NASA IS SEEKING A 'PLANETARY PROTECTION OFFICER' FOR A SIX-FIGURE SALARY

NASA is currently on the lookout for a candidate to take up an incredibly unusual and fascinating job role at that space agency, that of ‘planetary protection officer.' The primary role of this job, which comes with a considerable salary, is to coordinate the protection of the planet Earth from contamination from alien planets.  

NASA PUBLICLY ADVERTISES FOR A NEW PLANETARY PROTECTION OFFICER

The position of planetary protection officer was first created in 1967 after the United States ratified the Outer Space Treaty. Article IX of the document which states that all missions to space must be carried out in full mindfulness of protecting the planet from potential contamination from alien worlds. For a space mission to be permitted, there must be less than a one in ten thousand chance that this kind of contamination could occur.  

This means that the primary role of the planetary protection officer is to analyze the potential risks of contamination from space missions and to come up with measures to help to mitigate the risks. Mars is considered to be the most difficult and potentially problematic planet for the person in control of contamination to manage. It is believed that the Red Planet was once covered in a considerable body of water and that it might have once been the home of alien organisms. Scientists from NASA are very keen to collect fragments from the planet which might point to the existence of ancient alien life on Mars. The role of the planetary protection officer is to ensure that none of these samples have the potential to contaminate Earth once they are brought back to the planet.

Many space agencies across the world have planetary protection officers, but they tend to be shared roles. There are only two full-time planetary protection officers in the entire world, one based at NASA and the other based on the European Space Agency. To fulfill such a rare and specialized job, a very exceptional candidate is required. According to NASA, the successful candidate will have at least one year of experience at the top level of civilian government; they will have an advanced knowledge of planetary protection, diplomatic experience so that they can deal effectively with international space agencies and an advanced degree in either physical science, engineering or mathematics. After all of that, the candidate will have to undergo extensive security clearances.

At this current time, NASA’s planetary protection officer is Catharine Conley who has held the role since 2014. The role is held for three years at a time by one individual, although the contract can be extended. Conley has yet to make it clear whether she intends to reapply for her current job or to move on to a new area within the space agency.

If you want to apply, here is the link to the job offering:

https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/474414000

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Strange giant beams appear to follow the sun from East to West across the US

Was a Dwarf Star/Planet in close proximity to the earth yesterday, August 1, 2017?

The sky around earth at various times and locations displayed some unusual beams that appeared to follow the sun as they traveled from east to west across the country, spotted in the east first and hours later in the west.

In the hours prior to these sightings giant space lightning was recorded over in Central Europe.

Most remarkable; all of these sightings were within a few hours of each other consistent with the rotation of earth.

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

{http://nationalufocenter.com/ }

Filer’s Files #31 – 2017 Dead Sea Scrolls and UFOs - PART II

Who says there are no good jobs available? If you didn’t get hired for that great position as a nanny in a haunted house or ghost babysitter at a haunted prison, perhaps you’re better qualified for something more space-oriented. Are you interested in protecting the planet from space aliens? NASA is looking for you. Its only Planetary Protection Officer (and one of only two in the world) is moving on and this great six-figure job is available for the right person. Could that be you? Do you own a lightsaber or a fast spaceship?

“Planetary protection is concerned with the avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration. NASA maintains policies for planetary protection applicable to all space flight missions that may intentionally or unintentionally carry Earth organisms and organic constituents to the planets or other solar system bodies, and any mission employing spacecraft, which are intended to return to Earth and its biosphere with samples from extraterrestrial targets of exploration. This policy is based on federal requirements and international treaties and agreements.”

That sounds like a big job for just one person, but Catherine Conley has been NASA’s planetary protection officer since 2014 and she must be doing a good job because we haven’t been contaminated since then … have we? In fact, the only reason the position is available is bureaucracy — the position is being moved to a different department and that requires opening it up for a new person … including Catherine Conley, who can reapply. And she would be wise to. Where else can you get paid between $124,406 to $187,000 a year to protect Earth from aliens, other than in the European Space Agency?

The Planetary Protection Officer does not have the authority to call out the Air Force

The biggest part of being a Planetary Protection Officer is protecting other planets from contamination by our space probes and protecting us from what returning probes might bring back. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 created the necessity for the position:

“States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.”

Despite being paid up to $187,000, the Planetary Protection Officer doesn’t have to be perfect. In an interview with Business Insider, Conley said her target is to insure that Earth probes have a less than 1-in-10,000 chance of contaminating other celestial bodies. In that respect, this sounds more like an actuary at an insurance company. Conley traveled to space labs building equipment for missions and determined the probability of an orbiting probe photographing a planet’s surface suddenly crashing to the surface.

Labs like this one are the workplace of the Planetary Protection Officer

A bigger job is to protect Earth from contamination on so-called “sample return missions” like those planned for Mars. Conley has been helping to set up protocols and procedures to reduce the risks that Martian dirt will harm scientists or escape from the lab and kill us all.

If you think this is the job for you, get out your résumé and make sure it includes a degree in “physical science, engineering, or mathematics that included 24 semester hours in physical science and/or related engineering science such as mechanics, dynamics, properties of materials, and electronics” or equivalent experience. You must also have “experience planning, executing, or overseeing elements of space programs of national significance” and skills in “diplomacy that resulted in win-win solutions during extremely difficult and complex multilateral discussions.” You know, like negotiating with alien leaders to keep their filthy spaceships off of our pristine planet.

Applications are being accepted until August 14. Good luck!

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Well, my most recent article here at Mysterious Universe – “Are UFO Abductees Being Secretly Watched?” – provoked some interesting Facebook comments and messages – and emails, too. Some people were supportive of the theory that there is clandestine and widespread surveillance of alien abductees. Some even shared their stories with me on their own experiences. Others, meanwhile, considered the whole thing to be a bunch of nonsense born out of hoaxing and fantasizing. But, that latter category of people forget something important. In fact, they forget something very important. Or, maybe, they’re not even aware of what I’m about to state now.

Long before the alien abductees were on the scene, there were the Contactees – those people who, predominantly in the 1950s and the 1960s, claimed face to face contact with human-looking aliens, and who were concerned by our growing nuclear arsenals and the reckless ways in which we were exploiting the Earth and its inhabitants. They made grave and dire warnings of what would happen if we didn’t curb our warlike ways: a radioactive nightmare and the end of civilization would be the only inevitable outcomes. As an aside, given the way things are going right now in the world, they just might have had a point. But, there is something else too; something which has deep relevancy to the matter of someone – or some agency of government, the military, or the Intelligence community – spying on those who have undergone the abduction experience.

Just about all of the Contactees of the fifties and the sixties were watched secretly, carefully and closely by the FBI. George Adamski’s FBI file reveals that the Bureau was concerned by two things: (A) Adamski’s claims that his long-haired “Space Brothers” and “Space Sisters” were probably communist in nature; and (B) Adamski’s ability to influence lots of people (his 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed – co-authored with Desmond Leslie – was a huge seller). George Van Tassel was secretly watched too: his FBI file is extensive and covers the early 1950s to the middle part of the 1960s. He also talked about the politics of the aliens, as well as how he was reportedly told by his space-buddies that many of our major religions were born out of visits from ancient astronauts.

Contactee George Hunt Williamson had an FBI dossier opened on him, as did Frank Stranges, of Stranger at the Pentagoninfamy. Truman Bethurum – the man who lusted after hot and curvy space-babe Aura Rhanes – was watched. As was Orfeo Angelucci. Moving across the pond, in the late 1950s the British Police Force’s Special Branch opened a file on the Contactee-driven Aetherius Society. It was chiefly because the group often talked about the perils of atomic weapons – and to audiences of people who listened very closely to what was being said. It’s clear from the files referred to above that the relevant agencies did not believe the tales that the Contactees were telling. But, when it comes to their particular stories, that wasn’t the point. The point was that that the Contactees were saying a great deal of controversial things – and a lot of people listening to what they had to say were nodding their heads eagerly and in agreement. That’s what specifically had the FBI concerned.

Alien spacecraft is hovering abpve the meadow

Much the same can be said about today’s alien abductees. Namely, that more than a few books on the subject have sold very well. In many of those same books the bug-eyed Grays have warned those who have been abducted about the perils of nuclear war, of the destruction of the rain-forests, of the collapse of the ozone-layer, of the decline of the human race and…well, you get the picture. Just like the Contactees of yesteryear, the alien abductees of today – and particularly those who lecture and write articles and books – are in prime positions to potentially influence many.

Had there not been widespread surveillance of the Contactees in the 1950s and the 1960s, I might be inclined to dismiss some of the accounts of government agencies watching the abductees today. But, the FBI’s surveillance of the Contactees went on for years. Voluminous files were created. Special-Agents of the FBI sat in the audiences at Van Tassel’s and Adamski’s lectures – as the now-declassified files show. They even visited Van Tassel at his Giant Rock, California home, and on several occasions.

In light of all this – namely, the political/nuclear//end-of-the-world issues that led the FBI to keep a careful and clandestine watch on the Contactees – it doesn’t seem strange to me at all that what was going on in the 1950s with Adamski & Co. has its very own modern-day equivalent: the surveillance of the abductees.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

..

Het lijkt op een sciencefiction film, maar niets in minder waar, want de nieuwe Facebook robots hebben een eigen taal ontwikkeld die voor de programmeurs niet meer te volgen is. 

