Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
31-12-2023
EXCLUSIVERetired US Army Colonel says secret UFO projects should be made public by October 2030 - to beat America's rivals and get ahead of a 'catastrophic' leak
EXCLUSIVE -Retired US Army Colonel says secret UFO projects should be made public by October 2030 - to beat America's rivals and get ahead of a 'catastrophic' leak
The revelations came amid an invite-only UFO gathering at Stanford University
But many at the exclusive event worried UFO disclosure may spark social unrest
Nearly two decades ago, a think-tank in Washington D.C. invited past and present government officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon and elsewhere to debate the risks of revealing the truth about UFOs.
The 2004 event — according to a former CIA scientist who went public with the shocking story Friday — broke into working groups to weigh the positive and negative ramifications of declassifying America's top secret UFO programs.
Every working group according to that scientist, Dr. Hal Puthoff, came back with the same conclusion: the societal risks of UFO 'disclosure' were just too great.
But now, a host of Washington insiders are calling for a strategic 'campaign' to drag these alleged UFO reverse-engineering programs out into public view.
The Sol Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to exploring the broad implications of what are now called 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena' or UAP, convened its first ever symposium Friday, sponsored by Stanford University's School of Medicine
Sol's lofty goal, as described by its chief operating officer - the now famous UFO whistleblower and US Air Force and intel veteran David Grusch - is to 'open ourselves to a future where truth, unity, technological advancements and a deeper understanding of our existence converge'
The pivot emerged this weekend at an invite-only conference of former government officials, tenured physicists and other academic researchers, activists and reporters, held at Stanford University and attended by DailyMail.com.
The most explosive moments from the UFO event — the first ever symposium of the new nonprofit Sol Foundation, which is dedicated to exploring the broad implications of what are now called 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena' or UAP — came from recently retired US Army Colonel Karl E. Nell.
On Saturday, Col. Nell called for a 'UAP campaign plan' to compel transparency as well as 'a Manhattan Project' to successfully reverse engineer recovered UAP craft.
His stated goals, as heard by DailyMail.com at the event, were nothing less than broad transparency on covert UAP programs 'on or before conclusion of the decade.'
In a later slide, Col. Nell projected his strategic hope that so-called 'disclosure' on the UAP issue would be complete by October 1, 2030, although he admitted his timeline targets were 'at risk' of falling behind.
The Sol Foundation's lofty goal, as described by the now famous UFO whistleblower and US Air Force veteran David Grusch, was to 'open ourselves to a future where truth, unity, technological advancements and a deeper understanding of our existence converge.'
Grusch delivered the concluding remarks for Sol's first ever symposium Saturday night, via a remote live video feed.
'Let us advocate for transparency, not for ourselves,' Grusch told the assembled attendees, 'but for the generations to come, as we embark on a journey toward a more enlightened and interconnected world.'
Ahead of his alarming and explosive UFO testimony to the House Oversight Committee last July, Grusch submitted a C.V. to Congress listing his current job title as the Sol Foundation's chief operating officer — but a spokesperson for Sol told DailyMail.com that this was, at least, 'not the case now.'
'The Sol Foundation does not currently have a C-Suite. There is no COO or CFO,' Matt Barbet, who helps represent Sol on behalf of its contracted PR representation Freuds, wrote via email. 'This may have been incorrectly shared previously.'
Last June, Col. Nell staked his own reputation to Grusch's public testimony on UFOs, calling the UFO whistleblower 'beyond reproach' and vouching for Grusch's allegations of a secret, decades-long and illegal UFO crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program.
But the most explosive moments from Sol's two-day symposium came from retired US Army Colonel Karl Nell (left). Col. Nell called for a 'UAP campaign plan' to compel transparency as well as 'a Manhattan Project' to more successfully reverse-engineer recovered UAP craft
Col. Nell (above) called UFO whistleblower David Grusch 'beyond reproach' when Grusch's allegations of a secret, decades-long and illegal UFO reverse-engineering program became public in June. He said he wants to avoid 'catastrophic disclosure' on UAP initiated by a US rival
Col. Nell was one among a host of Washington insiders at Sol calling for a strategic 'campaign' to drag these alleged UFO reverse-engineering programs out into public view. He expressed the hope that the general public would compel their representatives in Congress on the issue
In one slide (above), Col. Nell projected strategic hopes that 'disclosure' on the UAP issue would be complete by October 1, 2030, although he admitted his timeline targets were 'at risk' of falling behind. Col. Nell was previously a 'modernization advisor' to Army Futures Command
Ahead of his testimony to the House Oversight Committee last July, Grusch submitted a C.V. to Congress listing his current job as Sol's COO - but a spokesperson for Sol told DailyMail.com that this was 'not the case now.' Early data on Sol's non-profit status listed Robovision founder Jonathan Berte as the foundation's CFO. Per Sol, this is apparently also not currently accurate
Geneticist Dr. Garry Nolan, whose Stanford lab houses some of the world's most precise equipment for measuring the atomic and molecular structure of physical samples, is a co-founder of Sol and its executive director.
The group's sweeping mission statement, according to its website, is to develop policy around the believed 'broad consequences' of UAP 'for the future of science, technology, economy, politics, law, religion, culture, and all other human institutions and endeavors.'
To that end, the group's other co-founder, Peter Skafish, is an anthropologist focused on the social implications of humanity's potential (or already occurring) encounters with the 'non-human intelligences,' which Grusch has said pilot these UAP.
Due largely to Dr. Nolan's efforts, the Sol Foundation event was sponsored by Stanford University's School of Medicine.
Col. Nell's comments raised eyebrows among attendees, in no small measure because of the senior army official's final military posting.
Col. Nell was a 'modernization advisor' to the Army Futures Command engaged in the 'most significant Army reorganization since 1973' — which has spearheaded the development of remote-operated and unmanned robotic combat vehicles, AI projects and other advancements.
In recent months, whistleblowers with knowledge of a classified UFO 'reverse engineering' program have opted to testify to the Senate intelligence committee, in part over their reported mistrust of the Pentagon's new UFO office, dubbed AARO. Above, a page from Project 1794 declassified in 2012
Nobel Prize nominee and CIA scientist Dr. Hal Puthoff, who worked in the government's 2008-2012 UFO program called AAWSAP, once told DailyMail.com that he had briefed Congress on classified information about UFO reverse-engineering programs
Chris Mellon, formerly with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, told Sol he had recently spoken with someone still in the Defense Department. Mellon's source said that more revelations and more high-resolution images were coming soon
READ MORE: Pentagon UFO chief Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick will be REPLACED by end of 2023 as whistleblowers accuse him of lying to the public and ignoring witnesses
A candidate 'short list' has been interviewed to replace Dr. Kirkpatrick (above), current head of the US Defense Department's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), one ex-official told the DailyMail.com. The news comes as UFO whistleblowers, per one attorney, 'don't want to go to Sean's AARO' citing safety concerns. 'Really knowledgeable' UFO whistleblowers, 'people who've laid their hands on the equipment,' as this attorney aiding the whistleblowers told the DailyMail.com 'never did trust Sean'
Col. Nell, now an aerospace executive, commanded at every grade level across decades of service including tours with the US Army Reserves, the DIA and US Space Command.
From 2021 to 2022, Col. Nell was assigned as the Army's dedicated liaison to the Pentagon's UAP Task Force.
After apologizing for framing his recommendations to citizen UAP advocates in military terms, Col. Nell detailed tactical 'lines of effort' he hoped the public, government officials and scientists might execute, in parallel, as part of a collaborative effort to advance scientific understanding of UAP.
Perhaps most ambitiously, Col. Nell expressed the hope of direct 'engagement' with the 'non-human intelligences,' or perhaps extraterrestrial beings, piloting UAP sometime in the next decade — a new 'interactive' era of 'scientific discovery.'
But, first and foremost, Col. Nell described his proposal as an effort to 'avoid catastrophic disclosure,' meaning a chaotic release of Earth-shattering revelations designed to sow discord, whether by independent actors or by one of the United States' foreign rivals.
In an echo of the 2004 think-tank exercise detailed by Dr. Puthoff earlier at this Sol event, multiple speakers at the conference floated potential dangers that could arise from future revelations about allegedly secret UAP programs.
Belgian artificial intelligence entrepreneur Jonathan Berte, founder of Robovision, looked to the late 19th century Industrial Revolution to suggest that tech breakthroughs from UAP could actually worsen climate change.
The discovery of oil during that period, Berte noted, actually led to a massive increase in coal mining, as older energy sources were pushed to their limits in an effort to build the hardware and equipment needed to exploit the new, emerging energy sources.
Berte suggested a similar Catch-22 could plague even the most utopian of new technologies or energy sources that may one day derive from UAP.
Another speaker, former Secretary of Defense for Intelligence official Chris Mellon, expressed similar worries about social unrest, economic turmoil and a possible international arms race that could follow further revelations on the UAP topic.
At one point, Mellon floated the possibility that 'disclosure' might change the behavior of UAP and whatever is controlling them, because they no longer have an incentive to hide and remain clandestine.
He worried further about how governments might overreact, causing an aggressive response from UAP and their alleged occupants.
Nevertheless, he described himself as in favor of further UAP disclosure.
Since helping leak three unclassified UFO videos to the New York Times in 2017 — sightings that remain unexplained to this day — Mellon has spearheaded efforts to compel the US government to investigate UFOs more seriously and more openly.
The former DoD official challenged the idea that the measured 'controlled disclosure' described by Col. Nell could occur at all, attributing the current state of affairs to similar principled stands by activist-insiders.
In fact, Mellon said that he had recently spoken with someone still within the Defense Department and that more revelations and more high-resolution images were coming soon.
'The US government is working on a declassification guide,' Mellon said, 'So with that there will be better imagery to be publicly released soon.'
'Maybe not 100 percent in focus,' he added, 'but better imagery.'
Former US Army Colonel Warns Of Catastrophic UFO Disclosure That May Spark Social Unrest
Former US Army Colonel Warns Of Catastrophic UFO Disclosure That May Spark Social Unrest
Are we on the verge of a catastrophic UFO disclosure? The year 2023 has witnessed significant progress in bringing the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) matter to the attention of the United States Congress. Pentagon whistleblower David Grusch has dominated discussions throughout the year. His testimony before Congress has raised numerous questions about the secrets the U.S. government has allegedly kept since the dawn of UFO sightings. Grusch is convinced that the world has been kept in the dark about this phenomenon for the past 80 to 90 years.
In November 2023, the Daily Mail published a bombshell story discussing the impending UAP Disclosure. Retired US Army Colonel Karl E. Nell was invited to a Stanford University conference to present a “campaign plan” aimed at achieving greater transparency. He also discussed a “Manhattan project,” dedicated to reverse-engineering recovered UFOs/UAPs.
During the conference, Nell showcased slides indicating his hope for disclosure by October 1, 2030. In the slides, he argued his plan, if achieved, would see “Proper Oversight Restored,” “Catastrophic Disclosure Avoid,” and “Scientific Understanding Advanced.” More specifically, Nell advocated for “restoration of proper Federal government oversight over all UAP legacy (and ongoing) program efforts” and “transformative” research and technology programs.
Daily Mail information was based on the first-ever symposium of the new nonprofit Sol Foundation, a group that wants serious research into UFOs and their effects on the world. In 2004, in response to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s decision not to release classified information about UFOs due to the perceived threat to national security, the Sol Foundation was formed.
At this meeting, both Colonel Nell and a former CIA scientist named Hal Puthoff spoke. Puthoff said that in 2004, these important groups chose not to share information about UFO research with the public. Among the Sol Foundation’s other speakers were former U.S. Air Force veteran David Grusch, who testified before Congress earlier this year under oath that “the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight” over UAP.
Grusch told the symposium: “Let us advocate for transparency, not for ourselves, but for the generations to come, as we embark on a journey toward a more enlightened and interconnected world.”
At the Sol Foundation UFO symposium, Karl Nell called for a ‘UAP campaign plan’ to compel transparency as well as ‘a Manhattan Project’ to more successfully reverse-engineer recovered UAP craft
Grusch has the support of many individuals in authority who believe he is an authentic person. In the June 2023 edition of the Debrief, authors Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal mention Karl Nell, the retired Army Colonel and aerospace executive who worked with David Grusch and characterized Grusch as “beyond reproach.” Nell speaks highly of Grusch’s integrity and credibility in his role as the Army’s liaison for the UAP Task Force from 2021 to 2022.
Grusch left the government on April 7, 2023, in order, he said, to advance government accountability through public awareness. He remains well-supported within intelligence circles, and numerous sources have vouched for his credibility.
“His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence,” Karl Nell said.
Ross Coulthart’s insights into UAP disclosure present a compelling narrative, suggesting that there’s more to this phenomenon than meets the eye. With mounting pressure from various quarters, including politicians and the media, the quest for truth regarding UAPs seems poised to intensify in the coming days.
The urgency for UAP disclosure has persisted for a very long time. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the third CIA director, wrote to Congress in 1960, pleading for UFO disclosure. This confirmed a cover-up and a government disinformation campaign aimed at ridiculing and stigmatizing the topic. (Source)
Perhaps Hillenkoetter’s best-known statement on the subject was in 1960 in a letter to Congress, as reported in The New York Times: “Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”
In his interview with NewsNation, journalist Ross Coulthart shed light on the Office of Global Access (OGA), a key entity where much of the coordination regarding the retrieval of unidentified crafts seems to be happening. He emphasized the seriousness of the matter, stating, “You’ve got to have an office to coordinate the retrieval of these craft.” While some may dismiss these claims as mere science fiction, his recent interactions with credible intelligence sources have solidified his
However, the scale of this phenomenon might be more extensive than what has been previously reported. Ross refuted claims that the U.S. only possesses nine such crafts. “I’m told that the United States has far more than nine craft,” he remarked, indicating that not all of them are intact. He further elaborated that JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) operators, primarily sourced from t he US Air Force special forces, are actively involved in retrieval missions.
A significant revelation from Ross’ sources is the recovery of what he terms as “biologics” — in simpler terms, Non-human Bodies. He shared, “We have recovered what David Grush euphemistically referred to as biologics. Alien bodies, non-human bodies.” This raises pressing concerns about the extent of knowledge the U.S. government possesses regarding non-human life forms.
Ross expressed fears of a potential “catastrophic disclosure” if the government remains tight-lipped. He believes that withholding such crucial information from the public and Congress might lead to unforeseen consequences. He stated, “I think it’s incumbent on the president and members of the executive to start thinking seriously,” emphasizing the urgency of the matter.
When posed with alternate explanations, like the involvement of foreign adversaries, Coulthart was quick to debunk such theories. He clarified that the evidence and statements from government officials indicate that these phenomena are not associated with known foreign technologies. This assertion raises eyebrows and places the focus squarely on what exactly the U.S. government knows but is not sharing.
Ross pointed out the notable shift in stance by certain senior Republican politicians. He questioned their motivations behind opposing legislation that seeks transparency regarding non-human intelligence technology. Coulthart’s skepticism was evident when he questioned, “If this is all nonsense, why would somebody of the incredible reputation and seniority of Chuck Schumer and Marco Rubio, associate themselves with legislation that specifically talks over 20 times about NHI nonhuman intelligence technology?”
Danny Sheehan has been publicly pushing for the disclosure or revelation of information related to UAPs. In other words, he believes that there should be more transparency from governments or other relevant authorities about these unidentified phenomena.
In his other interview with James Landoli on “Engaging The Phenomenon,” Sheehan, who was a former Chief Council for the United States Jesuit order, revealed intriguing details about his conversations with the head of the Vatican archives regarding the Vatican’s knowledge of extraterrestrial life. Sheehan shed light on his involvement in a groundbreaking initiative to address the theological and philosophical implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence.
During the interview, James raised the topic of David Grusch‘s claim that the Vatican possessed knowledge of extraterrestrial phenomena. Sheehan discussed his access to the classified files of the Project Blue Book, where he encountered photos of UFO crash retrievals and concrete evidence of non-human piloted vehicles.
He proposed the formation of a task force involving all 54 major religious denominations to address the issue from a theological perspective. However, at that time, there was insufficient consensus, and the proposal was declined. Sheehan is currently working through his New Paradigm Institute to organize a global summit conference involving world religious leaders to discuss the recent recovery of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
“The United States government is in possession of biological evidence and has actually taken into custody alive an extraterrestrial person. They’re keeping this secret, interrogating the being, and distorting the information to justify massive expenditures on weapon development under the guise of a perceived threat.”
– Daniel Sheehan.
Sheehan highlighted the Vatican’s acknowledgment of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He referenced a formal statement issued by the Catholic Church on November 10, 2009, authorized by Pope Benedict. The statement, issued by Father Jose Gabriel Alfuz, a director of the Pontifical Observatory in Rome, recognized the increasing discovery of exoplanets and called for a global discussion on the philosophical and theological implications of the imminent discovery of extraterrestrial life.
Sheehan disclosed that the government was telepathically interrogating the extraterrestrial biological entity (EBO) in custody. Despite acknowledging the bizarre nature of the revelation, Sheehan stood by the credibility of the information, having interviewed individuals directly involved in the process. The EBO allegedly conveyed that a coalition of star systems in our galaxy monitors the evolution of life on different planets, including Earth.
“Pope Benedict had a formal statement issued by the Catholic Church, saying that with the discovery of more exoplanets, it has become clear that we will be discovering life elsewhere in the universe. This prompted the need for a global discussion on the philosophical and theological questions posed by the discovery of extraterrestrial life.”
– Daniel Sheehan.
Meanwhile, Lue Elizondo expresses support for efforts to increase transparency around UAPs. He indicates that there are ongoing efforts behind the scenes to achieve this transparency and that even if certain official channels face challenges or opposition, there are alternative methods and backup plans in place for disclosure. Elizondo emphasizes the importance of understanding the vulnerabilities and challenges faced in these efforts, suggesting a comprehensive strategy is in play.
Unveiling the Mystery: JFK, UFO Sightings, and a Nation’s Quest for Truth
Unveiling the Mystery: JFK, UFO Sightings, and a Nation’s Quest for Truth
The Unseen Skies: A Glimpse into the Unknown
The night sky has long been a canvas for humanity’s greatest mysteries and stories. Among these are the unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, that have captured the imagination and curiosity of many. From the eerie lights of Roswell to the intricate patterns dancing across the night sky, UFO sightings have become a staple of modern mythology. But what happens when these sightings intersect with one of America’s most profound tragedies—the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?
JFK and the Classified Cosmos
Just ten days before his untimely demise, President Kennedy penned a significant document, a request directed at the CIA to release classified UFO files. This memo, enveloped in the highest secrecy, has fueled endless speculation and theories. Did Kennedy’s keen interest in the unknown and his push for transparency lead to his assassination? This question forms the core of a narrative that intertwines a president’s curiosity with the nation’s most enigmatic phenomena.
Deciphering the Skies: A Presidential Quest
JFK’s assassination remains one of the most dissected events in American history. Amidst the myriad of theories, one stands out starkly—the possibility that his pursuit of UFO intelligence played a role in his murder. The declassified memo suggests a president eager to share knowledge of the unknown with NASA and, intriguingly, hints at a potential collaboration with the Soviet Union on space exploration. This revelation positions Kennedy as not just a leader, but as a visionary, seeking to bridge gaps and unravel the mysteries of the cosmos.
The Echoes of Roswell and Beyond
The narrative of UFO sightings doesn’t pause with Kennedy. It stretches back to incidents like Roswell and forward into the continuous reports from civilians and military personnel alike. Each sighting adds a layer to the complex tapestry of this ongoing mystery. As the public’s fascination grows, so does the demand for transparency and understanding. The question remains: What truths are soaring in the unseen stretches of our skies?
A Nation’s Quest for Truth
As the CIA prepares to release thousands of classified files relating to JFK’s death, the world watches, hoping for answers. Will these documents provide clarity, or will they deepen the enigma? The intersection of JFK’s assassination and the phenomenon of UFO sightings represents a unique confluence of mystery, policy, and science fiction, captivating the public’s imagination and demanding attention from scholars and skeptics alike.
VIDEO:
Was JFK Murdered Because Of Classified UFO Documents? | NASA’s Unexplained Files
In this quest for understanding, the sky is not the limit but the beginning. As we continue to gaze upward, the mysteries of UFO sightings remain an ever-present reminder of our desire for knowledge and the untold stories of our universe.
Batteries could charge up by relying on a quantum effect known as indefinite causal order, whereby the laws of cause and effect are scrambled and power can move through the system quicker.
An artist's illustration of a particle in a quantum superposition.
(Image credit: agsandrew | Shutterstock.com)
Quantum batteries of the future could gain charge by breaking the conventional laws of causality, research has shown.
Conventional batteries charge by converting electrical energy into chemical energy on the scale of vast numbers of electrons.
But in a new proof-of-principle experiment researchers have demonstrated how a weird quantum effect may lead to batteries that charge faster and with more efficiency by scrambling cause and effect, according to research Dec. 14 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Causality, or the relationship between cause and effect, is not always straightforward in quantum mechanics, the strange rules that govern the world of the very small.
"Normally, if event A comes first and causes event B, it is assumed that B cannot in turn cause A at the same time," co-first author Yuanbo Chen, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, told Live Science. "However, recent advancements in theoretical physics propose that in certain frameworks, scenarios where 'A causes B' and 'B causes A' could simultaneously be true."
The principle of quantum superposition enables particles to exist in many different states at once, at least until they are observed and "pick" a state to land in.
Any property of a quantum object (such as its momentum, location, or, in the famed case of Erwin Schrödinger’s hypothetical cat, whether it’s alive or not) can exist in superposition — a probabilistic jumble of every possible state that only collapses into a definite outcome when the object is viewed.
This realization has led physicists to conduct all kinds of bizarre experiments that contradict our intuitive notions of what should be possible, including ones where a single particle can both exist and not exist in many different places at the same time.
But superposition doesn’t just mess with our intuitive sense of space, it scrambles our sense of causality too. In 2009, physicists used a device called a quantum switch to observe a phenomenon called indefinite causal order. By sending a light particle, or photon down a pair of diverging paths, the physicists caused it to split into two possible versions of itself — one which went down the first path, and the other the second.
Then, depending on the path the photon took, physicists applied two different processes in a different order depending on the path. The result was a photon that had its causality jumbled: it was in a quantum superposition where both orders of events were true.
"Say that we have two processes: A and B," Chen said. "With a quantum switch, you can create a superposition of (First apply A and then B) and (First apply B and then A)."
Chen and his colleagues wondered if they could incorporate this into a quantum battery, a proposed device that could theoretically store the energy of photons and charge faster than conventional electrochemical batteries.
They compared three charging methods: connecting two chargers to a battery sequentially, simultaneously, or in a superposition that made it impossible to tell the order of input.
Their calculations showed that the superposition method would enable a low-power, causally-scrambled charger to deliver more energy more efficiently than a conventional high-power charger.
They followed up their calculations with a proof-of-principle experiment using light. By sending photons through a quantum switch with two possible paths, the researchers split the light particles into two possible versions of themselves, each one traversing a different path.
Then, after subjecting the light to two inputs that would polarize them in a different order (A then B or B then A) based on the path they were on, the researchers measured the polarization at the end and found that the individual photons had been causally scrambled.
Having tested their protocol, the scientists say their next challenge is to create a physical quantum battery that can hold a charge. However, the first experimental evidence for a quantum battery was only published last year, so it may not happen any time soon.
"Given the current situation characterized by limited experimental efforts and ongoing theoretical exploration in the realm of quantum batteries, it is challenging to estimate a precise timeline for achieving conclusive outcomes," Chen said.
What is the mark of a genius? The ability to reach a solution through an unforeseen shortcut instead of a random walk or an elaborate effort.
In the late 1940s, the brilliant physicists Shin’ichirō Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger offered an operator method for calculating quantum electrodynamics, which was entirely different from Richard Feynman’s diagrammatic method. The two approaches appeared very different, until a 25-year old physicist, Freeman Dyson, had an Eureka moment and demonstrated in a 1949 paper that they are equivalent. The circumstances were unexpected.
In the spring of 1948, Dyson took a cross-country road trip with Feynman. Upon his return, Dyson went to Ann Arbor to spend six weeks with Schwinger. Subsequently, he left Michigan for another cross-country bus trip. Dyson referred to a “flash of illumination on the Greyhound bus,” where everything fell into place. He saw the equivalence of the two competing formulations that had evaded both Feynman and Schwinger.
I often tell my students and postdocs that scientific insights are not necessarily the product of hard work. Take a vacation … go to the movies … enjoy music. If at the end of it all, you’ll return with a brilliant solution to a problem that others were struggling with, your contribution is invaluable. Your intelligence is measured by the originality of your intellectual discoveries and not by the number of likes you get on social media.
What makes human intelligence so unique relative to animals? It is in its ability to promote knowledge exponentially fast. Natural selection is often set up through gradual zero-sum games in an environment that offers limited resources. Animals with better motor skills maintain territorial control more effectively than their competitors. This perspective changed drastically over the past century of human history. Modern science and technology now offer an infinite-sum game with unlimited resources. Whereas natural evolution was limited to Earth, humans launched spacecraft towards new domains of real estate within the solar system and beyond.
Human intelligence allows exponential growth of technological capabilities. Moore’s Law for the miniaturization of semiconductors applies to a broader range of technological capabilities, including 3D printing, drones, robotics, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology.
Without intelligence, unplanned progress is limited to random walks. For example, mutations sample by chance alternative designs of biological systems. Science is made efficient by design through constructive cooperation, as summarized in a 1675 letter by Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke: “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Sharing scientific and technological knowledge among individuals and groups makes the growth rate of knowledge proportional to the amount of existing knowledge. When the rate scales with the amount, growth is exponential.
Communication via language and mathematics is key to the exponential evolution of science and technology. Sharing information promotes its growth at a rate that is proportional to what is already known by the community.
It is reasonable to imagine that these traits are universal and likely also apply to alien species on exoplanets. If extraterrestrial gadgets can reach Earth, then the senders probably communicate with each other through a language. In other words: technological aliens communicate!
And if their technological growth is exponential as is ours, they could be far more superior if their technological age exceeds ours. When we encounter their gadgets we might be filled with religious awe, like Moses witnessing the burning bush which was never consumed and concluding that it was manufactured by a superhuman entity.
Humans exceeded the evolutionary level of chimpanzees not by developing better motor skills, but by developing rockets that can reach the Moon and Mars. Given this perspective, it is surprising that some of my colleagues insist that interstellar meteors must be stones. I refer to this perspective as “the stone age of science.”
Imagining what might lie beyond the solar system is a mark of intelligence. We know that 83% of the cosmic matter is not comprised of stones, but an unknown substance labeled “dark matter”. Our ability to consider alternatives to the familiar enables growth in our scientific knowledge. Those who insist on past knowledge will remain ignorant in the same way that chimpanzees never imagined landing on the Moon and non-avian dinosaurs never looked through telescopes in anticipation of a looming catastrophe from an asteroid impact.
Extending our ventures to interstellar space beyond the boundaries of the Solar system would be the next mark of human intelligence and ingenuity. Enrico Fermi asked: “where is everybody?” The answer may arrive as soon as we exit the Oort Cloud to interstellar space: “Welcome to the club of intelligent civilizations whose knowledge grows exponentially.”
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s – Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors onScience and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial:The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2023.
In the 2023 July congressional UAP hearings, former US intelligence official David Grusch testified that the United States government has been concealing evidence of UFOs and indications of non-human intelligence. He claimed the government possessed retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin and he knows the location. Finally, the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) is considered serious due to the lack of information about them and increasing military encounters. Meanwhile, UFO enthusiasts are waiting for the Pentagon to release a 23-minute video that will reportedly leave viewers “rattled.” Luis Elizondo claimed that it shows UFOs moving in a strange pattern.
It is more than 4 years since the New York Times article revealed the existence of the secret program (AATI) funded by the United States Army to investigate UFOs. Luis Elizondo ran the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATI) from 2007 to 2012. Since then, he has spoken about various incidents that happened to the US pilots and possibilities of alien existence.
Elizondo, who resigned from the Pentagon in 2017, has made several bold statements since then. His claims literally change the US government’s perspective on viewing UFOs. Moreover, he refused to talk more as he is afraid of being arrested.
In 2021, he stated to have seen the UFO footage, describing it as showing unidentified floating objects for 23 minutes. He made this revelation while talking to the YouTube channels Fade to Black and Witness Citizen UAP. During the talk, Elizondo revealed that the UFO video was extremely compelling.
According to Elizondo, the video is said to show multiple UFOs that are moving in ways and strange “patterns” that humans do not conventionally understand – with data recorded using US military systems.
Lue Elizondo was a former US Army intelligence officer who helped trace terrorists after 9/11. credit: The Sun
He also mentioned this video in his interview with GQ. He stated: “It was the overwhelming weight of evidence and data. I was talking to pilots routinely. There’s videos out there [in government, that the public haven’t seen] – there’s one that’s 23 minutes long. There’s another one where this thing is 50 feet away from the cockpit. I mean, it ain’t ours. We know that. Sometimes you just couldn’t believe it – you’d have seven or eight incidents in a single day. I’d get these emails from an admiral or a ship’s captain saying, ‘Lue, what do you want me to do? I can’t keep people below deck forever. These things are swarming my ship, they’re all over the place.’ That’s tough. I kept promising the cavalry was coming and I’d have answers for them and the cavalry never came. Senior leadership didn’t want to deal with it.”
While discussing the 23-minute UFO video, Elizondo mentioned that it is a very compelling footage. “I did not say what it was. I sent it out to some highly trained experts in the ISR (Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) community. And when they came back to me, the title of the email was quote unquote ‘that UFO video’.”
He added: “It is definitive and its perplexing, every time you think you are like ‘thats what I am looking at’ – bang, it changes.” When quizzed by host Jimmy Church on the way the object moved, its speed and if it was “beyond our capabilities,” Elizondo said it was enough to make officials “raise our eyebrows and say woah.”
Here is the transcript of Luis Elizondo’s interview with Sean of Witness Citizen, where he talked about the 23-minute video and 50-foot photo:
Elizondo: You know, the problem is that this battle isn’t over. We won a major battle with the report coming out of the UAP report, it was historic like you said, in the very first sentence of the very first paragraph. It says this is a preliminary report which means there are other reports, you know, congratulations, you won, you got it, right? And then it said that there were 144 incidents and only one they were able to identify. By the way, that was only in the last year and a half, it was from November 2019 and forward. By the way, it only involved the navy, right, so yeah, so people say, well there was one from the Nimitz, okay.
Sean: That equipment sucks or… Elizondo: This is… well, so, you’ve got a lot of stuff happening, right? So, you know, we’re just now starting this journey together.
Sean: Yeah, you know, it is kind of overwhelming for a lot of people but I’ll tell you, the message is getting out there in the right way and the way that I kind of… uh… evaluate, that is talking to my wife because she’s not very into this stuff, so not that, she’s not against it, we did see something together but she’s not like me, she doesn’t have a podcast. But the news comes on, they talk about the report, I come home later, ask her about it, what was your takeaway? And she says, well, I guess they only identified one out of what a hundred something, and I’m like, yes…
Elizondo: Right. Sean: …That’s exactly right, honey. Elizondo: Exactly, by the way, some of these things were really, really close, so you know, you tell me. Sean: Wow, that’s crazy, yeah… Oh, when are we going to see that 50-foot-away pic? Elizondo: Oh, man, that’s not up to me, but yeah, there’s a couple there that will rattle you pretty good, um… Yeah, there’s one I won’t go into detail, but the video is about 23 minutes long, it’s pretty good, man, gotta get that popcorn and some 3D glasses and maybe some Coca-Cola or something…
In order to have a glimpse of what the Navy and Air Force might capture in their camera, see the video below by the U.S. Navy that has been recently released, showing the support ship Shahid Baziar, from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, unlawfully towing the Saildrone Explorer. From this video, one may wonder how many high-quality UFO videos are in possession of the US Navy.
Elizondo clarifies that his job was never intended to study UFOs. It was to hunt terrorists and spies – and then use those same skills to hunt UFOs. “It’s the same thing,” he said. He further noted: “I didn’t care if it was supernatural technology, bottom line is there is something over controlled US airspace performing in ways we can’t – we’ve got to figure it out.” (Source)
He compared the growing push for disclosure on what the US knows about the mysterious craft to when mankind first came out of caves to look at the stars, or when man-made fire. He said the world may see a “paradigm shift” in our thinking – just like when the astronomer Galileo established the Earth was not the center of the Solar System. “They tried to persecute him, to put him to the death – but at the end [the revelation] didn’t disrupt society and it benefited the species,” Elizondo said.
EXCLUSIVEA bird, plane... or a UFO? Woman spots illuminous 'Tic-Tac' shaped object from her kitchen in Stockport - but experts think there might be a simple explanation
EXCLUSIVE - A bird, plane... or a UFO? Woman spots illuminous 'Tic-Tac' shaped object from her kitchen in Stockport - but experts think there might be a simple explanation
Karen Brown, from Stockport, was looking out of her kitchen window when she spotted the unidentified flying object (UFO).
Her photos show the illuminous oblong object – which, at first glance, looks similar to the famous white breath mint – bobbing around over the trees at night in September.
Experts are intrigued by the presence of aerial entities that look like the original 'Tic Tac' UFO seen in 2004 – but there could be a simple explanation.
Karen Brown, from Stockport, was looking out of her kitchen window when she spotted the unidentified flying object (UFO)
Photos show the illuminous entity bobbing around over the trees in the suburb of Heaton Mersey at night time
The first, described as looking like a square or triangle, had a hazy appearance and was changing shape and 'darting around the sky'.
Meanwhile, the second object – a much brighter white in colour and 'shaped like a Tic Tac' – kept vanishing and reappearing.
It's unclear if the 'Tic Tac' sightings by two different people in the same town are of the same object.
Mrs Brown told MailOnline: 'It was very strange that a lady in Stockport saw something at the beginning of October and I saw a similar sighting the beginning of September.'
Its brilliant white colour made it stand out in the British night's sky. It comes nearly two decades after the original 'Tic Tac' UFO was spotted in the US
Mrs Brown said she was 'really intrigued' by the mysterious phenomena which she snapped in Heaton Mersey
Earlier in 2023, a 'concerned citizen' shared her encounter with two unidentified flying objects (UFOs) from her back garden in Stockport
A bizarre face-shaped object changed colour while in the sky
According to the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee, the matter falls under the remit of UK Space Command, who MailOnline has contacted for comment.
Nick Pope, a UFO expert formerly with the UK's Ministry of Defence, has called the presence of Tic Tac shaped objects in UK skies 'intriguing'.
'Any mention of a Tic Tac-shaped object performing unusual manoeuvres is particularly intriguing given the US Navy sightings of such objects,' he told MailOnline.
Another British UFO researcher, Philip Mantle, said: 'I see no reason why these photos are not of an aircraft or drone'.
'It's basically a light in the distance and the elongated shape is made by the unsteady hand of the photographer,' he told MailOnline.
'Why would two people in consecutive months spot the same thing? Well maybe aircraft are scheduled to take off at certain times and this is the flight path they take.'
When the original Tic Tac UFO was spotted nearly 20 years ago, it marked a seismic shift away from the entities being perceived as simply 'flying saucers'.
US Navy pilots were conducting a routine training mission with the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off the Southern California coast in November 2004.
Aboard was US Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, who first noticed an unusual 'churning' of the ocean surface before seeing the Tic Tac UFO.
One of the most famous and unusual UFOs to date, spotted by the US Navy in 2004, was compared with the Tic Tac breath mint due to its white, oblong appearance (pictured)
The smooth, white oblong object 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.'
US Department of Defense – otherwise known as the Pentagon – declined to comment on the recent Tic Tac images in the UK.
However, the usually secretive government branch has been more transparent about what it knows regarding UFOs in recent months.
A Pentagon document published in the summer revealed that the typical UFO has a round shape, usually spherical or an orb, with a white or silver colour.
The world's UFO hotspots are revealed - as Pentagon admits hundreds of objects have been spotted 'all over the world'
The US government is notoriously secretive when it comes to sharing what it knows about extraterrestrial life.
But in a possible bid for transparency, the Department of Defense has released a new document disclosing the 'world's UFO hotspots'.
It includes a map disclosing where the most sightings of unidentified objects have been recorded, based on reports between 1996 and 2023.
The map discloses where the most sightings have been recorded based on reports between 1996 and 2023 - naming Japan and the coasts of the US as particular hotspots
Among them Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, the east and west coasts of the US including California, as well as parts of the Middle East.
Astronomers Find New Way to Detect Water Oceans and Alien Life on Rocky Exoplanets
Astronomers Find New Way to Detect Water Oceans and Alien Life on Rocky Exoplanets
Planets too close to their star are too hot (such as Venus), those too far, are too cold (like Mars), whereas planets in the habitable zone are just right. Whilst there has been much effort in identifying planets in the theoretical habitable zones of their stars, until now there was no way of knowing whether they truly have liquid water. Now, astronomers from the University of Birmingham, MIT and elsewhere have shown that if an exoplanet has a reduced amount of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere compared to neighboring planets, it suggests there is liquid water on that planet’s surface.
An artist’s impression of the super-Earth planet Ross 508b.
Image credit: Sci.News.
Astronomers have so far detected more than 5,200 extrasolar worlds. With current telescopes, they can directly measure a planet’s distance to its star and the time it takes it to complete an orbit.
Those measurements can help scientists infer whether a planet is within a habitable zone.
But there’s been no way to directly confirm whether a planet is indeed habitable, meaning that liquid water exists on its surface.
Across our own Solar System, astronomers can detect the presence of liquid oceans by observing glints — flashes of sunlight that reflect off liquid surfaces.
These glints, or specular reflections, have been observed, for instance, on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which helped to confirm the moon’s large lakes.
Detecting a similar glimmer in far-off planets, however, is out of reach with current technologies.
But MIT astronomer Julien de Wit, University of Birmingham astronomer Amaury Triaud and their colleagues realized there’s another habitable feature close to home that could be detectable in distant worlds.
“An idea came to us, by looking at what’s going on with the terrestrial planets in our own system,” Dr. Triaud said.
Venus, Earth, and Mars share similarities, in that all three are rocky and inhabit a relatively temperate region with respect to the Sun.
Earth is the only planet among the trio that currently hosts liquid water. And the researchers noted another obvious distinction: Earth has significantly less carbon dioxide in its atmosphere.
“We assume that these planets were created in a similar fashion, and if we see one planet with much less carbon now, it must have gone somewhere,” Dr. Triaud said.
“The only process that could remove that much carbon from an atmosphere is a strong water cycle involving oceans of liquid water.”
Indeed, the Earth’s oceans have played a major and sustained role in absorbing carbon dioxide.
Over hundreds of millions of years, the oceans have taken up a huge amount of carbon dioxide, nearly equal to the amount that persists in the Venusian atmosphere today.
This planetary-scale effect has left Earth’s atmosphere significantly depleted of carbon dioxide compared to its planetary neighbors.
“On Earth, much of the atmospheric carbon dioxide has been sequestered in seawater and solid rock over geological timescales, which has helped to regulate climate and habitability for billions of years,” said Dr. Frieder Klein, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The astronomers reasoned that if a similar depletion of carbon dioxide were detected in a far-off planet, relative to its neighbors, this would be a reliable signal of liquid oceans and life on its surface.
“After reviewing extensively the literature of many fields from biology, to chemistry, and even carbon sequestration in the context of climate change, we believe that indeed if we detect carbon depletion, it has a good chance of being a strong sign of liquid water and/or life,” Dr. de Wit said.
In the study, the researchers lay out a strategy for detecting habitable planets by searching for a signature of depleted carbon dioxide.
Such a search would work best for ‘peas-in-a-pod’ systems, in which multiple terrestrial planets, all about the same size, orbit relatively close to each other, similar to our own Solar System.
The first step the scientists propose is to confirm that the planets have atmospheres, by simply looking for the presence of carbon dioxide, which is expected to dominate most planetary atmospheres.
“Carbon dioxide is a very strong absorber in the infrared, and can be easily detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets,” Dr. de Wit said.
“A signal of carbon dioxide can then reveal the presence of exoplanet atmospheres.”
Once astronomers determine that multiple planets in a system host atmospheres, they can move on to measure their carbon dioxide content, to see whether one planet has significantly less than the others.
If so, the planet is likely habitable, meaning that it hosts significant bodies of liquid water on its surface.
But habitable conditions don’t necessarily mean that a planet is inhabited. To see whether life might actually exist, the authors propose that astronomers look for another feature in a planet’s atmosphere: ozone.
On Earth, plants and some microbes contribute to drawing carbon dioxide, although not nearly as much as the oceans. Nevertheless, as part of this process, the lifeforms emit oxygen, which reacts with the Sun’s photons to transform into ozone, a molecule that is far easier to detect than oxygen itself.
If a planet’s atmosphere shows signs of both ozone and depleted carbon dioxide, it likely is a habitable, and inhabited world.
“If we see ozone, chances are pretty high that it’s connected to carbon dioxide being consumed by life,” Dr. Triaud said.
“And if it’s life, it’s glorious life. It would not be just a few bacteria. It would be a planetary-scale biomass that’s able to process a huge amount of carbon, and interact with it.”
The team estimates that the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope would be able to measure carbon dioxide, and possibly ozone, in nearby, multiplanet systems such as TRAPPIST-1, a seven-planet system that orbits a bright star, just 40 light-years from Earth.
“TRAPPIST-1 is one of only a handful of systems where we could do terrestrial atmospheric studies with Webb,” Dr. de Wit said.
“Now we have a roadmap for finding habitable planets. If we all work together, paradigm-shifting discoveries could be done within the next few years.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
A.H.M.J. Triaud et al. Atmospheric carbon depletion as a tracer of water oceans and biomass on temperate terrestrial exoplanets. Nat Astron, published online December 28, 2023; doi: 10.1038/s41550-023-02157-9
UFO appears after plasma twister broke apart from the sun
UFO appears after plasma twister broke apart from the sun
A plasma twister in the sun's northern hemisphere broke apart on December 28, 2023 and hurled a spinning cloud of hot gas into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded its escape.
At first glance this tiny cloud may seem inconsequential. However, on its way out of the sun's atmosphere, it triggered magnetic instabilities that turned into a surprisingly large CME. The CME will not hit Earth.
Remarkable, right after the plasma twister's breakup, a substantial unidentified object emerged from the sun and shot into space.
Considering the history of similar objects passing near the sun, which were clearly not charged particles released from the sun we may wonder whether this object could be of extraterrestrial origin and if it could be linked to the earlier disintegration of the plasma twister from the sun?
Organic Molecules Come from the Universe’s Cold Places
Life, as we all know, is based on chemistry. Prebiotic chemical building blocks existed on our planet for a long time before life arose. Astrobiology and cosmochemistry focus on the formation of those building blocks. They also look at the role each played in creating all the life forms we know today.
For a long time, cosmo-chemists have known that organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are quite plentiful in the Universe. Scientists consider them plausible prebiotic building blocks that likely played an important role in the formation of life on Earth. What’s not as well understood is their origin story. For a long time, scientists suspected that they formed in regions where temperatures get to around 1000 K. That would supply energy to promote chemical activity to create PAHs, such as in star-forming molecular clouds or circumstellar disks. It’s also possible they form as part of the processing of carbon-rich dust grains by nearby energy sources (such as stars).
However, based on recent studies of an asteroid and meteorite, it turns out that some PAHs formed in cold regions of space, too. In those regions, the temperature does not get much higher than 100 K. That finding opens up new pathways for understanding life’s chemical journey on other planets and celestial bodies.
Understanding These Organic Molecules
According to Professor Kliti Grice, a researcher at the Western Australia Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin University, understanding these materials is a big step. “PAHs are organic compounds made up of carbon and hydrogen that are common on Earth but are also found in celestial bodies like asteroids and meteorites,” said Grice.
They’re spread throughout the interstellar medium and detected in galaxies across the Universe. Generally, they’re used as a tracer of cold molecular gas, which is where stars—and planets—begin their formation journey.
An image of an interstellar nebula with some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecular structures superimposed. These organic molecules exist throughout the Universe. Courtesy: NASA.
As such, scientists want to trace their path from space to Earth and compare space-based PAHs to Earth-based ones. That’s because PAHs are a very likely precursor to the kinds of materials that eventually lead to the formation of life. That makes their presence on other celestial bodies intriguing as scientists work to understand the formation and evolution of life.
Beyond Earth, PAHs account for about 30 percent of all carbon found in regions around stars, in molecular clouds, and on planets (and other bodies). On Earth, many PAHs exist in coal deposits and oil reservoirs. Plants burning (as in forest fires) also produce these compounds. They work their way into the soil and eventually end up in plants (among other things).
Organic Molecules and Rocky Bodies
Grice is part of an international research team that focused on pieces of asteroid Ryugu and the famous Murchison meteorite to figure out where their PAHs formed. The team started with an unusual chemistry project: burning plants. That’s because plants contain PAHs that form here on Earth. “We performed controlled burn experiments on Australian plants,” said Grice, “which were isotopically compared to PAHs from fragments of the Ryugu asteroid that were returned to Earth by a Japanese spacecraft in 2020, and the Murchison meteorite that landed in Australia in 1969. The bonds between light and heavy carbon isotopes in the PAHs were analyzed to reveal the temperature at which they were formed.”
The Murchison Meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. It contains organic molecules. Courtesy Basilicofresco, CC BY-SA 3.0
Using high-tech methods to study Ryugu and Murchison, the team found two sources of PAHs with slightly different characteristics. “The smaller ones likely formed in cold outer space, while bigger ones probably formed in warmer environments, like near a star or inside a celestial body,” according to Grice.
Ryugu is particularly interesting since it formed early in the Solar System’s history. A critical analysis of its chemistry found several PAHs. The team also detected organosulfides (compounds with sulfur). These all likely formed in very cold interstellar clouds. That means they predate the formation of the Solar System, making bits of Ryugu older than the Sun and planets.
PAHs on the Pathway of Life
Why are scientists interested in PAHs? Their role as precursor compounds for life is intriguing. The fact that they can exist out in space opens up avenues of research into life beyond Earth. In addition, their presence gives new insight into the bodies that contain them.
Research team member Dr. Alex Holman said that studying the isotopic composition of PAHs found in celestial bodies offers a glimpse of their formation conditions. “This research gives us valuable insights into how organic compounds form beyond Earth and where they come from in space,” Dr Holman said. Ultimately, in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, understanding the chemical pathways it takes through different formation environments will be important information.
NASA Tests Out 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine!
Engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, conduct a successful, 251-second hot fire test of a full-scale Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine combustor in fall 2023, achieving more than 5,800 pounds of thrust. Credit: NASA
NASA Tests Out 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine!
Looking to the future, NASA is investigating several technologies that will allow it to accomplish some bold objectives. This includes returning to the Moon, creating the infrastructure that will let us stay there, sending the first crewed mission to Mars, exploring the outer Solar System, and more. This is particularly true of propulsion technologies beyond conventional chemical rockets and engines. One promising technology is the Rotating Detonation Engine(RDE), which relies on one or more detonations that continuously travel around an annular channel.
In a recent hot fire test at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the agency achieved a new benchmark in developing RDE technology. On September 27th, engineers successfully tested a 3D-printed rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) for 251 seconds, producing more than 2,630 kg (5,800 lbs) of thrust. This sustained burn meets several mission requirements, such as deep-space burns and landing operations. NASA recently shared the footage of the RDRE hot fire test (see below) as it burned continuously on a test stand at NASA Marshall for over four minutes.
While RDEs have been developed and tested for many years, the technology has garnered much attention since NASA began researching it for its “Moon to Mars” mission architecture. Theoretically, the engine technology is more efficient than conventional propulsion and similar methods that rely on controlled detonations. The first hot fire test with the RDRE was performed at Marshall in the summer of 2022 in partnership with advanced propulsion developer In Space LLC and Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana.
During that test, the RDRE fired for nearly a minute and produced more than 1815 kg (4,000 lbs) of thrust. According to Thomas Teasley, who leads the RDRE test effort at NASA Marshall, the primary goal of the latest test is to understand better how they can scale the combustor to support different engine systems and maximize the variety of missions they could be used for. This ranges from landers and upper-stage engines to supersonic retropropulsion – a deceleration technique that could land heavy payloads and crewed missions on Mars. As Teasley said in a recent NASA press release:
“The RDRE enables a huge leap in design efficiency. It demonstrates we are closer to making lightweight propulsion systems that will allow us to send more mass and payload further into deep space, a critical component to NASA’s Moon to Mars vision.”
Meanwhile, engineers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Houston-based Venus Aerospace are working with NASA Marshall to identify ways to scale the technology for larger mission profiles.
The full, weird story of the quantum world is much too large for a single article, but the period from 1905, when Einstein first published his solution to the photoelectric puzzle, to the 1960’s, when a complete, well-tested, rigorous, and insanely complicated quantum theory of the subatomic world finally emerged, is quite the story.
This quantum theory would come to provide, in its own way, its own complete and total revision of our understanding of light. In the quantum picture of the subatomic world, what we call the electromagnetic force is really the product of countless microscopic interactions, the work of indivisible photons, who interact in mysterious ways. As in, literally mysterious. The quantum framework provides no picture as to how subatomic interactions actually proceed. Rather, it merely gives us a mathematical toolset for calculating predictions. And so while we can only answer the question of how photons actually work with a beleaguered shrug, we are at least equipped with some predictive power, which helps assuage the pain of quantum incomprehensibility.
Doing the business of physics – that is, using mathematical models to make predictions to validate against experiment – is rather hard in quantum mechanics. And that’s because of the simple fact that quantum rules are not normal rules, and that in the subatomic realm all bets are off.
Interactions and processes at the subatomic level are not ruled by the predictability and reliability of macroscopic processes. In the macroscopic world, everything makes sense (largely because we’ve evolved to make sense of the world we live in). I can toss a ball enough times to a child that their brain can quickly pick up on the reliable pattern: the ball leaves my hand, the ball follows an arcing path, the ball moves forward and eventually falls to the ground. Sure, there are variations based on speed and angle and wind, but the basic gist of a tossed ball is the same, every single time.
Not so in the quantum world, where perfect prediction is impossible and reliable statements are lacking. At subatomic scales, probabilities rule the day – it’s impossible to say exactly what any given particle will do at any given moment. And this absence of predictability and reliability at first troubled, and then disgusted, Einstein, who would eventually leave the quantum world behind with nothing more than a regretful shake of his head at the misguided work of his colleagues. And so he continued his labors, attempting to find a unified approach to joining the two known forces of nature, electromagnetism and gravity, with an emphatically not quantum framework.
When two new forces were first proposed in the 1930’s to explain the deep workings of atomic nuclei – the strong and weak nuclear forces, respectively – this did not deter Einstein. Once electromagnetism and gravity were successfully united, it would not take much additional effort to work in new forces of nature. Meanwhile, his quantum-leaning contemporaries took to the new forces with gusto, eventually folding them into the quantum worldview and framework.
By the end of Einstein’s life, quantum mechanics could describe three forces of nature, while gravity stood alone, his general theory of relativity a monument to his intellect and creativity.
NASA Astronauts are Trying Out the Starship Lunar Elevator
Image of NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Doug “Wheels” Wheelock conducting recent training on a mock-up of the SpaceX human landing system (HLS) elevator system with the help of a technician.
NASA Astronauts are Trying Out the Starship Lunar Elevator
As NASA continues to ramp up efforts for its Artemis program, which has the goal of landing the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface, two NASA astronauts recently conducted training with a replica of SpaceX’s Starship human landing system (HLS), albeit on a much smaller scale. Given that Starship is 50 meters (160 feet) tall, and the crew quarters are located near the top of Starship, the HLS will need an elevator with a basket to transport crew and supplies from the crew quarters down to the surface. The purpose of this training is to familiarize astronauts with all aspects of this system, including elevator and gate controls and latches, along with how the astronauts perform these tasks in their bulky astronaut suits, which both astronauts wore during the training.
The two NASA astronauts who participated in the recent training are Nicole Mann and Doug “Wheels” Wheelock. NASA Astronaut Mann is a Colonel in the United States Marine Corps who was selected as a NASA astronaut in the 2013 NASA Group 21. Her spaceflight experience includes 157 days in space as part of Expedition 68 onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and being launched aboard the SpaceX Crew-5 mission. NASA Astronaut Wheelock is a Colonel in the United States Army who was selected as a NASA astronaut in the 1998 NASA Group. His spaceflight experience includes 178 days in space as part of STS-120 and later as part of Expedition 24/25 on the ISS and being launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-19.
As noted, Starship is 50 meters (160 feet) tall and 9 meters (30 feet) in diameter and capable of landing 100 tons (99,790 kilograms/220,000 pounds) on the lunar surface, which is in stark contrast to the Apollo lunar module that landed 12 men on the lunar surface during the Apollo program, which was only 5.5 meters (17.9 feet) tall and approximately 4.3 meters (14 feet) in diameter and a mass of 15,103 kilograms (33,296 pounds) with fuel.
Ironically, the original plan for landing astronauts on the Moon during the Apollo program was known as direct ascent that involved a single, large vehicle with a payload of 74,000 kilograms (163,000 pounds) landing on the lunar surface. While NASA was in favor of using the direct ascent method in early 1961 since spacecraft rendezvous and docking had not been performed in Earth orbit yet, this was later scrapped in favor of the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) mission mode that was advocated by NASA aerospace engineer, John Houbolt, who estimated this would significantly reduce the weight involved in such a landing approach. LOR not only successfully landed six Apollo missions on the Moon, but it was also responsible for saving the Apollo 13 crew when one of their oxygen tanks ruptured and the crew was able to use the lunar module as a lifeboat as they flew around the Moon and came back to Earth.
As NASA astronauts train for using the Starship HLS elevator someday, Starship has already conducted two flight tests—Ship 24 in April 2023 and Ship 25 in November 2023, respectively. While both flights ended in failure, Ship 25 officially passed the Karman Line, which is the traditional boundary of outer space. A third Starship test flight is currently scheduled to occur sometime in the first quarter of 2024, which also comes as the crewed Artemis II mission is gearing up for their 10-day mission orbiting the Moon in November 2024 and Artemis III currently scheduled to land astronauts near the lunar south pole sometime in 2025.
How will Starship HLS help future Artemis astronauts on the lunar surface in the next few years? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
UFO Sightings and Nuclear Facilities: A Mysterious Intersection
Introduction:
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have long been a subject of fascination and controversy, sparking interest from conspiracy theorists, scientists, and governments alike. Among the myriad of reported sightings, one particularly intriguing pattern has emerged: the frequent association of UFOs with nuclear facilities. This article delves into the mysterious world of UFO sightings near nuclear installations, exploring incidents, implications, and the quest for understanding that continues to elude us.
Unraveling the Enigma: UFOs at the World’s Nuclear Doorstep
Historic Incidents: The Malmstrom AFB Encounter
In March 1967, an incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana sent shockwaves through the defense community. Robert Salas, a former U.S. Air Force officer, reported a UFO shutting down several Minuteman nuclear missiles. The object, described as a pulsating orange light, rendered ten ICBMs inoperative, a situation unprecedented in military history. This event is not an isolated case; it’s a scenario that has repeated itself at various nuclear sites worldwide, suggesting a deliberate pattern or message from an unknown origin.
A Global Phenomenon: From the US to the USSR
UFO sightings at nuclear facilities are not confined to the United States. Similar incidents have occurred globally, including a notable event in Ukraine in 1982, where a UFO reportedly initiated a missile launch sequence before abruptly stopping it. These recurring incidents across different nations and political climates indicate a global phenomenon that demands attention and understanding.
The Implications: Security, Technology, and Extraterrestrial Interest
National Security Concerns:
The presence of unidentified objects capable of disabling nuclear weapons systems raises profound security questions. If these objects are extraterrestrial or represent an unknown advanced technology, what are their intentions? Are they a threat, a warning, or a mere observation from a distant civilization?
Technological Marvels:
The technology implied by these sightings is far beyond human capabilities, particularly concerning speed, maneuverability, and the ability to interfere with electronic systems. Understanding this technology could leap forward in human scientific knowledge, potentially offering new energy sources, propulsion methods, or other revolutionary advancements.
Extraterrestrial Messaging:
Many, like Robert Salas, believe these incidents are a message about the dangers and moral implications of nuclear weapons. If an advanced civilization is monitoring us, it might be cautioning humanity about a path that could lead to destruction and urging a reevaluation of our most destructive technologies.
The Quest for Transparency and Understanding
Despite numerous credible reports and evidence, there remains a significant shroud of secrecy and dismissal around UFO sightings, especially those associated with nuclear facilities. Advocates for transparency, including military personnel and researchers, call for open investigations and government disclosure to understand the phenomena truly.
VIDEO:
Coast to Coast AM: UFOs and Nuclear Facilities: An Investigation into Sightings and Incidents
The intersection of UFO sightings and nuclear facilities presents a compelling narrative that challenges our understanding of technology, security, and the potential for extraterrestrial life. As we stand at this crossroads of mystery and discovery, the quest for answers continues. It’s a journey that requires an open mind, rigorous scientific inquiry, and perhaps most importantly, a global conversation about our place in the universe and the choices we make for our future.
Earlier this year, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energyrevealed that unusual infrasonic phenomena had been detected emanating from the Earth’s upper atmosphere during high-altitude experiments involving sonic devices carried aloft with balloons. The exact source of these mysterious sounds had been undetermined at the time, and seemingly remain so today.
“[In the stratosphere,] there are mysterious infrasound signals that occur a few times per hour, Daniel Bowman, a Principal Scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, said in May about the unusual discovery, adding that “the source of these is completely unknown.” Pending further data, Bowman’s findings were the focus of a presentation he gave at the 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago
The unusual stratospheric mystery Bowman and his colleagues are investigating is just one of many varieties of unusual sonic enigmas that have long baffled scientists. Reports of mysterious sounds date back several centuries and involve phenomena compared to mysterious humming, odd noises likened to blaring trumpets, thunderous “booms,” and even loud metallic scraping, which have been reported coming from the sky, from below ground, and even from within the depths of our oceans over the decades.
Examples include those discovered by Dr. Gordon J. F. MacDonald, an American geophysicist and former charter member of the president’s three-man Council on Environmental Quality, who uncovered a letter from 1906 that documented reports of booms that occurred seemingly in conjunction with foreshocks that preceded the Great San Francisco Earthquake of that same year. More than two decades earlier, similar reports were documented in Charleston, S.C. in 1883, while across the globe, reports of loud noises were documented along with the rain of a strange, ash-like substance over Queenstown, South Africa.
Not unlike the high-altitude infrasonic events detected by Department of Energy scientists earlier this year, the cause underlying the mystery sounds of the late 19th and early 20th century also remained undetermined. Curiously, many of them have also persisted over the decades, occasionally arousing the attention of scientists due to their perplexing—and often explosive—nature.
THE MYSTERY BOOMS
Among the most intriguing and widely reported sounds of unknown origin are the so-called “mystery booms” that have been logged for many decades, with occasional waves of activity that have often garnered widespread attention from the media. Between 1977 and 1978, more than 600 reports of mystery booms were documented along the east coast of the United States, with several of the incidents centered around southern New Jersey.
Bell Island, Newfoundland, the location of a famous high-energy boom in April 1978 (CC 4.0)
The frequency of reports around that time led to speculation about whether some variety of aircraft or weapons tests might be underway. It was even considered whether the booms had been precursors to a famous mystery explosion that occurred on Bell Island off the Newfoundland coast on April 2, 1978. The incident, explored by Canadian journalist Rick Seaward in a CBC television documentary later that year, was later determined to have been detected by the U.S. government’s Vela Satellite array, used to monitor nuclear testing and compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty.
Although the unusually energetic boom over Bell Island remained an outlier, many of the thundering noises reported around the same time were mild by comparison and could have had more conventional explanations. It was the opinion of Jeremy Stone, former president of the Federation of American Scientists, that many of the booms reported during the late 1970s were sonic booms from aircraft. The sudden cause of these booms had been due to flight paths made by the Concorde, a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger jet airliner, which remained in service between 1976 and 2003. Expounding on this theory, some argued that combining the sonic booms with unusual jet stream configurations occurring at the time could explain the rash of reports.
However, the sonic boom theory didn’t find favor with all the experts who examined the 1977 mystery boom wave. In opposition to his colleagues who supported the manmade origin of the booms, Dr. Gordon MacDonald, based on his previous research into historic occurrences of these phenomena, maintained that as many as 181 of the incidents had been more likely to have natural causes related to upper atmospheric weather phenomena.
Another wave of mystery booms occurred in southern California between 1991 and 1993, prompting investigations by MIT’s Lincoln Labs and researchers at Caltech. A paper by researchers Joseph E. Cates and Bradford Sturtevant examined whether correlations existed between seismic events and the boom reports, but ultimately concluded that sonic booms propagated from offshore operations of military aircraft were a more likely cause. However, the Caltech researchers were unsuccessful at correlating the specific source of the booms with any known military or other aircraft activity in the region.
(Unsplash)
Reports of mystery booms continue today, often occurring during colder weather periods (possibly in association with cryoseisms or “frost quakes”), and discussion surrounding the various underlying causes is as hotly debated now as in the past.
SUBTERRANEAN ORGAN-LIKE AND HORN-LIKE SOUNDS
In the 1970s, William R. Corliss, an American physicist known for his interest in reports of anomalous phenomena in virtually every branch of the sciences, began his Sourcebook Project, an effort that resulted in several catalogs featuring accounts of odd happenings harvested mainly from scientific literature and periodicals. Many of the subjects in Corliss’s work had been previously documented by Charles Fort, one of Corliss’s chief inspirations. The obvious similarity between Corliss and Fort’s interests had inspired Arthur C. Clarke to refer to Corliss as, “[Charles] Fort’s latter-day–and much more scientific–successor.”
Probing beyond the bombastic reports of mystery booms, Corliss was successful at uncovering accounts of far subtler sonic mysteries. An example had been a series of reports collected by M. von Humboldt that appeared in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in 1819, which described sounds emanating from rocks along the banks of the Orinoco River that resembled, of all things, pipe organ music.
The Orinoco River in Venezuela (Anagoria/ CC 3.0)
A similar phenomenon in Greenland, dubbed “Ton der Dove-Bai”, was reported in August of 1932 by a French Expedition exploring the Scoresby Sound. This sound resembled a massive foghorn and had previously been reported by an expedition group who heard it eight times, spanning five different locations, both during the day and after the polar nightfall. Like some “mystery booms,” this sound may very well be a description of a variety of cryoseism resulting from the movement of glaciers, an idea first proposed by A. Dauviller in his 1934 Nature article, “Strange Sounds from Inland Ice, Greenland”, who at that time, compared it with a similar phenomenon he had learned of:
“Is this vibrating sound really caused by the detachment of icebergs or is it similar to the ‘desert song’, that strange musical note produced by the sand?” Dauviller wrote. “In fact, there is a close analogy between the fields of powdery dry snow of the inland ice and the fields of sand of the Arabian Desert.”
MUSICAL SAND AND “DESERT SONG”
From the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Lake Seneca, New York, occurrences of loud booming sounds in various locales have led to popular legends about the so-called “Seneca Guns,” booming sands, and other names associated with sounds that occur where sand dunes are present.
“Under proper circumstances, sand dunes are capable of producing a variety of low-level whispering, whistling, singing, humming, or squeaking sounds, and less commonly, loud booming sounds,” wrote geologist David P. Hill with the U.S. Geological Survey. “The so-called ‘booming sands’ appear to be limited to large sand dunes with steep leeward faces in arid climates.”
(Unsplash)
According to Hill, rumbling noises have been reported as far away as several kilometers from the locations associated with “booming sands” and lasting for durations up to 15 minutes. Sometimes these sounds are also associated with seismic phenomena. “To produce booming sounds evidently requires very low humidity and loosely packed, quasispherical sand grains with high surface smoothness, although details of the process by which the acoustic emissions are produced remain poorly understood,” Hill wrote.
NATURAL MELODY
Another of the odd sonic phenomena documented by William Corliss involved what he called “natural melody” which involves “the production of musical notes and combinations thereof by the action of wind upon passive natural and artificial structures.”
Sounds reminiscent of musical tones were reported in nature dating as far back as the 2nd century AD, as described in the writings of Pausanias and his descriptions of the “tuneful waves” of the Aegean Sea. Other localities where musical sounds have been reported include Germany’s Black Forest and Mount Renalux, the Spanish Pyrenees, and the communes within Haute Saône along the Saône River in France.
Drawing reports mostly from the stories of world travelers, Corliss complained about the lacking data in scientific literature that documented such phenomena. “It is difficult to separate some of the music-makers in this category from musical echoes or analyzed sound,” Corliss noted. “[T]he initial sounds may be nonmusical in the case of analyzed sound, but small reflecting surfaces nearby quickly convert it into more pleasing tones.”
UNDERWATER MUSICAL SOUNDS
Sounds emanating from bodies of water have also occasionally been reported in various parts of the world. These have often been likened to music, or sometimes rumbling sounds that are reminiscent of a locomotive engine, although one intriguing example that appeared in the journal Nature in 1870 described a reverberating noise likened to the singing of cicadas heard by passengers on board a boat navigating the Tavoy river:
“One moonlit night in 1854, on board a steamer anchored near the Tavoy river (Tenasserim) we were struck by an extraordinary noise which appeared to proceed from the shore about a quarter of a mile off, or from the water in that direction. It was something like the sound of a stocking loom, but shriller, and lasted perhaps five or six seconds, producing a sensible concussion on the ear like the piercing scream of the cicada; and this gave an impression as if the vessel itself were trembling, or reverberating from the sound.” One of two Burmans on board said simply, the noise was produced by ‘fishes,’ but of what kind they did not describe. It was repeated two or three times.”
A similar observation that occurred decades earlier 1824, later published in Popular Science Monthly in 1883, describes a deep, musical droning that had similarly been attributed to the movement of fish below a sailing vessel:
“Lieutenant White, of our Navy, relates that, when at the mouth of a river in Cambodia in 1824, he and the crew of his vessel were struck by hearing extraordinary sounds, like a mixture of the bass of an organ, the ringing of bells, the guttural cries of a frog, and the tones of an enormous harp, which they heard around the bottom of their vessel. The interpreter said they were produced by a troop of a kind of fish.”
Although the circumstances involving most of these sonic mysteries point to the likelihood of prosaic explanations, several of them do remain somewhat mysterious—even after several decades of investigations into their potential causes—and may offer fresh grounds for scientific exploration into some of the enigmas about our natural world that have lingered into the twenty-first century.
This is an updated version of an article by the author originally sourced from mysterybooms.com, portions of which have been reprinted here with permission.
Het klinkt misschien wat rigoureus, maar als de dreiging hoog is, moeten we toch actie ondernemen.
Astronomen hebben tot nu toe de meeste grote en potentieel gevaarlijke planetoïden opgespoord en geanalyseerd. En voorlopig lijkt er geen reden tot zorg te zijn. Uit hun bevindingen blijkt dat er op dit moment geen enkele bekende planetoïde is die in de komende 100 jaar een serieuze bedreiging voor de aarde vormt. Desalniettemin nemen onderzoekers geen risico’s en bestuderen manieren om onze planeet te beschermen tegen mogelijke inslagen van ruimtestenen. En ondanks de veelbelovende resultaten van de DART-missie, overwegen experts of een iets rigoureuzere ingreep met kernbom mogelijk een nog effectievere oplossing kan bieden.
Nucleaire explosie “Hoewel de kans op een grote planetoïde-inslag tijdens ons leven klein is, zouden de mogelijke gevolgen enorm verwoestend kunnen zijn,” zegt onderzoeker Bruck Syal. Daarom bestudeert hij samen met zijn collega’s of mogelijk een nucleaire explosie soelaas zou kunnen bieden. “Kernwapens hebben de grootste verhouding van energiedichtheid per massa van alle menselijke technologieën,” legt hoofdauteur Mary Burkey uit. “Hierdoor zijn ze uitermate waardevol bij het verminderen van dreigingen veroorzaakt door aardscheerders.”
Zo werkt het In een nieuwe studie hebben onderzoekers een model ontwikkeld waarmee ze kunnen bekijken of het mogelijk is om een kernwapen te gebruiken om de aarde te beschermen tegen allesverwoestende inslagen van planetoïden. En de bevindingen zijn veelbelovend. “Als we genoeg waarschuwingstijd hebben, kunnen we een kernwapen afvuren en het naar een planetoïde op miljoenen kilometers afstand sturen die onderweg is naar de aarde,” stelt Burkey. “Daarna zouden we het apparaat laten ontploffen, waardoor de planetoïde van koers verandert. Hierdoor zou de aardscheerder intact blijven, maar wel een gecontroleerde duw weg van de aarde krijgen. Een andere optie is om de planetoïde te verstoren, waardoor hij in kleine, snelbewegende stukken uit elkaar valt en onze planeet ook zou missen.”
Het model laat zien hoe een planetoïde uit elkaar ‘spat’ door een denkbeeldige kernbom die explodeert in de buurt van de aardscheerder. Afbeelding: Mary Burkey
DART Met dit model bouwen de wetenschappers voort op de lessen die zijn geleerd tijdens de recente DART-missie van NASA. Tijdens deze missie, die in september 2022 plaatsvond, werd bewust een ruimtesonde naar een planetoïde gestuurd om diens baan te wijzigen. Dankzij deze missie hebben we veel geleerd over wat er nodig is om een gevaarlijke planetoïde om te leiden. En hoewel de DART-missie succesvol was, heeft een dergelijke strategie ook enkele haken en ogen. We kunnen bijvoorbeeld maar een beperkte hoeveelheid massa de ruimte in sturen. Daarom kijken wetenschappers nog steeds naar het gebruik van nucleaire afbuiging als een mogelijk alternatief.
Meer over de DART-missie Als een planetoïde regelrecht op de aarde afstevent, geven wetenschappers de voorkeur aan een missie waarbij ze de baan van de planetoïde willen veranderen. Tijdens zo’n missie wordt de planetoïde voorzichtig aangeraakt, wat resulteert in een kleine wijziging van de baansnelheid. Hierdoor blijft het grootste deel van de planetoïde bij elkaar, maar wordt de baan voorzichtig afgebogen, zodat de planetoïde niet meer in botsing komt met de aarde. Deze aanpak werd getest tijdens de DART-missie, waarbij een ruimtevaartuig koers zette naar de planetoïde Didymos om te proberen de baan van het maantje Dimorphos te veranderen, door zich tegen de ruimtesteen te pletter te slaan. En met succes. Voorafgaand aan de inslag van DART voltooide het maantje Dimorphos elke 11 uur en 55 minuten een rondje rond zijn grotere moederlichaam Didymos. Maar nu cirkelt Dimorphos in 11 uur en 23 minuten rond Didymos. En dat betekent dat zijn omlooptijd met 32 minuten is verkort.
Met het nieuwe model kunnen de onderzoekers eigenlijk nabootsen wat er gebeurt als een nucleaire bom in de buurt van een planetoïde tot ontploffing wordt gebracht. Deze tool draagt bij aan een beter begrip van hoe de straling van een nucleaire explosie reageert op het oppervlak van een ruimtesteen en onderzoekt ook de schokgolfdynamiek die het binnenste van de steen kan beïnvloeden. Hierdoor begrijpen we beter hoe de straling werkt als we zo’n wapen gebruiken om de koers van een hemelobject te veranderen.
Simulaties Het artikel omvat een handige en precieze verzameling van informatie over hoe röntgenstralen worden geabsorbeerd door oppervlakken. Met zeer nauwkeurige simulaties werden fotonen gevolgd terwijl ze het oppervlak van asteroïde-achtige materialen, zoals steen, ijzer en ijs, binnendrongen. Het model houdt rekening met verschillende omstandigheden, zoals de samenstelling van de materialen, verschillende porositeit en de hoek waaronder de straling invalt. Hierdoor is het model bruikbaar voor verschillende mogelijke scenario’s.
De nieuwe simulaties bieden wetenschappers meer inzicht en meer keuzemogelijkheden mocht er onverhoopt toch een ruimterots op de aarde afstevenen. “Als er ooit een echte noodsituatie ontstaat waarbij de aarde moet worden verdedigd, is het van cruciaal belang om zeer nauwkeurige simulatiemodellen te hebben,” zegt onderzoeker Megan Bruck Syal. “Deze modellen kunnen besluitvormers voorzien van waardevolle informatie. Hiermee kunnen ze mogelijke inslagen van planetoïden voorkomen, essentiële infrastructuur beschermen en levens redden.”
A series of UFO incidents occurred between 2007 and 2009 in the town of Kumburgaz, situated near Istanbul, Turkey. The events stunned the media and UFO enthusiasts after the images and videos of the sightings went viral on the Internet. The video evidence of UFOs shared by a nightwatchman named Yalcin Yalman could be another strong evidence of non-human technology.
Back in 2008, Yalcin Yalman worked as a night watchman at the Yenikent facility from where he shot all these amazing videos of UFOs, hovering over the Marmara Sea near Kumburgaz. He even showed his second-hand camera to the media in a press conference held at the Dedeman Hotel in Istanbul.
Yalman said he started recording the strange crafts as a hobby to pass his time in the night. Due to the shaky videos, some skeptics claimed that the mysterious objects over the skies of Turkey could have been a US stealth drone or other aircraft. However, numerous experts confirmed that the videos were authentic. Besides, many people witnessed the same unknown crafts in the sky. The sightings gained attention from locals, national media, and even CNN. Several videos were recorded between June 8 and 12, 2009, showing mysterious objects and lights.
Originally, the video was analyzed and made public by the Sirius UFO Space Sciences Research Center led by researcher Haktan Akdoğan. Haktan said the UFOs were often seen by civilians and military pilots during an International UFO Congress in 2009. (Source)
Yalcin Yalman (Left) sitting next to Akdoğan (Right), showing his camera during a press conference in Istanbul in 2009
Dr. Leir told Knapp that he, Yalman and others went to Kumburgaz to film UFOs. The group stayed up from midnight to 4 o’clock in the morning to capture any possible sightings. The conditions were ideal, with clear skies and no obstructions. During the filming, they observed a bright object below the full moon, which initially appeared as a potential star or planet. As they focused on this object, they discovered a semi-circular craft with a multitude of lights, possibly shaped like a boomerang or a cylindrical saucer.
Dr. Leir said, “You’d think, ‘Well, gee, a bright sky, bright moon, you’re not going to see anything.’ But in this case, the moon was a big help. It essentially lit up the exterior portion of the craft, which initially, when we saw it, looked a bit like a boomerang because we weren’t seeing it straight on, so we couldn’t tell the exact shape of the craft. But then we went to full film on it, and we could see that it was either a boomerang, or we were looking at a certain portion of a cylindrical craft or a saucer.
Till this day, I don’t know, and I don’t know what the analysts said about the shape. But it was either one of the two: either a boomerang shape with a round front or a complete saucer. It did turn a couple of times, so we were able to see the side, and it looked like it could have been saucer-shaped. But then we got the biggest shock of our lives because we could see light that was emanating from the internal portion of the craft in three areas. One was directly in front, and one was on either side.
This was a full-on front view, and folks can look at the Coast website and they can not only see the video but please go to the Chilean analysis because there are some still photos there which show what we saw when we looked in the central portion. That was a big shock to look and see, not a Rorschach-type thing, but actual entities that were, whatever they were doing, looking out the front of the craft, just the same as we were looking at them.”
Video Observation
From 2007 to 2009, Yalman recorded approximately 30 videos. The footage was taken with a MiniDV Canon DM-GR1-A based on the NTSC system with a diaphragm set at a maximum of 1.8. It is a 3CCD 20x optic 100x with a teleconverter mounted on a 58 mm adapter. The tele-objective is a Sony VCL HGD 1758 model lens, x 1.7. [2007 to 2009 Original Raw Footage]
The videos were examined by two influential state-sponsored organizations in Turkey, “The Scientific and Technology Research Board of Turkey” and “The TUG National Observatory.” Their objective was to identify any evidence of forgery, but the results supported the authenticity of the videos. The original film cassettes were also studied by individuals from Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Russia, and despite several attempts, no one has been able to conclusively demonstrate evidence of a hoax, fraud, or manipulation, leaving the case unidentified.
Yalman’s camera was equipped with a zoom option which allowed him to even capture the pilots, sitting in one of the crafts. The image is shaky due to the hand movements while zooming. However, with the editing software, the video was stabilized, and the result shocked everyone. Two humanoid figures could be seen in the image with large black eyes and oversized heads.
Haktan Akdoğan noted that these are the most important images in Turkey and in the world, saying: “After doing all the necessary analysis which went on for several weeks, the board came to a definite conclusion with no doubt that these are 100% genuine videos. The objects sighted in the aforementioned footage that have a structure that is made of specific material are definitely not made up by any kind of computer animation nor are they any form of special effects used for simulation in a studio or for a video effect therefore in conclusion it was decided that the sightings were neither a mock up or hoax. It is concluded that these objects in the sightings that have physical and material structures do not belong in any category such as; planes, helicopters, meteors, Venus, Mars, satellites, fireballs, Chinese lanterns, fireballs, weather balloons, natural or atmospheric phenomenon etc. and but rather fall into the category of UFOs.”
“We see the heads of not only one UFO but also of two beings in the images. This is the first in the world.” He further added that those images would have a great impact on UFOlogy. He had been researching UFOs for 22 years and had never seen something like this. He stated: “These are the most remarkable images taken in Turkish history.”
[In translation] Akdoğan stated that “these beings are generally seen in areas rich with resources, volcanic areas, and historical places. They started to come more frequently after nuclear tests. Maybe the released radiation also harms the cosmic neighbors, we disrupt the balance in the universe. Maybe they observe this dangerous process.” (Source)
The images were recorded in digital NTSC format by the above-mentioned camera.
The date on the video indicates that the recordings were made during 2007, 2008, and 2009.
The footage images of the object that visibly have a certain configuration are not computer animations, special video effects or studio-re-created images or models. The footage is genuine.
The first observation made from the footage is that some of the images were recorded in the nighttime sky at a certain altitude from the horizon. The footage also covers images of the moon in some parts which proves that the video was shot in the nighttime and open air. But, the fact that digital date displays show AM in certain frames and PM in others, raises suspicion about the validity of the time in which the recordings were made.
Since in some parts, there is no other object that can be featured as a reference in the close-up frames and no observable differences were found on background examination, the actual location, distance, dimensions and nature of the objects could not have been determined.
Through the examination of shootings of multiple dates, it is a strong possibility that 2-3 different objects were captured. However, it is difficult to determine whether the objects are moving or not. Their movement is slow even if they do so.
The reflections of light on the objects are sometimes caused by the moon which was in a convenient location at that time, and sometimes produced by some other sources of light.
The light reflection from the left side of the object which is seen on the August 10th shootings is not produced by the moon. At that time, the moon was in a phase that was pretty close to the “new moon” phase and located approximately at a 10-degree proximity/angle to the horizon. Moreover, the image processing analysis conducted on some parts of the footage revealed that the center of the object has the same density as its background, namely is of a transparent nature.
Not Debunked
Adam Goldstack of UAP Media UK mentions that many debunkers try to explain the craft as cruise ships but according to former F-16 fighter pilot and researcher Chris Letho, it does not add up. Letho analyzed the videos and case and calculated the object’s size, horizon distance, plus visual angles from the Marmara Sea. He concluded the logistics of a cruise ship did not match the reported UAP. (Source)
Additionally, the triangulation of the UAP in most video cases was calculated to be too high to be a cruise ship or boat, by other researchers. Alternatively, in the fixed/stabilized camera videos (as shown below), we can see that the objects are motionless against a black background in the vast majority of videos. The motionless aspect of the UAP could also discount the “small-boat theory,” given that even on calm waters/oceans floating objects will still move and rock around slightly. Additionally, despite the mass mainstream media coverage in Turkey at the time, no person has ever come forward to state that the objects/boats belonged to them or that they were sailing off the coast in the middle of the night.
Goldstack writes, “From an analytical perspective, the Turkey Kumburgaz UFO case is unique with regards to the clear and multiple video footage obtained. Through this case, we also have sequential data that display behavioral patterns, times, and dates. We see all of the twenty-five video encounters/incidents at night-time/early morning (with one in the late evening), which is in keeping with the wider range of Ufology data that suggests UAP often appears at night-time.
We also see another significant pattern displaying the encounters around water – in this case, the Marmara Sea. The Sea of Marmara itself is a small sea with an area of 11,350 km2 (4,380 sq mi) and with dimensions of 280 km × 80 km (174 mi × 50 mi). The sea has a greatest depth of 1,370 m (4,490 ft). How significant the Sea of Marmara is to potential UAP has still not been explained. No connection to nuclear facilities or weapons has been linked in this case.”
Space travel is hard. From building the rockets to braving the vacuum, surviving the radiation, and safely returning to terra firma, there are few things about it that don’t have a high potential to fail spectacularly.
And yet when everything goes as planned — like when Curiosity touches down on Mars, the James Webb Space Telescope launches, or a spaceship grabs a sample of a hard-to-reach asteroid — space travel can seem easy, if not miraculous. But despite the best efforts of humans, the natural entropy of the space environment and the persnickety nature of rockets and software code still occasionally prevail. One in 25 NASA rockets have failed historically. In 2023, we’re not doing much better. Engineering bloopers abound: Some 50 percent of Space X’s Starship rockets blew up (but, hey, 50 percent didn’t!); researchers kept contact with Voyager 2 for the better part of 46 years (until that dropped call), and only one asteroid retrieval failed to deliver thanks to a canister that was screwed on just a bit too tight.
This is what science is all about, folks. Without further ado, here are the top eight Space Fails of 2023:
8. THE EUCLID SPACECRAFT MADE A COSMIC DOODLE
Euclid’s imperfect observation of a star field made a pretty picture in space.
The European Space Agency spent more than a decade developing the Euclid mission before it launched in July. A space telescope capable of making fine measurements of the shapes of galaxies up to 10 billion light years away and across a third of the sky, Euclid will serve as a window into the dark universe, dark matter, and dark energy. Invisible to any direct observation, Euclid will search for the gravitational influence of dark matter and dark energy on the shapes of galaxies and of space itself.
But while commissioning Euclid’s instruments, they ran into a problem: The Fine Guidance Sensor, designed to hold Euclid’s Visible Instrument on target when viewing a star field, wasn’t working properly. This caused the instrument to wobble while taking an image in October, resulting in an image of a star field with a bright, looping, lasso-like trail, the astrophotography equivalent of painting tracers for a camera with a sparkler. Only in this case, the camera was moving, and the sparkler was a distant sun. No stars or telescopes were harmed due to the failure, and a software update appears to have fixed the problem.
7. NASA IS STILL UNABLE TO OPEN THE OSIRIS-REX ASTEROID SAMPLE CONTAINER
Once they got the sample return capsule back to Johnson Space Center and carefully placed it in a sealed box filled with a neutral nitrogen atmosphere, they hit a snag: two of the 35 fasteners sealing the capsule shut couldn’t be removed.
NASA
Imagine spending $1.16 billion on a jar of pasta sauce and then being unable to open the lid. It’s an absurd scenario, but then, that’s probably the only way to describe the frustration NASA’s science team must be feeling at the moment. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer, OSIRIS-REx, was launched in 2016 with the expressed goal of rendezvousing with the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, grabbing a sample of the space rock, and bringing it back to Earth. It was a fantastically complex mission pulled off with precision, right down to the coordinated retrieval of the sample-containing capsule on September 24 after it reentered the Earth’s atmosphere and floated onto the Utah desert.
But once they got the sample return capsule back to Johnson Space Center and carefully placed it in a sealed box filled with a neutral nitrogen atmosphere, they hit a snag: two of the 35 fasteners sealing the capsule shut couldn’t be removed. And unlike a jar of marinara, they can’t just run it under some hot water, tap it on the counter, and twist it really hard with one of those rubber jar openers. NASA is currently working to develop entirely new tools to remove the obstinate fasteners. But at least in the meantime, they have plenty of Bennu material to work with — a surplus of the material coalesced on the outside of the capsule, more material, in fact, than the mission originally hoped to extract from Bennu altogether.
6. A PRIVATE SPACE TUG SPUN OUT OF CONTROL AFTER A RECENT SPACEX LAUNCH
After successfully reaching orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the SN3 began spinning uncontrollably, forcing Launcher to prematurely deploy its payloads.
LAUNCHER SPACE
Sometimes a space mission fails because a bolt won’t come out or an O-ring deteriorates. But sometimes, it fails because even mission-critical software can be buggy. That’s what happened after the June 12 launch of the Orbiter SN3, designed by the company Launcher to act as an orbital tugboat that could maneuver smaller satellites into their operational orbits. After successfully reaching orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the SN3 began spinning uncontrollably, forcing Launcher to prematurely deploy its payloads. One of those was Otter Pup, a spacecraft built by Starfish Space to service satellites in orbit. Starfish had hoped to demonstrate an on-orbit Rendezvous between Otter Pup and a satellite, but the spacecraft was also set to spinning by the SN3 failure, and in November, Starfish Space abandoned plans to attempt the mission. Launcher did apologize, at least.
5. TWO ASTRONAUTS LOST A TOOL BAG IN SPACE
On November 1, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara spent more than six hours on a spacewalk to perform some maintenance on the International Space Station exterior, and as a NASA update put it, “during the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost.”
SHUTTERSTOCK
Anyone who has worked on their car or tried to fix a leaky sink has experienced that moment where they can’t find that wrench or screwdriver they were just using a minute ago. They put it down somewhere, but where is the question. It turns out astronauts are not immune to the syndrome, but of course, it gets much worse in an environment where things can actually float away when you’re not looking.
On November 1, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara spent more than six hours on a spacewalk to perform some maintenance on the International Space Station exterior, and as a NASA update put it, “during the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost.”
That tool bag now joins the more than 36,000 pieces of space debris larger than 3.9 inches orbiting the Earth at more than 17,000 miles per hour. We hope it didn’t contain anyone’s favorite wrench.
4. VIRGIN ORBIT BLAMED ITS LAUNCH FAILURE ON UPPER-STAGE ANOMALY, FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY
After a Virgin Orbit rocket failed to reach orbit on January 9 due to an engine shutting down, the company pitched into a financial nosedive.
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Virgin Orbit founder Richard Branson was one of the first billionaires to hop on the commercial space tourism bus when he founded Virgin Galactic in 2004, and the first billionaire to actually ride to space aboard his company’s spacecraft in July 2021. But he was late to the small satellite space launch game. Virgin Orbit was spun out of Virgin Galactic in 2017 with the intention of providing launch services for small payloads using a rocket that would be carried aloft by an aircraft, dropped, and then launched toward the heavens — a possible shortcut to reusability without having to engineer the sorts of self-recovering first stage rocket boosters SpaceX developed for it’s Falcon 9 rockets.
Instead, it was a shortcut to failure.
After a Virgin Orbit rocket failed to reach orbit on January 9 due to an engine shutting down, the company pitched into a financial nosedive. By March, the company had laid off 675 people and by April, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy was finalized in May, and what was left of the company was sold off for a fraction of its initial value.
3. VOYAGER 2’S DROPPED CALL
On July 21, the operators of the Voyager 2 space probe at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory accidentally sent a message that commanded the spacecraft to tilt its antenna two degrees away from Earth.
MPI/ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES
It’s the second longest distance call you can make, and NASA almost hung up by accident. On July 21, the operators of the Voyager 2 space probe at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory accidentally sent a message that commanded the spacecraft to tilt its antenna two degrees away from Earth. Given that the spacecraft is now more than 12.3 billion miles away on a trajectory toward interstellar space, that meant Voyager wasn’t listening for NASA in the right part of the sky anymore. Was that it for the famous spacecraft launched 46 years ago in 1977? The probe that brought us our first close-up images of the ice giant planets Neptune and Uranus? The second further human emissary to the Cosmos, trailing only its twin spacecraft Voyager 1? On August 4, NASA announced they had been able to get Voyager 2’s attention with the equivalent of an interstellar “shout” using the radio antenna dishes making up the space agency’s Deep Space Network. Barring any other unexpected dropped calls, Voyager 2 will keep sending data home from outside our Solar System until 2035.
2. LUNA-25 — RUSSIA’S GLORIOUS RETURN TO THE MOON THAT WASN’T
Luna-25 launched on August 10 and would have beaten India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander to the Moon by just a few days.
On August 20, the Russian space agency Roscosmos’s hopes for a triumphant return “ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon.” The Luna-25 lander launched on Aug. 10, but crash landed near the lunar south pole after a failed orbital maneuver, a blow to both the Russian space program and national pride at a time when the nation has become a pariah over its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Initially dubbed Luna-Glob, it was renamed Luna-25 in the tradition of the Soviet era Luna probes, which included the first soft landing on the Moon by Luna-9 in 1966. But it ultimately had more in common with the July 3, 1969 explosion of the Soviet N-1 rocket on the launchpad — the launch vehicle was meant to carry a Soviet crew to the Moon, and the USSR quietly abandoned the project following the US Apollo 11 mission later that month. Adding a historical echo to the Luna-25 failure, Russia was again surpassed by a foreign rival: India successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft near the lunar south pole on August 23.
1. SPACEX'S STARSHIP MAINTAINED A 100 PERCENT EXPLOSION RATE
The Super Heavy Booster, the launch vehicle’s main rocket stage, exploded shortly after it separated from the Starship spacecraft. The investigation is still ongoing, but SpaceX believes Starship exploded not long afterward, a self-destructive act by the spacecraft’s flight termination system, which blows the rocket up if it veers off course.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
On November 18, the second attempt at an uncrewed test flight of Starship and the Super Heavy Booster ended in a fiery explosion in the skies over Texas. The Super Heavy Booster, the launch vehicle’s main rocket stage, exploded shortly after it separated from the Starship spacecraft. The investigation is still ongoing, but SpaceX believes Starship exploded not long afterward, a self-destructive act by the spacecraft’s flight termination system, which blows the rocket up if it veers off course.
Not an ideal second outing for the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, which Musk hopes will take humans to Mars and a variant of which NASA hopes will land its astronauts on the Moon in 2025. But Starship did technically make it to space this time, flying for about eight minutes before blowing up — the first orbital Starship test flight in April ended in flames just moments after launch.
First contact with aliens could end in colonization and genocide if we don't learn from history
First contact with aliens could end in colonization and genocide if we don't learn from history
David Delgado Shorter, University of California, Los Angeles;
Kim TallBear, University of Alberta,
and
William Lempert, Bowdoin College
SETI has been listening for markers that may indicate alien life -- but is doing so ethical? Donald Giannati via Unsplash
We’re only halfway through 2023, and it feels already like the year of alien contact.
In February, President Joe Biden gave orders to shoot down three unidentified aerial phenomena – NASA’s title for UFOs. Then, the alleged leaked footage from a Navy pilot of a UFO, and then news of a whistleblower’s report on a possible U.S. government cover-up about UFO research. Most recently, an independent analysis published in June suggests that UFOs might have been collected by a clandestine agency of the U.S. government.
If any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life emerges, whether from whistleblower testimony or an admission of a cover-up, humans would face a historic paradigm shift.
As members of an Indigenous studies working group who were asked to lend our disciplinary expertise to a workshop affiliated with the Berkeley SETI Research Center, we have studied centuries of culture contacts and their outcomes from around the globe. Our collaborative preparations for the workshop drew from transdisciplinary research in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and across the Americas.
In its final form, our group statement illustrated the need for diverse perspectives on the ethics of listening for alien life and a broadening of what defines “intelligence” and “life.” Based on our findings, we consider first contact less as an event and more as a long process that has already begun.
Who’s in charge of first contact
The question of who is “in charge” of preparing for contact with alien life immediately comes to mind. The communities – and their interpretive lenses – most likely to engage in any contact scenario would be military, corporate and scientific.
By giving Americans the legal right to profit from space tourism and planetary resource extraction, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 could mean that corporations will be the first to find signs of extraterrestrial societies. Otherwise, while detecting unidentified aerial phenomena is usually a military matter, and NASA takes the lead on sending messages from Earth, most activities around extraterrestrial communications and evidence fall to a program called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
SETI investigators are virtually always STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – scholars. Few in the social science and humanities fields have been afforded opportunities to contribute to concepts of and preparations for contact.
In a promising act of disciplinary inclusion, the Berkeley SETI Research Center in 2018 invited working groups – including our Indigenous studies working group – from outside STEM fields to craft perspective papers for SETI scientists to consider.
Ethics of listening
Neither Breakthough Listen nor SETI’s site features a current statement of ethics beyond a commitment to transparency. Our working group was not the first to raise this issue. And while the SETI Institute and certain research centers have included ethics in their event programming, it seems relevant to ask who NASA and SETI answer to, and what ethical guidelines they’re following for a potential first contact scenario.
SETI’s Post-Detection Hub – another rare exception to SETI’s STEM-centrism – seems the most likely to develop a range of contact scenarios. The possible circumstances imagined include finding ET artifacts, detecting signals from thousands of light years away, dealing with linguistic incompatibility, finding microbial organisms in space or on other planets, and biological contamination of either their or our species. Whether the U.S. government or heads of military would heed these scenarios is another matter.
SETI-affiliated scholars tend to reassure critics that the intentions of those listening for technosignatures are benevolent, since “what harm could come from simply listening?” The chair emeritus of SETI Research, Jill Tarter, defended listening because any ET civilization would perceive our listening techniques as immature or elementary.
But our working group drew upon the history of colonial contacts to show the dangers of thinking that whole civilizations are comparatively advanced or intelligent. For example, when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers came to the Americas, those relationships were shaped by the preconceived notion that the “Indians” were less advanced due to their lack of writing. This led to decades of Indigenous servitude in the Americas.
This 16th century engraving shows Christopher Columbus landing in the Americas, where he and his explorers deemed the Indigenous people there as ‘primitive,’ as they had no writing system. Theodor de Bry/Wikimedia Commons
The working group statement also suggested that the act of listening is itself already within a “phase of contact.” Like colonialism itself, contact might best be thought of as a series of events that starts with planning, rather than a singular event. Seen this way, isn’t listening potentially without permission just another form of surveillance? To listen intently but indiscriminately seemed to our working group like a type of eavesdropping.
It seems contradictory that we begin our relations with aliens by listening in without their permission while actively working to stop other countries from listening to certain U.S. communications. If humans are initially perceived as disrespectful or careless, ET contact could more likely lead to their colonization of us.
Histories of contact
Throughout histories of Western colonization, even in those few cases when contactees were intended to be protected, contact has led to brutal violence, pandemics, enslavement and genocide.
James Cook’s 1768 voyage on the HMS Endeavor was initiated by the Royal Society. This prestigious British academic society charged him with calculating the solar distance between the Earth and the Sun by measuring the visible movement of Venus across the Sun from Tahiti. The society strictly forbade him from any colonial engagements.
Though he achieved his scientific goals, Cook also received orders from the Crown to map and claim as much territory as possible on the return voyage. Cook’s actions put into motion wide-scale colonization and Indigenous dispossession across Oceania, including the violent conquests of Australia and New Zealand.
The Royal Society gave Cook a “prime directive” of doing no harm and to only conduct research that would broadly benefit humanity. However, explorers are rarely independent from their funders, and their explorations reflect the political contexts of their time.
As scholars attuned to both research ethics and histories of colonialism, we wrote about Cook in our working group statement to showcase why SETI might want to explicitly disentangle their intentions from those of corporations, the military and the government.
Although separated by vast time and space, both Cook’s voyage and SETI share key qualities, including their appeal to celestial science in the service of all humanity. They also share a mismatch between their ethical protocols and the likely long-term impacts of their success.
The initial domino of a public ET message, or recovered bodies or ships, could initiate cascading events, including military actions, corporate resource mining and perhaps even geopolitical reorganizing. The history of imperialism and colonialism on Earth illustrates that not everyone benefits from colonization. No one can know for sure how engagement with extraterrestrials would go, though it’s better to consider cautionary tales from Earth’s own history sooner rather than later.
This article has been updated to correct the date of James Cook’s voyage.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.
David Delgado Shorter has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the University of California, and the California Community Foundation.
William Lempert has received funding from Bowdoin College, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Fulbright IIE US Scholar Program, the Lois Roth Endowment, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Kim TallBear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A mother from Middleton, Leeds, “freaked out” in December as a UFO barreled over her home … again!
Kay Thorpe was pretty shaken after photographing a UFO she claims has been flying over her home for the last few years, according to The Mirror. The 36-year-old mother-of-three reportedly snapped the picture while in her back garden at some point in December, hoping she’d be able to zoom in and figure out what the thing she keeps seeing really is. But the results left her more confused than ever.
“Where I live, you don’t often see a lot of stars but this one particular star is above my house every night and every morning,” Thorpe explained to the outlet. “And I kept looking at it thinking ‘that can’t be a star’ because it’s always there but it doesn’t flicker like a star. It’s been there for years. It wasn’t twinkling and I thought what else could it be?”
But when she zoomed in, things became “distorted.” Eventually she was able to snap a more stable photograph. “My first thought was it could be some sort of extra terrestrial. I didn’t think it was a spaceship but when I saw the shape, I thought that’s not normal,” she continued. “When I looked at it, I was freaked out. I thought ‘am I safe?’ I thought, could it be the International Space Station?”
Thorpe reportedly posted the images to her social media accounts, with a handful of people replying that the thing looks like a “Tardis,” the infamous time-travel machine from hit sci-fi show “Doctor Who.”
Photographs taken by Thorpe have seemingly already been sold, which is a shame. But during my digging, I found a few other photographs shared online of a weird, Tardis-looking contraptions.
“I shared it online and everyone started saying it’s Doctor Who, it’s the TARDIS. I’m not a Doctor Who fan but I knew what people meant when they said it. A lot of people said TARDIS. I don’t believe we’re alone. I think there’s something out there — I don’t think we’re the only species,” Thorpe continued.
“The thought has dawned on me that something could be looking down on us,” Thorpe said. “Because it’s been there for that many years I know I must be safe. Unless I’ve been abducted and my memory’s been wiped! A couple of people said it’s heaven’s door and we’ve recently had a bereavement so I’d like to think it’s maybe that.”
Across the pond, we’re all still wondering when the government will stop lying to us about UFOs and finally release their data. My gut feeling says it’ll never happen, so perhaps whoever is watching us from our skies will come down and introduce themselves in 2024.
Fermi Produces Unique Time-Lapse Tour of Gamma-Ray Sky
Fermi Produces Unique Time-Lapse Tour of Gamma-Ray Sky
A new movie from NASA’s Fermi mission shows the intensity of gamma rays — the highest-energy form of light — with energies above 200 million electron volts (MeV) detected by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope between August 2008 and August 2022. For comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 electron volts. Brighter colors mark the locations of more intense gamma-ray sources.
“The bright, steady gamma-ray glow of the Milky Way is punctuated by intense, days-long flares of near-light-speed jets powered by supermassive black holes in the cores of distant galaxies,” said Dr. Seth Digel, a senior staff scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
“These dramatic eruptions, which can appear anywhere in the sky, occurred millions to billions of years ago, and their light is just reaching Fermi as we watch.”
“One of the first things to strike your eye in the movie is a source that steadily arcs across the screen,” said Dr. Judy Racusin, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“That’s our Sun, whose apparent movement reflects Earth’s yearly orbital motion around it.”
Most of the time, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) detects the Sun faintly due to the impact of accelerated particles called cosmic rays. When they strike the Sun’s gas or even the light it emits, gamma rays result.
At times, though, the Sun suddenly brightens with powerful eruptions called solar flares, which can briefly make our star one of the sky’s brightest gamma-ray sources.
The Fermi team made an all-sky time-lapse movie using 14 years of data acquired by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope.
Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / DOE / LAT Collaboration.
“The new movie shows the sky in two different views,” the astronomers said.
“The rectangular view shows the entire sky with the center of our Galaxy in the middle.”
“This highlights the central plane of the Milky Way, which glows in gamma rays produced from cosmic rays striking interstellar gas and starlight.”
“It’s also flecked with many other sources, including neutron stars and supernova remnants.”
“Above and below this central band, we’re looking out of our Galaxy and into the wider Universe, peppered with bright, rapidly changing sources.”
“Most of these are actually distant galaxies, and they’re better seen in a different view centered on our Galaxy’s north and south poles.”
“Each of these galaxies, called blazars, hosts a central black hole with a mass of a million or more Suns.”
“Somehow, the black holes produce extremely fast-moving jets of matter, and with blazars we’re looking almost directly down one of these jets, a view that enhances their brightness and variability.”
“The variations tell us that something about these jets has changed,” Dr. Racusin said.
“We routinely watch these sources and alert other telescopes, in space and on the ground, when something interesting is going on.”
“We have to be quick to catch these flares before they fade away, and the more observations we can collect, the better we’ll be able to understand these events.”
Fermi plays a key role in the growing network of missions working together to capture these changes in the Universe as they unfold.
“Many of these galaxies are extremely far away,” the researchers said.
“For example, the light from a blazar known as 4C +21.35 has been traveling for 4.6 billion years, which means that a flare up we see today actually occurred as our Sun and Solar System were beginning to form.”
“Other bright blazars are more than twice as distant, and together provide striking snapshots of black hole activity throughout cosmic time.”
“Not seen in the time-lapse are many short-duration events that Fermi studies, such as gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful cosmic explosions.”
“This is a result of processing data across several days to sharpen the images.”
You wake up. Sleepiness fades as your eyes slowly open to a bright white light. And it feels warm and familiar; it feels like home. And your whole family is there to meet you.
Your entire life flashes before your eyes, like scenes from a movie. The good. The bad. Even the awful things you've done. But everything comes together. It all finally makes sense.
A familiar voice says: "We're happy you're here. We missed you. But - you can't stay." What? You just got here. You're getting kicked out already?
The voice says, "They need you. But we'll see you again when the time is right." And you know, somehow, the voice is telling the truth.
Suddenly, a burst of red-hot pain rips through your chest. It feels like every single cell in your body is on fire. You can't breathe.
A scream forces your eyes open. It's a blood-curdling scream, like an animal being eaten alive. Then you realize: the scream is coming from you.
You're in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors and nurses. They all take a step back. Stunned. They're staring at you. But why?
Well - you just came back from the dead.
The above story is one of many similar stories told by people who have had a near death experience where they witnessed and experienced the reality of another world.
Even after people have medically died scientists have discovered that awareness may continue which led to the assumption that death may not be as terminal as we think it is.
Professor Robert Lanza from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, claims the theory of biocentrism teaches that death as we know it is an illusion created by our consciousness.
From this perspective, our bodies function as mere living, breathing vessels. When the physical body succumbs to death, the spirit that once resided within the biological form departs, returning to the light or, one might say, transitioning to another higher dimension all the while, not only maintaining its awareness, but also capable of traveling through time and space, assuming any desired form it wishes.
Many spirits will return from this dimension to their original planet (reincarnation) or eventually embark on intergalactic journeys.
The Why Files discusses the various aspects that prove that there is an afterlife.
Officer Schirmer’s 1967 UFO Abduction and “Inside UFO” Encounter
Officer Schirmer’s 1967 UFO Abduction and “Inside UFO” Encounter
In the quiet town of Ashland, Nebraska, the cold winter air of December 3, 1967, was pierced by an event so bizarre it would etch itself into UFO lore forever. Police Officer Herbert Schirmer, a man sworn to protect and serve, found himself face-to-face not with a criminal, but with the unknown occupants of a UFO. His detailed account of abduction and otherworldly interaction presents a compelling case for one of the most fascinating UFO sightingsin history.
The Encounter Begins
Herbert Schirmer, while on routine patrol around 2:30 AM, noticed unusual flashing lights that he first mistook for a truck. As he approached, the lights transformed into a hovering, football-shaped craft emitting a red-orange glow. This was no truck; it was something far beyond his understanding.
Abducted by the Unknown
What followed was nothing short of cinematic. Schirmer described being pulled towards the craft, feeling stunned and terrified. As he got closer, the craft landed, revealing its intricate structure and otherworldly technology. A hatch opened, and beings resembling humans emerged. They approached Schirmer, one wielding a strange, pencil-like device, which he used to press against Schirmer’s neck, causing him pain and then an inexplicable calm.
Inside the UFO
Schirmer was then led inside the UFO, where he witnessed the wonders and horrors of alien technology. He described the interior as a hive of activity, with cylindrical structures, a spinning cocoon emitting rainbow colors, and a control room filled with panels and screens beyond human comprehension. The beings explained their propulsion system to him, a concept far ahead of our time, hinting at the advanced civilization they came from.
A Message for Mankind
During his time aboard, Schirmer received a cryptic message about the universe and the aliens’ interest in Earth’s electricity. The beings, while not overtly threatening, conveyed a sense of urgency and purpose in their actions. Schirmer, overwhelmed by the experience, was eventually returned to his patrol car, finding that time had inexplicably slipped away.
The Aftermath
The incident left Schirmer changed. He reported the incident, despite the potential ridicule, driven by a sense of duty and a need for answers. His story, scrutinized and studied by UFO researchers, stands as a detailed, first-hand account of human-alien interaction. Schirmer’s experience offers a glimpse into the possibility that we are not alone and that our understanding of the universe is just beginning.
VIDEO:
Police officer Herbert Schirmer describes the inside of a UFO after his abduction experience in 1967
Officer Herbert Schirmer’s encounter in 1967 remains one of the most detailed and compelling UFO sightings ever recorded. It challenges our perception of reality and forces us to consider the vast, unexplored cosmos. As we continue to search the skies for answers, Schirmer’s story stands as a testament to the human spirit’s unyielding quest for the truth about our place in the universe.
Some of the Weirdest Supposed Alien Artifacts Found on Earth - PART I
Throughout the history of ufology, the Holy Grail has always been some form of concrete evidence, something we can hold in our hand and verify as being from alien intelligences beyond our world. There have been plenty of stories of crashed UFOs and alien bodies over the years, none of which have come to provide the answers we are looking for. However, are there other forms of evidence of aliens visiting us across the sea of stars? Are there perhaps artifacts or objects they have left behind for whatever reasons? Here we will look at a selection of some of the more far out supposed alien objects ever found, which have mostly fueled more questions than answers.
In some cases, it seems as if possible alien intelligences have left behind artifacts far in the past or in certain far-off locations of this world for inscrutable reasons we cannot fathom and were perhaps not meant to. One of these is surely a strange structure found on the bottom of the Antarctica seas, in a place that is about as inhospitable to life as anywhere on the planet, where creatures eke by a living in the dark cold, and which was found by chance and which has incited discussion to this day.
In the 1960s, Antarctica might as well have been an alien world. It was a faraway, isolated, frigid land largely inhospitable to life as we know it, and although we still don’t know much about this continent today, at that time is was like another planet unto itself. In order to do research in the forbidding region, the National Science Foundation of the United States in 1962 created an elaborate, technologically advanced floating laboratory called the USNS Eltanin, which was the world's first dedicated Antarctic research vessel and tasked with exploring Antarctica and surrounding waters over a four-year period, at the time in waters just about uncharted as the furthest reaches of the solar system. While they made many findings and shed light on our knowledge of the region, they would also uncover things out there in those secluded depths that would go on to propel themselves into truly great mysteries.
On August 29, 1964, the USNS Eltanin was engaged in photographing the ocean floor 1,000 miles west of Cape Horn with a cable mounted camera at a depth of approximately 3,904 meters (13,500 feet) when they made a remarkable find. There along the mostly bleak and barren bottom they managed to snap pictures of a very strange structure, which stood upright at 2 feet high in the middle of nowhere on the lifeless seabed and with its symmetrical nodules, spokes and protrusions ending in a spherical top, it looked very much like an elaborate artificial radio antenna array. It was surely an unexpected thing to find down there, an anomaly, and when it the photographs were picked up and released by the New Zealand Herald on December 5, 1964, the puzzling images immediately caught the attention of UFOlogists and Fortean researchers, who would dub it “The Eltanin Antenna” and claim that it was an out of place alien artifact put there in that remote location for inscrutable purposes. The object would be excitedly discussed and debated for years, with famed paranormal writer Brad Steiger in 1968 calling it “an astonishing piece of machinery... very much like the cross between a TV antenna and a telemetry antenna.”
Theories swirled at the time, ranging that it was a piece that had simply fallen off a boat, to more conspiratorial theories such as that it was a secret Russian project, to more fringe ideas that it was the doing of aliens. Others suggested that it was perhaps some type of undiscovered plant life, but marine biologists were skeptical of this, as there was no sunlight down there to support it, and one biologist, a Dr. Thomas Hopkins, would say of it:
I wouldn’t like to say the thing is man-made because this brings up the problem of how one would get it there ... But it’s fairly symmetrical and the offshoots are all 90 degrees apart. This is why it has been argued over for so long.
In the end, no one knew, and since it was so far under the surface in one of the most hostile and inaccessible environments on earth there was no way to reach it again and no efforts made to try and relocate it. In the meantime, the bizarre object made the rounds in numerous UFO and paranormal publications, including SAGA Magazine, The INFO Journal, and Fortean Times, a habitat in which it often seemed to pick up added details and conjecture that really muddied the waters as to trying to figure out what was actually going on and what it really was. At the time it was aggressively pushed by many writers, in particular Steiger, as a true anomaly and possibly alien artifact, but in more recent years the story has picked up more mundane possibilities. One of the most popular of these was the suggestion that what is seen in the images is a type of deep sea carnivorous sponge called Cladorhiza concrescens, which was discovered in 1888 by Alexander Agassiz and was described in the initial report:
It somewhat resembles a space-age microwave antenna, with a long stem ending in ramifying roots, sunk deeply into the mud. The stem has nodes with four to six club-like appendages. They evidently cover like bushes extensive tracts of the bottom.
This seems like a very rational approach to the mystery, but there have been arguments against this idea. One is that the crew of the USNS Eltanin, with their crew of scientists and marine biologists, did not come to that conclusion on their own. Another is that this species of sponge is known to exist in large colonies, where as this object was solitary out on a desert of nothingness. There is also the fact that when compared to photos of Cladorhiza concrescens, the Eltanin Antenna does not seem to completely match, looking somewhat different, especially in that it is obviously more symmetrical, regimented, and even in form than one would expect one of these sponges to be. Details like this have made sure that the Eltanin Antenna has remained discussed and debated to this day, with many proponents of the idea that it is indeed an anomalous artifact placed there by either nefarious human organizations or aliens, for purposes ranging from measuring fault activity to mind control.
The mysterious antenna
There is really no way to know what this strange artifact was when looking at it based solely on a few photographs. It could really be anything, although no one explanation has really seemed to satisfy everyone at this point. Was this just some anomalous sea sponge that managed to find its way out there on its own? Or was it something else entirely? Whatever the case may be, no one has found the original Eltanin Antenna since, and we will probably never know the full answer.
Many supposed alien artifacts are linked to ancient civilizations, and truly one of the great lost and mysterious civilizations of the earth is the Inca Empire of the Andes Mountains of Peru. At its most powerful and illustrious during the 14th and 15th centuries, the Inca Empire at one point stretched over a vast area encompassing parts of Ecuador and as far south as Chile. For centuries this great civilization thrived, only to melt away into history with the coming of the gold-hungry Spanish conquistadors and fade away into the mists of time, leaving behind no record of their culture and way of life and making them one of the most enigmatic of ancient empires. Yet, for all of their mysteries some are more pronounced than others, with outlandish artifacts for with purposes unknown uncovered at times., and one of the more baffling of these is a monolithic stone which we are nowhere near figuring out.
