Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Berichten van 1 november 2017 tot 30 november 2017
Return of the ‘Unusual Comet’ 96P spotted by ESA, NASA Satellites
The ESA and NASA mission SOHO got a visit from an old friend this week when the highly unusual comet 96P entered its field of view on Oct. 25, 2017.
The comet entered the lower right corner of SOHO’s view, and skirted up and around the right edge before leaving on Oct. 30. SOHO also spotted comet 96P in 1996, 2002, 2007 and 2012, making it the spacecraft’s most frequent cometary visitor.
At the same time, comet 96P passed through a second NASA mission’s view: STEREO that also watched the comet between October 26 and 28 from the opposite side of Earth’s orbit.
It is extremely rare for comets to be seen simultaneously from two different locations in space, and these are the most comprehensive parallel observations of comet 96P yet.
Comet 96P — also known as comet Machholz, for amateur astronomer Dan Machholz’s 1986 discovery of the comet - completes an orbit around the Sun every 5.24 years. It makes its closest approach to the Sun at a toasty 11 million miles - a very close distance for a comet.
When comet 96P appeared in SOHO’s view in 2012, amateur astronomers studying the SOHO data discovered two tiny comet fragments some distance ahead of the main body, signaling the comet was actively changing. This time around they have detected a third fragment — another breadcrumb in the trail that indicates this 'Unusual Comet' is still evolving.
The former Blink 182 rocker now claims to have received groundbreaking information regarding an extraterrestrial corpse.
He described a shadowy encounter with a mysterious figure at a US airport, Express.co.uk reports.
DeLonge told radio host Joe Rogan: “I fly out to the airport and I sat at a table in a restaurant at the airport.
GETTY/NC
OTHERWORLDLY: Tom DeLonge claims to have received groundbreaking information
“No one’s in there, and this gentleman sits down. And the waiter comes up, he waves off the waiter, and he looks me in the eye and he says: ‘It was the Cold War and we found a life form’.
“That’s when I started sh***ing my pants.”
DeLonge claims he was given more sensational information that cannot be revealed at this stage.
Fake or leaked? Tom DeLonge has been slammed for relying on 'hoax' footage for serious project.
Mr DeLonge, who gave up a career as the front man of Blink 182 to focus on UFO research, revealed the video during an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience - an online podcast hosted by stand-up comedian Joe Rogan.
The rocker has vowed to set the UFO world on fire after recruiting a team of former military and government insiders to set up the Academy To The Stars – which has promised to lift the lid on alien life.
However, the video is unlikely to add any credibility to his project which has been labelled a "joke" after it emerged the video is widely believed to be CGI "hoaxed footage".
He revealed videos of the TR-3B during the interview, claiming they were real and leaked.
The TR-3B is alleged by conspiracy theorists to be a secret "black project" spy craft of the US government that can be flown into space.
Some alien hunters believe they are the motherships of extraterrestrials visiting Earth.
However, many conspiracy theorists believe they are actually secret aircrafts developed by the US Air Force (USAF) which are being tested.
The allegations are that these crafts are created at top-secret military bases such as Area 51 in Nevada, by reverse engineering alien technology.
Mr DeLonge is firmly in the camp that the TR-3B has been made by the government and is not an alien craft.
He believes the US government has recovered crashed UFOs flown by aliens before reverse-engineering them to create secret craft that can fly at warp speed and with anti-gravity propulsion.
Showing the video during the interview, Mr DeLonge said: "I think this was leaked on purpose because the guy is making it hard enough to see, moving the camera in and out of focus.
"That's pretty big, I would think that was about 40 feet.
"Look see the tail fin on the back, that is how you know it's not alien per se.
"It's built of, I think technology, that came from there, but they don't need vertical tail stabilisers."
In the video a huge light blast grows from the craft before it disappears.
Mr DeLonge said: "They turn this thing on, and so right, you know they are accessing that energy I told you about - and watch what happens… it's gone.
"Everyone thinks it is alien, and that not my belief."
Mr Rogan then joked that if he saw it in a movie he would ask for his money back because it loped "so fake”.
I think this was leaked on purpose because the guy is making it hard enough to see, moving the camera in and out of focus. That's pretty big, I would think that was about 40 feet.
Tom DeLonge
But Mr DeLonge insisted it was true.
After the interview, Isaac Koi took to Facebook to slam the use of the footage.
He investigated the video in 2009 after it emerged a year earlier claiming to have been filmed in Dudley, in the West Midlands.
A year later it reemerged on YouTube amid claims it was filmed in Paris.
Mr Koi wrote: "I wrote about the relevant video of a triangular craft back in 2009, after someone in England had claimed to have taken the video in Dudley – but one of the problems with that story was it had circulated the year before as being taken over Paris.
"So, which story does DeLonge believe? Or does he believe that the same footage (including the buildings) was taken over two different countries?
"At least one of the stories associated with the video is a hoax.
"Why not both? Most of the people that commented on the video in 2008 and again in 2009 thought it was a fairly transparently CGI, and posted reasons for that conclusion.
"Those reasons were not mentioned by DeLonge when talking about this video, nor indeed was the existence of CGI when he referred to videos on Youtube "Unfortunately, Delonge’s discussion of this video simply does not address the possibility of any hoax, even when the interviewer expressly raises this."
Josh Mobley responded on Facebook: "I too was shocked that he presented this as something real.
"I’m no expert but this obviously fake.
"If this is the kind of stuff he thinks is teal then the whole thing is a joke."
Scott Brando, a UFO debunker who funds website ufoofinterest.org, tweeted: "Another Tom DeLonge's #EpicFail."
Express.co.uk contacted Mr DeLong through To The Stars Academy and awaits a response.
The video, which shows what is claimed to be a gigantic "UFO mothership" filmed by US Marines on an exercise in the Arizona Desert received nearly 170,000 views in just four days.
The YouTube video released by channel Section 51 2 shows a group of marines who appear to be observing a massive flying saucer in the distance.
A close up of the saucer then shows a military helicopter passing it, and what appear to be two small satellite craft beneath the UFO.
Viewers then see a strange orb-like drone passing a marine on the ground.
The saucer is then watched as it appears to suck up sand from the desert floor.
TOM DeLONGE LEAKS: 'US found alien life form during Cold War, but not from Roswell UFO
THE US is holding the corpse of a dead alien life form, but it did not come from the alleged Roswell UFO crash, rock singer Tom DeLonge has sensationally claimed.
PRESERVED LIFEFORM? Tom DeLonge says a body was found in the Cold War (image is a YouTube hoax).
The former Blink 182 singer is now a legend among the UFO community after putting together an organisation made up of former military and government insiders dedicated to revealing the truth about aliens.
After launching the To The Stars Academy, Mr DeLonge revealed on radio he met with a government source in an airport who revealed the shocking claim of an alien life form being found.
Mr DeLonge was interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience - an online podcast hosted by the stand-up comedian - and described the bizarre meeting with a shadowy official and a further two-day interrogation in a hotel.
He said: “I fly out to this airport and I sit at a table in a restaurant at the airport.
“No one’s in there, and this gentleman sits down. And the waiter comes up, he waves off the waiter, and he looks me in the eye and he says ‘It was the Cold War and we found a life form.’
He was asked by Mr Rogan if he asked where they found it, but strangely, Mr DeLonge replied "I didn't ask him that question."
Mr Rogan said: "Really? Did you ever think this guy was bulls****ing you?"
"F**k no," replied DeLonge.
But, Mr DeLonge said he was told it was not found in the Roswell crash.
He said that after World War Two the US military were working with captured Nazi scientists who had managed to develop secret high-tech craft based on alien flying saucer technology.
He said: "They were 100 years ahead of us about what their guys did at the end of the war in South America.
No one’s in there, and this gentleman sits down. And the waiter comes up, he waves off the waiter, and he looks me in the eye and he says ‘It was the Cold War and we found a life form.’
Tom DeLonge
“What I believe crashed at Roswell… I believe it was German… from Argentina.
"But it had hallmarks and technology based on alien technology. "So, we put out a story saying, ‘It’s alien!’
"And then we put out a story saying, ‘It’s a weather balloon!’
"But the real thing it was we didn’t want anyone to guess.”
Mr DeLonge said he was told by insiders that the government had been infiltrating UFO groups since the 1950s and spreading "misinformation" in a bid to stop the real truth getting out.
He even said he was interviewed by six shady officials in a hotel over two days to ensure that he didn't already know too much, after he revealed in an earlier interview there was an international consortium dedicated to dealing with the "threat from aliens".
Mr DeLonge said he has been told stuff that he simply cannot reveal at this stage.
Roswell has been at the heart of the UFO scene since in July 1947 the military sensationally announced in a press release it had found the remains of a crashed flying saucer in the desert nearby.
But the following day it retracted the statement, saying it was in fact a damaged US Air Force air balloon.
Witnesses later came forward to say there had been alien bodies within the "crashed craft", which along with the wreckage were then taken to a mysterious top-secret military base.
There have been many theories about what actually happened, but an official government probe into what happened concluded it was a secret spy balloon being tested.
Miguel Carvajal projects a laser on the red moon during a lunar eclipse seen over Mamayuta Observatory in Chile.
CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS
Scientists propose there are three “magic wavelengths” of visible light that extraterrestrial civilizations could use to contact Earth: deep purple, deep red and yellow.
When the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life (SETI) began in 1960, it focused on eking out radio frequencies that alien civilizations could be sending as beacons of their existence. More recently, scientists have taken a new approach in the search for extraterrestrial life: scanning the sky for laser light.
This process, known as OSETI (the Optical Search for Extraterrestrial Life) looks for light within the visible spectrum, whereas Radio SETI looks on the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that contains radio waves and microwaves, which are invisible to the human eye.
In a paper in New Astronomy, Shinya Narusawa and his colleagues at the University of Hyogo lay out three likely visible wavelengths through which alien civilizations might contact Earth. While they acknowledge that “higher evolved civilizations” might have greater technological capabilities, for "the strength of argument," Narusawa and his team focused on the hypothetical situation of a planet as advanced as Earth trying to make contact.
The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SETI INSTITUTE
Looking at the kind of laser technology we have access to, the team makes the case that alien civilizations would try to signal their existence through a deep-purple, yellow or deep-red light. The researchers arrived at the wavelengths that correspond to these colors partly through a process of elimination, zeroing in on "solid-state lasers" as the most likely candidates. Of the wavelengths of light these lasers would use, the researchers propose that our outer space counterparts would try to signal us at wavelengths frequently observed in the sky.
It is in some ways easier to send frequencies by radio, for which “magical frequencies”—the one aliens would mostly likely use—have already been proposed. But there are some clear advantages to laser light over signals from the microwave and radio end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light can convey vast amounts of information and experiences less interference than radio waves as it travels through space. More importantly, sudden spikes of visible spectrum light are pretty rare (not the case with microwave). That means all it would take is one short pulse from a far-off planet to give reason to believe we might have something.
So, somewhere out there, if a planet like our own is trying to reach us with a beam of light, we have a better idea of what colors to look for.
When Raymond Szymanski arrived at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a college co-op student, he was intrigued when a mentor mentioned aliens and the base in the same sentence.
Szymanski, 65, spent 39 years at Wright-Patterson before retiring in 2011, and while he said he never saw any aliens, he went on a truth-seeking quest that took him from New Hampshire and Arizona across the Atlantic to England to track down those who claimed they had encounters with UFOs.
The Dayton area resident, a former Air Force Research Laboratory Sensors Directorate senior engineer, wrote “50 Shades of Greys: Evidence of Extraterrestrial Visitation to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Beyond.” He is set to speak about his findings in two weekend local appearances.
Ray Szymanski CONTRIBUTED Staff Writer
“The book is actually a documentary for my quest for the truth,” Szymanski said. “Were the stories I heard about Wright-Patterson true? What about some of the other famous places” where UFO sightings were claimed.
Szymanski points to Wright-Patterson as the home of the Air Force’s past UFO investigations, such as Project Blue Book in the 1960s, and decades-old reports that “exotic” material was brought to Wright-Patterson in 1947 after claims a UFO crashed in the desert near Roswell, N.M.
“Obviously, the Air Force took this seriously to an extent because they had collection and analysis of programs for nearly a quarter of a century, so certainly I took it seriously,” he said in a recent telephone interview.
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“The tipping point” to write the book, which is written in a first-person, humorous style about his on-the-road adventures for “the truth,” came in 2015 when he visited the place with a former logger who claimed he was abducted in 1975 by a UFO in the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest in Arizona, he said.
“This was some kind of a strange moment where I decided, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing all this research all these years, I’ve got to write a book,’” he said. “So I didn’t really do all my research and say, ’I’m going to write a book, but it was that kind of an encounter with that kind of person who had these kinds of experiences that just motivated me.”
Szymanski also details in his book travels to UFO sightings near Exeter, N.H., in 1965 and Rendelsham Forest in England in 1980 – along with investigating claims about Wright-Patterson.
“And now the million dollar question,” the author writes in the foreward in the book. “Does Wright-Patterson actually house aliens and their artifacts?
“At this point of writing this book, I’m not sure,” he wrote.
In an interview, he was certain whatever crashed in the desert near Roswell in 1947 was brought to Wright-Patterson, but he said he saw no evidence that it included alien beings.
“The Roswell alien thing is still a little squishy,” he said. “But that’s different from me believing we’ve been visited. Yes, I’ve talked and interviewed (UFO) experiencers and I’m convinced that what they’ve had is a real encounter, and so somewhere along the line people have encountered alien entities on this planet.”
More than three decades ago, the Air Force issued an official denial that Wright-Patterson housed alien space technology and the bodies of beings from another planet.
“Periodically, it is erroneously stated that the remains of extraterrestrial visitors are or have been stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,” the January 1985 statement said. “There are not now, nor have there ever been, any extraterrestrial visitors or equipment on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.”
Project Blue Book, a Wright-Patterson-headquartered Air Force investigation into reports of UFOs, concluded in December 1969 and found no threats to national security or evidence of extraterrestrial vehicles, the Air Force has said.
In 2013, the CIA reported high-flying spy planes spotted in the 1950s and 1960s were mistaken for UFOs more than half the time.
Szymanski, a Dayton area resident, said the UFO phenomenon came close to home for him.
“For me, there’s no doubt because as I documented in the book, I saw a UFO in my own neighborhood from about 200 feet away and 75 feet in the air as it slipped into a low bank of clouds,” he said. “That was kind of an up close and personal verification of what I pretty much was leaning towards anyway. And the people that I talk to about the cases and the evidence that they have is pretty much insurmountable, unassailable.”
Meet the author
The author and retired Wright-Patt engineer is scheduled to speak at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Centerville Library, 111 W. Spring Valley Road, and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Fairborn Senior Center, 325 N. 3rd St., as part of a Fairborn Area Historical Society presentation.
ANOTHER person has come forward claiming they have photographed a “flying saucer” on their smartphone, following a UFO sighting on the Great Barrier Reef.
But a professional photographer has come up with a simple explanation for the extraterrestrial image.
Sydney resident Carmen Schluter contacted the Cairns Post after reading of the sighing of an unexplained object that appeared in photos a Cairns woman took off Fitzroy Island last Saturday.
The object, which was not visible to the naked human eye, appeared to be a luminous green orb, shrouded in a flying saucer shape.
Ms Schluter said she had photos of a similar object, which she shot at Milperra on her smartphone, near Sydney last Tuesday morning.
“I have had photographer friends look at it,” she said.
“They are not sure either, (they think it’s) maybe lens flare, but it’s not conclusive.
“I was happy with the theory it's a spirit taken on my iPhone.”
Cairns Post photographer Brendan Radke, however, believed both the Fitzroy Island and Milperra photos simply showed lens flares.
“It occurs when there is internal reflections inside the lens,” he said.
