Japanese Rocket Followed By UFO On Jan 18, 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: January 18, 2018
Location of sighting: Japan

During the recorded launch of a Japanese rocket, a UFO was seen flying past the rocket at high altitude. This being a no fly zone to keep aircraft safe is further proof that this was an alien craft. If you compare the size of the UFO with that of the rocket, you will see the UFO is over 20X the size of the rocket. Thats big! 
Scott C. Waring

UFO Today states:

rocket to put a commercial planetary observational satellite into earth's atmosphere. The launch went perfectly, but during the launch a strange mysterious craft was filmed. This UFO was flying at the same altitude as the rocket. It was moving along with the rocket as it started it's orbit arround earth. What was this object?

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFO Fleet caught near Tesla Roadster in Space

SpaceX just launched a Tesla Roadster to Mars on top of the SpaceX' Falcon Heavy rocket.

This was the Falcon Heavy's maiden flight. It's the launch that everyone's been waiting for. The Falcon Heavy is a monster.

It has 27 engines, can generate more power than 18 747 jumbo jets, and is the most powerful rocket to fly since NASA's moon rocket, the Saturn V.

Even though this was a test launch, Musk took the opportunity to send some payload to space. A Tesla Roadster, which will eventually reach Mars' orbit.

And what a coincidence! Elon Musk shoots his car into space and we are witnessing UFO's floating around his car and it is not some sort of space dust, these objects hover, stop and start to float again.

HERBEKIJK: Elon Musks krachtigste draagraket ter wereld gelanceerd - HLN.be

Bron: Tweakers, ANP

Je weet maar nooit wie binnen miljoenen jaren ons zonnestelsel met een bezoekje vereert. Al staat één ding vast: ze zullen in de baan om de zon plots een rood voertuig zien cirkelen. Een Tesla Roadster, met uitneembaar glazen dak. “De snelste wagen ter wereld in 2017, toch volgens de oprichter van Tesla, Elon Musk”, zullen ze op het internet (?) zien verschijnen wanneer ze op zoek gaan naar wat meer informatie. “In de ruimte gestuurd op 6 februari 2018.”

Lees ook

Kippenvel! NASA’s verkenner Curiosity maakt prachtige nieuwe beelden van Mars

Vandaag dus. En wat al maanden als grap werd bestempeld, bleek nu toch waar. Elon Musk - ook oprichter van ruimtevaartbedrijf SpaceX - postte gisteren nog een foto op sociale media: z’n auto zat vastgegespt boven in de Falcon Heavy-raket. 

Bij een testvlucht is de kans op mislukken altijd groot. Dan mag er geen cruciale satelliet verloren gaan, en al helemaal geen mensenleven. Daarom worden zulke raketten geladen met ballast. Meestal is dat beton, maar voor deze vlucht koos Musk dus voor zijn eigen 1,25 ton zware auto. Die zal rond de zon draaien, tussen de Aarde en Mars. Op het verste punt zal hij 400 miljoen kilometer van ons verwijderd zijn. In de ruimte wordt de Tesla de snelste auto ooit, met een snelheid van ongeveer 42.000 kilometer per uur.

De lancering vanaf lanceerplatform Apollo 39A op Cape Canaveral in Florida was aanvankelijk gepland voor 19.30 uur Belgische tijd, maar werd uiteindelijk uitgesteld naar 21.45 uur omwille van hevige wind. Stipt op tijd ging de raket onder luid gejuich van een live publiek de lucht in. Meer dan twee miljoen kijkers volgden de lancering online op het SpaceX-YouTubekanaal. Onderweg klonk het ‘Space Oddity’ van David Bowie uit de speakers, hoewel daar in het luchtledige van de ruimte niet veel van te horen zal zijn. Achter het stuur zat een pop, Starman.

Om los te komen van de grond had de raket 27 motoren, die evenveel kracht hebben als achttien Boeings 747. Toen de taak van de zogeheten boosters erop zat, keerden ze voorzichtig terug naar de aarde, waar ze veilig landden op Cape Canaveral, klaar voor hergebruik. Het lanceerplatform ademt trouwens geschiedenis uit, want ook Neil Armstrong werd vanaf deze basis naar de maan gestuurd.

In april 2011 al maakte SpaceX bekend dat “the world’s most powerful rocket” een lanceerdatum had. Al kwam het bedrijf niet verder dan ‘eind 2013 of 2014’. Die datum bleek veel te optimistisch. De raket is pas in het tweede deel van december vorig jaar geassembleerd, waarna het gevaarte goed een maand geleden rechtop werd gezet. Tot de kortstondige shutdown van de Amerikaanse overheid roet in het eten gooide. Op 24 januari volgde eindelijk de eerste test waarbij alle 27 motoren tegelijkertijd ontbrand werden - een huzarenwerk.

En dus was vandaag ook een absoluut nagelbijtmoment. Na jaren uitstel en het feit dat het productieproces “veel moeilijker” bleek dan gedacht, volgde eindelijk de maiden trip. Die voor Musk al geslaagd zou zijn “indien de Falcon Heavy ver genoeg van haar lanceerplatform afkomt, zodat het niet beschadigd raakt”. “Dat zou ik eerlijk gezegd zelf al als winst beschouwen,” liet hij eerder optekenen. En dat lukte meer dan behoorlijk.

Wat de Heavy nu eigenlijk zo speciaal maakt? In feite is hij het sterkere broertje van de Falcon 9 met nog eens twee extra stuwmotoren, die aan weerszijden zijn gemonteerd. De Falcon Heavy heeft in totaal 27 raketmotoren, drie keer zoveel als waar de Falcon 9 over beschikt. De Heavy wordt zo de krachtigste raket sinds de maanraket Saturn V, die sinds 1973 niet meer heeft gevlogen. En heeft meer dan tweemaal de vrachtcapaciteit van de krachtigste raket op de huidige markt (voor de specialisten: de Delta IV Heavy, goed voor 28,8 ton). Ook andere huidige operationele raketten komen lang niet in de buurt van de stuwkracht van de Falcon Heavy. De in 2011 door de NASA uit dienst genomen Space Shuttle bijvoorbeeld kon een vracht van 24.000 kilo in een lage baan om de Aarde brengen. Volgens SpaceX kan hun tuig 63.800 kilo aan. Op een reis naar Mars zou dat 16.800 kilo zijn. 

SpaceX zet trouwens de commerciële lanceermarkt op zijn kop, want doel van de Heavy: de komende twee jaar ruimtetoeristen naar de maan en Mars laten vliegen. De raket die de lucht in moet gaan, zal echter vooral gebruikt worden voor vrachtmissies waarbij satellieten in een baan om de Aarde worden gebracht, bijvoorbeeld de zwaardere exemplaren van de Amerikaanse overheid. 

 AFP

 AFP 

De Falcon Heavy staat klaar in haar lanceerplatform.

 YouTube ‎@YouTube

Elon Musk

✔@elonmusk

Live view of Starman https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M 

10:50 PM - Feb 6, 2018

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Filer’s Files #5 – 2018 Secret Advanced Aircraft - PART II

SpaceX Did It: The Falcon Heavy Mission Sends "Starman' Into Space

By Nick Lucchesi

After many long years of waiting, on Tuesday, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket into space. Though it seemed the launch was going to be scrubbed, the Elon Musk’s aerospace company pulled it off just in time — just 45 minutes before the launch window closed.

And damn, did they do it in style.

Those at Cape Canaveral — and others watching from home — witnessed the rocket system, comprised of three boosters with nine engines each, collectively generate 5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off from launchpad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

As the rocket shot into the sky, worries that ice build-up on the central booster’s might fall onto the shorter side-cores was present, as the were concerns that the side boosters may snap off the central booster from the pressure. Luckily for SpaceX, those disaster scenarios didn’t occur as the rocket shot through the blue Floridian sky. There was no fireworks display of explosions on Tuesday, just controlled rocket science.

The real show was only beginning, though. The three boosters separated from each other on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, flipped according to plan, and headed back to Earth. The two side boosters landed side-by-side in perfect unison on landing pads near the launch site a few minutes after launch:

The central booster landed landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, floating in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida, a feat dampened only by a video camera that shorted out because of the heat and force of the incoming rocket.

The best was yet to come though: The payload for this demonstration mission — SpaceX hopes to show how its reusable rockets can be combined to carry heavier payloads and astronauts to space — was made for an internet audience.

His midnight-cherry Tesla Roadster, with a dummy in the driver’s seat, complete with a SpaceX branded spacesuit, was sent on a billion-year Martian orbit around the sun. The car safely separated from the payload fairing and there’s even a live feed of its orbit.

Musk has been talking about the Falcon Heavy rocket since 2011. It seemed it would launch in September, but that was pushed back due to January, and then on January 27, Musk announced the launch date.

Then on Monday, SpaceX shared this incredible animation of what it expected the test launch to look like. 

If you missed it, here’s the full mission:

• Written by Nick Lucchesi

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Success! SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy Rocket on Historic Maiden Voyage

Scientists find TRAPPIST-1 planets are temperate and have more water than Earth

A set of new studies sheds light on the properties of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system that is considered the most optimal candidate for finding biological life outside of our solar system.

The recently published studies in the journals Nature Astronomy and Astronomy and Astrophysics shed light on the TRAPPIST-1 star system, and offer new insight into the planets’ composition.

The new studies suggest the tightly-packed planets located some 40 light years from Earth are the best chance of discovering alien life. Ever since the planets were discovered, scientists have been studying the star system to understand what the planets are like on their surface.

Now, the recently published studies suggest that the planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1have great potential to host lie, although researchers caution they are  ‘far from establishing’ this for certain.

The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system is made up of seven planets (b, c, d, e, f, g, h) that orbit around the star and, although scientists argue their composition rocky, they are not sterile rocky worlds.

“We now know more about TRAPPIST-1 than any other planetary system apart from our own,” said Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, and co-author of the new study. “The improved densities in our study dramatically refine our understanding of the nature of these mysterious worlds.”

Based on the analysis of how starlight interacts with the planets’ atmospheres, scientists concluded that all seven alien worlds are made of rock just like the Earth, with water accounting for as much as five percent of their mass. Our planet, for example, only has 0.02%.

As for the size, density and amount of radiation the planets receive from their star, the fourth planet (TRAPPIST-1e) is the most similar to Earth; It seems to be the Earth-like in terms of its size and could house liquid water, as reported by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

Furthermore, researchers also found that the seven planets are considered temperate, which means that under a certain set of geological and atmospheric conditions, all of the planets could meet the necessary requirements to allow water to remain in a liquid form on their surface.