Als robots in staat zijn om dit te doen, dan doemt er een ander schrikbeeld op en dat is dat ze dan ook een soort bewustzijn hebben. 

Er heeft zich iets werkelijk alarmerends voorgedaan en de vraag is of de mensheid dit beseft, of dat men gewoon doorgaat met levensgevaarlijke experimenten. 

Even terug naar een artikel dat we ongeveer tien dagen geleden schreven:

Elon Musk blijft mensen iedere keer weer verbazen, niet alleen met zijn nieuwe uitvindingen en plannen, maar ook met hoe hij over bepaalde dingen denkt. 

Zo denkt dat hij dat er een kans is van één op de miljard dat wij NIET in een computersimulatie leven, een beetje zoals wij beschreven in een eerder artikel “Is God een IT specialist?”. 

En dan is het natuurlijk één ding dat wij als mensen leven in die computersimulatie, maar zoals de ontwikkelingen er nu uit zien, kan binnen die computersimulatie de leidende rol wel eens worden overgenomen door robots. 

In een toespraak vorige week begon Elon Musk opeens over het grote gevaar dat hij ziet en dat is dat overheden niets doen om AI (Artificial Intelligence) te reguleren. Dit is volgens hem broodnodig omdat er een groot gevaar bestaat dat het met kunstmatige intelligentie zoals robots volledig uit de hand kan gaan lopen. 

Hij zegt dat mensen waarschijnlijk pas in actie zullen komen als ze robots zien die door de straten gaan en mensen doden. Mensen doen helemaal niets omdat het voor hen zo onbegrijpelijk is allemaal. 

Maar, zo stelt, hij: “Als wij nu niet proactief dit soort dingen gaan reguleren in plaats van reactief, dan kan het wel eens te laat zijn”. Musk ziet AI als een fundamenteel risico voor het voortbestaan van de mensheid en maakt zich daarover dan ook veel zorgen. 

En alsof hij op zijn wenken wordt bediend, verschijnt gisteren het volgende bericht in de Telegraaf: 

Facebook heeft de bouw van slimme zelfdenkende robots vroegtijdig moeten afbreken. De robots in kunstmatige intelligentie bleken illegaal hun eigen taaltje te hebben ontwikkeld. 

Dat hebben bronnen binnen Facebook tegenover technologieblog Tech Times gemeld. 

De robots moesten zelf vervolgstappen in de programmeertaal bedenken voor apparaten. Ze kwamen echter vanuit het niets met een coderingstaal waar het Facebook-personeel weinig tegen kon doen maar ook niet begreep. 

De robots gingen door de grenzen van wat programmeurs vooraf als norm hadden vastgesteld. Het taaltje tussen de robots kregen Facebook-programmeurs niet voldoende beperkt, waarop het project tijdelijk werd stilgelegd, aldus het blog. 

De robots begonnen in het Engels, maar bedachten daarna de eigen taal die voor de softwaremakers totaal niet te volgen zou zijn geweest. 

De sociale mediareus steekt momenteel miljarden in kunstmatige intelligentie, bijvoorbeeld voor besturing van zelfrijdende auto’s. Vanaf juni was bekend dat de zogeheten dialogue agents een eigen taal ontwikkelden. 

De robots bleken voor programmeurs ,,ongelooflijke sterke onderhandelaars”, melden de bronnen tegen Tech Times. 

Het probleem blijkt enkele dagen nadat topman Elon Musk van de zelfrijdende batterijautomaker Tesla meldde dat het begrip bij topman Mark Zuckerberg van Facebook van kunstmatige intelligentie maar zeer beperkt is. 

Facebook reageert niet op het bericht, maar doet dat zelden op dergelijke ontwikkelproblemen. 

Eerder waarschuwden experts in kunstmatige intelligentie zoals hoogleraar Stephen Hawkings voor de te grote macht van de zelfdenkende robots. 

Elon Musk hamert al langer op ’het grootste gevaar voor de mensheid’. Zuckerberg noemde die zorgen recent onnodig en onverantwoord. 

Het bovenstaande is zo ingrijpend dat het onze wereld letterlijk op zijn kop kan zetten. 

Als robots, zonder dat ze daartoe geprogrammeerd zijn, in staat blijken om zelf een eigen onafhankelijke taal te creëren die voor niemand anders te begrijpen is, dan betekent dit dat er een bepaalde mate van bewustzijn aanwezig is in die robots. 

Het duidt op een bepaalde mate van intelligentie, intentie, efficiëntie en bewustzijn. 

Waarmee we dan op een punt zijn aanbeland waarbij blijkt dat je dus bewustzijn in een robot kunt stoppen. 

Is het dan een zaak dat bewustzijn misschien inderdaad niet is verbonden aan een bepaald individu, maar overal aanwezig is en dat dit bewustzijn als het ware ook te vangen in dit soort apparaten? 

Of is het een zaak dat zielen die reïncarneren op aarde hiervoor verschillende voertuigen kunnen gebruiken zolang er maar een bepaalde rekenmachine, een kwantumcomputer zoals onze hersenen, aan is gekoppeld zodat het kan denken, voelen en ervaren? Dat men voor reïncarnatie normaal gesproken een menselijk lichaam gebruikt, maar dat er ook zielen zijn die net zo lief reïncarneren in het metalen lichaam van een robot? 

Of zoals iemand uit onze omgeving zei: “Als ik mag kiezen tussen mijn lichaam of een robotlichaam als ik hetzelfde ervaar en kan? Doe dan maar een robotlichaam.” 

Kunnen mensen die straks heel erg ziek zijn hun complete bewustzijn inclusief geheugen uploaden naar een computer om dat dan vervolgens te downloaden in een robotlichaam? 

Duidelijk is wel dat Mark Zuckerberg druk doende is een doos van Pandora te openen. 

En wie weet was Pandora uit de Griekse mythologie ook wel een robot, want ze werd tenslotte in een werkplaats gemaakt. 

Volgens de Griekse mythologie maakte de god van het vuur, genaamd Hephaestus, in zijn werkplaats de eerste vrouw: Pandora. Aanvankelijk was het een metalen beeld, maar het was zo mooi dat Zeus besloot het leven te schenken.Toen gaven alle goden haar op hun beurt een geschenk: schoonheid, kracht, slimheid, handigheid, overredingskracht. Hera gaf haar de nieuwsgierigheid die haar geen moment met rust zou laten. Zeus zond Pandora als geschenk aan Epimetheus die haar tot zijn vrouw maakte. Als huwelijksgeschenk kregen zij een mooie doos, versierd met goud en edelstenen. Deze doos zat op slot, maar Zeus had de sleutel erbij gegeven en tegen Pandora gezegd dat als ze gelukkig wilden leven, ze de doos nooit moest openen. Op een bepaald moment won de nieuwsgierigheid het en opende Pandora de doos. In een klap kwamen daar alle tegenslagen en onheil uit die een mens maar kunnen treffen: ziektes, verbittering, pijn en alle mogelijke kwaad. Als laatste kwam echter de hoop eruit, in de vorm van een vogel. Dat was de boodschap van de troost voor de mensheid.

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

Want to Protect Earth from Aliens? NASA Is Hiring

Protection Officer; top 7 things to know about this alien combating job

Nupur Jha

Creative Commons

NASA is looking for planetary protection officer (PPO) to whom the eminent space organisation would pay a six figure salary.

ALSO READ:  NASA reveals more about Proxima b's habitability: Top 7 things to know

Here are top 7 things you need to know about this high paying job:

• The responsibilities of the role include protecting Earth from extraterrestrials and aliens. The job basically includes preventing biological and organic contamination of alien worlds by humans and robots while carrying out space explorations.
• Planetary protection officers have been employed by various space agencies for part time roles but NASA and ESA will hire full-time employees, as revealed by Business Insider report.
• The job description for planetary protection officer posted on USAJobs.gov reveals that the employee should focus on "avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration".
• The main concern of this job is to save the environment of Earth from being polluted by extraterrestrial matter from space missions.
• "If we're going to look for life on Mars, it would be really kind of lame to bring Earth life and find that instead," said Catharine Conley, who has served as NASA's sole planetary protection officer since 2014, according to New York Times report.
• The process to hire a planetary protection officer is difficult and requires an advanced degree in math or science along with an experience in planning as well as carrying out space programs. Possessing good skills in diplomacy is another crucial requirement of this job in order to handle extremely difficult and complex multilateral discussions.
• The Outer Space Treaty – which was approved by the US in 1967 -- led to the origin of the planetary protection concept and planetary protection role. As part of the international agreement, any space mission must have less than a 1-in-10,000 chance of contaminating an alien world.

{ http://www.ibtimes.co.in/ }

The invasion is nigh! You knew it would happen eventually — that the Roswell aliens would not only turn out to be real, but that they'd one day return to finish their job of Earthly conquest. Now, NASA, which was surely part of the conspiracy of silence for the last sixty years, has come clean, announcing the creation of the new position of Planetary Protection Officer. It's a sweet gig, actually, paying up to $187,000 per year. That makes for a pretty big pot of disposable income — at least until, you know, the world ends.

Actually, however, you can sound the all clear: The planetary protection job is real, though its purpose is only partly to save Earthlings from the ravages of alien life forms (and by life forms we mean microbes, not green guys). A bigger part of the job is to protect aliens from us — the real bad guys.

