Mars 2020: The Red Planet's Next Rover

Given the vastness of space, it has to be highly improbable that we’re alone. Still, if there are other intelligent civilizations out there, we have to detect them or their transmissions some day, right? That question been one of the biggest conundrums of astrophysics for years, and unfortunately we might never know the answer. Still, given the age of the known universe, the Earth and subsequently humankind are pretty young, cosmologically speaking. If there are (or were) any technologically advanced alien civilizations out there, we should be able to detect the various signals emitted by their technology – even if those aliens have been dead for ages. In fact, a new study claims that our galaxy could be filled with “ghost” signals from long-gone alien civilizations. Long-gone is better than never-was though, right?

I call dibs on their stuff.

The claim about ghost signals comes fom a team of astronomers and mathematicians from the SETI Institute and the University of California, Santa Cruz who have recently published a new calculation of the Drake equation. The authors include Frank Drake, author of the original Drake equation which is aimed at calculating the likelihood of discovering an alien civilization in our own galaxy. In a nutshell, the equation factors in the average rate of star formation per year observed in the Milky Way, the numbers of stars which host presumably habitable planets, and several hypothetical or currently unknowable variables like the fraction of habitable planets that actually go on to develop intelligent life. Since many of the variables aren’t able to be precisely calculated due to the limits of our knowledge and technology, the Drake equation is unsolvable.

And yet he got it published?

This new iteration of the equation seeks instead to calculate the probability that signals from any hypothetical alien civilizations might pass through our galaxy in a timeframe in which they can be discovered by humans. The new Drake equation factors in the speed of light, radio waves, and other electromagnetic radiation and assumes advanced civilizations only last for 100,000 years or less. With those new variables factored in, the odds are, well…

Wait for it…

Still astonishingly low. Terrifyingly low. Think about it: humanity has only been broadcasting (and therefore scanning for) radio transmissions for less than 100 years. Given the speed of radio waves, that means our transmissions are only detectable by the nearest 0.001 percent of the Milky Way. Given the sheer size of the galaxy, not to mention the universe, SETI has its work cut out for it. While the authors note that the likelihood is pretty slim that we will detect a technologically advanced alien race before human civilization comes crashing to a halt, some “ghost” signals from long-dead civilizations likely haunt the galaxy and could possibly even be discoverable right now. How bittersweet would that be, discovering our galactic neighbors only through their cosmic obituary? Sounds like a great premise for a one-shot Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. 

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

A Tale of (Possible) Alien Intruders in Antarctica

Red Pill Junkie

There are many ways to portray an alien invasion in Science Fiction: The conspicuous in-your-face massive landings of extraterrestrial spacecraft –favored by summer blockbusters like Independence Day— or the more insidious form of a ‘silent invasion’, by way of infiltrating aliens that are indistinguishable from us into our communities or sensible military and/or civilian installations, so that these invaders can slowly but surely defeat us from within. This is undoubtedly the most disturbing form of alien invasion, because it could be happening right before our eyes and we wouldn’t even realize it… until it’s too late.

Some of the best examples of UFO-themed films make use of the alien infiltration plot: John Carpenter’s The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live, etc. My friend and colleague Robbie Graham treated the subject at length on his seminal book Silver Screen Saucers. He also mentions how historians tend to treat these films as examples of the Cold War paranoia that spilled into many aspects of American culture —“anyonecould be a Commie traitor!”— and yet the reason why aliens are the ultimate ‘5th columnist’ in the popular imaginarium, is because since the beginning of the modern era of UFOs there were those who claimed contact with the occupants of those shiny flying saucers, and those UFOnauts looked just like usaccording to the excited accounts of the Contactees. Indeed, it would be later when we would get reports of ‘alien-er’ visitors sporting all sort of anomalous body lengths and features: from big-headed dwarves to spindly giants, with hairy trolls and goblins in-between.

Let’s take for example John Carpenter’s The Thing, which we mentioned earlier: The reason the movie is so particularly thrilling is not only because anyone –or anything!— could be the shapeshifting alien parasite, but also because the story takes place in one of the most alien environments in our own planet –a base in the middle of Antarctica. A place so inhospitable you can literally freeze just by taking a stroll outside if you’re not wearing the right gear. The landscape itself becomes another predator chasing after the movie heroes once they lose communication with the outside world, making the situation even more claustrophobic. You die if you leave, and you die if you stay.

Yep, The Thing is probably one of the few horror movies I actually like and rewatch regularly. “But let’s be serious here,”one might say: “The Contactees were all hoaxters and charlatans (Venusians? Gimme a break!) Besides, invaders that look like us and infiltrate sensitive facilities happen only in the movies and TV shows, right?”

“…Right?“

Well, that’s what I used to think, but once listened to the account of Mikey Kampmann, I’m not so sure anymore…

Now, you might not be familiar with the name of Mikey Kampmann, and there’s a good reason for that. He’s not part of any UFO lecturing circuit trying to peddle crazy stories about the Galactic Federation, or all the benevolent races trying to raise our ass to the 5th dimension and stuff. No, Mikey is just one of those adventuring types who felt the need to leave the small enclosures of his hometown and travel to the farthest reaches of the planet. And by “farthest” I mean “end-of-the-freaking-world” farthest!

On episode 166 of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, Mikey explains how he managed to get a job at the American south pole station for four months to fulfil a long-time dream. He doesn’t have any scientific or technical degrees, therefore he ended up as breakfast cook in charge of feeding 250 hungry base personnel each morning all by himself –so I guess in a John Carpenter-like scenario Mike would be Nauls, though I don’t know if he actually spent his tour roller-skating through the base’s corridors, at the beat of Stevie Wonder.

Mikey then goes to explain to Duncan the hurdles and steps he took in order to apply for that position at the station (the physical examinations, making sure you don’t have any cavities, etc.). He also discusses the type of scientific work they conduct there (astronomy-related stuff) and other aspects of the daily life at the base, like the fact that during the summer months the sun is always up; which, although fascinating on some level, makes the listener think this is going to be a pretty ordinarychat –even for a DTFH show, which will ALWAYS be filled with philosophical and metaphysical ponderings.

But then, Mikey drops a bombshell of Cosmic Watergateproportions…

At around 36 minutes into the recording, the conversation veers toward the strange lore circulating around the base with regards to ‘aliens’: How his boss at the base told Mikey on his very first day how ‘the grays’ are not often seen during the summer “because they mostly come out in the winter.” Was the comment part of some sort of weird initiation ritual in order to have some fun and break the tedium at the expense of the ‘ice rookies’, or is this an indication of what psychologists would describe as ‘cabin fever syndrome’? Given the quirkness of human nature, one would tend to think it was perhaps a bit of both.

And yet Mikey then proceeds to recount one personalexperience he had inside the base, which would suggest perhaps there was something truly anomalous going on inside this remote station. The incident involved a couple (a man and a woman) who worked together in the kitchen with him; he explains how although they were a very lovable people and he got along great with them, there was something odd about these individuals he couldn’t quite put his finger on: Despite their claim that they came from Colorado “they had these accents that were bull$#!t” Mikey says, that made them sound foreign to him. The couple also said they had waited 3 whole years trying to get a job in Antarctica, whereas his own application only took a week at the most. Who spends 3 years of their lives waiting to go to Antarctica to become… a dishwasher??

One day the couple were at the dishpit and Mikey was bringing in some dirty dishes from the mess hall. The woman was standing right in front of the man, and as Mikey got closer he could hear they were having some sort of conversation; but he soon realized the man and a woman were not talking in anylanguage he’d ever heard before!

“It wasn’t English or Spanish, and I didn’t recognize it (…) it sounded DIGITAL, truly!” he explains to Duncan, who asks Mikey to try and imitate the sounds he heard. Mikey’s recorded rendition of the ‘language’ –which I encourage anyone to hear– does sound like clicks and ‘tsk tsk’ snaps made out with the tongue, but he claims they had a mechanical quality to them.

The woman –who had her back toward Mikey and therefore could not see him as he was approaching them– was the one speaking to her husband in those robotic squeaks; the man eventually saw Mikey out of the corner of his eye, then looked at her wife who was still ‘talking’ and said to her “stop!”.

Mikey does not explain what he exactly did after he finally reached out to where they were standing at the dishpit. My guess is he probably left his load of dirty dishes by the sink and walked out of there without saying a word to them –the way most of us would’ve reacted in such an awkward situation.

To this day Mikey has no clue as to what was going on between this dishwashing couple from Colorado and their bizarre form of communication. The ‘legends about the grays’ he and his co-workers used to engage in —“who do you think is an alien?”— were mostly fun to him and didn’t take them too seriously. But could the man and woman he worked in that kitchen day in and day out be actual alien infiltrators?

In truth, the evidence supporting that outlandish claim is rather tenuous a best. We only have the testimony of a single man who, as sincere and honest as he sounds in the recording as he retells the event, remains as fallible and prone to making mistakes as the rest of us. We also have to take into consideration the unusual circumstances in which the event took place (i.e. in the middle of the south pole!) which would surely take its toll even among the most stable of individuals. Mikey also doesn’t shy away from the fact that life inside the base could be pretty hectic –lots and lots of wild parties where excess of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity were the norm. Maybe Mikey was recovering from a bad hangover and imagined the whole thing up?

There are also other avenues to consider, of course: Duncan proposes to him during the episode that instead of being scouts of an alien invading force, that perhaps these guys were human agents at the service of a foreign power, using some sort of secret language in order to pass sensitive information covertly. Although that seems a more reasonable assumption, it is not without logical holes either –wouldn’t it be easier to communicate through other means that wouldn’t raise suspicions among your co-workers, like using numbers or code-words in English that would sound innocuous to any bystander casually listening in?

Here I could propose a third possibility: What if these people were actually agents working for some American intelligence group, who were conducting a covert test meant to study the reactions of the personnel stationed at the base when faced with non-ordinary situations? Something akin to what is popularly referred to as gaslighting?

One thing’s for sure, and that is that after that bizarre incident at the kitchen Mikey started to closely watch the movements of the dishwashing couple, trying to learn more about them. He would casually spy on the man and woman during their free time, as they would wander off visiting the areas of the station which weren’t restricted, just like everybody else; but he never observed them doing anything unusual, or caught them off guard while they were taking off their human skin to groom their reptilian scales.

And Mike turned out to be not that casual in his espionage hobby, as he nonchalantly started out a rumor around the base about the possible alien nature of the couple! By the end of the summer season during his last week at the base, he was eventually confronted by them during one of the farewell parties. But instead of being mad or assimilating him into the Borg for blowing their cover, they acted as if they were amused by his suspicions!

“You think I’m an alien?” the woman teasingly asked Mikey point blank.

“I… I don’t know!” was the only thing he could blurt out as a reply. He did bring up the event at the dishpit, but didn’t have the nerve to actually ask her about the weird clicks. The three of them just kept drinking, laughing and enjoying the party –now I LOVE this anecdote because it’s so ambiguous: Ultimately the woman never denied Mikey’s suspicions; she just deflected him in the most ingenious way and at the most appropriate time. If these were aliens, they were surely masters in human psychology.

Mikey ends up the account by saying how, in some sort of symbolic gesture and as a compulsory way to express their feelings of fondness for each other at that moment, the three of them –Mike, the wife and the husband– leaned over and dry-kissed.

…And that’s it. No further mention of a hot human/reptilian menage-a-trois (Sorry, Ben and Aaron!). A few days later Mikey packed up his bags and left the station, never to see the odd couple again. He was only left with an ineffable sense of love and unity with two beings… who may or may not have been from this Earth.

Because even if they were from another world, why feed our fears into thinking they are among us for nefarious purposes? As much as I am a fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, I prefer stories like K-Pax or Starman, in which the alien is visiting us out of a sense of sheer curiosity, and a desire to reach out to without freaking us out with their sole presence.

Who knows, maybe there’s another parallel universe in which washing human dishes is considered the ultimate form of extreme resort. Think about that next time you eat at your local diner –and be sure to be generous with the tip.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

One of the most significant UFO movies of the 1950s was Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), which was very loosely based on Donald Keyhoe’s 1953 non-fiction book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space. In the movie, the last of a dying species of aliens arrive on Earth seeking a new home. The aliens request a meeting with world leaders to discuss their plans for occupation, but the US military, assisted by one America’s top scientists (played by Hugh Marlowe), formulates a plan of attack involving the use of sonar canons mounted on trucks to be fired at the alien saucers—the sonar supposedly interfering with their propulsion and navigation systems, and disabling their force fields.

The cloudbuster cannon.

The production history of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is intriguing. In 1955, Donald Keyhoe, then a jagged thorn in the side of the US government’s UFO secret-keepers, was approached by a group of Hollywood producers seeking to buy the rights to his aforementioned non-fiction book. The producers told Keyhoe their film was to be a serious documentary about UFOs. Although initially suspicious, Keyhoe eventually went along with the deal. Big mistake. Upon its completion in 1956, the “documentary” turned out to be the schlock sci-fi B-movie of our discussion. Keyhoe was outraged and demanded that his name be removed from the film’s credits, to no avail. Someone, it seemed, had it in for this outspoken advocate for government transparency on UFOs (perhaps the same “someone” who, two years later, censored Keyhoe’s statement on live TV that flying saucers were “real machines under intelligent control”).

Donald Keyhoe.

Keyhoe’s book, despite its pulpy title, was a serious examination of UFOs that drew extensively from the USAF’s own investigations into the phenomenon. The movie that the book inspired, however, was an outlandish affair, depicting scientists and the military as combating ridiculous rubber-suited aliens with plans to occupy the Earth. This deviation into kitsch fantasy is especially frustrating because the film also retained a considerable amount of fact-based UFOlogical detail from Keyhoe’s source material. The film’s saucers, for example, designed by Ray Harryhausen with a stationary central dome and a rotating outer-rim with slotted vanes, were based exactly on real-life descriptions collated by Keyhoe. Harryhausen also sought advice on his saucer design from UFO “contactee” George Adamski. The shrill sound emitted by the movie’s saucers also has been a common feature in UFO close encounter reports from the 1940s to present day, with witnesses often associating high-pitch whirring, humming, or hissing sounds with UFOs.