Speaking about TRAPPIST-1, Dr. Amaury Triaud, from the University of Birmingham, a leading member of the international team, said:

“Of the seven planets, and of all the exoplanets that have been identified so far, Trappist-1e is the most resembling Earth, when we consider the amount of energy a planet receives from its star, and its density, which reflects its internal composition. As our next step, we would like to find out whether the planet has an atmosphere since our only method to detect the presence of biology beyond the solar system relies on studying the chemistry of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.”

More information about the TRAPPIST-1 system, and whether or not it’s an ideal place for alien life to thrive will become clearer once NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope is launched into orbit next year.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

 

Artist’s conception of the portion of the Square Kilometer Array to be built in South Africa

SKA Organisation

Astronomers ready to unveil prototype radio dish for landmark observatory

By Sarah Wild

A landmark radio astronomy project is about to unveil its first prototype dish antenna.

Tomorrow, researchers and engineers with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA)—to be the largest radio telescope in the world—will inaugurate the dish at a test site in Shijiazhuang, China. And they expect to erect a sister prototype in South Africa by April. But funding, technical, and bureaucratic challenges have forced planners to downsize the first phase of the SKA—envisioned to include hundreds of dishes in South Africa and thousands in Australia—and delay completion by at least 2 years, to 2026.

Still, SKA officials are thrilled to see the first prototypes appear. “It’s great to actually see metal being deployed,” says Phil Diamond, director-general of the SKA Organisation, based in Manchester, U.K. “This is the culmination of a 5-year design program.”

When complete, the SKA will be much more sensitive than current radio telescopes that collect electromagnetic signals from space. In the first phase, Australia is expected to host some 130,000 dishes designed to collect low-frequency signals, while South Africa will host nearly 200 midfrequency dishes. Planners hope to substantially increase those numbers in a second phase. Researchers will use data collected by the linked arrays to investigate a wide range of questions, including what happened just after the big bang and whether there is other life in the universe.

The €674 million project, now backed by 10 partner countries, originally hoped to begin construction in 2018. But that date was pushed back to 2020 as a result of organizational hurdles, including the creation of an organization to oversee the SKA Observatory, and funding troubles forced a downsizing. Diamond says those issues have been resolved, but that countries still need to sign the legal documents.

In the meantime, the first prototype midfrequency dish, built by Chinese company CETC54 in collaboration European partner companies, will be unveiled tomorrow in China, to be joined within a few months by a second prototype in South Africa. The Chinese-led consortium’s design won out against Canadian and South African competitors, in part because of the dish’s superior structural integrity. The midfrequency dishes will need to survive the telescope’s 50-year operational life, so they will be rigorously tested.

Researchers expect to spend at least 6 months, and likely more, testing the two prototypes before attempting to move to full-scale production. “They’re at the start of a long road,” says Tony Beasley, head of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. (The United States is not a SKA partner.) “You need to make sure design is correct.”

{ http://www.sciencemag.org/}

Bryce Zabel – Hollywood and UFOs – February 6, 2018

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas 

Bryce Zabel

Bryce Zabel has a long list of achievements in the feature film and television industry. Much of this includes UFO and alien related projects. This includes writing and producing the NBC series Dark Skies and the Syfy movie Official Denial. He also was on the writing staff of Steven Spielberg’s Taken and ABC’s Lois and Clark (don’t forget, Superman is an alien). More recently, he co-wrote the book A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact with Richard Dolan. He is currently working on two UFO related movies. One is about the Betty and Barney Hill abductions and the other is a movie about the work of Roswell researchers Stanton Friedman and Don Schmitt.

In this interview, we discuss Bryce’s current project, some interest from a famous Hollywood actor/comedian and what it is like making UFO/Alien related entertainment projects. We also discuss Bryce’s upcoming talk at the 2018 International UFO Congress.

For more about Byce, visit his websites: www.StellarProductions.today – www.BryceZabel.com – www.AfterDisclosure.com – www.WhatIfBeatles.com

For more about the UFO Congress, visit: UFOCongress.com

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

The Pentagon has been chasing UFOs for a long, long time

Projects that began more than five decades ago and still continue to this day include efforts to evaluate bizarre sightings and exotic objects, scan the skies for signs of intelligent transmissions, and develop instruments capable of sniffing out signs of life on faraway worlds. The fact that the government chose to spend some cash on a supposedly scientific look at UFOs—particularly as they could be crucially related to national security threats—really should be no surprise, says Seth Shostak, one of the SETI Institute’s senior alien hunters.

1970s and ‘80s: CIA Investigations of Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena The 1970s and 1980s saw the CIA investigating a bunch of phenomena associated with UFO sightings, such as parapsychology and psychic happenings. According to CIA report “Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 (A Die-Hard Issue)”, “CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.”

1976-1993: SETI/HRMS The only time the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, has been written into a NASA budget line, this decade provided as much as $12 million a year for searches using the Arecibo and Goldstone antennas. Around 1990, the government’s SETI program—headquartered at NASA’s Ames Research Center—was renamed the High Resolution Microwave Survey in an attempt to avoid cancellation. Nevada senator Richard Bryan ended up cancelling the program anyway in 1993, right after actual observations had started.

1990s to now: NASA’s Astrobiology Institute Founded in 1998, the NASA Astrobiology Institute is one of many projects within the space agency aimed at investigating the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the cosmos. Scientists under its umbrella are currently thinking about whether life once existed on Mars, if there might be organisms tucked beneath the icy shells of the moons Europa and Enceladus, and how we would even recognize what life beyond Earth looks like if and when we see it. Now, and beyond.

Other ongoing work that continues to rely on federal funds includes developing instruments capable of detecting not only exoplanets but also alien biospheres, as well as work using organisms and environments on Earth as extraterrestrial analogs.

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

Why The Universe Does Not Need To Have A Beginning Or End

According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was born about 13.8 billion years ago. All the matter that exists today was once squished into an infinitely dense, infinitely tiny, ultra-hot point called a singularity. This tiny fireball then exploded and gave rise to the early universe.  The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a “Big Bang” did the universe officially begin allegedly.

Does the Universe have a beginning and thus an end state? I think that question itself is very short-sighted. I have a general problem with the word started. We must understand our place in the wonderous and almost entirely unknown mux of energy we call the Universe. Our brains developed with some severe biases. Like linear time, only seeing and experiencing a super slim sliver of reality with our poor biological senses. Our senses are all lockstep into an infinitesimal experience. We can only see a small infinitesimal small slice of the EM spectrum, hear an infinitesimal slice of auditory sensations, our skin and brains as in the other examples can only process an infinitesimal slice of motion, movement, and causation. Our intellects are just as hindered with infinitesimal perceptions and understanding. We are just the dominant animal on planet Earth. We must understand that we are woefully unsuited for any of this question to fall into colloquial understanding limits.

The Universe has no obligation to make colloquial sense to us. We can not (I suspect) even ask or comprehend the correct line of deductive reasoning yet alone understand the answers that must pour forth. We and our intellects are just fleas in a world of infinite. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

We and the Universe are more than just our 3 spatial axes of freedom plus time. The math works out for over 10 axes of freedom (dimensions). It is all this that we must at least try to consider when you think about the big bang, or how the observable Universe began.

First off there is no reason to think in our limited capacity of start and ends. That is a bias we have evolved to trust on our little dirty ball of dirt. That is our level of animal experience and intellect we must understand is by understanding what I wrote so far is incomplete. It is an asymptote that approaches zero. There does not have to be a beginning or an end.

We are 4D creatures in a Universe of many more dimensions. To a single dimensional creature, a single point is infinite. Consider a two-dimensional creature if it ever came upon a circle structure. To that creature the circle is infinite..it would if it could represent it by the symbol for infinity. Where does the circle start? Where does it end? Who created the symmetry of the circle?

We are predominately 3D creatures and the Universe looks infinite to us. It looks like it has a beginning and an end. But it is no truer for us as it is for the 2D creatures mentioned before.

As we go up the dimensional ladder the same questions can be asked ( I assume). What spatial geometry does a 5D creature see in the Universe? I wish I knew. I have some ideas which I have previously written about.

What I do know is that answering “GOD” to any of the questions we have considered so far is just a weak player, a pawn for intellectual stagnation which never answers anything.

There does not have to be a start/end to the grandeur of the Universe. It makes no sense unless you are looking with solely evolved monkey eyes. Eyes that are driven by imperfect cognition, billions of years of evolution in just one place, and a deep fear of death and non-existence. The human construct of “God” is just that a human construct to replace the ponderings which are imponderable by some people. Not their fault.

 “Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” 

~ Carl Sagan.

We could exist in just one slice of a continuum of Hubble volumes which all essentially look the same. What we see as spatial distances may and probably are illusions in the grand scheme of things. Spatial distance and time are different than we can comprehend at this point in our intellectual evolution. Serves us well on planet Earth at relativistic velocities but that is about it.

I suspect that the expansion and the question of the “Big Bang” are moot. Observable by our 3D instrumentation but is no more a complete picture than our vision is when considering the EM spectrum.

There certainly does not have to be a creator. That falls into that limited vision thing I spoke of earlier. The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe and it is still unable to comprehend the truth… so far. In time we will see the truth as prosaic. I know we will have to look forward to the answers not backward thousands of years to lies and deception which is so popular today.

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{ http://www.theangryufologist.us/ }

Is the Tesla Roadster Flying on the Falcon Heavy's Maiden Flight Just Space Junk?

Broad Haven UFO sightings marked 41 years on

There were no alien invasions or tales of abduction, yet a UFO sighting by a group of Pembrokeshire school children remains one of the most famous cases in Wales.

It was 40 years ago when a class of pupils at Broad Haven Primary School said they spotted a UFO in a field near their playground.

It was one of a wave of sightings in the area in 1977 - dubbed the Dyfed Triangle.

David Davies was 10 at the time and heard reports of pupils seeing flying saucers throughout the day.

"I was a natural born sceptic so after the bell rang I decided to go to the area that the children said they had seen it," he told BBC Wales.

He described seeing a silver "cigar-shaped" craft with a "dome covering the middle third".

"My sighting only lasted a couple of seconds. It popped up and then went back behind a tree."

Mr Davies said he did not feel afraid, "more in awe and wonderment", although he admitted he had "a strange desire to run away".

None of the teachers believed the children and so the headmaster separated them and got them to draw what they saw. There were slight variations, but what they drew was basically the same.

Mr Davies described the days that followed as a "wild rollercoaster."

"It went crazy with the media and it was difficult to settle down and actually think about what we had seen."

Two months later, Rosa Granville, who ran the Haven Fort Hotel in nearby Little Haven, described seeing an object which looked like an "upside-down saucer" and two "faceless humanoid" creatures with pointed heads.

She said so much heat came off it, her "face felt burned".