“It can occur whether you are using a digital SLR, or a smartphone — any camera that uses a lens with multiple lens elements.”
Mr Radke, who has been a professional photographer for 13 years, said lens flare was especially common on smartphones, as lens elements were stacked closer together compared to SLR cameras.
“Camera manufacturers use all types of technology to reduce lens reflections, but it doesn’t always eliminate this, especially when you are shooting into the sun,” he said.
NASA’s rover has been roaming around Mars since 2012, but the photos it sent back to Earth this week just changed the view. Long known as the Red Planet, it turns out Mars has some other colors to show off. Through special lenses on its camera-eyes, the rover sent back photos of purple contrasting with green tracking one mineral in particular: hematite.
The cameras on Curiosity take photographs at different wavelengths of lights. Since rocks reflect and absorb light differently, the camera (specifically the Mast Camera) can determine what type of minerals make-up Mars’ surface.
NASA Photos From Mars Curiosity Rover Reveal Red Planet is Also Green and Purple
Scientists noticed the variations in rocks from spectrometer observations from orbit years ago and have been planning to tackle the Vera Rubin Ridge on the lower part of Mount Sharp since. “This is the juiciest part of the traverse,” said Jeffrey Johnson, a planetary geologist of John Hopkins University’s applied physics laboratory.
Since Curiosity's landing in 2012, it has found simple organic compounds (though it is unclear if they were formed from human contamination or are native to Mars), evidence of water, and photographs from points of interest such as Mount Sharp, the Murray Buttes, Hidden Valley, Yellowknife Bay Formation, and Rocknest.
The latest images from the rover are showing a different perspective of what Mars looks like—and what it may have looked like in the past.
This pair of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity rover illustrates how special filters are used to scout terrain ahead for variations in the local bedrock.
NASA
Hematite is typically a red color which blends with the rest of the surface as evident in the full color photograph. It usually forms in the presence of water, tacking on more evidence that ancient Martian times had conditions favorable for life. Though the rover found evidence that Mars once had conditions favorable to life in the first year of its journey, the presence of hematite hints at a changing and varied past for those conditions. And by using the special lenses on the cameras, scientists can pinpoint the areas that could be further investigated, said Johnson.
Collecting data on these rocks can answer questions about factors of the water that may have once passed through, such as its acidity, according to Johnson. Those answers could tell scientists what types of lifeforms would have been able to survive and potentially thrive. And the Mast Camera on the rover provides an excellent vantage point for gathering such intel. “It’s like if you’re flying in a plane and you’re looking down in a canyon or rocks or fields or something,” said Johnson. “It’s always going to look a little different when you take your bike through it."
Other substances the rover has detected on the surface have been different types of salts, gypsum, volcanic rocks, and rocks that have clearly been weathered for long periods of times, said Johnson. Further south of the ridge, where the rover will cross next, is more claylike.
“All of the minerals that we see tell a story,” he said. “And sometimes that story is really complicated.”
The beautiful array of colours were captured by the MAVEN space probe, which studies the atmosphere of the fourth planet from the Sun.
Stephen Hawking warns: Artificial Intelligence could REPLACE humans
Professor Hawking has said that Artificial Intelligence could replace humans. “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.”
Professor Stephen Hawking has issued a new stark warning regarding Artificial Intelligence. According to the world-renowned genius, robots will soon be considered a new form of life which can outperform humans, and eventually replace humans.
Professor Hawking has already spoken out in the past regarding the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, saying that humans should tread carefully when it comes to developing robots.
Now, during an interview with wired, Professor Hawking warned that AI will soon reach a level where they could be considered a new life form on Earth and outperform humans.’
Professor Hawking said that Artificial Intelligence might replace humans altogether, although he didn’t specify a timeline for his predictions.
“I fear that AI may replace humans entirely. If people create computer viruses, someone will create AI that develops and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.” During the interview, Professor Hawking also urged more people to take a part in science, warning that there would be ‘serious consequences’ if this didn’t happen.
Professor Hawking also said that we need to start developing a new space programme, with ‘with a view to ultimately colonizing suitable planets for human habitation.’
“I believe we have entered the point of no return. Our Planet is becoming too small for us, global population is growing at an alarming rate, and we are in danger of self-destructing.”
In 2016, Hawking made several warnings when speaking about Robots saying that we could soon reach a point where artificial intelligence could develop a will of its own that is in conflict with that of humanity. “I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer,” said Professor Hawking at a conference in Cambridge at the launch of The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
“It, therefore, follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence – and exceed it.”
Professor Hawking said the potential benefits were many and the technological revolution could help mankind undo some of the damage done to the natural world by industrialization.
However, he warned that “In short, success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization.”
Researchers at the University of Oxford say this is what aliens could look like
The works of Hollywood and science fiction literature have led us to believe that aliens are probably monstrous beings and look very different from humans.
However, new research suggests that we could have much more in common with extraterrestrials than we think.
In a study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, a group of researchers from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) shows how the theory of evolution can serve as a basis for predictions about the appearance and behavior of aliens.
Picture an alien. These illustrations represent different levels of adaptive complexity we might imagine when thinking about aliens.
Scientists claim that extraterrestrial entities are potentially formed through the same processes and mechanisms that shaped human beings, such as natural selection, reports Phys.org.
The approach taken for this work is an alternative to previous research on the subject, which focused on analyzing living environments and not on how life could evolve.
Sam Levin, a researcher at the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, explains that the new theoretical predictions “can be applied to aliens [with primary molecular contents] based on silicon, which lacks DNA or breathes nitrogen, for example.”
The complexity of species on Earth is the result of a set of events known as large transitions.
These occur when a group of separate organisms evolves into higher-level organisms, for example, when cells become multicellular organisms.
For these large transitions to occur, extreme conditions are needed, as both theoretical and empirical data suggest.
The study also makes specific predictions about the biological structure of the most complex aliens and offers an interesting perspective on how they would look.
Like humans, he argues, these beings would be constituted by a “hierarchy of entities that cooperate to produce an alien.”
According to Levin, each level of an alien’s body would have “mechanisms to eliminate conflicts, maintain cooperation and preserve the functioning of the body.”
Maybe this is what our cosmic neighbors look like.
“We still can’t say whether aliens will walk on two legs or have big green eyes. But we believe evolutionary theory offers a unique additional tool for trying to understand what aliens will be like, and we have shown some examples of the kinds of strong predictions we can make with it.
“By predicting that aliens have undergone major transitions – which is how complexity has arisen in species on earth, we can say that there is a level of predictability to evolution that would cause them to look like us.
“Like humans, we predict that they are made-up of a hierarchy of entities, which all cooperate to produce an alien. At each level of the organism, there will be mechanisms in place to eliminate conflict, maintain cooperation, and keep the organism functioning. We can even offer some examples of what these mechanisms will be.
“There are potentially hundreds of thousands of habitable planets in our galaxy alone. We can’t say whether or not we’re alone on Earth, but we have taken a small step forward in answering, if we’re not alone, what our neighbors are like,” concluded Levin.
Le crash de Roswell en 1947 ne nécessite pas une introduction élaborée. C’est l’un des cas les plus célèbres de crash d’ovnis de toute l’histoire de l’humanité.
En 1947, un OVNI s’est écrasé dans un ranch au nord-ouest de Roswell, au Nouveau-Mexique, dans la première semaine de juillet 1947. L’armée américaine a fait une déclaration selon laquelle ils ont capturé une soucoupe volante et ils sont revenus sur cette déclaration peu de temps après.
Une nouvelle vidéo a été récemment publiée en ligne et elle présente le véritable corps de l’extraterrestre de Roswell, extirpé du site du crash. Elle n’a rien à voir avec la vidéo « autopsie d’un extraterrestre » qui s’est avérée être un fake des années 1990.
La vidéo a probablement été tournée dans un des hangars de la Zone 51 où les corps extraterrestres sont stockés. La vidéo montre un extraterrestre transporté sur une civière. Il y a beaucoup de militaires et de scientifiques qui attendent d’observer le spécimen de plus près.
autopsie du cas roswell v41 les cadavres d'extraterrestres new
Comme vous pouvez le constater, l'affaire est loin d'être aussi simple que certains sceptiques et de nombreux médias veulent bien le dire. Il existe bon nombre d'autres témoignages sur cette affaire dont celui de Bond Johnson, un journaliste, appelé en juillet 1947, pour photographier les débris de l'accident. C'est d'ailleurs le seul représentant des médias à avoir pu voir ces débris. Il est impossible de tous les citer à moins d'écrire un livre.
La question que tout le monde se pose est : Qu'est-il tombé du ciel le 2 juillet 1947 ? Seule l'armée de l'air pourrait répondre à cette question et nous connaissons leurs différentes versions peu convaincantes et surtout très contradictoires. La théorie du météorite est quant à elle totalement invraisemblable pour la simple raison que l'objet n'a laissé aucun impact du type cratère. Cependant, près de 60 ans après les évènements, de nombreuses personnes poursuivent leur enquête et continuent à chercher des réponses aux différentes questions.
* Où sont passés les débris analysés à Wright-Patterson ?
* Où sont les rapports d'expertise ?
* Qui est à l'origine du film d'autopsie ?
* L'énorme essor technologique qui s'est produit après la Seconde Guerre mondiale a-t-elle un rapport direct avec le crash de Roswell ?
Il existe trop de témoignages concordants pour que l'on puisse ignorer ou traiter par le mépris le cas Roswell. Il commence à y avoir quelques failles dans le mur du silence qui entoure l'affaire depuis 1947. Le nombre de témoignages importe peu en fait. La seule preuve qui pourrait nous donner la solution à cette énigme serait que l'on puisse analyser publiquement les débris récupérés. D'ailleurs, le centre international de recherche sur les OVNIS de Roswell offre un million de dollars à celui qui lui apportera l'un de ces débris après authentification. Tant qu'il n'y aura pas de nouvelles preuves de ce type, Roswell restera dans les énigmes de notre histoire.
Is de Grote Sfinx meer dan 750.000 jaar oud? Deze Oekraïense wetenschappers denken het antwoord te weten
Er bestaan nog veel onduidelijkheden over de Grote Sfinx van Gizeh en er zijn tal van theorieën over het ontstaan en de vorm. Ook zouden er nog ruimtes onder de sfinx zijn, die nog niet zijn verkend.
Onderzoekers Vjacheslav Mantsjev en Alexander Parkhomenko van de Nationale Academie van Wetenschappen van Oekraïne hebben recentelijk geprobeerd vast te stellen hoe oud de sfinx precies is.
Ze hebben zich laten inspireren door de uitspraken van theosoof Jelena Blavatskaja (Helena Blavatsky), diezei dat de sfinx ruim 750.000 jaar geleden is gebouwd.
Watererosie
De Oekraïense onderzoekers hebben vooral gekeken naar de invloed van overstromingen op het bouwwerk, met name de verticale muren.
Het lichaam van het bouwsel vertoont horizontale en verticale goten, die volgens de onderzoekers tekenen zijn van watererosie.
Ze wijzen erop dat in de literatuur wordt gesproken over meren in het gebied van het Pleistoceen tot het Holoceen.
800.000 jaar
“Die meren bevonden zich in de gebieden naast de Nijl,” schreven de wetenschappers, toevoegende dat de erosie bovenaan de Sfinx overeenkomt met het waterpeil in het Vroeg Pleistoceen, meer precies het Calabrien.
De Grote Sfinx moet zich in dat geologische tijdperk al op het Gizeh-plateau hebben bevonden, denken ze. Dat zou betekenen dat het bouwwerk minimaal zo’n 800.000 jaar oud moet zijn.
Onder water
Manitsjev en Parkhomenko vermoeden dat het bouwwerk op een bepaald moment helemaal onder water heeft gestaan. Ze verwijzen daarbij naar bestaande literatuur over geologisch onderzoek naar het Gizeh-plateau.
Rond het einde van het Plioceen stroomde het zeewater de Nijlvallei binnen, waardoor het gebied langzaam maar zeker overstroomde.
Lees hier het onderzoek van de Oekraïense wetenschappers.
11 plekken op aarde waar je niet mag komen. Heb je hier ooit van gehoord?
Vanaf oktober 2019 is het beklimmen van de iconische rots Uluru in Australië verboden, zo hebben de lokale autoriteiten beslist.
De grote rode rotsformatie is een heilige site voor de Aboriginalgemeenschap Anangu. Uluru staat op de UNESCO-lijst met werelderfgoed en zou een half miljard oud zijn.
Op welke andere plekken op aarde worden geen bezoekers toegelaten?
1. Grotten van Lascaux, Frankrijk
Deze grotten liggen in het Franse departement Dordogne. In 1940 werden in de grotten een groot aantal rotstekeningen ontdekt, die zijn gedateerd op 15.000 tot 10.000 voor Christus.
Het is de rijkst beschilderde prehistorische grot die tot nu toe is ontdekt. Sinds 2008 zijn de grotten gesloten voor publiek.
2. Vaticaans Geheim Archief, Vaticaanstad
Dit is de centrale bewaarplaats van alle akten die zijn uitgevaardigd door de Heilige Stoel. Het grootste deel daarvan wordt bewaard in een betonnen kubus die de bunker wordt genoemd.
In totaal wordt er nu zo’n 85 kilometer aan archiefstukken bewaard. Het archief is alleen toegankelijk voor geleerden van naam en faam.
3. Grote schrijn van Ise, Japan
Dit is een complex van Shintoschrijnen in de Japanse stad Ise. De grote schrijn is één van de heiligste en belangrijkste plekken binnen het Shintoïsme.
Toegang tot de locatie is sterk aan banden gelegd. Bezoekers mogen doorgaans niet meer zien dan de daken van de centrale gebouwen.
De hogepriesters en –priesteressen van de grote schrijn van Ise moeten traditiegetrouw afkomstig zijn uit de Japanse keizerlijke familie.
4. Area 51, VS
Dit is een militaire basis van de Amerikaanse luchtmacht in de Nevadawoestijn. In de volksmond wordt Area 51 ook wel Dreamland genoemd.
De basis is door UFO-onderzoekers vaak genoemd als locatie waar de Amerikaanse overheid buitenaardse wezens verborgen zou houden.
In 2013 heeft de CIA geheime documenten vrijgegeven waarin de basis als Area 51 wordt beschreven.
5. Graftombe van Qin Shi Huang, China
Qin Shi Huang wist gedurende zijn relatief korte bewind grote koninkrijken rondom een rivier in China te verenigen tot één rijk en wordt daarom gezien als de eerste keizer van China.
Bij de bouw van zijn mausoleum werden naar schatting 700.000 arbeiders ingezet, ruim twee keer zoveel als bij de Chinese Muur.
Het mausoleum ligt als een paleis onder een 76 meter hoge grafheuvel. Wonderbaarlijk genoeg is de tombe waarin Qin moet liggen nooit geopend.
6. Mezjgorje, Rusland
Mezjgorje is een gesloten stad in de Russische autonome deelrepubliek Basjkortostan. Gedacht wordt dat de stad moet fungeren als bunker tegen een kernaanval.
De federale overheid bepaalt wie toegang krijgt tot het stadje, dat 17.000 inwoners telt. Toeristen zijn er niet welkom.
Er gaan geruchten dat er Russische legerbataljons gestationeerd zijn die werken in een geheime nucleaire basis.
7. Slangeneiland, Brazilië
Ilha da Queimada, bijgenaamd Slangeneiland, ligt voor de kust van Brazilië en is de thuisbasis van duizenden Golden Lancehead Vipers.
Deze slangen behoren tot de meest giftige ter wereld. Er zouden liefst vijf van deze dieren op elke vierkante meter zijn te vinden.
Jarenlang was de enige menselijke bewoner een vuurtorenwachter, maar inmiddels is het verboden het eiland te betreden.