Particularly interesting is a scene in which Foo Fighters make a casual appearance. The scene in question sees heroic scientist Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe), his wife Carol (Joan Taylor), and the latter’s father, General Hanley (Morris Ankrum), having a family lunch while discussing their work on Project Skyhook—an American space program that launches research satellites into orbit. Suddenly, two glowing balls of light appear above their house, hovering silently. “Look! What are those lights?” asks the General. “They’re what the pilots call ‘Foo lights,’” Carol replies, “there have been so many around the project the last couple of days we all just take them for granted.” This is an unmistakable reference not only to Foo Fighters, but also to the many anomalous fireballs reported by military personnel around sensitive government facilities in the late-1940s which resulted in Project Twinkle, a two-year study program at Holloman Air Force Base tasked with solving the mystery.

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers even has echoes of Roswell in the form of its alien invaders, not as they appear in their cumbersome spacesuits, but in their true form underneath. When the protagonists remove the space-suit from one of the dead aliens, the being bears an uncanny likeness to the alleged Roswell beings as described by firsthand witnesses from 1947, but these testimonies would not come to light until more than twenty years after the release of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. How do we account for this apparent cinematic prescience? Were the Roswell witnesses influenced after the fact by Hollywood, or was Hollywood influenced by intelligence operatives with knowledge of the Roswell Incident?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Glowing UFO Comes Out Of Side Of Colima Volcano And Shoots Away On Live Internet Cam! March 12, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 12, 2018

Location of sighting: Colima Volcano, Mexico

Source: Live Internet Cam

I have been watching Colima live cam for over 5 years and have recorded over 40 UFOs myself, but this one really takes the cake. Youtube user Tenshi Mex saw and recorded this UFO. 

The UFO appears from below the ground through a hidden passage in the lower center of the volcano. The UFO hovers for a little bit as it exits the side of the volcano, then gets its engines or what ever propulsion set up and prepared, making a hard 180 degree turn flying over and past the mouth of the volcano! 

This is hard evidence and needs to be acnowledged by the governments of the world. Colima is clearly a UFO hotspot with an alien base 4-5km below its surface. How do I know? I have said that for over 5 years! This UFO came from within the volcano, the evidence is undeniable. 

Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Angelic Winged Sun Seen During Sunset In Florida, Video, March 2018, UFO Sighting News.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

ANCIENT ALIENS, SUPERHEROES, AND THE DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF

Co-author: Abby Moore (superhero theorist). Are myths of ancient astronauts filling the voids left behind in the exodus from the myths of religion? Perhaps the popularity of the Ancient Aliens television series parallels the decline of traditional religious belief in 21st-century America. After all, twice as many Americans believe in ancient aliens visiting humans on Earth (35%) than believe in the pure evolution of human life on Earth (19%). Maybe TV shows about ancient aliens and Hollywood movies about superheroes provide the big cosmic narratives that once belonged almost solely to theology. Think about it: ancient aliens and superheroes both have superpowers once reserved for Gods, prophets, and miracle makers.

For the record, I am an existentialist without the angst, influenced by Sartre, Sagan, and others. In a vast and ancient universe of two trillion galaxies and three sextillion stars stretching across 100 billion light years, I am not a cosmic narcissist who believes a Creator has a special plan for me or my species on a speck of a planet in a remote part of one galaxy. Yet, the cosmic vastness gives me hope that— to quote the astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) in Planet of the Apes (1968)— there has “to be something better than man. Has to be.” As explained in my most read essay in Medium, these better-than-human extratrerrestrials have never visited Earth (though I wish they would). Instead, we are witnessing the electronic birth of a new religion based in the myths and imaginary legends of extraterrestrial reality-TV stars—the “ancient aliens” who star in every episode, but have yet to appear.

21st Century Non-Belief

Much has been written about the decline of religious belief in 21st-century America, as documented in various surveys by the Pew Research Center. Americans who have no religious belief and/or no religious affiliation rose to 22.8% in 2014, up from 2% in the 1950s. While religious writers blamed the decline on the usual suspects (the breakdown of society, the decay of traditional values, and so on), the atheists and humanists tweeted their cheers of hope, apparently overlooking the possibility that a decline in traditional religious belief does not automatically equate to a rise in reason, science, and enlightenment. Given the increasing paranormalism in America, it could be the opposite. Make no mistake, something will fill the void.

According to the United States Census, the current US population is an estimated 327 million people. If indeed 22.8% of Americans are non-believers, that total equals about 75 million people. Age is definitely a factor in non-belief. Over 33% of millennials claim no religious belief, while GenX non-believers are at 23%, Baby Boomers are 17%, and those born before 1945 are 11%.

TABLE 1. Source: Pew Research Center website (2014); accessed November 11, 2017.

According to Pew, about 50% of the unaffiliated are disenchanted with religion or don’t need religion because of their beliefs in “science” and the lack of evidence for a Creator. Another 20% have a beef against organized religion, while 18% are unsure of their beliefs and 10% are inactive.

What’s most interesting to me is not the increase in atheists and agnostics, but the 15.8% who believe “nothing in particular.” 15.8% equals just over 50 million people. Since I doubt all of these people are nihilists, I wonder what they believe about the origins and destiny of the human species.

Are they merely disinterested in religion? Have they outgrown religion, with no need to replace it with any other worldview or cosmology? Do they believe in evolution or that the observable universe is indeed 13.7 billion years old and contains two trillion galaxies? Do they believe in human-caused climate disruption or the Anthropocene? Do they believe we got here via the advice and interventions of ancient aliens? Or do mobile phones, cool threads, hipster restaurants, and Netflix subscriptions provide the needed daily dope—such that they do not need a cosmology for themselves or for our species?

GRAPH 1. Beginning in the late 1960s, we can see the post-Apollo rise of the nones. Source: Gallup and National Public Radio, 2013.

The Apollo Effect

According to Gallup surveys and National Public Radio, the “nones” stayed below 5% until the Apollo program in the late 1960s. The rise of the nones began with the launch of rockets to the moon and continued long after the Apollo program was shut down. For readers who might not know, Apollo 8 orbited the moon in 1968 and took the famed Earthrise image, with Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969 and Apollo 17 marking the last journey to the moon in 1972.

GRAPH 2. The post-1990 rise of the internet and rise of nones. Source: MIT Technology Review (“How the Internet is Taking Away America’s Religion,” April 4, 2014) and Allen Downey (“ “Religious Affiliation, Education, and Internet Use,” March 21, 2014).

The Internet Effect

According to computer scientist Allen Downey, the rise of the internet correlates with the rise of non-belief from 1990 to 2010. During that period, the increase in non-believers jumped from 8% to 18% of Americans. In a study of four decades of survey data trends regarding demographics, socioeconomics, religious affiliation, and internet usage, Downey concluded that:

• Religious upbringing increases the chance of religious affiliation as an adult. Decreases in religious upbringing between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 25% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

• College education decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in college graduation between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 5% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

• Internet use decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in Internet use since 1990, from 0 to nearly 80% of the general population, account for about 20% of the observed decrease in affiliation.

Please keep in mind that “correlation” does not equal “causation.” Correlations show patterns that we must connect to other knowledge, evidence, and observations.

What Accounts for the Other 45%?

Given there are 75 million non-believers, what other trends might account for the startling growth in numbers? If we follow Downey’s study and assume upbringing, education, and the internet can account for 55% of the increase, what else accounts for the other 45% (33.7 million people)?

Is it the growth of the scientific outlook? That’s possible, given that only 9% of Americans believed in pure evolution in 1982 and the total has more than doubled to 19% in 2014 (according to Gallup). However, it is likely a good chunk of that 19% is accounted for in the 55% of Downey’s study?

Could the increases be attributed to the various “New Atheist” books published in the past few years? Recent works include: Sam Harris’ The End of Faith (2004), Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004), Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (2006), Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great (2007), and Victor Stenger’s God: the Failed Hypothesis (2007). These books might have had marginal influence on creating more non-believers, but my guess is that most of the readers of these books were already atheists. Plus, the sales of these books are dwarfed by the audience size of Ancient Aliens.

As dramatized in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith was the indisputable artifact left on Earth by advanced extraterrestrials. Ancient Aliens hijacked this concept and dumbed it down to the lowest possible level, while filling the intellectual void left by the death of philosophy long divorced from cosmology.

The Rise of Ancient Alien Theory: Hijacking the 2001 and Apollo Narratives

Published at the pinnacle of the space age in 1968, Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? hijacked the space narrative from Apollo and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 appeared in 1968, along with Planet of the Apes, Apollo 8 (the first journey to the moon), and Chariots of the Gods?. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969 as von Daniken’s book was becoming popular around the world. Chariots of the Gods? did what few other works tried (outside of a few episodes of the original Star Trek): it connected human destiny on Earth to the stars we were beginning to explore with the Apollo program. As I wrote in my previous essay about ancient-alien theory:

“The ancient-astronaut theory draws upon two valid cosmological concepts: 1) the reality of the immensity of space and time; and 2) the possibility of advanced civilizations somewhere in the cosmos. Given that the scale of the observable universe is immense and that NASA’s Kepler telescope suggests there may be billions of planets in the Milky Way, there is almost certainly life elsewhere in the cosmos, perhaps including intelligent civilizations.”

“Given that the observable universe is 13.7 billion years old and it took 4 billion years for intelligent life to emerge on Earth, then it is possible the remaining 9 billion years produced civilizations that may have existed for millions or billions of years. If so, they may have developed space travel technologies that allow them to traverse the great distances with relative ease…Such a possibility is one reason why 2001 offers such a compelling vision of human origins and destinies. After all, it would be an epochal moment to find a black monolith somewhere on Earth or the moon, beaming out a radio signal to an alert and curious species.”

Such a possibility is attractive, at least in theory. If ancient aliens have visited our planet, they would have possessed highly advanced sciences and technologies. They would have been viewed as gods, angels, and miracle makers by premodern humans, who would have looked upon the beings and technologies with awe, wonder, and fear.

A 1970s-style Captain Kirk got in on the ancient alien narrative, too.

Since Chariots of the Gods? was a huge best-seller, it was made into a documentary film, Chariots of the Gods (1970). Creator of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling even narrated a one-hour TV version called In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973). A copycat version of the film, Mysteries of the Gods, was released in 1976—hosted by none other than William Shatner, a.k.a. Captain Kirk, looking rather hip in a green turtleneck and black velour blazer, while sporting a 1970s-style toupée. With films and TV shows as publicity, Chariots of the Gods? sold over 40 million copies during the 1970s.

Without a doubt, 2001, Planet of the Apes, and von Daniken’s book and films were trying to account for human origins and destiny at the pinnacle of the space age and the Apollo program. When I first encountered Chariots of the Gods? as a boy in the suburbs of Texas in the 1970s, it seemed like a plausible counter-narrative to the self-righteous evangelicals in my school and neighborhood. As explained here, I eventually began to question the validity of the assertions and realized the ancient-alien theory was bogus pseudoscience. To be frank, I was kinda bummed out. But, logic and evidence mattered more to me. Still do.

Of course, there were mainstream media efforts to debunk Chariots of the Gods? These included a 1976 Skeptical Inquirer article, a book entitled The Space Gods Revealed that featured a forward by Carl Sagan, and a BBC-PBS production of Nova (the episode “The Case of the Ancient Astronauts”). Nevertheless, the book’s pseudoscientific ideas continued to circulate around the world in the decades that featured the rise of non-belief in the wake of Apollo. Given that Chariots of the Gods? sold 40 million copies, can we assume it had zero impact on traditional religious beliefs?

In 2009, a two-part episode of Ancient Aliens appeared on the History Channel. So popular was the show that the History Channel programmed the Ancient Alien series, which began in 2010 and is still running every season—134 episodes and counting! As point of comparison for the atheist programs, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s 2014 Cosmos reboot only had 13 episodes and seems to appear on TV far less often than Ancient Aliens. I have seen both series listed in Netflix. Why would Ancient Aliens far outstrip Cosmos if the issue was merely a scientific outlook?

The prime-time episodes of Ancient Aliens draw well over one million viewers, plus there are endless repeats during days and evenings. These audiences are far larger than anything on the Science Channel. Who knows how many millions of viewers have seen the various episodes of Ancient Aliens? Among the 45% and 33 million non-believers unaccounted for in Downey’s study, how many millions might be fans of Ancient Aliens? I don’t know but it is a question worth considering. I bet the total is far from zero. After all, recent surveys show that 35% of Americans believe aliens have visited Earth in the ancient past (see the Chapman surveys below).

Still going strong almost 50 years after Chariots of the Gods?.

The Ancient Aliens series features fanciful storytelling, with many scenes shot at the various remote sites where “evidence” of ancient aliens supposedly exists. Still, it’s all pseudoscientific nonsense—simply because there are no proven artifacts of extraterrestrial origin. There is no academic conspiracy against the ancient-alien theorists as implied in the narration and comments of the talking heads. What’s needed is proven evidence, as cleverly suggested by the monolith in 2001. But we haven’t discovered a monolith or the “chariots.” I wish we had.

In Chariots of the Gods?, Mysteries of the Gods, and Ancient Aliens, virtually all of the so-called evidence and arguments provided by the theorists are myth, superstition, hearsay, anecdotal, or involve an inference or conclusion that is fallacious, implausible, or unknowable. The “evidence” and arguments also contain inaccuracies, mistaken assumptions, unrelated facts, and false similarities. The few remaining pieces of “evidence” — which are a tiny fragment of the absurd claims — are simply mysteries yet to be solved or mysteries that will never be solved. One might say this is also a key point in the cultural emergence of “alternative facts.”