"There was light coming from it and flames of all colours. Then [the creatures] came out of these flames, that's what I don't understand," she said.

When she visited the field she said there was "two inches of burned grounds".

Ms Granville said the incident left her "agitated and disturbed".

Image captionDavid Davies' 1977 drawing

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the sightings.

Then-MP for Pembroke, Nicholas Edwards contacted the Ministry of Defence after being "inundated" with UFO sightings.

Flt Lt Cowan, an officer from RAF Brawdy, visited Ms Granville's hotel and examined the site, but could find no evidence of a landing.

He joked: "Should a UFO arrive at RAF Brawdy we will charge normal landing fees."

In his report, he mentioned the possibility that a "local prankster was at work" and the description of aliens "fitted exactly the type of protection suit that would have been issued in the event of a fire at one of the local oil refineries".

This fits in with the account of businessman Glyn Edwards, who in 1996 revealed he wandered around the area in a silver suit in 1977 as a prank.

The National Archives also released files which examined UFO sightings across Wales, and the officials who investigated the Broad Haven sightings suspected pranksters.

"There is general speculation in the neighbourhood that a practical joker may be at work," wrote staff at S4 - the government department that investigated sightings at the time.

It was also thought school children could have confused a sewage tank as a UFO, although many were from farming backgrounds and would have been familiar with the machinery.

More recently, a former US Navy sailor said the figure in a silver suit was in fact a member of US military personnel wearing their standard fireproof uniform and the UFOs were new Harrier jets flying over.

To mark 40 years since the sightings, a conference is being held in Broad Haven on Saturday, organised by Swansea UFO Network.

Organiser Emyln Williams said the case started "worldwide interest".

Asked if he thought it was genuine, he said: "One child can lie, but can a whole class?

"Over 40 years at least one of them might have come forward to say they made it up - but they haven't."

Mr Williams said there were several sightings the day the children claimed to have seen a UFO, including at Hubberston School in Milford Haven.

"That year there was so much happening. It is what we know as a UFO flap," he said.

Eyewitness Mr Davies, who lives in Shropshire, will be a guest speaker.

He said he had always been open-minded to the theories which attempted to explain the sightings and at no time had he "ever sensationalised his story".

"So many people are ridiculed for saying they have seen a UFO," he said, describing his secondary school life as a "misery".

"I was beaten senseless purely because of what happened to me. It would have been so much easier to take back my story."

He admits UFOs has been a subject that has gone on to "dominate his life".

"At one point I must have had the largest library of books in Wales on the subject."

Attending alongside Mr Davies is Neil Spring, who wrote a book based on the Broad Haven sightings.

"The moment I heard of this small village plagued by UFO sightings, I was inspired to understand what really happened," he said.

His research uncovered a secret investigation by the military police.

"Whilst the government was telling the public they had no records of any unusual activity in the area, privately, officials were so concerned about the UFO sightings in Broad Haven that they asked the military police to conduct a 'discreet' investigation," he said.

Mr Spring believes local pranksters were behind some of the sightings, but said "people emulate what's happening around them" and the pranks were inspired by events which had been "sincerely reported".

"My research showed that there were strange occurrences in Broad Haven long before the incident at the school and for a long times afterwards.

"So you can take the children out of the story and you'll still have the story."

{ http://www.bbc.com/news }

Is this the truth about the 'UFO filmed crossing path of Epsilon 3 rocket launch'?

ALIENS could be watching the space programme on Earth after footage of a Japanese rocket launch was said to show a UFO crossing its path.

Secret space program? 'TWO TR-3B triangle UFOs’ filmed flying out of canyon near air base

A UFO hunter believes he may have filmed two genuine "triangle UFOs" flying out of a canyon near a US Air Force base.

ONDERGRONDSE GEHEIME BASIS ANTARCTICA ONTDEKT?

Toen het Amerikaanse leger maatregelen nam om het overgewicht van personeel te bestrijden, had niemand gedacht dat hiermee ook gevoelige geheimen aan het licht zouden komen. 

Door dit alles is er nu precies vast te stellen waar zich op Antarctica een geheime ondergrondse basis bevindt, alhoewel deze niet persé Amerikaans hoeft te zijn.

Men heeft er bij het Pentagon nooit bij stilgestaan dat door middel van dingen zoals zogenaamde Fitbit horloges exacte locaties van de gebruikers kunnen worden vastgesteld. Dit systeem houdt al je lichamelijke activiteiten bij en meet verschillende dingen zoals hoeveel je gelopen hebt. Het doet dit op basis van het GPS systeem zodat van iedere gebruiker de exacte locatie kan worden vastgesteld.

Het Amerikaanse leger vond dit een goed hulpmiddel bij het bestrijden van overgewicht onder hun personeel en waren zo enthousiast dat ze deze Fitbits volop hebben verspreid binnen het leger. 

Via een organisatie die Strava heet is er nu een zogenaamde heatmap gemaakt van de aarde, waarop je precies kunt zien waar de Fitbit gebruikers zich bevinden. Het zijn natuurlijk niet alleen Amerikaanse militairen die met deze dingen rondlopen, maar overal ter wereld worden deze Fitbits gebruikt. Op de volgende kaart zie je het gebruik in Nederland en België. Hoe lichter de kaart, des te meer Fitbits zijn er actief.

Bij ons valt er weinig af te leiden uit het gebruik, behalve dat het in bepaalde gebieden meer voor komt dan in andere, maar wanneer je naar een totaal verlaten gebied kijkt in Syrië, net ten noorden van de stad Raqqa, dan begint het wel op te vallen.

Kortom, we weten nu van bovenstaande locatie dat het geen totaal verlaten gebied is, maar dat er één of meerdere personen aanwezig zijn die daar rondjes lopen. 

Veel militaire complexen zijn op verzoek van overheden niet opgenomen in Google Maps en Apple Map. Een woordvoerder van de US Central Command heeft aan de Washington Post laten weten dat het leger aan het kijken is naar de implicaties die de kaart met zich meebrengt. De looproutes van de militairen kunnen nu de locaties van geheime basissen vrijgeven. 

En dan komt er op de zogenaamde heatmap van Strava iets bijzonders tevoorschijn, ergens in een totaal verlaten gebied op Antarctica.

Ergens lopen daar één of meerdere mensen rond met een Fitibit.

Maar, als je op Google Earth kijkt, dan is er helemaal niets te zien, behalve ijs, sneeuw en rotsen.

Echter, op ongeveer 12 kilometer afstand ligt een landingsbaan die de Union Glacier Blue-Ice Runway heet. De rode markering geeft de landingsbaan aan en de groene de plek waar de bewegingen zijn waargenomen.

Dan blijft er eigenlijk maar één conclusie over en dat is dat er zich onder de bergen een basis bevindt. Het signaal is opgevangen, één of meerdere mensen hebben daar een bepaalde weg afgelegd en aangezien het zo goed als onmogelijk is dat dit aan de oppervlakte is geweest, kan het alleen ondergronds zijn geweest.

De vraag die dan overblijft is: Van wie is die basis? Van de Amerikanen waar veel militairen met een Fitbit rondlopen of toch van iemand anders?

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

‘Machines That Think’ predicts the future of artificial intelligence

A new book explores how AI may change people’s lives

BY 

MARIA TEMMING 

 

FORWARD THINKING  Toby Walsh cuts through the hype to give a critical assessment of how much we should welcome or worry about a future full of “thinking” machines.

PHONLAMAIPHOTO/ISTOCKPHOTO

Machines That Think
Toby Walsh
Prometheus Books, $16

Movies and other media are full of mixed messages about the risks and rewards of building machines with minds of their own. For every manipulative automaton like Ex Machina’s Ava (SN: 5/16/15, p. 26), there’s a helpful Star Wars droid. And while some tech titans such as Elon Musk warn of the threats artificial intelligence presents, others, including Mark Zuckerberg, dismiss the doomsayers.

AI researcher Toby Walsh’s Machines That Think is for anyone who has heard the hype and is seeking a critical assessment of what the technology can do — and what it might do in the future. Walsh’s conversational style is welcoming to nonexperts while his endnotes point readers to opportunities for deeper dives into specific aspects of AI.

Walsh begins with a history of AI, from Aristotle’s foundation of formal logic to modern facial-recognition systems. Excerpts from computer-composed poetry and tales of computers trouncing humans at strategy games (SN: 11/11/17, p. 13) are a testament to how far AI has come. But Walsh also highlights weaknesses, such as machine-learning algorithms’ reliance on so much data to master a single task.

This 30,000-foot view of AI research packs a lot of history, as well as philosophical and technical explanation. Walsh personalizes the account with stories of his own programming experiences, anecdotes about AI in daily life — like his daughter’s use of Siri — and his absolute, unapologetic love of puns.

Later in the book, Walsh speculates about technical hurdles that may curb further AI development and legal limits that society may want to impose. He also explores the societal impact that increasingly intelligent computers may have.

For instance, Walsh evaluates how likely various jobs are to be outsourced to AI. Some occupations, like journalist, will almost certainly be automated, he argues. Others, like oral surgeon, are probably safe. For future job security, Walsh recommends pursuing careers that require programming acumen, emotional intelligence or creativity.

AI also has the potential to revolutionize warfare. “Like Moore’s law, we are likely to see exponential growth in the capabilities of autonomous weapons,” Walsh writes. “I have named this ‘Schwarzenegger’s law’ to remind us of where it will end.” Walsh isn’t resigned to a Terminator-like future, though. If governments ban killer robots and arms developers use automation to enhance defensive equipment, he believes military AI could actually save many lives.

In fact, Walsh argues, all aspects of AI’s future impacts are in our hands. “Artificial intelligence can lead us down many different paths, some good and some bad,” he writes. “Society must choose which path to take.” 

Buy Machines That Think from Amazon.com. Science News is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Please see our FAQ for more details.

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Mankind Survived A ‘Civilization Changing’ Extraterrestrial Impact 12,800 Years Ago

In a massive study that included 24 researchers and published in two scientific papers, experts found that our planet suffered the impact of a space object as early as 12,800 years ago when humans were already sedentary and were beginning to form the very first complex societies around the planet.

The study titled Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago” analyzed geochemical and isotopic markers and found that massive fires would have been responsible, in part, for the disappearance of large mammals.

Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago” is divided into “Part I: Ice Cores and Glaciers” and “Part 2: Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments.”

“The study includes measurements made at more than 170 different sites around the world,” said Adrian Melott, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kansas and one of the authors of the research.

According to Melott and his colleagues, the new data indicates that the disaster was unleashed when the Earth collided with fragments of a disintegrating comet that was approximately 100 kilometers in diameter, whose remains persist in our solar system to this day.

