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.
John Young, the ninth man to walk on the moon, flew on three NASA programs: Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle.
Credit: NASA
John Young was NASA's longest-serving astronaut. He first became an astronaut when the agency was flying two-man space capsules. He left when the agency was flying the space shuttle. In between, he flew six space missions — the first person to do so.
In his decades with the agency, Young racked up several milestones. He made it to the moon's neighborhood twice, and walked on it once. He commanded the first space shuttle flight and then came back into space yet again to command another. His flight experience spanned three different programs: Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle.
In 2004, with an impressive 15,000 hours of spaceflight training across four decades, Young retired from the agency. Young died on Jan. 5, 2018, following complications from pneumonia.. He was 87.
Early life
John Watts Young was born on Sept. 24, 1930, in San Francisco, Calif. When he was 18 months old, Young's parents moved, first to Georgia and then Orlando, Florida, where he attended elementary and high school.
Young earned his bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952.
After graduation, he entered the U.S. Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Laws in the Korean War and then entering flight training before being assigned to a fighter squadron for four years.
Young graduated from the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School in 1959 and served at the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland, where he evaluated Crusader and Phantom fighter weapons systems. In 1962, he set world time-to-climb records to 3,000 and 25,000-meter (82,021 and 9,843-feet) altitudes in the F-4 Phantom.
'Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other'
NASA picked Young as an astronaut in September 1962, just as the one-man Mercury spacecraft program was winding down and the Gemini program was starting up. In fact, Young flew on the first manned Gemini flight — Gemini 3 — in 1965, transferring his test pilot skills to figuring out the new spacecraft.
Young then joined Michael Collins to do two rendezvous with two separate target Agena spacecraft in 1966, during Gemini 10. Working in close vicinity with other spacecraft was a requirement for moon missions, when two spacecraft would need to dock together to get to the moon and return home.
This experience came in handy for Apollo 10 in 1969, which featured the first moon-orbiting docking between two spacecraft. At the controls of the command module Charlie Brown, Young successfully joined with the lunar module, Snoopy, that had been doing a landing test a few miles above the surface.
"Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other!" said an exuberant Tom Stafford, who was commanding Apollo 10.
Driving on the moon
Young went back to the moon in 1972, during Apollo 16. He commanded a scientifically ambitious journey to the Descartes highlands, searching for volcanic rock and some possible clues to the moon's history. He and his crewmates, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly, brought back 200 lbs. of rock during more than 20 hours on the surface.
Young and Duke only found sedimentary rocks along the way, which surprised scientists back home. Despite the challenges, however, the men kept their sense of humor. They did a controlled but wild-looking test with the lunar rover, for example, skidding it across the surface in front of a video camera.
"One-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon is just delightful," Young said in a 2006 interview with NASA. "It's not like being in zero gravity, you know. You can drop a pencil in zero gravity and look for it for three days. In one-sixth gravity, you just look down and there it is."
John Young, astronaut and Navy veteran, salutes the U.S. flag at the Descartes landing site during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity (EVA-1). Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, jumps up from the lunar surface as astronaut and Air Force veteran, Charles M. Duke Jr., lunar module pilot, took this picture.
Credit: NASA, Charles M. Duke Jr.
After Apollo
In 1974, Young was named the fifth chief of the Astronaut Office, after serving for a year as the office's space shuttle branch chief. For 13 years, Young led NASA's astronaut corps, overseeing the crews assigned to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the approach and landing tests with the prototype orbiter Enterprise, and the first 25 space shuttle missions.
In 1981, Young moved to a very different kind of vehicle: the space shuttle, which acted and performed more like a plane than a spacecraft. Development on the ambitious vehicle was not without its challenges, as Young and his crewmate Robert Crippen discovered.
"I remember [senior NASA official Bob] Gilruth telling me it's going to be as reliable as a DC-8 and right after he said that, Crip and I, every time we went out to Rocketdyne or somewhere to see what was happening, engines were blowing up. So I wasn't sure it was going to be as reliable as a DC-8. It was a lot of fun," Young quipped.
Young and Crippen lifted off in the space shuttle Columbia in April 1981, on a test flight of a vehicle that had never before been used in space. There were questions about how its systems would perform, and whether the new tile heat-shield system for re-entry would hold up. The flight was a success.
Still with a taste for spaceflight, Young returned to space once more at the helm of STS-9. This flight, like his last Apollo mission, was scientifically heavy. The crew flew the experimental Spacelab module for the first time, performing hours of experiments during 10 days. "The mission returned more scientific and technical data than all the previous Apollo and Skylab missions put together," NASA stated.
After the loss of space shuttle Challenger and its seven-person crew in January 1986, Young penned internal memos critical of NASA's attention to safety, a topic he had championed since his days flying Gemini. Young expressed concern over schedule pressure and wrote that other astronauts who had launched on missions preceding the ill-fated STS-51L mission were "very lucky" to be alive.
Young was subsequently reassigned to be special assistant to the director of the Johnson Space Center for engineering, operations and safety until 1996, when he was named the associate director for technical affairs, a position he held until his retirement from NASA on Dec. 31, 2004.
Young was the recipient of many honors for his contributions to space exploration, including the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Rotary National Space Achievement Award, and six honorary doctorates. Young was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988 and Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993.
He was awarded the NASA Ambassador of Exploration in 2005, including a moon rock he assigned for display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and was bestowed the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award from the Space Foundation in 2010. A stretch of Florida State Road 423 that runs through Orlando is named John Young Parkway in his honor.
Reflecting on his time as a veteran of three programs, Young said the role of an astronaut has not changed, although the technology certainly did.
"I don't think it changed it any," he told the Houston Chronicle in 2004. "You just had to learn a lot of systems and learn how to operate them and be a systems person. That's what we were. We were systems operators."
Additional reporting by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com editor.
Live Stream Interview with ISS Astronauts gets a Remarkable End
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 54 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle of NASA and Flight Engineer Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) discussed life and research on the complex during a pair of in-flight interviews Jan. 3 with KMSP-TV, Minneapolis and the Voice of America.
The interview which seems to be live gets a remarkable end, which starts at about 13.55 in the video what looks like a glitch in a Chroma Key Layer.
A chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. So if it is really a glitch in a Chroma Key Layer, then it is not a live broadcast but a post-production, moreover if that should be the case then we may wonder whether the interview was recorded from an unknown location on Earth and edited by NASA?
If we look at a similar interview recorded in 2013 then it seems that certain “Live” interviews indeed happen from a location on earth instead directly “Live” from the ISS.
During that 2013 interview Chris Cassidy accidentally admits they are filming in the USA.
After an innocuous question from a student about his high school days Chris offers some unscripted information about where they are filming which makes the jovial space case seem pretty stressed out for a minute knowing he has said something truly stupid ( 0:56 ) "...Across the United States from where we are talking to you right…”
Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual effects / post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on color hues (chroma range).
The technique has been used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video – particularly the news casting, motion picture and videogame industries. A color range in the foreground footage is made transparent, allowing separately filmed background footage or a static image to be inserted into the scene.
Is the ISS live stream feed really "Live" or is it fake and it is all a matter of post production and editing?
Video 1:Fast forward the video to 13:55 and you see a glitch in the three astronauts’ layer. Video 2: Fast forward the video to 00:56 and you hear Chris Cassidy’s remarkable statement.
Humans have made a staggering amount of scientific and technological progress over the past century. We’ve created technology that has transformed our society; scientific advances have helped us answer fundamental questions about who we are and the world that we inhabit. And, yet, mysteries persist.
Why are we compelled to sleep every night? Why are we still not able to “see” dark matter? And where the heck are all the aliens?
People have debated questions like these for decades — sometimes centuries. Fortunately, our unfaltering will to uncover the world’s mysteries has brought us closer to some answers than ever before. Here are six mysteries that still keep scientists up at night, and how close they are to solving them.
1. Why Do We Need Sleep?
Why do we need sleep? This may seem like a straightforward question, but the answer is far more complex than you might think. There have been countless attempts to find a definitive reason as to why humans need to sleep every night, but scientists are still unable to offer a single, definitive answer.
Findings in sleep science have shed some light on the intricacies of sleep stages and brain activity, but ultimately, they have merely offered pieces to an ever-growing, incomplete puzzle. It doesn’t help that we don’t have much to compare ourselves to — as sleeping patterns and brain activity in other animals often deviate significantly from those of humans, further mystifying our understanding of sleep.
Jerry Siegel, a psychiatry professor at UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, has been studying the sleeping habits of animals to understand why humans need to enter a hibernation-like state every night.
“Our understanding and orientation [of sleep] is different than in any other animal because most of us would like to stay awake 24 hours a day. But in the natural world, animals that use a lot of energy are not going to survive,” Siegel tells Futurism. Nature values inactivity — for instance, winter hibernation allows certain animals to recover and store energy when it is not needed. “Across species, energy savings is the main evolutionary impulse for sleep,” Siegel explains. African elephants, for example, only sleep for two hours a day in the wild, likely because they need the rest of that time to feed in order to give their large bodies enough energy to function.
The energy saving theory is one of several that scientists use to explain why we sleep. As scientists have created tools that can track brain activity during the act of sleep, they have come closer to finishing the puzzle and uncovering all of sleep’s mysteries.
For example, the brain has mechanisms in place allowing it to purge itself of unnecessary information during sleep.“Sleep is the price we pay for learning,” Giulio Tononi, a psychiatry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison tells New Scientist. Tononi and his team conducted experiments on sleeping mice and found that, after sleep, synapses were significantly smaller than those before sleep.
Tononi’s team concluded that the brain needs to allow this activity to diminish in order to solidify information it gathered while it was awake. The brain is bombarded with information during the day, and it reinforces it with strong neural connections. To mix the new information in with all of the existing information, those connections need to weaken to “absorb” it. In other words, sleep allows the brain to make new information pliable enough to fit in with all of the old.
While this theory elegantly describes the brain’s process of making new information stick during sleep, Tononi and other neuroscientists have yet to prove that sleep is actually required for this to happen.
To fully understand sleep, sleep scientists need a better sense of the neurobiological processes of the brain during both wake and sleep cycles. For instance, how come some of us are able to sleep through extremely noisy environments, and some of us can’t? Once we are able to measure exactly how awake or asleep the human brain is, it will bring us even further to knowing all there is to know about sleep.
But one thing has remained clear as ever: Without sleep, we are far worse off. “We know that, if you are sleep-deprived, you have lapses in attention that are actually correlated with intrusions in sleep,” Siegel says. Not getting enough sleep has a direct affect on how much attention you can pay to the world around you. “Certainly when you are driving, losing alertness just for two seconds can be lethal.”
2. What Is Dark Matter, And Why Can’t We See It?
We don’t know what it looks like. We can’t see it. But it makes up more than 26 percent of the matter in the known universe. Since Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn hypothesized its existence in 1922, we have come to know it exists because of how it interacts with the matter we can observe, but dark matter is still mysteriously invisible to us.
Most of the matter that’s visible to us is made of neutrons, protons, and electrons. But dark matter does not adhere to these classifications. It’s made up of different types of particles we haven’t yet been able to categorize and that interact with light and matter in a completely different way. Dark matter does not absorb, reflect, or emit light. But its gravitational influence does bend light as it passes nearby — that kind of observation is how scientists know that dark matter exists.
Researchers have been studying this phenomenon, trying to unravel its mysteries, almost since its inception. More recently, the Large Hadron Collider at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) has brought us closer to actually doing so — researchers there are working to identify the invisible material by accelerating tiny particles and then studying the energy and momentum involved in their movements when they collide at high speeds.
Recent studies suggest that gravitational wave detectors could allow us to “see” dark matter for the first time. But the truth of the matter (so to speak) is that we are still very much in the dark about one of the most abundant entities in our universe.
Perhaps the best-known theory about the beginning of the universe is the Big Bang theory, in which the universe expanded from an extremely hot and dense singularity around 13.8 billion years ago. But people misunderstand if they think that matter simply exploded into being from nothing, Sutter says. “The Big Bang happened everywhere in the universe simultaneously; it’s not an explosion in space but an explosion of space.” Yet, the exact process of what caused this (and of course, what was there beforehand) remains unknown.
“The earlier we go in the history of the universe, the less we understand,” Sutter says. While we have caught brief glimpses of the universe when it was only 300,000 years old, scientists are still speculating about the extreme forces at play during the universe’s first moments.
Like all good mysteries, a question that seems simple yields more questions that must be solved before we can find the answer to the initial question. “We’re prevented from knowing the very earliest moments (like, less than 10^-40 seconds) because we don’t fully comprehend the quantum aspects of gravity,” Sutter says.
To this end, to fully understand the creation of our universe, we will need to have a comprehensive understanding of the laws of physics that govern matter and antimatter. This is a bit of a problem, as CERN recently confirmed that the Standard Model of particle physics may have to be turned on its head, as it doesn’t account for the majority of the matter the Big Bang produced.
Once we have fully understood the nature of antimatter and how it interacts with matter, we won’t have a final answer to the origin of the universe, but we will come much closer to understanding how it came to be.
4. Where is Planet Nine?
Beyond the Kuiper belt, a mysterious cluster of objects is orbiting the Sun. They orbit even more distant from the Sun than Neptune, but some of the objects’ trajectories don’t seem to fit the expected pattern. Most of them circle around Neptune, kept in the planet’s orbit by its powerful gravity. But a handful of these objects seem to be pulled out of place by something with much greater mass.
Konstantin Batygin, assistant professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology, believes that these peculiarities are at least partially caused by the existence of Planet Nine — a yet-to-be-discovered ninth planet in our solar system.
Think of the solar system as a giant disc. The orbits of these strangely behaving objects seem to bend the disc upwards at its edge. Planet Nine needs to be massive to have this kind of influence — a bigger mass than Earth, even. However, despite its apparent mass, we have not yet been able to prove its existence. In part, this is because we only just started looking for it; scientists first started theorizing about its existence in 2014.
However, that’s not the only reason that the planet remains undiscovered. “We haven’t found it yet because it is staggeringly dim,” Batygin says. “With the best telescopes around, we could just barely detect it, we think.” Infrared analysis is out of the question because the instruments are simply not sensitive enough. That forces astronomers to look for reflected light — an even more challenging task than infrared analysis. This is because any light that Planet Nine reflects has to travel from the Sun to the far reaches of the solar system, bounce off Planet Nine, and then arrive back to Earth. Reflected light diminishes exponentially as it crosses a distance; the properties of reflected light are stacked against us finding Planet Nine.
However, with advancements in technology, a more sensitive telescope may be able to register light reflected from it, once and for all confirming Planet Nine’s existence. Astronomers are also using computer simulations to estimate its orbit to get a better sense of where it will be and when. It’s possible that Planet Nine may be simply at a point in its orbit that makes it too distant to be observed.
5. Why Do These Sounds Make My Brain Tingle?
You might have encountered them on YouTube: thousands of videos narrated in hushed voices and accompanied by soft sounds, like massaging a textured piece of fabric or the faint hum of a hair clipper. A specialized microphone gives you the sensation that you are there. For some people, the sound creates the sensation of a scalp massage.
The result of this experience: a relaxing, tingling sensation in the brain in about 90 percent of the population. But why it happens, and why it doesn’t work for everyone, is still unknown.
Craig Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University and founder of ASMR University, has been studying this peculiar sensation since 2013. “We are at the very beginning of unraveling the science behind ASMR,” Richard tells Futurism. While past biological studies have shown that functional connectivity (regions of the brain that light up on a fMRI) is different in brains that experience ASMR than in those that don’t, ASMR remains a mystery. Why is it that only a certain percentage of humans experiences it? Why does it even exist? “I don’t think there will ever be one explanation that satisfies everyone,” he says.
6. Where Is Intelligent Alien Life?
The universe is billions of years old. Considering the age and sheer vastness of our cosmos, it’s hard to comprehend why we haven’t found other signs of intelligent life. Basic probability indicates that we should have found extraterrestrials by now, so where are they?
If extraterrestrial life does exist in our solar system, researchers suggest that it is likely microbial, as opposed to intelligent alien life. These alien organisms are thought to be on small, icy planets, such as the moons of Saturn or Jupiter. Scientists at NASA have conducted studies to investigate the composition and stateof the large oceans on these moons because, they predict, the presence of abundant water might allow alien life to thrive. But so far, these are only educated guesses based on findings of NASA’s Galileo satellite and extensive scanning and observation. NASA is planning to get a closer look by traveling to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa within the next decade.
But even if we did find alien life, would we be able to recognize it? Looking for familiar carbon-based lifeforms that use water as life support might limit us in our quest to find alien life. Scientists must be able to fully distinguish alien messages from all the other noise in space — and even that is far from simple. What if their message is indistinguishable from other frequencies? What if they don’t want to be found?
US has top secret airline that flies directly to mysterious military base Area 51
It turns out that flights that depart from Janet's hub at Las Vegas airport won't show up on departure boards.
Going by the name of Janet, it has a fleet of Boeing 737 airliners operating from McCarran Internatonal Airport in Las Vegas.
If theories are to be believed, there is a top secret airline that one is not meant to know exists. And this airline flies directly to UFO hot spot Area 51.
Going by the name of Janet, it has a fleet of Boeing 737 airliners operating from McCarran Internatonal Airport in Las Vegas and tourists on the Strip may have seen the distinctive red and white jets taking off and wondered where they go on their daily flights.
However, it is interesting to note that they won't show up on departure boards as only US military personnel are allowed to board from a separate hangar called the Gold Coast Terminal, which is guarded by armed men with walkie-talkies.
Apparently Janet, which stands for Just Another Non-Existent Terminal is run by the US Air Force to shuttle workers to secret test sites in the Nevada desert.
Flight tracking radar shows some of the flights - with call signs starting XXX - making the 45-minute journey to the nuclear facility at Tonopah, which has been the focus of many conspiracy theories.
The U.S. Air Force's SR-71 (double cockpit training version pictured)
Other brief flights go to an unspecified destination nearby - believed to be the Area 51 facility famous with alien hunters.
Furthermore, Groom Lake is believed to be used to test experimental aircraft and "black projects" weapons systems. Its existence was only acknowledged publicly for the first time in 2005.
Conspiracy theorists believe the top-secret military base contains the remains of an alien spaceship that crashed in the 1940s. Nobody who flies on the special Janet flights is allowed to reveal where they are going or what their job is.
Conspiracy theorist Nick Pope says, “Area 51 exists - it's part of a military testing range in Nevada - and because of the remote and sparsely-populated location, it's where various secret prototype aircraft and drones are developed and test flown. The UFO and conspiracy theory community think it's the place where crashed UFOs are kept and where the US military are trying to back-engineer this alien technology.”
Janet's six 737 jets and five executive turboprops mostly shuttle back and forth to the two sites in Nevada but also fly to US air bases in California, Utah and Ohio.
The planes can be seen waiting at the private terminal from some rooms at the Mandalay Hotel on the Las Vegas strip, which back on to the airport.
"A New Reality or Science Fiction?" The Complete Guide to This Week's Pentagon UFO Revelations
December 21 2017: Today's links to headline stories from around the world on the revelation of the Pentagon's secret UFO program and its implications. Coverage includes Alien Minds, AI Has Been Out There for Eons, Why Haven't We Found Aliens, You're Not Crazy If You Believe in UFOs, UFOs in Scientific Terms, What We've Learned from 60 Years of Probes, Gaian Bottleneck, The Great Filter, The Great Silence, The Tom DeLonge Radio Interview, John Podesta Interview, and more.
On December 16, the New York Times publishedtwo stories that read almost like science fiction. For at least five years, the Defense Department housed a $22-million, clandestine program to investigate UFOs. Military pilots had sent in reports of objects they observed that moved in unfamiliar ways; the mission of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, as it was called, was to investigate those claims to see if there was truly something otherworldly behind those sightings.
It’s unclear just how many reports pilots had filed to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, but people who have come forward about the program have made it clear that there would have been a lot more reports filed if it hadn’t been for one thing: stigma. “The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command, [former senator Harry Reid] said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed at or stigmatized,” one Times piece reads.
American culture is steeped in depictions of what would happen if sophisticated aliens visited Earth, from E.T. to Arrival to Independence Day. Some are more hackneyed than others; some are downright terrifying. But outside the clear genres of fiction, most conversations about UFOs happen online, and with varying degrees of vehemence.
Let’s face it — believing in the paranormal has become shorthand for crazy.
“60 years of folklorization and Hollywood production have, in the minds of the general public, definitely trivialized the subject. It has become a ‘standard’ consumer product,” Jean-Christophe Doré, the technical manager for UFO-SCIENCE, the French association that aims to scientifically evaluate aspects of UFO phenomena, tells Futurism.
But to some, that association might be changing. Luis Elizondo, the military official formerly in charge of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told The New York Times’ Daily podcast:
I think we’re entering an era of actual evidence. We’ve reached a moment of critical mass of credible witnesses, and these are witnesses that are in charge of multi-million-dollar weapon platforms with, in some cases, the highest level of security clearances and in some cases they’re trained observers. When these individuals are trying to report something, ‘Hey I saw this when I was flying,’ that can be turned around and people say ‘hey look if you’re crazy, there goes your flight status.’ Or all of a sudden commander so-and-so in charge of this very elite fighter wing will no longer be taken seriously. In fact, people are going to start to judge whether or not maybe our friend here might not be a little crazy, or maybe some loose screws. That’s always a threat to these people’s career. And let’s face it, these people have to pay their taxes, they have to pay their mortgages, they have families, they’re putting their kids through school. And frankly, they’re just really good patriots and they want to do the right thing. And that stigma is pretty powerful. It stops a lot of people from reporting something maybe they would normally report.
Government officials are no longer hiding their belief that extraterrestrials might be out there. Could this be a turning point for once-fringe communities and open doors for those looking to bring scientific rigor to the quest to understand UFOs?
Logical Fallacy
Most phenomena thought to be the doings of extraterrestrials are eventually explained. Take Project Blue Book, for example, the U.S. government’s program to investigate unidentified flying objects that ran from 1947 until 1969. Of the more than 12,000 reported sightings, investigators found out the real (not paranormal) story for all but 700 or so. That’s a pretty good percentage, says Joe Nickell, senior research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and paranormal investigator — about as much as you’d expect from any other scientific discipline. “A lot of these cases are never going to be solved because I don’t know what you think you saw 10 years ago. They’re not investigatable,” Nickell tells Futurism.