Ancient Aliens: A New Cosmic Religion

But the pseudoscience, endless fallacies, and alternative facts have not prevented the multi-season programming of the television series. Even if the History Channel decided against renewing the series, it would run for decades in syndication and for eternity online, at least until real extraterrestrials arrived or we finishing wrecking the planet.

According to Chapman University, the belief in ancient aliens is growing rapidly: from 20% in 2015 to 35% in 2017.

Chariots of the Gods? and Ancient Aliens have given birth to new cosmic religion narrative, with von Daniken as the great prophet and his followers serving as the scribes—Giorgio Tsoukalos, Graham Hancock, David Childress, and others. Like God and his prophets, the unseen aliens have superpowers and have shaped our past and perhaps our destiny, especially if they return. The ancient alien narrative is like the standard Creator narratives, in that it assumes most everything humans have done follows from pre-ordained grand plans, with mysterious or hidden purposes, effected by an all-powerful force from the sky, a force that has yet to return to prove it exists. Like the Creator narrative, we humans must have been special beneficiaries. After all, the ancient aliens have taken the time to visit our tiny planet, thus caring enough to allegedly build stone structures, design ancient batteries, create cool statuettes, and paint pictographs before cruising to the next galaxy or star system.

Despite (or because of) the pseudoscience, the ancient alien theorists are doing a far better job of connecting humanity to the cosmos than Hollywood filmmakers and contemporary philosophers. The ancient-alien theorists have a fervant audience of followers who feel the theory connects our origins and destinies to the stars. Meanwhile, Hollywood merely sends us into space to wage Star Wars and battle Alien monsters.

All of the above is why I predict the ancient-alien narrative will continue to grow over time, precisely because it is filled with mystical and magical beliefs that mirror religious mythologies. Ancient Aliens makes us feel special—just like Jesus, ETs came to visit us and advise us. After hijacking the 2001narrative, von Daniken and his scribes have built the ancient-astronaut theory into a new religion, a new cosmic narrative filling the void left by contemporary philosophy as it shrinks before a massive and expanding universe. Meanwhile, secular society provides us with mobile phones and IMAX movies, and says we and our tribes are special—so super-special that superheroes will save us in case the aliens don’t make it back in time.

Superheroes: Our Secular Gods

Born of Nietzsche’s 19th century “Ubermensch,” the superhero emerged to counter horiffic “supermen” of the 20th century — the Marxist New Man and the Nazi Aryan man. By the early 20th century, the Soviet Union promised to create the Marxist New Man, the new human supposedly liberated from capitalism and united via communism and “scientific” materialism, supposedly destined to operate on an international scale. Countering the Marxist New Man, Nazi Germany concocted a racist Aryan Man, a mythical superman from the past supposedly destined to rule Europe and much of the world. Of course, both of these visions of a “new man” resulted in genocide and mass slaughter in totalitarian societies, culminating in World War II and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people before, during, and after the war.

In America’s land of a mythic “Democratic Man,” the only “superman” would be Superman, Batman, and subsequent legions of superheroes to save us in comics and movies. Though superheroes are fictional, their stories draw on real world events, such as nuclear weapons and environmental destruction. Superheroes function like secular gods providing stories about humanity’s survival and redemption in the face of apocalypse. In the end credits for The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), we see a giant sculpture of the Avenger superheroes, as if they are a pantheon of gods from Ancient Greece or Rome.

Pantheon of Secular Gods. Above: Statue of The Avengers from The Age of Ultron. Below: Justice League Superheroes

Superhero films have proven especially popular in the 21st century, with a trendline that mirrors the rise of non-belief in America.

Well into the 21st century, the superhero films just keep coming from Hollywood. Be it Superman, Batman, X-Men, Wonder Woman, or The Avengers, it seems almost all superhero films feature superheroes confronting a doomsday scenario for humanity. The superheroes must “save the world” because we can’t do it. Just as ancient-aliens fills the void left by philosophy divorced from science, superheroes fill the void left because industrial society has become divorced from nature, yet it is utterly reliant on the resources we are depleting. Oceans are acidifying, sea levels are rising, and nuclear war is still a possibility, while terrorism, exploitation, and endless tribal warfare plague secular society. Superheroes are needed to save us from ourselves because we know we have no answers, no real solutions for our problems, no leaders or institutions left to trust. It’s the same thing, over and over again, as illustrated in presidential elections.

In the 21st century, Americans expect their presidents to be superheroes battling the doomsday scenarios of the other party—thus we give the presidents ever-expanded political and legal powers, as if we are trying to give them superpowers and make them into superheroes with super solutions. Both major parties do it. Don’t deny it. When the dictator arrives in America, it will be in the guise of a presidential superhero with political superpowers. As Trump has shown, the superhero prez won’t even need to be rational or coherent or even sane. They just need to be superheroes who zap the bad guys. This is what happens when religion and nationalism merge with Hollywood and the 24/7 media spectacle.

In superhero movies and sequels, the superheroes must return to save us, again and again. Ancient-alien theorists claim extraterrestrial visitors shaped our past, present, and perhaps our future when they return. The return of aliens and superheroes echoes the promised return of Jesus and Nietzsche’s cycle of the eternal return, the superhero feedback loop. Ancient aliens and superheroes have superpowers beyond anything humans have, not unlike the Gods and prophets in religions. In the end, superheroes are our secular Gods and fulfill functions formerly reserved for religion, while ancient-alien theory claims to offer a secular narrative that connects us to the stars, yet ends up as another religion—a merger of the space age and new age.

Superhero stories and ancient-alien theory now stand in for contemporary philosophy, divorced from 21st century cosmology and declared “dead” by Stephen Hawking. In the absence of a science-based popular philosophy that offers us hope, meaning, and purpose (beyond tribalism, consumerism, and strip-mining other planets) amid the cosmic vastness, the ancient-alien theory provides hope and meaning by connecting our origins and destiny to a story that begins in the stars—even it is in a universe of alternative facts.

How much of the decline of traditional religious belief can be attributed to the rise of ancient alien theory? I don’t know, but given this analysis, I bet it is far from zero. This possibility is why the traditional religions will try to colonize the ancient-alien theory. Already, one prominent religious leader suggests we baptize extraterrestrials upon meeting them. If the ancient aliens do show up and don’t believe in a Creator, we might well need the superheroes to save us from a religious war in space!

_____________

• Barry Vacker is author of the new book, Specter of the Monolith (2017), which explores the meaning of Apollo and films like 2001 and Interstellar, while outlining a new and entirely original space philosophy for the human species. The book is available in Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble (here), and Amazon (here).

Source medium.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

Meet 'Steve,' the Aurora-Like Mystery Scientists Are Beginning to Unravel

Cosmic dust may create Mars’ wispy clouds

Magnesium from passing comets could be a key part of the Red Planet’s cloud-starter kit

BY LISA GROSSMAN 

HEAD IN THE CLOUDS  The rover Opportunity snapped this picture of wispy clouds drifting through the Martian sky in 2006. New findings suggest the clouds might have condensed around particles of dust from comets.

JPL-NASA, CORNELL UNIV.

The seeds for Martian clouds may come from the dusty tails of comets.

Charged particles, or ions, of magnesium from the cosmic dust can trigger the formation of tiny ice crystals that help form clouds, a new analysis of Mars’ atmosphere suggests.

For more than a decade, rovers and orbiters have captured images of Martian skies with wispy clouds made of carbon dioxide ice. But “it hasn’t been easy to explain where they come from,” says chemist John Plane of the University of Leeds in England. The cloud-bearing layer of the atmosphere is between –120° and –140° Celsius — too warm for carbon dioxide clouds to form on their own, which can happen at about –220° C.

Then in 2017, NASA’s MAVEN orbiter detected a layer of magnesium ions hovering about 90 kilometers above the Martian surface (SN: 4/29/17, p. 20). Scientists think the magnesium, and possibly other metals not yet detected, comes from cosmic dust left by passing comets. The dust vaporizes as it hits the atmosphere, leaving a sprinkling of metals suspended in the air. Earth has a similar layer of atmospheric metals, but none had been observed elsewhere in the solar system before.

According to the new calculations, the bits of magnesium clump with carbon dioxide gas — which makes up about 95 percent of Mars’ atmosphere — to produce magnesium carbonate molecules. These larger, charged molecules could attract the atmosphere’s sparse water, creating what Plane calls “dirty” ice crystals.

At the temperatures seen in Mars’ cloud layer, pure carbon dioxide ice crystals are too small to gather clouds around them. But clouds could form around dirty ice at temperatures as high as –123° C, Plane and colleagues report online March 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Citations

• J.M.C. Plane et al. Meteoric metal chemistry in the Martian atmosphere. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Published online March 6, 2018. doi:10.1002/2017JE005510.

Further Reading

• M.M.J. Crismani et al. Detection of a persistent meteoric metal layer in the Martian atmosphere. Nature Geoscience. Published online May 22, 2017. doi:10.1038/ngeo2958.
• A. Yeager. Mars has nighttime snow storms. Science News Online, August 21, 2017.
• A. Yeager. Extreme gas loss dried out Mars, MAVEN data suggest. Science News. Vol. 191, April 29, 2017, p. 20.
• C. Crockett. Martian aurora, high-altitude dust clouds surprise scientists. Science News. Vol. 187, April 18, 2015, p. 15.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

Dwarf planet Ceres may store underground brine that still gushes up today

Waterlogged minerals and changing ice add to evidence that Ceres is geologically active

BY LISA GROSSMAN 

FOLLOW THE ICE  A wall of ice in the shadows of Ceres’ Juling crater, shown here in an image taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, grew by about 50 percent over the course of six months.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA

Ceres may be regularly coughing up briny water or slush onto its surface.

The discovery of waterlogged minerals and a growing ice wall suggests that the dwarf planet could harbor underground liquid water or slushy brine, which has escaped through cracks and craters in the recent past and may still be seeping out today. The findings, reported in two papers published online March 14 in Science Advances, add to a growing realization that Ceres is geologically active — and may point to new signs of the dwarf planet’s potential to host the ingredients for life.

“We thought of Ceres as a dead body like our moon,” says Andrea Raponi, a coauthor of both studies and a planetary scientist at the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome. The growing body of evidence “means that Ceres is geologically alive, active, in our days.”

Since 2015, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has orbited Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The mission has previously revealed Ceres has water ice in shadowed regions of its craters and a few meters below the surface (SN: 1/21/17, p. 8). The dwarf planet also has what look like cryovolcanoes, which spew slushy water instead of magma.

Now, scientists have used data from Dawn to make the first global map of surface carbonate minerals, which form in the presence of liquid water. In one of the new papers, the team reports finding hydrated sodium carbonate — versions of the minerals that still have water molecules attached.

Observations of Ceres have detected recent variations in its surface, revealing that the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system is a dynamic body that continues to evolve and change. "This is the first direct detection of change on the surface of Ceres," said Andrea Raponi of the Institute of Astrophysics and Planetary Science in Rome.

Small patches

Data taken by the Dawn spacecraft show that Ceres’ surface is covered in carbonate minerals that formed with water. Blue and magenta show widespread magnesium and calcium carbonates, while green and red show hydrated sodium carbonates. The hydrated carbonates are found in craters and on mounds, suggesting briny water or slush is reaching the surface in those zones.

F.G. CARROZZO ET AL/SCIENCE ADVANCES 2018

Because the dwarf planet has no atmosphere, that water can’t hang around more than a few million years, says study coauthor Filippo Giacomo Carrozzo, also a planetary scientist at the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome. With no protective shield, cosmic radiation breaks the water’s bonds to other molecules, and the water evaporates relatively quickly into space. The presence of so much hydrated sodium carbonate on the surface means something must be replenishing it.

Previous research had found other hydrated minerals called phyllosilicates on Ceres’ surface (SN: 10/1/16, p. 14). Finding more lingering water molecules further supports the idea that “the process of hydration is ongoing today,” Carrozzo says.

The hydrated sodium carbonates are particularly concentrated near craters and domes, suggesting that briny water or slush wells up from the subsurface in an ice volcano. Or impact craters may excavate rock and soil, exposing the brine, the researchers say.

Both ideas are “viable mechanisms,” says Lucy McFadden of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is a member of the Dawn team but was not involved in the new papers. “It’s all pretty exciting stuff.”

In the second study, Raponi, Carrozzo and colleagues report that a wall of water ice in a crater called Juling grew from about 3.6 square kilometers to 5.5 square kilometers from April to October 2016. “We see, under our eyes, a change in the cover of water ice in a period of six months,” Raponi says. The change took place as the dwarf planet’s 4.6-year orbit was taking Ceres closer to the sun, the equivalent of moving from winter to spring, she says.

Some of the ice could have been buried beneath dirt, which sloughed off as the ice beneath it warmed and revealed fresh ice as the seasons changed, the team argues. Or freshwater or brine could have welled up from below and froze in the shadowed crater wall. Features on the crater floor seem to support this upwelling idea, Raponi says.

If water is upwelling from below, it’s hard to explain how it stays fluid beneath the surface, Raponi admits. Icy moons with subsurface oceans, like Enceladus and Europa, get a constant influx of heat from the gravity of the giant planets they orbit, Saturn and Jupiter. But Ceres has no such heat source.

But if Ceres does have a stable layer of subsurface liquid, that could increase its potential to be habitable, Raponi says. Previous studies have found organic molecules on Ceres’ surface, too (SN: 3/18/17, p. 8). “If we have all the ingredients of life in a geologically active body, that can be very interesting,” Raponi says.

Citations

• F.G. Carrozzo et al. Nature, formation, and distribution of carbonates on Ceres. Science Advances. Published online March 14, 2018. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1701645.
• A. Raponi et al. Variations in the amount of water ice on Ceres’ surface suggest a seasonal water cycle. Science Advances. Published online March 14, 2018. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aao3757.