A chaotic time for early society

This impact would have caused fires so large that the resulting dust clogged the sky and prevented sunlight from entering.

The climate cooled rapidly, the plants died, the food sources were exhausted, and the glaciers moved forward again.

The oceanic currents moved, forming an almost glacial era that lasted a thousand years more.

Gobekli Tepe is considered one of the most mysterious places on the surface of the planet. Curiously, some authors believe that a similar catastrophic event was recorded at Gobekli Tepe by its builders.

“The hypothesis is that a massive comet fragmented and the pieces hit Earth, generating this disaster,” said Melott.

“A number of different chemical signatures – carbon dioxide, nitrate, ammonia, and others – seem to indicate that an astounding 10% of the earth’s surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires.”

Furthermore, according to Melott, pollen analysis suggests that pine forests were probably burned to be replaced by poplars, which is a species that colonizes cleared areas.

In fact, the authors postulate that the cosmic impact could have triggered the episode of the Recent Dryas, the burning of biomass, the extinction of the late Pleistocene of larger species (of which we were blamed) and the cultural changes in humans and the decrease in population.

“The estimates imply that the impact would have depleted the ozone layer, causing increases in skin cancer and other negative health effects,” said Melott.

“The impact hypothesis remains a hypothesis, but this study provides a large amount of evidence, which we argue can only be explained by a very large cosmic impact.”

If confirmed the hypothesis of this study which seems to have been recorded by ancient cultures, would indicate that humans not only survived a cataclysmic event, but we took advantage of it and we could start to repopulate the planet.

What Graham Hancock said

Curiously, that’s exactly what world-renowned author Graham Hancock said a few times already.

According to Mr. Hancock, 

an extremely advanced ancient civilization—that flourished during the Ice Age—was wiped out from the surface of the planet some 13,000 years ago due to a massive comet strike, and the ancients left us a warning of future events.

As explained in the book Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization, Mr. Hancock argues; “Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap.”

Source: New research suggests toward end of Ice Age, human beings witnessed fires larger than dinosaur killer, thanks to a cosmic impact

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/}

SHOCK CLAIM: Nuclear WW3 between US and Russia 'prevented by aliens'

ALIENS have repeatedly switched off nuclear warheads in Russia and the United States, in a bid to stop world war three breaking out, an expert has claimed.

OBJECTEN NAAST DE ZON EN VREEMDE LICHTEN STRAND EGMOND AAN ZEE, NEDERELAND ( VIDEO )

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

Het is zover: vanavond stuurt krachtigste draagraket ter wereld Tesla van Elon Musk de ruimte in - HLN.be

Bron: Tweakers

Je weet maar nooit wie binnen miljoenen jaren ons zonnestelsel met een bezoekje vereert. Al staat één ding vast: ze zullen in de baan om de zon plots een rood voertuig zien cirkelen. Een Tesla Roadster, met uitneembaar glazen dak. “De snelste wagen ter wereld in 2017, toch volgens de oprichter van Tesla, Elon Musk”, zullen ze op het internet (?) zien verschijnen wanneer ze op zoek gaan naar wat meer informatie. “In de ruimte gestuurd op 6 februari 2018.”

Lees ook

Kippenvel! NASA’s verkenner Curiosity maakt prachtige nieuwe beelden van Mars

Vandaag dus. En wat al maanden als grap wordt bestempeld, blijkt nu toch waar. Elon Musk - ook oprichter van ruimtevaartbedrijf SpaceX - postte gisteren nog een foto op sociale media: z’n auto zit vastgegespt boven in de Falcon Heavy-raket. Die staat intussen kaarsrecht in haar lanceerplatform Apollo 39A op Cape Canaveral in Florida. Klaar om rond 13.30 uur plaatselijke tijd de ruimte in te gaan, bij ons vanaf 19.30 uur. De plek ademt trouwens geschiedenis uit, want ook Neil Armstrong werd vanaf deze basis naar de maan gestuurd. 

In april 2011 al maakte SpaceX bekend dat “the world’s most powerful rocket” een lanceerdatum had. Al kwam het bedrijf niet verder dan ‘eind 2013 of 2014’. Die datum bleek veel te optimistisch. De raket is pas in het tweede deel van december vorig jaar geassembleerd, waarna het gevaarte goed een maand geleden rechtop werd gezet. Tot de kortstondige shutdown van de Amerikaanse overheid roet in het eten gooide. Op 24 januari volgde eindelijk de eerste test waarbij alle 27 motoren tegelijkertijd ontbrand werden - een huzarenwerk.

En dus wordt vandaag ook een absoluut nagelbijtmoment. Na jaren uitstel en het feit dat het productieproces “veel moeilijker” bleek dan gedacht, volgt de maiden trip. Die voor Musk al geslaagd zou zijn “indien de Falcon Heavy ver genoeg van haar lanceerplatform afkomt, zodat het niet beschadigd raakt”. “Dat zou ik eerlijk gezegd zelf al als winst beschouwen”, liet hij eerder optekenen. 

Wat de Heavy nu zo speciaal maakt? In feite is hij het sterkere broertje van de Falcon 9 met nog eens twee extra stuwmotoren, die aan weerszijden zijn gemonteerd. De Falcon Heavy heeft dus in totaal 27 raketmotoren, drie keer zoveel als waar de Falcon 9 over beschikt. De Heavy wordt zo de krachtigste raket sinds de maanraket Saturn V, die sinds 1973 niet meer heeft gevlogen. En heeft meer dan tweemaal de vrachtcapaciteit van de krachtigste raket op de huidige markt (voor de specialisten: de Delta IV Heavy, goed voor 28,8 ton). Ook andere huidige operationele raketten komen lang niet in de buurt van de stuwkracht van de Falcon Heavy. De in 2011 door de NASA uit dienst genomen Space Shuttle bijvoorbeeld kon een vracht van 24.000 kilo in een lage baan om de Aarde brengen. Volgens SpaceX kan hun tuig 63.800 kilo aan. Op een reis naar Mars zou dat 16.800 kilo zijn.

SpaceX zet trouwens de commerciële lanceermarkt op zijn kop, want doel van de Heavy: de komende twee jaar ruimtetoeristen naar de maan en Mars laten vliegen. De raket die de lucht in moet gaan, zal echter vooral gebruikt worden voor vrachtmissies waarbij satellieten in een baan om de Aarde worden gebracht, bijvoorbeeld de zwaardere exemplaren van de Amerikaanse overheid. 

En oh ja, ook David Bowie pikt een graantje mee vanavond: bij de lancering zal zijn nummer ‘Space Oddity’ weerklinken. “Een fantastische publiciteitsstunt”, zeggen experts erover.  Afwachten dus dat de raket niet ontploft.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Belgische wetenschappers: “Er is leven mogelijk op planeten TRAPPIST-1” - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

“Alle op dit ogenblik bestudeerde signalen staan op groen”, zei astronome Amaury Triaud van de Universiteit van Birmingham die mee de maandag verschenen studies schreef. “Op dit moment wijst niets erop dat zij niet ‘levensvatbaar’ zijn”. Op 22 februari 2017 maakten astronomen bekend dat bij de weinig heldere en koude dwergster TRAPPIST-1 zeven planeten ontdekt werden. Qua grootte gelijken ze op de onze. Drie ervan, Trappist-1 e, f en g, omcirkelen in de levensvatbare zone hun ster, wat betekent dat er vloeibaar water op hun oppervlak zou zijn.

Lees ook

Magnetische polen kunnen switchen en tot chaos leiden: “Zelfs doorspoelen wc wordt dan onmogelijk”

Sindsdien beschikken de astronomen over meer informatie met betrekking tot de ster, haar planeten en hun atmosfeer. De wetenschappers konden hun metingen van omvang en massa van de planeten verfijnen om vast te stellen dat zij vooral uit gesteente bestaan en dat bij sommigen tot vijf procent van hun massa uit water kan bestaan.

Vijf procent water

Ter vergelijking: slechts 0,1 procent van de massa van de Aarde bestaat uit water. Aangaande de kans dat de planeten leven zouden herbergen, zei Triaud tegenover het Franse persbureau AFP “in dit stadium niets te kunnen zeggen omdat ze erg van elkaar verschillen van de enige planeet waar leven is (de onze). “Maar ze hebben ook de geëigende kenmerken en vormen tot op vandaag de beste plaats buiten ons systeem om te zoeken naar signalen van levensvatbaarheid en van leven”.

“In termen van grootte, dichtheid en hoeveelheid straling van haar ster lijkt de vierde planeet het meest op de Aarde. Het lijkt erop dat het de meest gesteente-achtige planeet is, zelfs als de aanwezigheid van water niet is uitgesloten”, aldus een communiqué van het Franse CNRS dat deelnam aan het onderzoek. Het is gepubliceerd in de wetenschappelijke vakbladen Nature Astronomy en Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Er namen ook Belgische vorsers aan het pas gepubliceerde onderzoek deel zoals Julien De Wit van het prestigieuze Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alsmede een reeks wetenschappers van de Luikse universiteit Valérie Van Grootel, Michaël Gillon, Artem Burdanov, Laetitia Delrez en Emmanuël Jehin van de Luikse universiteit.

AFP 

De wetenschappers konden hun metingen van omvang en massa van de planeten verfijnen om vast te stellen dat zij vooral uit gesteente bestaan, en dat bij sommigen tot vijf procent van hun massa uit water kan bestaan.

 AFP

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Those who were excited about the Super Blue Blood Moon last week probably don’t live in Venice, where the pull of the Moon at its closest approach to Earth further dried up the canals already mysteriously on the edge of being bone dry. And, while the lunar eclipse that turned the Moon blood-red didn’t cause it, frustrated Siberians angry after a local river mysteriously turned the same color may swear at it anyways … at least until they get an explanation. What’s going on?

Better days in Venice

Let’s start with the canals. No matter what color they are, they’re the lifeblood of Venice, so any problems with them – and disappearance is definitely a big one – affect virtually everyone living in or visiting the beautiful city. Photographs taken last week (shown here and here) show gondolas resting in dry canal beds. Unfortunately, ‘dry’ doesn’t mean ‘empty’ as the pictures also reveal the garbage and debris that the waters normally hide.

A water-covered city knows its tidal calendar, so Venice was prepared for the low waters due to the Super Blue Blood Moon. This is also the third year in a row that droughts have contributed to extremely low – although not bone dry – water levels. However, experts are still mystified because the city continues to sink, which should make it prone to flooding – in Venice, that’s a good thing … or at least a better-than-no-water thing. Is the City of Canals destined to become the City of Great Places to Skateboard?

Will we ever see this again?