In other disciplines, a certain amount of uncertainty will mean that more studies are needed to definitely prove a link. But that’s not what happens with UFOs. “We spend all these years, virtually our entire lives (it’s what I’m doing with mine), and we’re solving most cases. We’re down to, say, 5 percent [that we can’t explain], and we’re arguing over the 5 percent,” Nickell says. You give someone a level-headed, thorough, earthly explanation for a particular report, and they’ll just respond, “But what about this other one?” This is, as Nickell points out, an argument from ignorance — in essence, X must be true because you can’t prove that X is false. “Why don’t we assume that, if we can explain 95 percent, that if we knew the answer, it would fall into the same category as the others?” Nickell says.
Belief in extraterrestrials is fueled by a lack of evidence, not its presence. For some people, that’s enough.
The Psychology Of Believers
More than half of Americans believe that aliens exist, according to a 2015 poll. Scientists have evaluated what distinguishes believers and non-believers and didn’t find much, the Conversation notes. But people that believe they had an abduction experience, perhaps a more extreme form of belief, are more likely to have fantasy-prone personalities, have experienced childhood trauma, or be prone to hypnosisthat can make them suggestible to false memories, studies have shown. That doesn’t mean they’re lying about their experiences — they often genuinely believe they happened — but those experiences were often not quite what the individuals thought they were.
What distinguishes people who believe in Big Foot, for example, from those who believe in UFOs? It’s the suspicion of government involvement, Nickell says. More peoplebelieve in conspiracies than ever; if someone were looking to find a black-ops government program and a conspiracy to keep it secret, they’d find the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
“I think, for most people who believe in these UFO claims, it’s tied up with conspiracy. If you want to believe that UFOs are visiting the planet, there kind of has to be a cover up,” Rob Brotherton, a psychology professor at Barnard College and the author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, tells Futurism. And because they’re built on secrecy, it’s really hard to disprove a conspiracy theory, Brotherton points out.
Conspiracy theories about UFOs, in particular, are pretty widespread, and they have a psychological appeal that goes against the stereotype of weirdos wearing tinfoil hats. Conspiracy theories rely on the same pattern-recognition techniques we use in our daily lives, and in science as well. “Conspiracy theories make for great stories, they’re tantalizing, mysteries not yet fully solved. Your brain is like, ‘What’s up with that?’ it’s not satisfied until it knows if these things are related.”
Most of the time, people who believe in them are psychologically normal. But the belief that the government or aliens are specifically pursuing you as an individual — a me and not an us focus —might indicate a psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia, though that would be one of a number of symptoms.
“It’s not impossible [that extraterrestrials are visiting Earth],” Brotherton says. “Maybe they’re technologically advanced, maybe they are able to make it here. That’s not beyond the realms of possibility; it doesn’t defy the laws of physics necessarily. It’s worth keeping an eye out for this stuff.”
Worthy of Pursuit
Science hinges on discovery and the pursuit to understand the unknown. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, then, that some of these UFO reports are worthy of rigorous investigation. They could reveal something new about atmospheric phenomena, or physics, or, yes, possibly even extraterrestrials.
It’s not easy to separate the mysterious sightings, the ones that could yield something scientifically interesting, from the sightings that can quickly be resolved. “These are, almost by definition, unusual things to start with, something in the sky that we don’t know what it is. We don’t see them every night. So we have no idea [at the beginning of an investigation] if they’re going to be productive or not,” Nickell says.
Despite these difficulties, some investigators are already bringing the rigor of science to examine UFO reports. Some, like Nickell, are hunting down witnesses and testing theories; others, like Chase Kloetzke, the deputy director of investigations at MUFON, the world’s oldest and largest UFO investigation group, are retrieving physical evidence and testing alloys of unknown metals with cutting-edge microscopes and trained metallurgists. A number of organizations receive private funding, which sometimes means they have fewer resources than they would if they received governments grants. And the work is often thankless. “I’m trying, in the name of science, to do what most scientists don’t have time to do, what they consider frivolous nonsense,” Nickell says. “UFOs have been looked into now by the tens of thousands, even by official government studies. And what do we have to show? Not a lot. How many more will we have to look into? I would say we will never be done. I’m in it for the long haul.”
To do these sorts of investigations, it’s irrelevant whether or not they believe that extraterrestrials have really visited Earth. All people need is a rigorous scientific mind, perseverance to investigate doggedly, and a sensitive nose for falsehoods.
Now that information about the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program has spilled out, it buoys those who hope that the government might have evidence that could more clearly indicate the presence of extraterrestrials, something that stands up to the rigor of scientific evaluation. “Do we have a smoking gun? We do, it’s just locked up,” Kloetzke, of MUFON, says referring to the “physical material [the government] has been holding and analyzing.” “We’re pushing down the doors. We’re trying to breach this information,” she says.
Still, opinions vary on how much evidence is enough to prove the existence of extraterrestrials. “I think most people are going to need a craft to land in Central Park [to believe UFOs are real],” Kloetzke says.
“There is absolutely no solid evidence that meets any standards of scientific ‘proof’ that UFOs exist. That’s why people can’t take it seriously,” Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who studies exoplanets and was quoted in the New York Timesarticle, tells Futurism. To some, in the end, evidence doesn’t matter. “I am not a UFO supporter in any way. It’s just like why do people believe in God? There’s no way to scientifically prove the existence of any God or gods. People just want to believe.”
Former Astronaut Confessed Before Dying: Aliens Prevented Nuclear War On Earth
Edgar Mitchell, former NASA astronaut, and the sixth human being to set foot on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
After retiring, he devoted his life to the unconventional scientific study of extraterrestrial life.
He died in Florida, United States, at 85 years of age.
However, before leaving Earth in his final trip, Mitchell shocked the general public when, during an interview with the British newspaper Mirror Online, he revealed that aliens visited the Earth during the Cold War, and prevented a nuclear war.
“My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth,” he told Mirror Online in an interview.
“The extraterrestrials were trying to prevent war by helping create peace on Earth,” he said.
Millions of people around the world are convinced aliens are real, and we have been contacted in the past.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Specifically, the astronaut made reference to UFO sightings in military bases:
“I spoke with several Air Force officers who worked in these bases during the Cold War. They told me that UFOs were frequently seen and that they were able to deactivate their missiles. Other officials on the Pacific coast said that their missiles were frequently shot down by alien ships. There was a lot of activity in those days. “he revealed.
According to Mitchell, the US government systematically hid all kinds of information about these incidents.
To this end, in 1974, a National Security Act was signed, which prohibited the disclosure of any information regarding such sightings.
“White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons – and that’s what the extraterrestrials were interested in. They wanted to know about our military capabilities,” said Mitchell.
But many people remain skeptical despite the fact that not only Mitchell but many other former astronauts, military officers, and high-ranking government officials have spoken about UFO’s and alien life, not to mention the countless declassified top-secret documents that have been made available to the general public in the last couple of years.
Furthermore, Dr. Mitchell, who had a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed the Roswell UFO cover-up was real.
NASA responded to Dr. Mitchell’s accusations in the past by saying: “Nasa does not track UFOs. Nasa is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue.”
Recently, the general public has been made aware of a top-secret Pentagon program called The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which investigated UFO sightings.
The man who ran the top-secret project, Mr. Luis Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the following:
“Despite overwhelming evidence at both the classified and unclassified levels, certain individuals in the [Defense] Department remain staunchly opposed to further research on what could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors and soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to our national security,”
For anyone trying to learn more about a potential connection between UFOs and nuclear weapons please visit UFO’s and Nukes.
Radio astronomer John Ball at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US has come up with a very shocking statement. He has said aliens will contact Earth when we are ready.
According to the "zoo hypothesis" by Ball, we are not advanced enough to contact or hear from the extraterrestrials.
The zoo hypothesis refers to the assumed behaviour and existence of the technically advanced extraterrestrial life and the reasons they refrain from contacting us on Earth.
According to the hypothesis, the extraterrestrial creatures are way too advanced than us and consider our civilisation to be very basic in contrast to theirs, a report by Daily Star revealed.
Humanity can pose little threat to them, while we would have been "squashed" by them, as per Ball's belief.
"Either we're more valuable to them alive than squashed, or at least we're not interfering much with whatever he's doing," Ball said.
"How could we interfere? We can't even get out of our solar system – yet," he added
Nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi's 1950 theory, which claimed there are alien beings in the galaxy, based purely on the almost-infinite size of the universe, is what Ball's hypothesis is based on.
A total of 4,655 flying saucers were reportedly spotted, of which 490 sightings were made in California, making it a UFO-sighting hot spot. Florida was the next significant spot with 305 sightings reported in 2017, while 55 UFO sightings were reported from Nevada, according to Daily Star.
The modern far right is crisscrossed with pseudo-scientific research into lost Aryan super-civilizations, biblical giants, ancient astronauts and the occasional inter-dimensional alien.
On December 6, 1830, Andrew Jackson used his second State of the Union address to defend the Indian Removal Act, the administration’s sole legislative victory. He described the law promulgating the expulsion and resettlement of southeastern Native American tribes as the “happy consummation” of U.S. Indian policy. To his critics who “wept over the fate of the aborigines” — and who, it turned out, accurately predicted the horrors of the forced migrations known collectively to history as the Trail of Tears — Jackson offered an archeology lesson. Any “melancholy reflections” were ahistorical, he said, because the Indians were neither innocent victims nor first peoples, but perpetrators of what Jackson’s modern admirers might call “white genocide.”
Jackson knew this because the evidence was everywhere in plain sight.
“In the monuments and fortifications of an unknown people, we behold the memorials of a once-powerful race,” said Jackson, “exterminated to make room for the existing savage tribes.”
This reference to a “once-powerful race” was not lost on the American public of 1830. Every schoolboy and girl knew it to be the Lost Race of the Mound Builders, believed to be the continent’s original Caucasian inhabitants. From the colonial era into the twentieth century, it was widely accepted that certain earthen structures and burial grounds proved the existence of “white” or Indo-European peoples who settled North America only to be wiped out by the arrival of Jackson’s “savage (Asiatic) tribes.”
As the country expanded west, the “Moundbuilders” myth had obvious utility: If the Indians destroyed earlier waves of (white) settlers, their own extermination was just another turn of history’s wheel.
In the early 1890s, the U.S. ethnologist Cyrus Vance discredited the theory in a series published by the Smithsonian Institution. But the idea of a pre-Colombian “white genocide” never disappeared. It survived in subcultures, influenced by the occult and Atlantis legends, which clung to theories of lost ancient super-civilizations that, curiously, always seemed to be racially “white.”
In recent decades, as evidence of a richer paleoamerican record than previously realized has come to light, Jackson’s “once-powerful race” has found a new generation of boosters on the far right, where fantasies of “white genocide” distantly past and currently unfolding are an animating obsession.
In the fractured and constantly cross-fertilizing galaxy of extremist conspiracy culture, the white Moundbuilders — now known on the far right as “the Solutreans” — share a stage with other characters from an ancient and racially glorious but “suppressed” past: ancient Nordic-looking astronauts, biblical Aryan giants, Nazi scientists under the South Pole, and the occasional inter-dimensional alien in league with the Jews.
Alt-History Goes Prime Time
Over the last decade, the History Channel has exploited and fueled the popularization of alternative archeology, or alt-history. Numerous programs on the network showcase ideas that, while not explicitly racist or anti-Semitic, have origins in colonial projects and have been championed (for a reason) by modern extremists.
Take “America Unearthed,” which aired between 2012 and 2015 on H2, a defunct History Channel network. That show’s host, a geologist named Scott Wolter, promoted theories that ancient Celts and Scots settled North America and hybridized Native Americans centuries before Columbus. The details can be found in Wolter’s contributions to Lost Worlds of Ancient America, a 2012 anthology edited by Frank Joseph, born Frank Collin, founder of the National Socialist Party of America. (In 1993, following his expulsion from the party for “impure blood”, Collin became editor of Ancient American magazine and has authored dozens of books dealing with ancient “suppressed” history.) In another episode, when a guest professes admiration for the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group of wealthy Southerners who sought to create a hemispheric slave empire, Wolter just nods. (Wolter has denied that he or his ideas are racist, and claims to be politically liberal.)
Whatever the personal politics of the host, these shows serve as vectors for racist ideas and scholarship, argues the independent scholar Jason Colavito, who has been tracking this cultural crossover and amplification of fringe history for years. In books like Foundations of Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts, and Other Alternative Pasts, Colavito explores and debunks many of the ideas promoted on the History Channel and far right websites alike.
“These shows serve as entry points for discredited nineteenth-century ideas and point viewers toward the sources of extremist pseudo-scholarship and politics,” says Colavito. “The idea that aliens built the pyramids isn’t so funny when it draws young people to websites that quickly switch out aliens for Jews and start talking about gas chambers.”
Shows like “America Unearthed” are heavily discussed on white nationalist alt-history forums, as well as general far right political sites like Stormfront. They are routinely praised for introducing viewers to variations on the Solutrean Hypothesis (see below) and raising the profile of racist pseudo-scholarship.
Consider the H2 series “In Search of Aliens,” which, before its demise, promoted the work of Jan Udo Holey, a German writer whose antisemitic books have been banned across Europe. (Holey’s pen name, Jan Van Helsig, is a blunt Dracula reference, i.e. Jews are bloodsuckers.) The History Channel’s long-running series “Ancient Aliens,” meanwhile, features David Childress, whose books cite and build on the work of James Churchward, who promoted an ancient empire called the “lost continent of Mu,” whose “dominant race” was an “exceedingly handsome people, with clear white or olive skin.”
While the appeal of these theories has roots in Jacksonian justification for Manifest Destiny, their current manifestations are closely intertwined with the venomous persecution complexes that motivate the modern far right .
“Pseudo-histories feed the self-importance and aggrievement of neo-Nazis and alt-right folk,” says Benjamin Radford, a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry who has written widely on pseudo-history and claims of paranormal activity. “They feel their rightful place in the world has been denied them — by ‘Big Archeology', by Jews, by an oppressive government.”
There is another source of the far right’s far-out ideas about ancient history, one that requires no psychologizing.
The Nazi Connection
The basic tenets of alt-archeology and alt-history were foundational to the ideology and program of National Socialism, but the Nazis did not invent them. The Nazi belief in a pure Aryan race with a glorious ancient past and distinct genetic history was central to a transatlantic nineteenth-century occult scene (that featured a heavy German influence.) After Hitler assumed power, this belief was institutionalized in the form of the Ancestral Heritage and Teaching Society, or the Ahnenerbe, an alt-archeology research outfit founded by Heinrich Himmler and the Atlantis theorist Herman Wirth.
Under the banner of the Ahnerbe, Nazi explorers fanned out across Europe and the globe in search of relics holding (possibly supernatural) hints of ancient Aryan glory. In 1938, a team was dispatched to Iceland in search of the lost Aryan civilization of Thule, which Nazi leaders discovered in an Icelandic epic poem. Among the Nazis’ interests in Thule was the legend of a race of ancient Aryan giants. (Versions of this myth remain common among biblically focused alt-historians like Steve Quayle and L.A. Marzulli.)
Belief in these legends was possible because of the Nazis’ sharp rejection of the Enlightenment. Dismissing the science of racial diversification and the archeological record, they reveled in symbology, myths and legends of “pure” ancient kingdoms that conquered the world under its symbol, the swastika. (This, the Nazis believed, explained the symbol’s presence in both Native American and Indian art.)
The Solutreans and the Original “White Genocide”
In the U.S., the average member of the far right is likely more familiar with the modern version of Jackson’s Race of the Moundbuilders, known as the Solutreans.
The name is taken from a hypothesis first promoted in the 1930s by the American archeologist Frank Hibben, who discovered arrowheads in North America that pre-dated the earliest Native American culture known at the time, the Clovis. The arrowheads, argued Hibben, resembled those of the Solutreans, a Stone Age people who inhabited southwestern Europe. Most of the field quickly dismissed the similarity as meaningless, but Hibben found adherents among those yearning for a new and more scientifically respectable version of Jackson’s “once-powerful race.” For them, the arrowheads (and other contested findings) prove that “European” Solutreans migrated to America across the northern ice-shelf millennia before “the Mongoloids” (as Solutrean adherents are apt to describe Native Americans.)
There is a second punchline to white nationalists continuing to hold up the Solutreans as victims of a prehistoric white persecution drama: Most scholars believe the Solutreans preceded racial diversification, and their arrowheads are artifacts of a dark-skinned people not long out of North Africa.
Atlantis, Aliens & Ancient Astronauts
In 1882, a decade before the Smithsonian debunked the Race of the Moundbuilders, a Minnesota Congressman and writer named Ignatius Loyola Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. The book provided another and more elaborate theory of an Aryan-looking super civilization that diffused technology to the rest of the world. Donnell’s book, based on mentions of Atlantis by Plato, cut the template for the sci-fi-tinged lost white civilization theories now experiencing a revival on cable television and beyond.
But just as Atlantis theory gained traction following the debunking of the Moundbuilders, so have theories of ancient Aryan astronauts superseded Atlantis with the mapping of the oceans and their floors.
“When there was nowhere left to explore, a group of thinkers started to project these ideas into the sky,” says Colavito, the historian. “Today, ancient astronauts are one of the more elaborate theories in pseudo-history with a racist component.”
In the 1960s and 70s, Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin put a twist on myths about Aryan visitors from a lost civilization predating the last Ice Age. These visitors to Mesoamerica didn’t come from Atlantis but from the sky. Bestsellers like von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods (seven million sold and counting) popularized the idea that Aryan-looking aliens brought science and technology to primitive peoples around the world. In recent years, Graham Hancock has repackaged Ancient Astronaut Theory for a new generation in his bestselling Fingerprints of the Gods, and through steady work as a History Channel talking head.
Today’s far right is divided on Ancient Astronaut theory. On the one hand, it denies agency to brown-skinned peoples, and features Aryan-looking heroes, which they consider good things; but it also deprives ancient (human) Aryans of the accomplishments credited to them so lavishly in Atlantis and other theories.
Consider the case of Patrick Chouinard, a prolific writer who operates the alt-history sites RenegadeTribune.com and ancientaryans.com. (The latter site’s symbol, the Norse rune, was also the logo of the Nazi Ahnenerbe.) Like the Nazis, the sites are dedicated to recapturing a lost, pure Aryan civilization — one respectful of, but not dependent on alien life. In September, Chouinard cast a critical eye on the upcoming tenth season of the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, in an article titled “Are Ancient Aliens Theorists Selling Our People Short?”
Chouinard believes they are. He cites an old episode of the H2’s In Search of Aliens in which the hosts, Giorgio Tsoukalos and David Childress (see above), explore the alleged mystery of some “elongated skulls” discovered in Peru. Chouinard scoffs at the hosts’ conclusion that the skulls belonged to aliens. Rather, he argued, reconstructions “show a very Nordic facial structure with [a] huge cranium.” This could be proof, furthermore, of “a separate branch of the White race the went along its own evolutionary path over 5,000 years ago.”
And who, you might wonder, does Chouinard believe is behind the Ancient Alien Theory that is “selling his people short”?
“The Jews,” writes Chouinard, “are using … the ancient alien camp to confound our race to the point that we deny our own accomplishments. The White race did not need ancient aliens to build our ancient civilizations, or to found other civilizations in remote corners of the Earth. Our race is capable of so much more.”
In 2018, it is dangerous in alt-ancient history circles to completely discount Ancient Aliens. Chouinard knows this. Rather than risk alienating his readers, he concedes, “It is very possible that visitations from extraterrestrials did happen in ancient times, [but] I will not conclude that the majority of our accomplishments as a race can be attributed to extraterrestrials.”
UFOs & “Refracted” Anti-Semitism
Massive and hopelessly intricate cover-ups. Nefarious alien races with gnomish physical features. Tales of secret Nazi super-technologies. It was always inevitable that the UFO and far right scenes would end up in bed together. UFO culture cast a shadow over everything in the postwar years, and as noted above, the far right has never been a stranger to the supernatural.
In Culture of Conspiracy, the historian Michael Barkun locates the early 1990s as the decade this convergence accelerated. Books like William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horseand journals published by Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn described UFO conspiracies that fit snugly into the New World Order conspiracy template, heavily influencing that decade’s militia movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was reportedly a fan of Cooper’s radio show.)
But the seeds of this union are much deeper in the postwar record. One of the most important early UFO writers in the early 1950s, William Dudley Pelly, was an American occultist and fascist; his most important disciple, George Hunt Williamson, produced Byzantine UFO theories that incorporated anti-Semitic themes. Williamson’s 1958 book, UFOsConfidential, claimed every government on earth was under the control of a handful of (mostly Jewish) “international bankers,” which for some reason the author believed included U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Pelley and Williamson’s successors are not always or even often so blatantly anti-Semitic. But the fingerprints of anti-Semites are visible in the works of influential modern UFO writers like Jim Marrs and Jim Keith. These fingerprints appear in what Barkun calls “refracted racism and anti-Semitism,” in which old tropes are repackaged as an episode of the X-Files. This repackaging often includes not very subtle distinctions between “benevolent” aliens (tall, Aryan-looking) and “malevolent” aliens (short, grotesque, often in league with “international bankers”).
More than anyone else, the British conspiracist David Icke has popularized the Alien version of New World Order conspiracy. The former sportscaster’s elaborate theory is the Sgt. Peppers album-cover of the genre, featuring the Masons, the Vatican, the Illuminati, the House of Windsor — everyone is there. At the center of the theory is an alien race of lizard people from the fifth-dimension. Though Icke has always denied trafficking in anti-Semitism, he has endorsed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion — the famous forgery and foundational text of modern anti-Semitism — choosing to call it “The Illuminati Protocols.”
This is Barkun’s “refraction,” in action, and Icke’s shadow is long indeed, visible across the far right media spectrum.
Hollow Earth, Secret Nazi Labs & the South Pole
Another inevitable development in postwar conspiracy subculture was the rise of a belief in secret Nazi bases underneath Antarctica. The idea of a “hollow” or “inner” earth was a key tenet of nineteenth-century occultism, and in the postwar years it reemerged as a setting for escaped Nazi scientists working in secret technology and weapons labs.
The legend took root during the mid-1970s, nurtured by the Canadian neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, who argued that Nazis invented flying saucers and had taken their breakthrough technology to bases deep under the South Pole.
The Third Reich was interested in a possible base at the South Pole, and a few high-level Nazis did escape to Argentina, whose national territory includes a slice of Antarctica extending to the South Pole. Zundel and his successors have infused these facts with Victorian inner-earth legends, and then marinated them over multiple viewings of the 1968 B-flick, They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Versions of the theory remain popular on neo-Nazi alt-history sites, and in recent years British tabloids like the Mirror and Daily Star have found click-bait gold in spreading them.