8. De slaapkamer van de Queen, Engeland
Buckingham Palace verwelkomt toeristen al sinds jaar en dag, maar de slaapkamer van koningin Elizabeth II is niet toegankelijk. Het gaat om één van de zwaarst bewaakte kamers in Engeland.
9. Wereldzaadbank, Spitsbergen
De wereldzaadbank bevat zaden van zoveel mogelijk rassen van gewassen. De opslagplaats, ook wel omschreven als een Doomsday-vault of een ark van Noach, wordt grotendeels betaald door de Noorse overheid.
De zaadbank bevindt zich 120 meter diep in een berg vlak bij de plaats Longyearbyen. Alleen enkele medewerkers mogen bij de zaadbank naar binnen.
10. North Sentinel Island, Andamanen
Dit kleine eiland heeft een oppervlakte van 72 vierkante kilometer en valt bestuurlijk gezien onder de Andamanen.
De inheemse bevolking bestaat uit Sentinelezen, die elk contact met andere mensen weigeren en behoren tot de laatste groepen geïsoleerde volkeren ter wereld die nog niet zijn beïnvloed door de moderne beschaving.
11. Kantoor 39, Noord-Korea
Noord-Korea is één van de meest geheimzinnige landen ter wereld, maar nog geheimzinniger is Kantoor 39.
Er is maar heel weinig bekend over Kantoor 39, waarvan wordt gedacht dat het zich in het hoofdkwartier van de Arbeiderspartij in Pyongyang bevindt.
Er zouden onder meer drugs worden verhandeld en wapendeals worden gesloten.
Monsterplaneet ontdekt die alle theorieën naar de prullenbak verwijst. Astronomen staan voor een raadsel
De ontdekking van een gigantische ‘monsterplaneet’ doet astronomen versteld staan. De planeet kan ervoor zorgen dat wetenschappers hun theorieën over planeetvorming zullen moeten herzien.
De planeet, bekend als NGTS-1b, is net zo groot als Jupiter, maar draait rond een rode dwerg die slechts half zo groot is als onze zon.
Astronomen hadden niet verwacht dat zo’n enorme planeet rond zo’n kleine ster zou kunnen draaien. De ontdekking staat haaks op de theorieën over de manier waarop planeten ontstaan.
Complete verrassing
Het mysterieuze zonnestelsel staat op 600 lichtjaar van de aarde.
“De ontdekking van NGTS-1b kwam voor ons als een complete verrassing,” zei hoofdonderzoeker Daniel Bayliss van de Universiteit van Warwick.
“We hadden niet verwacht dat zulke enorme planeten rond zulke kleine sterren zouden kunnen bestaan,” vervolgde hij.
“Onze uitdaging is nu om erachter te komen hoeveel van deze planeten in het sterrenstelsel voorkomen,” aldus dr. Bayliss.
Lastig
NGTS-1b is ontdekt met behulp van een netwerk van telescopen die staan opgesteld in de Atacama-woestijn in Chili.
De gasreus staat zeer dicht bij zijn ster, op slechts drie procent van de afstand tussen de aarde en de zon. Een jaar duurt er maar 2,6 dagen. De oppervlaktetemperatuur bedraagt er ongeveer 530 graden Celsius.
“NGTS-1b was lastig te vinden, ondanks het feit dat het een monster van een planeet is, omdat de moederster klein en zwak is,” zei professor Peter Wheatley.
Veel
“Kleine sterren komen het vaakst voor in het universum en dus is het mogelijk dat er veel van dit soort reuzenplaneten zijn,” voegde hij toe.
Grote Piramide bevat verborgen ruimte ter grootte van een Boeing. Wetenschappers doen spectaculaire vondst
Met de hulp van kosmische straling hebben wetenschappers een minstens 30 meter grote ruimte in de grootste van de drie piramides in Gizeh ontdekt.
Het resultaat betekent een doorbraak om de interne structuur van de piramide van Cheops beter te begrijpen, schrijven de onderzoekers in een verslag in vakblad Nature.
“We weten niet wat de bedoeling van deze holle ruimte is,” zegt Mehdi Tayoubi van het internationaal wetenschappelijk team.
Zo groot als een Boeing
“Daarom willen we ook niet van een kamer spreken,” voegde hij toe. Maar de omvang van de ontdekte ruimte is groot. “Zo groot als een Boeing,” klinkt het.
Drie teams van verschillende instituten en universiteiten uit Frankrijk en Japan onderzochten gedurende twee jaar de 4500 jaar oude piramide in Gizeh.
Daarbij gebruikten de wetenschappers een scan met muonen, een nevenproduct van kosmische straling.
Honderden meters
Net zoals röntgenstralen bij het menselijk lichaam kunnen die elementaire deeltjes honderden meters steen doordringen, aldus de onderzoekers.
De piramide van Cheops is de oudste en de grootste van de drie piramides van Gizeh en is één van de zeven wereldwonderen uit de Oudheid.
De piramide is 139 meter hoog en 230 meter lang. Het bouwwerk stamt uit de regeerperiode van Cheops en heeft nog steeds niet al zijn geheimen blootgegeven.
It is one of the great wonders of the ancient world; since long before Herodotus first wrote of its magnificence, describing the casing stones and their curious characters, and the more than 100,000 men who labored for two decades to complete it, the Great Pyramid has towered over the Earth, and the imaginations of men across the globe.
Hence it is with great intrigue that a new discovery has been revealed within the Great Pyramid, indicating a mysterious “void” estimated to be at least 100 feet in length. It is the first new discovery of an inner structure within the pyramid since the 19th century.
Mehdi Tayoubi, a co-founder of the nonprofit group that conducted the research, said of the discovery that, “No very big structure has not been discovered inside the Khufu pyramid since the Middle Ages,” emphasizing the significance of the new information.
Mirroring Tayoubi’s sentiments, Egyptologist Yukinori Kawae told National Geographic that, “This is definitely the discovery of the century.”
“There have been many hypotheses about the pyramid,” Kawae says, “but no one even imagined that such a big void is located above the Grand Gallery.”
Theories about the void (archaeologists have presently taken great care not to refer to the discovery as a “chamber”) range from an area engineered to relieve stress from the weight of large quantities of stone in the massive structure, to a possible cavity similar to that of the Grand Gallery itself.
The area is believed to have a cross section that bears similarity to the Grand Gallery in length and general size, and is estimated to be nearly 100 feet long (98 feet, by one estimate).
History tells us the Great Pyramid (or “Khufu’s pyramid” as it is also called, named after the Pharaoh to which it is attributed) was constructed around 2560. Traditions associated with the monument, along with interpretations of modern Egyptologists, relate that the structure was built to ensure the immortality of Khufu–a veritable god among men–as he passed into the afterlife.
The new discovery was truly a multidisciplinary effort, employing innovative physics along with archaeological research. With assistance from the Egyptian government, what is called the “ScanPyramids project” has been a two year collaboration with Egypts’ Heritage Innovation Preservation project, based out of Cairo University.
The ScanPyramids project relied on cosmic rays to be able to study the interior of the pyramid in a non-invasive way (contrasting sharply with earlier excavations carried out in the 19th century by Howard Vyse, who blasted his way through parts of the structure with gunpowder when necessary). The ScanPyramids team were able to rely on muons–which are essentially “heavy” electrons–to help detect structural changes within the pyramid, by setting up a muon telescope directly in front of the structure.
“When they hit objects on the ground, they act exactly like X-rays: Dense objects absorb them; less dense objects let them pass through. The ScanPyramids team used photographic plates sensitive to muons. These photographic plates were placed inside the already-explored chambers of the pyramid and around the outside of the structure. The data from each plate was then combined to make a map of the void.”
The discovery has been met with mixed opinions, and while fascinating, some outlets (including the New York Times) suggest that it’s not all that mysterious. The NYT went on to note that talk among the archaeological community, “questioned whether the study offered any new information about the ancient Egyptians,” further noting that the room was likely a structural necessity, as opposed to being, “a hidden room filled with the pharaoh’s riches.”
Whatever its purpose may yet be shown to be, the discovery remains, without question, among the most significant recent finds at the Giza complex, and will continue to assist in shaping our knowledge of the ancient world.
“The UFO got in the way of the sun, causing the earth to seem darker, and this would make the ball of light show up even more where the children were.”
What is this retired Presbyterian pastor talking about? If you think this sounds like the apparitions seen by three children in Fatima, Portugal, 100 years ago – except for the UFO part – you must be a fan of Reverend Barry Downing, who makes this and many other astonishing claims in his new book, Biblical UFO Revelations: Did Extraterrestrial Powers Cause Ancient Miracles?. Wait until you hear what he thinks about the burning bush and the pillar of fire.
Barry Downing isn’t just the Pastor emeritus of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Endwell, New York. He has bachelor’s degree in physics, a degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in the relation between religion and science from the University of Edinburgh of Scotland. He’s been enlightening and aggravating both theologians and ufologists since 1968 when he published his first book, The Bible and Flying Saucers, in which he equates biblical angels with space aliens.
“Church people have trouble with what I’m doing. People who’ve seen UFOs have no problem.”
That’s an understatement, considering Pope Francis talks about baptizing extraterrestrials while there are other Catholic Church leaders still arguing about Galileo. In an interview with Sean Casteel (who contributed to the book) on the website Unexplained Mysteries, Reverend Downing explains what’s in his new book, which is both an update and a sequel to the first:
“My argument is that the Exodus UFO, the pillar of cloud and fire, which appeared cloud-like during the day and glowed in the dark, used its propulsion system to split the waters of the Red Sea and save Israel from the Egyptians.”
Did religious scholars just feel a disturbance in the force? Downing calls the description of this event in Exodus 14:19-30 a “very detailed environmental impact statement.” He also looks at another significant phenomenon in that book as evidence of an encounter with an alien.
“What is not amazing to me is not that we had a burning bush … we had a talking bush. A voice came to Moses from the bush.”
Downing also returns to his idea that angels were aliens who took Moses on their spaceship to receive the 10 Commandments and specifications for the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. Statements like these have been made by others and can certainly sound believable, at least to ufologists. Where Reverend Downing will likely get criticized is in statements about close encounters of the New Testament kind that he spells out on the back cover:
** That Jesus was an extraterrestrial sent to earth to rid the world of sin and wickedness, quoting Biblical text to support his claim. ** That Jesus left earth in a spaceship to another planet, or perhaps another spatial dimension.
Good luck seeing Pope Francis at your next book signing, Reverend. He won’t see any government officials (other than possibly the Men in Black) there either with his idea that a possible government cover-up of UFOs is more because the aliens are angels rather than the fear of revealing advanced technology.
Downing just asks readers to keep an open mind.
“This book is for the faithful as well as those who are primarily interested in unexplained historical phenomena as revealed in Biblical as well as other ancient texts, as well as seekers of censored truths concerning the hidden and forbidden knowledge of mankind.”
Sounds like the perfect book to help get over the disappointment of the JFK assassination files.
Secret chamber found in the Great Pyramid of Giza (Video)
A long-hidden narrow cavity in the Great Pyramid of Giza has been found by scientists in a discovery that could finally reveal the secrets of the 4,500-year-old monument.
Location of the cavity, see the white dots in the above image.
Described as a 'deep void', it is at least about 100 feet long and up to 230 feet above ground, running over the Grand Gallery, an ascending corridor that links the Queen’s chamber to the King’s in the heart of the pyramid, reports Dailymail in their in-depth article on this discovery.
It is not known why the void exists or if there are any valuable artifacts inside as it is not obviously accessible. More research will be conducted to reveal the secrets of this cavity which is so big, it’s like a plane with 200 seats in the heart of the pyramid, explains AFP Medhi Tayoubi, co-director of the project ScanPyramids at the origin of the discovery.
See below the interesting video of ScanPyramids using advanced non-invasive technologies which allow them to see through stone walls to discover any voids or internal unknown structures.
Monster’ planet just discovered that was thought IMPOSSIBLE to exist!
A giant planet – the existence of which previously thought extremely unlikely – discovered around a small star by an international collaboration of astronomers, with University of Warwick taking a leading role.
Image above is an artist's rendering of the red 'monster' planet -
Mark Garlick, University of Warwick.
NGTS-1b is the largest planet compared to the size of its companion star ever discovered in universe – contradicts theories that a planet of this size could not be formed by such a small star Discovered using the state-of-the-art Next-Generation Transit Survey observing facility, designed to search for transiting planets on bright stars.
NGTS-1b is 600 light years away from us – it is a gas giant the size of Jupiter which orbits a star only half the size of our Sun at an extremely fast pace.
It’s amazing that they keep finding new planets, habitable exoplanets, Stars and even they have confirmed the existence of a planet nine but nothing is said about planet X also called Nibiru, except that it is a hypothetical planet and doesn’t exist.
The late Zecharia Sitchin wrote numerous publications on the planet Nibiru.
The planet Nibiru associated with Marduk in Babylonian cosmology is a central element of Sitchin's theory and he claims it was a tenth planet (twelfth to those who included the Sun and Moon) which followed a long, elliptical orbit, reaching the inner solar system every 3600 years and was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race called the Anunnaki in Sumerian myth, who Sitchin states are called the Nephilim in Genesis.
Despite Sitchin’s theory we cannot say for sure if Nibiru is real or just a hypothetical planet, though it is worth mentioning that the existing of a Nibiru solar system has been mentioned by numerous ancient civilizations.
Maybe they are not telling us everything about this ‘monster’ planet, but for now it is just another new discovered planet rather than part of the Nibiru system, which next passage is in the year 2085 according to Sitchin.
UFO hunters are amazed at the appearance of a strange looking cloud that was seen over the skies of Dorset. Onlookers reported a pair of odd looking clouds as some believed that UFOs were responsible for them as they punched through the clouds.
Locals and holidaymakers first spotted the formation between midday and 2 pm on October 25.
Many believe it was natural, but others argue it was supernatural that causing the unusual event. The rest are just scratching their heads as they cannot say for sure what was the cause.
Photographer Len Copeland managed to photograph the clouds as many people were halted in their tracks when they first noticed the clouds.
People around Copeland thought he knew what was going on after seeing him taking photographs but he had no idea as well.
Copeland said that two, round-shaped UFO formations appeared weird to them. Interestingly, one of the formations dissipated and left a feathery thing in its place.
During the event, there were thousands of people including children playing on the beach and swimming in the sea. Lots of people were reportedly taking pictures of the cloud.
However, Met Office spokesperson said that the rare cloud formation that left a hole in the sky over Dorset was a fallstreak cloud. Fallstreak clouds, according to the Met Office website, form when part of the cloud layer forms ice crystals that are large enough to drop as fallstreak.
As scientists have learned more about our solar system, they've realized our best bet for finding life in the neighborhood is buried in ice-covered oceans. But those ice shells make them difficult to study, which is why NASA is investing in state-of-the-art technology to understand what's happening beneath the surface of these potentially habitable places, like Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.
That's probably fine, since SELFI is still in the works anyway. The machine represents a huge step forward in what are known as submillimeter wavelength devices. Submillimeter wavelength is a fancy term for the type of light the machine will be able to see, and it's a burgeoning target for astronomical observations, since relatively little work has been done in that range.
Different types of chemical compounds produce different fingerprints in submillimeter wavelength light, which SELFI will be able to use to identify 13 ingredients. “Molecules such as water and carbon monoxide, and others, are like little radio stations that broadcast on very specific frequencies that say, ‘Hey, I’m water, I’m carbon monoxide,’” said Gordon Chin, the NASA scientist leading the project, in a press release. Other targeted chemicals include ammonia, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and table salt.
Analyzing Enceladus's jets may help scientists determine whether there is life on Saturn's moon.
NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
All 13 of those ingredients are of interest to planetary scientists, but they're particularly interested in water, so Chin and his colleagues are currently working to make SELFI extra-sensitive to that specific chemical fingerprint. They're hoping to have it all ready to add to NASA's first Enceladus mission, whenever that is approved.