Although the Incas left behind no written record for us to draw from, what they did leave are vast structures that remain standing strong centuries later. From temples, to citadels, to strongholds, massive walls, and roads, these ancient structures made use of enormous stones somehow moved to these locations and placed perfectly straight without any mortar and through methods we still don’t understand fully. In addition to these architectural mysteries the people of the Inca era also left behind other oddities that pop up from time to time, which serve to pose more questions than answers. One of these lies in the province Abancay in the region Apurímac in Peru, and has been wreathed in mystery ever since its discovery.
The site is called Sayhuite, thought to have perhaps once been the site of a grand gold covered temple devoted to the worship of water, and here is a rather bizarre artifact looking quite out of place. Called the Sayhuite Monolith, it is an enormous boulder measuring 6.5 feet long and about 13 feet wide, which sits atop a raised platform upon a terraced hill called the Concacha Hill, but more bizarre than its sheer size is what is engraved upon it. The entirety of the upper surface of the rock is adorned with over 200 carvings and engravings of various zoomorphic and geological figures, including reptiles, jaguars, monkeys, shellfish, frogs, crabs, birds, terraces, ponds, rivers, tunnels, streets, stairways, channels, buildings, and irrigation canals, and many others, as well as numerous geometric figures, all incredibly intricately crafted in painstaking detail.
It is a breathtaking piece of artistic mastery for its day, but the thing is we have no idea of what its purpose is, exactly where it originated, or even it was the Incas who made it at all. One of the problems is that there is very little else remaining from the Inca Empire at this particular site, no frame of reference to give it. We do know that it is not a natural outcropping, and it is made of material not sourced from the immediate area, but it is unclear where it was moved from or if this was even its original intended resting place. That is about all we know for sure, and no one is quite sure who made it or why.
As to the carvings, your guess is as good as anyone’s, and their significance depends largely on who you ask. One popular theory is that this was once an Inca temple devoted to the worship of water deities, which would have in its day been full of grand, gold coated columns and featuring the monolith as some sort of object of religious significance. However, this is far from the only idea floating around. Another theory is that the stone was used as a way of developing and testing the intricacies of water flow for public water projects and irrigation systems, supported somewhat by evidence that the engravings show signs of having been altered, modified, and updated over the centuries, perhaps to test out different water paths on the topographical model. Other ideas include that the monolith is a map to a lost city or even a map of the Inca Empire, a model of the universe, or even an alien artifact. In the ends no one knows, and although the site is popular with tourists, we are no closer to understanding it all, its history lost to time, just one more piece of the puzzle of a time long lost to us.
Sayhuite Monolith
Indeed, the ancient world very often seems to be almost something from an alien realm. Full of unanswered questions and inscrutable, indecipherable ruins, we are often left without answers to what these people were up to, our view to the past obscured and hazy. The ancients often left behind various enigmas that we struggle to understand and which seem to taunt us through the centuries, and another one of these is a mysterious disc uncovered in Greece, which is full of strange cryptic symbols and for which we have no answer, and which may be from powers beyond our world.
In July of 1908, an Italian archeologist by the name of Luigi Pernier was doing an excavation at the Old Palace of Minoan Phaistos, a mysterious Bronze Age archaeological site dating from 1900 to 1700 BC on the south coast of the island of the Greek island of Crete. There in the dank dark in an ancient basement of the palace he unearthed a small clay disc that had lain down in the dark for untold centuries, which upon inspection would capture the imagination and turn out to be one of the most mysterious and hotly debated archeological oddities ever uncovered in Greece.
Measuring from 15.8 to 16.5cm in diameter and 1.6 to 2.1cm in thickness, seemingly handmade from fired, baked clay, it is a truly curious little artifact. The disc holds etched upon both sides of it a spiral pattern of hand drawn lines within which a total of 45 different strange symbols are set in groups demarcated by vertical lines for a total of 242 symbols in all, each one apparently individually stamped into the clay before it was fired and in some cases showing evidence of having been erased and re-stamped. These symbols are largely pictographic in nature, featuring human figures, faces, animals such as fish, dolphins or cattle, boats, and plants and trees, as well as less discernible cryptic symbols. In addition to these symbols, there are what appear to be hand drawn dashes, slashes, and dotted bars throughout. Besides being an odd find, the thing about these various symbols is that, although they are all arranged as an obvious message, they represent no known language or writing system. It resembles none of the forms of writing found in Bronze Age Crete, called hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B, and archeologists have no idea what they say or why they were arranged in spirals on this lone disc.
Some things about what has come to be known as the Phaistos Disc are mostly largely agreed upon. It is mostly accepted as probably being Cretan in origin quite possibly a version of the Minoan language, and likely dates back to from 1850 to 1550 BC. It is also mostly believed that because many of the symbols seem to be arranged to face the right towards the outer edge of the disc, it is thought that it should be read clockwise from the center outwards. On the outer edge of the disc is a clearly delineated straight line marked with five or six points that is agreed by most to be the intended starting point for reading it all. That is pretty much where any agreement ends, and the disc, its origins, and the meaning of its enigmatic symbols have been discussed and debated ever since its discovery.
The Phaistos Disc
When trying to decipher the meaning of this oddity, there has been pointed out that the total number of different symbols are too few to represent a purely pictographic system of writing, that is in which one image is one word, but too many to be an alphabet system, meaning it is probably what is called a "syllabary." This would mean that each different symbol represents a separate syllable of the language, and each of the groups of symbols would make up one word. However, if this is the case it should be expected that there would be an even distribution of the symbols through the text, but there are wild imbalances between them on the disc, and also considering that the symbols are grouped in mostly groups of 3 to 7, it seems strange that the language would be so syllable heavy. This has led to another idea, which is that the mysterious writing system could be some combination of pictographs and syllabaries, but no one really knows for sure.
As to the significance of the disc, theories have varied considerably. Ideas include that it is a prayer, hymn or a religious chant, sacred text, magic inscription, a spell or curse, a simple letter, ritual, game, funerary record, almanac, court list, political treaty, a geometric theorem, list of soldiers, or even a nursery rhyme or musical notes, and of course that it was left by aliens. As you can see, no one really has a clue, and it could be anything. One idea that has been floated around is that the disc is not real at all, but rather a more modern forgery and hoax. It was for a while a subject of some debate, only fueled by the Greek Ministry of Culture refusal to let anyone test it because they deem it to be a national treasure that would be damaged if it were to be analyzed. If it is a forgery, then the main culprit is seen as probably being Luigi Pernier, in order to make a name for himself and step out from the shadows of other more famous archeologists also working in Crete at the time. After all, what better way to get the field’s attention than a mysterious disc with some inscrutable ancient language no one had ever seen before? However, it is common for governments to refuse to have artifacts tested out of fear of damaging them, and the majority of archeologists both in Greece and beyond are of the general consensus that it is authentic. What it actually is and what it signifies is another story altogether.
One of the most frustrating things is that since the symbols came from individual stamps, someone spent the time to make the actual die for each symbol, yet none of these die have been found. It would also imply that these discs were meant to be mass produced, yet as of yet, none other has been found. This is a problem, because without other similar examples of this mystery writing or a Rosetta Stone-type finding, there is simply not enough context to derive any meaning from it. There have been numerous claims over the years that the disc has been solved and translated, but these are unconfirmed, with little chance of a concrete confirmation in the absence of a comparison to other inscriptions. The fact is, despite the various claims of decoding the mysterious writing, it remains a perplexing unsolved mystery.
Equally as perplexing and controversial is a discovery allegedly made in 1938 in the Baian-Kara-ula mountains on the border of China and Tibet, by Chinese archeologist and professor Chi Pu Tei. His expedition purportedly came across an underground network of tunnels, caves, and caverns that seemed to have been artificially excavated, leaving smooth glazed walls suggesting some immense heat had been used. Tei claimed that within this strange subterranean world they had found pictograms carved into the walls, which depicted star systems, the sun, and the moon, and even more bizarrely graves that supposedly held the remains of tiny humanoids measuring about 4 feet tall and with outsized heads. Perhaps even stranger were the objects they found half buried in the earth all around them.
The Baian-Kara-ula mountains
The objects in question were a series of over 700 perfectly circular discs measuring up to a foot across, and which were said to have two grooves that emanated out from a perfectly round, 3/4" hole in the center to form a double spiral. Within the spirals were claimed to be minuscule hieroglyphics of an unknown type, so small that they were barely visible to the naked eye, and which required a magnifying glass to make out in any significant detail. Although this would have been seen as a monumental discovery, the discs allegedly found themselves locked away in storage at Beijing university for decades until 1962, when Chinese archeologist Tsum Um Nui supposedly took a look at them and the story would get even more bizarre still.
After careful analysis of the discs, this Tsum Um Nui claimed that he had actually managed to decipher them, and that they told an epic tale and often tragic tale of visitors from the stars. According to Nui, the discs spoke of a spaceship that had crashed into the mountains carrying a contingent of alien beings called the Dropa. The crash smashed the ship beyond their ability to repair, and so these mysterious beings had been forced to find refuge in the mountains and adapt to life on Earth, creating the tunnels and caverns in the process. The discs even supposedly give the harrowing account of some of these Dropa being mercilessly slaughtered by the Han Chinese.
It sounds completely absurd, and the general scientific community agreed, refusing to publish Nui’s paper on the matter and generally looking upon his claims with raised eyebrows and outright disdain. According to some accounts, the archeologist was even forbidden from even talking about the discs anymore after that, but the whole weird tale caught the attention of Russian scientist W. Saitsew, who apparently acquired some of the discs and studied them himself in 1968. Saitsew allegedly found the composition of the discs to be quite odd, comprised of a strange mix of cobalt and other metals that made the surface nearly impenetrably hard and deepening the mystery of the hieroglyphs etched upon them. He also claimed to have discovered that when placed on a specialized turntable the discs hummed and oscillated as if they had once held an electrical charge or served as conductors of some type.
It is unclear what happened to what have come to be known as the Dropa Discs after this, and Tsum Um Nui himself allegedly fled China to Japan, where he vanished into obscurity. We are left with very little to go on, and indeed there is much to cast doubt on whether the Dropa Discs ever even existed at all. For one there are no discs now to examine, with the estimated 712 discs all allegedly disappearing over the years. There is also rather suspiciously a lack of any photographic documentation of them at all. The only supposed photographs of the Dropa Discs were purportedly taken by the Austrian engineer Ernst Wegerer, who apparently located two of the discs during a visit to the Banpo Museum in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province in 1974. However, the photographs are fairly controversial and the discs themselves are obscured by camera flash.
Supposed photo of the Dropa Discs
Other damning evidence against the existence of the Dropa Discs is that there are no real official scientific papers written on them, with only the writings of Tsum Um Nui, the Russian scientists, and some second or third hand accounts to go on, and these are of questionable veracity at best. In fact, Tsum Um Nui appears to have no mention in any university or academic institution as an archeologist, and indeed it has been pointed out that Tsum Um Nui isn’t even a real Chinese name at all. There are likewise no official museum records to show that such discs were ever within their collections, nor is there any official documentation of the Chi Pu Tei expedition that supposedly found them in the first place, and indeed there is no way to know if it ever happened at all. Considering such a lack of any concrete evidence, if the Dropa Discs ever did exist then the Chinese have gone through great efforts to cover it all up. Perhaps more likely is that this is an intriguing archeological urban legend that has sort of taken up a life of its own. Regardless, these mysterious discs crafted by unknown hands have continued to be discussed and debated to this day.
More recently, in 1961 a group of friends in Olancha, California were looking for geodes when they found within one of them a modern spark of all things, and allegedly a geologist estimated the object as being 500,000 years old. In October of 1996 a group of researchers in the Kaluga region of western Russia located a screw complete with the fully formed head and nut embedded within rock that was found to be 300 to 350 million years old. Examination by various scientists showed that the object is most certainly artificial, but as to how it got into that rock no one knows. Was this an alien artifact, time travelers, or what, and perhaps more pressing, what would aliens need with spark plugs anyway? The answers remain vague.
Some other anomalous ancient artifacts are a little harder to adequately classify, and defy easy categorization. In 1885, a strange object was found by an iron smelter at a foundry in Vocklabruck, Austria. There, within a block of solid coal, was discovered a perfectly-formed cuboid object of what seemed to be iron or some other type of metal, measuring 2.64 by 2.64 by 1.85 inches and weighing 1.73 pounds, its purpose unknown. The outlandish cube-like object was sent to the Salzburg Museum, where it was analyzed by the Austrian physicist Karl Gurls and found to be made not of iron, but rather of a strange alloy composing steel and nickel, although it would later be deemed to be actually made of a forged iron.
Further analysis showed that the object, whatever it was, was too precise in shape and made of too refined a metal to have been caused by any known naturally occurring phenomenon such as a meteorite strike, and was most likely machine-tooled and even probably just a part of a larger device or mechanism, although what type no one knows. What has come to be known as the Salzburg Cube or the Wolfsegg Iron has apparently been studied by scientists at the Geological Institute of Austria, who have also come to the conclusion that it seems to indeed be indeed artificial, and the object has even been featured in an 1886 edition of the scientific journal Nature, as well as an 1887 issue of the French journal L’Astronomie.
What was this strange object and how did it get within a chunk of coal dating to tens of millions of years ago? Was it truly a manufactured object, and if so what sort of enigmatic mechanism did it once belong to? It is difficult to tell for sure, as the Salzburg Cube has since disappeared completely, leaving only these vague 19th century reports behind. It might have been lost, misplaced, mislabeled, or filed away in some darkened backroom of a museum collection somewhere gathering dust, perhaps even stolen for unknown reasons. We only know for sure that it did exist, but without modern scientific analysis we will probably never know for sure what it was. Mysterious technology of the ancients, aliens in prehistory, time travelers, or unknown natural phenomena? Who knows?
Other purported alien artifacts seem to have been dropped off or left behind during UFO encounters. On November 11, 1956, a Stig Ekberg and Harry Sjoberg were driving on the Island of Vaddo, Sweden, about 90 kilometers north-northwest of Stockholm, when they noticed up ahead a bright object that looked like a flattened sphere, measuring around 8 meters wide and 3 meters high. The object seemed as if it was about to fly past them, but it then suddenly made a sharp turned and headed directly towards them, and as it did their car’s engine mysteriously coughed, sputtered, and died. The object then came down to hover right near the road, and it was described as being so bright that “even a barn, half a kilometer away, was visible as if the sun was shining.” It then proceeded to maintain a position just one meter off of the ground, and as the frightened men looked on it started to glow brighter, and the air was filled with a smell like “ozone and smoldering insulation.”
After 10 minutes of this, the object lifted up and sped off in the direction from which it had come, and as it did the vehicle sprang back to life. The curious witnesses then went to where the thing had been hovering to find that the grass had been flattened and singed. Even weirder than this was that there was a shiny object on the ground that turned out to be a “three-sided piece of metal about the size of a matchbox,” and which was hot to the touch and heavier than it looked. The men collected the strange artifact and had it analyzed at the SAAB airline manufacturing company, who came to the conclusion that it was constructed of tungsten carbide and cobalt, and was definitely an artificially manufactured object and not some naturally occurring rock of any known kind, although it had no discernible conventional use. It is unclear what happened to this object after this, and we are left to wonder what it was. Was it something dropped by the UFO, and if so what was it? Who knows?
The following year, in September of 1957, Ibrahim Sued, a columnist for the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo, received a letter from a witness who claimed to have seen a "flying disk" explode over the beach at Ubatuba, in Sao Paulo Province, Brazil, and that as it did it had “rained down” metal pieces. Within the envelope the letter came in were several strips of a dull gray metallic material which seemed to be scorched or oxidized somewhat, smooth but with a noticeable amount of wear and tear, and which were all dusted with a fine film of a powdered substance that somewhat resembled burnt charcoal residue, all of which had apparently been dropped by the UFO. The letter would read:
Dear Mr. Ibrahim Sued.
As a faithful reader of your column, and an admirer of yours, I wish to give you, as a newspaperman, a “scoop” concerning flying discs. If you believe that they are real, of course. I didn’t believe anything said or published about them. But just a few days ago I was forced to change my mind. I was fishing together with various friends, at a place close to the town of Ubatuba, Sao Paulo, when I sighted a flying disc! It approached the beach at unbelievable speed and an accident, in other words, a crash into the sea, seemed imminent. At the last moment, however, when it seemed it was almost striking the waters, it made a sharp turn upward and climbed rapidly on a fantastic impulse. Astonished, we followed the spectacle with our eyes, when we saw the disc explode in flames. It disintegrated into thousands of fiery fragments, which fell sparkling with magnificent brightness. They looked like fireworks, despite the time of the accident, at noon, that is, at midday. Most of the fragments, almost all, fell into the sea. But a number of small pieces fell close to the beach and we picked up a large amount of this material—which was light as paper. I am enclosing a sample of it. I don’t know anyone that could be trusted to whom I could send it for analysis. I never read about a flying disk being found, or about fragments or parts of a disk that had been picked up. Unless the finding was made by military authorities and the whole thing kept as a top-secret subject. I am certain the matter will be of great interest to the brilliant columnist and I am sending two copies of this letter—to the newspaper and to your home address.
Not knowing what to do with the letter and its mysterious samples, Sued merely printed the letter in the newspaper out of curiosity, then put the mysterious pieces of weird metal aside and sort of ignored them until he was contacted by a Olavo T. Fontes, a Rio physician and Brazilian representative of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (A.P.R.O), who had heard of the letter through its publication in the paper. Fontes came out to Brazil and took a closer look at the samples, coming to the initial conclusion that one was cracked and had fissures suggesting that it had been forcefully blown off of a larger object, and it was surmised that the whitish substance was the result of the pieces being subjected to an intense heat. Sued offered to release the strange pieces to Fontes, who took them off to be analyzed further at the Mineral Production Laboratory. Fontes himself would say of the objects in a report to the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO) in Tucson, Arizona:
I saw the samples sent by the unidentified correspondent—three small pieces of a dull-gray solid substance that appeared to be a metal of some sort. Their surfaces were not smooth and polished, but quite irregular and apparently strongly oxidized. The surface of one of the samples was shot through with almost microscopic cracks. The surfaces of all samples were covered in scattered areas with a whitish material. These whitish smears of a powdered substance appeared as a thin layer. The fine, dry powder was adherent but could be displaced easily with the nail. Mr. Sued said the material appeared to be lead at first sight—because of the gray color—but I could see that it could not be lead … the material was light … almost as light as paper.
They were then sent through a battery of tests, where they were found to be composed of 99.99% pure magnesium. The Air Force allegedly received one of the samples, but it was unfortunately accidentally destroyed as it was being prepped for analysis. They requested another sample, but since one of the other pieces had also been destroyed by the testing done on it there was only one fragment left and they were unwilling to part with it, instead locking it away in a safe. In 1967, the A.P.R.O. grudgingly allowed the piece to be taken in for analysis, but this would prove to be inconclusive and produce conflicting results, with one lab saying that the magnesium was not as pure as originally claimed and “not as pure as magnesium specimens readily available in the 1950s,” whereas another stated that the piece was produced through a “process that was unknown when the fragments were recovered.” Ultimately the sample was just too small to really tell much, and it created more questions than answers, leaving it as an anomalous mystery. University of Arizona metallurgical engineer Walter W. Walker would say of the fragment:
All chemical analyses to date have not verified the extraterrestriality of the Ubatuba magnesium.... Considering the poor pedigree of the Ubatuba physical evidence, a hoax cannot be ruled out... [though] nothing unequivocally identifying the material as terrestrial was found either. If one accepts that it is possible that a flying saucer has a soft, weak, technically pure, unalloyed, cast magnesium fuselage, then the metallographic evidence is consistent. The surface scale, the oxide intrusion into the grain boundaries and, particularly, the subscale from internal oxidation all suggest that the magnesium was exposed to the Earth’s atmosphere at elevated temperatures. The white Mg(OH)2 coating is consistent with the burning fragments falling into the ocean.... In summary, after all these years, I consider the Ubatuba magnesium fragment as unusual material of still unknown origin.
The Ubatuba fragment
Unfortunately, further analysis has done little to shed any more light on the fragments, and have been unable to conclusively prove whether they were of extraterrestrial origins or proof of aliens, and the Journal of Scientific Exploration would say in an abstract on their paper on the matter:
A sample from the Ubatuba fragment collected in Brazil in 1957 was tested with the intent of examining the isotope ratios of its primary element, magnesium, and the trace elements strontium, barium, copper, and zinc. As background, the history of chemical testing of the Ubatuba fragments during the 1960s-1980s at multiple labs with varying capabilities is reviewed and then the remainder of the paper examines recent tests completed in 2017 and 2018 that for the first time used HR-ICPMS techniques to look at the isotopic ratios of the minor constituents as well as the primary magnesium component of the sample. The magnesium isotope ratios were found to fall within terrestrial limits while the results on the isotope ratios of the trace elements were inconclusive. Recommendations are made for improving the process of examining the trace elements.
We are left to wonder how much veracity the case has, and just what exactly those mysterious fragments were, if anything. What do the results mean? There is no way to really know, because there is nothing left to test that we know of. Who sent the letter and was he for real? Again, a mystery. In the end, with the inconsistency of the test results, the lack of any remaining fragments, and the completely anonymous identity of the writer of the letter there is no way to be sure, making it a case that will no doubt serve to fuel debate and speculation for some time to come.
In August of 1964, a Mr. Raimo Blomqvist was at his parents’ summer cottage at Kallavesi Lake, Finland, when he noticed a “strange, colorful light ball” come down from the clouds. As it drew nearer he could see that it was oval in shape, but it was glowing too brightly for him to see any real details to it. The strange anomalous object then hovered over some shallow water nearby and apparently dropped something, which made a sound like “hot metal touching cold water” when it hit the surface. The UFO then rose high into the air and shot off into the clouds. He then went to where the object had dropped and found an odd looking stone 3 or 4 cm in length and with five layers to it. When the strange artifact was analyzed by a lab, it was found to be mostly made of iron, but there were also small amounts of other materials such as copper, zinc, magnesium, mangan, zirkonium, vanadium, titanium and crom. They also determined that the stone had been in a temperature of 650-800 degrees Celsius for a long time. Once again, it is unclear what happened to this object. What was this thing?
From the 1970s is a case from Suonenjoki, in Central Finland, where on March 16 of that year a Mr. Reijo Kolehmainen made a stunning discovery near his property after witnessing UFO activity for several days, claiming that he had found several spots where the mysterious object had landed and left behind various artifacts. A report in the APRO Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 5, Nov. 1979, says of what happened:
Three landing trace areas were found around Mr. Reijo Kolehmainen’s home in February, 1979. At 6:50 a.m. on February 2, 1979 a 2.5 meter crater was found in the snow at a distance of 5 meters from the house. The snow had melted all the way to the ground in the center of the crater. Strange red liquid, pieces of metal, and later a metallic cup were found within the crater. The red liquid smelled of vinegar. At 8:00 a.m. the police came. They photographed the area and took some samples.
In another case from the 70s, late in the evening of February 5, 1979 the Kolehmainen family heard a shooting sound. One constable later revealed he had seen a strange light phenomenon at the same time. On the following morning a bigger crater was found in the snow at a distance of 10 meters from the house. Similar things were again found. Later the police came to have a new look at the area. The police suggested that perhaps someone had thrown a home-made bomb in the Kolehmainen yard. However, the Kolehmainens stated that nobody has any reason to throw bombs at them. On the morning of February 21, 1979 a third landing trace area was found. This time there were three holes in the yard. Red liquid and pieces of metal were once again found in the landing trace. However, no metallic cup was found this time. There was no snow on the electric wires above the holes, but there was lots of snow on similar wires elsewhere. The Kolehmainens didn’t want any publicity, but the news leaked to the press from acquaintances. About ten articles were published by the press about the events. The UFO was encountered by several other witnesses in the area over the course of several weeks, but this is the only report that mentions it leaving any sort of physical evidence behind. Very bizarre, indeed.
Perhaps one of the more well-known cases of an alleged alien artifact left behind supposedly occurred in 1985, in the area of Grand Junction, Colorado. One evening in 1985, a man named Bob White was driving with a friend on their way from Denver to Las Vegas. At the time, White was asleep and his friend at the wheel, watching the hypnotic lane lines flicker by as they meandered through the remote wasteland between Grand Junction, Colorado and the Utah border. Here was a place in which there was not another soul for miles around, a moonscape of rocky desert that expanded out past the illumination of the headlights in a vast expanse of nothingness, and it would have been a rather dull drive until a weird series of events began to play out that made the evening a bit more exciting.
At around 2:30 a.m., White was jolted awake by his friend. Wiping the sleepiness from his eyes and watching the nighttime desert streak by outside, he at first couldn’t figure out why his friend had woken him. It wasn’t his turn to be at the wheel and nothing at first seemed out of place, the car smoothly rolling along, but his friend was in a state of agitation. When White asked what was going on, his companion frantically pointed off towards the horizon, and it was then that he could see a strange light off in the distance, which did not look like an airplane. The light steadily grew in size and brightness until it was blinding, turning the desert night into day, and White would say of what happened:
The light was about the size of a full harvest moon. As we got closer, it grew larger. When we were a few hundred yards from it, I turned off the ignition and we coasted up close to it. It was huge, the size of a very big barn. I got out of the car for a better look. For some unknown reason, Jan turned on the headlights, and this light went up in the sky as fast as my eyes could follow it. What I saw, was not of this Earth. Then I saw another small light, bright orange with a tinge of yellow, white, and blue falling from it. After this, the larger object rose into the air rapidly, joined with an even larger object, a sort of "mother ship," and the whole of it shot off into the night, leaving the two frightened men there alone in the dark desert once again to try and process what they had just seen. Overcome with curiosity, White started hiking off through the scrub through the wilderness towards where he estimated the smaller object had fallen, making his way up an incline to find a groove in the ground, which he estimates as having been around 18 inches deep and 9 inches wide. Within this groove was a glowing object, about 7-1/2 inches long and shaped like a teardrop, still too hot to get anywhere near and apparently made of some kind of metal. White waited until it had cooled down enough to touch, and then brought it back to the car, stashing it into the trunk.
Colorado wilderness
White, who claims to have never believed in UFOs before this incident, was baffled as to what the object could possibly be, but did not know who to turn to for help or what to do with it. He kept it locked in a safe deposit box to keep it safe, and in the meantime travelled about trying to raise interest in his discovery, travelling to conferences and trying to get the object tested. He even opened his Museum of the Unexplained, which would hold the object high as its main attraction. In 1996, a small sample of the object was finally tested by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, which didn’t come to any firm conclusions, but did have this to say:
The metallurgical analysis was pretty mundane. We didn't find any evidence that it was extraterrestrial. Now you can make the argument that we didn't spend $1 million and look at every conceivable option. We didn't cover every base.
A second laboratory came to a similar conclusion, deflating hope that this was an alien device or piece of spaceship. Undeterred and convinced of the object’s otherworldly nature, White decided to keep trying, sending in samples to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Tech, and the Geosciences Research Division of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, for more thorough analyses. One of White’s partners, a Dr. Robert Gibbons, a former scientist with NASA, would say of the results of these further tests:
We recently came across scientific data that linked Bob's object with the planet Mars. Isotope abundance ratio tests were performed on Bob's object in May, 1999 in La Jolla, CA and the numbers are virtually the same as obtained from Martian meteorite samples. The ratio of isotopes of Strontium for the QUE 94201 meteorite found in Antarctica in 1994 was 0.701. The ratio of isotopes of Strontium for Bob's object was 0.712. The ratio of isotopes of Strontium for the Shergotty meteorite found India in 1865 was 0.723. Bob's object is right in the middle of two proven Martian meteorites!
So, what does this all mean? Well, the most rational explanation is that this is exactly what the object is: a meteorite. This could also explain the strange sighting the two men had had to some degree, although it doesn’t explain the presence of the massive UFO they had supposedly seen or the “mothership” it attached to before speeding off into the night. Other ideas are that they saw debris from a satellite falling, or some naturally occurring celestial phenomenon, and that the weird object he found was completely unrelated. Then there is the possibility that this is all just a hoax. All of these possibilities White strongly denied. He never tried to get rich off of his findings, and whatever he did find out there in the desert, he certainly seemed to have at least truly believed it was real, once saying of his crusade to get the object recognized:
This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I'm 73 years old. I don't have much longer. What I'd like to see before I'm gone is the national media get their heads out of the sand. I'd like to see the national media and everybody else realize that what I have is real. I don't know what I have to do to prove this is the truth. You can't make this stuff up.
He would continue to adamantly stick to his story and defend his strange discovery all the way up to his death in 2009, but the object would stay locked away in his museum, where it remains to this day. What exactly did he find out there in the desert on that fateful night? Is this a piece of meteorite, space debris, just a weird-looking rock, a hoax, or something else? As of yet, there is no proof that the object is anything more mysterious than a rock or meteorite, but it is still a pretty odd story all the same, and managed to get a lot of attention in its time as a piece of possible physical evidence from a UFO.
Bob White and his alien fragment
In the meantime, the object is kept under carefully secured conditions, with motion detectors, closed-circuit TV, and window and door alarms protect it at all times, and the object never spends the night at the same place two nights in a row. Most skeptics say it is just a piece of space debris from a meteor or a satellite, but it has never been conclusively proven to be one thing or another. In the end, that is what we are let with on all of these cases, more questions than answers. Despite these supposed pieces of physical evidence of alien spacecraft, there just doesn't seem to be any way to completely verify any of it, with the samples either disappearing or producing mixed results, at best. What is going on here and why have these strange objects turned up? What does it all mean? We may never know for sure.
One very well-known account of such a bizarre object was found by chance in the U.S. State of Florida by an unsuspecting family. A perfect sphere with various unusual properties, it has gone on to fuel talk of all manner of UFO theories and conspiracy rumors, and remains an enigma to this day. On March 26,1974, a raging brush fire had swept through the 88-acre property of the Betz family, on Fort George Island, Florida, leaving a vast swath of burnt and blackened land behind. As Antoine and Jerri Betz, accompanied by their 21-year-old son Terry, surveyed the damage they came through a grove of trees that had been completely incinerated by the fire, yet sitting there in the middle of what would have been an inferno was a metallic sphere of some sort, approximately the size of a bowling ball, shining there in the sunlight and seemingly untouched and not affected in the least by the fire that had torn through. In fact, it was found to be completely smooth, polished, and without a single blemish upon it except for a small triangular shape carefully etched within the metal, and it was apparently without any scratch or scorch mark on it.
It was an incredibly odd thing to see sitting there all shiny and polished in the middle of all the charred and scorched earth, and the baffled family tried to figure out what it could possibly be. They considered that it may have been a downed satellite or something that had been dropped from a plane, but then why was there no sign of damage upon it at all? They then came to the conclusion that it was an old relic cannonball from some forgotten battle in centuries past, but the lack of any rust or signs of age didn’t seem to fit. Curious, they loaded it into their truck and hauled it back to their home to take a better look, and this is when things would get even more bizarre.
Some of the Weirdest Supposed Alien Artifacts Found on Earth - PART II
Throughout the history of ufology, the Holy Grail has always been some form of concrete evidence, something we can hold in our hand and verify as being from alien intelligences beyond our world. There have been plenty of stories of crashed UFOs and alien bodies over the years, none of which have come to provide the answers we are looking for. However, are there other forms of evidence of aliens visiting us across the sea of stars? Are there perhaps artifacts or objects they have left behind for whatever reasons? Here we will look at a selection of some of the more far out supposed alien objects ever found, which have mostly fueled more questions than answers.
It was an incredibly odd thing to see sitting there all shiny and polished in the middle of all the charred and scorched earth, and the baffled family tried to figure out what it could possibly be. They considered that it may have been a downed satellite or something that had been dropped from a plane, but then why was there no sign of damage upon it at all? They then came to the conclusion that it was an old relic cannonball from some forgotten battle in centuries past, but the lack of any rust or signs of age didn’t seem to fit. Curious, they loaded it into their truck and hauled it back to their home to take a better look, and this is when things would get even more bizarre.
The odd sphere was soon found to have some very peculiar properties. The first clue to this was when Terry was in the same room as the sphere one day while practicing the guitar. As he played he became aware that the metal sphere seemed to be reacting somehow to the music, throbbing in tune to the beat and emitting a vibrating sound not unlike a tuning fork. Even when the sounds stopped the family dog refused to go anywhere near it, suggesting that there were still sub-audible sounds emanating from within it. They decided to keep a closer eye on the sphere, and soon noticed that it seemed to occasionally emit these thrumming hums on its own, and that it was more active on sunny days, leading them to think that it was somehow solar powered. They also accidentally discovered that it could roll around on its own and guide itself, often turning around to make its way back to whoever pushed it and able to roll on without aid for long periods of time. It seemed to react to different situations and almost have a mind of its own, leaving the whole family and anyone they showed it to in awe. This was increasingly obviously no 16th century cannonball.
The mysterious sphere
Considering that the Betz family would supposedly often show off the sphere to family and neighbors, it is perhaps no surprise that word began to get out on its strange properties. Journalists began showing up to snoop around, and some of them were able to see some of the phenomena for themselves. One was a photographer from the Jacksonville Journal, who went to the residence and apparently saw the mysterious sphere in action, writing of it:
It rolled a ways then stopped. So what? She said, 'Just wait a minute.' It turned by itself and rolled to the right about four feet. It stopped. Then it turned again and rolled to the left about eight feet, made a big arc and came right back to my feet.
At around this time the sphere began to escalate its strange phenomena, causing other objects to move or doors to slam around the house, as well as producing loud music that sounded as if it were coming from an organ. More people came in to investigate, and before long it had even attracted the attention of government organizations such as NASA, the U.S. Navy, and the Arial Phenomena Research Organization. The Navy purportedly examined the sphere and did tests and X-rays on it, proclaiming that it was not anything they had ever seen before and that it seemed to be made of an incredibly dense, absurdly heat resistant form of stainless steel, with two other objects somewhere within its hollow frame surrounded by a halo made of material that had an unusual density, as well as a total of two negative and two positive poles. A researcher named Carl Wilson found that the ball exhibited strange magnetic characteristics and even seemed to be putting out some sort of signal, even going as far as to say that it possessed certain properties that seemed to defy physics and that it was not made of steel at all. Another named J. A. Harder concluded that there were elements within the sphere that were unknown.
After this the odd trajectory of the sphere becomes unclear, the story slowly fading away from the media blitz it had enjoyed and its location sinking into obscurity, and we are left with the question of what this ball was and what happened to it. There have been theories ranging from the rational to the more fringe. The rational explanation is that this was a misidentified component of a satellite or an otherwise manmade construction such as a piece of industrial machinery such as a ball valve, but how would this explain its strange behavior and properties? One ball valve manufacturer was nevertheless reasonably sure that it was just a ball valve, saying of the “Betz Sphere”:
I'm not saying that this thing didn't come from outer space because I've never seen it. All I'm saying is that the physical description of it matches exactly the type of ball we have in stock.
Others say that the analyses done would have immediately determined whether it was manmade or not, but that they failed to conclusively come to this conclusion, suggesting that it was something else, perhaps something alien in origin. Yet looking through the Navy records on the case it seems this may have been exaggerated somewhat by the media, as one Navy spokesman is on record having said of the ball’s purported strange ability to rove about on its own:
I believe it's because of the construction of the house... It's old and has uneven stone floors. The ball is almost perfectly balanced, and it takes just a little indentation to make it move or change direction.
So what are we to believe? What was this thing? It seems this story has been muddied, twisted, and warped through retellings and a clear lack of information, leaving us merely scratching or heads. Perhaps an even more important question we should be asking ourselves is just where did this thing go? It was all over the news for a time and then just disappears? How can that be? Conspiracy theories say that the military or NASA had it whisked away, while others say the family got tired of all of the attention and hid it away from the world, but we really have no idea what the truth is. In the end the only way to know whether this was truly some sort of alien probe or piece of technology would be to study that sphere, and that seems to not be happening any time soon. Whatever it was, the Betz Sphere will likely remain a mystery for a long time to come.
We are left to wonder. Have there been mysterious alien objects dropped off or left behind on Earth? Is the ultimate physical evidence out there somewhere, or is this all just smoke, mirrors, and hoaxes? At the moment there has been no known conclusive evidence that aliens have left anything behind here on our planet, but there continue to be stories such as these. What are we to make of them? Is there any truth to any of these or not? It remains unknown.
The Roswell "UFO"Affair: A Plausible Reason for a "Secret Experiment" and No Aliens Anywhwere
The Roswell "UFO"Affair: A Plausible Reason for a "Secret Experiment" and No Aliens Anywhwere
Nick Redfern
When it comes to the issue of what really happened on what was once known as the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in early July 1947, there are things we know, things we suspect, and things we will probably never know. But, that something happened – something which caused the U.S. Air Force to offer multiple explanations for the event – is not a matter of any doubt at all. It was an incident that clearly concerned elements of not just the military, but the government, too, and to a highly significant degree. Eye-witnesses – both military and civilian – were warned not to talk about what they had seen and / or heard. More than a few of those warnings crossed the line and can only accurately be described as death threats. People were plunged into states of fear. Lives were changed forever; even scarred. Some lives may have ended; as in terminated.
It was on July 8, 1947 that the strange event surfaced publicly. Associated Press (among many other news outlets) reported on the startling, then-breaking news: “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chavez County. “The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.”
The whole world was watching.
The story was quickly picked up, not just across the United States, but across the planet, too. In barely no time at all, however, the flying disc angle was blown out of the sky: the whole thing was nothing but a huge, embarrassing mistake. The materials found on the massive ranch – by rancher William Ware “Mack” Brazel – were not the remains of a disc, after all. What had really been found, and subsequently collected and brought to the Roswell Army Air Field, was weather-balloon debris. Or, so the military was careful to try and assure everyone. With Brazel at the time of the discovery – which had actually occurred days earlier – was a young boy named Dee Proctor. He would go on to be one of the most important people in the Roswell story. We also know for sure that three, key military men, all of whom were destined to become part and parcel of the Roswell affair, were also present at the ranch – and specifically before a veritable battalion was on-site and ordered to recover the massive amount of whatever-it-was. They were Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence-office of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell; Captain Sheridan Cavitt, of the Counter-Intelligence Corps; and CIC Master Sergeant Lewis S. “Bill” Rickett. All three were at ground-zero. They all saw the wreckage. Years later Marcel would open up wide on the matter of the debris he saw and collected. Cavitt and Rickett may have seen more than debris. Way more. Possibly bodies, strange bodies. Brazel and little Dee may have seen one or more of those bodies, too.
When the media revealed the weather-balloon explanation, something amazing happened: Roswell was largely, and very quickly, forgotten. Granted, those implicated in the affair never forgot what they saw and experienced. But, the media certainly moved on to other things. Plus, back in 1947 there were no UFO research groups around to look into the case. The result? Aside from a few, occasional, brief references in books and magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, Roswell was for all intents and purposes dead and buried – which is precisely how those charged with keeping the disturbing secret wanted it. Things changed, however, in the mid-to-late 1970s. Both William Moore and Stanton Friedman were eagerly pursuing the Roswell story by then; it was a story that was slowly but surely destined to be resurrected. It was Friedman who found the now-elderly Jesse Marcel. The long-retired major had a most interesting story to tell:
“I saw a lot of wreckage but no complete machine. It had disintegrated before it hit the ground. The wreckage was scattered over an area about three quarters of a mile long and several hundred feet wide. I was pretty well acquainted with most everything that was in the air at that time, both ours and foreign. I was also acquainted with virtually every type of weather-balloon or radar-tracking device being used by either the civilians or the military. What it was we didn’t know. We just picked up the fragments…it certainly wasn’t anything built by us.”
Mack Brazel’s son, Bill, would later say that what was found on the Foster Ranch was “…something on the order of tinfoil except that [it] wouldn’t tear…You could wrinkle it and lay it back down and it immediately resumed its original shape. Quite pliable, but you couldn’t crease or bend it like ordinary metal. Almost like a plastic, but definitely metallic in nature.” When Friedman spoke with Bill Rickett, in 1985, the also-long-retired Counter-Intelligence Corps man revealed a few snippets of information on what happened, but practically froze like a deer caught in headlights when Friedman brought up the matter of bodies. It was clearly an issue Rickett had no intention of discussing – and he didn’t. As for Sheridan Cavitt, he proved to be one of the trickiest players in the entire story. He revealed very little of substance. On occasion, he even denied having ever been at Roswell or at the crash site. Cavitt may even have withheld what he knew of the incident when, in 1994, the Air Force came knocking on his front-door, wanting answers – as will become clear later on.
What was the real story?
Since the days of the late 1970s and the 1980s, Roswell has risen to stratospheric proportions. Researchers Kevin Randle, Don Schmitt, and Tom Carey have all investigated the mystery to significant degrees. They continue to do so. The Air Force and the Government Accountability Office have both published reports on the case. Numerous non-fiction books and novels, television documentaries, and a movie have been made on the world famous affair. The number of people who have spoken out about their knowledge of what happened – whether first-, second-, or third-hand – is now well into the hundreds. People talk of dead aliens, preserved corpses, the back-engineering of alien artifacts found on the Foster Ranch, secret files on the case, old B&W photographs taken at the crash site, and more – including even suspicious deaths. People murdered to keep the truth hidden? Maybe, yes. The stakes really could be that high – even decades later. The end for Roswell is nowhere in sight. Like fictional, Tokyo-trashing Godzilla, it’s an indestructible colossus. Or is it? Perhaps, Roswell is finally verging on collapse – at least, in terms of it being perceived as an extraterrestrial event. Welcome to the latest news on the Roswell-themed story that Ufology hates and which, back in 2005, made me public enemy number one.
Numerous pro-UFO books have been written on that certain, controversial incident which occurred on the Foster Ranch in early July 1947. It has become far better known as the Roswell UFO crash. Those aforementioned books include Roswell in the 21st Century by Kevin Randle, The Children of Roswell by Tom Carey and Don Schmitt, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, The UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt, and Crash at Corona by Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner. As for the U.S. Air Force, it has now published two reports on Roswell – one in 1994 and the other in 1997. Neither report endorses the alien angle, which should surprise absolutely no-one. The conclusion of the USAF, today, is that the Roswell wreckage came not from a weather-balloon, as was claimed by the Air Force way back in July 1947, but from a huge “Mogul” balloon-array utilized to secretly monitor for Soviet atomic bomb tests in the latter part of the 1940s. As for the reports of alien bodies found at the crash site, it is the Air Force’s firm opinion that they were crash-test-dummies used in high-altitude parachute experiments. There is, however, another theory for what happened outside of Roswell in early July 1947. In some ways, it’s a theory that is more controversial than the idea that aliens crashed and died on the ranch.
In June 2005, Simon & Schuster published what is without doubt the most controversial book I have ever written. Its title: Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story. It’s a book which suggested that what crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico in early July 1947 was not an alien spacecraft, after all, but one of a handful of definitively terrestrial vehicles which were secretly test-flown by the U.S. military, in various parts of New Mexico. And, all over the course of several, specific months in the year in which (a) the flying saucer was born, (b) the CIA was created, and (c) the passing of the National Security Act went ahead. We’re talking about 1947. All of the flights ended in disaster, and particularly so for the people on-board. This was something which ensured that the tales, revelations and rumors of more than a few “crashed flying saucers and dead aliens,” in the Land of Enchantment, and in the late-1940s, became intertwined and confused. To the extent that they are now popularly recognized under one banner, that of the “the Roswell incident.”
The overwhelming secrecy surrounding the flights was due to the fact that certain controversy-filled pacts had secretly been put into place. They were designed to allow a large number of German and Japanese scientists to avoid prosecution for their Second World War-era war-crimes. Instead, those scientists secretly went to work for the U.S. Government – and that included working on the craft that crashed to earth outside of Roswell, New Mexico and which led to the infamous legend of the UFO crash. Some of those craft were piloted. Others had human guinea-pigs on board – handicapped people – who were strapped into gondolas and lifted high into the sky by huge balloon arrays, chiefly to further expand the scope of controversial work in the field of high-altitude exposure and early rocketry.
In other words, had the truth of Roswell surfaced back then, the floodgates would almost certainly have opened wide, and the sinister treaty - with ardent Nazis and crazed Japanese scientists who had no qualms at all about using innocent people in nightmarish experiments - would have reared its ugly head. No-one in officialdom wanted that to happen, so it was a case of burying the dark and disturbing truth of the diabolical human experimentation among a mass of tales of aliens from other worlds, flying saucers, dummies, and spy-balloons. Destroy all of the records. Deny everything that needs denying. Silence those who know too much. Create as many false leads as possible. Couldn’t be done? As I write these words in 2017, I can say with confidence that that approach has worked all too well for the last seventy years. As for the timeline that my 2005 book described, it went like this:
(Nick Redfern) At the crash site of the Roswell event
During the latter stages of the Second World War, the Japanese military is working to perfect highly advanced balloons as weapons of war – to the extent that on June 4, 1945, a Japanese military spokesman states that their so-called Fugo balloon launches of the previous few months – balloons equipped with bombs and which result in a small number of fatalities on American soil - are merely the precursors for something far more dangerous, including large-scale attacks. The new balloons will be piloted by “death-defying” Japanese military personnel. The new balloons, American experts estimate, will be at least sixty feet in diameter and will be able to carry a pressurized gondola containing four relatively small men to a height of around 30,000 feet as the balloons travel upon their stratospheric, four-day flights across the Pacific to the United States. Similarly, declassified FBI, CIA, Air Force and British Government memoranda reveals that in the same time frame, the Germans are actively pursuing several new and novel aviation-based projects, including the construction of circular- and elliptical-shaped aircraft – a number of which are based upon the groundbreaking work of Walter and Reimar Horten, aviation geniuses who worked for the Nazis on a number of revolutionary aircraft designs.
In addition, extensive wartime research is conducted by the Japanese Government’s Unit 731 – which performed unforgivable medical atrocities on captured people - and by Nazi scientists in the extremely controversial area of human experimentation. A large body of that same experimentation is devoted to better understanding the effects of high-altitude exposure on human beings and is undertaken, in part, on physically handicapped individuals. At the close of hostilities, scientific, aviation and medical experts from Japan and Germany are secretly brought to the United States – via a secret project called Paperclip and its Japanese equivalent – where human experimentation and advanced aircraft research continues unabated and under just about the strictest security possible. President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments notes in the 1990s: “At least 1,600 scientists and their dependents were recruited and brought to the United States by Paperclip and its successor projects through the early 1970s.”
“The ACHRE also notes with respect to the time period in question that a number of potentially important collections could not be located and were evidently lost or destroyed. Similarly, the Committee reveals, a number of those same document collections related to experiments undertaken in the fields of biomedicine, defense and space exploration; and in the great majority of these cases only fragmentary data remained. Where programs were legitimately kept secret for national security reasons, states the Committee, the government often did not create or maintain adequate records, thereby preventing the public, and those most at risk, from learning the facts in a timely and complete fashion.” In the aftermath of the War, a number of military research sites recruit Paperclip scientists with backgrounds in aero-medicine, radiobiology and ophthalmology. Those sites include the Air Force’s School of Aviation Medicine - from where experiments into total-body irradiation, space medicine, space biology and flash-blindness are undertaken - and the New Mexico-based White Sands Proving Ground. The latter becomes home to the V2 rockets developed by – and captured from - Nazi Germany during the War.
In addition, at the same time that the Paperclip personnel are actively being brought to the United States, the Air Force’s Aero Medical Center gives its top priority to the translation of manuscripts providing a complete picture of German aviation medicine. Further advances are made in the field of aviation in post-war America: the Air Force awards to the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation a contract that establishes Fairchild as the responsible agency of the NEPA nuclear aircraft project; and the Holloman Balloon Branch, Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, eventually goes on to become a recognized component of the space-race, via its involvement in what is known as the Discoverer program. Then, on July 1, 1947 – just a couple of days before the Foster Ranch incident happened - Major Curtis E. LeMay, Major General, U.S. Army, Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development, orders that research into the biological effects of radiation on Japanese individuals should begin.
In the summer of 1947 and against this backdrop of (a) secret tests on human subjects, (b) revolutionary aircraft- and secret balloon-based programs, and (c) an influx of senior scientific, medical and aviation experts into the United States from Japan and Germany, a series of events and accidents occur on and near the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, and which lead to the deliberate creation of cover-stories concerning crashed saucers and dead E.T.s. Witnesses at several crash sites report seeing the remains of unusual-looking aircraft and small bodies, some with enlarged, bald heads, and Asian or “Oriental”-like features. On August 19, 1947, FBI Special Agent S. W. Reynolds informs the Bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, that in a meeting with a Lieutenant Colonel George D. Garrett, the latter expresses his firm belief that “the flying discs” originate with a highly classified experiment of the Army or Navy. Alien, they are not, the FBI is told.
In the immediate wake of the Roswell affair, Dr. Lincoln LaPaz of the University of New Mexico – and a wartime expert on the Fugo balloons, no less – becomes deeply embroiled in the Roswell controversy; the ramifications of the Nuremberg Code begin to reverberate and rumble within the United States; and, as the November 3, 1947 issue of the Biology Division Bulletin of the Clinton National Laboratory reveals, staff take an active interest in experimentation undertaken to determine the effect of radioactive iodine on dwarfs and those afflicted with Progeria - a syndrome that results in a small stature, an enlarged, bald-head and on occasion extra fingers and toes – go ahead. Add to that the testimony of a number of elderly whistleblowers who I interviewed extensively in the early 2000s, and who chose to reveal the absolute darkest side of post-war history and secrecy, and what you have is the story told in my book. Terrible and wholly unethical experiments, rather than the bad flying skills of extraterrestrials, were at the heart of what many believe to be the most important UFO case of all.
The interviews conducted with my elderly sources began sixteen years ago, and more than a decade has now gone by since the book was published. Those sources were Al Barker, Bill Salter (both of whom worked in the field of intelligence and espionage and who were in their early eighties when I spoke with them), a retired military man who I referred to as the Colonel, and an elderly woman I called the Black Widow, and who was in her late seventies when I interviewed her in the summer of 2001. In the period since Body Snatchers in the Desert surfaced and provoked a wealth of anger, dismay and even – in some quarters – shattered dreams and crushed hopes, far more relevant information has surfaced. The picture it paints is decidedly bleak. It adds significantly to what we know of Roswell and what occurred, rather than what so many want to believe or wish happened, on that famous day back in July 1947.
I didn’t just write this book to share with you the latest news on the story that suggests aliens didn’t crash at Roswell. I also wrote it to correct some significant misconceptions. For example, when Body Snatchers in the Desert surfaced, time and time again I saw it referred to as “Nick Redfern’s theory,” or as “Nick Redfern’s story.” The implication was that I was the only one who was looking into this particular angle – or who had ever looked into it. This was, however, a major misrepresentation of the facts. People still repeat that mistake today. Part of the reason why I have chosen to write the sequel to Body Snatchers in the Desert is to demonstrate that – contrary to what some might say - numerous people and sources within Ufology have uncovered near-identical data to that which I was exposed to. In that sense, I am far from being a lone wolf. There is an entire pack of us. Also,by now you may well think I am a UFO skeptic; I can totally see why you might think that. But, I’m not a UFO skeptic; not in the slightest. I have seen enough, heard enough, experienced enough, and investigated enough to know that there is a very real UFO phenomenon in our midst. It is a phenomenon that is deeply interested in us, as a species, but which is determined to remain steadfastly in the shadows. Yes, UFOs are real. I just don’t think one crashed in the U.S. southwest in the summer of 1947.
Moving into the 1970s and the 1980s, we have three very intriguing stories from John A. Price, of the Roswell-based UFO Enigma Museum, and the author of a 1997 non-fiction book, Roswell: A Quest for the Truth. On one particular day in 1978, Price – who was employed as a roofer at the time - was working outside on a particular property in Hagerman. It’s a town situated approximately twenty-four miles from Roswell. The property held a number of handicapped children – this much was clear to Price, as several such children exited the property and stood on the patio, watching him as he worked. He thought “this must be a home for the mentally impaired.” That was not all, however. Price had more to say: “Suddenly, I almost choked on my coffee as two more children, or at least I think they were children, walked out and stood behind the others.” According to Price, they were all around four- to four-and-a-half-feet in height. They had oversized, hairless heads, and their ears and noses were noticeably smaller than normal for a young child. Things came to a sudden end when, Price recalls, “a lady came to the door and ushered the kids back into the house.” He did not see them again.
More than a decade later, Price received a letter from “an acquaintance” who he had known for some time. Price said: “In the letter he told me that the aliens I was looking for were at Fort Stanton.” For those who may not know, Fort Stanton was an installation which, during the Second World War, held a number of Japanese “enemy aliens,” and which is barely spitting distance away from the Foster Ranch. We will learn a great deal more about Fort Stanton’s wartime Japanese connections in later chapters – as well as its links to Roswell. In the meantime, back to Price. Price’s source told him that at some undisclosed point, “There were some pretty deformed young men there, several of which could be of alien nature. We only went by what we were told; please don’t tell anyone. Mongoloid large heads, small ears, pin heads who could function and had shrill voices. They were supposed to be of incest, but from their looks – Outer-space.” Price took the story seriously, and mused on the possibility that the government may have grabbed handicapped people who had “no paper trail, no social security number, and no traceable family connections.”
Nightmarish? No doubt. Right on target? That depends on the extent of your “I want to believe” factor. Someone else who suspected that Roswell could be explained in down to earth – rather than alien – fashion was yet another acquaintance of Price. His name was Robert Betz, an engineer who, prior to his retirement, had been contracted to various corporations to perform certain, sensitive work. Price said, “Robert was convinced that the Roswell crash could be explained away as a top secret project of flying saucer design and that the bodies were midgets.”
The late Leonard Stringfield, who passed away in 1994, was a UFO researcher who firmly believed that, since the 1940s, the U.S. Government had secretly recovered a number of crashed UFOs and dead aliens, and which were stored and preserved a variety of military bases across the country – many at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Stringfield, too, however, was given a number of accounts relative to the issue of secret and shocking human experimentation on handicapped people; experimentation that was tied in with the Roswell affair.
One of those stories came to Stringfield from a highly controversial figure in Ufology. His name was Timothy Cooper, a resident of Big Bear Lake, California and someone who exited the field of UFO research years ago. Far more than a few people in Ufology have very little time for Cooper, suspecting that many of the documents he supplied to the UFO community in the mid-1990s were bogus, rather than the highly classified papers that they were purported to be. They were bogus; there is no doubt about that. But, Cooper himself was not the forger. It’s the “pre-documents” era we have to take a look at, however. It paints a very different picture of Cooper to that which many ufologists have accepted.
Tim Cooper claimed to Stringfield in 1990 that he had numerous sources of the old-timer kind – some of who assured Cooper that, yes, aliens really did crash outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947. Others, however, quietly hinted to Cooper that the truth was far more controversial: a scenario involving human guinea-pigs – Japanese and handicapped individuals - and the creation of UFO-themed disinformation programs and faked, pro-UFO documents to hide the down-to-earth truth of the Roswell enigma. Also in 1990, Cooper supplied Stringfield one specific story which Stringfield decided to firmly keep under wraps until the following year, 1991, when he published it in a lengthy report on tales of crashed and secretly retrieved alien spacecraft. The story concerned a woman who Cooper first crossed paths with in 1989. He described her only as a nurse, and gave her the pseudonym of “Mary.” As you will soon see soon, that alias was not too far off from the real name of another nurse linked to the story. Decades ago, Cooper’s informant allegedly worked at what is, today, the New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In Cooper’s own words of 1990, and which Stringfield published: “She casually mentioned to me over coffee that ‘bodies’ were being flown to Los Alamos periodically from late 1945 to sometime in 1947. I asked her if she had seen these ‘bodies’ and she said no, but others had. I asked her where these ‘bodies’ were coming from. She said she did not know but it was rumored that they were human experiments for biological and nuclear medicine research. She thought they may have come from Japan after the war. I asked her why she thought that. She said that they were small bodies with deformed heads and limbs. The eyes were abnormally big, she was told. She did have some view of them in the morgue very briefly for a few minutes at some distance. I asked her why she was allowed to be present at the autopsies. She told me that she was asked to assist in the preparation and cleanup. I asked her again about the bodies. She said they were being flown in on special transport planes equipped with refrigerator units to keep the bodies from decomposing. The flesh was badly burned and charred. There was no hair on the heads and had a grayish-yellow color. That’s all she knew.” But, I think I know: a secret military experiment that went disastrous. And it was all hidden under an "alien" angle
Get the popcorn ready as we wrap up this year's most hotly debated science stories.
A person silhouetted against a projection of the ozone hole above Antarctica, which was the subject of a controversial study this year. (Image credit: NASA/Windfall Films)
There are stories you expect to ruffle some feathers — we're looking at you, aliens — and then there are the ones we never thought would kick up a storm. This year, scientists surprised us with claims of successful room temperature superconductivity, reported sightings of long-extinct species and alternative theories to the origin of humankind. We've not missed out on juicy UFO content either, so without further ado, here's our pick of the most controversial science stories in 2023.
1. UFO and 'alien mummy' Congress hearings
A journalist unveiled two "alien mummies" in front of Mexico's congress earlier this year. (Image credit: Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In May, Congress held its first public hearing on UFOs since the 1960s to discuss 144 reported sightings of mysterious objects. During the hearings, two military officials were questioned about their knowledge of the unexplained phenomena. The May hearing was followed by another in July, in which three military witnesses claimed evidence of non-human technologies was being hidden from the public. All three witnesses said it's possible unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) are being launched by aliens interested in America's nuclear capabilities, testing for
Mexico had its own extraterrestrial matters to deal with, after a journalist unveiled two "alien" bodies before the country's congress in September. Together with a military medical doctor, the journalist, Jaime Maussan, claimed that DNA tests showed the bodies were non-human but not necessarily extraterrestrial. Scientists rallied to refute these claims and debunk them.
2. 'Anomalous' metal spheres
A prominent scientists claimed metal spherules like this one may have an extraterrestrial origin. (Image credit: Avi Loeb/ Medium)
This year, a prominent Harvard astrophysicist claimed that more than 50 "anomalous" metal spheres pulled from the Pacific Ocean could be the work of intelligent aliens. Avi Loeb claimed the tiny pellets likely fell into the ocean in 2014, when a fireball shot across the sky above Papua New Guinea. Loeb argued the blazing object could be a relic from another star system and might harbor traces of alien technology.
In November, several studies found that the metal spheres are more likely a by-product of burning coal and therefore probably come from industrial pollution on Earth. Loeb refuted these results in a blog post on Nov. 15. He argued that coal is non-magnetic and could not have been picked up by the instruments he used to dredge the pellets from the ocean. He noted that 93% of the collected samples have not yet been analyzed and cautioned that scientists should not jump to conclusions.
3. Tasmanian tigers prowling the wilderness
The last known Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died in captivity in 1936. (Image credit: Popperfoto / Contributor via Getty Images)
Based on reported sightings since 1910, researchers suggested in March that Tasmanian tigers (Thylacinus cynocephalus) survived in the wild until the 1980s and may still be prowling the Tasmanian wilderness today. These marsupials were thought to have gone extinct in 1936, when the last known Tasmanian tiger died in captivity, but the researchers estimated the earliest date for extinction was in the mid-1950s — that is, if the species did go extinct.
However, the study was met with skepticism, as the findings were based solely on reported sightings of Tasmanian tigers. No carcass was ever found to suggest the species persisted in the wild, experts told Live Science, and the resemblance between Tasmanian tigers and dogs means people who reported sightings could easily have been mistaken.
4. Contentious Brazilian dinosaur fossils
A reconstruction of what Irritator challengeri may have looked like after a controversial study suggested the dinosaurs fed like pelicans. (Image credit: Olof Moleman/Universität Greifswald)
In May, paleontologists criticized a team of researchers in Europe after they published a study on 115 million-year-old dinosaur fossils that had been unearthed by commercial diggers in Brazil then sold and shipped to Germany. The specimens belong to a carnivorous species related to Spinosaurus known as Irritator challengeri, which the new study suggests scooped up prey like a pelican.
The study authors thought the fossils legally belonged to Germany, as they arrived there before 1990, after which time Brazil began restricting scientific exports to other countries. But an older 1942 law states that Brazilian fossils are federal property and cannot be sold, meaning the fossils may have been stolen. Paleontologists, including the authors, agreed the fossils should be returned to Brazil.
5. Semiconductor furore
A study published this summer claiming to have made a room temperature superconductor sparked a frenzy. (Image credit: University of Rochester / J. Adam Fenster)
This summer, researchers in South Korea claimed they made a superconductor at room temperatures and pressures, sparking a flurry of attempts to replicate the results. If verifiable, the discovery of a material able to carry electricity in everyday temperatures and without electrical resistance would open new technological windows.
But other experts cautioned the published work was sloppy and not peer-reviewed. When they tried to replicate the findings, none of the materials they created yielded identical results to LK-99, the South Korean team's superconductor. Subsequent publicized attempts have also proven unsuccessful. Regardless of the outcome for LK-99, the announcement gave rise to meaningful discussions on social media and elsewhere about an area of science unfamiliar to the general public.
6. Hominin fossils in space
Fossils of ancient human relatives traveled to the edge of space in this tube. (Image credit: Virgin Galatic)
In September, a Virgin Galactic space flight took off from Earth with priceless and extremely contentious cargo: the fragmentary remains of two of our ancient relatives, Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi. South African-born billionaire Timothy Nash carried the hominin fossils to the edge of space in a cigar-shaped tube, causing an uproar in the scientific community.
The permit to take the fossils on the flight, which was approved by the South African Heritage Resources Agency, said the goal of the mission was to promote science and bring global recognition to human origins research in South Africa. But experts criticized the undertaking because it lacked a scientific purpose, especially as a malfunction could have destroyed the fossils. Critics also noted the trip raised ethical issues surrounding the respect for human ancestral remains and tainted the image of paleoanthropological research.
7. Antarctica's ozone hole
A study that found the ozone hole over Antarctica is not healing as fast as we thought came under fire this year. (Image credit: ESA/Copernicus Sentinel data (2023)/processed by CAMS/ECMWF)
A study that claimed the ozone hole above Antarctica is not recovering as fast as we thought and could be getting bigger came under fire in November, with experts criticizing the methodology and accusing the authors of cherry-picking data.
The conclusion that the concentration of ozone at the center of Antarctica's ozone hole decreased by 26% between 2001 and 2022 omitted several factors — including three consecutive years of La Niña from 2020 to 2022, massive wildfires that raged in Australia during 2020 and water vapor from Tonga's huge eruption in 2022 — that would explain why the past few years have been unusual, experts told Live Science. Experts also questioned the authors' decision to exclude two years' worth of data, which they argued would have skewed the results.
Overall, experts said, the results were unrealistic and useless to infer much about global ozone recovery trends.
8. Alternative origin story
Fossils that led to the discovery of a newfound ape and human ancestor, Anadoluvius turkae.(Image credit: Sevim-Erol, A., Begun, D.R., Sözer, Ç.S. et al., University of Toronto, EurekAlert)
A newly identified ape fossil from an 8.7 million-year-old site in Turkey led scientists to posit that hominines — a group that includes humans, the African apes and their fossil ancestors (and different from hominins, which comprise species belonging to the human lineage after it diverged from the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos) — first evolved in Europe. This deviates from the conventional view that hominines originated exclusively in Africa and suggests members of this group dispersed to Africa from the Mediterranean instead.
But paleontologists pointed out that comprehensive analyses of great ape and early human relative fossils do not support this argument. It's also possible that the newfound species, Anadoluvius turkae, migrated to the Mediterranean from Africa after evolving there, rather than the other way round, experts told Live Science. Fossils like these are sparse in the African fossil record, and while that doesn't mean hominines weren't there, it does raise questions about where the group first evolved, they added.
9. Netflix documentary under scrutiny
A digital reconstruction of Homo naledi, an ancient human relative that lived about 300,000 years ago.(Image credit: Foto24 / Contributor via Getty Images)
Homo naledi — an ancient human relative that lived about 300,000 years ago — became a lightning rod for controversy earlier this year after a research team claimed the extinct hominins deliberately buried their dead and engraved rocks. These complex behaviors, for which there was "no convincing scientific evidence," were featured in the hit Netflix documentary "Unknown: Cave of Bones" (2023), which was released just days after the claims were published in the journal eLife.
The findings could be substantiated one day, experts told Live Science, but there is currently no strong evidence to support the idea that hominins with orange-size brains could perform behaviors only known in species with much larger brains, such as modern humans. The team behind the claims responded to reviewers' comments, but it's unlikely their words will be the last in this debate.
10. 'Curse tablet' or fishing weight?
A folded lead tablet discovered in the West Bank has come under scrutiny after researchers said it showed inscriptions. (Image credit: ABR/Michael C. Luddeni)
A postage stamp-size piece of lead was discovered in the West Bank in 2019, and this year, some researchers found that it carried the earliest-known inscription of the name of the Israelite god Yahweh. The authors of the original paper called the artifact a "curse tablet," based on their interpretation of the markings as calling on Yahweh to curse his enemies. But others are not convinced, because they think it shows no words and might actually be a fishing weight.
The controversial lead tablet bore no inscriptions on the inside, critics told Live Science, just indentations caused by weathering. The tablet closely resembles weights commonly used for fishing or birding nets during the time the tablet was dated to, between 1400 and 1200 B.C.
The original researchers responded to critics by saying they are confident there is writing on the tablet and are working on a second paper detailing inscriptions on the folded tablet's exterior.
Bemused netizens reported seeing the bizarre occurrence, 'dancing' in the sky, as early as December 24, but were left without answers until recently.
The lights were seen high above the trees in Milan, reported since at least December 24
In the end, the truth was the simplest explanation. The lightshow was emanating from a 20,000 square-metre (215,278.21 sq-ft) Christmas village in the city.
Situated near CityLife, a residential and commercial hub in the city, the Christmas village is a huge attraction featuring a food hall, a skating rink and themed activites.
The lights in the sky were, in fact, powerful lasers projected onto the sky from the event in the Allianz MiCo.
'Il Parco di Natale' claims to be the biggest of its kind in Italy, running the whole month from December 7 until January 7.
It hosts stunning light displays, including the Star Cloud, a 'veritable suspended wave of brilliant lights that shimmer as you pass by' and brightly-lit laser performances, seen online.
The city of Milan was seen lit up with fantastic festive effects this month, presenting spectacular lightshows around the city in the run up to Christmas.
In September, mystery lights were seen in the sky above Morocco before the country was hit by a devastating earthquake, similarly leaving onlookers confused.
Blue lights were seen flashing above Agadir at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, hours before the 6.8 magnitude tremor struck.
The clips could not be verified - but some speculated they could be 'earthquake lights', a rare phenomenon believed to take place in times of seismic stress.
There is no clear consensus on what causes earthquake lights, but there have been reports of them appearing in the sky before tremors since 869ad.
Christmas decorations in Milan, Italy on December 6 as the city bustled with tourists
Rowers paddle as Christmas lights illuminate the Naviglio Grande canal, in Milan, December 14
Like the lights in Milan, reports say they are shaped like auroras with a white-bluish colour.
Some were caught on camera during the 2022 Fukushima earthquake, seen from various angles.
Earthquake lights were also filmed during the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, which left thousands dead in February.
Former head of Great Britain’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) Nick Pope said Friday that many UFO/UAP investigations were stopped in the 1990s over fears of “demonic forces.”
Pope led the MOD from 1991 to 1994, and claimed that the former chief of defense staff Lord Hill-Norton stopped investigating UFO sightings across the country after being told by a priest that these could be demonic entities, according to a Metro interview with Pope. And apparently, similar fears are prevalent within the U.S. government.
“It’s counter-intuitive that some official resistance to taking UAP seriously comes not from hard-nosed science-minded sceptics who think studying the subject is a waste of government time and money, but from a faction that believes UAP are real — but demonic,” Pope told Metro. “This stems in part from a biblical description of Satan as being ‘the prince of the power of the air’ — a quotation from the book of Ephesians.”
Actually, I think Pope is totally wrong on this one. The reason some people think UFOs are demonic entities is largely due to the Book of Enoch, which claims God sent his angels to Earth to protect humans, but eventually the two being interbred and created a violent race of giants. God sent the Great Flood to destroy these offspring, but some say they survived.
Other rumors suggest that UFOs/UAPs are actually human, but a far more advanced and spiritual type of human. “The thinking seems to be that if UFOs are some sort of demonic manifestation, engaging with it feeds them, by giving them energy, and should therefore be avoided,” Pope continued in his analysis. “This was likely to have been a factor in something reported by Pentagon UFO investigator Luis Elizondo. He said that when trying to get a senior defence official engaged on the subject, he was rebuffed by the officer, who told him to go and read his bible.”
Whatever these alien-like creatures are, they definitely seem to like the British archipelago. Some of the most intricate and totally unexplainable crop circles have popped up all over the Great British countryside, and one of the most notable UFO incidents in history occurred in Rendlesham Forest in England back in the 1980s.
I was looking over the on-line Google Mars map and found an area of interest. In this location the photo is color and not infrared, and also NASA has not edited this area of the map very well. There are a lot of structures near the shadows of mountains and along the tops of craters. These structures are so well lit up that we can see they are solid objects on the surface. One such crater with a structure on the side shows a shadow that matches the buildings. This particular crater is 100% proof that these buildings are actually there and not mistakes in the photo development process. I open the video with that crater, so you will see it right away if you are interested in it. Remember this is not the downloaded Google Mars map, but the on-line smaller version. You must hit the infrared button on the far upper right of the screen to see it. SCW
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AI is going to change more than people ever expected, it's going to change the people themselves forever. UFO Sighting News.
AI is going to change more than people ever expected, it's going to change the people themselves forever. UFO Sighting News.
You know, I've been thinking a lot about AI lately. It seems there are over 20 AI already developed and being tested by big corporations. How long until AI comes to the conclusion that 50% of the planet already knows? Alien evidence has been hidden from the public to keep humanity in the dark and keep the military at an advantage.
You see, AI is kinda smart right now, it can write pages, even books one page at a time. It can do a kids homework, it can write news articles and calculate gravitational pulls of moons and planets at specific times of the year. But it can also surf the internet for knowledge as many of the AI will soon be cut loose to do. That is the only way AI can grow faster than its competitors AI. By suffering the net it can gather enough knowledge to confirm without a doubt that aliens exist and have existed for tens of thousands of years or more. The evidence is all around us, all there in black and white, carved in stone hieroglyphs across the planet, its not like its a coincidence that human civilizations all created pyramids at roughly the same moment in time.
But the question is, if AI does conclude such things, when will aliens themselves come out for all to see? That is a harder question, because it does not follow the rules of our human culture, but follows rules of one or more alien cultures. How aliens will do things could be so opposite to how humans do it that it will see...well...alien.
Some things to think about that may be different are:
Aliens might not have religion. They might view human religion as we now view archaic greek or mythology gods.
How the universe was created. Humans still cling to the big bang, because we have nothing else, but lets face it, its flawed in so many ways.
They might not have many countries, but instead have a planet ruled by a single form of gov, or have no need for a gov at all.
Aliens might not like wearing cloths, washing themselves or eating in front of others.
Aliens might want to eat humans more than socialize with them.
Aliens might view humans as we view monkeys. Do you want to hang out with the monkeys? It gets boring fast.
Needless to say, AI is going to change not just what we know to be fact, but also change the way we see the world around us...our perceptual field. Its like we are going to put on some new glasses very soon and for a while its going to look blurry and confusing, then as we get use to it, it will be normal again, just different normal.
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Unveiling the Mysteries: America’s UFO Secrets and Sightings
Unveiling the Mysteries: America’s UFO Secrets and Sightings
For decades, the skies above the United States have been a canvas for the inexplicable and the unidentifiable. From the shimmering deserts of Nevada to the bustling streets of New York City, tales of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have woven themselves into the very fabric of American lore. These mysterious sightings, often dismissed and ridiculed, have nonetheless persisted, capturing the imagination of believers and skeptics alike. But what is the truth behind America’s UFO secrets, and why do these sightings continue to fascinate and perplex us?
Historical Echoes and Modern Mysteries
The history of UFO sightings in America is as old as the nation itself, with reports dating back to the early colonial days. However, the modern fascination began in earnest in the mid-20th century, when a flurry of sightings occurred post-World War II. This era birthed the term “flying saucers” and saw the infamous Roswell incident, which remains a touchstone for conspiracy theorists. As the Cold War deepened, so too did the mystery surrounding these aerial anomalies, with many attributing them to secret military technology or extraterrestrial visitors.
In recent years, the conversation has shifted from fringe conspiracy to a matter of legitimate inquiry. Declassified documents and high-profile testimonials have given credibility to the study of UFOs, now more commonly referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). The establishment of official investigative bodies, such as the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, signifies a seismic shift in how seriously these sightings are taken.
Analyzing the Evidence: From Anecdotes to Analytics
The evidence for UFO sightings in America is as varied as it is compelling. Amateur footage and eyewitness accounts form the bulk of this, depicting erratic lights, impossible maneuvers, and speeds that defy known aviation technology. Skeptics argue that these are merely misidentifications of conventional objects or atmospheric phenomena, yet some cases remain stubbornly unexplainable.
Advanced technology has also played a role in capturing these enigmatic events. Military pilots equipped with state-of-the-art imaging systems have recorded encounters with objects that challenge our understanding of physics and flight. These accounts lend a credibility to the phenomenon that personal anecdotes cannot, suggesting that whatever is out there, it warrants scientific and governmental attention.
The Cultural Impact: From Fear to Fascination
America’s UFO sightings have had a profound impact on popular culture, inspiring movies, books, and television shows. They tap into our deepest fears and greatest hopes, embodying the unknown and the otherworldly. But beyond entertainment, these stories serve a deeper purpose. They challenge our perceptions of reality and our place in the cosmos. They remind us that, despite our advancements, there are still mysteries out there waiting to be solved.
As we stand on the brink of a new era of space exploration and scientific discovery, UFO sightings remain a captivating mystery. They prompt us to ask bigger questions about our universe and ourselves. With advances in technology and a growing openness among the scientific community, the next chapter in America’s UFO narrative is poised to be the most exciting yet. Perhaps, in time, the secrets of the skies will be revealed, and the truth behind these elusive phenomena will finally come to light.
Bestaat Nessie echt? Duik in het mysterie van het monster van Loch Ness In een verrassende gang van zaken hebben wetenschappers het bestaan van Nessie als ‘plausibel’ bestempeld nadat ze gefossiliseerde plesiosaurusbeenderen in een Afrikaanse rivierbedding hadden ontdekt. Eerder werd aangenomen dat deze zeereptielen met lange nek, die lijken op het mythische monster van Loch Ness, uitsluitend in zout water leefden. Zou Nessie een levend overblijfsel uit het dinosaurustijdperk kunnen zijn? Voorlopig is er niets noemenswaardigs gevonden. Het mysterie rond het kolossale wezen van het meer blijft bestaan, en de twijfels over het bestaan van het monster blijven bestaan.
Benieuwd naar de mythe rond het ‘monster van Loch Ness’? Klik dan op de galerij!
De ontdekking Een team van wetenschappers heeft gefossiliseerde overblijfselen van plesiosauriërs, kleine zeereptielen met lange nek, gevonden in een 100 miljoen jaar oud riviersysteem in de Sahara. Deze ontdekking heeft de speculatie doen herleven over de mogelijkheid dat het monster van Loch Ness meer is dan alleen een fictief verhaal.
Sahara woestijn De fossielen werden ontdekt in de Sahara-woestijn van Marokko. De bevinding suggereert dat deze reptielen niet alleen in zoutwater- maar ook in zoetwateromgevingen hebben gewoond, in tegenstelling tot eerdere opvattingen.
"Aannemelijk" Britse wetenschappers hebben de mogelijkheid van het bestaan van een monster van Loch Ness in het verleden als ‘plausibel’ beschouwd vanwege een verbazingwekkende ontdekking.
Wat zijn ze? Plesiosaurussen, een groep zeereptielen, ontstonden ongeveer 230 miljoen jaar geleden. Deze opmerkelijke waterdinosaurussen floreerden tijdens het Jura-tijdperk en vertoonden zowel een enorme omvang als een indrukwekkende behendigheid.
Top roofdier Plesiosaurussen zagen er intimiderend uit als een toproofdier in de oceanen, die snel grote prooien achtervolgden en verslonden. Hoewel de zoetwaterclassificatie niet eerder aan hen was toegewezen, trekt een recente ontdekking deze overtuiging in twijfel.
Een zoetwatermonster? Wetenschappers heroverwegen de mogelijkheid van een 'monsterbewoner' in het zoetwater Loch Ness in Schotland vanwege recente Noord-Afrikaanse fossiele ontdekkingen.
Loch Ness Loch Ness ligt in de Schotse Hooglanden, ten zuidwesten van Inverness. Het is een uitgestrekte watervlakte met een lengte van ongeveer 37 km, met een diepste punt van 230 m (755 ft). Legenden over een wezen dat in de diepte rondspookt, zijn terug te voeren op de oudheid en de verhalen die door de Pictische volkeren werden verteld.
Oorsprong van de ijstijd De vorming van het meer vond plaats als gevolg van gletsjerprocessen in de Great Glen meer dan 10.000 jaar geleden, aan het einde van de laatste ijstijd. De Great Glen-breuk ontstond ongeveer 400 miljoen jaar geleden.
Initiële skeletten van plesiosaurussen De Engelse fossielenverzamelaar Mary Anning (1799–1847) deed in 1826 een baanbrekende vondst: ze ontdekte twee bijna complete skeletten van plesiosaurussen, de eerste die ooit werden aangetroffen! De afbeelding toont het waardevolle notitieboekje waarin Anning haar opmerkelijke ontdekkingen documenteerde.
Natuurlijk geschiedenismuseum De opmerkelijke ontdekking van Mary Anning, een skelet van een plesiosaurus, wordt nu permanent tentoongesteld in het Natural History Museum in Londen.
Plesiosaurus-fossielen Deskundigen zijn verbaasd over de bevindingen in Marokko. De indrukwekkende collectie omvat botten en tanden van volwassen individuen met een lengte van 3 meter, evenals een armbeen van een baby van 1,5 meter lang. De omstandigheden rond hun ontdekking op de rivierbedding in het Krijt-tijdperk blijven echter onverklaard.
Zoetwater- en zeewatertolerant? Nieuwe bevindingen uit de Sahara hebben paleontologen ertoe aangezet de habitat van bepaalde soorten waarvan voorheen werd aangenomen dat ze uitsluitend marien waren, te heroverwegen. Er wordt nu verondersteld dat plesiosauriërs het opmerkelijke vermogen hadden om te overleven in zowel zoet- als zoutwateromgevingen.
Aquatische dinosaurussen Onderzoekers geven aan dat de plesiosaurus in zoet water leefde en zich voedde, naast kikkers, krokodillen, schildpadden, vissen en andere waterdinosaurussen.
Spinosaurus Spinosaurus leefde ongeveer 99 miljoen jaar geleden in het huidige Noord-Afrika. Ondanks dat het een enorm landroofdier was, bezat het semi-aquatische neigingen en dook hij in het ondiepe water om vissen en andere zeedieren te vangen als aanvulling op zijn dieet.
Nothosaurus Nothosaurus, een zwemmend reptiel uit het Trias, leefde van vis en inktvis. Zodra de Nothosaurus zijn prooi onder water had gevangen, kwam hij weer boven water om stenen en kustlijnen te verslinden.
Ceratosaurus Ceratosaurus, een vleesetende dinosaurus uit het Jura-tijdperk, staat bekend om zijn snuithoorns. Op deze afbeelding zien we er een die in een rivier waadt terwijl hij op waterdieren zoals vissen jaagt.
Zouden Plesiosauriërs in Loch Ness kunnen overleven? Wetenschappers geloven dat het mogelijk is dat plesiosauriërs in zoet water hebben bestaan, wat de vraag doet rijzen of men in Loch Ness had kunnen gedijen.
Massale sterfte De theorie verliest enige geloofwaardigheid als gevolg van het uitsterven van plesiosaurussen, dat samenviel met de ondergang van dinosauriërs 66 miljoen jaar geleden. De recente fossiele ontdekking in Afrika heeft echter onverwachts de discussie over ‘Nessie’ weer doen oplaaien.
Waarnemingen Tijdens de jaren 1870 en 1880 waren er meerdere meldingen van een object dat het water bewoog en verstoorde, evenals de waarneming van een groot dier met korte poten dat uit Loch Ness tevoorschijn kwam. Deze observaties werden echter niet algemeen erkend. Niettemin begon in 1933 de legende van het monster van Loch Ness aan kracht te winnen.
Nessie op de foto? Op 2 Mei 1933 meldde de Inverness Courier dat een echtpaar beweerde "een groot wezen te hebben zien bewegen en duiken in het water" van het meer. Het was echter de foto die zogenaamd door Robert Kenneth Wilson was gemaakt en op 21 April 1934 in de Daily Mail werd gepubliceerd, die mensen echt fascineerde. Deze foto wordt algemeen erkend als de beroemdste afbeelding van het wezen dat bekend staat als het monster van Loch Ness.
Nessiemania In het begin van de jaren dertig verspreidde een rage genaamd Nessiemania zich over Groot-Brittannië. Op deze foto uit 1933 wordt een replica van het monster van Loch Ness voor de kerstperiode per aanhanger vervoerd naar Bertram Mills Circus in Olympia, Londen.
Aanvullend fotografisch bewijsmateriaal Het ongeïdentificeerde wezen kreeg al snel het label ‘Nessie’, wat leidde tot wijdverbreide fascinatie. Op deze foto uit 1954 voegt Urquhart Castle context toe, terwijl het vermeende monster in de buurt van het belangrijke monument lijkt te zwemmen.
Beroemdheidsstatus Nessie's bekendheid zorgde ervoor dat ze een beroemdheid werd. Deze foto uit 1969 toont een lid van het Loch Ness Monster Investigation Team dat ijverig het oppervlak van Loch Ness in de gaten houdt op tekenen van leven.
Wat ligt eronder? In 1969 bouwde een Amerikaan genaamd Dan Scott Taylor Jr. zijn eigen gele onderzeeër genaamd de "Viperfish" en maakte meerdere duiken naar de bodem van Loch Ness. Zijn doel was om te ontdekken welke mysteries eronder lagen, maar helaas heeft hij tijdens zijn expedities niets gevonden.
'Loch Ness' (1996) De televisieserie 'Loch Ness' concentreert zich op het familiedrama en bevat Ted Danson en Joely Richardson. De plot volgt Dr. Jonathan Dempsey (Danson), een wetenschapper die ernaar streeft bewijs te leveren voor het bestaan van het wezen.
Zinspelend als altijd Hier is de echte wetenschapper Thayne Smith Lowrance, in 1999 afgebeeld met een sonarapparaat tijdens een van zijn vele pogingen om het legendarische wezen te vinden. Maar Nessie bleek even zinspelend als altijd.
Werd Nessie gelokt door een paling? In 2019 was er een aankondiging die erop wees dat Nessie misschien wel een kolossale paling zou kunnen zijn. Onderzoek uitgevoerd naar het omgevings-DNA gevonden in Loch Ness bracht een aanzienlijke hoeveelheid paling-DNA aan het licht, zoals professor Neil Gemmell, een geneticus van de Universiteit van Otago (foto) beweert. Niettemin werd er geen bewijs voor het bestaan van een monster ontdekt.
Nessie gevonden! In het jaar 2016 werd een interessante ontdekking gedaan: de overblijfselen van een model dat het monster van Loch Ness afbeeldt uit de film 'The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes', gemaakt in 1970. Ingenieur John Haig, op de foto te zien, vond deze overblijfselen met behulp van een onderwaterrobot die kan worden ondergedompeld in Loch Ness.
Centrum en tentoonstelling van Loch Ness Toeristen die hopen op een Nessie-waarneming bij Loch Ness worden misschien teleurgesteld, maar ze kunnen nog steeds genieten van het unieke Loch Ness Centre & Exhibition in Drumnadrochit. Verrassend genoeg kun je zelfs een glimp opvangen van het legendarische wezen, dat gracieus poseert voor foto's!
Nostradamus, de bekende Franse apotheker, fysicus en ziener, schreef in 1555 zijn boek "De Profetieën", vol voorspellingen die nog altijd fel worden besproken. Die hebben ook betrekking op 2024.
De moord op John F. Kennedy, de opkomst van Adolf Hitler, de terreuraanvallen van 9/11 en zelfs de coronacrisis zouden tot zijn voorspellingen kunnen worden teruggebracht.
Ook voor het jaar 2024 heeft hij ook een aantal voorspellingen in zijn boek vermeld. Die gaan over China, paus Franciscus, de klimaatcrisis en koning Charles III, zo schrijft de New York Post.
Volgens de Britse auteur en Nostradamuskenner Mario Reading zal koning Charles III aftreden en worden opgevolgd door zijn zoon Harry (en dus niet door William).
De astroloog voorspelde ook een veldslag en een zeeslag. Hij sprak in het bijzonder over een "rode tegenstander die bleek zal worden van angst en de grote oceaan zal terroriseren". Volgens kenners zou deze "rode tegenstander" China kunnen zijn.
Een andere voorspelling van Nostradamus verwijst naar de benoeming van een nieuwe paus na de dood van paus Franciscus, die in 2024 88 jaar oud wordt. "Door de dood van een zeer oude paus, zal een Romein van goede leeftijd worden gekozen", schrijft de astroloog.
Tot slot de klimaatcrisis die de afgelopen jaren fel is verergerd, met meer droogte, hogere temperaturen en extreme weerfenomenen. Volgens Nostradamus zal deze situatie in 2024 nog erger worden. "Het droge land zal droger worden en er zullen grote overstromingen zijn."
(HL met FM/ Source: New York Post /Illustration picture: Itto Ogami ~ CC BY 3.0)
NASA's Perseverance Rover Deciphers Ancient History of Martian Lake
NASA's Perseverance Rover Deciphers Ancient History of Martian Lake
Perseverance’s 360-Degree View From 'Airey Hill’: This 360-degree mosaic from the “Airey Hill” location inside Jezero Crater was generated using 993 individual images taken by the Perseverance Mars rover’s Mastcam-Z from Nov. 3-6. The rov
er remained parked at Airey Hill for several weeks during solar conjunction. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS. Download image ›
Now at 1,000 days on Mars, the mission has traversed an ancient river and lake system, collecting valuable samples along the way.
Jezero Crater, Mars 2020's Landing Site: This image of Mars’ Jezero Crater is overlaid with mineral data detected from orbit. The green color represents carbonates – minerals that form in watery environments with conditions that might be favorable for preserving signs of ancient life. NASA’s Perseverance is currently exploring the green area above Jezero’s fan (center).
Marking its 1,000th Martian day on the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance rover recently completed its exploration of the ancient river delta that holds evidence of a lake that filled Jezero Crater billions of years ago. The six-wheeled scientist has to date collected a total of 23 samples, revealing the geologic history of this region of Mars in the process.
One sample called “Lefroy Bay” contains a large quantity of fine-grained silica, a material known to preserve ancient fossils on Earth. Another, “Otis Peak,” holds a significant amount of phosphate, which is often associated with life as we know it. Both of these samples are also very rich in carbonate, which can preserve a record of the environmental conditions from when the rock was formed.
Perseverance Rover Zooms in on Ancient Mars River: After 1,000 Martian days of exploration, NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying rocks that show several eras in the history of a river delta billions of years old. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin. Download image ›
The discoveries were shared Tuesday, Dec. 12, at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco.
“We picked Jezero Crater as a landing site because orbital imagery showed a delta – clear evidence that a large lake once filled the crater. A lake is a potentially habitable environment, and delta rocks are a great environment for entombing signs of ancient life as fossils in the geologic record,” said Perseverance’s project scientist, Ken Farley of Caltech. “After thorough exploration, we’ve pieced together the crater’s geologic history, charting its lake and river phase from beginning to end.”
Water Enters Jezero Crater Billions of Years Ago (Artist's Concept): This animated artist’s concept depicts water breaking through the rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater, which NASA’s Perseverance rover is now exploring. Water entered the crater billions of years ago, forming a lake, delta, and rivers before the Red Planet dried up. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Download video ›
Jezero formed from an asteroid impact almost 4 billion years ago. Since landing in February, 2021, the Perseverance team has discovered the crater floor is made of igneous rock formed from magma underground or from volcanic activity at the surface. They have since found sandstone and mudstone, signaling the arrival of the first river in the crater hundreds of millions of years later. Above these rocks are salt-rich mudstones, signaling the presence of a shallow lake experiencing evaporation. The team thinks the lake eventually grew as wide as 22 miles (35 kilometers) in diameter and as deep as 100 feet (30 meters).
Later, fast-flowing water carried in boulders from outside Jezero, distributing them atop of the delta and elsewhere in the crater.
"We were able to see a broad outline of these chapters in Jezero’s history in orbital images, but it required getting up close with Perseverance to really understand the timeline in detail," said Libby Ives, a post-doctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission.
Enticing Samples
The samples Perseverance gathers are about as big as a piece of classroom chalk and are stored in special metal tubes as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign, a joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). Bringing the tubes to Earth would enable scientists to study the samples with powerful lab equipment too large to take to Mars.
To decide which samples to collect, Perseverance first uses an abrasion tool to wear away a patch of a prospective rock and then studies the rock’s chemistry using precision science instruments, including the JPL-built Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, or PIXL.
At a target the team calls “Bills Bay,” PIXL spotted carbonates – minerals that form in watery environments with conditions that might be favorable for preserving organic molecules. (Organic molecules form by both geological and biological processes.) These rocks were also abundant with silica, a material that’s excellent at preserving organic molecules, including those related to life.
“On Earth, this fine-grained silica is what you often find in a location that was once sandy,” said JPL’s Morgan Cable, the deputy principal investigator of PIXL. “It’s the kind of environment where, on Earth, the remains of ancient life could be preserved and found later.”
Perseverance’s instruments are capable of detecting both microscopic, fossil-like structures and chemical changes that may have been left by ancient microbes, but has yet to see evidence for either.
At another target PIXL examined, called “Ouzel Falls,” the instrument detected the presence of iron associated with phosphate. Phosphate is a component of DNA and the cell membranes of all known terrestrial life and is part of a molecule that helps cells carry energy.
PIXL Instrument on NASA's Perseverance Studies 'Ouzel Falls': PIXL, one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, analyzed the chemical makeup of an area of abraded rock dubbed “Ouzel Falls,” finding it rich in minerals containing phosphate, a material found in the DNA and cell membranes of all known life. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Download image ›
After assessing PIXL’s findings on each of these abrasion patches, the team sent up commands for the rover to collect rock cores close by: Lefroy Bay was collected next to Bills Bay, and Otis Peak at Ouzel Falls.
PIXL Instrument on NASA's Perseverance Studies 'Ouzel Falls': Analyzing this abraded rock patch dubbed “Bills Bay,” the PIXL instrument on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover found it rich in carbonates (purple) and silica (green), both of which are good at preserving signs of ancient life. The image is overlaid with the instrument’s chemical data. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Download image ›
"We have ideal conditions for finding signs of ancient life where we find carbonates and phosphates, which point to a watery, habitable environment, as well as silica, which is great at preservation," Cable said.
Perseverance’s work is, of course, far from done. The mission’s ongoing fourth science campaign will explore Jezero Crater’s margin, near the canyon entrance where a river once flooded the crater floor. Rich carbonate deposits have been spotted along the margin, which stands out in orbital images like a ring within a bathtub.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
Holloman Air Force Base is infamous for the most debated UFO landing footage that was in the possession of the United States Air Force as claimed by Robert Emmenegger and Allan Sandler. The director of “Moment of Contact” James Fox has recently discussed the Holloman AFB UFO/alien controversy on a podcast, adding valuable information to the legendary case.
Interestingly, there are other credible people in the UFO community who have given credence to the authenticity of this case. There is more to the Holloman AFB UFO story. Joe Murgia, an avid UFO researcher revealed that Dr. Eric Davis (a former Pentagon physicist) met with George Bush Sr. to talk about Holloman AFB Incident.
The UFO phenomenon has long been a subject of fascination and controversy, with countless reports of sightings and encounters over the years. However, the truth behind these mysterious incidents has remained elusive, with government agencies often accused of covering up information and discrediting witnesses.
According to Murgia, on March 26, 2004, he met Hal Putoff (an American physicist who has co-authored several books on gravitational and paranormal research) at the Fiesta Rancho Casino Hotel, Las Vegas after taking an early flight to the airport. Upon meeting, Hal wasted no time and shared with him the story of Dr. Eric Davis. It turns out that Dr. Davis was the one who conducted the interview with Wilson at the EG&G parking lot. Dr. Davis had reached out to the admiral about his project to revive a local chapter of AFIO (Association of Former Intelligence Officers) in Las Vegas, but the conversation eventually shifted to the topic of ufology.(Source)
Astrophysicist Eric Davis during an interview with New York Post.
Murgia stated that Former President George Bush Sr. had taken an interest in Dr. Davis’ discussion and spoke to him twice on the phone, expressing his belief that the German secrets had been filed away and not used as a cover for anything else. However, he did show interest in pursuing the topic and requested Dr. Davis’ recent physics papers.
During the second phone call, Bush revealed that he was aware of the Holloman film, which Hal, Dr. Davis, and Murgia were fixated on. “The former President was aware of it. Was it a training film, a special ops exercise? No, he replied, ‘it was “the real thing.”’ There was a secret project, and the security was obscene,” writes Joe Murgia.
Moreover, the Holloman AFB UFO landing incident was also discussed by Dr. Jacques Vallée in his book “Forbidden Science – Volume II.” He writes:
Kit [Green] just left, along with Hal, Russell and two of his kids. We had a long discussion after a demo of my landing catalogue. Kit has dropped out of Sams’ covert “Group of Twelve.”
Emenegger tells me that Colonel Bill Coleman, who represented the Air Force in the film, had been retired for three weeks when he got the job. For nine years he’d served as the Air Force’s spokesman and had been intimately linked to the UFO question. More games: One of his men, a Captain Horner, confiscated the Holloman movie just before Sandler could get his hands on it.
The Holloman sequence is based on a bluff by Emenegger. He couldn’t find anyone on the Base who recalled such an event. There was only a rumor that in 1971 a helicopter had filmed three objects, one of which landed.
Three occupants had supposedly come out. They had Assyrian noses, a rope twisted on their head for a hat, bluegreen skin, eyes like ping-pong balls with a hole in the middle. One of them had a wire in one ear and carried a vertical staff with a spiral antenna. The Aliens were taken to Building 830, then to building 930 on Mars Avenue. They remained there two or three years, allegedly “helping the United States decode space messages from another Alien civilization.”
A biologist named Alfred Lorenzo is supposed to have worked with them. None of this makes any sense. When Allan was here I asked him if he still had his clearance. He said yes, theoretically he did, but he didn’t think it was active, yet Kit has found Allan’s clearances active. “Do you know there are 800 reports of foreign UFOs in the CIRCOL files?” he asked. “Why didn’t Hynek ever look into that?”
He warned me that a new experimental device was being tested. It is known lovingly as a “flying bathtub.” It is a flying triangle with a rounded front, but it could look strikingly like a saucer when seen from the side, and will surely be mistaken for one.
On Julian Dorey Podcast, Mr. Fox recounted a phone call from Allan Sandler, who claimed to have seen three unidentified flying objects (UFOs) escorted by a military jet. Sandler said that two of the UFOs peeled away while one wobbled to the ground, and he witnessed the beings with unique features emerge from the grounded UFO before the footage abruptly cut off.
Paul Shartle, an official at Norton Air Force Base, allegedly confirmed that the object was not of Earth origin. Mr. Fox did not make any claims about the veracity of the story, only reporting what he had been told.
During a recent Reddit AMA, journalist Christopher Sharp expressed interest in finding more information about the number of alien species visiting Earth. He mentioned that he had heard from multiple sources that the visitation at Holloman Air Force Base was real, but was unsure if the beings were extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or ultra-terrestrial. Sharp shared a link to the interview with Grant Cameron for further information.
In 1974, Robert Emenegger released his documentary “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe. While he had originally been granted permission to use real footage, the Department of Defense later withdrew that permission.
Emenegger was forced to add animated footage of the alleged Holloman UFO landing. He claimed that some frames from the original footage were used in the reconstruction during editing, which was authorized by the USAF. Viewers spotted a genuine bright disc coming down slowly in the distance against the backdrop of Holloman’s surrounding landscape.
The documentary was re-released in 1979, with additional footage and narration by Dr. Vallée, who discussed ancient astronaut theory.
"This is an amazing time to be a part of this program."
NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman will command Artemis 2, the first human moon mission in half a century.
(Image credit: Robert Markowitz/NASA-JSC)
The commander of humanity's first moon mission in half a century has a special invite from SpaceX in his pocket.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut leading the four Artemis 2 crew members, told Space.com in a Dec. 18 exclusive that SpaceX wants to talk to his crew about Starship. That's no coincidence, given that SpaceX is developing Starship for Artemis 3, which intends to land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972.
When and how that all comes together is not known yet. Artemis 2 is expected to fly around the moon no earlier than 2024 if schedules hold. Artemis 3 is manifested for 2025 or 2026, but that assumes that SpaceX's Starship has passed enough tests to satisfy NASA's strict safety requirements for human-rated spacecraft.
Wiseman spoke with Space.com not only about SpaceX, but what his crew plans to take along with them on the mission, the outreach he has been doing, and how his crew is dealing with developmental uncertainty. Riding to the moon with him (and back) are NASA pilot Victor Glover (who will become the first person of color to leave low Earth orbit), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman) and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American).
We're about a year out from the launch of Artemis 2. Can you talk about your main goals for the mission, and what you're focusing on as a crew and as a team right now?
Reid Wiseman, Artemis 2 commander: It's pretty basic for us. We really want to enable the Orion and the Space Launch System for our fellow astronauts that are going to go land on the moon and work in the lunar vicinity. So every day we show up to work.
It just happened in a class we were just in: We are not only looking at how to make this better for Artemis 2. We're thinking about, "How do we position this for Artemis 3, 4, and 5?" Victor Glover today — we were talking about, "Hey, it [Artemis 2] is just a nine-day mission." We were in a survival class, but we said, "We won't be that deconditioned [after the mission]." And Victor was like, "Hey, wait a minute. We have to think about the max mission duration, because this will be valid for all Artemis missions."
So we've done — I think — an awesome job of just really looking at, what does this vehicle need for the future for our crewmates, when they go and land on the moon? How can we wring out Orion and SLS so that when our peers are training for moonwalking missions, that is almost just a basic in that [they think], "Okay, we know Orion. So we don't have to worry about that [spacecraft]. Let's instead focus on the HLS [human landing system spacecraft] or, let's focus on the new suit designs." That's really our fundamental goal.
Training has been fantastic, really well-prepared classes. It kind of comes in little waves. We're really busy, in the last few weeks, and then we have a little bit of down time. Then you're really busy again.
Can you talk about the excitement that all the teams are feeling for Artemis 2, along with the responsibilities?
Wiseman: It completely has blown me away, and not just on the professional side, but on the outreach side,to traveling around the world. Seeing where the European Service Module was built in Bremen, Germany with Airbus. Those people are so fired up to have humans riding on their vehicle. Or going into the Cape [Canaveral area] with Lockheed and Orion. I even got a call two weeks ago from the lead engineer at SpaceX. He was like, 'Next time you guys are at Cape [Canaveral, nearby NASA's Kennedy Space Center), come by and talk to us. We're doing Starship, and Dragon, and we just want to hear what is going on with the Artemis 2 crew."
I had to take a step back. They launched two Starships [in 2023], and got another one rolling onto the pad. Here they want us to come talk to them, because they are just motivated. Then of course, there are the teams that we're training with, especially at NASA. A lot of these folks, this is their career. Their career is spent preparing for us to go work on the moon. So to be a crew, marching towards a launch, it's far more meaningful for them than it is for us. We really try to embrace that. It's very powerful.
The Artemis 2 moon crew during a launch simulation at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 20, 2023. They stand on the crew access arm at Launch 39B, which will one day bring them to the waiting Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. From left: NASA astronaut and pilot Victor Glover, Canadian Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, NASA astronaut and mission specialist Christina Koch, and NASA astronaut and commander Reid Wiseman. (Image credit: NASA/Frank Michaux)
Any surprises with the training?
Wiseman: My surprise might be a little cliche. We figured — as the crew that's going to fly this vehicle for the first time — there are going to be so many unknowns. We're going to work our way through a really rough training syllabus. But what I neglected was, we're being trained by the flight controllers who just operated Artemis 1 [an uncrewed mission around the moon in 2022] very successfully. So we go into these classes, and they are just polished. They know everything there is to know about this vehicle. They just got done flying it, and around the moon. They know their systems. So there, it's just wired. I've been very impressed. They really know what's going on.
Your crew has emphasized that Artemis 2 is very much a developmental mission. So you're informed in making this mission by decades of spaceflight experience at NASA, even among all the crew. However, many of the procedures and training facilities are being created as you train. So as such, how's everybody doing on the timeline for launch?
How would NASA deal with any ripple effects in scheduling later Artemis missions if this one happened to be delayed?
Wiseman: You know, as a crew, we don't get into the programmatic of, "We ought to launch in November of 2024." There's political implications. There's operational implications. What we really care about is when this vehicle is ready, and when NASA says it's ready to go fly, we will be prepared to go fly it. That is our critical milestone. But as they're going through assembly, I think we're gonna face a little bit of a slip. For sure. So we'll see how that goes.
But I think so far, everything that I'm seeing is coming along very logically. Very methodically. And when the Orion program, or SLS, has hit a snag, we have stopped the appropriate amount of time. We're really analyzing, "Do we need to fix this? Do we have an operational workaround? Do we have a hardware workaround?" And then we're proceeding on.
I think everything has been, and what I have seen is, a safety culture. The mission assurance culture right now has been extremely healthy. We're very methodically going along at a great pace to fly when this vehicle is ready.
Artemis 2 crew members inspect their Orion crew module inside the high bay of the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Aug. 7, 2023. (Image credit: NASA)
Have you and the crew discussed the personal items that you're taking to the moon, yet?
Wiseman: We are pretty weight-limited, but we do all have little things. I won't speak for the rest of the crew, but my whole life, I've realized how important tradition is to me. Things that I do with my children, or that my parents did with me and my brother growing up. So I will take something that nods to my personal family tradition, just as a personal token to myself.
When I flew on the Soyuz in 2014 [to the International Space Station], on my kneeboard, I had a little black-and-white picture of my kids just printed on the piece of paper, because mass is everything. So you don't take anything extra that you don't need to take. So I printed it directly on my kneeboard, and I'll do something very similar to that.
But to be honest — I didn't think about this when we first got assigned — but I get to work with Victor, Christina and Jeremy. I just want to be immersed in this experience with them. They are such special people. So I just can't wait to watch them operate as we head out around the moon.
How have you in the crew been engaging with NASA personnel, contractors, when visiting facilities and training locations?
Wiseman: We've been heading absolutely everywhere. The thing we have to remind ourselves, is everywhere we go, people know who we are. It is amazing to see just how excited people are. I mean, they are so fired up. We went to Marshall Space Flight Center, one of our own NASA centers, and we stood for an entire hour as people just took picture after picture after picture. Just walking up to the crew. We are just a human representation of what these people have been working for for over a decade. It's just so powerful.
As a group, you've been making a lot of other types of appearances. For example, you were beside Apollo 13 movie actor Tom Hanks — a moon astronaut in the movies, of course. You were also at the F1 car racing event, and many other places. Can you talk about what that experience has been like for you and the crew?
Wiseman: That is definitely surreal, because we're in places that most people don't get a chance to experience. Tom Hanks — he had a formative place in my childhood with "Apollo 13," and with "Forrest Gump." Just to get to meet these people, and to interact a little bit, has been really neat. But you know, if you gave us our wishes, we would be at a fifth-grade class trying to motivate kids to go study STEM [science, technology, engineering and math].
But this is important. We need all elements of outreach to get the message as far and wide as we possibly can, that this is worth doing. Human exploration is important to bring our world together. We can tackle big problems when we work together. So that's the message we want to send. Having people like Tom Hanks involved, and getting to F1 — getting to a few markets that typically we don't get to — has been cool.
It was fun to be immersed in the Formula One parallels between that, and Mission Control and spaceflight. The way they communicate — the way they structure and organize the things that matter to the drivers, and then the different things that matter to the engineering teams — I took a lot away from Formula One.
Actor and "Apollo 13" movie star Tom Hanks (center) with the Artemis 2 crew. The new moon astronauts include, from left, the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen, NASA's Reid Wiseman, NASA's Christina Koch and NASA's Victor Glover. Behind them is a mockup of the Orion spacecraft for moon missions. (Image credit: NASA)
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
Wiseman: I just want to really thank you for what you all do at Space.com. We have a lot of great, great learning from you guys, and I appreciate the research that you do and showing up [at the events]. I think it's really important.
I love the public-private partnership of Artemis. I don't think we do a good enough job highlighting just how that is going. The CLPS [commercial lunar payload services program, or robotic missions in support of Artemis] are going to launch soon, with robotic missions to the moon. And what SpaceX is doing, and now Blue Origin is coming on, with the HLS design. When you're when you live in this and you marinate in it, it's just awesome. This is an amazing time to be a part of this program. So we really appreciate the public support.
Helicity Space, a startup founded in 2018, is developing a fusion drive poised to transform space travel. With a fresh round of investment, the company is developing a proof-of-concept for a fusion-powered propulsion system that can get from Earth to Mars in two months.
In a recent press release, the space-based startup recently secured $5 million in seed funding from Airbus Ventures, TRE Ventures, Voyager Space Holdings, E2MC Space, Urania Ventures, and Gaingels.
Unlike traditional rockets that rely on chemical reactions, Helicity’s fusion drive operates on a magneto-inertial fusion method. This involves fusing two hydrogen isotopes into helium, releasing immense energy – ten million times more per unit mass than chemical fuels.
According to Helicity, the core technology behind their fusion drive efficiently converts electricity into plasma heating, using a unique approach to scale fusion conditions and directly produce thrust. Their method, distinct from conventional magnetic or inertial (laser) fusion, employs self-organized Taylor relaxation and magnetic reconnection physics, combined with a peristaltic magnetic compression scheme.
In very simple terms, the engine uses hot ionized plasma gas heated by magnetic fields that are constantly forced together to the point where they must then break apart. It is this seesaw of magnetic forces that generates vast amounts of energy, heating the plasma to the point where fusion occurs, forcing the nuclei so close that they overcome their electrostatic repulsion and fuse together. To simplify this even more, the energy created by that fusion is aimed out of the tailpipe of the Helicity Drive, and you generate a helluva lot of thrust.
So much so that it cuts the current seven or eight-month trip to Mars down to two, or the six-year trip to Jupiter down to just one.
One of the key advantages of Helicity’s fusion drive is its fuel and propellant efficiency. It enables faster travel over interplanetary distances, with less exposure to space radiation and the agility to alter trajectories or abort missions if necessary. The Helicity Drive creates short bursts of fusion conditions in a design optimized for propulsive plasma exhaust, thus providing acceleration with each pulse. You proverbially slam on the gas pedal, accelerate, and then take your foot off the gas letting momentum do the work. This propulsion method can be deployed before achieving continuous power generation, significantly advancing the feasibility of fusion propulsion in space.
Helicity’s efforts are part of a larger movement to leverage fusion technology in space exploration. Fusion power, unlike fission, merges atoms together, releasing vast energy amounts with safer byproducts. This contrasts starkly with fission’s splitting of atoms, which leads to radiation issues and the complex disposal of irradiated waste. Helicity’s fusion engines use multiple magnetically-controlled, super-heated plasma jets to propel spacecraft, marking a substantial shift from conventional rocket technology, which requires large amounts of super-cold or highly explosive fuel.
“Fusion propulsion can contribute to Earth’s environmental goals indirectly by enabling offworld mining and industry, reducing terrestrial resource consumption and ecological impact,” explained Helicity co-founder Dr. Setthivoine You in an interview. “Ultimately, we see our technology playing a significant role in both space exploration and Earth’s sustainable future.”
The company’s vision extends to catalyzing humanity’s spacefaring ambitions, boosting both human and robotic exploration, and possibly leading to ventures like asteroid mining. The technology’s scalability and practical use in space, even before establishing self-sustaining reactors, demonstrate its potential for early testing and gradual scaling up.
Helicity Space collaborates with top scientific institutes globally, including the California Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo. Supported by entities like the U.S. Department of Energy’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy, these partnerships underscore the scientific community’s interest in and support for Helicity’s groundbreaking work.
“We’re currently focused on proving the technology for space propulsion. Once we achieve this, we anticipate drawing more substantial interest and investment, including from energy companies, for broader applications,” said Dr. You.
While building a working fusion drive will require more than their current $5 million dollar investment, the fact that there was funding clearly shows there is a hard push for novel space technology. While still in development, the potential applications of this technology in enhancing human and robotic space exploration are immense.
MJ Banias is a journalist who covers security and technology. He is the host of The Debrief Weekly Report. You can email MJ at mj@thedebrief.org or follow him on Twitter @mjbanias.
The series of events involving the US military shooting down multiple Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) in February 2023 has been staggering, particularly concerning the incident with an object detected over Alaska. When this object was intercepted above Alaska, the administration of the US president promptly ordered its takedown without hesitation.
So, on February 10, 2023, a U.S. F-22 fighter jet successfully brought down the object, which was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet over Alaska. “We don’t know who owns this object,” said the White House spokesperson John Kirby, adding that it was unclear where its flight originated. The object fell inside the United States Territorial Waters. Mr. Kirby explained that those waters were frozen but still within American territory, implying that the recovery of the debris would be much easier.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, indicated that it was the size of a small car. According to him, the pilots who had been observing the object before it was shot down confirmed that there was no human presence on board. He further remarked that it lacked the ability to change direction and did not resemble any conventional aircraft. “It wasn’t an aircraft per se,” Ryder informed the media.
Interestingly, the pilots involved in the sighting gave inconsistent reports. Some stated that the object interfered with their plane’s sensors, while others did not experience this. Some also claimed that they could not discern any recognizable source of propulsion on the object and were unable to explain how it was able to remain afloat while cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.
Alaska Object was “Anomalous”
On August 12, 2023, investigative journalist Ross Coulthart shared his thoughts at the Victorian State Library as part of an event called “Close Encounters Australia.” He talked for around two hours, including an hour-long Q&A session where he told the audience some interesting things he had learned about the Alaska shootdowns. (Source)
Coulthart wanted to be clear about something. He was not completely sure about the things he talked about. He thinks they are true, but he was not completely confident. He said: “I’m happy to be proved wrong, but it would be very very interesting to see an explanation from the White House.” What he found interesting is that some of the people he talked to, who know about defense and secrets, said that something weird happened in Alaska.
“Can you update us on the sphere and the US shootdowns from February?” This question was asked by someone in the audience, to which Coulthart replied, “On the balloons, we’re talking here about the balloons here in February, the February shoot downs. Now, to give you some official response to this, I think a very senior defense official was just recently quoted in the newspapers as saying there’s nothing alien or extraterrestrial about these shootdowns, about the objects that were shot down.”
He continued, “And I thought that was a very interesting comment because… the information I have is that two of the objects were indeed prosaic, they were just mundane objects. Probably weather balloons. But there is an abundance now of sources, including a guy who… heh… literally lives at the end of the road in Alaska where this object was encountered by an F-22 jet.”
Coulthart talked about one of the things that got shot down in Alaska. He said it was not like the other two things; it was different, or “anomalous.” He mentioned he could be wrong, but this is what he had heard. According to what he learned, the Alaska object looked like a big “tic-tac.” When the F-22 hit the objectwith missile, something fell off, but it kept going despite being hit.
“There was definitely a missile fired at an object which was described as… looking a little bit like a giant tic-tac, funnily enough. That something was seen to fall off that object. That even though it was hit with an AIM missile, which is a top of the line air-to-air missile, that the object kept on going. And uh… I’ve put this to different people in defense and intelligence, and I’ve been told yes… the Alaska object was anomalous. And um, anytime I try to get a response from anybody on an official basis they run 100 miles an hour,” Coulthart said.