The story’s persistence led Colin Summerhayes of Cambridge University’s Polar Research Institute to look into the matter. In a 2006 edition of The Polar Record, Summerhayes presented his heavily footnoted and researched conclusion that secret Nazi bases do not exist, and have never existed, on or below Antarctica.
As exhaustive as it was, it is unlikely Summerhayes’ study had much impact among the theory’s adherents. It was, after all, competing with an ever expanding glut of “hidden history” books, podcasts and websites. One of many such titles to appear that year was SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazi's Incredible Secret Technology, penned by Joseph P. Farrell, a prolific alt-historian and regular on Red Ice Radio.
DUST IN THE WIND Dust surrounding KIC 8462852 (known as Tabby’s star), shown in this artist’s illustration, could explain the star’s odd dips in light. But scientists don’t know where the dust came from.
JPL-CALTECH/NASA
The first observations of Tabby’s star flickering in real time have put the last nails in the “it’s-an-alien-megastructure” coffin.
The star’s most recent winks show that the dimming is from small dust particles surrounding it, a team of more than 200 scientists and amateur astronomers reports in a paper posted at arXiv.org January 3.
The oddball star, officially named KIC 8462852, is best known for its sudden drops in brightness (SN Online: 2/2/16). Astronomers have invoked everything from evaporating comets to an enormous edifice built by intelligent aliens to explain the sporadic winks.
In March 2016, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (for whom the star was nicknamed) and her colleagues began trying to catch light dips in the act using two automatic ground-based telescopes with the Las Cumbres Observatory, a worldwide network of telescopes.
On May 18, 2017, as Tabby’s star started to dim, at least 12 other telescopes rushed to follow up. That event turned out to be the first of four distinct light dips between May and the end of December, when the star moved behind the sun from Earth’s perspective.
Boyajian and colleagues report that the star grew dimmer in blue wavelengths than in red ones. That dimming is best explained by dust particles less than a micrometer in size, Boyajian says. If a large, opaque object — say, an alien megastructure — was blocking the star, then multiple telescopes should see the same level of dimming across many wavelengths of light. An earlier paper reported the same wavelength difference in the star’s dimming spanning several years (SN: 9/30/17, p. 11), but this is the first time it has been seen for the short-term dips.
“This is a very exciting step towards understanding this object,” says Brian Metzger of Columbia University, who was not involved in the new study. “It’s a nail in the coffin of anything where you imagine it’s some sort of solid structure.”
But declaring dust the culprit raises a new mystery. The dust is small enough that the star’s radiation should blow it away, so something must be constantly creating more of it.
“None of the ideas we have at this point are really great at putting all the pieces together,” Boyajian says. “Yeah, it’s dust, but where is it coming from? That’s still up in the air.”
And now … a big bubble theory. Scientists are discussing the possibility that our solar system formed in wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead star.
This simulation shows how bubbles form over the course of 4.7 million years from the intense stellar winds off a massive star. UChicago scientists postulated how our own solar system could have formed in the dense shell of such a bubble.
Image via V. Dwarkadas/ D. Rosenberg/ UChicagoNews.
For decades, astronomers have accepted the theory that our sun and planets – our solar system – formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a spinning cloud of gas and dust. In recent years, they’ve added to that idea a triggering mechanism: a nearby supernova, or exploding star. A nearby supernova might have triggered a gravitational collapse in the cloud of gas and dust, ultimately leading to our sun and its planets. But questions have remained, and now University of Chicago scientists have described a new comprehensive theory, which can explain some of the mysteries. According to their theory, our solar system might have formed in the wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead Wolf-Rayet star.
Wolf-Rayet stars are a type of star – more than 40 to 50 times the size of our own sun – that aren’t supernovae yet, but will likely become supernovae in the future. The new scenario by the UChicago scientists starts with this type of star, which, their statement said:
… burns the hottest of all stars, producing tons of elements which are flung off the surface in an intense stellar wind. As the Wolf-Rayet star sheds its mass, the stellar wind plows through the material that was around it, forming a bubble structure with a dense shell.
Geophysicist Nicolas Dauphas at UChicago is a co-author on the new study. He said:
The shell of such a bubble is a good place to produce stars.
That’s because dust and gas become trapped inside where they can condense into stars, and presumably solar systems like the one in which we live.
These scientists estimate that 1 percent to 16 percent of all sunlike stars could be formed in the bubbles produced by Wolf-Rayet stars.
This setup differs from the supernova hypothesis in order to make sense of two isotopes that occur in strange proportions in the early solar system, compared to the rest of the galaxy. Meteorites left over from the early solar system tell us there was a lot of aluminium-26. In addition, studies, including a 2015 one by Dauphas and a former student, increasingly suggest we had less of the isotope iron-60.
This brings scientists up short, because supernovae produce both isotopes.
Coauthor and astronomer Vikram Dwarkadas explained:
[The production of both elements by supernovae] begs the question of why one was injected into the solar system and the other was not.
That’s why these scientists turned to the idea of Wolf-Rayet stars. They are well-studied stars, known to release lots of aluminium-26, but no iron-60. Dwarkadas said
The idea is that aluminum-26 flung from the Wolf-Rayet star is carried outwards on grains of dust formed around the star. These grains have enough momentum to punch through one side of the shell, where they are mostly destroyed—trapping the aluminum inside the shell.
Eventually, part of the shell collapses inward due to gravity, forming our solar system, these scientists suggest.
As with all new theories, this one will have to undergo scrutiny by other scientists.
Slices of a simulation showing how bubbles around a massive star evolve over the course of millions of years (moving clockwise from top left).
Image via V. Dwarkadas/ D. Rosenberg/ UChicagoNews.
Bottom line: A new theory suggests the possibility that our solar system formed in wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead Wolf-Rayet star.µ
More than five years after it landed on the red planet, NASA’s Curiosity Rover is still cruising around and discovering curious things that have scientists here on Earth scratching their heads. While perusing the latest batch of photos taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), something unusual caught the eye of researcher Barry DiGregorio, author of Mars: The Living Planet and The Microbes of Mars.
It could be a ground-breaking discovery, he told the website Inside Outer Space. “They look remarkably similar to Ordovician trace fossils I have studied and photographed here on Earth,” he said. “If not trace fossils, what other geological explanations will NASA come up with?”
The rover has given us some stunning images of the red planet’s landscape, but tiny formations in a Martian rock may be the biggest find yet.
The stick-like features were first spotted in black-and-white photos takes by the rover. They’re quite unusual, so Curiosity is heading back there to take a closer look. “This site was so interesting that we backtracked to get to where the rover was parked for this plan,” wrote Curiosity team member Christopher Edwards in the January 3 Curiosity mission update.
NASA/JPL
The most likely explanation for the strange images is a natural formation, said Pascal Lee of the Mars Institute. “The Curiosity images really pique our curiosity,” he said. “It’s hard to tell what the wiggly sticks are, and a strictly mineral origin is, of course, the most plausible.”
The tiny tubes could be evidence of bioturbation, which is what occurs when organisms living in sediments leave an imprint on their structure. “A common example of bioturbation is the formation of worm burrows,” Lee explained. “The burrows, once refilled with sediments, fossilized, and then exposed by erosion, can end up looking like wiggly sticks.”
“To claim that we’re seeing bioturbation on Mars — which I did not say — would be an extraordinary claim,” he added.
The structures are very small, about a millimeter in width and five millimeters long. Their angular nature may indicate that they were formed by tiny crystals. Crystal molds, which are often found here on Earth, can form when crystals in rock dissolve. Even a roving laboratory like Curiosity would be hard pressed to make a definitive analysis, noted Ashwin Vasavada, project scientist for Curiousity.
“That’s pretty challenging on Earth to distinguish those two things without being able to put these things into a lab to look for the presence of organics,” he said. “We have a very limited capability overall to understand whether something is biological or not.”
Still, Curiosity does have some tools at its disposal, with Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer analysis planned for the site. The color camera on MAHLI will also be used to collect more detailed images for scientists to study.
“But I have to say, the imagery is really intriguing, and I hope Curiosity spends more time in the area to get to the bottom of this,” Lee said. “This is exciting!”
Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
The Week's Top Space Stories
NASA satellites capture amazing images of the "bomb cyclone" that hit the U.S. East Coast this week, SpaceX delays the launch of the secret Zuma mission, the loss of a $45 million Russian satellite is attributed to a launch site mix-up and a jetstream on Jupiter could give hints at what atmospheres are like on alien planets. Here are this week's top stories at Space.com.
Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC
1. Winter Storm Grayson created brutally cold temperatures
Many people are reeling from a powerful winter storm system that swept the U.S. East Coast on Thursday (Jan. 4). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used Earth-observing satellites to watch the "bomb cyclone," which has produced hurricane-levels winds and heavy snow over several states.
2. Winter storm likely behind delay of mysterious SpaceX mission
A Falcon 9 rocket will launch the secret Zuma mission no earlier than Sunday (Jan. 7), after "extreme weather" apparently delayed the liftoff originally scheduled for Friday (Jan. 5). The new launch window from SpaceX's pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida opens Sunday at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT).
3. Curiosity spots weird features in Martian rocks
The possibility that weird structures in Martian rocks could be fossils was an idea that one researcher entertained while poring over the first set of 2018 images from the Curiosity rover. But the Curiosity team isn't jumping to this conclusion, saying that crystals may have created the features.
Photo Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin
4. New tech could help astronomers spot rocky alien planets
In the 2020s, technology may be able to produce imagery of a rocky exoplanet in the nearby Alpha Centauri star system. The new technique announced on Dec. 15 could also make multi-star systems visible to researchers, too. According to previous work, two-thirds of sun-like stars coexist with at least one other star.µ
A Russian satellite was programmed for an incorrect launch site, and it was this human error in setting coordinates that caused Meteor-M No.2-1 to be lost in November 2017. A high-ranking Russian official announced the $45 million weather satellite was programmed as if it were to launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but actually launched at a site in eastern Russian.
New images reveal surface bubbles on a red giant star in the Crane constellation, showing the star's heat-transfer process for the first time. The star is known as Pi1 Grius, and it is about 350 times the diameter of the sun. The star's large size is attributed to swelling, caused when a sun-like star runs out of hydrogen to burn.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station successfully sequenced microbial DNA, and did so under extreme circumstances. While NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson was collecting the sample and getting ready to perform the never-before-seen procedure with guidance from a microbiologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, reports came in about Hurricane Harvey's approach.
8. Jupiter jetstream physics could apply to alien planets
Jet streams passing over Jupiter's equator have been known to change direction, somewhat like those on Earth and those seen on Saturn. A new study reveals gravity waves could be the reason the jet streams on Jupiter switch their flow, and scientists predict the new data could help pinpoint how atmospheres move across the skies of distant worlds.
Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
9. Heavyweight stars may play big role in cosmic evolution
New findings suggest that the universe might be home to more heavyweight stars than previously thought. Stars up to hundreds of times the mass of the sun are the source of many dramatic cosmic events, like black holes and massive explosions, and if these heavyweight stars are more common, perhaps they also play a bigger role in the universe's evolution than scientists had thought.
10. Asteroid with geological layers created Australian meteorite
Bunburra Rockhole is a meteorite that originated from a parent asteroid so large that it had a core, mantle and crust, according to a new analysis. While the asteroid was not as big as a planet, it should be large enough to at some point have been catalogued, meaning that this big asteroid is unknown or has eroded into a smaller space rock.
China Plans to Grow Plants and Insects on the Dark Side of the Moon
Chris Mahon
Image credit: YouTube
Did you know that profits from Pink Floyd's famous album, Dark Side of the Moon, helped fund Monty Python and the Holy Grail? How about the fact that Paul McCartney was originally supposed to sing on the album? Congrats! You now know more about that album than most people know about the actual dark side of the moon.
Chinese is planning to land a probe on the far side of the moon to see if plants and insects can be grown on the lunar surface.
Creative Commons
Sure, NASA has photographed the far side of the moon in the past, but no one has ever landed on it, much less explored it. That's supposed to change this year if China's ambitious new Chang'e 4 mission is successful.
The mission comes in two parts: the first part will launch in June and put a relay satellite into orbit 60,000 km behind the moon (meant to overcome the long-running difficulty of communication on the far side of the moon), while the second mission will launch a rover and lander to explore the surface. Included in this second launch will be a canister containing vegetables and insects—according to Zhang Yuanxun, who designed it:
"The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis. Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the moon."
Chang'e 3 Chinese lunar mission.
Chang'e 4 will be the first time anyone has ever landed on the far side of the moon. The planned location of the landing will be close to the Von Karman crater, the oldest (and largest) impact feature on the moon. The area around Von Karman also has abnormally high levels of thorium, which could serve as a potential nuclear fuel source in the future.
In 2013, China’s Chang’e 3, deploying the Jade Rabbit rover, makes the first soft landing on the moon since 1976. Chang’e 4 is set for lift-off in 2018.
Photograph: CLEP/CNSA
Chang'e 4, originally scheduled for 2015, is a precursor to China's stated goal of landing a human on the moon in the 2030s, an achievement that falls in line with their recent plans to become the world leader in space exploration. At the heart of those plans is its new generation of Long March-series rockets, which are slated to carry huge payloads and employ reusable components to make space exploration more efficient.
I mean we all know China is going to lead the 21st century, but now they’re just rubbing it in our sad little faces. Who knew a tyrannical one-party government would be able to crack enough eggs with its iron first to make the world’s largest human omelette? Progress heals all wounds, I suppose they’re telling themselves. China is proving itself capable of tackling nearly any engineering challenge at nearly any cost, and now the Middle Kingdom has its eyes cast upward on the icy, black reaches of space. China has several Mars missions planned for the next few years, a space station in orbit (for now), and has just finished constructing the world’s largest radio telescope. Now, Chinese news outlets have just announced that China will further its space program with a plan aimed at colonizing the moon – with insects, at least.
Hey, it’s a start.
The People’s Daily reports that China’s second lunar lander, the Chang’e 4, will land on the moon’s surface with a miniature “eco-base” meant to test the viability of establishing colonies on the moon. According to Zhang Yuanxun, the module’s designer, the pod will contain several symbiotic organisms which could create a stable miniature ecosystem:
The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the Moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis. Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the Moon.
Of course, there are some significant challenges the ecosystem will face, namely temperature control and protection from radiation. If it succeeds, however, the module could lead to tests of larger eco-modules. China’s Chang’e 4 will be sent to the South Pole-Aitken Basin, an 8-mile-deep (13 km) crater which stays in constant shadow. That region is of particular interest to space agencies who hope its abundant water ice could be of use to future colonists.
Chinese astronauts took already silkworms for a “spacewalk” aboard the Tiangong-2 space station last year.
Yeah that’s neat and all, but I’m more interested in what the irradiated silkworms and potatoes might evolve into given a few million years after they’ve been forgotten on the cold, desolate surface of the moon. Is this how life on Earth started? Some abandoned alien science experiment? It certainly sounds a lot cooler than those other guys’ stories. Maybe if they had pamphlets about an ancient alien race’s potatoes and silkworms instead of some dead dude with a funny name and his witnesses, I wouldn’t have to spray them with my hose in the dead of winter to get them to leave.
APDe vijver in Nahualac, met in het midden, onderwater, het schrijn.
Mexicaanse wetenschappers vermoeden dat de Mexicaanse Tetzacualco geconstrueerd werd als ‘miniatuurmodel van het universum.’ De constructie bevindt zich onder water.
Het heiligdom ligt in een vijver aan de rand van de Iztaccihuatl-vulkaan, nabij Mexico-Stad. De constructie behoort tot de archeologische site Nahualac. Sommige Meso-Amerikaanse mythen beschrijven de schepping van de wereld door een krokodil, genaamd Cipactli. Deze dreef op de oerwateren. Uit zijn lichaam werden aarde en lucht geschapen: het mythische begin van het universum.
Mede omdat het heiligdom midden in een vijver ligt, vermoeden archeologen dat het een weergave is van het scheppingsverhaal. Archeoloog Iris Hernández van het Mexicaanse Nationaal Instituut voor Antropologie en Geschiedenis leidde de opgravingen. Zij stelt dat het plaatsen van architectonische elementen in water veel zegt over het Meso-Amerikaanse denken.
APDe archeologische site bij Nahualac.
Hernández vermoedt dat de watertoevoer van de vijver uiterst gecontroleerd gebeurde. Zo konden Meso-Amerikanen een effect creëren waardoor het schrijn leek te drijven.
Nahualac
De opgravingen begonnen in 2016 waarna archeologen snel tekenen van menselijke aanwezigheid aantroffen. Denk daarbij aan keramiek, delen van obsidiaan-messen, steenkool en het mineraal schist, dat mogelijk werd gebruikt bij offers.
De nederzetting Nahualac bestond uit twee delen. Het eerste is het schrijn, dat bestaat uit opeengestapelde stenen. Het twee deel ligt 150 meter verder. Hier vonden archeologen voorwerpen die in verband kunnen worden gebracht met Tlaloc, de god van de regen. Archeologen denken dat de site in zijn geheel in het teken stond van deze god.
Vreemde structuren ontdekt op Mars. Heeft NASA’s Curiosity sporen van leven gevonden?
Zijn er sporenfossielen gevonden op Mars? NASA’s Curiosity heeft op de rode planeet een aantal foto’s gemaakt van vreemde buisvormige structuren.
Barry DiGregorio van het Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology zegt dat ze opvallend veel gelijkenissen vertonen met sporenfossielen uit het Ordovicium die op aarde zijn ontdekt.
Ashwin Vasavada van NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Californië zei dat de structuren zeer klein zijn, waarschijnlijk één tot twee millimeter breed en vijf millimeter lang.
Sluiten niet uit
Ze zien er zo vreemd uit dat wetenschappers Curiosity terugstuurden om ze nader te onderzoeken.
“We sluiten niet uit dat het sporenfossielen zijn,” legde Vasavada uit. “Maar het is ook zeker niet het eerste waar we aan denken.”
Bioturbatie
Geoloog Pascal Lee van het SETI Institute dacht bij het zien van de foto’s gelijk aan bioturbatie, het proces waarbij sediment door organismen door elkaar wordt gewerkt en verplaatst.
Als voorbeeld hiervan noemt Lee gaten die door wormen worden gemaakt in de grond. Die gaten worden gevuld met sediment, fossiliseren en worden blootgesteld aan erosie, waardoor ze eruit komen te zien als buisvormige structuren.
Mysterie
Hoewel hij niet beweert dat de foto’s bewijs zijn voor bioturbatie op Mars, vindt Lee dit alles wel erg intrigerend en hoopt hij dat Curiosity meer tijd in het gebied zal doorbrengen om dit mysterie tot op de bodem uit te zoeken.
Meest mysterieuze ster in Melkweg blijft astronomen beroeren. Verklaart dit haar vreemde gedrag?
Tabby’s Ster of KIC 8462852, de meest tot de verbeelding sprekende ster in onze Melkweg, blijft astronomen beroeren.
Wetenschappers merken voortdurend schommelingen op in haar helderheid en er blijkt tussen de ster en ons af en toe iets groots en donkers te passeren.
Sommigen suggereerden eerder dat er buitenaards leven in het spel is.
Nieuwste ontwikkelingen
Anderen dachten dat de ster een erg afwijkend lichtpatroon vertoonde vanwege een gigantische meteoor die in de omgeving van de ster te vinden is.
Tabetha Boyajian van de Universiteit van Louisiana, naar wie de ster vernoemd is, onderzoekt KIC 8462852 al sinds 2015.
Onlangs publiceerde het team van Boyajian een artikel in het tijdschrift Astrophysical Journal Letters over de nieuwste ontwikkelingen.
Aliens
Sommige van haar collega’s denken dat andere planeten of zelfs activiteiten van aliens de ster aan het zicht onttrekken.
Boyajian: “Volgens de gegevens die afkomstig zijn van de Kepler-telescoop, is de helderheid van de ster door de jaren heen met 22 procent afgenomen.”
“Als een groep planeten het zicht zou belemmeren, dan zouden dat meer dan 50 planeten moeten zijn die allemaal perfect op één lijn staan om de helderheidsdipjes te kunnen verklaren,” voegde ze toe.
Ook UFO’s ziet ze niet als antwoord op het vreemde gedrag van de ster.
Stof
Zelf denkt Boyajian dat stof mogelijk de reden is dat de ster ‘aan- en uitgaat’. “In het heelal is er overal stof, dus astronomen herkennen de structuur ervan,” zei ze.
“Stof verklaart de ongewone activiteiten van de ster het best,” vervolgde ze.
Maar het team blijft met veel vragen zitten, bijvoorbeeld hoe het stof geproduceerd is en waarom het rond de ster hangt.
MENSEN HOREN VREEMDE GELUIDEN BOVEN NOORD- EN ZUID-HOLLAND, NEDERLAND
Nog steeds worden er overal ter wereld vreemde geluiden gehoord waarvoor geen logische verklaring te vinden is.
In Amerika krijgt nu de vorst de schuld van enorme explosies die de huizen op hun grondvesten doen schudden en ook in Nederland hoort men vreemde dingen.
We beginnen met Nederland, waar een lezer en haar collega beiden een vreemd geluid hebben gehoord. De één woont in Rijnsburg en de andere in Katwijk, dus grote kans dat beiden hetzelfde hebben gehoord.
De lezer stuurt (dank!) het volgende bericht:
Afgelopen donderdag 4-1-18 nacht kon moeilijk inslapen, hoorde ineens een enorm indringend zwaar motorgeluid alsof er een turbine boven me hing die stationair draaide op een plek, rond 02:38 uur AM
Bij vreemde geluiden ga ik altijd op mijn balkon kijken of er iets te zien is. De hemel was dicht bewolkt en ik zag dus niets, alleen een hele snelle felle rode flits. Het was een gevoel van een soort druk wat boven me hing en intuïtief leek het mij een heel groot object. Na 3of 5 minuten werd het geluid zwakker ik voelde dat het verder weg ging. Weer naar mijn bed gegaan en heb het geluid horen wegebben, maar het bleef piepen in mijn oren, wat ik wel vaker heb.
s 'Morgens op het lokale nieuws gekeken of iemand anders het ook had gezien, niets dus!
Ik woon in Rijnsburg.
Ik was niet thuis die dag, dus s 'avonds opende ik een mail van een jonge collega die diezelfde donderdagnacht is verstuurd, alleen heb ik dat niet meer gezien, met het volgende bericht over die donderdagnacht!
Mijn collega in Katwijk.