The Cassini spacecraft detected hydrogen in the plume of gas and icy material spraying from Enceladus during its deepest and last dive through the plume on Oct. 28, 2015. This graphic illustrates a theory on how water interacts with rock at the bottom of the moon’s ocean, producing hydrogen gas. A Goddard team wants to develop an instrument that would reveal even more details about the hydrothermal vents and perhaps help answer if life exists on this ocean world.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Southwest Research Institute
Right now, the agency has only committed to sending an orbiter to Enceladus's leading competitor for life on an icy moon, Jupiter's Europa. That mission is scheduled to launch during the 2020s. Just like Enceladus, Europa likely hides a water ocean underneath a frozen crust, although Europa doesn't sport Enceladus's geysers that helpfully bring the ocean closer to orbiting spacecraft. It's highly unlikely NASA will approve a mission to land on either moon, since that would risk contaminating a habitable world with Earth cooties.
An intricate crop circle spans a diameter of more than 45 metres in a barley field close to Barbury Castle near Wroughton, England, about 130 kilometres west of London, in 2008. The circle is noteworthy for its complexity, representing the first 10 digits of the mathematical constant pi, or 3.141592654. Lucy Pringle, CC BY-SA
Crop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture
Crop circles are some of the most beautiful, mysterious and controversial landscape phenomena in the contemporary world. They are found around the globe, appearing in countries with large areas of agricultural land. They are also central to a shift in culture with investigative approaches that mimic science and increasingly make the paranormal mainstream.
Unlike UFOs, ghosts and sasquatches, crop circles are tangible — people can touch and walk into them. At least 30 appeared in England last summer. In British Columbia, crop circle formations appeared in Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres west of Prince George, in 1998 and 2001.
Crop circles and what people do with them represent one aspect of my ongoing four-year research project, which explores the recent growth of beliefs, practices and experiences related to the paranormal. My fieldwork studies investigative paranormal groups in the Vancouver area and paranormal conferences across North America and England.
Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people’s lives in the West.
Because the paranormal refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life.
Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream.
Paranormal goes mainstream and scientific
Investigative organizations and international conferences that mobilize paranormal feelings, knowledge and practices are central to the merger between the paranormal and the mainstream.
Drawing on the models and techniques that mimic conventional science, these conferences and organizations are open to the public and have led to the democratization of paranormal investigation and availability of paranormal experiences.
The 1990s TV series, The X-Files, which followed FBI agents investigating strange phenomena, has regained popularity and returned to production amid rising interest in the paranormal.
Researchers — especially in the humanities — acknowledge the relevance of the paranormal. Yet enduring skepticism in the social sciences about the legitimacy of the claims about paranormal phenomena and experiences has resulted in a lack of critical studies on how people are actually engaging with the paranormal.
Academic research has already acknowledged the importance of local paranormal groups and international conferences that engage paranormal phenomena — in particular ghosts, UFOs and cryptids such as sasquatch. Yet we know very little about the relationships between these groups and conferences, as well as why and how they shape people’s everyday lives.
My study helps explain how paranormal organizations and conferences are contributing to these sociocultural changes.
Rationality conflicts with crop circles’ mystery
Crop circle research or “cereology” exemplifies the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary.
No matter what one understands to be the cause of crop circles, whether they are all human-made or involve aquifers, ley lines, divine feminine energy, ancient sacred sites, ball lightning or even UFOs, crop circles bring to the fore a mysterious disconnection between language and the visible, as described in Jean-François Lyotard’s book Discourse, Figure.
The French philosopher argues there is an unstable relationship between linguistic meaning and units of signification, that is, the visible patterns of words, dreams, symbols and visual art. Because there is no inherent meaning in any given signifier (meaning always relies on another word and a wider context), and art and symbols are conceptually opaque by default, they necessarily defy easy rational understanding.
A crop circle enthusiast from Dublin lies on the ground to connect with what he believes are sacred energies in a crop circle in Wiltshire, England, in July.(Paul Kingsbury), Author provided
One day during the conference, I went to visit a crop circle with fellow researchers only to find a sign on a gate to the property: “Crop circle closed.” The person representing an organization that liaises between farmers and crop-circle researchers was not present. Because we could not proceed without trespassing, we got back into the car.
Back at the conference, an argument erupted over the behaviour of some researchers who had ignored the “Crop circle closed” sign, climbed over the fence and walked to the crop circle.
For one researcher, this transgression was troubling because it exhibited the crass consumption of what he believed was a sacred phenomenon. Another researcher, who had ignored the sign, replied that he respected this opinion, but felt the crop circle was “calling out” to him and that it would be more disrespectful to ignore the pull of the sacred.
The researchers had differing views on whether a “Crop circle closed” sign, which demarcated a boundary, should be obeyed or whether it was an inappropriate obstacle to the “call” of the crop circle.
The tension between the appearances and meanings of crop circles also informed the tricky patience demanded in a sacred geometry workshop. As participants drew lines with compasses and protractors, they struggled to accurately reproduce the complex patterns of crop circles, losing small pieces of pencil lead and struggling to keep their compasses from slipping on the paper. Conference organizer Karen Alexander said the exercise gave the participants a better appreciation and intimate understanding of crop circles.
Interpreting paranormal cultures
As a part of my work, I explore the tensions between the visual and language, focusing on the complexity of crop-circle landscapes where enthusiasts struggle to navigate toward, inside and away from crop circles.
Lyotard aligns these events with “figural space” — elusive elements that disrupt and exceed the capture of language. Crucial here is how crop circles — unlike ghosts, UFOs and sasquatches — are highly tangible signs. But what they mean and what they are remains a mystery.
Despite claims by “circle-makers” that they are human-made, the sheer size and complexity of the circles belies a 100 per cent human-made explanation.
According to researchers at the conference, hoaxers, when questioned about how they were able to make 80 or so perfectly round circles without breaking or snapping cereal stalks, are unable to reproduce the patterns and ignore the researchers’ questions.
Furthermore, finding and getting to the crop circles — navigating narrow and winding English countryside roads and locating their exact whereabouts in large fields of wheat or barley — is no small feat.
Like all the other paranormal investigation cultures I have studied so far, crop circle research blurs the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary. Beyond this, one cannot discount the importance of geography in the micro-spaces of fields and conference venues. The regional nature and extent to which crop circles are landscape phenomena incites many people’s desire to shape their encounters with the sublime.
An intricate crop circle spans a diameter of more than 45 metres in a barley field close to Barbury Castle near Wroughton, England, about 130 kilometres west of London, in 2008. The circle is noteworthy for its complexity, representing the first 10 digits of the mathematical constant pi, or 3.141592654. Lucy Pringle, CC BY-SA
Crop circles blur science, paranormal in X-Files culture
Crop circles are some of the most beautiful, mysterious and controversial landscape phenomena in the contemporary world. They are found around the globe, appearing in countries with large areas of agricultural land. They are also central to a shift in culture with investigative approaches that mimic science and increasingly make the paranormal mainstream.
Unlike UFOs, ghosts and sasquatches, crop circles are tangible — people can touch and walk into them. At least 30 appeared in England last summer. In British Columbia, crop circle formations appeared in Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres west of Prince George, in 1998 and 2001.
Crop circles and what people do with them represent one aspect of my ongoing four-year research project, which explores the recent growth of beliefs, practices and experiences related to the paranormal. My fieldwork studies investigative paranormal groups in the Vancouver area and paranormal conferences across North America and England.
Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people’s lives in the West.
Because the paranormal refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life.
Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream.
Paranormal goes mainstream and scientific
Investigative organizations and international conferences that mobilize paranormal feelings, knowledge and practices are central to the merger between the paranormal and the mainstream.
Drawing on the models and techniques that mimic conventional science, these conferences and organizations are open to the public and have led to the democratization of paranormal investigation and availability of paranormal experiences.
The 1990s TV series, The X-Files, which followed FBI agents investigating strange phenomena, has regained popularity and returned to production amid rising interest in the paranormal.
Researchers — especially in the humanities — acknowledge the relevance of the paranormal. Yet enduring skepticism in the social sciences about the legitimacy of the claims about paranormal phenomena and experiences has resulted in a lack of critical studies on how people are actually engaging with the paranormal.
Academic research has already acknowledged the importance of local paranormal groups and international conferences that engage paranormal phenomena — in particular ghosts, UFOs and cryptids such as sasquatch. Yet we know very little about the relationships between these groups and conferences, as well as why and how they shape people’s everyday lives.
My study helps explain how paranormal organizations and conferences are contributing to these sociocultural changes.
Rationality conflicts with crop circles’ mystery
Crop circle research or “cereology” exemplifies the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary.
No matter what one understands to be the cause of crop circles, whether they are all human-made or involve aquifers, ley lines, divine feminine energy, ancient sacred sites, ball lightning or even UFOs, crop circles bring to the fore a mysterious disconnection between language and the visible, as described in Jean-François Lyotard’s book Discourse, Figure.
The French philosopher argues there is an unstable relationship between linguistic meaning and units of signification, that is, the visible patterns of words, dreams, symbols and visual art. Because there is no inherent meaning in any given signifier (meaning always relies on another word and a wider context), and art and symbols are conceptually opaque by default, they necessarily defy easy rational understanding.
A crop circle enthusiast from Dublin lies on the ground to connect with what he believes are sacred energies in a crop circle in Wiltshire, England, in July.(Paul Kingsbury), Author provided
One day during the conference, I went to visit a crop circle with fellow researchers only to find a sign on a gate to the property: “Crop circle closed.” The person representing an organization that liaises between farmers and crop-circle researchers was not present. Because we could not proceed without trespassing, we got back into the car.
Back at the conference, an argument erupted over the behaviour of some researchers who had ignored the “Crop circle closed” sign, climbed over the fence and walked to the crop circle.
For one researcher, this transgression was troubling because it exhibited the crass consumption of what he believed was a sacred phenomenon. Another researcher, who had ignored the sign, replied that he respected this opinion, but felt the crop circle was “calling out” to him and that it would be more disrespectful to ignore the pull of the sacred.
The researchers had differing views on whether a “Crop circle closed” sign, which demarcated a boundary, should be obeyed or whether it was an inappropriate obstacle to the “call” of the crop circle.
The tension between the appearances and meanings of crop circles also informed the tricky patience demanded in a sacred geometry workshop. As participants drew lines with compasses and protractors, they struggled to accurately reproduce the complex patterns of crop circles, losing small pieces of pencil lead and struggling to keep their compasses from slipping on the paper. Conference organizer Karen Alexander said the exercise gave the participants a better appreciation and intimate understanding of crop circles.
Interpreting paranormal cultures
As a part of my work, I explore the tensions between the visual and language, focusing on the complexity of crop-circle landscapes where enthusiasts struggle to navigate toward, inside and away from crop circles.
Lyotard aligns these events with “figural space” — elusive elements that disrupt and exceed the capture of language. Crucial here is how crop circles — unlike ghosts, UFOs and sasquatches — are highly tangible signs. But what they mean and what they are remains a mystery.
Despite claims by “circle-makers” that they are human-made, the sheer size and complexity of the circles belies a 100 per cent human-made explanation.
According to researchers at the conference, hoaxers, when questioned about how they were able to make 80 or so perfectly round circles without breaking or snapping cereal stalks, are unable to reproduce the patterns and ignore the researchers’ questions.
Furthermore, finding and getting to the crop circles — navigating narrow and winding English countryside roads and locating their exact whereabouts in large fields of wheat or barley — is no small feat.
Like all the other paranormal investigation cultures I have studied so far, crop circle research blurs the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary. Beyond this, one cannot discount the importance of geography in the micro-spaces of fields and conference venues. The regional nature and extent to which crop circles are landscape phenomena incites many people’s desire to shape their encounters with the sublime.
Since 1950, Missouri is fourteenth in the highest number of sightings of unidentified flying objects.
File photo
In recent years, the state of Missouri has embarked on an aggressive tourism campaign, designed to attract visitors from surrounding areas. Some of those visitors may even be from other galaxies.
Since 1950, Missouri is fourteenth in the highest number of sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs), with 2,114 reports to the National UFO Reporting Center. Among the eight states bordering Missouri, only Illinois has more.
The statistics were revealed in the most extensive release of government UFO files to date. In January 2015, some 136,000 pages of declassified records from Project Blue Book, the renowned Air Force investigation of UFOs, were placed online.
Project Blue Book, based at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, recorded 12,618 reports of UFOs between 1947-69. Most were easily explained, though 701 are still listed as “unidentified.”
More than ever, Americans are convinced that aliens visit Earth. In 2012, a National Geographic survey revealed that 36 percent of Americans believe in UFOs, with only 17 percent disputing such a notion. The rest – a whopping 47 percent – was undecided. Some eighty percent of those surveyed think the U.S. government has concealed information on UFOs from the public.
The following year, a Huffington Post survey found that 48 percent of American adults were “open to the idea that alien spacecraft are observing our planet,” with 35 percent disagreeing. Men and women were nearly equal in percentage of believers, though political preference apparently influences UFO support. The Huffington survey found that 58 percent of Democrats call themselves believers, compared to 37 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of independents.
Missouri’s high ranking may be attributed to several factors, including relative population. Of the leading ten states for UFO reports, eight are in the top ten in population. California, for instance, leads the nation in population with 38.3 million residents, and its 12,658 UFO reports are over twice the number of the next-highest state.
Water may also be a factor. UFO reports tend to be clustered around large bodies of water, a trait shared by nine of the top ten states for sightings. With the Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock Lake, and the Mississippi River, Missouri has plenty to attract cosmic visitors looking for a scenic vista or a cool drink.
Several sightings have been reported around the area in recent years, including in Perryville on Dec. 10, 2011. In that instance, two witnesses reported “two triangle-shaped objects hovering very high above the Missouri bootheel.”
On April 4, 2012 in Perryville, “one large, spherical unblinking light” was “seen in the distance that made quick movements.” The sighting lasted for thirty to forty-five minutes. Sometimes the reports were not of sightings at all. On Jan. 11, 2015 in Perryville, “an unusual and almost deafening rumbling noise” was reported that “sounded very low but could not be seen.”
Perhaps otherworldly visitors to Perry County want to see what’s happening at the Perry Park Center. Or to check out the latest Cruise In.
Maybe they were passing through on their way to nearby towns. On June 21, 2014, a slow-moving orange light was reported across the sky over Fredericktown, where a “blinking white light” that “traveled a short distance, (then) disappeared” was also reported on May 2, 2015.
To the north, Farmington’s slogan of “the city of tradition and progress” may have attracted a “huge fireball-type object with humanoid object in the center,” according to a report on Nov. 8, 2012. On Dec. 19, 2013, “three horizontal bright white lights hovering in the southwest sky at night” were witnessed in Farmington, which may be comparable to a sighting there on June 17, 2015 of “a flash, or streak” that “seemed very bright, brighter than the moon, with the intensity of lightning.”
Aliens may have wanted to celebrate July 4 in Farmington in 2015, because on that night, a motorist “looked out (the) windshield and viewed the craft headed west. It seemed quite large, a fireball, with no discernible flashing lights.”
At least two recent UFO reports in neighboring Illinois have garnered national attention. In the early morning hours of Jan. 5, 2000, a string of local policemen on night patrol in neighboring towns reported a well-lit triangular object flying quietly at low altitudes over such locations as Highland, Lebanon, Dupo, Millstadt, and O’Fallon. Dubbed the “St. Clair Triangle,” the sighting has been the subject of national television features and multiple investigations by UFO enthusiasts.
On Nov. 7, 2006, mass reports of a lighted, saucer-like phenomena over a concourse of the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare Airport in Chicago set the Windy City abuzz. The alleged craft hovered for several minutes before racing into the sky and leaving what appeared to be a hole in the clouds.