Meanwhile, a different problem is causing the residents of the Siberian city of Tyumen to avoid the Molchanka River because of what the media is calling … well, you can read it yourself:

“Experts say they so far cannot pinpoint the cause of what state news agency Itar-Tass called a ‘Biblical bombshell’.”

The “biblical bombshell” is a river that mysteriously and quickly turned red (more pictures here) and has not changed its hue in over a week. Tyumen is the home of many oil and gas companies, so the first inclination is to point fingers at them, not the bible. However, local officials doubted that explanation.

“Team of experts examining the area found no trace of sewage discharges. Extra water samples were taken. Laboratory results will be ready by the end of this week.”

That was on January 31st and no results have been released as of this writing, days after the “end of the week.” Meanwhile, the water isn’t moving, some residents say it’s getting redder and the Russian environmental watchdog group Rosprirodnadzor (The Federal Service for Supervision of Use of Natural Resources) isn’t making anyone feel better with comments like this:

“We have never dealt with this before so we are waiting for the results of tests.”

Hey, at least they have an environmental watchdog group.

While many people today (including news agencies) are quick to use the terms “biblical,” apocalyptic” and “end times” (like the story today about birds falling from the sky), the real problem is that our waterways and oceans are being affected constantly by humans (yes, the moon influenced the tide in Venice but humans built the city in spite of it) and watchdog groups are becoming an endangered species.

Are songs like “Watching the River Flow” and “Blue Bayou” destined for extinction too?

{  http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

It’s never good news when birds – or any other animals for that matter – fall from the sky … dead or alive. Get ready for some bad news from Draper, Utah, and Rome, Italy, where hundreds of dead starlings covered the ground recently. Pollution? End times? Something worse?

The Times reports that the dead starlings began appearing the weekend of January 27th at the Porta Pia gate in the Aurelian Walls of Rome. Residents reported the ground being covered with corpses, blanketing walkways and roads with dead, and eventually flattened, birds (photos here). This is migration season, so Romans are used to seeing the sky and tree branches covered with starlings summering in the city and eating the local olives. Unfortunately, something has made life the pits for these birds this year. But what?

“We found they were in good health but suffering from the trauma and broken bones you would associate with collisions, either with each other or with cables.”

Francesca Manzia, head of a hospital run by the Italian League for the Protection of Birds (there’s an idea other cities should adopt), had no answer. Fatal bird collisions when there’s millions of them aloft can be caused by a predator, a loud noise or some other disturbance, leading to lemming-like processions of crashes into buildings, trees or each other. Is Rome no longer big enough for the starling migration? Could the birds have been stunned by an electromagnetic or other unseen forces?

If they’re looking for a different warm migration stopover, they need to scratch Draper, Utah off of the list. Located 20 miles south of Salt Lake City in the north central portion of the state, Draper is home to many Native Americans, a state prison and, on January 30th, thousands of dead starlings.

“As I was driving, these birds were just falling out of the sky. They were all on the ground right around here and on the roadway. They were just falling out of the sky like leaves.”

Resident Lacey Brown told a local news station that there were so many starlings on the ground, she stopped to help a man shovel them out of the road to avoid making a feather, bloody mess. Unfortunately, Sergeant Chad Carpenter with the Draper police, saw more carnage.

“It was just one of those freak things where the birds were just flying along, crashed into the side of a large vehicle and boom.”

Draper Animal Services helped with the cleanup and found some starlings still alive, lending credence to the theory that these birds were also startled into a mass collision.

Again, what could have startled the starlings to their deaths? The beautiful twisting formations they fly in are called murmurations and bird experts are unable to explain how millions of birds can make tight turns so close together without colliding … which makes the rare times they do collide even more mystifying. Sadly, they may have more opportunities to study the phenomena since it seems to be happening more frequently.

Starlings are highly social birds and their survival depends on the ability to fly together. If their mysterious deaths are not a sign of the end times, can we at least see them as a sign that not living and working together is a bad thing?

{  http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Life imitates art? — The reciprocal relationship between UFO reports and Hollywood

CURT COLLINS

Recent news revealing the Pentagon’s secret UFO program has reignited the general public’s curiosity about the possibility of extraterrestrials in our skies. There has always been a blurry line between the topic of UFOs and the realms of fantasy and science fiction. Skeptical UFO historian Martin Kottmeyer has documented how virtually every detail witnesses report about alien encounters can be found in earlier science fiction stories, or in legends and mythology.

It’s also a fact that our books, TV shows, and movies have used UFO reports for inspiration, which in turn has helped spread fantastic concepts of extraterrestrial visitors. A cultural feedback loop exists between the real and unreal. Let’s take a look at a few of the most powerful examples.

The Early Days

In the 1870s, Earth’s telescopes detected dark, linear features on Mars, which were interpreted by some as canals produced by a civilization older and more advanced than our own. This inspired one of the most influential of all science fiction novels, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

When Orson Welles (no relation) adapted The War of the Worlds in 1938 for CBS radio using a faux documentary style, the tale of an attack by Martian invaders was heard by thousands. Some of those listeners (but not as many as you might think) were persuaded the story was true and panicked. The reaction to the broadcast made headlines, and to capitalize on the sensation, Universal studios quickly recut their movie serial Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars into the feature-length Mars Attacks the World. It’s kinda-sorta the first UFO movie, produced to exploit the public’s interest in extraterrestrial visitors. Like the radio play, it also preyed on the flip side of hope — fear. If our rockets were beginning to reach into space, what if someone out there had a big head start?

In June of 1947, newspapers broke the story of how aviator Kenneth Arnold had spotted a formation of unknown disc-like aircraft moving at speeds beyond those of our fastest jets. The U.S. Air Force began an investigation into the sighting, and the explosion of flying saucer reports that followed it. By late 1949, the Air Force’s investigation, later known as Project Blue Book, determined that saucers were not a secret project by the U.S. itself, the Soviets, or anyone else. They tried to shut down the saucer fever, but science fiction had greased the skids. If these UFOs were real craft, they came from somewhere else, and that somewhere must be Mars or another planet.

Saucer reports dwindled, but radio and newspapers found that covering them made for hot filler material. In 1950, two best-selling books emerged that would shape the belief in UFOs and influence the films made about them.

Retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe’s The Flying Saucers Are Real debuted, and his key ideas would become canon: UFOs are ships from outer space, the U.S. government knows it, and there’s a big cover-up. Keyhoe reached some far-out conclusions, but he relied on the word of credible sources working in the government saucer investigation. However, there was another guy with a saucer story, a far more fantastic tale, and it became the biggest one of all time when rebranded as the Roswell UFO crash.

Frank Scully was a columnist for the show biz magazine Variety, where he first introduced his story which was later expanded into a book, Behind the Flying Saucers. Scully told how scientists revealed that a saucer had crashed in the New Mexico desert, the U.S. military recovered the disc, the alien technology, and the small deceased humanoid bodies found inside, then hid and denied everything. (Scully’s tale was exposed as a hoax in 1952, when his source, the “scientists” Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer, were convicted as swindlers, but that’s another story.)

With the phenomenal success of the 1950 Keyhoe and Scully books, many people went from asking if flying saucers were real to accepting that they were. Hollywood was ready to capitalize on the saucer craze, but they needed more stories. They turned to science fiction for material.

John W. Campbell, Jr’s story “Who Goes There” from Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938, was adapted into the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World. The first change was to make the spaceship in the story into a flying saucer,although it’s only as an indistinct shape through ice except for its tail fin. The Thing bears a resemblance to the premise of Frank Scully’s saucer book, the military mission to recover a crashed flying saucer, and it also gets in a few jabs at government denials. The extraterrestrial in the movie is truly alien, a throwback to Wells’ monstrous Martians, out to survive at the cost of human life.

The Day the Earth Stood Still,also released in 1951, was loosely based on Harry Bates’ story from the October 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, “Farewell to the Master.” Again the spaceship was swapped for a flying saucer, and it’s a major set piece, almost a co-star. As for the aliens, the giant Gort is as enigmatic as the ship. Klaatu seems human, benevolent, almost angelic, bringing a message of peace, love, and understanding – but carrying a stern warning that mankind will not be allowed to spread its warlike ways to the people of other planets.

The Day the Earth Stood Still was not influenced by genuine saucer stories, but it became a tremendous influence on those that followed. George Adamski and his cult concocted the hoax of an angelic Klaatu-like visitor from Venus here to warn of the dangers of nuclear war, as chronicled in the 1953 book Flying Saucers Have Landed. Following Adamski’s fame, a legion of imitators dubbed “Contactees” surfaced with tales of meetings and flights with the Space Brothers. This kind of friendly visitor from the stars wasn’t good movie material until Stephen Spielberg revived the idea in the 1970s.

Invaders from Mars (April 1953) delivered the goods, an original story with a flying saucer full of aliens here for the business of abducting, controlling minds, and conquering. Due to its hasty production, it has the distinction of being the first UFO film in color, so we get to see the saucer, the green-skinned Martians, and their strange little tentacled, big-headed leader in all their glory. Invaders also depicted a number of elements that would come to be staples of later UFO tales — alien abductions and medical implants.

When The War of the Worlds finally made it to the movies, it was influenced by flying saucers as well, with the Martian war machines’ tripods eliminated, updated into sinister saucer-like aircraft.

Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers (1956) was the first try at a docudrama. It’s historically important for being the first film to be factually based on UFO cases, including real witnesses and saucer footage. Unfortunately, in striving so hard to be realistic, it did the unbelievable – it almost made saucers seem dull. Still, the ads and posters for UFO promised something far more sensational.

In 1961, after New Hampshire couple Betty and Barney Hill observed a star-like object in the sky, they started having nightmares. Under hypnosis, an abduction story surfaced, one reminiscent of Invaders from Mars. The Hills story was portrayed in the 1975 TV movie The UFO Incident, which may have in turn inspired other abduction dreams and stories that followed.

Travis Walton’s alleged abduction near Snowflake Arizona came shortly after the broadcast of the Betty and Barney Hill TV movie. What makes Walton’s case noteworthy is that he appears to have been the first guy kicked off a flying saucer for fighting.

Incredible Heroes of Alien Disclosure

Modern Remakes

All the truly influential things happened in the first 20 years or so of flying saucers – both the sightings and in the movies. With rare exceptions, after 1980, films were either toying with the established memes or were just remakes, remixes, and rip-offs of what had come before.

The year 1977 for saucer buffs, at least in the cinema. George Lucas’ film Star Wars was more about reviving Flash Gordon-style fun than anything else, but it’s worth a passing mention, since it featured a Bigfoot co-piloting a flying saucer.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was inspired by real UFO cases, but copied and pasted bits of them together, adding a mothership-sized dose of Disneyesque melodrama, with a side order of Adamski’s message of the aliens’ love from above. Real-life UFO expert Dr. J. Alien Hynek served as a consultant on the film and made a cameo appearance during the finale.