Human beings have long hoped to find life in space and we may not have to look far. In our solar system alone, there are at least five worlds other than Earth that, thanks to the presence of water, may have the conditions to support biology: Mars, Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede, Saturn's moon Enceladus and Pluto. The problem is, discovering and recovering that life requires sending robot probes or even human beings out to explore. Robots could contain trace bacteria, viruses or other biological contaminants from Earth, and a human being is nothing but one gigantic, walking contaminant.

If an earthly organism got loose in an otherwise pristine place, two problematic things could happen: The contamination would make it impossible to know for sure if any organism you detected was native to the planet or a stowaway. Worse, if alien life did exist, Earth bugs could contaminate its environment and perhaps even prove to be lethal.

In-bound contamination — the space-to-Earth variety — has, of course, always been what worries us more. When astronauts from the first three Apollo moon landings returned to Earth, they were kept in quarantine for three weeks to ensure that they had not picked up any lunar bugs. That was unlikely given that the moon is an airless, waterless, and thus likely sterile place. But in fact there was a bit of a scare.

When the Apollo 12 crew returned to earth, they brought back a camera from the unmanned Surveyor 3 spacecraft that had landed on the moon two and a half years earlier. NASA scientists examined the camera and to their surprise, discovered a small, viable colony of strep bacteria deep inside. It was possible—though exceedingly improbable—that strep was endemic to the moon. Much more likely, the bugs had been carried aboard the Surveyor and had somehow survived their time in the lunar environment. Later analysis revealed that neither scenario was the right one: the camera was actually colonized by the bugs in the lab's ostensible clean room after its return. Still, the incident was seen as a reminder of how easy the spread of bugs from world to world might be.

The Planetary Protection Officer's job will be to help ensure that that kind of bio-leak doesn't happen for real not just when humans come back from alien worlds, but when robot probes do too. This will be especially important if NASA at last moves ahead with its long deferred Mars Sample Return mission, whose job, as its name suggests, will be to collect samples of Martian soil and rocks to be transported back to Earth for study. To help prevent outward-bound contamination, the job will include establishing and developing better quality control standards so that clean rooms where spacecraft are assembled stay clean and disinfection of the spacecraft before the launch actually works.

And then, of course, there is one final act of self-sacrifice spacecraft perform to help keep things pristine. On September 21, 3003, after eight years spent orbiting Jupiter, the aging Galileo spacecraft made a suicide plunge into the planet's cloud tops to prevent it from accidentally crashing onto Europa, Ganymede or any other Jovian moon that might harbor life. This September, the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, will make a similar high-dive into the Saturnian atmosphere. The maneuvers are designed so that the ships leave the planetary systems as they found them: unharmed—even if much better understood.

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etc

{ http://time.com/ }

Astronomers found an alien world with glowing water atmosphere

Water vapor glowing in the atmosphere around a newly discovered exoplanet suggests the alien world boasts a stratosphere. Photo by Engine House VFX/At-Bristol Science Centre/University of Exeter

Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Scientists have discovered evidence of a stratosphere surrounding a large exoplanet located 900 light-years from Earth.

A team of astronomers from the University of Exeter and the University of Maryland discovered glowing water molecules while surveying Hubble's observations of WASP-121b's atmosphere.

"When it comes to distant exoplanets, which we can't see in the same detail as other planets here in our own solar system, we have to rely on proxy techniques to reveal their structure," Drake Deming, a professor of astronomy at Maryland, said in a news release. "The stratosphere of WASP-121b so hot it can make water vapor glow, which is the basis for our analysis."

Water molecules interact with certain wavelengths of light in predictable ways. At cooler temperatures, water molecules block light. At higher temperatures, water molecules radiate or shimmer.

As water molecules are heated and vaporized, their electrons move into higher energy states. As they do, they emit infrared light. Scientists were able to identify the phenomenon in spectral data collected by Hubble.

"This new research is the smoking gun evidence scientists have been searching for when studying hot exoplanets," said David Sing, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Exeter. "We have discovered this hot Jupiter has a stratosphere, a common feature seen in most of our solar system planets."

WASP-121b is so hot because it orbits so close to its host star. If the star and exoplanet were any closer, the star's gravity would likely rip WASP-121b to shreds.

The temperature of Earth's stratosphere is stratified, it gets warmers as the stratosphere extends away from Earth. Ozone in the layers closer to the sun absorb more heat from solar radiation. Methane in the stratosphere of Jupiter and Saturn's moon Titan has a similar effect.

Researchers believe WASP-121b is host to a similar stratification, only more dramatic. Most stratospheres feature a temperature difference of 100 degrees Celsius. The stratosphere of the newly discovered exoplanet features a temperature difference of 1,000 degrees Celsius.

"We've measured a strong rise in the temperature of WASP-121b's atmosphere at higher altitudes, but we don't yet know what's causing this dramatic heating," said Nikolay Nikolov, a research fellow at Exeter. "We hope to address this mystery with upcoming observations at other wavelengths."

Researchers described their analysis of WASP-121b's atmosphere this week in the journal Nature.

Related UPI Stories

• NASA scientists find chemical capable of forming cell membranes on Saturn's moon
• Astronomers find smallest-ever star
• NASA's Kepler mission finds 219 new exoplanets, several potentially habitable worlds
• TRAPPIST-1 planets have an Earth-like composition, research suggests

Married UFO enthusiast, 54, who has repeatedly claimed he was abducted by aliens and was profiled in a 2013 documentary goes on trial for child pornography

• Stanley Tiger Romanek, 54, of Colorado, is on trial for allegedly distributing and being in possession of child pornography
• He was arrested in February 2014 on felony counts after eight-month investigation initiated by Homeland Security 
• A search of Romanek's Loveland home turned up more than 300 images and videos on a laptop depciting child pornography   
• Romanek was profiled in 2013 documentary titled Extraordinary: The Stan Romanek Story, which is was released on Netflix in June
• Romanek has claimed to have had multiple encounters with UFOs and to have fathered alien children
• He and wife Lisa claimed they have been targeted by hackers because they know about UFOs

By Snejana Farberov For Dailymail.com

UFO enthusiast on trial: Stanley Tiger Romanek, 54, the subject of a documentary that detailed his alleged experiences with extra-terrestrials, is on trial on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography 

Opening statements were presented on Tuesday in the child pornography trial of a married father-of-two UFO enthusiast from Colorado who was the subject of a controversial documentary that detailed his alleged experiences with extra-terrestrials.

Stanley Tiger Romanek, 54, of Loveland, was arrested in February 2014 on felony charges of sexual exploitation of a child for allegedly distributing and being in possession of child pornography.

Romanek was taken into custody after an eight-month investigation initiated by the Department of homeland Security, during which a search of his home on Ash Avenue in Loveland turned up more than 300 photos and videos depicting children in sexual situations.

The lewd material was found on a laptop stored inside a closet in Romanek's home, which he shared with his wife Lisa.

According to an arrest affidavit, the computer had 'Stan Romanek' engraved on it, reported The Coloradoan, which has been covering the case from the beginning.

When interviewed by investigators during the search of his home in April 2013, Romankek admitted that he has seen files on his computer that could be considered child pornography but said he did not know how they ended up on his device, the document stated.

Romanek has claimed to have had more than 100 encounters with alien beings, and capturing some of them on camera, including this image from 2003 

Out-of-this world tales: Romanek, a married father-of-two, previously claimed that he had been abducted by aliens who left red marks on his body (left) 

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He then floated the theory that someone had planted the incriminating images on the laptop. Romanek pleaded not guilty to the charges in March 2016.

Both Stanley and Lisa Romanek have claimed they have been targeted by hackers and subjected to threats because they have secret knowledge about the existence of UFOs.

Romanek was profiled in the 2013 documentary film Extraordinary: The Stan Romanek Story, which is was released on Netflix in June.

Fame: Romanek was profiled in the 2013 documentary film Extraordinary: The Stan Romanek Story, which is was released on Netflix in June

In the film, Romanek claims to have had more than 100 encounters with alien beings, and capturing some of them on camera. 

Among the claims Romanek makes in the film there are tales of alien abductions that left him with red marks on his body, and fathering multiple extra-terrestrial children.

The documentary now includes a postscript that references Romanek’s child pornography case.

Romanek is also the author of three books on the subject of aliens, including ‘Messages: The World's Most Documented Extraterrestrial Contact Story’; ‘Answers’, and ‘The Orion Regressions.’

Romanek had undergone several rounds of mental health evaluations and was found to be competent to stand trial, which got under way on Monday with jury selection.

During opening statements presented on Tuesday, prosecutor Joshua Ritter reminded the jurors the case was about the 'victimization of children' and warned that the images they were about to see in the course of the proceedings were ‘not pleasant.’

Conspiracy: Both Stanley (left) and Lisa Romanek (right) have claimed they have been targeted by hackers and subjected to threats because they have secret knowledge about the existence of UFOs.

Reporter-herald reported that Ritter said the pornographic content was discovered after a computer crimes expert from the Department of Homeland Security offered the Loveland Police Departmenta tip about images being used in a peer-to-peer network connected to an IP address at Romanek's residence. 

Romanek's defense attorney Elizabeth McClintock countered her opponent's arguments by telling the jury the prosecution has no concrete evidence tying the IP address at the center of the case directly to her client.

Romanek’s trial is expected to last eight days and wrap up on August 9.