Commercial and military pilots sometimes report strange lights in their airspace, though, as are sightings on the ground, the extraterrestrial possibility of these objects is hotly debated.
Interest in UFOs revives every few years, sometimes with reported sightings. The spike in the post-war era started with reports of alleged UFO wreckage near Roswell, N.M. in 1947. However, Roswell was hardly the first alleged UFO incident, as some researchers argue that strange phenomena in the skies is reported in the Bible.
In 1896 and 1897, there was a spate of UFO sightings across the nation, usually of cigar-shaped lighted objects in the sky. On April 17, 1897, reports surfaced of an extraterrestrial vehicle crash near Aurora, Tex., which allegedly resulted in one alien casualty.
Closer to home, three men claimed to have seen a cigar-shaped object with some sort of canopy top and oars that landed in a field near the tiny town of Nilwood, Ill., 30 miles south of Springfield, a mere two days before the Aurora crash. Whether or not the incidents are connected is not clear.
Despite the debate, Hollywood has made billions on the fantasy of space travel and the encounters that follow. The never-ending Star Wars releases are among the most profitable films of all time, while television favorites like Star Trek have legions of fans.
Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill., and a non-believer in UFOs. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.
After more than 70 years of tourism, authorities announced this week that the iconic Australian landmark Uluru would be off limits for climbers as of October 2019.
The huge red monolith, formerly known as Ayers Rock, has been considered by many tourists a must-visit site when travelling through Australia.
However, it is sacred to its traditional Aboriginal owners who have long been asking people to stop climbing it.
“The land has law and culture. We welcome tourists here. Closing the climb is not something to feel upset about but a cause for celebration. Let’s come together; let’s close it together,” said Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park board chairman Sammy Wilson.
But what other famous landmarks around the world are off-limits to visitors?
1. Lascaux Caves, France
The cave complex in southwestern France is home to some of the world’s most famous examples of prehistoric paintings.
After being discovered by a group of teenagers in 1940, the site became a popular tourist spot, accepting more than a thousand visitors a day following World War II.
However, the UNESCO World Heritage Site had to be sealed off to the public in 1963 because the breath and sweat of visitors, presence of light and changes in air circulation had damaged the paintings.
Lascaux II, an exact copy of the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery, opened in 1983 for visitors.
2. Vatican Secret Archives, Vatican City
Hidden deep within the walls of the Vatican City are the Vatican Secret Archives, storing thousands of important historic documents on an estimated 52 miles of shelves.
Files include correspondence between the Vatican and some of the world’s most famous historic figures, such as Mozart, Queen Elizabeth I and Adolf Hitler.
The archives, which are officially the pope’s personal property, are off-limits to visitors. Scientific researchers from qualified universities can apply to enter, but even if granted access, no document after 1939 is available for public viewing.
3. Ise Grand Shrine, Japan
Visitors hoping to get inside the Ise Grand Shrine in Japan will have to think again, as authorities won’t even let you see the building.
The shrine is dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu and is considered one of the holiest places in Japan.
Only the chief priest or priestess of the shrine, who must be a member of the Imperial Family, is allowed to enter the sacred site.
4. Area 51, US
The United States Air Force facility in the Nevada desert commonly known as ‘Area 51’ is the stuff of UFO legends.
The CIA publicly acknowledged the existence of the base for the first time in 2013.
But while the surrounding area, including the small town of Rachel on the so-called “Extraterrestrial Highway”, is a popular tourist destination, Area 51 itself is off limits.
While you can see the complex’s buildings in satellite images, it doesn’t appear on public US government maps, and you can’t drive anywhere near it.
5. Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, China
Located at the northern foot of the Lishan Mountain, the Qinshihuang Mausoleum is the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang, the founder of the first unified empire in Chinese history.
The huge complex reportedly took 38 years to build, from 246 to 208 BC, and was designed to mirror the urban plan of the then-capital, Xianyang.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site contains thousands of intricately crafted terracotta soldiers, each designed individually with horses, chariots and weapons and first unearthed in 1974.
However, far from being open to visitors, the tomb itself has not yet even been excavated.
6. Mezhgorye, Russia
Mezhgorye is a closed town in the Republic of Bashkortosan, Russia, which is believed to serve as a bunker against a nuclear attack.
Its status means that the federal government has the power to grant and deny access to the town of around 17,000 inhabitants, making it out of bounds for tourists.
It has been reported that the site is home to Russian military battalions that serve a secret nuclear missile base.
7. Snake Island, Brazil
Ilha da Queimada Grande, also known as Snake Island, is a tiny island off the coast of Brazil that is home to more than 4,000 deadly snakes.
The island is deemed so dangerous that the Brazilian government banned visitors, and while scientists occasionally venture there for study, no humans or mammal species call the island home.
8. The Queen’s bedroom, England
Buckingham Palace has long welcomed tourists, but the Queen’s bedroom remains completely out of bounds to visitors.
The heavily guarded chamber is said to be among the most secure rooms in England, and has become even more so since 1982, when a man named Michael Fagan broke into the bedroom and saw the Queen in her nightie in the biggest royal security breach of the 20th century.
9. Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen is strictly off limits to the public.
The vault was built to store seeds that could be retrieved in the case of a huge environmental disaster.
It is one of the most secure storage facilities on the entire planet, so tourists hoping to pay a visit to the vault will have to think again.
10. North Sentinel Island, India
The remote North Sentinel Island off the coast of India is home to the indigenous Sentinelese people who actively avoid contact with the outside world.
India has reportedly stopped all attempts at contacting the tribe and imposed a three-mile out-of-bounds zone around the island.
In 2006, two fishermen approached the island illegally and were killed.
11. Room 39, North Korea
North Korea is one of the most secretive countries in the world, but even more secret is its Room 39.
Very little is known about Room 39 – thought to be inside the Workers’ Party headquarters in downtown Pyongyang – but it is believed to handle weapons deals, drug trafficking and money counterfeiting.
For tourists visiting the country on one of the official tours, it is certain to be left off the itinerary.
Editor’s note: This is the final entry for Robert Powell’s three part series regarding a UFO encounter by the US Navy. Here are links to Part I and Part II.
In Part I of this series I told you about an amazing UFO encounter that occurred between the USS Nimitz, USS Princeton, an E-2C airborne early warning aircraft, four Navy F-18 Super Hornets and a Marine F-18. In Part II I told you about emails that I received from the Navy JAG where a Marine Lt Colonel and a Major confirmed that they were aware of this UFO encounter as were at least seven other Navy and Marine officers. Now in Part III I will explain how you can help and make a difference. This is your chance to pressure your congressman to investigate this incident. If everyone acts together, there is a reasonable chance that the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services will ask for a debriefing on the incident.
The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), guided missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59), and fast combat support ship USS Bridge (AOE 10) participate in an underway replenishment (UNREP).
(Credit: US Navy)
The Senate Armed Service Committee is the congressional organization that would receive a debriefing and this is why we are also sending a letter to John McCain who is the Chairman of this committee. The four steps below will guide you. The letter to your congressman has already been written and the wording of the letter has been carefully chosen to provide the best chance at success.
Step 1 – Share/forward this information with all of your friends that are interested in a solution to the UFO phenomenon. This is the most important action that you can take. Let’s get thousands of letters sent!
Step 2– Go to the following link to identify your congressional representatives by entering your address including your state: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/
You will have two senators and one representative. Click on their “Official Website” to obtain their physical address and use their address that is in Washington, D.C.
Add the appropriate name of your senator or representative, print, sign the letter, use the address from Step 2, and then mail it. You will have three letters for your two senators and one representative. Physical mail with a personal signature has more effect with your congressman than an email.
Step 4 – Download the following letter to Senator John McCain here: Letter to John McCain
Sign your name and use the address shown in the letter heading to address your envelope.
Robert Powell presenting at the International UFO Congress.
(Credit: International UFO Congress)
Thank you for support! Once you’ve sent your letters, please send an email with the subject line “I voted from ‘name of your state’” to robertmaxpowell@gmail.com This will allow me to measure the effectiveness of the campaign.
Historical discovery: Researchers find hidden ‘chamber’ inside the Great Pyramid
The Great Pyramid is a universal symbol of genius and creativity. The evidence that humankind can make the impossible possible., It was ‘opened’ in the Middle Ages by Calif Al-Mamun. His team found most of the major internal structures we see today.
Launched in October of 2015 the ScanPyramids Mission is looking through stones using non-invasive technologies in order to detect unknown internal structures.
The void looks like a corridor, it has remained hidden behind the chevrons of the North face of the pyramid for centuries.
The detected part of this big void has a more or less similar size to the known Grand Gallery. The Grand Gallery has a length of 47 meters in length, a height of 8 meters, and volume of 600m3.
The Big Void’s minimum length is 30 meters and is located between 50 to 70 meters from the ground. It could be composed of one or more internal structures. It is either horizontal or inclined, and its cross-section is similar to that of the Grand Gallery.
With the aid of muon detectors, scientists from the ScanPyramids project have found a previously unknown, 30-meter-long structure, hidden deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
For millennia has the Great Pyramid of Giza remained shrouded in mystery? Now, thanks to revolutionary new technology—particle physics— new details and long-held secrets from within the monument may come to life.
Using cosmic-ray based imaging, scientists have found a narrow void embedded deep within the ancient structure.
Located just above the “Grand Gallery” which links two of the main chambers inside the Pyramid, the hidden structure goes on for around thirty meters.
Researchers still do not know the exact design and what the purpose of the void was, but the finding has already been hailed by scholars around the globe as the biggest discovered inside the Pyramid since the 19th century.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is believed to have been commissioned by Pharaoh Khufu and completed sometime around 2550 BC.
The Great Pyramid of Giza remained as the world’s tallest manmade structure for thousands of years.
The construction technique and process used to build the Great Pyramid of Giza has remained one of the greatest scientific mystery for decades.
However, as the ScanPyramids project explains, “Just because a mystery is 4,500 years old doesn’t mean it can’t be solved.”
However, the latest discovery could help researchers understand how and why the Great Pyramid of Giza was erected thousands of years ago.
Since 2015, a group of scientists from various countries including France and Japan, and experts from Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, the University of Cairo, and the non-profit organization the Heritage Innovation Preservation (HIP) Institute, began scanning and studying the structure with revolutionary new technology.
Now with the help of ‘cosmic ray muons’ which are partially absorbed by stone, researchers have spotted something ‘big’ inside the Pyramid. Something that has never before been spotted. Something that has remained a mystery for thousands of years.
Muon data showing the big void. This view is looking upward from the Queen’s Chamber.
ScanPyramids/HIP Institute; Business Insider
Scientists set up a number of muon detectors inside the pyramid, including the Queen’s chamber.
This allowed experts to ‘view’ the inside of the Pyramid without physically touching anything.
The presence of the ‘structure’ which has been dubbed by Scan Pyramids as the ‘Big Void‘ was confirmed using three different Muon detectors, observed and confirmed several months after it was spotted for the first time, wrote scientists in a study published in the journal Nature.
The results were analyzed several times before the discovery was confirmed.
“We have been very surprised to discover something so big—a big anomaly,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, one of the authors of the paper, during a press conference.
“A lot of people tried to dig some tunnels looking for chambers,” Tayoubi added. “But as far as I am aware, no one has tried to dig something in this area. There was no theory expecting to find something as big as the Grand Gallery here.”
Tayoubi and his fellow colleagues are firmly convinced that the “Big Void” is neither an anomaly in the data nor porous rock or loose rubble.
Furthermore, the team is 99.99% certain it is real, it exists, and a foremost expert on Egypt’s pyramids agrees with that conclusion.
“I don’t think this is bulls…,” Mark Lehner, an archaeologist and Egyptologist at the Ancient Egypt Research Association, told Business Insider. “I put credence in the results, and I think they have indications of a large empty space.”
Stephen Hawking is worried that artificial intelligence could copy itself and replace humans as Earth’s dominant life form. It sounds farfetched, but the 75-year-old physicist is not alone in his predictions, as tech entrepreneurs have also sounded the alarm over such systems.
“I fear that A.I. may replace humans altogether,” Hawking said in an interview with Wired this week. “If people design computer viruses, someone will design A.I. that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.”
Hawking isn’t the first big name to warn about A.I. SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk has claimed the technology poses “a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization,” and its exponential growth is advancing “like a tidal wave.” Among other projects, Musk has criticized plans to develop a godlike A.I. capable of forming its own religion:
An AI god will emerge by 2042 and write its own bible. Will you worship it?
In the next 25 years, AI will evolve to the point where it will know more on an intellectual level than any human. In the next 50 or 100 years, an AI might know more than the entire population of t…
Musk and Hawking have worked together before to warn about the future of A.I. The pair joined hundreds of other researchers and experts earlier this year to endorse a list of 23 guiding principles for future A.I. development. The Asilomar A.I. Principles includes basic ideas like ensuring humans have control, but also cover bigger concepts like ensuring such systems have a shared benefit and designing machines with compatible human values.
In the wider tech industry, responses to these warnings have varied. But as A.I. forms a bigger part of people’s lives, the conversation is shifting.
“[Musk is] a deep thinker about problems, and I think it’s right to be concerned about A.I.,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview, when told Musk had raised concerns about his company’s A.I.-powered camera.
Like Musk, Hawking is worried people aren’t concerned enough about the pace of change. At the launch of Cambridge University’s artificial intelligence center last year, he said that while experiments with machines learning how to play Go were cool, they “will surely pale against what the coming decades will bring.”
“I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer,” Hawking said . “It therefore follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence – and exceed it.”
Each year, Mars City Design hosts a competition in which teams from around the world submit their concepts for future Martian cities. This year, a team from MIT took home first prize in the architecture category with their Martian city inspired by trees.
MARTIAN FORESTS
Every year, Mars City Design hosts a competition in which innovative teams of scientists, engineers, and students design unique concept-cities for the day when humans attempt to live on Mars. This year, a team of nine MIT students led by MIT postdoc Valentina Sumini and Assistant Professor Caitlin Mueller took first place in the architecture portion of the contest with their unique tree-inspired Mars city concept, titled Redwood Forest.
Redwood Forest is a soothing space that can provide up to 10,000 weary human travelers with equal amounts of comfort and safety from the elements. While at first glance the domes themselves don’t appear capable of housing such large numbers of people or providing them with adequate facilities, just like a tree, these domes aren’t limited to what you see above ground.
Image Credit: Mars City Design
Below the surface of the Red Planet, each dome in MIT’s Mars city concept branches out into “roots.” These intricate tunnel systems connect the domes and provide additional protection from surface threats. This design was chosen for both functional and symbolic reasons.
“On Mars, our city will physically and functionally mimic a forest, using local Martian resources such as ice and water, regolith or soil, and Sun to support life,” Sumini told MIT News. “Designing a forest also symbolizes the potential for outward growth as nature spreads across the Martian landscape. Each tree habitat incorporates a branching structural system and an inflated membrane enclosure, anchored by tunneling roots.”
Image Credit: Mars City Design
Doctoral student George Lordos, who was responsible for Redwood Forest’s system architecture, shared details on how Redwood Forest will take advantage of those Martian resources:
Every tree habitat in Redwood Forest will collect energy from the Sun and use it to process and transport the water throughout the tree, and every tree is designed as a water-rich environment. Water fills the soft cells inside the dome providing protection from radiation, helps manage heat loads, and supplies hydroponic farms for growing fish and greens.
Solar panels produce energy to split the stored water for the production of rocket fuel, oxygen, and for charging hydrogen fuel cells, which are necessary to power long-range vehicles as well as provide backup energy storage in case of dust storms.
THE PATH FORWARD
The surface of the Red Planet is intrinsically harsh. From a virtually nonexistent atmosphere to radiation to dust storms capable of covering the entire planet, Mars is a barren landscape that can get as cold as -125 degrees Celsius (-195 degrees Fahrenheit) near the poles in winter.