*Ik ben momenteel klaarwakker en er gebeurt me toch iets ontzettend raars! Ik hoorde opeens een heel laag en donker / duister geluid hier vlakbij mijn huis. Het was een hard geluid en echt heel duidelijk hoorbaar, alsof er een groot object met een niet ontzettend grote snelheid door de lucht heen vliegt.
Geen vliegtuig, die zijn hier binnen een minuut overgevlogen en het geluid is iets totaal anders. Een helikopter was het ook zeker niet, het is iets wat ik nog nooit gehoord heb! Nu het geluid minder sterk aanwezig is hoorde ik een soort van hoge trillende frequentie, die frequentie hoor ik nu nog steeds af en toe door de lucht. Ik hoor het geluid nu nog in de verte, samen met de hoge frequentie. Er cirkelt hier iets rond wat ik niet kan definiëren. Er zijn ook steeds windvlagen. HAARP? Iets met het weer beïnvloeden? Heel creepy dit. Heb wat op internet gespeurd en er zijn meer mensen die dit horen.
Naast Rijnsburg en Katwijk, kregen we ook een melding binnen (dank!) van twee dames die een vergelijkbaar geluid hoorden in Amsterdam en "dit best eng" vonden klinken.
In Amerika horen mensen op dit moment heel andersoortige geluiden. Geen diep brommend geluid of trompetgeluiden, maar dat van een enorme explosie, terwijl er niets te zien is.
Zoals dat gebeurde rond vier uur 's middags op Nieuwjaarsdag in het dorpje Pewamo in Michigan, waar volgens Bethanie Kramer een geluid te horen was wat je alleen kunt omschrijven als een explosie en waardoor het hele huis stond te trillen. Zij was uiteraard niet de enige inwoner die het had gehoord en de sociale media stonden dan ook bol van de verhalen.
Aangezien men geen verklaring heeft en het daar momenteel vriest, krijgt de vorst de schuld en wordt het verklaard als een soort ijsbeving. Deze klinken echter in werkelijkheid heel anders dan een explosie die het hele huis doet schudden.
Een dag later, op 2 januari 2018, gebeurde hetzelfde in delen van de staat Georgia. Ook daar meldden bewoners een enorme explosie die de huizen deed trillen en ook daar geen enkel spoor van iets dat dit zou kunnen veroorzaken.
Weer een dag later, op 3 januari 2018, meldden inwoners van de staat Tennessee vergelijkbare explosies en ook daar geen verklaring en dus krijgt ook daar de vorst de schuld.
Ook vorig jaar werden deze mysterieuze "booms" zoals ze worden genoemd, veelvuldig gehoord, voornamelijk in Amerika en Engeland. En dat gebeurde ook in tijden dat het niet vroor. Tot op de dag van vandaag is voor deze 64 "booms" geen verklaring gevonden.
Wij zijn natuurlijk nieuwsgierig of meer mensen iets vreemds hebben gehoord in de nacht van 4 januari 2018 en als laatste hebben we nog een vraag van een lezer die graag wat wil weten en reactie vraagt van onze lezers:
Al een tijdje check ik waar 's ochtends de zon opkomt en waar deze 's avonds ondergaat. Volgens mij moeten deze locaties ongeveer lijnrecht - dus in een hoek van ca. 180 graden - tegenover elkaar liggen. Maar wat schetst mijn verbazing dat deze hoek slechts iets meer dan 90 graden bedraagt. Is hier nu sprake van de beruchte Nibiru 'wobble' waardoor de aardas schommelt?
Mijn verzoek: zouden jullie eens een oproep kunnen plaatsen om lezers bovenstaand fenomeen te laten onderzoeken? Bij voorbaat dank.
UFO'S GEFILMD VANUIT RYANAIR VLIEGTUIG ONDERWEG NAAR EINDHOVEN, NEDERLAND ( VIDEO )
De laatste jaren worden er opvallend veel ufo's waargenomen in de buurt van verkeersvliegtuigen, overal ter wereld.
Zo zijn er nu beelden van een ufo bij een vliegtuig in de buurt van Eindhoven, Liverpool en Paaseiland.
Wie ook de intelligentie is die achter de kleine ronde ufo's, één ding lijkt zeker en dat is dat ze belangstelling hebben voor vliegtuigen. Zo kregen we via een lezer (dank!) de volgende opnames toegestuurd.
Deze zijn gemaakt aan boord van een Ryanair toestel, onderweg van Milaan naar Eindhoven.
Hij schreef het volgende:
01/10/2017 17.33 uur boven Duitsland ( stuur screenshot tijd en lokatie )
Rayanair vlucht van Milaan naar Eindhoven.
Ik schat de afstand rond 400 meter, kleine witte bollen, zag er eerst een toen meerdere, denk 7 stuks, sommige versnelden en verdwenen, andere verdween achter vleugel.
In vliegtuig vlak voor vertrek in Milaan oppeens 4 uur vertraging, vervolgens met 55 minuten vertraging vertrokken, misschien had de vertraging te maken met de ufo dacht ik achteraf.
Beste wensen ook, beeld voor beeld kijken paar bij vleugel en drie samen richting wolk.
Hierna volgen de videobeelden die door de lezer werden opgestuurd en omdat het vaak niet meevalt om de ufo's te spotten, hebben we in bovenstaande plaatjes aangegeven waar te kijken.
Het vliegtuig bevond zich ten tijde van de opname in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, een plaatsje tussen Heidelberg en Kaiserslautern in Duitsland.
De tweede opname van een vliegtuig en ufo is gemaakt rond 17 of 18 december 2017 en het betrof hier een vliegtuig dat vertrok vanaf Paaseiland, verdere gegevens ontbreken. En dan een opname die al wat ouder is, maar nu pas boven water komt en die met recht spectaculair genoemd mag worden. De volgende afbeelding laat zien waar de ufo zich bevindt ten opzichte van het vliegtuig.
De opname schijnt gemaakt te zijn in 2015 en het betreft een vliegtuig dat is vertrokken vanaf Liverpool in Engeland. Als je de volgende bewegende beelden bekijkt, dan zie je rond de 32 seconden dat de ufo met een enorme snelheid plotseling wegvliegt. Een acceleratie die zo groot is dat geen vliegtuig dit ooit zou kunnen.
The Origin of ‘Oumuamua revealed: Mystery object came from the Pleiades
The year 2017 was of great importance as numerous groundbreaking discoveries were made in outer space. One of the highlights of 2017 was the arrival of the first interstellar object, first thought to be a comet, an asteroid, and then an alien spaceship. Discovered by a Hawaiian astronomer, it was quickly named ‘Oumuamua, which means “a messenger from afar arriving first,” reflecting the origin of the mystery object. However, the exact origin of the mystery rock remained a mystery, at least until now.
Astronomers believe they have finally tracked down the origin of the interstellar object.
According to experts, the cigar-shaped asteroid originated from the nearby “Pleiades moving group” of young stars, one of the closest to Earth and best perceived by the naked eye.
Astronomers believe how ‘Oumuamua was most likely expelled from its home star system, and sent out towards interstellar space.
Astronomers already know that the mystery object is composed of ice with a carbon-rich surface and has an extremely unusual orbit, and is traveling at around 26 km/ s, and will soon leave our solar system.
The hyperbolic trajectory of ʻOumuamua through the inner Solar System, with the Sun at the focus, showing its position every 7 days. The planet positions are fixed at the perihelion on September 9, 2017. Shown from a three-quarter perspective, roughly aligned to the plane of ʻOumuamua’s path.
‘Oumuamua was scanned using the Green Bank Telescope by astronomers from the Breakthrough Listen research program for any signs of alien signals, however, of intelligent signals have been identified so far, though further observations are planned, notes an article by the Conversation.
Now, a recent study published at arXiv gives us a glimpse of exactly where ‘Oumuamua may have originated from.
By reconstructing the object’s motion, Fabo Feng, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hertfordshire indicates how ‘Oumuamua most likely originated from the nearby “Pleiades moving group” of young stars, also known as the “Local Association”.
Astronomers believe it was likely ejected from its home solar system and sent out to travel interstellar space.
Based on the trajectory of ‘Oumuamua, this scientist simulated how ‘Oumuamua traveled through the galaxy and compared it to the movements of nearby stars. The conclusion is that the object passed 109 stars at a distance of 16 light years.
Five of these stars corresponded to the Pleiades or Local Association (a group of young stars that probably formed together), at a very slow speed in relation to their movement.
The study notes how it is likely that when Oumuamua was first expelled into outer space, it would have traveled at just enough speed to separate itself from the gravity of its home star, rather than at a much faster speed that would require even more energy.
An artist’s impression of the ‘Oumuamua asteroid, which scientists scanned for signs of intelligent life.
Photograph: ESO/M Kornmesser/PA
This means, according to the new research, that we would expect the object to move relatively slowly at the start of its interstellar travel, so it’s slow encounters with these five stars suggest that it was expelled from one of the groups.
Usually, stars move with an average speed as they form and gradually change velocity when encountering very large cosmic objects, such as massive stars and molecular clouds, and are therefore affected by their gravity.
“Unlike most nearby stars, Oumuamua moves very slowly compared to the average movement of the rest of the galaxy. This suggests that it has only been traveling in interstellar space for a relatively short time and has not had the opportunity to find many massive objects that accelerate it, “the study emphasizes.
As to what the asteroid ejected from initially, this study considers as a plausible scenario that Oumuamua was ejected from a binary star system consisting of two stars orbiting closely together, explains Feng in an article written in The Conversation.
“Objects orbiting one of the stars in a binary system will be strongly affected by the gravity of the other and so can be more easily ejected from the system than if it had just one star.”
Furthermore, Feng indicates how ‘Oumuamua is probably just the tip of the iceberg. And that there are likely more than 46m similar interstellar objects crossing the solar system every year.
Artist’s illustration of planet formation. Credit: NASA / Lynette Cook
One of the highlights of 2017 was the discovery of the first object in our solar system that definitely came from somewhere else. At first we thought it was a comet, then an asteroid, and now the International Astronomical Union has reclassified it as something new entirely, an interstellar object. The Hawaiian astronomers who discovered it aptly named it 'Oumuamua, which means "a messenger from afar arriving first", reflecting that this object is like a scout sent from the past to reach out to us.
Research has already helped us learn a lot about 'Oumuamua's rare cigar-like shape, what it's made of (ice with a carbon-rich surface) and its highly unusual orbit, which will take it out of our solar system at a speed of around 26 km/s. The Breakthrough Listen research program has even investigated whether 'Oumuamua is an alien space ship by scanning the object for life forms with the Green Bank Telescope. No intelligent signals have been identified so far, though further observations are planned.
Now my latest study gives us a glimpse of exactly where 'Oumuamua may have come from. Reconstructing the object's motion, my research suggests it probably came from the nearby "Pleiades moving group" of young stars, also known as the "Local Association". It was likely ejected from its home solar system and sent out to travel interstellar space.
Based on 'Oumuamua's trajectory, I simulated how it has probably travelled through the galaxy and compared this to the motions of nearby stars. I found the object passed 109 stars within a distance of 16 light years. It went by five of these stars from in the Local Association (a group of young stars likely to have formed together), at a very slow speed relative to their movement.
'Oumuamua’s journey.
It's likely that when 'Oumuamua was first ejected into space, it was travelling at just enough speed to break away from the gravity of its planet or star of origin, rather than at a much faster speed that would require even more energy. This means we'd expect the object to move relatively slowly at the start of its interstellar journey, and so its slow encounters with these five stars suggests it was ejected from one of the group.
When was it kicked out of its home?
Stars typically move with an average speed when they are formed and gradually change speed as they encounter very large objects, such as massive stars and molecular clouds and are affected by their gravity. Unlike most nearby stars, 'Oumuamua moves very slowly compared to the average motion of the rest of the galaxy. This suggests it has only been travelling in interstellar space for a relatively short time and hasn't had a chance to encounter many massive objects that would speed it up.
We also have evidence for 'Oumuamua's relatively young age from the colour of its surface. Outside of the protection of a star's magnetic field, objects in space are bombarded with cosmic rays and interstellar dust and gas that gradually alter their surfaces and turn them very red in colour. But 'Oumuamua has a more neutral colour, suggesting it has only been impacted by cosmic rays for, at most, hundreds of million years rather than for the billions of years that our solar system has existed.
Young visitor. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser, CC BY-SA
How was it ejected?
'Oumuamua is extremely elongated and has quite a different shape from other objects in our solar system. It was probably formed by a relatively high-energy process such as a collision, or ejected from a forming star. Most objects in the outer part of a planetary system are made more of ice and most objects in the inner regions are made more of rocks. Since 'Oumuamua is a more even mix of iceand rocks, it's likely it came from the middle part of a solar system, similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that features a mixture of icy and rocky asteroids.
Perhaps the most plausible scenario is that 'Oumuamua was ejected from a closely separated binary star system made of two stars closely orbiting each other. Objects orbiting one of the stars in a binary system will be strongly affected by the gravity of the other and so can be more easily ejected from the system than if it had just one star.
'Oumuamua is probably just the tip of the iceberg. My research suggests there are likely more than 46m similar interstellar objects crossing the solar system every year. Most of them will be too far away for us to see with our current telescopes. But new telescopes and surveys should soon be able to find these interstellar messengers, which may be sending us important information about how stars and planets formed. Studying more objects like 'Oumuamua will enable us to work out how much debris is left over from star formation and how much this adds to the mass of our galaxy.
Another reason to study these interstellar objects is that they could one day threaten to collide with the Earth and cause catastrophic events such as mass extinctions. The more we know, the better prepared we'll be if that day ever comes.
REAL-LIFE X FILES - The final part of Britain’s real-life X Files has been released – but does the Government have something to hide?
Government officials have finally finished the ten-year process of declassifying Britain's real-life X Files, but some think they've been made deliberately hard to access. Former MoD alien expert Nick Pope wonders what's really been going on
EXCLUSIVE
By George Harrison
THE MoD has spent ten years releasing a trickle of declassified files relating to UFO sightings... and now the final three documents have been made public.
Nick Pope, former UFO investigator at the MoD, has suggested that alien enthusiasts won't be too chuffed with this final release
Over the past decade, the files, which have been drip-fed into the public domain to hush any claims of a conspiracy, were ushered out without any fanfare from the Government, with batches steadily and unceremoniously cropping up online.
The final three documents appeared on the National Archives website on January 1, and are all dated from 1986.
But, even after spending the past three decades behind the closed doors of the MoD, they're unlikely to satisfy conspiracy theorists.
SOURCED
Past file releases have included eyewitness accounts of UFO sightings
Unlike many of the releases before it, this final wave of files won't be available online, and the timing of their publication is sure to cause more a stir among the UFO community.
Officials originally decided to circulate the documents to save the hassle of responding to thousands of freedom of information requests about the Government's knowledge of UFOs.
But Nick Pope, who used to run the Ministry of Defence's UFO project, says conspiracy theorists are likely to be "incensed" by the questions thrown up by the final file dump.
Now, believers will want to know why the Government waited ten years to release these files, and why they've been made so hard to get hold of.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
The release of these files prove governments are taking alien life more seriously than we thought... and some reckon they're still hiding something
Why January 1?
One reason why UFO hunters are unlikely to be happy is the precise timing of the release, on New Years Day.
Nick says: "This looks suspiciously as if The National Archives tried to sneak out this release when nobody was looking."
Some will be asking whether this was an attempt to bury the release by shuffling it out on a bank holiday when everyone was in bed.
It's true that January 1 is a common release date for public files, but hardcore UFO hunters will want to know why the MoD has held on to these for so long in the first place.
SOURCED
Previous files include sketches and police reports relating to UFO sightings
Is there a link to the Pentagon's UFO research?
This final wave of files, which caps off a ten-year release programme, was published after the big news broke that the American government was hiding its own X Files.
Nick said: "Coming so soon after the revelations about the Pentagon's UFO program, this will raise suspicion in the UFO community that there's been co-ordination between the US and UK government on this."
Conspiracy theorists may also wonder whether the MoD's UFO reports ever tied in with the Pentagon's £16 million investigation into the existence of UFOs and aliens.
Dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the secret project ran for five years, proving that both US and UK governments take aliens more seriously than we all thought.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
News about the Pentagon's own UFO research project will cause some to question whether the MoD's research is linked
Why aren't they online?
Unlike many of the other X Files, the final three documents haven't been digitised.
That means anyone who wants to read them will have to either visit the National Archives in person or fork out to order a copy of the documents.
While hardcore alien chasers are unlikely to be put off by this, it does make it harder for members of the public to access the declassified files.
Nick has previously been critical of the way the release has been handled, and he says having to pay for the final files is sure to outrage the UFO community.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
The files don't prove that there's 'smoking gun' evidence of alien life, but it does include fascinating details of UFO sightings
He added: "Having worked on the MoD's UFO investigations in the Nineties I'm pleased that these files are finally in the open.
"There's no smoking gun in these files that says UFOs are extraterrestrial, but there are plenty of interesting sighting reports and other related material relating to MoD research on the subject.
"These recent revelations in the UK and the US show that whatever you believe about the UFO mystery, some of us in government took the subject seriously."
Sergey Trushkin, an astronomer at the Special astrophysical Observatory of the RAS, spoke about why scientists are interested in the mysterious fast radiosystemy, the so-called radio signals of the aliens, and explained how Russian telescope RATAN-600 had a unique chance to reveal their essence.
«Given our modest capabilities, we expect that we manage to fix in the best case three to five such outbursts in a year of observations. On the other hand, even if we can find at least one event at the frequencies where we are searching, it will change radically the understanding of the nature of these signals,» said Trushkin, speaking at the annual conference «high energy Astrophysics» in the walls of the IKI in Moscow.
The call of the cosmos
For the first time about the existence of a mysterious flares of radio emission (fast radio burst FRB), open accidentally during observations of radio pulsars using the Parkes telescope (Australia), astronomers began in 2007.
«Why don’t we find these phenomena 50 years ago, when the first radio telescopes? The problem was that our predecessors were not so high-quality radio that exists today. They were discovered with the help of parks upgrade of its detectors, which allowed the pioneers to understand that these interference signals are not born on Earth, and flashes from distant galaxies» — said the scientist.
In subsequent years, failed to find traces of another nine such bursts. The comparison showed that they can have an artificial origin, and even potentially be signals of extraterrestrial civilizations due to the unexplained periodicity in the structure.
Last spring it became clear that the source of one of such FRB-flares were an elliptical galaxy, located six billion light years from the milky Way, and this led the scientists to conclude that such outbursts are born during the merging of neutron stars or other compact objects, turning into a black hole.
This theory suffered a crushing defeat in March 2016. Using the same parks, canadian researchers found that one of the first found flares — burst FRB 121102 is re-originated at the same point in the constellation Auriga, where it was found six years ago.
«Now the number of theories that explain such outbursts, much higher than the number of those phenomena known to science. We are the observers and the experimenters are more interested in opening events and receiving new data, which our colleagues-theorists can use to create their theories,» continues Trushkin.
Two key features of «radio alien», as the scientist, is their high brightness and extremely low duration — allow you to bypass the main drawback of the RATAN-600 — the failure of any continuous monitor one point on the sky.
During observations of FRB Russian telescope will scan the entire night sky, watching his every segment for a very short time. This will allow, despite the modest angle of view RATAN, cover a large enough area of the sky, which is only four times less than the similar indicator for the telescope parks.
«We have long thought, what frequency to choose for these observations, and highlighted the importance 4.7 GHz. All other bursts were detected at frequencies of 1.4 GHz or less, but these observations need a fairly expensive installation for which we simply have no money. High frequency, in turn, reduce the number of channels necessary for the conduction of observations, and allow us to go in the area on which the FRB had never seen,» continues Trushkin.
The last car space train
According to him, these observations are in fact «hobby» for employees of the Observatory — will lead to the Western sector of ring of RATAN-600, previously mothballed, and with the help of four backup detectors, sets of filters and other radio equipment, which was purchased in the pre-crisis years and were not used.
«We were in preliminary talks with the Fund Yuri Milner supporting such initiatives, however, nothing substantial, they have not ended. On the other hand, we need a little money, about 30 thousand dollars to double the number of detectors and significantly increase the probability of detection of new outbreaks» — said the scientist.
As noted by the astronomer Russian scientists will focus their efforts on observations of the portion of the sky where the FRB 121102. Recurrent outbreaks as hope Trushkin and his associates, will increase the chances of RATAN-600 to the detection of at least one such phenomena and will allow us to study it at wavelengths that are inaccessible to other telescopes.
Work updated the RATAN-600 scientists have checked on two sites — one of the brightest pulsars located in our Galaxy, as well as trying to detect FRB 121102. According to Trushkina, in August this year his team «caught» the signal coming from the same point, that this re-surge.
CC BY-SA 3.0 / Pticy uleteli / radio Telescope RATAN-600 in Special astrophysical Observatory RAS,CC BY-SA 3.0 / Pticy uleteli / radio Telescope RATAN-600 in Special astrophysical Observatory of RAS
While there is no assurance that managed to fix FRB-flash, since that time the telescope was not yet fully configured. Therefore, astronomers were unable to determine the distance to the «alien signal» and calculate its exact coordinates.
On the other hand, the other two radio Observatory — telescopes in the United States GBT and WSRT in the Netherlands — re-fixed burst FRB 121102 around the same time, which confirms the hypothesis of Russian scientists.
«These observations of colleagues and our preliminary data suggests that FRB 121102 is not simply a variable and recurring source. He can emit such a pulse kind of queues. In other words, it is able to produce several outbreaks in a single month, and then «silence» for a week, a month or conditional a thousand days,» says Trushkin.
According to him, today the main problem for the RATAN-600 is time. While such observations can only lead to Russian telescope, however, those same frequencies will be available for megatelecom SKA, the construction of which will begin in South Africa next year.
«SKA and the canadian project CHIME is expected the participants will find dozens of similar outbreaks every day. While they have not yet put into operation, we have the opportunity to make a unique contribution to the study of FRB-outbreaks due to the high frequencies at which we work, and somehow compete on the international level,» concludes astronomer.
A mysterious UFO sighting over RAF Cosford could have been investigated in a top-secret Pentagon study, a leading expert has claimed.
The Pentagon could have investigated the UFO sighting over RAF Cosford
In 1993, an MoD police patrol reported a large triangular craft over the Midlands airbase which fired a beam at the ground before speeding off.
It was one of a dozen UFOs reported flying at speed over the skies of Britain at the same time.