Further Reading

• E. Eaton. Ceres harbors homegrown organic compounds. Science News. Vol. 191, March 18, 2017, p. 8.
• C. Crockett. Dawn spacecraft maps water beneath the surface of Ceres. Science News. Vol. 191, January 21, 2017, p. 8.
• C. Crockett. Water plays a big role in shaping dwarf planet Ceres. Science News. Vol. 190, October 1, 2016, p. 14.
• C. Crockett. Pluto’s icy landscape comes into view. Science News. Vol. 188, August 8, 2015, p. 6.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

Here Are 3 Of The Best Recorded UFO Sightings Witnessed In Ancient Times

“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head…It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south…”

Despite the fact that millions of people around the globe are convinced that mankind has been visited and is being visited by beings not from Earth, the evidence remains unconvincing for skeptics.

Even though we can find hundreds of mysterious videos filmed both by ordinary people and by astronauts and military personnel, it is a common belief that ‘contact’ with alien life has never been made.

If we take a look at history, we will find a number of interesting documents which ‘prove’ that ancient cultures like the Egyptians, or people living in Europe some 500 years ago, witnessed something in the sky which they could not properly explain.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

They saw something in the heavens that was strange, but they knew it wasn’t weather related and thought of the mysterious phenomenon as a sign of the Gods.

One of the most discussed ancient documents that suggest the ancient Egyptians witnessed UFOs in the distant past is the so-called Tulli Papyrus.

This document offers the earliest citation of flying saucers on the planet.

The Tulli “papyrus” is a translation of a modern transcription of an ancient Egyptian document.

As noted in this ancient text, during the rule of Pharaoh Thutmose III a mass UFO sighting occurred over Egypt. The event was recorded in history as a day of great importance, a day that something unexplainable occurred.

The translation of the text, according to R. Cedric Leonard:

“In the year 22, of the third month of winter, sixth hour of the day […] among the scribes of the House of Life it was found that a strange Fiery Disk was coming in the sky. It had no head. The breath of its mouth emitted a foul odor. Its body was one rod in length and one rod in width. It had no voice…

…It was after the evening meal when the Disks ascended even higher in the sky to the south. Fish and other volatiles rained down from the sky: a marvel never before known since the foundation of the country.”

In addition to this document, many other accounts of strange ‘ships’ in the sky have been recorded throughout the years.

In 1561, the inhabitants of Nuremberg (modern-day German) witnessed a battle in the sky.

This event is considered as one of the best recorded UFO sightings in the history of man.

The day was April 14th, 1561, people left their homes to go about their everyday activities, but when they looked towards the sky, they saw something terrifying and unexplainable, as dozens of strange crafts were flying above the city.

The local newspaper from Nuremberg gave the following description of the events over the city:

“In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates, and in the country – by many men and women. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes. These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides, the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen. By Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg”.

(Source: Colman S. Von Kevicsky, “The Ufo Sighting Over Nuremberg in 1561” Official Ufo January 1976, pp. 36-8, 68. The translation is by Ilse Von Jacobi.)

But there’s more.

In 1665, hundreds of people witnessed another battle of ships in the sky, above the sky of Barhöfft.

Shortly after the battle had ended, the inhabitants of Barhöfft witnessed a dark, disk-shaped object overflying the area where the battle had taken place.

The event:

“After a while out of the sky came a flat round form, like a plate, looking like the big hat of a man… Its color was that of the darkening moon, and it hovered right over the Church of St. Nicolai. There it remained stationary until the evening. The fishermen, worried to death, didn’t want to look further at the spectacle and buried their faces in their hands. On the following days, they fell sick with trembling all over and pain in head and limbs. Many scholarly people thought a lot about that,” 

wrote Erasmus Francisci in “Der wunder-reiche Ueberzug unserer Nider-Welt/Oder Erd-umgebende” in 1689.

{ https://ancient-code.com/ }

Stephen Hawking’s Most Dire Predictions for the Future

by Alexandra Ossola

  Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Mysterious Beams of Light appear in the Sky over Ohio

While driving on March 13th, 2018 in Ohio, Justin saw lights coming from the upper right side of the screen.

At first Justin thought it was a reflection but realized it wasn’t because the light was being blocked by the trees.

Indeed it is not a reflection and again an orange glow in the sky that surrounds the beams of light before the mysterious phenomenon disappears and the night sky turns to normal again.

The strange sky phenomenon starts at the 0.48 mark in the video.

  

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

Galactic clockwork: Astronomers find all galaxies rotate once every billion years

Credit: Pexels.

Our planet spins around its own axis, with each completed cycle corresponding to the length of a day. The Earth also orbits the Sun, coming full circle every ~365 days, which we call a year. But now, researchers have found that not only do all galaxies spin around their core like cosmic clocks, they also all take just as long to complete a full revolution, regardless of their size. That’s about one billion years or so. Can we call it a galacton? What about a galaxium? I want more ideas in the comments.

Like clockwork

“It’s not Swiss watch precision,” said Professor Gerhardt Meurer from the UWA node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

“But regardless of whether a galaxy is very big or very small, if you could sit on the extreme edge of its disk as it spins, it would take you about a billion years to go all the way round.”

The researchers investigated numerous galaxies of all shapes, sizes, and rotational velocity, ranging from small dwarf irregulars to massive spirals

Meurer and colleagues found there were some persistent regularities such as that all galaxies of the same size also have the same average density of stars. “You won’t find a dense galaxy rotating quickly, while another with the same size but lower density is rotating more slowly,” Meurer said.

The astronomers thought they would find dispersed populations of young stars and gas at the edges of galactic disks. But instead, the models revealed that older stars exit through the outer edge of galaxies, too. This finding is of significant practical importance since it tells scientists where a galaxy ends, allowing them to limit observations and not waste time and computer processing power.

When the next generation of radio telescopes comes online, such as the massive Square Kilometre Array (SKA), these will generate a flood of new data, so knowing how to accurately identify a galaxy’s edge can save astronomers a lot of headaches.

By far, the most striking finding was that, no matter how big they are, all galaxies rotate once every billion years.

“So because of this work, we now know that galaxies rotate once every billion years, with a sharp edge that’s populated with a mixture of interstellar gas, with both old and young stars,” Professor Meurer said.

“When the SKA comes online in the next decade,” Meurer said, “we’ll need as much help as we can get to characterize the billions of galaxies these telescopes will soon make available to us.”

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Ancient Biblical Texts Tell Of Civil War Between Ancient Astronauts

BY CHET DEMBECK 

Ancient carved pipes of the mysterious ‘Mount Builders’,

Credit: Unknown

The Book of Enoch and Extraterrestrial Watchers

The controversy surrounding the Old Testament “Book of Enoch” will always be with us as more theologies reject this unique chronicle than accept it as part of the cannon of the Bible. This is understandable because when interpreted literally, it makes little sense.

R.H. Charles translated the ancient text in 1912. In 1948 more pieces of this ancient puzzle came together with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Soon after, fragments of the Greek text were also discovered.

True Events

It is my belief that Enoch was writing about true events and real experiences using the language and belief system of his ancient times to describe what he perceived as supernatural spiritual beings at war with one another.

In truth, I believe Enoch really was witnessing two groups of space travelers from a civilization eons ahead of man’s technologically, who were fighting over whether such an advanced civilization had the right to interfere, intermarry and conquer a primitive species.

In my opinion it is only when we view the so-called “Watchers” or “angels” Enoch chronicles in this context that this prophet’s epic account makes any sense at all.

Shipwrecked or Observation Post

I am going to give you my interpretation of Enoch’s writings first, with his text immediately following.

My interpretation of Chapter six and seven of the Book of Enoch is as follows:

An expedition of extraterrestrials either crashed or was shipped down to earth to observe mankind and watch its progress — thus the term “Watchers.” This is no different than what some of our scientists do in the wild with animals or secluded Amazon tribes. They observe, tag and try to learn as much as they can about their subjects without destroying their culture or interfering with their affairs. Again, I am speaking of today and not during the period of past European colonialism.

Gap in Time

Whether these visitors had crashed or had been transported to the ancient Middle East is not known. But according to Enoch’s account, the 200 of them, who had become residents of the area, started to find earth women quite attractive. My best guess is that a long period of time has passed between when this crew had been dropped off or crashed on earth; therefore, as a group they decided it was time to procreate with the natives because they weren’t sure if their fleet would ever be returning for them.

Or this action could have been purely a matter of survival. Perhaps their women had died, or perhaps they were dwindling in numbers and believed it was necessary to take action to preserve themselves. Or, perhaps they were just horny.

Interesting, Enoch writes that their leader Semjâzâ openly expressed great concern about such a move; in fact, he told his fellow extraterrestrials that he would be held responsible and pay a heavy price for allowing such sexual copulation.

At this, his crew assured the leader that they had his back, which appeared to ease Semjâzâ reservations enough to give them the final O.K. — and even join in.

Broke the Prime Directive

Using a Star Trek term, it was soon after that the 200 visitors descended Mount Hermon, a place with so-called angels and God often communicated with the prophets, and took themselves human wives.

In the next passage, Enoch begins to outline the consequences of these extraterrestrials mating with local women. Immediately, the visitors began to teach their wives advanced chemistry and later they would teach their offspring the advantages of technology as applied to warfare with other humans.

Instantly, these extraterrestrials had sowed the seeds for the disaster that followed.

{https://unknownboundaries.com/ }

Here Are 10 Of The Most Remarkable Ancient Temples Ever Built On Earth

Thousands of years ago, ancient cultures around the globe erected some of the most amazing structures on the surface of the planet.

Using incredible knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, engineering, and architecture, ancient people created truly wonderous monuments to stand the test of time.

Some of these structures are engulfed in mystery, as they defy everything we have been taught about ancient cultures.

From laser-like cuts to supermassive blocks of stone weighing up to one hundred tons, these incredible ancient structures prove that our ancestors were far more advanced than what we are crediting them for.

Join me on this journey while I explore ten of the most remarkable temples ever built on Earth.

The Konark Sun Temple. 

This ancient temple located in Orissa, India was built by King Narasimhadeva I of Eastern Ganga Dynasty in 1255 CE.

I find this temple beyond stunning as it features a number of intricate design details that will make your jaw drop.

The temple itself was shaped like a gigantic chariot, but its breathtaking design elements are the smaller ones, like the elaborately carved stone wheels, pillars, and walls. A major part of the structure is now in ruins.

Another temple, perhaps equally stunning is the so-called Brihadeeswarar Temple dedicated to Lord Shiva and commissioned by Raja Raja Chola I. The temple was completed in 1010 CE. This temple is located in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. One of its most prominent features is the massive 40-meter-high Vimana—one of the largest in the world. The entire temple was built out of granite, and scholars have calculated that the ancients used more than 130,000 tons in its construction.

The Prambanan temple compound, home to 240 rocket-like structures. This ancient temple compound is believed to have been erected during the 9th century under the Sanjaya dynasty of the first Kingdom of Mataram in the Central Java region. Prambanan is considered the most significant Hindu temple site in Indonesia, and one of the biggest in Southeast Asia. The stunning rocket-like structures are characterized by its tall and pointed architecture style, which, according to historians, are typical of Hindu architecture and by a towering 47-meter-high central building inside a large complex of individual temples.

One of my favorite ancient temples is located in Ellora, Maharashtra, India. This ancient wonder of the world is considered the largest rock-cut temple on the surface of the planet.

The Kailasanatha temple (Cave 16) is one of the 34 cave temples and monasteries are known collectively as the Ellora Caves.  Its construction is generally attributed to the 8th-century Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in 756-773 CE.

From India, we travel to Egypt. There, in the land of the Pharaohs, we come across the Temple of Dendera, an ancient monument built to honor the Goddess Hathor.

Curiously, this temple, located a mere 2.5 km southeast of Dendera, is one of the best preserved Egyptian complexes, especially its central temple, thanks to which it remained buried by sand and mud until it was unearthed by Auguste Mariette in the middle of the 19th century.

The Temple of Dendera features a mysterious relief that some authors claim depicts a massive lightbulb used by the ancients Egyptians, suggesting that thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians had access to advanced technologies like electricity.

Egypt has a number of ancient temples that are worth mentioning, and I can’t exclude Khafre’s Valley Temple from this article.

This ancient temple is one of the most curious temples in Egypt mostly because of the enigmatic ‘bent’ stones that lie inside the temple. It features supermassive blocks of stones, some exceeding 150 tons in weight, and design elements that eerily resemble elements found halfway around the world, in Peru.

The Giant Pyramid-temple of Borobudur. This magnificent ancient structure is considered the largest Pyramid-shaped Buddhist monument in the world, but it is also one of the most intricately designed structures on the surface of the planet. mainstream scholars have no idea who erected it, what its original purpose was, nor how on earth it was built.

A few people are aware of the fact that hidden deep inside the desert region in Peru, more than 5,000 years ago, an ancient civilization erected magnificent temples and pyramids.

An Aerial view of Caral. Image Credit: Turandino

The Pyramids and temples of Peru are believed to predate the Pyramids of the Giza plateau by at least 500 years and were erected by the Caral people.

From Peru me journey to the Temple of the Sun or (Coricancha, Koricancha, Qoricancha or Qorikancha), the main Inca Sanctuary. Its internal walls, embedded and molded with millimetric precision, surprise even more when it is known that during the Inca Empire they were not ‘naked’, but that all the walls of the temple, according to Garcilaso de la Vega who wrote about Coricancha in the late sixteenth century, “were covered from top to bottom with massive gold planks.”

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The Temple of the Sun (Coricancha) is part of a beautiful complex composed of several temples.

And last but not least, we travel to Cambodia.

There, in the city of Angkor Thom lie the ruins of the temple complex of 200-smiling-faces: The Bayon Temple.

Built at the end of the 12th century, it was completed during the reign of Jayavarman VII. It was created in Buddhist style. The temple is oriented towards the east, and so its buildings are set back to the west inside enclosures elongated along the east-west axis. It is best known for its 54 towers and more than two hundred Buddha faces which give off a sensation as if they were staring at you with a relaxed, calm, and beatific look.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

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Here Are NASA’s Unreleased Apollo Mission Images They Don’t Want You To See

The idea that NASA has encountered Alien life during the Apollo missions has aroused the curiosity of thousands of experts in the field for decades.