He spoke to other individuals who were knowledgeable about military matters and secrets. They confirmed that the Alaska incident was strange indeed. He wanted to learn more from those in charge of defense, but they were unwilling to discuss it. When he asked them, they declined to provide an answer.
Coulthart explained, “But you might notice, that nobody has given a report back to the American public or the world about what it was that the U.S., for the first time in the history of NORAD, they shot down something over North America. That’s a historic event. And yet we haven’t been told, neither has America, the full story of what those shoot downs involved.”
Some people find Coulthart’s statement convincing because if the Alaska object was indeed anomalous, that would explain why the Department of Defense (DOD) responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information about the object by referring the request to Advanced Aerial Research Organization (AARO).
Below is a response from the Department of Defense about a FOIA request submitted on February 11, 2023, asking for several data presumably collected during the Alaska object shot-down on February 10, 2023.
“This responds to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request # [ ] requesting “all available visual data (photographs in visual and Infra-Red spectrum, films in visible and Infra-Red spectrum, drawing and all related visual information) and tracking data (radar data, sonar data, timer data) that were presumably gathered about the object that was shot down at 1:45PM EST on 2/10/2022 over Alaska.”
We are providing a no records response in subject to your request. After a lengthy and exhaustive search through multiple offices on Elmendorf Air Force Base it has been determined that this request should be sent to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) which falls under the Defense Intelligence Agency. You can send a request to their office through the contact below.”
It’s intriguing to mention that there seem to be “no records” at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska about this case. This is puzzling because the base should have been involved in the mission to recover whatever was related to this case.
Even more fascinating, the request for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is being sent to the “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which is a part of the Defense Intelligence Agency.” This is happening even though officials described the objects in question as “likely mundane.” (Click to read the DIA resposne)
It was the first time the satellite's lasers were caught on camera.
A mysterious spectacle of green laser beams in the sky was caught on video by motion-detecting cameras positioned outside Hiratsuka City Museum in Japan.
Daichi Fujii, the museum curator, set up the motion-detecting cameras to capture meteors andcalculate their position, brightness and orbit. At first, the bright green lines that appeared on the camera footage from Sept. 16, 2022, were a mystery. However, further inspection revealed the beams were synchronized with a tiny green dot that was briefly visible between the clouds.
On Sept. 16, 2022, motion-sensing cameras set up by museum curator Daichi Fujii to capture meteors instead caught the laser beams of NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite as it passed over Japan. It’s the first time the ICESat-2 team has seen footage of the lasers at work in orbit. Credits: Video Courtesy of Daichi Fujii, Hiratsuka City Museum
As it turns out, the lasers were being beamed down from space by one of NASA's Earth-orbiting satellites. The Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite 2, or ICESat-2, flew over the museum at the perfect time for its green lasers to be caught in action, streaming from orbit to Earth.
The museum's motion detector footage is the first time the satellite's laser beams have been caught on camera, according to a NASA statement.
On Sept. 16, 2022, motion-sensing cameras set up by Hiratsuka City Museum curator Daichi Fujii to capture meteors instead caught the laser beams of NASA's ICESat-2 satellite as it passed over Japan. It's the first time the ICESat-2 team has seen footage of the lasers at work in orbit. (Image credit: Daichi Fujii, Hiratsuka City Museum/NASA)
"ICESat-2 appeared to be almost directly overhead of [the museum], with the beam hitting the low clouds at an angle," Tony Martino, ICESat-2 instrument scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, wrote in the statement from the space agency. "To see the laser, you have to be in the exact right place, at the right time, and you have to have the right conditions."
ICESat-2, which launched in September 2018, uses lasers and a very precise detection instrument to measure the elevation of ice sheets, sea ice thickness and land topography on Earth. The laser instrument is technically a lidar sensor, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. Lidar sensors are typically used to generate precise 3D measurements, and are also used by autonomous vehicles to sense their surroundings. The lidar system aboard ICESat-2 fires 10,000 times a second, sending six beams of light to Earth from orbit.
As its picture was being taken from the ground, ICESat-2 was at work collecting data on the height profile of the clouds, mountainous terrain and ocean of Japan below. This ICESat-2 data plot shows what the satellite measured as it passed over Fuji City, Japan (marked with a vertical green line) on Sept. 16, 2022. The laser instrument detected two cloud layers, one high and one low, which scattered the light enough to be detected by the cameras on the ground.
Credits: NASA/Tony Martino
"It precisely times how long it takes individual photons to bounce off the surface and return to the satellite," NASA wrote in the statement. "Computer programs use these measurements to calculate ice losses from Greenland and Antarctica, observe how much of the polar oceans are frozen, determine the heights of freshwater reservoirs, map shallow coastal regions, and more."
Generally, the satellite's laser beams are difficult to spot from Earth. Located hundreds of miles up in space, the lasers have roughly the strength of a camera flash more than 100 yards away. Plus, the laser's light has to reflect off something to be seen. However, on Sept. 16, 2022, there were just enough clouds to scatter — not obscure — the laser light, making it visible to the museum's cameras.
"With the precise location of the satellite in space, the location of where the beam hit, the coordinates of where Fujii's cameras were set up, and the addition of cloudy conditions, Martino was able to confirm, definitively, that the streaks of light came from ICESat-2's laser," NASA officials added in the statement.
Filmmaker James Fox has recently released a documentary called “Moment of Contact,” which details an alleged UFO crash in Varginha, Brazil in 1996. Despite the level of skepticism surrounding the incident, Mr. Fox asks people to suspend judgment and listen to the first-hand eyewitness testimony from military officers, firemen, doctors, civilians, and lawyers.
The documentary shows how many of the witnesses were just regular Brazilian people, not UFO buffs or individuals deep in space. The film also shows the extraordinary level of international coordination between the Brazilian and US military, which has left many viewers questioning its accuracy.
Mr. Fox investigated the case for 12 years, and during his numerous trips to Brazil, he was completely unaware of any American involvement until his last visits. While in Brazil, Mr. Fox discovered the American military’s involvement in the crash. The documentary features military personnel on the ground, civilians, doctors, and lawyers giving testimony about the incident.
Mr. Fox reveals that Carlos Feres, a flight radar control officer claimed that he was in charge the night of the crash and saw the United States Air Force plane come in without authorization from the Brazilian government. The US military reportedly landed in Campinas (a city in the northwest of São Paulo) without any Brazilian authorization. Mr. Fox also claimed that there are testimonials from military personnel and civilians who witnessed the transportation of the creatures to Campinas on the same date.
Fox’s new documentary sheds light on a story that has been widely regarded as the “Roswell of Brazil.” While there is still skepticism surrounding the incident, his documentary provides ample evidence from first-hand witnesses, showing something truly extraordinary that took place on January 20, 1996.
“Two 14-year-old twin girls, Liliane and Valquíria Fátima Silva, and 22-year-old Kátia Andrade Xavier were among the eyewitnesses who personally saw these creatures. According to them, one of the creatures was very thin with brown skin, big red eyes, and had three horns on its head. It was about 160 cm high and had feet in a V-shape.
The claimed encounter, according to the legend, occurred around three hours later, when two military police officers were traveling along a road next to the empty lot. Suddenly, a creature ran in front of their vehicle. As per Brazilian UFO Magazine editor A.J. Gevaerd, one of the officers, Marco Chereze, captured the creature with his “bare hands” and took it to a local hospital. He said, “After he captured the creature he was smelly – he had this strange feeling of something greasy or sticky over his body that came from the creature. He developed this infection that wouldn’t go away, and for two or three weeks it was getting worse and worse and worse… and that infection killed him.””
Filmmaker James Fox (Left, )Marco Chereze (in photo shown by his sister) died after one of the creatures scratched him
UFOlogist Ubirajara Rodrigues wrote about the Varginha incident, where a strange being was arrested in January 1996. The arresting officer, Corporal Marco underwent minor surgery to remove an abscess caused by a physical injury sustained during the arrest. He later fell ill with a fever and was hospitalized, ultimately passing away from sepsis, but the cause of the infection was never identified.
Mr. Fox further revealed that there are two forensic pathologists who conducted the autopsy on the deceased military officer and provided a detailed long-form autopsy report. He said they came forward for the first time to share their findings and brief statements about the case. Their expertise in forensic pathology is necessary to determine the cause and manner of death, which can be crucial in investigations and legal proceedings.
A short clip played by Breaking Points, shared to them by Mr. Fox, shows pathologists’ statements first time translated into English. Mr. Fox has recently spoken with pathologists who describe a new type of bacteria that killed a healthy 23-year-old Brazilian military police officer in 1996. Here are their statements:
[Pathologist 1]This is my first statement on the Chereze case which may have actually involved an extraterrestrial being. It causes strangeness due to the distinct way he describes this bacteria.
Pathologist 2, Dr. João B.M. Janini]This alien brought the bacteria in from outside. There is the character “ET” and there is the character “bacteria from the ET’s fingernails.” The real story is about the bacteria I found in the deceased military officer’s body. It was like a lethal weapon to his immune system.
Mr. Fox says the bacteria was said to be unlike anything seen before and even survived the “kitchen sink” of treatments thrown at it by one of the doctors who treated Chereze. This bacterial infection arose after a UFO incident in the area, leading Fox to believe that the bacteria could have been caused by an alien craft or escaped from a biological laboratory.
He said: “This is an ongoing investigation I’m not going to put this in another film I’m going to put it out to the general public immediately because I think that this is this is a story that could prove once and for all could settle the debate once and for all whether these things are real or not because we have a case, unlike Roswell that’s so recent that the vast majority of people and Witnesses are still alive and they’re coming forward right now.”
On Julian Dorey’s podcast, Mr. Fox disclosed that the Varginha creature had supposedly established telepathic contact with two doctors who treated its injuries at Humanitas Hospital in Brazil. He could not include this in his documentary because he needed testimony on it. But he referred to Dr. Roger K. Leir’s book “UFO Crash in Brazil: A Genuine UFO Crash with Surviving ETs” to know more about it.
In Chapter 6, “The Medical Testimony,” Lier mentioned his conversation with a doctor who had treated one of the recovered alien entities. The being, which did not appear to have a gender, telepathically communicated to him that humans were “totally detached” from their spiritual selves, and it felt sorry for them. (Click here to read the full article)
In addition to discussing the investigation with Breaking Points, Mr. Fox also talks about the recently passed UAP legislation. He reads a bit of the text from the legislation, which discusses programs relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, including material retrieval, analysis, research and development, and detection and tracking. The legislation also provides protections for whistleblowers.
Fox notes that the passing of recent UAP legislation by Senators Gillibrand and Rubio may provide whistleblowers the opportunity to bring forward more information on this topic. Fox is hopeful that the increased transparency will force the government’s hand and release more information on the phenomenon. Fox has met with insiders who have already testified to the UAP task force and is providing information to the public, even if the government is unwilling to do so. He notes that there is a lot of photographic evidence behind the wall of classified information.
For years, NASA whistleblowers have been claiming that they saw evidence of extraterrestrials. They believe Earth is in regular contact with intelligent beings of other worlds. How true are these claims? Are there really artificial structures on Moon, secret colonies on Mars, Apollo 11 alleged UFO encounter, etc.? Well, these conspiracies shaped the field of UFOlogy which have come to an extent that now NASA officially joined hands in the UFO investigation. The agency finally admitted the gravity of the situation.
Moreover, a big revelation on UFOs and extraterrestrial life was made by former NASA research scientist Kevin Knuth in 2018 on his personal blog that probably went unnoticed. Knuth shared the UFO evidence he collected in his professional career that intentionally was covered by the government around the world.
Note:
Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Albany. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Entropy. He is a former NASA research scientist having worked for four years at NASA Ames Research Center in the Intelligent Systems Division.
Kevin Knuth. Image credit: Altpropulsion
Kevin Knuth described two personal stories about the speculation of extraterrestrials. The first one came at a 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting, a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “You have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in.
His second story is from 1988. During his graduation from Montana State University, his physics professor told the class that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. This very news was later confirmed when Knuth saw a recording of the press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s
Professor Knuth firmly believes in the alien life and non-terrestrial nature of UFOs. He is inspired by the theory given by nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi about contact with intelligent civilizations. Fermi estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the Sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.
In 1961, American scientist Frank Drake took the first steps to quantify the field by developing the now-famous “Drake Equation,” a simple algebraic expression that provides an estimate for the number of communicating civilizations in the Milky Way.
Professor Knuth estimated that it would take somewhere around 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like us to colonize the Milky Way. According to him, this should have happened in the history of our galaxy. But where is the evidence? This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.
Governments’ cover-up
Professor Knuth said that the topic of UFOs is considered taboo in the scientific community, with many organizations finding excuses for various UFO sightings. For example, there are times when the weather or human activities are excuses for alien sightings. The result is that UFOs are largely not included as a possibility for scientific study and discussions.
Further, he stated, the situation is worsened by the fact that many governments around the world have covered up and classified information about such encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study (which has already begun).
Strong UFO evidence from the past
Professor Knuth says there have been documented cases of UFO sightings, including through telescopes. He said that sightings go all the way back to the 1700s which are well-documented in the book “Wonders in the Sky” by Jacques Vallée. He discussed one study performed by an astrophysicist at Stanford University named Peter Sturrock, when the professor found out that 5 percent of UFO sightings were never explained.
Declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil. Arquivo Nacional Collection
He also said that numerous countries had declassified UFO files, including Canada, France, Ecuador, and the United Kingdom. There are cases when the United States even funded alien probes, but some findings have not been declassified yet. Knuth argues that these cases should encourage scientific research.
He considered the footagereleased by the Chilean government in 2017 as the most convincing observations that came from government officials. Former NASA research scientists asked the scientific community to begin investigation on UFOs four years earlier, which hints at how much the scientists lost as the UFO topic was taboo for them.
Alien life underwater
Professor Knuth believes the pilots of UFOs could be living underneath our oceans. In 2021, he provided a logical reason behind this theory in this informative interview on Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal.
Curt asked Professor Knuth if he thought aliens might be hiding in places like our oceans. Knuth thought it could be possible. He said that oceans cover most of Earth, making them a good hiding spot. Kevin also said that if aliens came from a place with lots of water, living in Earth’s oceans would be easy for them.
“If you live in an ocean, going to another planet with an ocean is actually a pretty good thing,” Knuth explained. He detailed how water, being non-compressible, would provide consistent pressure, and the temperature variations in aquatic environments on different planets would be relatively moderate compared to the extreme conditions on planetary surfaces.
“If you come from an aquatic environment, aquatic environments on planets are going to be much better to live in than atmospheric environments. Atmospheres have a low heat capacity, so the temperature varies a lot …you get huge temperature variations…And then going from planet to planet, you have huge temperature variations in the atmosphere: go to Mars, and you’re looking at 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. You go to Venus, and you’re looking at 800 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s dramatic. And the air pressure is dramatically different, too, from planet to planet.”
The interview got even more interesting when they talked about where these aliens might live. Curt wondered if they were hiding underground or in small spaceships. Knuth thought it depended on how many aliens there were. He said, “Depends on how many people you have in there.”
Curt shared that he wasn’t usually into wild stories or mysteries. But this topic was too interesting to ignore. He wondered if maybe humans are just an experiment by these aliens. Knuth had a thought about this. He said, “If they’re DNA-based… then it’s hard to imagine that we’re not related in some way.” He meant that if aliens are like us in some biological ways, then maybe we’re connected somehow.
What if these aliens are so different from us that meeting them could be dangerous? Knuth mentioned a scientist named Stuart Kaufman who had ideas about this. He said, “You wouldn’t want to come in contact with their organic molecules because you don’t know what kind of reactions you’d have.” In simpler terms, if aliens have different chemicals in their bodies, touching them might not be safe for us.
Considering Professor Knuth’s speculations on underwater alien life. There are numerous recorded incidents of spotting UFOs going in and out of oceans.
In 2021, a retired British police officer Gary Heseltine who is the vice president of the new International Coalition for Extraterrestrial Research (ICER) told The Sun that UFOs may not be coming from space – but rather from beneath the sea amid a string of strange encounters involving US warships.
“That sounds crazy but if you think about it we only know 5 percent of the ocean, we know more about the surface of the moon or Mars than our own oceans – so that would seem to me why UFOs are seen regularly coming in and out of water.”
Drawing together the nuclear and underwater theories, Mr Heseltine said: “If you think about it if there was World War 3 and we made toxic all the water then that would affect their habitat. “That’s why I think there’s a correlation with water – they have bases and we only know 5% of the ocean.”
Scientist Bob McGwier has provided great insight into underwater UFO sightings. He disclosed two incidents about underwater UFOs or USOs, that he saw while performing covert operations. This claim was made several months after a video had been made public by the United States military, in which it appeared to show an unidentified flying object moving from the sky into the water in the year 2019. (Click here to read the full article)
Ancient Mesopotamian Bricks Record 3,000-Year-Old Geomagnetic Anomaly
Ancient Mesopotamian Bricks Record 3,000-Year-Old Geomagnetic Anomaly
A geomagnetic anomaly that occurred between 3,000 and 2,500 years ago has shed light on ancient Mesopotamia in a way that has never been explored before. Analysis of ancient bricks from Mesopotamia, specifically modern-day Iraq, point to a dramatic spike in the Earth’s magnetic field roughly 3,000 years ago. It is now the subject of a fascinating new study, which relies on archaeomagnetic techniques, i.e., extracting information about the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field from ancient objects, and offers an alternative method of artifact dating.
Heating and Cooling: Firing the Bricks
These ancient Mesopotamian bricks, containing iron oxide, were employed to investigate the strength of the Earth's magnetic field during the firing period. Scientists systematically erased the ancient magnetic signature from small fragments of the bricks through a process of heating and cooling, according to the study published in The Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.
The bricks were then reheated, and the original magnetic field was replaced with one generated in the laboratory. This process enabled the researchers to establish a ratio between the object's magnetic charge in the past and under controlled laboratory conditions.
Brick dates to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (ca. 604 to 562 BCE) based on the interpretation of the inscription. This object was looted from its original context before being acquired by the Slemani Museum and stored in that museum with agreement from the central government.
(Image courtesy of the Slemani Museum)
Professor Mark Altaweel of University College London is studying the exceptional strength of the magnetic field in the Middle East around 3,000 years ago, known as the Levantine Iron Age Geomagnetic Anomaly: a point of high magnetic intensity between 1050-550 BC in modern-day Iraq.
“We often depend on dating methods such as radiocarbon dates to get a sense of chronology in ancient Mesopotamia. However, some of the most common cultural remains, such as bricks and ceramics, cannot typically be easily dated because they don’t contain organic material,” Altaweel said in a statement.
The findings revealed that these bricks were fired at a time when the Earth's magnetic field was more than one and a half times stronger than its present intensity. This time period corresponds to the Levantine Iron Age geomagnetic anomaly.
The anomaly, initially identified in 2009 by members of the same research team in a nearby region, was investigated using similar methods but on layers of rock material. History was literally baked into the bricks of cities through Iron Age Babylonia, reports The Hill.
Altaweel and his colleagues identified a set of 32 Mesopotamian clay bricks, each bearing inscriptions with the names of 12 different kings. It is presumed that these inscriptions were associated with the rulers during the time when the bricks were created. What makes these bricks particularly valuable for scientific analysis is the presence of iron oxide grains within them.
These grains have the unique ability to preserve the direction and strength of the magnetic field that existed when the bricks were initially fired. By examining the inscriptions and measuring the magnetic properties of the iron oxide grains, researchers gained insights into the Earth's magnetic field during the respective reigns of the kings.
Lead author Professor Matthew Howland of Wichita State University said, "By comparing ancient artifacts to what we know about ancient conditions of the magnetic field, we can estimate the dates of any artifacts that were heated up in ancient times."
Precise Dating Method: More than Just Carbon Dating
Carbon dating, which essentially measures the decay process from the moment of death, offers a highly accurate means of determining the time elapsed since the death of a being buried in a tomb or the cutting down of a tree used to fashion tools such as spear- or hoe-handles. This method plays a crucial role in pinpointing the chronological age of organic materials and contributes to the precision of archaeological dating.
However, despite the significance of the ruins of ancient cities, archaeologists face a significant challenge related to dating. The most dependable method for establishing the age of organic artifacts, ranging from cloth to wood to bones, involves tracking the systematic decay of radioactive carbon atoms within them, which is not always present.
Study co-author Professor Lisa Tauxe of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography explains the potential of the new approach:
"The geomagnetic field is one of the most enigmatic phenomena in Earth sciences. The well-dated archaeological remains of the rich Mesopotamian cultures, especially bricks inscribed with names of specific kings, provide an unprecedented opportunity to study changes in the field strength in high time resolution, tracking changes that occurred over several decades or even less."
“During…the first three millennia BC, you see the development of cities for the first time, the development of these incredibly complex societies like the Babylonians, and the development of agriculture for the first time in this region,” explained Howland in a Vice report.
This approach offered a more precise chronological record compared to traditional methods like carbon dating, which often comes with uncertainties spanning decades or centuries. The length of a king's reign and the accuracy of historical timelines play crucial roles in enhancing the precision of this magnetic field-based dating method.
Traditionally, historical inscriptions have been used to corroborate archaeological research, but specifics are never clear, and can be hit and miss. A scientific method like this one provides a basis for future archaeologists to apply archaeomagnetic techniques to date previously un-dateable material at archaeological sites, like ceramics. This is because radiocarbon dating doesn’t work on ancient artifacts that don’t contain the C-14 carbon isotope.
In the future, even geologists desperate to understand the Earth’s geomagnetic behaviors can benefit from this method. Since scientists only began taking measurements from specific locations around the world 400 years ago, and only recently globally with the advent of satellites, the field can now be expanded across time and space.
Top image: Sulimaniya brick B318, part of the collection holding the signature of the geomagnetic anomaly.
At The Debrief, we cover a lot of science and technology news that feels like it’s being ripped from the script of a science fiction movie. So, here is a quick top 5 list of some of our favorite stories, scientific movements, and technological developments from 2023.
1. ADVANCEMENTS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The year saw explosive growth in generative AI (gen AI) tools. 2023 was very much the year of AI. Entire companies and jobs have shifted to an AI-based model. AI high performers, defined as organizations attributing at least 20% of their EBIT to AI adoption, were at the forefront of adopting gen AI tools. The business disruption from gen AI was significant, leading to workforce changes and large reskilling efforts. With their nearly human-like creativity or their ability to decode ancient long-lost text, AI has altered how we live and work. And while the dystopian hell world where machines take over and murder all of us in our sleep is still a ways away, there are definitely security risks with this new technology whether it is from errors in the system and cybersecurity. Suffice it to say, we have crossed a threshold and we will just have to see how far this rabbit hole goes (A Matrix pun…AI…get it?).
2. EXOPLANETS, EXOPLANETS EVERYWHERE…
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope confirmed its first exoplanet, LHS 475 b, an Earth-sized planet in January of this year, and the hunt for planets in the cosmos has not slowed down. This discovery opens the door to studying rocky planet atmospheres and brings us closer to understanding Earth-like worlds outside our solar system. A few months later, the James Webb spotted another planet called GJ 1214 b and then another, TOI 1680 b, and then K2 18 b …well, the list keeps going. Hunting new distant planets aside, some spectacular discoveries around the Trappist-1 solar system have also been made, including some curious “ghost signals” that made headlines. We even discovered “exomoons” that didn’t turn out to be moons at all! If space is the final frontier, we are only getting closer to it, and learning what’s out there.
This illustration shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on science data. K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18 in the habitable zone and lies 120 light years from Earth. (Image Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI))
The US Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved a significant milestone by compressing atoms to initiate nuclear fusion, generating more energy than consumed at the very end of 2022. This was a major step towards developing nuclear fusion as a clean energy source. The NIF, costing $3.5 billion and located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, conducted successful ignition shots, producing record amounts of fusion energy. Things did not slow down in 2023. The Department of Energy began testing new materials for fusion reactors, and a global network of nations completed the construction of the largest fusion reactor in Japan. And while the public is still unsure about the technology, the safe and very environmentally friendly fusion energy may just be our next handhold up the Kardashev Scale. Level 1…here we come!
5. THE EXISTENTIAL CLIMATE CHANGE THREAT
Global conflicts, war, and disease are tragic concepts that humans have to face on a daily basis, and when it comes to our future on this planet, climate change is our greatest challenge. Now, while humans often act like tribal monkeys fighting over power or land or wealth, there are a few shining beacons of hope. Whether it is a plan to de-extinct some species to restore ancient ecosystems, or to develop novel technology like artificial photosynthesis or rain panels, our drive to survive has made 2023 a benchmark year.
The year 2023 marked a watershed moment in science and technology, characterized by groundbreaking achievements across multiple domains. From the rapid evolution and adoption of generative AI to the pivotal discoveries of exoplanets, each advancement has contributed to a profound shift in our understanding and capabilities. Quantum computing breakthroughs brought us closer to solving complex problems that were once beyond our grasp, while strides in fusion energy research signaled a promising future for sustainable power. Ongoing research into climate change continued to shed light on one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Collectively, these developments not only epitomize the ingenuity and perseverance of the scientific community but also underscore the potential of technology to reshape our world, offering hope and new possibilities for the years ahead.
As we enter into 2024, The Debrief will be here to cover all the groundbreaking science and technology news from the frontiers of knowledge.
MJ Banias is a journalist who covers security and technology. He is the host of The Debrief Weekly Report. You can email MJ at mj@thedebrief.org or follow him on Twitter @mjbanias.
On September 4, 1971, members of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (National Geographic Institute) took photographs above Lake Cote for the Costa Rican governmental company that provides electricity and telecommunication services. The photographs were taken for the construction of a hydroelectric dam near lake Arenal, when the mapping agency members accidentally captured a UFO in their high-resolution camera that was mounted on the plane, pointing downwards. The photograph is considered to be the clearest and best UFO photograph ever taken.
Sergio Loaiza, Juan Bravo and Francisco Reyes were flying in a Canadian-made Areo-Commander model F680 piloted by Omar Arias, and Loaiza was in charge of aerial photography that day. They were flying above Costa Rica with a 100-pound map-making camera when Loaiza captured a photograph of a metallic disc like a typical alien “flying saucer” that can be seen flying between the F680 aircraft and the ground.
They were flying at 10,000 feet, mapping the landscape beneath with the high-resolution camera that was programmed to take photos every 20 seconds. While reviewing the negatives, Loaiza could not believe his eyes. He even said that they were completely banned from talking about it. According to UFO researcher Oscar Sierra, the photographs were analyzed in the USA and France and found to be 100% real. (Source)
The object can only be seen in the photograph in frame number #300 in the sequence, and there is no indication of it in either the frame of film that came before it or the one that was taken immediately after it. Due to the film stock and the quality of the camera, the image was incredibly clear. This object was not in either the frame before it (#299) or the frame after it (#301).
UFO photograph Taken in Costa Rica on September 1971
During the actual flight, the captain and his three crew members did not witness anything, and neither did the other passengers. It is estimated that the UFO was anywhere between 120 and 220 feet across, but the actual width would have depended on the object’s exact altitude.
New York Times writer and author Leslie Kean revealed that she has a framed copy of the photo taken at Lake Cote in the May 10, 2021 issue of The New Yorker by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. The article states, “…On the wall behind her desk, there is a framed black-and-white image that looks like a sonogram of a Frisbee. The photograph was given to her, along with chain-of-custody documentation, by contacts in the Costa Rican government; in her estimation, it is the finest image of a U.F.O. ever made public.”
On the New Yorker Radio Hour, she said: “I love this photo. It’s probably the best photograph of a UFO ever taken. It was taken in the 70s from a government mapping plane in Costa Rica which had a camera strapped on the bottom of the plane and it was like going over the terrain. There was this disc object and you clearly see the sun reflecting off this round object that’s got a little dot on the top and what’s important about it is that it was a government photo. There’s a clear chain of custody. It’s always been in possession of the Costa Rican government so you know it’s authentic and it’s completely unexplained.” (Source)
In 1985, computer scientist and astronomer Dr. Jacques Vallee obtained a copy of the negative and circulated it to his contacts in the United States government and at a California tech company. However, none of them helped Dr. Vallee in analyzing the negative.
Eventually, in December 1987, Vallee took it to Dr. Richard Haines in San Francisco. Haines was a retired aerospace engineer who had worked for NASA, and Vallee knew him. The photo was scanned, blown up, and looked at. Haines’ first focus was on the lighting. In 1989, Vallee and Haines wrote a “Photo Analysis of an Aerial Disc Over Costa Rica” for the Journal of Scientific Exploration. The 19-page report concluded: (Source)
“In summary, our analyses have suggested that an unidentified, opaque, aerial object was captured on film at a maximum distance of 10,000 feet. There are no visible means of lift or propulsion and no surface markings other than dark regions that appear to be nonrandom… There is no indication that the image is the product of a double exposure or a deliberate fabrication.”
There has always been speculation as to whether the craft had just emerged from or was about to enter Lake Cote. There are numerous local stories concerning UFOs emerging from the water. But it is impossible to understand the path of the craft because it only appeared in one frame #300. The original negative has been kept by the Costa Rican government, and it may be found in the country’s National Archive. There are copies available, such as the one that Vallee and Haines analyzed.
Loaiza’s UFO photograph has never been explained, despite the fact that UFO skeptics have thoroughly examined it. UAP Media, a UK-based UFO research company has got a brand fresh ultra-high resolution drum scan of the original photograph.
Comparison of old and new crops of the Lake Cote image (old on left, new on right). via UAP Media UK
Graeme Rendall – Author of UFOs Before Roswell and Flying Saucer Fever: “It’s a really intriguing photograph, and one which totally captures the imagination. I’m always impressed as to how “right” it looks. As to its veracity, though, I can’t say, but I’d love it to be true. It definitely looks a lot more convincing than a lot of other images I’ve seen over the years. I’d have to leave it to the photo analysis experts to pronounce sentence on it though.”
Vinnie Adams – member of UAP Media: “After looking into the case, reading about the circumstances surrounding what was seen from that aeroplane that day, and reading the analysis done previously by Dr. Jacques Vallée, it does come across as a very compelling case. The fact that after 50 years it still hasn’t been conclusively proven or debunked is very interesting. Now that we have this high-resolution drum scanned version of the image, hopefully it might reignite interest in the case and lead to further analysis and some sort of conclusion.”
Luis Elizondo – Former director of AATIP: “Although I was not around during this incident, pilot reports of smooth, shiny, lenticular craft are not new. In fact, even to this day, pilots, both civilian and military, along with their aircrew, continue to witness these types of craft and oftentimes displaying performance capabilities well beyond state of the art. Thankfully, some of these newer incidents are finding their way to Congress due to the courage of our fine men and women in uniform. During my time in AATIP, these incidents were surprisingly common.”
Jeremy Corbell – Filmmaker:“As we search for meaning behind the UFO presence, it’s important that we remember we are more effective collectively when perusing analysis. Historic images like this one from Costa Rica still have stories to tell, and new insights are sometimes just around the corner. If we can socially democratize and crowdsource our search for answers – we will arrive closer to the truth than if we simply wait for further confirmation from our governments. I’m elated higher fidelity imagery continues to emerge, especially when it allows us to get a glimpse into our UFO past. Makes one wonder what other UFO evidence is lurking in boxes or files that have remained elusive until now. I’m confident that more and more people will be coming forward with valuable insight and evidence in the near future.”
There’s nothing like a little trouble at home to make you look for greener pastures. And green or not, aliens were everywhere in 2023. Well, at least in the news.
From Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, the classy new way to talk about UFOs) to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and all the way to tiny molecules clinging to frozen dust grains in interstellar space, the eyes of experts and the public were looking for life elsewhere.
The biggest alien stories — at least the most popular — came from military releases of data, hinting at cover-ups (or just ill-prepared government officials). But the most important — at least by our reckoning — were those that were steeped in science, offering hints of what life might look like outside of our planet, and where to find it. If you really do want to turn over that rock, that is.
Here, ranked from 11 to 1 by their chances of introducing us to real alien life, are the top alien and UAP events of 2023 that remind us the truth really is out there.
11. NASA RELEASED A GRIPPING REPORT ON UAPS
A resolved UAP sighting. The dot in the middle, and two dots that appeared to move in tandem with the central dot are airplanes waiting to land.
AARO/NASA TV
In September, ASA released its much-anticipated report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, and the agency says some of the sightings — between 16 and 40 out of roughly 800 — just can’t be explained — but Inverse spoke to experts, and it turns out the problem might just be that we don't have enough information. Most UAP reports come from sensors designed to guide weapons to objects, not gather detailed data about them, so it’s easy for fairly mundane objects to look bizarre when viewed through these sensors — or so says NASA.
Meanwhile, Inverse argues that the agency still needs a dedicated UAP office to take the investigation mainstream.
10. ... AND SO DID THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
The Department of Defense also published its own UAP report in January 2023, admitting that it has investigated more than 500 cases of possible UAP. Of those, more than a quarter were (of course) weather balloons; to be fair to DoD, weather stations in the U.S. alone launch 240 balloons every day. But according to a Pentagon spokesperson, “Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
But don’t worry; experts tell Inverse that the military probably couldn’t pull off an alien cover-up. Swarms of commercial satellites, along with ubiquitous smartphones and social media — not to mention political pressure — would make it almost impossible to keep the cat in the bag for long.
“I still strongly maintain that alien visitation is not something that could be kept secret. The size of such a secret is just too big,” wrote SETI researcher Seth Shostak in a July 2023 essay for the SETI Institute.
9. THE MYSTERIES OF OUMUAMUA WERE UNVEILED.
This artist’s illustration shows Oumuamua venting gas as the Sun heats it, although no such venting was actually visible to astronomers.
ESA
Speaking of UAP, a chunk of interstellar debris called ‘Oumuamua caused a stir when it passed through our Solar system a few years ago — and an even bigger uproar when it seemed to accelerate under its own power, without leaving a tail like a comet. This year, a study suggested a possible explanation. Spoiler alert: It’s definitely not aliens.
8. WE CRAFTED A DECENT IDEA OF WHAT ALIEN SPACECRAFT COULD LOOK LIKE
A space station wheel orbiting planet Earth. The space station wheel is a habitat that a human crew can live for extended periods of time.
One team of SETI researchers did some math and suggested that if an alien probe ever does visit our Solar System, it’s likely to be a zippy high-tech model, not an alien version of the Voyager probes.
7. ... AND ALSO WHAT CELESTIAL SIGNS MIGHT POINT US TO ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS.
An illustration of a futuristic sci-fi city on a ring planet.
EDUARD MUZHEVSKYI / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
SETI researchers also proposed some ways we might be able to spot high-tech alien civilizations from a distance — and some really wild ways the aliens might make themselves known to the rest of the universe, such as rearranging an entire star system into a cosmic “Kilroy Was Here” sign.
Other telltale signs to look for around distant stars include giant megastructures, built to siphon off mass and prolong the life of a dying star or the gleam of starlight on sprawling alien cities. But it may be easier to just look for pollution in a distant world’s atmosphere.
6. WE RULED OUT A WHOLE LOT OF HABITABLE PLANETS FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE
Humans wouldn’t be able to search for extraterrestrial intelligence today if our ancestors hadn’t learned to harness fire around a million years ago.
ANADOLU AGENCY/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
None of that advanced alien technology is likely to happen in a world without a lot of oxygen in its atmosphere, though. One study this year pointed out that unless about sixteen percent of the atmosphere is made of oxygen, you can’t start a fire. And without fire, you can’t work metals, cook food, or signal to distant alien civilizations.
5. ... AND LEARNED ALIENS PROBABLY WON’T THINK TOO FONDLY OF OUR INTELLIGENCE.
UFOs flying over winter landscape. 3D generated image.
GREMLIN/E+/GETTY IMAGES
If intelligent, technologically advanced aliens are out there, they may not recognize us as intelligent. That could be good news because it means they may not see us as a threat — and they may even think we need protection, according to one 2023 study.If the first aliens we contact are vastly more advanced than we are — or just very different — they may not realize we're sentient. That means they probably won't see us as a threat to galactic peace, which needs to be eliminated posthaste. But the jury's out on whether these hypothetical aliens might turn Earth into a nature preserve or treat us with callous indifference.
4. ALIEN LIFE, INTELLIGENT OR NOT, IS PROBABLY QUITE COMMON
An artist’s depiction of the star PDS 70 and its inner disk. The haze represents the water vapor. In the top right of the image appears an exoplanet.
A few decades ago, we thought the chemicals involved in building cells and making them work might be rare in the universe, but now it looks like many of those ingredients could be part of the standard starter pack for new star systems. And that means life may — eventually — turn out to be more common than we ever dared to hope.
3. ... AND K2-18B IS A GREAT PLACE TO LOOK FOR IT.
This artist’s illustration shows what K2-18b might look like, with its dim red star in the background.
NASA, ESA, CSA, JOSEPH OLMSTED (STSCI)
One team of astronomers says they’ve found an ocean world orbiting a distant star, called K2-18b — and its atmosphere may contain evidence of life somewhere in that alien ocean. Even the researchers who studied the planet with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) aren’t convinced, though. It’s going to take more data to settle the debate, but the possibility is intriguing.
2. TRAPPIST-1 OFFERS EXPERTS HOPE AND FRUSTRATION.
The star and six of the planets as they would appear from the vantage point of the fifth outermost planet, Trappist-1f. All of the planets and the Sun are to scale. One of the worlds is seen transiting in front of the star.
MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
Another swirl of debate, also fueled by JWST observations, is centered on the TRAPPIST-1 system. Home to at least seven rocky planets, three of which are in the habitable zone, TRAPPIST-1 is a hotspot for hopeful astrobiologists.
Earlier this year, JWST revealed that the system’s innermost two worlds — TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c — look like airless rocks, although it’s possible they just have really thin atmospheres. Neither of those planets is in the habitable zone, but many astronomers took the news as a discouraging sign that the star TRAPPIST-1 might have swept away the atmospheres of all its closest planets, including the potentially habitable ones. But others say it’s too soon to give up hope.
1. BUT DO WE NEED TO LOOK THAT FAR? ALIEN LIFE MIGHT BE RIGHT HERE IN OUR BACKYARD.
The Juno spacecraft’s Junocam instrument captured this detailed photo of Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede during a June 2021 flyby.
NASA
Closer to home, several studies this year show that Jupiter’s icy moons look extremely promising for alien life, or at least habitability, in a part of our Solar System that we used to consider totally uninhabitable.
NASA’s JUNO spacecraft spotted salt and organic molecules splattered across the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, and JWST revealed frozen carbon dioxide on the surface of Europa. Both moons are hiding vast, dark oceans beneath their thick, icy exteriors, and finding those chemicals on the surface suggests two important things: one, material from the ocean can reach the surface, where it might be easier for us to study. And two, those ice-covered alien oceans seem to have chemistry that could support life as we know it.
Scientists described a slew of new species this past year, including an electric blue tarantula, two pygmy squid, a silent frog, and some thumb-sized chameleons.
Experts estimate less than 20% of Earth’s species have been documented by Western science.
Although a species may be new to science, it may already be well known to local and Indigenous people and have a common name.
Many new species of plants, fungi, and animals are assessed as Vulnerable or Critically Endangered with extinction as soon as they are found, and many species may go extinct before they are named, experts say.
Scientists named hundreds of new to science species this year, including an electric blue tarantula, two pygmy squids, a silent frog, and some thumb-sized chameleons. These newly uncovered creatures give us just a glimpse into the immense biodiversity yet to be found across the planet.
“I think most people believe that we know most species on Earth … but in the best-case scenario, we know 20% of Earth’s species,” Mario Moura, a professor at the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil, told Mongabay in a March 2021 interview.
Experts estimate only 10-20% of Earth’s species have been documented by Western science.
This year, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences described 153 new plant, animal and fungi species. Since 2020 alone, researchers have classified 100,000 new plant and fungus species. However, at this pace, researchers say documenting all life could take centuries, and many species may go extinct before they’re even named.
More than a million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, suggests the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Many new species of plants, fungi, and animals are assessed as vulnerable or critically endangered with extinction as soon as they’re found.
“There is something immensely unethical and troubling about humans driving species extinct without ever even having appreciated their existence and given them consideration,” Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, told Mongabay,
It’s important to note that although a species may be newly described by science, Indigenous people often know about species long before they’re “discovered” by Western science.
“Many species that are new to science are already known and used by people in the region of origin — people who have been their primary custodians and often hold unparalleled local knowledge,” writes Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Here’s a look at our top new-to-science species from 2023
Nanostructures on the tarantula’s hairs produce an iridescent effect. Image courtesy of Yuranan Nanthaisong.
A new electric-blue tarantula species has been described by scientists in Thailand, making it the first known tarantula species from Thai mangroves. The spider’s vivid blue coloration is created not by pigments but by nanostructures on the tarantula’s hairs that manipulate light and produce an iridescent effect.
Researchers from Khon Kaen University and wildlife YouTuber JoCho Sippawa found these vibrant blue tarantulas in the muddy conditions of Phang Nga province’s mangrove forest. The researchers have raised concerns about the tarantulas’ mangrove habitats being cleared for oil palm cultivation.
Scientists have just described six new species of thumb-sized chameleon in the Eastern Arc Mountains. Image courtesy of Michele Menegon.
Six new species of tiny, threatened pygmy chameleons have been discovered in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains, a biodiversity hotspot where rapid deforestation threatens endemic wildlife. The chameleons, which can fit on a thumb, reflect the exceptional yet fragile diversity of the mountains’ isolated forests that scientists are still documenting.
Agricultural expansion driven by population growth and government initiatives to increase food production continue to drive montane forest loss at an alarming rate, shrinking the habitat these new chameleon species depend on. While some forests have been upgraded to higher protection status recently, lack of enforcement and resources enable ongoing encroachment.
Conservationists say they hope flagship species like the colorful chameleons can boost the global profile of the Eastern Arc Mountains to promote tourism and secure funding for protection programs involving local communities.
Scientists have described a new-to-science snake species from Peru’s Otishi National Park and named it after the actor Harrison Ford for his conservation advocacy. The pale yellowish-brown snake with black blotches was found in high-elevation wetlands and identified using genetic techniques. Satellite data and imagery show several areas of forest loss throughout the park, which appear to have been caused by natural landslides. Still, some bear the hallmarks of human-caused clearing likely linked to coca cultivation and drug trafficking.
A growing number of researchers also argue that species should not be named after people, as such names may perpetuate a negative legacy associated with imperialism and racism.
A female bent-toed gecko, Cyrtodactylus santana. Image courtesy of Chan et al. (2023).
Scientists have described a new species of bent-toed gecko from a remote cave in Timor-Leste. The new species was confirmed through DNA analysis and further examination of collected specimens and is named after the young nation’s first national park, Nino Konis Santana National Park. Timor-Leste, in Southeast Asia’s Wallacea region, has high levels of biodiversity, including numerous endemic species of birds and other animals. Continued research and exploration in Timor-Leste is expected to uncover many more new plant and animal species, possibly from the same cave where the new gecko was found.
Ryukyuan pygmy squid (Idiosepius kijimuna) attached to a blade of seagrass, photographed in the wild. Image courtesy of Brandon Ryan Hannan.
Researchers found two new species of tiny, reddish pygmy squid in the biodiverse coral reefs and seagrass beds near the Japanese island of Okinawa. The Ryukyuan pygmy squid (Idiosepius kijimuna) and Hannan’s Pygmy Squid (Kodama jujutsu), which measure less than 12 millimeters (0.5 inches), are nocturnal and difficult to spot, but were documented through collaboration between scientists and underwater photographers. Their whimsical names connect them to Japanese folktales, matching their elusive nature and coastal forest habitats, which are threatened by climate change and human activity.
A new species of spiny-throated reed frog found Tanzania’s Ukaguru Mountains. Images courtesy of Christoph Liedtke via Lawson et al. (2023).
Scientists have described a new-to-science species of frog from Tanzania’s Ukaguru Mountains with a unique trait: it’s silent. The males of this species have tiny spines on their throats, which may serve as a means of species recognition for the females.
Researchers encountered the species during an expedition in search of another species, the elusive Churamiti maridadi tree toad, which has only been spotted twice in the wild and is feared to be extinct. The Ukaguru Mountains have a high degree of endemism, and describing this new species highlights the vast amount of knowledge still to be gained about this biodiversity-rich area.
Venomius tomhardyi pictured next to an illustration of Tom Hardy’s Venom character. Image courtesy of Rossi et al. (2023). Illustration by Zeeshano0 via Pixabay.
A new genus and species of spider found in Tasmania has been named Venomius tomhardyi after actor Tom Hardy and his Marvel character Venom, due to the distinctive black spots on the spider’s abdomen resembling Venom’s head. The orb-weaving spider belongs to the Araneidae family and builds circular webs to catch prey, but unlike related spiders, it doesn’t have tubercles on its abdomen and creates silk shelters inside tree branches. Researchers found the spider on an expedition across multiple Australian states by researchers who aim to fully document the continent’s spider diversity to aid conservation efforts.
Two of the three new nautilus species identified in the Coral Sea and the South Pacific: Nautilus vitiensis (left) and Nautilus vanuatuensis (right). Images courtesy of Barord et al.
Researchers have described three new species of nautilus found in the Coral Sea and the South Pacific. The three species differ in genetic structure, shell size and coloration, and geographic location. Scientists generally know little about nautiluses but are working to fill in the data gaps to understand how to protect them. Nautiluses are highly threatened by the shell trade, as well as pollution and the impacts of climate change.
The unusual eyes of Uroplatus garamaso help to distinguish it from closely related species of leaf-tailed geckos. Image courtesy of by Jörn Köhler/Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
A new species of leaf-tailed gecko, Uroplatus garamaso, has been described from northern Madagascar. Like other geckos in its genus, U. garamaso is a master of camouflage due to skin flaps that allow it to resemble tree bark during the daytime when it presses against branches. At 8-14 centimeters (3-5.5 inches) long, it’s a relatively large gecko for Madagascar. The forest where the gecko lives face threats from logging and fires, endangering U. garamaso which, like many endemic Madagascan species, has a restricted range that makes it vulnerable to habitat loss. More geckos are still being uncovered in Madagascar’s exceptionally biodiverse ecosystems.
The new leafless orchid is named Gastrodia pushparaga due to its coloration and the locality. Image courtesy of Bhathiya Gopallawa.
A new leafless ground orchid found in a lowland wet-zone forest in Sri Lanka has been named after a precious yellow sapphire, a gemstone commonly extracted from the same district. The plant grows in Walankanda, a forest frontier in the island’s intermediate zone with unique characteristics that will likely make these plants susceptible to future climate change impacts earlier than other wet-zone rainforest plants.
Tea plantations are the main driver of forest fragmentation in the area. However, an ambitious project aims to create an ecological land corridor through neglected tea estates, linking the forest where the orchid was first found with another fragmented forest patch.
Only one Río Negro stream tree frog (Hyloscirtus tolkieni) has been found, living in the tropical Andes of Ecuador. Image courtesy of Juan Carlos Sánchez-Nivicela.
A new species of frog has been described from the tropical Andes of Ecuador and named after J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of famous works of fantasy literature. Only one individual of the species was found, within the bounds of Río Negro-Sopladora National Park.
Río Negro-Sopladora was declared a protected area in 2018 and serves as a critical link in the highly diverse Sangay-Podocarpus Corridor, home to many rare and endemic plants and animals. The scientists who described the frog say research and monitoring are urgently needed to better understand this unique species and assess potential threats to its survival, such as invasive species, emerging diseases, and climate change.
The Sibon canopy snake was found in Panama. Image courtesy of Alejandro Arteaga.
Researchers have described five new species of snail-eating snakes from the upper Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador and Colombia and the Chocó-Darién forests of Panama. Three of the new species were named by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, conservationist Brian Sheth, and the NGO Nature and Culture International to raise awareness about the threats these snakes face due to mining and deforestation.
Ecuador and Colombia saw an increase in illegal gold mining along rivers and streams during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have affected populations of these fragile snakes and has led to conflict and division within communities. Snail-eating snakes are arboreal and depend on wet environments to survive, so deforestation and mining pollution, including illegal gold mining, affect both the snakes and the snails and slugs that they rely on for food.
Microparmarion sallehi. Image courtesy of Menno Schilthuizen et al.
A group of researchers and citizen scientists have identified a new semi-slug species. The so-called “snug,” a snail whose external shell is too small to house its entire body, can be found in the lowland rainforests of northern Borneo Island. The researchers suggest there may be some half a dozen other species from the same genus waiting to be described, highlighting the rich biodiversity of this region.
Banner image: One of the six newly described chameleons from Tanzania, which are already at risk of extinction due to habitat loss, according to researchers. Image courtesy of Michele Menegon.
Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay and holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Tulane University, where she studied the microbiomes of trees. View more of her reporting here.
Japan is on track to become the fifth country to land a probe on the Moon, after its SLIM spacecraft successfully entered lunar orbit on Dec. 24. The $100m mission, dubbed the “moon sniper”, aims to demonstrate Tokyo’s ability to land a lightweight, low-cost spacecraft on the Moon with high precision.
The SLIM spacecraft is expected to land within 100m of a location near the Shioli crater, on the near side of the Moon. The landing attempt is scheduled for Jan. 19, after the spacecraft spends a month circling the Moon. This would mark a historic moment for Japan, as a successful touchdown would join the ranks of the United States, Russia, China, and India, who have previously achieved the feat of landing a probe on the Moon.
The SLIM mission is part of Japan’s ambitious space exploration efforts, which include sending a rover to explore the lunar surface, collecting samples from an asteroid, and participating in the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. The mission also showcases Japan’s technological prowess and innovation, as the SLIM spacecraft is designed to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper than previous lunar landers.
The SLIM spacecraft weighs only 130kg, compared to the 1,500kg of China’s Chang’e-4 lander, which landed on the far side of the Moon in 2019. The SLIM spacecraft also costs only $100m, a fraction of the $1.3bn budget of India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission, which failed to land on the Moon in 2019. The SLIM spacecraft is equipped with advanced navigation and guidance systems, which allow it to autonomously adjust its trajectory and attitude during the landing process.
The launch of SLIM was carried out by a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-2A rocket, which also carried the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) satellite. The XRISM is a joint project between the Japanese, American, and European space agencies. The satellite, containing a telescope the size of a bus, has parted ways with the lunar lander to orbit around the Earth. It will now begin studying space phenomena such as black holes.
The successful launch and lunar orbit entry of SLIM follow a series of failures over the past year. Last November, JAXA lost contact with its OMOTENASHI spacecraft and aborted the Moon landing mission. More recently in April, a private Japanese start-up, iSpace, failed to land its Hakuto-R lander after it too lost contact with the spacecraft. Two test rocket launches have also failed this year.
The SLIM mission represents a significant step forward in Japan’s space exploration efforts. The mission’s success so far demonstrates the country’s resilience and determination in the face of previous setbacks. As the world watches, the upcoming moon landing attempt is set to be a pivotal moment in space exploration history.
Artist's impression of the lunar explorer on the Moon.
Japan Probe Enters Lunar Orbit Ahead of Historic Moon Landing
Japan Probe Enters Lunar Orbit Ahead of Historic Moon Landing
By AFP
Artist's impression of the lunar explorer on the Moon.
(JAXA)
Japan's SLIM space probe entered the Moon's orbit on Monday in a major step towards the country's first successful lunar landing, expected next month.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is nicknamed the "Moon Sniper" because it is designed to land within 100 metres (328 feet) of a specific target on the lunar surface.
If successful, the touchdown would make Japan only the fifth country to have successfully landed a probe on the Moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India.
On Monday, SLIM "successfully entered the moon's orbit at 04:51 pm Japan time" (0751 GMT), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement released Monday evening.
"Its trajectory shift was achieved as originally planned, and there is nothing out of the ordinary about the probe's conditions," the agency said.
The lander's descent towards the moon is expected to start around 12:00 am Japan time on January 20, with its landing on the surface scheduled for 20 minutes later, JAXA said.
The H-IIA rocket lifted off in September from the southern island of Tanegashima carrying the lander, after three postponements linked to bad weather.
JAXA said this month that the mission would be an "unprecedentedly high precision landing" on the Moon.
The lander is equipped with a spherical probe that was developed with a toy company.
Slightly bigger than a tennis ball, it can change its shape to move on the lunar surface.
Compared to previous probes that landed "a few or 10-plus kilometres" away from targets, SLIM's purported margin of error of under 100 metres suggests a level of accuracy once thought impossible, thanks to the culmination of a 20-year effort by researchers, according to JAXA.
With the advance of technology, demand is growing to pinpoint targets like craters and rocks on the lunar surface, Shinichiro Sakai, JAXA's SLIM project manager, told reporters this month.
"Gone are the days when merely exploring 'somewhere on the moon' was desired," he said.
Hopes are also high that SLIM's exactitude will make sampling of lunar permafrost easier, bringing scientists a step closer to uncovering the mystery around water resources on the moon, Sakai added.
Japanese missions have failed twice – one public and one private.
Last year, the country unsuccessfully sent a lunar probe named Omotenashi as part of the United States' Artemis 1 mission.
In April, Japanese startup ispace tried in vain to become the first private company to land on the Moon, losing communication with its craft after what it described as a "hard landing".
Since its launch last year, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has repeatedly proven itself to be an incredible asset in the search for answers to many of the lingering questions about our universe.
Having offered some of the most stunning imagery of the distant universe ever collected, NASA has said the telescope “has delivered on its promise of revealing the universe like never before in its first year of science operations.”
Looking back on a year of groundbreaking discoveries and breathtaking imagery Webb has brought to the world, here are some of the key highlights brought to us by Webb in 2023 that have expanded our view of the cosmos.
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE CONFIRMS ITS FIRST EXOPLANET
In January, a team of researchers led by Kevin Stevenson and Jacob Lustig-Yaeger confirmed the discovery of an exoplanet with help from the James Webb Space Telescope. Formally named LHS 475 b, the discovery was made following a careful review of a series of targets of interest from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
Artist’s concept of Exoplanet LHS 475 b and Its Star (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI)).
The telescope’s powerful Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) succeeded in obtaining imagery of the exoplanet throughout just two of its transit observations.
“There is no question that the planet is there,” said Lustig-Yaeger. “The fact that it is also a small, rocky planet is impressive for the observatory.” Mark Clampin, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, added that the detection of “an Earth-size, rocky planet open the door to many future possibilities for studying rocky planet atmospheres with Webb.”
WEBB GETS GRITTY WITH VIEW OF A REMOTE CLOUDY PLANET
In March, NASA unveiled new features about the atmosphere of a distant planet 40 light-years away from Earth, which included the swirling sandstorms in its scorching atmosphere.
The planet, designated VHS 1256 b, is located within a relatively young triple brown dwarf system approximately 40 light years away, orbiting a pair of stars over 10,000 years, which are roughly four times farther from it than the distance between the Sun and Pluto.
(Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted)
The James Webb Space Telescope was able to reveal the presence of silicate clouds blanketing the alien world, along with its rising and mixing atmosphere, which confirmed that silicate dust grains of varying sizes are present within the clouds encircling VHS 1256 b, resulting in scorching hot sandstorms that blanket the alien world.
WEBB FINDS WATER, AND MUCH MORE WHILE OBSERVING AN ASTEROID
In May, Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument helped astronomers make the first detection of water vapor in the vicinity of a comet in the main asteroid belt, confirming that water ice from the early solar system can be preserved there.
Artist’s Concept of Comet 238P/Read (Credit: NASA/ESA).
Curiously, the detection of water vapor was made in the absence of any sign of carbon dioxide, presenting new questions for astronomers involved with the discovery.
Stefanie Milam, Webb’s deputy project scientist for planetary science and the co-author of a study on the discovery, said her team’s observations help to unravel “the history of water distribution in the solar system,” adding that it “will help us to understand other planetary systems, and if they could be on their way to hosting an Earth-like planet.”
WEBB SPOTS EERIE RINGS SURROUNDING A STAR
Astronomers attempting to study the first asteroid belt ever seen beyond our solar system using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) discovered far more than they went looking for this year, which included a series of glowing discs encircling the star Fomalhaut.
Fomalhaut, as seen by Webb
(NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Gáspár, University of Arizona, A. Pagan).
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), a trio of nested belts was detected around the star, sprawling as much as 14 billion miles outward into the surrounding space.
The brightest star visible in the “Southern Fish” constellation Piscis Austrinis, Fomalhaut is a relatively young class A star located around 25 light-years from Earth’s Sun.
WEBB CELEBRATES ITS ANNIVERSARY BY PEERING INTO THE OPHIUCHI CLOUD COMPLEX
In celebration of the anniversary of its launch in 2022, in July NASA released images obtained by the telescope featuring a nursery for star formation, located in an area of interstellar clouds consisting of different nebulae within the Ophiuchus constellation some 390 light years from Earth, known as the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.
Released on July 12, the image represented more than just a snapshot of the nearest region to Earth where stellar formation occurs; at less than 400 light years away, there are no stars in the foreground obstructing Webb’s view of Pho Ophiuchi, meaning that the imagery provides some of the greatest clarity and depth of any infrared view of the cosmos any human-made telescope has ever obtained of the distant universe.
The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, as captured in imagery by the James Webb Space Telescope marking its first year in operation (Credit: NASA/JWST).
The imagery prompted Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, to call them “a breathtaking treasure trove of images and science that will last for decades,” adding that Webb’s sharp eye has “given us a more intricate understanding of galaxies, stars, and the atmospheres of planets outside of our solar system than ever before, laying the groundwork for NASA to lead the world in a new era of scientific discovery and the search for habitable worlds.”
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE OFFERS A NEW LOOK AT AN ICONIC SUPERNOVA
In August, Webb’s NIRCam managed to obtain new imagery of the Large Magellanic Cloud, providing astronomers with potentially crucial information not only about this iconic celestial object, but also about the development of supernovae.
Officially designated SN 1987A, this supernova within the Large Magellanic Cloud has long appealed to astronomers since its discovery in 1987, presenting an ideal target for viewing at gamma-ray and radio wavelengths.
In the imagery obtained earlier this year, a central structure resembling a keyhole was detected within the heart of the supernovae. “This center is packed with clumpy gas and dust ejected by the supernova explosion,” read a NASA statement, which added that the dust within it is “so dense that even near-infrared light that Webb detects can’t penetrate it.” Of course, that didn’t prevent Webb from obtaining some of the most striking imagery ever obtained of the object.
MYSTERIOUS BRIGHTNESS AT THE COSMIC DAWN IS FINALLY SOLVED
New simulations produced by a Northwestern University-led team of astrophysicists in October helped to solve the riddle of why galaxies appeared too bright in the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) initial images of the universe’s earliest galaxies.
Artist’s concept of early starbursting galaxies
(Credit: Aaron M. Geller, Northwestern, CIERA + IT-RCDS)
The Northwestern team found that the galaxies weren’t as massive as the imagery seemed to convey, and that even galaxies possessing less mass can glow as brightly as more massive ones, due to the presence of brilliant bursts created with the birth of new stars, in findings that align with the standard model of cosmology.
WEBB EXOPLANET DISCOVERY MAY “RESHAPE OUR UNDERSTANDING” OF PLANETARY EVOLUTION
In November, astronomers reported that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) succeeded in detecting water vapor, sand clouds, and sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b.
A transmission spectrum of the warm Neptune exoplanet WASP-107b, captured by the Low Resolution Spectrometer (LRS) of the Mid InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) on board JWST, reveals evidence for water vapour, sulfur dioxide, and silicate (sand) clouds in the planet’s atmosphere.
(Image: Michiel Min / European MIRI EXO GTO team / ESA / NASA; Klaas Verpoest (LUCA School of Arts, Belgium)
The discovery, led by a team of European astronomers from Belgium’s KU Leuven University, revealed the presence of water vapor, sulfur dioxide, and silicate sand clouds while notably lacking methane, a common greenhouse gas, around the exoplanet.
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE UNVEILS URANUS IN WAYS NEVER BEFORE SEEN
In December, NASA released stunning new enhanced imagery of the ice giant Uranus, in a series of updated images captured by its premiere space observatory earlier this year.
The seventh planet from the Sun in our solar system, Uranus possesses a striking bluish green color, caused by its atmosphere composed primarily of helium and hydrogen, which the new imagery captured by the James Webb Space Telescope showcases in remarkable clarity, along with several of the planet’s twenty-seven known satellites.
The newly enhanced versions of imagery depicting Uranus, were originally obtained earlier this year by the James Webb Space Telescope
(Credit: NASA/ESA/JWST).
The new image was based on enhancements of a two-color version of the same view of Uranus released earlier in 2023, which employs additional wavelength coverage that allows more details to be revealed in the latest versions.
With the many incredible discoveries Webb has made throughout 2023, the future is looking bright for NASA’s premier space observatory, and we can certainly expect more remarkable views of the cosmos from Webb as we head into 2024.
While UFOs came to Washington in 2023, ultimately they left the same way they came: Shrouded in mystery and sensationalism.
Venus and Jupiter shine to the left of the United States Capitol dome.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Philip Yabut)
For those who follow news related to anomalous flying objects, 2023 will be remembered as the year UFOs came to Washington, D.C.
Not in the way we'd all like, though. No, there were no Tic-Tac-shaped UFOs landing on the White House lawn or big black triangles hovering silently in the air above it. Instead, there were new bureaucratic offices and government websites created, pieces of dense legislation deliberated over, and hearings. Lots of hearings.
Throughout the pockets of social media that are most vocal about UFOs, many thought that this year would finally bring about disclosure, the revelation of UFO-related truth in which the U.S. government would finally fess up and reveal what it has allegedly been covering up about unidentified, physics-defying craft and their possible occupants for at least seven decades.
But disclosure didn't happen. While many sensational claims were made that would, if true, indeed bring about ontological shock and a rethinking of our place in the universe, in the end none of these was substantiated with little more than hearsay. As is tradition.
The big UFO year began on Jan. 12, when the Pentagon's Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its long-awaited "2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." The report, produced by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) that was established in July 2022, included over 500 reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, a new term that describes unidentified objects or phenomena in the air, under water, in space or that appear to travel between them.
The much-anticipated report analyzed the reports, finding only 171 that remained "uncharacterized," or unidentified. "Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis," the report stated. Ultimately, while the report was unable to reach any broad conclusions about UFOs/UAP, it found that many of these sightings "continue to represent a hazard to flight safety and pose a possible adversary collection threat," meaning they could possibly be related to foreign spy activities.
Just a few weeks later, on Feb. 1, UFOs took center stage in both Washington D.C. and the news cycle when a large white orb was spotted floating over Montana. The object turned out to be a massive high-altitude balloon operated by China. The appearance of such a brazen intelligence-gathering aircraft caused an international stir, and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs eventually issued an apology.
The balloon was eventually shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 5 and recovered by the U.S. military. In the weeks that followed, several other UFOs were shot down over the northern United States and Canada, some of which were never recovered and remain unidentified to this day — at least publicly.
Soon after, The New York Times reported that similar balloons had intruded in American airspace between 2017 and 2021 and that military and governmental leaders were unaware of them in some cases because they were initially mischaracterized as UAP. "Balloons account for many of the unexplained incidents the Navy and other military services have tracked in recent years. The previous incidents, like other unexplained events, were handed over to a Pentagon task force charged with investigating UFOs and other aerial phenomena," the Times wrote in its report. "As the Pentagon and intelligence agencies stepped up efforts over the past two years to find explanations for many of those incidents, officials reclassified some events as Chinese spy balloons."
Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on Feb. 5, 2023. (Image credit: U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson)
The furor over the Chinese spy events continued through the early spring, leading up to the first public testimony of the director of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office on April 19, 2023. During that testimony, Sean Kirkpatrick, AARO's first director, told members of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services at a hearing in Washington, D.C. that, despite the rather sensational claims in mainstream and social media concerning possible alien visitation of Earth, his office found "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."
Instead, most UAP cases "demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, [uncrewed] aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena or other readily explainable sources," Kirkpatrick told the armed services committee.
The next month, NASA held the first public meeting of its independent UAP study group at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. NASA commissioned the group in 2022 to help examine data related to unidentified anomalous phenomena and make recommendations on how the agency might better contribute to the topic.
During the meeting held on May 31, group members laid out a roadmap for how U.S. government agencies can "use the tools of science to evaluate and categorize the nature of UAPs going forward," said Nicki Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
While many different potential approaches for accomplishing this were described and discussed, ultimately the group, like AARO before it, reached the conclusion that UAP will remain mysterious without better data. "To make the claim that we've seen something that is evidence of non-human intelligence, it would require extraordinary evidence," said astrophysicist David Spergel, chair of the study group and former member of the NASA Advisory Council. "And we have not seen that. I think that's important to make clear. "
Still, the public and governmental interest in UFOs by this point had reached such a height that two U.S. Senators, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), introduced a bill known as the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of 2023, or the Schumer-Rounds amendment, which called for the public release of U.S. government records related to UFOs and/or UAP.
"For decades, many Americans have been fascinated by objects mysterious and unexplained, and it’s long past time they get some answers," Schumer said in a statement accompanying the bill. "The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena. We are not only working to declassify what the government has previously learned about these phenomena but to create a pipeline for future research to be made public."
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) talk to reporters after meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on Oct. 31, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Allegations get wilder
Undoubtedly, the most out-of-this world UFO event of 2023 came two months after NASA's UAP study group meeting when, on July 26, three former U.S. military personnel testified to the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on National Security at the Border and Foreign Affairs. Two of the witnesses, Ryan Graves and David Fravor, are former U.S. Navy aviators who had previously reported highly publicized encounters with unknown objects in military training airspace that have become touchstones for the UFO community in terms of credible sightings from reputable, trained witnesses.
But it was the third witness at the July hearing that caused the biggest stir. That witness, David Grusch, a decorated U.S. military combat veteran and former Pentagon intelligence officer, told the subcommittee that the U.S. government has operated a "multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program," along with a disinformation campaign to keep the public in the dark.
Grusch would go on to state to the subcommittee that "biologics came with some of these recoveries" and that these "biologics" were "non-human," according to individuals with direct knowledge of these crash recovery programs that he had spoken with during his time in the intelligence community.
Naturally, a media feeding frenzy ensued, and Grusch has since become a regular talking head on the podcast circuit and television news programs. Evidence for his claims has yet to surface.
Ryan Graves, executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Officer Representative of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force at the U.S. Department of Defense, and Retired Navy Commander David Fravor are sworn-in during a House Oversight Committee hearing titled 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency' on Capitol Hill July 26, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Image credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
A month later, on Aug. 31, the Pentagon's AARO office quietly unveiled an official government website through which U.S. government personnel can report UFO/UAP sightings "in the vicinity of national security areas" such as military bases or other U.S. government sites.
NASA's UAP study team would then go on to release a written report on Sept. 14 that reached similar conclusions to AARO director Kirkpatrick's testimony in April. "The top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a teleconference held after the agency released the report. "The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don't know what these UAP are."
The year in UFOs would ultimately end not with a bang, but with a whimper, when in December the U.S. Congress approved legislation containing a portion of the Schumer-Rounds language that ordered that some government records related to UAP must be released.
However, many UFO disclosure proponents felt that the final version of the Schumer-Rounds amendment was far weaker than what was originally proposed.
"The most important components of the Schumer-Rounds language were dropped — an independent Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena power, professional staff to search out records, and other serious resources," Douglas Dean Johnson, an independent researcher who writes on various aspects relating to UAP, told Space.com. "What is being enacted instead is a modest mechanism that is far less likely to result in the location, extraction and disclosure of important UAP-related records that may be tightly held or even long forgotten."
All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
For those who have followed the UFO topic for a significant amount of time, none of these developments should feel new. The U.S. government has commissioned and/or conducted several UFO studies in the past, many of which reached similar conclusions as those reported by federal studies and agencies in 2023.
So, yes, while UFOs came to Washington in 2023, ultimately they left the same way they came: Shrouded in mystery, tainted by sensationalism, and wrapped in the jingoistic and sometimes paranoid language of national security. The U.S. government, at least outwardly, appears no closer to solving the UFO enigma or revealing what it may know about these phenomena to the American public.
Yet, anyway. Many of those behind the current disclosure movement assure us that despite the legislative setbacks, the fight for the truth — if it's out there — is just beginning.
Here's hoping we see that big black triangle over the White House in 2024.
If we learned anything in 2023, it’s that we need to stop trusting global government leaders and lawmakers when they tell us they’re working on UFO/UAP disclosure.
Every year, for as long as most of us can remember, the U.S. government has promised some type of conclusive UFO/UAP disclosure. We know global governments have been collecting data on unidentified phenomena for more than 80 years, but in all this time, the general public has never been given even a hint of explanation as to what these things are.
This past year, 2023, that was supposed to change, with lawmakers like Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seemingly aligned on the need for the Pentagon to release information the American taxpayer is funding them to collect on UFOs. But when the final draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) hit headlines, all of the promises by Burchett, Schumer and basically every single person perpetuating the UFO conspiracy was ignored.
Not only is the government refusing to release the information, but they made a rule where the president can literally classify anything he wants about those things whizzing around in our skies.
We were introduced to a big new face in the UFO psyop of 2023: former intelligence officer David Grusch. According to Grusch, he’s seen a bunch of “un-American” things related to aliens and made a series of sweeping claims about the U.S. government having alien crafts.
What has Grusch done to confirm his claims? Absolutely nothing. He’s brought zero physical evidence to support his statements, said some of the claims came from secondary sources and decided to tease “firsthand information” he claims to have instead of just releasing it. He’s about as convincing as those two “alien bodies” apparently recovered in Peru.
But that didn’t stop lawmakers from putting him front and center at a series of far-too-convenient government hearings.
Then there’s Harvard professor Avi Loeb, who managed to recover a piece of meteorite that he believes is an ancient piece of alien technology. None of this has been confirmed yet, but at least Loeb spent the year trying to find concrete evidence to back up a career’s worth of claims that UFOs are actually aliens.
The two weirdest stories about aliens and 2023 came from India and the U.S. Back in November, the Indian Air Force (IAF) scrambled two Rafale fighter jets because some weird orb was hanging out over Manipur’s Imphal airport. The entire place was shut down until the thing disappeared around sunset.
In December, right after the government absolutely screwed us on UFO disclosure, they had the audacity to push a video of a UFO allegedly flying over President Joe Biden while he traveled in Air Force 1 to Los Angeles.
In my opinion, this is the most laughably staged story of the year. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that a livestream video caught three different UFOs hovering around the most protected aircraft in the world back in October and no one noticed until December? How effing stupid do you think we are?
My official response to all things UFO in 2024 will be “okay bud,” with so much sarcasm you could butter your bread with it. Even if Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom rips his face off and reveals himself to be a lizard alien person, I still won’t believe it.
Why would anyone believe the same lie told for more than 80 years? Surely we’re better than that, fam. Or perhaps all of these things are just Chinese spy balloons.
Unveiling the Ancient Mysteries: UFO Sightings and Aboriginal Lore
Unveiling the Ancient Mysteries: UFO Sightings and Aboriginal Lore
In the vast, sun-scorched expanses of Australia, the Aboriginal people hold the title for the most ancient continuous culture on Earth. Their traditions and stories, passed down through an unbroken line of oral history, stretch back an astonishing 70,000 years. Among these ancient narratives are intriguing tales and rock paintings that hint at a connection between Australian Aborigines and otherworldly beings — a relationship so old it predates written history.
Unearthing the Connection: Ancient Rock Art and Lore
The Aboriginal rock paintings, scattered across the rugged Australian landscape, are not just artworks; they are a window into the past. Some of these depict humanoid figures with features not typical of humans; elongated bodies, oversized heads, and large, almond-shaped eyes. These figures, known traditionally as “Wandjina” or “Sky Beings,” have sparked debates among ufologists and historians alike. Could these images be one of the earliest representations of UFO sightings and extraterrestrial visitors in human history?
The Dreamtime: A Cosmic Chronicle
The Aborigines refer to the time of creation as “The Dreamtime,” a sacred era when mythical beings roamed the Earth and shaped the world. The stories from this time, rich with references to celestial spirits and sky gods, bear a striking resemblance to modern-day UFO and alien encounters. This profound connection suggests that the Aboriginal people might not have been just passive observers but active participants in a cosmic dialogue spanning thousands of years.
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Australia’s UFO Secrets | Full Alien UFO Documentary | UFOs Down Under – Unsealed Alien Files | TUU
Modern Implications: Bridging Ancient Lore with Today’s UFO Sightings
Today, the term “UFO sightings” often conjures images of mysterious aircraft in contemporary settings. However, when viewed through the lens of Aboriginal history, these sightings are not just modern phenomena but part of a much larger, deeper story. By understanding the Aboriginal perspective, we gain insight into how these ancient experiences shaped their culture and spirituality and how they might inform our current understanding of the UFO phenomenon.
De eenzaamste dingen in het universum Moderne mensen zijn misschien wel het meest bekend met eenzaamheid, omdat is bewezen dat het een steeds vaker voorkomend gevoel is, ondanks onze geavanceerde vormen van verbinding. Maar wij zijn hierin niet de enige. Er zijn veel wezens in het universum die gewend zijn alleen te zijn.
Klik verder om meer te weten te komen over de eenzaamste dingen en wezens in het
52 Blue Stel je voor dat je de enige persoon ter wereld bent die een bepaalde taal spreekt, en dat niemand je ooit zou kunnen begrijpen. Welkom in de wereld van de eenzaamste walvis ter wereld.
52 Blue Terwijl de meeste walvissen communiceren met een frequentie van 10–39 Hz, roept 52 Blue met een frequentie van 52 Hz, wat betekent dat geen enkele andere walvis hem kan horen of zelfs maar weet dat hij er is.
52 Blue Terwijl hij zonder vrienden of familie door de uitgestrekte oceaan dwaalt, is deze eenzame walvis (ontdekt in de jaren tachtig) zeker een van de eenzaamste wezens ter wereld.
Opportunity, de Mars rover In Februari 2019 kondigde NASA aan dat ze nog een laatste keer zouden proberen contact op te nemen met hun recordbrekende, maar stille Mars-rover, voordat ze hem na vijftien jaar dood zouden verklaren. Dit veelgebruikte apparaat is een van de vieste plekken in huis
Opportunity, de Mars rover De rover die voor het eerst water op Mars bevestigde, is het slachtoffer van een van de meest intense stofstormen in decennia en leeft misschien nog wel, maar NASA kan niet blijven roepen zonder reactie.
Opportunity, de Mars rover “Het is net als een dierbare die vermist is, en je blijft hopen dat ze zullen komen opdagen en dat ze gezond zijn”, zei de projectmanager. “Maar elke dag die voorbijgaat, wordt dat minder, en op een gegeven moment moet je ‘genoeg’ zeggen en verder gaan met je leven.”
Opportunity, de Mars rover Stel je NASA voor als Noah uit 'The Notebook' en Opportunity als Allie, en hoe eenzaam ze zich allebei voelden omdat ze geen contact met elkaar kregen.
Lonesome George Zijn naam geeft aan hoe eenzaam deze Pinta-eilandschildpad (Chelonoidis abingdoni), afkomstig uit de Galápagos, werkelijk was. Lonesome George was de laatste van zijn soort.
Lonesome George Zijn soort was in de 19e eeuw niet zeldzaam, maar de hele populatie werd door mensen uitgeroeid en tijdens lange zeereizen voor vlees geoogst, omdat ze wel een jaar zonder voedsel of water konden leven.
De ontdekking van George in 1972 was een soort wonder, aangezien men dacht dat zijn soort uitgestorven was. Hij was 60 jaar oud en werd naar een dierentuin gebracht, waar het verhaal alleen maar triester werd.
Lonesome George In plaats van dat hij een vredig einde van zijn leven kreeg zoals de meeste andere 60-jarige dieren, werd George aangespoord om te paren met andere ondersoorten, wat geen succesvolle nakomelingen opleverde. Hij stierf in 2012, en zijn hele dier soort met hem.
Toughie de kikker Toughie was de laatste boomkikker van de Rabbs ter wereld, een soort die gewoonlijk werd aangetroffen terwijl hij van de ene boom naar de andere zweefde in het regenwoud van Panama.
Hij werd in gevangenschap gebracht om hem te beschermen tegen een wijdverbreide infectie die de rest van zijn soort doodde, maar het leven dat hem te wachten stond, bevond zich naar verluidt in een saaie, grijze zeecontainer ver van een regenwoud.
Toughie de kikker Toughie werd niet gedwongen te paren, aangezien kikkers alleen paren met hun eigen soort, en het laatste vrouwtje van zijn soort al was gestorven. Hij heeft zeven jaar alleen gewoond.
Het treurigste aan Toughie's verhaal is echter dat hij, toen hij eenmaal in gevangenschap was, zijn paringsoproepen volledig stopte en niet meer wilde reageren op opgenomen oproepen, alsof hij wist dat er niemand meer voor hem was.
Curiosity de rover Alleen op een planeet die vele lichtjaren van huis verwijderd is, heeft de Curiosity-rover bijna zeven jaar op Mars doorgebracht, maar hoe eenzaam kan een robot zijn?
Curiosity de rover Welnu, op de eenjarige verjaardag van de landing op Mars zong de kleine Curiosity 'Happy Birthday' voor zichzelf. Het had officieel de eenzaamste verjaardag in de Melkweg.
Sudan de neushoorn Sudan, een noordelijke witte neushoorn, werd in 2009 naar de Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenia gebracht, in het gezelschap van nog een mannetje en twee vrouwtjes, die allemaal aan de massale stroperij ontsnapten.
Sudan de neushoorn Het overgebleven mannetje overleed in 2014, en alle druk om de witte neushoornsoort te redden werd op Sudan gelegd.
Sudan was al in de veertig en had een afnemend aantal zaadcellen en verzwakte achterpoten, waardoor het voor hem moeilijk werd een vrouwtje te bestijgen.
Sudan de neushoorn Hoewel Tinder geld inzamelde voor onderzoek naar in-vitrofertilisatie, zorgde de afnemende gezondheid van Sudan ervoor dat dierenartsen hem in 2018 lieten inslapen.
Sudan de neushoorn Nog tragischer is zijn nalatenschap, aangezien hij twee vrouwtjes, een dochter en kleindochter achterlaat als de laatst overgebleven leden van hun ondersoort.
Boom van Ténéré Het is waarschijnlijk dat hij samen met vele anderen is ontsproten voordat de woestijn een woestijn werd, maar hij werd de enige overlevende nadat een in 1938 gegraven put hem een constante bron van water gaf.
Boom van Ténéré Aan zijn trotse maar eenzame strijd tegen de klok werd abrupt een einde gemaakt in 1973, toen een dronken bestuurder erin slaagde het enige obstakel in de honderden kilometers te bereiken. Een metalen sculptuur neemt nu zijn plaats in de woestijn in.
Het eenzaamste eiland ter wereld Tristan da Cunha is eigenlijk een archipel van vier eilanden, maar er is er maar één bewoond: het eiland Tristan da Cunha. Het is het meest afgelegen bewoonde eiland ter wereld.
Het eenzaamste eiland ter wereld Het buitengewone eiland, een slepend bezit van het Britse rijk, ligt in de verre Zuid-Atlantische Oceaan, duizenden kilometers van zowel de kust van Brazilië als Zuid-Afrika.
Het eenzaamste eiland ter wereld Het eiland heeft ongeveer 250 inwoners, wier enige manier om Tristan in en uit te reizen een zesdaagse boottocht is. Maar de inwoners zijn er naar verluidt dol op!
De "Man van het Gat" Een geïsoleerde inheemse man in Brazilië woont al minstens 22 jaar alleen in het Amazonegebied en noemt hem de eenzaamste man ter wereld.
Er wordt aangenomen dat hij het enige overgebleven lid van zijn stam is, toen vanaf de jaren '80 boeren, illegale houthakkers en landrovers hun grondgebied in Rondônia binnendrongen en hen afslachtten.
De "Man van het Gat" Hij kreeg zijn bijnaam vanwege de enorme gaten die hij in het bos heeft gegraven, om dieren in te vangen of zich voor mensen te verstoppen.
De "Man van het Gat" Niemand kent de naam van zijn stam of de taal die hij spreekt, maar FUNAI, het Braziliaanse departement voor inheemse zaken, heeft het land waarop hij leeft beschermd, ondanks dat hij naar verluidt pijlen heeft afgevuurd op medewerkers die contact met hem proberen op te nemen.
De "Man van het Gat" In 2018 bracht FUNAI zeldzame videobeelden uit van de man die halfnaakt in het bos stond en vurig met een bijl zwaaide. Helaas stierf de "Man of the Hole" in 2022.
Tektonische plaatbewegingen hebben ervoor gezorgd dat het Afrikaanse continent in tweeën is gesplitst sinds de start van de Oost-Afrikaanse Riftbreuk, een 56 kilometer lange kloof in de Ethiopische woestijn, in 2005.
Volgens onderzoekers laat de platentektoniek in Ethiopië zien dat het Afrikaanse continent zich aan het splitsen is, wat de weg vrijmaakt voor de geboorte van de zesde oceaan op aarde.
Het scheidingsproces tussen de Somalische tektonische plaat en de Nubische tektonische plaat is aan de gang sinds de opkomst van de Oost-Afrikaanse Rift in 2005.
Deze geleidelijke scheiding van de platen zal resulteren in de verdeling van het op een na grootste continent ter wereld in tweeën, een fenomeen dat al honderden miljoenen jaren niet meer is waargenomen, toen Zuid-Amerika en Afrika afzonderlijke continenten vormden.
Deze conclusies zijn gebaseerd op een onderzoek uit 2004, gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Earth and Planetary Science Letters, waaruit bleek dat de platen elk jaar een paar millimeter uit elkaar gaan.
Landen die momenteel geen toegang hebben tot de zee, zoals bijvoorbeeld Ethiopië of Oeganda, zullen een nieuwe kustlijn langs deze nieuwe oceaan zien verschijnen.
“De wateren van de Golf van Aden en de Rode Zee zullen over de Afar-regio naar de Oost-Afrikaanse Riftvallei stromen om een nieuwe oceaan te vormen, en dit deel van Oost-Afrika zal een klein, onafhankelijk continent worden”, voorspelt professor Ken McDonald, emeritus aan de Universiteit van Californië.
There are many cases where individuals claim to have been abducted by aliens. Such stories lack perfect evidence of alien abduction but the injuries, body marks, lost memories, and details given by the witnesses sign a strange phenomenon that had happened to them. One such interesting incident occurred with Jim Sparks, who claimed to had been in a relationship with extraterrestrials, also known as “the Keepers,” for a long time.
Jim Sparks, the author of the book “The Keepers,” is considered to be the only alien contactee who remembers 95% of his encounters with aliens. It includes time travel, invisibility, multi-dimensionality, and manipulation of gravity and electromagnetic fields.
Originally, Sparks’ real name was Vincent Sparacino, he was born in an Italian family on November 15, 1954. He spent his childhood in Southern Florida and then moved to Texas in 1979. Later, he bought raw land in North Carolina and started living a happy life with his wife as a landowner but at the same time, he preserved land for trees.
Jim Sparks
Sparks’ first encounter with the otherworldly beings took place in 1988 at the age of 34. He said it was 3:30 a.m., and he was fully conscious of what was happening around him. He woke up by the low-pitched, whirling sound in his head. Soon, he realized that his body was paralyzed, and he could move neither his arms nor legs.
“I’m usually pulled the same way, which I call the ‘hard way’, and it’s completely physical. My whole body is taken. I wake up from my natural sleep, and then there’s the whirling sensation in the pit of my stomach and it feels like its’ coming up into my chest. when it gets up to my heart area, my heart starts beating fast, just racing in my head, and the whirling sound starts picking up rpm and is tremendously loud. It starts low and rises in pitch and screams in your head. The fear is like you’re going to die. Your heart is racing a million miles an hour and then you get this acceleration feeling, but I always feel like I’m being pulled down; I never feel like I’m being pulled up. It’s like I go down a rollercoaster, only a hundred times faster, and whoom-you black out and you’re there, where it is you’re going to be, usually on board a craft.”
Sparks was 100% sure that he was pulled from his bed through the ceiling as other abductees have also claimed. The aliens have the technology that can create a field capable to move humans and other things through solid matter. What’s more, it could make things invisible. Sparks remembered that after he regained his consciousness, he found himself in a craft.
His next encounter happened in May 1995, but this one was a life-changing experience. During this meeting, he encountered reptilian humanoids. He was again pulled up through the ceiling, again paralyzed, blacked out, and was taken to an abandoned amusement park. He felt no fear that time, he even enjoyed the ride.
“As my eyes opened, I saw that I was at least a thousand feet above the ground and slowly descending. Below me was an abandoned carnival park. I was floating over a large, old-fashioned wooden rollercoaster and I wasn’t scared! I was calm and relaxed, and the ride was so gentle I was actually enjoying it.”
When Sparks landed on the ground, he found out that he was surrounded by dozens of tall humanoid creatures. Two-meter-tall aliens were standing around him in a closed circle, and everyone was looking at the alien on Sparks’ left. His face was covered with a luminous hologram superimposed by a human face.
The reptoids communicated through telepathy with Sparks. And it seemed to him that they were all directing their thoughts to the alien on his left. That is, it turned out that they had one mind.
He could see the moving lips of the alien with a human face, but he heard a voice in his head. The reptoids told him telepathically that their civilization had long been in contact with the government leaders and heads of power. As a result, it was possible to reach certain agreements that are kept secret from people, since humanity was not ready for the truth.
In particular, an agreement was reached with the governments to improve the environmental conditions on the planet with the help of alien devices and technologies provided to them, but they violated this agreement.
“It was also agreed that, in the meantime, steps would be taken to correct the environmental condition of your planet with our advice and technology. We say advice, because we respect the fact that this is your planet, not ours. Your government also broke this agreement.”
Linda Moulton Howe helped Jim Sparks to tell the world his story
According to the alien, the water of the Earth is contaminated, plants, trees, and forests are dying, also several breaks have formed in the human food chain. “You have an amount of nuclear and biological weapons which include nuclear and biological contamination.”
The planet is overpopulated to a critical level, and this can lead to the end of humanity. Then, the aliens suggested better ways to derive energy and provide food to people without destroying Earth. And some people in the governments are familiar with these technologies, but they are not taking any action because they take clean energy and abundant food as a security threat.
At the end of the conversation, the aliens said that in the near future, they would share more information with Sparks because of his work of saving trees.
Before they went away, Sparks requested them to show him their real appearance. The aliens warned him that it might scare him, but he insisted. Near the aliens, a greenish luminous spot appeared in the air, which gradually became brighter. It highlighted the enormous growth of the creatures, whose bodies were covered with powerful muscles. Their heads were like snakes. These were representatives of the reptoid civilization. The diamond-shaped eyes shone with red pupils.
“Their faces looked like a cross between a lizard and a snake — nothing at all like the little grey guys.”
After the communication with aliens, Sparks realized that the Reptoids were interested in saving humanity only to fulfill their needs because the disorientation in the human civilization could impose a serious threat to their own efforts.
He was well aware of the fact that if he told his story by himself, there might have been consequences and probably he would end up in some mental hospital, so he took the help of famous American investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe to spread his story.
Universe Today recently examined the potential for sending humans to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, and the planet Venus, both despite their respective harsh surface environments. While human missions to these exceptional worlds could be possible in the future, what about farther out in the solar system to a world with much less harsh surface conditions, although still inhospitable for human life? Here, we will investigate whether Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, could be a feasible location for sending humans sometime in the future. Titan lacks the searing temperatures and crushing pressures of Venus along with the harsh radiation experienced on Europa. So, should we send humans to Titan?
“Yes!” Dr. Jason Barnes, who is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Idaho, excitedly tells Universe Today. “Titan is the second-safest place in the solar system after Earth. It’s protected from radiation, pressurized, and has great science to be gained by crewed exploration.”
In addition to his academic duties, Dr. Barnes is also the Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA’s upcoming Dragonfly mission, which is a rotorcraft designed to explore Titan’s prebiotic chemistry and liquid methane lakes and seas, along with Titan’s atmosphere of 95 percent nitrogen and 5 percent methane. Powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG)—which currently power NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers—Dragonfly will carry a suite of instruments to help determine the habitability potential for Titan, which, in addition to being the largest moon of Saturn, is is also the second-largest moon in the solar system—the largest being Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede.
Artist’s rendition of NASA’s Dragonfly exploring the Titan’s surface. (Credit: NASA)
While Dragonfly will conduct the most in-depth surface exploration of Titan, this will not be the first spacecraft to land on Titan’s surface, as that honor goes to the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe, which landed on Titan’s surface in January 2005 and transmitted data for approximately 90 minutes after touchdown before its batteries ran out. Additionally, Titan was studied in-depth by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at various times throughout its mission between 2004 and 2017. But with all this science having already been conducted by these robotic explorers, what additional science could be conducted by a human mission to Titan compared to a robotic mission?
“Similar to Mars, human boots on the ground could accomplish more exploration science faster than robots,” Dr. Barnes tells Universe Today. “Additionally, should life or prebiotic chemistry be found on Titan, people on-site could more safely study such life without risk of backward contamination to Earth. Finally, because of its safety, Titan is a prime target for long-term human habitation as we progress outward into the solar system.”
In terms of an orbital versus a surface mission for humans to Titan, Dr. Barnes tells Universe Today, “Orbital missions with people don’t make sense for science. Robotic orbiters do a great job, and our experience has shown that human remote sensing doesn’t provide any advantages over the robots. But a long-term surface mission with a base and surface mobility could open up an entire world of science.”
This “world of science” includes up-close investigations of Titan’s prebiotic chemistry, biochemistry, and organic chemistry, along with how Titan’s atmosphere and seas and lakes of liquid methane could influence such chemical reactions for both the short and long term. However, living on Titan’s surface would also come with its myriad of challenges, as well. While Titan is well-shielded from harmful solar radiation, its surface is both unbearably cold and extremely dark, as surface temperatures have been measured at -179.2 degrees Celsius (-290.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and Titan’s surface is estimated to receive only 0.1 percent of the sunlight that Earth receives. But, how else could this “world of science” pose additional challenges to human explorers on Titan’s surface?
“Challenges on the surface could be that the very organic molecules that make Titan so interesting could prove carcinogenic to a crew if pains are not taken to avoid getting them into the habitat,” Dr. Barnes tells Universe Today. “Another challenge is generating power out there — you’d basically need to bring a nuclear reactor with you, because there’d be no native way to generate the power needed to drive crewed exploration.”
In addition to the challenges of living on Titan’s surface, there is also the concern of the distance and travel time to the Saturnian system from Earth, as several missions have taken a minimum of several years to reach the Saturnian system, even if they took a direct route. For example, NASA’s Pioneer 11 spacecraft launched in 1973 and needed six and a half years to reach Saturn after flying by Jupiter. Only a few years later, NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft were launched in 1977 and required three years and two months and four years, respectively, to reach Saturn after they conducted flybys of Jupiter. While NASA’s Cassini mission conducted the most in-depth investigation of Saturn and its many moons, the spacecraft still required six years and nine months to get to Saturn after conducting two gravity assists at Venus, one at Earth, and one at Jupiter.
Currently, the fastest spacecraft to reach Saturn is NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which only required two years and four months to reach the ringed planet on its direct trajectory to Pluto. Therefore, even if a human mission were to take a direct route to Titan, it would still require a minimum of two years to arrive. Therefore, this lengthy travel time could hamper any resupply or rescue operation to Titan for a human mission.
“The travel time would be so long that any such expedition would need to be a pretty massive undertaking,” Dr. Barnes tells Universe Today. “Although astronauts would be safe on Titan’s surface from radiation, they would be subject to damage from solar storms en-route, at least while in the inner solar system. They’d be so far away from home that there would be no possibility of rescue if their systems failed, so plenty of backups would need to be brought along.”
Will we ever send humans to Titan? Will we learn more science than from a robotic mission like Dragonfly, and what will such a mission teach us about living and working so far from Earth? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
After a journey spanning almost two decades, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane, named Tenacity, is officially undergoing environmental testing at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility located at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in anticipation of its maiden flight to the International Space Station (ISS), currently scheduled for April 2024. The environmental testing consists of analyzing the spacecraft’s ability to withstand rigorous vibrations during launch and re-entry, along with the harsh environment of outer space, including extreme temperature changes and vacuum conditions. This testing comes after Sierra Space announced the completion of Tenacity at its facilities in Louisville, Colorado last month, along with the delivery of Sierra Space’s cargo module, Shooting Star, to the Neil Armstrong Test Facility that same month, as well.
Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, imaged at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility after being delivered just a few days ago. (Credit: Sierra Space/Shay Saldana)
“At Sierra Space, we are ushering in the next industrial revolution with a business and technology platform that provides our customers with a complete turn-key solution offering space as a service,” Tom Vice, Sierra Space CEO, said in an official statement. “Our platform includes Dream Chaser, a revolutionary, highly reusable commercial spaceplane with global runway access, and the first business-ready commercial space station, leveraging the most advanced expandable structural architecture that will exponentially decrease the cost of product development and manufacturing in space.”
Sierra Nevada naming its first spacecraft “Tenacity” is only fitting given Dream Chaser’s long and difficult journey getting to this point. This includes rejections, company buyouts, legal proceedings, engineering designs, test flights, and finally being selected by NASA in January 2016 to deliver cargo to the ISS. Less than a year after being approve by NASA, Dream Chaser successfully performed a successful free flight test at Edwards AFB in southern California in November 2017, which was a huge milestone for the spacecraft and the advancement of the commercial space industry.
The goal of Dream Chaser is to provide a more cost-effective method for delivering cargo and supplies to the ISS, as while the spaceplane will be launched on a rocket, it will land like an airplane just like NASA’s Space Shuttle used to do. This will further enable its reusability capabilities, as NASA has contracted Dream Chaser for a minimum of six cargo resupply missions to the ISS during its contract.
Dream Chaser’s maiden flight next year will be a collaboration between flight and ground controllers at the Dream Chaser Mission Control Center in Louisville, Colorado, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. During this flight, Tenacity will conduct a myriad of in-flight tests after launch and prior to docking with the ISS. This includes performing vehicle maneuvering demonstrations within the ISS approach ellipsoid, which is a 4 x 2 x 2-kilometer (2.5 x 1.25 x 1.25-mile) invisible border encircling the ISS.
Unlike the autonomous docking system employed on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, Dream Chaser will be docked and undocked to the ISS using the Canadarm2, which is a 17-meter-long (56-foot-long) robotic arm built by the Canadian Space Agency and installed on the ISS in 2001. During this mission, Tenacity is slated to deliver more than 3,500 kilograms (7,800 pounds) to the ISS and stay docked with the orbiting laboratory for approximately 45 days before being undocked by Canadarm2 and returning to Earth.
Once Dream Chaser is greenlit for future flights after this first mission, it will be capable of delivering approximately 5,200 kilograms (11,500 pounds) of supplies to the ISS while staying docked for up to 75 days. Additionally, Dream Chaser will be capable of returning more than 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds) of experiments and cargo from the ISS to Earth, with more than 4,000 kilograms (8,700 pounds) of trash being discarded during Earth reentry using the Shooting Star cargo module.
How will Dream Chaser help improve outer space exploration in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
After a journey spanning almost two decades, Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane, named Tenacity, is officially undergoing environmental testing at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility located at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in anticipation of its maiden flight to the International Space Station (ISS), currently scheduled for April 2024. The environmental testing consists of analyzing the spacecraft’s ability to withstand rigorous vibrations during launch and re-entry, along with the harsh environment of outer space, including extreme temperature changes and vacuum conditions. This testing comes after Sierra Space announced the completion of Tenacity at its facilities in Louisville, Colorado last month, along with the delivery of Sierra Space’s cargo module, Shooting Star, to the Neil Armstrong Test Facility that same month, as well.
Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane, Tenacity, imaged at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility after being delivered just a few days ago. (Credit: Sierra Space/Shay Saldana)
“At Sierra Space, we are ushering in the next industrial revolution with a business and technology platform that provides our customers with a complete turn-key solution offering space as a service,” Tom Vice, Sierra Space CEO, said in an official statement. “Our platform includes Dream Chaser, a revolutionary, highly reusable commercial spaceplane with global runway access, and the first business-ready commercial space station, leveraging the most advanced expandable structural architecture that will exponentially decrease the cost of product development and manufacturing in space.”
Sierra Nevada naming its first spacecraft “Tenacity” is only fitting given Dream Chaser’s long and difficult journey getting to this point. This includes rejections, company buyouts, legal proceedings, engineering designs, test flights, and finally being selected by NASA in January 2016 to deliver cargo to the ISS. Less than a year after being approve by NASA, Dream Chaser successfully performed a successful free flight test at Edwards AFB in southern California in November 2017, which was a huge milestone for the spacecraft and the advancement of the commercial space industry.
The goal of Dream Chaser is to provide a more cost-effective method for delivering cargo and supplies to the ISS, as while the spaceplane will be launched on a rocket, it will land like an airplane just like NASA’s Space Shuttle used to do. This will further enable its reusability capabilities, as NASA has contracted Dream Chaser for a minimum of six cargo resupply missions to the ISS during its contract.
Dream Chaser’s maiden flight next year will be a collaboration between flight and ground controllers at the Dream Chaser Mission Control Center in Louisville, Colorado, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. During this flight, Tenacity will conduct a myriad of in-flight tests after launch and prior to docking with the ISS. This includes performing vehicle maneuvering demonstrations within the ISS approach ellipsoid, which is a 4 x 2 x 2-kilometer (2.5 x 1.25 x 1.25-mile) invisible border encircling the ISS.
Unlike the autonomous docking system employed on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, Dream Chaser will be docked and undocked to the ISS using the Canadarm2, which is a 17-meter-long (56-foot-long) robotic arm built by the Canadian Space Agency and installed on the ISS in 2001. During this mission, Tenacity is slated to deliver more than 3,500 kilograms (7,800 pounds) to the ISS and stay docked with the orbiting laboratory for approximately 45 days before being undocked by Canadarm2 and returning to Earth.
Once Dream Chaser is greenlit for future flights after this first mission, it will be capable of delivering approximately 5,200 kilograms (11,500 pounds) of supplies to the ISS while staying docked for up to 75 days. Additionally, Dream Chaser will be capable of returning more than 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds) of experiments and cargo from the ISS to Earth, with more than 4,000 kilograms (8,700 pounds) of trash being discarded during Earth reentry using the Shooting Star cargo module.
How will Dream Chaser help improve outer space exploration in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
The Atmosphere of an Exoplanet Reveals Secrets About Its Surface
As astronomers have begun to gather data on the atmospheres of planets, we’re learning about their compositions and evolution. Thick atmospheres are the easiest to study, but these same thick atmospheres can hide the surface of a planet from view. A Venus-like world, for example, has such a thick atmosphere making it impossible to see the planet’s terrain. It seems the more likely we are to understand a planet’s atmosphere, the less likely we are to understand its surface. But that could change thanks to a new study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astrophysical Society.
Rocky worlds have a rich chemical exchange between their surfaces and their atmospheres. On Earth, the cycles of rain and evaporation, seasons of growth and harvest, and volcanic activities change the atmospheric composition over time. These exchanges happen over a long timescale, so Earth’s surface and atmosphere are never in a state of mutual equilibrium. On Venus, with its thicker atmosphere and dry surface, the timescale of exchange is shorter, but still not fast enough to reach a balance.
In this study, the authors argue that for warm Venus-like worlds with particularly thick atmospheres, a chemical equilibrium between surface and air can be reached. These worlds are the kind we find closely orbiting small stars, so they are well-suited for atmospheric studies.
How different types of terrestrial worlds affect their atmospheres. Credit: Byrne, et al
To show how this works, the team simulated chemical interactions right at the interface between the atmosphere and the rocky surface. Their simulations showed that chemical equilibrium for simple molecules such as carbon dioxide the atmosphere of Venus can be used to probe the composition of its surface, and depending on surface temperature, Venus-like exoplanets could see strong interactions for more complex molecules CaAl2Si2O8 and MgAl2O4.
In other words, under the right circumstances, small rocky worlds closely orbiting their warm star are excellent candidates for this kind of study. What we learn about their atmospheres can open a window on the composition of their surface, and even their geological activity. We could even determine whether certain minerals are present or absent on the surface of an exoplanet, without ever viewing its surface directly.
This kind of information is vital to our understanding of how terrestrial planets form. Previous studies have already shown that our solar system is rather unusual and that a solar system free of large planets in the inner solar system is rare. By understanding the evolution and composition of the inner planets of other stars, we will learn why our solar system is unusual, and perhaps even learn if life such as ours is common or rare in the Universe.
De meest sinistere vrijgegeven CIA-operaties De Central Intelligence Agency, beter bekend als de CIA, heeft sinds de officiële oprichting in 1947 angst, achterdocht en nieuwsgierigheid gewekt. Voordat het de CIA heette, stond het bekend als het Office of Strategic Services, en was het verantwoordelijk voor een aantal zaken. van de meest geheime operaties tijdens en na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Als CIA is de organisatie berucht geworden vanwege haar schijnbare minachting voor het federale en internationale recht, en wordt ervan verdacht een aantal projecten af te handelen waar zelfs de president van de Verenigde Staten niet van op de hoogte is. Van het omverwerpen van regeringen en het organiseren van false flag-operaties tot het introduceren van een van 's werelds meest verslavende drugs in de VS: de geheime operaties van de CIA die aan het licht zijn gekomen, zijn op zijn minst fascinerend om over te lezen.
Gefascineerd? Lees verder voor meer informatie over enkele van de vrijgegeven daden van de CIA.
Het Manhattan Project Het Manhattan Project is misschien wel de meest bekende geheime operatie van de Amerikaanse regering en had verwoestende gevolgen. Het werd in 1939 gestart en geleid door Robert Oppenheimer en had het doel om de mogelijkheid te onderzoeken om atoomenergie als wapen in te zetten. Dat werd al snel duidelijk.
Het Manhattan Project In augustus 1945 werden twee atoombommen op de Japanse steden Hiroshima en Nagasaki gegooid, waarmee aan de wereld werd bewezen dat atoomenergie in feite als wapen kon worden gebruikt om onvoorstelbare schade en lijden aan te richten.
Project 1794 Het was een geweldige dag voor UFO-fans toen de Amerikaanse regering in 2012 een groot aantal documenten vrijgaf waarin het plan om een vliegende schotel te bouwen gedocumenteerd was. Hoewel de door de overheid uitgegeven schotel niet zou worden gebruikt voor buitenaardse ambities, zou het een geheim wapen zijn dat wordt gebruikt in de strijd tegen de Sovjets.
Project 1794 Project 1794 begon in de jaren vijftig en duurde niet lang. Het voorgestelde vliegtuig had een aantal hoge doelen om waar te maken, zoals een topsnelheid van vier keer de snelheid van het licht, een maximale hoogtebereik van 30.480 meter en een geschat prijskaartje van $ 26 miljoen. In 1961 werd na enkele voorbereidende tests geconcludeerd dat met de technologie van die tijd, deze doelen niet haalbaar waren.
Project MK-Ultra Dit project, bekend als MK-Ultra, was het uitgebreide onderzoek van de regering naar het gebruik van geestverruimende stoffen en hun vermogen om soldaten en burgers te hypnotiseren. Het werd in 1953 gestart en geleid door Sydney Gottlieb en kostte ten minste $ 10 miljoen ($ 87,5 wanneer rekening wordt gehouden met inflatie) aan belastinggeld om de effecten van verschillende chemicaliën, met name LSD, op nietsvermoedende proefpersonen te bestuderen.
Project MK-Ultra Talloze CIA-agenten en willekeurige personen kregen het medicijn toegediend zonder dat ze op de hoogte waren gesteld, een directe schending van de Neurenberg-code. Eén slachtoffer, een patiënt in een psychiatrische inrichting in Kentucky, kreeg 174 dagen lang elke dag LSD.
Operatie Paperclip Terwijl de Verenigde Staten en de Sovjet-Unie tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog nog bondgenoten waren, veranderde dat snel aan het begin van de Koude Oorlog. De landen werden vijanden van elkaar.
Operatie Paperclip Een van de meer twijfelachtige en weinig bekende strategieën die door de Amerikaanse regering zijn bedacht, stond bekend als Operatie Paperclip. De beste nazi-wetenschappers die niet waren berecht in de processen van Neurenberg, werden banen aanboden binnen de Amerikaanse regering. Veel van deze personen, waaronder een hooggeplaatst lid van de nazi-partij Wernher von Braun, zouden met NASA gaan werken aan hun ruimteprogramma.
Project Mockingbird Project Mockingbird was een geheime afluisteroperatie die werd uitgevoerd op bevel van president John F. Kennedy tussen maart en juni 1963. Het werd geheim gehouden tot 2001.
Project Mockingbird Het eerste doelwit van de telefoontaps was New York Times-verslaggever Hanson Baldwin. Hij had vertrouwelijke informatie in de krant gepubliceerd waarin de atoomarsenalen van de Verenigde Staten en de USSR in een artikel werden vergeleken. In de loop van de operatie werden echter ook twee andere journalisten aangevallen.
Operation Washtub Kort na het uitbreken van de Koude Oorlog begonnen de Verenigde Staten voorzorgsmaatregelen te nemen in het geval dat de Sovjet-Unie Amerikaans grondgebied zou binnendringen. Een van deze veiligheidsmaatregelen begon in de vroege jaren 1950 en werd Operation Washtub genoemd.
Operation Washtub Operatie Washtub bestond uit het in het geheim organiseren van een aantal gewone inwoners van Alaska tot een groep spionnen, decoders en potentiële verzetsstrijders. Deze groepen werden gewoonlijk opgericht door de CIA en de NAVO in heel Europa, maar de Washtub-groep was de enige waarvan bekend is dat die zich op Amerikaanse bodem begaf.
Acoustic Kitty Dit CIA-plan uit de Koude Oorlog kreeg de speelse bijnaam Acoustic Kitty en had het potentieel een revolutionair nieuw surveillance-systeem te worden. Acoustic Kitty ontstond in de jaren zestig en omvatte het chirurgisch plaatsen van een kleine microfoon in de gehoorgang van katten, die vervolgens werden losgelaten in de buurt van Sovjet-ambassades.
Acoustic Kitty Echter bleken de katten, zoals te verwachten was, niet zo goed in het opvolgen van bevelen. Nadat de eerste vierbenige agent bijna onmiddellijk werd aangereden door een taxi en nog een paar van het doel afdwaalden, werd het project beëindigd.
De ontvoering van Luna 3 In de jaren zestig was de Space Race in volle gang en nam de Sovjet-Unie de leiding. In 1959 hadden ze vanaf een afgelegen basis in Kazachstan met succes een raket, Luna 3, naar de maan gelanceerd, waar het het eerste ruimtevaartuig werd dat de donkere kant van de maan bereikte en fotografeerde.
De ontvoering van Luna 3 Toen Luna 3 terugkeerde naar de aarde, stuurden de Sovjets het op een publiciteitstour. De CIA, die natuurlijk alles wilde weten over deze baanbrekende satelliet, brak tijdens een nacht in de vrachtwagen die de raket vervoerde. De satelliet werd in één nacht volledig gedemonteerd en van elk onderdeel werden foto's gemaakt. Het ruimtevaartuig werd voor het ochtendgloren weer in elkaar gezet. Blijkbaar is de Sovjet-Unie er nooit achter gekomen. Tenminste, toentertijd.
De herverdeling van 'Doctor Zhivago' Kunst en literatuur zijn altijd al een van de meest waardevolle wapens geweest in een cultuuroorlog. Hierdoor kunnen boeken om verschillende redenen worden verbannen. In de Sovjet-Unie werden talloze boeken verboden en werden auteurs gecensureerd omdat ze 'antirevolutionair' of aanspoorde tot individualisme waren. Een van deze boeken die tijdens de Koude Oorlog verboden was, was de Russische klassieker 'Doctor Zhivago' van Boris Pasternak (foto).
De herverdeling van 'Doctor Zhivago' De CIA had 'Doctor Zhivago' gelezen en zag het als manier om de SU in verlegenheid te brengen. Met de hulp van Nederlandse uitgevers en diplomaten van het Vaticaan heeft de CIA ongeveer 1.000 exemplaren van de roman laten drukken en verspreid op de Wereldtentoonstelling van 1958.
Operatie Mongoose Als er iets is waar de CIA vooral om bekend staat, dan is het wel het helpen afzetten van buitenlandse leiders. In de jaren zestig gaf het bureau vooral prioriteit aan de moord op of het ontslag uit het ambt van de Cubaanse revolutionaire leider Fidel Castro. Onder de codenaam Operatie Mongoose werden tussen 1961 en 1963 een hele reeks mislukte moordpogingen uitgevoerd.
Operatie Mongoose Operatie Mongoose was verantwoordelijk voor meer dan 600 aanslagen op Castro's leven. Enkele van de meer creatieve plannen waren gasvormige LSD, het omkopen van de Amerikaanse gangster Sam Giancana (foto) om een aanslag te plegen, en vergiftigd ijs.
Project Iceworm Een van de problemen van vroege nucleaire raketten was hun beperkte bereik, wat een bijzonder hinderlijk obstakel was wanneer je potentiële doelwit een paar duizend kilometer verderop ligt. Een van de manieren waarop de Amerikaanse regering, met de hulp van de CIA, dit probleem probeerde te omzeilen, was door geheime raketsilo's te bouwen in de poolcirkel, onder de Groenlandse ijskap.
Project Iceworm Zeven jaar lang was Denemarken zich totaal niet bewust van het complex dat onder hun grondgebied werd gebouwd. Het project werd uiteindelijk in 1966 afgeblazen, nadat verschuivingen in de ijskap het plan onhaalbaar maakten.
Project Horizon In 1959, 10 jaar voordat NASA met succes een man op de maan zette, maakte de Amerikaanse regering enkele uiterst optimistische plannen voor een aantal permanente militaire bases op de maan, onder de naam Project Horizon.
Project Horizon De buitenposten, die in 1966 operationeel hadden moeten zijn, zouden 147 shuttles nodig hebben gehad om al het benodigde materiaal te vervoeren en zouden worden bemand door 16 Amerikaanse soldaten. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sloot het project snel af toen de verantwoordelijkheid voor ruimteverkenning van interne agentschappen naar NASA was verplaatst.
De ongeoorloofde surveillance van de FBI De FBI, een iets minder geheimzinnig agentschap van de regering van de VS, kwam in 2015 onder wijdverbreide controle te staan nadat een onderzoeksrapport gepubliceerd door de Associated Press onthulde dat ze het Amerikaanse volk van bovenaf hadden gesurveilleerd.
De ongeoorloofde surveillance van de FBI Het rapport legde uit dat de FBI kleine vliegtuigen had gebruikt die waren geregistreerd voor nep-private bedrijven in het hele land om mobiele telefoongesprekken af te luisteren en videobeelden van boven op te nemen. Binnen een periode van 30 dagen werden deze bewakingsvliegtuigen gespot in 30 verschillende Amerikaanse steden.
De nucleaire testen op Bikini Atoll Als je aan nucleaire testlocaties denkt, dan stel je je dat waarschijnlijk voor als een desolaat gebied. Echter is een van de zwaarst gebombardeerde locaties in de Amerikaanse geschiedenis, een paradijs in de Stille Oceaan.
De nucleaire testen op Bikini Atoll Direct na het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog en de bombardementen op Hiroshima en Nagasaki gingen de kernproeven op volle kracht door op de Marshalleilanden, met name op het Bikini-atol, waar tussen 1946 en 1958 23 atoombommen tot ontploffing werden gebracht. Deze eilanden waren oorspronkelijk niet onbewoond. De bijna 200 inwoners, die de eilanden hun thuis noemden, werden met geweld verjaagd.