Nick Pope, who ran the MoD’s UFO project, believes the ‘high-profile’ event, dubbed the ‘Cosford Incident’, formed part of the AdvancedAviation Threat Identification Program.
The programme, run secretly by the American government, operated between 2007 and 2012, but its existence was only revealed last month in December by US-based journalists.
However it generated a 490-page report consisting of UFO sightings from across the world.
Mr Pope, who wrote a report on the incident at the time, told the Express & Star: “The Cosford Incident was the most high-profile and compelling UFO incident that took place during my time on the MoD’s UFO project in the early Nineties.
“It is probably among the best cases in our entire archive, that goes back decades and includes around 12,000 sightings.
“It is inconceivable to me that this wouldn’t be one of the incidents mentioned in the secret US report. I’m sure the Americans knew all about the Cosford Incident, and maybe conducted some discreet enquiries of their own.”
On March 31 at around 1.15am, MoD officers reported ‘a vast triangular shaped craft flying at about 200ft’. The craft made a low humming noise and fired a beam of light which swept the ground. It left trails of luminous vapour and sped off in a South East direction.
Most eyewitnesses described the craft as having two white lights, but some said there was a third giving an impression the object was triangular.
In his report at the time, Mr Pope said there was a UFO of ‘unknown origin’ operating in the UK air space without showing up on radar.
He said the incident was of ‘considerable defence significance’ and recommended it for further investigation.
Although no new details have come to light, Mr Pope believes the severity of the event would have prompted the American government to carry out its own investigation.
Nick Pope, who ran Britain's UFO project between 1991 and 1994
He added: “Officials connected with the Pentagon’s AATIP project have disclosed that it (the programme) generated a 490-page report detailing UFO sightings from not just the US, but from all around the world.
“If US intelligence found any answers (about the Cosford Incident), it’s not clear whether they told British defence chiefs. I’d left the MoD by the time AATIP was set up, so I don’t know whether the Americans briefed us on their findings.”
UFO websites claimed that the event was a major indicator alien life existed.
But sceptics believed there could have been different causes. The day before the sighting, a Russian radio satellite was jetted into the sky and the debris from its rocket booster fell back down to Earth.
The severity of the Cosford Incident was made even more extra-ordinary because at the same time, dozens of triangular-shaped UFOs were reported moving at speed in the sky across western Britain. They were also reported in other areas of the Midlands on the night. One family from Rugeley even claimed they chased a UFO across the Staffordshire countryside into a field before it disappeared.
The first sighting took place in Somerset the day before at around 8.30pm, said Mr Pope.
Then at 9.30pm in Quantock Hills, Somerset, a police officer with a group of scouts reported seeing aircraft described as ‘looking like two Concordes side by side and joined together’.Mr Pope said: “The reports came in thick and fast and when I arrived at work the following morning I received a steady stream of reports.
“It was soon clear that I had a major UFO event on my hands. One of the most interesting reports came from a member of the public in Rugeley, Staffordshire, who reported a UFO that he estimated as being 200 metres in diameter.
“He and other family members told me how they had chased the object in their car and got extremely close to it, believing it had landed in a nearby field.
“When they got there a few seconds later, there was nothing to be seen.
“Many of the descriptions related to a triangular-shaped craft or of the lights perceived as being on the underside of such a craft.
“Indeed, in an apparent coincidence these sighting occurred three years to the very day after the famous wave of sightings in Belgium that had led to F-16 fighters being scrambled to intercept a UFO being tracked on radar.
Mr Pope, who ran the British government’s UFO project between 1991 and 1994, believes UFO’s exist ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. And he believes some of their origins could be other-worldly, or extraterrestrial.
He recently tweeted: “Existence of UFOs proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, claims former Pentagon UFO investigator. Having run the UK MoD’s #UFO project I agree, but I contend that the true nature of the phenomenon remains unexplained. It’s possible but not proven that some UFOs may be extraterrestrial.”
Fuhr, a retired farmer who lives in Langenburg, Sask was in a cheerful mood when I called him one afternoon in the summer. I was doubtful that he would want to speak to me after having done countless interviews about his experience. But Fuhr was still happy to chat, and even took us outside of Langenburg to the field where he saw five saucer-shaped objects floating above the ground.
I originally heard about Fuhr’s story from retired Leader-Post photographer Don Healy. Healy went out to Fuhr’s farm in 1974 and took pictures of him pointing to the markings the saucers left in the field. Of all the stories Healy had accrued during his more than 40 years at the Leader-Post, this was my favourite. I never got tired of hearing it.
Edwin Fuhr indicates where multiple flying saucers landed on his farm in Langenburg, Saskatchewan in September, 1974.
DON HEALY / REGINA LEADER-POST
I was hooked on The X-Files when I was a kid, and ate up UFO books before you could read about the subject on the Internet. So naturally, I was drawn to Fuhr’s story.
After seeing an interview with Fuhr on YouTube that was done by Russell Klitch, I decided it couldn’t wait any longer. Even though it was a story that had been told before, I wanted to speak to Fuhr myself.
Fuhr is of course only one half of the story. There’s also the RCMP member who investigated his sighting, Ron Morier. Like Fuhr, I was surprised at how willing Morier was to talk about the sighting, about which he has also been interviewed several times.
Morier has also done an incredible job preserving the story by keeping a file of paperwork, photos and newspaper clippings from over the years.
The response I got after doing the story proved that after all these years, Fuhr’s story still draws interest. I got one email from a man from California who was adamant that Fuhr was lying. I got another from a man who attempted to explain the technology behind the UFOs Fuhr saw, which he referred to as “unifying field oscillation.”
I prefer not to tell people whether or not I believe Fuhr. Part of what makes his story so enjoyable is deciding on that for yourself. The uncertainty is what makes it so intriguing. There is no concrete proof of UFOs landing in that field, just the account of a friendly farmer who did not have a reputation for making up stories.
The lack of hard evidence, but compelling account from a likeable person makes Fuhr’s sighting the quintessential UFO story. UFO enthusiasts want to believe him, and skeptics are incensed that Fuhr still won’t concede what he saw.
I guess that old X-Files slogan applies here too: The truth is out there.
Why the dreams of UFO enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s technology
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE VIA THE NEW YORK TIMES
In an undated handout image taken from a video released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object. UFOs have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. Astronomers have their noses pressed against the windows of the unknown, wanting to believe in life elsewhere just like many outer space enthusiasts.
By Dennis Overbye, New York Times News Service
Hey, Mr. Spaceman, Won’t you please take me along? I won’t do anything wrong. Hey, Mr. Spaceman, Won’t you please take me along for a ride?
So sang the Byrds in 1966, after strange radio bursts from distant galaxies called quasars had excited people about the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.
I recalled those words recently when reading the account of a pair of Navy pilots who were outmaneuvered and outrun by a UFO off the coast of San Diego in 2004. Cmdr. David Fravor said he had no idea what he had seen.
“But,” he added, “I want to fly one.”
His story was part of a bundle of material released recently about a supersecret $22 million Pentagon project called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, aimed at investigating UFOs. The project was officially killed in 2012, but now it’s being resurrected as a nonprofit organization.
Disgruntled that the government wasn’t taking the possibility of alien visitors seriously, a group of former defense officials, aerospace engineers and other space fans have set up their own group, To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science. One of its founders is Tom DeLonge, a former punk musician, record producer and entrepreneur, who is also head of the group’s entertainment division.
For a minimum of $200, you can join and help finance their research into how UFOs do whatever it is they do, as well as telepathy and “a point-to-point transportation craft that will erase the current travel limits of distance and time” by using a drive that “alters the space-time metric” — that is, a warp drive going faster than the speed of light, Einstein’s old cosmic speed limit.
“We believe there are transformative discoveries within our reach that will revolutionize the human experience, but they can only be accomplished through the unrestricted support of breakthrough research, discovery and innovation,” says the group’s website.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for progress on telepathy or warp drive, but I agree with at least one thing that one official with the group said. That was Steve Justice, a former engineer at Lockheed Martin’s famous Skunk Works, where advanced aircraft like the SR-71 high-altitude superfast spy plane were designed.
“How dare we think that the physics we have today is all that there is,” he said in an interview published recently in HuffPost.
I could hardly agree more, having spent my professional life in the company of physicists and astronomers trying to poke out of the cocoon of present knowledge into the unknown, to overturn Einstein and what passes for contemporary science. Lately, they haven’t gotten anywhere.
The last time physicists had to deal with faster-than-light travel was six years ago, when a group of Italy-based physicists announced that they had seen the subatomic particles known as neutrinos going faster than light. It turned out they had wired up their equipment wrong.
So far Einstein is still the champ. But surely there is so much more to learn. A lot of surprises lie ahead, but many of the most popular ideas on how to transcend Einstein and his peers are on the verge of being ruled out. Transforming science is harder than it looks.
While there is a lot we don’t know, there is also a lot we do know. We know how to turn on our computers and let gadgets in our pocket navigate the world. We know that when physical objects zig and zag through a medium like air, as UFOs are said to do, they produce turbulence and shock waves. NASA engineers predicted to the minute when the Cassini spacecraft would dwindle to a wisp of smoke in Saturn’s atmosphere last fall.
In moments like this, I take comfort in what the great Russian physicist and cosmologist Yakov Zeldovich, one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, once told me. “What science has already taken, it will not give back,” he said.
Scientists are not the killjoys in all this.
In the astronomical world, the border between science fact and science fiction can be very permeable, perhaps because many scientists grew up reading science fiction. And astronomers forever have their noses pressed up against the window of the unknown. They want to believe more than anybody, and I count myself among them.
But they are also trained to look at nature with ruthless rigor and skepticism. For astronomers, the biggest problem with E.T. is not the occasional claim of a mysterious light in the sky, but the fact that we are not constantly overwhelmed with them.
Half a century ago, the legendary physicist Enrico Fermi concluded from a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation that even without warp drive, a single civilization could visit and colonize all the planets in the galaxy in a fraction of the 10-billion-year age of the Milky Way.
“Where are they?” he asked.
Proponents of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, have been debating ever since. One answer I like is the “zoo hypothesis,” according to which we have been placed off-limits, a cosmic wildlife refuge.
Another answer came from Jill Tarter, formerly the director of research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. “We haven’t looked hard enough,” she said when I asked her recently.
If there was an iPhone sitting under a rock on the moon or Mars, for example, we would not have found it yet. Our own latest ideas for interstellar exploration involve launching probes the size of postage stamps to Alpha Centauri.
In the next generation, they might be the size of mosquitoes. By contrast, the dreams of some UFO enthusiasts are stuck in 1950s technology.
Still, we keep trying.
In the fall, when a strange object — an interstellar asteroid now named Oumuamua — was found cruising through the solar system, astronomers’ thoughts raced to the Arthur C. Clarke novel “Rendezvous With Rama,” in which the object was an alien spaceship. Two groups have been monitoring Oumuamua for alien radio signals, so far to no avail.
Meanwhile, some astronomers have speculated that the erratic dimming of a star known as “Boyajian’s star” or “Tabby’s star,” after the astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, could be caused by some gigantic construction project orbiting the star. That has not worked out, but none of the other explanations — dust or a fleet of comets — have, either.
A pair of Harvard astronomers suggested in the spring that mysterious sporadic flashes of energy known as fast radio bursts coming from far, far away are alien transmitters powering interstellar spacecraft carrying light sails. “Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence,” astronomer Avi Loeb said in a news release from Harvard. “Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”
UFO investigations are nothing new. The most famous was the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which ran from 1952 to 1970 and examined more than 12,000 sightings.
Most UFO sightings turn out to be swamp gas and other atmospheric anomalies, Venus, weird reflections or just plain hoaxes. But there is a stubborn residue, a few percent that resist easy explication, including Fravor’s story. But that’s a far cry from proving they are alien or interstellar.
I don’t know what to think about these stories, often told by sober, respected and professional observers — police officers, pilots, military officials — in indelible detail. I always wish I could have been there to see it for myself.
Then I wonder how much good it would do to see it anyway.
Recently I ran into my friend Mark Mitton, a professional magician, in a restaurant. He came over to the table and started doing tricks. At one point he fanned the card deck, asked my daughter to pick one, and then asked her to shuffle the deck, which she did expertly.
Mitton grabbed the deck and sprayed the cards in the air. There was my daughter’s card stuck to a mirror about 5 feet away. How did it get there? Not by any new physics. Seeing didn’t really help.
As modern psychology and neuroscience have established, the senses are an unreliable portal to reality, whatever that is.
Something might be happening, but we don’t know what it is. E.T., if you’re reading this, I’m still waiting to take my ride.
Anyone driving across a barren interstate freeway at night has likely looked up into the sky and wondered about the possibility of witnessing the unexpected. For people who have held beliefs in extra-terrestrials or alien craft, the entire history of the UFO phenomenon is an obsession that goes beyond mere fascination.
Books, movies, and television help alien seekers conceptualize what an encounter could potentially look like. Perhaps no show has flown as close to the sun with depicting real-life accounts of the UFO phenomenon than The X-Files, the seminal sci-fi series from Fox and Chris Carter.
When Carter’s series made its return to Fox for a revival in 2016, it honed in on a new extra-terrestrial threat for the digital age. Ever since they successfully blurred the line between fiction and real world events when the pilot debuted in 1993, The X-Files has depicted triangle-shaped crafts, or disc shaped crafts of various sizes, or even more recently in the new episodes, ARV’s - Alien Reproduction Vehicle’s. But the series drew from real world belief in the phenomenon, as well as the belief in global conspiracies.
The Basis for The X-Files
Chris Carter’s pre-pilot research revealed something startling. He read a Roper Organization survey stated that three percent of the U.S. population believes they have been abducted by aliens. When Carter would later direct the “Duane Barry” episode, a fill-in crew member revealed his brother-in-law believed he had been abducted. Carter’s persistent mantra in the early years was that the show had to be “scientifically plausible.” This meant that a lot of the research was pulled from real UFOlogy archives.
One key plot element in the series has been the Roswell incident, which the Deep Throat character first mentioned in season one’s final episode “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” when he comments that “Roswell was a smokescreen.” It was a comment that would be mirrored by the old man in “My Struggle I” from the new event series.
The Roswell incident from 1947 in New Mexico has remained the holy-grail source for the subject, touching on most of people’s concerns. As The X-Files heavily played up in the first episode of season 10, “My Struggle,” they showed the military retrieving wreckage from an unidentified craft, and using intimidation, misdirection, deniability, or direct threats to hide from the public secret military technology, or the existence of extra-terrestrials. What is known about the incident is that an event took place in July of 1947. The public might not have known about it had it not been for a military press release on Tuesday, July 8th that confirmed a disc-shaped object that “landed” on a Ranch, just outside of Roswell Army Air Field.
"Are They Really A Hoax?"
The Roswell story caused a sensation for hours in the press before a second story was released that the wreckage of a weather balloon was recovered. Major Jesse A. Marcel was the head of 509th Bomb group intelligence office at the time of the incident. But the story of a landing wouldn’t jive with one of the eyewitness accounts of a foreman named William Brazel, who was working for rancher J.B. Foster at the time.
William and his son Vernon claimed to have come across an area strewn with unfamiliar material that was part of some collected wreckage. In a matter of days, Major Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt of the Counter-Intelligence Corps contacted them and took the materials. In spite of residential eye witness accounts by the Wilmonts, the flying saucer story was debunked by the Roswell Dispatch by July 9th. Interest in the story was revived by the late ‘70s, but most of the eyewitnesses had passed away by then.
Many UFO believers regard the incident as a key moment, pointing fingers at segments of the military, whom they say created smokescreens to cover up alien technology, or secret military aircrafts. Original witnesses had offered conflicting stories; some had described a crashed disc, with two hundred yards in diameter that formed a long, thin strip some three quarters of a mile long, between two hundred to three hundred feet wide, and at one end was a deep gouge in the ground, ten feet wide, and five hundred feet long. That account would have indicated a significant amount of debris.
Some of the wreckage recovered had “I-beams” which Marcel’s son described as having hieroglyphic-type characters. These first accounts would describe something fairly mundane, and likely a crashed experimental craft in development near Roswell Army Air Field, or a shot down foreign craft.
The mythology of Roswell became evident here. There were no initial reports of an intact craft or alien bodies recovered. In 1974, TV researcher Robert Carr put out comments about a craft, and frozen alien bodies being held in Wright-Patterson AFB, related to a crash in 1948 that was later debunked.
Despite the falsehood, it triggered interest in the UFO research community, and the Roswell case started to be taken seriously. Other figures have elaborated the story with greater claims, such as Frank J. Kaufman, Glenn Dennis, Jim Ragsdale, “Pappy” Henderson, Mr. Rowe, and Major Edwin Easley. Several figures even claiming there were two crash sites, which has only complicated the narrative about what was found.
Some theories suggest that a Japanese Balloon bomb from World War II was recovered, or a V-2 rocket that veered off course, as part of the MOGUL project, a project developed with sensitive instruments and high altitude balloons to monitor soviet nuclear test activity.
Roswell’s Rumble is Chris Carter’s Treasure
What The X-Files did do well was add fragments from the known history to create an unsettling agenda in the series’ mythology. Carter and Co. borrowed much of the tone of the 1960s ABC sci-fi series The Invaders, which starred Roy Thinnes, a future X-Files acting alumnus who played the character of Jeremiah Smith.
In The Invaders, Thinnes played David Vincent, a man who witnesses a flying saucer land with alien beings intent on taking over the Earth. Over the course of the series, Vincent manages to gather a small circle of people who believe him, and eventually the invaders change their plans.
The series had an obvious parallel to the plight of the X-Files iconic villain. “We had a perfect conspiracy with an alien race,” The Cigarette Smoking Man ominously intoned in The X-Files season six episode, "One Son"; “Aliens who were coming to reclaim the planet and destroy all human life. Our job was to secretly prepare the way for their invasion. To create for them a race of human-alien hybrids. They were good plans, right plans. Kept secret for over fifty years, ever since the crash at Roswell.”
Some of the events in the series that speak of a clandestine meeting between the Colonists and the Syndicate in 1973 revealed in “One Son” mirror a rumored alleged clandestine meeting in February 1954 at Muroc, now Edwards, air force base, with on-going contact between Extra-Terrestrials and eminent people, including Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Which has also lead to the argument with some UFOologists that recovered technology from Roswell was “reversed-engineered,” and lead to developments like the current laser, transistors, microchips, Velcro, and microwave ovens. It has also been argued that such "reverse-engineering" gave the United States leverage with such contact. Deep Throat certainly suggested the Military use of “reverse-engineering” in season one’s second episode.
In The X-Files season five episode “Redux,” Michael Kritschgau offered up an counter explanation regarding Roswell as a cover, a red herring for other agendas.
“The Military saw a good thing in ’47 when the Roswell story broke. The more we denied it, the more people believed it was true. Aliens had landed – a made-to-order cover story for generals looking to develop the national war chest.”
Kritschgau further noted that such official investigations as Grudge, Twinkle, Project Blue Book, and Majestic 12 fed into the belief in UFOs, Kritschgau also noted that the first supersonic flight was in 1947, after which, every experimental flight was considered a U.F.O. All of these points are part of the historical lore.
The new X-Files episode, “My Struggle” depicted a version of the Roswell Crash, while also citing several other events, including the Kenneth Arnoldsightings from June 24, 1947, near Mount Rainier, Washington.Other events noted were the Maury Island sighing from June 21, 1947 near Tacoma, Washington, as well as the 1952 UFO flap over Washington D.C.
The Arnold sighting is notable. A pilot was commanding his own light aircraft to Pendleton Oregon from a job at Chehalis Air Service, Washington State, when he found himself near a location where an aircraft had vanished. At an altitude of 9,200 feet (2,760 m), he saw a bright flash, which he described as a “screwy formation… a chain of nine peculiar-looking aircraft” flying north to south at approximately 9,000 feet (2,790 m) elevation and going in a definite direction at an angle of 170 degrees.
The objects approached Mount Rainier at a very high speed, some of them changing or dipping direction. He realized they were moving much too fast to be a flock of birds. Upon landing in Yakima, Arnold described what he had witnessed to his fellow pilots. He would later describe them as half-moon-shaped oval in front and convex in the rear. At first, the news of his sighting was treated as a hoax, but Arnold’s impeccable record and integrity prompted people to take him more seriously. Arnold had assumed it was some sort of secret weapon or Soviet aircraft invading US airspace, an idea that was reinforced in private by a former USAF officer, that it was some rocket-powered jet, skeptics have suggested he witnessed a flock of pelicans, but this ignores the little known fact that Arnold had another sighting in the same area five days later at La Grande Airfield, Oregon.
Another key sighting that was visually referenced in the “My Struggle” teaser was the Maury Island incident. Harold A. Dahl, a harbor patrolman at Tacoma, was on his boat with his fifteen-year-old son, his dog, and two crewman on the 21st at around 2 p.m. when they saw five doughnut-shaped objects with rows of portholes circling around a sixth object. They estimated it was about 2,000 feet (600 m) above the water at the Puget Sound. They estimated that the objects were about 100 feet wide with a 25-foot hole in the middle.
While landing on the beach of Maury Island, Dahl took several photographs. One of the ships appeared to be trying to repair the other ship. There was a thunderous explosion, and the entire object emitted dark, almost molten, rock-like material and sheets of an extremely light metallic substance. Being directly under the shower, Dahl’s dog was killed, his son’s arm was injured, and the boat was damaged. After the UFOs headed out to sea, Dahl tried to get help via his radio, but it was dead. Dahl and others collected sample evidence and took it back to Tacoma to his boss, Fred Crissman. Soon, Kenneth Arnold was investigating the incident, and within days had his own encounter.
Lastly, there was the incident in Washington from 1952. As the nuclear age developed through the ‘50s, the ratio of UFO activity seemed to increase. In June of 1952, there were reports of UFOs over the skies of the east coast of the United States. Starting in Quantico, Virginia, there were various accounts of witnesses from Pan American Airline and National Airline crews spotting crafts through July, seen on radar at the Air Route Traffic Control. At Washington’s National Airport, the sightings near the capital reached such a degree that B-52s and F-94s were dispatched to intercept but to no avail.
These cases would evolve and become more complicated, and many themes were cited and explored on The X-Files. UFO abductions, the alien-human hybrid hypothesis as first cited in “The Erlenmeyer Flask,” UFO cults cited in episodes like “Red Museum,” or Ancient Astronaut Theory first cited in “Biogenesis,” or animal experimentation as cited in “Fearful Symmetry.”