Stephen Spielberg scuttled the idea of a direct sequel to CE3K and went for another story of cuddly aliens in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, in 1982. Spielberg inspired many other friendly aliens, like those featured in Mork & Mindy, Starman, Cocoon, ALF, The Abyss, and others.

Hangar 18 (1980) can be seen as a marker in the UFO topic’s turn toward the dark side. It was (very loosely) based on Scully’s crashed aliens story and it also featured a sinister government conspiracy to cover it up. The huge advertising push for Hangar 18 helped prepare the public to swallow the retconned Roswell story that surfaced around the same time, bit it didn’t catch fire in the mainstream until September of 1989, when it featured on the NBC TV show, Unsolved Mysteries, as “Legend: Roswell Crash.”

For the Roswell conspiracy story to be true, there must be a massive cover-up, and a mythology sprang up to serve as the story’s super-villain, a secret government cabal known as MJ-12. The idea of benevolent ETs was again pushed aside, replaced with spooky tales of government treaties with aliens to allow abductions, cattle mutilations, and human-hybrid breeding programs at Area 51 and secret underground bases.

When Travis Walton’s abduction story was turned into a movie, 1993’s Fire in the Sky, Hollywood considered his 1950s-style aliens outdated. The producers insisted on a jazzed-up more horrific version of the aliens and abductions like those that became fashionable in the 1980s.

The X-Files (1993) television show came to define UFOs in the ’90s, but most viewers were unaware of the source of the stories. The alien content on the show was “ripped from the headlines,” but from tabloids and crackpot UFO magazines about those dark, dubious ’80s encounters. An early and enduring UFO conspiracy belief was that the truth about aliens would shock and panic the populace, but the public could adjust gradually to the idea as introduced through entertainment.

Independence Day (1996) incorporated a stew of lore, the Roswell incident, the government UFO cover-up, abductions, and more, with the fight against the aliens based at Area 51. Some imagined that Hollywood’s UFO movies and The X-Files were part of the acclimation program. To them, seeing an old story resurface on screen was “confirmation” that it was genuine.

Men In Black (1997) was also based on an old UFO legend via a little-known comic book. The MIB were first made famous in Gray Barker’s 1956 book, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, and further embellished by John Keel. Thing is, the MIB were made up by Barker and his friends to exploit the paranoia of many UFO buffs who thought that the government was operating a “Silence Group” to cover up UFO reports.

In 2008, The History Channel brought us UFO Hunters, but had far better success with Ancient Aliens. It was based on the second- and third-hand notions popularized by Erich von Däniken, that extraterrestrials were the gods of myth, and that there is abundant alien evidence in archeological remains. The success of the show served to demonstrate that the public’s interest in UFOs and aliens remains strong. However, recent incidents that make for good evidence – or good entertainment – are quite rare. They literally had to dig up the past for story material.

The UFO concepts have become so familiar, they blend in, nestled almost unnoticed into the premises of hit movies such as The Transformers or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers series. Recently, UFOs themselves as a central topic have made a comeback, both in the news and on the entertainment screen, with several movies, documentaries and TV shows in production. You can expect AMC’s 10-episode docudrama, Blue Book, starring Aidan Gillen as J. Allen Hynek, to continue the circle on TV screens soon.

WHAT WAS IT? Two 'experienced skywatchers' saw UFO on BOTH sides of Atlantic last night

ALIEN investigators have been independently contacted by two "experienced skywatchers" who claim to have seen an unusually slow-moving UFO last night on both sides of The Pond.

UFO ATTACK? Hundreds of birds drop dead in sky over Utah

HUNDREDS of birds flying through the sky suddenly dropped dead sparking fears they were subjected to a UFO attack in midair.

PENTAGON UFO: US has MORE radar footage of UFOs says former boss of secret X-Files

THE man who headed-up a top-secret Pentagon real-life X-Files probe into UFOs says there is more compelling video footage to come.

DNA Results Show The Elongated Paracas Skulls Are Not Native American

“The Paracas were an incredibly complex ethnic mix of people… There are a number of different haplogroups that were found in the DNA tests of the Paracas elongated skulls and these haplogroups, which is your genetic ancestry, they don’t fit in with the history of Peru in any shape or form…”

According to a group of experts dealing with the Paracas skull phenomenon, recent DNA results have revealed that the elongated skulls of Paracas, Peru, are not native to the region.

During the 1920’s, a Peruvian archaeologist by the name Julio Tello discovered a series of tombs in Paracas Peru. The contents of the tomb left experts stumped as countless elongated skulls were recovered from the tombs. Since then, more elongated skulls have been found in the region, raising numerous questions about these mysterious people.

For more than five years have experts like Brien Foerster tried solving the mystery behind the elongated skulls. While much progress has been made in understanding them, the journey has been very difficult.

The analysis of this elongated skull, which has reddish hair, shows that it has a mitochondrial haplogroup U2e, which may signify it originated somewhere in the Caucasus… far from Paracas.

After countless studies and research, we have begun finding out more about these mystery skulls. Some DNA analysis has shown that the elongation present on the Paracas skulls was not the result of artificial cranial deformation but by genetics. Some of the Paracas Skulls have a cranial volume which is up to 25% larger and 60% percent heavier than conventional human skulls. While ‘head binding’ can alter the shape of the skull, it cannot alter its volume.

At the end of last week, a Symposium was held in Los Angeles where experts announced new results of testing performed on the elongated Skulls.

The main speakers of the event were L.A. Marzulli and Brien Foerster.

As reported by Megalith Marvels, Foerster, author of several books on the subject and a recognized expert of the Paracas Skulls, published the following information on the aforementioned DNA results.

“The DNA results actually were incredibly complicated… It’s going to take me some time to actually figure out what the results mean. What it does show for sure is that the Paracas elongated skull people were not 100% Native American. They were a mix or even you could say, in some ways, a hybrid of different people.”

More question than answers…

Foerster explains that “Their blood types are very complicated as well, they should be blood type “O” if they’re 100% Native American and that’s not the case. We are likely looking at a sub-species of humanity as regards to the Paracas… Seems to be a lot of DNA evidence from extreme eastern Europe and extreme western Asia. More specifically I’m talking about the area in between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea where ancient elongated skull people lived I think about 3000 years ago.”

Source and reference:

Hidden Inca Tours

Megalithic Marvels

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What Makes Jupiter's Great Spot Red? It's Still a Mystery

Lasers Reveal a Maya Civilization So Dense It Blew Experts’ Minds

Is this proof aliens are watching us? UFO crosses paths with Epsilon 3 rocket launch travelling at 25,000mph

Conspiracy theorists believe a UFO overshadowed the launch of the Japanese rocket

A £255million satellite that will monitor the Earth's atmosphere has successfully launched into space.

But conspiracy theorists believe something overshadowed the 'perfect' launch on Kyushu Island in Japan.

They claim an unknown 'mysterious craft' passed closely by the rocket as it travelled at 25,000mph - and some think it could be aliens monitoring our technological advances.

Thousands of people gathered to watch Japanese Space agency Jaxa launch its Epsilon 3 rocket at 6.06am on January 18.

Video shows that shortly after the craft engaged its secondary boosters a UFO , allegedly flying at the same altitude as the rocket, appeared.

The object was made up of three white lights and a red blinking beacon that appear to swoop close to the rocket.

READ MORE

• Bizarre 'UFO-like' object unearthed on beach as stormy weather batters coast - can you guess what it is?

Many viewers have pointed out that the lights look like they belong to a plane.

But conspiracy theorists insist a no-fly zone was in place during the launch.

UFO Today posted footage of the launch on its YouTube page.7

READ MORE

• Dad taking pictures of medieval castle with son spots strange ghostly figure when he looks back at images

The caption read: "Many will say this is an airplane, but the area had a no fly zone at the time of the rocket launch.

"The launch went perfectly, but during the launch a strange mysterious craft was filmed. This UFO was flying at the same altitude as the rocket.

"It was moving along with the rocket as it started it's orbit around earth. What was this object?"

READ MORE

• Viewers spot two 'UFOs' flying through night sky during live broadcast as presenters discuss the day's news

But not everyone was convinced the lights were extra-terrestrial in origin.

One viewer wrote: "It's got an FAA light blinking...so....it's human made."

{ https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ }

Mystery Of Remarkable Ancient Maps

Map are among the oldest firms of human communication, far from purely scientific instruments, they are almost always bound with history, mythology, and religion. The earliest maps were created long before first alphabets were invented. People have always been fascinated by maps and their power to represent –  and misrepresent – our world. From prehistoric rock carvings to the latest computer-generated imagery, mapmakers have used cartography to chart every aspect of the world – and to alter our perception of it.

The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity (6th to 5th centuries BCE) but is there anything that could pulverise that age limit? What if the world’s oldest map is at least ten times older than that putative onset of abstract thought. How about a map that is anywhere from half a million to one million years old? 

Amateur archeologist David King has been researching one site at the head of the Colne Valley in England, within two decades, he has collected over 10,000 paleolithic artefacts in the area.  

The map in question seems to be engraved on a 4.5-inch tall pebble. It takes only a small leap of the imagination to recognise the coastlines of Europe in the shapes incised into the stone. But matching the mapwork with the object’s supposed age – up to a million years, Mr. King contends – is several bridges too far for current science. And for most scientists.

image source (Image Source)

image source (Image Source)

Mr. King has had the map stone for over a decade, but in all those years was unable to have ‘official’ palaeontologists concede that it might be a man-made artefact.In fact, Mr. King contends, the stone surface presents “an accurate,detailed and concise map of the coastlines,lakes and river systems from north Europe all the way down to South Africa.”

1  – World’s oldest urban landscape

An engraved object recently found at the site of Moli del Salt in Spain and dated to the end of the Upper Paleolithic, about 13,800 years ago, may show a hunter-gatherer campsite. 

The world’s first piece of landscape art may have been discovered in Spain, depicting what appears to be a Stone Age hunter-gatherer campsite 13,800 years ago. Landscapes and images of everyday life were “scarcely represented” in Paleolithic art, with those featuring huts and campsites particularly rare.The slab has seven engraved semi-circular motifs on with internal lines arranged in two rows. Analysis of motifs and composition together with archaeological records led authors to come to the conclusion it depicts a campsite. Scientists suggest it may be be the earliest image of human habitation ever discovered.

The Moli del Salt slab is now housed in the Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain.