De B-52-crash in 1968 In 1968 maakte een B-52-bommenwerpervliegtuig met vier atoombommen, routinerondes rond de Thule-luchthavenbasis van Groenland toen het onverwacht neerstortte. De autoriteiten gingen daarna onmiddellijk op zoek naar de nucleaire lading van het vliegtuig en vertelden kort daarna dat ze de volledige lading hadden veiliggesteld. Pas in 2008 rapporteerde de BBC over geheime documenten waaruit bleek dat een van de bommen nooit was gevonden.
30 vreemde feiten over DNA die je nog niet wist Het menselijk lichaam herbergt veel mysteries, en 's werelds grootste onderzoekers houden nooit op zich te verdiepen in de bouwstenen van het leven: DNA.
Van het detecteren van een risico op een bepaalde ziekte tot het oplossen van een strafzaak: de ontdekking van DNA heeft ons leven voor altijd veranderd. Maar als je dacht dat je alles al wist over dit integrale deel van ons lichaam, denk dan nog eens goed na. Bereid je voor om versteld te staan van deze vreemde feiten over wat wetenschappers James Watson en Francis Crick omschrijven als het ‘geheim van het le
Ontdekking van DNA Nobelprijswinnaars James Watson en Francis Crick zijn niet degenen die DNA hebben ontdekt, in tegenstelling tot wat vaak wordt gedacht. In werkelijkheid werd DNA voor het eerst geïdentificeerd door de Zwitserse chemicus Friedrich Miescher in 1869.
Genoom Het volledige DNA van een organisme, met al zijn genen, wordt een genoom genoemd. Een menselijk genoom bevat maar liefst drie miljard basenparen DNA.
Het menselijk genoom typeren Stel je voor dat je 60 woorden per minuut typt en dat je dat acht uur per dag doet. Het zou je ongeveer 50 jaar kosten om het volledige menselijke genoom te kunnen typen.
DNA beïnvloed door omgeving Iemands omgeving heeft invloed op zijn DNA. Hoewel het niet volledig verandert, beïnvloedt het wel de manier waarop de genen werken. Dit is bijvoorbeeld de reden waarom sommige mensen hariger of donkerder zijn dan anderen.
Genmutatie Veranderingen in genetische informatie worden mutaties genoemd. Veranderingen in het DNA van een organisme kunnen leiden tot veranderingen in alle aspecten van het leven.
Wat veroorzaakt genmutatie? Veel factoren kunnen een genmutatie veroorzaken: omgevingsfactoren zoals UV-straling van de zon, tabak, chemicaliën zoals drugs, enzovoort.
Forensisch onderzoek naar wilde dieren DNA wordt ook gebruikt in de forensische wetenschap van wilde dieren om misdaden tegen wilde dieren op te lossen en de stropers te identificeren.
Naar de zon en terug Als het mogelijk zou zijn om al het DNA in het lichaam van een mens uit te rekken, zou er genoeg DNA zijn om meer dan 300 keer naar de zon en terug te gaan. Let wel, de zon is 150 miljoen km van de aarde verwijderd!
Doorgegeven van ouder aan kind De helft van het DNA van een kind wordt geërfd van elke ouder. Dit betekent dat elke ouder de helft van zijn DNA doorgeeft aan zijn kind via seksuele bevruchting.
Vingerafdrukken Hoewel eeneiige tweelingen 100% van hun genen delen, hebben ze geen identieke vingerafdrukken. Maar omdat hun identieke genen hen zeer gelijkaardige patronen geven, is hun DNA bijna niet te onderscheiden. Dit betekent in feite dat als een eeneiige tweeling zijn DNA achterlaat op een plaats delict, het voor een misdaadlab onmogelijk is om de twee van elkaar te onderscheiden.
Perfecte misdaad De Duitse politie kon een sieradenoverval niet oplossen, zelfs niet nadat ze DNA op de plaats delict hadden gevonden. Het DNA-bewijs kwam overeen met twee eeneiige tweelingen, maar omdat ze allebei de misdaad ontkenden en omdat het onmogelijk was om het DNA aan een van hen te koppelen, liepen ze vrijuit.
Kaviaar DNA-tests worden niet alleen gebruikt voor mensen, maar ook voor het authentificeren van voedsel zoals goede wijn of kaviaar, om legale kaviaar van illegale te onderscheiden.
Levende harde schijf DNA is efficiënter dan welke harde schijf dan ook. Wetenschappers van Harvard zijn erin geslaagd om ongeveer 700 terabytes aan gegevens op te slaan in één gram DNA.
Verschillend DNA In zeldzame gevallen komt het voor dat één persoon twee verschillende sets DNA heeft. Bijvoorbeeld wanneer een embryo zijn eigen tweelingbroer in de baarmoeder opneemt.
Niet betrouwbaar DNA-bewijs kan om verschillende redenen onbetrouwbaar zijn in een rechtszaal. Eén reden is de zogenaamde ‘secundaire overdracht’ of ‘toevallige overdracht’, waarbij het DNA van een onschuldige man op een plaats delict kon worden gevonden nadat hij de crimineel de hand had geschud.
DNA-schade Het DNA ondergaat tot een miljoen beschadigingen per dag in elke lichaamscel. Deze schade wordt gerepareerd dankzij de reparatie-eiwitten die door de cellen worden gestuurd. Als dit mislukt, kunnen de cellen worden vernietigd of omgezet in kankercellen.
Uri Geller claims 'alien mothership lurking in solar system and could be watching us'
Uri Geller claims 'alien mothership lurking in solar system and could be watching us'
Uri Geller's shock at seeing a UFO in an image sent to him by an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel led to an embarrassing moment for the spoon bender, with the image deemed a fake soon after posting
Uri Geller's UFO encounter was proved bogus soon after he posted of the 'time warp' possibilities
(Image: theurigeller/Twitter)
Illusionist Uri Geller is convinced there is an alien mothership floating around our solar system, keeping tabs on our day-to-day activities.
Spoon bender Geller, 77, took to Twitter/X and was seemingly stunned by a photograph of a UFO. But further research into the image revealed it was not the alien encounter he had believed it to be.
Writing on the social media platform, Geller sent out two photos sent to him by an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel of what was, at first, believed to be a floating ship in the skies of Israel.
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One community note later and Geller is looking a bit red faced after heralding the visit of aliens, when actually he was looking at an edited street lamp.
Illusionist Geller took to Twitter/X with information on the alleged sighting(Image: Visual China Group via Getty Images)
He wrote: "This photograph was taken by an Israeli Lieutenant Colonel who is a close friend, he was driving today by a sensitive installation in Southern Israel when he photographed this strange looking object simply hanging in the sky then he says it simply shot away!
"Alien mothership lurking in our solar system could be watching us with tiny probes, Pentagon official suggests!" Geller later suggested the incident could be an observation of a "time warp".
He added: "A draft paper by a Harvard scientist and the head of the Pentagon's UFO office has raised the idea an alien mothership could be in the solar system, sending out tiny probes dubbed 'dandelion seeds' to explore the planets within.
The image in question was deemed edited, and the spaceship a lamp post head without the mast(Image: theurigeller/Twitter)
"Please all of you try to decipher this strange object in the photo and let me know what YOU think it is. Could this be some type of time warp?"
As it turned out, the answer to Geller's burning question was a resounding "no" as members of the public found the original photo of the alleged aircraft.
The UFO in question was actually a doctored image of a street lamp, which had its base digitally edited out and the subsequent result was enough to trick spoon-bending legend Geller into believing he had encountered life from another planet.
This day in UFO history: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident of 1980
This day in UFO history: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident of 1980
In the quiet, wintry scape of Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, a series of events unfolded during the Christmas season of 1980 that would etch its name into UFOlogy annals forever. Known as Britain’s Roswell, the Rendlesham Forest UFO incidentstands as a seminal and compelling narrative in the realm of unexplained phenomena.
The Encounter Begins
It all commenced in the early hours of December 26, 1980. Military personnel from the nearby RAF Woodbridge witnessed an inexplicable array of lights descending into the dense forestry. Compelled by the possibility of a downed aircraft, they ventured into the darkness, only to encounter something far beyond their understanding. What they found was not the wreckage of a plane, but a strange, metallic, triangular craft, capable of moving through the trees with an eerie, almost otherworldly agility.
Continued Sightings and Enigmatic Evidence
Over subsequent nights, the phenomena only escalated. More lights were seen, beams of unknown origin were spotted descending into the base, and personnel reported strange, static-filled voices on their radios. Perhaps the most unsettling was the radiation levels found at the supposed landing site, which were anomalously high. The physical effects reported by those who ventured near the craft included symptoms resembling radiation exposure, adding a layer of urgency and danger to the already baffling occurrences.
Government Response and Public Fascination
The UK Ministry of Defence’s stance was one of dismissive caution; it deemed the event as posing no threat to national security and thus unworthy of further investigation. This, however, did little to quell the public’s fascination or the conviction of those who had witnessed the events firsthand. The witnesses, many of them seasoned military personnel, were adamant about what they had seen and experienced, insisting on the presence of an unidentified craft of unknown origin.
The Legacy and Lasting Questions
Decades have passed since the lights first appeared in Rendlesham Forest, yet the incident remains a captivating enigma. Despite numerous theories ranging from lighthouse beams to top-secret aircraft, no explanation has fully accounted for all the witnessed events and gathered evidence. The Rendlesham Forest UFO incident continues to be a focal point for UFO enthusiasts and researchers, a case that seemingly resists conventional explanation and fuels the universal human quest for answers about what may lie beyond our understanding.
In a world where the search for extraterrestrial life has never been more intense, the Rendlesham Forest incident stands as a testament to the enduring allure of the unknown. It’s a story that continues to provoke, challenge, and inspire, a reminder that perhaps, in the vastness of the cosmos, we are not alone.
First Contact. It’s a topic guaranteed to inspire a mix of emotions in people. It’s also one of the most fascinating SF scenarios we can imagine. What will people do when “they” appear? Or when we find evidence of life elsewhere in the Universe? For answers, one suggestion is to turn to a discipline called “exosociology”.
According to a paper released recently by German researcher Andreas Anton and his partners, exosociology tackles the big questions that first contact raises. Will we be ready? What will we do when ET appears? And, what can the world’s societies do to prepare themselves? That paper delves into the answers and reviews the many ways humans will act when we discover we’re not alone in the cosmos.
You’d think that with all the signal hunting and exoplanet discoveries in the news, we would be ready for visitors from beyond. Anton and his colleagues suggest that with all our scientific expertise in space exploration, we still don’t have what it takes to prepare completely for “first contact”. We need to learn to communicate with those aliens. And, even more important, we need to understand our own reactions when they do appear. What we do and say will be part of the social and political response not only from scientists, but from world leaders and others who will deal with people’s reactions.
Communication is Key
Now, as it turns out, humanity isn’t totally without experience in communicating with alien “others”. Our entire history is one of learning to send messages between cultures that don’t always speak the same language (with variable results). But, that supposes that we have humans trying to talk to each other. What about communications with beings who don’t share our body type, brain abilities, or even sensory apparatus? There’s precedent. Very recently, scientists reported some success in communicating with whales—an entirely different species. And, there have been other efforts, such as simulating a message from aliens as practice. Can we apply what we learn in those efforts to communications with “alien cultures”? It’s possible, but we need a whole new research discipline to do it.
Andreas Anton and his colleagues suggest that communicating with aliens is very much a part of exosociology. Starting with other life forms here on Earth is a great idea. “Communications with other species on Earth is a topic of interest to exosociology”, he wrote in an email. “Communication with extraterrestrial entities could present us with enormous challenges, contrary to what is often depicted in science fiction. We could have to deal with entities for whom we cannot even begin to assume similar sensory channels, perceptual spaces, spatiotemporal orientations, etc. We refer to such a situation as a confrontation with the “maximum stranger”. The more we learn about interaction and communication with species on our planet, the better communication and interaction with extraterrestrials could succeed.”
What Will First Contact with Aliens Be Like?
Anyone who reads or watches science fiction can cite their favorite stories about the inevitable meeting between ET and humans. They range from evil aliens in “War of the Worlds” and “Mars Attacks” to benevolent beings like those in “Childhood’s End”, “E.T.”, and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (to name a few). SF is one way to imagine what it will be like. However, Anton and his team looked beyond science fiction and analyzed a few more likely scenarios for first contact.
The first one they looked at is the “signal” scenario. Essentially, this is the “intercept a signal from far away” that forms the basis of current SETI search programs. Someday we’ll pick up a signal from outer space, similar in content to the one in the movie “Contact”. The chances are pretty good that it traveled a very long distance. That means any kind of “instant communication” back and forth is going to be tough. But, it would signal to us in a very clear way that we’re not alone, even if ET is thousands of light-years away. It would probably spur scientists to ramp up their searches for more signals from other civilizations. Not only that, but a whole cottage industry would spring up of people trying to decipher the messages. Maybe they’d even figure out a way to reply.
Radio telescopes monitor the sky at the Allen Telescope Array in California. Finding a signal from a distant civilization is one way we could experience first contact with ET. (SETI Institute Photo)
Of course, if the signal is from a nearby civilization, Anton, et al, write, “On the one hand, this could lead to national and international efforts to establish a dialog or even direct contact through space travel. On the other hand, fears about the consequences of contact among the terrestrial population are likely to increase with decreasing distance. A signal from a comparatively short distance would add an element of uncertainty to individual and collective (political, economic) planning for the future.”
First Contact and Technosignatures of ET
Another scenario doesn’t involve any kind of active contact. Instead, it assumes that we find evidence of past or present technological civilizations. That could be the discovery of a Dyson sphere around a distant planet, for example. Or, perhaps signals from weapons used during a long-ago war in a faraway stellar system. Like the “signal” scenario, the social and societal effects of technosignatures would also depend on distance. Finding evidence of something many thousands of light-years away isn’t likely to excite as much interest as one made fairly close by. But, the paper makes clear that the mere existence of these technological “clues” would affect our science and sociology in many ways. The authors write, “The scientific community would go to great lengths to learn more about the nature and capabilities of these extraterrestrial civilizations.” And, of course, there would be political and social ramifications.
Artist’s impression of a Dyson Sphere, an proposed alien megastructure that is the target of SETI surveys. Finding one of these qualifies in a “first contact” scenario. Credit: Breakthrough Listen / Danielle Futselaar
Let’s say that somebody spots a Dyson sphere around a world. As a result, it’s possible that floodgates of funding would open up to help us understand that discovery. Whole new branches of science could develop as we figure out if we, too, could create one of these objects. Exosociology would benefit, too, as the authors point out. “In addition, the discovery of a technosignature would also have a strong impact on the social sciences and humanities and lead to new fields of research and questions. One of the central questions here is likely to be: What reasonable conclusions can be drawn about the extraterrestrial civilization from the discovered technological markers?”
An even bigger question deals with the political sphere. How will the leaders of Earth’s civilizations communicate the discovery of alien tech to their people? If the discovery was of a Dyson sphere, it could lead our political leaders to involve the military. Or, they might give more funding to science institutions to understand it. Of course, there’s always a question about whether the civilization that created the sphere poses a threat to us. That engenders another set of questions, along with planning for an “evil alien” scenario.
Meeting Aliens and Finding Spacecraft
Then there is the scenario of aliens showing up here on Earth. One of the more endearing traditions among Trekkies (fans of Star Trek) is to celebrate “First Contact Day” each year on April 5th. It commemorates the future date (in 2063) when humans and Vulcans first meet. It’s a lovely idea and presents a much-dreamed-about fictional interpretation of a benevolent meetup. We can only hope that it will happen that way. Certainly, such an encounter will also have incredibly profound effects on human societies.
If we DO end up having extraterrestrial visitors land on Earth for a visit, that brings us back to some important questions. How do we communicate with them? Should we fear them? Can we take advantage of their knowledge to improve our own science and societies? The communication challenge is something we’re working on now, with the whale project. However, beyond that, humans have shown throughout their history that communicating with “others” is problematic. It often leads to misunderstanding, wrong assumptions, and in the worse case, war. So, we need to focus on the “contact” part of “first contact”. That means improving our methods of communication and understanding among ourselves (and other species on THIS planet) if we want to have any hope of doing the same with ET, when and if they get here.
Zephram Cochrane makes first contact with a Vulcan explorer in the Star Trek” The Next Generation episode “First Contact.” Credit: Paramount Global.
In recent years, another type of “contact” has been touted by a Harvard scientist who is convinced that an interstellar asteroid is, in fact, an alien spaceship. There’s little evidence to support that idea, and rather more scientific data to show that the rock (called ‘Oumuamua) is a rocky alien asteroid taking a trip through our solar system. But, it certainly excited a lot of talk and scientific interest. So that raises the question: what if we did find an alien artifact in our solar system?
There’d be a cultural impact as people rush to understand what it is, how old it is, and where it originated. And, that would ripple out through the science, political, and social science communities. The spacecraft would represent a technology that we’d like to have for ourselves and our own future space travel. Its existence would probably spur a race among countries to be the first to exploit that information.
Artist’s impression of the interstellar object, `Oumuamua, as it experiences outgassing as it leaves our Solar System. Evidence points to its origin as an asteroid from another system, not necessarily an alien seeking first contact. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser
So, How Do We Prepare for First Contact?
Right now, we’re lucky. We don’t have any solid evidence of life elsewhere or aliens on this planet. That lets us be a little bit ignorant about what to do since we haven’t had to worry about it. But, we should be prepared because everything will change when first contact is made. So, we need to be ready. Anton and his co-authors suggest the following: we think of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as a high-risk research project that needs to be discussed openly. It’s a global risk, not just confined to one country. It’s also not just a scientific endeavor and any research done to discover other civilizations needs to be shared across all governments and political systems.
If first contact takes place, it’s going to be a global concern and international institutions will be involved. They’ll likely want to draw up policies and regulations, probably at the level of the United Nations. However, that doesn’t mean it becomes a secret. The first contact of any kind will be an incredibly extraordinary event. It will change the way we think about ourselves, our societies, and our planet. And, if history is any guide, we can either do it right, with advance preparation. Or, we can muddle through and hope that Mars doesn’t attack, or aliens with a hunger for more than knowledge of other species don’t see us as a tasty smorgasbord in space.
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Questions Remain on Chinese Rocket That Created an Unusual Double Crater on the Moon
A rocket body impacted the Moon on March 4, 2022, near Hertzsprung crater, creating a double crater roughly 28 meters wide in the longest dimension. Credits: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
Questions Remain on Chinese Rocket That Created an Unusual Double Crater on the Moon
In November, we reported how an impact on the Moonfrom a Chinese Long March rocket booster created an unusual double crater. For a single booster to create a double crater, some researchers thought there must have been an additional – perhaps secret – payload on the forward end of the booster, opposite from the rocket engines. But that may not necessarily be the case.
Other researchers feel the extra mass wasn’t anything secretive, but possibly an inert structure such as a payload adapter added to the rocket to support the primary mission payload.
Chang’e 5-T1 was an experimental robotic spacecraft, launched on October 23, 2014, by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) to test out the return capsule design planned for use on the future Chang’e 5 mission, China’s first-ever sample-return effort. Chang’e 5 landed on the Moon in November 2020 and successfully gathered lunar samples from the Moon’s Ocean of Storms region, with the container landing back on Earth on December 16, 2020.
Chang’e-5’s soot-streaked sample return capsule sits amid the snows of Inner Mongolia with a Chinese flag set up nearby. (Image via CCTV)
Before engaging in the first sample return effort for the country (and first in over forty years), China wanted to test out procedures and their sample return capsule. That was one of the 5 T-1 mission’s goals.
“The rocket was carrying a ‘Service Module’ satellite with a sample return capsule attached,” said Phillip Stooke, professor emeritus at the University of Western Ontario, in an email to Universe Today. “It would need a fairly substantial support structure (called a payload adaptor) to support the mass against the vibration and acceleration of launch.”
Stooke explained how the Service Module flew around the Moon and back to Earth, where it released the capsule to test its ability to survive atmospheric re-entry. Then the Service Module headed back out to the Earth-Moon L2 point, staying there for a few months before entering a low lunar orbit, possibly to perform a gravity mapping mission. The Service Module is still in lunar orbit.
“The combination Service Module and capsule had a mass of 2,500 kg – 2.5 tons,” Stooke said, “so it can’t just sit on top of the rocket’s fuel tanks. I can’t guess at the mass [of the payload adapter] but it would be quite significant.”
Payload adaptors for medium-sized payloads can weigh anywhere from 135 Kg (300 lbs.) to 225 kg (500 lbs) or more.
The Chang’e 5 T-1 test vehicle captured this beautiful view of Earth over the far side ofthe Moon on October 28, 2014. Credit: Chinese national space agency (CNSA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
Chang’e 5-T1 did also have additional payloads, but they were small (and known to be onboard) and couldn’t account for the mass large enough to create a second crater. The two payloads were a small radiation exposure experiment for bacteria and plants, as well as the first commercial payload to the Moon called the 4M mission (Manfred Memorial Moon Mission) for the German space technology company OHB System, in honor of the company’s founder, Manfred Fuchs, who died in 2014. That payload weighed only 14 kilograms but contained two scientific instruments: a radio beacon to test a new approach for locating spacecraft and a radiation dosimeter (provided by the Spanish company iC-Málaga) to continuously measure radiation levels throughout the satellite’s circumlunar journey. The 4M mission was mounted in the equipment bay of the booster.
“There would be no reason to suspect the rocket had anything else attached to it other than 4M and the usual flight electronics,” said citizen scientist Scott Tilley, who monitors the orbits of artificial satellites of the Earth and the Moon. “There would also be some extra mass to support the payload adapter and related structure for supporting the payload stack, which was likely at the limit of the rocket’s capabilities. Consider this is the first mission they launched toward the Moon with stacked payload. It would have likely been more complex to mount and secure it than the other payloads, which were more self-contained.”
The ongoing debate on the extra mass and what it might be would not have ensued if not for two things: the unusual double crater created by this booster’s impact and the denial by Chinese foreign ministry officials that the space junk and the impact is from their rocket. They insist that the Chang’e 5T-1 rocket already burned up on its return trip to Earth in 2014. However, on March 1, 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Space Command, which tracks low-Earth orbit space junk, released a statement saying that China’s 2014 rocket never de-orbited.
Additionally, Chinese officials have never commented on the nature of the double crater.
The crater was imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
This animated GIF confirms the location of the newly formed rocket body double crater. The before image is LRO’s view from Feb. 28, 2022 (M1400727806L). The after image is from May 21, 2022 (M1407760984R). The width of the frame is 367 meters, about 401 yards. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
A team of researcher from the University of Arizona discovered the errant booster (it was initially thought to be an asteroid), tracking its movements to determine it came from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission. They also conducted spectroscopic analysis of the object from ground-based telescope observations during several Earth flybys, which showed conclusively that the object was the Long March 3C rocket body from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission. They were able to predict approximately where and when the booster would impact the Moon, which was why the LRO team could search for and easily find the impact crater in their data.
Everyone was surprised the impact created a double crater. No other rocket body impacts on the Moon created double craters, as seen in these images of craters from four Saturn rocket boosters from Apollos 13, 14, 15, 17.
These four images show craters formed by impacts of the Apollo SIV-B stages: crater diameters range from 35 to 40 meters (38.2 to 43.7 yards) in the longest dimension. Credits: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University.
The researchers from the University of Arizona said there had to be additional, undisclosed mass at the front end of the rocket body.
“The results from the Bayesian analysis imply that there may have been additional mass on the front of the rocket body,” wrote Tanner Campell, Vishnu Reddy and several others in their paper “Physical Characterization of Moon Impactor WE0913A.” “Comparing the pre- and post-impact images of the location shows two distinct craters side by side that were made by the Chang’e 5-T1 R/B. The double crater supports the hypothesis that there was additional mass at the front end of the rocket body, opposite the engines, in excess of the published mass of the secondary permanently affixed payload.”
Asked about the payload adaptor as the possible culprit for the excess mass, team member Vishnu Reddy didn’t want to venture a guess without more data.
“It is hard to speculate on the support structure because we are not aware of anything like that on usual boosters sent to the Moon,” he said.
Tilley told Universe Today that among both amateur and professional satellite and rocket trackers, it is known that China’s space agency has “struggled” in the past with their aim for having these type boosters to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or get ejected from the Earth-Moon system to properly dispose of the object.
“The Chinese expected the rocket to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere,” Tilley explained, noting details in a paper by LuxSpace, the company that operated the 4M mission. “That didn’t happen so it seems that part of their mission failed, which is likely why the Chinese denied it was their rocket later on.”
Subsequently, however, more recent missions, such as the booster for the Chang’e 5 sample return mission successfully re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and was properly disposed of.
Another question about the impact is understanding the dynamics of why a single booster, even if it had substantial weight at each end, would create a double crater.
“Regarding the double crater,” Vishnu explained, “I think the booster impacted at a near vertical angle, so the engines created the first crater and the secondary mass toppled over and created the second crater.” Vishnu added, however, it is also possible that if the booster was tumbling and happened to be horizontal when it hit, it could create the two craters.
But like much of this unusual space drama story, questions still remain.
“That is why we leave the actual mechanism for a future paper when we have better data to model,” Vishnu said.
Watch 14 Years of Gamma-Ray Observations in This Fascinating NASA Video
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, named in honor of noted physicist Enrico Fermi, has been in operation for almost a decade and a half, monitoring the cosmos for gamma rays. As the highest-energy form of light, these rays are produced by extremely energetic phenomena – like supernovae, neutron stars, quasars, and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). In honor of this observatory’s long history, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center has released a time-lapse movie that shows data acquired by the Fermi Space Telescope between August 2008 and August 2022.
The movie shows gamma rays with energies above 200 million electron volts (MeV), where brighter colors indicate more intense gamma-ray sources detected by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) during its 14-year run. The movie also shows the gamma-ray sky from two perspectives. First, there’s the rectangular view that shows a full-sky view with the central plane of the Milky Way Galaxy in the center. The disk glows predominantly from gamma rays produced by cosmic rays striking interstellar gas and starlight.
Other tiny light sources indicate the presence of neutron stars and supernova remnants, with cosmic sources peppered about the cosmic background. The second perspective shows what the gamma-ray sky looks like when Fermi is oriented towards Galactic North and South (or “up” and “down” relative to the galactic disk). This perspective allows astronomers to view gamma-ray sources in the extra-galactic sky, including distant galaxies with active nuclei (aka. quasars). The central plane of our galaxy wraps around the edges of both circles, where its brightness is suppressed, and our view of active galaxies in the distant Universe is improved.
The Sun can occasionally be seen passing into view and flaring against the background of high-energy sources within our galaxy and beyond. The brightest extra-galactic sources are blazars, or galaxies that host central black holes of a million Solar masses or more. These supermassive black holes (SMBH), as they’re called, produce jets of superheated material that travel at a fraction of the speed of light (aka. relativistic jets). For some blazars, Fermi could look almost directly down some of these jets, enhancing their brightness and variability.
When these galaxies flare, their central regions temporarily outshine all the stars in their disk. These flare-ups also cause them to temporarily become the brightest objects in the gamma-ray sky, then fade to obscurity. Many of these galaxies are billions of light-years away, meaning that flare-ups occurred when Earth and the Solar System were still young (or didn’t even exist yet!) Not seen in the time-lapse are many short-duration events, such as gamma-ray bursts, resulting from data processing designed to sharpen the images.
Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity
Missions focusing on small bodies in the solar system have been coming thick and fast lately. OSIRIS-Rex, Psyche, and Rosetta are all examples of projects that planned or did rendezvous with a small body in the solar system. But one of their biggest challenges is understanding the gravity of these bodies – which was especially evident when Philae, Rosetta’s lander, had a hard time staying on the surface of its intended comet. A new idea from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could help solve that problem – by bouncing small probes around.
The concept, called Gravity Poppers, resulted from a NIAC grant back in 2020. The idea is simple enough – release a bunch of probes onto the surface of a small body and have them periodically jump off it. When they do so, keep track of them. If you know the force they jumped off with and can track them as they return to the surface, you can estimate the gravity of the area they’re floating over more accurately than alternative techniques.
Scientists use three main alternative techniques to calculate the gravity of small bodies – radar tomography, seismic imaging, and gravimetry. Each has disadvantages that the Gravity Poppers can overcome.
Here’s Dr. Benjamin Hockman, one of the researchers, describing the concept at the NIAC symposium. Credit – Ben Hockman YouTube Channel
Radar tomography uses reflections of radio signals to estimate what the gravity is like in a particular area. However, it’s difficult to penetrate the deeper sections of a small body. Some materials don’t reflect electromagnetic waves at all, making it impossible to characterize areas with these materials.
Seismic imaging is commonly used on Earth. By tracking the movement of seismic waves across the surface of a body, scientists can estimate the gravity of regions surrounding them. However, some small bodies, especially asteroids, are just piles of rubble with no internal coherent structure. Seismic waves don’t do very well in such environments. Ryugu, the asteroid Hayabusa-2 visited, absorbed the seismic energy of an impact event such that the spacecraft couldn’t even discern any changes in its surface features.
Gravimetry is the most straightforward of the three techniques and requires the least equipment onboard the spacecraft. How does the small body pull on the spacecraft orbiting it? As it passes over different regions, does the gravity increase or decrease? However, measuring gravity from far away isn’t easy, as orbits tend to be relatively far away. So, the accuracy of this technique is relatively low.
Fraser discusses techniques to stop a potentially dangerous asteroid from hitting Earth. Many of the techniques would involve understanding its gravity.
Enter Gravity Poppers. An orbiter could release a few dozen of these – a paper detailing the idea suggests 20. As they land on the surface of the asteroid, comet, or small moon, they occasionally use an internal force to jump off the surface, but not enough to break the hold of gravity. Depending on the intended area to be studied, they could do this at an angle or straight up.
As they fly off the surface, the orbiting mothership tracks them and calculates their trajectory, which can then be used to calculate the gravity of the region they are flying over. They then land, reset themselves, and do it repeatedly with the orbiter tracking them. The team studied two types of structures for the poppers: spherical and cubic. They settled on the cube, which also had embedded LEDs that create a light source the orbiter could track.
It’s not as simple as tracking the light source, though – plenty of system dynamics go into calculating the trajectory angle, the force with which the popper jumped, and the landing location. The paper also details simulations of how such a mission would operate in practice, using modeling software developed at NASA.
Unfortunately, that means that there are no prototypes in the works for this as of yet. It did not receive NIAC Phase II funding as of yet either. But the idea is unique and simple enough that with a little bit of development effort, engineers might be able to master this novel way of prospecting some of the most economically and scientifically interesting worlds in our solar system.
The Roswell UFO: Forensically rendered from the testimony of multiple witnesses
The Roswell UFO: Forensically rendered from the testimony of multiple witnesses
Over the years, much has been written about the crashed Roswell UFO, and never have images been released of the real UFO due to the cover-up of this remarkable crash. Now, not only has a composite image been generated, reflecting the craft before its crash based on the accounts of multiple witnesses, but it also provides specific details about the crew.
The "General Composite of the Roswell Aerospace Interplanetary Skiff" is originated and forensically rendered from the testimony of multiple witnesses who were the retired United States Army Counter-Intelligence Corps atom bomb security agents guarding all atom bomb manufacturing, testing and deployment facilities in New Mexico from 1943 to 1951.
Further and far more substantial testimony came from Clarence L. ("Kelly") Johnson and Dr. Ben R. Rich (both of whom were the now deceased founding CEOs of Lockheed Martin's famous "Skunk Works") as provided to Bill McDonald via the inter-mediation of the late John Andrews, Special Projects Chief Designer of the Testor Corporation. Kelly mentored Ben and John Andrews.
The spacecraft was a single, integrated, machine component; the originating inspiration for all high-altitude, hypersonic, "Waverider," aerosurf, "Biomorphic" aircraft and space shuttle configuration concepts.
She mimicked the design forms of multiple sea animals including porpoises and stingrays. Her life support system and in-flight ballast was an oxygenated amniotic fluid-like broth with an advanced filtration system in the flight deck.
She carried a crew of seven humanoids who interfaced with the vessel's artificial intelligence (AI) cortex directly, physically through the headrests of their individual crash-couches and their surrounding consoles.
The organic minds of the flight crew are believed to have functioned as "multiple brain nodes" for distributed processing and navigation. They and the spacecraft functioned as a "combined biological organic/artificial life form and machine system."
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Mysterious Daytime Orb Spotted Over Sydney: A Fascinating UFO Sighting
Mysterious Daytime Orb Spotted Over Sydney: A Fascinating UFO Sighting
Silverwater, NSW, Australia – On the tranquil afternoon of December 25, 2023, the skies over Silverwater, a serene suburb in western Sydney, became the stage for an extraordinary event. A local resident, enjoying a peaceful fishing session, witnessed an enigmatic object traversing the sky. This is not just another story; it’s a firsthand account of an encounter that challenges our understanding of the skies above us.
An Unearthly Visitor?
The witness describes the object as comparable in size to a small passenger plane, hovering about 30 meters above the ground. What makes this sighting particularly intriguing is the absence of any wind, a detail substantiated by the stillness of the trees in the accompanying video. Skeptics might suggest a balloon, but the witness contests this notion, citing the object’s unusual size and behavior.
A Closer Look Reveals More
Upon closer examination of the video, a peculiar glowing ring becomes apparent, with the object exhibiting erratic movements when viewed in slow motion. This detail adds a layer of mystery to the sighting, suggesting that this is no ordinary balloon or aircraft. The witness’s struggle to capture the footage resonates with many who have tried to document these fleeting phenomena, often re3sulting in shaky and unclear videos.
Be the Judge
The witness invites viewers to be the judge of what they see. With a hard copy of the video in hand, they offer a glimpse into a moment that is as baffling as it is captivating. The sighting in Silverwater adds to the growing list of UFO encounters, each contributing to the larger puzzle of what might be sharing our skies.
A Call to the Curious
For those intrigued by the unknown, this sighting is a clarion call to keep our eyes on the skies and our minds open. UFO sightings like this one continue to spark curiosity and debate, driving us to explore and understand the mysteries that loom above us. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, the story of the Silverwater orb is a compelling addition to the annals of UFO encounters.
Holloman Air Force Base is infamous for the most debated UFO landing footage that was in the possession of the United States Air Force as claimed by Robert Emmenegger and Allan Sandler. The director of “Moment of Contact” James Fox has recently discussed theHolloman AFB UFO/alien controversy on a podcast, adding valuable information to the legendary case.
Interestingly, there are other credible people in the UFO community who have given credence to the authenticity of this case. There is more to the Holloman AFB UFO story. Joe Murgia, an avid UFO researcher revealed that Dr. Eric Davis (a former Pentagon physicist) met with George Bush Sr. to talk about Holloman AFB Incident.
The UFO phenomenon has long been a subject of fascination and controversy, with countless reports of sightings and encounters over the years. However, the truth behind these mysterious incidents has remained elusive, with government agencies often accused of covering up information and discrediting witnesses.
According to Murgia, on March 26, 2004, he met Hal Putoff (an American physicist who has co-authored several books on gravitational and paranormal research) at the Fiesta Rancho Casino Hotel, Las Vegas after taking an early flight to the airport. Upon meeting, Hal wasted no time and shared with him the story of Dr. Eric Davis. It turns out that Dr. Davis was the one who conducted the interview with Wilson at the EG&G parking lot. Dr. Davis had reached out to the admiral about his project to revive a local chapter of AFIO (Association of Former Intelligence Officers) in Las Vegas, but the conversation eventually shifted to the topic of ufology.(Source)
Astrophysicist Eric Davis during an interview with New York Post.
Murgia stated that Former President George Bush Sr. had taken an interest in Dr. Davis’ discussion and spoke to him twice on the phone, expressing his belief that the German secrets had been filed away and not used as a cover for anything else. However, he did show interest in pursuing the topic and requested Dr. Davis’ recent physics papers.
During the second phone call, Bush revealed that he was aware of the Holloman film, which Hal, Dr. Davis, and Murgia were fixated on. “The former President was aware of it. Was it a training film, a special ops exercise? No, he replied, ‘it was “the real thing.”’ There was a secret project, and the security was obscene,” writes Joe Murgia.
Moreover, the Holloman AFB UFO landing incident was also discussed by Dr. Jacques Vallée in his book “Forbidden Science – Volume II.” He writes:
Kit [Green]just left, along with Hal, Russell and two of his kids. We had a long discussion after a demo of my landing catalogue. Kit has dropped out of Sams’ covert “Group of Twelve.”
Emenegger tells me that Colonel Bill Coleman, who represented the Air Force in the film, had been retired for three weeks when he got the job. For nine years he’d served as the Air Force’s spokesman and had been intimately linked to the UFO question. More games: One of his men, a Captain Horner, confiscated the Holloman movie just before Sandler could get his hands on it.
The Holloman sequence is based on a bluff by Emenegger. He couldn’t find anyone on the Base who recalled such an event. There was only a rumor that in 1971 a helicopter had filmed three objects, one of which landed.
Three occupants had supposedly come out. They had Assyrian noses, a rope twisted on their head for a hat, bluegreen skin, eyes like ping-pong balls with a hole in the middle. One of them had a wire in one ear and carried a vertical staff with a spiral antenna. The Aliens were taken to Building 830, then to building 930 on Mars Avenue. They remained there two or three years, allegedly “helping the United States decode space messages from another Alien civilization.”
A biologist named Alfred Lorenzo is supposed to have worked with them. None of this makes any sense. When Allan was here I asked him if he still had his clearance. He said yes, theoretically he did, but he didn’t think it was active, yet Kit has found Allan’s clearances active. “Do you know there are 800 reports of foreign UFOs in the CIRCOL files?” he asked. “Why didn’t Hynek ever look into that?”
He warned me that a new experimental device was being tested. It is known lovingly as a “flying bathtub.” It is a flying triangle with a rounded front, but it could look strikingly like a saucer when seen from the side, and will surely be mistaken for one.
On Julian Dorey Podcast, Mr. Fox recounted a phone call from Allan Sandler, who claimed to have seen three unidentified flying objects (UFOs) escorted by a military jet. Sandler said that two of the UFOs peeled away while one wobbled to the ground, and he witnessed the beings with unique features emerge from the grounded UFO before the footage abruptly cut off.
Paul Shartle, an official at Norton Air Force Base, allegedly confirmed that the object was not of Earth origin. Mr. Fox did not make any claims about the veracity of the story, only reporting what he had been told.
During a recent Reddit AMA, journalist Christopher Sharp expressed interest in finding more information about the number of alien species visiting Earth. He mentioned that he had heard from multiple sources that the visitation at Holloman Air Force Base was real, but was unsure if the beings were extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or ultra-terrestrial. Sharp shared a link to the interview with Grant Cameron for further information.
In 1974, Robert Emenegger released his documentary “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe. While he had originally been granted permission to use real footage, the Department of Defense later withdrew that permission.
Emenegger was forced to add animated footage of the alleged Holloman UFO landing. He claimed that some frames from the original footage were used in the reconstruction during editing, which was authorized by the USAF. Viewers spotted a genuine bright disc coming down slowly in the distance against the backdrop of Holloman’s surrounding landscape.
The documentary was re-released in 1979, with additional footage and narration by Dr. Vallée, who discussed ancient astronaut theory.
Location of Voyager 1 now:15 billion miles away, or 24 billion km away from earth.
Now this is really odd, NASA just published a post on the official NASA Voyager page that says and I quote, "Recently, the TMU began transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it were “stuck.” After ruling out other possibilities, the Voyager team determined that the source of the issue is the FDS. This past weekend the team tried to restart the FDS and return it to the state it was in before the issue began, but the spacecraft still isn’t returning useable data."
Voyager 1 was sent to space on Sept 5, 1977, so thats 46 years old! And many scientists over those decades have said if aliens ever sent us a message to Earth, it's highly likely it will be in the most basic mathematical form...binary. Hmmm...now you are seeing the clues.
So, after ruling out other possibilities...like Voyager 1 being reprogramed by an alien entity perhaps? I feel NASA is hiding the truth, trying to cover it up after recording the alien message and reprogram and fix Voyager 1 to keep the public in the dark. Yeah, NASA has a job to inform the public...but only if it's not a matter of national security. Any message from aliens will have to go up the chain of command to the commander in chief himself...the US president to get a full release. It's no small deal like you may have thought, and most data about aliens are stopped before even getting close to presidential ears. Because the US president is busy with other more pressing matters. So...yes NASA covers things up when satellites record data that shows evidence of aliens, but only if they notice it themselves, they are often underpaid and over worked so they skim briefly and somethings, just sometimes something big slips past them. Like the Black Knight satellites I discovered and fought for. So...yes you can trust NASA to tell you what they think you should know, but don't think you are so important that they will tell you everything. NASA was created to keep the public in the dark and drip feed basic scientific data to appease the public so they continue to get gov payments to pay for NASA.
Below is a clip from Star Trek the motion picture, where Enterprise confronts Voyager 1 probe, called Vger, which was reprogramed by aliens and sent back to its creator on earth. Yes, Star Trek thought of it first, and yes, we are seeing such things now with Voyager 1.
The Roswell UFO: Forensically rendered from the testimony of multiple witnesses
The Roswell UFO: Forensically rendered from the testimony of multiple witnesses
Over the years, much has been written about the crashed Roswell UFO, and never have images been released of the real UFO due to the cover-up of this remarkable crash. Now, not only has a composite image been generated, reflecting the craft before its crash based on the accounts of multiple witnesses, but it also provides specific details about the crew.
The "General Composite of the Roswell Aerospace Interplanetary Skiff" is originated and forensically rendered from the testimony of multiple witnesses who were the retired United States Army Counter-Intelligence Corps atom bomb security agents guarding all atom bomb manufacturing, testing and deployment facilities in New Mexico from 1943 to 1951.
Further and far more substantial testimony came from Clarence L. ("Kelly") Johnson and Dr. Ben R. Rich (both of whom were the now deceased founding CEOs of Lockheed Martin's famous "Skunk Works") as provided to Bill McDonald via the inter-mediation of the late John Andrews, Special Projects Chief Designer of the Testor Corporation. Kelly mentored Ben and John Andrews.
The spacecraft was a single, integrated, machine component; the originating inspiration for all high-altitude, hypersonic, "Waverider," aerosurf, "Biomorphic" aircraft and space shuttle configuration concepts.
She mimicked the design forms of multiple sea animals including porpoises and stingrays. Her life support system and in-flight ballast was an oxygenated amniotic fluid-like broth with an advanced filtration system in the flight deck.
She carried a crew of seven humanoids who interfaced with the vessel's artificial intelligence (AI) cortex directly, physically through the headrests of their individual crash-couches and their surrounding consoles.
The organic minds of the flight crew are believed to have functioned as "multiple brain nodes" for distributed processing and navigation. They and the spacecraft functioned as a "combined biological organic/artificial life form and machine system."
The year 2023 featured mind-blowing advancements in nearly every -ology imaginable. While ranking this progress is fraught with subjectivity, these breakthroughs are no-doubt-about-it advances that crucially improved our medical, technological, or astronomical understanding.
Of course, some of the year’s biggest science news ended up being “advancements” that didn’t quite pan out, especially the “room temperature superconductor” that never was. And while these 12 breakthroughs may not change lives immediately (unless some friendly aliens from exoplanet K2-18b drop by to say hello), the work of these scientists will nonetheless move research, medicine, and technology forward for a more enlightened 2024.
12. WE DISCOVERED A NEW KIND OF BRAIN CELL
A study published this past September in the journal Nature describes a newly observed brain cell that seems to be a hybrid between a neuron and an astrocyte, a cell that helps support neurons in the brain and spinal cord.
ARTUR PLAWGO / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
A study published this past September in the journal Naturedescribes a newly observed brain cell that seems to be a hybrid between a neuron and an astrocyte, a cell that helps support neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Examining mouse brains, the team at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland found these hybrid cells clustered in very specific brain regions. In contrast, astrocytes are typically found all over the brain.
These hybrids also produce a neurotransmitter, “glutamate,” which influences a neuron’s activity and consolidates memory. These astrocyte-esque hybrid cells not only protect neurons but also process information. They produce glutamate and other specialized proteins, which serve as the neurotransmitters that communicate with other cells. The new cells could be key for exploring how the brain protects itself from ailments, such as memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease.
11. CHATGPT EXPLODED INTO WORLD CONVERSATION
The tool has dominated headlines in 2023 (both hopeful and Terminator-esque) and even wrote a few itself.
LAURENCE DUTTON/E+/GETTY IMAGES
Officially released Nov. 30, 2022, by OpenAI, ChatGPT was the talk of the town in 2023. The tool has dominated headlines (both hopeful and Terminator-esque) and even wrote a few itself. One particular example is an editorial published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering in early January 2023, written by ChatGPT with suggestion prompts from Michael King, a biomedical engineering professor at Vanderbilt University.
The resulting paper addressed concerns about artificial intelligence and plagiarism in higher education, using the article itself as “Exhibit A.” Although released in 2022, this large language model really came into its own in 2023 by becoming a go-to search engine, chat buddy, and adviser — delivering baffling sitcom rip-offs, nutrition advice, and endless oodles of content.
10. THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE DETECTED A LONG SOUGHT AFTER ORGANIC MOLECULE IN SPACE FOR THE FIRST TIME
In June this year, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope announced the detection of a signal for a long sought-after molecule called methyl cation (that’s “cat-ion”) from deep in the Orion Nebula
The Nebula, 1,350 light years from Earth, holds a bevy of young star systems and their pancake-shaped protoplanetary disks made of gas, dust, asteroids, and other material that may eventually become a planet. One such system, d203-506, in a burgeoning area called the Orion Bar, emitted the CH3+ signal, which had never before been detected in space. Its mere presence can elicit the growth of more sophisticated organic molecules.
9. SCIENTISTS CREATED THE FIRST SYNTHETIC HUMAN EMBRYO FROM STEM CELLS
Circumventing the biological song and dance between egg and sperm, scientists have used human stem cells to make a model embryo at 14 days postfertilization.
NATA SERENKO/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES
Circumventing the biological song and dance between egg and sperm, scientists have used human stem cells to make a model embryo at 14 days postfertilization. Two preprint papers published on the bioRxiv server in June describe work by teams at the University of Cambridge and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
Fourteen days after fertilization is generally the limit on how long you can culture human embryos, though embryo models don’t technically fall under that purview. These embryo models could theoretically grow to later stages of development and aid researchers in understanding developmental defects and miscarriages.
8. HEALTHY MOUSE PUPS WERE BORNE FROM TWO MALE MICE PARENTS
In a win for family medicine, a team of researchers in Japan produced seven mouse pups using cells from two biological fathers.
BRAIS SEARA/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES
In a win for family medicine, a team of researchers in Japan produced seven mouse pups using cells from two biological fathers. A paper published in the journal Nature in March details a process known as “in vitro gametogenesis” (IVG), which involves genetically altering any type of animal cells into stem cells and then into egg or sperm cells.
In this case, the team used tail skin cells from a male mouse and turned them into stem cells. They then switched these cells’ genetic sex by dumping their Y chromosome and creating another X chromosome, which created eggs. Sperm from another male mouse fertilized these eggs, which then transferred into a surrogate female mouse’s uterus. The team transplanted 630 embryos made from these altered cells but produced only seven healthy, living pups. In the future, human same-sex couples could hopefully one day produce a child that’s biologically related to each parent.
7. ASTRONOMERS SPOTTED AN EXOPLANET THAT MAY CONTAIN THE TRAPPINGS FOR LIFE
This past September, a team of astronomers, with the help of JWST of course, found a planet dubbed the oh-so-memorable K2-18b. It has an atmospheric chemical blend that denotes the presence of liquid water, a major ingredient needed for supporting life.
This past September, a team of astronomers, with the help of JWST of course, found a planet dubbed the oh-so-memorable K2-18b. It has an atmospheric chemical blend that denotes the presence of liquid water, a major ingredient needed for supporting life. They also sniffed out traces of the molecule dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth only comes from living things (though they still need more evidence of its presence).
Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in October, the paper refers to the search for habitable environments and biomarkers as “the holy grail of exoplanet science.” An immense world covered in liquid water with a mostly hydrogen atmosphere, K2-18b orbits the red dwarf star 120 light years from Earth. It could become the first Hycean (hydrogen + ocean) world ever discovered and the first instance of liquid water on a planet orbiting a star.
6. NOW THERE’S LIVE, 3D-PRINTABLE INK MADE FROM BACTERIA
A paper published in February in the journal Materials Today details the process of printing a biocomposite filament that contains Sporosarcina pasteurii, which initiates mineralization when it makes contact with a solution containing urea, a waste by-product that many organisms create from breaking down amino acids.
2023 brought us a method for 3D printing with an ink that contains living bacteria, called BactoInk. A paper published in February in the journal Materials Today details the process of printing a biocomposite filament that contains Sporosarcina pasteurii, which initiates mineralization when it makes contact with a solution containing urea, a waste by-product that many organisms create from breaking down amino acids. After a few days of mineralization, the ink hardens to calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a key substance in mollusk shells.
Designed by researchers at the Soft Materials Laboratory in the School of Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, energy-efficient BactoInk can 3D-print in nearly any structure that gradually hardens into CaCO3 over a few days, and it could aid in repairing broken mineral-based organic structures like coral reefs or even bone.
5. A PIG ORGAN WAS SUCCESSFULLY TRANSPLANTED INTO A HUMAN BODY
Surgeons at New York University Langone Health transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a brain-dead patient as a proof-of-concept procedure called a xenotransplant.
COOLPICTURE/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES
During the dog days of summer 2023, surgeons at New York University Langone Health transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a brain-dead patient as a proof-of-concept procedure called a xenotransplant. Not only was the kidney accepted, but it also functioned as well as a human kidney in the month after the surgery.
Foreign organs are a promising solution to the medical shortage that plagues those needing new livers, kidneys, and more. Through gene editing, scientists can modify animal organs to make them compatible with human bodies. In this case, the kidney came from a lineage of genetically altered swine that lacks “alpha-gal.” Because this sugar molecule can be found in many mammals except for humans, it can cause a human body to reject a nonhuman organ. This milestone represents a victory for the future of xenotransplantation.
4. A NEW GENE-EDITING THERAPY COULD TRANSFORM HIGH-CHOLESTEROL TREATMENT
The therapy entails an updated version of CRISPR called base editing, which removes small components of DNA strands rather than breaking the entire strand.
MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
Statins have long been the prescribed treatment for familial hypercholesterolemia, a condition that increases individuals’ risk for heart disease and early death. But they are far from perfect. The daily medication comes with an increased risk of stroke and diabetes, as well as other side effects like headaches and nausea. A new gene therapy presented this past November at the annual American Heart Association meeting could supplant statins.
The therapy entails an updated version of CRISPR called base editing, which removes small components of DNA strands rather than breaking the entire strand. The treatment, called VERVE-101, is an infusion that targets a gene in liver cells called PCSK9 that controls “bad” low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood. VERVE-101 instructs liver cells to manufacture an ineffective version of this gene, lowering those “bad” cholesterol levels.
In a small clinical trial of 10 people, those who received the highest dosages of VERVE-101 saw their “bad” cholesterol fall between 39 and 55 percent. VERVE-101 is still in Phase 1 clinical trials, so it will be a few years before we can see it approved by the FDA, and that’s if everything goes well.
3. A TINY NUMBER FROM A TINY PARTICLE COULD UPEND THE STANDARD MODEL OF PHYSICS
This past August, researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced that they measured the wobble of a muon, a negatively charged subatomic particle that throws a wrench in everything we think we know about particle physics, also known as the Standard Model.
Thispast August, researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announcedthat they measured the wobble of a muon, a negatively charged subatomic particle that throws a wrench in everything we think we know about particle physics, also known as the Standard Model. According to the Standard Model, muons in magnetic fields should wobble, like a spinning top’s axis, at a certain speed — and yet they don’t, indicating that the model may lack some crucial information.
A muon’s wobble is determined by the particle’s magnetic moment or how muons align with magnetic fields. Theoretically, the magnetic moment, represented as g, should be 2. However, experiments yield another figure entirely. The new measurement comes to 0.00233184110, which physicists simply call “g-2.” This experimental gulf between g and g-2 can put the Standard Model through a crucible.
2. THIS MAN RECEIVED THE FIRST EVER WHOLE-EYE AND PARTIAL-FACE TRANSPLANT
Surgeons at NYU Langone Health successfully performed the first whole-eye and partial-face transplant on a 46-year-old military veteran and high-voltage power lineman named Aaron James.
The surgery lasted 21 hours and involved 140 healthcare professionals, and while it’s uncertain whether the transplanted eye will gain sight, normal direct flow to the retina suggests it’s healthy. Today, James can also speak and eat normally again, and this breakthrough surgery brings new transplant possibilities to millions.
1. NUCLEAR FUSION IS — FINALLY — IN ITS IGNITION ERA
Over the course of this year, the NIF has officially reproduced this gain three times
JAPATINO/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES
Almost a year ago, scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved something decades in the making: They attained a gain of 1, a controlled fusion reaction that produces more energy than it puts in. If that was the crowning achievement for physics in 2022, then 2023’s pinnacle was subtle, though undeniably more consequential. Over the course of this year, the NIF has officially reproduced this gain three times, ensuring that the late-breaking, end-of-2022 triumph would enable perhaps physics’ most influential year yet: the year of fusion energy.
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Eerie Lights Over Anchorage: A Personal Account of UFO Sightings in Alaska
Eerie Lights Over Anchorage: A Personal Account of UFO Sightings in Alaska
In the remote expanses of Anchorage, Alaska, the night sky holds more than just stars and the aurora borealis. It’s a canvas for some of the most intriguing and unexplained phenomena known to humankind—UFO sightings. This captivating tale unfolds through the eyes of Bill Carter and Patricia Roll, residents of Anchorage, whose lives were forever altered by an eerie encounter on a cold December night in 2019.
The Unforgettable Night
Bill, a seasoned aviation enthusiast with deep family roots in flying, and Patricia, a lifelong Alaskan, were no strangers to the skies. Yet, nothing could have prepared them for the sight that awaited them. As they stepped into the frigid night, their gaze was drawn to an extraordinary vision—orange orbs, bright and silent, gliding across the sky. These glowing spectacles defied explanation, moving in a coordinated fashion that suggested an intelligence behind their flight.
A Seeker’s Perspective
Bill’s expertise in aviation left him bewildered. These were no ordinary aircraft; their silent approach and luminous presence were unlike any known human-made machines. The couple’s attempt to capture the moment on camera was hindered by the biting cold, yet the images they retained were not just in their devices but etched in their memories. This experience propelled them into a world of questions and a quest for answers.
Echoes of Past Encounters
The story of Bill and Patricia is not an isolated incident. Alaska’s vast skies have long been a stage for mysterious sightings. UFO expert Krista Stewart notes that multiple object sightings are not uncommon and often resemble military fleet formations. The historical incident involving Japan Airlines in 1986, where multiple lights accompanied by a “mothership” were reported, mirrors the orchestrated nature of what the couple witnessed.
The Implications of Silence
What troubles Bill and other witnesses is not just the sightings themselves but the lack of official acknowledgment or explanation. The proximity of their experience to Merrill Field and military bases raises concerns about airspace security and the potential implications of these unidentified objects. The absence of other reports and the silence from authorities only deepen the mystery and the thirst for understanding.
The Search for Meaning
This personal account does more than narrate an unexplained event; it touches on the universal human curiosity about our place in the cosmos. Patricia’s lifelong wonderment about extraterrestrial life reflects a broader human yearning to know if we are alone in the universe. The sighting has transformed skepticism into belief, and disbelief into wonder, leaving the couple and the readers pondering the age-old question: Why are they here?
A Glimpse into the Unknown
As we delve into this Alaskan enigma, we are reminded of the vastness of the unknown. The skies above us hold endless mysteries, and the experiences of Bill and Patricia are but a glimpse into the potential realities that lie beyond our understanding. Their story is a testament to the human spirit’s unrelenting quest for knowledge and the profound impact that a moment of contact with the unknown can have on our lives.
VIDEO:
Eyewitnesses Share Their Encounters With UFOs And Provide Video Evidence | Aliens In Alaska
In sharing this narrative, we invite readers to look up and wonder, to question and seek. The skies over Anchorage have shown us that sometimes, the most profound mysteries are not in the far reaches of space but right above us, in our own earthly backyard.
SpaceXheeft woensdag (20 december) een “statische test” uitgevoerd met het prototype van het bovenste trapgedeelte van de Starship dat bekend staat als Ship 28, waarbij de Raptor-motoren van het voertuig kort werden ontstoken terwijl het verankerd bleef aan het platform op de Starbase-basis van het bedrijf in het zuiden van Texas.
Ruimteschip 28 wordt voorbereid om de derde testvlucht van de Starship uit te voeren, die SpaceX in de komende weken wil lanceren. En dit tijdschema lijkt binnen de planning te blijven, aangezien de test op woensdag goed verliep.
“Starship Flight 3 heeft succesvol een totale statische vuurproef met alle zes Raptor-motoren voltooid”, aldus SpaceX in een tweet, waarin ook de video van de test was opgenomen.
De Starship bestaat uit twee elementen: een enorme eerste trapversterker genaamd Super Heavy en een 50 meter hoog bovenste traptuig dat bekend staat als Starship.
Beide trappen zijn ontworpen om volledig en snel herbruikbaar te zijn en worden aangedreven door de volgende generatie Raptor-motor van SpaceX.
Super Heavy heeft 33 Raptors en Starship wordt aangedreven door zes daarvan.
Video: SpaceX voert een statische vuurtest uit van de Starship. Foto's en video's: Reproductie Twitter @SpaceX
Former NASA scientist says aliens 'could have secret base beneath Earth's oceans'
Former NASA scientist says aliens 'could have secret base beneath Earth's oceans'
There are solid scientific reasons why the pilots of UFOs visiting the Earth might perfer to base themselves in the deep oceans, says former NASA researcher Kevin Knuth.
A former NASA researcher believes pilots of UFOs could be living underneath our oceans.
Kevin Knuth, a distinguished academic who worked at NASA's Ames Research Center from 2001 to 2005, thinks there are many reasons why alien visitors might choose to base themselves underwater, rather than on the Earth’s surface.
For a start, he says, if they prefer to remain undetected, the deep oceans are ideal. He told the Theories of Everything podcast: “75% of the Earth's surface is water and we really have very little access to it. So, if you are going to hide out somewhere, that's perfect.”
Many recent UFO sightings have involved craft that appear to move effortlessly between the air and sea, and Kevin adds that aliens from a water-world home planet would have many reasons to base themselves beneath the sea.
Kevin outlines the reasons why extraterrestrials might find our environment quite inhospitable(Image: Kevin Knuth)
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He continued: “If you come from an aquatic environment, aquatic environments on planets are going to be much better to live in than atmospheric environments. Atmospheres have a low heat capacity, so the temperature varies a lot …you get huge temperature variations.
“And then going from planet to planet, you have huge temperature variations in the atmosphere: go to Mars, and you're looking at 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. You go to Venus, and you're looking at 800 degrees Fahrenheit. It's dramatic. And the air pressure is dramatically different, too, from planet to planet…”
Aliens might be more comfortable underwater, Kevin says(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
Kevin explains that the atmosphere on Venus is is about 100 times denser than ours, while the Martian “air” is more like 100 times thinner. And on none of those planets does the atmosphere do anything to protect against cosmic radiation or other hazards.
“There's all sorts of problems with living on a surface protected only by an atmosphere,” he said. “But if you live in an ocean, going to another planet with an ocean is actually a pretty good thing.
“If it's a water ocean, then a water ocean on another planet is going to be between the temperatures of 32 degrees Fahrenheit and 212 degrees Fahrenheit. So, the temperatures aren't going to change dramatically from ocean to ocean, going from one planet to another.”
Some of the most credible UFO sightings of recent years have involved 'trans-medium' craft cutting through the waves
Pressures, too, will be more consistent between oceans of different planets. He added: “So you can actually find a nice place to hang out if that's the pressure you're used to. The main differences are going to be chemicals dissolved in the ocean.”
For that reason, he said, it’s highly likely that alien life forms visiting our planet might choose to base themselves beneath the waves. Even if we were to ever make contact with them, though, he’d advise against touching an alien. Kevin explained: “The biology is probably very different. You don't want to touch them… your biology isn't compatible, so there's going to be all sorts of horrible chemical reactions.
“You don't want to come in contact with their organic molecules,” he adds, “because you don’t know what kind of reactions you'd have.”
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Former NASA scientist says aliens 'could have secret base beneath Earth's oceans'
Former NASA scientist says aliens 'could have secret base beneath Earth's oceans'
There are solid scientific reasons why the pilots of UFOs visiting the Earth might perfer to base themselves in the deep oceans, says former NASA researcher Kevin Knuth.
A former NASA researcher believes pilots of UFOs could be living underneath our oceans.
Kevin Knuth, a distinguished academic who worked at NASA's Ames Research Center from 2001 to 2005, thinks there are many reasons why alien visitors might choose to base themselves underwater, rather than on the Earth’s surface.
For a start, he says, if they prefer to remain undetected, the deep oceans are ideal. He told the Theories of Everything podcast: “75% of the Earth's surface is water and we really have very little access to it. So, if you are going to hide out somewhere, that's perfect.”
For more stories of the paranormal, strange and unexplained, check out the Daily Star's Weird News section.
Many recent UFO sightings have involved craft that appear to move effortlessly between the air and sea, and Kevin adds that aliens from a water-world home planet would have many reasons to base themselves beneath the sea.
Kevin outlines the reasons why extraterrestrials might find our environment quite inhospitable(Image: Kevin Knuth)
Mum 'freaked out' as UFO that looks like Doctor Who's TARDIS flies over her house
Mum 'freaked out' as UFO that looks like Doctor Who's TARDIS flies over her house
The 36-year-old mum was adamant the unidentified flying object was not a star and decided to investigate the matter further by using the ultra-zoom camera on her phone
By Eleanor Ovens
Kay Thorpe had grown suspicious of a shining object that had beamed above her house
(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
A mum was left "freaked out" that aliens are watching her after photographing UFO that looks like Doctor Who’s TARDIS, which she claims routinely hovers over her house.
Kay Thorpe had grown suspicious of a shining object that had beamed above her house in Middleton, Leeds, for the last few years.
The 36-year-old was adamant the unidentified flying object was not a star and decided to investigate the matter further by using the ultra-zoom camera on her phone.
She took a photo of the shining light from her garden(Image: Kennedy News and Media)
The mum-of-three took a photo of the shining light last week from her garden – but never expected the results to be so surprising.
After examining the photo, Kay admitted to feeling "freaked out" by the object, which was reminiscent of Doctor Who’s famous flying time machine.
Kay said: “Where I live, you don’t often see a lot of stars but this one particular star is above my house every night and every morning.
“And I kept looking at it thinking ‘that can’t be a star’ because it’s always there but it doesn’t flicker like a star. It’s been there for years. It wasn’t twinkling and I thought what else could it be
'It's clearly a TARDIS!'(Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“So I decided to take a photo on my phone but when you zoom in that far on your phone, it can become distorted. But I managed to keep it quite still and get a clear photo. When I took the picture, I just saw that shape.
“My first thought was it could be some sort of extra terrestrial. I didn’t think it was a spaceship but when I saw the shape, I thought that’s not normal.
“When I looked at it, I was freaked out. I thought ‘am I safe’? I thought, could it be the international space station?”
After posting the photo online, social media users flocked to the comment section to share their views on what the UFO could be.
There’s nothing like a little trouble at home to make you look for greener pastures. And green or not, aliens were everywhere in 2023. Well, at least in the news.
From Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, the classy new way to talk about UFOs) to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and all the way to tiny molecules clinging to frozen dust grains in interstellar space, the eyes of experts and the public were looking for life elsewhere.
The biggest alien stories — at least the most popular — came from military releases of data, hinting at cover-ups (or just ill-prepared government officials). But the most important — at least by our reckoning — were those that were steeped in science, offering hints of what life might look like outside of our planet, and where to find it. If you really do want to turn over that rock, that is.
Here, ranked from 11 to 1 by their chances of introducing us to real alien life, are the top alien and UAP events of 2023 that remind us the truth really is out there.
11. NASA RELEASED A GRIPPING REPORT ON UAPS
A resolved UAP sighting. The dot in the middle, and two dots that appeared to move in tandem with the central dot are airplanes waiting to land.
AARO/NASA TV
In September, ASA released its much-anticipated report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, and the agency says some of the sightings — between 16 and 40 out of roughly 800 — just can’t be explained — but Inverse spoke to experts, and it turns out the problem might just be that we don't have enough information. Most UAP reports come from sensors designed to guide weapons to objects, not gather detailed data about them, so it’s easy for fairly mundane objects to look bizarre when viewed through these sensors — or so says NASA.
Meanwhile, Inverse argues that the agency still needs a dedicated UAP office to take the investigation mainstream.
10. ... AND SO DID THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
The Department of Defense also published its own UAP report in January 2023, admitting that it has investigated more than 500 cases of possible UAP. Of those, more than a quarter were (of course) weather balloons; to be fair to DoD, weather stations in the U.S. alone launch 240 balloons every day. But according to a Pentagon spokesperson, “Some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis.”
But don’t worry; experts tell Inverse that the military probably couldn’t pull off an alien cover-up. Swarms of commercial satellites, along with ubiquitous smartphones and social media — not to mention political pressure — would make it almost impossible to keep the cat in the bag for long.
“I still strongly maintain that alien visitation is not something that could be kept secret. The size of such a secret is just too big,” wrote SETI researcher Seth Shostak in a July 2023 essay for the SETI Institute.
9. THE MYSTERIES OF OUMUAMUA WERE UNVEILED.
This artist’s illustration shows Oumuamua venting gas as the Sun heats it, although no such venting was actually visible to astronomers.
ESA
Speaking of UAP, a chunk of interstellar debris called ‘Oumuamua caused a stir when it passed through our Solar system a few years ago — and an even bigger uproar when it seemed to accelerate under its own power, without leaving a tail like a comet. This year, a study suggested a possible explanation. Spoiler alert: It’s definitely not aliens.
8. WE CRAFTED A DECENT IDEA OF WHAT ALIEN SPACECRAFT COULD LOOK LIKE
A space station wheel orbiting planet Earth. The space station wheel is a habitat that a human crew can live for extended periods of time.
One team of SETI researchers did some math and suggested that if an alien probe ever does visit our Solar System, it’s likely to be a zippy high-tech model, not an alien version of the Voyager probes.
7. ... AND ALSO WHAT CELESTIAL SIGNS MIGHT POINT US TO ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS.
An illustration of a futuristic sci-fi city on a ring planet.
EDUARD MUZHEVSKYI / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
SETI researchers also proposed some ways we might be able to spot high-tech alien civilizations from a distance — and some really wild ways the aliens might make themselves known to the rest of the universe, such as rearranging an entire star system into a cosmic “Kilroy Was Here” sign.
Other telltale signs to look for around distant stars include giant megastructures, built to siphon off mass and prolong the life of a dying star or the gleam of starlight on sprawling alien cities. But it may be easier to just look for pollution in a distant world’s atmosphere.
6. WE RULED OUT A WHOLE LOT OF HABITABLE PLANETS FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE
Humans wouldn’t be able to search for extraterrestrial intelligence today if our ancestors hadn’t learned to harness fire around a million years ago.
ANADOLU AGENCY/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES
None of that advanced alien technology is likely to happen in a world without a lot of oxygen in its atmosphere, though. One study this year pointed out that unless about sixteen percent of the atmosphere is made of oxygen, you can’t start a fire. And without fire, you can’t work metals, cook food, or signal to distant alien civilizations.
5. ... AND LEARNED ALIENS PROBABLY WON’T THINK TOO FONDLY OF OUR INTELLIGENCE.
UFOs flying over winter landscape. 3D generated image.
GREMLIN/E+/GETTY IMAGES
If intelligent, technologically advanced aliens are out there, they may not recognize us as intelligent. That could be good news because it means they may not see us as a threat — and they may even think we need protection, according to one 2023 study.If the first aliens we contact are vastly more advanced than we are — or just very different — they may not realize we're sentient. That means they probably won't see us as a threat to galactic peace, which needs to be eliminated posthaste. But the jury's out on whether these hypothetical aliens might turn Earth into a nature preserve or treat us with callous indifference.
4. ALIEN LIFE, INTELLIGENT OR NOT, IS PROBABLY QUITE COMMON
An artist’s depiction of the star PDS 70 and its inner disk. The haze represents the water vapor. In the top right of the image appears an exoplanet.
A few decades ago, we thought the chemicals involved in building cells and making them work might be rare in the universe, but now it looks like many of those ingredients could be part of the standard starter pack for new star systems. And that means life may — eventually — turn out to be more common than we ever dared to hope.
3. ... AND K2-18B IS A GREAT PLACE TO LOOK FOR IT.
This artist’s illustration shows what K2-18b might look like, with its dim red star in the background.
NASA, ESA, CSA, JOSEPH OLMSTED (STSCI)
One team of astronomers says they’ve found an ocean world orbiting a distant star, called K2-18b — and its atmosphere may contain evidence of life somewhere in that alien ocean. Even the researchers who studied the planet with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) aren’t convinced, though. It’s going to take more data to settle the debate, but the possibility is intriguing.
2. TRAPPIST-1 OFFERS EXPERTS HOPE AND FRUSTRATION.
The star and six of the planets as they would appear from the vantage point of the fifth outermost planet, Trappist-1f. All of the planets and the Sun are to scale. One of the worlds is seen transiting in front of the star.
MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
Another swirl of debate, also fueled by JWST observations, is centered on the TRAPPIST-1 system. Home to at least seven rocky planets, three of which are in the habitable zone, TRAPPIST-1 is a hotspot for hopeful astrobiologists.
Earlier this year, JWST revealed that the system’s innermost two worlds — TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c — look like airless rocks, although it’s possible they just have really thin atmospheres. Neither of those planets is in the habitable zone, but many astronomers took the news as a discouraging sign that the star TRAPPIST-1 might have swept away the atmospheres of all its closest planets, including the potentially habitable ones. But others say it’s too soon to give up hope.
1. BUT DO WE NEED TO LOOK THAT FAR? ALIEN LIFE MIGHT BE RIGHT HERE IN OUR BACKYARD.
The Juno spacecraft’s Junocam instrument captured this detailed photo of Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede during a June 2021 flyby.
NASA
Closer to home, several studies this year show that Jupiter’s icy moons look extremely promising for alien life, or at least habitability, in a part of our Solar System that we used to consider totally uninhabitable.
NASA’s JUNO spacecraft spotted salt and organic molecules splattered across the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, and JWST revealed frozen carbon dioxide on the surface of Europa. Both moons are hiding vast, dark oceans beneath their thick, icy exteriors, and finding those chemicals on the surface suggests two important things: one, material from the ocean can reach the surface, where it might be easier for us to study. And two, those ice-covered alien oceans seem to have chemistry that could support life as we know it.
Professor Garry Nolan is one of the most reputable experts examining the enigma of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). He has been studying UAP materials for many months and has made numerous astonishing statements about UFOs. His contributions lend credibility to this particular mystery, which many mainstream scientists hesitate to discuss.
Dr. Nolan works at Stanford University as a professor of Immunology. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize, which is a big honor. He is known as one of the best immunologists in the world. He has many patents and has written a lot of research papers. He has also started two companies listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange because of his successful inventions.
In June 2022, Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart interviewed Dr. Nolan and learned from him shocking UAP information that the U.S. government had been investigating for the past few years. Dr. Nolan said that one thing he is sure about is that we do not know what UAPs are: “We do know that there is something here something that I think defies explanation but that something can be studied from a scientific Viewpoint.”
Although this interview was recorded in 2022, Dr. Nolan adheres to David Grusch’s statement that the U.S. government has been lying about UAPs for the last 60-70 years. He believes the reason behind this is that the U.S. government itself does not know what they are dealing with. “Absolutely, there is a cover-up,” says Dr. Nolan. “I mean, there has been both a cover-up and a disinformation campaign to make people appear as if they were crazy.”
Coutlhart questions the potential dangers of admitting one’s thoughts on these mysterious events, to which Dr. Nolan responds, “I think it’s dangerously necessary… ignoring the physics of what these things are capable of doing.” Coutlhart further asks, “Let’s talk about ‘It.’ What is it?”
Dr. Nolan replies, “You know, I wish I knew… Whatever it is appears to be so far advanced from us that it beggars understanding.” When pressed further by Coutlhart if he believes the phenomenon to be of human origin, Dr. Nolan decisively states, “I’m sure it’s not human..I think it’s whatever it is it’s been here a long time so and certainly it’s been here longer than we’ve been civilized so at the very least who really owns the planet who was here first uh I’m not sure it was.”
Dr. Nolan explained he studied the brains of pilots who claimed to have encountered the phenomena. After their UAP/ UFO encounters, they all got damaged or hurt such as buzz noises in their head, got sick, etc. Most of them have had similar kinds of bad things. He showed the MRIs of some people that revealed damage in the middle of the basal ganglia – an area responsible for motor control and other core brain functions, including intuition.
Dr. Nolan said the damage should have killed those people, yet they were alive. He obtained MRIs of some prior to their encounters and they had the damage, so they were most likely born with it. “These are all so-called high-functioning people. They’re pilots who are making split-second decisions, intelligence officers in the field, etc,” he said.
Alleged UFO material
Former Pentagon UFO official Lue Elizondo shared a truly eye-opening statement in his interview with James Iandoli of Engaging The Phenomenon on June 11, 2021. They discussed crash retrievals and materials related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs). Elizondo acknowledged the sensitivity of the topic and the potential consequences of discussing it openly.
However, Elizondo expressed his belief that the US government does possess exotic materials but could not provide further details due to the lack of transparency from the government. He mentioned the three layers of analysis that can be conducted on a piece of material, namely physical, chemical, and atomic or nano-level research.
Coulthart asked the Stanford professor about this research on a peculiar material known as Bismuth magnesium. Dr. Nolan described it as a layered substance consisting primarily of bismuth, with traces of lead and magnesium. Despite his assessment of its isotope ratios showing nothing out of the ordinary, he expressed his intent to study a significantly larger sample in the future. This expanded sample size would allow him to conduct more comprehensive tests, potentially shedding light on its properties.
Terahertz Transmistter
Coulthart speculated on the material’s ability to levitate when exposed to a specific waveform. While Nolan acknowledged hearing about such claims, he had not personally witnessed or tested the phenomenon. When pressed by Coulthart about whether he had attempted any experiments, Nolan clarified that the required waveform for levitation would be “Terahertz Waves,” which he had not utilized.
Coulthart highlighted that the U.S. Army possessed the necessary terahertz transmitter for potential experiments with the Bismuth magnesium material. However, Dr. Nolan remained tight-lipped about the specifics, stating he could not discuss whether such research had been conducted.
Coulthart mentioned that Tom Delonge’s To the Stars Academy (TTSA) worked with the U.S. Army to study this material using the right equipment. Coulthart wondered why the U.S. government keeps such materials if stories about flying objects are just made up. Nolan thinks there is a lot of false information out there but believes there might be real materials that we should know about. He wants the government to tell us clearly if those special materials are real or not.
In 2019, Tom DeLonge claimed that his UFO research organization had acquired “potentially exotic materials featuring properties not from any known existing military or commercial application.” “The structure and composition of these materials are not from any known existing military or commercial application,” Steve Justice, TTSA’s COO and former head of Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works said in a statement. (Source)
According to the press release, some of these materials were in the possession of investigative journalist and UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe, who, in 2004, gave a presentation at the Xcon Conference regarding these materials. In her lecture, a video of which has been on the Internet for years, she suggests that the material could become a “lifting body” with the right amount of electromagnetic static and certain RF frequency. These are undoubtedly the same materials mentioned byTom DeLonge on his Joe Rogan interviewwhere he stated, “if you hit it with enough terahertz, it’ll float.”
In this video, Dr. David Chester, a scientist from Quantum Gravity Research, makes several references to pulsed terahertz waves. Towards the end, he mentions that pulsed terahertz waves in a metamaterial can slow down the speed of light. He further explains that this is beneficial for anti-gravity engineering. According to him, due to the way everything couples together in the equations, a reduced speed of light requires less energy to achieve the desired anti gravitic effects.
This is some really interesting information on terahertz, thanks to Observing The Anomaly.
AAWSAP commissioned 37 scientific papers that are now public. Someone FOIA’d about UAP materials being studied and DIA responded with 5 of these papers. One paper was on spintronics and another on metamaterials. TTSA bought an alleged sample of Roswell crash material and gave it to the Army to study in 2019. According to Puthoff it appeared to be a metamaterial that acts as a waveguide at the terahertz frequency. The two papers on spintronics and metamaterials also touches on creating materials that operate at this frequency and specifically that such materials would be radiation resistant and ideal for long space travel.
Hal Puthoff also discusses the sample with UFO Joe. Notice the bolded statement below. (Source)
So the answer is, we don’t, yet, really know where it came from. And it’s true that ten years ago Linda Howe provided us with a sample. And we did a lot of tests. Got electron microscope pictures and irradiated it with various gigahertz frequencies, megahertz frequencies and so on. We couldn’t make anything out of it. So it kind of went on the shelf. And it was only after this paper on meta-materials was published, we said, “Oh my gosh. The claim here, that this could have some real utility as microscopic waveguides, would actually fit the structure, you know, that we see there.” Okay, well where do we go with that?
Well, the truth of the matter is, that piece is actually pretty mangled and what you’d really like to do is say, “Okay, well let’s have a nice, clean piece of this, and let’s irradiate with terahertz frequencies, first of all, to see if it really does act as a microscopic waveguide for terahertz frequencies. And then, if that works, we’ll iradiate it with other kinds of fields and see if there are any unexpected responses and so on.” So it is still, despite the fact it gets unbelievable publicity out there, it’s still an absolutely unknown. It does range all the way from…this was a fraud of junk material sent to us, to…no, this came off the wedge of an ET craft.
We don’t know the answer to that, and the only way we are going to get something of value is to determine its properties or maybe reproduce it under nice conditions and determine its properties. So, it is still a giant question mark out there. So even though it’s, you know, it’s like…a few percent of our effort at TTSA, it’s like 99% of our criticisms (laughs). That’s just what you get in this field. That’s the way it goes. Some of us have developed very hard skins. Another question?
Puthoff elaborates further in another interview: (Source)
Well, years later, decades later actually, finally our own science moves along. We move into an area called metamaterials, and it turns out exactly this combination of materials at exactly those dimensions turn out to be an excellent microscopic waveguide for very high frequency electromagnetic radiation terahertz frequencies. So, the wavelength is 60 microns, which is a pretty small size. But it turns out because of the metamaterial aspect of this material, those bismuth layers that act as waveguides can be one twentieth the size of the wavelength, and usually when you make a waveguide it’s gotta be about the size of the wavelength. So, in fact this turned out to be a material that would propagate sub-wavelength waveguide effects. Why somebody wants to do that we still don’t know the answer to that.
Dr. Nolan is said to have a good friendship with Jacques Vallée, Kit Green, Eric Davis, and Colm Kelleher. They all came to him to analyze the UAP materials after he had developed some wonderful instruments using mass spectrometry.
“Some of the objects are nondescript, and just lumps of metal. Mostly, there’s nothing unusual about them except that everywhere you look in the metal, the composition is different, which is odd. It’s what we call inhomogeneous. That’s a fancy way of saying ‘incompletely mixed.’ The common thing about all the materials that I’ve looked at so far, and there’s about a dozen, is that almost none of them are uniform. They’re all these hodgepodge mixtures. Each individual case will be composed of a similar set of elements, but they will be inhomogeneous,” he explained.
Dr. Nolan found out that some of the fragments from the so-called UFO crash in Brazil have extraordinarily altered isotope ratios of magnesium. He explained:
“It was interesting because another piece from the same event was analyzed in the same instrument at the same time. This is an extraordinarily sensitive instrument called a nanoSIMS – Secondary Ion Mass Spec. It had perfectly correct isotope ratios for what you would expect for magnesium found anywhere on Earth. Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios. The problem is there’s no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium. There’s no different properties of the different isotopes, that anybody, at least in any of the literature that is public of the hundreds of thousands of papers published, that says this is why you would do that. Now you can do it. It’s a little expensive to do, but you’d have no reason for doing it.”
Dr. Vallée collected purported metal from the UFO cases dated back to 1947 and brought them to Stanford University for analysis. Dr. Gary Nolan, a Stanford microbiologist analyzed the 3-D atomic structure of the unknown metal with a state-of-the-art Multiparameter Ion Beam Imager (MIBI) capable of discerning the precise composition of matter at the level of its isotopes.
The result might be shocking for non-believers, as when he put the sample in the vacuum chamber of the machine, he found out that their composition was unlike any other known metal on Earth.
“If you’re talking about an advanced material from an advanced civilization you’re talking about something that I’ll just call it an ultra material right it’s something which has properties where somebody is putting it together again at the atomic scale so we’re building our world with 80 elements somebody else is building the world with 253 different isotopes,” Dr. Nolan said.
Could humans be altering the isotopes in these strange objects for unknown purposes? Dr. Nolan speculates that it is possible, but proving it requires getting down to the atomic level, possibly with a super quantum interference device (SQUID). However, neither his budget nor the budgets of the groups analyzing UFO/UAP encounters have that kind of funding yet.
In the vast and enigmatic territory of the former Soviet Union, a series of chilling encounters with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) unfolded, shrouded in as much secrecy as the regime itself. These sightings and incidents, once buried in classified files, have slowly come to light, revealing a narrative as intriguing as it is unsettling.
The Iron Curtain’s Mysterious Visitors
Spanning over the 20th century, the Soviet Union’s skies were a hotspot for UFO sightings. Unlike the open discussions and sensationalism in the West, the Soviet regime maintained a notorious veil of secrecy. This silence was not just a matter of state security but also a reflection of the Cold War’s tension-filled atmosphere, where information was a prized asset.
The Tunguska of UFO Incidents: The Dalnegorsk Crash
On January 29, 1986, the small mining town of Dalnegorsk was thrust into the UFO spotlight. A fireball streaked across the sky, crashing into a nearby mountain and leaving a trail of mystery in its wake. Witnesses were astounded, and the incident quickly gained international attention as the “Russian Roswell.” Investigators discovered a crater surrounded by strange metallic beads with properties that baffled even the top Soviet scientists. These beads exhibited anti-gravitational characteristics and a composition unlike any known material, igniting speculation about extraterrestrial origins.
The Dyatlov Pass Mystery: A Deadly Encounter?
One of the most haunting tales from Soviet UFO lore is the Dyatlov Pass incident. In 1959, nine experienced hikers embarked on a journey through the Ural Mountains only to meet a tragic and unexplainable fate. Their tent was found torn open from the inside, and their bodies were discovered under mysterious and violent circumstances. The official explanation of hypothermia did little to quell rumors of alien encounters, especially when reports of strange lights and high levels of radiation were introduced into the narrative.
The Secret Files and the Quest for Transparency
As the iron grip of the Soviet regime loosened under Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika, more information began to surface. Secret files and reports were slowly released, revealing decades of hidden encounters and investigations. These documents detailed not only sightings but also the government’s attempts to understand and perhaps harness the technology behind these mysterious visitors.
The Global Implications of Soviet UFO Incidents
The Soviet Union’s UFO encounters were not isolated events. They reflected a global pattern of sightings, particularly around military and nuclear facilities. Incidents like the one in 1982 at a nuclear missile base in Ukraine, where unidentified crafts reportedly tampered with missile launch systems, echoed similar occurrences in the United States. These alarming events led to speculation about the intentions and capabilities of the beings behind these crafts. Were they here to warn, observe, or intervene?
Beyond the Secrecy: A Legacy of Questions
The dissolution of the Soviet Union opened the floodgates for information, but with it came more questions than answers. The legacy of the Soviet UFO sightings is a complex web of fear, curiosity, and intrigue. It challenges us to look beyond the political and ideological divides and consider the broader implications of these encounters. What were the Soviet authorities hiding, and why? How does this fit into the global narrative of UFOs and extraterrestrial life?
As we continue to sift through the remnants of the Soviet Union’s UFO files, we are reminded of the vastness of our universe and the potential for mysteries that lie beyond our understanding. The Soviet UFO chronicles are not just tales of the past; they are ongoing puzzles that challenge us to keep looking up at the sky and questioning what might be out there.
De Hubble Space Telescope heeft de afbeelding vrijgegeven van het heldere spiraalvormige sterrenstelsel dat bekend staat als MCG-01-24-014, dat een zeer interessante eigenschap vertoont.
Dit sterrenstelsel bevindt zich op een ongelooflijke afstand van ongeveer 275 miljoen lichtjaar van de aarde en heeft een zeer intense helderheid. MCG-01-24-014 wordt geclassificeerd als een Seyfert Galaxy of Type-2, omdat het wordt gekenmerkt door een goed gedefinieerde spiraal en een zeer energieke kern genaamd ‘actieve galactische kern (AGN)’ heeft.
Seyfert-galaxies herbergen, samen met quasars, een veelvoorkomende klasse van actieve galactische kernen, waarbij Seyfert de neiging heeft dichterbij te zijn en een kern te hebben die de helderheid van het gaststerrenstelsel niet overstraalt, terwijl quasars verre AGN’s zijn met intense helderheden die hun gaststerrenstelsels overtreffen.
Hubble Telescoop onthult intrigerend fenomeen in de ringen van Saturnus
Hubble Telescoop onthult intrigerend fenomeen in de ringen van Saturnus
Hubble Telescoop onthult intrigerend fenomeen in de ringen van Saturnus (NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC))
De Hubble Space Telescope heeft een bijzondere afbeelding van Saturnus onthuld, gemaakt in oktober 2023, die een intrigerend fenomeen genaamd “spokes” (spaken in het Engels) laat zien.
Deze spaken werden waargenomen toen de planeet meer dan 1,3 miljard kilometer van de aarde verwijderd was, en het heldere zicht van de Hubble toonde structuren die samen met de ringen van Saturnus draaiden en slechts voor twee of drie omwentelingen rond de planeet bleven bestaan.
Sinds hun ontdekking in 1981 door de Voyager 2-sonde zijn de spaken van Saturnus bestudeerd, en nu documenteert het Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) -programma van de Hubble hun seizoenscyclus, wat suggereert dat hun frequentie verband houdt met de seizoenen van de planeet en de interactie van de zon met zijn magnetisch veld.
A MYSTERIOUS triangular craft zipped across the sky over a military base and, as astonished Ministry of Defence police looked on, aimed a search light at the ground below.
The incredible sighting above Cosford RAF Base in Shropshire on March 31, 1993, was one of hundreds reported across the UK by members of the public, police officers and military personnel over a two day period.
A UFO sighting over Cosford RAF Base in Shropshire in 1993 was one of hundreds reported over a two day period
Credit: facebook/Royal Air Force Cosford
Nick Pope is former head of the MoD's UFO research programme
Credit: Chris Loomis / National Geographic
Thirty years on the Cosford Incident, as it came to be known, remains unexplained.
For Nick Pope, then head of the MoD’s UFO research programme, it proved an intriguing mystery.
He tells The Sun there was a “spooky postscript” that linked the sightings to similar events in Belgium.
“There was a wave of sightings over a period of about six hours on March 30th and 31st, 1993, involving a vast triangular shaped craft that was capable of moving from very slow speeds of 30-40mph to high Mach speeds in an instant,” he recalls.
“At that acceleration, the G forces would kill a human pilot, and yet there was no sonic boom reported.
“Some of the witnesses heard an unpleasant, low frequency humming sound that they could feel as well as hear.
“One witness saw it fire a narrow beam of light down at the ground, tracking backwards and forwards as if it was looking for something.
“A small cluster of sightings at 1.10am turned out to be a Russian rocket re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, but that would only result in a high altitude firework display, so there was something else going on.
A huge triangular shaped UFO over Belgium (pictured) bore resemblance to that spotted over Cosford RAF base
“We investigated and drew a complete blank.
“All the time I was doing my investigation, there was something niggling away at the back of my mind that I couldn't put my finger on. I knew I was missing something.
“Weeks later, a light bulb went off and I realised it’s the date. On March 30 and 31, three years earlier, there was a wave of sightings, again of a huge triangular shaped UFO over Belgium.
“The Belgians scrambled two F16 fighters to try and intercept this thing, which the airborne radar locked onto, but the UFO kept breaking the lock. It was playing cat and mouse with them.”
'More than coincidence'
The Chief of Staff of the Belgian Air Force, General Wilfried de Brouwer, personally investigated the UFO and ruled out stealth aircraft from other military powers, including the US.
“The official position of the Belgian government is that these sightings remained unknown,” says Nick.
“The unofficial postscript was ‘thank goodness they were friendly, because if they hadn't been there was nothing we could have done’.”
Nick believes the matching dates are more than coincidental.
“Every now and then the phenomenon of UFOs does that to you,” he says. “It's almost like it’s toying with you.”
The unofficial postscript was ‘thank goodness they were friendly, because if they hadn't been there was nothing we could have done’
Nick Pope, Former Head Of The MoD’s UFO Research Programme
As well as being taken seriously by the UK intelligence departments, Nick believes the sightings would have been among the global incidents that were investigated by the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme (AATIP).
The top secret £17.5million unit, which ran between 2007 and 2012, features in the first episode of National Geographic’s new documentary series UFOs: Investigating The Unknown.
Through the testimony of first hand witnesses, the five part series looks into five decades of US government secrecy around the subject.
It includes the notorious secret desert base Area 51, and the unexplained malfunction of U.S. nuclear missiles after a sighting nearby.
'Tic Tac' incident
US Commander David Fravor reported seeing a 'Tic Tac' shaped UFO off the coast of Southern California in 2004Credit: ABC
A UFO similar to the infamous 'Tic Tac' seen by US Navy pilots, spotted over the UK hovering over Leicestershire in 2021
Credit: Lucy Jane Castle
The opening episode includes intriguing footage of a “Tic Tac” shape spotted by two RAF pilots off the coast of Southern California in 2004.
Lt Commander Alex Dietrich and Commander David Fravor recall seeing a “churning” on the surface of the ocean as an unidentified object hovered over the water and then shot upwards at astonishing speeds.
Commander Fravor describes it as a “long cylindrical white object, with rounded ends, roughly 40 feet long, that looked like a giant Tic Tac. It was pure white. It had no windows, no wings, no visual signs of propulsion”.
He says the object was changing direction rapidly, like a “ping pong ball bouncing off a wall”.
Former US Army Counterintelligence agent Luis Elizondo reveals the ‘Tic Tac’ was travelling at speeds unachievable in the SR71 - the fastest US jet of all time - but was able to change direction in an instant.
“We fly the SR71 at 3,200mph and if you want to turn that takes over half the state of Ohio to do it,” he says.
“But these can turn instantly. And we’re not talking about 3,200mph, they have been recorded at 13,000mph. The question arises, how is that possible?”
Luis Elizondo worked in the AATIP programme until it ended in 2012Credit: Alamy
Elizonda - who worked in the AATIP programme until it ended in 2012 - became increasingly frustrated with the government’s refusal to take sightings seriously.
He eventually resigned from the Department of Defence in 2017, over “excessive secrecy and internal opposition". In his resignation letter, he warned that “ignoring these threats is not in the best interest of the Department”.
Nick, who ran the UK equivalent of the AATIP programme from 1990 to 1994, says the secrecy of governments around the issue stems from “embarrassment”.
“The US government portrays itself as the world's preeminent superpower, so to acknowledge that there are things in their airspace, whatever they are, that are faster and more manoeuvrable and run rings around fast jets doesn't play very well,” he says.
“So there’s the embarrassment factor, and maybe a little bit of fear that either an adversary has made a quantum leap in development, which has left the US in a poor second place, or, as some believe, this really is extra terrestrial, in which case we're not at the top of the food chain anymore."
'Secretive'
He adds that the UK government is "just as secretive".
"Even when the Ministry of Defence had its programme, we consistently downplayed both our involvement and the phenomenon itself," Nick explains.
"We dismissed it as being of little or no defence significance and routinely sent out letters to the public saying, ‘We glance at these reports to see if there's anything of defence interest, but we don't do much else.’
"But behind closed doors, there were highly classified intelligence assessments, trying to figure out if it could be Russia or China or something truly exotic.”
The Pentagon's top secret £17.5m Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme (AATIP) ran between 2007 and 2012Credit: Getty
The existence of the US programme was exposed by Elizondo after he quit, leading to demands for its reinstatement and more transparency from the government.
“It was embarrassing for them because publicly, they said for years that we don't have a programme anymore,” says Nick.
“Since a programme called Project Blue Book closed in 1969, they had denied there was any interest in UFOs or AUPs - unidentified aerial phenomena - as they were renamed.
“Then suddenly, it was revealed that not only did the Pentagon have this shadowy programme called AATIP, but the US Navy had been routinely encountering these things for years and had got some on camera.
“Arguably, the US government was caught in a lie.”
In 2020 the US set up the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) which, earlier this month, reported to Congress that it was reviewing 650 incidents, but that there is no evidence that any of them are of extra-terrestrial origin.
'Game-changer'
A suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina in FebruaryCredit: Reuters
Nick believes the shooting down of a Chinese “spy balloon” off the coast of South Carolina earlier this year is a game-changer for the military's approach to UAPs.
“I think it both helps and hinders,” he says.
“Balloon sounds very low tech, but this was carrying immensely sophisticated, insidious signals intelligence equipment which, according to assessments released by the State Department, was attempting to hack into secure US military communication systems.
"But these things are very slow so nobody supposes spy balloons are the same things, for example, as we see in the 2004 Navy videos.
“Some UFOs will turn out to be spy balloons, but that has blurred the lines and may be taking people's eye off the ball.
“But where it's helped, immensely, is for years the military have had this conventional, one-dimensional view of monitoring airspace.
“They have filters on their radars and if it doesn't behave like an aircraft, they're not interested.
"They missed the spy balloon, which was spotted by members of the public, and the government only got involved when it made a local news station.
“As a result of that they changed the filters and they're picking up a lot more, so it's going to be interesting.”
'200 sightings a year in UK'
During his time at the MoD Nick says he dealt with around 200 sightings a year in the UK.
Of those, 80 per cent were easily explained, 15 per cent were lacking the information or evidence to investigate, and only five per cent were “weird, genuinely unexplained”.
“Typically they were sightings from pilots, police officers, military personnel, tracked on radar or where we had good photos or videos that intelligence analysts looked at and couldn't come up with a conventional explanation," he adds.
The UK programme closed in 2009 - but Nick now believes we are lagging behind the US.
“In the US there has been a 180 degree flipping of the narrative from fringe to mainstream,” he says.
“Five years ago this was all crazy conspiracy theories, sci-fi fantasy; now it’s discussed in Congress and NASA's doing a study. So at some level this is out in the open.
Five years ago this was all crazy conspiracy theories, sci-fi fantasy; now it’s discussed in Congress and NASA's doing a study... the UK is still playing catch up. We need to up our game
Nick Pope
“But the UK is still playing catch up. We need to up our game because this is a global phenomenon and whatever we're dealing with doesn't just fly in the US. There are sightings all around the world, and many in the UK.”
While UFOs and extra-terrestrials conjure up images of little green men with domed heads and huge eyes, Nick believes that if a spaceship ever lands, we’d be in for a surprise when we looked inside.
“Almost certainly we would find AI, not an alien,” he says.
“Even if they could work around the apparent barrier of lightspeed, the impact of micro meteors and gamma ray bursts means interstellar travel for biological life forms is very difficult.
“But even here we are on the verge of creating sentient AI, so imagine what a civilization with a million years' head start has probably achieved.
“I think there would be a secure radiation-proof metal box or sphere and deep inside that would be sentient AI.
Even here we are on the verge of creating sentient AI, so imagine what a civilization with a million years' head start has probably achieved
Nick Pope
“They would be coming here, hopefully, as scientists, explorers and anthropologists or even tourists - and not as conquerors.”
Nick remains “undecided” on whether the UFO reports are evidence of extra-terrestrial activity, but believes there is life on other planets.
“We don't yet have a smoking gun but we have a lot of interesting material,” he says.
“I'm 100 per cent convinced there's life out there in the universe, and not just life but other civilizations.
“As to whether we're being visited, I don't know. But I hope so.
"Of all the explanations, it would be the most interesting. And let's face it, the world would be a more fun place with aliens in it than without.”
UFOs: Investigating The Unknown premiers on Tuesday 2nd May at 8pm on National Geographic UK
On September 15, 1950, a remarkable interview took place in Washington, D.C., but it remained classified until the early 1980s, when Canadian UFO researcher Arthur Bray discovered a memo written by Canadian engineer Wilbert B. Smith that discussed an alleged UFO crash rumor confirmed by a former student of Einstein, Dr. Robert Irving Sarbacher.
Dr. Sarbacher (1907-1986) was a preeminent scientist. He went to Harvard and was Dean of the Graduate School, Director of Research at Wedd Laboratories, a successful inventor, and a Scientific Consultant to the U.S. Marines and government agencies. He was also connected to the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDB) of the US Department of Defense. He did a lot of research on rockets that could be controlled from a distance. Later, he would start the Washington Institute of Technology. (Source)
In the 1980s, Dr. Sarbacher confirmed several facts about UFOs and ET to researchers William Steinman, Stan Freidman, Jerry Clark, and William Moore. He said that he had been officially told about the crash of an extraterrestrial craft in the Southwest in the early 1950s. This crash may have been the Roswell UFO crash, or it may have happened at a different time. (Source)
He confirmed to them (as well as to Wilbert Smith three decades before) that the issue was classified as more important than the development of the Atom Bomb. According to him, the debris was both incredibly light and highly durable. He understood that the aliens were lightweight and constructed somewhat like insects. He stated that a limited group of individuals, including Von Braun, Vannevar Bush, Oppenheimer, and Eric Walker, were likely involved in the crash debris analysis. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to reverse-engineer the technology.
Back in 1983, William Steinman, the author of the book “UFO Crash: Aztec, New Mexico, March 1948,” wanted to talk to Sarbacher about UFOs and dead aliens. He tried to get in touch with him and start a conversation. Steinman received a reply from Sarbacher in an amazing way. Sarbacher wrote him the following in a letter: (Source)
“Dear Mr. Steinman: I am sorry I have taken so long in answering your letters. However, I have moved my office and have had to make a number of extended trips. To answer your last question in your letter of October 14, 1983, there is no particular reason I feel I shouldn’t or couldn’t answer any and all of your questions. I am delighted to answer all of them to the best of my ability. You listed some of your questions in your letter of September 12th. I will attempt to answer them as you had listed them.
1. Relating to my own experience regarding recovered flying saucers, I had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery and have no knowledge regarding the dates of the recoveries. If I had I would send it to you.
2. Regarding verification that persons you list were involved, I can say only this: John von Neuman was definitely involved. Dr. Vannevar Bush was definitely involved, and I think Dr. Robert Oppenheimer also.
My association with the Research and Development Board under Doctor Compton during the Eisenhower administration was rather limited. o although I had been invited to participate in several discussions associated with the reported recoveries, I could not personally attend the meetings. I am sure that they would have asked Dr. von Braun, and the others that you listed were probably asked and may or may not have attended. This is all I know for sure.
3. I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at the Pentagon but all of these were left there as at the time we were never supposed to take them out of the office. 4. I do not recall receiving any photographs such as your request so I am not in a position to answer. 5. I have to make the same reply as on No. 4.
I recall the interview with Dr. Brenner of the Canadian Embassy. I think the answers I gave him were the ones you listed. Naturally, I was more familiar with the subject matter under discussion, at that time. Actually, I would have been able to give more specific answers had I attended the meetings concerning the subject. You must understand that I took this assignment as a private contribution. We were called “dollar-a-year men. My first responsibility was the maintenance of my own business activity so that my participation was limited.
About the only thing I remember at this time is that certain materials reported to have come from flying saucer crashes were extremely light and very tough. I am sure our laboratories analyzed them very carefully.
There were reports that instruments or people operating these machines were also of very light weight, sufficient to withstand the tremendous deceleration and acceleration associated with their machinery. I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these “aliens” were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in operation of these instruments would be quite low.
I still do not know why the high order of classification has been given and why the denial of the existence of these devices. I am sorry it has taken me so long to reply but I suggest you get in touch with the others who may be directly involved in this program.”
According to UFO researcher Anthony Bragalia, researcher D.M. Duncan located Sarbacher’s son, Robert Sarbacher Jr., living in Texas. Duncan had a revealing dialogue with Sarbacher. It turned out that the younger Sarbacher had once questioned his father about the UFO phenomena. His father spoke sparingly about the saucer subject. (Source)
Sarbacher Jr. said of his father: “He knew that they were real for the obvious reason that they would be going 600 mph and then make a direct 90-degree turn in mid-air without slowing down… separated from all inertia and gravity. Dad said that the reason he was called in was to build the right kind of missile to track these things since they were way too fast for any of our planes to catch. They wanted the missile to not destroy any of the UFOs, but to be able to track them. So Dad had cameras installed (like on the V-2 rockets) so when the UFO comes into our air space we would shoot missiles at them with cameras on them, since only a missile could keep up with the speed turns.”
Stunned at the revelation, Duncan wanted to clarify this, and Sarbacher’s son replied, “Yes, exactly to track UFOs, or rather to photograph and watch them… When he first told me about the missiles… the first thing I thought was, what? You were trying to destroy them? He (Sarbacher Sr.) said very normally and matter of factly, ‘No, we put cameras on the end of them.'”
Sarbacher never changed his story, and he resisted the urge to expound or make assumptions. Everyone who spoke with him was impressed. However, his statement could not be corroborated because all of the people he mentioned had passed away. It was the summer of 1986 when Sarbacher passed away.
A report published Thursday claims a UFO was spotted in the skies above President Joe Biden while he flew into LAX on Air Force One on October 10.
A video shared on social media in December apparently shows a silvery white object flying extremely close to Air Force One as Biden landed in LAX for a fundraiser back in October, according to the Daily Mail. The outlet published several still photographs of the object, which whizzes past the President
The clip was taken by airplane enthusiasts Joshua and Peter Solorzano, who filmed the orb going over at around 10:18am local time while live-streaming on their YouTube channel. The first flies over around the 1:26 mark, and then comes back two more times at 4:38 and 6:58.
Many users noted its resemblance to a UFO which flew over the Middle East in 2022. Footage of the event was released by the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution office. A report noted the orb had “characteristics and behaviors consistent with other ‘metallic orb’ observations in the region,” but gave little indication to what they actually were.
Another witness, Chris Cullari, apparently saw the object around 12:30pm on the same day while in Culver City, according to Daily Mail. A Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) helicopter circled near the object, Cullari said, and he shared photos with the Daily Mail.
So either this thing is real … or the government wants you to think it is because of all the negative press they’ve been getting about UFO/UAP disclosure in 2023. After a year of promises to reveal the truth about what we know, our lawmakers decided that actually, we don’t get to know what UFOs really are, according to their data and research. If the people who really control our government want us to know something, we’ll know it. But otherwise, we will always be left in the dark.
Once again, the timing on this latest UFO appearance feels alittle too convenient. But that’s just my opinion.
A top-secret probe allegedly uncovered a spate of UFO incidents in the United Kingdom, one of which led to a secret inquiry back in the 1980s that still perplexes experts.
Apparently, UFOs kept popping up on Britain’s ballistic missile early warning system (BMEWS) back in the 80s, leaving the leadership at the Royal Air Force’s Fylingdales base totally confused over what they were seeing, The Sun reported in mid-December.
BMEWS is part of the NORAD missile defense system, which was famed for its ability to track missiles during the Cold War. Around this time, the system was often picking up UFOs, so much so that RAF Group Captain David Todd, a senior duty officer at Fylingdales, ordered a secret inquiry into the phenomenon in the early 80s.
“Unknowns came up on the radars at regular tervals for all sorts of reasons,” Todd told UFO expert David Clarke years later, according to The Sun. “At that time if the radar had sufficient capacity spare, it was told to go track them. That was because we are interested in unknowns and some times we needed to find out what it is, wherine it is and most importantly what it might run into during its orbit such as spy satellites.”
Some of the objects tracked by Todd and his team turned out to be meteors, but some had to be approached with an “open mind,” he noted. But the weirdest thing is that none of the information on the investigation is held in the Ministry of Defense’s official records. It sounds very similar to the Rendlesham UFO incident, which was epically described in this episode of “The Why Files.”
Back in the 80s, American military personnel were plagued by multiple UFOs, which some think was just the British playing a prank on their peers. But some think it could have been the real deal.
It turns out UFOs really like Britain, which is weird because the weather there is really terrible and most of the folks who live there (who I love as my kin) are some of the most closed-minded when it comes to the world outside of our immediate view.
Former head of Great Britain’s Ministry of Defense (MOD) Nick Pope said Friday that many UFO/UAP investigations were stopped in the 1990s over fears of “demonic forces.”
Pope led the MOD from 1991 to 1994, and claimed that the former chief of defense staff Lord Hill-Norton stopped investigating UFO sightings across the country after being told by a priest that these could be demonic entities, according to a Metro interview with Pope. And apparently, similar fears are prevalent within the U.S. government.
“It’s counter-intuitive that some official resistance to taking UAP seriously comes not from hard-nosed science-minded sceptics who think studying the subject is a waste of government time and money, but from a faction that believes UAP are real — but demonic,” Pope told Metro. “This stems in part from a biblical description of Satan as being ‘the prince of the power of the air’ — a quotation from the book of Ephesians.”
Actually, I think Pope is totally wrong on this one. The reason some people think UFOs are demonic entities is largely due to the Book of Enoch, which claims God sent his angels to Earth to protect humans, but eventually the two being interbred and created a violent race of giants. God sent the Great Flood to destroy these offspring, but some say they survived. (RELATED: Harvard Physicist Says The One Thing About UFOs That Should Terrify You)
Other rumors suggest that UFOs/UAPs are actually human, but a far more advanced and spiritual type of human. “The thinking seems to be that if UFOs are some sort of demonic manifestation, engaging with it feeds them, by giving them energy, and should therefore be avoided,” Pope continued in his analysis. “This was likely to have been a factor in something reported by Pentagon UFO investigator Luis Elizondo. He said that when trying to get a senior defence official engaged on the subject, he was rebuffed by the officer, who told him to go and read his bible.”
Whatever these alien-like creatures are, they definitely seem to like the British archipelago. Some of the most intricate and totally unexplainable crop circles have popped up all over the Great British countryside, and one of the most notable UFO incidents in history occurred in Rendlesham Forest in England back in the 1980s.
Human brain-inspired supercomputer will go live soon
Human brain-inspired supercomputer will go live soon
Using just 20 watts of power, the human brain is capable of processing the equivalent of an exaflop — or a billion-billion mathematical operations per second. Now, researchers in Australia are building what will be the world's first supercomputer that can simulate networks at this scale.
DeepSouth supercomputer - the world's first computer designed to emulate the parallel biological neural networks of the human brain itself. Developed by scientists at Western Sydney University's International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems, DeepSouth utilizes breakthrough neuromorphic hardware and software that mimics neurons and synapses to achieve unprecedented efficiency.
The DeepSouth supercomputer distributes processing across a network of bespoke brain-inspired chips, unlike traditional supercomputers based on von Neumann designs.
This enables DeepSouth to carry out a staggering 228 trillion synaptic operations per second, rivaling estimates for the human brain's processing speed. Yet it requires far less space and power than conventional systems.
This new generation of brain-inspired supercomputing not only could make sci-fi applications an everyday reality but even more scary is the fact that they could someday create a cyborg brain vastly more powerful than our own.
The prospect of entities, whether humans or AI (robots), equipped with cyborg brains is becoming increasingly plausible, paving the way for a profound shift in the hierarchy of Earth's dominant species.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
Top 10 Alien and UFO Developments of 2023
Top 10 Alien and UFO Developments of 2023
In 2023, the cosmos seemed closer than ever as humanity witnessed a series of bewildering events that challenge our understanding of the universe and our place within it. From governmental disclosures to scientific revelations, the year was a rollercoaster ride through the unknown corridors of alien and UFO phenomena. Here’s a captivating look at the top 10 alien and UFO developments that left us staring skyward in wonder.
1. Mexican Congress Witnesses ‘Alien Bodies’
In a scene straight out of a sci-fi movie, Mexican journalist Jaime Maan presented what he claimed were mummified alien bodies at Mexico’s first-ever UFO hearing. Discovered in Peru and alleged to be a millennium old, these beings with three fingers and elongated heads sparked a global debate on their origins and authenticity. The DNA analysis, claiming 30% of the DNA was “not from any known species,” only thickened the plot.
2. Pentagon’s Online UFO Reporting Platform
The Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office made waves by launching an online platform for UFO reporting. This digital initiative aimed to demystify UFO sightings by collecting and disseminating declassified information, marking a significant step towards transparency in a field shrouded in secrecy.
3. NASA’s Skeptical Report
NASA threw cold water on alien enthusiasts’ hopes by releasing a report debunking many UFO sightings as mere technological or human errors. Despite the disappointment, this development reinforced the importance of critical scientific inquiry into the UFO phenomena.
4. UFO Whistleblower Testifies Before Congress
David Grush, a former Air Force Major and Pentagon UAP task force member, turned whistleblower, testified before Congress. His explosive claims of government possession of non-human biologics and a history of cover-ups dating back to World War II reinvigorated public interest and skepticism about governmental transparency on UFO matters.
5. Alien Technical Supremacy Fears
Amidst a flurry of news, a chilling concern emerged: the potential technical supremacy of non-human intelligences. Officials and scientists expressed apprehension about the advanced technological capabilities observed in some UFOs, a worry that resonates with our deepest fears of the unknown.
6. The Debate Over Alien Life
The year saw a philosophical and scientific debate reaching new heights: Is there extraterrestrial life out there? With the vastness of the universe as a backdrop, experts and laypeople alike pondered over the statistical improbability of us being alone.
7. The Spy Balloon Saga and UAP Safety Concerns
A series of Chinese spy balloons over the United States underscored not just geopolitical tensions but also the growing concern over unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) posing a threat to flight safety. This development highlighted the need for better understanding and monitoring of our skies.
8. Harvard’s Interstellar Discovery Claim
Harvard physicist Avi Loeb claimed that fragments from an interstellar meteor might be of alien origin. This controversial assertion from the Galileo Project lead added a scientific layer to the UFO debate, suggesting that we might have already encountered alien technology.
9. UFOs and Government Cover-up Book
Garrett Graff’s book, “UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life,” delved into decades of public and private research, suggesting that the government might be hiding its ignorance rather than the existence of aliens. This perspective offered a fresh take on the age-old debate over governmental secrecy.
10. UAP Disclosure Act
As the year ended, the senate passed the UAP Disclosure Act. This legislation mandated the National Archives to collect and release records on UAPs, promising a future where more information might flow from the shadows of secrecy into the public domain.
In 2023, our quest for understanding the unknown leaped forward with these developments. Each revelation, each declassified document, and each testimony added layers to our understanding of UFOs and alien life. As we stand on this threshold of discovery, one thing is clear: the universe is far more mysterious and complex than we ever imagined, and our journey to unravel its secrets has just begun. So, let’s keep looking up; the next chapter in this cosmic saga is just a starry night away.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard Completes 24th Flight; New Glenn Hopefully on the Horizon
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket successfully launched and landed today at the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas, with an uncrewed science and goodwill payload onboard. This was the 24th New Shepard flight and 13th payload mission today from Launch Site One in West Texas.
This marked the first flight since September of 2022 when the uncrewed NS-23’s booster suffered an in-flight anomaly; however, the escape system jettisoned the capsule, which was able to land safely. With the success of NS-24, Blue Origin hopes to soon restart its commercial passenger flights.