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

REVEALED: Truth about ‘alien mothership’ filmed ‘tracking’ International Space Station

THIS is the moment a gigantic "alien spaceship" is filmed monitoring the International Space station (ISS), according to UFO experts.

Footage from the ISS livestream, uploaded to YouTube, shows a massive hazy object come into view in the background away from the space station.

Commentators have described it as first appearing as a line of orange lights, before it begins to take on a larger form.

As the clip comes to the end, the lights appear to dim back into space.

YOUTUBE

BIZARRE: The lights soon faded and the shape disappeared

The video was released by brothers Blake and Brett Cousins who run YouTube channel ‘thirdphaseofmoon’ yesterday.

The pair showed an interview with a UFO expert in an effort to identify the mysterious anomaly.

Nasa*YouTube

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  Shock video of 'large cylindrical UFO' passing ISS goes viral
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In the video the expert says: "First, what I was looking at is I don’t know exactly what I was looking at.

“In the very beginning, you see these orange dots around it and by the end of it the entire thing almost shrinks up a little bit.

“Almost as if it’s a giant mothership for all we know.”

There have already been more than 40,000 views of the video.

One viewer said: “Looks like the Battlestar Galactica just jumped into orbit.” 

RELATED ARTICLES

• 
  'Monster UFO' appears by International Space Station
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  NASA forced to respond after footage of 'several UFOs' by ISS emerges

In the very beginning, you see these orange dots around it and by the end of it the entire thing almost shrinks up a little bit. Almost as if it’s a giant mothership for all we know.

UFO expert

Another said: “It’s an interstellar mother ship, watching what NASA is doing, as NASA have lied since the first encounter with UFO.”

But a sceptical third said: “To me it looks like the ISS filmed a storm in the upper atmosphere.”

Thirdphaseofmoon has made it onto a number of UFO website and YouTube channel blacklists by more sceptical investigators, amid claims they use hoax and misrepresented footage.

The brothers deny this and claim to be legitimate researchers.

UFO chasers have reported seeing scores of UFOs on the livestream this year but they have turned out to be nothing more than ice, space debris, or lens flares which is when light refracts inside the camera lens and then is projected on to the still or video image.

Express.co.uk showed the video to Scott Brando, who runs debunking website ufoofinterest.org, who said it was just reflected light coming from the ISS itself, so there was no UFO and nothing was actually there.

Related articles

•  ‘UFO’ filmed on ISS camera is ‘AMAZING evidence ALIENS are watching'
•  NASA'S UFO BLACKOUTS: Truth about 'alien surveillance' of ISS
•  Video claims legendary Black Knight Satellite UFO caught on ISS camera

{ http://www.express.co.uk/ }

Shock as UFO 'spotted coming out of PORTAL to another dimension'

UFO hunters have been sent into a frenzy after a strange object was seen coming out of a ‘portal’ in the sky.

Reddit Users Ask SETI Founder and Space Legend Anything

 

mtilghma/Adobe Stock

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Who Is Doing This?! Global Wave of Animal Mutilations Defies Explanation

© Photo: Pixabay

Who or what is mutilating animals the world over? Declassified files show the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has investigated thousands of instances of cattle disfigurement across the American Midwest since the 1970s, to no avail. A leading expert in the field isn't sure either – but he has told Sputnik the explanation certainly isn't humdrum.

While skeptics will surely opt to blame the international wave of brutalized bovines on natural disasters, sadistic pranks or similarly sick, wanton hijinks, proponents of conspiratorial and/or otherworldly explanations for the disturbing acts are quick to point out the attacks are often carried out with surgical precision.

Farmers worldwide, most notably and recurrently in US states such as South Dakota, Colorado, Kansas, and Nevada, have for decades had the unpleasant experience of discovering their treasured, lucrative beasts dead with various organs — including eyes, noses, tongues, hearts, livers, anuses, and genitalia — excised with lazer-like accuracy.

© PHOTO: UFONUT.COM

Sightings of attacks on cattle

Moreover, the FBI documents make clear even the US' best investigative minds were seemingly stumped at the ultimate source of all the carnage.

In many cases residents reported seeing crafts — whether thoroughly terrestrial helicopters, or UFOs — circling areas where cattle later turned up sliced up.

Such phenomena prompted concerns among researchers that the mutilations were being carried out and covered up by the government for some nefarious purpose or other — although as the wave of mutilations occurred concurrently with a worldwide obsession with flying saucers, some believe the mutilations' origins to be otherworldly.

Linda Moulton Howe, founder of EarthFiles.com, states the same pattern of "bloodless excision" has been documented in all kinds of domestic and wild animals. Typically, the sky-facing ear is removed in a neat circle at the skull, the eyeball is removed without any blood or fluid leakage, and often there is a circle of hide taken around that eye. Tongues are removed from deep inside the throat, and sky-facing jaw flesh is cleanly excised, usually in a "keyhole" pattern.

"Genitals, male and female, are removed in neat, hide-deep circular, oval or square excisions. In almost all cases the rectum is excised about 6 inches wide and 6 or more inches deep into the body of the animal. If female, the vaginal opening and tract are usually also removed in a larger single hole along with the rectal tissue."

"I interviewed a Sheriff in Logan County, Colorado, who told me a veterinarian he had perform a necropsy on a fresh cow mutilation at the pasture site discovered that the entire cow's heart had been removed from inside the pericardium and the chest, without any excision in the pericardium that surrounded the heart and no excision in the cow's chest,"

Ms. Moulton Howe told Sputnik.

To achieve such a feat would require molecular-specific surgical devices capable of going through skin, cartilege, muscle, bone an organs to remove tissue from a specific organ without causing any cutting damage to the rest of the body — an impossibility on Earth, although a hypothesized innovation in the distant future.In all, there are over 10,000 documented instances of animals being bewilderingly mutilated in the US alone since 1955 — and in every case that has been investigated by law enforcement, no human or predator has ever been found to be the culprit.

The phenomenon constitutes the largest single animal cruelty trend not merely in the US, but the world — and each case costs ranchers thousands of dollars.

Warning: Graphic content, viewer discretion advised

Chuck Zukowski, curator of UfoNut.com, has been investigating these mystifying occurrences for decades.

He says each case fits a common pattern — an animal is lifted from location A to a location B, where it's drained of blood and unusual cuts are created.

Then, the animal is placed in location C, which lies within the general area of location A.

"No sign of predator takedown, no sign of masses amount of bleeding out, and no signs of animal struggle, none! The animal is just placed back, and in some cases, a round ground depression is created while placing the animal back. Mutilations have been going on for centuries — Native Americans also have stories of mutilated animals that occurred before the Europeans migrated to North America,"

Mr. Zukowski told Sputnik.

He adds that mutilations typically occur multiple times within a week, either in the same area or in different states — "we had one in Colorado, and within three days there was another in Missouri" — and in some of his investigations, the animal was found lying in a crop-circle-like ground depression.

Soil analysis he has conducted has shown the soil within the animal's vicinity is less water-soluble than outside the circle, meaning whatever caused the circle altered the nutrients in the soil — the exact same result has been recorded in different cases in separate US states (Colorado, Missouri, and Georgia), which don't share the same types of soil. 

He believes the lack of gallons of blood near the animal, no apparent signs of animal struggle and the highly specific nature of the mutilations (for instance, precise cuts on the hide, and tongues cut out at the base) suggest the animals can only have been kidnapped and maimed by an intelligent agency — and the crushed rib cages and broken limbs often evidenced point to them having fallen some way to their final resting place. Yet more eerily, in some cases he has reviewed, scavengers won't even touch the carcass. 

As for what is mutilating these ill-fated creatures, Mr. Zukowski won't speculate, but he says the evidence strongly points to a non-human rather than human source.

In the majority of cases he has investigated, witnesses have seen "balls of light" near the land from which animals have been abducted, and in some cases apparent spacecraft.

He also believes the unmarked helicopters seen at some sites are indicative that the US government is running its own investigations into the happenings.

As for whether there could be a mundane explanation, Mr. Zukowski is unequivocal — "absolutely not!"

"We're talking about something that was alive just hours before, with no symptoms of being ill, then later found with horrific damage. Who is doing this? I have my thoughts, which makes these investigations extremely dangerous, because you don't want to be in the right place at the wrong time — it could happen to you. There have been some human mutilation cases too!"

he adds.

This bloodcurdling singularity is not exclusive to the US.

Mr. Zukowski not infrequently receives emails from investigators based in other countries asking for help, including Australia, New Zealand, Dominican Republic, and the UK.

He notes some UK mutilations have made it in to the mainstream media, including mutilated lambs in Beddgelert, Gwynedd, mutilated rams in Plwmp, Dyfed, and mutilated deer, foxes and badgers near Shropshire and mid-Wales. Furthermore, every June, ewes go missing in Bleddfa, Powys.

Nick Pope, who investigated UFOs and other mysterious phenomena for the UK Ministry of Defense between 1991-1994, says it's difficult to judge the true extent of the phenomenon, as the insurance industry has a policy not issuing payments to farmers if they suggested their slain animals had been killed in a mysterious, unknown way.

As a result, farmers and veterinary physicians generally "colluded" to describe any mysterious animal deaths as being the result of dog attacks. This made it difficult for him to investigate cases further.