Such real life incidents fed into the story arc’s of The X-Files, and often acted as a starting off point for the writers imagination. What is also to be noted is the point that writers would attend conventions about the UFO phenomenon in the early years, which would lead to the invention of characters like The Lone Gunmen, or other UFO investigators, there’s even accounts of the series writers enjoying cooperation from some government agencies. This cross pollination helped to shape the science and speculation that detailed the series.
Chris Carter and The X-Files took subjects that had been discussed in whispers and brought them into the mainstream, hence the popularity of Ancient Aliens for the History channel, or NASA’s Unexplained Files for the Discovery channel. Indeed, The truth is often stranger than fiction.
UFO believers got one thing right. Here's what they get wrong.
The government did have a secret program to investigate odd aerial phenomena, but that doesn't mean UFOs are alien spacecraft.
by Seth Shostak
Fanciful illustration of alien spacecraft.
Chris Clor / Getty Images/Blend Images
The past few weeks have been good for UFO believers. For decades they’ve clamored for “disclosure” — an admission by the government that it knows of galactic gatecrashers, and that aliens are irrefutably here. This always struck me as a classic argument from ignorance: We lack good evidence to prove our case because it’s been hidden.
That wouldn’t work in the courts or in science, but hey, it kind of sounds good.
Well, it turns out something was hidden. In 2007 Senator Harry Reid initiated a secret Pentagon program to investigate strange aerial phenomena. It ran for five years and cost $22 million. Finally, the skeptics — those who doubt that we’re hosting extraterrestrial visitors — had been shown the error of their disbelieving ways.
Except that the Pentagon study seems to have found no good evidence for visitors. Yes, there was an intriguing military video purportedly showing a cluster of alien craft. But when I watched it, I noticed that the cluster was always in the center of the field of view — which suggests that these “craft” were actually caused by the instruments aboard the plane rather than something in the airspace in front of it. Experts will undoubtedly weigh in.
What would be good evidence of alien presence? Nearly every day I receive an email or phone call from someone who claims to have seen “something very important” (which I’ve learned from experience is code for “UFO”). They want to chat.
So what do I do? First off, I generally dismiss witness testimony, or, put another way, stories. It’s not that I think people are lying. But if someone tells you he saw a ghost at the mall, you’ll have a hard time doing much with that information unless ectoplasm hangs out there on a regular basis.
Witness testimony isn’t terribly reliable in criminal court cases. It’s even less useful for science.
So I ask about physical or photographic evidence. There never seems to be any of the former, but often there is imagery. Some folks won’t send it, apparently afraid that I’ll sell their pix and deprive them of a Nobel Prize or a photo royalty. The photos I do see tend to show obvious optical effects — often bright lights caused by internal reflections in the lens or color fringes resulting from the workings of the camera’s chip. Other photos show diffraction patterns caused by “hunting” of the camera’s autofocus system. Many people interpret these patterns as spacecraft markings.
A lot of the images are shot at night, making them particularly hard to interpret. Perhaps daylight is too dangerous for aliens, because then it might be possible to see detail in photos taken of them. I wonder if, when the sun is shining, they hang out underground like bats.
I’m also wary of anthropomorphic touches — for example, when someone says, “They seemed friendly and just want to establish contact” or “They’re buzzing our missile silos.” The latter is particularly goofy. Any aliens who come from the stars are way ahead of us. If you could visit America 150 years ago, would you spend time inspecting the Union Army’s cannon-making factory at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Arsenal?
Hoaxes — and of course there are some — don’t seem to be common. The people who contact me all sound pretty sincere. But the one UFO claim that has zero worth for me is: “I know what I saw.” After all, if that’s what someone asserts, there’s no room for discussion.
More than anything, I ask myself if the extraterrestrial explanation is compelling — or merely possible. Is the evidence proof-positive or only puzzling? The latter isn’t good enough.
Personally, I’m mystified by the stage illusions of David Copperfield. Did he really walk through that giant fan, or is that only a possibility? Just because I don’t know what really happened is hardly reason to conclude that he can saunter through whirling metal blades without chopped Copperfield flying into the audience.
The Pentagon study is certainly interesting, but not because it proves alien visitation. Of course, you can be sure that the “disclosure” folks will soon be claiming that UFO evidence is still being covered up. Conspiracy theories never end.
In the era of Google Earth, when every square yard of the continents has been photographed and put online, it’s hardly surprising that we have an unsatisfied craving to explore the unknown, to do what Columbus, Magellan, Cook, and others did a half-millennium ago.
Of course, in the 21st Century, a sailing vessel may no longer satisfy that need. A sailing saucer just might.
"Strange Signals Have Been Detected" --China Aims to Be First to Discover an Alien Technological Civilization (A 2017 Most Viewed)
"We don't know when earthlings will discover ET. It could be 1,000 years from now, or in our lifetimes. It could be next year, when FAST gets going on the sky surveys," said Dan Werthimer, chief scientist for the SETI Research Center at University of California, Berkeley.
However, with no clues of extraterrestrial life over the past five decades, questions are constantly asked as whether the search methods are appropriate. "Some strange signals have been found, but it's hard to confirm their origins, because these signals do not repeat," says Li Di, chief scientist of China's new FAST Radio telescope. "We look for not only television signals, but also atomic bomb signals. We'll give full play to our imaginations when processing the signals," Li says. "It's a complete exploration, as we don't know what an alien is like."
With a dish the size of 30 football fields, China's new FAST radio telescope, which measures 500 meters in diameter, dwarfs Puerto Rico's 300-meter Arecibo Observatory. Having the world's largest and most powerful new radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), "We can receive weaker and more distant radio messages," said Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, "It will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe," he added underscoring the China's race to be the first nation to discover the existence of an advanced alien civilization.
The dish will have a perimeter of about 1.6 kilometers, and there are no towns within five kilometers, giving it ideal surroundings to listen for signals from space. Scientists have depicted it as a super-sensitive "ear", capable of spotting very weak messages - if there are any - from "cousins" of human beings.
The telescope, nicknamed Tianyan, or the Eye of Heaven, can accurately image twice as much the sky as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which had previously been the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, with double sensitivity and five to 10 times the surveying speed.
Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, an organization promoting messaging outer space in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, noted that astronomers worldwide will be invited to use the facility through a competitive review of observing proposals.
"By opening FAST to use by the broader international community, China is demonstrating its commitment to fostering astronomy as a global scientific enterprise," he told Xinhua, saying it may lead to "discoveries beyond our wildest imagination."
As for FAST's scientific missions, Vakoch said it will be used to look for the signatures of complex organic molecules in interstellar space, which will show how widely the basic building blocks of life are distributed throughout the cosmos.
"For over a half century, astronomers have been using radio telescopes to answer the haunting question, 'Are we alone?' But astronomers face a daunting challenge: the signals they seek are so weak that an incredibly sensitive telescope is needed to detect them," he said.
"FAST's innovative design and huge collecting area give it unsurpassed speed and sensitivity, making it vital to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the coming decades," said Vakoch. "We can expect China to become a world leader in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence because of its demonstrated commitment in building FAST."
However, FAST will not initially be outfitted with the signal processing capabilities to search for aliens, he said. This technology will be added at a later stage, and when that happens, FAST will be able to scan the heavens for signals that "can't be created by nature, but only by advanced civilizations," Vakoch said.
Sometimes, radio telescopes are "confused" by signals from astronomical objects. For example, astronomers once mistook signals from a pulsar for extraterrestrial signs, because a pulsar can also give out very stable periodical signals.
"It is highly possible that life on other planets is entirely different from that on Earth, and it might not be carbon-based," says Jin Hairong, deputy curator of Beijing Planetarium.
Liu Cixin, a Chinese science fiction writer and winner of the Hugo Award for his novel The Three Body Problem (check out the fascinating video trailer below), points out the current method assumes that aliens also communicate in radio waves. "But if it's a truly advanced civilization, it is possible to use other more advanced forms of communication, such as gravitational waves."
But Mao Shude with the National Astronomical Observatories of China and professor of astrophysics at the Jodrell Bank Observatory believes many methods deserve a try: "Who knows what they are and how they think? "When we study the origin of life, we risk going down a blind alley if we only have one sample from Earth," Mao says. "If we could find more samples in the universe, we could look at the puzzle more comprehensively and solve it more easily."
Shude gives an example in astronomy to explain the limitations of a single sample. "When scientists started to look for planets around Sun-like stars, they thought it must be difficult as their period might be as long as a year. However, the first such planet discovered outside our solar system takes only four days to orbit its host star - much faster than astronomers expected. At that time, some people doubted it, showing how the example of our solar system narrowed their thinking."
"If we really discover extraterrestrial life, I'd like to know how life spreads in the universe. Is it distributed uniformly in space, or clustered?" Mao wonders.
However, the idea communicating with aliens comes with concerns.
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has warned that communicating with aliens could be a threat to Earth: "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin depicted the universe as a jungle with every civilization as a hidden hunter. Those who are exposed will be eliminated.
But Han Song, another leading Chinese science fiction writer, believes humans naturally want to connect, citing the Internet as proof. "I think aliens might think similarly. It is a biological instinct to connect with each other. Everyone wants to prove that they are not alone in the universe. Loneliness is intolerable to humans," he says.
He also points out that the contact will be driven by curiosity and real requirements. "Humans will ultimately go to space to find resources and expand their living area, so it will be hard to avoid aliens. Contact with them, especially those with more advanced intelligence, may help us leap forward in civilization."
Regardless of the theoretical debate, scientists have never wavered in the search. "I think we shall call out. As a matter of fact, we have been yelling for years, and our radios and televisions are broadcasting in space all the time," Mao says, "Aren't you curious what our counterparts would look like?
If they are inferior or equal to us in terms of civilization, we won't be easily destroyed. If they are much more intelligent than us, they wouldn't be so narrow-minded as to compete with us. Some worry they will come to rob us of our natural resources, but they likely have the power to transform the entire globe already. What's the point of eliminating a much lower civilization?"
Mao believes the result will be significant however it turns out. "If we find other life, it will undoubtedly be the most important scientific discovery in our history; if not, it shows that life on Earth is unique and we should respect life and cherish each other.
"No matter the outcome, we shall never stop searching, and I hope to hear more voices and contributions from Chinese scientists."
If you were to encounter humans from 300,000 years ago, you might be struck by how much they look like humans in 2018. Anatomically modern and large-brained, with faces and teeth not dissimilar to our own, these early Homo sapienswent to war, formed relationships, and created tools, just like us. There’s still plenty to learn about our direct evolutionary ancestors, but this year, thanks to the widespread use of genomic sequencing, scientists gave us an unprecedented glimpse into how humans came to be. Here, Inverse lists everything we’ve learned about human evolution in the past year.
While we are the only hominids to walk the Earth today, this year genomic evidence proved that the DNA of some people contains traces of Paleolithic trysts between humans and other Homo species, like the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. A decade ago, scientists would have been extremely skeptical. University of Buffalo evolutionary anthropologist Omer Gokcumen, Ph.D. tells Inverse that it’s only in the past five years that scientists have been able to confirm that early Sapiens didn’t only hang out with other Sapiens.
“You can think of the world 100,000 years ago like a Lord of the Rings world, where different, pretty smart human-like creatures are roaming,” Gokcumen says, explaining that this situation is called interaction dynamism. “One of them would be our ancestors in Africa, but there would also be other species like Neanderthals, that we could tell were different — but not different enough to not interbreed and produce fertile offspring.”
This year, academics including Gokcumen published an extensive amount of research filling in the details of this Tolkien-esque world, furthering our understanding of how our minds, bodies, and behavior came to be. Learning what it means to be human, it seems, means learning about really old humans.
1. Ancient Spit Reveals Mysterious Human ‘Ghost’ Ancestor
In July, Gokcumen and a team of scientists announced in Molecular Biology and Evolution that a protein in the saliva of people from sub-Saharan Africa indicates that they carry genetic evidence of an unknown hominin ancestor. The saliva protein became a point of interest when University of Buffalo oral biologist and co-author Stefan Ruhl, Ph.D. compared the saliva proteins of primates and humans. Typically, these proteins look very similar. That’s why it was startling when they discovered that one protein from the sub-Saharan African population was revealed to be very different in size than the others.
This protein, known as MUC7, is thought to be the result of genetic material left over from mating between Homo sapiens and a ‘ghost’ species as recently as 150,000 years ago. Gokcumen believes this mysterious species was confined to Africa and split from Homo sapiens’ evolutionary path around three million years ago. This study is further proof that we, in Gokcumen’s polite words, “absorbed different populations that lived around us” — mating with other Homo species, many of which are still unidentified.
“Our study adds to this generally more colorful picture of human history, and it’s becoming very clear that it’s not as simple as we previously thought,” says Gokcumen. “It’s become very clear to researchers that even though the majority of our genome can be traced back to particular, Homo sapien ancestral population, there’s observable evidence that other, smaller populations made their way into our modern human gene pool.”
2. Newly Discovered Fossils Pushed Back Our Origins by 100,000 Years
Scientists announced a textbook-changing discovery in June, writing in Nature that they discovered three Homo sapiensfossils that date back to approximately 300,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest Homo sapiens found were 200,000 years old. These fossils were excavated in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, contradicting the popular claim that our species evolved from a “cradle of mankind” in East Africa.
“The dating was a bit, wow!” co-author Jean-Jacques Hublin, Ph.D., said in his interview with Inverse in June. “No one imagined these remains could be that old. In the meantime, the interpretation of the fossil evidence suddenly made much more sense.”
A facial reconstruction of one of the ancient samples found in Morocco.
3. Neanderthal Genes Responsible for Bad Habits and Modern-Day Looks
Research published in October by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology added further detail to what we know about the Neanderthal genes some humans carry around today. In the American Journal of Human Genetics, the team explained that Neanderthal DNA strongly influences the hair and skin color of the one to five percent of European and Asian people who carry this DNA. Neanderthal alleles also shape whether people have lighter and darker skin tones and determine hair color, indicating that ancient hominids had many different hair and skin colors, too.
Drawing from a sample of 112,000 study participants, the scientists additionally determined that there was a significant link between people who carry Neanderthal DNA and those who had experienced “loneliness of isolation, frequency of enthusiasm or disinterest in the last two weeks, and smoking status.”
4. The Remains of One of the Oldest Americans Were Found in Mexico
Human remains found in 2012 in Mexico’s Tulum system of submerged caves were re-analyzed this year, leading scientists to believe the remains are the oldest osteological remains of humans in the Americas. In a paper published in PLOS One in August, the scientists behind the research, led by Heidelberg University paleoecologist Wolfgang Stinnesbeck, Ph.D., explain the bones likely belong to a young man who lived around 13,000 years ago.
Stinnesbeck and his team dated one bone, the pelvis, by measuring the levels of uranium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes within it as well as that within the stalagmite that had grown through it. Calcite layers, which contain oxygen and carbon isotopes, store information about climate and precipitation data, which helps determine an age.
The researchers claim this discovery adds further proof to the theory that humans came to the Americas at least 5,000 years before the Clovis, a prehistoric group of people who have previously been called the first Americans.
5. Neanderthal Brains Grew At a Slower Pace Than Human Brains
In a paper published in Science in September, an international team of scientists reported that they found 13 ancient Neanderthal skeletons in a 49,000-year old cave in northern Spain. To the astonishment of the researchers, one of the specimens, which they named El Sidron, was a nearly complete specimen that belonged to a boy who died when he was almost eight years old.
El Sidron’s teeth and endocranial features suggested that his brain growth wasn’t done by the time of his death, giving away his age. A human brain is essentially grown to its full size by the time a person is six, but El Sidron’s brain was still growing at a period when the brains of his peers had long since stopped. This extended period of brain growth, the study authors hypothesize, suggest Neanderthal children spent more time acquiring cognitive skills than human children.
But perhaps the most marvelous revelation from this study was the fact that, barring brain growth, Neanderthal children were much like human children in terms of physical growth and maturation, reducing the gap between us and our not-so-distant cousins.
Comparison of modern human and Neanderthal skulls.
6. Some of Man’s Earliest Ancestors Were Furry Rat-Like Creatures
If you imagine your ancient human ancestors, you might an envision a bulky, strong caveperson, ready to hunt and provide. But if you look past that ancestor and deeper into their lineage, you’d see a something that looks a lot like a rat.
In November, scientists reported in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica that they excavated two fossilized teeth belonging to this rat-like creature in the rocky cliffs of Dorset, England. The teeth are believed to be 145 million years old, and the scientists claim they are the oldest evidence of this human ancestor ever found. The claim is contested by a different team of scientists, who say theirfinding is the oldest at 160 million years old, but their study’s validity is still being debated.
The nocturnal, placental mammal is thought to be an ancestor of mice, pygmy shrews, blue whales and elephants — putting us humans in good company within the animal kingdom.
7. Human Speech Is Our Evolutionary Advantage Over Monkeys
In a very Planet of the Apes-like turn of events, scientists announced in July that the reason that monkeys can’t talk like humans isn’t because of their vocal anatomy but their neural wiring. In a Science study led by the University of Vienna’s W. Tecumseh Fitch, Ph.D., scientists used x-ray videos to examine the vocal tracts of living macaques while they ate, made facial displays, and vocalized monkey sounds. Analysis revealed that their vocal tracts could “easily produce an adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language,” disproving previous theories that both human anatomy and the human brain give us our specialized ability to speak.
Instead, Fitch argues that the “evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy.” This revelation likely offers a clue to a bigger mystery: Understanding why human language emerged in the first place. Maybe we’ll find that out this year.
APDe vijver in Nahualac, met in het midden, onderwater, het schrijn.
Mexicaanse wetenschappers vermoeden dat de Mexicaanse Tetzacualco geconstrueerd werd als ‘miniatuurmodel van het universum.’ De constructie bevindt zich onder water.
Het heiligdom ligt in een vijver aan de rand van de Iztaccihuatl-vulkaan, nabij Mexico-Stad. De constructie behoort tot de archeologische site Nahualac. Sommige Meso-Amerikaanse mythen beschrijven de schepping van de wereld door een krokodil, genaamd Cipactli. Deze dreef op de oerwateren. Uit zijn lichaam werden aarde en lucht geschapen: het mythische begin van het universum.
Mede omdat het heiligdom midden in een vijver ligt, vermoeden archeologen dat het een weergave is van het scheppingsverhaal. Archeoloog Iris Hernández van het Mexicaanse Nationaal Instituut voor Antropologie en Geschiedenis leidde de opgravingen. Zij stelt dat het plaatsen van architectonische elementen in water veel zegt over het Meso-Amerikaanse denken.
APDe archeologische site bij Nahualac.
Hernández vermoedt dat de watertoevoer van de vijver uiterst gecontroleerd gebeurde. Zo konden Meso-Amerikanen een effect creëren waardoor het schrijn leek te drijven.
Nahualac
De opgravingen begonnen in 2016 waarna archeologen snel tekenen van menselijke aanwezigheid aantroffen. Denk daarbij aan keramiek, delen van obsidiaan-messen, steenkool en het mineraal schist, dat mogelijk werd gebruikt bij offers.
De nederzetting Nahualac bestond uit twee delen. Het eerste is het schrijn, dat bestaat uit opeengestapelde stenen. Het twee deel ligt 150 meter verder. Hier vonden archeologen voorwerpen die in verband kunnen worden gebracht met Tlaloc, de god van de regen. Archeologen denken dat de site in zijn geheel in het teken stond van deze god.
While images sent back from NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover have proven to be delightful fodder for the endless numbers of armchair detectives with YouTube channels looking for evidence of aliens on the Red Planet, NASA itself occasionally does point out curious structures or odd objects its rover comes across. This week NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory wasted no time in adding some mystery to the new year, announcing the discovery of some strange “stick-like figures” the Curiosity Rover came across this week.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted the raw images online.
After collecting images and data about the odd formations, the Curiosity Rover immediately took to Twitter to give an update about its activity and post a picture of the strange objects. NASA scientists aren’t quite speculating yet what the objects might be, but their tweet suggests they are geological in nature:
Meanwhile, back on Mars… I’m checking out these stick-like figures. Each is about a quarter-inch long. Maybe they’re crystals? Or they could be minerals that filled spaces where crystals dissolved away. Stay tuned! Science continues.
Of course, they could be something else entirely that we haven’t yet encountered on Mars. Fossilized Mars bug larvae? Martian coprolite? Doubtful. It’s probably just some dumb rock, one more dumb rock in a long line of dumb rocks found on the dumb Red Planet, itself a big dumb rock. For those of us who have spent most of our lives eagerly awaiting first contact, these little curiosities only add to the bitter realization that the discovery of alien life is likely still a few generations away. For their part, though, NASA is still hopefully that life may be soon found on Mars. NASA and the European Space Agency are sending two more missions to the Martian surface over the next two years designed to look for evidence of long-dead microscopic organisms. More and more evidence of microbial life thriving in harsh environments has been found, leading many astronomers and scientists to speculate that any alien life we discover on our own might be microscopic.
But then again, would we recognize alien life if it happened to take forms not found on Earth?
That’s why I still think these “weird Mars rock” stories should be taken seriously (at least the ones released by space agencies themselves. Sorry, YouTubers). There have already been claims that the Viking landers of the 1970s might have discovered evidence of life on Mars without even realizing it. Who knows what any of these weird-looking dumb rocks might turn out to be after years of analysis or examination by more advanced rovers? Hopefully not Martian coprolites. What a bittersweet, cruelly symbolic discovery that would be.
The Ocean disappears from Ecuador – Natural Phenomenon or Something is going on?
Inhabitants of the locality of Santa Rosa, in the canton Salinas of the province of Santa Elena; and Bahía de Caráquez, in Manabi, all on the Pacific coast of Ecuador, were alarmed at the moment the sea retreated more than 100 meters from the shore, reports Actualidad.RT.
Several photographs of the phenomenon circulated on social networks, which users associated with what happens before a tsunami.
However, the Oceanographic Institute of the Navy (Inocar) ruled out that it is a tsunami. In a statement, they explained that until Friday, January 5, there will be tides of sicigia or aguajes, and it is precisely this that has caused the withdrawal of the sea.
From January 2 to 5, 2018, there has been a maximum water level that also coincides with perihelion (when the Earth is closer to the Sun).
This coincidence, in addition to oceanographic and atmospheric factors that have contributed to a decrease in sea level, made these days in some sectors of the coast a recollection of the sea that is not usual, "reads the statement.
But is it really a phenomenon that is caused as a result of the earth being closer to the sun?
What about all the ocean water that mysteriously vanished from the beaches last year in Brazil, Bahamas, Uruguay, Mexico and what about the water in many lakes and rivers, like the Mississippi, lake Georgia, PA Lake that suddenly disappeared, yet the many sinkholes, cracks and land-slides throughout the country.