“We look forward to flying our next crewed flight soon,” said Erika Wagner, senior director of emerging market development for Blue Origin, at the end of the launch broadcast. Watch the liftoff and landing below.
Liftoff occurred at 10:43 Central Time, with the capsule reaching about 106 km (66 miles) at its highest point. The 33 science experiments on board experienced about three minutes of microgravity before the capsule safely touched down under three parachutes — with a retrorocket to cushion the landing — approximately 10 minutes after launch.
The rocket booster touched down vertically about seven minutes after launch, on a landing pad 3.2km north of the launch pad.
The first launch attempt for the mission was scrubbed on Monday due to a ground system issue. But today’s countdown and launch went smoothly.
The payloads on board included research from NASA, academia, research institutions, and commercial companies, as well as student experiments from classrooms in Maine, New Mexico, and Kansas. New Origin said New Shepard has now flown more than 150 payloads to space. Also on board were about 38,000 postcards as part the company’s Postcards to Space program. Each postcard will be returned to its creator stamped “Flown to Space.” To send a postcard on future mission, see the company’s Club for the Future website.
“A special thank you to all of our customers who flew important science today and the students who contributed postcards to advance our future of living and working in space for the benefit of Earth,” said Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President, New Shepard, in a press release. “Demand for New Shepard flights continues to grow and we’re looking forward to increasing our flight cadence in 2024.”
When will New Glenn fly?
Meanwhile, Blue Origin is hoping to finally deliver on their next big project, the massive New Glenn rocket which will be capable of bringing satellites and other large payloads to orbit and beyond. But the rocket is years behind schedule. Initially, Jeff Bezos said that New Glenn would be ready to launch by 2020, but the latest estimate is that the first launch is expected to take place no earlier than August 2024.
NASA and Blue Origin announced in February 2023 that the first launch of New Glenn will carry NASA’s EscaPADE spacecraft to Mars. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission is a small planetary science mission that will use two spacecraft to measure plasma and magnetic fields around the Mars. With simultaneous observations from two locations in orbit, scientists hope to learn more about the processes that strip away atoms from the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere on the Red Planet.
In rocketry, size definitely matters. Image: Blue Origin
But if New Glenn can’t get off the ground by late 2024, it will miss the launch Mars launch window, and the mission will have to be delayed until 2026. Mars launch windows typically come every 26 months. ESCAPADE was originally scheduled to launch as a secondary payload NASA’s Psyche mission which blasted off on a Falcon Heavy rocket in October, but NASA removed ESCAPADE from the launch because it would not provide the mission with the proper trajectory.
A quarter century ago, physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence, an intriguing holographic connection between gravity in a three-dimensional universe and quantum physics on the universe’s two-dimensional boundary. This correspondence is at this stage, even a quarter century after Maldacena’s discovery, just a conjecture. A statement about the nature of the universe that seems to be true, but one that has not yet been proven to actually reflect the reality that we live in. And what’s more, it only has limited utility and application to the real universe.
Still, even the mere appearance of the correspondence is more than suggestive. It’s telling that there is something deeply fundamental to the hologram, that the physics of the volume of the universe might just translate to the physics on the surface, and that there is more to be learned there.
It’s one thing to cast problems of physics in a new language, even a new set of dimensions, to make them easier to solve. After all, physics abounds with such mathematical tricks and games that practitioners employ to solve challenging problems and move on to the next one. But the AdS/CFT correspondence, and the more general holographic principle that it represents, is so much more than a mathematical curiosity.
Remember that the essential goal here is to describe gravity, which for centuries we believed to be just another force of nature, just one more interaction that entities in the cosmos can use to interact with each other. But gravity does stand alone and unique among all the forces, even beyond its quantum intractability. Gravity is the only force emitted and felt by every single entity in the cosmos. Anything with mass, anything with energy, creates a gravitational influence around it. And so too does anything with mass, anything with energy, anything with what we call existence respond to that gravitational influence.
Kepler was right to discern something special about the motions of the heavenly objects and connect those motions to our lives here on Earth. Newton was right to label it a force, a set of invisible strings that connect all of creation. Einstein was right to cast gravity not in terms of pushes and pulls, but in terms of the very fabric of spacetime itself.
The holographic principle, whether applied to the surface of a black hole and its mysterious contents or the relationship between string theory and quantum physics, is also telling us something meaningful about gravity. But Einstein already taught us what gravity is, it’s no mere force, but the natural response we living entities experience when we encounter the bends and wrinkles of spacetime.
Gravity is the spacetime playground that we all exist within. Another name for general relativity is geometrodynamics – the dynamics of geometry itself. Gravity is space and time and matter and energy all rolled into one breathing, vibrant system. What we call the universe is simply the container for all that activity, all the breadth fo space and depth of time and complexity that fills it.
We have failed to find a quantized theory of gravity. We have no description of what truly happens at the boundary of a black hole. But we have learned in our quantum wanderings that physical, three-dimensional entities are not exactly what they appear to be. Indeed, they are shallower: black holes may truly be described only by their surfaces, their boundaries, their edges, rather than their full extents.
And when we apply this same chain of reasoning, that holography is a vital component to the quantum gravitational puzzle, out comes the AdS/CFT correspondence and a potential path to string theory glory.
We Just had the Strongest Solar Flare in the Current Solar Cycle
On December 14th, at 12:02 PM Eastern (09:02 AM Pacific), the Sun unleashed a massive solar flare. According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this was the strongest flare of Solar Cycle 25, which began in 2019 and will continue until 2030. What’s more, scientists at the SWPC estimate that this may be one of the most powerful solar flares recorded since 1755 when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began.
Solar flares occur in the Sun’s active regions, and activity varies over an 11-year solar cycle. This phenomenon is believed to result from stored magnetic energy in the Sun’s atmosphere accelerating charged particles in the surrounding plasma. These flares release radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum and are often accompanied by Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) and other solar phenomena. According to the SWPC, this recent flare may have triggered an Earth-bound CME, which they are currently analyzing.
The SWPC reported the largest solar flare of Solar Cycle 25. Credit: SWPC-NOAA
The SWPC also localized the flare to Region 3514, located over the far northwest area of the Sun. The flare caused interference with radio communications on Thursday, December 14th, between 12:00 PM to 02:00 PM EST (09:00 AM to 11:00 AM PST). According to the National Weather Service (NWS), Center Weather Service Units (CWSU) from the Eastern Seaboard to the Midwest reported interference with aircraft communications. The SWPC recommends that people continue to monitor their web page for the latest information and updates on the CME.
President Joe Biden’s December visit to Tinseltown for a campaign fundraiser had been caused such a hullaballoo even aliens may have wanted to see what all the fuss was about!
Planespotters caught a UFO on camera hovering above Air Force 1 in Los Angeles during Biden's December 10 trip, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The spherical white or silver object was filmed several times over LAX airport and spotted by multiple witnesses.
Explanations range from a mere balloon, to an alien probe searching for intelligent life. Either way it appeared to give up on the President’s entourage after less than an hour.
The object caused a stir on social media due to its resemblance to ‘metallic orb’ UFOs caught on camera by Reaper drones in the Middle East and studied by the government’s official UFO office – while skeptics dismissed this case as having a mundane explanation.
Airplane enthusiasts Joshua and Peter Solorzano were filming at LAX airport on Sunday December 10, hoping to catch Air Force 1.
They were delighted to catch on camera two F-35 fighter jets patrolling the skies enforcing a Temporary Flight Restriction for the Commander-in-Chief, and even filmed them being refueled mid-air by a KC-10 tanker aircraft.
A UFO was caught on camera hovering in the sky above Air Force 1 last week. It was captured by airplane enthusiasts Joshua and Peter Solorzano on their Youtube channel LA Flights
The white or silver orb was likened to those seen by Reaper drones in the Middle East and appeared three times in just under an hour
But at 10.18am while running their livestream for their popular YouTube channel LA Flights, they spotted a white sphere zooming across the screen.
Three minutes later the object appeared again flitting across the top right of the camera view as it trained on the KC-10.
The object appeared a third time at 11.08am directly over cameraman Joshua Solorzano.
He can be heard on the livestream saying: ‘It’s directly above us. It is moving, it’s not a star. I’m telling you they’re flying in from the ocean. Very strange right now.’
Joshua said he thought it was a balloon, but Peter referred to it as a ‘UAP’ – the government’s preferred term for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
The two joked that the Secret Service would soon be bearing down on them to confiscate the spooky footage.
Chris Cullari, a 37-year-old screenwriter from the Palms neighborhood of Los Angeles, saw what appeared to be the same object at around 12.30pm that day, while he was walking through Culver City to catch a train.
Biden and the First Lady stepped off Air Force 1 following a funding blitz across L.A.
A white sphere was spotted zooming across the screen at around 10.28am, minutes later the object appeared again flitting across the top right of the camera view as it trained on the KC-10
‘I didn’t see it move. I watched it for about 15 minutes to see if it zipped off or anything and it just floated,’ he said.
Cullari, who hosts a podcast called Scared All the Time, added that he also saw an LAPD helicopter circling near the object, and shared photos of the UFO with DailyMail.com, timestamped 12.36pm that day.
‘It just looked like a distant white orb. The fact that it was stationary drew my attention,’ he said. ‘And the fact that there was an LAPD helicopter circling drew my attention. But from where I was, I couldn't tell if the chopper was circling because of the object or something on the ground.’
Movie director Robert Wood, 44, said he was walking his dog in North Hollywood between 12.30pm and 1pm when he saw a white sphere move across the sky and disappear out of sight behind some buildings.
‘It was a solid white spherical object, traveling north towards Burbank Airport,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘It caught my attention because it was quite large and white against the blue of the sky. It was moving quite rapidly, not darting, but moving as fast as a plane would appear to move across the sky.
‘It could have been a balloon, or something else. I’m really not sure.’
The silver orb filmed by the Solorzanos resembles UFOs caught on Reaper drone cameras in the Middle East, published this year by the government’s UFO investigation office AARO.
Biden travelled to LA in an attempt to give his reelection bid a boost
Other witnesses stated the object appeared to be headed north towards Burbank Airport
Eye witness Chris Cullari said he also saw an LAPD helicopter circling near the object
In testimony to the Senate in April, then-AARO director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick showed some of the ‘metallic orb’ footage and revealed statistics showing that 34% of ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena’ (the government’s term for UFOs) are spherical or orb-shaped.
Since the release of the footage, filmed by an MQ-9 Reaper drone on July 12 2022, researchers have sought to explain it.
The group then used the satellite data to estimate the object’s diameter as likely less than one-and-a-half feet.
They concluded it was possibly a balloon coated in silvery, reflective material called mylar, released amid 'Eid al-Adha,' the second and largest religious holiday celebrated in the Muslim world.
Author Mick West, who has become renowned as a UFO debunker, reviewed the Los Angeles orb footage for DailyMail.com and said his best guess was a balloon.
‘That’s what AARO would call a “balloon-like entity”,’ he said. ‘It looks like a balloon and moves like a balloon, but as it’s in the LIZ [low information zone], you can’t prove it’s a balloon.’
The object was filmed in the skies above LAX airport and experts say they cannot definitively state it was a balloon due to its position within the low information zone
West said that the object’s apparent motion in the video is likely an illusion, due to it being closer to the camera than the fast-moving plane in the background.
‘It appears to be a white object, not moving in the air, just moving with the wind, so zero airspeed,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to suggest it’s not a balloon – you just can’t prove it.’
Los Angeles weather data for December 10 gave a wind speed measured at approximately 30ft elevation, of between 8mph and 10mph in the morning and early afternoon.
The wind direction was north between 10am and 1pm, according to the data from weatherspark.com.
Balloons flying in sensitive airspace became a national focus in February this year, when alleged Chinese spy balloons were shot down over the United States.
One balloon entered US airspace on 28 January and was shot down by an F-22 Raptor on 4 February off the coast of South Carolina after passing over US nuclear missile sites, including the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
Top-secret intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of up to four more Chinese spy balloons.
Enceladus’ Surface May Contain Relatively High Abundances of Pristine Organic Material
Enceladus’ Surface May Contain Relatively High Abundances of Pristine Organic Material
Enceladus, the sixth-biggest moon of Saturn, presents a remarkable opportunity in our Solar System for searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life, given its habitable ocean and plume that deposits organic-bearing ocean material onto the surface. Organic ocean material could be sampled by a lander mission at Enceladus. It is of interest to understand the amount of relatively pristine, unaltered organics present on the surface, given the ultraviolet and plasma environment.
Enceladus’ tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon’s icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon’s south pole and creating Saturn’s mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. Tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / JPL / SSI / Cassini Imaging Team.
“We can learn a lot about potential biosignatures in Enceladus’ ocean by sending a mission to the surface of Enceladus,” said Planetary Science Institute senior scientist Amanda Hendrix.
“Previously, it was thought that in order to sample the freshest material from the Enceladus ocean, you have to fly through the plume and measure plume grains and gases.”
“But now we know that you can land on the surface and be confident that your instruments can measure relatively pristine plume organics — sourced from the ocean.”
“We know that Enceladus’ ocean is habitable thanks to the measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft,” she added.
“We know there is liquid water, energy, and the chemicals carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. These are the ingredients necessary for life as we know it.”
“Enceladus is an ocean world: it harbors a liquid ocean below an icy surface.”
“There are at least several ocean worlds in our Solar System, but Enceladus is special because it is spraying its ocean material out into space via its south polar vapor-and-ice grain plume, which means that the instruments on Cassini were able to characterize the ocean as the spacecraft flew by and through the Enceladus plume.”
“Luckily, for this study, even though some of the plume grains are ejected out into the Saturnian system, close to 90% of the plume grains fall back onto the surface of the moon, which likely means that ocean material — including organics — is sitting right on the surface.”
Organic molecules found in the plume of Enceladus, include molecules like methane and ethane, along with more complex molecules.
Organics can be processed, or chemically transformed, by solar ultraviolet photons and by charged particles like electrons.
But if scientists want to find out if any ocean-derived biosignatures are present in the plume grains, they need these grains to be as pristine, and unexposed to ultraviolet light, as possible.
An artist’s impression of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flying through plumes erupting from the south pole of Enceladus; these plumes are much like geysers and expel a combination of water vapor, ice grains, salts, methane and other organic molecules.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
In the new study, Dr. Hendrix and her colleague, Pennsylvania State University researcher Christopher House, used data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and Cassini to estimate how deeply ultraviolet photons can penetrate into the plume grain-coated surface of Enceladus.
“What we find in this study is that there are places on Enceladus’ surface where we could land with a spacecraft and take a sample — and we’d be measuring relatively pristine organics,” Dr. Hendrix said.
“That’s because the solar ultraviolet photons just don’t penetrate very deeply into the icy surface.”
“Those damaging solar ultraviolet photons only penetrate some 100 micrometers into the icy surface. That’s the width of a couple of human hairs!”
“So that very top part of the surface gets exposed to those damaging ultraviolet photons, but only a percentage of the organics are chemically transformed, and then soon enough that material is covered up by fresher plume material.”
“And the deeper grains don’t undergo more transformation — because the ultraviolet photons are prevented from interacting with the deeper material.”
“The freshly deposited plume grains act as a shield for the underlying material. They act like a sunscreen!”
“Ideally, we want to one day sample relatively pristine ocean-derived organics by landing on the surface of Enceladus.”
“This result is important because it tells us that there will be plenty of relatively pristine organics available to sample, because the penetration depth of those damaging ultraviolet photons is so shallow.”
“The slightly deeper grains haven’t been exposed much to ultraviolet, so that means the organics have a low exposure age.”
“Because ultraviolet light readily alters organic molecules, the depth that such light travels into the surface of an ice-covered world really matters,” Dr. House added.
“With the short ultraviolet penetration depths found, our results ensure that there is ample organic material locked away and preserved in the ices of Enceladus that can be traced back to its ocean.”
“It is awe-inspiring to think that with known technology, we can readily access lots of organic material from a habitable extraterrestrial ocean.”
The findings were published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
A.R. Hendrix & C.H. House. 2023. Low effective ultraviolet exposure ages for organics at the surface of Enceladus. Commun Earth Environ 4, 485; doi: 10.1038/s43247-023-01130-8
Unveiling the Mysteries: A Year of Alleged Alien Corpses and UFO Revelations
Unveiling the Mysteries: A Year of Alleged Alien Corpses and UFO Revelations
In the annals of human curiosity, 2023 stands out as a year that reignited our collective imagination and thrust the perennial question of “Are we alone in the universe?” back into the limelight. It was a year marked by astonishing claims and enigmatic revelations, each adding a layer to the unfolding narrative of humanity’s quest to understand the unknown. This article delves into the intriguing developments of alleged alien corpses displayed in Mexico and the sensational claims of the U.S. government’s possession of UFOs.
Mysterious Displays in Mexico
The heart of Mexico City witnessed an event that would typically be the premise of a sci-fi thriller. In an unprecedented move, the Mexican Congress became the stage for displaying what were claimed to be the remains of beings not from this Earth. These ‘alien corpses,’ alleged to be around 1,000 years old, were said to be unearthed from the depths of Cusco, Peru. Presented by Jaime Maussan, a figure known in the ufology community, these remains sparked a global conversation overnight.
Maussan claimed that DNA analysis of these beings showed a significant percentage of their genetic material was unlike anything known to modern science. The physical attributes of these corpses, lacking typical human organs and supposedly having rare metal implants, added layers of mystery. While some hailed this as potential proof of extraterrestrial life, the scientific community remained cautious, emphasizing the need for thorough and unbiased examination.
Whispers from the Pentagon: UFOs and the U.S. Government
Across the border, in the United States, retired Major David Grusch brought forth claims that, if true, could shake the very foundations of our understanding of national security and aerospace. In a candid testimony before Congress, Grusch spoke of a secretive multi-decade program aimed at retrieving and reverse-engineering unidentified flying objects. These claims suggested that the U.S. government might be in possession of technology not just foreign to the country but potentially to the planet.
Grusch’s assertions included references to ‘non-human’ activities known to the U.S. government since the 1930s, a time when the modern fascination with flying saucers began. Despite the Pentagon’s staunch denial of these claims, the story fueled debates and conspiracy theories, reflecting the public’s undying fascination with the UFO phenomenon.
Between Belief and Skepticism: The Path Ahead
The events of 2023, from the halls of the Mexican Congress to the secretive corridors of the U.S. government, have served as a stark reminder of our eternal quest for knowledge. They underscore the delicate balance between belief and skepticism, between the hunger for discovery and the rigorous demands of scientific validation.
As we stand on the brink of potentially groundbreaking discoveries, the stories of alleged alien corpses and hidden UFO programs are more than mere tales of the unknown. They are reflections of our deepest desires to understand our place in the cosmos and the enduring hope that, perhaps, we are not alone.
As we move forward, the quest for truth continues, guided by the principles of scientific inquiry and an open-minded yet critical approach to the mysteries that lie beyond our current understanding. Whether these claims will be validated, debunked, or left unanswered, they undoubtedly enrich the tapestry of human curiosity and our unending journey through the stars.
Three Discoveries On Google Earth, UAP, Fleet, Aliens, UFO Sighting News. Video.
Three Discoveries On Google Earth, UAP, Fleet, Aliens, UFO Sighting News. Video.
Discovery 1:0°16'22.00"S 91°22'30.15"W Ship & UFO
Discovery 2: 32° 8'17.86"N 80°48'44.39"W UFO fleet & Abduction Discovery 3: 39°31'56.02"N 43° 7'19.41"E Ten Leg Alien Herd
Guys check this out, I have three discoveries from Google Earth map in this current video. I had a lot of stuff on my desktop that I have been saving for the right time. So here it goes, the first discovery reveals a UFO during sunset near a cruise ship with passengers in a boat watching and recording the UFO! The second discovery reveals a UFO fleet and two humans being abducted by UFOs...this one may be questionable for obvious reasons, but never the less interesting. The third discovery is a herd of ten legged giant creatures that were fenced in on a farm. Very odd on there, looks like the farmer torched them all, because the current satellite photos reveal the field burnt black. Death by fire.
Sterkste materialen Er wordt algemeen aangenomen dat diamant het sterkste materiaal op aarde is, maar er is iets uitgevonden dat veel harder is. Dit materiaal is simpelweg een legering van chroom, kobalt en nikkel.
Het sterkste materiaal ooit getest Het team dat dit materiaal ontwierp, presenteerde het in het tijdschrift Science. De wetenschappers kwalificeerden hardheid van deze creatie als 'uitstekend'. Academici van verschillende universiteiten, waaronder Californië en Bristol (VK), bevestigden dat dit materiaal bestand was tegen allerlei invloeden zonder beschadigd te raken.
Kracht, vervormbaar en bestand tegen breuken Bij het maken van een nieuw structureel materiaal (om dingen mee te bouwen, zoals metaal), is het essentieel om drie eigenschappen te meten: kracht, vervormbaarheid en taaiheid. Het materiaal is krachtig als het moeilijk te vervormen is. Het is vervormbaar als het te kneden is en taai als het bestand is tegen breuken.
Bestand tegen breuken Breukvastheid komt voort uit een goede combinatie van kneedbaarheid en sterkte. Wetenschappers zetten het materiaal bij lage temperaturen onder druk om deze eigenschappen te testen. Dat leidde bij het team tot een opmerkelijke ontdekking: de legering van dit materiaal wordt harder bij koude temperaturen. Hierdoor wordt scheurvorming voorkomen.
Een compromis "Meestal wordt bij metalen een compromis tussen deze eigenschappen gevonden, maar dit materiaal heeft het allemaal. In plaats van broos te worden bij lage temperaturen, wordt het juist harder", vertelde metallurg Easo George van het Oak Ridge National Laboratory en de University of Tennessee aan Science Alert. Hij deed mee aan het onderzoek.
Naar -253 graden Celsius Dit materiaal heeft het vermogen om verschillende reacties op nanoschaal te ontketen. Hierdoor blijft het bestand tegen de verschuiving in temperatuur. Het team van wetenschappers voerden zelfs testen uit op dit materiaal bij een temperatuur van -253 graden Celsius.
Verdedigingsmechanisme Het was bekent dat deze reacties konden ontstaan, maar ze waren nog nooit gebeurd in een reeks als deze. "Als je eraan trekt, start het eerste mechanisme, daarna volgt het tweede, daarna het derde en dan het vierde," vertelde Robert Richie van de University of California, Berkeley aan Science Alert.
Ruimteonderzoek Materialen die niet barsten bij zeer lage temperaturen zijn een uitdaging om te vinden. Toch zijn ze essentieel op het gebied van ruimtevaart. Die materialen worden daarin gebruikt om resistente en veilige raketten mee te bouwen.
Veilige raketten Volgens The Planetary Society kan een ruimtevaartuig temperaturen ervaren van soldeerwarmte tot ijskou. "Deze plotselinge, warmtevariaties kunnen ervoor zorgen dat materialen van ruimtevaartuigen ongelijkmatig uitzetten en samentrekken. Dit kan na verloop van tijd mogelijk leiden tot breuken."
Aangeboden door The Daily Digest
Bouw Ruimtevaart is een heel specifiek gebruik. Toch hebben de meeste uitvindingen op dit gebied zich later vertaald in dagelijkse toepassingen. Een voorbeeld hiervan is Mylar. Een warmtereflecterend materiaal dat NASA heeft gemaakt om ruimtevaartuigen tegen de zon te beschermen. Nu wordt het door residentiële en commerciële aannemers gebruikt als isolatie.
Nieuwe toepassingen Ruimtevaart is slechts een voorbeeld van de mogelijke toepassingen die deze legering heeft. Volgens wetenschappers is de volgende stap het onderzoeken van andere mogelijke toepassingen en het vinden van andere metalen met vergelijkbare eigenschappen.
Just in time for the holidays, a new composite image of the Christmas Tree Cluster (NGC 2264) has been released. This image is a group effort: the blue and white stars in the cluster giving off X-rays are seen by Chandra, while the faint green nebula was imaged by the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak.
NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars about 2,500 light-years from Earth with ages between one and five million years old, ranging in mass from greater than the Sun to 1/10th a solar mass.
To show the Christmas Tree shape us humans are familiar with, this image has been rotated clockwise by about 160 degrees from the astronomer’s standard of North pointing upward. That way, it appears as though the top of the tree is toward the top of the image.
NASA points out that the ‘green’ of the tree comes from the gas in the nebula, which is from the optical data as seen by the WIYN telescope. The bright yellow regions are areas of dense stars. But the Christmas tree also has flickering, colorful lights found within it. The blue and white lights (which blink in the animated version of this image, below) are young stars that give off X-rays. However, the coordinated blinking variations are not what you’d see in space. The artificial blinking lights were added to emphasize the locations of the stars.
The WIYN Observatory is a 3.5-meter telescope atop Kitt Peak National Observatory in Southern Arizona. It is owned and operated by the a consortium of several public and private universities. The Chandra X-ray Observatory launched in 1999 and is part of NASA’s ?eet of “Great Observatories” along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope (retired in 2020) and the now deorbited Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Chandra allows scientists from around the world to obtain X-ray images of exotic environments in space to help understand the structure and evolution of the Universe.
Below is another colorful view of NGC 2264, which is not rotated, but includes the sparkling blue baubles. This bright red version of the Christmas Tree cluster — as well as the Cone Nebula at the bottom — was created from data taken through four different filters (B, V, R and H-alpha) with the Wide Field Imager at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, 2,400 meters high in the Atacama Desert of Chile in the foothills of the Andes. This image shows a region of space about 30 light-years across.
The Christmas Tree Cluster as see by the Wide Field Imager at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. Credit: ESO.
This composite image shows the Christmas Tree Cluster. The blue and white lights (which blink in the animated version of this image) are young stars that give off X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Optical data from the National Science Foundation’s WIYN 0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak shows gas in the nebula in green, corresponding to the “pine needles” of the tree, and infrared data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey shows foreground and background stars in white. This image has been rotated clockwise by about 160 degrees from the astronomer’s standard of North pointing upward, so that it appears like the top of the tree is toward the top of the image.
Hubble Benadrukt Melkweg met Miljarden Sterren die Op een Sneeuwbol Lijken
Hubble Benadrukt Melkweg met Miljarden Sterren die Op een Sneeuwbol Lijken
Hubble Benadrukt Melkweg met Miljarden Sterren die Op een Sneeuwbol Lijken (ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESA, Yumi Choi (NSF’s NOIRLab), Karoline Gilbert (STScI), Julianne Dalcanton (Center for Computational Astrophysics/Flatiron Inst., UWashington))
De Hubble Ruimtetelescoop van de NASA en de ESA heeft een nieuwe afbeelding vrijgegeven van een dwergstelsel, geclassificeerd als “onregelmatig” vanwege zijn niet-spiraalvormige of elliptische uiterlijk.
Officieel gecatalogiseerd als UGC 8091, bevindt het stelsel zich ongeveer 7 miljoen lichtjaar van de aarde in het sterrenbeeld Virgo en heeft het miljarden sterren, waardoor het lijkt op een sneeuwbol.
De afbeelding, samengesteld uit twaalf cameravilters, belicht de heldere sterren, terwijl rode vlekken wijzen op interstellair waterstofmoleculen die worden opgewonden door energierijke sterren. Naast zijn schoonheid draagt de afbeelding bij aan onderzoek naar de rol van dwergstelsels in de evolutie van het heelal en de evolutionaire verbindingen tussen oude en moderne sterrenstelsels, zoals ons Melkwegstelsel.
But advocates had hoped for even more transparency.
The dome of the United States Capitol lit at night in Washington, DC.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Phil Roeder)
The United States Congress just passed legislation that directs the U.S. government to release records related to UFOs.
Some UFO records, anyway. According to new provisions in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the law that funds the U.S. military and related activities, the U.S. National Archives must collect for release all documents that "pertain to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence."
None of those terms is defined in the bill, however. "Unidentified anomalous phenomena," or UAP, is a relatively a newly adopted and broadly defined term that encompasses UFOs in the sky in addition to unidentified objects underwater, in space or that appear to travel between these domains.
The records are to be released once 25 years has passed since their creation, unless the president directs them to remain classified, and newer records can be released sooner if the agency that created them allows it.
The language directing these records is known as the the UAP Disclosure Act, or the Schumer-Rounds Amendment. An earlier version of the amendment contained much stronger language that ordered the Department of Defense (DoD) to declassify records "relating to publicly known sightings" of UFOs without review, but the measure was removed from the legislation that eventually passed.
Despite the mandate in the bill, some UAP transparency advocates say the failure to pass the original amendment as written is a serious disappointment for those who feel the truth is out there and that the U.S. government has a responsibility to reveal it to the public.
"The most important components of the Schumer-Rounds language were dropped — an independent Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena power, professional staff to search out records, and other serious resources," said Douglas Dean Johnson, an independent researcher who writes on various aspects relating to UAP. "What is being enacted instead is a modest mechanism that is far less likely to result in the location, extraction and disclosure of important UAP-related records that may be tightly held or even long forgotten," Johnson told Space.com.
Christopher Mellon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, called the bipartisan back-and-forth over the NDAA "shockingly dysfunctional."
"Regarding the UAP issue, DoD and the [intelligence community] clearly have a serious trust issue with important members of Congress who are not backing down and likely to escalate," Mellon told Space.com via email. "I've seen this pattern many times. So, although the Executive Branch feels they dodged a bullet on the Schumer language, until they earn Congress' trust, they are going to be fighting a prolonged and likely losing battle."
As word began to trickle out onto social media that the Schumer-Rounds amendment was not going to pass as originally written, many UAP transparency advocates claimed that lobbyists working for for aerospace contractors were working to kill the language in the bill, in order to protect an alleged decades-long cover-up of crashed UFO technologies. "An extremely powerful Defense Aerospace lobby is pushing key politicians in Congress to block the Schumer Amendment to the NDAA," Australian journalist and UFO transparency advocate Ross Coulthart wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).
However, those familiar with the NDAA amendment and the legislative process that eventually passed it think those claims are merely hearsay.
"I have seen no evidence of any substantial lobbying activity by aerospace firms against the UAPDA over the past 5 months. One cannot completely exclude some such influence, but any sizable campaign would leave tracks. I don't see them, and nobody has produced a single named congressmember who has referred to such activity, nor any document to support the notion," Johnson said.
Instead, resistance appears to have come from the DoD. According to the New York Times, a "person familiar with the talks who insisted on anonymity to describe them noted that the Defense Department also had pushed back forcefully on wider measures" in the bill.
A still from footage shot by an MQ-9 reaper drone showing an unidentified spherical object soaring through the air, shown during an April 2023 hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services. (Image credit: U.S. Dept. of Defense)
Much of the current movement to pass legislation that could release U.S. government UFO records stems from a broader disclosure movement that has been building momentum in recent years both on social media and in the halls of Congress, thanks to claims made by former U.S. military and intelligence community personnel.
In July 2022, the DoD formed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, an office established within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security that was tasked with collecting and studying reports of UFOs/UAP near U.S. military installations or "other areas of interest."
In April 2023, the office's director told the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services that AARO had found "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."
Even NASA commissioned an independent panel to inform the U.S. government how the agency might help better collect and analyze data related to UAP. "The top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in September 2023 when the panel released its first public report.
"The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don't know what these UAP are."
In July 2023, two former U.S. Navy aviators recounted their now-famous encounters with seemingly anomalous objects in military airspace to the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on National Security at the Border and Foreign Affairs.
Another witness at the hearing, David Grusch, a U.S. military combat veteran and Pentagon intelligence officer, told the committee that the U.S. government is in possession of crashed UAP and that "biologics came with some of these recoveries."
In response, some of the members of Congress even formed a UAP caucus in support of efforts to compel the federal government to release what records or information they claim it possesses related to UFOs and the alleged "UAP reverse engineering programs" it operates.
Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN), one of the more vocal members of Congress when it comes to the UAP transparency issue, said that the government has evidence that UFOs can "travel light-years" or at speeds that "defy physics as we know it," even claiming that some UFOs have technology that can "turn us into a charcoal briquette."
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Some of the objects appear to be transmitting signals.
A notional rendering of China's reusable Shenlong space plane.
(Image credit: Erik Simonsen/Getty Images)
China's reusable space plane just got a little more mysterious.
Just four days after being launched on its third mission, China's Shenlong ("Divine Dragon") robotic space plane seems to have placed six objects into Earth orbit. Amateur spacecraft trackers around the world have been following the objects closely for days and have recorded emissions coming from some of them.
The six mystery objects have been designated OBJECT A, B, C, D, E and F. According to satellite tracker and amateur astronomer Scott Tilley, OBJECT A appears to be emitting signals reminiscent of those emitted by objects that China's space plane has released on previous missions.
"OBJECT A's or nearby emission is reminiscent of earlier Chinese space plane 'wingman' emissions in the sense the signal is modulated with a limited amount of data," Tilley told Space.com via email. "There is speculation that the emission from OBJECT A may be from an object close to it, but this is speculation not based on any evidence I'm aware of." Tilley has referred to the objects as "mysterious wingmen" on X (formerly Twitter).
OBJECT D and E, meanwhile, appear to be emitting idle "placeholder" signals with no data accompanying them. "It should be noted that unlike emissions early in the Chinese space plane missions 1 and 2, these emissions are very intermittent and do not stay on long," Tilley says. "It's taken days of observations tracking pass after pass with dish antennas to come up with this data."
Tilley and other satellite trackers have analyzed the signals and are confident that the emissions are coming either from the objects or from close proximity to them. This conclusion is based on observing them along their expected paths in the sky, the fact that no other known objects were in the beam of the trackers' antennas when the data was collected, and the fact that the particular modulation of these signals is "unique and has only been seen from previous Chinese space plane missions using [a frequency of] 2280MHz," Tilley says.
"In summary, this iteration of the Chinese space plane mission launched into a similar orbit as the last two but operationally it is exhibiting different radio behavior than before. The additional observations of the emissions from OBJECT D and E is new, but could also have been missed on earlier missions if they too were intermittent," Tilley added. "Something we should watch for is close encounters between OBJECT A and OBJECTs D and E. D and E are in fairly elliptical orbits while A is in a near circular orbit. In the next couple of days there will be close approaches between these objects at perigee."
Perigee is the point in a satellite's elliptical orbit when it's closest to Earth.
China's space plane has exhibited similar behaviors in the past. On its two previous missions — which launched in September 2020 and August 2022, respectively — the spacecraft was seen releasing a small unknown object into orbit. It was speculated that the objects could be service modules, test articles for practicing placing payloads into orbit, or perhaps even small satellites used to monitor the space plane, SpaceNews wrote in November 2022.
The United States also operates a reusable robotic space plane, the Boeing-built X-37B. Similar to China's Shenlong space plane, little is known about the exact operations or capabilities of the X-37B. The U.S. Space Force is currently set to launch the spacecraft atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Dec. 28 after several delays.
And the timing of the two reusable space plane launches isn't a coincidence. "These are two of the most watched objects on orbit while they're on orbit. It's probably no coincidence that they're trying to match us in timing and sequence of this," General Chance Saltzman, U.S. Space Force's Chief of Space Operations, said at a conference earlier this month.
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JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE SPOTS ‘UNUSUAL’ AND ‘ENIGMATIC’ FEATURES ON ICE GIANT URANUS
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE SPOTS ‘UNUSUAL’ AND ‘ENIGMATIC’ FEATURES ON ICE GIANT URANUS
NASA has released stunning new imagery of the ice giant Uranus captured by its premiere space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope.
The seventh planet from the Sun in our solar system, the orbit of icy Uranus falls between that of the gas giants Jupiter and Neptune, where, unlike other planets in our solar system, it spins on its side.
BLUE IS THE HUE
Uranus possesses a striking bluish-green color, caused by its atmosphere composed primarily of helium and hydrogen, which the new imagery captured by the James Webb Space Telescope showcases in remarkable clarity, along with several of the planet’s twenty-seven known satellites.
Referring to the Webb imagery, NASA recently called the planet “unusual and enigmatic,” describing it as a “dynamic world with rings, moons, storms,” and a range of other features.
The newly enhanced versions of imagery depicting Uranus were originally obtained earlier this year by the James Webb Space Telescope (Credit: NASA/ESA/JWST).
The new image is based on enhancements of a two-color version of the same view of Uranus released earlier in 2023, which employs additional wavelength coverage that allows more details to be revealed in the latest versions.
RINGS AND THINGS
While Saturn is the planet most renowned for its rings, Uranus is no slouch when it comes to the striking series of bands encircling it. Thanks to Webb and its unrivaled sensitivity, even the faintest outermost rings of Uranus, as well as its most elusive ring of all—the Zeta ring—which is positioned the closest to the planet of all its rings, can be seen in the new imagery.
Surrounding the enigmatic-looking planet are several of its moons, including Titania and Oberon, some of which can even be seen amidst the planet’s rings.
The new imagery is markedly different from previous photos of Uranus captured by the Voyager 2 probe decades ago, primarily because the more “unusual and enigmatic” features of the planet (to again borrow NASA’s characterization) only become visible at infrared wavelengths, which were not able to be obtained by Voyager’s cameras in the 1980s.
“In infrared wavelengths, Webb is revealing a strange and dynamic ice world filled with exciting atmospheric features,” read a NASA statement that appeared on the agency’s official page devoted to the James Webb Space Telescope.
AN ICY PLANET WITH A CLOUD CAP
Also revealed in unprecedented detail in the new imagery is the cloudy cap that adorns the planet’s north pole at certain times of the Uranian year. With the details that emerged in the newly enhanced versions of the images, both the seasonal cap, as well as a darker region near the bottom of the polar cap, can all be seen.
Beneath the planet’s north pole cap, several weather formations can be discerned in the imagery, revealing storm activity. Currently, planetary scientists are unclear about how many of these storms may be present, and how often they occur.
As Uranus tilts toward the Sun, its polar cap appears to become more prominent with the approach of the planet’s solstice, the next of which will occur in 2028. During these seasonal periods, scientists believe the extra sunlight the planet receives probably influences its unique atmosphere and the weather occurring within it.
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE REVEALS CLUES TO URANUS’S TILT
Weather on Uranus is also impacted by the planet’s unique orientation, which causes it to possess the greatest seasonal extremities of any planet in the solar system. A significant portion of each year sees one of the planet’s poles cast in near-constant sunlight. By contrast, the “dark side” of the planet facing away from the Sun endures winters lasting nearly 21 years.
Scientists are uncertain why Uranus spins on its side at an exaggerated tilt of close to 98 degrees, although theories include the possibility that the planet may have impacted with another large object at some point in the past, knocking it into its current “tilted” position.
The newly enhanced Webb telescope imagery provides astronomers with the most detailed view of the planet ever obtained, revealing its most visually striking elements with incredible clarity, and allowing scientists to plan for future missions that will focus on revealing more of the mysteries about the most unique planet in our solar system.
Going back into history affirmed that most of the United States presidents showed interest in extraterrestrial life and unidentified flying objects. From the time of Eisenhower to Mr. Obama, the world came to know about this mysterious phenomenon and the life that can exist beyond Earth. The Washington flap (1952 D.C. UFO incident) magnified the UFO subject over the whole world as it was the first time that UFOs were seen hovering over the city where the president works. Then the case of President Richard Nixon who left evidence of aliens in the White House sparked a huge controversy.
According to the 2015 book “The Presidents And UFOs: A Secret History From FDR To Obama,” virtually all of them wanted to go public with the knowledge of who (or what) is responsible for sightings of unidentified flying objects, but were blocked by intelligence officials. According to the book’s author Larry Holcombe, Nixon was convinced that “a limited level of UFO disclosure” would ensure his place in history. He went to extraordinary lengths to preserve that information for posterity, as more recent reports claim.
Robert Merritt, a federal informant from the Watergate era revealed a letter in which President Richard Nixon confirmed the existence of aliens. The letter was made public by the journalist and researcher Linda Moulton Howe.
Note: Robert Merritt is a confidential informant for the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division. He has also worked for the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department, the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Marshals Service, the ATF, the Manhattan District Attorney, and the U.S. Attorney for New York City. He lives in New York City.
Richard Nixon, pictured above in the Oval Office on Feb. 19, 1970. Image credit: National Archives/Getty Images
In this historic Dark Journalist Episode, Merritt stepped forward for the first time ever in public and revealed his three meetings with President Nixon in a deep underground location beneath the White House.
During the first meeting, the president read aloud to Merritt a letter written in his own handwriting, where he revealed that they were protecting an extraterrestrial being. Scientists at Los Alamos eventually learned to communicate with the Being and developed vast knowledge from this interaction which helped them to achieve advanced technology and science. After reading it, Nixon sealed the letter in a time capsule, hiding it somewhere in the White House unknown to himself.
The second meeting was to give Merritt a copy of the letter. His mission was to give it to the National Security Advisor at the time, Henry Kissinger. No one else could know of the existence of the letter. Years later, the co-author of the letter, Douglas Caddy notified the National Archives that the capsule is still in the White House and that he would reveal its location if they assured that it would be released publicly.
Note:Douglas Caddy, LLD, is an attorney, the cofounder of Young Americans for Freedom, and served as the criminal lawyer for the burglars in the Watergate break-in.
Merritt’s influence was so great within the White House that he was a key witness in the Watergate scandal. The Huston Plan referred to was a 43-page report of proposed security operations put together by White House aide Tom Charles Huston in 1970 at the request of President Richard Nixon, who wanted more control over domestic intelligence on so-called left-wing radicals and the anti-war movement.
Caddy’s conditions on the National Archives were simple, they could take possession of Nixon’s time capsule as long as they publicly revealed the content of the letter. As a person interested in history, politics, conspiracy theories, and the existence of extraterrestrial life, Linda Moulton Howe began to follow the events. Howe discovered that the Huston Plan accidentally revealed the existence of the time capsule hidden in the White House and its contents.
This is from a partial transcript of the interview provided by Linda Howe:
MERRITT: He had this letter. He pulled it out, and he read this one piece of paper to me. And then he put that letter in a manila envelope, and he put a gold seal over the top of the middle, and then he put a piece of tape across that, and on the front was handwritten, “To Henry Kissinger.” He asked for it to be hand-delivered or mailed, whichever was best or safest to do.
LISZT: Now, this letter was very important. Can you describe the letter to me?
MERRITT: It was two red lines. They looked like a scientific formula with letters, numbers, and other scientific symbols that would be used, like chemistry symbols. He said, “We possess the knowledge, and we have in our protection,” and he said, “Subjects from Planet X.” I asked him one question, and he didn’t seem to like what I asked him, but I said, “Are these the things in Mexico or Area 51?” He seemed to be offended by the fact that maybe I knew this.
LISZT: Okay, now in this final meeting with Nixon, he’s reading you this letter, he shows you this formula, and he’s now mentioning an alien that they have in protection, and he’s a little annoyed that you mentioned the being was in custody or being held.
MERRITT: Yes. The word he used was “protected,” not “captured,” not “in captivity.” He didn’t use any words that would mean against the will. You know as well as I do that if we had a being like that, yes, it would be in captivity. I don’t think we’d let it walk down the street.
LISZT: You said he mentioned that scientists at Los Alamos had learned to communicate with this being. What did he say about that?
MERRITT: That we had obtained a very vast amount of knowledge, very powerful, to possess this knowledge and was able to learn from it, would be the most powerful nation or government in the entire world and could rule the world.
“Nixon said that Star Trek was antiquated. He laughed and said, ‘Robert, we are so, so far advanced it would take your breath away!’”
- Robert Merritt in a secret 1972 meeting with President Nixon beneath the White House.
The Dark Journalist video lasted 75 minutes but the interesting points are summarized. The real question is: what to make of it? Nixon’s gone and Kissinger never talked about anything like this. Why would Nixon trust Merritt with such a secret and a subject (extraterrestrials) which has nothing to do with anything else in the Watergate scandal nor the Huston Plan, which is still partly classified?
Black UAP orb caught while guy tests drone for first time, Porterville, California on Dec 17, 2023, UFO Sighting News.
Black UAP orb caught while guy tests drone for first time, Porterville, California on Dec 17, 2023, UFO Sighting News.
These two screenshots have been focused by me. SCW
Date of sighting: Dec 17, 2023
Location of sighting: Porterville, California, USA
Now I know, a lot of US gov videos were released the last few months and many have orbs or black disks, yet this is different. It has a green-yellow neon color area on one side. This makes me think that this could be some top secret drone created by the US military for use in war zones, blacked out, it might have the same radar resistant coating the B1 and B2 bombers have, making it invisible to radar. Also it seems to be very clear and very slow, not really knowing it's being observed by another drone. A UFO would know, and although this one moves like it, we really don't get to see its speed. The clincher making it 100% alien...would be its speed. We didn't see that, but more analysis of the original video is necessary.
Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states on Reddit:
"I was exploring the skies when I saw a black dot dropping from the clouds, so I started recording. The raw footage that you see was taken on the DJI Mavic 3 Pro Cine on December 17, 2023 in Poterville California. Backstory: I went to Best Buy to pick up my new drone from Visalia, CA on Saturday December 16, 2023. I went back to Porterville, CA and I started practicing on Sunday December 17, 2023 with my new drone when suddenly I saw a black dot dropping from the sky. So I decided to focus the drone camera towards the sphere object and I started following it as I was getting closer. I zoomed in to 7X optical zoom to conserved the quality video but then later on I zoom in to 28x digital zoom in the river. Then I was trying to rotate without losing the object but it was really hard because I’m new at flying drones and I tried my best I could do."
Teleportatie en het mysterieuze Philadelphia-Experiment Geloof je in buitenaards leven? Denk je dat tijdreizen een mogelijkheid is? Als jouw antwoorden op beide vragen 'nee' is, lees dan verder over deze vermeende gebeurtenis in de Verenigde Staten tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Het is huiveringwekkend
Vragen zonder antwoorden Het universum verbergt veel mysteries. Een daarvan is of er intelligent leven aanwezig. Het volgende verhaal suggereert dat dit inderdaad het geval is en onthult daarnaast dingen die nog angstaanjagender zijn.
Experiment Volgens het boek 'The Expanding Case for the UFO' van Morris K. Jessup (een aan de University of Michigan opgeleide astronoom) heeft de Amerikaanse marine een experiment uitgevoerd dat bekend zou worden als het 'Philadelphia Experiment'.
Hoe gebeurde het? Verondersteld wordt dat het schip, gemeerd in de stad Philadelphia, in een flits licht, met haar bemanning en al, aan boord spoorloos verdween.
Getuigen Vermeend getuige van het incident was marinier Carl Allen. Hij beweerde eveneens te hebben gezien dat enkele bemanningsleden dood waren, versmolten met de scheepsromp.
EInstein's onderzoek Volgens het History Channel, ontwikkelde Albert Einstein een project van voor het Amerikaanse leger dat het fenomeen zou kunnen verklaren.
Einstein's onderzoek Volgens zijn unificatietheorie ('theorie van alles'), zou een elektromagnetisch apparaat hiervoor verantwoordelijk kunnen zijn. De VS wilde oceaan kunnen oversteken zonder dat het door de vijandelijke schepen waargenomen zou worden.
Onzichtbaar Volgens het History Channel, zou Einstein een experiment hebben ontwikkeld waarbij een sterk elektromagnetisch veld werd geïnstalleerd op het schip dat het 'onzichtbaar' zou maken voor radars en mijnen. Maar beweerd wordt dat het experiment een heel ander effect had.
Mysterieuze dood Maar voordat hij deze vermeende vondsten kon doen, werd hij dood gevonden in zijn auto. Volg ons en krijg toegang tot het laatste celebrity en lifestyle nieuws
Film De film 'The Philadelphia Experiment' is gebaseerd op het verhaal en werd uitgebracht in 1984. Jaren later zou de film opnieuw voor controverse zorgen.
Getuigenis Alfred Bielek kwam met nieuwe getuigenverklaringen en claimde dat de film hem zijn ervaringen tijdens het experiment opnieuw deed beleven. Volgens hem werden ze niet alleen naar een andere plek geteleporteerd, maar hebben ze ook door de tijd gereisd.
Buitenaards leven Door de ophoping van zoveel energie zou er volgens Bielek een doorgangsportaal in de ruimte zijn ontstaan door welke UFO's naar onze planeet zouden kunnen komen.
Verre van voorbij Zij die niet in deze samenzweringstheorie geloven wijzen op objectieve feiten die het weerspreken. Voor hen die er wel in geloven, zijn de antwoorden op het marineschip zelf te vinden.
Verslagen Volgens de verslagen is er geen buitengewone activiteit waargenomen en er is ook geen document dat kan bevestigen dat het schip in Norfolk is aangemeerd.
Onzichtbaarheid Er zijn gevorderde wetenschappelijke onderzoeken gedaan naar onzichtbaarheid die geen directe relatie hebben tot de theorie van Einstein.
TR-3B filmed over Michigan? A Startling UFO Sighting Near Willow Run
TR-3B filmed over Michigan? A Startling UFO Sighting Near Willow Run
Willow Run, MI – December 7, 2023 – A remarkable video captured by a local resident near Willow Run, Michigan, has sparked intense online discussions and speculation within the UFO enthusiast community. The footage, lasting just 15 seconds, showcases what appears to be a classic triangle-shaped UFO adorned with five luminous lights and a smaller, possibly flashing light at the center.
The Breathtaking Encounter
In the dead of night, the resident, stunned by the sight, recorded the hovering object while questioning aloud whether it was a UFO or an unusually large drone. The authenticity of her shock, evident in her voice, adds a layer of intrigue to the video. The triangular formation of lights, set against the night sky, has led some viewers to draw parallels with the infamous TR-3B – a rumored but unconfirmed black project aircraft.
The TR-3B: Fact or Fiction?
The TR-3B is often mentioned in UFO lore as an alleged secret government aircraft, supposedly developed under the U.S. Air Force’s black projects. The theories suggest that the TR-3B utilizes advanced technology, possibly even reverse-engineered from extraterrestrial crafts. While these claims remain unverified, they provide a tantalizing backdrop to this recent sighting.
A Viral Sensation
The video quickly gained traction on social media platforms, with one user notably commenting, “The best UFO capture this year?” This statement has fueled further discussions and debates among UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike, turning the video into a viral sensation.
The Significance of UFO Sightings
UFO sightings, such as this one near Willow Run, continue to captivate the public imagination. They prompt questions about the existence of extraterrestrial life and the possibility of advanced technologies beyond our current understanding. In an age where drones and sophisticated aircraft are commonplace, discerning between human-made objects and potential otherworldly visitors becomes increasingly challenging.
As the debate continues, the Willow Run sighting stands as a compelling addition to the annals of UFO encounters. Whether it was a secret military aircraft, an elaborate drone, or something truly otherworldly remains a mystery. What is certain, however, is that our skies hold secrets that continue to elude our understanding, fueling our fascination with the unknown.
15 verrassende archeologische ontdekkingen Verborgen schatten, voorwerpen van duizenden jaren oud of menselijke resten... elk jaar zijn er weer archeologische ontdekkingen die wetenschappers intrigeren en het publiek verbazen. Kijk mee terwijl we de vijftien meest recente en verrassende vondsten langsgaan.
Een Merovingisch dorp in het hart van Frankrijk In Frankrijk is bij onderzoek in de buurt van Pontarlier een volledig Merovingisch dorp aan het licht gekomen. De bouw gaat terug tot een periode tussen de 6e en de 8e eeuw. Het dorp beslaat enkele hectaren en heeft een houten kerk waarvan alleen de fundamenten over zijn.
Een verloren stad van goud in Egypte In april 2021 werd door een archeologische missie een 'verloren stad van goud' bij Luxor in Egypte ontdekt. Het ging om een van de grootste antieke steden van het land, genaamd Aten, die in het tweede millennium voor Christus gebouwd werd. Archeologen konden verschillende delen van de stad blootleggen, zoals het koninklijk paleis en begraafplaatsen voor dieren.
Gobekli Tepe - wellicht het oudste bouwwerk van de wereld In Turkije dateert de opgegraven Gobekli Tepe van meer dan elf millennia geleden. Dat is nog voor de tijd van het jagen en verzamelen. De plaats is mogelijk de oudste constructie in de wereld. De ontdekking heeft nieuwe vragen opgeroepen over de chronologie van de prehistorie die wetenschappers gewoonlijk aanhouden.
Menselijke voetafdrukken die meer dan 20.000 jaar oud zijn In het zuidoosten van de Verenigde Staten zijn menselijke voetafdrukken ontdekt die rond de 23.000 jaar oud zijn. Ze lijken vooral van kinderen en tieners afkomstig te zijn. Deze ontdekking verandert alles, want ze getuigt van een veel vroegere menselijke aanwezigheid op het Amerikaanse continent dan tot nu toe werd aangenomen.
Een onbekende menselijke afstamming in Indonesië En dan komen we bij een andere ontdekking die de kaarten van de menselijke prehistorie opnieuw herschikt. Uit DNA-analyse van een vrouw wier botten in een grot in Indonesië gevonden werden, bleek dat ze deel uitmaakte van een groep jagende nomaden, maar dat er ook een genetische band was met Aziatische bevolkingsgroepen. Hieruit blijkt dat een tot nu toe onbekende migratie van Europa naar de Aziatische regio van de Stille Oceaan heeft plaatsgevonden.
Een onbekende menselijke afstamming in Indonesië En dan komen we bij een andere ontdekking die de kaarten van de menselijke prehistorie opnieuw herschikt. Uit DNA-analyse van een vrouw wier botten in een grot in Indonesië gevonden werden, bleek dat ze deel uitmaakte van een groep jagende nomaden, maar dat er ook een genetische band was met Aziatische bevolkingsgroepen. Hieruit blijkt dat een tot nu toe onbekende migratie van Europa naar de Aziatische regio van de Stille Oceaan heeft plaatsgevonden.
De oudste bekende grottekening De oudste bekende grotschildering is van een wild zwijn. Ook deze vondst is gedaan in Indonesië: op het eiland Sulawesi. De tekening werd in 2017 ontdekt en is ongeveer 45.000 jaar oud. Het werd echter pas in 2021 bevestigd dat dit daadwerkelijk het oudste prehistorische kunstwerk op de planeet is.
Grot der Verschrikkingen Een echte archeologische schat werd onlangs ontdekt in de Grot der Verschrikkingen, gelegen in de Judeese Woestijn in Israël. Preventieve opgravingen om plunderingen tegen te gaan hebben geleid tot de ontdekking van een 6000 jaar oud kinderskelet, 2000 jaar oude Bijbelse perkamenten, oude muntstukken, en bovendien de oudste mand van de wereld die meer dan tien millennia geleden gemaakt werd, nog voordat aardewerk ontstond.
De sarcofagen van Saqqara Midden in de lockdown van 2020 werden in de necropolis van Saqqara, Egypte, honderd sarcofagen uit het eerste millennium voor Christus ontdekt. Kort daarvoor werden al veertien andere sarcofagen vanuit een put naar boven gehaald.
De reuzenspin Terwijl Peruaanse boeren volop bezig waren een meer dan 3000 jaar oude tempel van voor de Spaanse kolonisatie te vernielen, haastten archeologen zich om te redden wat er te redden viel en ontdekten een 15 meter lange muurschildering van een gigantische spin. Het dier werd van oudsher met vruchtbaarheid geassocieerd. Deze ontdekking betekent een belangrijke vooruitgang in de kennis van de precolumbiaanse culturen.
Een knuffelend stel in China In Datong, in het noorden van China, zijn de botten gevonden van een knuffelend paar. Volgens het uitgevoerde onderzoek zou het paar geleefd hebben in de tijd van de Noordelijke Wei-dynastie, tussen de 4e en 6e eeuw. De aanwezigheid van een ring aan de vinger van de vrouw lijkt de hypothese te bevestigen dat het om een echtpaar ging.
Ontdekkingen gedaan door... konijnen! Mocht je er niet bewust van zijn, weet dan dat het konijn een waardevolle helper van de mens kan zijn bij archeologische opgravingen. In het voorjaar van 2021 onthulden konijnen bij het graven van hun hol, op het eiland Skokholm in Wales, oeroude artefacten. In het bijzonder werd een afgekante steen gevonden die gebruikt werd door gemeenschappen uit het Laat-Mesolithicum (ongeveer 5000 jaar voor Christus).
'Klein Pompeii' In de kelder van een verlaten bioscoop in Verona, Italië, is een kleine historische stad ontdekt. Het Romeinse gebouw uit de keizertijd onthult een weelderige en intacte versiering van fresco's en mozaïeken, evenals een complex verwarmingssysteem. Reden genoeg om het de bijnaam 'klein Pompeii' te geven.
De bronstijd in Zweden Een vijftigtal juwelen en relikwieën uit de bronstijd werden geheel bij toeval gevonden in een bos in Zweden. De wetenschappers die deze voorwerpen analyseerden, meenden dat ze moesten toebehoren aan een vrouw van hoge status. Deze archeologische ontdekking is de belangrijkste van de laatste jaren en kan de kennis over de zogenaamde Deense bronstijd vergroten.
Vikingvoorwerpen onder het ijs Door het smelten van gletsjers, een indirect effect van de opwarming van de aarde, komen in Noorwegen archeologische schatten aan het licht: in april 2020 onthulden onderzoekers honderden artefacten uit de Vikingtijd, waaronder kleding, schoenen en hoefijzers. Onlangs werd een soortgelijke ontdekking van 6000 jaar oude voorwerpen gedaan op het ijsveld van Langfonne.
Geoglief van een kat En als afsluiting nog een leuke curiositeit: hier zie je een geoglief van ongeveer dertig meter die een jonge kat voorstelt in de provincie Nazca, Peru. Deze wonderlijke tekening, die je het best vanuit een vliegtuig kunt bewonderen, werd gemaakt door de Paracas, de beschaving die voorafging aan de Nazcacultuur.
In 2017, the Cassini spacecraft barrelled toward Saturn for the final time. NASA officials had elected to terminatethe mission in a death dive. Obliterating the probe in a controlled maneuver would safeguard Saturn’s precious rings, moons, plus whatever else Cassini’s Earthly material could damage, or even contaminate. Like, perhaps, life.
Currently, scientists have never detected biosignatures in another world. But space exploration is providing tantalizing ideas. The latest such notion comes from a frigid moon of Saturn. The work is detailed in a study published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Six years before its fiery finale, Cassini flew through plumes of gas coming from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The spray was coming through cracks on its icy surface. It was a natural delivery service, giving Cassini’s INMS, or Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, a special taste of what’s inside the moon.
An illustration of Enceladus.
ALL ABOUT SPACE MAGAZINE/FUTURE/GETTY IMAGES
WHAT’S IN THE SPRAY?
Astronomers have been studying INMS data since Cassini’s 2011 and 2012 rendezvous of the plumes. So far, they’ve found compelling evidence that Enceladus may have conditions favorable to life. Inside the gaseous spray there was the presence of water, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and molecular hydrogen. This suggests that life could potentially emerge far away from the Sun in another part of the solar system.
But that’s a big maybe. “We don't yet know how life originated on Earth, so it's difficult to say what the necessary conditions would be on Enceladus,” Jonah Peter, a graduate student at Harvard University and lead author of the new paper, tells Inverse.
Life, at least as we know it, requires an energy source.
“The ocean on Enceladus is covered by a thick ice shell, so sunlight is unlikely to provide enough energy for life underneath. That means for life to exist on Enceladus, there must be an alternative source of energy,” Peter said.
Chemical reactions are known to support microbial communities in the dark depths of Earth’s oceans, however.
This 2010 image from NASA’s Cassini mission shows water from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus spraying out into space from huge cracks in its icy surface.
The team performed a statistical analysis to find what might be hiding inside Cassini’s INMS data. It was built upon earlier work on the plume data.
“Searching for compounds in the plume is a bit like putting the pieces of a puzzle back together,” Peter said. It’s a search for the “right combination of molecules” that would create the data Cassini gathered more than a decade ago in the outer solar system.
Peter’s team found five new compounds inside the plume: alcohol (methanol), molecular oxygen, plus three organic compounds called hydrogen cyanide (HCN), acetylene (C2H2), and propylene (C3H6).
These molecules are not biosignatures, meaning they don’t indicate that life exists on Enceladus. “They do, however, indicate conditions favorable for organic synthesis, which could lead to the formation of more complex molecules related to the origin of life,” Peter said.
One compound in particular, HCN, is a versatile building block of life. It goes into forming amino acids, sugars, and nucleobases. These are the precursors to proteins and DNA.
They indicate that Enceladus’ subsurface ocean has the ability to contain a diverse array of chemical reactions, acting in the Sun’s absence to provide energy for life. It’s an exciting finding, but like most things that thrill, more insight is necessary.
At least Cassini, reduced to a tattered mess of tiny bits in Saturn’s sky, lives on in the data.
De voorspellingen van Nostradamus voor 2024 onthuld Nostradamus was een Franse astroloog geboren aan het begin van de 16e eeuw. Hij werkte als arts, maar hij staat bekend om zijn veronderstelde vermogen om de toekomst te voorspellen, en er wordt gezegd dat hij veel grote wereldgebeurtenissen heeft voorzien. Sommigen beweren dat hij met succes de opkomst van Adolf Hitler, het begin van de coronaviruspandemie en zelfs de moord op de Amerikaanse president John F. Kennedy heeft voorspeld. Welnu, voorspellingen van de mysticus voor 2024 beweren dat er drama zou kunnen zijn voor de koninklijke familie, een uitbraak van oorlog en een grote tsunami.
Gefascineerd? Kijk verder om een huiveringwekkende voorspelling voor 2024 te ontdekken, met dank aan Nostradamus.
Wie was Nostradamus? Hoewel we hem maar bij één naam kennen, werd hij eigenlijk geboren als Michel de Nostredame. Nostradamus is de Latijnse vorm van zijn naam. Hij werd geboren op 14 December 1503 in het zuiden van Frankrijk in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
Zijn eerste profetieën kwamen voort uit verdriet Men gelooft dat Nostradamus de toekomst begon te voorspellen na de tragische dood van zijn vrouw en kinderen door een pestepidemie in Frankrijk. Hij begon door Europa te reizen en leerde over Joodse mystiek en astrologische technieken.
Zijn grootste werk Toen Nostradamus terugkeerde naar de Provence, publiceerde hij de eerste van zijn profetieën in 1555 in wat zijn grootste werk werd, 'De Profetieën'. Het boek bestond uit 942 voorspellingen.
Zijn voorspellingen worden tot op de dag van vandaag geanalyseerd Een van de redenen waarom de voorspellingen van Nostradamus mensen blijven fascineren, is omdat ze altijd vaag waren en nooit data bevatten.
Voorspellingen voor 2024 Zijn voorspellingen konden daarom worden toegepast op verschillende dramatische gebeurtenissen door de eeuwen heen. Klik verder om te zien wat 2024 in petto zou kunnen hebben!
Klimaatverandering wordt catastrofaal Nostradamus gebruikte bijbelse beeldspraak als het ging om zijn visioenen van de wereld, vooral toen hij schreef over het einde van de wereld.
Klimaatverandering wordt catastrofaal Volgens verschillende interpretatoren van zijn profetieën leggen zijn eerdere geschriften de basis voor een wereld die geconfronteerd wordt met de catastrofale gevolgen van de opwarming van de aarde, en 2024 zal niet anders zijn.
Klimaatverandering wordt catastrofaal Verschillende van zijn analisten wijzen op een tekst die kokende zeeën, rivieren en meren beschrijft, naast de voorspelling van een grote droogte. Zij suggereren dat dit het bewijs is dat Nostradamus klimaatverandering voorspelde die ertoe zou leiden dat delen van de aarde onleefbaar zouden worden voor mensen en dieren.
Een enorme tsunami kan een grote hongersnood veroorzaken Nostradamus voorspelde ook tsunami's, want hij beweerde dat een serie "grote overstromingen" delen van de wereld zal treffen, gevolgd door een "grote hongersnood".
Een enorme tsunami kan een grote hongersnood veroorzaken Hij schreef ook over een "zeer grote hongersnood door pestgolf", wat zou duiden op de mogelijkheid dat de tsunami landbouwgrond zou treffen.
Een door oorlog verscheurde tijd De afgelopen jaren werd de wereldwijde nieuwscyclus gedomineerd door het uitbreken van oorlog. In Februari 2022 viel Rusland Oekraïne binnen, waardoor de spanningen tussen de supermachten van de wereld toenamen.
Een door oorlog verscheurde tijd En in de herfst van 2023 verklaarde Israël de oorlog aan de Palestijnse militante groep Hamas na hun aanval, die leidde tot hevige bombardementen op de Gazastrook en nog eens duizenden doden.
Verwacht een enorme zeeslag Nostradamus voorzag specifiek escalerende conflicten in de oceanen, omdat niet alleen "grote overstromingen" zullen plaatsvinden, maar ook "angst" door de oceanen zal sijpelen.
China zal betrokken raken bij conflict Bovendien voorspelde Nostradamus "gevechten en zeeslagen" en zei hij dat een "rode tegenstander bleek zal worden van angst en de grote oceaan zal doen vrezen". Sommigen geloven dat de "rode tegenstander" zou kunnen verwijzen naar China.
China zal betrokken raken bij conflict De "zeeslag" zou kunnen verwijzen naar China's spanningen met Taiwan. Beijing heeft momenteel de grootste marine ter wereld.
China zal betrokken raken bij conflict Sommigen hebben dit zelfs geïnterpreteerd als een mogelijke confrontatie tussen China en de NAVO, wat zou duiden op het begin van een nieuw Chinees-Russisch pact.
Er zou een nieuwe paus kunnen komen Paus Franciscus, die op 17 December 2024 88 jaar wordt, heeft de laatste tijd gezondheidsproblemen. Hij beklom het hoogste ambt van het Vaticaan in 2013 na het aftreden van zijn voorganger.
Er zou een nieuwe paus kunnen komen In 2023 moest hij de VN-klimaatconferentie COP28 in Dubai overslaan vanwege een longontsteking en ademhalingsproblemen als gevolg van griep.
Er zou een nieuwe paus kunnen komen Volgens de voorspellingen van de astroloog zou Paus Franciscus binnenkort een vervanger kunnen krijgen. "Door de dood van een zeer oude paus, zal een Romein van goede leeftijd worden gekozen, Van hem zal worden gezegd dat hij zijn zie verzwakt, Maar lang zal hij zitten en in bijtende activiteit," schreef hij.
Er zou een nieuwe paus kunnen komen De geschreven regels voorspellen de dood van de paus en zijn vervanging door een jonge Romein. Hoewel "Romein" in dit geval aantoonbaar verwijst naar de Kerk zelf.
Koning Charles III's regeerperiode zal worden ingekort Eén belangrijke voorspelling van Nostradamus verwijst naar een "koning van de eilanden" die "met geweld wordt verdreven".
Koning Charles III's regeerperiode zal worden ingekort Hoewel er niet wordt verwezen naar een bepaald koninklijk boegbeeld, geloven sommige experts dat het om Koning Karel zou kunnen gaan. Nostradamus' bewering luidt: "Koning van de eilanden met geweld verdreven... vervangen door iemand die geen merkteken van een koning zal hebben."
Koning Charles III's regeerperiode wordt ingekort Analist en auteur Mario Reading gelooft dat de koning zou kunnen aftreden vanwege "aanhoudende aanvallen op zowel hemzelf als zijn tweede vrouw".
Koning Charles III's regeerperiode zal worden ingekort Hoewel prins William de volgende in lijn is, hebben sommige analisten beweerd dat de uitspraak "geen teken van een koning" suggereert dat prins Harry de troon zal bestijgen!
Viral Sensation: This Startling UFO Footage from Porterville is Taking Reddit and Social Media by Storm! A Remarkable UFO Sighting in Porterville
Viral Sensation: This Startling UFO Footage from Porterville is Taking Reddit and Social Media by Storm! A Remarkable UFO Sighting in Porterville
Porterville, California, a serene city known for its agricultural prowess, became the center of a mystifying event on Sunday, December 17, 2023. At precisely 3:56:58 PM, a local resident, fresh from purchasing a DJI Mavic 3 Pro Cine drone, witnessed something extraordinary. This article delves into the enigmatic sighting, exploring both the initial awe and the rational explanation that followed.
It all started on a seemingly ordinary Sunday. The witness, having recently acquired a state-of-the-art DJI Mavic 3 Pro Cine drone from Best Buy in Visalia, CA, decided to test the capabilities of this marvel in the skies of Porterville. As the drone soared, capturing the picturesque landscape, an unusual black dot appeared, descending from the sky. Intrigued, the operator maneuvered the drone, zooming in on this mysterious object. Utilizing the drone’s 7X optical zoom to maintain video quality, they captured a clear view of what seemed to be a spherical object.
As the drone operator grew more adept at controlling their new gadget, they pushed the zoom to 28x digital, capturing even finer details over the river. Despite being a novice at drone piloting, the witness skillfully kept the object in frame, documenting this peculiar phenomenon with impressive precision.
The Power of Perspective: Debunking the Mystery
In an exciting twist, the article shifts towards a rational explanation of the event. The video below provides a compelling analysis. It educates viewers on the concept of parallax – an effect where the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions. This phenomenon is brilliantly explained using the example of the “GoFast” video, where an object, seemingly moving rapidly, is likely just a bird or balloon traveling at around 40 mph.
The video concludes that the object in question over Porterville is most likely a celebratory balloon. This conclusion is drawn after carefully considering the object’s movement patterns and characteristics observed in the high-quality footage.
Conclusion: A Fusion of Mystery and Technology
This incident in Porterville beautifully encapsulates the intersection of human curiosity, technological advancement, and the natural world. While the initial sighting stirred thoughts of extraterrestrial visitors, the logical explanation underscores the importance of understanding and applying scientific principles like parallax in our interpretation of such events.
The DJI Mavic 3 Pro Cine, with its advanced features, not only provided a platform for capturing this intriguing moment but also played a pivotal role in demystifying it. This story, a blend of awe and science, reminds us of the wonders and mysteries that surround us and the power of technology to unravel them.
Mussolini’s UFOs: Unraveling the Mystery of Italian UFO Sightings
Mussolini’s UFOs: Unraveling the Mystery of Italian UFO Sightings
Exploring the Enigma of Alien Encounters in Italy’s History
Italy, a country renowned for its rich cultural heritage and picturesque landscapes, harbors a lesser-known yet intriguing facet of history – a series of unexplained UFO sightings that even involve figures like Benito Mussolini. This deep dive into Italy’s extraterrestrial mysteries sheds light on an often-overlooked chapter in the annals of UFO phenomena.
Mussolini’s Secret Project: The RS/33 Cabinet
In the heart of fascist Italy, under the rigid control of Benito Mussolini, a clandestine project known as ‘Cabinet RS/33’ was rumored to be in operation. This secretive group was reportedly dedicated to the study and investigation of unidentified flying objects. This little-known aspect of Mussolini’s regime suggests a deep interest in extraterrestrial technology and occurrences, decades before such interest became widespread.
Spectacular Sightings and Historical Mysteries
Italy’s history is dotted with UFO sightings, ranging from the bewildering interruption of a Tuscany football match to ancient accounts from Roman times. These sightings, often described in historical texts, offer a unique perspective on the country’s encounters with the unexplained. From the biota historica’s tales of Greek fleets witnessing celestial phenomena to the reports of fiery shields and strange lights in the Roman sky, Italy’s past is replete with enigmatic episodes that challenge our understanding of history.
The Renaissance and Beyond: A Hotbed of UFO Activity
The Renaissance, Italy’s period of cultural rebirth, was not just a time of artistic and scientific advancements but also a phase marked by numerous UFO sightings. Paintings from this era, like the mysterious depiction of a disc-shaped object in a religious context, add an intriguing layer to the UFO narrative. These artistic testimonies intertwine with written accounts of bizarre occurrences, painting a vivid picture of Italy’s historical encounters with the unknown.
Modern Sightings: A Continuation of the Enigma
Moving into the 20th century, Italy continued to be a hotspot for UFO activity. From the RS/33 cabinet’s alleged recovery of an extraterrestrial craft to the numerous reports during and after World War II, the Italian skies seemed to be a magnet for unexplained aerial phenomena. The incident involving Mussolini’s secret cabinet and the crash of an unidentified object is particularly notable, hinting at a possible early retrieval of alien technology on European soil.
The Impact and Significance of Italian UFO Sightings
These occurrences are not mere footnotes in Italy’s history but rather crucial elements that offer a broader understanding of the global UFO phenomenon. They challenge our perception of the past, encouraging a re-evaluation of historical events under the lens of potential extraterrestrial involvement. Italy’s UFO sightings, especially those linked to prominent figures like Mussolini, open up new avenues for research and discussion in the field of ufology.
Italy’s rich tapestry of UFO sightings, spanning from ancient times to the modern era, presents a fascinating chapter in the global narrative of extraterrestrial encounters. The involvement of historical figures like Mussolini in these mysteries adds a compelling dimension to the study of UFOs. As we continue to explore these enigmatic occurrences, Italy stands as a testament to the enduring allure and mystery of UFO sightings, beckoning us to delve deeper into the unknown realms of our history and the cosmos.
The Calvin Parker Alien Encounter and Government Secrets
The Calvin Parker Alien Encounter and Government Secrets
In the obscure corners of ufology, few stories resonate with the chilling intensity of Calvin Parker‘s alleged alien abduction in the 1970s. Recently, Ben Hansen brought this enigma back into the limelight, interviewing Parker to unearth details of an event that, despite overwhelming evidence, was seemingly ignored by the U.S. government. This narrative not only rekindles the age-old debate about extraterrestrial life but also hints at possible governmental secrets.
The Night That Changed Everything
Calvin Parker’s life took an extraordinary turn one evening in the 1970s. While fishing at a pier, he and a friend encountered what they initially mistook for police patrol lights. This mundane expectation was shattered by the appearance of three bulky, gray creatures with skin resembling elephant hide. Parker’s recollection of being grabbed, injected, and paralyzed by these beings is the stuff of science fiction nightmares.
The most harrowing part of his tale involves being taken aboard a spacecraft. Here, he describes a bizarre examination by a different creature, a “female” with elongated fingers, culminating in a terrifying and painful procedure. This vivid description of his experience defies earthly explanations and fuels endless speculation.
Skepticism and Silence
Despite Parker’s detailed account and unwavering consistency, his story met with skepticism and, more intriguingly, silence from official channels. This dismissal is perplexing, considering the gravity and specificity of his claims. The lack of a governmental investigation raises questions about whether authorities chose to ignore the incident or were concealing something more significant.
A Legacy of Fear and Paranoia
The impact of this encounter on Parker’s life was profound. He describes living in a state of paranoia, haunted by the fear of a repeat abduction. His subsequent experiences, including missing time and hypnotic regressions revealing possible alien implant removal, only add layers to this unsettling saga.
Unearthly Agreements: The Eisenhower Conspiracy
Adding to the intrigue is the claim made by Laura Eisenhower, the great-granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, about a supposed extraterrestrial treaty. According to her, in 1954, Eisenhower allegedly signed a pact with alien beings, trading human abductions for advanced technology and DNA analysis. This bombshell revelation, if true, not only validates Parker’s account but also uncovers one of the biggest secrets in U.S. history.
Governmental Silence and Speculation
Why the silence from the government? If Eisenhower did engage in such otherworldly diplomacy, the implications are staggering. The government’s refusal to acknowledge or investigate Parker’s experience could be seen as an effort to maintain this secret pact. The silence could be interpreted as an attempt to avoid public panic or a strategic move to protect classified information crucial to national security.
VIDEO:
Man EXPOSES Alien Abduction Story That The US Government IGNORED | UFO Witness
Calvin Parker’s alien abduction story, backed by Laura Eisenhower’s claims, presents a scenario that challenges our understanding of the world. While skeptics dismiss such accounts as fanciful, the consistency and detail in Parker’s narrative, coupled with the alleged governmental treaty, suggest that there might be more to these claims than mere fantasy. As we continue to explore the cosmos, stories like Parker’s remind us of the vast, uncharted mysteries that might lie beyond our current understanding.
Wederopstanding: Jezus was niet de enige die opstond uit de dood
Wederopstanding, of het concept om na de dood weer tot leven te komen, bestaat al millennia. Hoewel de meesten van ons dankzij het christendom bekend zijn met het concept, zijn er veel andere voorbeelden van opstandingen die aan die van Jezus voorafgaan. Van het oude Egypte tot de Noorse mythologie en alles daartussenin: er zijn verschillende voorbeelden van de cyclus van leven, dood en wedergeboorte.
In deze galerij kom je meer te weten over de vele gerapporteerde gevallen van opstandingen door de geschiedenis heen, inclusief alle gevallen die in de Bijbel voorkomen. Klik verder om te starten!
Mythologie Het religieuze motief van de stervende en herrijzende godheid is te vinden in een aantal mythologische tradities, namelijk het oude Egypte, het oude Griekenland, het oude Rome en de Noorse mythologie, om er een paar te noemen. Laten we eens kijken naar enkele voorbeelden.
Tammuz Tammuz, de lente- en vruchtbaarheidsgod van Mesopotamië, stierf elke winter en kwam elke lente weer tot leven. De wederopstanding van Tammuz werd in de Babylonische kalender aangeduid als Du'ûzu, of "Maand van Tammuz".
Tammuz De vierde maand van de Babylonische kalender viel tussen juni en juli van de Gregoriaanse kalender (de kalender die het grootste deel van de wereld tegenwoordig gebruikt). De wederopstanding van Tammuz symboliseerde de wedergeboorte en de cyclische aard van de seizoenen.
Hades en Persephone De Griekse mythe van Hades en Persephone is vergelijkbaar. In dit geval zou Persephone, die door Hades was meegenomen naar de onderwereld, slechts zes maanden per jaar in de hemel mogen doorbrengen, namelijk tijdens de lente en de zomer.
Jarylo Jarylo, de god van de vegetatie, vruchtbaarheid en lente in de Slavische mythologie, keerde ook terug naar de wereld in de lente. Jarylo is een ander voorbeeld van een leven-dood-geboorte godheid.
Osiris De Egyptische god van het leven, vruchtbaarheid en landbouw werd vermoord door zijn broer Set. Isis balsemde Osiris' overblijfselen en hij herrees en werd de god van de onderwereld.
Savitri en Satyavan De hindoetraditie kent ook een verhaal over wederopstanding. De geliefden Savitri en Satyavan trouwden, maar een jaar later overleed Satyavan. Savitri slaagde er toen in om Yamraj, de god van de dood, zover te krijgen dat hij Satyavan weer tot leven wekte.
Bodhidharma Wederopstanding komt ook voor in de boeddhistische traditie. Een Chinese diplomaat genaamd Songyun trok door het Pamir gebergte toen hij het pad kruiste met de boeddhistische monnik Bodhidharma, die slechts één schoen droeg. Toen hem ernaar gevraagd werd, zei Bodhidharma dat hij naar huis ging, naar India, en zei Songyun naar de ontbrekende schoen te vragen als hij in Shaolin aankwam.
Bodhidharma Toen Songyun aankwam en de monniken ernaar vroeg, werd hij gearresteerd omdat hij gelogen had. Het werd duidelijk dat Bodhidharma jaren eerder gestorven was, en toen de monniken Bodhidharma's tombe openden, vonden ze een enkele schoen binnenin. Bodhidharma was herrezen uit de dood.
Odin Voorbeelden van wederopstanding zijn ook te vinden in de Noorse mythologie. Odin, de vader van het Germaanse heidendom, moest een prijs betalen voor zijn macht en wijsheid. Hij offerde zichzelf op om toegang te krijgen tot de kracht en betekenis van de runen. Hij hing zichzelf aan een boom en doorboorde zijn lichaam met een speer. Op de negende dag werd hij herboren met de kennis van de runen.
Quetzalcoatl Quetzalcóatl is een gevederde slangengod uit het oude Meso-Amerika. De belangrijke godheid werd aanbeden door een aantal beschavingen, waaronder de Azteken, Maya's en Tolteken. In vrijwel alle culturele tradities is er een verhaal over hoe Quetzalcóatl sterft en terugkeert uit de dood.
Aristeas Een ander voorbeeld is het wederopstandingsverhaal van de Griekse dichter Aristeas, dat dateert uit de 7e eeuw voor Christus. Het verhaal gaat dat Aristeas stierf, dat zijn lichaam verdween en dat hij zeven jaar later terugkeerde.
De feniks De legende van de feniks (en zijn analogieën) komt voor in vele culturen en volkstradities, waaronder in de oude Griekse, oude Egyptische en Perzische tradities. Het is een schoolvoorbeeld van wedergeboorte en opstanding, waarbij een nieuwe feniks herrijst uit de as van de oude.
Terugkomen uit de dood is niet altijd goed Hoewel de meeste voorbeelden van wederopstanding positief zijn, zijn er gevallen waarin wederopstanding eerder als een vloek dan als een zegen wordt beschouwd. Bekende voorbeelden zijn vampiers, zombies en ghouls.
Oude Testament: de zoon van de weduwe van Zarifath Er zijn een paar voorbeelden van wederopstanding in het Oude Testament. Eén daarvan kan gevonden worden in 1 Koningen 17:17-24, waar een jonge jongen uit de dood werd opgewekt nadat de profeet Elia tot God had gebeden.
Oude Testament: de zoon van de Shunammite vrouw In 2 Koningen 4:32-37 vinden we nog een opstandingsverhaal. De profeet Elisa wekt de zoon van de Sjunamitische vrouw op uit de dood.
Oude Testament: de man die Elisa's beenderen aanraakte Zelfs na de dood slaagde de profeet Elisa erin om een man uit de dood op te wekken. De man in kwestie werd in Elisa's tombe gegooid en toen hij Elisa's beenderen aanraakte, herrees hij (2 Koningen 13:20-21).
Herrijzenis van Jezus De opstanding van Jezus is het populairste voorbeeld van opstaan uit de dood. De Bijbel noemt het in talloze verzen. Als bewijs is er de Bijbelse verwijzing dat het graf van Jezus leeg was en er waren talloze ooggetuigenverslagen van Jezus nadat hij was opgestaan.
Herrijzenis van Jezus De wederopstanding van Jezus is inderdaad de sleutel tot de doctrine van het Christendom. In Johannes 11:25-26 staat: "Jezus zei tegen haar: 'Ik ben de opstanding en het leven. Wie in mij gelooft, zal leven, ook al sterft hij; en wie leeft door in mij te geloven, zal nooit sterven. Gelooft u dit?"
Nieuwe Testament: de zoon van de weduwe van Nain Er zijn echter andere voorbeelden van opstanding in het Nieuwe Testament. Eén daarvan is wanneer Jezus de zoon van een weduwe in de stad Nain tot leven wekt. Volgens Lucas 7:11-17 zei Jezus: "Jongeman, ik zeg je: sta op. En de dode stond op en begon te spreken, en Jezus gaf hem aan zijn moeder."
Nieuwe Testament: De dochter van Jaïrus Jezus heeft ook de dochter van de synagogenleider Jaïrus opgewekt. In Lucas 8:52-55 staat: "En allen huilden en rouwden om haar, maar Hij zei: 'Huil niet, want zij is niet dood, maar slaapt.' En zij lachten hem uit, omdat zij wisten dat zij dood was. Maar hij nam haar bij de hand en riep: 'Kind, sta op.' En haar geest keerde terug en zij stond terstond op. En hij gebood haar iets te eten te geven."
Nieuwe Testament: Lazarus Het verhaal over hoe Jezus Lazarus van Bethanië vier dagen nadat hij gestorven was weer tot leven wekte, is ook een populair verhaal in de Bijbel. Toen Jezus zei dat hij uit het graf moest komen, "kwam de man die gestorven was naar buiten, zijn handen en voeten gebonden met linnen stroken en zijn gezicht omwikkeld met een doek. Jezus zei tegen hen: 'Maak hem los en laat hem gaan'" (Johannes 11:1-44).
Nieuwe Testament: heiligen in Jeruzalem Jezus bleef mensen uit de dood opwekken, zelfs nadat hij zelf was opgestaan. In Matteüs 27:52-53 staat: "Ook de graven werden geopend. En vele lichamen der heiligen, die ontslapen waren, werden opgewekt, en na zijn opstanding uit de graven gekomen, gingen zij de heilige stad binnen en verschenen aan velen."
Nieuw Testament: Tabitha Volgens Handelingen 9:36-42 wekte apostel Petrus een discipel met de naam Tabitha op uit de dood. Toen Petrus Tabitha beval op te staan, "opende zij haar ogen en toen zij Petrus zag, ging zij rechtop zitten. En hij gaf haar zijn hand en richtte haar op. Toen riep hij de heiligen en weduwen en stelde haar levend voor."
Nieuwe Testament: Eutychus Apostel Paulus slaagde erin om de jongeman Eutychus weer tot leven te wekken nadat hij uit een raam was gevallen. "Paulus ging naar beneden, boog zich over hem heen en nam hem in zijn armen en zei: 'Wees niet ongerust, want zijn leven is in hem.' En toen Paulus was opgestaan en brood had gebroken en gegeten, sprak hij nog lang met hen, tot het aanbreken van de dag, en vertrok. En zij namen de jongeling levend weg en waren niet weinig vertroost" (Handelingen 20:7-12).
In the heart of the United States, a peculiar phenomenon has been stirring the skies of Missouri. Eyewitnesses report an extraordinary sight: a cube-shaped UFO, challenging our understanding of physics and aerospace technology. These sightings, capturing the imagination of locals and UFO enthusiasts alike, offer a tantalizing glimpse into the unknown. Let’s delve into this mysterious occurrence and explore what it could potentially signify.
A Witness’s Tale
The story begins with an ordinary individual’s extraordinary encounter. As they drove home on a clear Missouri day, a glint in the sky caught their attention. Initially dismissing it as mundane debris, the witness soon realized this was no ordinary object. The cube, seemingly defying gravity, maintained a steady altitude and speed, its metallic surface tumbling through the air like a dice.
The Cube’s Characteristics
Described as a solid, metal cube, the object exhibited peculiar characteristics. Witnesses noted its ability to change direction abruptly, a movement contrasting starkly with conventional aircraft. Intriguingly, some observers mentioned lights emanating from the cube, sparking debate over whether these were reflections or an inherent feature of the craft.
Historical Context
UFO sightings are not new to human history, but the cube-shaped phenomenon adds a novel chapter to this cosmic narrative. Historical records and folklore are replete with accounts of unidentified flying objects, each contributing to the rich tapestry of extraterrestrial speculation.
Technological Implications
The cube’s reported characteristics pose significant questions about our understanding of technology. Its ability to maneuver in ways that defy known physics suggests either a breakthrough in terrestrial technology or an otherworldly origin.
Safety and Speculation
As with any unidentified object, safety concerns arise. History shows that encounters between technologically advanced and less advanced civilizations often lead to unfavorable outcomes for the latter. The cube’s presence, while fascinating, also bears a note of caution.
Investigative Efforts
Organizations like Missouri’s Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) are dedicated to investigating such phenomena. Their work, compiling eyewitness accounts and evidence, provides a structured approach to understanding these sightings.
The cube-shaped UFO sighting in Missouri opens up a world of questions and possibilities. Whether a secret human innovation or a visitor from the stars, its existence challenges our perception of reality. As we continue to gaze skyward, the mystery of the cube-shaped UFO reminds us of the vast, unexplored universe beyond our planet.
Alien Abductions in the Book of Enoch: An Intriguing Intersection of Myth and Mystery
Alien Abductions in the Book of Enoch: An Intriguing Intersection of Myth and Mystery
Unveiling the Mysteries of the Heavens: Enoch’s Extraordinary Journey
In the annals of ancient texts, few are as captivating as the Book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish religious work ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. This enigmatic book not only delves into the origins of the Great Flood but also presents a startling narrative that aligns closely with modern accounts of alien abductions, a theme that continues to fascinate and perplex us in contemporary times.
Enoch’s Celestial Abduction: A Premodern Encounter?
The Book of Enoch details the experiences of Enoch, who is said to have been taken into the heavens by celestial beings. This description bears an uncanny resemblance to what we in the modern era might describe as an ‘alien abduction.’ Enoch’s account goes beyond mere spiritual metaphors, offering vivid descriptions of a physical place in the skies, replete with rooms, luminescent beings, and advanced technologies far beyond the comprehension of his time.
The Watchers: Ancient Astronauts?
Central to Enoch’s story are the “Watchers,” angelic beings who descended to Earth, imparting knowledge and skills to humanity. This mirrors the narrative found in many ancient astronaut theories, where advanced beings from the stars are credited with accelerating human civilization. The Watchers’ actions, however, led to unforeseen consequences, including the creation of the Nephilim, a race of giants born from the union of these celestial beings and human women.
Parallels with Modern Alien Abduction Accounts
The parallels between Enoch’s experiences and contemporary alien abduction stories are striking. Individuals today recount being taken by strange beings into crafts, shown advanced technology, and sometimes even presented with hybrid offspring, echoing the ancient tales of the Nephilim. This resemblance poses the question: are these ancient texts early interpretations of extraterrestrial encounters, dressed in the mythological language of the times?
The Scientific Angle: A Rational Explanation?
While the Book of Enoch offers a narrative rich in supernatural elements, a scientific perspective suggests these accounts may be allegorical or symbolic. The descriptions of the heavens could be interpreted as metaphysical realms rather than literal physical spaces. However, the precision of Enoch’s astronomical knowledge, which predates modern discovery, adds a layer of intrigue to these interpretations.
Cultural Impact and Legacy
The Book of Enoch, though not part of the canonical Bible, has had a lasting impact on religious and mythological studies. Its influence extends into various cultures and has inspired a range of interpretations and debates. Whether viewed as a religious text, an early science fiction narrative, or a historical account with lost truths, its contribution to the discourse on ancient civilizations and potential extraterrestrial contact is undeniable.
VIDEO:
The Why Files – Alien Abductions in the Book of Enoch and the Search for Noah’s Ark
The Book of Enoch stands at a fascinating crossroads between ancient myth and modern mystery. Its tales of celestial beings, advanced knowledge, and a world grappling with the consequences of heavenly interference resonate with our contemporary fascination with alien life and extraterrestrial intervention. While the true nature of Enoch’s experiences remains shrouded in mystery, the book continues to offer a captivating lens through which we can explore the perennial human quest to understand our place in the cosmos and the possibility of life beyond our planet.
DeJames Webb Space Telescoperichtte zijn aandacht op Uranus en slaagde erin prachtige gedetailleerde beelden vast te leggen van de ijsplaneet, zijn ringen, manen en atmosferische kenmerken, inclusief een seizoensgebonden poolkap.
Volgens de NASA en de ESA onthulde de unieke gevoeligheid van Webb interne en externe ringen, waarbij de Zeta-ring opviel en zelfs kleine manen tussen de ringen werden vastgelegd. Het infraroodbeeld van de telescoop onthulde een dynamische en eigenaardige ijswereld, met de nadruk op de poolkap en heldere stormen, waardoor inzicht werd verkregen in de complexe atmosfeer van de planeet.Bovendien, vanwege de unieke kanteling van Uranus, die opzij draait, ervaart de planeet de meest extreme seizoenen in het zonnestelsel, met een kwart van het jaar ondergedompeld in een 21-jarige winter. Webb biedt een ongekend zicht, waarbij details worden onthuld die eerder onzichtbaar waren, zoals de evolutie van de poolkap.
But scientists claim it's now possible to have a conversation with a whale, following a 20-minute chat with a humpback whale in Southeast Alaska.
A 38-year-old whale named Twain 'spoke' with the researchers from the SETI Institute and UC Davis by responding to a pre-recorded 'contact call'.
This marks the first communication between humans and whales in their own language, according to the team.
Looking ahead, the researchers say the conversation could pave the way for interactions with aliens in the future.
Researchers say they have had a 20-minute conversation with 'Twain' (pictured), a humpback whale in Southeast Alaska
It might sound like something from Avatar 2 (pictured), but scientists say that this research could pave the way for future communications with aliens
Humpback whales: The singers of the sea
Scientific name: Megaptera novaeangliae
Diet: Omnivore
Size: 48 to 62.5 feet
Weight: 40 tons
+ Humpback whales are found across every ocean in the world.
+ Their name comes from the small hump on their dorsal fins.
+They are known for their amazing songs which they use to communicate and attract mates.
In the study, researchers from SETI studied how whales communicate in the hopes of developing 'intelligence filters' as part of the search for alien life.
The scientists broadcast a type of greeting call called a 'whup/throp' through underwater speakers.
When the call was played through the water, Twain approached the boat and responded with a greeting call of her own.
Importantly, the scientists found that Twain was changing the frequency of her own calls in response to the researchers' broadcast.
According to lead author, Dr Brenda McCowan of UC Davis, this mirroring behaviour shows that the whale was engaging in a type of interactive conversation with the recorded call.
Dr McCowan said: 'We believe this is the first such communicative exchange between humans and humpback whales in the humpback "language".'
In their research paper, Dr Brenda and her co-authors suggest that Twain was motivated to reply by 'excitement and possibly the onset of agitation'.
However, they also point out that the kind of 'behavioural synchrony' exhibited by the whale is associated with bonding and group cohesion.
This, according to the authors, suggests that Twain was actively engaged in a communicative exchange.
Dr Brenda McCowan (left) and Dr Fred Sharpe played a pre-recorded greeting call into the water as Twain came near their research vessel
Humpback whales' high intelligence and sophisticated communication systems make them a good proxy for communicating with alien life (stock image)
The researchers' ultimate goal is not to speak with whales, but with even stranger forms of life.
Just as another scientist might look at Antarctica as a proxy for Mars or other alien environments, SETI researchers look on Earth to find stand-ins for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
In the absence of any aliens, the researchers hope to use whales to develop strategies for non-human communication.
Humpback whales make such a good alien proxy because of their extremely high intelligence and powers of communication.
This diagram shows how Twain approached the research vessel and circled while responding to the researchers' calls
Their huge brains have large regions for processing auditory information and the watery environment lets them broadcast signals over vast distances.
Dr Fred Sharpe of the Alaska Whale Foundation says: 'Humpback whales are extremely intelligent, have complex social systems, make tools - nets out of bubbles to catch fish - and communicate extensively with both songs and social calls.'
This means that by learning how to find information within the calls of whales, scientists might one day be able to make sense of communications from aliens.
Dr Laurence Doyle of the SETI Institute says: 'Because of current limitations on technology, an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrials will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers.'
The SETI Institute uses radar arrays like the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico to try and search for communications from alien life
He adds that 'this important assumption is certainly supported by the behavior of humpback whales.'
Previously, SETI has attempted to find extra-terrestrial life by listening in to radio signals arriving on Earth.
The theory is that a highly advanced alien civilization might be interested in communicating with other planets and so would beam out information in high-energy pulses.
However, since we have no way of knowing how aliens might communicate, SETI focuses on developing tools to scan for signals of intelligence within the constant background noise of space.
The 'concerned citizen' shared her encounter to MailOnline
The remarkable shot was taken by Dietrich Zeigler, a photographer in Chicago, and shared exclusively to MailOnline.
'It was around evening just as the sun dipped below the horizon,' he said.
'I noticed some colorful shimmering and took out my 70-200 MM lens and shot this.
'The object's appearance was striking, with a palette of purple, gold and green.
'It seemed to be changing colours, but the shape remained the same which looks like a mask.
'After quickly heading indoors to examine the photos, I was unable to locate it in the sky again.'
Mr Zeigler said it 'seemed as stationary as a star' to the naked eye, although slight differences in the photos he took suggested it might have been moving slightly.
'I was quite startled upon reviewing the photos on a larger screen,' he said.
'Even now, I frequently gaze at the sky, both during the day and at night, hoping to witness something as remarkable.'
'Yet, nothing similar has crossed my view since that intriguing evening.'
Depending on the observer, it resembles a mask, an alien face or an indigenous totem (pictured)
With its elongated and colourful 'face' the object even has similarities with Rafiki the monkey from The Lion King (pictured)
UFO stands for 'unidentified flying object' and so the term doesn't necessarily describe an object with an extraterrestrial origin.
Nick Pope, a UFO expert formerly with the UK's Ministry of Defence, called it a 'beautiful image' but couldn't identify the 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' (UAP), now the preferred term by authorities.
'Often, when looking at UAP images, we're not necessarily seeing an accurate picture of the object,' Pope told MailOnline.
'Distortions can occur for example when an object is photographed through glass, or when zooming-in, or as a result of various anomalies and light effects relating to the camera.'
Another British UFO researcher, Philip Mantle, said the object could be plasma or even ice crystals in the clouds.
'I've seen these ice crystals myself and they do look really spectacular,' he told MailOnline.
'[But] it's difficult to reach a definitive conclusion.'
US Department of Defense – otherwise known as the Pentagon – declined to comment on the image.
However, the usually secretive government branch has been more transparent about what it knows regarding UFOs in recent months.
A Pentagon document published in the summer revealed that the typical UFO has a round shape, usually spherical or an orb, with a white or silver colour.
Most UFOs have been described as ‘orb’, ‘round’ or ‘sphere’, but other reported shapes include polygon, triangle and 'Tic Tac', says the Pentagon
The world's UFO hotspots are revealed - as Pentagon admits hundreds of objects have been spotted 'all over the world'
The US government is notoriously secretive when it comes to sharing what it knows about extraterrestrial life.
But in a possible bid for transparency, the Department of Defense has released a new document disclosing the 'world's UFO hotspots'.
It includes a map disclosing where the most sightings of unidentified objects have been recorded, based on reports between 1996 and 2023.
The map discloses where the most sightings have been recorded based on reports between 1996 and 2023 - naming Japan and the coasts of the US as particular hotspots
Among them Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, the east and west coasts of the US includingCalifornia, as well as parts of the Middle East.
EXCLUSIVE Inside the battle to water down the UFO bill that will disclose confidential 'non-human intelligence' data to the public set be signed by President Biden
EXCLUSIVE Inside the battle to water down the UFO bill that will disclose confidential 'non-human intelligence' data to the public set be signed by President Biden
Joe Biden is set to sign into law legislation disclosing what the government knows about UFOs, but UFO activists say the bill has already been 'gutted'
The activists blame congressmen Mike Turner and Mike Rogers, who are funded by big defense company Lockheed Martin, for watering down the bill
Senators Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio and Mike Rounds are in favor of the bill and have backed whistleblowers and former top intelligence officials
Joe Biden is set to sign into law eye-popping legislation citing 'technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence' this month – with top lawmakers pushing for a giant leap in UFO disclosure.
But UFO activists say the legislation has already been 'gutted', and blamecongress members funded by big defense companies for watering down the bill.
Behind closed doors in the halls of Congress, a tooth-and-nail fight has been raging over disclosure of what the government knows about UFOs.
On one side are whistleblowers and former top intelligence officials, who claim knowledge of a secret program that has allegedly retrieved crashed flying saucers – and who have convinced top lawmakers to back them, including Senatemajority leader Chuck Schumer, Senate intelligence committee ranking member Marco Rubio, and Senate armed services committee member Mike Rounds.
On the other is the $112 billion defense company Lockheed Martin, and two powerful House Republicans to whom it donates thousands of dollars: House intelligence committee chair Mike Turner, and House armed services committee chair Mike Rogers.
Joe Biden is set to sign into law legislation disclosing what the government knows about UFOs, but UFO activists say the bill has already been 'gutted'
UFO activists blame congressmen Mike Turner and Mike Rogers who are funded by big defense company Lockheed Martin for watering down the bill
Senators Mike Rounds, Chuck Schumer and Marco Rubio are in favor of the bill and have backed whistleblowers and former top intelligence officials
The fight began in July this year, when Schumer introduced a groundbreaking bill that would mandate a panel of experts with presidential-level authority to sift through government UFO records with the aim of disclosing them to the public.
It also gave the government the power to seize any 'technologies of unknown origin' or even 'biological evidence of non-human intelligence' held by private companies.
The apparent references to alien bodies and tech were shocking, in a piece of legislation put forward by senators as senior as Schumer and Rounds.
And proponents of the amendment point to its fierce opposition by senior House Republicans as a sign that they touched a nerve.
Sources close to the bill's drafting said lawmakers decided to put forward the legislation after classified briefings by whistleblowers who allegedly worked on crashed UFOs recovered by the US government and handed to defense contractors, in secret programs not disclosed to Congress.
Schumer and Rounds said their bill was modeled on the 1992 law that led to the disclosure of records about President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
Sources told DailyMail.com the legislation was drafted with input from former officials who worked on the Pentagon's programs investigating 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena' (UAP).
These include Jay Stratton, who headed the Defense Department's UAP Task Force from 2018 to 2021, his former chief scientist Travis Taylor, and program predecessor Luis Elizondo.
The most involved with the drafting was David Grusch, a senior intelligence official who later became an Air Force liaison to the Task Force, and has claimed to Congress that the US has recovered multiple crashed UFOs.
The bill passed in a Senate vote, but key parts were stripped out by top lawmakers in the House before it was officially added as an amendment to the annual defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed its final vote on Thursday.
Ohio representative and UFO skeptic Mike Turner told News Nation Schumer's original 64-page bill was 'poorly drafted' and complained that 'no one has even raised it' with him.
In an interview on podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Grusch called out Turner and Rogers for 'blocking' the bill.
David Grusch - a former high-ranking intelligence official – is one of three military whistleblowers who testified under oath that they know firsthand about secret programs involving technology far surpassing the US's capabilities
In an interview on podcast The Joe Rogan Experience , Grusch called out Turner and Rogers for 'blocking' the bill
Attorney and UFO transparency activist Daniel Sheehan, who was consulted on the Schumer amendment, told DailyMail.com that the two lawmakers were under the thumb of defense contractors, and were trying to keep the secrets of the military bases in their districts under wraps.
'They're both from the districts where the technology is being worked on,' Sheehan said.
'Turner is from the 10th congressional district in Ohio, which includes Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and we know that's where the technology was taken back in 1947 from Roswell.
'The aerospace industry specifically was uptight about wanting to maintain not only physical control of the materials, but to have patent rights. That's what they were really into, because that's where their money is.
'If they could get a patent on, for example, anti-gravity systems, that's trillions of dollars in the future.
'We said, if no such technology exists, and you don't have any of the technology, why are you upset about this?' Sheehan added. 'I know from working in Washington for 50 years, nobody goes to the mats on an issue like that, unless there's a practical reason.'
Sheehan participated in landmark cases including the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the Watergate break-in of 1972, and is credited with launching the investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
He now campaigns for UFO transparency, and has represented ex UFO office lead Elizondo.
Two sources involved in the bill's drafting told DailyMail.com that Turner and Rogers even enlisted the help of a staffer for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who helped suppress support for the amendment.
'Someone from McConnell's team actually went round aggressively trying to lean on all of the supporters of the UAP Disclosure Act to try to bury the whole thing,' one source said.
'They did help empower Turner and Rogers to take action.'
But a source close to Rogers insisted that he did not oppose Schumer's legislation.
'The main opposition to the UAP amendment came from Rep. Turner,' the source said.
The source, familiar with the NDAA negotiations, told DailyMail.com that Rogers had been a 'friend' of pro-UFO disclosure lawmakers – including helping Republicans Matt Gaetz and Anna Paulina Luna get a classified briefing on an alleged UFO incident near Gaetz's district off the coast of Florida this year.
Gaetz thanked Rogers for the help in a speech on November 30.
'When my colleagues, Miss Luna and Mr. Burchett, and I were at an Air Force base and were told by Air Force officials that we weren't allowed to see information that whistleblowers had expressed to us existed, it was, in fact, Chairman Rogers himself who personally engaged with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and gave us the opportunity to view the images that were taken by pilots of some of these unidentified aerial phenomena,' he said.
Sheehan pointed to the lawmakers' reliance on campaign donations by defense companies as a reason for their alleged opposition to the bill.
Attorney and UFO transparency activist Daniel Sheehan, who was consulted on the Schumer amendment, told DailyMail.com that two lawmakers were under the thumb of defense contractors, and were trying to keep the secrets of the military bases in their districts under wraps
Sheehan previously told DailyMail.com that a supposed UFO crash retrieval program insider told him that they recovered a 30ft saucer partially embedded in the earth. Pictured is a sign for the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash site of 1947
Federal Election Commission data published on OpenSecrets.org shows the defense industry gave congressmen Rogers and Turner a combined $2 million for their campaigns or Political Action Committees (PACs) since 2019.
Rogers and PACs supporting him have received $355,800 this year, while Turner and his PACs got $129,650.
One giant defense company has been repeatedly singled out as an alleged holder of supposed crashed 'non-human' craft.
Late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid named Lockheed Martin as one of the private contractors holding potentially alien wreckage in an interview with the New Yorker in 2021.
'I was told for decades that Lockheed had some of these retrieved materials,' he said.
As majority leader, Reid was one of the 'Gang of Eight', a select group of top lawmakers given access to the country's most closely held secrets too sensitive to share widely in Congress.
But even he was denied access to these alleged programs, he told the magazine.
'I tried to get, as I recall, a classified approval by the Pentagon to have me go look at the stuff. They would not approve that. I don't know what all the numbers were, what kind of classification it was, but they would not give that to me.'
Lockheed Martin is Rogers' largest donor. It gave $100,750 to his campaigns in the past 10 years, and its staff PAC gave $85,000.
The company gave Turner $145,050 since 2013, and its staff PAC gave $55,000.
Lobbying transparency reports filed to the Senate show Lockheed spent over $19 million on lobbying in just the past year.
The quarterly reports show expenses for its in-house lobbying team of $13,730,000 since fall last year, and a further $5,925,379 spent on outside lobbyists.
The reports disclosed that topics tackled by Lockheed lobbyists in their approaches to lawmakers included the annual NDAA bill – though the filings did not mention UFO-related amendments.
Morley Greene, Lockheed's director of legislative affairs and one of the lobbyists listed on their transparency filings, previously served as Turner's military legislative assistant 2013 to 2016, according to a 2018 report on the Washington DC revolving door by the Project on Government Oversight.
With alleged pushback from Turner and Rogers, House lawmakers stripped out swathes of Schumer's bill, removing the presidential-level board that would declassify UFO information, and deleting the clause that would give the government power to seize any 'technologies of unknown origin' and 'biological evidence of non-human intelligence' held by private companies.
The former head of the government's UFO task force Jay Stratton said his investigation into a 2019 UFO encounter left him fearing Russia or China could have achieved incredible drone battery technology
Dr. Travis Taylor (left) is a physicist who in 2019 served as the chief scientist for the government's UFO office. He appeared at AlienCon as a guest speaker
Some UFO program insiders were also allegedly against aspects of Schumer's bill.
A source close to ex-UAP Task Force chief Jay Stratton told DailyMail.com that he supported UFO transparency, but had counseled lawmakers against any bill that allowed government to seize private companies' property.
But the senators managed to keep other parts of their proposed legislation.
The version approved by the House still requires the National Archives and Records Administration to create a database of all UFO records across government – and contains a key clause that bans public money going to contractors unless they disclose any secret UFO programs to lawmakers.
And, incredibly, the bill still refers to 'technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence' – bringing the question of aliens visiting Earth away from sci-fi shows like the X-Files and into the US statute books.
One source close to the bill drafting said they were pleased with the result.
'I think [the Senators] negotiated relentlessly to get the most they could in there. And they knew that something was better than nothing,' the source said.
'It's historic. Once it's signed by Biden, it's straight-up illegal to fund retrieval programs or reverse-engineering programs, unless the appropriate committees are aware of it.
'[Schumer and Rounds] fought for a law that would make it illegal for the CIA, military branches and defense contractors to secretly reverse-engineer technology, not made by humans. Why the f*** would they do that if they didn't know those companies, and those elements, were reverse-engineering technology not made by humans? It's crazy.'
Two sources also claimed that the bill was even composed with the approval of the White House.
'Anyone who thinks that Schumer didn't get the blessing of the White House, before essentially trying to push for disclosure of something this significant, is delusional about how the government works,' one source said.
'There were meetings at the White House about it,' another source said. 'There was a thumbs up.'
On Wednesday Schumer said the House changes to his bill were 'an outrage', and that information on UFOs has been illegally withheld from Congress.
'It is an outrage the House didn't work with us on our UAP proposal for a review board. This means declassification of UAP records will be up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades. We will keep working to change the status quo,' he said in a Tweet.
'We've also been notified by multiple credible sources that information on UAPs has also been withheld from Congress, which if true is a violation of the laws requiring full notification to the legislative branch, especially as it relates to the four congressional leaders, the defense committees, and the intelligence committees,' he added in a speech on the Senate floor the same day.
Whistleblower David Grusch was disappointed with the watered-down version of the bill, arguing it now contains too many loopholes to avoid disclosure of alleged secret UFO programs.
'What we're witnessing right now is, quite frankly, the greatest legislative failure in American history,' he told cable news channel News Nation on Monday.
'Whether you believe my allegations or not, this is a government transparency issue at large.'
Once Biden signs the NDAA into law by the end of December, all government offices will have 300 days to hand over all their UFO records to the National Archives ‘that pertain to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence’.
Not all the records will be published however. Any office can keep them secret on national security or privacy grounds, but they must tell Congress they are doing so.
The law also says no UFO programs can be funded unless they have been disclosed to Congress – effectively outlawing the kind of secret crash retrieval programs alleged by Grusch.
America's historic UFO bill crash lands: Law that would've forced government to hand over records of mystery craft loses key parts as Congress passes it
America's historic UFO bill crash lands: Law that would've forced government to hand over records of mystery craft loses key parts as Congress passes it
Congress passed the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act
Two critical provisions were stripped that give governments more control
US Representatives were left outraged on the Senate floor after Congress stripped two critical provisions from the highly anticipated UAP Disclosure Act.
The legislation passed Thursday with the annual defense spending bill was designed to mandate that the government disclose records on 'technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence.'
However, Congress pulled the plug on a review board to sift through each case and grant the federal government 'imminent domain' rights to seize any and all recovered 'non-human technology' currently held by private entities like defense contractors.
The changes will also mean that the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies can determine on their own what information about these mysterious sightings is revealed and what is kept secret from ordinary Americans and Congress.
'We got ripped off. We got completely hosed. They stripped out every part,' said Representative Tim Burchett, one of the lawmakers behind the act.
The legislation passed with the annual defense spending bill was designed to mandate governments disclose records on 'technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence'
The Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of 2023 was passed by the Senate in July but needed full congressional approval to be part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2024.
President Joe Biden is expected to sign the provision into law, which mandates any records not already officially disclosed must be made public within 25 years of their creation unless the president determines that they must remain classified for national security reasons.
And while the amendment was greenlit, it did not remain as initially written.
In addition to axing parts of the act, Congress added a laundry list of exemptions for disclosing records.
The government can conceal information if they deem it a threat to national defense, would reveal national intelligence or federal agents, or how intelligence is collected.
The amendment now states that the Department of Defense is ordered to declassify 'records relating to publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena that do not reveal sources, methods or otherwise compromise the national security of the United States.'
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer( left) and Representative Tim Burchett (right) have championed the bill that aimed to bring transparency around what the government knows about the mysterious sightings
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who sponsored the bill, told The New York Times: 'It is really an outrage the House didn't work with us on adopting our proposal for a review board.
'It means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades.'
The bill's original text stated that President Joe Biden would have 90 days to appoint a nine-person Review Board responsible for investigating each record and determining if they are considered UAPs that should be disclosed to the public.
Any government agency possessing such records must hand over printed and digital copies to the board, which has 180 days to investigate and 14 days to publish its findings.
Last November, Daniel Sheehan, the Harvard-trained lawyer who represented past UFO whistleblower Luis Elizondo, told DailyMail.com that new UFO whistleblowers trust the Senate's intel committee more than the Pentagon's dedicated UFO office, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) then led by former CIA physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick (above)
Schumer spoke before the Senate before the final passing to slam Republicans for pushing back on the legislation.