2 – Forma Urbis Romae

Forma Urbis Romae, or Severan Marble Plan of Rome is enormous map, measuring ca. 18.10 x 13 meters (ca. 60 x 43 feet). It was carved between 203-211 CE and covered an entire wall inside the Templum Pacis in Rome. It depicted the groundplan of every architectural feature in the ancient city, from large public monuments to small shops, rooms, and even staircases. For more information about the map itself. It is composed of 150 marble tiles built to a scale of 1 to 240. The Forma Urbis Romae was ripped down—most likely to be used to make lime cement. Today, only 10 percent of the original map remains. The first pieces were rediscovered in 1562. A section recently discovered in Palazzo Maffei Marescotti allowed researchers to connect three chunks of the ancient puzzle. The newfound piece has shed new light on the present-day ghetto, an area which once dominated by the Circus Flaminius.

3 – Danish map stones

A set of broken stones covered with etchings of lines and squares, discovered at a 5,000-year-old sacred site in Denmark, may be some of humankind’s earliest maps, according to archaeologists.

The researchers think the inscribed stones are symbolic maps of local landscapes, and were perhaps used in rituals by Stone Age farmers who hoped to magically influence the sun and the fertility of their farmlands.

4 – Turin Papyrus

The Turin Papyrus Map is an ancient Egyptian map that is generally considered to be the oldest surviving topographical and geological map of the ancient world – there are some older maps from outside Egypt, thought these have been described as rather crude, and more abstract in comparison with the Turin Papyrus Map. The Turin Papyrus Map is believed to have been made during the reign of Ramesses IV, around the middle of the 12th century BC. Investigations have shown that the map was made by Amennakhte, son of Ipuy, who bore the title ‘Scribe of the Tomb’.The map is believed to have been prepared for one of the quarrying expeditions sent by the pharaoh to Wadi Hammamat for the quarrying of bekhen­-stone, a greyish-green type of stone highly prized by the ancient Egyptians. The purpose of its creation, however, is less clear.

5 – Piri Reis map

The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC. 

6 – A star map carved into Japan’s Kitora Tomb

A star map carved into Japan’s Kitora Tomb may be the world’s oldest astronomic chart. 68 constellations with gold leaf stars cloaks the ceiling. Three circles track the movement of celestial bodies—including the Sun. The pole star dominates the center. The detailed map depicts the horizon, equator, and star courses. This is not the first depiction of the night sky. Lascaux Cave contains a 17,300-year-old image of the subject. However, it lacks astronomical observations.

Researchers determined that the sky as depicted in the Kitora Tomb chart was seen from China, from locations such as modern-day Xi’an and Luoyang.

7 – Oldest Map of New York

The map, which was created by a Genoese cartographer named Vesconte Maggiolo in 1531, is one of the first depictions of America’s eastern seaboard and is now worth $10 million. It’s also the first (extant) map, ever, to show New York harbor.

The ancient chart even follows Magellan’s circumnavigation, making it a true world map. 6.7 feet wide and 3 feet tall, the map is made of nearly indestructible goatskin.

8 – Buache Map

The Buache Map is an 18th century map commonly claimed to accurately depict the continent of Antarctica before it was buried by ice. By extension, it has been claimed that this map is evidence that an ancient civilization had mapped Antarctica when it was free from ice, and that it was based on this source that the Buache Map was drawn. However, t ere are arguments against this interpretation of the Buache Map, and the claim that the continent of Antarctica was known to a highly advanced ancient civilization long before it was ‘re-discovered’ by modern man in the early part of the 19th century. 

Christopher Columbus may have consulted a mysterious map from 1491 before setting sail across the Atlantic Ocean one year later. Made by Florence-based cartographer Henricus Martellus, the map synthesizes Claudius Ptolemy’s observations about the circumference of the world with Marco Polo’s observations and Portuguese Africa explorations. The map does not show the Americas. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas he believed he had reached Japan, which is where Martellus’s map had him located.

Analysis revealed hidden messages on the map. The secret notes contain place names and 60 written passages. The 6-by-4-foot map was photographed under 12 light frequencies—including several beyond human visibility. Latin descriptions reveal facts about far-flung peoples like the “Balor” of Northern Asia who live without wine or wheat and subsist on deer meat. The detail of southern Africa is extremely accurate, suggesting it was derived from native sources rather than Europeans.

9 – Ancient Babylonian Conservative Map

The Babylonian Map of the World is a dramatic labeled depiction of the known world from the perspective of Babylonia. The map is incised on a clay tablet, showing Babylon somewhat to the north of its center; the clay tablet is damaged, and also contains a section of cuneiform text. 

It is usually dated to the 5th century BC. It was discovered at Sippar, southern Iraq, 60 miles (97 km) north of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates River, and published in 1899. The clay tablet resides at the British Museum. It is conjectured that the island locations, though possibly referring to real areas, may also represent a mythological interpretation of the world.

The map depicts the world as a disc surrounded by water. Seven mythical islands lie beyond and connect the earth to the heavens. Cuneiform text explains the mysterious beasts and heroes that inhabit these islands. Seven dots represent seven cities of the ancient world. A “Great Wall” symbolizes winter. The back of the tablet describes mythic beasts that inhabit the heavenly ocean. Experts believe these are constellations.

10 – Hereford Mappa Mundi

The Hereford Mappa Mundi is unique in Britain’s heritage; an outstanding treasure of the medieval world, it records how 13th-century scholars interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms.

The map bears the name of its author, ‘Richard of Haldingham or Lafford’ (Holdingham and Sleaford in Lincolnshire). Recent research suggests a date of about 1300 for the creation of the map.

Superimposed on to the continents are drawings of the history of humankind and the marvels of the natural world. These 500 or so drawings include of around 420 cities and towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology.

{ http://www.look4ward.co.uk/ }

For The First Time Ever, Astronomers Find Planets In Another Galaxy

Astrophysicists have discovered a group of planets in a galaxy 3.8 billion light years away Getty

For the first time ever, astronomers have discovered a set of planets in a galaxy, far beyond the Milky Way. Until now, scientists had never found evidence of planets existing outside the Milky Way Galaxy. The newly-found set of planets are located in a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away.

Eureka! Astrophysicists at the University of Oklahoma have discovered the first population of planets outside of our galaxy.

The groundbreaking discovery was made possible thanks to a revolutionary technique called microlensing, which allowed astrophysicists to spot celestial objects in galaxies that are located too far away to be observed directly.

Prior to this discovery, astronomers had no evidence of alien planets outside the Milky Way Galaxy.

Astrophysicists note that this discovery indicates that there are around 2,000 planets ranging in size from the moon to Jupiter mass per main-sequence star. As of January 2018, there are more than 3,500 confirmed planets outside of our solar system.

Prior to this finding, researchers had never found evidence of planets existing in other galaxies. This is because detecting alien planets is hard due to vast distances involved. In fact, it’s not easy to find planets even within the milky way. The farthest planets discovered inside the Milky Way are SWEEPS-04 and SWEEPS-11, two alien worlds located about 27,000 light-years from Earth, which is curiously only about a quarter of the width of the Milky Way.

By using microlensing techniques, which take advantage of distortions of light from a background source much like a magnifying glass to see distant objects, astronomers spotted a family of planets. Massive objects like black holes for example literally curve the fabric of space-time so much that it bends any light passing by it.

“We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy,” Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences.

“These small planets are the best candidate for the signature we observed in this study using the microlensing technique. We analyzed the high frequency of the signature by modeling the data to determine the mass.”

Image of the gravitational lens RX J1131-1231 galaxy with the lens galaxy at the center and four lensed background quasars. It is estimated that there are trillions of planets in the center elliptical galaxy in this image.
Credit: University of Oklahoma

Cool science

Until now, microlensing techniques were only used to detect alien worlds inside the Milky Way Galaxy.

“This is an example of how powerful the techniques of analysis of extragalactic microlensing can be. This galaxy is located 3.8 billion light-years away, and there is not the slightest chance of observing these planets directly, not even with the best telescope one can imagine in a science fiction scenario,” said OU postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Guerras.

“However, we are able to study them, unveil their presence and even have an idea of their masses. This is very cool science.”

Researchers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to make the discovery.

The historic find was published in The Astrophysical Journal

Source: University of Oklahoma

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Life On Titan? Scientists Find Signs That Life “Breathes” Cyanide On Saturn’s Moon

Caves and Sinkholes Found on Saturn's Moon Titan

Don’t get too excited but… we may just have found the necessary conditions for alien life to exist on Saturn’s moon Titan.

Scientists at NASA have recently confirmed the existence of vinyl cyanide in Titan’s atmosphere. Vinyl cyanide is an organic compound which may potentially provide the cellular membranes for microbial life to form in Titan’s vast methane oceans reports Phys.org.

Titan: Gigantic Moon or Dwarf Planet?

If true, it could prove that life can flourish without the ubiquitous H₂O.

Here on Earth, cell membranes are composed of phospholipids: molecular chains with phosphorus-oxygen heads and carbon-chain tails that join together to form a flexible membrane in water.

Alternative form of life?

If Methane-based life should exist in the solar system, it would need an alternative to Earth’s phospholipid-based existence and would open up a much wider range of planets and moons to the possibility of extraterrestrial life—and one such possible alternative is vinyl cyanide.

So, how do we know there’s vinyl cyanide on Titan?

Diagram of the internal structure of Titan according to the fully differentiated dense-ocean model.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Cassini spacecraft was one of the first to suggest there might by vinyl cyanide on Titan after its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) picked it up as the spacecraft was orbiting Saturn. However, to confirm vinyl cyanide was really there, scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in the desert of Chile.

Maureen Palmer, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of an article describing the research in Science Advances, collected data from the ALMA and verified the presence of vinyl cyanide in the atmosphere of Titan, at altitudes above 200 kilometers, with its highest concentrations in areas above the south pole of Titan.

Speaking about the discovery Palmer, said: “If membranes can be made in a lab with a simulation of Titan’s ocean conditions, it would make us more optimistic about them really forming on Titan.”

Artist’s impression of Saturn View from Titan / iasos.com

She adds Titan is “an interesting chemical laboratory to study the boundaries of possible biochemistry for creating life”.

Titan is home to freezing temperatures which reach a staggering minus 179 degrees Celsius. In these low temperatures organic molecules in the atmosphere form droplets that rain down to fill methane lakes in a weather cycle similar to that of Earth’s water cycle. There, they could potentially create simple, microscopic life forms.

Palmer and her colleagues demonstrated that there is enough vinyl cyanide in Ligeia Mare, Titan’s northern lake, to form about 10 million cells per cubic centimeter, which is roughly 10 times more than the bacteria in Earth’s coastal oceans.

However, we still have to prove Vinyl cyanide can produce life, but an exciting study by Cornell University researchers that was also published in Science Advances made it an intriguing prospect.