Ever since NASA successfully landed on the moon, people have wondered whether or not the astronauts on the lunar surface—and during their trip to the moon—witnessed things they couldn’t rationally explain.

In other words; Alien spaceships and structures on the moon’s surface.

These questions were quickly turned into a conspiracy theory, and people who argue that the Apollo astronauts witnessed inexplicable things during their trip to the moon were called out as conspiracy nuts.

To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the surface of Moon, with the last Apollo mission departing the lunar surface in December 1972.

Apollo 11 Moon Landing.

Image credit: NASA

For nearly half a century—46 years to be precise—space agencies around the globe have avoided going to the moon.

But why?

Was it due to extremely high costs? Risks? Or is it that the moon is simply not an interesting place?

The truth is that today, 46 years after the last successful moon landing we have much better technology than we had 46 years ago.

Money isn’t an issue, for we always find money for things we want and need.

The moon is perhaps one of the most interesting places in the solar system, and numerous experts have claimed it is imperative for humans to establish a colony on the lunar surface.

So, what’s keeping us from landing on the moon?

A man called Bob Dean may answer the above question.

Mr. Dean is retired US Army Command Sergeant Major who served for 28 years.

He has given a number of interesting lectures, providing a wealth of information about not only the moon landings, Apollo missions, but also corroborating what numerous whistleblowers have said in the past.

During the Barcelona Exopolitics Summit, on July 25, 2009, Mr. Dean released a set of amazing images. He also explained the Apollo missions, and what astronauts encountered unlike anyone before him.

During the summit, Mr. Dean released to the public a set of fascinating images supposedly captured by astronauts of the Apollo 12 mission, including an image showing mysterious spacecraft several hundred feet in diameter.

During the lecture, Mr. Dean recounts how on the morning of the 2nd of February 1961, World War III almost began, and a fleet of unidentified flying objects were to blame:

“It appears that on the morning of the 2nd of February 1961, World War III almost started. It was involved in the flyover of large numbers of circular metallic craft, flying in formation, very obviously under intelligent control,” said Mr. Dean during the lecture.

Mr. Dean continued: “They would fly out of the Soviet sector in the Warsaw Pact toward the U.S. in formation at a high speed and at a very high altitude. They would turn north over the English Channel over the southern coast of England and then they would disappear off of NATO radar over the Norwegian Sea.”

“The Soviets went on red alert. The NATO forces went on red alert. Everybody was, you know … fingers on their triggers, thumbs poised above those red buttons. And World War III was just moments away,” explained Mr. Dean. “Within 20 minutes, it was all over. The objects flew, turned north and disappeared off of radar.”

Soon after the mysterious sighting that nearly triggered WWIII, a study of the occurred took place.

Experts concluded how “…planet Earth and the human race had been under some kind of survey or observation going on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. They concluded, in 1964, that there were at least four different groups coming here, observing us, surveying us, analyzing us, closely watching us, what we were up to, what we were doing. They concluded that it did not appear to be a military threat involved, because their repeated demonstrations of incredibly advanced technology demonstrated to us that, if they had been hostile or malevolent, there was absolutely nothing we could do. If they were evil in their intent and they were hostile toward us, it would have been over a long time ago.”

“…the conclusion was there were four different groups involved,” explained Mr. Dean.

This image comes from the Apollo 12 mission, Apollo Systems 12, roll number 50, negative number 7348. A mysterious object was sighted by Apollo astronauts as they were orbiting the moon.

The image seen below was taken by Astronaut Neil Armstrong. While the astronauts were looking out of the window of their little craft, this cigar-shaped object flew by.

The next image, says Mr. Dean, shows a mysterious disc-shaped object with several hundred feet in diameter. It was snapped while astronauts made their way to the surface of the moon.

The next two images were taken by Apollo Astronauts when they were overflying the so-called Lansberg crater. According to Mr. Dean; “The astronauts in orbit above the Moon were particularly fascinated by the Lansberg crater. They had been given a special designation to take pictures of Lansberg, because the crater, which they named as the Lansberg, had things going on that were very anomalous. There was construction going on. There were gigantic facilities in the crater up there. So they were specifically delegated and assigned to photograph Lansberg to see if they could figure out what the hell was going on down there. While they were looking at Lansberg, this object happened to express interest in them and flew by. Now this line is an artificial line that was drawn to show you the … it gave the direction that this object was going. This is a good-size object flying past the Apollo Lander.”

Are these mysterious spots alien structures on the lunar surface?

Mr. Dean continued showing evidence gathered by astronauts from the Apollo 13 mission. The below image, says Mr. Dean, where taken as Apollo 13 astronauts were traveling to the moon when a number of things began happening. Some strange objects were appearing outside the windows of the spacecraft, so the Apollo 13 Astronauts grabbed their Hasselblad cameras and started taking pictures of what they had seen.

This photograph below shows three different objects.

Another image of the Apollo 13 ‘UFO’ encounter, as noted by Mr. Dean.

Read the entire transcript and view more images here.

Source: Bob Dean: Barcelona Exopolitics Summit, 25 July 2009, Transcript

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Hoe hij ontdekte dat hij ziek was en hoe hij zijn stem verloor: 10 dingen die je nog niet wist over Stephen Hawking

FOTO: PHOTO NEWS

De grootste natuurkundige van deze tijd, de bekendste wetenschapper ter wereld, een legende, een briljant fysicus,... De op 14 maart overleden Stephen Hawking kreeg veel bejubelende stempels opgekleefd. Maar hij was niet alleen dat. Hij was bijvoorbeeld ook een middelmatige scholier of auteur van kinderboeken. En het had niet veel gescheeld of de wereld had al in 1985 afscheid moeten nemen van Hawking. Dat en een aantal andere zaken die je wellicht nog niet wist over Hawking zetten we in onderstaand lijstje op een rijtje.

• LEES OOK. Fysicus Stephen Hawking overleden op 76-jarige leeftijd

1. ZIEKTE ONTDEKT NA VAL OP IJSPISTE. 

Stephen Hawking was niet alleen wereldberoemd wetenschapper, maar ook een van de bekendste ALS-patiënten. Dat hij die ziekte had, ontdekte hij toen hij 21 was. De eerste signalen daarvoor merkte hij op toen hij met zijn moeder ging schaatsen. Hij kwam toen ten val, maar het lukte hem nauwelijks om weer rechtop te geraken. Hij werd ook steeds onhandiger en kon steeds moeilijker praten. Hawking besefte dat er iets mis was. Begin 1963 werd de diagnose gesteld: de ongeneeslijke ziekte ALS. Dokters gaven hem nog maar 2 jaar te leven. Uiteindelijk werden het er nog 55.

FOTO: PHOTO NEWS

2. BIJNA GESTORVEN IN 1985. 

Bijna was Hawking zo’n 33 jaar geleden al gestorven, nadat hij een longontsteking opliep tijdens een congres in Genève. De situatie was zo ernstig dat hij met machines in leven moest gehouden worden. Zijn stembanden werden tijdens een noodzakelijke operatie ook doorgesneden, waardoor hij zijn stem kwijtraakte. De echtgenote van Hawking, Jane, werd voor de keuze gesteld om de machines die hem in leven hielden, uit te zetten. De dokters gaven Stephen namelijk geen kans meer op overleven. Jane weigerde echter de machines te laten uitzetten, en uiteindelijk overleefde Stephen toch.

3. BRIT MET AMERIKAANSE STEM. 

Hawking’s ziekte heeft ertoe geleid dat hij niet goed meer kon praten. Na een noodzakelijke operatie werden zijn stembanden ook doorgesneden en verloor hij zijn stem. De man kon al jaren niet meer praten en communiceerde daarom via een stemcomputer. Opvallend: hoewel Hawking Brits is, spreekt de stemcomputer met een Amerikaans accent. Hawking wilde toch dié stemcomputer behouden “omdat hij geen enkele stem had die hij beter vond en omdat hij zichzelf intussen met die stem geïdentificeerd had.”

Zijn stem kan trouwens ook gehoord worden in de nummers Keep Talking en Talkin’ Hawking van Pink Floyd en in de intro van het album Party Animals van Turbonegro0

FOTO: PHOTO NEWS

4. MIDDELMATIGE STUDENT. 

Hawking was een genie, maar in zijn eerste schooljaren was hij toch vooral een middelmatige student. Meer nog: hij eindigde vaak als laatste in de klas wanneer de schoolrapporten werden uitgedeeld. Dat hij slechte punten had ,was echter niet omdat hij niet intelligent zou geweest zijn. Wel was de jonge Hawking eerder lui. Ook in de middelbare school haalde Hawking daardoor geen uitmuntende punten. Hij was niet meer de slechtste, maar scoorde ook niet meer dan middelmatig.

• LEES OOK. Hawking gaf ooit een feestje voor tijdreizigers, maar niemand kwam opdagen

5. POPULAIR DANKZIJ ROEIEN.

 Hawking studeerde eerst aan de Oxford-universiteit. Volgens biograaf Kristine Larsen was hij ongelukkig tijdens zijn eerste jaar aan de universiteit. Hij raakte uit die ongelukkige periode door zich aan te sluiten bij het roeiteam. Hawking had toen nog niet de diagnose van ALS gekregen. Maar een echte sportieve rol had hij niet in het team. Hij zat op de positie waarin de stuur- en slagfrequentie bepaald werd. Dat maakte hem populair, vooral omdat dit een cruciale positie is.

• REACTIES. Verslagenheid, maar vooral ook lof na dood van Hawking: “Briljant wetenschapper, een echte legende”

6. ICONISCHE STATUS. 

Hawking wordt beschouwd als de grootste natuurkundige van deze tijd. Hij heeft ook een iconische status als meest herkenbare wetenschapper van onze tijd. Dat werd nog versterkt doordat hij in meerdere programma’s kwam opdraven. Zo had hij een rol in Star Trek of The Big Bang Theory, net als in The Simpsons. En een deel van zijn leven werd ook verfilmd: een paar jaar geleden kwam The Theory of Everything in de zalen. Eddie Redmayne vertolkte toen de rol van Hawking en kreeg daar een Oscar voor.

FOTO: PHOTO NEWS

7. NIET ALLEEN WETENSCHAP, OOK KINDERBOEKEN. 

‘A Brief History of Time’ is een van de bekendste werken van Stephen Hawking. Het werd een wereldwijde bestseller. Onder andere dankzij dit boek verwierf Hawking bekendheid bij het grote publiek. Er zijn wereldwijd tientallen miljoenen exemplaren van dit boek verkocht, het werd in meerdere talen vertaald. Maar Hawking schreef niet alleen puur wetenschappelijke werken. Hij schreef ook essays en gaf lezingen over bijvoorbeeld politiek, intelligente wapens, robots, het beleid van Amerikaans president Trump, over de klimaatverandering of over ‘de vernietiging van onze planeet’.

FOTO: AP

En Hawking is ook auteur van een kinderboek. In 2007 maakte hij samen met zijn dochter Lucy het boek ‘George’s Secret Key to the Universe’. Het boek was vooral bedoeld om zwaar wetenschappelijke thema’s zoals theorieën rond het heelal en zwarte gaten op een begrijpbare manier uit te leggen aan kinderen. Het boek kreeg, als onderdeel van een trilogie, ook nog een vervolg.

8. BELANGRIJKSTE WETENSCHAPPER. 

Hawking is, letterlijk en figuurlijk, onlosmakelijk verbonden met zijn elektrische rolstoel. Dat bekend beeld van de man overschaduwde soms zijn wetenschappelijk nalatenschap. Nochtans is Hawking misschien wel de belangrijkste wetenschapper van de voorbije decennia. Hij vergrootte ons begrip van tijd en ruimte, vormde een brug tussen de relativiteitstheorie van Einstein en het ontstaan van het heelal, en heeft mee de basis gelegd voor de vooruitgang in de hedendaagse theoretische fysica.

• LEES OOK. Jane Hawking: “We zijn met vier in het huwelijk getreden”

9. ZWEVEN ‘IN DE RUIMTE’.

 In 2006 pleitte Hawking openlijk voor de kolonisatie van andere planeten. Zijn eigen volgende doel was daarom ook om eens naar de ruimte te gaan. Hij grapte toen dat “Richard Branson hem daar misschien wel bij kan helpen.” Een jaar later deed de miljardair dat ook. Of toch een beetje. Hawking ging niet écht de ruimte in, maar kon dankzij een wetenschappelijke vlucht toch gewichtloosheid ervaren. De kosten van die vlucht werden volledig gedragen door Branson.

FOTO: PHOTO NEWS

10. VERJAARDAG VAN EINSTEIN EN PI.

 Stephen Hawking werd geboren op 8 januari 1942. Dat was op de 300ste verjaardag van de dood van Galileo, de Italiaanse fysicus, wiskundige, filosoof en astronoom die ook wel de ‘Vader van de Moderne Wetenschap’ wordt genoemd. De dag waarop Hawking stierf, 14 maart, is ook de dag waarop Albert Einstein in 1879 werd geboren. Hawking werd en wordt ook wel de Albert Einstein van deze generatie genoemd. En 14 maart is ook pi-dag, de dag die wereldwijd door wiskundigen wordt gevierd. Die dag, 3/14, verwijst naar de eerste drie cijfers van pi, een van de belangrijkste wiskundige begrippen.

FOTO: AP

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Are Aliens Trying To Contact US? Astronomers Spot Brightest Ever Fast Radio Burst

People are divided between whether or not the mysterious FastRadio Bursts are signals sent from an advanced alien civilization or a natural cosmic phenomenon.

Now, astronomers have registered another mysterious fast radioburst, and they say it is the brightest on so far.

The enigmatic signal could help astronomers pinpoint its cosmic source and understand what exactly is causing it.

Are FRB signals from an alien civilization?