Water in the oceans, lakes and rivers just don’t disappear, unless something is happening and we are not getting the truth about this “phenomenon’.
Possible triangle UFO sighting over Nicosia, Cyprus 2-Jan-2018
Here’s one new footage of a possible triangle UFO sighting over Nicosia in Cyprus.
Witness report:
I, my father and my two children ( 7 and 3 years old), at 2nd of january 2018 around 19:30, in Nicosia in Cyprus observed 3 or 4 red lights in a form of triangle stay in the sky, moving up and down , above and under the clouds, flushing, going left and right and app. In 5 minutes dissapeared. It happen on the parking place close to the kids carousel park in Nicosia, all of us saw same things.
Interview with Nick Pope on the Pentagon UFO Program. Jan 2, 2018
Nick Pope comes on to Portal to Ascension to discuss the current UFO disclosure occurring via the Pentagon and Department of Defense in the US. Nick has been asked to comment on this by many main stream news outlets due to his involvement in identifying UFOs for the UK Government. Nick will be presenting at the Extraterrestrial Disclosure Online Summit on 1/20 and 1/21 to give a further in depth analysis.
Le Pentagone a révélé qu’ils ont récupéré des alliages métalliques d’un OVNI qu’ils ne reconnaissent pas. Les matériaux sont censés avoir des propriétés qui sont incroyables et sont actuellement censés être stockés dans des bâtiments à Las Vegas qui ont été modifiés,peu après le stockage des matériaux.
DOD admis à 22 millions de dollars Secret Programme d’enquête sur les ovnis
Le ministère de la Défense a admis qu’il y avait un programme qui avait été gardé secret qui a coûté 22 millions de dollars et ce programme a fonctionné entre 2007 et 2012, et son seul but était de se pencher sur les rapports d’OVNIS et d’enquêter avec discrétion.
Un auteur du New York Times qui a révélé que les matériaux ont des propriétés étonnantes a déclaré que les scientifiques essayaient de découvrir ce qui se cache derrière leurs propriétés.Ralf Blumenthal a poursuivi en disant que le ministère de la Défense n’avait aucune idée de ce que sont les matériaux car c’était un composé qui leur était inconnu.
En 1945 ,il y eu le Crash d’un OVNI à San Antonio, au Nouveau-Mexique :l’enquête compris l’analyse microscopique de matériaux réels pris à partir des débris de l’OVNI.
Le Pentagone a été invité à commenter mais ils (les responsables) ont refusé de commenter. Le New York Times a également déclaré que des chercheurs avaient étudié des personnes qui prétendaient avoir des effets physiques après avoir eu des rencontres rapprochées avec les phénomènes OVNI. Une vidéo qui avait été précédemment classée a été révélée par le ministère de la Défense, et elle a montré les réactions des pilotes de la Navy qui ont été envoyés pour regarder un OVNI car il planait juste au large de la côte de San Diego.
Le film, qui vient juste d’être publié, a montré une rencontre en 2014 entre ce qui était censé être un objet de la taille d’un avion typique et les Super Hornets F / A-18 de la Navy, qui ont décollé du porte-avions Nimitz . Le capitaine de frégate Jim Slaight et le commandant David Fraver participaient à une mission d’entraînement routinière à environ 100 milles au-dessus de l’océan Pacifique et on leur a demandé d’aller voir l’objet. Fraver a dit que l’objet semblait avoir environ 40 pieds de long et qu’ils ne pouvaient pas y voir de rotors, de panaches ou d’ailes. Il a également souligné que l’objet était capable de distancer les F-18 dans lesquels ils se trouvaient et aussi assez grand pour faire le barattage de l’océan, qui était d’environ 50 pieds en dessous.
Blumenthal a dit que même aujourd’hui personne n’a une idée de ce que l’objet a été vu cette nuit-là. Beaucoup de recherches ont été faites pour essayer d’identifier les moyens de propulsion des objets ainsi que leur aérodynamique phénoménale, qui ne représenteraient rien de ce qui a été vu sur Terre dans aucun pays. Les experts ont dit qu’il y a généralement une bonne explication des observations d’OVNIS et qu’elles peuvent être expliquées, et il faut faire attention de ne pas sauter à la conclusion qu’elles sont extraterrestres juste parce qu’il n’y a pas eu d’explication mondaine.
AATIP peut ne pas être complètement fermé vers le bas
Alors que le Pentagone a déclaré que le Programme d’identification avancée des menaces aériennes avait été fermé il y a cinq ans en raison des fonctionnaires du ministère de la Défense déplaçant des fonds vers d’autres priorités, ses partisans disent qu’il est resté en vie sous une certaine forme.
Laura Ochoa, porte-parole du Pentagone, a révélé que l’AATIP a pris fin en 2012 après que d’autres priorités aient été annoncées. Ochoa a été demandé si le Département de la Défense avait continué à se pencher sur les observations d’OVNI suite à la dissolution, elle a dit que le DOD avait pris des menaces potentielles très au sérieux et ils ont pris des mesures si toute information crédible venait à être révélée.
Que savons-nous…
Que savons-nous? Nous savons que le gouvernement ment tout le temps à tout. Nous savons que le pentagone achète des médias et influence autrement les médias. Nous savons que sur le NYT,on ne peut pas faire confiance. Nous savons qu’ils nous ont menti dans la guerre en Irak, au Viet Nam, à la guerre de 1812 et à chaque action en Amérique du Sud et aussi à beaucoup d’autres opérations de faux-drapeaux. Des tas d’actions illicites de la CIA, du FBI, de la DEA, etc.,nous sont connus. Ce même gouvernement a tué JFK, Bobby, King et d’autres. Alors pourquoi devrions-nous faire confiance à cela? Pourquoi ne serait-ce pas une sorte de manipulation? Peut-être pour nous distraire du fait qu’un coup d’État est en train de se produire? Le rasoir d’Occam: Il est beaucoup plus probable que le gouvernement tire nos chaînes et ce qu’ils nous disent n’est pas vrai. Le cinéma et une bonne histoire ne sont pas des preuves. Juste un autre faux drapeau (false flag) très popularisé.
Les Alliages et les technologies extraterrestres récupérées de la zone d’accident d’OVNI et leur utilisation par l’armée
Bien que l’opinion publique américaine ait insisté pour déclassifier les documents d’incident de Roswell, les autorités américaines n’ont pas suivi ces étapes et ont même contourné la loi sur l’obligation de déclassifier les documents après un certain nombre d’années.
Cependant, des informations sur ce qui s’est passé à Roswell sont venues de divers scientifiques qui ont indépendamment enquêté sur l’incident.
L’affaire Roswell s’est déroulée de la même manière en 1986 à Dalnegorsk, URSS.
Le 29 janvier, les habitants de Dalnegorsk ont remarqué une sphère lumineuse qui s’est écrasée sur une colline voisine. L’objet était à une vitesse de 15 km / h et volant chaotique, montant, descendant, volant en zigzag. Après l’effondrement, l’épave a brûlé pendant une heure.
Parce que l’accès à la zone de l’accident était difficile, l’armée est arrivée à l’épave le lendemain.En plus de l’épave, des sphères contenant de l’or, du fer, du magnésium et de l’aluminium ont été récupérées sur les lieux de l’accident.
Métaux extraterrestres et alliages | Quand leur accident a façonné notre histoire
La zone a été évitée par les animaux et les insectes pendant trois ans, le niveau de radioactivité étant élevé.
Périodiquement, il attire l’attention des personnes intéressées, à travers des témoignages ou des documents, sur l’incident de la forêt de Rendlesham dans le Suffolk, à environ 150 kilomètres au nord-est de Londres, considéré comme le plus important événement ovni du Royaume-Uni.
Ici, en 1980, deux bases militaires inaugurales, Bentwaters et Woodbridge, ont été louées à la Force aérienne de l’OTAN et ont accueilli un nombre indéterminé d’ogives nucléaires.
À l’aube du 27 décembre 1980, vers 3 h, une patrouille de sécurité près de la porte est de la RAF Woodbridge a signalé que des lumières étranges avaient atterri dans la forêt voisine de Rendlesham. Croyant qu’un avion s’était écrasé ou avait atterri, une troupe de trois soldats a marché à pied pour enquêter sur ce qui s’était passé.
Au début, ils ont vu des lumières étranges se déplacer à travers les arbres, ainsi qu’une forte lumière provenant d’un objet non identifié.
Puis, comme indiqué, ils y ont vu une forme triangulaire étrange, brillante, apparemment métallique, d’environ deux à trois mètres de large à la base et d’environ deux pieds de haut.
Il y avait une lumière pulsante rouge sur le dessus et un laiton bleu bleu dessous. Lorsque la patrouille s’est approchée de l’objet, elle a manoeuvré à travers les arbres et a disparu.
L’objet a également été trouvé pendant une courte période, environ une heure, près de la porte arrière. Il a réapparu la nuit suivante.
Parallel Universes Could Solve One of the Biggest Mysteries in Physics
IN BRIEF
Black holes have long since presented something of a contradiction considering our current understanding of physics. Now, the many worlds interpretation offers a convincing explanation.
BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS
Black holes are the source of a major quandary when it comes to our understanding of physics; either they can destroy information, which contradicts what we know about quantum mechanics, or they seemingly disregard Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, it’s now thought by some that the many worlds interpretation might help explain the situation.
It suggests that each one of the multiple possible outcomes of a quantum event splinters off into its own discrete world.
Now, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology led by Sean Carroll has suggested that this interpretation can explain away inconsistencies pertaining to black holes. They say that general relativity is upheld within each single possible world, while information is preserved across the entire global wave function, if not among individual branches.
MANY WORLDS
Aidan Chatwin-Davies, a member of Carroll’s team, told Futurism that other scientists have already suggested applying the many worlds theory, also known as Everettian, to the black hole information problem. “Cosmetically, we’re perhaps the first to cleanly label our perspective as Everettian,” he said. “More substantively, we wanted to perform some concrete calculations to mathematize otherwise abstract ideas.”
“Previous attempts considered statements of general relativity and quantum mechanics to be applicable to the same world,” Yasunori Nomura, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley told Futurism. “My approach separates the two – quantum mechanics allows for a quantum state to be a ‘superposition’ of many classical worlds; statements of quantum mechanics apply to the entirety of these many worlds while those of general relativity apply only to each of these worlds.”
This line of thinking is important because it could potentially explain more about the nature of gravity and spacetime. Nomura suggests that these ideas have a broader relevance to how quantum gravity works at a fundamental level, particular in relation to the origins of the universe.
“We know that we need both general relativity and quantum mechanics to understand black holes, and so they are a good starting point for testing out ideas about quantum gravity,” explained Chatwin-Davies. “If we really understood how to describe black holes, then we would be a great deal closer to being able to describe quantum gravity in broad generality.”
By using the many worlds interpretation, scientists and astronomers are finding new ways to approach longstanding questions about black holes. With further study, this research might offer up further information about the very fabric of our universe that could fill in some persistent gaps in our knowledge.
Fourteen years ago in Bremen, Germany, astronomer Seth Shostak gave a lecture that included a wager. “I bet everybody in the audience a cup of Starbucks that we would find E.T. within two dozen years,” he told a new audience in October. You don't have to be a Klaatu-level math whiz to calculate that Shostak has 10 years left before he'd have to shell out for a lot of tall drips. I'm talking about the coffee.
Shostak is senior astronomer at the Center for SETI Research based in Mountain View, Calif. SETI stands for “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” of course, as the millions who have loaned out their home computer time for the SETI@home project know. He mentioned the wager at a session on the current state of the search for any signs of alien intelligence at the World Conference of Science Journalists in the San Francisco Bay Area. The SETI conversation in question took place on the University of California, Berkeley, campus. No protesters or extraterrestrials attended. Probably.
“To have some reasonable chance of success,” Shostak said, “you'd have to look at at least a million star systems.” Which may be possible within the coffee challenge's time parameter, thanks to $100 million from Russian physicist and entrepreneur Yuri Milner in 2015 to establish what is called Breakthrough Listen—an effort to use multiple radio and optical telescopes to survey the million stars closest to us. (It recently came out that in 2015 Milner had invested in a start-up co-owned by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is a senior White House adviser. Perhaps Milner's SETI funding represented his realization that looking for intelligent life in outer space was a better bet.)
Shostak thinks his Bremen audience comes out ahead either way. “Because either [by 2027] a signal has been found and you have something to talk about at lunch—or you get a cup of coffee. You can't lose.”
But what about sending out messages inviting contact with intelligent aliens rather than just listening for incoming missives from faraway smarty-pants or whatever clothing may be appropriate for their anatomy? “I think the risks outweigh the benefits,” said Dan Werthimer, chief scientist at the Berkeley SETI Research Center, which oversees Breakthrough Listen. “When advanced civilizations come in contact with less advanced civilizations, it hasn't been good on Earth. So I think there's a lot of risk.”
But Shostak thinks we already might have attracted somebody's attention: “The kind of equipment that we have today is within four orders of magnitude of being able to detect radars on nearby worlds, within a few tens of light-years. Now this speed of increase in the collecting area of radio telescopes on Earth is roughly two orders of magnitude per century.... That means that any society that's at least 200 years more advanced than we are has equipment that can pick up SFO, alright? That's the local airport for those of you from out of town. So ... if you really think there's a potential of killing seven billion people because the aliens get ticked off by hearing I Love Lucy and send their interstellar battlewagons here to wipe us out..., you better turn off all the radars. Not for the weekend, not for this year, you better turn them off forever. And to me, that doesn't sound like a good idea.”
Shostak also brought up a less frightening but perhaps more existentially dreadful possibility about some future first contact: what if we finally hear from aliens broadcasting their presence as sentient beings, and the big announcement is their understanding of well-known mathematical phenomena such as the Fibonacci sequence. “That would be a real bummer, wouldn't it?” he asked. “I mean, we finally hear from E.T., and he tells us something you learned in 10th grade.”
Actually I'd be okay with it—and with them watching Lucy gobble chocolates off the conveyor belt. What I worry about is them catching the iconic Twilight Zone episode where the aliens show up with a manuscript entitled “To Serve Man,” and it ends up being a cookbook. Why give advanced carnivores any cravings?
This article was originally published with the title "Is Anybody Anywhere?"
Mysterious X-Ray Emission May Reveal Nature of Dark Matter
By Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Contributor
X-ray light from the Perseus cluster of galaxies may finally reveal the true nature of one of the most mysterious substances in the cosmos: dark matter.
Dark matter is a bizarre material that does not emit light or energy, yet is thought to make up about 85 percent of the matter in the universe. Researchers use creative and indirect observations to deduce dark matter's presence, but it remains challenging to pin down solid evidence of the substance's existence. Thanks to mounting observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, a Japanese-led X-ray telescope known as Hitomi and the European Space Agency's (ESA) XMM-Newton, scientists may be on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery about the mysterious material, researchers said in a statement from the Chandra X-Ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The subject of study is the Perseus cluster, a dusty region of galaxies gathered together 250 million light-years from Earth. Scientists estimate that the Perseus cluster is 11.6 million light-years across and that it may contain a whopping 660 trillion times the mass of the sun.
An optical image of the Perseus cluster taken using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit: NASA/ESA/IoA/A. Fabian et al.
In 2014, an unusual spike of intensity in X-ray wavelengths caught the attention of researchers using the XMM-Newton space observatory. The waves were coming from heated gas in the Perseus galactic cluster, near the center. Researchers also found that this same wavelength of radiation, known as an emission line, was coming from 73 other galaxy clusters, according to the statement.
That 2014 observation showed radiation emanating with 3.5 kiloelectron volts (keV) of energy, and a new analysis detected an absorption of X-rays — also at 3.5 keV — surrounding a supermassive black hole at the center of the Perseus cluster. Researchers have found it nearly impossible to explain why that particular wavelength is being emitted and absorbed, and because previously-seen astronomical objects don't seem to reveal clues about the wavelength emission, they suggested dark matter could be the cause.
A composite image of X-ray and optical observations of the Perseus galaxy cluster. This image contains X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The observations have been combined with optical data from the Hubble space telescope (pink) and radio-emission data from the Very Large Array (red) in New Mexico. If these findings are confirmed with future observations, it would signal a major step forward in comprehending the nature of dark matter, researchers said in a statement.
Credit: NASA/ESA/CXO/Oxford University/NRAO/AUI/University of Montreal
"We expect that this result will either be hugely important or a total dud," said Joseph Conlon of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, lead author of the recent study. "I don't think there is a halfway point when you are looking for answers to one of the biggest questions in science." The new paperdescribing the team's results was published in the journal Physical Review D on Dec. 19.
If dark matter caused the atypical emission and absorption lines at that wavelength — both giving off and absorbing X-rays within the collection of galaxies — further observation could teach researchers more about the mysterious substance, the scientists said.
Fortunately, powerful X-ray telescopes currently being developed will let scientists make more-precise observations of these fascinating X-ray emission lines.
New Study Finds TRAPPIST-1 Planets Have Atmospheres Which Could Support Life
One of the outer planets of the TRAPPIST 1 system that resides in the habitable zone, where water can be maintained in a liquid state, has conditions to retain a long-term atmosphere and be fit for life, astronomers have recently found.
The TRAPPIST-1 star system is composed of seven temperate terrestrial planets, of which five (b, c, e, f, and g) are similar in size to Earth, and two (d and h) are of an intermediate size ranging in size between Mars and Earth. Three of the planets (e, f, and g) orbit within the habitable zone of the star.
This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses, and orbital distances. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A team of astronomers led by Michaël Gillon of the Institute of Astrophysics and Geophysics at the University of Liège in Belgium used the TRAPPIST telescope (Small Telescope for Planets and Planetesimals in Transit) at the La Silla Observatory in the Atacama Desert ( Chile) to observe TRAPPIST-1 and search it for potential planets.
So far, this is the most promising solar system discovered to date, that may host life as we know it.
What do we know so far?
TRAPPIST-1 is located around 40 light years from Earth and as we’ve already indicated, astronomers know that there are seven rocky planets orbiting the star, similar in size to Earth and three of those planets could contain water on their surface.
TRAPPIST-1 is a red dwarf star. It’s cooler, smaller, and much more active than our sun, despite being the size of Jupiter. Its stellar flares can erupt out to millions of miles, which isn’t really good news as its outermost planet is only 5.5 million miles away. Furthermore, each planet is located about a quarter-of-a-million-miles away from each other at closest approach.
The TRAPPIST-1 system.
Despite the fact that TRAPPIST-1 planets may be bombarded by solar flares, astronomers have recently found that all seven planets could retain their atmosphere, but the more likely scenario is that the outermost two planets orbiting the red dwarf, -1g and -1h, have the best odds.
Now, a new study published in PNAS has determined the atmospheric escape rates for the planets of TRAPPIST-1 and shows that it is likely that TRAPPIST-G, located within the habitable zone, may have the ability to retain its atmosphere on a timescale of billions of years. This means that TRAPPIST-1G has great odds of having water on its surface, and when looking for alien life, we consider water as the number one key ingredient.
“…the outer planets are potentially likely to retain their atmospheres over billion-year timescales.”
Further studies will be made when the James Webb Space Telescope becomes active in 2019, and astronomers will use it to detect traces of the atmospheres on the planets, proving more accurate data and perhaps even answering whether or not the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system are habitable and suitable for life as we know it.
Our bright neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, could harbor an Earth-size planet — but new jumps in technology are needed for us to see it.
Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin
Technology in development could capture images from an Earth-size planet in the nearby Alpha Centauri system in the 2020s, new research suggests.
The new technique, presented Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in New Orleans, could also help researchers see exoplanets in other systems with more than one star.
Although there's only one star in Earth's solar system, previous work found that two-thirds of so-called class G yellow dwarf stars (the group that includes our sun) are in multiple systems, or systems with two or more stars orbiting each other. Some known multiple systems are home to up to seven stars. [What Do We Know About Alpha Centauri?] Because multiple systems are common, they may be rich targets in the hunt for alien planets, according to Ruslan Belikov, an astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and his colleagues. For example, the sun's closest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri system, possesses three stars and potentially multiple planets, such as the Earth-size Proxima Centauri b.
To capture images of an exoplanet, astronomers typically employ an instrument known as a coronagraph, which blocks out its star's glaring light, thus letting them seeany faint light reflected off or emitted from that world. When researchers want to directly image an exoplanet in a system that has more than one star, light from a star's companion may drown out their view of the planet even after they block the first star's light.
Although scientists could conceivably use more than one coronagraph to block out the light from all the stars in a multiple system, tiny imperfections within the components of a telescope would inevitably cause light to leak through a coronagraph, Belikov said. "This light is only a small fraction of the original star's light but can still overwhelm planets, which are much fainter still," he told Space.com.Belikov and his colleagues have developed a way to get around that issue and image exoplanets in multiple-star systems.
"We are developing the technology to search for Earth-like planets around other stars," Belikov said in an email. "If, when I was a kid, somebody told me that I would be doing this as an adult, I would not have believed it — in my mind, detecting Earth-like planets is 'Star Trek' science that rightly belongs in the 23rd century. But we are doing it now."
The new method the researchers have devised, known as the multi-star wavefront control, relies on deformable mirrors within telescopes that are used to bounce light from stars and planets onto sensors. These mirrors can alter the shape of their surfaces to correct for imperfections within the optical components of telescopes.
The new technique controls a deformable mirror "in a way that allows it to remove light from more than one star," Belikov said. The mirror can superimpose multiple shapes onto itself, each of which can factor out light from a star.
"It's a bit like when an audio speaker plays a symphony," Belikov said. "It uses its lower-frequency range to represent the cellos and the higher-frequency range to represent the violins. In our case, the cello would correspond to one star and the violin to the other."
A major advantage of this new system "is that it is compatible with many already-designed instruments," Belikov said. "A deformable mirror is all that's needed, which is almost always present with modern coronagraphs."
Ideally, "we hope to infuse our technology into future space telescopes to enable them to target Alpha Centauri and other binaries," Belikov said. "These range from small telescopes like ACESat or Project Blue that can be launched in the early 2020s, WFIRST in the mid-2020s, and LUVOIR or HabEx in the 2030s. There are also telescopes on the ground that can use this technology."
Belikov cautioned that any exoplanet pictures that researchers capture in the near future will not resolve details such as continents and oceans. "Rather, an image of another Earth will be a pale blue dot," he said. "However, there is a lot of information that we can discern from the spectrum of that dot, including signs of life."