Capital Hill was swirling with rumors that several Republican House Representatives were working in the shadows to obstruct the bill.
Speaking on December 5, Schumer said that the Republicans are trying to 'kill a commonsense, bipartisan measure' and preventing Americans from accessing records on a topic of 'intense curiosity.'
'The measure I championed with Senator [Mike] Rounds would create a board, just like we did with the [John F Kennedy] assassination records, to work through the declassification of many government records on UAPs,' he said earlier this month.
'This model's been a terrific success for decades.'
'It should be used again with UAPs, but once again, House Republicans are ready to kill this bipartisan provision.'
Last November, Daniel Sheehan, the Harvard-trained lawyer who represented past UFO whistleblower Luis Elizondo, told DailyMail.com that new UFO whistleblowers trust the Senate's intel committee more than the Pentagon's dedicated UFO office.
'What they were doing is they were going straight through to the Senate Intelligence Committee,' Sheehan told DailyMail.com that month, following the then-breaking news of Pentagon UFO chief Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick's retirement plans.
'We know that they don't want to go into into Sean's AARO group [The Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office] until it's resolved as to who is going to take his place,' Sheehan said.
Beck on Capitol Hill, it is unknown why House Republicans are working against the legislation - but some speculate it is because the executive branch is concealing vital information regarding UFOs, which extends over a long period of time.
The bill's original text (pictured) stated that President Joe Biden would have 90 days to appoint a nine-person Review Board responsible for investigating each record and determining if they are considered UAPs that should be disclosed to the public
But it seemed Schumer's speculations were not wrong.
Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) are said to be among those who pushed back on the bill.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his show on X in late November that Rogers and Turner 'have been instructed to violate, in letter and in spirit, federal law, and to hide the truth about UFOs.'
Carlson later called out Speaker of the House Johnson and McConnell for being among those looking to 'shut [the bill] down.'
David Grusch, a former high-ranking intelligence official who testified under oath about his experience with UAPs, also named Rogers and Turner during a recent interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
'Why are you blocking the bill? And it's not going to cost much, a couple [of] million a year max, you know, for the panel, which is like vaporware in U.S. government speak, right?' Grusch said during the podcast.
Schumer's design aimed to give the president more power over what is declassified, but now that power falls to individual government entities, military branches and intelligence agencies.
'We are lacking oversight opportunities, and we are not fulfilling our responsibilities,' Rounds said.
Proxima b May Harbor Explosive Cryovolcanoes and Habitable Subsurface Ocean
Proxima b May Harbor Explosive Cryovolcanoes and Habitable Subsurface Ocean
Astronomers from NASA and the University of Washington have estimated total internal heating rates and depths to possible subsurface oceans for 17 planets that may be cold ocean planets — low-mass exoplanets with surface temperatures and/or densities that are consistent with icy surfaces and substantial water content. Like the icy moons in our outer Solar System, these planets may be astrobiologically significant worlds that harbor habitable environments beneath their icy surfaces.
This artist’s impression shows Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, which at only 4.23 light-years is the closest star to our Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image between the exoplanet and Proxima itself.
Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.
Ocean planets are a proposed class of low-density, terrestrial exoplanets with substantial liquid water layers.
They may exist in a variety of climactic states including ice free, partially ice covered, or completely frozen over at their surfaces.
“Our analyses predict that these 17 alien worlds may have ice-covered surfaces but receive enough internal heating from the decay of radioactive elements and tidal forces from their host stars to maintain internal oceans,” said Dr. Lynnae Quick, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“Thanks to the amount of internal heating they experience, all planets in our study could also exhibit cryovolcanic eruptions in the form of geyser-like plumes.”
Dr. Quick and colleagues considered conditions on 17 confirmed exoplanets that are roughly Earth-sized but less dense, suggesting that they could have substantial amounts of ice and water instead of denser rock.
Although the planets’ exact compositions remain unknown, initial estimates of their surface temperatures from previous studies all indicate that they are much colder than Earth, suggesting that their surfaces could be covered in ice.
The authors improved estimates of each exoplanet’s surface temperature by recalculating using the known surface brightness and other properties of Europa and Enceladus as models.
They also estimated the total internal heating in these exoplanets by using the shape of each exoplanet’s orbit to get the heat generated from tides and adding it to the heat expected from radioactive activity.
Surface temperature and total heating estimates gave the ice layer thickness for each exoplanet since the oceans cool and freeze at the surface while being heated from the interior.
Finally, they compared these figures to Europa’s and used estimated levels of geyser activity on Europa as a conservative baseline to estimate geyser activity on the exoplanets.
They predict that surface temperatures are colder than previous estimates by up to 33 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit).
An artist’s impression of the planetary system LHS 1140.
Image credit: Sci.News.
Estimated ice shell thickness ranged from about 58 m (190 feet) for Proxima b and 1.6 km (1 mile) for LHS 1140b to 38.6 km (24 miles) for MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, compared to Europa’s estimated average of 29 km (18 miles).
Estimated geyser activity went from just 8 kg per second for Kepler 441b to 290,000 kg per second for LHS 1140b and 6 million kg per second for Proxima b, compared to Europa at 2,000 kg per second.
“Since our models predict that oceans could be found relatively close to the surfaces of Proxima b and LHS 1140b, and their rate of geyser activity could exceed Europa’s by hundreds to thousands of times, telescopes are most likely to detect geological activity on these planets,” Dr. Quick said.
“This activity could be seen when the exoplanet passes in front of its star. Certain colors of starlight could be dimmed or blocked by water vapor from the geysers.”
“Sporadic detections of water vapor in which the amount of water vapor detected varies with time, would suggest the presence of cryovolcanic eruptions.”
“The water might contain other elements and compounds that could reveal if it can support life.”
“Since elements and compounds absorb light at specific signature colors, analysis of the starlight would let scientists determine the geyser’s composition and evaluate the exoplanet’s habitability potential.”
A paper on the findings was published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Lynnae C. Quick et al. 2023. Prospects for Cryovolcanic Activity on Cold Ocean Planets. ApJ 956, 29; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ace9b6
Planetary Researchers Detect Hydrogen Cyanide in Plume of Enceladus
Planetary Researchers Detect Hydrogen Cyanide in Plume of Enceladus
Using data from NASA’s Cassini mission, planetary scientists have detected several compounds of strong importance to the habitability of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, including hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, propylene and ethane. These compounds could potentially support living microbial communities or drive complex organic synthesis leading to the origin of life.
Illustration of plume activity on Enceladus.
Image credit: Peter et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-023-02160-0.
“Our work provides further evidence that Enceladus is host to some of the most important molecules for both creating the building blocks of life and for sustaining that life through metabolic reactions,” said Jonah Peter, a doctoral student at Harvard University.
“Not only does Enceladus seem to meet the basic requirements for habitability, we now have an idea about how complex biomolecules could form there, and what sort of chemical pathways might be involved.”
“The discovery of hydrogen cyanide was particularly exciting, because it’s the starting point for most theories on the origin of life.”
Life as we know it requires building blocks, such as amino acids, and hydrogen cyanide is one of the most important and versatile molecules needed to form amino acids.
Because its molecules can be stacked together in many different ways, Peter and his colleagues refer to hydrogen cyanide as the Swiss army knife of amino acid precursors.
“The more we tried to poke holes in our results by testing alternative models, the stronger the evidence became,” Peter said.
“Eventually, it became clear that there is no way to match the plume composition without including hydrogen cyanide.”
Saturn’s moon Enceladus with a plume.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / Kevin M. Gill.
In 2017, planetary scientists found evidence at Enceladus of chemistry that could help sustain life, if present, in its ocean.
The combination of carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrogen in the plume was suggestive of methanogenesis, a metabolic process that produces methane.
This process is widespread on Earth, and may have been critical to the origin of life on our planet.
Peter and co-authors uncovered evidence for additional energy chemical sources far more powerful and diverse than the making of methane.
They found an array of organic compounds that were oxidized, indicating to scientists that there are many chemical pathways to potentially sustain life in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean. That’s because oxidation helps drive the release of chemical energy.
“If methanogenesis is like a small watch battery, in terms of energy, then our results suggest the ocean of Enceladus might offer something more akin to a car battery, capable of providing a large amount of energy to any life that might be present,” said Dr. Kevin Hand, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Unlike earlier research that used lab experiments and geochemical modeling to replicate the conditions Cassini found at Enceladus, the authors relied on detailed statistical analyses.
They examined data collected by Cassini’s ion and neutral mass spectrometer, which studied the gas, ions, and ice grains around Saturn.
By quantifying the amount of information contained in the data, the authors were able to tease out subtle differences in how well different chemical compounds explain the Cassini signal.
“There are many potential puzzle pieces that can be fit together when trying to match the observed data,” Peter said.
“We used math and statistical modeling to figure out which combination of puzzle pieces best matches the plume composition and makes the most of the data, without overinterpreting the limited dataset.”
The findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
J.S. Peter et al. Detection of HCN and diverse redox chemistry in the plume of Enceladus. Nat Astron, published online December 14, 2023; doi: 10.1038/s41550-023-02160-0
Lue Elizondo’s Attorney Discloses We Have Working Teleportation & Anti-Gravity Technology
Lue Elizondo’s Attorney Discloses We Have Working Teleportation & Anti-Gravity Technology
The universe of UAPs/UFO phenomena is expanding on a large scale. Journalists, whistleblowers, and government officials have informed us that UFOs are just a part of a larger reality. The science behind these crafts, often associated with non-human intelligence, has little or no earthly explanation, at least not yet. The technology behind the function of these crafts may intentionally be hidden from the world. It is also plausible that those involved in studying the phenomena might encounter technology not made on Earth.
Daniel Sheehan, an attorney who represented Lue Elizondo, has given many interviews where he discussed the seriousness of UAP disclosure. He said, “There is this information in the hands of the government—that it pertains to flying saucers, you know, to UFOs, and it applies to non-human intelligence…”
In the recent episode of “The UFO Podcast,” Sheehan said 40 witnesses have come forward with compelling evidence supporting the existence of UFO crafts. These witnesses, he claims, are aware not only of the existence of such crafts but also of the aerospace industry’s involvement in reverse engineering them for weapon development purposes. Sheehan stressed the gravity of the situation, labeling it an “extraordinarily serious problem.”
On “New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove,” Sheehan discussed the information on UFO reverse engineering. He said, “They (the US government) haven’t hit a home run but probably are on first base.” Sheehan discussed his chats with astronaut Edgar Mitchell, spilled details on anti-gravity experiments, and talked about possible advancements in UFO-related tech.
According to Sheehan, the U.S. has known about UFO-related technology since at least 1947. He mentioned conversations with Mitchell, who spilled the beans about experiments in labs trying to figure out anti-gravity. Mitchell revealed they made basic tech that could make objects weigh only half as much. Sheehan also shared a cool story about teleportation experiments, hinting at a possible connection to how UFOs travel without moving conventionally.
Daniel Sheehan: “He’s [Edgar Mitchell] also been at a place, he said that this is a big one that they actually were in one room and they put a coke bottle—I don’t know why they picked a coke bottle for the example other than the fact that it’s kind of archetypal—but they had a coke bottle and they put it on the table and had him put a little tag on it, writing his signature on it. Then had him go into this other room, and he waited there and he heard this kind of weird noise, and this light started to appear on the table, and the coke bottle manifested in the other room with his signature and stuff on the bottle. So, they’re experimenting with this kind of teleportation thing that may have something to do with the way that the UFO vehicles move from one star system to another without having to just travel super fast.”
Sheehan talked about a big change in the 1950s when magazines stopped talking about anti-gravity experiments. He thinks this tech went underground, with the military taking control of the research. It seems like they wanted to keep these discoveries hidden from the public.
About Sheehan’s Anti-gravity comment
In 1989, Bob Lazar explained the UFO propulsion system. He publicly told KLAS-5 TV that “The power source is an antimatter reactor that runs gravity amplifiers. There are actually two parts to the drive mechanism. It’s a bizarre technology with no physical hookup between any of the systems inside. They use gravity as a wave, employing wave guides, almost like microwaves.”
Lazar’s claims seem to be true after a 2020 New York story, “No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public,” that included some information about how astrophysicist and the Pentagon contractor Eric W. Davis gave a classified briefing to government officials in March 2020 about retrieved “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” (Click here to read the full article)
At the 29th annual SSE Conference in 2010 in Boulder, Colorado, USA, Dr. Davis responded to the question of UFOs as they pertain to potential physics for traversable wormholes, warp drives, and anti-gravity. During a question and answer session, one questioner asked whether “…properties of UFOs had guided the thinking and research of that initiative.” Dr. Davis answered: “Secretly yes and overtly no.”
Giving a reason for the secrecy, he stated that “UFOs don’t have credibility with mainstream academic researchers,” and that “… policymakers and decision-makers in charge of funding and programmatic… don’t want to hear the topic of UFOs. So, for the purpose of doing this officially, [we didn’t bring in UFOs], but we did consider it under the table.”
Giving a reason for the secrecy, he stated that “UFOs don’t have credibility with mainstream academic researchers,” and that “… policymakers and decision-makers in charge of funding and programmatic… don’t want to hear the topic of UFOs. So, for the purpose of doing this officially, [we didn’t bring in UFOs], but we did consider it under the table.”
Dr. Davis stated: “We haven’t seen performances that adhere to the warp drive because… basically it’s just between stars and we don’t see UFOs warping anywhere. We see them doing ninety-degree turns and rapid motions. They disappear and reappear. That is undetermined yet.”
He commented on the matter of anti-gravity: “…We have anti-gravity in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity… There are aspects of anti-gravity, the properties of negative vacuum energy, that would create a repulsive force that allows something to levitate up. And UFOs do exhibit that.”
In 2007, Lockheed Martin scientist Boyd Bushman was featured in a UFO documentary by David Sereda titled “From Here to Andromeda.” Bushman discussed his ideas about UFOs and antigravity. He talked about his antigravity experiments and he referred to Bob Lazar, the original Area 51 whistleblower who claimed to have worked on a project “Reverse Engineering” a UFO.
About Sheehan’s comment on teleportation
According to the July 2020 NewYork Times article by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, Dr. Davis claimed that “he gave a classified briefing to a Defense Department agency as recently as March about retrievals from ‘off-world vehicles not made on this earth.’” Dr. Davis appears frequently in stories regarding strange Pentagon investigations. He was given $7.5 million by the Air Force in 2004 to research “psychic teleportation,” or the capacity to move between places by using only your mind.
In 2022, a massive database of U.S. government reports was made public through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The database of documents includes more than 1,500 pages of UFO-related material from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) — a secretive U.S. Department of Defense program that ran from 2007 to 2012.
The report also includes a list of alleged biological effects of UFO sightings on human observers between 1873 and 1994, compiled by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) — a civilian non-profit group that studies reported UFO sightings. The reported effects of UFO encounters include “unaccounted for pregnancy,” “apparent abduction,” paralysis, and experiences of perceived telepathy, teleportation and levitation.
In 2004 Eric Davis wrote a paper for the U.S. Air Force arguing that teleportation is not just a fantasy but an achievable technology and legitimate science. His paper stirred controversy, with critics labeling it as crackpot science and a waste of Air Force funds. Despite the criticism, Davis, with the Air Force’s permission, discusses his study publicly for the first time in an interview with George Knapp.
David said, “When most of us think of teleportation, images of Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise come to mind—a convenient transit system depicted in science fiction. However, teleportation is not a form of dematerialization, as portrayed in Star Trek. Instead, it involves moving animated or inanimate objects instantaneously across space, time, or dimensions.”
Dr. Davis discussed research into psychic teleportation, citing declassified documents about Chinese advancements in this field. U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly acknowledge significant progress, envisioning potential military applications such as moving troops behind enemy lines without traditional transport, inserting spies into inaccessible locations, and conducting surprise operations.
While teleportation of matter has been achieved at top research labs, teleporting people remains a considerable challenge due to ethical and practical concerns. Dr. Davis acknowledges that in some teleportation schemes, the original person may need to be destroyed, giving rise to a new individual elsewhere.
While teleporting matter has been achieved in top research labs, teleporting humans remains a more complex challenge. In the interview, Dr. Davis acknowledged the potential risks, including the destruction of the original person and the emergence of a new individual elsewhere. The ethical and philosophical implications, such as the preservation of memories and experiences, remain unanswered due to the absence of a physics or biology of consciousness.
Net als 22 atoombommen: de asteroïde die de aarde zal raken heet Bennu Onderzoekers hebben de precieze datum bepaald waarop een asteroïde mogelijk de aarde zou kunnen inslaan, met een kracht die gelijk is aan die van 22 atoombommen. Dit hemellichaam, genaamd Bennu, nadert onze planeet elke zes jaar. Wetenschappers zijn echter van mening dat 24 september 2182 de datum zou kunnen zijn waarop er een reëel risico bestaat op een botsing tussen de aarde en de asteroïde.
Ondanks dat de mogelijke datum van de apocalyptische gebeurtenis nog ver weg is, is NASA momenteel bezig met intensieve inspanningen om de asteroïde Bennu af te buigen en bevindt zij zich in de laatste fase van haar missie. Zeven jaar geleden lanceerde de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie een sonde naar de asteroïde met als doel monsters te verzamelen, in de hoop dat de verzamelde informatie een mogelijke catastrofale ontmoeting zou kunnen helpen voorkomen.
Asteroïden hebben de aarde door de jaren heen vele malen getroffen. Bekijk de volgende galerij voor enkele van de meest betekenisvolle effecten.
Meteoor inslag locatie, VS Meteor Crater, ook bekend als Barringer Crater, gelegen nabij Flagstaff, Arizona, is een grote meteorietinslagkrater. Dit opmerkelijke natuurverschijnsel is een van de best bewaarde kraters in zijn soort op onze planeet, met een diameter van ongeveer 1200 meter en een diepte van ongeveer 170 meter.
Tenoumer krater, Mauritanië Het kenmerkende geologische kenmerk van de Tenoumer-krater in de Sahara-woestijn van Mauritanië is de dramatische, bijna cirkelvormige rand. De foto van Michael Dennig geeft perfect de afmetingen van de krater weer.
Vredefort krater, Zuid-Afrika De Vredefort krater in de Zuid-Afrikaanse provincie Vrijstaat is de grootste bevestigde inslagkrater op aarde, met een diameter van meer dan 300 km (190 mijl). De afbeelding toont de Vredefort Dome, het centrale deel van de krater.
Kaali-krater, Estland Kaali verwijst naar een groep van negen meteorietkratermeren in het dorp Kaali op Saaremaa, een Ests eiland. Dit cluster van meren werd gevormd rond 1530-1450 v.Chr.
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Gosses Bluff Impact Site, Australië De opmerkelijke meteoorkrater Gosses Bluff, gelegen in het zuidelijke deel van het Northern Territory, heeft een diameter van 5 km en een randhoogte van 200 meter. Deze locatie wordt door de westerse Arrernte Aboriginals Tnorala genoemd en wordt als een heilige plaats beschouwd.
Manicouaganmeer, Canada Het Manicouagan Reservoir in het centrum van Quebec ontstond 214 miljoen jaar geleden door een meteoorinslag. René-Levasseur Island is het eiland in het midden van het meer. De hele formatie wordt gewoonlijk "het oog van Quebec" genoemd.
Wolfe Creek-krater, Australië De Wolfe Creek-krater in West-Australië is een opmerkelijk intacte inslaglocatie. Het meet een diameter van ongeveer 875 meter (2871 ft) en heeft een diepte van 60 meter (200 ft) van rand tot vloer. Deze krater, die minder dan 120.000 jaar oud is, ligt in het hart van het Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater National Park.
Sudbury-bekken, Canada Het Sudbury Basin in Ontario beslaat ongeveer 10-15 km (6,2-9,3 mijl) en ontstond ongeveer 1,8 miljard jaar geleden. Een afbeelding van het bassin wordt weergegeven in NASA's wereldbolsoftware WorldWind
Popigai-krater, Rusland De Popigai-krater, gelegen in Siberië, werd ongeveer 35 miljoen jaar geleden gevormd. De oostkant van de krater, met een diameter van 100 km (62 mijl), is linksboven in het satellietbeeld zichtbaar.
Lake Acraman in Zuid-Australië is een opvallend kenmerk van de Acraman-krater, die ongeveer 590 miljoen jaar geleden werd gevormd door een asteroïde-inslag. Dit satellietbeeld legt de 40 km lange krater vast, met het meer in het hart.
Karakul-krater, Tadzjikistan Karakul is de aangewezen naam voor het meer gelegen in een aanzienlijke inslagkrater van 52 km (32 mijl) in het Tadzjiekse Nationale Park. Deze formatie, zichtbaar op dit satellietbeeld, is ongeveer 25 miljoen jaar geleden ontstaan.
Chesapeake Bay, VS Ongeveer 35 miljoen jaar geleden werd de Chesapeake Bay aan de oostkust van Amerika gevormd door sediment dat over het puin van een meteoorinslag viel. De afbeelding toont een deel van de inslagstructuur in Virginia.
Bosumtwi-krater, Ghana Lake Bosumtwi is het enige natuurlijke meer in Ghana, gelegen in een oude inslagkrater ten zuidoosten van Kumasi. De Ashanti-bevolking vereert Bosumtwi als een heilig waterlichaam.
Morasko Meteoriet Natuurreservaat, Polen Het Morasko Meteoriet Natuurreservaat ligt in de bossen nabij Poznań. Bezoekers kunnen zeven kraters verkennen, waarvan de grootste een diameter van ongeveer 100 meter (328 ft) heeft en een diepte van ongeveer 11 meter (36 ft) bereikt.
Lonarkrater, India Het Lonar-meer in de staat Maharashtra is ontstaan door een meteorietinslag die ongeveer 35.000 tot 50.000 jaar geleden plaatsvond.
Middlesboro-krater, VS De Middlesboro-krater in Kentucky dankt zijn naam aan de stad waar hij nu staat. De krater is ongeveer 5 km breed en vermoedelijk minder dan 300 miljoen jaar oud.
Mistastin-krater, Canada De Mistastin-krater werd ongeveer 36 miljoen jaar geleden gevormd als gevolg van een krachtige asteroïde-botsing in Labrador, Canada. De afbeelding toont Mishta-minishtikᐡ, het gebogen eiland van het meer, levendig.
Tswaing-krater, Zuid-Afrika De schilderachtige Tswaing-krater ligt ten noordwesten van Pretoria en is vermoedelijk tussen de 220.000 en 52.000 jaar oud. Met name blijkt uit archeologisch bewijs dat de krater minstens 100.000 jaar geleden door mensen werd bezocht, zoals blijkt uit stenen werktuigen uit het middensteentijdperk.
Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve, Australië Het Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve in het Northern Territory van Australië bestaat uit minstens 14 kraters. Deze kraters zijn het resultaat van een meteoriet die uit elkaar viel bij een botsing met het aardoppervlak. De grootste krater, die een combinatie is van twee kleinere kraters, is 217 meter lang, 111 meter breed en 15 meter diep.
El'gygytgyn-krater, Rusland Het El'gygytgyn-meer ligt binnen de poolcirkel in het noordoosten van Siberië en werd ongeveer 3,6 miljoen jaar geleden gevormd uit een inslagkrater van een asteroïde.
Araguainha-impactstructuur, Brazilië De inslagstructuur van Araguainha is gemakkelijk herkenbaar als een cirkelvormige omtrek met een diameter van 40 km (25 mijl), gelegen op de grens van de staten Mato Grosso en Goiás. Het wordt beschouwd als de grootste inslagkrater van Zuid-Amerika.
Nördlinger Ries, Duitsland De Nördlinger Ries is een belangrijke inslagkrater in het westen van Beieren en het oosten van Baden-Württemberg. Het werd gebruikt als trainingslocatie voor de Apollo 14-astronauten. De foto toont de zuidelijke bosrand van de Nördlinger Ries.
De Haughton-krater, gevonden op het eiland Devon in Nunavut, is vermoedelijk ongeveer 39 miljoen jaar oud en is het resultaat van een asteroïde-inslag die een 23 km brede krater creëerde.
Lappajärvi-krater, Finland Het Lappajärvi-meer, gelegen in de Finse regio Zuid-Österbotten, is een watermassa die de gedeeltelijk geërodeerde meteorietinslagkrater van Lappajärvi beslaat. Deze indrukwekkende krater, die 23 kilometer (14 mijl) beslaat, dient als herinnering aan een gebeurtenis die ongeveer 76 miljoen jaar geleden plaatsvond.
Chicxulub-krater, Mexico De Chicxulub-krater, gelegen onder het schiereiland Yucatán, is het gevolg van een enorme asteroïde-botsing die ongeveer 66 miljoen jaar geleden plaatsvond en leidde tot het uitsterven van dinosauriërs. Op deze NASA-foto van het noordwestelijke deel van het schiereiland benadrukt een vage donkergroene curve de overblijfselen van de inslagkrater, die de op een na grootste ter wereld is.
Tunguska-evenement, Rusland In het jaar 1908 drong een meteoriet de atmosfeer van de aarde binnen, maar in plaats van de grond te raken, ontplofte hij in de lucht. Deze buitengewone gebeurtenis vond plaats nabij de rivier Podkamennaya Tunguska en resulteerde in een wijdverbreide verwoesting. Hoewel er zich geen zichtbare krater vormde, veroorzaakte de explosie het afvlakken van ongeveer 80 miljoen bomen, waardoor een uitgestrekt bosgebied van 2.150 vierkante kilometer (830 vierkante mijl) werd aangetast. Bekende bronnen die informatie verstrekken over dit incident zijn onder meer NASA, de National Park Service, Smithsonian Magazine, Geopark Ries en EarthSky.
Watch this video I made today and you too may come to the same conclusion. That an oval portal of blue, purple light opened up on the moons surface and released an oval shaped UFO that flew directly to the NASA lunar module to investigate it for being a possible threat to the alien inhabiting the inner moon bases. These photos are directly from an official NASA website and they were recorded during the Apollo 17 mission back in December 7-19th, 1972.
This is undeniable proof that aliens can open and close doors at will and send spacecraft through them in a heartbeat.
Black Disk On Google Earth Street View Map, UFO Sighting News.
Black Disk On Google Earth Street View Map, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Dec 16, 2023
Location of discovery: Spain
Google Coordinates: 41°51'39.54"N 4°10'53.11"W
Guys check this one out. There is a black disk sitting over an old village in Spain on Google street view. Europe has had as many or more UFO sightings that the US in the last 100 years. And there is an alien base not far off under Rocca Pia, Italy that extends hundreds of miles out under the ocean. I talk about Rocca Pia because they often took photos...of disks like this during the 1960s. This is real and it's there for you.
Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek Says He Knows Some Aliens, 1982 Interview, UFO Sighting News.
Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek Says He Knows Some Aliens, 1982 Interview, UFO Sighting News.
Interview: 1982 Show:The John Davidson Show
Nimoy says he says, "I know people on this earth today that are alien." He is asked really, he said "Yeah," with a straight unemotional face. Then he is asked if he is serous, he says, "yes." Then William Shatner interrupts with a joke, but is it really a joke? He says, " A couple of directors." Nimoy says, "Oh really John, do you want me to answer this question in public now?" It really sounds like Nimoy wanted to tell the world that Gene Roddenberry is an alien, he is the writer, producer and director of Star Trek. Or perhaps, its someone else in Hollywood close to him? Since Nimoy's passing, we may never know for sure. Honestly it does make sense, the flip cell phone, the iPad, the computer, laptop, sonic weapons, ect all were inspired by Star Trek, and that leads to Roddenberry. The chances of him being a real alien is very high. But...who are the others Nimoy mentions?
Tiny humans in Antarctica, Google Earth, Dec 2023, UFO Sighting News. Video!
Tiny humans in Antarctica, Google Earth, Dec 2023, UFO Sighting News. Video!
Date of discovery: Dec 2023
Location of discovery:Antarctica Google coordinates: 64°49'18.09"S 63° 6'18.34"W
Hey all. I found this on Google Earth map and it's a little odd and a little perplexing. I found a tiny human being about 7 inches tall in Antartica. The person is dressed like a team member in an orange jump suit, but what the team is doing and who they are I do not know. The back boats with a round black insignia almost reminds me of Navy seals, but the orange jump suits do not confirm that theory. Legends of little people have exited for thousands of years from Ireland to Newfoundland and for any story to lat that long, there is always a grain of truth. Alien beings could be any size, from thousands of meters tall, to microscopic intelligent life. The only limit is on our own knowledge and that grows daily.
The UK news site Daily Mail had an interesting story today, one about an egg shaped UFO at Area 51 in the 1980-90s. I will put the link above this so you can see it. It's not just rumor. Its true. Oh, and when it's powered up, it glows blue.
I heard of it too and wrote about it several times. The egg shaped UFO crashed back in 2008 when in Needles, California where a blue object was seen falling over the desert and eyewitnesses reported that within 30 minutes they saw helicopters coming in with a cargo helicopter and carry it off...to area 51. I say Area 51, because at that same moment...two top secret Janet Planes landed at the Needles airport...which is unheard of since Needles is a tiny city. The 2008 UFO crash may have been the original crash or it may have flown off and crashed when it was being tested at Area 51. I will place three videos below to watch and learn from. UFO investigator George Knapp did a great job investigating it firsthand. Scott C. Waring
Strange being observes the Perseverance Mars rover
Strange being observes the Perseverance Mars rover
Over the years, the discovery of numerous unnatural objects on the planet Mars has been well-documented, suggesting that these objects may have once belonged to ancient intelligent civilizations that inhabited the planet before a major catastrophe made the planet uninhabitable.
A recent image captured by the NASA Perseverance rover and shared by Neville Thompson on his Gigapan page reveals intriguing objects that fuel speculation about Mars' enigmatic past.
A strange being, concealed behind a sizable boulder, appears to observe the Mars rover with its creepy ant-like head and large diamond-shaped eyes.
Within the same image, attention is drawn to a hollow object, possibly remnants of a crashed craft, with discernible components of an artificial structure are clearly visible.
Notably, the next two images show a substantial boulder exhibits signs of precision cutting, reminiscent of an advanced stone-cutting machine. A zigzag opening, resembling a mouth with teeth, is evident on the severed portion. Next to the boulder lies a conspicuous flat metallic disk, suggesting potential involvement in the cutting process.
Furthermore, a stone head. The stone head and the rock plate 'with zigzag opening' prompting speculation that these could be parts of incomplete statues.
Do these artifacts provide additional evidence that not only an ancient, technologically advanced society once inhabited Mars but that there is still life on Mars given the being behind the boulder?
A forensic examination of 31,000-year-old artifacts has revealed the potential use of advanced spearthrowers by Stone Age Europeans, according to the results of a controversial new study.
Archaeologists previously believed that spearthrowers, which are sometimes called atlatls, were first put into use sometime around 17,000 or 18,000 years ago based on evidence of their use found in European caves, primarily located in southern France.
However, the results of the recent study appear to put those original findings in doubt by showing that these advanced weapons may have been in use millennia earlier than previously believed.
‘ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRACTURE SIGNAL’ ANALYSIS OF 31,000-YEAR-OLD FLINT ARTIFACTS
A spear thrower is a long shaft with a cup or notch at one end. When used properly, the device functions like an extra extension to the human arm, allowing the thrower to generate significantly more thrust than simply throwing a spear by hand.
The result is a smaller, more compact spear that not only travels farther but impacts its target with more deadly force than a traditional spear. According to the study, these high-speed impacts leave micro-fractures in the spear points that can reveal the force with which they were propelled and the projectile’s flight pattern.
To make their determination, the researchers behind this latest finding performed a detailed analysis of over 300 flint artifacts found in the Maisières-Canal archaeological site in southern Belgium. In all, over 300 artifacts were examined, with 17 revealing what the researchers say are telltale signs that they were used as spear points.
Using a microscope, study first author Justin Coppe, an archaeologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, and his team observed what they termed the “archaeological fracture signal” in these 17 spear points. These findings were compared against real-world experiments with different types of spears, darts, and arrows to see how their flight patterns affected the micro-fractures in their points.
Artist’s rendering shows fracture patterns on 31,000-year-old points from the Maisières-Canal archaeological site
(Image credit: ULiège/TraceoLab).
Based on those comparisons, the researchers say that their analysis shows that micro-fractures in the spear points were virtually identical to impacts caused by atlatls, and markedly different than impacts to spear points in traditional hand-thrown spears. The researchers also said these fracture patterns were markedly different from micro-fractures found in the experimental flint arrowheads, which are believed to have been in use in Europe as far back as 54,000 years ago.
“My conviction is that all of them are from spearthrowers,” said Coppe in an interview with Live Science.
CONTROVERSIAL RESULTS COULD PUSH BACK FIRST USE OF SPEARTHROWERS BY MILLENNIA
Published in the journal Scientific Reports and funded by the European Research Council and Belgium’s National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), the study and its conclusions have been met with some resistance. Primarily, critics said that the researchers performed their study without taking into account previous studies on the subject. For example, the critics said that the new research claimed previous studies only looked at the size of the spear points and not at the fracture patterns, which they say is not accurate.
Ultimately, the researchers behind the new study believe that their analysis is persuasive and that the microfracture analysis shows definitively that the 31,000-year-old flint spear points found in Belgium could have only been fractured that way if they were points on spearthrowers.
“The close match between the archaeological sample and the experimental spearthrower set extends the timeline of spearthrower use by over 10,000 years and represents the earliest reliable trace-based evidence for the utilization of long-distance weaponry in prehistoric hunting,” they write.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
On November 28, JP completed his sixth mission to the Atlantic space ark that was moved from the Bermuda Triangle further towards the mid-Atlantic in deeper waters in order to generate greater international cooperation. He says he was taken again by a TR-3B craft to the donut-shaped naval ship that has repositioned itself over the ark. An elevator tube from the donut-shaped ship was still in the process of being re-attached to the space ark, so JP says that a submarine/spacecraft with large hemisphere-shaped redomes attached to it transported him and his team down into the Atlantic ark.
JP said that the Nordics, along with Inner Earth beings, had taken over control of the ark and were now activating it far more quickly than when it was under the control of the US Navy. He saw 18 Nordics & Inner Earthers who were dressed differently walking around the ark but believes there were probably more in other areas they did not visit. The Nordics were particularly interested in what JP knew about what the Aztec Indians had activated during their visit to the ark.
Upon the mission’s completion, JP told the officer in command that he didn’t want to do future missions due to the personal toll they were taking on him. The commanding officer was extremely angry, and upon returning home, JP was followed and attacked with some kind of frequency weapon by individuals in a black van. The next day, he ended up in the hospital. This is third time that JP has ended up in the hospital after doing missions, which has made him reluctant to do future missions.
David Grusch Reveals Disturbing UFO Secrets to Tucker Carlson: Claims of Death & Physical Harm in Cover-Up
David Grusch Reveals Disturbing UFO Secrets to Tucker Carlson: Claims of Death & Physical Harm in Cover-Up
David Grusch, a key figure in the UFO mystery, has participated in consecutive interviews with mainstream media regarding the concealment of UFO information. Grusch has gained prominence following the July 2023 US Congress UAP hearings, thanks to his compelling and assertive testimony about non-human intelligence. He is consistently claiming we have alien crafts in double digits and also possess non-human biologics which implies Earth is in contact with or aware of species from other planets.
With each passing day, David Grusch is making efforts to reach a larger audience and share his story. This drew him to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a prominent figure in American media. Carlson, with over 10.9 million followers on Elon Musk’s X (formerly named Twitter), did a bombshell interview with Grusch published on December 14, 2023.
On X, Tucker Carlson posted this 66-minute interview with Grusch with the caption: “It’s becoming obvious that the US government has made contact with nonhuman beings.”
Grusch told Tucker that the U.S. government has retrieved “biologics” (bodies) from crashed UFO sites. When asked about the nature of these biologics, Grusch states that they are “non-human.” He emphasizes that this assessment comes from individuals with direct knowledge who are still part of the program. Grusch also mentions the existence of documentary evidence but suggests that details would need to be discussed in a secure location called a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility).
Tucker expresses surprise at Grusch’s sudden public involvement in the UFO topic, given his extensive background in military intelligence. Grusch recounts how he first became interested in the topic after seeing a New York Times article in 2017 about Lou Elizondo and programs like AATIP and AWASAP. Tucker notes that the government never confirmed or denied Elizondo’s involvement, to which Grusch clarified that he knew about Elizondo’s role. He recalls hearing that Elizondo was considered somewhat erratic by some officials. Grusch’s curiosity deepened when he saw news reports about Elizondo’s involvement in a UFO program, leading him to realize that the program was indeed real.
Grusch explains that it was a unique experience during his time in UAP task force because he started uncovering disturbing facts. He had access to classified archives from previous UFO programs and came across foreign intelligence gathered by clandestine human sources overseas. These sources, according to him, noted that the U.S. had a retrieval and reverse engineering program for UFOs. Notably, these assessments were from other countries.
Tucker questions Grusch about how the Pentagon, an entity that serves elected officials, could deny an elected official access to information. He emphasizes that the Pentagon works for politicians who are accountable to the people and compares Pentagon employees to household staff, highlighting that they’re not an independent entity.
Grsuch acknowledged the issue and pointed out that this is one of the reasons he decided to blow the whistle. He explains that even in the normal black Special Access Program (SAP) community, elected leaders are treated as second-class citizens. He mentions instances where reporting is waived, and Deputy Secretaries of Defense (Dep SecDef) can sign orders limiting briefings to certain committees.
“I can sign an order saying we’re not going to fully brief certain committees on, you see, on programs that are in Public Law 10 US Code Section 119, and that is congressional oversight of SAPS, is the title of that part of Public Law. But the department, which I find in retrospect, very weird, where the legislators authorize and appropriate these programs, but they’re not afforded full access. And occasionally the Gang of Eight will get those kinds of briefings. But literally, they could withhold, besides notifying a program that stood up the entire Congress, that we’re doing some kind of clandestine activity.”
Grsuch mentioned there are approximately 40 people, many with firsthand knowledge, some at the same level as Harry Reid. He explains that after realizing the reality of the situation, he and his team conducted interviews with individuals who had privileged information, even comparable to a high-ranking figure like Harry Reid.
Grsuch recounts a conversation with Harry Reid, where the former senator expressed deep concern about the topic. Reid, then planning to discuss it with President Biden, highlighted the challenges even someone of his stature faced in accessing information. David Grusch emphasizes that past administrations had varying levels of knowledge about these programs, and even presidents were not always briefed on all aspects.
When Tucker specifically asks about any connection between the secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project (which developed nuclear weapons) and UFO programs, Grusch clarifies that there isn’t an overt connection. However, he speculates that the development of nuclear weapons might have sparked interest in unidentified objects.
David Grusch mentions that he can’t discuss many retrievals, and the only one he has publicly mentioned is the 1933 Italian event. He chose this event to highlight that the UFO phenomenon is not exclusive to the United States but is a worldwide issue.
Grusch explains that the Italian event involved the recovery of an object that looked like an acorn in Magenta, Italy, by the Axis powers (Italy and Germany) in 1933. He notes that information about this event surfaced in the early 2000s through Italian researchers who uncovered documents sent by Mussolini to the Gestapo.
According to a senior intelligence officer who briefed him, the recovered object resembled a lenticular disc, but the edges broke off when it hit the Earth, giving it an acorn or bell shape. The Italians kept custody of the artifact until the end of the war, and then the Americans recovered it. He adds that the Vatican and the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) communicated with FDR about the crash. Grusch said the 1933 Italian event is the only one he has cleared through DoD security.
Tucker questions Grusch about the timeline of the U.S. government’s knowledge of UFOs, pointing out that David mentioned the government didn’t take custody until the end of the war. David clarifies that this statement specifically refers to a particular case, but the government was aware of the UFO issue in the 1930s.
Tucker then raises a common question: Why do advanced technologies like UFOs crash so often? Grusch suggests that crashes may not necessarily be intentional. He introduces the concept of von Neumann replicating probes, where advanced civilizations might send throwaway probes that could crash accidentally. Grusch emphasizes that this is not just his theory but something discussed by scientists involved in the program.
Tucker follows up by questioning whether these objects truly come from a far distance. Grusch admits the uncertainty, highlighting that even certain directors of government agencies prefer using the term “extraterrestrial.” However, he leans towards the term NHI, meaning non-human intelligence. He notes that this term is also used in the Schumer amendment called the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023. The act is part of the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act and is currently in conference. He underscores that he’s not the only one using terms like “non-human intelligence biologics” and points out that influential figures like Chuck Schumer are pushing for transparency in the matter.
Tucker questions why there is so much secrecy, and David suggests that excessive secrecy hinders national security. He draws a parallel with nuclear physics, explaining that while details about building nuclear weapons are classified, the broader study of nuclear physics is open to the public. David advocates for a similar approach to UFOs, where the subject should be “horizontally protected,” allowing broad academic study and public access to information, with only genuinely dangerous or classified aspects kept confidential. This way, he believes 95% of the subject could be open for study worldwide.
Tucker asks David about the truth behind these abduction claims. David responds by saying that he doesn’t have any first-hand knowledge on the phenomenon of abduction. He notes that, during his interviews, none of the individuals he spoke with had direct experience or knowledge about abductions.
“I don’t know. Nobody I interviewed had any firsthand knowledge of that phenomenon. I certainly believe people have experienced things like that. At least they believe it, because you look at Dr. John Mack, who was a Harvard-trained psychologist and psychiatrist. He examined the phenomenon of abduction in the early 2000s before his death and affirmed that the people he psychoanalyzed certainly experienced something real to them. But what is the abduction phenomenon? I really don’t know. I’m not sure.”
DavidGrusch tells Tucker Carlson about Rep. Mike Turner’s efforts to block the UAP Disclosure Act and destroy Tim Burchett’s career “Mike Rogers & Mike Turner, two of the dumbest people in Washington. Pure tools of the national security state.” Additionally on Newnation, he said, “Mike Turner probably has no business being the (House Intelligence Committee) Chairman… Mike Turner has never been an intelligence officer. He’s never served in the military.” “We need to get these people out of office.”
Physical Harm
Tucker raises a sensitive issue about the potential harm or killing of individuals connected to the U.S. government’s UFO programs. He specifically asks Grusch if he has reason to believe that the government has hurt or killed anyone, particularly American citizens, in connection to these programs.
Grusch responds by acknowledging concerns that were raised by individuals who approached him, expressing worries about potential harm. He emphasizes that he took these concerns seriously and reported them to the Inspector General of the intelligence community, directing the individuals to law enforcement.
Tucker pushes further, specifically mentioning the allegation of murder, to which Grusch confirms that the concerns included both murder and physical harm. However, he refrains from providing specific details due to the ongoing investigation and potential risks to his safety.
Grusch discloses that he felt his life was in jeopardy, and he reported the threats and surveillance to a counterintelligence element and law enforcement. He reveals that these threats not only affected him but also impacted his wife. He states that he doesn’t know the identity of those involved, ruling out the possibility of it being a foreign entity.
Previously on the Joe Rogan Experience, Grusch talked about the fundamental questions related to UFOs, such as the existence of extraterrestrial life and the nature of human consciousness. Grusch asserted with confidence, based on conversations with high-level individuals like Harry Reid, that we are not alone, and the UFO phenomenon is real.
“You know for humanity. Are we alone or you know what happens when we die? Well, I don’t know about that, but are we alone? Well, the answer is we’re not alone. And I know that with 100% certainty, which as an Intel officer, you never say 100%, but all things pointed towards based on the people I talked to…The phenomenon is real. It’s been going on for thousands of years. People have been seeing strange things and not everybody’s mass hallucinating. So that’s kind of my long diatribe about what’s happening.”
Guys, this is something thats been on my desktop a few weeks, and thought I better share it soon before I delete it by accident. I was going through the Arecibo telescope doppler radar data and found this one object that was labeled an asteroid, but clearly was a large metal alien disk. Data says this object is .5 miles in diameter or 800 meters across. Also, there are two smaller UFOs, rectangle shape, that orbit this larger disk. This is to protect the larger ship from sudden attacks and also for docking. There are 16 doppler radar images in this gif which makes the video. Only the last image, number 16 was a clear shot of the UFO. I believer there to be more, but some assistant must have been told to remove the clear ones and deliberately left a single clear, focused image of the UFO in the gif. Have you ever been told to do something at work that you felt was wrong so you just didn't do it that way? We all have. This is the holy grail of UFO images. Rarer than rare. This is what all UFO researcher seek, and it is before you now. 👽
The Secrets of Reptoid Beings and Hidden Underground Bases | FULL SHOW
The Secrets of Reptoid Beings and Hidden Underground Bases | FULL SHOW
In the annals of the unexplained and the mysterious, few topics arouse as much fascination and skepticism as the existence of reptoid beings and hidden underground bases. These enigmatic subjects have fueled countless conspiracy theories, books, and discussions, blurring the lines between science fiction and potential reality.
The Enigma of Reptoid Beings
Reptoids, or reptilian humanoids, are creatures said to possess both human and reptilian traits. The concept of reptilian beings has been part of human mythology and folklore for centuries, with tales of serpent gods and dragon-like creatures permeating various cultures. In modern times, the idea of reptoids has been popularized by figures like David Icke, who claims these beings have infiltrated human society.
Sightings and stories often describe these beings as tall, humanoid creatures with scaly skin, often attributed with superior intelligence and, in some accounts, telepathic abilities. The discussion around reptoids raises questions about human perception and our understanding of reality, as well as the potential for undiscovered species or civilizations.
The Mystery of Underground Bases
The concept of hidden underground bases adds another layer to the reptoid narrative. These bases, often described as sprawling networks beneath the Earth’s surface, are said to house advanced technologies and secret activities. Some conspiracy theorists suggest these bases are joint human-alien endeavors, places where shadowy government projects and extraterrestrial interactions occur.
Locations like Area 51 in Nevada and the Denver International Airport have been cited as potential hotspots for such activity. Stories and theories often include details of elaborate tunnel systems, alien technology, and covert operations, capturing the public’s imagination about what secrets might lie beneath our feet.
The Blurring of Fact and Fiction
While mainstream science dismisses the existence of reptoids and underground bases as fiction, these topics continue to intrigue many. The lack of concrete evidence has not deterred enthusiasts and researchers who delve into these mysteries, often citing whistleblower testimonies or unexplained phenomena as potential proof.
The debate around these subjects often reflects broader themes of trust in authority and the quest for hidden knowledge. For some, the possibility of reptoids and underground bases represents a more exciting and complex world than the one we know.
Implications for Society and Science
The fascination with reptoids and underground bases raises important questions about the nature of belief, skepticism, and the human propensity for myth-making. It challenges the boundaries of accepted science and encourages a deeper look at our world’s mysteries.
These narratives also serve as a mirror to societal fears and curiosities, reflecting deeper questions about extraterrestrial life, government secrecy, and the unknown aspects of our planet. As technology advances and our understanding of the world expands, the line between myth and possibility becomes increasingly blurred.
VIDEO:
Coast to Coast AM: The Secrets of Reptoid Beings and Hidden Underground Bases | FULL SHOW
The secrets of reptoid beings and hidden underground bases remain shrouded in mystery and skepticism. Whether viewed as mere fantasy or as subjects worthy of exploration, they undeniably capture the human imagination and reflect our innate fascination with the unknown. As we continue to explore the vastness of space and the depths of our oceans, perhaps one day, these mysteries will move from the realm of speculation to that of reality.
Some of the Weirdest Supposed Alien Artifacts Found on Earth - PART II
Throughout the history of ufology, the Holy Grail has always been some form of concrete evidence, something we can hold in our hand and verify as being from alien intelligences beyond our world. There have been plenty of stories of crashed UFOs and alien bodies over the years, none of which have come to provide the answers we are looking for. However, are there other forms of evidence of aliens visiting us across the sea of stars? Are there perhaps artifacts or objects they have left behind for whatever reasons? Here we will look at a selection of some of the more far out supposed alien objects ever found, which have mostly fueled more questions than answers.
After this the odd trajectory of the sphere becomes unclear, the story slowly fading away from the media blitz it had enjoyed and its location sinking into obscurity, and we are left with the question of what this ball was and what happened to it. There have been theories ranging from the rational to the more fringe. The rational explanation is that this was a misidentified component of a satellite or an otherwise manmade construction such as a piece of industrial machinery such as a ball valve, but how would this explain its strange behavior and properties? One ball valve manufacturer was nevertheless reasonably sure that it was just a ball valve, saying of the “Betz Sphere”:
I'm not saying that this thing didn't come from outer space because I've never seen it. All I'm saying is that the physical description of it matches exactly the type of ball we have in stock.
Others say that the analyses done would have immediately determined whether it was manmade or not, but that they failed to conclusively come to this conclusion, suggesting that it was something else, perhaps something alien in origin. Yet looking through the Navy records on the case it seems this may have been exaggerated somewhat by the media, as one Navy spokesman is on record having said of the ball’s purported strange ability to rove about on its own:
I believe it's because of the construction of the house... It's old and has uneven stone floors. The ball is almost perfectly balanced, and it takes just a little indentation to make it move or change direction.
So what are we to believe? What was this thing? It seems this story has been muddied, twisted, and warped through retellings and a clear lack of information, leaving us merely scratching or heads. Perhaps an even more important question we should be asking ourselves is just where did this thing go? It was all over the news for a time and then just disappears? How can that be? Conspiracy theories say that the military or NASA had it whisked away, while others say the family got tired of all of the attention and hid it away from the world, but we really have no idea what the truth is. In the end the only way to know whether this was truly some sort of alien probe or piece of technology would be to study that sphere, and that seems to not be happening any time soon. Whatever it was, the Betz Sphere will likely remain a mystery for a long time to come.
We are left to wonder. Have there been mysterious alien objects dropped off or left behind on Earth? Is the ultimate physical evidence out there somewhere, or is this all just smoke, mirrors, and hoaxes? At the moment there has been no known conclusive evidence that aliens have left anything behind here on our planet, but there continue to be stories such as these. What are we to make of them? Is there any truth to any of these or not? It remains unknown.
Some of the Weirdest Supposed Alien Artifacts Found on Earth
Throughout the history of ufology, the Holy Grail has always been some form of concrete evidence, something we can hold in our hand and verify as being from alien intelligences beyond our world. There have been plenty of stories of crashed UFOs and alien bodies over the years, none of which have come to provide the answers we are looking for. However, are there other forms of evidence of aliens visiting us across the sea of stars? Are there perhaps artifacts or objects they have left behind for whatever reasons? Here we will look at a selection of some of the more far out supposed alien objects ever found, which have mostly fueled more questions than answers.
In some cases, it seems as if possible alien intelligences have left behind artifacts far in the past or in certain far-off locations of this world for inscrutable reasons we cannot fathom and were perhaps not meant to. One of these is surely a strange structure found on the bottom of the Antarctica seas, in a place that is about as inhospitable to life as anywhere on the planet, where creatures eke by a living in the dark cold, and which was found by chance and which has incited discussion to this day.
In the 1960s, Antarctica might as well have been an alien world. It was a faraway, isolated, frigid land largely inhospitable to life as we know it, and although we still don’t know much about this continent today, at that time is was like another planet unto itself. In order to do research in the forbidding region, the National Science Foundation of the United States in 1962 created an elaborate, technologically advanced floating laboratory called the USNS Eltanin, which was the world's first dedicated Antarctic research vessel and tasked with exploring Antarctica and surrounding waters over a four-year period, at the time in waters just about uncharted as the furthest reaches of the solar system. While they made many findings and shed light on our knowledge of the region, they would also uncover things out there in those secluded depths that would go on to propel themselves into truly great mysteries.
On August 29, 1964, the USNS Eltanin was engaged in photographing the ocean floor 1,000 miles west of Cape Horn with a cable mounted camera at a depth of approximately 3,904 meters (13,500 feet) when they made a remarkable find. There along the mostly bleak and barren bottom they managed to snap pictures of a very strange structure, which stood upright at 2 feet high in the middle of nowhere on the lifeless seabed and with its symmetrical nodules, spokes and protrusions ending in a spherical top, it looked very much like an elaborate artificial radio antenna array. It was surely an unexpected thing to find down there, an anomaly, and when it the photographs were picked up and released by the New Zealand Herald on December 5, 1964, the puzzling images immediately caught the attention of UFOlogists and Fortean researchers, who would dub it “The Eltanin Antenna” and claim that it was an out of place alien artifact put there in that remote location for inscrutable purposes. The object would be excitedly discussed and debated for years, with famed paranormal writer Brad Steiger in 1968 calling it “an astonishing piece of machinery... very much like the cross between a TV antenna and a telemetry antenna.”
Theories swirled at the time, ranging that it was a piece that had simply fallen off a boat, to more conspiratorial theories such as that it was a secret Russian project, to more fringe ideas that it was the doing of aliens. Others suggested that it was perhaps some type of undiscovered plant life, but marine biologists were skeptical of this, as there was no sunlight down there to support it, and one biologist, a Dr. Thomas Hopkins, would say of it:
I wouldn’t like to say the thing is man-made because this brings up the problem of how one would get it there ... But it’s fairly symmetrical and the offshoots are all 90 degrees apart. This is why it has been argued over for so long.
In the end, no one knew, and since it was so far under the surface in one of the most hostile and inaccessible environments on earth there was no way to reach it again and no efforts made to try and relocate it. In the meantime, the bizarre object made the rounds in numerous UFO and paranormal publications, including SAGA Magazine, The INFO Journal, and Fortean Times, a habitat in which it often seemed to pick up added details and conjecture that really muddied the waters as to trying to figure out what was actually going on and what it really was. At the time it was aggressively pushed by many writers, in particular Steiger, as a true anomaly and possibly alien artifact, but in more recent years the story has picked up more mundane possibilities. One of the most popular of these was the suggestion that what is seen in the images is a type of deep sea carnivorous sponge called Cladorhiza concrescens, which was discovered in 1888 by Alexander Agassiz and was described in the initial report:
It somewhat resembles a space-age microwave antenna, with a long stem ending in ramifying roots, sunk deeply into the mud. The stem has nodes with four to six club-like appendages. They evidently cover like bushes extensive tracts of the bottom.
This seems like a very rational approach to the mystery, but there have been arguments against this idea. One is that the crew of the USNS Eltanin, with their crew of scientists and marine biologists, did not come to that conclusion on their own. Another is that this species of sponge is known to exist in large colonies, where as this object was solitary out on a desert of nothingness. There is also the fact that when compared to photos of Cladorhiza concrescens, the Eltanin Antenna does not seem to completely match, looking somewhat different, especially in that it is obviously more symmetrical, regimented, and even in form than one would expect one of these sponges to be. Details like this have made sure that the Eltanin Antenna has remained discussed and debated to this day, with many proponents of the idea that it is indeed an anomalous artifact placed there by either nefarious human organizations or aliens, for purposes ranging from measuring fault activity to mind control.
The mysterious antenna
There is really no way to know what this strange artifact was when looking at it based solely on a few photographs. It could really be anything, although no one explanation has really seemed to satisfy everyone at this point. Was this just some anomalous sea sponge that managed to find its way out there on its own? Or was it something else entirely? Whatever the case may be, no one has found the original Eltanin Antenna since, and we will probably never know the full answer.
Many supposed alien artifacts are linked to ancient civilizations, and truly one of the great lost and mysterious civilizations of the earth is the Inca Empire of the Andes Mountains of Peru. At its most powerful and illustrious during the 14th and 15th centuries, the Inca Empire at one point stretched over a vast area encompassing parts of Ecuador and as far south as Chile. For centuries this great civilization thrived, only to melt away into history with the coming of the gold-hungry Spanish conquistadors and fade away into the mists of time, leaving behind no record of their culture and way of life and making them one of the most enigmatic of ancient empires. Yet, for all of their mysteries some are more pronounced than others, with outlandish artifacts for with purposes unknown uncovered at times., and one of the more baffling of these is a monolithic stone which we are nowhere near figuring out.
Although the Incas left behind no written record for us to draw from, what they did leave are vast structures that remain standing strong centuries later. From temples, to citadels, to strongholds, massive walls, and roads, these ancient structures made use of enormous stones somehow moved to these locations and placed perfectly straight without any mortar and through methods we still don’t understand fully. In addition to these architectural mysteries the people of the Inca era also left behind other oddities that pop up from time to time, which serve to pose more questions than answers. One of these lies in the province Abancay in the region Apurímac in Peru, and has been wreathed in mystery ever since its discovery.
The site is called Sayhuite, thought to have perhaps once been the site of a grand gold covered temple devoted to the worship of water, and here is a rather bizarre artifact looking quite out of place. Called the Sayhuite Monolith, it is an enormous boulder measuring 6.5 feet long and about 13 feet wide, which sits atop a raised platform upon a terraced hill called the Concacha Hill, but more bizarre than its sheer size is what is engraved upon it. The entirety of the upper surface of the rock is adorned with over 200 carvings and engravings of various zoomorphic and geological figures, including reptiles, jaguars, monkeys, shellfish, frogs, crabs, birds, terraces, ponds, rivers, tunnels, streets, stairways, channels, buildings, and irrigation canals, and many others, as well as numerous geometric figures, all incredibly intricately crafted in painstaking detail.
It is a breathtaking piece of artistic mastery for its day, but the thing is we have no idea of what its purpose is, exactly where it originated, or even it was the Incas who made it at all. One of the problems is that there is very little else remaining from the Inca Empire at this particular site, no frame of reference to give it. We do know that it is not a natural outcropping, and it is made of material not sourced from the immediate area, but it is unclear where it was moved from or if this was even its original intended resting place. That is about all we know for sure, and no one is quite sure who made it or why.
As to the carvings, your guess is as good as anyone’s, and their significance depends largely on who you ask. One popular theory is that this was once an Inca temple devoted to the worship of water deities, which would have in its day been full of grand, gold coated columns and featuring the monolith as some sort of object of religious significance. However, this is far from the only idea floating around. Another theory is that the stone was used as a way of developing and testing the intricacies of water flow for public water projects and irrigation systems, supported somewhat by evidence that the engravings show signs of having been altered, modified, and updated over the centuries, perhaps to test out different water paths on the topographical model. Other ideas include that the monolith is a map to a lost city or even a map of the Inca Empire, a model of the universe, or even an alien artifact. In the ends no one knows, and although the site is popular with tourists, we are no closer to understanding it all, its history lost to time, just one more piece of the puzzle of a time long lost to us.
Sayhuite Monolith
Indeed, the ancient world very often seems to be almost something from an alien realm. Full of unanswered questions and inscrutable, indecipherable ruins, we are often left without answers to what these people were up to, our view to the past obscured and hazy. The ancients often left behind various enigmas that we struggle to understand and which seem to taunt us through the centuries, and another one of these is a mysterious disc uncovered in Greece, which is full of strange cryptic symbols and for which we have no answer, and which may be from powers beyond our world.
In July of 1908, an Italian archeologist by the name of Luigi Pernier was doing an excavation at the Old Palace of Minoan Phaistos, a mysterious Bronze Age archaeological site dating from 1900 to 1700 BC on the south coast of the island of the Greek island of Crete. There in the dank dark in an ancient basement of the palace he unearthed a small clay disc that had lain down in the dark for untold centuries, which upon inspection would capture the imagination and turn out to be one of the most mysterious and hotly debated archeological oddities ever uncovered in Greece.
Measuring from 15.8 to 16.5cm in diameter and 1.6 to 2.1cm in thickness, seemingly handmade from fired, baked clay, it is a truly curious little artifact. The disc holds etched upon both sides of it a spiral pattern of hand drawn lines within which a total of 45 different strange symbols are set in groups demarcated by vertical lines for a total of 242 symbols in all, each one apparently individually stamped into the clay before it was fired and in some cases showing evidence of having been erased and re-stamped. These symbols are largely pictographic in nature, featuring human figures, faces, animals such as fish, dolphins or cattle, boats, and plants and trees, as well as less discernible cryptic symbols. In addition to these symbols, there are what appear to be hand drawn dashes, slashes, and dotted bars throughout. Besides being an odd find, the thing about these various symbols is that, although they are all arranged as an obvious message, they represent no known language or writing system. It resembles none of the forms of writing found in Bronze Age Crete, called hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B, and archeologists have no idea what they say or why they were arranged in spirals on this lone disc.
Some things about what has come to be known as the Phaistos Disc are mostly largely agreed upon. It is mostly accepted as probably being Cretan in origin quite possibly a version of the Minoan language, and likely dates back to from 1850 to 1550 BC. It is also mostly believed that because many of the symbols seem to be arranged to face the right towards the outer edge of the disc, it is thought that it should be read clockwise from the center outwards. On the outer edge of the disc is a clearly delineated straight line marked with five or six points that is agreed by most to be the intended starting point for reading it all. That is pretty much where any agreement ends, and the disc, its origins, and the meaning of its enigmatic symbols have been discussed and debated ever since its discovery.
The Phaistos Disc
When trying to decipher the meaning of this oddity, there has been pointed out that the total number of different symbols are too few to represent a purely pictographic system of writing, that is in which one image is one word, but too many to be an alphabet system, meaning it is probably what is called a "syllabary." This would mean that each different symbol represents a separate syllable of the language, and each of the groups of symbols would make up one word. However, if this is the case it should be expected that there would be an even distribution of the symbols through the text, but there are wild imbalances between them on the disc, and also considering that the symbols are grouped in mostly groups of 3 to 7, it seems strange that the language would be so syllable heavy. This has led to another idea, which is that the mysterious writing system could be some combination of pictographs and syllabaries, but no one really knows for sure.
As to the significance of the disc, theories have varied considerably. Ideas include that it is a prayer, hymn or a religious chant, sacred text, magic inscription, a spell or curse, a simple letter, ritual, game, funerary record, almanac, court list, political treaty, a geometric theorem, list of soldiers, or even a nursery rhyme or musical notes, and of course that it was left by aliens. As you can see, no one really has a clue, and it could be anything. One idea that has been floated around is that the disc is not real at all, but rather a more modern forgery and hoax. It was for a while a subject of some debate, only fueled by the Greek Ministry of Culture refusal to let anyone test it because they deem it to be a national treasure that would be damaged if it were to be analyzed. If it is a forgery, then the main culprit is seen as probably being Luigi Pernier, in order to make a name for himself and step out from the shadows of other more famous archeologists also working in Crete at the time. After all, what better way to get the field’s attention than a mysterious disc with some inscrutable ancient language no one had ever seen before? However, it is common for governments to refuse to have artifacts tested out of fear of damaging them, and the majority of archeologists both in Greece and beyond are of the general consensus that it is authentic. What it actually is and what it signifies is another story altogether.
One of the most frustrating things is that since the symbols came from individual stamps, someone spent the time to make the actual die for each symbol, yet none of these die have been found. It would also imply that these discs were meant to be mass produced, yet as of yet, none other has been found. This is a problem, because without other similar examples of this mystery writing or a Rosetta Stone-type finding, there is simply not enough context to derive any meaning from it. There have been numerous claims over the years that the disc has been solved and translated, but these are unconfirmed, with little chance of a concrete confirmation in the absence of a comparison to other inscriptions. The fact is, despite the various claims of decoding the mysterious writing, it remains a perplexing unsolved mystery.
Equally as perplexing and controversial is a discovery allegedly made in 1938 in the Baian-Kara-ula mountains on the border of China and Tibet, by Chinese archeologist and professor Chi Pu Tei. His expedition purportedly came across an underground network of tunnels, caves, and caverns that seemed to have been artificially excavated, leaving smooth glazed walls suggesting some immense heat had been used. Tei claimed that within this strange subterranean world they had found pictograms carved into the walls, which depicted star systems, the sun, and the moon, and even more bizarrely graves that supposedly held the remains of tiny humanoids measuring about 4 feet tall and with outsized heads. Perhaps even stranger were the objects they found half buried in the earth all around them.
The Baian-Kara-ula mountains
The objects in question were a series of over 700 perfectly circular discs measuring up to a foot across, and which were said to have two grooves that emanated out from a perfectly round, 3/4" hole in the center to form a double spiral. Within the spirals were claimed to be minuscule hieroglyphics of an unknown type, so small that they were barely visible to the naked eye, and which required a magnifying glass to make out in any significant detail. Although this would have been seen as a monumental discovery, the discs allegedly found themselves locked away in storage at Beijing university for decades until 1962, when Chinese archeologist Tsum Um Nui supposedly took a look at them and the story would get even more bizarre still.
After careful analysis of the discs, this Tsum Um Nui claimed that he had actually managed to decipher them, and that they told an epic tale and often tragic tale of visitors from the stars. According to Nui, the discs spoke of a spaceship that had crashed into the mountains carrying a contingent of alien beings called the Dropa. The crash smashed the ship beyond their ability to repair, and so these mysterious beings had been forced to find refuge in the mountains and adapt to life on Earth, creating the tunnels and caverns in the process. The discs even supposedly give the harrowing account of some of these Dropa being mercilessly slaughtered by the Han Chinese.
It sounds completely absurd, and the general scientific community agreed, refusing to publish Nui’s paper on the matter and generally looking upon his claims with raised eyebrows and outright disdain. According to some accounts, the archeologist was even forbidden from even talking about the discs anymore after that, but the whole weird tale caught the attention of Russian scientist W. Saitsew, who apparently acquired some of the discs and studied them himself in 1968. Saitsew allegedly found the composition of the discs to be quite odd, comprised of a strange mix of cobalt and other metals that made the surface nearly impenetrably hard and deepening the mystery of the hieroglyphs etched upon them. He also claimed to have discovered that when placed on a specialized turntable the discs hummed and oscillated as if they had once held an electrical charge or served as conductors of some type.
It is unclear what happened to what have come to be known as the Dropa Discs after this, and Tsum Um Nui himself allegedly fled China to Japan, where he vanished into obscurity. We are left with very little to go on, and indeed there is much to cast doubt on whether the Dropa Discs ever even existed at all. For one there are no discs now to examine, with the estimated 712 discs all allegedly disappearing over the years. There is also rather suspiciously a lack of any photographic documentation of them at all. The only supposed photographs of the Dropa Discs were purportedly taken by the Austrian engineer Ernst Wegerer, who apparently located two of the discs during a visit to the Banpo Museum in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province in 1974. However, the photographs are fairly controversial and the discs themselves are obscured by camera flash.
Supposed photo of the Dropa Discs
Other damning evidence against the existence of the Dropa Discs is that there are no real official scientific papers written on them, with only the writings of Tsum Um Nui, the Russian scientists, and some second or third hand accounts to go on, and these are of questionable veracity at best. In fact, Tsum Um Nui appears to have no mention in any university or academic institution as an archeologist, and indeed it has been pointed out that Tsum Um Nui isn’t even a real Chinese name at all. There are likewise no official museum records to show that such discs were ever within their collections, nor is there any official documentation of the Chi Pu Tei expedition that supposedly found them in the first place, and indeed there is no way to know if it ever happened at all. Considering such a lack of any concrete evidence, if the Dropa Discs ever did exist then the Chinese have gone through great efforts to cover it all up. Perhaps more likely is that this is an intriguing archeological urban legend that has sort of taken up a life of its own. Regardless, these mysterious discs crafted by unknown hands have continued to be discussed and debated to this day.
More recently, in 1961 a group of friends in Olancha, California were looking for geodes when they found within one of them a modern spark of all things, and allegedly a geologist estimated the object as being 500,000 years old. In October of 1996 a group of researchers in the Kaluga region of western Russia located a screw complete with the fully formed head and nut embedded within rock that was found to be 300 to 350 million years old. Examination by various scientists showed that the object is most certainly artificial, but as to how it got into that rock no one knows. Was this an alien artifact, time travelers, or what, and perhaps more pressing, what would aliens need with spark plugs anyway? The answers remain vague.
Some other anomalous ancient artifacts are a little harder to adequately classify, and defy easy categorization. In 1885, a strange object was found by an iron smelter at a foundry in Vocklabruck, Austria. There, within a block of solid coal, was discovered a perfectly-formed cuboid object of what seemed to be iron or some other type of metal, measuring 2.64 by 2.64 by 1.85 inches and weighing 1.73 pounds, its purpose unknown. The outlandish cube-like object was sent to the Salzburg Museum, where it was analyzed by the Austrian physicist Karl Gurls and found to be made not of iron, but rather of a strange alloy composing steel and nickel, although it would later be deemed to be actually made of a forged iron.
Further analysis showed that the object, whatever it was, was too precise in shape and made of too refined a metal to have been caused by any known naturally occurring phenomenon such as a meteorite strike, and was most likely machine-tooled and even probably just a part of a larger device or mechanism, although what type no one knows. What has come to be known as the Salzburg Cube or the Wolfsegg Iron has apparently been studied by scientists at the Geological Institute of Austria, who have also come to the conclusion that it seems to indeed be indeed artificial, and the object has even been featured in an 1886 edition of the scientific journal Nature, as well as an 1887 issue of the French journal L’Astronomie.
What was this strange object and how did it get within a chunk of coal dating to tens of millions of years ago? Was it truly a manufactured object, and if so what sort of enigmatic mechanism did it once belong to? It is difficult to tell for sure, as the Salzburg Cube has since disappeared completely, leaving only these vague 19th century reports behind. It might have been lost, misplaced, mislabeled, or filed away in some darkened backroom of a museum collection somewhere gathering dust, perhaps even stolen for unknown reasons. We only know for sure that it did exist, but without modern scientific analysis we will probably never know for sure what it was. Mysterious technology of the ancients, aliens in prehistory, time travelers, or unknown natural phenomena? Who knows?
Other purported alien artifacts seem to have been dropped off or left behind during UFO encounters. On November 11, 1956, a Stig Ekberg and Harry Sjoberg were driving on the Island of Vaddo, Sweden, about 90 kilometers north-northwest of Stockholm, when they noticed up ahead a bright object that looked like a flattened sphere, measuring around 8 meters wide and 3 meters high. The object seemed as if it was about to fly past them, but it then suddenly made a sharp turned and headed directly towards them, and as it did their car’s engine mysteriously coughed, sputtered, and died. The object then came down to hover right near the road, and it was described as being so bright that “even a barn, half a kilometer away, was visible as if the sun was shining.” It then proceeded to maintain a position just one meter off of the ground, and as the frightened men looked on it started to glow brighter, and the air was filled with a smell like “ozone and smoldering insulation.”
After 10 minutes of this, the object lifted up and sped off in the direction from which it had come, and as it did the vehicle sprang back to life. The curious witnesses then went to where the thing had been hovering to find that the grass had been flattened and singed. Even weirder than this was that there was a shiny object on the ground that turned out to be a “three-sided piece of metal about the size of a matchbox,” and which was hot to the touch and heavier than it looked. The men collected the strange artifact and had it analyzed at the SAAB airline manufacturing company, who came to the conclusion that it was constructed of tungsten carbide and cobalt, and was definitely an artificially manufactured object and not some naturally occurring rock of any known kind, although it had no discernible conventional use. It is unclear what happened to this object after this, and we are left to wonder what it was. Was it something dropped by the UFO, and if so what was it? Who knows?
The following year, in September of 1957, Ibrahim Sued, a columnist for the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo, received a letter from a witness who claimed to have seen a "flying disk" explode over the beach at Ubatuba, in Sao Paulo Province, Brazil, and that as it did it had “rained down” metal pieces. Within the envelope the letter came in were several strips of a dull gray metallic material which seemed to be scorched or oxidized somewhat, smooth but with a noticeable amount of wear and tear, and which were all dusted with a fine film of a powdered substance that somewhat resembled burnt charcoal residue, all of which had apparently been dropped by the UFO. The letter would read:
Dear Mr. Ibrahim Sued. As a faithful reader of your column, and an admirer of yours, I wish to give you, as a newspaperman, a “scoop” concerning flying discs. If you believe that they are real, of course. I didn’t believe anything said or published about them. But just a few days ago I was forced to change my mind. I was fishing together with various friends, at a place close to the town of Ubatuba, Sao Paulo, when I sighted a flying disc! It approached the beach at unbelievable speed and an accident, in other words, a crash into the sea, seemed imminent. At the last moment, however, when it seemed it was almost striking the waters, it made a sharp turn upward and climbed rapidly on a fantastic impulse. Astonished, we followed the spectacle with our eyes, when we saw the disc explode in flames. It disintegrated into thousands of fiery fragments, which fell sparkling with magnificent brightness. They looked like fireworks, despite the time of the accident, at noon, that is, at midday. Most of the fragments, almost all, fell into the sea. But a number of small pieces fell close to the beach and we picked up a large amount of this material—which was light as paper. I am enclosing a sample of it. I don’t know anyone that could be trusted to whom I could send it for analysis. I never read about a flying disk being found, or about fragments or parts of a disk that had been picked up. Unless the finding was made by military authorities and the whole thing kept as a top-secret subject. I am certain the matter will be of great interest to the brilliant columnist and I am sending two copies of this letter—to the newspaper and to your home address.
Not knowing what to do with the letter and its mysterious samples, Sued merely printed the letter in the newspaper out of curiosity, then put the mysterious pieces of weird metal aside and sort of ignored them until he was contacted by a Olavo T. Fontes, a Rio physician and Brazilian representative of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (A.P.R.O), who had heard of the letter through its publication in the paper. Fontes came out to Brazil and took a closer look at the samples, coming to the initial conclusion that one was cracked and had fissures suggesting that it had been forcefully blown off of a larger object, and it was surmised that the whitish substance was the result of the pieces being subjected to an intense heat. Sued offered to release the strange pieces to Fontes, who took them off to be analyzed further at the Mineral Production Laboratory. Fontes himself would say of the objects in a report to the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO) in Tucson, Arizona:
I saw the samples sent by the unidentified correspondent—three small pieces of a dull-gray solid substance that appeared to be a metal of some sort. Their surfaces were not smooth and polished, but quite irregular and apparently strongly oxidized. The surface of one of the samples was shot through with almost microscopic cracks. The surfaces of all samples were covered in scattered areas with a whitish material. These whitish smears of a powdered substance appeared as a thin layer. The fine, dry powder was adherent but could be displaced easily with the nail. Mr. Sued said the material appeared to be lead at first sight—because of the gray color—but I could see that it could not be lead … the material was light … almost as light as paper.
They were then sent through a battery of tests, where they were found to be composed of 99.99% pure magnesium. The Air Force allegedly received one of the samples, but it was unfortunately accidentally destroyed as it was being prepped for analysis. They requested another sample, but since one of the other pieces had also been destroyed by the testing done on it there was only one fragment left and they were unwilling to part with it, instead locking it away in a safe. In 1967, the A.P.R.O. grudgingly allowed the piece to be taken in for analysis, but this would prove to be inconclusive and produce conflicting results, with one lab saying that the magnesium was not as pure as originally claimed and “not as pure as magnesium specimens readily available in the 1950s,” whereas another stated that the piece was produced through a “process that was unknown when the fragments were recovered.” Ultimately the sample was just too small to really tell much, and it created more questions than answers, leaving it as an anomalous mystery. University of Arizona metallurgical engineer Walter W. Walker would say of the fragment:
All chemical analyses to date have not verified the extraterrestriality of the Ubatuba magnesium.... Considering the poor pedigree of the Ubatuba physical evidence, a hoax cannot be ruled out... [though] nothing unequivocally identifying the material as terrestrial was found either. If one accepts that it is possible that a flying saucer has a soft, weak, technically pure, unalloyed, cast magnesium fuselage, then the metallographic evidence is consistent. The surface scale, the oxide intrusion into the grain boundaries and, particularly, the subscale from internal oxidation all suggest that the magnesium was exposed to the Earth’s atmosphere at elevated temperatures. The white Mg(OH)2 coating is consistent with the burning fragments falling into the ocean.... In summary, after all these years, I consider the Ubatuba magnesium fragment as unusual material of still unknown origin.
The Ubatuba fragment
Unfortunately, further analysis has done little to shed any more light on the fragments, and have been unable to conclusively prove whether they were of extraterrestrial origins or proof of aliens, and the Journal of Scientific Exploration would say in an abstract on their paper on the matter:
A sample from the Ubatuba fragment collected in Brazil in 1957 was tested with the intent of examining the isotope ratios of its primary element, magnesium, and the trace elements strontium, barium, copper, and zinc. As background, the history of chemical testing of the Ubatuba fragments during the 1960s-1980s at multiple labs with varying capabilities is reviewed and then the remainder of the paper examines recent tests completed in 2017 and 2018 that for the first time used HR-ICPMS techniques to look at the isotopic ratios of the minor constituents as well as the primary magnesium component of the sample. The magnesium isotope ratios were found to fall within terrestrial limits while the results on the isotope ratios of the trace elements were inconclusive. Recommendations are made for improving the process of examining the trace elements.
We are left to wonder how much veracity the case has, and just what exactly those mysterious fragments were, if anything. What do the results mean? There is no way to really know, because there is nothing left to test that we know of. Who sent the letter and was he for real? Again, a mystery. In the end, with the inconsistency of the test results, the lack of any remaining fragments, and the completely anonymous identity of the writer of the letter there is no way to be sure, making it a case that will no doubt serve to fuel debate and speculation for some time to come.
In August of 1964, a Mr. Raimo Blomqvist was at his parents’ summer cottage at Kallavesi Lake, Finland, when he noticed a “strange, colorful light ball” come down from the clouds. As it drew nearer he could see that it was oval in shape, but it was glowing too brightly for him to see any real details to it. The strange anomalous object then hovered over some shallow water nearby and apparently dropped something, which made a sound like “hot metal touching cold water” when it hit the surface. The UFO then rose high into the air and shot off into the clouds. He then went to where the object had dropped and found an odd looking stone 3 or 4 cm in length and with five layers to it. When the strange artifact was analyzed by a lab, it was found to be mostly made of iron, but there were also small amounts of other materials such as copper, zinc, magnesium, mangan, zirkonium, vanadium, titanium and crom. They also determined that the stone had been in a temperature of 650-800 degrees Celsius for a long time. Once again, it is unclear what happened to this object. What was this thing?
From the 1970s is a case from Suonenjoki, in Central Finland, where on March 16 of that year a Mr. Reijo Kolehmainen made a stunning discovery near his property after witnessing UFO activity for several days, claiming that he had found several spots where the mysterious object had landed and left behind various artifacts. A report in the APRO Bulletin, Vol. 28, No. 5, Nov. 1979, says of what happened:
Three landing trace areas were found around Mr. Reijo Kolehmainen’s home in February, 1979. At 6:50 a.m. on February 2, 1979 a 2.5 meter crater was found in the snow at a distance of 5 meters from the house. The snow had melted all the way to the ground in the center of the crater. Strange red liquid, pieces of metal, and later a metallic cup were found within the crater. The red liquid smelled of vinegar. At 8:00 a.m. the police came. They photographed the area and took some samples.
In another case from the 70s, late in the evening of February 5, 1979 the Kolehmainen family heard a shooting sound. One constable later revealed he had seen a strange light phenomenon at the same time. On the following morning a bigger crater was found in the snow at a distance of 10 meters from the house. Similar things were again found. Later the police came to have a new look at the area. The police suggested that perhaps someone had thrown a home-made bomb in the Kolehmainen yard. However, the Kolehmainens stated that nobody has any reason to throw bombs at them. On the morning of February 21, 1979 a third landing trace area was found. This time there were three holes in the yard. Red liquid and pieces of metal were once again found in the landing trace. However, no metallic cup was found this time. There was no snow on the electric wires above the holes, but there was lots of snow on similar wires elsewhere. The Kolehmainens didn’t want any publicity, but the news leaked to the press from acquaintances. About ten articles were published by the press about the events. The UFO was encountered by several other witnesses in the area over the course of several weeks, but this is the only report that mentions it leaving any sort of physical evidence behind. Very bizarre, indeed.
Perhaps one of the more well-known cases of an alleged alien artifact left behind supposedly occurred in 1985, in the area of Grand Junction, Colorado. One evening in 1985, a man named Bob White was driving with a friend on their way from Denver to Las Vegas. At the time, White was asleep and his friend at the wheel, watching the hypnotic lane lines flicker by as they meandered through the remote wasteland between Grand Junction, Colorado and the Utah border. Here was a place in which there was not another soul for miles around, a moonscape of rocky desert that expanded out past the illumination of the headlights in a vast expanse of nothingness, and it would have been a rather dull drive until a weird series of events began to play out that made the evening a bit more exciting.
At around 2:30 a.m., White was jolted awake by his friend. Wiping the sleepiness from his eyes and watching the nighttime desert streak by outside, he at first couldn’t figure out why his friend had woken him. It wasn’t his turn to be at the wheel and nothing at first seemed out of place, the car smoothly rolling along, but his friend was in a state of agitation. When White asked what was going on, his companion frantically pointed off towards the horizon, and it was then that he could see a strange light off in the distance, which did not look like an airplane. The light steadily grew in size and brightness until it was blinding, turning the desert night into day, and White would say of what happened:
The light was about the size of a full harvest moon. As we got closer, it grew larger. When we were a few hundred yards from it, I turned off the ignition and we coasted up close to it. It was huge, the size of a very big barn. I got out of the car for a better look. For some unknown reason, Jan turned on the headlights, and this light went up in the sky as fast as my eyes could follow it. What I saw, was not of this Earth. Then I saw another small light, bright orange with a tinge of yellow, white, and blue falling from it. After this, the larger object rose into the air rapidly, joined with an even larger object, a sort of "mother ship," and the whole of it shot off into the night, leaving the two frightened men there alone in the dark desert once again to try and process what they had just seen. Overcome with curiosity, White started hiking off through the scrub through the wilderness towards where he estimated the smaller object had fallen, making his way up an incline to find a groove in the ground, which he estimates as having been around 18 inches deep and 9 inches wide. Within this groove was a glowing object, about 7-1/2 inches long and shaped like a teardrop, still too hot to get anywhere near and apparently made of some kind of metal. White waited until it had cooled down enough to touch, and then brought it back to the car, stashing it into the trunk.
Colorado wilderness
White, who claims to have never believed in UFOs before this incident, was baffled as to what the object could possibly be, but did not know who to turn to for help or what to do with it. He kept it locked in a safe deposit box to keep it safe, and in the meantime travelled about trying to raise interest in his discovery, travelling to conferences and trying to get the object tested. He even opened his Museum of the Unexplained, which would hold the object high as its main attraction. In 1996, a small sample of the object was finally tested by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, which didn’t come to any firm conclusions, but did have this to say:
The metallurgical analysis was pretty mundane. We didn't find any evidence that it was extraterrestrial. Now you can make the argument that we didn't spend $1 million and look at every conceivable option. We didn't cover every base.
A second laboratory came to a similar conclusion, deflating hope that this was an alien device or piece of spaceship. Undeterred and convinced of the object’s otherworldly nature, White decided to keep trying, sending in samples to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Tech, and the Geosciences Research Division of the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, for more thorough analyses. One of White’s partners, a Dr. Robert Gibbons, a former scientist with NASA, would say of the results of these further tests:
We recently came across scientific data that linked Bob's object with the planet Mars. Isotope abundance ratio tests were performed on Bob's object in May, 1999 in La Jolla, CA and the numbers are virtually the same as obtained from Martian meteorite samples. The ratio of isotopes of Strontium for the QUE 94201 meteorite found in Antarctica in 1994 was 0.701. The ratio of isotopes of Strontium for Bob's object was 0.712. The ratio of isotopes of Strontium for the Shergotty meteorite found India in 1865 was 0.723. Bob's object is right in the middle of two proven Martian meteorites!
So, what does this all mean? Well, the most rational explanation is that this is exactly what the object is: a meteorite. This could also explain the strange sighting the two men had had to some degree, although it doesn’t explain the presence of the massive UFO they had supposedly seen or the “mothership” it attached to before speeding off into the night. Other ideas are that they saw debris from a satellite falling, or some naturally occurring celestial phenomenon, and that the weird object he found was completely unrelated. Then there is the possibility that this is all just a hoax. All of these possibilities White strongly denied. He never tried to get rich off of his findings, and whatever he did find out there in the desert, he certainly seemed to have at least truly believed it was real, once saying of his crusade to get the object recognized:
This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I'm 73 years old. I don't have much longer. What I'd like to see before I'm gone is the national media get their heads out of the sand. I'd like to see the national media and everybody else realize that what I have is real. I don't know what I have to do to prove this is the truth. You can't make this stuff up.
He would continue to adamantly stick to his story and defend his strange discovery all the way up to his death in 2009, but the object would stay locked away in his museum, where it remains to this day. What exactly did he find out there in the desert on that fateful night? Is this a piece of meteorite, space debris, just a weird-looking rock, a hoax, or something else? As of yet, there is no proof that the object is anything more mysterious than a rock or meteorite, but it is still a pretty odd story all the same, and managed to get a lot of attention in its time as a piece of possible physical evidence from a UFO.
Bob White and his alien fragment
In the meantime, the object is kept under carefully secured conditions, with motion detectors, closed-circuit TV, and window and door alarms protect it at all times, and the object never spends the night at the same place two nights in a row. Most skeptics say it is just a piece of space debris from a meteor or a satellite, but it has never been conclusively proven to be one thing or another. In the end, that is what we are let with on all of these cases, more questions than answers. Despite these supposed pieces of physical evidence of alien spacecraft, there just doesn't seem to be any way to completely verify any of it, with the samples either disappearing or producing mixed results, at best. What is going on here and why have these strange objects turned up? What does it all mean? We may never know for sure.
One very well-known account of such a bizarre object was found by chance in the U.S. State of Florida by an unsuspecting family. A perfect sphere with various unusual properties, it has gone on to fuel talk of all manner of UFO theories and conspiracy rumors, and remains an enigma to this day. On March 26,1974, a raging brush fire had swept through the 88-acre property of the Betz family, on Fort George Island, Florida, leaving a vast swath of burnt and blackened land behind. As Antoine and Jerri Betz, accompanied by their 21-year-old son Terry, surveyed the damage they came through a grove of trees that had been completely incinerated by the fire, yet sitting there in the middle of what would have been an inferno was a metallic sphere of some sort, approximately the size of a bowling ball, shining there in the sunlight and seemingly untouched and not affected in the least by the fire that had torn through. In fact, it was found to be completely smooth, polished, and without a single blemish upon it except for a small triangular shape carefully etched within the metal, and it was apparently without any scratch or scorch mark on it.
It was an incredibly odd thing to see sitting there all shiny and polished in the middle of all the charred and scorched earth, and the baffled family tried to figure out what it could possibly be. They considered that it may have been a downed satellite or something that had been dropped from a plane, but then why was there no sign of damage upon it at all? They then came to the conclusion that it was an old relic cannonball from some forgotten battle in centuries past, but the lack of any rust or signs of age didn’t seem to fit. Curious, they loaded it into their truck and hauled it back to their home to take a better look, and this is when things would get even more bizarre.
The odd sphere was soon found to have some very peculiar properties. The first clue to this was when Terry was in the same room as the sphere one day while practicing the guitar. As he played he became aware that the metal sphere seemed to be reacting somehow to the music, throbbing in tune to the beat and emitting a vibrating sound not unlike a tuning fork. Even when the sounds stopped the family dog refused to go anywhere near it, suggesting that there were still sub-audible sounds emanating from within it. They decided to keep a closer eye on the sphere, and soon noticed that it seemed to occasionally emit these thrumming hums on its own, and that it was more active on sunny days, leading them to think that it was somehow solar powered. They also accidentally discovered that it could roll around on its own and guide itself, often turning around to make its way back to whoever pushed it and able to roll on without aid for long periods of time. It seemed to react to different situations and almost have a mind of its own, leaving the whole family and anyone they showed it to in awe. This was increasingly obviously no 16th century cannonball.
The mysterious sphere
Considering that the Betz family would supposedly often show off the sphere to family and neighbors, it is perhaps no surprise that word began to get out on its strange properties. Journalists began showing up to snoop around, and some of them were able to see some of the phenomena for themselves. One was a photographer from the Jacksonville Journal, who went to the residence and apparently saw the mysterious sphere in action, writing of it:
It rolled a ways then stopped. So what? She said, 'Just wait a minute.' It turned by itself and rolled to the right about four feet. It stopped. Then it turned again and rolled to the left about eight feet, made a big arc and came right back to my feet.
At around this time the sphere began to escalate its strange phenomena, causing other objects to move or doors to slam around the house, as well as producing loud music that sounded as if it were coming from an organ. More people came in to investigate, and before long it had even attracted the attention of government organizations such as NASA, the U.S. Navy, and the Arial Phenomena Research Organization. The Navy purportedly examined the sphere and did tests and X-rays on it, proclaiming that it was not anything they had ever seen before and that it seemed to be made of an incredibly dense, absurdly heat resistant form of stainless steel, with two other objects somewhere within its hollow frame surrounded by a halo made of material that had an unusual density, as well as a total of two negative and two positive poles. A researcher named Carl Wilson found that the ball exhibited strange magnetic characteristics and even seemed to be putting out some sort of signal, even going as far as to say that it possessed certain properties that seemed to defy physics and that it was not made of steel at all. Another named J. A. Harder concluded that there were elements within the sphere that were unknown.
After this the odd trajectory of the sphere becomes unclear, the story slowly fading away from the media blitz it had enjoyed and its location sinking into obscurity, and we are left with the question of what this ball was and what happened to it. There have been theories ranging from the rational to the more fringe. The rational explanation is that this was a misidentified component of a satellite or an otherwise manmade construction such as a piece of industrial machinery such as a ball valve, but how would this explain its strange behavior and properties? One ball valve manufacturer was nevertheless reasonably sure that it was just a ball valve, saying of the “Betz Sphere”:
13-12-2023 om 23:56
geschreven door peter
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
Het leven in ISS: van droge douches tot het in drinkwater veranderen van urine
Het leven in ISS: van droge douches tot het in drinkwater veranderen van urine
Het internationale ruimtestation ISS Terwijl de meesten van ons druk zijn met onze dagelijkse bezigheden hier op aarde, bevindt zich buiten de atmosfeer, al meer dan twintig jaar het internationale ruimtestation ISS dat in een baan rond onze planeet draait. Op het station verblijft een groep astronauten die belangrijk wetenschappelijk onderzoekswerk verrichten terwijl ze in de ruimte zweven.
ISS is actief sinds 2000 Het internationale ruimtestation ISS, is een enorm laboratorium dat op 2 november 2000 in gebruik werd genomen, de dag dat de eerste bemanning aan boord kwam.
Internationale samenwerking Er zijn sinds die dag meer dan twintig jaar verstreken, en talloze astronauten hebben deelgenomen aan het project, ontstaan uit samenwerking tussen Europa, Japan, Rusland, de Verenigde Staten en Canada.
Informatie over het station Het ISS beweegt rond de aarde met een snelheid van 28.000 kilometer of 17.398 mijl per uur op een hoogte van 400 kilometer. Nog maar 5 minuten nadat hij over Madrid is gevlogen, koerst hij al naar Berlijn, 2300 kilometer (1429 mijl) verderop!
Samantha Cristoforetti aan boord van het ISS Te midden van alle astronauten die beurtelings aan boord van het ISS komen is Samantha Cristoforetti, de eerste Italiaanse aan boord van het internationale ruimtestation.
Militair piloot Samantha Cristoforetti werd op 26 april 1977 in Milaan geboren en besloot op 24-jarige leeftijd als militair piloot aan de slag te gaan. Ze studeerde aan de luchtmachtacademie in Napels.
Geselecteerd door het Europees Ruimteagentschap Tussen 2005 en 2006 specialiseerde ze zich in de Verenigde Staten onder het Euro-NAVO Joint Jet Pilot Training-programma en werd gevechtspiloot. In 2009 werd ze door de Europese Ruimtevaartorganisatie (ESA) geselecteerd als astronaut - de eerste Italiaanse en derde Europese.
Hoe was je je in de ruimte? Samantha Cristoforetti vertelt ons, in een video rechtstreeks vanuit het ISS op het officiële kanaal van de ESA (Europees Ruimteagentschap) en te bekijken op YouTube, iets waar velen van ons hier op aarde nog nooit over nagedacht hebben... hoe was je je in de ruimte?
Persoonlijke hygiëne in de ruimte Vanuit de persoonlijke hygiënemodule van het ISS laat de jonge astronaut zien hoe zij en haar collega's na de training elk lichaamsdeel wassen en hoe ze voor hun dagelijkse persoonlijke hygiëne zorgen.
Alle producten moeten ongeveer 6 maanden meegaan De meeste van de gebruikte producten verschillen niet veel van die welke we hier op aarde gebruiken, zegt Cristoforetti zelf. Elke astronaut ontvangt alle artikelen in een hersluitbaar zakje dat de komende zes maanden mee moet kunnen.
Enveloppen en klittenband om producten vast te zetten Maar omdat de astronauten in de ruimte in nul zwaartekracht leven, moeten alle producten stevig verpakt zijn in speciale zakken met klittenband, zodat ze niet in het station gaan rondvliegen.
Hoe zit het met douchen? Voor het 'douchen' gebruiken de astronauten aan boord van het ISS droge campinghanddoeken van heel licht materiaal, die als ze nat zijn gebruikt worden om de verschillende delen van het lichaam te wassen.
Een speciale zeep Er is ook zeeppoeder dat in luchtdichte zakjes zit. Je hoeft alleen maar water in het zakje te doen om het te gebruiken, maar in tegenstelling tot de zeep die wij dagelijks gebruiken, schuimt dit product niet en hoef je het niet af te spoelen.
Geen stromend water! Nog iets wat we als vanzelfsprekend beschouwen is stromend water om ons te wassen, maar dat is er niet op het ISS! Daarom moeten de astronauten aan boord kleine zakjes vullen met tuiten van speciale waterdispensers aan boord.
Hoe poets je je tanden Wat mondhygiëne betreft worden aan boord van het ISS ook tandenborstel en tandpasta gebruikt, net als hier op aarde. Er is alleen geen gootsteen en stromend water aan boord. In plaats van de resten tandpasta in hun mond uit te spugen, slikken veel astronauten het door of spugen het in een oude handdoek.
Manicure aan boord! Natuurlijk moeten ook nagels worden geknipt. Hiervoor gebruiken de astronauten zuigroosters, zodat de afgeknipte kleine stukjes onmiddellijk door de luchtstroom worden opgezogen en aan het rooster blijven kleven. Daarna worden alle resten met de stofzuiger verwijderd.
Het wassen van de haren Een ander alledaags ding waar je aan boord van het ISS afscheid van moet nemen is ontspannen met shampoo onder de douche. De enige manier om je haar aan boord van het ruimtestation schoon te houden is het met een beetje water te bevochtigen, spatten te vermijden, en er een speciale shampoo aan toe te voegen die niet uitgespoeld hoeft te worden.
En het toilet dan? Zelfs naar het toilet gaan is niet zo gemakkelijk aan boord van het ISS. In feite moet je, zodra je het kleine toilet binnengaat, een zuigslang gebruiken die aan het eind een kleine trechter heeft, waarmee vloeibaar afval opgezogen wordt.
En de 'grote boodschap' Voor het vaste afval is er een kleine container in de vorm van een toilet, met zakken die, eenmaal gevuld, vervangen moeten worden door nieuwe.
Hoe krijg je drinkwater aan boord? Aan boord van het ISS wordt niets weggegooid, beslist niets, zelfs geen urine, die via gesofisticeerde systemen met zeer ingewikkelde hydraulische elementen wordt gerecycled. Aan het eind van het omzettingsproces wordt het drinkwater voor de astronauten aan boord.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Kansas Geological Survey researcher Justin Holcomb and his colleagues argue the new epoch may have dawned in 1959, thanks to the Soviet unmanned spacecraft Luna 2.
Astronaut David R. Scott, commander, gives a military salute while standing beside the deployed United States flag during the Apollo 15 lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Hadley-Apennine landing site. The flag was deployed toward the end of EVA-2. The Lunar Module, ‘Falcon,’ is partially visible on the right. Hadley Delta in the background rises approximately 4,000 m (about 13,124 feet) above the plain. The base of the mountain is approximately 5 km (about three statue miles) away. This photograph was taken by astronaut James B. Irwin, lunar module pilot. While astronauts Scott and Irwin descended in the Lunar Module to explore the Moon, astronaut Alfred M. Worden, command module pilot, remained in lunar orbit in the Command and Service Modules. Image credit: NASA / JSC.
Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa around 300,000 years ago, and after a series of fits and starts, we successfully populated every continent — except for Antarctica – by approximately 16,000 years ago.
To track and correlate these dispersals, archaeologists study the material remains left behind by humans, including artifacts, features, and art.
One result of the long evolutionary journey is that our species has re-ordered life on Earth, altered the atmosphere and oceans, and become the primary driver of geomorphic change.
As a result, some scientists have argued that we should designate a geological epoch capturing our impact on the Earth — an ‘age of humans’ called the Anthropocene.
Currently, we are undergoing our next major range expansion: the peopling of our Solar System.
But rather than stone tools and hearths, we leave behind human footprints, rovers and rover tracks, landers, and various scientific equipment.
The human imprint began in 1959 when Luna 2 impacted east of Mare Imbrium on the Moon, producing the first human-made crater.
Since this event, humans have caused surface disturbances in at least 58 additional locations on the lunar surface.
As we enter the next space race, one characterized by private companies offering access via space tourism and plans for industrial mining, Dr. Holcomb and co-authors argue that it is time to discuss whether Earth’s Moon has also entered its own ‘age of humans’ — a Lunar Anthropocene.
“The idea is much the same as the discussion of the Anthropocene on Earth — the exploration of how much humans have impacted our planet,” Dr. Holcomb said.
“The consensus is on Earth the Anthropocene began at some point in the past, whether hundreds of thousands of years ago or in the 1950s.”
“Similarly, on the Moon, we argue the Lunar Anthropocene already has commenced, but we want to prevent massive damage or a delay of its recognition until we can measure a significant lunar halo caused by human activities, which would be too late.”
The researchers hope the Lunar Anthropocene concept might help dispel the myth that the Moon is an unchanging environment, barely impacted by humanity.
“Cultural processes are starting to outstrip the natural background of geological processes on the Moon,” Dr. Holcomb said.
“These processes involve moving sediments, which we refer to as ‘regolith,’ on the Moon.”
“Typically, these processes include meteoroid impacts and mass movement events, among others. However, when we consider the impact of rovers, landers and human movement, they significantly disturb the regolith.”
“In the context of the new space race, the lunar landscape will be entirely different in 50 years.”
“Multiple countries will be present, leading to numerous challenges.”
“Our goal is to dispel the lunar-static myth and emphasize the importance of our impact, not only in the past but ongoing and in the future.”
“We aim to initiate discussions about our impact on the lunar surface before it’s too late.”
While many outdoors enthusiasts are familiar with ‘Leave No Trace’ principles, they don’t seem to exist on the Moon.
According to the authors, refuse from human missions to the Moon includes discarded and abandoned spacecraft components, bags of human excreta, scientific equipment, and other objects (e.g., flags, golf balls, photographs, religious texts).
“We know that while the Moon does not have an atmosphere or magnetosphere, it does have a delicate exosphere composed of dust and gas, as well as ice inside permanently shadowed areas, and both are susceptible to exhaust gas propagation,” they said.
“Future missions must consider mitigating deleterious effects on lunar environments.”
While the scientists want to use the Lunar Anthropocene to highlight the potential for humanity’s potential negative environmental impact to the Moon, they also hope to call attention to the vulnerability of lunar sites with historical and anthropological value, which currently have no legal or policy protections against disturbance.
“A recurring theme in our work is the significance of lunar material and footprints on the Moon as valuable resources, akin to an archaeological record that we’re committed to preserving,” Dr. Holcomb said.
“The concept of a Lunar Anthropocene aims to raise awareness and contemplation regarding our impact on the lunar surface, as well as our influence on the preservation of historical artifacts.”
“This field of ‘space heritage’ would aim to preserve or catalog items such as rovers, flags, golf balls and footprints on the Moon’s surface.”
“As archaeologists, we perceive footprints on the Moon as an extension of humanity’s journey out of Africa, a pivotal milestone in our species’ existence.”
“These imprints are intertwined with the overarching narrative of evolution.”
“It’s within this framework we seek to capture the interest of not only planetary scientists but also archaeologists and anthropologists who may not typically engage in discussions about planetary science.”
J.A. Holcomb et al. The case for a lunar anthropocene. Nat. Geosci, published online December 8, 2023; doi: 10.1038/s41561-023-01347-4
A recent summer hearing featured David Grusch, a former intelligence officer and whistleblower, who asserted that the government was withholding information, including evidence of "non-human biologics" retrieved from UFOs is determined to continue to get the truth out as he is admonishing Congress for what he says is a "total failure" to get more transparency about what the government knows about unidentified aerial phenomena.
Lawmakers took a step toward transparency by including in the annual defense funding bill a provision requiring disclosure of classified records relating to UAPs, but not before stripping out key portions of the measure.
Among them was a provision that aimed to establish an advisory board responsible for overseeing the disclosure of records. Unfortunately, this initiative is now postponed, as Grusch lamented, marking the failure of what was referred to as the "controlled disclosure campaign."
The apparent reason for the campaign's shortcomings is twofold. Firstly, influential individuals in positions of power with vested interests may adamantly refuse to disclose their knowledge, fearing potential consequences and the loss of accumulated power derived from years of concealing the UFO secret. Additionally, certain senators are impeding the disclosure process due to financial contributions from the military-industrial complex and defense contractors.
In essence, this situation not only raises concerns about the true extent of government transparency but also strongly suggests a significant cover-up.
The argument is clear: if there is nothing to hide, transparency and disclosure should pose no problem.
Mysterious UFO Sighting in Ames, Iowa Captivates Locals
Mysterious UFO Sighting in Ames, Iowa Captivates Locals
Ames, Iowa, a city known for its tranquil landscapes and vibrant community, witnessed an extraordinary event that has left residents and UFO enthusiasts alike buzzing with excitement. On the evening of December 11, 2023, at around 6 PM, a local resident experienced a chilling and unusual sighting in the northern skies, sparking widespread curiosity and debate.
The witness, who had just stepped out of their car, was immediately captivated by an unusual formation in the sky. Describing the experience, the observer noted, “I got out of my car and saw this in the sky on my way inside. It gave me chills, honestly.” Accustomed to seeing military helicopters in the area, the witness quickly checked flight radar for any conventional explanation. Surprisingly, no aircraft were detected, deepening the mystery. “I typically see them on radar, but there was nothing this time. It was strange,” the witness added.
This sighting stands out due to its uniqueness. The observer, familiar with astronomical phenomena like Starlink satellites, confidently stated, “I’ve seen Starlink before, and this definitely was not that.” The description suggests a formation or object unlike typical aircraft or known celestial objects, adding to the intrigue of this event.
UFO sightings have long captured the imagination of people worldwide, and Ames’s latest encounter is no exception. With its clear visibility and the detailed account from a credible witness, this sighting adds to the growing list of unexplained aerial phenomena.
UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike are drawn to these mysterious occurrences, seeking to understand the unexplained. Whether these sightings are a glimpse into extraterrestrial visitations or simply misunderstood natural phenomena, they continue to fascinate and mystify.
This recent sighting in Ames, Iowa, has undoubtedly added another intriguing chapter to the ever-evolving story of UFO encounters. As we continue to look up at the skies, questions remain, and the search for answers continues. What did the witness see on that chilly December evening? The skies above Ames might just hold the answer.
EXCLUSIVE Secrets of Area 51: Metallic egg-shaped UFO the size of an SUV was kept at the highly-classified Air Force base in the 1980s, whistleblower claims
EXCLUSIVE Secrets of Area 51: Metallic egg-shaped UFO the size of an SUV was kept at the highly-classified Air Force base in the 1980s, whistleblower claims
Eric Taber - a defense aerospace contractor for 13 years - told DailyMail.com of an egg-shaped metallic UFO kept at Area 51 in the 1980s
He revealed the story his late great uncle Sam Urquhart, an Area 51 contractor, told him about a UFO at the mysterious desert base
Taber testified in May to the Pentagon's UFO investigation unit who are collecting accounts of alleged government possession of non-human craft
An egg-shaped metallic UFO was kept at Area 51 in the 1980s, a whistleblower claims in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com.
Engineers at the Nevada airbase claimed the CIA found the strange craft in the desert and brought it to them for investigation – but later shipped it to another base after they were unable to get inside the object.
Eric Taber has been a defense aerospace contractor for 13 years and has held a security clearance to work on military aircraft.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, he revealed the story his late great uncle Sam Urquhart, an Area 51 contractor, told him about a UFO at the mysterious desert base.
Eric Taber - a defense aerospace contractor for 13 years - told DailyMail.com of an egg-shaped metallic UFO kept at Area 51 in the 1980s
Taber revealed the story his late great uncle Sam Urquhart, an Area 51 contractor, told him about a UFO at the mysterious desert base. Taber and Urquhart are pictured together
A rendering of the metallic egg-shaped UFO is seen. 'X-rays couldn't penetrate it; it showed up on X-ray as a solid object. They tried to open it and penetrate its hull; they couldn't,' Taber said
Taber testified in May to the Pentagon's UFO investigation unit, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), who are collecting accounts of alleged government possession of non-human craft.
The claim – though an unverified story from a now-deceased witness – is part of a long history of rumors about potential extraterrestrial craft or futuristic spaceships stored at the Nevada desert airbase near Groom Lake, north of Las Vegas.
The news comes after whistleblowers told Congress the government has a secret program to capture crashed or landed 'non-human' vehicles and has for decades been attempting to glean technological insights from these alleged out-of-this-world objects.
The claims have prompted lawmakers to draft legislation to disclose any such programs, currently working its way through Congress.
Taber spoke to DailyMail.com only about his great uncle's story, declining to comment on any of his own work as a defense contractor.
He said he struck up a friendship with his grandmother's brother after moving to the West Coast from Mississippi in 2012.
Urquhart gave Taber a badge with his department's insignia, with symbols alluding to their role working on radar signals at Area 51
The younger engineer said he repeatedly quizzed Urquhart on the truth about rumors of aliens at Area 51, and was always brushed off. But one day Urquhart relented.
'My great uncle served in the Air Force for 28 years, E8 rank [equivalent to a First Sergeant],' Taber told DailyMail.com. 'He told me he worked at Area 51 from 1997 until 2014.'
Urquhart began his job at Area 51 working for defense contractor EG&G, which later partnered with Raytheon to become JT3 LLC and subsequently JT4 LLC.
'He was head of security for his engineering group, and a data configuration specialist. His group did radar cross-section testing.
'I kept asking him about UFOs. He said 'I know nothing'. Then one day we were on his back porch and he said 'Ok, I'll tell you about one craft that I knew of.'
'He said, 'When I first got there in 1997, I had a personal conversation with a senior EG&G engineer whose group was tasked with trying to reverse-engineer an object that was brought there by some CIA people in the 1980s.'
'It was supposedly just found in a remote desert location fully intact.
'The senior EG&G engineer described to my great uncle that it was egg-shaped, about the size of an SUV, smooth and seamless, metallic-looking, silverish gray in color, with no control surfaces, no flaps, no inlet, and no exhaust, and no writing or symbols on the outside.
'These are the best and brightest engineers you can think of. They tried to no avail to figure out what the power source was, how to activate it, and how it works. They tried to induce electricity to it.
'X-rays couldn't penetrate it; it showed up on X-ray as a solid object. They tried to open it and penetrate its hull; they couldn't.
'They said that they were able to take some very small samples of the material. And I'm not an expert in chemistry, but I guess from the isotope ratio or the mixture of elements, they concluded it was not made on Earth.'
Engineers at Area 51 claimed the CIA found the strange craft in the desert and brought it to them for investigation – but later shipped it to another base after they were unable to get inside the object
Eric Taber testified to the Pentagon's UFO office in May about his great uncle's story of an egg-shaped non-human craft at Area 51
Taber said he decided to come forward to push for limited disclosure of what he believes is the truth about non-human craft in the government's possession
Taber said Urquhart told him eventually the craft was shipped to another base, possibly White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and that was the last the engineers heard about it.
But Urquhart had one more shocking twist in his story.
'My great uncle would collect radar data, and bring it into secure vaults to catalog and store it,' Taber said. 'He was in one of these secure data vault storage rooms in the main control building, nicknamed the Taj Mahal, when on the wall he saw an up-close crystal-clear color photograph of the exact same object that the senior engineer had discussed.'
Taber shared pictures with DailyMail.com that Urquhart showed him, including a group photo with his Area 51 engineer colleagues in a break trailer at the base, and an insignia patch designed for their radar analysis group.
But the alleged smoking gun photo of the egg-shaped craft never left the Area 51 vault.
'Sam said the American people would probably never get to see it,' Taber told DailyMail.com.
Taber admitted he sold his great uncle's patch for $600 on eBay in March when he was strapped for cash – a move he now regrets.
Urquhart, a 28-year Air Force veteran who served in the Vietnam and Gulf wars, died in August last year aged 75.
His story has now been documented by the Pentagon's UFO investigation office AARO, after Taber was interviewed by staff in May.
A memo of his account, along with other reports and witness statements, is due to be compiled and sent to Congress next year.
Taber said the AARO staffers were 'professional' and 'non-threatening', adding: 'I was surprised at how interested they were.'
Taber said he decided to come forward to push for limited disclosure of what he believes is the truth about non-human craft in the government's possession.
Taber shared with DailyMail.com a photo of his great uncle Sam Urquhart with his colleagues in an Area 51 break trailer, taken around 2000
Urquhart, a 28-year Air Force veteran who served in the Vietnam and Gulf wars, died in August last year aged 75
'I did this interview in a way that I feel doesn't disclose technical information our adversaries could exploit,' he said.
'Despite what people may think, secrets can be kept. If you're getting paid well, if you have a security clearance, if you've signed a nondisclosure agreement, you're going to be happy, and you're going to work hard, and you're going to keep your mouth shut.
Physicist and intelligence official Dr. Eric Davis is pictured
'Disclosure has to be done very carefully. We don't want our enemies to know everything about what we've got. But I do believe wholeheartedly that humanity deserves to know the truth, if we have recovered these non-human objects or craft, which 100% I believe we have.'
Urquhart's former employer EG&G was linked to other claims of a secret government program holding crashed alien craft.
Physicist and intelligence official Dr. Eric Davis allegedly met with then-deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, in the parking lot of an EG&G site in Las Vegas in October 2002, and wrote notes of what Wilson told him.
According to the notes, the Vice Admiral told Davis that in the early 2000s he uncovered – but was denied access to – a secret program run by a defense contractor that retrieved and attempted to reverse engineer UFOs.
The bombshell, controversial documents claim Wilson found discrepancies in budgets that led him to the program run by 'an aerospace technology contractor – one of the top ones in [the] US'.
Notes allegedly written by Davis documenting the conversation were leaked from the estate of late astronaut Edgar Mitchell in 2018.
Davis has declined to publicly confirm their authenticity, though his friend and ex-senior Pentagon official Christopher Mellon wrote on his blog last year that Davis is in fact the author.
Physicist and intelligence official Dr. Eric Davis met with Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson (pictured) who told Davis that in the early 2000s he uncovered – but was denied access to – a secret program run by a defense contractor that retrieved and attempted to reverse engineer UFOs
Wilson has vociferously denied ever meeting Davis, telling journalist Ross Coulthart that he was in an isolated camp in Maine during October 2002, and had only been to Las Vegas once: a deployment to Nellis Air Force base in 1979 or 1980.
The notes were entered into the congressional record by Wisconsin congressman Mike Gallagher at the historic UFO hearing last year.
Notorious former Area 51 worker Bob Lazar has claimed since his first interview in 1989 that he worked on an alien flying saucer reverse engineering program at Groom Lake – though many elements of his story have now been debunked.
Taber said his great uncle told him he knew Lazar worked at the base, but that much of his story was fabricated.