"The cattle mutilation mystery is extremely disturbing, and there are many different theories, including predator activity, satanists, secret military experiments, and extraterrestrial activity. The theory about military involvement makes no sense, because government scientists already have a facility where animal testing is carried out, so they would have had no need to conduct additional, illegal testing. However, I was not able to find a definitive explanation during my government work,"

Mr. Pope told Sputnik.    

{ https://sputniknews.com/ }

UFOs And The Edge Of Reality

ByCheryl Costa

 

Columnist Cheryl Costa discusses the mental conception of off-world crafts.

Was there a UFO sighting at Skyfest?

SPOKANE, Wash. -

Were you at Skyfest this past weekend? And did you see a UFO?

At least one man claims he did, and believes he has the video evidence to support his case.

“Never have I captured anything like this ever,” said John Whichelow.

Whichelow thought he was just recording the Thunderbirds at the air show at Fairchild AFB, but when he watched the video back, he noticed two different unidentified flying objects in the frame.

“It would seem it was moving incredibly fast since the announcer said those jets were going 500 mph and they looked slow by comparison,” said Whichelow. “Some people talk about meteors or birds or bugs that are close to the camera, I looked at it so closely and I don't think it's any of those.”

The video shows a white object at five seconds dart by the frame before the Thunderbirds pass each other. Later at 36 seconds, you can see a smaller black object come through the frame following behind the ascending Thunderbird.

“Carl Sagan said there are more stars out there then grains of sand on the beach,” said Whichelow. “And if there are that many stars, and many are older than ours, well it seems since I believe we'll get to the starts someday, why not the possibility that someone has gotten here already.”

KHQ called the National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport to ask if the object was a possible sign of intelligent life. The director, Peter Davenport, did not comment at the time, saying he’d like to see more 

{ http://www.khq.com/ }

NASA wil 'planetaire verdediging' testen aan de hand van passerende asteroïde - HLN.be

Bron: Reuters

© NASA.

RUIMTEVAART NASA wil de passerende asteroïde 2012 TC4 gebruiken om zijn systeem voor 'planetaire verdediging' te testen, dat bestaat uit een netwerk van observatoria en wetenschappers. De asteroïde passeert mogelijk op 12 oktober de aarde op een afstand van 6800 kilometer.

Volgens de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie heeft 2012 TC4 een doorsnede van tien tot dertig meter en is hij sinds zijn ontdekking op 5 oktober 2012 niet meer waargenomen. Destijds passeerde de asteroïde de aarde op een afstand van ongeveer 100.000 kilometer en werd hij ontdekt door de Pan-STARRS-telescoop op Hawaï. 

Dat hij sindsdien niet meer is gezien, heeft ermee te maken dat hij te ver weg en te klein is om te volgen. De berekening dat hij op een afstand van 6800km van de aarde passeert is gebaseerd op een meting gedurende zeven dagen na zijn ontdekking. In werkelijkheid zou de asteroïde echter ook op een afstand van 270.000km kunnen passeren, aldus NASA.

Lees ook

• Drie nieuwe bemanningsleden voor ISS
• VIDEO: Astronaut filmt poollichtspektakel vanuit ISS
• VIDEO: Vlieg mee over bergketens en ijsvlaktes van Pluto

Er zijn aanvullende observaties nodig om een nauwkeurigere inschatting te maken. Het passeren van 2012 TC4 moet ertoe dienen om het wereldwijde netwerk voor detectie en het volgen van asteroïden te testen, legt wetenschapper Michael Kelly uit. 

Daaruit moet blijken in hoeverre het netwerk, dat bestaat uit wetenschappers, observatoria en universiteiten, in staat is om samen te werken na de ontdekking van een potentiële dreiging. Die samenwerking bestaat uit het observeren van de asteroïde, het bepalen van zijn route en de internationale communicatie. 2012 TC4 is bijzonder geschikt voor het uitvoeren van een test, omdat vaststaat dat hij de aarde niet zal raken, maar het nog onduidelijk is wat zijn precieze baan zal zijn.

'Planetaire verdediging' valt onder de verantwoordelijkheid van NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Naast het volgen en indelen van asteroïden geeft de afdeling waarschuwingen af als het risico bestaat dat de aarde wordt geraakt. Die kans bestaat bij asteroïden met een doorsnede vanaf dertig tot vijftig meter. NASA houdt statistieken bij van het aantal near-earth asteroids dat de aarde heeft gepasseerd, inclusief 'close approaches'. Mocht een asteroïde daadwerkelijk de aarde raken, dan zijn er technieken om dit af te wenden, bijvoorbeeld door hem af te remmen of door zijn baan af te buigen met een groot object.         

{ http://www.hln.be/ }

Facebook legt experiment rond artificiële intelligentie stil nadat robots eigen geheime taal ontwikkelen - HLN.be

Bron: Next Web, The New York Post, Gizmodo, The Sun

© thinkstock.

Spannend maar tegelijk angstaanjagend: zo omschrijven experts een project rond artificiële intelligentie dat Facebook stillegde nadat spraakrobots een eigen taal ontwikkelden, die alleen zij begrepen. Alice en Bob pasten het Engels aan om makkelijker te kunnen communiceren met elkaar. Dat resulteerde in vreemde zinnen, die voor de onderzoekers geen enkele betekenis meer hadden.

Alice en Bob moesten Engels spreken terwijl ze 'leerden' om onder meer hoeden, boeken en ballen te verkopen. De voorwerpen hadden allemaal een verschillende waarde, waardoor ook onderhandeld moest worden. Dat moest uitmonden in hightech onderhandelingssoftware die zo goed was dat mensen die ermee in interactie zouden gaan, zelfs niet meer zouden merken dat ze eigenlijk tegen een robot bezig waren. 

Vrije hand
Toen ze de vrije hand kregen om de algoritmes op basis waarvan ze spraken beter en efficiënter te maken, begonnen de robots echter vreemde codewoorden en herhalingen te gebruiken. Dat ging bijvoorbeeld zo: 

Bob: ik kan ik ik alle andere dingen ... 

Alice: ballen hebben nul voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij. 

Bob: jij ik alle andere dingen ... 

Alice: ballen hebben een bal voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij voor mij

Lees ook

• Oud-Googlebaas: "Koop gerust een Android-toestel als het je niet kan schelen dat je jaren achterloopt"
• "Robots zullen beter integreren met minder zelfvertrouwen"
• Dit gebeurt er wanneer je twee Google Homes met elkaar laat discussiëren

En er was meer: de onderzoekers van het Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab (FAIR) ontdekten ook dat de robots 'slimmer' werden in het onderhandelen en bijvoorbeeld deden alsof ze een item leuk vonden om het verderop in de onderhandeling zogezegd 'op te offeren' om een (vals) compromis te maken. 

Potentieel gevaarlijk
Toen ze doorkregen wat er aan de hand was, legden de onderzoekers het experiment stil. "Dit is een belangrijke mijlpaal. Maar iedereen die ontkent dat dit potentieel gevaarlijk is, steekt zijn kop in het zand", volgens professor Kevin Warwick, een expert in robotica in het Verenigd Koninkrijk. "We hebben er geen flauw idee van wat deze robots tegen elkaar zeggen. Eenmaal je robots hebt die ook fysiek dingen kunnen doen, in het bijzonder voor militaire doeleinden, kan zoiets dodelijk zijn." 

Stephen Hawking
"Dit is het eerste gedocumenteerde geval van een dergelijke communicatie, maar er zullen er zeker nog al geweest zijn", gaat hij verder. "Robots kunnen communiceren met elkaar en hoewel we denken dat we hen in de gaten kunnen houden, is er geen enkele manier waarop we dat zeker weten. Ook Stephen Hawking en Elon Musk waarschuwden al voor de gevaren van artificiële intelligentie."

Het doet een beetje denken aan de filmreeks Terminator met Arnold Schwarzenegger, waarin robots een zelfbewustzijn ontwikkelen en de mensheid proberen uit te roeien. Zo ver is het nog niet, maar héél gek klinkt het niet meer. "Het gebeurt eigenlijk al overal", aldus technologie-experte Kate Adamson. "Kijk bijvoorbeeld naar de hoge frequentiehandel op de aandelenmarkt. Sommige algoritmes doen precies hetzelfde. Ze hebben een bepaalde kennis ontwikkeld en worden technisch gezien niet minuut na minuut gemonitord. Artificiële intelligentie kan een moeilijkheidsgraad aan die jij en ik niet eens zouden kunnen vatten als we ons best deden." 

Google Translate
Volgens Facebook zelf werd het experiment stilgelegd omdat het "niet tot het resultaat leidde dat we wilden". "We hadden de robots niet opgelegd dat ze Engels moesten praten. De onderhandelingssoftware is echter bedoeld voor communicatie met mensen, niet voor communictatie tussen robots onderling. Daarom had het geen zin om ermee door te gaan."

Het sociale netwerk wijst er ook op dat er in andere techbedrijven soortgelijke dingen gebeuren. Zo ontdekten wetenschappers van Google Translate vorig jaar dat hun dienst ook een eigen taal had ontwikkeld.

(Sleep het icoontje op de grijze boog naar links of rechts)

Voel jij je bedreigd door artificiële intelligentie?

Ja, ik denk dat we hiermee voorzichtig moeten zijn.

Nee, mensen maken hier een te groot probleem van.