FRB or Fast Radio Bursts are extremely brief yet extremely bright pulses of radio emissions that have caused confusion among astronomers for more than a decade.

First spotted in 2008, after 11 years, experts have not been able to determine the exact origin of the mysterious radio emissions that only last a few milliseconds.

Astronomers say that their extremely unusual signal strength may help decipher their mysterious origin.

Some have claimed that the signals come from an advanced alien civilization, while others say that the universe is to blame.

The truth is, we still don’t know.

So far, astronomers have managed to detect 33 FRBs since 2007, but two groups of astronomers have uncovered three more mystery signals in the last few days.

The first signals were uncovered by Breakthrough Listen, which looks for signs of intelligent life in the universe.

The second and third signal was spotted by researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia-

All three signals were found thanks to Australia’s Parkes Telescope.

Speaking to the New Scientist about the new FRB signals, Peter Williams, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said: “Finding three this quickly is quite unusual. It seems like it was just luck.”

FRBs are a curious phenomenon.

A message from the stars?

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

So far, only one FRB ever cataloged has been detected to flashmore than once: an object known as FRB 121102 in a galaxy about three billion light-years away.

However, despite this rare event, astronomers say that other FRBs also flash more times, it’s just that they are too dim for us to see.

However, after the detection of the FRBs in March of 2018, Professor Maura McLaughlin at West Virginia University in Morgantown,

says future detections could be much easier if the repeating FRB hypothesis is correct.

Professor McLaughlin said: “Everyone’s sort of jumping on this bandwagon of looking for FRBs in the background all the time no matter what else is going on. This should lead to a huge uptick in detections in the next year or so.”

Experts from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in March 2017 claimed a solar-powered transmitter using sunlight cast on an area twice the size of Earth could generate enough energy to be ‘seen’ by far away viewers.

Exeperts said that the most readonsable use for this incredilbe amount og enery wuld be to drive intertellar light sails, devices that would rely on a steady beam from the transmitter, allowing ‘alien’ spaceships to mtravel across the universe.

Scientists argue that the so-called FRBs could be evidence of said sails. Observers from Earth only see the brief flash as the sail, its host planet, its star, and the galaxy all move relative to us, making the signal to sweep across the sky, only pointing at Earth for a short moment.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

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British Physicist Stephen Hawking Died Aged 76 In Cambridge

British physicist Stephen Hawking died Wednesday, March 14, 2018, at the age 76, according to his family.

One of the most prestigious scientists and one of the most popular theoretical physicists of the last decades has begun his never-ending journey through the fabrics of the universe.

“We are deeply saddened by the death of our father,” said his children Lucy, Robert and Tim.

“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live for many years,” they said in a statement.

Professor Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, in the United Kingdom, and was considered one of the most influential scientists since the great Albert Einstein, not only for his decisive contributions to scientific progress, but also for his constant concern to bring science closer to the public and his extraordinary courage against the degenerative disease that he battled against that put him in a wheelchair.

Hawking needed an electronic synthesizer to be able to speak, but his voice ended up being heard all over the world.

To move around, he used his chair, which he controlled with the movement of head and eyes.

Son of a biologist who decided to take his family out of London to save them from the German bombings during World War II, Hawking grew up in the city of St Albans.

As a student, he soon proved how important he would eventually become for society.

He graduated with honors in Physics at Oxford and later obtained a postgraduate degree in Cosmology at the University of Cambridge.

At the age of only 21, everything changed for the young Stephen Hawking. He began noticing that his movements were getting clumsy, and he had difficulties moving. Soon after, he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease.

At that time, he was planning the wedding with Jane Wilde, his first wife.

The doctors did not bring good news, predicting that he would not live beyond two years.

“The commitment saved my life, it gave me a reason to live,” he said years later.

The couple had three children.

Hawking defied all odds and the disease progressed more slowly than expected, but over the years it ended up leaving him with only two functionally fingers and a few facial muscles.

However, this ‘limitation’ did not prevent him from continuing to work on his theories and disseminating them through books and public events.

In 1988 he had published his book “Brief History of Time”, which sold more than 10 million copies, becoming a worldwide bestseller.

Through his work and his books, he proved that the passion to which he devoted his entire life, to study the laws that govern the universe, could also be attractive to the general public and not only scientists.

He was right.

He turned his disability into one of the keys to his scientific work.

When he lost the mobility of the arms, he insisted on being able to solve the most complex calculations with the mind alone, without writing down the equations.

What other’s saw as a limitation, Professor Hawking saw as another challenge to overcome, and through his years he proved that he was really good at overcoming challenges.

Soon he began to propose revolutionary theses that questioned the established scientific theories.

One of his most daring statements was to consider that the General Theory of Relativity formulated by Einstein implied that space and time had a beginning in the Big Bang and its end in black holes.

In 1976, and following the statements of quantum physics, Hawking concluded in his “Theory of Radiation” that black holes—regions with such powerful gravity that even light cannot escape—were capable of emitting energy and losing matter.

His theories never stalled, and he continued developing them throughout the years.

In 2004 he refuted himself and came to the conclusion that black holes do not absorb everything.

In other words, Hawking played a definitive role in the diffusion of cosmology in terms easy to understand for the general public.

Aware that his book had sold a lot, but due to its complexity had been understood and read through by few, Hawking worked on a shorter version (of the already brief history of time) and made it more “readable”.

The British physicist tried, by all means, to get people closer to the mysteries of the universe and in search of this objective he never hesitated to resort to humor and was able to find a bright, small light, even inside of black holes.

Hawking won the Albert Einstein Award, the Wolf Prize, the Copley Medal, and the Fundamental Physics Prize, but the Nobel prize, however, eluded him.

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Stephen Hawking : top 5 de ses découvertes

Célèbre auprès du grand public pour son activité de vulgarisation, le physicien Stephen Hawkingétait d'abord un cosmologiste qui a travaillé à la description de l'univers et de son histoire dans le cadre de la théorie de la Relativité générale. Ses travaux, qui concernent également les trous noirs, ont porté initialement sur la fameuse singularité cosmologique du Big Bang. 

Voici, sous une forme extrêmement simplifiée (que les physiciens nous pardonnent), ses cinq contributions majeures à la fresque moderne du Cosmos.

1 - La croissance de la surface d’un trou noir

Stephen Hawking réfléchit, un soir de novembre 1970 alors qu'il va se coucher, à la façon de décrire un trou noir. « Mon invalidité rend cette opération très longue, aussi avais-je le temps de réfléchir » raconte-t-il dans Une brève histoire du temps. Il s'attarde sur les phénomènes se déroulant sur l'horizon, cette limite immatérielle marquant en quelque sorte la frontière du trou noir. Il aboutit à une curieuse conclusion. « Si deux trous noirs se heurtaient avant de se fondre pour n'en former plus qu'un, la surface de l'horizon du trou noir final serait supérieure à la somme des surfaces des trous noirs originaux. Cette propriété de non-croissance limite considérablement le comportement possible d'un trou noir. Je fus si excité par ma découverte que je ne dormis guère cette nuit-là. Le lendemain, j'appelais Roger Penrose. »

Si la surface d'un trou noir ne peut que croître, ce comportement évoque une quantité physique qui se comporte de la même manière : l'entropie. Elle décrit le désordre d'un système et le second principe de la thermodynamique affirme qu'elle ne peut que croître dans un système isolé. Mais le rapprochement semblait initialement problématique. Si un trou noir se trouve entouré de gaz qu'il avale en partie, il absorbe aussi l'entropie du gaz. Or, le second principe de la thermodynamique implique que l'entropie totale de l'ensemble gaz-trou noir ne peut diminuer. Il n'est pas violé que si la surface de l'horizon des événements est bien une mesure de l'entropie du trou noir. Alors, en effet, elle augmente avec l'absorption de ce gaz.

Or, un système physique qui a de l'entropie a aussi une température et ce qui a une température émet un rayonnement. Et à cette époque, les trous noirs ne sont pas censés émettre quoi que ce soit.

La voûte céleste telle que la verrait un observateur situé près d’un hypothétique trou noir devant le centre de notre galaxie.

© Alain Riazuelo, IAP 

2 - Le rayonnement de Hawking

Cherchant à démontrer que c'est bien le cas Hawking prédit finalement, à sa grand surprise, que les trous noirs doivent bel et bien rayonner. Cette prédiction de l'évaporation des trous noirs est une découverte faite par le calcul par Stephen Hawking en 1974. Il montre surtout que si un trou noir émet un rayonnement, il doit adopter le spectre du rayonnement d'un corps chaud particulier que l'on appelle un corps noir, avec une température ne dépendant que de sa masse. C'est précisément ce qu'il fallait pour assurer l'existence de l'entropie d'un trou noir. Il trouve cette explication dans la physique quantique. Les fluctuations quantiques du vide créent des paires de particule-antiparticule virtuelles qui ne vivent que très peu de temps avant de s'annihiler mutuellement sans quoi elles violeraient le principe de conservation de l'énergie.

Tout près de l'horizon d'un trou noir, juste son extérieur, les paires de particules peuvent être séparées par des forces de marée qui fournissent de l'énergie et rendent ces particules réelles, autant que celles qui nous entourent. Lorsque l'une d'elles passe l'horizon, pour un observateur extérieur, elle se comporte comme une particule d'énergie négative, tandis que l'autre a une énergie positive. Le même observateur extérieur voit donc de l'énergie émise par le trou noir sous forme de particules (de matière ou d'antimatière), lequel absorbe en permanence un flux d'énergie négative, ce qui, d'après la célébrissime formule E=mc², correspond à une perte de masse. Un trou noir s'évapore, annonce Stephen Hawking. Lentement mais sûrement.

3- Le paradoxe de l’information qui disparaît

Tout ce qui tombe dans un trou noir disparaît à jamais. Ou plus exactement, le trou noir semble ne retenir des caractéristiques de cette matière que sa masse, son moment cinétique et ses charges électriques et magnétiques. Plus de formes ni de structures : une planète entière avec tout ce qu'elle portait serait réduite à une collection d'objets décrits par ces quatre nombres. Autrement dit, toute l'information, qui était nécessaire pour décrire (ou représentée par) les océans, les plaques tectoniques, les organismes vivants, les bibliothèques ou les pages Web, aura disparu. Impossible dit la physique quantique qui, pourtant, affirme que le rayonnement de corps noir émit par le trou noir ne doit pas coder de l'information, étant aussi désordonné que possible !

Malgré de gros efforts, ce paradoxe n'est pas résolu.

• VOIR AUSSI :Trou noir : Hawking a-t-il enfin résolu le paradoxe de l’information ?

4 - Les théorèmes sur les singularités

Entre 1965 et le début des années 1970, Roger Penrose s'attaque à la question de savoir si la formation des trous noirs avec un horizon des évènements implique aussi qu'il s'y forme une singularité de l'espace-temps, avec une courbure et une densité infinie. Sa réponse est positive et Stephen Hawking va étendre les travaux de Penrose, d'abord seul puis en sa compagnie, au cas du Big Bang. Là aussi, les deux chercheurs aboutissent à la conclusion qu'une singularité est inévitable... si la théorie de la relativité générale seule est employée pour décrire ces phénomènes, précisent-ils.

• VOIR AUSSI :Singularités, trou de ver et voyage spatiotemporel

5 -Le temps imaginaire de Hartle-Hawking

En 1983, James Hartle et Stephen Hawking proposent une description quantique de l'univers tout près du Big Bang dans laquelle le temps se comporte exactement comme une dimension d'espace. Le temps ne serait apparu, si l'on peut dire, qu'après la fameuse ère de Planck relevant d'une théorie quantique de la gravitation. L'espace-temps doit alors se décrire non pas uniquement par des nombres réels mais aussi par des nombres complexes, au sens mathématique du terme, le temps pouvant alors même être décrit uniquement par la partie imaginaire de ces nombres (toujours au sens mathématique du terme). Il n'y aurait plus alors de singularité. Au moment du Big Bang, le temps tel que nous le ressentons aujourd'hui n'existait pas et la question de l'avant-Big Bang n'a plus de sens.

• VOIR AUSSI :Big Bang : le modèle de Hartle-Hawking est-il faux ?

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OP STEEDS MEER PLAATSEN VREEMDE GLOED AAN DE NACHTHEMEL...

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“De wereld is een prachtige mens en briljante wetenschapper kwijt”: beroemdheden reageren verslagen op overlijden Stephen Hawking - HLN.be - DEEL I

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, oprichter van het wereldwijde web, reageerde als een van de eersten op Twitter. “We hebben een kolossale denker en een ongelooflijke geest verloren. Rust in vrede, Stephen Hawking.”

Lees ook

Natuurkundige en kosmoloog Stephen Hawking (76) overleden

Ook de ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA reageerde verslagen en noemt Hawking “een vermaarde fysicus en ambassadeur van de wetenschap”. “Zijn theorieën hebben een universum van mogelijkheden geopend die wij en de wereld kunnen verkennen. Moge je blijven vliegen als superman in microzwaartekracht, zoals je in 2014 aan onze astronauten zei.′

NASA

✔@NASA

Remembering Stephen Hawking, a renowned physicist and ambassador of science. His theories unlocked a universe of possibilities that we & the world are exploring. May you keep flying like superman in microgravity, as you said to astronauts on @Space_Station in 2014

6:06 AM - Mar 14, 2018

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“Zal overal met genegenheid worden herinnerd”

“Professor Hawking was een uniek wezen, dat niet enkel in Cambridge maar over de hele wereld met genegenheid zal worden herinnerd”, reageerde Stephen Toope, de vicevoorzitter van de universiteit van Cambridge, waar Stephan Hawking heeft gestudeerd en gewerkt. “Zijn uitzonderlijke bijdrage aan de wetenschappelijke kennis en het begrijpelijk maken van wetenschap en wiskunde zijn een onuitwisbare erfenis.”

De bekende Britse fysicus Brian Cox treedt hem bij: “Hij wordt terecht beschreven als één van de grootsten. Hij was ervan overtuigd dat het publieke engagement van wetenschap, beschrijven wat we doen als wetenschappers, niet alleen waardevol is, maar ook nodig.”