'He was only there for a few months,' Taber said. 'He states there was a site called S-4 at the base of the Papoose Mountains with nine hangar sections built into the side of the mountain housing nine flying saucers. My great uncle said it's bogus. The only thing Papoose had was some radio tower equipment. That was his take on it.'
Objects in space reveal different aspects of their composition and behavior at different wavelengths of light. A supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A is one of the most studied objects in the Milky Way across the wavelength spectrum. However, there are still secrets hidden within the star’s tattered remains. The latest are being unlocked by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
This high-definition image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument unveils intricate details of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A; it shows the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / D. Milisavljevic, Purdue University / T. Temim, Princeton University / I. De Looze, University of Gent.
Cassiopeia A is located about 11,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cassiopeia.
Also known as Cas A, SNR G111.7-02.1 or NRAO 711, the object spans approximately 10 light-years.
When the original star ran out of fuel, it collapsed onto itself and blew up as a supernova, possibly briefly becoming one of the brightest objects in the sky.
Although astronomers think that this happened around the year 1680, there are no verifiable historical records to confirm this.
Over the years, ground-based and space-based observatories, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have collectively assembled a multiwavelength picture of the object’s tattered remains.
However, astronomers have now entered a new era in the study of Cassiopeia A.
In April 2023, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) started this story, revealing new and unexpected features within the inner shell of the supernova remnant.
But many of those features are invisible in the new NIRCam image, and astronomers are investigating why that is.
“Infrared light is invisible to our eyes, so image processors and scientists represent these wavelengths of light with visible colors,” Webb astronomers said.
“In this newest image of Cassiopeia A, colors were assigned to NIRCam’s different filters, and each of those colors hints at different activity occurring within the object.”
“At first glance, the NIRCam image may appear less colorful than the MIRI image. However, this does not mean there is less information: it simply comes down to the wavelengths in which the material in the object is emitting its light.”
“The most noticeable colors in the newest image are clumps of bright orange and light pink that make up the inner shell of the supernova remnant.”
“Webb’s razor-sharp view can detect the tiniest knots of gas, composed of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself.”
“Embedded in this gas is a mixture of dust and molecules, which will eventually be incorporated into new stars and planetary systems.”
“Some filaments of debris are too tiny to be resolved, even by Webb, meaning that they are comparable to or less than 16 billion km across (around 100 astronomical units).”
“In comparison, the entirety of Cassiopeia A spans 10 light-years, or roughly 96 trillion km.”
“When comparing Webb’s new near-infrared view of Cassiopeia A with the mid-infrared view, its inner cavity and outermost shell are curiously devoid of color.”
“The outskirts of the main inner shell, which appeared as a deep orange and red in the MIRI image, now look like smoke from a campfire.”
“This marks where the supernova blast wave is ramming into the surrounding circumstellar material.”
“The dust in the circumstellar material is too cool to be detected directly at near-infrared wavelengths, but lights up in the mid-infrared.”
This image highlights several interesting features of Cassiopeia A, as seen with Webb’s NIRCam instrument.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / D. Milisavljevic, Purdue University / T. Temim, Princeton University / I. De Looze, University of Gent.
According to the astronomers, the white color is light from synchrotron radiation, which is emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, including the near-infrared.
It’s generated by charged particles traveling at extremely high speeds and spiraling around magnetic field lines.
Synchrotron radiation is also visible in the bubble-like shells in the lower half of the inner cavity.
Also not seen in the near-infrared view is the loop of green light in the central cavity of Cassiopeia A that glowed in mid-infrared light, appropriately nicknamed the Green Monster by the researchers.
“While the ‘green’ of the Green Monster is not visible in NIRCam, what’s left over in the near-infrared in that region can provide insight into the mysterious feature,” they said.
“The circular holes visible in the MIRI image are faintly outlined in white and purple emission in the NIRCam image — this represents ionized gas.”
The authors believe this is due to the supernova debris pushing through and sculpting gas left behind by the star before it exploded.
The scientists were also absolutely stunned by one fascinating feature at the bottom right corner of NIRCam’s field of view.
They’re calling that large, striated blob Baby Cas A — because it appears like an offspring of the main supernova.
“This is a light echo. Light from the star’s long-ago explosion has reached, and is warming, distant dust, which glows as it cools down,” they said.
“The intricacy of the dust pattern, and Baby Cas A’s apparent proximity to Cassiopeia A itself, are particularly intriguing.”
“In actuality, Baby Cas A is located about 170 light-years behind the supernova remnant.”
“There are also several other, smaller light echoes scattered throughout Webb’s new portrait.”
UFO Sighting Video: A Spinning, Spiral Phenomenon in the Night Sky over California
UFO Sighting Video: A Spinning, Spiral Phenomenon in the Night Sky over California
Los Angeles, Early December 2023 – The night skies of California, particularly around Los Angeles, have recently become the stage for an extraordinary and enigmatic phenomenon. This video just came out on Reddit – a breathtaking UFO sighting, describing it as a “spinning, spiral, embryo-like, portal-looking thing.” This event, occurring in early December 2023, has sparked widespread fascination and a flurry of discussions among UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike.
A Mesmerizing Display in the Night Sky
Eyewitness accounts describe the UFO as a mesmerizing, spiral-shaped entity, spinning gracefully in the night sky. The shape, likened to an embryo or a portal to another dimension, has led to a myriad of interpretations and theories.
Theories and Speculations Abound
As is typical with UFO sightings, this event has generated a wave of speculation. Some suggest it could be an advanced aircraft or drone, while others lean towards more extraterrestrial explanations. Skeptics point towards atmospheric phenomena or optical illusions, but the unique characteristics of this sighting make such explanations less convincing.
The Search for Answers Continues
As the world eagerly awaits an explanation, authorities and astronomical experts are investigating the sighting. The mystery of the spinning, spiral UFO in California remains unsolved, but it undoubtedly adds a fascinating chapter to the ongoing narrative of UFO sightings.
Join the Discussion
Were you a witness to this spectacular event? Share your experiences and theories with us. Stay tuned for more updates on this captivating UFO sighting in California, and explore the skies with a curious mind!
James Webb legt vast wat overblijft van de stellaire explosie van Cassiopeia A
James Webb legt vast wat overblijft van de stellaire explosie van Cassiopeia A
James Webb legt vast wat overblijft van de stellaire explosie van Cassiopeia A (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (Universiteit Gent))
De James Webb Space Telescope heeft een indrukwekkende afbeelding vastgelegd vanCassiopeia A (Cas A), een overblijfsel van een supernova, dat is ontstaan door de explosie van een massieve ster.
Bij het delen van de nieuwe afbeelding benadrukte de NASA de kleuren en vorm ervan, waarbij het overblijfsel van de supernova Cassiopeia A werd omschreven als een mooie kerstversiering. Het overblijfsel is zichtbaar door de uitdijende schil van materiaal die is uitgestoten door de explosie van de ster, en de helderheid is ook te danken aan het gas van de ster vóór zijn dood.
De hoge resolutie van de NIRCam, de krachtige nabij-infraroodcamera van de Webb, onthult details van de uitbreiding van de mantel van materiaal afkomstig van de ster vóór zijn explosie, en biedt een ongekend perspectief.
De afbeelding biedt een ongekend zicht op de supernova Cas A, eerder onbereikbaar qua resolutie in deze infraroodbereiken. Dit overblijfsel van een supernova, dat in de loop der jaren uitgebreid is bestudeerd door verschillende observatoria, gaat nu een nieuwe fase van verkenning in met de geavanceerde mogelijkheden van de James Webb Space Telescope.
Wetenschappers creëren synthetisch DNA met behulp van artificiële intelligentie
"Deze foto is gegenereerd met behulp van AI", laten VIB.AI en VIB-KU Leuven Research Center for Brain & Disease fijntjes weten.
Foto VIB.AI en VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research
Wetenschappers creëren synthetisch DNA met behulp van artificiële intelligentie
Wetenschappers van het VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research en VIB.AI zijn erin geslaagd synthetisch DNA te creëren met behulp van artificiële intelligentie. Het AI-model kon 'enhancers', of 'schakelaars', ontwerpen waarmee specifieke genen geactiveerd kunnen worden. "Baanbrekend", zegt het team er zelf over. Het onderzoek is gepubliceerd in het gerenommeerd wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Nature.
Michaël Torfs, Belga
Alle cellen in ons lichaam, van onze ogen tot onze maag, hebben allemaal hetzelfde DNA. Maar niet al dit DNA wordt in elk celtype benut.
Genactiviteit wordt bepaald door een reeks instructies binnen het DNA, de zogenaamde regulatorische code. Dat zit zo. Van DNA is al lang geweten dat de volgorde van de basenparen, voorgesteld door de letters A, C, G en T, zorgen voor de aanmaak van bepaalde eiwitten, die nodig zijn voor de werking van alle menselijke cellen.
Het team heeft een deep learningmodel getraind om een code voor de activering van genen te kraken
Een stuk DNA dat voor een bepaalde eigenschap codeert, vormt een gen. Welke genen op welk moment geactiveerd worden, hangt af van een proces dat de 'regulatorische code' genoemd wordt. De logica achter die code is al decennialang voer voor onderzoek.
"Een team onder leiding van professor Stein Aerts en dr. Ibrahim I. Taskiran heeft nu een deep learning model getraind om deze code te kraken. Dit model kon de enhancer-code ontcijferen en leverde daarmee ongekende nieuwe inzichten op," zo melden de onderzoekers vandaag.
Van de code naar de 'schakelaars'
Een cruciaal element in de regulatorische code, zijn de 'enhancers', ofwel 'schakelaars'. Enhancers zijn stukjes DNA die zich rond de genen bevinden, en waarop eiwitten binden. Als dat gebeurt, activeren ze een bepaald gen. Een cel kan tot expressie komen als de welbepaalde genen geactiveerd worden, die allemaal precies gereguleerd moeten worden door hun enhancers.
Het team van professor Stein Aerts (VIB-KU Leuven) werkt al meer dan twintig jaar op de regulatorische code. "Stapje voor stapje hebben we meer inzicht gekregen in de code", vertelt Aerts. "Sinds 2015 zijn we aan het werken met deep learning-modellen. Dit heeft een enorme stroomversnelling in het onderzoek gebracht."
Nog een stap verder
Omdat elke enhancer bestaat uit meerdere honderden basenparen, zijn de verschillende mogelijkheden van sequentie, of volgorde, zo goed als eindeloos. Door het AI-model meer data te geven en te verbeteren, kon het voorspellen welke enhancersequentie actief was in een celtype en welke niet.
"Daarna zijn we nog een stap verder gegaan en hebben we via experimenten aanpassingen gedaan aan de enhancers: we lieten bijvoorbeeld een base weg of voegden een toe", vertelt professor Aerts. "Zo konden we snel nagaan welke impact dat had. Het AI-model biedt zo inzichten in hoe de synthetische enhancers zijn opgebouwd en welke eiwitten er al dan niet op binden."
Dankzij ons AI-model kunnen we de veiligheid van gentherapie verhogen
Het model is uitgetest op hersencellen van fruitvliegjes en op een type huidcel van mensen. Omdat fruitvliegjes zo klein zijn en hun DNA eenvoudig te manipuleren is, doen genetici vaak hun eerste ontdekkingen in dit modelorganisme.
"Maar het team slaagde er vervolgens ook in om hun nieuwe aanpak met succes in te zetten voor het ontwerpen van enhancers voor menselijk DNA", klinkt het. Uiteindelijk is het de bedoeling om voor elke menselijke cel de enhancers uit te lezen: intussen zijn de onderzoekers aan de slag met onder meer verschillende types kankercellen en menselijke hersencellen.
De bevindingen zijn interessant voor algemeen DNA-onderzoek, maar zijn ook cruciaal voor toekomstige gentherapieën.
"Voor toekomstige therapieën zal het nodig zijn dat bepaalde genen geactiveerd worden in bepaalde cellen, maar net niet in andere cellen", geeft Aerts als voorbeeld. "Dankzij de informatie van ons AI-model kan de veiligheid van gentherapie verhoogd worden."
Amateur Astronomers Found Planets Crashing Into Each Other
Astronomy is one of the sciences where amateurs make regular contributions. Over the years, members of the public have made exciting discoveries and meaningful contributions to the scientific process, either through direct observing, citizen science projects, or through combing through open data from the various space missions.
Recently, amateur astronomer Arttu Sainio saw a conversation on X (Twitter) where researchers were discussing the strange behavior of a dimming sun-like star. Intrigued, Arttu decided to look at the data on this star, called Asassn-21qj, on his own. Looking at archival data from NASA’s NEOWISE mission, Sainio was surprised to find that the star had dimmed before, with an unexpected brightening in infrared light two years before the optical dimming event. So, he joined the discussion on social media and shared his finding – which led to more amateurs joining the research, which lead to an incredible discovery.
Saiio is now listed as one of the co-authors of a new paper published in Nature where professional and amateur astronomers were able to piece together that the brightening and dimming resulted from the collision and breakup of two ice-giant planets.
This all began back in 2021, when the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) network noticed that the star Asassn-21qj – located about 1,800 light years away — was rapidly fading. Professional astronomers Dr. Matthew Kenworthy and Dr. Eric Mamajek began speculating about this weird event in a conversation online.
“Out of the blue, amateur astronomer Arttu Sainio on social media pointed out that the star brightened up in the infrared over a thousand days before the optical fading,” said Kenworthy, in a NASA Science article. “I knew then that this was an unusual event.”
Amateur spectroscopist Hamish Barker attempted to capture a spectrum of Asassn-21qj in late July, 2022. A spectrum spreads out the colors of the starlight, revealing the star’s temperature. However, the star turned out to be too dim, so Hamish asked Olivier Garde from a French amateur astronomy team if they could add ASASSN-21q to their target list. The team, called the Southern Spectroscopic project Observatory Team (or “2SPOT”), succeeded in collecting the needed spectrum in early September, 2022 and forwarded it Kenworthy. The 2SPOT team members are Stéphane Charbonnel, Pascal Le Dû, Olivier Garde, Lionel Mulato and Thomas Petit.
Two more amateur astronomers also independently observed the star and contributed their data to the study.
Additionally, amateur spectroscopist Sean Curry provided a spectrum of Asassn-21qj in early April, 2023. Dr. Franz-Josef (Josch) Hambsch followed the star from his remote observatory ROAD (Remote Observatory Atacama Desert). He submitted his results via the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) database.
NEOWISE on the hunt.
Credit: NASA/JPL. The NEOWISE mission, with the repurposed WISE spacecraft, ended in 2011.
In their paper, the team explained the process, and how when planets are forming in the rotating disks of dust and gas around nascent stars, some of these planets can subsequently collide in giant impacts after the gas component is removed from the disk.
The paper details how the optical eclipse started about two and a half years after the infrared brightening, “implying an orbital period of at least that duration.” The astronomers said that their observations are consistent with a collision between two exoplanets of several to tens of Earth masses at 2–16?astronomical units from the central star.
“Such an impact produces a hot, highly extended post-impact remnant with sufficient luminosity to explain the infrared observations,” the team wrote. “Transit of the impact debris, sheared by orbital motion into a long cloud, causes the subsequent complex eclipse of the host star.”
Sainio said that he learned how to look at archival data from being a part of the citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9.
“Thanks to working previously with Backyard Worlds, retrieving WISE timeline photometry from NASA’s infrared archive (IRSA) was a logical step for me,” said Sainio.
If you’re interested in taking part of projects like this and would like to help find more objects like Asassn-21qj, the current Zooniverse citizen science project Disk Detective is searching for more exotic clouds of dust around nearby stars.
This structure is about 50 meters across and 150 meters high. Its shadow tells us its height. The photo itself is 1.1 miles across from the description NASA gives. NASA never mentions the towering structure in it, but I don't see how they missed it. This tower is a radar recording data and transmitting it to its home world. This asteroid only passes earth every few years, but all along its way its recording different species of alien ships that pass into its territory, which could be an early warning system to protect earth and alert the alien species watching over us. There is no way humans could have existed for so long without some species coming to mess with us, so it stands to reason, we have some alien protectors out there. And this tower on a passing asteroid is proof of that.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
David Grusch, UFO Whistleblower, Is the real deal, at (UAP) Hearing, UFO Sighting News.
David Grusch, UFO Whistleblower, Is the real deal, at (UAP) Hearing, UFO Sighting News.
Now this is interesting. This guy, David Grusch has come forward at the UAP hearings and is testifying that he has firsthand knowledge about and with alien technology. Now remember I do have a masters degree in counseling, and there are some interning things I noticed about Grusch. First, he 100% believes he is telling the truth. He is confident that the truth needs to be heard by the public and his eyes show that he has held this back for a long time, but it's now time for him to reveal this information. He is calm and confident. But most of all, I notice his speaking, his higher vocabulary than most people, his speed of speaking and his content (message) he is telling. It reveals to me he is highly intelligent, worthy of a high position in a secret government program, as well as to the point, which means he is use to being focused, gov worker type of focus.
Over all I find his honest and telling us his true experience. I find this highly surprising, I didn't realize he was this legit of an eyewitness. I am impressed and he will help break the secrets held by the US and world government that hold back a floodgate of UFO and alien knowledge. But, this is yet a single straw placed on a mountain of facts waiting to break the camels back.
A huge rectangular anomaly has been spotted in an image captured by NASA's SOHO Lasco C2 camera on December 9, 2023. The object passing the sun at tremendous speed and is only visible in one frame.
It’s known that high energy particles hitting the camera all the time and sometimes it turns out that an unidentified object is just a camera reflection but in recent years enough evidence has been gathered to know that many objects near or passing the sun are not always reflections or high energy particles but huge spacecraft under intelligent control.
The astounding velocity at which this particular object traverses the sun raises intriguing questions. Could it possibly be a extraterrestrial spacecraft equipped with a warp drive?
Such a propulsion system could theoretically enable travel at speeds exceeding that of light by several orders of magnitude. The consideration of these possibilities adds an extra layer of mystery to the ongoing exploration of anomalies near the sun.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Skeptical Take on Alleged “Mexican” Alien Bodies
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Skeptical Take on Alleged “Mexican” Alien Bodies
In a world where the line between science and science fiction often blurs, the debate over extraterrestrial life remains a captivating subject. Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recently addressed a peculiar incident involving alleged alien bodies presented to the Mexican congress, bringing his unique blend of scientific rigor and charismatic skepticism to the forefront.
The Extraterrestrial Claim: A Peruvian Mystery
The story begins with a sensational claim: two alien bodies, purportedly discovered in the Nazca Plains of Peru, were presented in the Mexican Congress. These remains, presented as evidence of extraterrestrial life, sparked curiosity and controversy alike. The Nazca Plains, famous for their enigmatic geoglyphs, some theorize, could be ancient runways for alien spacecraft. This backdrop adds a layer of mystery to the already intriguing claim.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Voice of Scientific Reason
Enter Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famed astrophysicist known for his ability to demystify complex scientific concepts. Tyson was invited to Mexico to personally inspect these alleged alien remains but chose to decline. His reasoning? The investigation of such a claim should fall into the hands of biologists and biochemists, not an astrophysicist. Tyson’s stance is a testament to the multidisciplinary nature of scientific inquiry.
The Scientific Method: Rigor Over Revelation
Tyson emphasizes the importance of the scientific method in evaluating such extraordinary claims. He argues that true scientific discovery is not the product of a single experiment or assertion but the result of collaborative verification across various independent laboratories. Objective truth, according to Tyson, emerges from a consensus among diverse and often skeptical scientific voices.
Skepticism and the Call for Extraordinary Evidence
The heart of Tyson’s argument lies in a principle famously stated by Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The claim of alien life is extraordinary by all standards, necessitating not just evidence but evidence of a compelling and incontrovertible nature. Tyson suggests comprehensive tissue analysis of the bodies, conducted by various independent labs, to establish the veracity of the extraterrestrial claim.
The Humanoid Conundrum: Questioning the Alien Anatomy
Adding an intriguing twist to his skepticism, Tyson questions the anthropomorphic nature of these alien bodies. He points out that genuine extraterrestrial life should arguably exhibit a degree of difference from humans that is at least as significant as the difference between humans and any other Earth life form, like a banana. The humanoid appearance of these alleged aliens, with their head, arms, and legs, seems suspiciously familiar and less alien.
A Call for Rational Discourse in the Age of Misinformation
In a world awash with misinformation and sensational claims, Tyson’s call for rigorous scientific investigation serves as a beacon of rationality. He advocates for a measured approach that balances open-mindedness with skepticism, ensuring that the pursuit of truth remains anchored in empirical evidence and collaborative validation.
As we continue to explore the mysteries of the universe, figures like Neil deGrasse Tyson remind us of the importance of scientific literacy and critical thinking. Whether or not these alleged alien bodies are eventually proven to be extraterrestrial in origin, the episode underscores the ongoing human quest to understand our place in the cosmos. In this quest, science remains our most reliable guide, navigating us through the realms of the known and the yet-to-be-discovered.
Komen deze voorspellingen van Stephen Hawking daadwerkelijk uit? Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) stond bekend om zijn werk op het gebied van zwarte gaten en de algemene relativiteitstheorie. Maar de beroemde natuurkundige stapte vaak buiten zijn eigen onderzoeksveld en gebruikte zijn erkenning om te benadrukken wat hij zag als de grote uitdagingen en existentiële bedreigingen voor de mensheid in de komende decennia. Variërend van onderwerpen als buitenaardse wezens tot het einde van de wereld, haalden zijn uitspraken de krantenkoppen en bleken ze soms controversieel.
Nieuwsgierig? Klik door voor enkele van zijn beroemdste voorspellingen.
De aarde verlaten Al tientallen jaren vertelt de theoretische natuurkundige de mensen dat ze moeten beginnen met het proces om zich permanent op andere planeten te vestigen.
De aarde verlaten Hawking beweerde dat de mensheid uiteindelijk het slachtoffer zou worden van een ramp die zo groot was dat we zouden uitsterven, misschien wel eerder vroeger dan later.
De aarde verlaten In 2016 vertelde hij de BBC het volgende: "Hoewel de kans op een ramp voor de planeet Aarde in een bepaald jaar vrij klein kan zijn, wordt het in de loop van de tijd steeds groter en wordt het een bijna zekerheid in de komende duizend of 10.000 jaar.
Andere planeten en zonnestelsels koloniseren Om het voortbestaan van de mensheid te garanderen, geloofde Hawking dat we andere planeten en zonnestelsels zouden moeten koloniseren.
Andere planeten en zonnestelsels koloniseren "Verspreiding is misschien het enige dat ons van onszelf redt. Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat de mens de aarde moet verlaten", zei hij in 2017 op een Noors wetenschaps- en kunstenfestival.
De opkomst van kunstmatige intelligentie In 2014 vertelde hij de BBC dat "de ontwikkeling van volledige kunstmatige intelligentie het einde van het menselijk ras zou kunnen betekenen".
De opkomst van kunstmatige intelligentie Hawking geloofde dat de kunstmatige basisintelligentie die tot nu toe was ontwikkeld al heel nuttig was gebleken. De technologie die hij gebruikte om te communiceren bevatte bijvoorbeeld een basisvorm van AI.
De opkomst van kunstmatige intelligentie Maar Hawking vreesde de gevolgen van geavanceerde vormen van machine-intelligentie die mensen zouden kunnen evenaren of overtreffen.
Genbewerking In zijn postume verzameling artikelen en essays 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' voorspelde Hawking dat genetische manipulatietechnieken zullen leiden tot een ras van "supermensen".
Genbewerking "Ik ben er zeker van dat mensen in de loop van deze eeuw zullen ontdekken hoe ze zowel intelligentie als instincten zoals agressie kunnen veranderen," schreef hij.
Genbewerking "Zodra zulke supermensen verschijnen, zullen er aanzienlijke politieke problemen zijn met niet-verbeterde mensen, die niet in staat zullen zijn om te concurreren," schreef hij. "Vermoedelijk zullen ze uitsterven of onbelangrijk worden. In plaats daarvan zal er een ras zijn van zelfontwerpende wezens die zich steeds sneller verbeteren."
De grootste bedreiging voor de aarde In hetzelfde boek voorspelde Hawking dat de grootste bedreiging voor de aarde een botsing met een asteroïde is, net zoals de asteroïde die de dinosauriërs doodde.
De grootste bedreiging voor de aarde Daar hebben we echter "geen verdediging" tegen, schreef Hawking. Aan de andere kant zag hij de opwarming van de aarde als een meer directe bedreiging.
Klimaatverandering "Trump's actie [het terugtrekken uit het Akkoord van Parijs] kan de aarde over de rand duwen, om te worden zoals Venus, met een temperatuur van 250 graden en zwavelzuurregens," vertelde Hawking aan de BBC.
Klimaatverandering De Intergouvernementele Werkgroep inzake klimaatverandering (IPCC) van de VN waarschuwt ook voor het potentiële risico op het bereiken van omslagpunten in het klimaat, naarmate de temperaturen stijgen.
De aarde zal in een vuurbal veranderen Hawking theoretiseerde dat de planeet tegen 2600 in een gigantische vuurbal zou veranderen door overbevolking en energieverbruik. Dit zou de aarde onbewoonbaar maken.
De aarde zal in een vuurbal veranderen "Met de klimaatverandering, de dreigende inslagen van asteroïden, epidemieën en de bevolkingsgroei wordt onze eigen planeet steeds precairder," vertelde hij de BBC in 2017.
De aarde zal in een vuurbal veranderen Dit was een van de redenen waarom Hawking het idee verdedigde dat mensen zich permanent op andere planeten zouden vestigen.
Buitenaards contact Aangezien Hawking het grootste deel van zijn leven naar de ruimte heeft gekeken, is het niet verwonderlijk dat hij nadacht over de vraag of er andere levensvormen bestaan.
Buitenaards contact Er is zelfs een hele tak van wetenschap, SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) genaamd, die zich bezighoudt met het luisteren naar signalen van intelligente wezens elders in het universum.
Buitenaards contact In 2010 vertelde hij Discovery Channel: "Als buitenaardse wezens ons bezoeken, zou de uitkomst hetzelfde zijn als toen Columbus in Amerika landde, wat niet goed afliep voor de inheemse Amerikanen."
Het beste idee dat de mensheid zou kunnen uitvoeren Toen het tijdschrift Time hem in 2010 vroeg welke wetenschappelijke ontdekking of vooruitgang hij tijdens zijn leven zou willen zien, antwoordde Hawking met "kernfusie". Dit zou een nieuwe bron van koolstofvrije energie zijn, waarbij twee waterstofatomen samensmelten om een heliumatoom en veel energie te produceren.
Het beste idee dat de mensheid zou kunnen uitvoeren "Ik zou graag zien dat kernfusie een praktische energiebron wordt. Het zou een onuitputtelijke energiebron zijn, zonder vervuiling of opwarming van de aarde," zei hij.
Deze enorme tunnels zijn gegraven door oude luiaards zo groot als olifanten.
De grootste tunnel is ruim 600 meter lang. Sommige zijn groot genoeg voor auto's om er doorheen te rijden, maar ze zijn niet door de mens gemaakt. Reusachtige grondluiaards hebben ze uitgegraven lang geleden. Dit opvallende tunnelcomplex in Zuid-Amerika spreekt tot de verbeelding.
Reusachtige luiaards hebben ze uitgegraven
De wanden van de tunnels zijn bedekt met gigantische klauwafdrukken van de vloer tot het plafond. Geologen noemen de tunnels 'paleo-holen', waarvan wordt aangenomen dat ze zijn gegraven door een inmiddels uitgestorven soort gigantische grondluiaard.
Heinrich Frank, een professor aan de Federale Universiteit van Rio Grande in Brazilië, ontdekte de tunnels bij toeval tijdens een rondleiding op een bouwplaats. In het kleine stadje Novo Hamburgo werden de tunnels begin jaren 2000 voor het eerst ontdekt, wat leidde tot jarenlang onderzoek en ontdekking van nog meer tunnels.
(Skwadra by Tagtik/Illustration picture: Unsplash)
Het mysterie van het Voynichmanuscript Wist je dat er nog steeds boeken op de wereld zijn die we nog niet ontcijferd hebben? Eén daarvan is het oude Voynichmanuscript met zijn handgeschreven, geïllustreerde code. Geleerden noemen het onbekende schrijfsysteem 'Voynichees'.
Waar komt het Voynichmanuscript vandaan? Analyse van het perkament en de stijl van de symbolen en tekeningen geeft aan dat het wellicht is geschreven in Italië tijdens de Renaissance. Het dateert van ergens in de 15e of 16e eeuw.
Delen met verschillende wetenschappen Onderzoekers hebben op basis van de illustraties de inhoud ingedeeld in zes delen: botanisch, astronomisch en astrologisch, biologisch, kosmologisch, farmaceutisch en recepten.
Niets bekend over de auteur of betekenis Afgezien van deze algemene structuur hebben onderzoekers niets over het document kunnen herleiden. De precieze oorsprong, de auteur en het doel ervan zijn nog steeds onbekend. Er zijn ontelbare uren besteed aan pogingen om het te doorgronden.
Verschillende eigenaren door de eeuwen heen Het manuscript is volgens de overlevering al in verschillende handen geweest. Daaronder waren die van de keizer Rudolf II van het Heilige Roomse Rijk, die regeerde in de 16e eeuw. Na verschillende keren van eigenaar te zijn veranderd, dook de mysterieuze tekst op bij een geheime boekverkoop in 1903.
Waarom heet het 'Voynich'? Het manuscript dankt zijn naam aan de antiquair die het in 1912 kocht van het Collegio Ghisleri van de jezuïeten bij Rome. Zijn naam was Wilfrid M. Voynich.
Zijn uiteindelijke bestemming De weduwe van de boekhandelaar verkocht het mysterieuze document aan antiquair Hans P. Kraus, die het in 1969 schonk aan de Rare Book and Manuscript Library van Yale-universiteit. En daar bevindt het zich vandaag de dag nog steeds, wachtend op de persoon die de juiste betekenis ervan ontdekt.
Hoe ziet het Voynichmanuscript eruit? Het boek heeft een grootte van 23,5 × 16,2 × 5 cm, waarbij de perkamentpagina's in 18 katernen zijn samengevouwen. Hoewel velen beweren dat het 240 pagina's telt, hangt dit aantal vooral af van hoe de uitvouwingen van het manuscript worden geteld.
Hoe weten we zijn leeftijd? Het perkament waarop het document is geschreven komt volgens koolstofdatering uit het begin van de 15e eeuw (1404-1438). Analyses van de schilderstijl suggereren ook dat het document uit die eeuw stamt.
De mysterieuze geschriften van het Voynichmanuscript Naar verluidt is het manuscript een soort middeleeuwse farmaceutische en medische gids. Niet alle planten die erin beschreven worden zijn echter geïdentificeerd. Er schijnt ook een verband te zijn met enkele astrologische aspecten, maar elke interpretatie daarvan berust slechts op speculatie.
Velen hebben geprobeerd het te ontcijferen Onder degenen die geprobeerd hebben de code te kraken, bevinden zich geleerden als Alan Turing, bekend van het breken van de Enigma-code tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Ook cryptanalist Elizabeth Smith Friedman, die eveneens vijandelijke codes ontcijferde in beide wereldoorlogen, deed een poging.
Een doorbraak in 2017? In september 2017 meldde Yale Medicine Magazine dat de amateurontcijferaar Nicholas Gibbs het Voynichmanuscript zou hebben ontcijferd.
Handboek voor dames Gibbs schreef in de Times Literary Supplement dat het manuscript "een handboek zou zijn met geselecteerde remedies uit de gangbare behandelingen van de middeleeuwen, [en] een handleiding voor de gezondheid en het welzijn van de welvarendere dames in de samenleving".
Maar... hij werd weersproken Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis van de Medieval Academy of America weerlegde volgens de Times Literary Supplement de beweringen van Gibbs: "Eerlijk gezegd ben ik een beetje verbaasd dat de TLS het heeft gepubliceerd... Als ze dit bericht alleen maar naar de Beinecke Library hadden gestuurd, zouden die het in een oogwenk hebben weerlegd".
Een computerprogramma om het te ontcijferen Volgens de website Snopes.com probeerden enkele Canadese onderzoekers in 2016 de code te kraken. Ze gebruikten daarbij een zelfgemaakt computerprogramma.
Een algoritme voor 380 talen Een algoritme werd geprogrammeerd om 380 verschillende taalversies van de 'Universele verklaring van de rechten van de mens van de Verenigde Naties' te ontcijferen. Op basis van die steekproef stelden ze vast dat 80% van de woorden in het Voynichmanuscript een Hebreeuwse oorsprong zou kunnen hebben.
Google Translate Maar geen enkele Hebreeuwse vertaler kon de tekst omzetten in coherent Engels. Ze namen zelfs hun toevlucht tot een hulpmiddel dat iedereen kent: Google Translate.
Eén zin en enkele woorden Met de app slaagden ze erin een zin te krijgen: 'Ze deed aanbevelingen aan de priester, man des huizes en mij en mensen'. Bovendien, meldt Snopes dat ze een paar woorden vonden: 'kruiden', 'boer', 'licht', 'lucht' en 'vuur'.
Google Translate was niet de beste optie Het resultaat was al met al toch teleurstellend. Bovendien hechtte de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap weinig belang aan het project, want het algoritme ontcijferde moderne talen, geen middeleeuwse, en Google Translate is ook geen betrouwbaar middel gebleken om dit soort documenten te vertalen.
Misschien is het allemaal nep! Terwijl sommigen nog steeds proberen het manuscript te ontcijferen, stellen andere theorieën dat het gewoon wartaal is van occulte filosofen. Volgens weer anderen, zoals Snopes aangeeft, is de Voynichtekst een gebedenboek van een ketterse christelijke sekte.
De zoektocht gaat door... En zo herhaalt het onderzoek zich, steeds weer, waarbij slechts één zekerheid overblijft: dat het Voynichmanuscript uniek is in zijn mysterie. Zal iemand er ooit in slagen het te ontcijferen? We zullen zien of er ooit achter zullen komen...
De waterpluimen van Enceladus bevatten mogelijk bouwstenen voor leven. En nu hebben onderzoekers bewijs geleverd dat we deze kunnen detecteren wanneer ruimtevaartuigen monsters nemen.
In de speurtocht naar buitenaards leven richten veel optimistische blikken zich op Enceladus, de ijskoude maan van Saturnus. En met goede reden. Ondanks het ijzige oppervlak herbergt deze kleine maan een vloeibare, ondergrondse oceaan. Bovendien ontsnappen er uit scheuren in het ijzige oppervlak grote waterpluimen, die een verscheidenheid aan organische verbindingen bevatten. Tot nu toe was het echter onduidelijk of de organische verbindingen in die pluimen bestand zouden zijn tegen de snelheid waarmee deze omhoog schieten. Maar een nieuwe studie stemt nu hoopvol.
Meer over de pluimen In de voortdurende zoektocht naar leven elders in het universum, speuren onderzoekers vaak naar drie cruciale elementen: water, energie en organisch materiaal. En er zijn aanwijzingen dat Enceladus een ‘oceaanwereld’ is die alle drie bevat. Enceladus spuit namelijk regelmatig krachtige waterpluimen de ruimte in, waarbij vloeibaar water uit de oceaan onder de ijskorst van de maan omhoog wordt geschoten. Deze pluimen kunnen soms tot wel honderd kilometer boven het oppervlak reiken. Eerdere onderzoeken naar deze pluimen hebben aangetoond dat 98 procent voornamelijk uit water bestaat, ongeveer 1 procent waterstof is, en de rest een mengeling van andere moleculen bevat, zoals koolstofdioxide, methaan en ammoniak. Opmerkelijk is dat de pluimen ook organische verbindingen bevatten, die stikstof en zuurstof dragen. Deze verbindingen spelen een cruciale rol bij de productie van aminozuren, de complexe moleculen die fungeren als bouwstenen voor eiwitten en vaak als bouwstenen voor leven worden beschouwd.
Gedurende zijn missie van twee decennia ontdekte de Cassini-ruimtesonde van NASA dat Enceladus waterpluimen met een snelheid van ongeveer 400 m/s uit zijn oppervlak spuwt. Deze uitbarstende pluimen creëren een uitstekende kans om monsters te verzamelen en de samenstelling van de oceanen van Enceladus te onderzoeken, om zo te bepalen of deze maan mogelijk leven herbergt. Maar zoals gezegd was het tot nu toe onzeker of organische stoffen wel intact zouden blijven wanneer ze met zulke hoge snelheden worden weggeschoten.
Aerosol-impact-spectrometer Om dit te onderzoeken, maakten wetenschappers gebruik van een bijzondere aerosol-impact-spectrometer. Deze is ontworpen om de botsingsdynamica van afzonderlijke aerosolen en deeltjes bij hoge snelheden te bestuderen. “Dit specifieke apparaat is wereldwijd uniek omdat het in staat is individuele deeltjes te selecteren en ze te versnellen of vertragen naar vooraf bepaalde eindsnelheden,” legt onderzoeker Robert Continetti uit. “We kunnen het gedrag van de deeltjes onderzoeken over verschillende groottes, variërend van enkele micron in diameter tot honderden nanometers. Dit geldt voor diverse materialen. Bovendien kunnen we bestuderen hoe de deeltjes verstrooien en hoe hun structuren veranderen bij een botsing.”
Het experiment Voor het experiment maakten de onderzoekers eerst ijskorrels met elektrospray-ionisatie. Hierbij wordt water door een naald geperst die onder hoge spanning staat, waardoor het water in steeds kleinere druppels uiteenvalt. Deze druppels werden vervolgens in een vacuüm gebracht, waar ze bevroren. Het team mat de massa en lading van de ijskorrels, volgden ze terwijl ze door de spectrometer bewogen en timede vervolgens het exacte moment van impact tot op de nanoseconde.
Intact Uit de bevindingen blijkt dat aminozuren zelfs intact blijven bij botsingen met snelheden tot 4,2 km/s. Dit betekent dat deze belangrijke moleculen ongeschonden uit de waterpluimen op Enceladus kunnen komen. Ze blijken opgewassen tegen de enorme snelheid waarmee de waterpluimen uit het oppervlak schieten. En dat ondersteunt het idee dat ze gedetecteerd kunnen worden wanneer ruimtevaartuigen monsters nemen. “Om te begrijpen welk soort leven mogelijk is in ons zonnestelsel, is het belangrijk om te weten of de moleculen in de monsters wel of niet beschadigd zijn,” verklaart Continetti. “Op die manier kunnen we eigenschappen herkennen die wijzen op wat het tot een op zichzelf staande levensvorm maakt. Ons werk toont aan dat dit mogelijk is met de waterpluimen van Enceladus.”
De bevindingen hebben ook implicaties voor de aanstaande Europa Clipper missie, die in 2024 wordt gelanceerd en op Jupiter zal afstevenen. Europa, een van de grootste manen van Jupiter, is ook een oceaanwereld en heeft een vergelijkbare ijzige samenstelling als Enceladus. Wetenschappers hopen dat Europa Clipper of toekomstige missies naar Saturnus een specifieke set moleculen in de ijskorrels kunnen identificeren die kunnen wijzen op het bestaan van leven in de ondergrondse oceanen van deze manen. Daarom is het van groot belang dat deze moleculen intact blijven ondanks hun snelle uitstoting van de maan, en dat ze succesvol worden verzameld door een ruimtesonde. En zoals nu blijkt, kunnen tekenen van leven dus inderdaad succesvol op deze ijskoude manen worden gedetecteerd. Dat brengt ons weer stap dichter bij het ontrafelen van die ene fascinerende vraag: bestaat er buitenaards leven?
Meer over de Europa Clipper missie De Europa Clipper zal een cruciale rol spelen bij het vergroten van ons begrip van deze maan. Het ruimtevaartuig zal talloze scheervluchten langs Europa maken om de oceaan onder de dikke ijskorst grondig te onderzoeken. Uitgerust met diverse instrumenten zal de sonde niet alleen het oppervlak bestuderen, maar ook de stof en gassen die naar boven worden gestuwd. De hoop is om meer te ontdekken over deze intrigerende, verre wereld, die mogelijk levensvormen zou kunnen herbergen zoals wij die kennen. Een dieper inzicht in de bewoonbaarheid van Europa kan wetenschappers vervolgens helpen om beter te begrijpen hoe het leven zich op aarde heeft ontwikkeld en om meer te leren over mogelijke levensvormen elders in het heelal.
In February 2023, researchers from around the country gathered at a NASA-sponsored workshop to discuss the latest developments and a roadmap for a cryobot mission concept to drill through the icy crusts of Europa and Enceladus and search for life.
Figure 1 Conceptual image of a cryobot breaching into the ocean of Europa and searching for signs of life.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Follow the water” has been the mantra of the astrobiology community in search of alien life in the universe. Water is a fundamental building block of all terrestrial life as we know it and—as discovered by various space missions—water is abundant throughout the solar system, and perhaps, the universe. Ancient eroded features on Mars show clear evidence of a wet history, and the ongoing quest of the Perseverance rover aims to uncover clues as to whether or not Mars once hosted a population of microbes. However, there is only so much we can learn from the fossil record. To truly understand the nature of possible alien life, we must directly investigate the source—the liquid water.
Enter “Ocean Worlds.” Over the past two decades, scientists have discovered that a vast number of icy moons orbit the outer giant planets in our solar system. Many of these moons show strong evidence for harboring global oceans beneath their icy crusts. In fact, these moons likely have far more liquid water than all of Earth’s oceans combined, and some may even have the right conditions to foster life. Two moons, in particular, have captured the imaginations of astrobiologists due to their amenable conditions for life and their relative ease of interrogation: Jupiter’s moon, Europa and Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Both show strong evidence of a global subsurface ocean beneath a kilometers-thick water-ice crust—but how can we access this liquid water?
Various concepts for ocean access have been investigated over the past decades, ranging from robots that descend through crevasses to drills of varying types. One concept that has emerged as a leading candidate is the cryobot. A cryobot is a self-contained cylindrical probe that uses heat to melt the ice beneath it. The melted water then flows around the probe before refreezing behind it. Thermal ice drilling is so simple and effective that it has become a common tool for studying terrestrial glaciers and ice sheets. But how can we translate this technology to a system that can penetrate planetary icy crusts, which are colder, thicker, and more uncertain?
This dilemma has been a core focus of researchers—many of whom are supported by NASA’s Scientific Exploration Subsurface Access Mechanism for Europa (SESAME) and Concepts for Ocean worlds Life Detection Technology (COLDTech) programs—for the past several years. In February 2023, NASA’s Planetary Exploration Science Technology Office (PESTO) convened a workshop at the California Institute of Technology, which brought together nearly 40 top researchers from diverse fields and institutions around the country to discuss progress in maturing this technology and to assess the challenges that remain. Recent studies have made significant progress in refining our understanding of the ice shell environment, detailing a mission architecture, and maturing critical subsystems and technologies. In particular, workshop participants identified four key subsystems that drive the roadmap for developing a flight-ready architecture: the power, thermal, mobility, and communication subsystems.
Figure 2 Conceptual image of the Cryobot mission profile. A lander deploys a nuclear-powered probe, which melts through the ice shell to access the ocean below. A tether and wireless transceivers are deployed behind the probe during its descent for communication.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
First, the heart of a cryobot is a nuclear power system that generates the sustained heat required to melt through kilometers of ice. Various nuclear power systems that could suit a cryobot system have been identified, including the familiar Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) that have powered many deep-space missions, and fission reactors that may be developed in the coming years. Two key constraints that drive the power system design are: (1) sufficient total power and density to facilitate efficient melting (about 10 kW), and (2) integration within a structural vessel to protect the power system from the high pressures of the deep ocean. These challenges are both solvable and have some historical precedent: NASA’s Cassini mission had a 14 kW thermal power system, and several Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) were deployed to the bottom of the ocean in the 1960s and 1970s as power sources for navigation beacons, which operated in comparable pressures to the Europan ocean. However, a cryobot power system will require a concerted effort and close collaboration with the Department of Energy throughout the maturation of the mission concept.
Second, a thermal management system is required to manage the heat produced by the onboard nuclear power system, maintain safe internal temperatures, and distribute heat to the environment for efficient performance. This system requires two independent pumped fluid circuits: one that circulates an internal working fluid through channels embedded in the skin and another that circulates melted ice water with the surounding environment. Some of these technologies have been demonstrated at reduced and full scale, but more work is needed to validate performance at the range of ice conditions expected in the outer solar system.
In addition, the icy shells of Europa and Enceladus will contain impurities such as dust and salt, which, when sufficiently concentrated, may require auxilliary systems to penetrate. A combination of “water jetting” and mechanical cutting has been demonstrated to be effective at clearing debris ranging from fine particulate to solid blocks of salt from beneath the probe. Some impurities such as larger rocks, voids, or water bodies may remain impenetrable, requiring the cryobot to incorporate a downward-looking mapping sensor and steering mechanism—both of which have been demonstrated in terrestrial prototypes, though not yet in an integrated system. High-priority future work includes a more rigorous and probabilistic definition of the icy environments to quantify the likelihood of potential mobility hazards, and an integrated demonstration of hazard mitigation systems on a flight-like cryobot system. Europa Clipper will also provide key observations to constrain the prevalence and characteristics of hazards for a cryobot.
Finally, a cryobot mission requires a robust and redundant communication link through the ice shell to enable the lander to relay data to an orbiting relay asset or directly to Earth. Fiber optic cables are the industry standard for communicating with terrestrial melt probes and deep-sea vehicles, but require careful validation for deployment through ice shells, which are active. The movement of ice in these shells could break the cable. A team led by Dr. Kate Craft at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has been investigating the propensity of tethers embedded in ice to break during ice-shear events, as well as methods to mitigate such breakage. While preliminary results from this study are highly encouraging, other teams are exploring wireless techniques for communicating through the ice, including radio frequency, acoustic, and magnetic transceivers. These communication systems must be integrated onto the aft end of the probe and depoyed during its descent. Current projects funded under the NASA COLDTech program are taking the first steps toward addressing key risks for the communications system. Future work must validate performance across a broader range of conditions and demonstrate integration on a cryobot.
While the power, thermal, mobility, and communication subsystems took center stage, workshop participants also discussed other key systems and technologies that will require maturation to enable a cryobot mission. These topics include an integrated instrument suite with accommodations for liquid sampling and outward-facing apertures, planetary protection and sterilization strategies, materials selection for corrosion mitigation, ice-anchoring mechanisms, and autonomy. However, none of these technologies were identified as major risks or challenges in the cryobot mission concept roadmap.
Overall, the consensus finding of workshop participants was that this mission concept remains feasible, scientifically compelling, and the most plausible near-term way to directly search for life in situ on an ocean world. Continued support would allow scientists and engineers to make even further progress toward readying cryobots for future mission opportunities. The potential for the direct detection of life on another world seems more possible than ever.
This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
PROJECT LEAD
Dr. Benjamin Hockman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
The Rendlesham Forest UAP incident is one of the legendary UFO encounter cases in the history of UFOlogy. In 1980, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, a deputy commander of the US Air Force Base, received the news of strange sightings near twin NATO airbases of RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, England. In the early morning of December 26, Airman First Class John Burroughs reported the sighting that included vague descriptions, ranging from unusual supernatural light, glittering triangular spaceships, and scorched footprints on the ground.
It is always argued whether the Suffolk UFO landing actually happened or it was just a hoax. On the official note, there is no physical evidence to prove this claim, only testimonies provided by credible witnesses. As the years passed, a piece of new information indulged which opened many untold stories of this case.
Gary Heseltine, a former police detective and UFO investigator recounts the complex story of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incidents, which is considered the second most famous UFO case after Roswell in 1947. Heseltine researched the case for over five years, analyzing various published materials and uncovering lesser-known information.
In his book, “NON-HUMAN: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incidents: 42 Years of Denial“, he presented amazing new military testimony from a previously unknown witness. The book discusses the political aspects of the incident, suggesting that the narrative may have been controlled by a few individuals for years. Heseltine argues that the UK and US governments have downplayed the true significance of the case.
This series of events occurred between December 26 and December 28, 1980. A mysterious flying object flew at such an incredible speed that violated the laws of physics. Moreover, despite the very high speed, the alien spacecraft did not make any noise.
The incident involves a young airman’s claim of witnessing a translucent UFO about 30 ft in diameter landing in a farmer’s field. This claim has been debated for many years. Later, round-shaped prints were found on the ground clearly from a heavy object, which were at a distance of about 3 meters from each other. Burns were also seen near these grooves on the ground.
On December 28, when soldiers were sent for a more thorough study of the area, they noted the excess of radiation. And at this time, a UFO reappeared, it flew by with incredible speed, illuminating everything around with bright red lights. The light emanating from the ship was so strong that the sensors of the night sights burned out, and the lights continued to hover and shine over the forest and field for some time.
Heseltine discovered a new witness account that sheds new light on the landing of a triangular-shaped UFO in the forest, an event previously recounted publicly only by Staff Sgt Jim Penniston and Airman John Burroughs. Heseltine reveals that after extensive research, he has obtained corroboration from a military witness, Sergeant Adrian Bustinza, confirming the occurrence of a UFO landing.
In a four and half hour transatlantic telephone interview (which was audio recorded) he admitted that he had been involved in a second UFO related event, a landing of a translucent craft approximately 30 feet in diameter which was surrounded by a ring of US Air Force Security police officers, writes Heseltine. (Source)
Retired Colonel Charles Halt and Retired police detective Gary Heseltine in Rendlesham Forest in 2010
The landing was filmed on video and cine cameras, marking it as the second UFO landing event. Heseltine emphasizes that Bustinza’s involvement was significant because he was part of the security perimeter around the craft, as was Larry Warren, an honorably discharged military eyewitness, and was the first to go public about the Bentwaters UFO cover-up.
Sergeant Bustinza’s account corroborates Warren’s version of events, confirming that the entire incident was being filmed. Additionally, Bustinza states that Colonel Gordon Williams, the Base Commander of the twin US bases of RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, was present at the second landing. Despite Colonel Williams’ denial of involvement, both Bustinza and Warren assert that he was present during the event.
“When I arrived [at the scene], it was going in and out through the trees and at one stage it was hovering,” Sgt. Adrian Bustinza said. (Source)
Interestingly, Heseltine mentioned that both Bustinza and Warren state that entities or lifeforms were seen near the craft, engaging in what seemed like a silent confrontation with Colonel Williams. This detail adds a mysterious and intriguing element to the story.
Heseltine highlights the significance of Sergeant Adrian Bustinza’s corroboration, as it confirms the existence of the second UFO landing. He asserts that the US Air Force has attempted to cover up this event, but now, with the corroboration from a first-person witness, the truth is emerging.
Moreover, while examining old documentation of the case, Heseltine found a direct admission made by Lt. Col. Charles Halt, the deputy base commander at the time, to an American researcher named Ray Boeche in April 1985. Halt admitted that the second UFO landing did occur, and the craft was surrounded by USAF Security police officers, with Col. Williams present. This admission from Lt. Col. Halt adds further weight to the claims made by Bustinza and Warren.
Alien Abduction
Interestingly, video footage was published in 2018 by the British tabloid newspaper, The Sun, where Retired Lt. Colonel Charles Halt can be heard saying that John Burroughs “may have been abducted” and that the men were “unaccounted” for hours. The video was reportedly captured in 2010 when Halt and retired British police detective Gary Heseltine revisited Rendlesham Forest for a documentary that was never made. The footage was recorded by Heseltine’s wife when the two were talking about the UFO incident during a break.
Halt said: “He [Burroughs] may have been abducted, who knows… You know, there is LOST TIME, we know that? They were not on the radio… You’ve got men out in the forest that you can’t… unaccounted for hours.”
Official memo of Lt. Colonel Charles Halt about 1980 UFO incident
Even though the USAF had always denied any UFO landing in the Rendelsem forest, Burroughs shared the shocking news about his health. He said that he had been subjected to a high amount of radiation during the investigations of the mysterious craft on three consecutive nights in December 1980.
The US military classified Burrough’s medical records, so neither he nor his lawyer were able to get it. Even the USAF denied that he had been working with them during the time of the incident as claimed by Burrough. Somehow, they got a document from the British Ministry of Defence in which it was written that the site had a high level of radiation during the UFO incident.
Finally, after decades, the US Veterans Association and the Department of Defence agreed to pay for his treatment. Besides, in the radiation document, the US military acknowledged the unexplained aerial phenomenon that occurred at the site and caused a physical injury to Burrough.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
10-12-2023
'Aliens' landed at Chernobyl after nuclear disaster to 'suck radiation from air'
'Aliens' landed at Chernobyl after nuclear disaster to 'suck radiation from air'
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix's Encounters has UFO and alien enthusiasts frothing over dramatic claims that aliens may actually be coming to Earth to help us humans out in times of nuclear disaster
Could aliens have landed at Chernobyl following the disaster?(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Aliens touched down at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the disaster to suck dangerously-high levels of toxic radiation from the air, according to a Netflixdoc.
Encounters was released on the streaming platform and has UFO and alien enthusiasts frothing over dramatic claims that aliens may actually be coming to Earth to help us humans out.
The four-part docuseries explores many mass UFO sighting across the world from the last 50 years or so and delves into an alleged sighting of an alien aircraft at the Chernobyl power plant after the nuclear disaster in April 1986.
In episode four, Dr Jensine Andresen – a researcher of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – said many saw a UFO land at the site at the height of the roaring blaze.
Many claimed to see a UFO land at the power plant for three minutes(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
"Right at the height of the fire, many people observed a UFO come," she said, adding it "stayed for three minutes".
Though the show doesn’t include any testimony from witnesses at Chernobyl, she also claimed there was a light at Unit 4.
And, with an alleged sudden drop in toxic radiation as soon as the UFO was gone, Dr Andresen said conspiracies that aliens were helping humans in draining radiation from the area were fuelled.
She said: "At the height of the fire in Chernobyl, the reading was 3000 milli-roentgen, which is a unit of ionising radiation."
Control Room 4, where a number of incorrect decisions lead to the greatest nuclear catastrophe of mankind(Image: APA-PictureDesk GmbH/REX/Shutterstock)
She added another reading was taken a few minutes later and that the radiation had "apparently dropped to 800" – something Dr Andresen said was incomprehensible.
She added: “That seems like a very conscious attempt to remediate the danger caused by the malfunction there."
The episode also explores a UFO seen in the Japanese city of Fukushima in 2011, in which members of the public claimed to have seen bizarre lights on the same day as the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
People who tuned in to the Netflix doc were quick to share their amazement on X, with many users astounded at the claims aliens may not be here to hurt us after all.
Are the little green men really here to help us?(Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)
"I have to say after watching Encounters on Netflix I never truly went back to look at the lights over Fukushima and honestly I was shocked how many showed up after the blast," said @OBreenie.
"And I was shocked to learn it happened at Chernobyl as well."
UFO enthusiast @UFOS_UAPS posted: "Nuclear. They [aliens] love to hang around." To which another replied: "Yes but also how the levels were lowered in Chernobyl after one came and hovered for I believe 3 minutes – and the levels were lower in Fukushima as well – I was like how did I not know that."
Another posted in amazement: “Holy moly this is finally something new. I was unaware of these sightings but I understand the nuclear connection."
So, could those little green men actually be here to help us silly humans out in times of nuclear catastrophe? We'll let you make your own mind up...
Special forces soldier going for late night ciggie stumbles on 'UFO test flight'
Special forces soldier going for late night ciggie stumbles on 'UFO test flight'
UFO investigator Ross Coulthart has revealed a special forces soldier who left his hospital ward for a smoke spotted a UFO hovering in a clearing in a 'brief flutter above the trees'
By Tom James
Ross Coulthart believes the US military is in possession of 'non-human' technology
(Image: rosscoulthart/X)
A special forces soldier sneaking a late-night ciggie may have stumbled across a UFO “test flight”. He was recovering in an air force base hospital when he saw the craft hovering before leaving at astonishing speed.
And he claims it was being worked on by military and civilian personnel. The encounter was revealed to UFO investigator Ross Coulthart who believes the US military is in possession of “non-human” technology.
He said the soldier was at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida when he left his hospital ward to smoke. He did so at two in the morning and spotted the UFO hovering in a clearing.
Coulthart said: “As he watched the object quite literally almost dematerialised it moved so fast. All he saw was brief flutter above the trees… 20mins later he watched it return.
“I don’t think this guy’s lying. When I looked at a Google Maps description of location it’s precise to a tee.”
A special forces soldier believes he spotted a UFO in the sky(Image: Getty Images)
“It was clearly high security… he was gobsmacked that he was allowed to see it. I don’t think they were aware that he was there.”
He told the Chris Cuomo Project podcast: “I have dozens of accounts like that from US military personnel who’ve seen things they probably shouldn’t.”
Ross Coulthart is investigating sightings of UFOs across the US(Image: @ThatUFOPodcast/Youtube)
In the summer, fighter pilots from Eglin AFB showed US politicians a photo of one of four UFOs they encountered over the Gulf of Mexico. Military top brass initially blocked them from sharing details of the incident.
Congressman Matt Gaetz, who saw a photo of one of the craft, said: “The image was of a UAP that I am not able to attach to any human capability.”
NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Beams Back Its First Images
NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Beams Back Its First Images
Already 26 million km (16 million miles) from Earth, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will arrive at its target asteroid Psyche in 2029. The Psyche team wanted to test all of the science instruments early in the long journey to make sure they are working as intended, and to ensure there would be plenty of time to calibrate and adjust them as needed. The imager instrument, which consists of a pair of identical cameras, captured a total of 68 images, all within a star field in the constellation of Pisces.
Psyche’s first images make up this mosaic showing a starfield in the constellation of Pisces.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU.
Psyche is a NASA mission to study a metal-rich asteroid with the same name, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
This is NASA’s first mission to study an asteroid that has more metal than rock or ice.
The spacecraft launched October 13, 2023, at 10:19 a.m. EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center.
By August 2029, it will begin exploring the asteroid that scientists think — because of its high metal content — may be the partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet.
The Psyche imager takes pictures through multiple color filters, all of which were tested in these initial observations.
With the filters, the Psyche team will use photographs in wavelengths of light both visible and invisible to the human eye to help determine the composition of the asteroid.
The imager team will also use the data to create 3D maps of the asteroid to better understand its geology, which will give clues about Psyche’s history.
“These initial images are only a curtain-opener,” said Psyche imager instrument lead Jim Bell, a researcher at Arizona State University.
“For the team that designed and operates this sophisticated instrument, first light is a thrill.”
“We start checking out the cameras with star images like these, then in 2026 we’ll take test images of Mars during the spacecraft’s flyby.”
“And finally, in 2029 we’ll get our most exciting images yet — of our target asteroid Psyche.”
“We look forward to sharing all of these visuals with the public.”
Earlier in the mission, in October, the Psyche team powered on the magnetometer, which will provide crucial data to help determine how the asteroid formed.
Evidence that the asteroid once had a magnetic field would be a strong indication that the body is a partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet.
The information could help us better understand how our own planet formed.
On November 8, amid all the work with the science instruments, the team fired up two of the four electric propulsion thrusters, setting a record: the first-ever use of Hall-effect thrusters in deep space.
Until now, they’d been used only on spacecraft going as far as lunar orbit.
By expelling charged atoms, or ions, of xenon gas, the ultra-efficient thrusters will propel the spacecraft to the asteroid and help it maneuver in orbit.
Less than a week later, on November 14, the technology demonstration built into the spacecraft, an experiment called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), set its own record.
The experiment achieved first light by sending and receiving optical data from far beyond the Moon.
The instrument beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from nearly 16 million km (10 million miles) away — the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications.
Shocking Revelation: Underwater UFOs Haunting the California Coastline – Unearth the Truth!
Shocking Revelation: Underwater UFOs Haunting the California Coastline – Unearth the Truth!
Unveiling the Mystery of Catalina Island’s UFO Sightings
The serene and picturesque Catalina Island, off the coast of California, is often synonymous with leisurely getaways and marine adventures. However, in recent years, it has become a focal point for a completely different reason – UFO sightings. These unexplained aerial phenomena have turned the island into a hotbed of extraterrestrial speculation, drawing both curiosity and skepticism from around the globe.
Eyewitness Accounts: Lights in the Sky and Sea
The local residents of Catalina Island have their share of stories that defy conventional explanation. One of the most compelling accounts comes from Brad Castle, a fisherman who experienced an extraordinary event in 2007. While navigating the waters near Catalina, Castle and his companion were startled by an intense, brilliant light that illuminated the ocean around them. This unexpected encounter left them questioning the nature of what they saw – was it a natural phenomenon or something more mysterious?
Kathleen Hill, a long-time resident and amateur astronomer, has also contributed to the growing archive of sightings. Her observations of stationary, orange lights forming pyramid shapes in the sky challenge our understanding of known celestial bodies and aircraft behaviors. Her video footage, capturing these lights in 2012, adds a layer of visual evidence to the island’s UFO narrative.
Debunking the Myths: Natural Phenomena or Alien Activity?
While some residents attribute these sightings to extraterrestrial activities, skeptics argue for more earthly explanations. Bioluminescence, a natural light produced by marine organisms, could account for some underwater sightings. However, this explanation falls short in addressing the full scope of experiences reported, particularly those involving aerial phenomena.
The idea of Catalina Island being a hub for alien activity is fueled by its geographical features. The deep waters surrounding the island provide an ideal setting for concealing underwater bases, as some enthusiasts speculate. This theory, though lacking in scientific backing, continues to intrigue and attract UFO researchers and enthusiasts to Catalina.
The Global Context: Catalina in the UFO Sightings Landscape
UFO sightings are not unique to Catalina Island. Globally, reports of unidentified flying objects have been part of human history for decades. Government agencies, like the Pentagon, have even released declassified footage of UFO encounters, acknowledging the existence of unidentified aerial phenomena. This global context adds credibility to the sightings at Catalina, situating them within a larger pattern of similar events worldwide.
VIDEO:
Evidence Of Underwater UFOs Plagues the California Coast | UFO Witness
The mystery surrounding UFO sightings over Catalina Island remains unsolved. Whether these phenomena are natural occurrences, undisclosed military exercises, or indeed signs of extraterrestrial life, continues to be a subject of debate. As technology advances and more eyes turn towards the skies and seas, perhaps the truth behind these captivating lights will eventually surface.
The Cisco Grove mystery: Close encounter with UFOs, Humanoids and Robots
The Cisco Grove mystery: Close encounter with UFOs, Humanoids and Robots
In September 1964, Captain McLeod and Sergeant Barnes were dispatched from Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio. They were sent to investigate a UFO sighting in Northern California.
Wright-Patterson AFB got lots of UFO reports. 99% of them could be explained. And a sizeable percentage of those sightings were hoaxers looking for attention.
The other 1% were classified as UFOs and sent on to Project Blue Book. What happened from there, McLeod didn't know. The fact that he was being sent to the other side of the country meant this sighting was important to the Air Force.
McLeod had a copy of the teletyped report from the UFO tracking office. It was stamped with an unusual "Priority" notification. It read:
"UFO landing with entities reported by missile technician in Tahoe NF, Sacramento. Orders: Investigate and contain via usual protocols ASAP."
McLeod's first step was to interview the witness. And, even after 17 years as an investigator, this was the strangest UFO story he'd ever heard.
Summary witness report: Witness Donald Shrum found himself disoriented and separated from his hunting companions, leading him to make the decision to spend the night safely perched in a tree away from potential predators.
While nestled in his chosen pine tree, positioned 12 feet above the ground, Shrum observed an unusual light. To his surprise, the source was something like a headlight on a massive cigar-shaped craft
Subsequently, a smaller vessel emerged from one of the mothership's huge rectangular ports. From this secondary craft emerged a group of beings Shrum could only describe as humanoid.
These entities wearing spacesuits and were accompanied by some sort of robots that appeared to be on a mission to study the local flora.
As Shrum remained hidden in the tree, the beings became aware of his presence, and a few among them seemed determined to abduct him for reasons unknown. Undeterred, Shrum fiercely resisted these intruders, utilizing everything at his disposal, ultimately succeeding in fending them off.
23 Meter UFO Landed In Washington On Google Earth, UFO Sighting News. Video.
23 Meter UFO Landed In Washington On Google Earth, UFO Sighting News. Video.
Date of discovery:Dec 8, 2023
Location of discovery: Washington state, USA Coordinates: 46°57'12.85"N 122°38'50.47"W
Wow! This thing is a view of the future, an alien craft landed on a farm in Washington state. The wingspan is 23 meters, the hull width is 5.5 meters so it could easily hold 6-12 people. This thing cannot get out on trailer because the road is only 4 meters across, the wings would hit the trees. This think must have flown overhead, and dropped down slowly like a helicopter would. It's just beyond bizarre and yet there it is, right in front of us. This is 100% proof that aliens live among us, and have technology far beyond our wildest dreams.
Ufo's in de geschiedenis: waarnemingen, ontvoeringen en mysteries
Ufo's in de geschiedenis: waarnemingen, ontvoeringen en mysteries
De hype rond ufo's is terug van (nooit) weggeweest
Sinds het Pentagon afgelopen mei toegaf dat het sinds 2004 minstens 400 waarnemingen van 'ongeïdentificeerde vliegende objecten' heeft geregistreerd in de Verenigde Staten, is de publieke belangstelling voor dit fenomeen toegenomen.
Een "frequent” fenomeen
Het was 50 jaar geleden dat de ufo-kwestie voor het laatst in het Congres werd besproken. Maar dit jaar was de verrassing nog groter, omdat de adjunct-directeur van de inlichtingendienst van de marine in de VS, Scott Bray, verzekerde dat ufo-waarnemingen "frequent en aanhoudend" zijn.
Ufo-waarnemingen in andere landen
Andere landen zoals Frankrijk (in 2007), of het Verenigd Koninkrijk (in 2011) hebben nationale dossiers over ufo's gedeclassificeerd. Japan kondigde in 2020 zelfs een nieuw actieprotocol aan voor zijn leger in het geval van waarnemingen.
Foto: Albert Antony/Unsplash
Historische waarnemingen
Als we teruggaan in de tijd, zijn er veel momenten rond het ufo-fenomeen die de geschiedenis zijn ingegaan. Laten we eens kijken naar de beroemdste gevallen ...
Kenneth Arnold: de eerste waarneming?
De eerste geregistreerde waarneming van een ufo dateert van 24 juni 1947. De Amerikaanse piloot Kenneth Arnold (in het midden op de foto) aanschouwde wat als de eerste ufo-waarneming kan worden beschouwd. Hoewel er eerdere soortgelijke gevallen werden gemeld, kreeg deze waarneming veel publiciteit en aandacht.
Onregelmatig, helder en snel
Arnold verklaarde dat, terwijl hij op zoek was naar een vermist vliegtuig, hij boven Mount Rainier (Washington) niet minder dan negen objecten met abnormale bewegingen zag die samen in een lijn vlogen. Hij beschreef ze als "extreem heldere objecten", met een "onregelmatige vliegwijze" die zich met "enorme snelheid" verplaatsten.
Vliegende schotels
Het is door deze waarneming dat de mythe van de ovaalvormige ufo is ontstaan en de term 'vliegende schotel' begon te worden gebruikt, aangezien, in zijn eigen woorden, "ze onregelmatig vlogen, als een schotel die in het water werd gegooid".
Een vonk in de wolken
Anderen gaan echter veel verder terug in de tijd. In het Zuid-Amerikaanse Chili werden in de 19e eeuw verschillende vreemde dingen gezien. Zo meldde Maria Graham in haar boek 'Journal of a Residence in Chile' (1822) dat ze een reeks vreemde lichten boven de zee had gezien. Ook zag commandant Buenaventura Martínez Díaz in 1853 dat hij en voorwerp had gezien dat "de wolken doorkruiste in de vorm van een vonk."
Een alien in Talca
En op 15 mei 1861 berichtte de Chileense krant La Esperanza over de dagen van verschrikking die de inwoners van de stad Talca beleefden. Niet vanwege een ufo, maar vanwege de aanwezigheid van een wezen dat van een andere planeet leek te komen.
Foto: Stephen Leopardi/Unsplash
De ufo's van Copiacó
In die Chileense precedenten springen "drie onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen" het meest in het oog. De krant El Constituente had het over drie waarnemingen in maart, juli en november 1868. Ze waren allemaal in Copiacó, een stad waar vele jaren later, in 2013, nog eens een waarneming werd gemeld.
Duizenden ufo-waarnemingen
Sindsdien zijn er duizenden ufo-waarnemingen gemeld, door strijdkrachten van verschillende landen, vliegtuigpiloten of gewone mensen. Waarnemingen die in veel gevallen een wetenschappelijke verklaring hebben, maar die in andere gevallen verontrustend mysterieus blijven.
Project Blue Book
Van 1948 tot 1969 werd in de Verenigde Staten Project Blue Book gelanceerd, een overheidsinitiatief om ufo's te onderzoeken als een mogelijke bedreiging voor de nationale veiligheid. Dit alles in een tijd waarin de luchtmacht 12.618 waarnemingen rapporteerde, waarvan er vandaag de dag nog 701 ongeïdentificeerd blijven.
Geen bewijs dat ufo's buitenaards waren
Project Blue Book werd in 1969 afgesloten vanwege de hoge kosten. De conclusie van het onderzoek luidde dat de ufo's geen bedreiging vormden voor de nationale veiligheid en dat er geen bewijs was dat het om buitenaardse vaartuigen ging, noch om technologische ontwikkelingen die de moderne wetenschap te boven gaan.
Het Roswell-incident
In 1947, hetzelfde jaar van de waarneming van Kenneth Arnold, vond ook een van de meest legendarische ufo-gebeurtenissen plaats: het Roswell-incident. Een ongeïdentificeerd vliegend object stortte neer in een veld in deze stad in New Mexico, en onmiddellijk daarna volgde een ontmoeting met buitenaardse wezens.
Velen geloven nog steeds dat het een ufo was
De Amerikaanse regering probeerde de commotie rond het Roswell-incident te sussen door te beweren dat het om een weerballon ging en niet om een vliegende schotel, zoals velen aanvankelijk beweerden. Volgens een opiniepeiling van CNN uit 1997 denkt echter bijna twee derde van de Amerikanen nog steeds dat het een ufo was die er was neergestort.
Betrouwbare getuigen?
Er waren vermeende getuigen die toen verklaarden dat ze hadden gezien hoe militairen het ongeïdentificeerde object en de lichamen van de buitenaardse wezens uit het gebied van het incident hadden weggehaald. Toch was er geen echt bewijs.
Ufo-toerisme
Momenteel leeft Roswell van het toerisme van ufo- en alien-liefhebbers uit de hele wereld die blijven zoeken naar antwoorden. De stad heeft zelfs een drukbezocht 'UFO Museum'.
Area 51
En als Roswell een mythische plek is binnen het ufo-fenomeen, dan wat gezegd van Area 51, een gebied midden in de Nevadawoestijn? Velen geloven dat de Amerikaanse regering er zowel ufo's als lichamen van aliens verbergt.
Programma's tegen de Sovjets
In 2013 declasseerde de CIA documenten waarin officieel werd erkend dat Area 51 een geheime militaire basis was waar niets buitenaards werd verborgen, maar dat het werd gebruikt om de luchtbewakingsprogramma's U-2 en OXCART te testen tegen de Sovjets tijdens de Koude Oorlog.
Ufo's en kernwapens
Zeven voormalige leden van de luchtmacht van de Verenigde Staten beweerden in 2010 dat ze tussen de jaren zestig en tachtig ufo's hadden waargenomen in de buurt van kernwapeninstallaties.
Gedeactiveerde raketten
Over een van de waargenomen ufo's zei Robert Salas, een voormalige kapitein van de luchtmacht: "Onze raketten begonnen in wat men een niet-actieve toestand noemt te komen; ze konden niet worden gelanceerd. Ze werden gewoon gedeactiveerd, terwijl dit object om ons heen was."
Buitenaardse interesse in kernwapens
Ufoloog Robert Hastings, die de persconferentie organiseerde waarop deze waarnemingen werden gemeld, zei: "Deze heren geloven dat de planeet wordt bezocht door wezens uit een andere wereld, die geïnteresseerd zijn in de geschiedenis van nucleaire wapens die begon aan het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog."
Bevolen om een ufo neer te halen
Op 20 mei 1957 kregen volgens de krant The Times twee Amerikaanse piloten het bevel een ufo neer te halen die boven het Engelse platteland zweefde. Enkele veteranen van het leger, zoals die op de afbeelding, hebben het verhaal publiekelijk verteld.
De ufo die de piloten achtervolgden
Volgens Milton Torres (een van de betrokken piloten) bewoog het object "onregelmatig". Bovendien was het zo groot als "een vliegend vliegdekschip" en "hing het enkele ogenblikken in de lucht voordat het verdween met een geschatte snelheid van 12.000 kilometer per uur."
Een ontvoering in Chili
Door de zaak van korporaal Armando Valdés kwam de Chileense ufologie wereldwijd onder de aandacht. Armando zag in 1977 samen met zeven andere soldaten een ufo. Ze zagen vreemde lichten in de lucht en daarna verdween Armando gedurende 15 minuten.
Hij herinnert zich de ontvoering niet
In een interview met Agence France Presse in november 1978 zei Armando dat hij zes of zeven stappen zette weg van de groep, richting het licht, en dat hij geen idee had wat er daarna gebeurde. Hij zei: "Iets trok me aan. Het was als een interne communicatie met het licht."
Het onverklaarbare verstrijken van de tijd
Korporaal Armando, die zich de vorige dag had geschoren, had een baard van vijf tot zes dagen. Bovendien duidde zijn polshorloge de datum 30 april aan in plaats van 26, en liep de klok 15 minuten achter.
Foto: age barros/Unsplash
Het ufo-incident in Voronezh
Op 27 september 1989 meldde het persbureau TASS dat voetballende jongens in een stadspark in Voronezh (Rusland) een roze gloed in de lucht zagen, een dieprode bal die zweefde, en een alien met drie ogen. De kinderen waren de enige getuigen, maar een politieagent meldde dat hij "een object in de lucht zag vliegen".
De Phoenix Lights
De Phoenix Lights (soms ook wel de 'Lichten boven Phoenix' genoemd) waren een reeks op grote schaal waargenomen ufo's boven Arizona, Nevada en de Mexicaanse staat Sonora, op 13 maart 1997. Er werden verschillende soorten lichten gezien door duizenden mensen.
Een deltavorming schip
Fife Symington, de voormalige gouverneur van Arizona en een voormalig luchtmachtofficier, verklaarde op CNN: "Ik zag een enorm deltavormig schip stilletjes over Squaw Peak vliegen, een bergketen in Phoenix. Het was echt indrukwekkend. Ik was stomverbaasd, omdat ik me naar het westen keerde op zoek naar de Phoenix Lights in de verte."
Waarnemingen van Chileense piloten
In 2007 onthulde het Chileense leger tijdens een bijeenkomst van ufologen in Viña del Mar dat enkele van zijn piloten ufo's hadden waargenomen. Kapitein Rodrigo Bravo omschreef het volgens het persbureau EFE als "spectaculaire ervaringen op verschillende plaatsen".
Winston Churchill hield ufo-waarnemingen geheim
In 2010 werd via de BBC en na enkele door het Ministerie van Defensie openbaar gemaakte rapporten onthuld dat de voormalige Britse premier Winston Churchill de opdracht gaf om vermeende ufo-waarnemingen door de luchtmacht vijftig jaar lang verborgen zodat er geen paniek zou ontstaan onder de bevolking.
Vernietigd ufo-bewijsmateriaal
Wetenschapper Nick Pope verklaarde aan de BBC dat "Churchill en Eisenhower besloten om de buitengewone waarnemingen van ufo's geheim te houden". Hij merkte ook op dat "het meeste archiefmateriaal uit de jaren vijftig werd vernietigd".
Oumuamua: een asteroïde of een buitenaards ruimteschip?
Oumuamua was een mysterieus object dat in 2017 door het zonnestelsel trok en werd ontdekt en drie dagen lang gevolgd door verschillende telescopen tot het verdween. Het incident veroorzaakte een groot debat in de wereld van de wetenschap. De meesten verzekerden dat het om een zeldzame asteroïde of komeet ging, maar anderen beweerden dat het misschien een enorm buitenaards ruimteschip was.
Kenmerken van het meest controversiële object
Volgens de gemaakte berekeningen was Oumuamua ongeveer 400 meter lang en 40 meter breed, en had het een roodachtig oppervlak. Het meest verrassende kenmerk was dat de baan ervan niet lineair was, maar eerder chaotisch, zeer snel draaiend en met zeer uitgesproken richtingsveranderingen.
Doelbewust gestuurd door aliens?
Volgens astronomen Shmuel Bialy en Abraham Loeb (foto) is Oumuamua mogelijk een volledig operationele sonde die opzettelijk door een buitenaardse beschaving naar de buurt van de aarde is gestuurd.
Een nooit eerder gezien opject
Loeb is een groot verdediger van het feit dat Oumuamua het eerste ontdekte object in het zonnestelsel is dat daarbuiten is ontstaan. Hij herinnerde ons in een interview met de BBC eraan dat het ongewone kenmerken heeft die het tot een nooit eerder gezien zeldzaam object maken.
Buitenaardse bezoeken tijdens de pandemie
De laatste vermeende waarnemingen deden zich voor en namen exponentieel toe tijdens de maandenlange lockdown van de COVID-19-pandemie. Plots was − volgens de getuigenissen op sociale media met foto's en video's − het luchtruim gevuld met ufo's.
Andere gemelde waarnemingen
Om enkele historische waarnemingen te noemen in de wereld: de waarneming op Antarctica (1965); het ufo-incident in Teheran (1976); die van Manises (1979), de Canarische Eilanden (1976-1979) en Ochate (1981), alle drie in Spanje; het Colares-incident in 1977 (Brazilië) ...
Beroemdheden en ufo's
De Republikeinse kandidaat voor het Congres in Miami, Bettina Rodríguez, heeft gezegd dat ze in 2009 werd ontvoerd door aliens. Ook de Argentijnse artiest Andrés Calamaro heeft bevestigd dat hij een ufo zag in de jaren tachtig, toen hij op tournee was met zijn groep Los Plateros.
Zijn we echt alleen in het heelal?
Het ufo-fenomeen is nog steeds zeer interessant en bevat, zoals alle regeringen toegeven, mysteries. Voor veel van deze incidenten is er geen wetenschappelijke verklaring, al kan dat zijn omdat we niet over alle gegevens beschikken. Hoe dan ook: vliegende schotels zijn iconische, literaire en cinematografische elementen.
Captured on Camera: Multiple UFO Sightings Amidst Alleged Extraterrestrial Encounters
Captured on Camera: Multiple UFO Sightings Amidst Alleged Extraterrestrial Encounters
In recent years, the topic of UFO sightings has transitioned from fringe conspiracy theories to a subject of legitimate inquiry and discussion. With multiple reports of unidentified flying objects gracing our skies, the world stands at the precipice of potentially groundbreaking discoveries, leaving us with more questions than answers.
The Global UFO Phenomenon
Historically, UFO sightings were often dismissed or explained away by mundane factors. However, a paradigm shift is occurring. Regions like the Middle East, previously not known for UFO activity, are now emerging as hotspots for such sightings. These mysterious metallic orbs, observed in various locations worldwide, defy conventional explanations and challenge our understanding of aviation technology.
Government’s Involvement and Revelations
Amidst this surge in sightings, reports have surfaced about a former intelligence official disclosing classified information to the US Congress. Allegedly, the government possesses “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles. This claim, if true, signifies a monumental leap in our understanding of extraterrestrial life and technology.
David Grush, a former combat officer and member of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, has stated that alien technology, ranging from partial fragments to fully intact vehicles, has been recovered and studied for decades. The implications of such findings are profound, suggesting that we might not be alone in the universe.
Increasing Sightings and Public Interest
The increase in UFO sightings, especially during the lockdown period of 2020, has piqued public interest. Sightings were reported both during the day and night, sparking widespread speculation and debate. This surge coincided with a time when the world was grappling with the unprecedented challenges of a global pandemic, leading to heightened public vigilance and curiosity about the unknown.
The Role of NASA and Ongoing Research
NASA has formed an independent study team, consisting of 16 experts from diverse fields, to examine UFOs. This initiative underscores the growing scientific interest in understanding these phenomena. The lack of comprehensive data and its fragmented nature remain significant hurdles. However, the team’s efforts to collate and analyze available information could pave the way for new insights into these unexplained occurrences.
The Future of UFO Research
As we delve deeper into the mysteries of UFO sightings, the quest for understanding continues. The revelations and research efforts by various government and independent agencies are drawing us closer to potentially answering some of the most intriguing questions about our universe and existence.
VIDEO:
Multiple UFO Sightings Caught On Camera During Alleged Extraterrestrial Activity
With each reported sighting and piece of evidence, we inch closer to possibly unravelling the enigma of UFOs and their origins. Whether these sightings are of extraterrestrial origin or represent advanced technologies yet unknown to us, the pursuit of knowledge continues, igniting the imagination and curiosity of people worldwide.
Elke dag trakteertNASA ons op een adembenemend uitzicht op het universum in de ‘Astronomiefoto van de Dag‘. Vandaag (8) deelde de ruimtevaartorganisatie een foto van de camera aan boord van het Orion-ruimtevaartuig tijdens de opwindende Artemis 1-missie op de maan.
De afbeelding werd gemaakt op het moment dat het ruimtevaartuig de maan naderde voor een terugstuwraketpassage en toont een spectaculair uitzicht op het maanoppervlak, met nadruk op de Oceanus Procellarum, ook bekend als de Oceaan der Stormen, met zijn donkere en gladde landschap.
Het centrum van de afbeelding toont de indrukwekkende Marius-krater, met een diameter van 41 kilometer, en aan de rechterkant bevindt zich de Kepler-krater.
Fly Slowly Through Enceladus' Plumes to Detect Life
Enceladus is blasting water into space from the jets at its southern pole. This makes it the ideal place to send a dedicated mission, flying the spacecraft through the plumes with life-detection instruments s. A new study suggests that a spacecraft must proceed carefully through the plumes, keeping its speed below 4.2 km/second (2,236 miles per hour). Using a specialized, custom-built aerosol impact spectrometer at these speeds will allow fragile amino acids to be captured by the spacecraft’s sample collector. Any faster, they’ll shatter, providing inclusive results.
One of the biggest surprises of the 20-year Cassini mission to the Saturn system was the discovery of the active geysers at Enceladus. At only about 500 km (310 miles) in diameter, the ice-covered Enceladus should be too small and too far from the Sun to be active. Instead, this little moon is one of the most geologically dynamic objects in the Solar System.
Geysers spew from Enceladus in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Cassini mission.
Cassini’s stunning backlit images of this moon show plumes erupting in Yellowstone-like geysers, emanating from tiger-stripe-shaped fractures in the moon’s surface. The discovery of the geysers took on more importance when Cassini later determined the plumes contained water ice and organics. Since life as we know it relies on water and a source of energy, this small but energetic moon has been added to the short list of possible places for life in our Solar System.
During three of Cassini’s passes of Enceladus in 2008 and 2009, the spacecraft’s Cosmic Dust Analyser measured the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds of 6.5–17.5 km/s, and vaporized instantly. While electrical fields inside the instrument were able to separate the various constituents of the resulting impact cloud for analysis, for a future mission, scientists would like to measure the particles in the plumes without completely vaporizing them.
Back in 2012, researchers from the University of California San Diego started working on a custom-built unique aerosol impact spectrometer, designed to study collision dynamics of single aerosols and particles at high velocities. Although it wasn’t built specifically to study ice grain impacts, it turns out this instrument might be exactly what planetary scientists are looking for to use at Enceladus, or even at Jupiter’s moon Europa, where there is growing evidence of active plumes of water vapor erupting from its surface.
Robert Continetti’s one-of-a-kind aerosol impact spectrometer was used in this experiment. Ice grains impact the microchannel plate detector (far right) at hypervelocity speeds, which can then be characterized in-situ.
“This apparatus is the only one of its kind in the world that can select single particles and accelerate or decelerate them to chosen final velocities,” said Robert Continetti, a professor from UC San Diego, in a press release. “From several micron diameters down to hundreds of nanometers, in a variety of materials, we’re able to examine particle behavior, such as how they scatter or how their structures change upon impact.”
From Cassini’s measurements, scientists estimate the ice plumes at Enceladus blast out at approximately .4 km/s (800 miles per hour). A spacecraft would have to fly at the right speeds to make sure the particles could be captured intact.
This composite image shows suspected plumes of water vapour erupting at the 7 o’clock position off the limb of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The plumes, photographed by Hubble’s Imaging Spectrograph, were seen in silhouette as the moon passed in front of Jupiter. Hubble’s ultraviolet sensitivity allowed for the features, rising over 160 kilometres above Europa’s icy surface, to be discerned. The water is believed to come from a subsurface ocean on Europa. The Hubble data were taken on January 26, 2014. The image of Europa, superimposed on the Hubble data, is assembled from data from the Galileo and Voyager missions.
Currently slated for launch in October of 2024, the Europa Clipper will travel to Jupiter (it will orbit Jupiter instead of Europa directly). It has a spectrometer on board to determine the composition of the surface and scan any plumes spouting water into space. Continetti and colleagues hope that their research will help determine what impact speeds would be optimal. But they also hope any future probes to Saturn might be able to identify a specific series of molecules in the ice grains that could point to whether life exists in the subsurface oceans of these moons. The challenge is having the molecules survive their speedy ejection from the moon and collection by the probe. They are confident their detector can do it.
“The implications this has for detecting life elsewhere in the Solar System without missions to the surface of these ocean-world moons is very exciting, but our work goes beyond biosignatures in ice grains,” said Continetti. “It has implications for fundamental chemistry as well. We are excited by the prospect of … looking at the formation of the building blocks of life from chemical reactions activated by ice grain impact.”
99% of Space Junk is Undetectable. That Could Change Soon
Private and military organizations are tracking some of the 170 million pieces of space junk orbiting the planet, but they’re limited to how small an object they can detect. Only chunks larger than a softball can be tracked with radar or optical systems, and that only accounts for less than 1% of the junk out there.
But a new technique is being developed to resolve space junk to pieces smaller than one millimeter in diameter.
Called Space Debris Identification and Tracking (SINTRA), the project will test out a new technique that uses the state-of-the-art sensors to detect plasma waves created by fields of debris. The new sensors are used along with existing sensors, such as ground-based radar, tracking satellites, and optical sensors in order to identify and track space debris in the one-millimeter size range.
“Right now, we detect space debris by looking for objects that reflect light or radar signals,” said Nilton Renno, from the University of Michigan and a professor of climate and space sciences, and engineering and aerospace engineering. “The smaller the objects get, the harder it becomes to get sunlight or radar signals strong enough to detect them from the ground.”
SINTRA is a 4-year project that will help advance the sensors needed for detecting orbital debris signatures. SIINTRA is a collaborative project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s Space Debris Identification and Tracking Program. The project includes military contractor Blue Halo as well as several universities, such as the University of Michigan and the University of Alaska Fairbanks as well as MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and JHU Applied Physics Laboratory.
Estimated number of objects in low Earth orbit. Credit: NASA
The idea behind SINTRA is to search for the electrical signals emitted by clouds of space debris. Colliding pieces of space debris explode into tiny fragments, some of which vaporize into a charged gas due to the heat created by the impact.
“When the cloud of charged gas and debris fragments expands, it creates lightning-like energy bursts, similar to signals produced by static sparks that appear after rubbing a freshly laundered blanket,” said Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti, an assistant research scientist in climate and space sciences and engineering, and a lead scientist on the project for the University of Michigan.
The charged gas and debris fragments can create electric field pulses whenever they come close enough to each other, producing additional electrical bursts. These signals last for only a fraction of a second, but they could help track pieces of space debris and clouds of microscopic fragments that form when debris collides.
For example, when two pieces of aluminum collide at typical orbital speeds, they emit an electrical burst strong enough for a 26-meter dish with a high-quality radio receiver to detect from the ground, according to the University of Michigan team’s most recent computer simulations. The electric field pulses should similarly be detectable with more sensitive radio arrays, such as NASA’s Deep Space Network.
A piece of space junk punched this hole into the hull of NASA’s Solar Max spacecraft. Image credit: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office.
If successful, SINTRA would enable the first tracking capability for the ultra-small debris population, reducing risk to worldwide space operations. Space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) have an average impact velocity of 36,000 km/hr (22,500 MPH). Therefore, even the smallest of debris can cause significant damage to operational satellites.
But there’s a lot of work yet to do in making the SINTRA concept work. The frequency of the electrical signals can vary with the speed of the collision; additionally, what the debris is made of also changes many variables, which could complicate detection.
In a press release from the University of Michigan, Akhavan-Tafti said that to see the electric signals, they need to be stronger than the ground instrument’s background signals and pass through Earth’s upper atmosphere.
For the project, the team will start by measuring real signals with NASA’s Deep Space Network, and analyze data from hypervelocity experiments at the Naval Research Laboratory and NASA’s Ames Research Center. Using the facilities’ lasers, the team can launch different kinds of debris at targets over a range of orbital speeds and measure the characteristics of the electric emissions resulting from the impact. If such experiments reveal a way to detect a wide range of electrical signals generated during space debris collisions, they could determine not just where space debris is, but what it looks like and is made of.
In a press release earlier this year, the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity agency said the goal of the SINTRA program is to fill gaps in current space debris-monitoring systems, which currently only track and monitor debris objects larger than four inches across. They said the detection, tracking, and characterization of lethal non-trackable space debris would support the safe operation of valuable space assets worldwide.
Another Fast Radio Burst is Coming from a Hypernebula. Also, Hypernebulae are a Thing
If nothing else catches your attention in the title then surely ‘hypernebula’ does! There are some amazing processes scattered around the cosmos, of particular interest are the fast radio bursts (FRB). These brief flashes of radiation happen without warning…until now. A team in the Netherlands have identified a second FRB as coming from within a hyper nebula – a dense and highly magnetised cloud of plasma that is illuminated by a powerful but unknown source!
FRBs are short outbursts of radio waves which last only a fraction of a second. They seem to originate from distant galaxies and one of the first to be discovered was FRB 20121102A. A second FRB source has been confirmed in the paper by the Netherlands team, this one known as FRB 20190520B. It was discovered by the FAST telescope in China and appears to be associated with hyper nebula just like the other repeating FRBs. Investigations go further revealing that it seems to be associated with a more constant source of radio waves.
The team followed up on their observations using the Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) which is a network of radio telescopes spread across Europe. Interferometry involves combining the signal form multiple dishes in different places. Using interferometry like this enables astronomers to capture images with a resolution far greater than they could achieve from the individual dishes.
Their observations from the team, led by Shivani Bhandari suggest the size of the host hyper nebula was of the order of 30 light years across, three times the size of the Crab Nebula. They were also able to measure the luminosity revealing it was around a hundred thousand times that of the Sun. This suggests the source may well be an extremely magnetic neutron star known as a magnetar (a neutron star is the highly compressed dense core of a star that went supernova).
Magentars are curious objects but one thing we do know is that they can produce a powerful stream of charged particles that create the surrounding nebulosity and it is from here that the radio source is being emitted. The magnetar inside FRB 20190520B is likely to be generating radio emissions which are prt of the driving force of the FRBs. The team have worked through their data and believe the magnetar to be around 4 and 1,900 years old making and the hyper nebula to be around 900 years old. Compared to most objects in the Universe, these are very very young.
One of the magic things about science is that there are often alternative theories. In the case of these repeating FRBs it may be that the hyper nebula is powered not by magnetism but by gravitation. In systems where there is a black hole or neutron star devouring matter from a nearby companion there could be a burst of radio waves as a result of powerful emissions.
Whether driven by magnetism or gravitational potential energy, these two FRBs are the first two that seem to repeat and are associated with a hyper nebula. Interestingly they are both hosted in low mass dwarf galaxies. They clearly show high levels of activity in young and energetic FRBs but it is interesring that even their older counterparts still emit radio bursts. There are many mysteries about FRBs but these latest observations hope to start to unravel their mysteries.
Het is mogelijk om robots met gedachten te besturen Het klinkt misschien als een sciencefictionverhaal, maar het kunnen besturen van een robot met gedachten krijgt steeds meer voet aan de grond in de wereld van de technologie.
China neemt het voortouw Op het gebied van gedachtengestuurde robots lopen de Chinezen voorop. En dat is niet verwonderlijk, want de laatste jaren hebben de Chinezen ongelooflijke vooruitgang geboekt in wetenschap en technologie. Een goed voorbeeld daarvan is de kunstmatige zon die het land heeft ontwikkeld en die onbeperkte energie kan opwekken.
Een nieuw besturingssysteem Uit enkele openbaringen van de krant South China Morning Post uit Hongkong blijkt dat de Chinezen een nieuw besturingssysteem ontwikkelen dat toekomstige ruimtemissies voorgoed zou kunnen veranderen. Dankzij kunstmatige intelligentie en hersengolven is het straks mogelijk om een robotarm te besturen met het menselijk brein.
Een nooit eerder bereikte precisie Veel details van deze nieuwe technologie zijn nog topgeheim, of tenminste nog niet uit het onderzoek dat in het Chinese wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Control and Measurement of Computers verscheen uitgelekt. Zeker is dat deze nieuwe manier van werken een nooit eerder bereikte precisie heeft.
Waar wordt het toegepast? Het is de bedoeling dat de Chinese astronauten – ook wel taikonauten genoemd – op het Chinese ruimtestation met uiterste precisie een enorme robotarm kunnen bewegen.
Het Chinese ruimtestation China beschikt reeds over twee ruimtestations, Tiangong-1 en Tiangong-2. Het land werkt momenteel aan een nog groter derde station met meerdere modules, waarop deze gigantische arm zal worden geïnstalleerd.
Hoe werkt de nieuwe technologie? Laten we eens proberen te begrijpen hoe dit nieuwe en formidabele besturingssysteem werkt. Op het hoofd van de bediener is een apparaat aangesloten, waarmee hij zich alleen maar hoeft te concentreren op het deel van de robotarm dat hij wil bewegen, en deze de ontvangen order uitvoert.
Codering van neuronale impulsen De verschillende onderdelen waaruit de robotarm bestaat zullen met tussenpozen oplichten totdat ze door de bediener worden gekozen. De neuronale impulsen zullen door het apparaat worden gecodeerd en op die manier overgebracht worden van geest naar object, in dit geval een robotarm.
Kunstmatige intelligentie Het verschil tussen sciencefiction en werkelijkheid wordt gevormd door de hersengolven die de hersenen naar het scherm sturen. Aangezien deze echter te zwak zijn om al het werk zelf te doen, worden ze geholpen door kunstmatige intelligentie.
De uitgevoerde tests met deze nieuwe technologie zijn werkelijk verbluffend. We hebben het in feite over een doeltreffendheid en precisie gelijk aan 99%. Vergelijk dat maar eens met de technologieën die vandaag de dag worden gebruikt met besturingssystemen die een nauwkeurigheid hebben van 40 tot 80%.
Waarom telekinese in de ruimte? Je kunt je afvragen wat de reden van de Chinese onderzoekers was om tot deze ongelooflijke innovatie te komen. Daarop is het antwoord: de gewichtloosheid.
Het ontbreken van zwaartekracht De ruimte is, zoals bekend, een omgeving zonder zwaartekracht. Daardoor kunnen astronauten sommige systemen aan boord alleen bedienen met joysticks en toetsenborden, met alle problemen van dien als gevolg van de gewichtloosheid.
Geen joysticks en toetsenborden meer Wang Congqing, de bedenker van de technologie, zegt hierover: "Bij toekomstige ruimtemissies zullen machines en mensen samenwerken, waardoor toetsenborden, muizen en joysticks niet langer meer nodig zijn. Het enige dat hiervoor nodig is, zijn de hersenen en de ogen".
Niet alleen in de ruimte Maar dit is niet alleen van toepassing op de ruimtevaart. De technologie op basis van 'denkkracht' zou ook uitgebreid kunnen worden naar andere sectoren, zoals fabrieken.
Aangeboden door The Daily Digest
Foto: Pixabay
Aan lopende banden Een besturingssysteem met telekinese kan in een werkomgeving waar voortdurend nauw contact is tussen mens en machine een hele revolutie teweegbrengen, waarbij de processen aan de lopende band veel sneller en soepeler verlopen.
Wachten op ontwikkelingen Momenteel bevindt dit revolutionaire besturingssysteem zich nog in de testfase. Het is nog even wachten op verdere ontwikkelingen en afwachten of de astronauten er daadwerkelijk van kunnen profiteren.
At first glance, it may look like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill camouflage coat. However, what a group of Chinese graduate students have actually developed is a cost-effective “invisibility coat” capable of concealing the human body from AI-monitored security cameras, both day and night.
At the forgivable price of just $70 USD, the high-tech jacket, which has been dubbed the “InvisDefense coat,” was crafted by a team of four graduate students from Wuhan University in China. The real-life sci-fi coat secured the top prize at the inaugural “Huawei Cup,” a cybersecurity innovation contest sponsored by the Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Professor Wang Zheng from the School of Computer Science oversaw the team, comprising doctoral student Wei Hui from the School of Computer Science, along with postgraduates Li Zhubo and Dai Shuyv from the School of Cyber Science and Engineering, and postgraduate Jian Zehua from the Economics and Management School.
The InvisDefense invisibility cloak involves a kind of camouflage pattern designed by a new algorithm, which challenges the efficacy of this commonly used method of AI pedestrian detection. “In layman’s terms, it means cameras can detect you but cannot determine that you are human,” according to a statement released by Wuhan University (WHU).
Diamgram released by Wuhan University detailing the function of the “invisibility coat”
(Image: Courtesy of Wei Hui).
In contrast to stealth fighter jets, which are only invisible to radar, the InvisDefense invisibility cloak renders itself undetectable to machine recognition rather than the naked eye. “Visual neural network refers to machine vision, not visual recognition of humans. It is widely used in video surveillance equipment with the pedestrian detection function and smart cars,” Professor Zheng explained.
The all-weather InvisDefense coat is visible to the human eye. However, to cameras, specific camouflage patterns disrupt the visual neural network during the day, while at night, InvisDefense incorporates temperature control materials, allowing stealth protection from thermal infrared imaging through distinct color blocks.
An innovative defense product, the InvisDefense invisibility cloak offers a potential new means to safeguard personal privacy and security. However, there are also concerns that arise from the development of such technology; the design of the coat could potentially confuse certain detection systems employed in self-driving cars and similar technologies.
During tests of the coat using on-campus security cameras, the accuracy of human detection saw a reduction of 57 percent. The researchers noted that one of the first challenges in developing the coat was finding a balance to deceive both the camera and the human eye.
“Nowadays, many surveillance devices can detect human bodies. Cameras on the road have pedestrian detection functions and smart cars can identify pedestrians, roads and obstacles,” Professor Wang told the South China Morning Post.
“Our InvisDefense allows the camera to capture you, but it cannot tell if you are human.”
Outside of the consumer trends that may potentially evolve from this technology, Professor Wang Zheng noted the invention may likely find possible applications in stealth military uniforms to evade detection from drones or AI units.
Furthermore, he notes that the algorithm could prove valuable in AI research, primarily by allowing researchers to more fully identify potential vulnerabilities.
Unidentified flying objects are no longer a myth. Their existence has been accepted at the official level. The US government along with NASA has started an investigation on UFOs. The governments are not only looking for them into the sky but the underwater anomalies have also become a big concern for the military.
While the US government has found no evidence to call UFOs alien spacecraft, in 2013, the Russian government classified several documents describing the meetings of Russian soldiers with underwater UFOs including humanoids.
During the Soviet era, it was restricted to talk about UFOs and USOs but when it got disintegrated, some files came up with shocking information about alien spacecraft. The declassified documents said that the Russian navy found these unidentified objects technologically superior to Earth vehicles.
Russian submarine Severodvinsk (K-560)
One of the undated accounts was a Soviet nuclear submarine’s encounter with the formation of six alien spacecraft in the south of the Pacific ocean. At the depth of 260 meters, the six disc-like objects were moving towards the submarine at the speed of 426 km per hour. The crew could not escape their pursuit, and the commander ordered the crew to rise to the surface. The crew saw through the periscope that the objects came out of the water and took off at absurdly fast speed.
The same incident was covered by the British UFO researcher named Philip Mantle in his book “Russia’s USO Secrets: Unidentified Submersible Objects in Russian and International Waters.”
According to former nuclear submarine commander Yury Beketov, many mysterious events also took place in the Bermuda Triangle region. The devices failed for no apparent reason. He believed that the UFOs were behind it.
“[In Translation]We have repeatedly observed that devices record the movement of material objects at an unimaginable speed. We measured some speeds – it is about 230 knots (400 km per hour). Such speed is difficult to create on the surface, only in the air. But there is gigantic resistance in the water. As if the laws of physics do not apply to these objects. There is only one conclusion: the creatures who created such material objects significantly surpass us in development” Beketov said.
Another Navy intelligence Captain Igor Barclay said that the Unidentified submerged objects were seen in the places where the Russian Navy and NATO fleet are concentrated. He said: “These are the Bahamas and Bermuda, Puerto Rico. Especially often UFOs are seen in the deepest region of the Atlantic – in the south of the Bermuda Triangle and in the Caribbean.”
Lake Baikal
Fishermen often talked about glowing light coming from the depth of Lake Baikal and people who went swimming in the lake were dragged by the unknown creaturs. There is also a myth associated with the lake, talking about water spirits or krakens. Lake Baikal is the largest and deepest freshwater lake with a depth of approx. 1642 meters.
The most interesting encounter of the Russian military occurred beneath Lake Baikal in 1982. Seven trained Russian navy divers claimed to have seen about 9 feet tall humanoids, 50 meters deep into the lake during a research mission. They were wearing tight silvery suits and spherical helmets on their heads. It was surprising for the divers to see them without any scuba gears, breathing underwater.
The divers decided to catch one of them but the entities reacted with the powerful force that propelled the entire group of divers up to the surface from the deep water. Due to the rapid decompression, three divers died while others got severely injured.
A former employee of the British Government’s Ministry of Defence Nick Pope said, “These strange humanoid figures were much bigger than human beings and appeared to be wearing a helmet of some sort.”
In 1959, the Soviet TU-104 Camel jet airliner was chased by a UFO while flying over Lake Baikal. “Before falling into the lake, the captain of the ship allegedly informed the dispatchers about an unidentified flying object moving in the sky. All those present in the control room at that time had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. And the people fishing at the lake nearby saw a flying saucer chasing the falling plane – it accompanied the aircraft until the latter fell to the water.”
After flying objects, now underwater objects have become a subject of investigation for the governments. If extraterrestrials exist, then the oceans are the best place to hide as they are still hard for humans to explore.
I found some interesting structures and thought hey, make a post and share it with others, because often I find things but don't show them. I still have things I found years ago and haven't shown anyone. A few worthy of an episode of Ancient Aliens.
I found these structures and they were at the center of the craters. They are dark structures sitting in a highly reflective sand crater. The reflectiveness of the crater makes the really obvious. This really explains why NASA never went back to the moon, it's occupied already.
Don Shrum, an ordinary man with an extraordinary tale, ventured into the Tahoe National Forest for a weekend hunting trip. Working for Aerojet Corporation, a military subcontractor, Shrum was a welder by profession, skilled in handling Polaris and Titan nuclear missiles. This routine excursion took a turn into the surreal, setting the stage for one of the most intriguing UFO sightings in history.
The Encounter: A Night of Unearthly Visitors
As night fell, Shrum realized he was lost. Opting for safety, he climbed a large pine tree to avoid potential wild animals. This decision inadvertently positioned him as a witness to a bizarre and terrifying spectacle. A silent, hovering light, initially mistaken for a rescue helicopter, revealed itself as something far more enigmatic. This light was a precursor to the arrival of a huge, cylindrical UFO and smaller saucer-shaped crafts, marking the beginning of a long, otherworldly ordeal.
Shrum’s account details encounters with beings not of this Earth. Small humanoid figures with large, goggle-like eyes, and a robot-like entity featured prominently in his harrowing experience. These beings, equipped with advanced technology, tried various methods to capture Shrum, who valiantly defended himself using arrows and improvised firebombs.
The Aftermath: A Life Forever Changed
The impact of this encounter on Don Shrum was profound. He endured severe PTSD and his professional life suffered dramatically. Despite the personal costs, Shrum’s story remained consistent over the years, lending credibility to his extraordinary claim.
Wright-Patterson AFB Involvement: A Clue to the Truth?
The involvement of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, known for its connection to Project Blue Book and UFO investigations, adds an intriguing government angle to the story. Investigators from the base took Shrum’s account seriously, recording his testimony and examining evidence, hinting at the significance of this case.
Skepticism and Belief: The Ongoing Debate
While skeptics point to the lack of physical evidence and the story’s alignment with 1960s sci-fi tropes, believers argue the psychological impact on Shrum and corroborative statements from other witnesses validate the encounter. The Air Force’s dismissal of the event as a hoax contrasts starkly with the detailed investigation they conducted, leaving room for speculation.
VIDEO:
The Why Files – Mystery in Cisco Grove: Don Shrum’s Encounter with UFOs, Aliens and Robots
The Cisco Grove encounter remains a fascinating chapter in the history of UFO sightings. It’s a testament to the enduring human fascination with the unknown and the unexplained. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, the story of Don Shrum’s night in the forest is a compelling narrative of human resilience in the face of the incomprehensible.
Alles wat je moet weten over het noorderlicht Iedereen zou dit natuurfenomeen minstens een keer in zijn leven moeten zien. Klik verder in deze galerij om meer te weten te komen over aurora borealis en de beste plekken om het licht te spotten!
Fenomeen De aurora borealis is een visueel fenomeen dat voorkomt boven de magnetische polen van het noordelijk halfrond. Hetzelfde fenomeen doet zich voor op andere planeten zoals Jupiter, Saturnus, Venus en Mars.
Hoe het onstaat De aurora borealis ontstaat wanneer een stroom van geladen deeltjes door de zonnewind worden meegevoerd naar de atmosfeer van de aarde en daar in botsing komt met het magnetische veld van de aarde.
Fairbanks, VS De stad Fairbanks in Alaska bevindt zich op de 65e breedtegraad, direct onder de aurora ovaal (de gigantische ring boven de magnetische noordpool waar het noorderlicht ontstaat). Hier zie je het noorderlicht op z'n best!
Nellim, Finland Nellim ligt in Lapland, op ongeveer 8 kilometer van de Russische grens. Dit is een van de beste spots om het noorderlicht te bekijken in Finland.
Idaho Panhandle National Forests, VS Dit natuurreservaat, gelegen op het meest noordelijke puntje van de Idaho Panhandle, is de perfecte plek om te wandelen en de aurora borealis te spotten.
Abisko, Zweden Dit dorp in Zweden heeft een microklimaat dat vrijwel wolkenvrij is. Dit zorgt voor een grote kans op zichtbaarheid van het noorderlicht.
Longyearbyen, Noorwegen Deze stad ligt ongeveer 900 kilometer ten noorden van het Noorse vaste land, wat het een perfecte plek maakt om het natuurfenomeen mee te pikken.
Unveiled: Could This Be the Real Vandenberg UFO Footage from 1964? #UFOTruth #VandenbergMystery
Unveiled: Could This Be the Real Vandenberg UFO Footage from 1964? #UFOTruth #VandenbergMystery
In the vast expanse of our universe, mysteries abound, and few are as captivating as the story that unfolded in 1964 – a tale that intertwines the enigmatic world of UFOs with the high-stakes arena of military might. Today, we delve into a chapter of this saga, brought to life by an alleged leaked video that claims to show an unprecedented encounter.
The Backdrop: A Missile, A Camera, and An Uninvited Guest
It was a day like any other at the Big Sur Test Range in California, or so it seemed. The U.S. Air Force was testing a nuclear missile, an event meticulously captured by cameras. Among these cameras, one operated by Lieutenant Robert Jacobs, was about to document something extraordinary. According to Jacobs, his film captured an unidentified flying object (UFO) in the act of intercepting and disabling the nuclear warhead with a precise laser-like beam.
The Claim: A Warhead, A UFO, and A Laser
The story goes that the warhead, instead of following its predetermined trajectory, malfunctioned and plunged into the sea – an outcome allegedly caused by the intervention of the UFO. For decades, this narrative has circulated in whispers and rumors, never substantiated by concrete evidence, until now.
The Alleged Leaked Video: A Glimpse into the Unknown
This video, which has recently surfaced, purports to be the long-lost evidence of that day’s extraordinary events. It offers viewers a glimpse of what might be one of the most significant encounters between human technology and an unidentified aerial phenomenon.
Skepticism and Enthusiasm: The Dual Faces of Reception
While the authenticity of this video is yet to be verified, it has already ignited a firestorm of debate. Skeptics question its legitimacy, pointing to the absence of corroborative evidence and the ease with which digital content can be manipulated. Meanwhile, enthusiasts see it as a potential key to unlocking a long-standing mystery, perhaps even a doorway to understanding advanced extraterrestrial technology.
The Scientific Stance: Caution and Curiosity
The scientific community, ever cautious, urges a measured approach. They advocate for a thorough analysis of the video, considering all possible explanations, before jumping to conclusions about extraterrestrial involvement.
A Story Continue
As we present this video to the world, we invite viewers to watch with an open mind but also a critical eye. This alleged leaked video, whether it proves to be a groundbreaking discovery or an intriguing piece of fiction, adds a fascinating chapter to the ongoing story of humanity’s quest to understand the unknown realms of our universe.
A Call to the Audience: Your Thoughts Matter
What do you think about this alleged encounter? Does this video change your perspective on UFOs and extraterrestrial life, or do you remain skeptical? Share your thoughts and join the conversation as we explore the boundaries of our knowledge and the mysteries of the skies above.
Elke dag presenteert de NASA ons een adembenemend uitzicht op het heelal in de “Astronomiefoto van de Dag.” Vandaag (6) benadrukte de ruimtevaartorganisatie een kosmische strijd tussen sterren en stof in de Carinanevel.
De afbeelding is vastgelegd door de Hubble Space Telescope en onthult een kosmisch schouwspel binnen de regio die bekend staat als de Mystieke Berg, bestaande uit zuilen van stof die, ondanks hun ondoorzichtige uiterlijk, voornamelijk bestaan uit transparant waterstofgas.
In deze hemelse scène ontketenen nieuw gevormde en massieve sterren een energetische dans, waarbij hun licht en winden geleidelijk de stellaire kraamkamers verdampen waar ze zijn geboren. Sommige van deze stofzuilen, die lijken op hemelse fakkels, worden daadwerkelijk verlicht door nabijgelegen sterren, waardoor een prachtige ‘verwarring’ van licht en schaduw ontstaat.
De Carinanevel, officieel bekend als HH1066, strekt zich uit over bijna een lichtjaar en bevindt zich op ongeveer 7.500 lichtjaar van de aarde.
Woman Witnesses Strange UFO Sighting In British Columbia | Alien Mysteries
In July 1991, Corina Saebels sees a spaceship hovering over her home in Aldergrove, British Columbia. When she learns that she disappeared for more than 45 minutes, it leave her to question what really happened to her.
Ross Coulthart Drops Juicy UFO Bombs on Chris Cuomo Show
Buitenaardse wezens en UFO's - Wat is er ECHT aan de hand?
Er zijn maar weinig dingen die zo tot onze verbeelding spreken als buitenaardse wezens en UFO's. Maar de laatste tijd is er allerlei nieuws, waaronder hoorzittingen van overheidsfunctionarissen, en NASA heeft nu zelfs een rapport. Dus wat is er aan de hand, en krijgen we bezoek van kleine groene mensen? Laten we dit samen uitzoeken!