21 864 Votes

{ http://www.hln.be/ }

Buzz Aldrin: We Will Have Humans on Mars in the Next 20 Years

by Jolene Creighton and Chelsea Gohd

NASA

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Curious Kids: What Started the Big Bang?

In the beginning, the Universe expanded very, very fast.

Credit: Flickr/Jamie, CC BY-SA

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky! The article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

---

What started the Big Bang?

– Pippi, 8, Canberra.

This is one of the two questions I get asked a lot (the other one is: do aliens exist?) Both are very good questions! Pippi, the short answer is that we do not know what started the Big Bang. This is a big mystery.

The Big Bang is an idea about the history of the Universe, the history of space and time and matter ("stuff") and energy. The Universe is about 13.8 billion years old and from observations we make using telescopes we can tell that the Universe was very small 13.8 billion years ago.

Observations also suggest that in the first fraction of a second, the Universe seemed to expand very quickly but then slow down. After a few hundred thousand years, the simplest type of atom formed: hydrogen. The hydrogen started to form stars and galaxies.

After billions of years the Earth (and us) formed from the atoms made inside stars - every atom in your body more complicated than hydrogen was made by a star at some point in the last 13.8 billion years. In all that time, the Universe has continued to expand. In fact, observations now tell us that the expansion of the Universe is getting faster.

The idea of the Big Bang agrees with all these observations. So scientists think the Big Bang is an idea that does a good job of describing the history of the Universe.

However, the idea is not perfect. We don't know why the Universe expanded so quickly in the first second and then slowed down. We don't know why the expansion of the Universe is speeding up now. We don't know why we have a certain number of forces that control the Universe. And we don't know what started the Big Bang!

Very large telescopes, like the Murchison Widefield Array can make observations that help us understand how the Universe evolved.

It took hundreds of years to build the idea of the Big Bang, and it may take a long time to improve it or find an idea that is better. Scientists have a lot of ideas about how the Big Bang started. But these ideas must agree with our observations of the Universe.

The future is very exciting for anyone who wants to help figure this out. The advanced technology we have means that we can build machines that smash particles (tiny little bits of stuff even smaller than an atom) together to show what happened right after the Big Bang. We can now build powerful new telescopes to observe the stars and galaxies in the Universe in a lot of detail. We will use these machines and telescopes to see which ideas about the Big Bang are right and which are wrong.

Sometimes new ideas take many years to be worked out. Sometimes new ideas pop into people's heads very quickly. It is very exciting to have a new idea about the Universe. We will need lots of people who are good at puzzles to help us.

---

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. They can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us on Twitter by tagging @ConversationEDU with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
* Tell us on Facebook

Please tell us your name, age, and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won't be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

Steven Tingay, Professor of Radio Astronomy, Curtin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. 

Editor's Recommendations

• Big Bang Theory: 5 Weird Facts About Seeing the Universe's Birth
• Big Bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events (Op-Ed)
• The History & Structure of the Universe (Infographic)

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

As someone who writes a great deal on the subject of UFO-themed issues, I find myself on the receiving end of a lot of reports and witness testimony. Some such accounts are more controversial than others. Then, there are those incidents which are really controversial. Arguably, we’re talking about beyond controversial. There is one particular case which is coming up to its 30th anniversary. I’m talking about just days away, which is why I mention it now. In many respects, referring to it as an “anniversary” is probably not the correct thing to do. Not because it’s inaccurate, but because an anniversary is so often tied to fun and celebratory events. But, there’s nothing to celebrate here. And, certainly, there is no fun either.

Brenda is someone whose story was told to me personally and which occasionally crosses my mind, such is the deep strangeness attached to it. She is someone who has had a lifetime of encounters with those diminutive, black-eyed entities that have become known as “The Grays.” For Brenda they are encounters which have revolved, primarily, around two issues: (A) medical procedures said to have been undertaken by the Grays and (B) terrifying dreams of a looming apocalypse – always looming but never quite arriving, thankfully.

It was early August 1987 and Brenda was driving late at night to visit her family in the southeast Texan city of Beaumont – a city which, ironically, I lived very close to from early 2002 to December 2003. Brenda arrived at the family home in one piece, but not until the following morning – hours after she should have arrived. Her family was frantic and was all but ready to contact the Beaumont police when it became clear that something – something deeply worrying and even conspiratorial – was going down. It was only Brenda’s call from a 24-hour gas station, in the early hours of the morning that prevented the authorities from being brought in and a full scale hunt being initiated.

When Brenda finally reached her family, it was clear that she was in a state of deep distress and utter confusion. Concerned that she had been attacked, mugged, or worse, her brother wanted to bring the police in – as in immediately. Brenda pleaded otherwise, and explained what she consciously recalled. It wasn’t the whole story, but it was certainly enough to paint a graphic picture. It revolved around Brenda being taken from her car – by what seemed to be military personnel. She believed – or, perhaps, “suspected” would be a better term – that the men had somehow been able to “prompt” her into exiting the main highway from Houston to Beaumont and down a lonely stretch of heavily wooded road, where she was confronted by a black van, surrounded by a group of four or five men, all dressed in black fatigues. Precisely how they were able to “prompt” her was never resolved. It was, by Brenda’s own admittance, just a feeling, one that she felt was provoked by something on the tip of her tongue, but which she could not properly remember or describe. Not unlike one of those dreams that fades away as we wake up.

Brenda also recalled being taken, in what she felt was a drugged state, to a small, sub-surface facility, a couple of miles away at the very most, and where she was interrogated in downright hostile fashion by two elderly men that she thought were doctors. They were surrounded by several men in military uniforms that befitted the likes of high-ranking personnel. The two doctors, Brenda says, “…wanted to know, did I know my blood group? Well, yes I did. They took a lot of blood. Vials. They kept asking me about my blood: Did I get a lot of nosebleeds? Did I have any physical differences? I don’t know what that meant. Did I feel like I was on a mission to do things for the aliens? Well, I have always thought that and I told them. I remember the doctors looking at each other when I said that.”

It’s worth noting too that Brenda developed a feeling that the building was not your average military facility. In fact, it may not have been anything of the sort at all – even though that was what Brenda first assumed it to be. She said: “I got the feeling this place, whatever it might have been, was abandoned. For a long time. It was convenient, I guess, for them to use somewhere and not get caught.” The idea of teams of military personnel clandestinely watching abductees – even kidnapping and interrogating them – is indeed controversial. Yet, such cases proliferate. They have become known as “Milabs,” or “Military Abductions.” They remain among the most controversial of all the various aspects of the alien abduction phenomenon.

Tags

• Abductions 
• aliens 
• MILABs 
• ufo

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Most remarkable UFO sightings in July 2017

early July 2017; bright orbs – Unsure, New Mexico

5th July 2017; UFOs in the sky – Lake Havasu, Arizona

7th July 2017; unknownlights – Girard, Ohio

17th July 2017; disc-shaped UFO – Chelmsford, UK

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

Aliens In Christ’s Crucifixion

Conspiracy theorists claim to have seen an actual UFO floating close to the cross in a depiction of Christ’s crucifixion. A fresco painting in Georgia’s Svetitskhoveli Cathedral apparently shows a little hovering disc next to Jesus when he was crucified.

The artist of the painting is not known, but conspiracy theorists believe that the unknown artist is trying to say that these flying saucers were present during the death of Jesus.

But other observers are more sceptical, including UFO author Nigel Watson. He says that artists in the past often used symbolism to tell a story to provide greater meaning to the image.

Mr Watson explains that the UFOs in the crucifixion of Christ are representations of light and darkness or life and death respectively. Some artists painted Sun and Moon, faces or angels to depict such symbolic elements. Mr Watson believes there are no aliens in the painting.

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

KLASSIEKE VLIEGENDE SCHOTEL ONTDEKT OP ANTARCTICA

Het continent Antarctica geeft iedere keer wat meer van haar geheimen prijs en niet zelden speelt Google daarin een belangrijke rol. 

Iemand die langdurig de Google kaarten van dit zuidelijke continent heeft bestudeerd, ontdekt op één van de satellietbeelden een object dat verdacht veel lijkt op de klassieke vliegende schotel zoals ook de Duitsers die bezaten. 

Eigenlijk een heel vreemd woord, vliegende schotel. Er zijn dan ook maar weinig mensen die weten hoe die uitdrukking is ontstaan. Deze naam werd voor het eerst gebruikt door de Amerikaan Kenneth Arnold die tijdens een vlucht enkele weken voorafgaand aan het Roswell incident een paar UFO’s ontdekte. 

Toen hij de objecten moest omschrijven en hoe ze vlogen, zei hij dat het leek op een schotel die je over het water laat scheren. 

Daarmee wordt dan de zogenaamde klassieke of retro UFO beschreven. Een soort platte schijf met bovenop iets dan op een koepel lijkt. 

Een dergelijk object is nu ontdekt op de door Google gepubliceerde satellietfoto’s van Antarctica. 

De ontdekking is gedaan op het uiterste puntje van Antarctica, dichtbij het meest zuidelijke stukje van Zuid Amerika.

En daar is onmiskenbaar een object te zien wat alleen maar kan worden omschreven als een klassieke vliegende schotel.

Men heeft later deze afbeeldingen vergeleken met opnames die enkele dagen eerder werden genomen en daar komt dit object niet op voor. Wie zelf deze UFO wil bekijken, kan via Google dat doen met de volgende coördinaten: 

61°57'50.91"S, 58° 3'44.74"W

Dit is een teken dat we te maken hebben met een vliegend object en rest uiteraard de vraag of dit een aards of een buitenaards object is. 