Obviously, any Mars city concept would need to be capable of protecting Earthling travelers from these physical hardships. However, after a mind-numbingly long and arduous journey through space, survivable conditions might not be all that a group of human beings needs to live a happy, healthy life on Mars.
Thinking of all these potential variables will be essential if humanity ever hopes to live beyond Earth. We’ll need innovative thinkers at all stages of the process, from designing the rockets that transport us to building the cities we inhabit once we arrive. The Redwood Forest concept illustrates the power and potential of both sound scientific planning and the ability to see far beyond what has been done, or even imagined, before.
NEW HIDDEN CHAMBER WITH UNKNOWN PURPOSE FOUND INSIDE GREAT PYRAMID AT GIZA
An international team of scientists claims to have discovered a previously unknown space within the Great Pyramid of Giza. In a study published in Nature detailing their use of advanced scanning processes, the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute disclosed the apparent existence of a large unknown structure located above the famed Grand Gallery.
Mehdi Tayoubi, the institute's president, told Daily Mail reporters “it could be composed of one or several structures. Maybe it could another Grand Gallery. It could be a chamber; it could a lot of things.”
There are so many theories — nice ones but also crazy ones,
He went on to tell the BBC "what we are sure about is that this big void is there; that it is impressive; and that it was not expected as far as I know by any theory."
THERE ARE SO MANY THEORIES — NICE ONES BUT ALSO CRAZY ONES
The team, composed of French and Japanese scientists, employed the use of cosmic-ray imaging. The process uses plates designed to record the activity of muons, a kind of naturally occurring sub atomic particle. Such muons are constantly entering the earth's atmosphere, but their path can be interrupted by solid objects, such as the pyramid's rock walls.
Using these plates and triangulating the data, the team was able to approximate the size of the “void” without disturbing the surrounding walls. This technology has been employed successfully in multiple geological studies as well as, more recently, the investigation into the reactor failure at Fukushima.
says Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation institute in Paris
The pyramid is also known as Khufu's Pyramid for its builder, a 4th dynasty pharaoh who reigned from 2509 to 2483 B.C.
Researchers placed muons detectors inside and outside the pyramid
The pyramids of Giza have drawn both scientific and artistic study for ages. However, no major discoveries have been found in the pyramid since the 1800’s. The 19th-century techniques of excavation were primitive and often damaged to the artifacts being studied. “We can no longer go blasting our way through the pyramid with gunpowder, ” the American archaeologist Mark Lehner said while calling for “more of a focus” on the discovered “anomaly.” More recent explorations using robots, such as the Upuaut Project campaigns in 1992 and 1993, were significantly less damaging but produced only minor successes.
However, not all of the archeological community is thrilled with the published results, and some have expressed doubts regarding the validity of the find. Archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying “The Great Pyramid is full of voids. We have to be careful how results are presented to the public.”
Coincidentally, both the exact details of the Great Pyramids construction and the ultimate source of the universe’s muons are unknown. In both sciences, arguments clash and contradict each other, and new theories are frequently created and disposed of. In this unique case, scientists can use the known qualities of one mystery to explore the unknown facts of another.
KEPLER JUST FOUND EARTH'S TWIN WITH AN ORBIT OF 395 DAYS AND VERY CLOSE IN SIZE
Newly discovered planet capable of hosting life.
Science Magazine, New Scientist, has revealed that 20 extraterrestrial worlds that might be able to host life have been discovered.
According to an analysis by the magazine, these worlds come with a varying orbit time, noting that one of them might even be very similar to earth as it takes 395 Earth days to circle its star and 18 days to complete a single orbit.
IT ALSO HOLDS LIQUID WATER WHICH IS ESSENTIAL TO LIFE
NASA launched mission Kepler to find other habitable planets in 2009.
Jeff Coughlin, the Kepler team Leader, said that the exoplanet with a 395-day orbit time was definitely the most promising to host life.
He was quoted as saying: "If you had to choose one to send a spacecraft to, it's not a bad option."
The exoplanet is about 97% the size of Earth as well. However, it is colder, and its chilly temperature is said to be as a result of the distance from its star.
Dubbed KOI-7923.01, the exoplanet boasts of a slightly cooler star and has a warm enough temperature to host life conveniently.
It also holds liquid water which is essential to life, the report said.
NASA announced that 219 new planets were discovered to be able to host life in June.
It said 10 of them shared many similarities with Earth, having almost the same orbit and size as the Earth.
Kepler, NASA's first mission to find potentially habitable zones launched in 2009 and has so far found 4,000 new potentially habitable new planets.
BRIGHT 'FLYING SAUCER' CAPTURED OVER THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
It seems it’s not just humans who love the Great Barrier Reef. A woman in Australia thinks she has photographic evidence of aliens visiting the reef.
After a long day fishing with friends, Jenny Morrison couldn’t help but take a few quick photos of the beautiful sunset over the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Jenny took her photos around the area of Elford Reef, a reef around 50km east of Cairns.
Later that evening in the comfort of her own home Jenny looked through the images she’d taken of her day out on the 2,300km-long reef. To her astonishment, she noticed what appeared to be an odd shape hanging in the sky.
The odd shape in the sky seemed to resemble a flying saucer, a disc-like shape with a haze around it. With the availability of photo editing equipment, any image can easily be manipulated, but Miss Morrison was quick to stress she had not interfered with the image in any way and she cannot explain what is on the photograph.
No doubt most people will be skeptical and say this image was not a UFO and was simply some kind of glitch or effect created by the light reflecting off the seawater or some dirt on the camera lens.
All the above is possible, but maybe it’s not just earthlings who find the barrier reef a majestic beauty, surely anyone looking down on earth from above would surely be interested in the largest living thing on the planet.
Maybe an alien expedition? Or a package holiday to visit Earth's most beautiful natural landmarks.
This part of North Queensland is a Hotspot for UFO activity. For decades UFO sightings have been reported.
They have an annual UFO event called The Cardwell UFO Festival, held every October to celebrate the area’s links with extraterrestrial activity by encouraging members of the public to share their experiences.
Tweede wetenschapper spreekt zich uit over mummies uit Nazca. Dit is wat hij erover te zeggen heeft
Arts Jose Benitez maakt onderdeel uit van het team dat onderzoek doet naar de bizarre mummies die recentelijk in een grot in Nazca in Peru zijn ontdekt.
Diverse Peruaanse wetenschappers hebben gezegd dat het gaat om een hoax, maar dr. Benitez is nu de tweede wetenschapper die zijn reputatie op het spel durft te zetten door te zeggen dat het gaat om authentieke gemummificeerde resten.
Afgelopen maand gaf dr. Edson Vivanco aan dat de resten volgens hem echt zijn.
Meerdere afwijkingen
Vivanco en Benitez zijn onderdeel van een team dat geleid wordt door de Mexicaanse onderzoeksjournalist Jaime Maussan, die heeft gezegd dat het mogelijk aliens zijn.
Dr. Benitez werd onlangs geïnterviewd voor een documentaire die is gemaakt door de Britse ufoloog Steve Mera. Hij reisde af naar Peru om de zaak te onderzoeken.
“Ik stuitte op een aantal eigenaardigheden die dit lichaam totaal anders maken,” zei Benitez. “In eerste instantie leek het op een normaal lichaam, maar bij nadere inspectie zagen we meerdere afwijkingen.”
Opvallende verschillen
“Het hoofd is groter, de ogen zijn groter, de neus is kleiner en oren ontbreken,” voegde hij toe. “Het heeft minder wervels dan een normaal mens.”
Benitez zei verder dat ook de botstructuur en het aantal vingerkootjes anders zijn. “Er zijn slechts drie vingers en drie tenen. Dit zijn de meest opvallende verschillen die we konden vinden,” zei hij.
Het witte materiaal waarmee de mummies bedekt zijn is volgens hem een speciaal soort materiaal dat diatomeeënaarde wordt genoemd.
Bijzondere eigenschappen
Het materiaal heeft volgens hem zeer bijzondere eigenschappen.
Dergelijke aarde kan goed worden gebruikt om weefsel te bewaren en houdt bovendien insecten op afstand, aldus dr. Benitez.
Hij zei dat vastgesteld moet worden wat het is en waar het vandaan komt.
SECOND SCIENTIST GIVES VERDICT OF NAZCA TOMB 'ALIENS'
The alleged remains of mummified bodies that were found in Nazca Peru were said to have been alien. However, after analysis, it was said that they were human. Now a second scientist has analyzed them, and it appears that they are not ordinary human beings.
BODIES HAD SEVERAL ABNORMALITIES SUGGESTED THEY ARE NOT HUMAN
It was said that at first sight, they did look like normal bodies but when looking closer it was found that there were several abnormalities. The heads are bigger; they have eyes that are wider, no ears and a nose that is smaller, along with fewer vertebras that what is found in humans.
The remains have sparked a huge debate among those who believe they may be aliens. At first, it was said that the mummified remains found in Peru were alien, but then the scientific community said that the whole thing had been nothing more than a hoax and the mummies had been fabricated and they had not actually been discovered in a cave in Peru. These comments had been made without scientists ever looking at the mummies, and they had not been analyzed properly.
SCIENTISTS CLAIM BODIES ARE NOT ORDINARY HUMAN BEINGS
The scientists stood up to their claims even though a journalist and UFO researcher from Mexico, Mr. Jaime Maussan, along with his team, gave evidence that suggested that the remains that had been found in Peru were not those of ordinary humans. Months after they were found they have now been analyzed by independent laboratories from around the world and another scientist has been able to study them and he says that they are not a hoax.
Dr. Jose Benitez is a doctor of forensic medicine, and he has made claims that are shocking about the mummified remains. He is now the second scientists to have put his work and reputation on the line as he said that the remains might be alien or a new species that has never been seen on Earth. Dr. Edson Vivancoa, a skeletal specialist, made the same claims when he studied the remains.
I found a lot of characteristics that make this body entirely different.
At first sight, it looked like a normal body but looking closely at every body part we found could find several abnormalities. “For example, the head is bigger, it has wider eyes, a smaller nose, and it has no ears. It has fewer vertebrae that a common human.
The bone structure is different; it’s wider. There are only three fingers and three toes. These are the most notable distinctions we could find. There are a few more such as the number of finger joints and the nail beds.
The white dust that covers the mummified remains is a special material known as diatom soil. This soil has a unique origin with extraordinary characteristics. It dries, dehydrates and preserves tissue and also has the unusual characteristic of being an insect repellent, deterring insects.
For example, the head is more prominent. It has wider eyes, a smaller nose, has no ears. It has fewer vertebrae that an ordinary human.
Helping the dehydration process and encouraging the natural mummification process.
DNA tests had suggested a different story as one result said that the remains were 100% human, but another set of tests of DNA revealed that the results were inconclusive. Therefore there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the mummified remains as to whether or not they are human or alien.
Drs Vivancoa and Benitez are a part of a group that was led by Mr. Maussan, and Benitez had analyzed other discoveries with Maussan. In 2015 they looked at images of what people said was not the body of a human but later on, it turned out that it was, in fact, a mummified child. Steve Meera, a Ufologist from Britain recently interviewed Dr. Benitez, and he said that he had found many characteristics that set the body apart from that of a human being.
MUMMIFIED BODIES HAD BEEN COVERED IN DUST THAT IS UNIQUE
He went on to say that there had been many abnormalities, one of which was the fact that the bone structure was wider and another was the fact that the bodies had only three fingers and toes. He also said that there were more differences between the number of joints in the fingers and nail beds.
He said that the mummified remains had been covered in white dust, which was a material by the name of diatom soil. He said that the soil was unique in origin and it has characteristics that were unusual.
The findings and conclusions of Dr. Benitez have now been presented in a documentary that has been presented by Steve Meera that suggests that the remains found in Peru are not human. He said that it was essential that people faced up to the possibility that an organic being had been found that is similar to a human being but at the same time very different. He concluded by saying that now steps should go forward to try to find out what the bodies are and where they actually came from.
HOAX: A fake CGI UFO over the great wall in a Section 51 YouTube video.
The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) today received a report from an eyewitness who shaped the "flying saucer" near the great wall at Simatai in the north of Miyun County, 72 miles northeast of Beijing.
US-based MUFON is the world's largest independent organisation dedicated to UFO, alien and other paranormal research.
It also maintains a database of sightings from across the globe, which it investigates.
The unnamed photographer said in a report to MUFON: "I Went for great wall hiking.
MUFON
The UFO (ringed) that was snapped over the great wall today and sent to MUFON.
However, the object in the image may not be as exciting as it seems, and certainly not of extra terrestrial origin, according to Scott Brando, a forensic UFO investigator who has debunked hundreds of suspected UFO videos and pictures through his website ufoofinterest.org.
He told Express.co.uk it was likely a "blurfo".
This is a term coined by UFO investigators for a blurred bird or insect that is caught on camera and resembles a disk or flying saucer shape.
He said: "It is a blurfo. In this case it's most likely an insect."
BEIJING, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- There's a giant "ruler" hidden among millions of galaxies in the universe. With it, scientists can measure how fast the universe is expanding. This will help them explore dark energy, the mysterious power behind cosmic expansion, and so speculate on the universe's destiny.
With this ruler, Chinese astronomers recently succeeded in reconstructing the evolution history of dark energy based on the observation of over a million galaxies. The research shows that dark energy is dynamic.
"What it means is that dark energy, which causes cosmic expansion, might not be a vacuum energy with a constant density, like many scientists previously believed, but rather an energy field with certain dynamic properties," said Zhao Gongbo, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The research result made by a team led by Zhao was recently published on the academic journal, Nature Astronomy.
Dark energy determines the universe's destiny, he said.
"If dark energy is indeed a vacuum energy, the universe will keep on expanding until it ends with a 'big rip'. But if dark energy is dynamic, the universe might go through expansion, contraction and then expansion again -- a cyclical universe."
FINDING THE RULER
How do scientists measure such a vast universe? According to Zhao, nature provides a magic ruler -- baryon acoustic oscillations.
The early universe consisted of a hot, dense plasma of electrons, baryons (protons and neutrons) and photons, like a pot of porridge. The primordial disturbances from cosmic creation transmitted through the "porridge," causing periodic changes to its density, temperature and pressure on the chronological sequence. This transmission mechanism is similar to sound waves transmission, so it is called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) by scientists.
About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the cooled-down universe became transparent. The transmission of BAOs stopped, and the information of those oscillations is frozen in space-time. But the great power of it influenced the distribution of galaxies in the universe.
In 2005, the BAO signal was discovered for the first time. Thus cosmologists finally got the "standard ruler" they dreamed of, in order to measure the universe -- whether it's flat or curved, and how fast it's expanding.
But that's just the start. Scientists also have to make accurate measurements.
Since 2012, Zhao's team has been making observations with the Sloan telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Based on the observation of galaxies and quasars, they obtained high-precision BAO signals.
"The observation of BAOs is becoming more precise. Previous observations focused on a short period of the universe, but we adopted a new method. Like doing a CT scan for a more remote universe, we get to know more about the history of cosmic evolution," said Zhao.
Based on the measurement with the ruler, astronomers will be able to draft a three-dimensional map of the universe.
EXPLORING DARK ENERGY
In 1929, U.S. astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble discovered most galaxies are moving away from the Earth, indicating the universe is expanding. The discovery shocked the world, overthrowing the long-held perception of a static universe.
But many scientists still believed that cosmic expansion would slow down. However, to their surprise, two research teams, in the United States and Australia, reported respectively in 1998 that they had discovered cosmic expansion is speeding up.
Scientists assumed an unknown power they called dark energy was accelerating cosmic expansion. Even now, scientists still know little about it, although they have put forward many theoretical models.