Sundar Pichai, ceo van Google, noemt Hawking “een prachtige mens en een briljante wetenschapper”.

Dezelfde boodschap bij Satya Nadella, ceo van Microsoft: “We hebben een grote verloren vandaag. Stephen Hawking zal herinnerd worden voor zijn ongelooflijke bijdrages aan de wetenschap, door complexe theorieën en concepten toegankelijker te maken voor de massa.”

De Indiase premier Narendra Modi roemt Hawkings’ “moed en doorzettingsvermogen” dat “mensen over de hele wereld inspireerde”. “Zijn pionierswerk maakte van onze wereld een betere plek.”

“Zijn overlijden laat een intellectuele vacuüm achter. Maar het is niet leeg”, schrijft de Amerikaanse astrofysicus Neil deGrasse Tyson bij een foto van hem en Hawking.

View image on Twitter

Neil deGrasse Tyson

✔@neiltyson

His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it's not empty. Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating the fabric of spacetime that defies measure. Stephen Hawking, RIP 1942-2018.

5:06 AM - Mar 14, 2018

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De Canadese astronaut Chris Hadfield spreekt over een “genie zo mooi en zeldzaam”. “Dag professor Hawking, je inspireerde en leerde ons allemaal.”

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Chris Hadfield

✔@Cmdr_Hadfield

Genius is so fine and rare. Goodbye Professor Hawking. You inspired and taught us all.

5:04 AM - Mar 14, 2018

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“Inspiratie voor allen”

De Britse staatssecretaris Tobias Ellwood noemde Hawking een “inspiratie voor allen”. “Je belichaamde echte moed boven tegenspoed, terwijl je de wonderen van het universum aan de wereld uitlegde. Je prestaties symboliseren de kracht van de menselijke geest. Een inspiratie voor ons allemaal, ongeacht onze situatie, om naar de sterren te reiken, vanwaar je nu op ons schijnt.”

Europees president Donald Tusk citeerde een van Hawkings bekendste opmerkingen over zijn ziekte, ALS: “It matters if you just don’t give up.” De Britse premier Theresa May, is eveneens lof: “Professor Stephen Hawking was een briljante en buitengewone geest, een van de grootste wetenschappers van zijn generatie. Zijn moed, humor en doorzettingsvermogen om het onderste uit de kan te halen in dit leven, waren een inspiratiebron. Zijn erfenis wordt niet vergeten.” 

“Triomf van wilskracht”

Stephen Hawking is “ongetwijfeld één van de grootste wetenschappers van onze tijd”. Zo omschreef natuurkundige Thomas Hertog (KU Leuven) de overleden fysicus en kosmoloog, met wie hij gedurende jaren samenwerkte. Maar zijn beroemdheid overstijgt de wetenschap, aldus Hertog in De Ochtend (Radio 1), die hem zag als een “triomf van wilskracht” en zijn tomeloze inzet voor de wetenschap prees. Thomas Hertog doctoreerde eind jaren ’90 bij Hawking aan de universiteit van Cambridge, maar bleef ook nadien met hem samenwerken, tot enkele weken geleden.

{  https://www.hln.be/ }

“De wereld is een prachtige mens en briljante wetenschapper kwijt”: beroemdheden reageren verslagen op overlijden Stephen Hawking -HLN.be - DEEL II

Sterren

Eddie Redmayne, de acteur die Hawking vertolkt in “The Theory Of Everything”, is vol lof over Hawking: “We hebben een schitterende geest, een ongelooflijke wetenschapper en de grappigste man die ik ken, verloren.”

De Foo Fighters noemen Hawking in hun eigen stijl dan weer “een fucking legende”, terwijl acteur Macaulay Culkin hem “een genie en mijn favoriete Simpsons-figuur” noemt.

{  https://www.hln.be/ }

Natuurkundige en kosmoloog Stephen Hawking (76) overleden -  HLN.be

Bron: BBC, The Guardian, ANP

Hawkings kinderen Lucy, Robert en Tim lieten in een verklaring erg verdietig te zijn over het overlijden van hun vader. “Hij was een groot wetenschapper en een buitengewone man wiens werk en nalatenschap nog jarenlang zullen voortleven. Zijn moed en vasthoudendheid en zijn begaafdheid en humor inspireerden mensen wereldwijd. Hij zei eens: ‘Het universum zou niet veel voorstellen als het niet de plek was waar de mensen van wie je houdt wonen.’ We zullen hem voor altijd missen”, klinkt het.

Spraakcomputer

De in Oxford geboren astrofysicus leed aan de neurologische ziekte ALS. De wetenschapper kon uitsluitend via een spraakcomputer communiceren en bewoog zich al tientallen jaren per rolstoel voort. De aandoening werd vastgesteld in 1963, toen hij 21 jaar oud was. Artsen gaven hem toen hooguit nog twee jaar te leven. In 2017 zei Hawking aan de BBC dat hij “nooit had verwacht 75 te worden”.

Hawking hield zich bezig met zwarte gaten, het heelal en kosmologie. Hij publiceerde in 1988 het boek ‘A brief history of time’, waarvan meer dan tien miljoen exemplaren werden verkocht. In ons land verscheen het boek onder de titel ‘Het Heelal’. Daarin legde Hawking op een toegankelijke manier de volledige geschiedenis van het gehele universum uit, vanaf de oerknal. Het boek werd een bestseller. 

Hij zei aan de BBC dat hij geloofde dat zijn grootste verwezenlijking was dat hij ontdekte dat zwarte gaten niet volledig zwart zijn. Dat is cruciaal om “te begrijpen hoe paradoxen tussen kwantummechanica en de algemene relativiteitstheorie kunnen opgeklaard worden”.

God

In ‘Het Heelal’ hield Hawking nog rekening met het bestaan van God, maar in ‘The Grand Design’ (2010) blijkt dat hij tot andere inzichten was gekomen. Natuurwetten als de zwaartekracht verklaren de oerknal en het begin van ons heelal. “Het is niet noodzakelijk om naar God te wijzen om het universum in werking te zetten”, schreef hij.

In 2014 verscheen over het leven van Hawking de film ‘The Theory Of Everything’. Zelf heeft de wetenschapper ook een aantal tv-optredens gemaakt, zo verscheen hij een aantal keer in de populaire comedyserie ‘The Big Bang Theory’.

Hawking werd op 8 januari 1942 geboren in een familie van intellectuelen. Hij kreeg in 1959 een beurs voor de Oxford University, en drie jaar later verhuisde hij naar de universiteit van Cambridge om er onderzoek te voeren binnen de kosmologie. Op zijn 32ste werd hij het jongste lid van de Royal Society, het meest prestigieuze Britse academische instituut. In 1979 werd hij professor in de wiskunde aan Cambridge University.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

De grootste prestatie van Stephen Hawking? “Elke mens moed geven dat je ondanks veel miserie er toch het beste van kan maken” - HLN.be

Het ultieme portret van één van de meest briljante wetenschappers uit de moderne geschiedenis

Steven Swinnen

Het bestaan van een God – “sprookje voor wie nog bang is in het donker” – heeft hij vol vuur ontkracht. Maar in dat geval moet het toch wel onwaarschijnlijk straf toeval zijn dat Stephen William Hawking na zijn dood met wetenschappelijke precisie als een dominosteentje past tussen twee andere van de briljantste breinen in de geschiedenis van de mensheid. De Britse fysicus werd namelijk geboren op 8 januari 1942, dag op dag precies 300 jaar na de dood van de Italiaanse astronoom Galileo Galilei en stierf vandaag op 14 maart, oftewel op de kop 139 jaar na de geboortedag van Albert Einstein. 

Lees ook

Dit had Stephen Hawking over zijn eigen dood te vertellen

IQ van 160

Net als geniale warhoofd Einstein in zijn tijd was Hawking de voorbije decennia óók de celebrity onder de wetenschappers. Ook bezitter van een – door ziekte - nogal karakteristiek uiterlijk én ook dankzij een steeds langer lijstje met inspirerende uitspraken – doorgaans doorspekt met zelfrelativering en nederigheid, zoals “wie opschept over zijn IQ is een loser” dixit de man met een zeldzaam IQ van 160 – groeide Hawking uit tot de erudiete chouchou van het grote publiek. Ook wie zijn boeken over de gravitatie-singulariteiten met betrekking tot de algemene relativiteitstheorie en de vernieuwende blikken op de quantummechanica niet op het nachtkastje had liggen, kon geboeid zijn door zijn lezingen, interviews en vele tv-optredens.

Natuurlijk had Hawking meteen beziens als hij scheefgezakt in een wat te grote kostuumvest in zijn gemotoriseerde rolstoel over een podium rolde, maar het curiosum bezat wel de zeldzame gave om complexe materie uit de wereld van de wiskunde en de kosmos min of meer verteerbaar uit te leggen. Zoveel mogelijk mensen inspireren om naar de sterren in plaats van naar hun voeten te kijken was zijn grote doel. 

Nochtans de jonge Stephen Hawking - zoon van een vooraanstaande dokter – was niet meteen de briljantste student begin jaren zestig in Oxford. Hij was begeesterd door wis- en natuurkunde, maar blokte niet al te graag en dus waren zijn resultaten navenant. Proffen hadden al snel in de gaten dat Hawking een ‘mastermind’ was, maar hij kon ook al eens vervelend uit de hoek komen. Na een matig rapport kwam Hawking op een deliberatieronde zelfs eens pleiten om hem toch door te laten zodat hij naar Cambridge kon. Zo niet zou hij nog in Oxford blijven en plots was de keuze snel gemaakt. 

Doodsvonnis op zijn 21ste

Op de unief van Cambridge mocht hij doctoreren in de toegepaste wiskunde en vond Hawking wél z’n draai, maar hij werd ziek. Op z’n 21ste begon hij plots te stuntelen, ging hij moeizaam praten en kreeg hij met de zenuwziekte ALS van de dokters al z’n doodvonnis. Hooguit 2 jaar konden de witjassen hem nog geven. Het werden er uiteindelijk nog 55. Omdat Hawking – geluk bij een ongeluk – de trage variant had van de ongeneeslijke ziekte, die finaal z’n hele lichaam zou verlammen.

Dat hij zo jong al eens over de rand van het ravijn moest gluren, werkte enigszins als een bevrijding voor Hawking. “Er hing dan wel een donkere wolk over mijn toekomst, maar ik bleek – tot mijn verrassing – meer van het leven te genieten dan voordien en zo begon ik vooruitgang te maken in mijn werk.” Met revolutionaire ideeën in de fysica en door wiskundige formules los te laten op het ontstaan van het heelal schoot de wetenschapper Hawking zelf als een komeet de hoogte in. Hij was als ‘Lucasian professor of mathematics’ een verre opvolger van Isaac Newton in Cambridge en bezette voor meer dan dertig jaar één van de meest belangrijke leerstoelen ter wereld. Hawking voegde elk jaar de meest bekwame doctoraatstudent toe aan zijn team en dat bleek eind jaren negentig onze landgenoot Thomas Hertog te zijn, inmiddels professor natuurkunde aan de KU Leuven en jarenlang een vriend van Hawking. 

Zwarte gaten

“Zijn systeem om jaarlijks één doctorandus uit te kiezen zorgde wel voor grote ijver onder de studenten”, zegt Hertog, die tot twee weken geleden nog contact had met de wetenschapper. “Hij was de abstracte denker die in z’n hoofd allerlei concepten bedacht die wij dan mochten uitpluizen. Zoals zijn hypotheses over hoe de zwarte gaten werken en de oerknal. Onder leiding van Hawking ontstond een soort wetenschappelijke commune waarvan hij de inspirerende, toegankelijke en heel warme leider was. Net als op een school deelde hij aan ieder van ons huistaakjes uit. Door zijn ziekte kon Stephen niet langer nog zelf al die wiskundige berekeningen uitvoeren.” Met die sluipende aftakeling die hem hoe langer hoe meer aan banden legde, had Hawking het wel lastig. Hij kroop pas in z’n rolstoel wanneer het écht niet meer anders kon, maar schepte er dan later wel weer genoegen in om als een wervelwind door de unief te razen. 

Zere tenen

Ontelbare studenten hebben vandaag nog een mooi aandenken aan Hawking in de vorm van de zere tenen die ze ooit hadden toen hij z’n draai weer eens te kort nam. Sommigen onder hen kregen zelfs ooit de onvergetelijke ‘Hawking spin’ op hun netvlies wanneer de wetenschapper met z’n door een joystick aangestuurde dansmoves uitpakte. ALS nam Hawking alles af behalve z’n verstand en z’n humor. Wanneer hij begin jaren tachtig niet meer verstaanbaar kan spreken, is er z’n echtgenote Jane Wilde – die hij op school leerde kennen toen hij nog gezond was en met wie hij drie kinderen had – om te tolken. 

Communiceren met wenkbrauwen

Hawkings’ vrouw was ook zijn bewaarengel wanneer hij in ’85 bij een bezoek aan het CERN in Genève zo’n zware longontsteking opliep dat hij zo goed als op sterven lag. Wanneer de dokters voorstelden om de beademingsmachine maar stop te zetten, weigerde Jane en liet ze een tracheotomie (een snede in de luchtpijp) uitvoeren. Hierdoor verloor de wetenschapper volledig zijn stem, maar hij kwam er wel weer bovenop. Van dan af is Hawking voor de rest van z’n leven de klok rond afhankelijk van verpleging. Communiceren lukte enkel nog tergend traag door z’n wenkbrauwen te sturen naar de letters van het alfabet.