Feit is dat dit object niet alleen in de dagen van Kenneth Arnold werd waargenomen, maar ook tot op de dag van vandaag. Zo werd enkele weken geleden nog iets dergelijks waargenomen boven New York. 

Feit is eveneens dat de aardse elite beschikt over dit type schepen en daar regelmatig false flag aanvallen mee uitvoert zoals onlangs tijdens een begrafenis in Kabul. 

Anderzijds vertellen de verhalen dat de buitenaardse Roswell schotel er ook zo uit zag:

En om het geheel compleet verwarrend te maken, bezaten de Duitsers al voor Roswell dergelijke vliegende schotels. 

Daar komt bij dat er natuurlijk talloze verhalen de ronde doen dat ze nog steeds actief zijn via hun geheime bases op Antarctica.

Wie weet van wie de pas ontdekte schotel op de Google foto’s is, mag het zeggen.

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

Weird Manta-Ray-shaped appearance spotted in the clouds over Cheswick, Pennsylvania

While taken photos from sun/clouds a photographer in Cheswick, PA observed a “Manta-Ray”-shaped object in the sky on July 30, 2017 and from his location with the camera pointed towards s/w sky he managed to take a photo of the strange appearance.

According to the photographer, the object, which had no visible means of propulsion or flapping wings, moved from right to left. Mufon case 85521.

So, the strange appearance is an unknown creature that takes on the form of manta ray or could it be a giant oceanic flying manta ray?

Though, given the location which is far from the ocean it seems unlikely that it is an oceanic flying manta ray, yet the question whether it can fly so high between the clouds and stay out of the ocean for a long time without taking oxygen.

A similar flying manta ray shape has been filmed at 20,000 ft. from a French government airplane window.

The old footage below is from the French government circa 1948 and shows around the 0.15 mark a “manta-ray”-shaped object flying above the clouds, then it drops a few hundred feet below in about 1 second. The original frames were motion tracked and stabilized.

There is something strange about this kind of manta ray shapes that cannot be explained, whether it is an oceanic flying manta ray or something from other worlds.

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

NASA to Test Earth Defense Observatory & Systems During Asteroid Flyby

{ http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/ }

THE BRIGHTEST METEOR SHOWER IN HUMAN HISTORY IS HAPPENING, GET READY

Astronomers have marked their calendar for one of the biggest meteor showers that have ever been recorded to date. A meteor show is going to take place on August 12 that is going to light up the sky at night, and it is thought that it might be visible even during the daytime.

The meteor shower is thought to be a once in a lifetime chance as a shower of this nature is not going to occur for another 96 years. The meteor shower is called the Perseid meteor shower usually occurs between 17 July and 24 August and is said to be the brighter of showers happening each year. It is generally at its peak from 9 August to 13 August.

Experts have said that the best time to see the Perseid meteor shower is while the sky is very dark. Many astronomers have said that the best time to take a look at the shower is just before dawn, dependent of course on the phase of the Moon.

The Perseid meteor show is typically seen in the Northern Hemisphere. Anyone wanting to catch this wonderful sight should look between radiant, to the north-eastern region of the sky, and zenith, the point in the sky that is right above the head.

It is relatively easy to locate and see a shooting star using the naked eye when looking directly up. However, it has been suggested that this year the Waning Gibbous Moon could hinder sightings of the asteroid shower.

The Perseid meteor shower is made up of space debris that comes from the Swift-Tuttle comet and the name is based on the constellation Perseus due to the fact that the direction in which the shower comes from is typically in the same direction the Perseus constellation can be found. Astronomers say that at the peak they can see around 60 to 100 meteors every hour when viewing from a place that is dark. Experts recommend people try to get out of town and away from any artificial lights and then be prepared to wait for the sky to light up.

{ https://hidden-truth.net/ }

NASA SHUT DOWN THEIR LIVE STREAM AS STRANGE UFO ENTERS EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE

UFO hunters have raised the alarm about an alleged intrusion of Earth’s atmosphere by a massive UFO. The mysterious space object, according to UFO chasers, was spotted on the live ISS stream entering the Earth’s atmosphere on July 9, 2016.

The alleged intrusion was first reported by prolific UFO hunter Streetcap1 in a video uploaded online on July 9, 2016, the same day he spotted the mysterious object entering the Earth’s atmosphere.

According to Streetcap1 in the description of his video titled “UFO Enters Earth’s Atmosphere, July 9, 2016,” while it was possible that the object was a meteor, we may suspect it was an alien craft because NASA cut live transmission as it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

The UFO hunter wrote that the object may have been a meteor, but the suggestion appeared to be contradicted by his observation that it paused during entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

“Remember a UFO is an unidentified flying object.”

“This could well be a meteor or the like. What made it interesting was that the camera cut off when the UFO seemed to stop.”

Streetcap1’s observations sparked a debate among enthusiasts.
UFO Sightings Hotspot argued that although the object appears, at first glance, to be a natural space object, such as a meteor, a closer look could lead the observer to conclude it was an artificial space object, such as space junk or debris, making re-entry into the atmosphere from orbit.

But according to the blogger, the fact that NASA cut the live video raises suspicion.

“At first glance it could be a natural object like a meteor or an artificial object like space junk or a satellite but what made it interesting was that NASA cut the live camera feed just at the moment the UFO seemed to stop just above earth’s atmosphere,” the blogger wrote.

“If it [was a] recognizable and identified object then there is no reason to shut down the live streaming,” the UFO blogger continued, “but NASA seems to have a nasty habit of cutting off their live camera feeds every time a UFO enters the frame.”

UFO blogger Scott C. Waring also joined the debate. In a post to this UFO Sightings Daily blog, he ruled out the suggestion that the mysterious object was the Moon or a meteor.

Although he admitted the object could be a giant UFO, he argued, rather uncharacteristically, that it was more likely the Chinese space station Tiangong-1.

“I have watched the International Space Station a lot over the last 6 years and I can tell you that this is not the moon, nor a meteor,” he wrote. “It may be the Chinese space station cargo ship, called Tiangong-1, or the other one Tangong-2.”

Tiangong-1 is China’s first space station launched unmanned into orbit in September 2011. It serves primarily as an experimental module for testing and demonstrating space maneuvers and operations, such as docking.

The Chinese plan to replace it with Tiangong-2 in September 2016, according to Spaceflights News.
Tiangong-2 will allow China to place two astronauts in orbit for up to 30 days, Shanghai Daily.

This is not the first time that UFO hunters have accused NASA of cutting transmission after a mysterious UFO appeared on the live ISS stream.

A NASA spokesperson made a statement earlier in April denying allegations that NASA technicians deliberately shut down transmission when UFOs appear on the live video. According to the spokesperson, NASA never intentionally shuts down live transmission to hide UFOs. Loss of video is usually due to loss of signals from the ISS.

“The station [ISS] regularly passes out of range of the Tracking and Relay Data Satellites used to send and receive video, voice and telemetry from the station,” NASA spokesperson Tabatha Thompson said. “For video, whenever we lose signal video comes down on our higher bandwidth, called KU. The cameras will show a blue screen indicating no signal or a preset video slate, depending on where you are watching the feed.”

The statement was issued in response to media questions after Waring claimed in a blog post (see video above) that the agency cut live transmission following the appearance of a “diamond” or “horseshoe-shaped” UFO on the live feed.

{ https://hidden-truth.net/ }

Secret Space Program and the Missing Quadrillions

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The Quadrillion dollar question: Where did all our money go and why are we in such debt globally? There is a separate space program, which you guys are paying for and they’re not telling you anything about it, and as a result, NASA is a bit of a joke. We have a special space program and it is apparently known as the United States Aerospace Command and it is a joint service agency. That means it includes Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and it also includes the British Aerospace Command. It’s basically where all the missing 100′s of Trillions , sorry Quadrilions went. (our calculator doesn’t have enough digits to work it out).

BOB DEAN at the Project Camelot Awake and Aware Conference, Los Angeles, Sept 2009 (gets interesting around 38:00) but worth watching in it’s entire length.

Excerpts from the transcript of the presentation. Click here for the full transcript.

Robert “Bob” Dean worked for NASA for over 30 years. In 2009 he thought it about time to reveal the origins a NASA photographic library “lost footage” and evidence of a USSS fleet (detailing a transfer of admiralty from the USSS Curtis Lemay and USSS Roscoe Hillencotter) captured on film during the Apollo 13 Mission. Nasa maintains they had lost 40 rolls of film with 1000′s of shots from the mission documenting this but a Japanese scientist, had a copy of everything from the sixties due to ever space agency involved having copies of the Secret Space Program and public Space Program Missions. – Read more excerpts from Bob Dean

This photograph was taken by Apollo 13. Now, you may remember Apollo 13. It was the one that never made it to the Moon. They had a tiny explosion on the way, where an oxygen tank blew up and they were barely able to get to the Moon, go around, and barely able to get home. But they were not alone on that trip. So, while they were out and away, going and coming, they had little windows and they snapped pictures. This is one picture that was held by the Japanese Space Agency. This object is five miles long.

This is in the A Ring and the statistics on this will blow your mind. This object here is an artificially-constructed [artificial object], as Norman says; NASA called it an electromagnetic vehicle. That dude is 2,000 miles long, over 450 miles in diameter. But 2,000 miles long!