For instance, a model of dark energy advanced by Zhang Xinmin, a researcher at Institute of High Energy Physics under the CAS, conforms to the observation results of Zhao's team using the Sloan telescope.
In order to test so many theories, large-scale computer simulations are needed. "With the help of China's Tianhe supercomputer as well as foreign supercomputers, we simulated approximately 2,000 universes for analytic purposes," said Zhao.
On the computer screen, billions of years flew by, galaxies took shape and the universe evolved.
"I want to understand why cosmic expansion is accelerating," said Zhao. "There is so much new physics in that. Normal matter only accounts for about 5 percent of the universe, while the other 95 percent of dark matter and dark energy is still unknown to us. If one day we know what dark energy is, the whole discipline of physics will be revolutionized."
In the next five to 10 years, many projects will study dark energy on Earth and in space, both in China and abroad, he said. For example, China's future space station will contain a space telescope two meters in diameter. Its major scientific goal is to study dark energy.
We leven in een cyclisch heelal. Chinese wetenschappers doen opzienbarende ontdekking
Ergens tussen de miljoenen sterrenstelsels in het heelal zit een gigantische ‘magische liniaal’ verborgen. Daarmee kunnen wetenschappers meten hoe snel het universum uitdijt.
Op deze manier kunnen ze donkere energie bestuderen, de mysterieuze kracht achter de kosmische expansie.
Met behulp van de liniaal zijn Chinese astronomen er recentelijk in geslaagd om de evolutie van donkere energie in kaart te brengen. Hun onderzoek laat zien dat donkere energie dynamisch is.
Cyclisch universum
“Het is mogelijk geen vacuümenergie met een constante dichtheid, zoals veel wetenschappers denken, maar een energieveld met dynamische eigenschappen,” zei Zhao Gongbo van de Chinese Academie van Wetenschappen.
Als donkere energie daadwerkelijk een vacuümenergie is, blijft het universum uitdijen tot het uiteen wordt gereten.
Maar als donkere energie dynamisch is, dijt het universum uit om vervolgens weer samen te trekken en weer opnieuw uit te dijen; een cyclisch universum, aldus Zhao.
Einde
Met behulp van de liniaal kunnen astronomen nu een driedimensionale kaart van het universum maken.
In 1929 ontdekte astronoom Edwin Powell Hubble tot ieders verbazing dat de meeste sterrenstelsels bij ons vandaan bewegen, wat erop wijst dat het universum uitdijt.
Veel wetenschappers dachten dat er op den duur een einde zou komen aan die kosmische expansie.
Vrijwel niets bekend
Onderzoeksteams uit de VS en Australië kwamen echter tot de ontdekking dat het heelal steeds sneller uitdijt.
Wetenschappers namen aan dat een onbekende kracht die ze donkere energie noemden verantwoordelijk was voor de versnelde expansie. Vandaag de dag weten ze hier nog steeds weinig over.
Het heelal bestaat voor vijf procent uit normale materie en over de resterende 95 procent – donkere materie en donkere energie – is vrijwel niets bekend, zei Zhao.
De onderzoeksresultaten zijn onlangs gepubliceerd in vakblad Nature Astronomy.
Ancient UNDERWATER structure, said to be 14,000 years old— Could this be evidence of ALIEN bases & UFOs?
Three decades ago, a Japanese diver discovered a massive stone complex near Yonaguni, at the southwestern-most tip of the Japanese archipelago. Scientists have determined that this structure is man-made and that it must have been built more than 14,000 years ago—a conclusion that led some to seek out more “paranormal” explanations.
The massive structure, first discovered by tour diver Kihachiro Aratake, consists of megalithic stone formations, the largest of which resembles a tiered pyramid the size of two football fields.
The underwater ruins, which lie at depths ranging between 60 and 100 feet below the surface, is considered one of the greatest underwater archeological discoveries in history.
Based on geometric patterns present at the site, scientists have concluded that the formation is not natural. While the structure contains “tons of right angles,” there are also clearly rectangular channels, which lead to stairwells.
According to Graham Hancock, author of the book “Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization,” the structure, which he believes to be a “ceremonial complex,” was built using a scale of thinking that far surpasses all stone-age civilizations known to us. According to him, the structure was probably built before the thaw of the last ice age, which would have caused massive flooding, a conclusion that would date the structure to over 14,000 years ago.
Given that mankind was unable to conceive of such structures so early, (thus implying that they could not have been built by mankind), some scientists have further formed theories in the direction of extraterrestrial intelligence.
Looking into the history of the area where the ruins were found, there are untold numbers of accounts of strange phenomena that have occurred.
According to ancient Japanese history, the area of sea south of Japan has long been the subject of legends, telling of fire-breathing underwater dragons flying out of the water and capsizing vessels, while causing sailors to meet a watery grave. That area of ocean was termed the “Dragon’s Triangle,” also known as the “Devil’s Sea.”
In modern times, this area is considered a hotbed of UFO activity, with descriptions of glowing objects rising out of the water and circling ships from above.
Strangely enough, this vast stretch of water has a counterpart on the exact opposite side of the earth, on exactly the same line of latitude, the 25th parallel north—and that is of course the Bermuda Triangle, also considered to be a hotbed of UFO and paranormal phenomena.
Both areas of water similarly are considered treacherous, where magnetic phenomena causing compasses and instruments to fail are common, and literally thousands of vessels and aircraft have entered the region only to vanish, often without a distress call being made, and without a trace.
The similarities don’t end there; just as ancient ruins were discovered on the outskirts of the Dragon’s Triangle, so too have there been ruins found beneath the oceans off the coast of Cuba, just on the outskirts of the Bermuda Triangle, including terraced, pyramid structures. Could there be some connection between the ruins of the east Atlantic and those of Yonaguni in the Pacific?
Some paranormal experts have considered the possibility that the areas of the Triangles could indicate the existence of alien bases, which might have existed on earth for thousands of years.
Given the facts that these structures must have been built before they were submerged some 14,000 years ago and that stone-age man could not have conceived such structures as early as that time, who could have created these structures? Is it merely coincidence that ruins are located beside the mysterious seas of the Bermuda and Dragon’s Triangle?
Could all of these mysteries be explained by the existence of aliens and alien bases beneath the sea, or could there be some less extraordinary, more conventional explanation? Please share your thoughts!
Ex-Air Force reveals HUGE ‘alien’ structures on Moon—NASA warned off, ‘don’t come back!’
While NASA prepares for man’s first ever mission to Mars, it’s curious we have not set foot on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, let alone established a base there yet. Astronauts and many researchers have claimed this is because there are in fact bases on the lunar surface already … and indeed they are not human bases.
Former chief of NASA Communications Systems, Maurice Chatelain confirmed in 1979 that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had seen two UFOs on the rim of a crater during the Apollo 11 Moon Mission in the Summer of 1969. “The encounter was common knowledge in NASA,” Chatelain said, “but nobody has talked about it until now.”
According to Armstrong, they had been “warned off” from the Moon by extraterrestrials.
Former NASA employee Otto Binder said that an unnamed radio-receiving facility bypassed NASA’s broadcasting outlets and captured the following exchange:
NASA: What’s there? Mission Control calling Apollo 11…
Apollo: These “Babies” are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn’t believe it! I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there, lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They’re on the Moon watching us!
During Apollo 17, NASA’s final Moon mission in 1972, only CBS was covering the live footage as the lunar rover traversed the lunar surface. NASA operators on Earth began to pan the TV camera, mounted on the rover, in order to get a panorama of the terrain. There was a 4-second delay between the TV camera’s movements and the controls operated from Earth, due to the distance between the Moon and Earth.
As the camera panned the landscape, suddenly, it captured what looked like a massive rectangular building in the distance.
CBS host Walter Cronkite was stunned, exclaiming: “That looks like a man-made object!” Almost immediately, the live feed was cut along with Cronkite and was replaced with older footage labeled: “recorded earlier today.”
Twenty minutes later, Walter returned on air and, bemusedly, he told viewers that the so-called “man-made object” in fact had been just part of the lunar rover. However, the footage was never aired again, nor was the incident ever mentioned again on TV, nor in any document known to the public … ever.
It would seem one of NASA’s responsibilities is to control what information the public gets to see and what it doesn’t. Former NASA employee Dona Hare explained that she and her colleagues were responsible for airbrushing out evidence of alien activity in our skies and on the lunar surface.
Dona asked her colleague one day, “What are you going to do with this information? ‘We have to airbrush these out’ … The people that told me there was a coverup … they’d tell me, ‘Don’t ever say I said it, or I’ll say, I didn’t.’”
Yet, it would seem that images of so-called “alien activity” on the Moon have leaked out anyway. On Oct. 1, 2010, China launched its Chang’e-2 Moon orbiter. Widely disputed claims were made that the orbiter’s cameras captured what appears to be an installation on the lunar surface.
Eventually, it was determined that the photos were not taken by Chang’e-2 but were from NASA’s own archives, though this could not be confirmed, as there was no frame number on the photo.
Could the Chinese government have intentionally (possibly subversively) leaked out a NASA photo before they’d had a chance to doctor it?
Indeed, much of this evidence is corroborated by claims from numerous high-level officials such as one ex-U.S. Air Force employee named Karl Wolf, who, at one time, had “cryptologic top secret” security clearance. He confided that he was told by an NSA employee: “We’ve discovered a base on the back side of the moon.” Wolf then added: “And then he pulled out one of these [maps] and showed this base, which had geometric shapes.
“There were towers; there were spherical buildings … they’re massive. Some of the structures are half a mile in size. They’re huge structures.”
More images of what appear to be gigantic structures were obtained during the Apollo 16 mission. A towering cylindrical structure, similar to a nuclear cooling tower, was discovered beside what could be a turret of some kind. A 3D digital reconstruction of the photo illustrates what this image might look like from near the lunar surface.
What makes all this evidence so compelling is how many well-known astronauts make corroborating statements. The sixth man to walk on the Moon, Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Michell shared that, “After traveling in space, I am fully confident that the aliens are watching us. I do not know how many, where and how they do it, but watching us; we see these ships are all times.”
Apollo 11 lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin supported this preposition with his own experience: “I saw this illumination that was moving with respect to the stars. We were smart enough to not say, ‘Houston, there’s a light out there’s a light out there that’s following us.’ So, technically, it becomes an unidentified flying object.”
Is it possible that NASA has been covering up knowledge of alien bases on the Moon for the last 50 years? Could that be the real reason why we have not set foot on or colonized the lunar surface since our last Moon mission? Please let us know in the comments!
Check out this amazing revelation in the video below:
Is dit de echte reden dat we niet zijn teruggegaan naar de maan?
De NASA bereidt zich voor op de eerste bemande missie naar Mars. Maar waarom zijn we na 1972 niet meer teruggegaan naar de maan?
Astronauten en vele onderzoekers claimen dat dit is omdat er al bases op het maanoppervlak staan. En dat die bases niet door mensen zijn gebouwd.
Het voormalige hoofd van NASA Communications Systems, Maurice Chatelain, bevestigde in 1979 dat Neil Armstrong en Buzz Aldrin aan de rand van een krater twee UFO’s hadden gezien na hun maanlanding.
Gewaarschuwd
“Iedereen binnen de NASA wist ervan,” zei Chatelain. “Maar niemand sprak erover.”
Volgens Armstrong hadden de buitenaardsen ‘gewaarschuwd’ dat ze niet moesten terugkomen.
Tijdens Apollo 17, de laatste bemande maanmissie van de NASA in 1972, deed CBS live verslag van de landing.
Toen de NASA uitzoomde met de camera die op de rover was gemonteerd, verscheen plotseling een enorm rechthoekig object in beeld.
Verbaasd
Presentator Walter Cronkite was verbaasd en zei: “Dat lijkt op een door mensen gemaakt object.”
Vrijwel gelijk ging het beeld op zwart, waarna oudere beelden werden getoond. Twintig minuten later kwam Walter weer in beeld. Hij vertelde de kijkers dat het object ‘onderdeel was van de maanrover’.
De beelden zijn nooit opnieuw uitgezonden en er is op tv ook nooit meer over het incident gesproken.
Meer hierover in onderstaande video:
Enorm
Donna Hare heeft voor de NASA gewerkt en verklaarde dat haar team beelden moest ontdoen van UFO’s en andere onverklaarbare objecten.
Karl Wolfe, die voor de Amerikaanse luchtmacht werkte, kreeg naar eigen zeggen beelden van een NASA-medewerker over ‘een basis op de achterkant van de maan’.
“Er waren torens en cirkelvormige gebouwen te zien, ze waren enorm,” zei hij. “Sommige bouwwerken waren wel een kilometer groot. Het waren enorme bouwwerken.”
Verborgen
Ook astronauten die op de maan zijn geweest hebben zich hierover uitgesproken.
Dr. Edgar Mitchell zei bijvoorbeeld: “Ik ben er volledig van overtuigd dat aliens ons in de gaten houden. Ik weet niet hoeveel er zijn, waar ze vandaan komen en hoe ze het doen, maar ze houden ons in de gaten; we zien hun schepen constant.”
Is het mogelijk dat de NASA het bestaan van buitenaardse bases op de maan al 50 jaar verborgen houdt? Kan dat de echte reden zijn waarom we sindsdien niet meer terug zijn geweest?
“Imagine a social networking site, where instead of having a page with posts of people here you have an actual cave wall or roof full of different pictographs.”
If you’re looking for proof that the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans were ahead of their time, a new study that is the result of three years of intense spelunking in the caves of the uninhabited Puerto Rican island of Mona Island is a good place to start. Researchers found 70 cave systems on the currently uninhabited island filled with indigenous pre-Columbian rock art and the reason behind the strangeness of some of the drawings is a surprise.
All images used with permission from University of Leicester
In a press release announcing their study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers from the University of Leicester, the British Museum, the British Geological Survey and Cambridge University call the thousands of well-preserved wall drawings deep in the caves the “greatest diversity of preserved indigenous iconography in the Caribbean.”
“Most of the precolonial pictographs are in very narrow spaces deep in the caves, some are very hard to access, you have to crawl to get to them, they are very extensive and humidity is very high but it is extremely rewarding.”
Fortunately for the pictorials, but not for the indigenous people, the island has been uninhabited since the 16th century. First settled by Arawaks from Hispaniola and later by the Tainos from Cuba and other Caribbean islands, Ámona had the bad luck of being ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. It quickly became a major port and the natives were offered ‘jobs’ as ‘laborers’ in the fields while merchants and pirates (including Captain Kidd) pillaged the island. By the late 16th century, the Spanish had no more use for Mona and abandoned it to the natives – who had already abandoned it to the ruthless Europeans. As a result, there was no one to see or destroy the hidden cave artwork.
Being in caves, it’s not surprising that the artists used bat guano that had changed colors by absorbing minerals from the floors. Most of the pictures were drawn with their fingers after dipping them in the guano ‘paint’ or simply by using their fingertips to remove the dark calcite on the walls and expose the lighter rock underneath. The figures in the drawings appear to be humans in transition to animals or plants which the researchers say indicates that these wee deeply spiritual pictures in a deep, dark spiritual place. In fact, that explains the strange shapes in the pictures.
“They took cohoba a hallucinogenic drug that you snort and it’s very powerful.”
According to co-author Dr. Jago Cooper, the Tainos people inhaled the ground seeds of cojóbana tree for a psychedelically-induced spiritual experience. Under the direction of a shaman or religious leader, the people would be led deep into this temple-like place.
“The further you go into the cave the more into the spiritual world you go. In the dark a lot of your sense are totally transformed – it’s very eerie and strange. You are completely out of your comfort zone – it’s discombobulating and the same thing would have happened would have happened to the people making this art.”
The art shows that the caves acted as portals to the spiritual world – a kind of transition point where the human changed to another form. More research is planned. (Shouldn’t this be done under the influence of cohoba? Asking for a friend.)