The engineers wanted to see if they could determine some cardiovascular risks simply by looking a picture of someone’s retina. They developed a convolutional neural network — a feed-forward algorithm inspired by biological processes, especially pattern between neurons, commonly used in image analysis.
This type of artificial intelligence (AI) analyzes images holistically, without splitting them into smaller pieces, based on their shared similarities and symmetrical parts.
The approach became quite popular in recent years, especially as Facebook and other tech giants began developing their face-recognition software. Scientists have long proposed that this type of network can be used in other fields, but due to the innate processing complexity, progress has been slow. The fact that such algorithms can be applied to biology (and human biology, at that) is astonishing.
“It was unrealistic to apply machine learning to many areas of biology before,” saysPhilip Nelson, a director of engineering at Google Research in Mountain View, California. “Now you can — but even more exciting, machines can now see things that humans might not have seen before.”
Observing and quantifying associations in images can be difficult because of the wide variety of features, patterns, colors, values, and shapes in real data. In this case, Ryan Poplin, Machine Learning Technical Lead at Google, used AI trained on data from 284,335 patients. He and his colleagues then tested their neural network on two independent datasets of 12,026 and 999 photos respectively. They were able to predict age (within 3.26 years), and within an acceptable margin, gender, smoking status, systolic blood pressure as well as major adverse cardiac events. Researchers say results were similar to the European SCORE system, a test which relies on a blood test.
To make things even more interesting, the algorithm uses distinct aspects of the anatomy to generate each prediction, such as the optic disc or blood vessels. This means that, in time, each individual detection pattern can be improved and tailored for a specific purpose. Also, a data set of almost 300,000 models is relatively small for a neural network, so feeding more data into the algorithm can almost certainly improve it.
Doctors today rely heavily on blood tests to determine cardiovascular risks, so having a non-invasive alternative could save a lot of costs and time, while making visits to the doctor less unpleasant. Of course, for Google (or rather Google’s parent company, Alphabet), developing such an algorithm would be a significant development and a potentially profitable one at that.
It’s not the first time Google engineers have dipped their feet into this type of technology — one of the authors, Lily Peng, published another paper last year in which she used AI to detect blindness associated with diabetes.
Journal Reference: Ryan Poplin et al. Predicting Cardiovascular Risk Factors from Retinal Fundus Photographs using Deep Learning. arXiv:1708.09843
The moon has been neglected for far too long, and China seems keen on moving fast to cover all the lost lunar ground. The nation’s ambitious space program, among other things, is set on achieving several important milestones.
A trifecta, consisting of a lunar probe, lander, and rover, will be deployed to the moon’s orbit and surface respectively. This will be the first time a man-made contraption makes a soft landing on the far side of the moon, a site of renewed interest for many scientists. The mission will also carry insects and plants that will form a mini-ecosystem on the moon whose response will teach us valuable lessons in preparations for a manned outpost or even a colony.
Potatoes on the dark side of the moon
This remarkable mission is part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP), otherwise known as the Chang’e Program, named so in honor of the Chinese goddess of the moon. Previously, the Chang’e program had already sent two orbiters and one lander to the moon.
In the first half of 2018, Chang’e 4 will initially launch a relay satellite aboard a Long March 5 rocket that will be positioned at the Earth-moon Lagrange point 2 (EM-L2).
Artist impression of the relay satellite slated for launch. Credit: CNSA.
This is where the satellite can essentially remain stationary relative to the bodies, since the Earth and Moon gravities cancel each other out. From this point, the communications satellite will relay data between controllers on Earth and the Chang’e 4 lander and rover slated to touch down on the moon’s far side — also known as the dark side of the moon since it faces away from Earth.
The lander and rover will be launched together six months after the relay satellite is deployed at EM-L2. The lander will be equipped with various instruments designed to study the lunar environment and geology in detail, but also a mini-habitat comprised of insects and plants.
“The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis. Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the moon,” Zhang Yuanxun, chief designer of the lunar habitat, told the Chongqing Morning Post.
Last year, researchers grew potatoes in Mars-like conditions. Pulling the same stunt completely outside of Earth will be a whole different challenge which will be very intriguing to follow.
The Chinese lunar rover which is supposed to land on the dark side of the moon by the end of the year.
Credit: CASC/China Ministry of Defense
The lander and rover will be deployed in the huge South Pole-Aitken Basin. This is the single-largest impact basin on the moon, measuring a staggering 2,500 km (1,600 miles) in diameter and 13 kilometers (8.1 miles) deep. Previously, missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and India’s Chandrayaan-1 orbiter confirmed that the basin contains water ice, likely sourced from meteors and asteroids.
This ice can survive in this form because the Aitken Basin is always shadowed. Once this finding was confirmed by NASA, the site has immediately been singled out as an important candidate for a possible lunar base. With this context in mind, the Chang’e 4 mission is valuable in the sense that it can help establish not only what the local terrain in the basin is like but also how the environment will influence organisms. For instance, gravity on the moon is just 16% that of Earth. Plants use gravity to decide the direction of their growth, and a strong or weak gravitational pull will also affect the height of plants.
If all of this sounds exciting, know that once the lunar habitat container is deployed at the end of this year, China plans to live stream the plants’ growth and development. Your message can also be among the 20,000 that will be sent into space via the relay satellite. You can submit it to the WeChat account ‘slecbj’ from Dec. 19, 2017, to March 6, 2018.
Researchers working on behalf of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have unearthed an ancient Aztec site unlike anything they’ve found before. The shrine was found at an elevation of 13,000 feet in a volcanic pond near the dormant Iztaccihuatl, or “White Woman” volcano in central Mexico which is central to several Aztec legends. The stone shrine was found lying at the bottom of a shallow pond, and researchers believe the shrine was originally constructed to appear as if it were floating just below the surface of the water. Most fascinating of all, archaeologists believe that this site may be an early ‘map’ of the known universe according to Aztec mythology.
Aerial view of the shrine with water drained.
(INAH).
According to several Mesoamerican creation myths, the primeval sea monster Cipactli floated on primordial waters until it split itself in two, creating the heavens and Earth in the process.. In a statement, INAH archaeologists claim the flow of water within this tetzacualco, or shrine, could have been controlled using nearby springs, creating a visual effect meant to evoke the Cipactli creation myth:
The existence of a tetzacualco in the middle of a natural pond and the optical effect that occurs when the water mirrors, from which it seems that the structure emanates, suggests that the place is the representation of a primeval time and space, a miniature model of the universe.
Evidence of a temple which once housed the site has been found along with numerous other artifacts including blades, pottery, and stone tools. Several finds suggest the site also could have been a site of worship for the Aztec rain god Tlaloc.
Excavations of the site are still underway. (INAH).
While far from proving any ancient astronaut theories, the discovery of this mythological representation of the known universe adds to a growing body of evidence which suggests Aztec civilization and technology may have been more advanced than we currently know. Plus, a floating crocodile-god shrine sure is a lot cooler than that creation museum in Kentucky. I wonder what future archaeologists are going to have to say about that one.
Aerospace watchdog sites reported last year on a mysterious, highly secretive rocket launch scheduled by SpaceX.
NASASpaceFlight.com noticed a last-minute addition to SpaceX’s launch calendar, adding a mission known only as “Zuma.” An issue with the Falcon 9 rocket nose cone caused the launch to be delayed, but SpaceX has now announced that the Zuma mission could be its first launch of 2018, set to blast off on Friday, January 5th.
SpaceX launched 18 rockets in 2017, all of which were successful.
As of now, SpaceX meteorologists predict a 90% chance of “go” conditions at the scheduled launch time. Despite several months of wait time between the last scheduled launch, little is still known to the public about the mysterious Zuma mission. What is known are two facts: one, that the rocket is launching an object into a low-Earth orbit; and two, that SpaceX’s client for the launch is aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman. You might know Northrop Grumman from such top-secret black-ops projects as the B-2 stealth bomber and a wide range of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Aside from war machines, Northrop Grumman also develops technologies for use in space telescopes.
Given Grumman’s extensive pedigree in some of the most high-tech and clandestine examples of military engineering, many outlets have taken to wondering just what exactly might be aboard the Zuma rocket. For its part, Northrop Grumman has stated only that Zuma is carrying a “restricted payload.” Some sources have claimed the National Reconnaissance Office is behind the launch, but the NRO has denied any part in the mission – but then again, why would they want to admit to launching some new type of spy technology if its purpose is to remain in the shadows?
While it’s hard to hide a massive rocket launch, the contents of those rockets are not always public record.
Given all of the recent weirdness surrounding so-called “killer” satellites and what appears to be a burgeoning arms race taking place in low-Earth orbit, chances are high that this launch could be a test of some new space weapon or other defensive technology. Telecommunications and live data from satellites are key to modern-day military operations, and many nations are already testing methods of attacking or hijacking other nations’ satellites. Could the Zuma mission hint that SpaceX getting in on the defense contractor market while competition is still scarce? Some sources claim SpaceX could launch close to 40 rockets for U.S. military and intelligence clients in 2018. I mean, Elon’s gotta find funding to send his car into space by whatever means necessary.
Due to several recent discoveries, much of the conversation surrounding the search for alien life has turned to wondering if we might discover microbial life long before we find green, three-breasted alien women. Microbes have been discovered here on Earth which can survive on air alone, or even by ‘eating’ radiation in some cases. Microbes have even been sustained in a simulated Martian atmosphere and Russian state media claims microbes were found on the outside of the ISSlast year. Are macroscopic, walking, talking life forms such as us hairless apes an anomaly? Could the rest of the universe be filled with microscopic forms of life? Who knows. However, if that possibility becomes a reality, a new experimented conducted aboard the International Space Station lends hope to our own ability to identify any potential alien life forms we may encounter in space.
Russia’s reports of extraterrestrial “biomatter” on the ISS are still unconfirmed.
According to a NASA press release, scientists on the ISS successfully sequenced the genomes of mystery microbes found inside the space station. The microbes were found earlier last year clinging to various surfaces inside the space station. While it’s well-known that astronauts bring all sorts of creepy crawly contaminants with them when they enter the space station, the identity of these space bugs has never been identified – particularly not while aboard the space station itself. In the press statement, NASA claims this groundbreaking experiment could pave the way for being able to identify any potential lifeforms found during our future exploration of the cosmos:
The ability to identify microbes in space could aid in the ability to diagnose and treat astronaut ailments in real time, as well as assisting in the identification of DNA-based life on other planets. Being able to identify microbes in real time aboard the International Space Station, without having to send them back to Earth for identification first, would be revolutionary for the world of microbiology and space exploration.
Of course, it would have been much more exciting had the microbes actually been from space and not from the dead skin cells and other effluvium that surrounds astronauts’ bodies like the dust cloud floating around Pig-Pen from Peanuts. Still, now that scientists have the ability to sequence DNA in space, that opens the doors for much faster identification of alien DNA in the future. The only question now is if that discovery will happen in our lifetimes.
On several occasions at Mysterious Universe, I have mentioned an intriguing operation of the U.S. Government called Project Moon Dust (which, in some of the documents that have now been declassified, is referred to as Moondust). Here’s one such example of the articles on Moon Dust you can find at MU: on the extremely controversial saga of Moon Dust and Marilyn Monroe. It’s quite clear from examining the now-many pages of official documentation on Moon Dust that have been declassified by the U.S. Air Force, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Department of State, that the vast majority of Moon Dust recoveries were of earth-based technology such as Soviet satellites, rocket-boosters, etc. That’s not to say the incidents were not of deep interest. They certainly were. Consider the quote from the following from Moon Dust files of 1960:
“On 30 September 1960, a TWX report was sent to the Pacific Air Forces on a sighting of an unidentified object that entered the water near the village of Ctaru. The report originated with the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) headquarters and was relayed to us by the Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF). According to the report, a fiery object fell from the sky and into the sea, making a fountain of water which was described as looking like a ‘geyser.’ Technical intelligence personnel from Tokyo took over the case, but were unable to locate or reclaim the object.”
Perhaps, more than 40 years on, it still lies dormant deep below the Pacific, its secrets still waiting to be plundered. Then, there are these, quoted from the Air Force’s records:
“1. The White Saucer: On 18 October 1960, a pilot of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Squadron reported that he had seen an object as large as a saucer about eight inches in diameter. The object was white, and it had a white tail about 16 to 20 times as long as the diameter of the object. It appeared from about 30 degrees above and 20 degrees to the right of the aircraft and passed by the aircraft’s right side, disappearing towards the rear of the aircraft in a downward arc.
“2. The Bubble: On 11 October 1960, a pilot over the beach east of Kisawa observed an orange flash on the horizon. He described the phenomenon as being distinct and looking like a great bubble. The area in which the phenomenon could be observed was along the southern coast of the Soviet Kuril Islands.
“3. The Green Pea: On 14 September 1960, a pilot was flying an F-86D between an overcast above and below him when a greenish-white object appeared from the overcast above him. The object fell straight down, and disappeared in the overcast below. The object was described as looking like a green pea. Preliminary investigation could not identify any balloons or other known objects in the area which could have accounted for the sighting.”
By the mid-1960s, Moon Dust was still receiving interesting reports. One of them was a 1965 document declassified by the CIA, a copy of which is in the Moon Dust files. Titled, “Fragment, Metal, Recovered in the Republic of the Congo, Origin Believed to be an Unidentified Flying Object,” it states: “The purpose of this report is to present the results of the exploitation of a metallic fragment recovered near the town of [illegible] in the Republic of the Congo. Fragment recovery was the result of a ground-level search which was coordinated after an unidentified flying object exploded and fell to earth in the area. The sighting and recovery took place sometime between 10 and 15 October 1965. Other than a reported east-to-west direction of flight for the UFO, specific observation and recovery details are lacking.”
Two years later, Project Moon Dust personnel were still active. Two Defense Intelligence Agency reports in particular conclusively make this point. The first report, titled “UFO Sighting at Kasba Talda, Morocco,” states: “This report forwards a translation of an article which appeared in the Potit Morocain[newspaper], 2 April 1967. This item was not carried in the other daily newspapers, but is significant as it indicates continued local interest in the subject of UFOs.”
The second report, also from Morocco, and also dated 1967, states the following with regard to an event over Agadir: “This report forwards translations of two articles which appeared in the Potit Morocain [newspaper]. Each article is separately identified as to source. Although the two articles are very contradictory, the page one coverage afforded this sighting demonstrates a high level of interest in the subject of UFOs, and presages future reporting which could be valuable in pursuit of Project Moon Dust.”
Moon ufos
Then, there is a Department of State telegram of August 1967 from the American Embassy at Khartoum to Washington. It states: “Local press 17 Aug 1967 reported that a satellite, cube shaped, weighing approximately three tons discovered 3 August 50 miles from Kutum. Satellite described as made of soft metal presumably light aluminum in oblong cubes measuring two inches by one inch tightly fastened together and covered by a silky material. Nationality not identified as no inscriptions evident on outer surface. Local authorities in El Fasher have photographs and with difficulty cut samples.”
It’s unfortunate that many of the Moon Dust-based documents are brief in content and description, but it should not be forgotten that – as the Moon Dust files note – “UFO” does not necessarily mean “alien spacecraft.”
Buitenspel gezette wetenschapper over waarom je in Nederland niet mag praten over UFO’s en 9/11 als complot
Een afwijkende mening hebben én een hoge functie bekleden op een universiteit. Dat is in Nederland natuurlijk uit den boze.
Je hoort wel eens dat bepaalde landen op aarde in de middeleeuwen zijn blijven hangen, maar in Nederland lopen we ook nog ver achter als het om bepaalde onderwerpen gaat.
Wetenschapper Coen Vermeeren, schrijver van de boeken UFO’s bestaan gewoon en 9/11 is gewoon een complot, was tot voor kort hoofd van de afdeling Studium Generale en docent lucht- en ruimtevaarttechniek aan de TU Delft.
Status quo
Hij moest in september het veld ruimen. In overleg stapte hij op, omdat hij zich naar eigen zeggen niet de mond laat snoeren.
En zo houdt de zelfcensuur de status quo in stand. Op mensen met een ander geluid wordt net zolang druk uitgeoefend tot ze uiteindelijk van het toneel verdwijnen.
Vermeeren weet zeker dat UFO’s bestaan en dat ze regelmatig vanuit de ruimte onze planeet bezoeken. Ook is hij ervan overtuigd dat het vernietigen van het World Trade Center in New York op 9/11 een complot was.
Mag niet
Waarom mag hier geen maatschappelijk debat over gevoerd worden? De meeste mensen geloven immers in UFO’s en meer dan de helft van de Amerikanen ziet een complot in 9/11.
Dus wat is het probleem?
“UFO-waarnemingen van hoogopgeleide astronauten, piloten en luchtverkeersleiders moeten serieus worden genomen,” zegt Vermeeren. “Dat mag niet van de wetenschap.”
Taboe
“Het onderwerp UFO is taboe omdat het raakt aan gevestigde belangen,” licht hij toe. “Stel je voor dat we energieneutraal kunnen voortbewegen, zoals UFO’s dat doen?”
“Dat zet onze hele maatschappij op de kop,” klinkt het.
Wat de Twin Towers betreft, die zijn niet ingestort, maar mogelijk opgeblazen, aldus Vermeeren. “Dat is de meest gangbare van meerdere theorieën waarvan verstoffing de meest controversiële is.”
Niets meer over
Een hoogleraar vroeg hem 15 jaar geleden om ‘voor het Studium Generale een rel te organiseren’. Hij werd daarop hoofd van de afdeling en organiseerde bijeenkomsten over gevoelige onderwerpen.
Van die vrije aanpak is volgens hem niets meer over. Vermeeren is van plan zijn boodschap nu te verspreiden via lezingen.
Bloedrood-blauwe supermaan voor het eerst in ruim 150 jaar te zien deze maand. Zet maar vast in je agenda
Op 31 januari is er voor de tweede keer deze maand een volle maan te zien. We spreken in dit geval ook wel van een blauwe maan.
Op dezelfde dag vindt daarnaast een totale maansverduistering plaats, aldus de website hemel.waarnemen.com. Hierbij beweegt de maan zich door de schaduw van de aarde.
Er valt dan geen direct zonlicht meer op het maanoppervlak en de hele maan is dan veel donkerder dan normaal. De eclips is in onze streken helaas onzichtbaar.
Bloedmaan
Een totale maansverduistering kan erg indrukwekkend zijn. Tijdens de verduistering, die duurt van 13.52 tot 15.09 uur, valt een beetje zonlicht door de aardatmosfeer, waardoor het maanoppervlak alsnog een klein beetje wordt verlicht.
Dit is met name rood licht, waardoor er een rode gloed over de maan komt. Deze fase wordt in de volksmond ook wel bloedmaan genoemd en duurt bij deze eclips ongeveer 77 minuten.
150 jaar
Doordat de verduistering erg centraal is, is dit effect bij deze verduistering bijzonder sterk.
Het is voor het eerst in 150 jaar dat zo’n totale maansverduistering samenvalt met een blauwe maan, meldt de in ruimtenieuws gespecialiseerde website Space.com.
Supermaan
Omdat het volle maan is en de maan en de aarde dicht bij elkaar staan wordt bovendien gesproken van een supermaan. Daardoor lijkt de maan een heel stuk groter en feller.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETVan het wiel tot het poliovaccin van Jonas Salk: er zijn uitvindingen die de wereld compleet veranderen. Maar wat is de volgende grote ontwikkeling die de geschiedenis zal ingaan? In een artikel voor Time Magazine doet Bill Gates enkele voorspellingen.
1. MetaFridge
Vaccinaties redden talloze levens, maar ze zijn ook vrij fragiel. Worden ze niet op de juiste temperatuur opgeslaan, dan kan je ze weggooien. Een groep uitvinders van Global Good in Seattle hebben nu een nieuwe soort koelkast ontworpen: de MetaFridge. Die houdt de vaccins lange tijd koud, ook als de elektriciteit uitvalt. Momenteel werken ze ook aan een draagbare versie van hun uitvinding, zodat ook mensen in de meest afgelegen gebieden gevaccineerd kunnen worden.
2. Genetische manipulatie
Gates beseft dat de technologie van genetische manipulatie nog in de kinderschoenen staat, en dat er ook heel wat prangende ethische vraagstukken rond het onderwerp hangen. Toch heeft hij een goed oog in de mogelijkheden. “Stel je een toekomst voor waarin we het DNA van zieke mensen kunnen wijzigen, of bijvoorbeeld de genen kunnen verwijderen die het muggen mogelijk maakt om malaria te verspreiden.”
3. Zonnebrandstof
Gates is geen ontkenner van de opwarming van de aarde. “Als we dat willen inperken, moeten we afstappen van fossiele brandstoffen en een andere methode zoeken.” Hij kijkt vol vertrouwen naar Caltech, waar ze in hun labo’s zoeken naar een manier om zonne-energie om te zetten in brandstof. “We zijn nog ver van het moment waarop je zonnebrandstof in je auto kan gooien, maar ik hoop in de nabije toekomst op een energiemirakel.”
Thinkstock
4. mRNA vaccins
Momenteel wordt een vaccin ontwikkeld aan de hand van verzwakte of inactieve vormen van het virus in kwestie. Je lichaam g5.aat dan antilichamen produceren, waardoor je beschermd bent tegen de ziekte. Momenteel bekijkt de wetenschap echter hoe we genetisch materiaal kunnen aanwenden om een vaccin te maken, wat het proces een stuk goedkoper en sneller maakt. Zo kan je een lichaam leren om vanzelf natuurlijke antilichamen aan te maken.
5. Betere inname van medicijnen
Van insuline tot de anticonceptiepil: sommige medicijnen moet je op gezette tijden innemen. Niet altijd even gemakkelijk, want je durft dat wel eens vergeten. Het bedrijf Intarcia wil de manier waarop we medicatie nemen nu veranderen. Ze hebben een piepklein apparaatje ontwikkeld dat je onder de huid kan inplanten. Daar geeft het de medicijnen op de gewenste tijdstippen af. Gates vindt vooral de bescherming tegen HIV erg veelbelovend. “Eén implantaat kan een mens tot een jaar lang beschermen tegen het virus.”
6. Artificiële intelligentie
Van al deze ontwikkelingen is artificiële intelligentie degene waarvan Gates zeker is dat het de wereld voor altijd zal veranderen. “Ook al zal AI nieuwe uitdagingen creëren - zoals het heropleiden van mensen die hun job zullen verliezen - denk ik dat het ons leven veel productiever, efficiënter en makkelijker zal maken.”
Meer van UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
John Young: The Prolific Astronaut
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