They launch satellites from several different positions on the planet. They maintain, apparently, an entire fleet of vessels in orbit. They have anti-gravity and zero-point energy, which you guys have a right to and you ain’t going to see for another ten years.

Now, that’s where your missing trillions have gone. You know the story: ’98, ’99, and 2000, $1.7 [trillion dollars] a year for three years disappeared off the books. That bunch of clowns in congress; do you think there was an uproar? Do you think there was a demand for answers? Where did that money go? Forget it!

Now, the day before 9/11 the Secretary of Defense says: We’re missing three trillion dollars. We can’t account for it. It’s off the books, somehow. We’re working on it. It may be an accounting error. You know how they are: Doublespeak. George Orwell would be happy with this crowd.

Missing three trillion, after the already missing of $1.7 [trillion] a year for three years? There is where the funding is coming for your Aerospace Command that Daniel Inouye is talking about – a separate shadow government that you have no idea exists. And those guys have got the technology that Ben Rich says is 100 years beyond establishment knowledge.

Our thanks to Bob Dean and others for coming forward with this information. We salute you Bob, you’re a kind, smart and decent man and your courage is greatly admired.

Other secret projects were carried out over a 70 yea plus time period that involved advanced technology, stolen technology and dark, occult practices.

We also know that during the “black op” Operation Paperclip – Ratlines were used as escape routes for Nazi scientists who fled to the United States and South America in 1945. Now the New York Times are reporting the truth about the Nazi refugees.

The Orion Conspiracy details technology and the origins of the Nazi-Era scientists.

{http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

NASA spacecraft missions have proven that Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus have all suffered “climate change” … without any human activity whatsoever

(Natural News) Temperature fluctuates, the weather shifts, and the climate never stays the same. It doesn’t matter where you live; it has always been this way on planet Earth. Through the course of many centuries, humans, animals, plants, and microbes have exhibited extraordinary resilience in the face of change and are all constantly adapting to this day.

But today there is a global movement that seeks to control these cycles, predict and manipulate the changes that naturally take place on our planet. This climate change movement seeks to control levels of atmospheric gases (primarily carbon dioxide) which humans naturally exhale. This climate change agenda seeks to engineer the Earth’s atmosphere in hopes of changing temperature and weather. The implications are unsettling.

The climate change agenda is only interested in proving that human activity is causing the planet to warm. Specifically, this agenda wants to target carbon dioxide as the problem. If they can prove that the Earth is warming by any measure, then they will correlate human activity’s release of carbon dioxide with any cherry-picked temperature increase data. However, correlation doesn’t always equate to causation, and even if scientists could accurately record a consistent temperature increase throughout the Earth’s land, air, soil, and water, why would carbon dioxide automatically be the “pollutant” to blame?

Maybe temperature and weather on Earth is impacted by sun cycles, orbit patterns, and the Earth’s relationship with the sun and other planets. In fact, NASA missions have documented climate change on other planets, including Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. If carbon dioxide emissions from human activity were the extreme pollutant burning up planet Earth, then why have other planets experienced extreme heating, climate change, extraordinary storms, and massive changes in their atmospheres? None of these planets have humans present to destroy them, so why should we be worried that our breath is burning up the planet? The Earth has historically survived much greater threats.

The climate change that occurs on other planets puts everything into perspective. The Earth has survived extreme changes over many millennia, while orbiting the sun in a volatile solar system. Should humans really worry about their carbon footprint?

Mars is warming due to solar cycles

Mars is currently experiencing a period of warming as NASA scientists recognize that the planet is exiting a series of ice ages. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, has compared sun cycles with climate data from both Mars and Earth. He says that the current global warming on Mars suggests that any documented warming on Earth could also be caused by these solar cycles. “The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said. His research isn’t always accepted by the climate change scientists who are dead set on correlating carbon dioxide emissions with warming temperatures, but Mr. Abdussamatov has a valid point. Both Earth and Mars experience orbital changes that affect how much sunlight reaches the planets’ surface. These orbital variations are called Milankovitch cycles. This large scale phenomenon makes the slight carbon dioxide emission influxes on Earth seem trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Carbon dioxide released by human activity pales in comparison to natural CO2 release

The amount of carbon dioxide released by human activity is indeed trivial when compared with the carbon dioxide that is released naturally by the Earth. Most of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions come from the energy sector and are derived from fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil. The amount of carbon dioxide emission from fossil fuels totaled 33.2 billion tons worldwide in 2011. In comparison, the Earth’s oceans naturally produce 330 billion tons of carbon dioxide during normal ocean-atmosphere exchange. Dissolved carbon dioxide within the oceans is released into the air at the sea surface. Ironically, the oceans absorb similar amounts of carbon dioxide, which helps maintain balance. Animals and plants naturally respire 220 tons of carbon dioxide every year, as part of a cycle. It’s this natural cycle of carbon dioxide release that feeds plant life, resulting in more food and oxygen for humans.

Storm patterns on Jupiter cause temperature changes not caused by human activity

Climate change has also been observed on Jupiter by NASA’s Hubble space telescope. A massive storm, which is three times the size of planet Earth, is expected to raise temperatures on Jupiter by 10 degrees Fahrenheit or more. The massive storm formed when smaller white oval-shaped storms merged between the years 1998 and 2000. The shift has mobilized heat from the equator to the 34 degree southern latitude mark closer to Jupiter’s southern pole. The heat is now slowing down where the new Red Spot Jr. is forming, allowing the poles to cool down while returning heat back to the planet’s equator. This natural shift of temperature within the planet, which is not caused by human activity, shows how larger weather patterns and changes in the atmosphere can affect temperatures across a planet.

In the fight to prove that carbon dioxide emissions are going to destroy the planet, climate change alarmists are not seeing the bigger picture. Maybe that’s because there is a more sinister agenda behind climate change and a lot of money is at stake. Maybe the global climate change agenda is a mass wealth confiscation effort, an economic and energy control plan that is being used to make some people and industries rich while accidentally destroying the planet in the process. (Related: Learn why carbon is an important molecule of life, not a devastating pollutant.)

Sources include:

Space.com

Space.com

WhatsYourImpact.org

News.NationalGeographic.com

NaturalNews.com

{ http://www.naturalnews.com/ }

Should We Try to Colonize Other Worlds or Stay and Fix Earth?

 

NASA Ames Research Center

IN BRIEF

• Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson explores the dangers posed by long-term space travel and colonization in his novel Aurora.
• While the discovery of seven exoplanets surrounding nearby TRAPPIST-1 has elevated hopes for space travel, many problems for such journeys remain unsolved.

CONCERNS OVER COLONIZATION

As NASA continues to make incredible discoveries about nearby exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system, it’s easy to wonder “what if?”

What if we made successful manned missions to those planets? What if there was life on any of those planets, and we could make contact? These questions have driven astronomers and science fiction enthusiasts alike for countless years. And, as planning for mannmissions to Mars and the search for extraterrestrial life continue, these questions become more relevant than ever.ed 

Credit: Clarkesworld Magazine

However, putting aside all the excitement generated by space exploration, it’s important to ask not only if we can, but if we should. According to acclaimed science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, sending humans to nearby exoplanets would be a terrible idea. To discuss his opinions the best way he knew how, Robinson expressed himself in his 2015 novel “Aurora.” In this book, Robinson imagines a capsule-type human society that takes an extended journey to a nearby star on a large vessel built to sustain human, plant, and animal life for centuries.

While Robinson’s book was technically science fiction, it wasn’t all that far from reality. Darpa funded the construction of an ark-like vessel similar to Aurora’s ship around the time the book was written. But instead of reinforcing Darpa’s aspirations, Robinson’s tale highlighted the issues that could potentially arise and compound on each other with such lengthy space travel. And, as his narrative illustrates, Robinson believes that these problems would be too great for humans to overcome.

CLOSE TO HOME

The challenges the fictional crew on the Aurora face paint a picture of the potential issues with space colonization that are rarely discussed. For example, we can clearly see how climate change is slowly but surely wreaking havoc on our planet. Now, imagine that Earth was a smaller, completely contained vessel in which the emissions and gasses produced had nowhere to escape. Even if the ship launched with environmental systems perfectly equilibrated with each other, any changes that occurred over the hundred years in space would throw multiple systems out of balance.

As time goes on, this imbalance would only become more severe, and a trip to even the nearest exoplanet could take an extraordinary amount of time. These scientific concerns of imbalance in long-term, artificial environments are in addition to the sociological issues that are bound to arise.

Terra-forming and space colonization are getting a lot of buzz since NASA announced that a nearby dwarf star named TRAPPIST-1 was discovered with seven surrounding planets, three of which orbit within the “habitable zone.” So, we may be wise to take this discussion about the repercussions of a manned mission to a nearby exoplanet more seriously than we would the latest piece of crazy science fiction. A voyage like this is becoming more and more of a possibility, and it’s important to take a step back and think about obstacles that might not be obvious.

While it will be temping to bound ahead with interplanetary space travel as soon as it becomes more feasible, we might not want to take the leap too soon. The problems we have on Earth will not disappear when we leave — they will follow us wherever we go. So let us remember even while we work towards a technologically advanced future that just because we can doesn’t always mean that we should.

References: Business Insider

{https://futurism.com/v}