Mona Island is still generally uninhabited and the areas where the drawings are found in the caves are difficult to reach, so they’re safe … for now.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETMet de hulp van kosmische stralen hebben wetenschappers een minstens 30 meter lange ruimte in de grootste van de drie piramides in Gizeh ontdekt. Het resultaat betekent een doorbraak om de interne structuur van de piramide van Cheops beter te begrijpen, schrijven de onderzoekers in een verslag in vakblad Nature.
“We weten niet wat de bedoeling van deze holle ruimte is”, zegt Mehdi Tayoubi van het internationaal wetenschappelijk team. “Daarom willen we ook niet van een kamer spreken”. Maar de omvang van de ontdekte ruimte is groot. “Zo groot als een Boeing”, klinkt het.
Drie teams van verschillende instituten en universiteiten uit Frankrijk en Japan onderzochten gedurende twee jaar de 4.500 jaar oude piramide in Gizeh. Daarbij gebruikten de wetenschappers een scan met muonen, een nevenproduct van kosmische straling. Net zoals röntgenstralen bij het menselijk lichaam kunnen die elementaire deeltjes honderden meter steen doordringenen, aldus de vorsers.
ap
Grootste
De piramide van Cheops is de oudste en de grootste van de drie piramide van Gizeh en is een van de zeven wereldwonderen uit de Oudheid. De piramide is 139 meter hoog en 230 meter lang. Het bouwsel werd tijdens de regeerperiode van Cheops (2509 tot 2483 v. Chr.) opgericht en heeft nog steeds niet al zijn geheimen blootgegeven.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETOp de verjaardag van het internationaal ruimtestation ISS werd de baan rond de Aarde zoals gepland met 700 meter verschoven naar 404,6 kilometer hoogte.
Voor het manoeuvre werden de motoren van de momenteel aan de ISS aangedokte ruimtecargo Progress MS-06 gedurende 206 seconden ontstoken. De geplande correctie van de baan moet het aandokken van een bemande capsule en de aankomst van een ruimteschip in december voorbereiden.
Exact 17 jaar geleden, op 2 november 2000, arriveerde de eerste bemanning voor een langdurige bezetting aan het ISS. De Russische kosmonauten Sergej Krikaljov en de Joeri Gidsenko en de Amerikaanse astronaut William Shepherd bereikten het ruimtestation toen na een driedaagse vlucht met een Sojoez-capsule. Ze keerden op 21 maart 2001 naar de Aarde terug. Tijdens hun verblijf van vierenenhalve maand verrichten de ISS-pioniers belangrijk technisch werk om de bedrijvigheden in het station te kunnen beginnen.
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Samenwerking
Vandaag is al de 53ste bemanning aan de slag in het vliegende lab. De meeste driekoppige teams blijven in de regel ruim zes maanden in de ruimte en verrichten fundamenteel onderzoek in gewichtloosheid. In tegenstelling tot de politieke crisis tussen Rusland en het Westen verloopt de samenwerking met de ruimtevaartinstanties in het heelal perfect. Naast de VS en Rusland werken ook de ruimtevaartoverheden van Canada en Japan en het Europees Ruimtevaartagentschap Esa aan het ISS mee.
University of WarwickDe NGTS-1b is "monsterlijk groot"
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETDe ontdekking van een planeet die “monsterlijk groot” is in vergelijking met zijn moederster, zorgt voor opwinding onder wetenschappers. Het bestaan van ‘NGTS-1b’ stelt immers alle gangbare theorieën over de vorming van planeten in ons heelal in vraag.
Tot nu toe werd namelijk aangenomen dat het onmogelijk zou zijn dat zo’n grote planeet rond een (rode) dwergster zou kunnen ontstaan. Maar het recent ontdekte exemplaar dat de naam ‘NGTS-1b’ kreeg, slaat reeds bestaande inzichten helemaal aan diggelen.
Het mysterieuze zonnestelsel dat elke verbeelding tart, bevindt zich op 600 lichtjaren van onze Aarde en de dwergster is qua massa en straal de helft kleiner dan onze zon. Men heeft altijd aangenomen dat rond een soortgelijke ster enkel kleine rotsachtige planeten kunnen ontstaan. Maar NGTS-1b is net heel groot en helemaal niet rotsachtig. Volgens de geldende theorieën had de monsterplaneet dus niet eens kunnen bestaan.
“De ontdekking van NGTS-1b was een complete verrassing voor ons”, verklaarde professor Daniel Bayliss van de universiteit van Warwick. “We gingen ervan uit dat dergelijke gigantische planeten niet zouden kunnen voorkomen rond kleine sterren. Dit gegeven stelt onze huidige kennis omtrent de vorming van planeten in ons heelal in vraag. Nu moeten we nagaan hoe frequent dit soort planeten voorkomt.”
De nieuwe planeet werd ontdekt met het ‘Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS)’-instrument dat in de Chileense Atacama-woestijn staat opgesteld om de ruimte te verkennen. Het gaat om een gasgigant die binnen de categorie van ‘hot Jupiter’ valt, wat concreet betekent dat de planeet minstens zo groot is als de Jupiter uit ons zonnestelsel. In het geval van NGTS-1b blijkt dat ze 30 procent groter is dan Jupiter maar wel 20 procent minder massa heeft. Ze draait om de 2,5 dagen om haar ster.
Toch was het voor de astronomen helemaal niet evident om de monsterplaneet te vinden omdat de moederster heel klein en zwak is. Maar het nieuwe NGTS-systeem geeft wetenschappers de mogelijkheid om in de toekomst mogelijk nog verrassende ontdekkingen te doen. “Wie weet wat we nog allemaal vinden”, besloot Bayliss.
British scientists have claimed alien lifeforms may have evolved in a similar way to the organisms here on Earth.
A new study from the University of Oxford suggested that the process of natural selection which created the myriad species we see here on Earth is likely to have taken place on other planets too.
However, this does not mean aliens will resemble beautiful human beings.
An illustration of an alien 'octomite' made up of several types of beastie working together
Natural selection is a process outlined by Charles Darwin which suggests that the species which are best suited to their environment are most likely to survive to pass on their genes.
Three different types of alien life, ranging from a very simplle on the left to a more complex one on the right
On Earth, this has led to the evolution of humans over billions of years.
But on another world, life is likely to look radically different depending on the conditions on the planet.
Sam Levin, a researcher at Oxford’s Department of Zoology, said: "We still can't say whether aliens will walk on two legs or have big green eyes. But we believe evolutionary theory offers a unique additional tool for trying to understand what aliens will be like, and we have shown some examples of the kinds of strong predictions we can make with it.
"There are potentially hundreds of thousands of habitable planets in our galaxy alone. We can't say whether or not we're alone on Earth, but we have taken a small step forward in answering, if we're not alone, what our neighbors are like."
On this planet, events known as "major transitions" have driven the evolution of different species.
These events take place when one group of organisms evolve into "higher level" types of lfe.
This happened when single cell organisms evolved to become organisms made of several cells - or when the first societies of primates formed, eventually leading to the rise of humanity.
"By predicting that aliens have undergone major transitions - which is how complexity has arisen in species on earth, we can say that there is a level of predictability to evolution that would cause them to look like us," Levin added.
He suggested aliens would have evolved similar "mechanisms" to humans, allowing them to "eliminate conflict, maintain cooperation and keep the organism functioning".
He added: "In our paper, we offer an alternative approach, which is to use evolutionary theory to make predictions that are independent of Earth's details. This is a useful approach, because theoretical predictions will apply to aliens that are silicon-based, do not have DNA, and breathe nitrogen, for example."
ELON MUSK SUPER INTELLIGENT ALIENS ARE “PROBABLY ALREADY OBSERVING Us
Aliens and Illuminati confirmed: a plane-sized hole has been found in the middle of the Great Pyramid, according to scientists.
What lies in the middle of the structure has been subject to debate for years as researchers were unable to get a look inside. But they now appear to have discovered that it contains a huge room with an unknown purpose... did someone say 'landing dock'?
Discovered as part of the 'ScanPyramids' project, it is the first of its kind to be made since the 19th century. The project sees researchers using particle physics to look deep inside the structure without disturbing what's inside.
Credit: PA Images
"We don't know whether this big void is horizontal or inclined; we don't know if this void is made by one structure or several successive structures," explained Mehdi Tayoubi from the HIP Institute, Paris.
"What we are sure about is that this big void is there; that it is impressive; and that it was not expected as far as I know by any sort of theory."
The Great Pyramid, or Khufu's Pyramid, was constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu between 2509 and 2483 BC. It is the largest of the Egyptian pyramids located at Giza
Japanese and French scientists made the announcement after two years of study at the famous pyramid complex, after making the discovery using cosmic-ray imaging.
Credit: PA Images
"It could be a kind of space that the builders left to protect the very narrow roof of the grand gallery from the weight of the pyramid," American archaeologist Mark Lehner told the BBC's Science In Action programme.
"Right now it's just a big difference; it's an anomaly. But we need more of a focus on it, especially in a day and age when we can no longer go blasting our way through the pyramid with gunpowder as [British] Egyptologist Howard Vyse did in the early 1800s."
Hidden structure found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in massive breakthrough.
Aliens would look a lot like life on Earth, researchers say.
Credit: Leo Blanchette/Shutterstock
What would life in a far-flung star system look like? Would humans even recognize it as life?
A new theory says yes, we would. In fact, life on other planets (or moons, or asteroids) might look surprisingly similar to life here on Earth, University of Oxford scientist wrote in the International Journal of Astrobiology on Oct. 31. That's because life on other planets would likely be subject to natural selection, just like life on Earth. And if life is subject to natural selection, it is likely to share similarities, even if it isn't carbon-based, for example, or codes its operating instructions in a way entirely different than DNA.
"Living things are adapted," study co-author Samuel Levin, a doctoral candidate in zoology at the University of Oxford, wrote in an email to Live Science. "They appear to be 'trying to do things' like eat, survive, grow, reproduce."
The only way to get adaptedness, Levin said, is through natural selection, the process through which hereditary variation among individuals leads to differences in success, and ultimately survival of the fittest.
Taking natural selection as a starting point, Levin and his colleagues asked what that reveals about how aliens might look. This is a theoretical approach to the question, Levin said. Many astrobiologists take what's called a "mechanistic" approach, looking at how life has evolved on Earth — say, around deep-sea vents — and try to apply that to the environments of distant planets. Mechanistic predictions have their strengths, Levin said, but because the sample size of planets with known life is just one, it's hard to know what is unique to Earth and what would hold true in space. For example, eyes or eye-like structures have evolved independently about 40 times on Earth, but it's not clear if aliens would also have eyes or whether sight is an Earth-centric sense.
These illustrations represent different levels of adaptive complexity that alien life may go through, ranging from a simple replicating molecule, with no apparent design (a), to a simple, cell-like entity that undergoes natural selection (b), to an alien with many intricate parts working together (c).
Credit: Helen S. Cooper
"Theoretical predictions, like the ones we make, are not tied to the details of Earth," Levin said. "They hold regardless of whether aliens are made of carbon or silicon, have DNA or 'XNA,' breathe oxygen or nitrogen, etc."
Theoretical predictions aren't able to determine anything so specific as whether aliens will look more like E.T. or the Predator, but natural selection does lead to certain kinds of organisms. Aliens that have undergone natural selection will be "nested," Levin said — they will have undergone transformations in complexity over time, and they'll retain some evidence of those transitions. On Earth, genes "cooperated" to make genomes, genomes made blueprints for cells, and primitive cells eventually joined together to make more complex eukaryotic cells. (Mitochondria, the energy-transforming organelles of eukaryotic cells, were once separate organisms that entered a mutually beneficial relationship with their host cells.) Cells join together to make multicellular organisms, and multicellular organisms often cooperate in colonies or societies.
Getting to know the neighbors
To illustrate the concept, Levin and his colleagues dreamed up a tuber-like alien they call the "Octomite," a complex creature made up of smaller entities that have aligned their interests so that they cooperate, much like the human body's cells work together to keep a person alive.
To illustrate the concept, the researchers came up with a tuber-like alien they dubbed "Octomite," a complex creature made up of smaller entities that cooperate, much like the human body's cells work together to keep a person alive.
Credit: Helen S. Cooper
"Are we alone?" is one of the fundamental questions of the universe, Levin said, so it's worth pondering the sort of life we might run across if we do find E.T. out there.
"On a more philosophical level, understanding what features will be universal to life, wherever it exists, seems deeply rewarding," Levin said. "Our work can't answer the question of whether we're alone, but it does tell us something about our neighbors if we're not alone."
What Would Aliens Really Look Like? Here Are Some Hints From Evolution
Um, would they even have faces?
MIKE MCRAE
We're all a little obsessed about aliens. Lonely little Earthlings that we are, science and philosophy are bent on knowing why we're here and whether we're alone.
Until we're the ones doing the probing on something from beyond Proxima Centauri, we have to make do with our imaginations. But with the help of experts in evolutionary biology, we can make some fascinating guesses at what could be out there.
Researchers from the University of Oxford have decided to use their skills in this field to outline an argument for applying natural selection to predicting the morphologies and functions of extra-terrestrial organisms.
"Past approaches in the field of astrobiology have been largely mechanistic, taking what we see on Earth, and what we know about chemistry, geology, and physics to make predictions about aliens," says researcher Sam Levin.
Instead of assuming life forms from other worlds are bound by similar chemical attributes, we should be more focused on naturally selective processes, claims Levin.
"This is a useful approach, because theoretical predictions will apply to aliens that are silicon based, do not have DNA, and breathe nitrogen, for example."
To sketch out the kinds of biology we'd expect to find out there on the kinds of oddball worlds we're discovering, the researchers argue we should gather evidence on any critical planetary moments that could act as an evolutionary trigger.
Evidence is mounting for massive global events on our own planet kickstarting new evolutionary pathways, such as releasing bursts of nutrients.
On Earth, these events have been defining moments on the path of life – the merging of cells to form significant symbiotic partnerships, or the diversification of cells in colonies to represent something more multicellular.
The researchers sketched out some back-of-the-envelope concepts of how complexity might proceed in another biosphere.
Researchers sketch a concept for a very alien evolutionary path in an alien environment.
(Helen.S.Cooper)
Predicting these steps in complexity might not tell us much about the fine details, but they could still help us flesh out on which worlds we should expect slime and on which we could hope for something more communicative.
"We still can't say whether aliens will walk on two legs or have big green eyes," says Levin. "But we believe evolutionary theory offers a unique additional tool for trying to understand what aliens will be like, and we have shown some examples of the kinds of strong predictions we can make with it."
But it's clearly a useful exercise in exploring what's possible. Nothing in what we've learned about evolution on Earth suggests it wouldn't work on any type of imperfectly replicating system, after all.
It can even be argued that this feature should form the very basis of how we identify life, meaning if we did discover biology elsewhere it would by definition bea "self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution".
Thinking of it this way, the very concept of discrete alien species might be a red herring. On Earth, the boundaries between individual organisms and our biosphere are often hazy. Likewise, first contact might be less like a handshake with ET and more like dipping a finger into a planet-wide primordial soup.
"At each level of the organism there will be mechanisms in place to eliminate conflict, maintain cooperation, and keep the organism functioning," says Levin. "We can even offer some examples of what these mechanisms will be."
The research paper might not be revolutionary, but acts as a useful reminder of evolution as a defining quality of life. It serves as an interesting touchstone for what we could reasonably expect from biology that evolved on an exoplanet.
Perhaps we could even begin to create some kind of preliminary categories without setting foot on any of these far-flung worlds.
At the very least, it's added fuel for one of humanity's favourite pastimes – dreaming that we're not alone.
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The purple hue indicates hematite below the dust.
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