Journal reference: Science Advances  

Source: Astrobio.net

Featured image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institut

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The video above – released in January 2018 – is based on data from NASA satellites and shows global patterns and cycles of biomass burning. According to NASA, emissions from both wildfires and prescribed burning turned out to be a key in solving the puzzle of the sharp increase in methane in Earth’s atmosphere in recent years. John Worden of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory led the new analysis of satellite and ground-based data, with the goal of more accurately pinpointing the sources of methane.

The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.

Methane is a greenhouse gas. It absorbs the sun’s heat and helps warm Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of methane in Earth’s air has sharply increased since 2006, and scientists want to understand why. NASA explained that various teams of scientists have had different explanations for the puzzling increase in methane:

Some teams have published evidence showing that emissions from biogenic [living] sources is driving the increase. Wetlands, ruminants, and rice paddies — all home to methane-producing microbes — are some of the major sources of biogenic methane.

Other teams have argued that a simultaneous increase in atmospheric ethane, a key component of natural gas, implies that fossil fuels are the culprit. Extracting and transporting fossil fuels add both ethane and methane to the atmosphere via leaks in wells, pipes, and other infrastructure.

Worden’s new analysis suggests that both fossil fuels and biogenic sources (wetlands and agriculture) are the primary drivers of the increase.

View larger. | Sources of methane in Earth’s air, via GlobalCarbonProject.org.

The key to this new understanding by Worden and team was a new calculation of the role played by emissions from global biomass burning. NASA explained:

Worden’s team calculated that fossil fuels have contributed about 12 to 19 teragrams of methane to the atmosphere each year since 2006. They found biogenic sources contributed 12 to 16 teragrams per year. At the same time, emissions from biomass burning — wildfires and prescribed burning — decreased by 4 to 5 teragrams per year.

The key to pinpointing these numbers was the calculation of a new estimate of emissions from biomass burning.

In the past, researchers relied on ‘bottom up” estimates of methane emissions based on output from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED), a model that estimates emissions based on satellite observations of burnt area, vegetation type, and other factors.

Worden’s group supplemented the GFED estimates by incorporating satellite measurements of methan

m the Measurements of Pollutants in the Troposphere (MOPITT) sensor on the Terra satellite and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer 

e and carbon monoxide actually in the atmosphere. The “top-down” observations came fro(TES) sensor on Aura.

Because methane is a powerful, heat-trapping greenhouse gas, scientists want to understand exactly why it’s been increasing in Earth’s atmosphere since 2006.

Image via NASA.

The video at the top of this article – based on data from GFED – shows land fires burning around the world between 2000 and 2015. The data show that the area burned each year decreased by about 12 percent between the early 2000s and the more recent period of 2007 to 2014.

The logical assumption would have been that methane emissions from fires would decrease by roughly the same percentage as the change in burned area. But, NASA said, that’s not what happened. Instead:

… the observations from TES and MOPITT made clear that the decrease in methane emissions was almost twice as much as that assumption would suggest.

Armed with this new understanding, Worden’s team was able to point with confidence both to fossil fuels and to biogenic sources (wetlands and agriculture) as primary drivers of the methane increase since 2006. Worden commented:

A fun thing about this study was combining all this different evidence to piece this puzzle together.

John Worden of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Bottom line: Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. A new study lets scientists understand with better precision the sources of the increase in methane in Earth’s air since 2006.

Source: Reduced biomass burning emissions reconcile conflicting estimates of the post-2006 atmospheric methane budget

Via NASA Earth Observatory

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

Russen maken hun langste ruimtewandeling ooit. Resultaat: antenne staat in verkeerde richting -  HLN.be

Bron: ScienceAlert, NASA

 NASA  Commandant Alexander Misurkin en vluchtingenieur Anton Shkaplerov.

WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Twee kosmonauten die in het internationaal ruimtestation ISS verblijven, hebben de langste Russische ruimtewandeling ooit gemaakt. Dat gebeurde eigenlijk per ongeluk, omdat er problemen waren bij het vervangen van de elektronicadoos van een communicatieantenne. Toen ze de antenne opnieuw wilden uitschuiven, wilde die niet meer mee.

Commandant Alexander Misurkin en vluchtingenieur Anton Shkaplerov zouden normaal gezien een wandeling maken van 6,5 uur om de elektronicadoos te vervangen. Maar niet alles verliep volgens plan. Toen ze zeven uur bezig waren en de antenne weer uit wilden schuiven, ging het fout.

Lees ook

Als toerist door de ruimte reizen? Ruimtevaartagentschap onthult ambitieus plan

Positie

De kosmonauten duwden eerst minuten lang tegen de antenne, terwijl de vluchtcontrole ze in de juiste positie probeerden te draaien. Uiteindelijk kregen ze er beweging in, maar de controlekamer bevestigde dat de antenne ongeveer 180 graden verkeerd stond. Volgens commentator Rob Navias van NASA TV zou ze echter “werken en in goede staat” zijn. De kosmonauten zullen wel bekijken of ze nog iets kunnen doen aan de situatie. (lees hieronder verder)

NASA

✔@NASA

RIGHT NOW: Two humans are working in the vacuum of space to complete today’s #spacewalk, which began at 10:34am ET. Watch them outside @Space_Station live: https://www.nasa.gov/live 

6:34 PM - Feb 2, 2018

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De ruimtewandeling van de twee duurde in totaal 8 uur en 13 minuten en daarmee was ze langer dan het vorige record uit december 2013, dat op 8 uur en 7 minuten stond.

De oude elektronicadoos werd overigens niet mee terug naar het ruimtestation genomen. Een van de kosmonauten gooide ze de ruimte in, weg van het ISS. De doos – die de grootte is van een reiskoffer en 27 kilogram weegt – zal uiteindelijk opbranden in de atmosfeer van de aarde. (lees hieronder verder)

Intl. Space Station

✔@Space_Station

Spacewalker Alexander Misurkin jettisoned, or tossed, an old electronics box removed from the station into space. It will eventually re-enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up. https://www.nasa.gov/live 

8:50 PM - Feb 2, 2018

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Het vervangen van de doos was overigens niet eenvoudig, omdat het nooit de bedoeling was dat het in de ruimte zou moeten gebeuren. Voor kosmonauten met grote ruimtehandschoenen is het geen evidentie om de gedetailleerde operatie uit te voeren.

De volgende ruimtewandeling staat gepland voor 15 februari.

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Intl. Space Station

✔@Space_Station

Two cosmonauts completed the longest spacewalk in Russian history today after 8 hours and 13 minutes to upgrade a high gain antenna system. https://go.nasa.gov/2FHH829 

1:04 AM - Feb 3, 2018

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{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Primeur in de astronomie: voor het eerst planeten waargenomen ver buiten ons sterrenstelsel -  HLN.be

Bron: The Independent, Phys.org

Bij “gravitationele microlensing” wordt gebruik gemaakt van de sterkte van het licht van een verre ster en quasars (een actief centrum van een sterrenstelsel met een hoge helderheid, red.). Dat licht wordt gebogen en versterkt door het zwaartekrachtsveld van een ster die meer op de voorgrond staat. Als de verre ster recht achter de dichtere ster ligt, dan zal die laatste als een lens werken en creëert het een soort schijf van licht waarbij de lichtstralen van de verre ster alle kanten opgaan. 

De lichtsterkte van de stralen wordt beïnvloed door de aanwezigheid van planeten in de buurt van de dichte ster. Door het licht kan mijn dus nagaan of er planten zijn in de omgeving. De techniek, die tot nu enkel is gebruikt om nieuwe planeten te vinden in de Melkweg, is de enige gekende manier waarmee planeten op zo’n afstand kunnen waargenomen worden.

3,8 miljard lichtjaren ver

Met die techniek hebben wetenschappers nu dus een groep van zo’n 2.000 planeten kunnen identificeren. Qua grootte variëren de planeten tussen de grootte van de maan - die een straal heeft van 1.737 km - tot de grootte van Jupiter - die een straal heeft van 69.911 km. De planeten zijn zo’n 3,8 miljard lichtjaren verwijderd van ons sterrenstelsel. 

“We zijn heel erg blij met deze ontdekking. Het is de eerste keer dat iemand planeten buiten ons eigen sterrenstelsel heeft ontdekt”, zegt professor Xinyu Dai, astrofysicus aan de Universiteit van Oklahoma. Professor Dai en zijn collega dokter Eduardo Guerras hebben hun ontdekkingen gepubliceerd in The Astrophysical Journal.

“Coole wetenschap”

“Dit is hét voorbeeld van hoe krachtig de technieken van microlensing kan zijn”, zegt dokter Guerras. “Dit sterrenstelsel ligt 3,8 miljard lichtjaren ver en er is geen kans om deze planeten op directe wijze te observeren, zelfs niet met de beste telescopen die je kan bedenken in een science fiction-scenario”, zegt Guerras. “Maar we kunnen ze wel bestuderen, hun aanwezigheid bevestigen en zelfs hun massa schatten. Dit is heel coole wetenschap.”

Het team van astronomen heeft data gebruikt van het Chandra X-ray Observatory, een satelliet die astronomische waarnemingen doet aan de hand van de röntgenstraling. Met een telescoop hebben de wetenschappers de stralen van quasars op de achtergrond kunnen bestuderen om zo metingen te doen die bewijs leveren voor de planeten.  

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Black UFO Comes Out Of Thin Air Near Volcano In Mexico, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Feb 4, 2018
Location of sighting: Popocateptl, Mexico

Seen by Orlando Bosca of Youtube, this dark black UFO was seen appearing out of thin air near the mouth of the volcano. The UFO moves away quickly, compared to clouds around the volcano. 

This UFO is similar to a UFO that was tracked by a US Navy radar plane a few years ago. This is clearly an alien craft. Its been long believed by many UFO researchers that this particular volcano has an alien base 5km below its surface. 
Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

The True Story of Area 51 – Grant Cameron

Interview with UFO researcher and author Grant Cameron.

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

Cloud being ripped apart by mysterious object over Nevada

On February 3, 2018 Reddove Twenty heard a strange sound over his house in Pahrump, Nevada, about a 30 minutes drive from Mercury and the old Nevada test site.

He went outside maybe 60 second later, looked up in the sky and saw a large hole in the clouds, as if the clouds have been ripped apart by something that left a huge trail.

Reddove said that he always see strange things happening in the sky but this is a little different and wonders whether something has arrived through a portal or could it be a UFO, meteor or secret craft?

  

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

Here’s Your First Look at the Most Detailed Simulation of the Cosmos Ever Made

by Christianna Reedy

{ https://futurism.com/ }