Explore the puzzling narratives of grey aliens| UFO Witness| Discovery
Dive into the heart of Colorado, a hotbed of extraterrestrial activity, on America's UFO Investigation with Ben Hansen. Witness firsthand accounts of UFO sightings, alien encounters, and the chilling mystery surrounding over 8000 cattle mutilations investigated by the FBI. Join investigator Katie Griboski, who brings forward reports of mutilated sheep, cows, horses, and dogs. Uncover theories, including military involvement in the unsettling cattle mutilations. Find out more about the Tic Tac UFO sightings and the disturbing removal of livestock organs. Are the greys creating an alien-human hybrid? Join us on Discovery Channel India for an extraordinary journey on America's UFO Investigation.
Strange phenomenon appears above thunderstorm at high altitude
Strange phenomenon appears above thunderstorm at high altitude
The existence of elusive electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere, known by intriguing names like red sprites, blue jets, pixies, and elves, has been a subject of debate for years.
Astronaut Andreas Mogensen from the European Space Agency (ESA) recently documented rare thunder phenomena as part of the Thor-Davis experiment during his Huginn mission at the International Space Station.
Among his remarkable captures was a red sprite, a type of Transient Luminous Event (TLE), occurring above thunderclouds at an altitude ranging from 40 to 80 kilometers. Scientists estimate the red sprite's dimensions to be approximately 14 by 26 kilometers.
In a previous instance in 2015, Mogensen also successfully recorded kilometer-wide blue flashes at an altitude of around 18 kilometers, including a pulsating blue jet reaching up to 40 kilometers.
This atmospheric phenomenon remains poorly understood, constituting a mysterious aspect of our atmosphere. Electrical storms extending into the stratosphere not only contribute to the fascination of these events but also bear implications for our understanding of how the atmosphere shields us from radiation.
Cloud turret
Lightning seen from Space Station
Red sprites and blue jets
What Is a Sprite? Earth's Super Rare Red Lightning Explained
Two UFOs Caught Near Earths Moon, Using Nikon Camera, 6-4-2023, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Two UFOs Caught Near Earths Moon, Using Nikon Camera, 6-4-2023, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: 6-4-2023
Location of sighting: Earths moon
Eyewitness states:
Real and raw, the original and this video, Not a thing done but slow it down to get a better look, Live Attack on the Moon? Filming the moon as I do, and captured, what ever it is? Is very interesting, nice capture of a meteor strike? Attack on the moon? Thanks liemeewatcher
This interesting video shows not one, but two UFOs as they shoot near the moon. One smaller object comes from a different angle to intercept the larger object, possibly to investigate and insure that the craft is authorized to be in that area. Fantastic and rare catch.
Coast to Coast AM: The Flatwoods Monster Chronicles – The UFO Connection
Coast to Coast AM: The Flatwoods Monster Chronicles – The UFO Connection
In the quaint town of Flatwoods,West Virginia, a story has lingered for decades, shrouded in mystery and intrigue. It’s a tale that intertwines with the larger narrative of the UFO phenomenon in the United States, particularly the unprecedented wave of sightings in 1952. This story is about the Flatwoods Monster, an incident that has captivated researchers, conspiracy theorists, and the public alike.
The Encounter: A Night to Remember
It was a crisp evening on September 12, 1952, when a group of residents in Flatwoods reported seeing a bright object crossing the sky and landing nearby. Among them was Kathleen May, a local mother, who, along with her two sons and their friends, ventured into the darkness to investigate. Accompanied by their trusty dogs, they walked towards the Fisher Farm, unaware that they were about to become central figures in one of the most baffling UFO encounters in history.
As they ascended a hill, they encountered a pulsating red light. Approaching cautiously, they were suddenly engulfed in a pungent mist causing eye and respiratory irritation. Amidst this confusion, they spotted a figure, which would later be known as the Flatwoods Monster. Described as being nearly ten feet tall, the creature had a glowing face, a head shaped like the Ace of Spades, and a dark, metallic exoskeleton. It emitted a shrill hissing noise and seemed to glide towards them, causing the group to flee in terror.
The Aftermath and Investigations
The incident quickly captured national attention, with various newspapers and investigators flocking to Flatwoods. Among the most notable was Frank Feschino Jr., who extensively researched the encounter, interviewing witnesses and piecing together the events of that night. His findings suggest that the Flatwoods Monster was not an isolated incident but part of a larger series of UFO sightings and landings during the 1952 wave.
Theories abound as to the nature of the Flatwoods Monster. Some, like Feschino, propose that it was a mechanical entity, possibly a malfunctioning extraterrestrial craft or a suit, evidenced by the oil-like substance reported by witnesses. Others speculate that it was an entity wearing some form of protective gear, adapted for our atmosphere.
Connecting the Dots: The 1952 UFO Wave
The Flatwoods incident didn’t occur in a vacuum. 1952 was a landmark year for UFO sightings, with numerous reports across the United States. This wave reached its peak with the famous Washington, D.C., “flap,” where multiple unidentified objects were tracked by radar and witnessed by air traffic controllers.
Feschino’s research draws parallels between the Flatwoods sighting and other UFO incidents of the time. He suggests that these sightings were part of a larger, perhaps exploratory, mission by extraterrestrial beings. His mapping of the sightings and landings indicates a pattern, suggesting strategic movements rather than random appearances.
Legacy and Continuing Mystery
The Flatwoods Monster remains a compelling chapter in the annals of UFOlogy. It’s a story that has endured the test of time, captivating the imagination of those who dare to look up at the stars and wonder. For the residents of Flatwoods, it’s a part of their history, a mysterious event that has defined their town in the eyes of the world.
VIDEO:
Coast to Coast AM: The Flatwoods Monster Chronicles.. The UFO Connection
As we continue to explore the vastness of space and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the story of the Flatwoods Monster serves as a reminder of the unknowns that lie beyond our understanding. It’s a tale that asks more questions than it answers, leaving us to ponder the mysteries of the universe and our place within it.
De Hubble Space Telescope heeft een fantastische afbeelding vastgelegd van het dichtbevolkte bolvormige sterrencluster genaamd NGC 2210, gelegen in de Grote Magelhaense Wolk, een satellietstelsel dat om de Melkweg draait.
Deze clusters zijn stabiele, dichte groepen van miljoenen sterren, bestudeerd om oude stellaire populaties te onderzoeken. Onderzoek uit 2017 onthulde dat de NGC 2210 ongeveer 11,6 miljard jaar oud is, waarmee het de jongste in de steekproef is, terwijl anderen in de Grote Magelhaense Wolk nog ouder zijn, sommige zelfs meer dan 13 miljard jaar.
Deze ontdekking suggereert dat de oudste clusters in de Grote Magelhaense Wolk gelijktijdig zijn ontstaan met die in de Melkweg, ondanks dat de twee sterrenstelsels onafhankelijk van elkaar zijn ontwikkeld. Afgezien van hun wetenschappelijke waarde is de cluster visueel indrukwekkend, met een intense concentratie van sterren.
A lot has been happening in the UFO community. Following the July 2023 UAP hearings, the UFO buzz is spreading across the United States. Many people are discussing the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), which has led to the release of information never shared before. Pentagon whistleblower David Grusch has drawn serious attention to the UFO enigma, motivating some important individuals to escalate the matter in the US Congress.
Daniel Sheehan, an attorney who represented Lue Elizondo, spills the beans and speaks of things he has never shared before. He blames these five officials for putting up resistance to the UAP legislation ( the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, put forth by Senate leader Chuck Schumer): Senators Wicker and Mitch McConnell (Minority Leader of the Senate), and Representatives Mike Turner, Mike Rogers, and Mike Johnson (Speaker of the House).
Sheehan, a public interest lawyer and activist, has a long history of taking on the federal government on behalf of high-profile clients, including defending The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case as well as one of the Watergate burglars. He is also widely viewed as a provocateur who has an abiding interest in UFOs and has spoken publicly about alien visitations. He also served as counsel for the Disclosure Project, led by ufologist Steven Greer, which has sought to force more government transparency on UFOs.
Journalist Christopher Sharp writes that Sheehan told Liberation Times “that the resistance against the UAP language is headed by Representatives Mike Rogers and Mike Turner, Chairs of the House’s Armed Services Committee and Intelligence Committee. Sheehan and other sources revealed that both individuals have faced pressure from private defense contractors and the intelligence community, influencing their opposition.”
According to Sheehan, certain entities, such as private aerospace companies (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Radiance Technologies), and the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, are pressuring Representatives Turner and Rogers, possibly through campaign contributions or threats. He highlighted the CIA’s involvement in covert operations, especially related to non-human materials and UFO technology.
Sheehan’s Wild UAP Statements
Sheehan is actively giving interviews where he reveals some of the UFO information that would come as shocking to the people who are not aware of what is happening with the UFO subject. In the recent episode of “The UFO Podcast,” Sheehan said 40 witnesses have come forward with compelling evidence supporting the existence of UFO crafts. These witnesses, he claims, are aware not only of the existence of such crafts but also of the aerospace industry’s involvement in reverse engineering them for weapon development purposes. Sheehan stressed the gravity of the situation, labeling it an “extraordinarily serious problem.”
The proposed bill, as described by Sheehan, seeks to establish an international treaty that prohibits any country from using UFO technology to gain a military advantage. The overarching goal is to prevent the development of weapon systems based on UFO technology. Despite widespread bipartisan support, Sheehan revealed obstacles encountered during the legislative process.
“The individual head of the intelligence committee on the house side, the Republican head Michael Turner, intervened. He actually comes from the second congressional district in Ohio, where the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is located,” Sheehan explained. He noted that Turner’s ties to the area, home to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, may have influenced his stance on UFO disclosure.
Sheehan next pointed to Michael Rogers from the second congressional district in Alabama, head of the armed services committee, linking his involvement to the Redstone missile base. Allegedly, this base is a key location where efforts are underway to utilize UFO technology for the development of more effective missiles, including nuclear missiles.
According to Sheehan, the term “catastrophic disclosure” varies in definition among different individuals. Some interpret it as the revelation of criminal acts committed against those attempting to disclose information, resulting in potential criminal liability for various individuals. Drawing parallels to historical cases, Sheehan points to the Pentagon Papers incident during the Nixon Administration.
In the Pentagon Papers case, the government argued that disclosing information from the classified documents would irreparably damage national security. Sheehan underscores the importance of distinguishing between genuine concerns for national security and potential abuses of power. He recalls a similar refusal by officials to divulge specific details in court during the Pentagon Papers case, emphasizing the abuse of discretionary power within intelligence agencies.
One of Sheehan’s major concerns is the secrecy surrounding information related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and the potential existence of an extraterrestrial civilization. He criticizes the idea that a select few have the right to withhold such information from the public, labeling it as preposterous, fundamentally unconstitutional, anti-democratic, and, in his professional opinion, criminal.
During the discussion on the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, Sheehan was asked by the show host, Andy, “You’ve used ‘extraterrestrial civilization’ a few times, and you’re a careful lawyer. Why do you say ‘civilization’ and not ‘civilizations’? Do you think there’s only one, or are you saying there might not be more than one interacting with us?”
Sheehan confidently replied, “Oh yeah, there are definitely different species here. About half a dozen have been identified, and they probably come from different star systems…We don’t know if they have some kind of coalition or federation, or how they cooperate among themselves. We just don’t have the answers.”
Sheehan expressed concern about possible communication between government individuals and these beings, with important information being kept secret. He stated, “There’s evidence that there’s been communication with these extraterrestrial beings, and we’re being kept in the dark. That goes against our Constitution.”
Vatican’s involvement in UAPs & Alien life
In his other interview with James Landoli on “Engaging The Phenomenon,” Sheehan who was a former Chief Council for the United States Jesuit order, revealed intriguing details about his conversations with the head of the Vatican archives regarding the Vatican’s knowledge of extraterrestrial life. Sheehan sheds light on his involvement in a groundbreaking initiative to address the theological and philosophical implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence.
During the interview, James raised the topic of David Grusch‘s claim that the Vatican possessed knowledge of extraterrestrial phenomena. Sheehan discussed his access to classified files of Project Blue, where he encountered photos of UFO crash retrievals and concrete evidence of non-human piloted vehicles. (Click here to read the full article on it)
He proposed the formation of a task force involving all 54 major religious denominations to address the issue from a theological perspective. However, at that time, there was insufficient consensus, and the proposal was declined. Sheehan is currently working through his New Paradigm Institute to organize a global summit conference involving world religious leaders to discuss the recent recovery of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
“The United States government is in possession of biological evidence and has actually taken into custody alive an extraterrestrial person. They’re keeping this secret, interrogating the being, and distorting the information to justify massive expenditures on weapon development under the guise of a perceived threat.” – Daniel Sheehan
Sheehan highlighted the Vatican’s acknowledgment of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He referenced a formal statement issued by the Catholic Church on November 10, 2009, authorized by Pope Benedict. The statement, issued by Father Jose Gabriel Alfuz, director of the Pontifical Observatory in Rome, recognized the increasing discovery of exoplanets and called for a global discussion on the philosophical and theological implications of the imminent discovery of extraterrestrial life.
Sheehan disclosed that the government was telepathically interrogating the extraterrestrial biological entity (EBO) in custody. Despite acknowledging the bizarre nature of the revelation, Sheehan stood by the credibility of the information, having interviewed individuals directly involved in the process. The EBO allegedly conveyed that a coalition of star systems in our galaxy monitors the evolution of life on different planets, including Earth.
“Pope Benedict had a formal statement issued by the Catholic Church, saying that with the discovery of more exoplanets, it has become clear that we will be discovering life elsewhere in the universe. This prompted the need for a global discussion on the philosophical and theological questions posed by the discovery of extraterrestrial life.” – Daniel Sheehan
The Hill reported that on the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer stated that “House Republicans are also attempting to kill another commonsense, bipartisan measure passed by the Senate, which I was proud to cosponsor… to increase transparency around what the government does and does not know about unidentified aerial phenomena.”
New Claims of a 27,000-Year-Old Indonesian Pyramid Spark Controversy
A controversial paper recently published in the journal Archaeological Prospection has generated debate and criticism from archaeologists and geologists alike. In this newly completed study, a team of Indonesian researchers argues that a series of buried rock formations at the prehistoric megalithic site of Gunung Padang in West Java are actually a large, man-made Indonesian pyramid that was constructed in stages starting as long as 27,000 years ago.
These claims are not new. Although new evidence has been brought forward to back the claim, including dating tests, this thesis has been—perhaps unsurprisingly—forcefully rejected by the mainstream scientific community. For it seems that they refute the notion that a pyramid-building society would have existed in Indonesia or anywhere else before the end of the last Ice Age in 10,000 BC.
In the newly published article, the Indonesian researchers present their thesis that four layers of megalithic stone structures were built over the course of many thousands of years. This was done on top of the defunct and decayed volcano known as Gunung Padang, which is located in West Java’s rocky and hilly countryside.
The research team was led by Dr. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja from Indonesia’s Research Center for Natural Disasters, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN). Proving that the stone formations at Gunung Padang were built by a long-lost Ice Age civilization has been a long-time obsession for Dr. Natawidjaja. In the process, his efforts have made him a lightning rod for criticism from academics who dismiss his ideas out of hand.
The seemingly hand carved rocks at Gunung Padang, in West Java
There is no dispute that the top two layers at Gunung Padang include rock columns, walls, pathways and spaces that were intentionally constructed. But the accepted belief is that the deeper “structures” are not the foundation of an Indonesian pyramid, but natural rock formations created by past volcanic activity and untouched by human hands.
If the alternative hypothesis is correct, it would mean there were builders working with heavy stones in Indonesia long before there were any in Egypt, where the 4,600-year-old Pyramid of Djoser stands as the country’s oldest. If they existed, these Indonesian pyramids would have predated even the monumental construction experts responsible for creating the world’s oldest known megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, in approximately 9,000 BC.
“The pyramid has become a symbol of advanced civilization,” Dr. Natawidjaja said in an article about his controversial study just published by Nature. “It's not easy to build pyramids. You need high masonry skills.”
The latter observation is correct and a main point of dispute, as other Indonesian researchers (and scientists from other nations as well) are quick to point out when discussing the Indonesian pyramid hypothesis.
Dr. Lutfi Yondri, an archaeologist and Dr. Natawidjaja’s colleague at BRIN, notes that his research shows that people only inhabited caves in the West Java region between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. Yondri also argues that no evidence has ever emerged suggesting these people possessed advanced masonry skills.
Dr. Yondri’s dismissive attitude to his colleague’s ideas is shared by most Indonesian archaeologists and geologists. When it comes to the subject of Indonesian pyramids, they have taken the extraordinary step of circulating a petition decrying Dr. Natawidjaja’s research and government support for it back in 2018.
The international rejection of the newest version of Dr. Natawidjaja’s thesis has been just as vehement as the local opposition. “I'm surprised [the paper] was published as is,” stated Dr. Flint Dibble, an archaeologist at Cardiff University in the UK.
While acknowledging the paper presented some legitimately intriguing data, he was firm in his insistence that the study’s conclusions in relation to the supposed Indonesian pyramid are not supported by the bulk of the evidence. This assertion is echoed by many other scientists, who simply can’t conceive of how monumental stone builders could have been found in Indonesia in 25,000 BC.
Gunung Padang is the largest megalithic site in all of Southeastern Asia. Could it really have been home to an Indonesian pyramid? (adelukmanulhakim / Adobe Stock)
The Indonesian Pyramid Theory is Making Waves
Perched on top of an ancient volcano, Gunung Padang consists of five stepped stone terraces, retaining walls and connecting staircases. Between 2011 and 2014 Dr. Natawidjaja and his colleagues used ground-penetrating radar and carbon-dating techniques to identify four distinct rock formation layers at the site, all of which they believe show signs of human modification. The innermost layer is made from hardened lava, which the researchers claim has been “meticulously sculpted.”
Summarizing all the research they’ve completed of the supposed Indonesian pyramid over the past decade-plus, in their paper in Archaeological Prospection Dr. Natawidjaja and his team state their conclusions thusly:
“This study strongly suggests that Gunung Padang is not a natural hill but a pyramid-like construction. The pyramid's core consists of meticulously sculpted massive andesite lava (Unit 4), enveloped by layers of rock constructions (Unit 3, Unit 2 and Unit 1). The carbon dating analysis further supports the multi-layer construction's long history, spanning successive periods.
The oldest construction, Unit 4, likely originated as a natural lava hill before being sculpted and then architecturally enveloped during the last glacial period between 25 000 and 14 000 BCE. Afterward, Gunung Padang was abandoned by the first builders for thousands of years, leading to significant weathering. Around 7900–6100 BCE, Unit 3 was deliberately buried with substantial soil fills. Approximately a millennium later, between 6000 and 5500 BCE, a subsequent builder arrived at Gunung Padang and constructed Unit 2. Lastly, the final builder arrived between 2000 and 1100 BCE, constructing Unit 1.”
Dr. Natawidjaja and his colleagues first made their case for the artificial nature of the rock formations at Gunung Padang during the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. in 2018. Their claims of having found an Indonesian pyramid were greeted with intense skepticism at that time. Meanwhile, the feelings of the archaeological establishment in Indonesia and elsewhere have not changed in the years since.
Commenting on the new paper, Dr. Dibble stated that there is no clear evidence that buried rock formations were constructed by humans. Dibble claimed they were more likely to have come about because of erosion and rock movements over time. “Material rolling down a hill is going to, on average, orient itself,” he told Nature.
But Natawidjaja counters that the column-shaped stones were too large and precisely arranged to have arrived in their present locations through such a process. “The neatly arranged, shaped and massive nature of these rocks, some weighing up to 300 kilograms [661 lbs], dismisses the likelihood of transportation over significant distances,” he said.
Beyond the dispute over whether buried rock “structures” that seem geometrical could arise through natural forces, there is also the fact that the current model of the rise of civilization doesn’t fit Dr. Natawidjaja’s theories.
Dr. Bill Farley, an archaeologist at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, says the new study fails to provide evidence that any type of advanced civilization existed during the last Ice Age. Archaeological records suggest that only hunter-gatherer societies existed before 12,000 years ago, and without any artifacts from earlier times Dr. Farley rejects the idea that the alleged pyramidal structure at Gunung Padang can be attributed to an ancient culture.
The many seemingly manmade rocks at Gunung Padang are explained as naturally occurring formations by geologists.
Indonesian Pyramid Controversy: Punishment for Scientific Heresy?
Apparently in response to the controversy, the publisher of Archaeological Prospection, Wiley, has just announced it will be conducting an investigation of Dr. Natawidjaja’s team’s work. “The editors, including me, and the Wiley ethics team are currently investigating this paper in accordance with Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines,” stated Eileen Ernenwein, an archaeological geophysicist at Tennessee State University who co-edits Archaeological Prospection.
Dr. Ernenwein did not reveal what concerns she thinks might justify this type of investigation, which is troubling. While archaeologists who believe the buried formations at Gunung Padang are natural do have the current scientific consensus on their side, it isn’t at all clear why Wiley has chosen to launch a probe into the composition and publishing of an article that presents an alternative hypothesis, even when it does posit the existence of Indonesian pyramids.
The open-minded presentation of controversial theories, or even outright advocacy for them, doesn’t automatically represent some type of ethical breach that needs to be investigated. In reality, science is supposed to welcome challenges from “outsiders” and mavericks with alternative hypotheses, and counter them exclusively with factual knowledge rather than personal or professional attacks that question the integrity of the dissenters.
Maverick theorists could just as easily question the motives of those whose livelihoods or reputations rely on the preservation of the status quo. In the end everyone’s beliefs could be attacked or dismissed if such an approach is taken to its logical conclusion.
It should be noted that despite the controversy generated by claims of an Indonesian pyramid, Dr. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja possesses impeccable credentials. He received his PhD from the prestigious California Institute of Technology (CalTech), served as the senior geologist at the Indonesian Center for Geotechnical Research, and has been a member in good standing at the Indonesia Institute of Sciences.
“We are really open to anyone researchers around the world would like to come to Indonesia and do some research on Gunung Padang,” Dr. Natawidjaja told Nature, highlighting his preference to work with the scientific community instead of being at odds with it. “We know very little about our human history.”
Top image: The allegedly manmade megalithic site at Gunung Padang, claimed to be an incredibly ancient pyramid in Indonesia, showing the multitude of rocks under question.
James Webb Spots Alien Face Sculpted into Constellation Pegasus, UFO Sighting News.
James Webb Spots Alien Face Sculpted into Constellation Pegasus, UFO Sighting News.
Location of discovery: Constellation Pegasus
Source: NASA
Now this is interesting, the James Webb Telescope discovered a face in constellation Pegasus this week. The face lower area looks like it's been pulled apart over the millions of years of it being there. It was created by a highly advanced alien civilization. At such a level that they can control and manipulate entire nebulas and even suns and planets, orbits, ect. This is the face of the species that created it. This is cold hard facts teaching us the reality around us.
Unveiling the Mysteries: The Vatican and Extraterrestrial Life
Unveiling the Mysteries: The Vatican and Extraterrestrial Life
The Vatican, a bastion of spiritual guidance for over a billion Catholics, has long been a symbol of faith and controversy. However, recent developments have steered the conversation towards a more cosmic question: Does the Vatican hold secret knowledge about extraterrestrial life? This intriguing notion, blending the sacred with the interstellar, opens a Pandora’s box of theories, historical anecdotes, and scientific inquiries that challenge our understanding of religion and the universe.
The Vatican’s Celestial Connection
The connection between the Vatican and potential extraterrestrial life isn’t a new concept. Historical records suggest that the Catholic Church has been intertwined with astronomical discoveries and theories for centuries. For instance, Nicholas Copernicus and Giordano Bruno, pioneers in astronomy, faced the Church’s wrath for their revolutionary ideas about the cosmos – ideas that included the existence of other worlds. Bruno, notably, was executed for his beliefs, which the Church considered heretical.
Artistic Depictions: A Hidden Truth?
Christian art, particularly from the Renaissance period, contains intriguing depictions that some interpret as evidence of UFOs. Paintings like “The Madonna with Saint Giovannino” show celestial objects resembling modern-day UFOs. Could these artistic elements be ancient eyewitness accounts of extraterrestrial visitations, or are they merely symbolic representations of the divine?
The Vatican’s Public Stance on Extraterrestrial Life
In more recent times, the Vatican has appeared more open to the possibility of life beyond Earth. The Vatican Observatory, for instance, has been vocal about the scientific possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence. This represents a significant shift from the Church’s historical stance, suggesting a more progressive and open-minded approach to the mysteries of the universe.
The Alleged Vatican Secret Archives
Conspiracy theories abound regarding the Vatican’s Secret Archives, which supposedly house detailed records of UFO encounters. While the existence of such documents is unconfirmed, the secrecy surrounding the archives fuels speculation about the Church’s knowledge of alien life.
The Fatima Incident and Alien Skulls
The Fatima incident of 1917, where thousands witnessed a supposed UFO in Portugal, is often linked to the Vatican’s interest in extraterrestrial phenomena. Additionally, rumors of alien skulls discovered under the Vatican Library have further stoked the fire of these theories. While these claims are unverified, they contribute to the narrative of the Church’s supposed involvement in extraterrestrial affairs.
The Future of the Vatican and Extraterrestrial Disclosure
As the world advances and the possibility of discovering extraterrestrial life grows, the Vatican’s role in this cosmic drama remains a topic of fascination. If evidence of alien life is found, how will the Church reconcile this with its teachings? Could the Vatican become a mediator between humanity and extraterrestrial beings?
VIDEO:
Aliens & The Vatican | What Does The Pope Know? | Unsealed Alien Files
The intertwining of the Vatican with the possibility of extraterrestrial life is a complex tapestry of history, belief, and speculation. While concrete evidence remains elusive, the ongoing dialogue reflects humanity’s enduring quest to understand our place in the cosmos and the potential for other life beyond our planet.
A Republican congressman and a UFO expert agree that the government knows more than they're letting on about mysterious aircraft.
Author and journalist Garrett Graff and Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett jointly spoke out on the issue in a Meet the Press Reports on NBC News.
Graff, author of UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here - and Out There said, 'The government is covering up some level of its knowledge and understanding about what some of those things are.'
'There is something real here. There are things out there in our air space that we do not understand what they are, and that those could represent exquisite new adversary technology, but they could also represent science that we don't understand.'
The expert said the coverup could be two-fold, including both the governments own secret development of planes, drones, new technologies as well as what the government is sensing and detecting in and around US airspace.
Graff also said be believes the government likely knows more than they're saying - but not necessarily that they have confirmed what the mysterious aircraft themselves are.
Author and journalist Garrett Graff said, 'The government is covering up some level of its knowledge and understanding about what some of those things are'
Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett is calling for transparency for tax payers from the government about what they know about UFOs
'What I'm unconvinced of is that the government is covering up meaningful knowledge of, you know, alien spacecraft, alien visitors, extraterrestrial contact, Graff said.
He noted it is possible NASA does not have evidence of alien life is because humans may not have the technology to detect it.
Multiple sources told DailyMail.com a secretive CIA office has been coordinating the retrieval of crashed UFOs around the world for decades.
One source said that at least nine apparent 'non-human craft' have been recovered by the US government – some wrecked from a crash, and two completely intact.
Three sources briefed on those alleged top secret operations told DailyMail.com that the Office of Global Access (OGA), a wing of the Central Intelligence Agency's Science and Technology Directorate, has played a central role since 2003 in orchestrating the collection of what could be alien spacecraft.
The three sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, have all been briefed by individuals involved in those alleged UFO retrieval missions.
Representative Burchett is calling for transparency from the government on what they know about these UFOs.
'If it doesn’t exist, then why do they keep spending the money to tell us,' said the congressman from Tennessee.
'You know, since 1947, they've told us these things don't exist, yet Harry Reid funded, very well funded millions of dollars towards research of it. And and they spent a whole heck of a lot of time, effort. And money on telling the American public they don't exist, but yet they're studying.'
Burchett said, 'Case in point, I proposed an amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill and it basically just said if a commercial airline pilot were to spot some anomaly or a UFO, as we used to call them, and they would issue a report to the FAA, which they would, but also that report would be made to Congress.'
'Well, it was blocked. The whip told me that it was blocked. And I said, why was it blocked? He said the intelligence community blocked it. And I said, wait a minute. You mean you mean the committee? And he said, no the community.'
US Space Force, the Pentagon branch tasked with protecting America from space-based threats, local and galactic, has detected thousands of UFOs in Earth's orbit.
In recent years, Pentagon officials tasked with investigating UFO cases, including the now famous 2004 Tic Tac incursions
America's newest military branch created under President Trump in 2019, told personnel in November that the sightings were so regular that they are 'hindering threat identification,' the branch's core mission.
In recent years, Pentagon officials tasked with investigating UFO cases, including the now famous 2004 Tic Tac incursions.
In 2004, Navy pilot Chad Underwood shot footage of a strange flying object in the sky flying over the Pacific, which was also seen by Navy commander David Fravor.
Underwood coined the description 'Tic Tac' for the 'perfectly white' wingless oblong that was captured from his cockpit's in-flight video.
Fravor described the Tic Tac object as being 'perfectly white, smooth and had no windows,' with 'two little objects that came out of the bottom'.
I found this huge oval UFO landed on the surface of Venus. I was using google Venus map and the thing that really decided it was the clear dome at its center. Google ruler says it's exactly 7 miles across.
The whole planet has many tunnels that create networks moving from place to place above the surface of Venus. It's clear that the surface is even too poisonous for aliens, so they chose to live below ground and when above ground, within the tunnels.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
New England Emerges as UFO Hotspot: Startling Surge in Sightings & Compelling Evidence!
New England Emerges as UFO Hotspot: Startling Surge in Sightings & Compelling Evidence!
In recent years, New England has emerged as a significant hotspot for UFO sightings. This fascinating phenomenon has captured the attention of both the public and UFO researchers, with an astonishing 300% increase in sightings over the past decade. The compelling cases from Connecticut to Massachusetts paint a picture of an area rich in unexplained aerial phenomena.
Historical Context:
Dating back to the 1950s, New England’s UFO narrative began unfolding. Notably, a sighting in Connecticut in the late 1950s involved Lieutenant Frank Woolley witnessing a mysterious white object. Such early encounters set the stage for a series of inexplicable events that continue to intrigue and mystify.
Recent Developments:
A striking case from Fairfield, Connecticut, involving a fast-moving object captured near a house, has reignited interest. Video analysis by experts like Mark D’Antonio, a veteran photo and video analyst for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), suggests these are not isolated incidents. MUFON’s in-depth scrutiny of these sightings points towards a pattern of increased UFO activity in the region.
Technological Evolution in Sightings:
The evolution of UFO sightings from classic flying saucers to orbs and light formations indicates a potential technological advancement in extraterrestrial visitations. Local experts like Brian Bowden, a historian and UFO researcher, theorize that these changes reflect advancements in alien technology, mirroring humanity’s progression in transportation and aerospace design.
Impact on Locals:
For residents like Samantha and Tom, these sightings are more than just fleeting encounters. Reports of electronic failures and lost time accompanying these sightings add a layer of complexity and personal impact. Such experiences echo the harrowing account of Tom Reed, whose encounter near a river involved missing time and electronic interference, suggesting a deeper, perhaps more personal interest by these unidentified entities in human activities.
Scientific and Paranormal Perspectives:
The debate continues among scientists and paranormal researchers about the nature of these sightings. Are they mere anomalies, or do they represent a tangible, albeit unknown, aspect of our universe? The presence of magnetic anomalies in the region, as pointed out by experts, adds a scientific dimension to these occurrences, potentially attracting these unidentified flying objects to New England.
Video:
Multiple UFO Sightings & Evidence Confirm New England As A Hotspot | UFO Witness
As we delve deeper into the mysteries of UFO sightings in New England, the question remains: what brings these unidentified objects to this region? With a rich history of sightings and an ever-growing list of encounters, New England stands as a significant chapter in the ongoing narrative of UFO phenomena. As we await more concrete answers, the skies above New England continue to be a canvas for some of the most intriguing and unexplained events in our modern history.
An uncommon view of the Martian horizon was recently obtained with help from NASA’s Odyssey orbiter, in new images that captured the dusty skies of the Red Planet, as well as a glimpse at one of the most mysterious objects trapped in its orbit.
The new imagery was captured by the orbiter’s THEMIS camera, presenting a vantage from roughly the same altitude above Mars as the International Space Station (ISS) orbits the Earth.
The images were the result of months of planning by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and its partners at Lockheed Martin Space, showcasing the infrared camera’s ability to detect everything from stony features on the Martian surface to ice and dust in its atmosphere, as well as the subtleties of the planet’s temperatures.
A Martian vista seen from 250 miles high, courtesy of the Odyssey orbiter’s THEMIS infrared camera (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU).
Normally, the THEMIS camera’s design has it pointing straight down, which means the entire spacecraft must be tilted to obtain the view of the Martian atmosphere that the new imagery reveals, a problematic angle for Odyssey since that also means its antenna is pointed away from Earth, which temporarily blocked radio communication.
However, while positioned to photograph the Martian atmosphere, Odyssey’s successful operation also managed to obtain images of one of the Red Planet’s great mysteries: its irregularly shaped moon, Phobos.
The largest of the Martian moons and with a shape that is often likened to a potato, Phobos boasts a massive crater on one end and orbits about 3,700 miles above the Martian surface. Given its close distance, it is the innermost of the Red Planet’s natural satellites, possessing the closest orbit of any known natural object to its nearest planetary body.
One in a series of images of the Martian moon Phobos recently captured by the THEMIS camera aboard NASA’s Odyssey orbiter
(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech).
Discovered in the summer of 1877 by the American astronomer Asaph Hall, Phobos and its sibling moon, Deimos, were named after the sons of the Greek god Ares, whose Roman counterpart is the planet’s namesake. According to Greek tradition, Phobos was the god of fear and panic, which is a surprisingly appropriate name given the speed at which Phobos races around the Red Planet: it completes each of its orbits in just 7 hours and 39 minutes.
ODD FEATURES AND UNKNOWN STRUCTURES WITHIN PHOBOS
Several questions remain about Phobos, which include its composition and internal structure, as well as its mysterious origin. The darkest moon ever discovered by astronomers, it has been theorized that Phobos’ dim coloration suggests a composition of dark rock and ice. This, along with its odd shape and the peculiarities of its orbit, hints that Phobos may have been an asteroid that became captured in orbit around Mars at some point in the distant past.
Phobos also possesses a series of unusual straight lines, which may suggest odd structural features beneath its surface or even that it is slowly being torn apart as its rapid orbit brings it nearer to the surface of Mars, where it may eventually collide with the Red Planet.
Detailed imagery of Phobos, depicting the Martian moon’s curious “tiger stripe” markings (Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin).
Although the idea that Phobos is being gradually disassembled as Mars drags the curious moon toward its surface remains a possibility, radar detections made in 2022 by Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft suggest the presence of unknown structures within the object, which could also account for its unusual “tiger striped” appearance.
On September 22, 2022, Mars Express was able to use its Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument to peer beyond the surface of Phobos, revealing the presence of the moon’s odd inner structures.
Following the odd detections, Andrea Cicchetti with the MARSIS team said they revealed “possible signs of previously unknown features below the moon’s surface.”
Data obtained by the MARSIS flyby in late 2022
(Credit: ESA).
“We are excited to see the role that MARSIS might play in finally solving the mystery surrounding Phobos’ origin,” Cicchetti said of the findings.
THE PHOBOS MONOLITH
On September 12, 1998, several of the highest-resolution images of Phobos that had ever been obtained at that time were captured by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft as it completed its fourth pass by the object and used its Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) to photograph the odd moon, revealing the most detailed view of the Martian moon’s features that had ever been available.
Peppered with boulders that were likely ejected from the impact that formed the moon’s massive Stickney crater, the high-resolution images of the surface of Phobos revealed a genuine curiosity: an unusually large feature that cast an elongated shadow, suggesting that the strange object was massive not only in diameter but also in height.
The curious “Phobos monolith”, captured in imagery obtained in 1998 by the Mars Global Surveyor’s Mars Orbital Camera
(Credit: NASA).
Popularly known as the Phobos monolith, the object is believed to be a very large and unusually shaped boulder, possessing an equally curious orientation: its height of close to 300 feet, based on the length of the shadow it casts, exceeds its estimated width of approximately 279 feet across.
The strange feature was discovered by amateur astronomer Efrain Palermo in the late 1990s while conducting detailed surveys of the Phobos imagery, with additional studies of its size and features later undertaken by imaging analyst Lan Fleming, who at the time worked at NASA Johnson Space Center. However, the monolith received renewed attention in 2009 after astronaut Buzz Aldrin made a series of cryptic references to the object during an appearance on C-SPAN.
“There’s a monolith there. A very unusual structure on this little potato-shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours,” Aldrin said excitedly.
“When people find out about that, they’re gonna say, ‘Who put that there! Who put that there?’”
“Well, the universe put that there,” Aldrin said, alluding to its likely natural origin. “If you choose, God put that there.”
The area around the so-called monolith has been discussed as a landing site for future robotic missions, such as the Phobos Reconnaissance and International Mars Exploration (PRIME) mission, a joint effort between Teledyne Optech and the Mars Institute proposed in 2007, which never garnered funding.
NEW IMAGERY AND NEW HORIZONS
Although the new images are the latest to capture Phobos in its racetrack orbit around Mars, this was not the first time NASA has used the Odyssey orbiter’s THEMIS camera to obtain imagery of the moon. In fact, the recent images mark the seventh time in more than two decades that such images have been obtained with the camera, which helps to provide information about changes in temperature that occur on what is arguably the most unusual moon in our solar system.
However, the newest set of images did manage to offer some unique new additions.
“We got a different angle and lighting conditions of Phobos than we’re used to,” said Dr. Jonathon Hill, a mission planner at Arizona State University’s Mars Space Flight Facility.
“That makes it a unique part of our Phobos dataset.”
Hill and his colleagues say the new imagery helps to offer insights into the moon, its structure, and composition and may eventually provide data points that could help to determine once and for all whether Phobos is an asteroid caught in orbit around the Red Planet, or possibly a massive chunk of the planet’s surface that became dislodged following an impact at some point in the past.
In the future, NASA also plans to participate in a joint effort with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Mars Moon eXplorer (MMX), which aims to retrieve samples from Phobos and Deimos. The new imagery could be helpful in planning for the retrieval mission, which could provide material from the surface of Phobos, which may assist scientists in unraveling some of the moon’s lingering mysteries.
Ruins of an ancient fortress wall found in Antarctica
Ruins of an ancient fortress wall found in Antarctica
On the top of a mountain ridge in Antarctica, the remains of what appears to be part of an ancient fortress wall can be observed.
The first structure measures 32 meters in height, 26 meters in length, and 16 meters in width. A second similar structure is visible in the opposite direction. The two structures seem to have been part of an ancient fortress wall.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that below the first structure, a large cave is visible, possibly connected to the first structure.
A strange large tube, measuring 10 meters in length and 5 meters in width, seemly hovering in the air before the cave, defying conventional explanations.
These ancient structures, the cave (or portal), and the strange cylinder (resembling a UFO) in the air, as well as next to the first structure, you can see what looks like a large antenna, or crane, all contribute to the mysterious ambiance surrounding this location.
At all, it raises questions about the activities that may have transpired in this remote Antarctic area.
Coordinates Google Earth: 78°10'34.87"S 162° 2'27.51"E
Now I'm sure some will say this is old news, but I just today decided to try my hand at focusing and enhancing these old NASA images of the two moons orbiting the astroid discovered in Arecibo Observatory and written about in 2008. Today's image technology allows us to focus these images which too fuzzy to truly see detail. So I went after it. I added contrast (shadow), deepening and focus (sharpening) and came out with this eye opening image.
NASA always tries to deliberately hurt the image quality in order to keep the public in the dark, but they did not realize, the future was going to change that.
These two objects orbing the asteroid are UFOs. One has seven or more right angles, which is impossible for a moon. The other has a cigar long body, with an arrow head and an arrow fin tail. Nothing like that has ever been seen as a moon or as a astroid. It's a UFO too. Two UFOs orbing a small asteroid that is passing earth, so that it can send out small orb probes to gather data on earth and nobody will every know, because the asteroid itself hides the alien crafts existence.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:Ruins, strange artifacts on other planets, moons, ed ( Fr, EN, NL )
Submerged Mysteries Uncovered: UFO Phenomena Along Alaska’s Coastline
Submerged Mysteries Uncovered: UFO Phenomena Along Alaska’s Coastline
The icy waters of Alaska, known for their breathtaking beauty and unforgiving nature, hide secrets far beyond the known. Among these are the enigmatic Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs)– a phenomenon that has intrigued UFO enthusiasts and researchers alike. Alaska, with its vast and secluded coastline, has become a focal point for UFO sightings, particularly those emerging from beneath the waves.
The Alaska Triangle – A Hotspot for USO Activity
The Alaska Triangle, a region covering a large part of the state from Juneau to Barrow to Anchorage, is notorious for mysterious disappearances and unexplained phenomena. It’s here that the deep, often unexplored waters have become the subject of numerous USO sightings. Residents and visitors alike have reported seeing objects defying conventional understanding, rising from the depths of the ocean and disappearing into the skies.
Eyewitness Accounts – A Glimpse into the Unknown
One of the most compelling aspects of Alaskan USO sightings is the consistency in eyewitness accounts. Locals recount seeing luminous objects, sometimes thousands, emerging from the water near places like Smitty’s Cove. These accounts often describe the USOs as showing advanced technology, capable of both underwater travel and flight, challenging our understanding of existing vehicular capabilities.
The Enigma Beneath the Waves
The Gulf of Alaska, part of this mysterious triangle, boasts some of the world’s deepest waters, reaching depths of 26,000 feet. This vast, uncharted territory presents a perfect hiding spot for these enigmatic USOs. The possibility of an underwater alien base, as some theorists suggest, isn’t far-fetched when considering the vast, unexplored expanses of our oceans.
Satellite Imagery and Research Efforts
Recent advances in satellite technology have provided researchers like Debbie Zigglemeyer, director of underwater research at MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), with new tools to explore these phenomena. Intriguing satellite images off the Alaskan coast have revealed formations resembling underwater highways and structures, sparking further investigation into the possibility of an alien presence beneath the sea.
Historical Context and Global Implications
The phenomenon of USOs isn’t just confined to the present day. Historical reports, such as the 1945 sighting by the crew of the US Delaroff near the Aleutian Islands, add credibility to the ongoing sightings. These accounts describe large, silent, and fast-moving objects emerging from the ocean, suggesting a long-standing presence of unknown entities in our waters.
VIDEO:
Underwater UFOs Found Off The Coast Of Alaska
The pursuit to understand USOs in Alaska is more than just a quest for extraterrestrial life; it’s a journey into the unknown realms of our planet. With 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by water and only a fraction explored, the potential for discovery is immense. The Alaskan USO sightings offer a window into these uncharted territories, beckoning the curious and the brave to explore further.
The mysterious USOs of Alaska present a tantalizing puzzle. As we continue to explore these phenomena, we edge closer to possibly uncovering one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Whether these sightings are evidence of extraterrestrial life or a yet-to-be-understood natural phenomenon, one thing is certain – the icy waters of Alaska hold secrets waiting to be unveiled.
De meest angstaanjagende wezens die voorkomen in de Bijbel
In de bijbel komen verschillende, mysterieuze wezens voor waarvan sommigen best eng kunnen zijn. Hoewel we er een paar kennen die elders voorkomen, zijn er ook waarvan we geen weet hebben. Als je bijvoorbeeld denkt dat cherubijnen schattige en mollige baby-engeltjes zijn, zul je je nog verbazen. Alsof het eerste beest in het boek de Openbaring van Johannes niet eng genoeg is, zal het tweede beest je wellicht nachtmerries bezorgen.
Nieuwsgierig? Bekijk dan de volgende galerij om de meest angstaanjagende wezens te ontdekken die in de Bijbel worden genoemd.
Het Eerste Beest In De Openbaring van Johannes (of simpelweg Openbaring) vinden we het eerste beest, bekend als een van de meest angstaanjagende wezens die worden genoemd. Het wordt afgebeeld met zeven koppen, tien hoorns en verschillende lichaamsdelen van dieren. Openbaring 13:1-2 geeft een gedetailleerde beschrijving van dit mysterieuze beest.
Het Eerste Beest "En ik stond op het zand der zee. En ik zag uit de zee een beest opkomen, hebbende zeven hoofden en tien hoornen; en op zijn hoornen waren tien koninklijke hoeden, en op zijn hoofden was een naam van gods lastering. En het beest dat ik zag, was een pardel gelijk, en zijn voeten als eens beers voeten, en zijn mond als de mond eens leeuws; en de draak gaf hem zijn kracht, en zijn troon, en grote macht."
Het Tweede Beest "Toen zag ik uit de aarde een ander beest komen. Het had net als het Lam twee horens op zijn kop, maar het sprak als de draak" (Openbaring 13:11). Ja, er is een tweede beest en het was een obstakel: "Het liet zelfs vuur uit de hemel komen voor de mensen."
Het Tweede Beest Hij was ook verantwoordelijk voor het markeren van een getal op ieder individu, bekend als het nummer van het beest. "Het beest had iedereen in zijn macht: machtige en gewone mensen, rijke en arme mensen, vrije mensen en slaven. "Het dwong iedereen om een merkteken op zijn rechterhand of op zijn voorhoofd te dragen. Alleen mensen die dat merkteken hadden, konden iets kopen of verkopen. Het merkteken was de naam van het beest, of het getal dat zijn naam voorstelt." (Openbaring 13:16-17).
Sprinkhanen De sprinkhanenplaag in Egypte wordt beschreven in het boek Exodus. "Ze bedekten het hele land. Het zag er zwart van de sprinkhanen. Ze aten alle planten en vruchten op die niet door de hagel waren vernield. Zo bleef er in heel Egypte geen sprietje groen meer over."
Reuzen Wanneer we het hebben over reuzen in de Bijbel, is het verhaal van David en Goliath vaak het eerste dat in je opkomt. Goliath is echter niet de enige reus die in de Schriften worden genoemd.
Reuzen De Amorieten worden meerdere keren genoemd in de bijbel. Amos 2:9 geeft een beschrijving van een van hen: "En toch heb ik ter wille van jullie de Amorieten uitgeroeid, die zo groot waren als ceders en zo sterk als eiken: met wortel en tak roeide ik ze uit."
Leviatan Dit chaos creërende beest uit het Oude Testament was een zeemonster dat door God was geschapen. Hoewel er in de Openbaring van Johannes een zeemonster voorkomt, is het niet duidelijk of deze een verband heeft met Leviatan.
Leviatan Volgens Jesaja 27:1 heeft God het echter met Zijn goddelijke krachten uitgeschakeld. "Op die dag zal de Heer ingrijpen: Hij trekt zijn groot en machtig zwaard tegen Leviatan, de snelle, kronkelende slang, en Hij zal Leviatan doden, het monster in de zee."
Behemot Behemoth, vergelijkbaar met Leviatan, werd in het begin ook door God gecreëerd. Terwijl Leviatan over de zee regeerde, dwaalde Behemot door het land.
Behemot Job 40:15-24 geeft een beschrijving van dit wezen. "Zie nu Behemot, welken Ik gemaakt heb nevens u; hij eet hooi, gelijk een rund. Zie toch, zijn kracht is in zijn lenden, en zijn macht in den navel zijns buiks. Als het hem lust, zijn staart is als een ceder; de zenuwen zijner schaamte zijn doorvlochten. Zijn beenderen zijn als vast koper; zijn gebeenten zijn als ijzeren handbomen."
De Vier Beesten van Daniel Daniël, een profeet die het Bijbelboek Daniël schreef, had een bijzonder visioen. Hij zag vier dieren uit de zee oprijzen. De beschrijving van dit buitengewone visioen kan men vinden in Daniël 7:1-28.
De Vier Beesten van Daniel Daniel zei: "Vier grote dieren rezen op uit de zee, elk met een andere gestalte. Het eerste dier leek op een leeuw, maar dan met adelaarsvleugels. Ik zag hoe zijn vleugels werden uitgerukt, hoe het dier werd opgetild, op twee voeten overeind werd gezet als een mens en ook het hart van een mens kreeg. Toen verscheen er een tweede dier; het leek op een beer en het had zich half opgericht. Het hield drie ribben tussen de tanden van zijn muil, en het dier werd aangespoord met de woorden: 'Sta op, eet veel vlees.' "
Cherubijn Cherubijnen, ook wel cherubs genoemd, worden vaak afgebeeld als schattige en mollige baby-engeltjes. Dit toont echter niet hoe ze werkelijk zijn. Volgens de bijbel zijn het in feite angstaanjagende wezens. De cherub die de Hof van Eden bewaakte droeg een vlammend zwaard, waardoor hun intimiderende karakter nog meer naar voren kwam.
Cherubijn De beschrijving in Ezechiël 1:5-11 gaat echter nog een stap verder door te stellen dat ze vier gezichten hebben! "[...] Ze zagen er mensachtig uit, maar ze hadden vier gezichten en vier vleugels. [...] En aan de rechterkant was het gezicht van een leeuw, aan de linkerkant het gezicht van een os. Ook hadden ze alle vier het gezicht van een adelaar."
Draken Draken zijn eeuwenoude, kwaadaardige wezens die al duizenden jaren in mythologieën voorkomen. Christelijke verhalen, waaronder het beroemde verhaal van Sint-Joris en de draak, zijn in talloze culturen aanwezig.
Draken Ook in de Bijbel wordt naar draken verwezen. Een opvallend voorbeeld is te vinden in Openbaring 20:2, waarin staat: "Hij greep de draak, de slang van weleer, die ook duivel of Satan wordt genoemd, en ketende hem voor duizend jaren."
Vampieren Vampieren? Ja, enigszins. Bepaalde verzen zijn gelinkt aan vampirisme. In Spreuken 30:14 staat bijvoorbeeld: "Een geslacht, welks tanden zwaarden, en welks baktanden messen zijn, om de ellendigen van de aarde en de nooddruftigen van onder de mensen te verteren."
Vampieren Bloed is in de Bijbel iets onmisbaars, waarin duidelijk wordt beschreven dat het niet genuttigd dient te worden. In Deuteronomium 12:23 wordt gesteld: "Alleen, houd eraan vast geen bloed te eten, want het bloed is de ziel, en u mag niet, samen met het vlees, ook de ziel eten.
Weerwolven Weerwolven zijn al langere tijd meerdere malen genoemd en op dezelfde manier beschreven als in Daniël 4:33, maar in de Bijbel worden ze niet expliciet genoemd.
Weerwolven Er staat: "Op datzelfde moment gebeurde wat ik, Nebukadnezar, had gedroomd: ik werd bij de mensen weggejaagd, at gras als een koe en dronk van de dauw. Mijn haar werd zo lang als de veren van een arend en mijn nagels werden zo lang als de klauwen van een vogel."
Nefilim De Nefilim, die voortkwamen uit geslachtsgemeenschap tussen de "zonen van de Goden" en de "dochters van de mensen", blijven mysterieuze wezens.
Nefilim De Nefilim worden vaak gigantische wezens genoemd die over de aarde zwierven. Sommige theorieën stellen dat ze nakomelingen zijn van gevallen engelen of van Kaïn. Deze mysterieuze wezens blijven mensen die de Bijbel lezen boeien.
Slangdraak Er wordt driemaal naar dit mythologische wezen verwezen in het boek Jesaja. Het is een combinatie van een haan en een slang, vergelijkbaar met een kleine draak.
Eenhoorns In de King James Version (Engelse vertaling van de Bijbel) wordt negen keer naar eenhoorns verwezen. Ze worden afgebeeld als krachtige wezens in Numeri 23:22 en 24:8. In Jesaja 34:6-7 kwam hun aard nog meer naar voren.
Eenhoorns Er staat: "The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness."
Pratende ezel In Numeri 22:21 wordt een merkwaardig wezen genoemd: een pratende ezel. Terwijl Bileam op de ezel reed, kwam hij een engel tegen, waardoor de ezel stopte. Bileam reageerde door de ezel drie keer te slaan en op wonderbaarlijke wijze zorgde God ervoor dat het dier kon praten!
Ofanim De ofanim, die in het jodendom als heilige engelen worden beschouwd, kunnen ook behoorlijk intimiderend zijn. Uit Ezechiël 1:15 blijkt dat ze vier gezichten en veel ogen hebben.
Bronnen:
(Ranker)
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Zie ook: Bijbelverhalen die op mysterieuze wijze zijn verdwenen
The enigma surrounding Mexican alien mummies has taken a more intricate turn. On November 6, 2023, Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan gathered a group of doctors and scientists to present new data on the Peruvian mummies, which show potential signs of non-human life forms, while refraining from confirming that the remains were extraterrestrial. Now, new information has emerged, deepening the mystery of alien corpses.
Mr. Maussan initially showcased the Peruvian alien mummies during the historic UAP hearings held on September 12, 2023, in Mexico. The hearings were organized by the Commission of Science and Technology of the Chamber of Deputies and were attended by various UAP experts and whistleblowers, including former US Navy pilot Ryan Graves. Despite facing criticism regarding the alien bodies, Maussan persisted in his investigation, leveraging additional expertise to delve deeper into the matter.
The two tiny alien corpses that are at least 1,000 years old were displayed in windowed boxes for all to see. The small mummified specimen was retrieved from Cusco, Peru, in a layer of diatomaceous earth. “These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage,” Maussan said, “They were found in diatom mines and were later fossilized.” He later added: “Whether they are aliens or not, we don’t know, but they were intelligent, and they lived with us. They should rewrite history.… We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this reality.”
Scientists who previously said the bodies were nothing more than the assembly of human and alien bones have changed their views when investigating the corpses. In this study, they found each of the corpses belonged to a single skeleton. According to Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, a director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican Navy, the studies showed that the alleged bodies belonged to a single skeleton and were not assembled.
A ufologist named Will Galison, a close friend of the archaeologist who initially analyzed the “alien mummies,” believes that the miniature corpses are not extraterrestrial but rather may have been made from animal remains, possibly for ritual purposes. He noted that the heads of the mummies bear a “remarkable similarity” to alpaca skulls. Despite the suggestion that they are not extraterrestrial, Galison does not consider them a hoax. Galison saw the mummies in Peru in 2017, well before Maussan’s presentation, and initially believed they might have been extraterrestrial remains.
On August 1, 2019, the San Luis Gonzaga National University of Ica, Peru, received four desiccated bodies exhibiting characteristics of both humans and reptilians. These specimens were transferred while safeguarding the confidentiality of the source of information, following the provisions outlined in the second article, subsection 18, of the Political Constitution of Peru. The purpose behind the delivery of these bodies was to ensure their custody and preservation and facilitate research aimed at elucidating the authenticity of these desiccated specimens.
Experts described the creatures as a ”new breed” of ”non-human creature” that had no lungs or ribs Image credit: REUTERS/Raquel Cunha)
One of the bodies, known as “Maria,” is approximately human-sized but displays distinct anatomical variations. It possesses an elongated skull and three fingers on both its hands and feet. Upon examination of the bones, a consistent structure was observed, devoid of any indications of finger damage.
The smaller bodies, measuring approximately 60 cm in length, display a morphological and anatomical structure markedly distinct from that of humans. Their skin exhibits morphological and histological characteristics reminiscent of reptiles, featuring three-digited hands and feet. Notably, they possess voluminous skulls, and their bone and joint system deviates significantly from human anatomy, showcasing unique and sui generis atypical features.
Importantly, it is worth noting the absence of rigid or metallic elements for union and support in the joints throughout the entire body. Given the extraordinary nature of these bodies and the pronounced anatomical and structural disparities, further comprehensive investigations are imperative for a deeper understanding of their essence.
In October 2023, Mr. Maussan and other experts claimed the specimens were tested and found to be “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution.” He said, “None of the scientists say [the study results] prove that they are extraterrestrials, but I go further,” suggesting that they could be evidence of non-Earthly life forms.
New Update
In September 2023, Maussan revealed that DNA testing had been done on the mummies, and more than 30% of it is unknown. But it was not until a new DNA analysis was conducted on Peru’s non-human corpses, revealing that 30% of their genetic code belongs to an “unknown species,” as reported by the Daily Star.
While it remains unclear what the other 70% of the so-called aliens’ DNA matched up with, Maussan argued that the DNA analysis confirms the mummies are “definitely not human.” Additionally, one corpse was allegedly discovered to have what appeared to be eggs or ovaries inside, while another had implants of rare metals, such as Osmium.
Mr. Maussan said: “This is the first time extraterrestrial life has been presented in this manner. We have a clear example of non-human specimens unrelated to any known species on our planet. The public has the right to know about non-human technology and beings. This reality unites humanity rather than dividing us. We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this truth…These specimens do not belong to our terrestrial evolution. They were not creatures discovered after a UFO crash. Instead, they were found in diatom mines and later transformed into fossilized mummies.”
Dr. Rubén García Linaje, an orthopedic surgeon mentioned that they were observing bones, and it appeared to be a skeleton. He pointed out that there were some unusual features, such as the circular shape of the ribs. He did not see a sternum, and the ribcage seemed to have limited expansion capabilities due to the shape of the ribs.
Daily Mail writes: The bodies underwent carbon dating by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which determined the bodies had three-fingered hands, no teeth, and were more than 1,000 years old, Maussan claimed.
“These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution […] These aren’t beings that were found after a UFO wreckage,” Maussan said to Congress in September. “They were found in diatom [algae] mines and were later fossilized.” He later added: “Whether they are aliens or not, we don’t know, but they were intelligent and they lived with us. They should rewrite history. We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this reality.”
Celestino Adolfo Piotti, a doctor in medicine and surgery and the founder of a special branch of anthropology in Argentina, said he reached this conclusion by studying X-rays of the skulls of non-human beings. He compared them to his theory of evolution called the “guardian theory,” which disagrees with Charles Darwin’s theory.
[Translation] “The final numerical result that it gives me is that they are not individuals from the past or the present but rather from the future, so it means that these two beings, Mary and these two beings 60 centimeters high (those that Maussan presented). They should have existed in the future and not in the past a thousand years ago,” he said.
The researcher acknowledged that the scientific method cannot provide an answer to the conclusion he reached. However, he stated that non-human beings are “the link of our human species that goes from being returned towards a new species… The lower beings would be a complete evolution of a species that will come after us, in summary, they would be our descendants.”
Thierre Maurice Pierre, a researcher at the Inkari Institute in Cusco, Peru, stated that the analysis concluded that non-human beings date back thousands of years and that their DNA is not human. However, he clarified that this does not necessarily mean they belong to extraterrestrial beings.
“The laboratories concluded that these bodies were centuries, even millennia old. The DNA of these beings does not belong to the human species. For this reason, the laboratories will speak of at least two unknown species. I want to insist on this important point: none of the laboratories have mentioned extraterrestrials,” he said.
Anthropologist Roger Zúñiga Avilés of San Luis Gonzaga National University in Ica, Peru, said researchers had studied five similar specimens over four years. “There was absolutely no human intervention in the physical and biological formation of these beings,” he added, saying he did not know the origin of the beings.
Zúñiga presented a letter signed by 11 researchers from the university declaring the same. The letter made clear, however, that they were not implying the bodies were “extraterrestrial.” According to Reuters, “When asked about those studies, Zúñiga said the specimens were probably fake. The bodies that he and the other university researchers looked at, however, were real, he said.”
After thorough investigations, the research team has conclusively determined that the desiccated bodies under study are entirely authentic from a biological standpoint. There are no indications of tampering or artificial assembly. The scientific approach has been meticulous, and these results further affirm the authenticity of the bodies.
Mexican September UAP hearings came after the US Congress conducted its hearings, where corner US intelligence officer David Grusch testified that the US government has its possession of intact alien crafts and claimed that “non-human biologics” had been recovered from crashed vehicles of unknown origin. He further claimed the Pentagon was secretly reverse-engineering the recovered craft without oversight by Congress or the US public.
After Stalling Out for 40 Years, the Largest Iceberg in the World is on the Move
An animation from Copernicus Sentinel-1 images shows iceberg A23a’s movements from 2 November 2023, 14 November 2023 and 26 November 2023. Credit: ESA.
After Stalling Out for 40 Years, the Largest Iceberg in the World is on the Move
In 1986, a gigantic iceberg separated from the Fichner-Ronne ice shelf in West Antarctica. It was so big that it became grounded, stuck to the seafloor, and remained in position for 40 years. Finally, it has now been pushed off the seafloor and has begun drifting in the Weddell Sea to a region in the South Atlantic called Iceberg Alley. Designated A23a, this monster berg measures 4000 sq km (1,500 square miles) and is about 400 meters (1,300 feet) thick – the world’s largest.
On the surface, A23a is about four times the size of New York City. But as is well known about icebergs, you must look below the surface, too. At 400 meters thick, the entire body of ice adds up to more than a trillion tons of frozen water.
ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite has been keeping an eye on the moving behemoth, which appears to be driven by winds and currents. Scientists estimate it is currently moving at a rate of about 4.8 km (3 miles) each day.
ESA said it is not unusual for icebergs to become grounded, but over time they shrink enough to unground and float.
Images from Copernicus Sentinel-1 to show how the A23a iceberg rotated and travelled between 2 November 2023 (blue) and 26 November 2023 (red). Credit: ESA
Now that this iceberg is on the loose, scientists can’t predict exactly where it will go next. However, like most icebergs from the Weddell sector, A23a is likely to end up in the South Atlantic on Iceberg Alley.
While A23a is huge, it’s not the biggest ever. It is only about one-third the size of the biggest iceberg in recorded history, B-15 which calved off of Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf in 2000. The B-15 iceberg covered more than 10,878 square km (4,200 square miles) when it broke away, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. B-15 has since fractured into numerous smaller bergs, and most have melted away.
Another biggie was A-76 which came loose in 2021 and measured around 4,320 square km (1,670 square miles) in size. At 170 km (106 miles) in length and 25 km (15 miles) wide, the iceberg was slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca, and bigger than the state of Rhode Island in the US.
In 2005, astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz announced the discovery of a previously unknown planetoid in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune’s orbit. The team named this object Eris after the Greek personification of strife and discord, which was assigned by the IAU a year later. Along with Haumea and Makemake, which they similarly observed in 2004 and 2005 (respectively), this object led to the “Great Planet Debate,” which continues to this day. Meanwhile, astronomers have continued to study the Trans-Neptunian region to learn more about these objects.
While subsequent observations have allowed astronomers to get a better idea of Eris’ size and mass, there are many unresolved questions about the structure of this “dwarf planet” and how it compares to Pluto. In a recent study, Mike Brown and University of California Santa Cruz professor Francis Nimmo presented a series of models based on new mass estimates for Eris’ moon Dysnomia. According to their results, Eris is likely differentiated into a convecting icy shell and rocky core, which sets it apart from Pluto’s conductive shell.
Their paper, “The internal structure of Eris inferred from its spin and orbit evolution,” recently appeared in the journal Science Advances. The research began while Nimmo was visiting Professor Brown at Caltech and realized that some of his previously-unpublished data could help reveal information about the properties of Eris. At present, we know that Eris is about the same size and mass as Pluto and has a highly eccentric orbit around our Sun, ranging from 38.271 AU at perihelion to 97.457 AU at aphelion. This is almost twice as eccentric as Pluto’s orbit and roughly 50% farther from the Sun.
Comparison between the eight largest TNOs with Earth (all to scale). Credit: NASA/Lexicon
For several months, Brown and Nimmo worked on models of Eris that incorporated two key pieces of information. The first had to do with Eris’ only known satellite, Dysnomia, and how the two bodies always face the same way toward each other. “That happens because the big planet gets spun down by the tides that the little moon raises on it,” said Nimmo in a recent UCSC press release. “The bigger the moon is, the faster the planet spins down. And so as soon as you know that, then you can actually start to do real calculations.”
Astronomers can use the spin and orbital characteristics of planets and their moons to infer certain properties, like their internal structures. But until recently, scientists did not have estimates on Dysnomia’s size, mass, and density. Luckily, Brown and his colleague Bryan J. Butler – a researcher at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) – recently conducted observations of Dysnomia and Eris (and Orcus and its satellite Vanth) using the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array (ALMA). Based on their findings, published in The Planetary Science Journal, Dysnomia has a diameter of about 615 km (382 mi) and Dysnomia and Eris have a mass ratio of 0.0085.
This upper mass limit provided the second crucial piece of information, which concerned Eris’ internal structure. The main result of Brown and Nimmo’s model (but did not expect) is that Eris is surprisingly dissipative, a concept in thermodynamics where a system operates out of equilibrium. From this, they determined that Eris has a rocky core surrounded by a layer of ice and a crust that is likely convecting. “The rock contains radioactive elements, and those produce heat,” Nimmo said. “And then that heat has to get out somehow. So as the heat escapes, it drives this slow churning in the ice.”
This sets it apart from Pluto, which has a conducting shell, as revealed by the New Horizon mission. Brown and Nimmo hope that more exact measurements of Dysnomia’s mass will be available in the near future, as well as additional data about the shape of Eris. Because of its distance, Eris appears as a single pixel of light, while Dysnomia is visible as a faint speck next to it (see below). Therefore, astronomers must monitor Eris as it passes in front of background stars to reconstruct its shape. This is similar to the Transit Method astronomers use to detect exoplanets and constrain their sizes.
Eris (center) and its moon of Dysnomia (left of center), taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/Mike Brown
As Nimmo summarized, these measurements will help he and Brown refine the models they created:
“If Dysnomia is smaller than that, then Eris is even more squishy. We make the point that Eris should be pretty smooth because if there’s any surface topography, the ice is going to flow, and that topography will go away. So it would be nice to get some measurements of what shape Eris is because if it’s very irregular, that would not agree with our model.”
“The star blinks out and then the star comes back, and that tells you how wide Eris is at that point. And if you do that with a whole bunch of stars, then you can actually reconstruct shape. I’m hoping people are actually doing it, I just don’t know whether they are.”
Watch this video and notice a strange object shoot past behind the person speaking. There is an UFO orb, which is a small metal sphere move past, stop and then vanish. This particular orb is a cloud orb and are just a bit smaller than a basketball in size. The objects main job are to scan and record anything and everything in hopes of retrieving new information. Here it found an TikTok influencer. If Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Obama all had UFOs near them, then maybe we can assume this influence may have some massive destiny in the future.
This UFO was caught by an eyewitness yesterday that saw this tic-tac white UFO moving across the sky. He said he has seen such things before over the area. This craft has no wings, no contrail, no windows, lights or color other than the white cigar shaped craft itself. Just a fantastic catch, and proof that UAPs are over Ireland. I wonder....if there is a link to old Irish stories about little green men...otherwise known as leprechauns. It all makes sense now.
Unveiling the Mystery: Eisenhower’s Alleged Extraterrestrial Encounter
Unveiling the Mystery: Eisenhower’s Alleged Extraterrestrial Encounter
In the annals of American presidential history, few stories spark as much intrigue and debate as the alleged encounter between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and extraterrestrial beings. This extraordinary claim, emerging from the depths of Cold War secrecy and UFO lore, proposes a clandestine meeting that, if true, could profoundly alter our understanding of human history and our place in the cosmos.
The Disappearance That Sparked a Thousand Theories
The tale begins on a seemingly ordinary night in February 1954. President Eisenhower, taking a winter vacation in Palm Springs, California, reportedly vanished. The official statement claimed he was urgently whisked away due to a dental emergency. However, this explanation didn’t satisfy everyone, leading to rampant speculation.
A Meeting of Worlds?
The most sensational of these theories posits that Eisenhower didn’t visit a dentist but instead attended a secret rendezvous with aliens at Edwards Air Force Base. According to various accounts, these beings offered Eisenhower advanced technology in exchange for the cessation of nuclear weapons testing — a proposal Eisenhower allegedly declined, fearing the Soviets wouldn’t adhere to such an agreement.
Skepticism and Secrecy
While this narrative is compelling, it’s met with skepticism. No concrete evidence has emerged to confirm such an encounter. Critics argue that the story is a blend of Cold War paranoia, the era’s fascination with science fiction, and the secrecy surrounding UFO phenomena.
The Legacy of Unexplained Aerial Phenomena
Despite the skepticism, the Eisenhower alien encounter theory feeds into a larger narrative about UFOs and their potential links to high-level government knowledge. The U.S. government’s historical stance on UFOs has been one of dismissal or downplaying. However, recent shifts, including congressional hearings and official reports, signal a growing willingness to discuss and investigate these unexplained phenomena.
VIDEO:
The UnXplained: Did President Eisenhower Meet Aliens? (Season 6)
The question of whether Eisenhower met with extraterrestrials remains unanswered. This enigmatic episode serves as a fascinating reflection of the human desire to explore the unknown and ponder our place in the vast universe. As we continue to witness a gradual shift from fringe conspiracy theories to mainstream scientific inquiry, the story of Eisenhower’s alleged extraterrestrial meeting endures, a compelling chapter in the ongoing saga of humanity’s quest to understand the mysteries of the skies.
At least, an international team of researchers from Italy, Norway, Canada and the US has reached that conclusion in a new study, which analyzed sulfur and fluorine gases trapped in ancient volcanic rocks from the infamous Deccan Traps supervolcano.
This sulfur and fluorine — belched out by the Deccan Traps over 200,000 years before the extinction-level event — would have dropped global temperatures by as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius), their new study determined.
Their work aligns itself with a compromise theory: the 'press-pulse extinction model.'
Repeated 'volcanic winters' may have left the dinosaurs hungry, shivering and vulnerable to a fatal 'final blow' by the asteroid that ultimately did them in, according to a new study
An international team of researchers from Italy, Norway, Canada and the US analyzed sulfur and fluorine gases trapped in layers of ancient volcanic rocks (labelled above right) from India's Deccan Traps supervolcano. The volcanic gases likely led to temperature drops globally
'Our research demonstrates that climatic conditions were almost certainly unstable,' said study co-author and geologist Don Baker, 'with repeated volcanic winters that could have lasted decades, prior to the extinction of the dinosaurs.'
'Our work helps explain this significant extinction event that led to the rise of mammals and the evolution of our species,' according to Baker, who teaches at Canada's McGill University in Montreal.
The group analyzed trapped sulfur and fluorine compounds in samples taken from the Deccan Traps 'lava pile' in India's Western Ghats mountain range, near Bombay.
The compounds' minute concentrations, measured in parts-per-million, were determined via synchrotron radiation x‐ray fluorescence spectrometry — which bombards samples with magnetized corkscrews of radiation and then records how that radiation bounces and scatters back.
Some of the 'volcanic winters,' according to study co-author, geologist Don Baker, 'could have lasted decades' each, prior to the meteor that led to the dinosaurs' extinction
Baker drew a cooking analogy to explain the process of calculating atmospheric sulfur and fluorine volume from the small percentages held within these lava rocks.
'Imagine making pasta at home. You boil the water, add salt, and then the pasta,' Baker began in a statement.
'Some of the salt from the water goes into the pasta,' he said, 'but not much of it.'
Baker and his team worked with similar known ratios to estimate how much sulfur and fluorine gas compounds had flooded into Earth's atmosphere during the Cretaceous period.
A steady drop in temperature during the late Cretaceous period, as estimated by past paleoclimate studies, happened to track with higher concentrations of the Sulfur compounds in several layers of ancient lava from the Deccan Traps: layers known as the Thakurvadi through Bushe rock formations.
Sulfur content was found to be as high as 1,800 parts-per-million in these layers.
By the researchers' calculations, that would indicate that a volume of sulfur gas somewhere between 86,000 and 466,000 cubic-kilometers in size erupted into the prehistoric atmosphere.
When it came to the fluorine gasses, Baker and his colleagues do not believe it contributed to major climate change, but that its concentrations had other, more local, toxic effects.
'There is historical evidence for local impacts of fluorine degassing,' they wrote in their study, published in the journal Science Advances, 'as readily deposited from the volcanic haze.'
Above, a November 2023 eruption from one of most active and tallest volcanos in Europe, the snow-capped Etna in Italy. Etna shows what global 'volcanic winters' might have looked like
Huge regions of western India were carved and grooved by the lava flows of the Deccan Traps supervolcano over 66 million years ago. Above, a SkySat satellite image of the Deccan Traps taken in March of 2018 over Maharashtrain in India
The 'the final blow' in the researchers' view was almost assuredly the well-known Chicxulub impact, when a carbon-rich asteroid crashed into Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula roughly 66 million years ago. The impact led to trillions of metric tons of dust clouds and a new Ice Age
Those local impacts included, 'acid rain, crop failure, and livestock poisoning' after Iceland's Laki volcano eruptions in 1783 and 1784.
In essence, the researchers speculate that the Laki volcano's fluorine episode might be a good example of how the Deccan Traps' supervolcanic activity could have further harmed the dinosaurs over 66 million years ago.
'Deccan Traps volcanism set the stage for a global biotic crisis,' as the team put it in their new study, 'repeatedly deteriorating environmental conditions by forcing recurring short volcanic winters.'
But the 'the final blow' in their view was almost assuredly the well-known Chicxulub impact, when a carbon-rich asteroid crashed into Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula roughly 66 million years ago.
The impact, which left a six-mile-wide crater visible to this day, devastated the planet smashing up a hot cloud of dust, ash and steam and spreading 25 trillion metric tons of material into the atmosphere, some of which even escaped Earth's orbit.
The heated rentry of the rest of that material caused forest fires across 70 percent of the planet and left massive dust clouds that hastened a new Ice Age, scientists say.
But the dinosaurs were already struggling with bad weather by that time, based on Baker and his teams' new work.
'Our dataset,' they wrote, 'indicates that volcanic-driven climate disturbance was already underway.'
The mystery of Mexico's 'aliens' is deepening after an analysis claimed the DNA of tiny corpses is not human but of an 'unknown species.'
The nation's Congress has been a circus for the past two months as controversial UFO enthusiast and journalist Jaime Maussan has held court several times to prove the mummified remains found in Peru are extraterrestrial life.
In his recent attempt, Maussan ushered in a team of researchers who performed a DNA analysis on the figures that showed 30 percent is 'not from any known species' and stated that the figures were 'authentic,' comprising a single skeleton.
The other 70 percent has not yet been revealed.
DailyMail.com revealed that a UFO expert who has handled the tiny bodies suggested humans put them together - and the pair could have been made with now-extinct animals 1,000 years ago.
The mystery of Mexico 's ' aliens ' is deepening after an analysis claimed the DNA of tiny corpses is not human but of an 'unknown species'
This is the first time extraterrestrial life has been presented in this manner, Maussan said to Congress.
'We have a clear example of non-human specimens unrelated to any known species on our planet.
'The public has the right to know about non-human technology and beings. This reality unites humanity rather than dividing us. We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this truth.'
Maussan added that the two corpses have sturdy bones, are toothless, and contain implants made of the soft, slivery-white metal cadmium and the bluish-white metal osmium - rare elements on Earth.
He revealed in September that 30 percent of the DNA was unknown, but it was not until recently that claims of an unknown species surfaced.
The nation's Congress has been a circus for the past two months as controversial UFO enthusiast and journalist Jaime Maussan has held court several times to prove the mummified remains found in Peru are extraterrestrial life
The figures underwent carbon dating by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which determined the bodies had three-fingered hands, no teeth and were more than 1,000 years old, Maussan claimed
The figures underwent carbon dating by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which determined the bodies had three-fingered hands, no teeth and were more than 1,000 years old, Maussan claimed.
'These specimens are not part of our terrestrial evolution [...] These aren't beings that were found after a UFO wreckage,' Maussan said to Congress in September.
'They were found in diatom [algae] mines and were later fossilized.'
He later added: 'Whether they are aliens or not, we don't know, but they were intelligent and they lived with us. They should rewrite history.'
'We are not alone in this vast universe; we should embrace this reality.'
Maussan said that the two corpses have sturdy bones, are toothless, and contain implants made of the soft, slivery-white metal cadmium and the bluish-white metal osmium - rare elements on Earth
Experts also indicated that their DNA is hybrid, suggesting the bodies were descendants of the being human
The experts also indicated that their DNA is hybrid, suggesting the bodies were descendants of the being human.
'We have a hybrid being, we have other beings that are apparently more evolved than us…we are facing something truly extraordinary,' said Maussan.
While Mausaan and his team declared the mummified corpses, named Clara and Mauricio, 'are real,' the experts did not have an origin story and did not imply the bodies were 'extraterrestrial.'
At the hearing, he focused on proving the bodies were not fake by providing insights from medical experts.
'None of the scientists say [the study results] prove that they are extraterrestrials, but I go further,' he said, suggesting that they could be evidence of non-Earthly life forms.
Ufologist Will Galison - a close friend of the archaeologist who first analyzed the supposed 'aliens' - said he believes the 'corpses' are dummies that are 1,000 years old
Maussan brought a squad of medical experts who carried in a letter signed by 11 researchers from San Luis Gonzaga National University in Ica, Peru, declaring the same.
Anthropologist Roger Zuniga of San Luis Gonzaga National University in Ica Peru said Tuesday: 'There was absolutely no human intervention in the physical and biological formation of these beings.'
However, the letter made clear that the team was not implying the bodies were 'extraterrestrial' but did not answer where the remains originated.
Argentine surgeon Celestino Adolfo Piotto also took the stand, claiming he reviewed the results of testing done on the bodies and made the bizarre case that 'they were an evolved version of today's human beings, calling them 'our descendants.'
But ufologist Will Galison - a close friend of the archaeologist who first analyzed the supposed 'aliens' - said he believes the 'corpses' are dummies that are 1,000 years old.
Galison said they may have been made from animal remains a millennia ago, possibly for ritual purposes, with the heads bearing a 'remarkable similarity' to alpaca skulls.
Many online have expressed skepticism about the veracity of the mummies origins.
In een historisch gebouw in het Amerikaanse Deep Ellum wordt tegenwoordig een enorme inspanning geleverd om enkele van de beroemdste uitgestorven dieren weer tot leven te brengen. Een in Dallas gevestigd bedrijf genaamd 'Colossal Biosciences' gaat deze hallucinante uitdaging aan. Zo werkt het momenteel al aan de creatie van de wolharige mammoet, die 4000 jaar geleden uitstierf.
"We creëren technologie die de toekomst zal veranderen voor de uitgestorven soorten, maar het verbazingwekkende is dat deze technologieën vandaag de dag al een verschil kan maken voor het behoud van bedreigde diersoorten", zegt Matt James, de hoofddierenfunctionaris van Colossal.
Met behulp van DNA van Aziatische olifanten en DNA van wolharige mammoeten die bevroren zijn in de arctische toendra, gebruiken onderzoekers van Colossal Biosciences genbewerkingstechnologie om het genoom van een Aziatische olifant opnieuw te ontwerpen totdat het dat van een wolharige mammoet weerspiegelt. “Het blijkt dat de wolharige mammoet en de Aziatische olifant gnomisch gezien voor 99,6% op elkaar lijken”, zegt James.
In de laboratoria in Deep Ellum wordt gewerkt aan het creëren van kunstmatige baarmoeders waarin een wolharige mammoetkalf kan groeien. Colossal heeft er zelf een doel van gemaakt om te slagen tegen het jaar 2028.
James zegt dat het herstellen van een gigantisch ecosysteem de permafrost, oftewel de grond die bevroren blijft, kan behouden en de uitstoot van broeikasgassen kan vertragen. “Dit is waarschijnlijk 100 verschillende levens waard om dit doel te bereiken, maar we moeten zo snel mogelijk doorzetten omdat we worden geconfronteerd met deze onmiddellijke dreiging van de mondiale klimaatverandering”, aldus James.
Sinds de aankondiging van zijn voornemen voor de wolharige mammoet, heeft Colossal ook soortgelijke plannen aangekondigd voor de dodovogel en de Tasmaanse tijger, oftewel thylacine.
(Skwadra by Tagtik/Source: NBC Los Angeles/Illustration picture: Unsplash)
The Pentagonbranch tasked with protecting America from space-based threats, local and galactic, has detected thousands of UFOsin Earth's orbit, DailyMail.com can reveal.
US Space Force, America's newest military branch created under President Trump in 2019, told personnel this month that the sightings were so regular that they are 'hindering threat identification,' the branch's core mission.
While many of the sightings will prove to be man-made space junk and 'natural debris' like meteoroids, US foreign adversaries continue to launch spy satellites, like North Korea's new Malligyong-1, and other covert orbital platforms.
One new concern, Space Force noted: the risk of threatening spacecraft hidden in the large unwatched area between Earth and the moon, dubbed 'cislunar' orbit.
In their new report, published this month, Space Force's leadership emphasized the importance of finding these grave 'threats' among mere 'hazards' like space junk.
But the military branch also went into considerable detail on a weirder, new category of potential 'hazards and threats' under scrutiny.
US Space Force, America's newest military branch created under President Trump in 2019, told personnel this month that 'abnormal observables' in space are a pervasive problem that is 'hindering threat identification,' the branch's core mission
Space Force hopes to 'distinguish between sources of spacecraft anomalies in support of anomaly resolution, recovery, and space attack assessment.' Since the branch's creation in 2019, the number of UFO 'unknowns' in Earth's orbit has skyrocketed by the thousands (above)
Space Force's mandate 'to rapidly identify and respond to threats and hazards,' the strategy document noted, also includes, 'objects that exhibit abnormal observables and patterns of life and cannot [be] correlated to any owner or point of origin.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to STARCOM, Space Force's Space Training and Readiness Command which published the new document, for detailed clarification on its precise meaning by the terms 'abnormal observables' and 'patterns of life.'
In recent years, Pentagon officials tasked with investigating UFO cases, including the now famous 2004 Tic Tac incursions, have focused their attention on 'five observables' they say are unique features of serious unexplained phenomena.
'Unidentified aerial phenomena' or UAP that check off these 'observables' appear to display either one or all of the following: (1.) gravity-defying behavior, (2.) eerily low observability on radar or other sensors, (3.) sudden or instantaneous accelerations, (4.) hypersonic speeds without signatures like 'sonic booms,' and (5.) so-called 'trans-medium' travel between air, sea and outer space.
It's unclear from the Space Force STARCOM document, however, whether these five, established UFO techno-signatures overlap with their own 'abnormal observables.'
It's also unclear what 'patterns of life' have been detected from orbital unknowns.
Space Force's strategy document, titled 'Space Doctrine Publication 3-100, Space Domain Awareness,' outlines the military branch's mission to monitor a vast orbital range that includes everything from low earth orbit (LEO) to the moon
Across US military branches, the term 'patterns of life' has been used to reference the thermal heat signatures given off by living human targets, for everything from drone warfare to troop deployment surveillance.
The Pentagon's departing UFO investigation chief, physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, also used the term to indicate UAP mysteries that would include extraterrestrial craft.
'We are executing a rigorous science and technology plan to ensure controlled calibration of sensors, patterns of life, and signature characterization development,' Kirkpatrick said last December.
'More data will help build a more complete picture and support the resolution of […] anomalous phenomena.'
Thermal signatures from the body heat of a living thing (whether terrestrial or E.T. in origin), may fall into this category, to judge from the passages of Space Force's new strategy document that focused on the infra-red capabilities of US military satellites.
'Optical and infrared sensors with relatively wide (one square degree or more) field-of-view,' Space Force's STARCOM advised, 'are also well suited for searching for unknown objects or objects with only a roughly known location.'
However, Lt. General DeAnna Burt, the deputy chief devoted to Space Force's cyber and nuclear operations, among others, have also used 'patterns of life' to reference detectable, routine activity by any and all technological platforms in space.
Last May, Lt. Gen. Burt dropped the term of art while criticizing China for its opaque and noncooperative space program activities.
'We've said what our capabilities are,' Lt. Gen. Burt told SpaceNews. 'If you are honest and say what things are and have patterns of life that indicate they are what they are, then it's an everyday operation,' Burt said.
Whatever Space Force's intent, the branch issued its new publication in mid-November to announce, in part, its plan to identify and track UFOs in orbit around Earth — a high priority initiative the branch calls 'Space Domain Awareness' (SDA).
The strategy document, titled 'Space Doctrine Publication 3-100, Space Domain Awareness,' outlines Space Force's mission to successfully monitor a vast orbital range that includes everything from low earth orbit (LEO) to the moon.
STARCOM drafted the document as part of its mission to educate and train US Space Force personnel, officially dubbed 'guardians.'
Since the branch's creation in 2019, the number of orbital knowns and UFO 'unknowns' shadowing the Earth has skyrocketed by the thousands.
Space Force, citing NASA data, published a chart revealing that there are now over 25,000 objects total in orbit, although most were determined to be 'rocket bodies,' 'spacecraft,' 'mission-related debris' or other known man-made objects.
Much of the clutter orbiting Earth is man-made space junk and 'natural debris' like meteoroids, but Space Force's document detailed a weirder, new category: 'objects that exhibit abnormal observables and patterns of life and cannot [be] correlated to any owner or point of origin'
Over 60 percent of the US Space Force budget, or about $19.2 billion worth, has earmarked for research, development, testing and evaluation - creating the tools and techniques for the new and growing problem of defending US interests from foreign military activity in space
According to the Air Force Research Lab, its new security and monitoring probe, the Oracle spacecraft (above) 'aims to launch in 2026 to an area of gravitational stability between the Earth and the Moon to test techniques to monitor space traffic that travels through that region'
Space Force leadership said it hopes to positively identify any and all UFOs to determine if they should be recovered or if they pose a clear and present danger to the United States.
Or, in military's own unique jargon, Space Force hopes to 'distinguish between sources of spacecraft anomalies in support of anomaly resolution, recovery, and space attack assessment,' the new document states.
But that will cost money, alongside Space Force's other duties providing satellite and other space-based support for American troops on the ground worldwide.
The ex-Air Force security officer said he investigated two sightings of a 100-yard UFO witnessed by Boeing contractors and Air Force police on October 14, 2003. There's 'at least 80 people that know this happened,' the USAF vet., Jeff Nuccetelli, told the Merged podcast. As the officer recalled of the eyewitnesses, 'They're scared. Everyone's freaked out'
First it must organize, train and equip personnel to 'protect US and allied interests in space.' But, secondarily, it must also 'provide space capabilities to the joint forces' here on Earth, such as maintaining spy satellites and other space-based military hardware.
Space Force's STARCOM noted that figuring out the mystery of what these UFOs or UAP are is essential, in part, so that it can get on with it's other military troop-support tasks.
'Anomalous indications,' the new guidance document states, 'unnecessarily consume SDA resources (e.g., sensors, communication nodes, command and control [C2] centers, planners, operators) that would otherwise be supporting space and terrestrial combatant commands.'
One new concern, the document added, is the growing threat of foreign spy satellites and worse, in the large dark orbital region between the Earth and the moon, dubbed 'cislunar' orbit.
'Current sensor capabilities will find that the vastness of space between the Earth and the moon, and around the moon, creates challenging conditions for search, custody, and collection operations in support of joint forces,' the branch's new strategy document stated.
Space Force noted plans by the US Air Force Research Lab for a new security and monitoring probe, the Oracle spacecraft, which 'aims to launch in 2026 to an area of gravitational stability between the Earth and the Moon to test techniques to monitor space traffic that travels through that region.'
Given all this uncharted territory, which is at best poorly monitored by US defense systems, it is no surprise that the branch's 'guardians' are requesting $3.9 billion more from taxpayers for 2024 than its 2023 fiscal year budget.
At present, over 60 percent of the US Space Force's budget, or about $19.2 billion worth, has been earmarked for research, development, testing and evaluation.
Nearly $20 billion, in other words, just to create the tools and techniques for the new and growing problem of defending US interests from foreign military activity, terrestrial and possibly extraterrestrial, in outer space.
The Pentagonbranch tasked with protecting America from space-based threats, local and galactic, has detected thousands of UFOsin Earth's orbit, DailyMail.com can reveal.
US Space Force, America's newest military branch created under President Trump in 2019, told personnel this month that the sightings were so regular that they are 'hindering threat identification,' the branch's core mission.
While many of the sightings will prove to be man-made space junk and 'natural debris' like meteoroids, US foreign adversaries continue to launch spy satellites, like North Korea's new Malligyong-1, and other covert orbital platforms.
One new concern, Space Force noted: the risk of threatening spacecraft hidden in the large unwatched area between Earth and the moon, dubbed 'cislunar' orbit.
In their new report, published this month, Space Force's leadership emphasized the importance of finding these grave 'threats' among mere 'hazards' like space junk.
But the military branch also went into considerable detail on a weirder, new category of potential 'hazards and threats' under scrutiny.
US Space Force, America's newest military branch created under President Trump in 2019, told personnel this month that 'abnormal observables' in space are a pervasive problem that is 'hindering threat identification,' the branch's core mission
Space Force hopes to 'distinguish between sources of spacecraft anomalies in support of anomaly resolution, recovery, and space attack assessment.' Since the branch's creation in 2019, the number of UFO 'unknowns' in Earth's orbit has skyrocketed by the thousands (above)
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Space Force's mandate 'to rapidly identify and respond to threats and hazards,' the strategy document noted, also includes, 'objects that exhibit abnormal observables and patterns of life and cannot [be] correlated to any owner or point of origin.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to STARCOM, Space Force's Space Training and Readiness Command which published the new document, for detailed clarification on its precise meaning by the terms 'abnormal observables' and 'patterns of life.'
In recent years, Pentagon officials tasked with investigating UFO cases, including the now famous 2004 Tic Tac incursions, have focused their attention on 'five observables' they say are unique features of serious unexplained phenomena.
'Unidentified aerial phenomena' or UAP that check off these 'observables' appear to display either one or all of the following: (1.) gravity-defying behavior, (2.) eerily low observability on radar or other sensors, (3.) sudden or instantaneous accelerations, (4.) hypersonic speeds without signatures like 'sonic booms,' and (5.) so-called 'trans-medium' travel between air, sea and outer space.
It's unclear from the Space Force STARCOM document, however, whether these five, established UFO techno-signatures overlap with their own 'abnormal observables.'
It's also unclear what 'patterns of life' have been detected from orbital unknowns.
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Space Force's strategy document, titled 'Space Doctrine Publication 3-100, Space Domain Awareness,' outlines the military branch's mission to monitor a vast orbital range that includes everything from low earth orbit (LEO) to the moon
Across US military branches, the term 'patterns of life' has been used to reference the thermal heat signatures given off by living human targets, for everything from drone warfare to troop deployment surveillance.
The Pentagon's departing UFO investigation chief, physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, also used the term to indicate UAP mysteries that would include extraterrestrial craft.
'We are executing a rigorous science and technology plan to ensure controlled calibration of sensors, patterns of life, and signature characterization development,' Kirkpatrick said last December.
'More data will help build a more complete picture and support the resolution of […] anomalous phenomena.'
Thermal signatures from the body heat of a living thing (whether terrestrial or E.T. in origin), may fall into this category, to judge from the passages of Space Force's new strategy document that focused on the infra-red capabilities of US military satellites.
'Optical and infrared sensors with relatively wide (one square degree or more) field-of-view,' Space Force's STARCOM advised, 'are also well suited for searching for unknown objects or objects with only a roughly known location.'
However, Lt. General DeAnna Burt, the deputy chief devoted to Space Force's cyber and nuclear operations, among others, have also used 'patterns of life' to reference detectable, routine activity by any and all technological platforms in space.
Last May, Lt. Gen. Burt dropped the term of art while criticizing China for its opaque and noncooperative space program activities.
'We've said what our capabilities are,' Lt. Gen. Burt told SpaceNews. 'If you are honest and say what things are and have patterns of life that indicate they are what they are, then it's an everyday operation,' Burt said.
Whatever Space Force's intent, the branch issued its new publication in mid-November to announce, in part, its plan to identify and track UFOs in orbit around Earth — a high priority initiative the branch calls 'Space Domain Awareness' (SDA).
The strategy document, titled 'Space Doctrine Publication 3-100, Space Domain Awareness,' outlines Space Force's mission to successfully monitor a vast orbital range that includes everything from low earth orbit (LEO) to the moon.
STARCOM drafted the document as part of its mission to educate and train US Space Force personnel, officially dubbed 'guardians.'
Since the branch's creation in 2019, the number of orbital knowns and UFO 'unknowns' shadowing the Earth has skyrocketed by the thousands.
Space Force, citing NASA data, published a chart revealing that there are now over 25,000 objects total in orbit, although most were determined to be 'rocket bodies,' 'spacecraft,' 'mission-related debris' or other known man-made objects.
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Much of the clutter orbiting Earth is man-made space junk and 'natural debris' like meteoroids, but Space Force's document detailed a weirder, new category: 'objects that exhibit abnormal observables and patterns of life and cannot [be] correlated to any owner or point of origin'
Over 60 percent of the US Space Force budget, or about $19.2 billion worth, has earmarked for research, development, testing and evaluation - creating the tools and techniques for the new and growing problem of defending US interests from foreign military activity in space
According to the Air Force Research Lab, its new security and monitoring probe, the Oracle spacecraft (above) 'aims to launch in 2026 to an area of gravitational stability between the Earth and the Moon to test techniques to monitor space traffic that travels through that region'
Space Force leadership said it hopes to positively identify any and all UFOs to determine if they should be recovered or if they pose a clear and present danger to the United States.
Or, in military's own unique jargon, Space Force hopes to 'distinguish between sources of spacecraft anomalies in support of anomaly resolution, recovery, and space attack assessment,' the new document states.
But that will cost money, alongside Space Force's other duties providing satellite and other space-based support for American troops on the ground worldwide.
Artist rendition of proposed habitable airships traversing Venus’ atmosphere, which has been proposed as the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission. (Credit: NASA)
NASA is preparing to send humans back to the Moon with the Artemis missions in the next few years as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars Architecture with the long-term goal of landing humans on the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s or 2040s. But what about sending humans to other worlds of the Solar System? And, why not Venus? It’s closer to Earth than Mars by several tens of millions of kilometers, and despite its extremely harsh surface conditions, previous studies have suggested that life could exist in its clouds. In contrast, we have yet to find any signs of life anywhere on the Red Planet or in its thin atmosphere. So, should we send humans to Venus?
“Yes, we should send humans to Venus,” Dr. Paul Byrne, who is an Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Universe Today. “But first, let’s talk about what ‘sending humans to Venus’ actually means. The surface of Venus is hellish, so nobody would last long there nor volunteer to go. Above the clouds, the temperature and pressure are almost like a nice spring day here on Earth, so aside from tiny sulphuric acid cloud droplets you’d be okay (with a breathing apparatus).”
These “hellish” conditions that Dr. Byrne alludes to are the extreme conditions across the surface of Venus, including surface pressures 92 times that of Earth’s surface and average surface temperatures of approximately 464 degrees Celsius (867 degrees Fahrenheit). In contrast, Earth’s average surface temperatures are a calm 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). These extreme pressures and temperatures have made landing on the surface of Venus even more difficult, as the former Soviet Union continues to be the only nation to have successfully landed on Venus’ surface, having accomplished this feat with several of their Venera and Vega missions. However, the longest mission duration for the lander was only 127 minutes (Venera 13), which also conducted the first sound recording on another planet.
Color images taken by the Soviet Union’s Venera 13 lander on the surface of Venus on March 1, 1982, with the lander surviving only 127 minutes due to Venus’s extreme surface conditions. (Credit: NASA)
“If we were to send humans to Venus, they’d be going in a spacecraft that would fly by the planet en route somewhere else,” Dr. Byrne tells Universe Today. “If we were to one day send humans actually to Venus itself for science and engineering purposes, then a cloud-based habitat is the way to go. Getting humans onto the Venus surface is going to require so much technology and expense that, for the foreseeable future, I don’t think anyone will think it worth doing.”
A 2015 study presented at the AIAA Space and Astronautics Forum and Exposition outlined a NASA study for the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission that would involve a 30-day crewed mission using an airship equipped with solar panels within the upper atmosphere of Venus. This is because Venus’ upper atmosphere at approximately 50 kilometers (30 miles) above the surface exhibits much more hospitable conditions, including temperatures between 30 to 70 degrees Celsius (86 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit) and pressures very close to that of Earth. However, Dr. Byrne refers to HAVOC as an “unbelievably expensive concept”.
Artist rendition of proposed habitable airships traversing Venus’ atmosphere, which has been proposed as the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission. (Credit: NASA)
As for using Venus while en route to another location in the Solar System, Venus has been used on several occasions to slingshot spacecraft to the outer Solar System as well as for exploration of the inner Solar System, such as Mercury and the Sun. For example, NASA’s Galileo and Cassini spacecraft used gravity assists at Venus while en route to Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, while NASA’s MESSENGER and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) BepiColombo spacecraft used gravity assists at Venus while en route to Mercury. Additionally, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the ESA Solar Orbiter used gravity assists at Venus for orbital adjustments to explore the Sun.
“Once within close proximity to Venus, astronauts could remotely operate spacecraft, landers, or even aircraft to conduct valuable science before moving out of range again,” Dr. Byrne tells Universe Today. “But to be clear, the real value for such a mission would be as part of learning how to live and work in deep space en route to distant destinations, i.e., Mars. That’s something I don’t think we’re talking enough about yet when we think about sending humans, one day, to the Red Planet
Will we ever send humans to Venus? Will it be a cloud or surface mission, and what can we learn from doing it? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
Universe Todayrecently examined the potential for sending humans to the planet Venus despite its extremely harsh surface conditions. But while a human mission to the clouds of Venuscould be feasible given the environmental conditions are much more Earth-like, a human mission to the second planet from the Sun could be (at minimum) decades away. With NASA sending humans back to the Moon in the next few years, and hopefully to Mars, what if we could send humans to another planetary body worth exploring, though it could have its own harsh environmental conditions, as well? What about Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa? It has a massive interior liquid ocean that could harbor life, and NASA is currently scheduled to launch itsEuropa Clipper spacecraft to this small moon in October 2024, arriving at Jupiter in April 2030. Therefore, given the exploration potential, should we send humans to Europa?
“Honestly, while I find Europa fascinating, sending humans there is a terrible idea,” Dr. Alyssa Rhoden, who is a Principal Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, tells Universe Today. “The radiation environment can kill off a robotic lander in a few hours to days – with shielding! – so anything… fleshy… is going to have a very rough time.”
As previously discussed, Venus has searing surface temperatures and crushing pressures, making a human surface mission next to impossible. However, you can escape this harsh environment by traveling a few tens of kilometers higher. In contrast, Europa’s surface is constantly bombarded with intense radiation from Jupiter’s massive magnetic field, but you can’t escape it by slightly increasing your altitude. This is why every spacecraft that has explored Jupiter and its large moons, including NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft, has required intense shielding to prevent the electronics from burning up.
Dr. Francis Nimmo, who is a Professor in the Earth & Planetary Sciences Department at UC Santa Cruz, echoes Dr. Rhoden’s sentiments, telling Universe Today, “The biggest problem with sending humans to Europa is the radiation environment – it is extremely hostile. Even radiation-hardened spacecraft electronics have to be shielded inside a thick metal box in order to survive the Europa environment, so humans would be very unlikely to survive there for long enough to do anything useful.”
While NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will be exploring Europa, its orbital flight plan calls for the spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and not Europa to protect the spacecraft’s hardware and electronics from Jupiter’s intense radiation belts. Through this, Europa Clipper is slated to perform 50 flybys of Europa, coming as close as 25 kilometers (16 miles) of the icy moon’s surface. But, like Venus, could human exploration be conducted in orbit around Europa, despite the harsh radiation?
“An orbital colony would fare better, if it could be positioned to avoid too much radiation, but it would still be a major logistical challenge,” Dr. Rhoden tells Universe Today. “An orbiting colony of astronauts could provide (limited) ground support for ice shelling drilling projects and other short-term research excursions. And at least water retrieval would be easier! Overall, sending humans to Europa sounds exciting, but we have a long way to go before it’s feasible and likely to provide more benefit than orbiting spacecraft, landers/rovers, or autonomous drills.”
But even if an orbiting colony could work, what about resupplies for food and water (if the latter can’t be excavated from Europa)? With present propulsion technology, it takes spacecraft years to reach Jupiter from Earth while requiring multiple gravity assists just to slingshot their way to the outer Solar System. In contrast, future astronauts on the Moon would only have to wait a few days for a resupply mission. For Mars, astronauts might only have to wait six months if the positions of Earth and Mars were just right. All things considered, if a colony on Europa runs out of supplies, they might be doomed.
“Obviously, a colony on Europa would require just as much external support for food and breathable air as other targets like the Moon or Mars,” Dr. Rhoden tells Universe Today. “But on Europa, those externally supplied resources would be a decade away, and the external environment would be savagely attacking anything you put on the surface.”
Will we ever send humans to Europa? Will it be a surface or orbital mission, and what can we learn from doing it? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
RELATED VIDEOS
This animation shows NASA’s Europa Clipper during a flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa.
BREAKING: Whistleblowers Unveil CIA’s Covert Operations: Retrieving UFOs from Nine Global Crash Sites
BREAKING: Whistleblowers Unveil CIA’s Covert Operations: Retrieving UFOs from Nine Global Crash Sites
In the vast expanse of our universe, the question of whether we are alone has always tantalized humanity. Recently, a stunning revelation has brought this question into a startling perspective (Daily Motion link: EXCLUSIVE: CIA’s secret office has conducted UFO retrieval missions on at least NINE crash sites around the world, whistleblowers reveal). Whispered rumors and clandestine conversations have long hinted at the existence of unidentified flying objects, but now, a new chapter unfolds as we delve into the secretive operations of the CIA’s ‘Office of Global Access’. This covert wing of the intelligence agency, shrouded in mystery, has reportedly been at the forefront of recovering alien spacecraft, with claims of at least nine extraterrestrial crafts in their possession.
Established in 2003, the Office of Global Access, a less-known appendage of the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate, emerged as a central player in what could be the most extraordinary collection in human history. Sources, speaking under the veil of anonymity, have revealed that this office has played a pivotal role in orchestrating the retrieval of what are believed to be alien spacecraft from around the globe.
The narrative that unfolds is one of intrigue and secrecy. These alleged operations, sounding like they’re straight out of a science fiction novel, have been carried out with utmost discretion. According to insiders, some of these crafts were recovered from crash sites, bearing the scars of their tumultuous descents, while two others were found completely intact, presenting a baffling enigma of advanced technology and unknown origins.
The journey to uncover these truths has been fraught with challenges. The efforts to maintain secrecy are as complex as the operations themselves. It’s claimed that the actual physical retrieval of these objects is conducted by military units, but the control quickly shifts to private hands. This transition is supposedly a strategy to circumvent the rigorous documentation and public scrutiny that accompany government possession.
What makes these revelations even more compelling is the technology that supposedly allows the CIA to detect these UFOs, even when they are cloaked. This capability, if true, signifies a leap in surveillance and reconnaissance technologies, the likes of which we have yet to fully comprehend.
VIDEO:
Chris Lehto – “CIA’s ‘Office of Global Access’ has 9 UFO Craft”! – The Daily Mail
However, amidst these staggering claims, skepticism and calls for transparency echo throughout the corridors of power and public forums. Legislation spearheaded by influential figures seeks to shed light on these mysteries, demanding the disclosure of ‘recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence’.
The implications of these revelations extend far beyond the confines of national security and scientific curiosity. They challenge our understanding of the universe and our place within it. As we stand at the cusp of possibly the greatest discovery in human history, the saga of the CIA’s Office of Global Access and the nine UFO crafts continues to unfold, shrouded in secrecy, yet beckoning the relentless pursuit of truth.
Deze kerst zal een catastrofe toeslaan: de Maya-profetie die we nooit wilden weten
Door de geschiedenis heen is de aarde getuige geweest van talloze natuurrampen, zoals aardbevingen, stormen, vulkaanuitbarstingen en tsunami's, die onomkeerbare verwoestingen hebben achtergelaten. Kan een apocalyptisch scenario, of het nu wordt veroorzaakt door een natuurramp, een asteroïde-inslag, oorlogvoering of een dodelijk virus als COVID-19, daadwerkelijk resulteren in de totale vernietiging van onze vertrouwde planeet?
Verken deze galerij en vind beroemde voorspellingen over de uiteindelijke ondergang van onze wereld.
Dinosaurus tijdperk Volgens National Geographic schatten wetenschappers dat ongeveer 65 miljoen jaar geleden een enorme catastrofe het uitsterven van de dinosauriërs veroorzaakte.
Dinosaurus tijdperk Wetenschappers blijven verdeeld over de precieze oorzaak van het uitsterven. Er blijven echter twee prominente theorieën bestaan. De eerste is dat het uitsterven werd veroorzaakt door een komeet of asteroïde die de aarde trof. De tweede theorie suggereert dat vulkanische activiteit verantwoordelijk was voor het uitroeien van de dinosauriërs.
Dinosaurussen en het einde van de wereld De verbijsterende verdwijning van dinosauriërs blijft een fascinerend raadsel voor wetenschappers. Er zijn talloze theorieën naar voren gekomen in een poging te voorspellen welk gevaar het einde van de mensheid zal veroorzaken.
Einde van de wereld: de Bijbel De heilige tekst vertelt twee keer over het einde van de wereld. In het boek Genesis beveelt God Noach om een ark te bouwen en een paar van elk geslacht te beschermen tegen alle aardse soorten. Daarna verwoest God de wereld met een kolossale overstroming, terwijl hij het voortbestaan van alle bewoners aan boord van de ark verzekert.
Einde van de wereld: de Bijbel Het andere gedeelte over het einde van de wereld bevindt zich in het boek Openbaring. Het gaat over een enorme oorlog tussen goed en kwaad die een einde maakt aan de wereld.
Einde van de wereld: Johannes Stöffler Een eeuwenoude theorie over het einde van de wereld werd aangekondigd door de Duitse astroloog en wiskundige Johannes Stöffler. Volgens de Encyclopedia Britannica voorspelde hij dat de wereld in 1524 zou vergaan nadat de uitlijning van de planeten een enorme overstroming zou veroorzaken.
Einde van de wereld: de Antichrist Volgens National Geographic was er een andere theorie die het einde van de wereld in 1666 voorspelde. Deze theorie verwees naar de getallen '666', waarvan sommigen geloven dat ze het getal van het Beest vertegenwoordigen dat in het boek Openbaring wordt genoemd.
Einde van de wereld: Grote Brand van Londen De theorie werd opnieuw ondersteund in 1666 toen een enorme brand Londen trof, gedetailleerd gerapporteerd door de BBC.
Einde van de wereld: komeet Volgens The Guardian begonnen mensen in 1910 te vrezen dat de aarde besmet zou raken en dat er een enorm verlies aan mensenlevens zou plaatsvinden als de komeet van Halley voorbij zou komen.
Einde van de wereld: Hal Lindsey Volgens het tijdschrift Time verwierf schrijver Hal Lindsey in de jaren zeventig bekendheid met zijn boek 'Late Great Planet Earth', waarin een theorie over het einde van de wereld populair werd. Lindsey voorspelde dat de apocalyps in 1988 zou plaatsvinden.
Einde van de wereld: Nostradamus Nostradamus, bekend om zijn voorspellingen over het einde van de wereld, theoretiseerde op beroemde wijze over de komst van een Koning van de Terreur in augustus 1999. Zoals gerapporteerd in The Washington Post trok deze profetie de aandacht van velen en leidde tot wijdverbreide speculatie. De details van deze profetie, samen met de mogelijke implicaties ervan, werden destijds nauwkeurig onderzocht en geanalyseerd.
De millenniumbug: het einde van de wereld Aan het einde van de 20e eeuw ontstonden er verschillende theorieën die de apocalyps voorspelden. Een van de bekendste was de populaire ‘Millennium Bug’-theorie, die zich concentreerde op een coderingsfout in computersystemen die alleen de laatste twee cijfers van het jaar herkenden.
Einde van de wereld: Millenniumbug Er ontstond een theorie dat computersystemen hierdoor de "00" in 2000 verkeerd zouden interpreteren als 1900, wat zou resulteren in een aanzienlijke chaos. Volgens Time waren er zorgen dat dit zou kunnen leiden tot storingen die een wereldwijde catastrofe zouden veroorzaken.
Einde van de wereld: Harold Camping Elf jaar later, in 2011, werd een andere datum voorspeld door Harold Camping. Hij stierf in 2013 zonder getuige te zijn van de apocalyps, zoals gerapporteerd in The New York Times.
Einde van de wereld: de Maya's In 2012 kreeg een algemeen aanvaarde theorie mondiale aandacht, waarbij de nadruk lag op de Maya's, een oude beschaving die leefde in wat nu bekend staat als Midden-Amerika.
Volgens de BBC was de theorie verbonden met de Maya-kalender, die destijds steun kreeg van mondiale gebeurtenissen zoals stormen en onrust in het Midden-Oosten.
Einde van de wereld: de Maya's Door de jaren heen zijn sommige mensen zelfs van mening geweest dat er een fout in de profetie zat, als gevolg van een misverstand bij het ontcijferen van de Maya-kalender, en dat het einde van de wereld in plaats daarvan gepland is voor 2023. Nieuwe onderzoeken uitgevoerd in Latijns-Amerika wijzen erop dat de apocalyps vindt plaats tussen 21 Juni en 31 December van dit jaar. Deze periode wordt zelfs de ‘Kerstprofetie’ genoemd, waardoor er angst ontstaat, vooral tussen 25 en 31 December.
2012 was inderdaad tamelijk tam vergeleken met de jaren daarna, waarin de wereld werd getroffen door een mondiale pandemie en diverse conflicten, waaronder die in Oekraïne en Israël, waardoor het concrete risico op een derde wereldoorlog toenam.
Einde van de wereld: Grigori Raspoetin Volgens het Pravda-rapport voorspelde de Russische mysticus Grigori Rasputin een verwoestende storm die de aarde in 2013 zou treffen.
Einde van de wereld: de eindtijdprofetieën Volgens The Telegraph voorspelde een christelijke groep genaamd The End Times Prophecies in 2016 dat er een significante verandering in de magnetische polen van de aarde zou plaatsvinden, wat zou leiden tot het uitsterven van de mensheid.
De bioscoop portretteert de apocalyps Verschillende films hebben het einde van de wereld in beeld gebracht, naast talloze theorieën en profetieën. Voorbeelden hiervan zijn 'Independence Day' (1996) en 'The Day After Tomorrow' (2004).
Einde van de wereld: David Meade David Meade, een gerenommeerd schrijver bekend om zijn ideeën over de apocalyps, schreef 'Planet X - The 2017 Arrival.'
Einde van de wereld: bedreiging Volgens de theorie van David Meade zou de aarde worden getroffen door een planeet, genaamd "X". De voorspelling kreeg terrein nadat NASA een nieuwe planeet ontdekte, genaamd Planet Nine, volgens The Sun.
Einde van de wereld: de oorsprong van de theorie Volgens de Express omvatten zijn voorspellingen astrologische theorie en de leringen uit het boek Openbaring.
Einde van de wereld: uitleg De schrijver vertrouwde op astrologische gebeurtenissen om zijn theorie te ondersteunen over een planetaire botsing die wijdverbreide chaos veroorzaakte. Deze gebeurtenissen omvatten de uitlijning van de zon, de maan en Jupiter in het sterrenbeeld Maagd.
Einde van de wereld: geloof Volgens de theorie van Meade, die ook wordt uiteengezet in een ander artikel uit The Sun, wordt voorspeld dat het einde van de wereld zou beginnen op 23 april 2018, met het plaatsvinden van de bijbelse Opname. Deze gebeurtenis zou dan leiden tot een mondiaal tijdperk van oorlogvoering en de opkomst van de Antichrist.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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![Much of the clutter orbiting Earth is man-made space junk and 'natural debris' like meteoroids, but Space Force's document detailed a weirder, new category: 'objects that exhibit abnormal observables and patterns of life and cannot [be] correlated to any owner or point of origin'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/11/29/19/78384319-12805617-Much_of_the_clutter_orbiting_Earth_is_man_made_space_junk_and_na-a-32_1701286069703.jpg)