De gekende monotone computerstem kwam enkele jaren later als een bevrijding. Met een knop kon de geleerde nu kiezen uit een databank met klanken, woorden en zinnen. De Brit sprak opeens een wat komisch, nasaal Amerikaans taaltje, maar zag dat wel als een gimmick. Ondanks de evolutie in spraaktechnologie hield hij vast aan die eerste computerstem, zelfs toen de Queen hem eens onder z’n neus wreef dat dat Amerikaans toch niet echt kon voor een Brit. Hoe dan ook: Hawking bleef rad van tong en gul met z’n droge humor. Toen het hem in een vol café tijdens een discussie met wetenschappers begon te dagen dat hij het met een bepaalde theorie over zwarte gaten verkeerd voor had, draaide hij eens z’n volumeknop volledig open en begon een oorverdovend ‘I’m coming out!’ door de kroeg te galmen. De boel op stelten natuurlijk en Hawking draaide gewoon de knop weer naar links en begon rustig te doceren. 

Nobelprijs

En toch. Opvallend: zijn prijzen, medailles en eredoctoraten zijn niet te tellen, maar de oppergaai schoot Hawking nooit af. “Er zijn verschillende hypotheses waarom Hawking nooit de Nobelprijs gekregen heeft”, zegt sterrenkundige Leen Decin (KU Leuven), die de natuurkundige ook meermaals ontmoette. “Mogelijk is dat omdat hij als abstracte denker zijn tijd vooruit liep. Onze François Englert heeft zijn Nobelprijs ook pas gekregen nadat ze het Higgs-deeltje gevonden hebben. 

Hawking heeft een theorie geschreven dat zwarte gaten toch niet helemaal zwart zijn en dat ze straling lekken. Alleen hebben we dat nog niet kunnen verifiëren met waarnemingen. Zijn nalatenschap mag nu wel theoretisch ogen, maar dat wil niets zeggen. Toen Einstein stierf was zijn relativiteitstheorie ook maar boekenwijsheid, maar later zijn daaraan verschillende belangrijke toepassingen zoals de GPS schatplichtig aan.” 

Doorzettingsvermogen

Ook al zijn er dan nog geen tastbare uitvindingen aan Hawking toe te schrijven, zijn grote erfenis aan de maatschappij is volgens Thomas Hertog zijn onpeilbare doorzettingsvermogen. “Hawking liet elke mens dromen van wat mogelijk kan zijn. Stephen was verzot op wetenschap, maar ook op het leven en het avontuur. Wat hij ondanks zijn ziekte kon verwezenlijken is een triomf van de wilskracht op het noodlot.” 

Tumultueus tweede huwelijk

Wat voor het genie altijd een vraagstuk is gebleven, was de vrouw. “Een compleet mysterie voor mij”, zo knipoogde hij eens tijdens een interview. Zijn huwelijk met zijn jeugdliefde Jane liep begin jaren negentig spaak. “Een kind met een fragiel ego”, zo schreef zijn ex-vrouw onomfloerst in haar biografie over de man met wie ze drie kinderen kreeg. Zijn ziekte en het feit dat hij daarover met haar niet kon of wilde spreken bleken een te grote horde. Daarna had Hawking nog een nogal tumultueus huwelijk met Elaine Mason, die een verpleegster van hem was geweest en volgens andere verzorgers haar man mishandelde. De politie kwam de klachten meermaals onderzoeken, maar de wetenschapper ging daar nooit op in. In 2006 ging het koppel desondanks toch uit elkaar. 

De wetenschap is wél tot aan z’n dood de muze gebleven van Hawking. De jongste jaren trok hij zich meer en meer terug uit het openbare leven, maar betekende volgens Thomas Hertog niet dat hij de zaken maar op z’n beloop liet. “Twee weken geleden hadden we nog contact. Hij wist dat het einde voor hem snel naderde, maar hij is doorgegaan tot hij echt niet meer kon.” De grapjes over God die Hawking al beu zou zijn omdat de slimme geleerde zijn bestaan aan de hemelpoorten komt ondergraven ten spijt: als het Britse genie gelijk heeft gekregen is hij vandaag niet in één of ander hiernamaals. “Ik bekijk het brein als een computer die stopt met werken wanneer de onderdelen kapot zijn. Er is geen hemel of leven na de aarde voor kapotte computers.”

 BELGAIMAGE

 REUTERS

AP

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Filer’s Files # 10 – 2018 Planetary Defense - PART I

In special reports, this week’s files cover: U.S. Releases  UFO  Files, Pentagon Fails to Capture Data About Alien Orbs, Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus, Asteroid Redirection for Planetary Defense, Abductee Says Aliens Asked Him About Jesus Christ, Manta Ray Ascending and Descending into the Ground, and Grand Teton National Park UFO.

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Arizona, California, Florida, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Jersey,  New York, Tennessee, and Wyoming

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico,, Portugal, Poland, and England in the United Kingdom.

The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.

George A. Filer III

New Jersey State Director

MUFON Eastern Region Director

Www.nationalUFOcenter.com. Now receiving 3 million hits a month

Details at: https://thepromiserevealed.com/mt-shasta-summer-conference-2018.

Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.

Special Projects

U.S. Releases UFO  Files

Washington Post by Christopher Mellon st on March 9, 2018. Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science.

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.

https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com

The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest 

Pentagon Fails to Capture Data About Alien Orbs

Joseph Foster writes, An article was released on the Internet detailing Alien Orbs being observed over a period of time at the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey.  As reported on September 29, 1999, scientists at the American Science Foundation were asked by a local computer company executive (ACC – Jack Schulman) to analyze claims contained in a study of the possibility of extraterrestrial life using a “door way” system along with some form of “resonant energy” to covertly study humanity.

Reportedly, after   several months of studying gathered data, the scientists were no longer skeptical.  Their studies indicated that there was in fact

“evidence” of a “so-called Vortex” located at the reservoir in Wanaque, NJ.  Studies performed at the time authenticated that the “doorway system” does in fact exist and that it allows an unknown specie or species to travel without observation to any point in on the face of the earth using some gateway system.

In 1999 at the ‘Global Sciences Congress’ annual convention in Denver, Co. of that year, with 600 Attendees were provided a chance to witness the existence of what “Team Orb” described as a “Alien Observer Orbs”. 15 or so were captured live on Digital Cameras were shown to a “stunned” audience.  This conference then supposedly turned into an Orb-fest with the Orbs almost obediently lining up for picture taking.  This supposed behavior was indicative of a “human compatible intelligence” with even a sense of humor.

The portal itself was likened to the wormholes as described in the movie “Contact” with Jodie Foster.  These portals were metamorphic and compared favorably to such interstellar wormholes potentially used by alien intelligence as a inter-galactic transportation system.

The study was documented by a hastily organized study team using captured stereo-optic and infra red images of these “beings” using this “doorway” system to transit to and from our world.  They again are here to observe humanity and then to leave.

The technology used by these beings was beyond anything in the Pentagon’s arsenal and as such probably did not escape the Pentagon’s attention for long.  The American Science Foundation Study Team (identified in the original article as TEAM ORB) observed the strange Vortex, followed by filming and cataloging Orb-like evidence of the alien species as it visits our planet through this apparent portal.  It should also be noted that the Pentagon was now also gaining interest as the mystery deepened.

Not to be outdone, a new study team was organized by the Department of Defense who then installed permanent monitoring equipment and sensors at the Vortex location.  These sensors were designed to collect images of the strange comings and goings of the beings using the Orb Doorway System.

After two weeks of monitoring the inner workings of the recording equipment had been “pulverized” by a force not yet identified.  At the time, Pentagon “experts” were observing not only the Vortex but also the activities of the American Science Foundations’ “TEAM ORB”.  When the equipment stopped working, it was inspected and found to be unopened leaving the Pentagon personnel at a loss to explain how their equipment was damaged, especially being that it was only on the insides with no evidence of entry.

Making light of the situation, Pentagon and FBI personnel had little to say about the actions of the traveling Orb phenomena other than to suggest that the phenomena captured by TEAM ORB (1’ to 5’ orbs as “documented”) was nothing but “pollen” caught by the camera equipment.  It was also at this point a member of “Team Orb” reportedly commented: “Sorry, but I left my Electron Microscope home”. Apparently the Government found the situation amusing, because it was essentially powerless to stop the Orb entities from manifesting to private citizens at their homes and/or their offices”.

“The Beings trashed the Pentagon’s equipment” said one Team Orb member.  At first they were quite annoyed because it looked like we had inadvertently caused the Pentagon and the NSA to bring in heavy equipment to study THEM.  Afterwards, it seemed that they had gotten over it. Aliens apparently went up to the Pentagon’s equipment and used some form of technology on it, thus leaving a not too subtle message for the DoD, et al. They (the entities) find our concept of the use of the Military and war very primitive.

It was also reported that TEAM ORB received numerous offers of funding by high tech firms interested in gaining access to benefits coming from these scientific studies of Vortex phenomena as well as the Beings who use the Orb Doorway System to observe and study humanity.  The commercialization would be “earth shaking”!

“If TEAM ORB can produce enough information about how the Vortex Doorway System works, imagine the benefits,” stated George

Gemmiel, an AT&T Executive who was one of several parties interviewed and definitely interested in the technology.  Mr. Gemmiel expressed his interest to TEAM ORB being that AT&T independently verified that the Orbs were real and appeared to be a form of technology”. But whatever controls it does not appear to like us up there with our equipment, unlike how TEAM ORB is treated: their team members are welcomed by these objects every time they visit. We hope to interest TEAM ORB in a technology exchange agreement.”

Note:  Joe Foster writes I have very limited firsthand knowledge of this article.  That knowledge comes from the fact that at the time the article was written I was a consultant to AT&T with access to the company’s Global Email system directory.  I was able to validate that this AT&T executive did in fact exist and that he was who he reported to be – JRF

Another Executive (David G.), who was an executive at SAIC Bellcore, indicated that his firm was also interested in the technological advantages offered by any remote alien species who might be visiting earth. To paraphrase, He indicated that if space-time could be conquered then we should be able to transcend the limitations of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, therefore advancing to a new understanding of the Universe and how we may explore it.  This then could be done in real time, traveling light Years, in the matter of seconds. There was as described by the writer of the original report, TEAM ORB members offering to take the Orbs and the beings associated with them on “field trips” to NASA, The US Government, the Vatican, etc. offers reportedly resulted in interest, yet some trepidation remained. The Government’s offer caused the Pentagon to take up a position near the Wanaque Vortex. NASA indicated that they had in fact hired a director to look into the phenomena as well. The American Science Foundation team to that point had been highly successful in standing off the “debunkers” by providing authentication of their film methodology and artifacts as well as by taking various members of the public to the Vortex where they where they were “encouraged” to take their own photos of this remarkable find. “Humanity may not be ready for this discovery,” stated a TEAM ORB lead investigator, Bryan Williams, who was also one of the original discoverers of the Vortex Doorway System. Apparently these astral alien beings, or whatever they are, were ready for contact and interaction with Humanity. The opportunity was pursued in order to open a relationship with them and to gain insights as to who they are and what they may want from us. It also seemed to the investigators that there might have been some kind of conflict between competing Alien races of one order and that of another.

Accordingly they (the entities) may have been here to try to prepare us for the possibility of being drawn into a vast, political conflict, well beyond our experience and control.  The fear being that there may be a time when a race (if not already here) pops into our Solar System through one of these Interstellar, Inter-dimensional “gateways” that allows one to transcend Einstein’s theory regarding “speed of light” limitations. An advanced species very well may have solved this problem and is now transiting the universe in such a manner (as in Carl Sagan’s “Contact”) to affect these visits.

As to the Pentagon’s “reported” interest, the message by the alien entity seems to have been ‘kids should not play with toys they don’t fully understand’.  This probably also explains the Pentagon’s attempts to gain evidence of the phenomena by trying to Observe it Scientifically. Based upon the “destruction” of their monitors and sensors, the Pentagon team should have consulted with TEAM ORB directly before setting their equipment up and turning it on.  Possible reason being, the entities were already fully aware of what they were doing and just wanted to let the Pentagon know!

As of this report, no other information is available however, the Computer company mentioned above was supposedly doing some PR for Team Orb group as well as providing limited “sponsorship” for part of its activities.  ACC and Jack Schulman (associated with a AT&T Bell Labs reported incident back in the 90’s) seems to add some weight to the mystery surrounding this endeavor. Thanks to Fitzhugh MacCrae and Joe Foster. Orb photos – Credit AmericanComputerScienceAssociation Website

Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus’

Raymond A. Keller’s “The Final Countdown: Rockets to Venus” is the second exciting book in mythologist, magic realist, and ufologist that received the London Book Festival’s  Honorable Mention. This is the second book in  Dr. Raymond A. Keller’s internationally acclaimed and award-winning Venus Rising series. Some of the interesting and real individuals you’ll meet in this book of astounding science include: The German “Rocket Man” who saved New York City in early 1945, the wife of a Japanese prime minister who traveled to Venus in another dimension aboard an ethereal beam ship, a California contactee under constant surveillance by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and his public revelations that smashed the Venus Conspiracy.
The team of Russian scientists probing the mysteries of Venusians life being monitored by the Above Top Secret United States Air Force’s “Project White Stork,” the mega-stars who have used various forms of magic to contact Venusians and other entities inhabiting the mysterious phantom zone known as “Dimension X.”

          The enigmatic psychic Maria Orsic (shown) and the members of the Vril Social Club that inspired the early German science fiction writers and rocket scientists and countless others also appear in the well documented pages of the Venus Rising series. So take your protein pills and put your helmet on because we are going to momentarily be blasting off for high adventures on Venus with both the Cosmic Ray himself and his long-time friend and associate, the glorious Queen of Outer Space!

In the GISS model’s simulation, Venus’ slow spin exposes its dayside to the sun for 117 days almost two months at a time,” co-author and fellow GISS scientist Anthony Del Genio said. “This warms the surface and produces rain that creates a thick layer of clouds, which acts like an umbrella to shield the surface from much of the solar heating. The result is mean climate temperatures that are actually a few degrees cooler than Earth’s today.” Until recently, it was assumed that a thick atmosphere like that of modern Venus was required for the planet to have today’s slow rotation rate. However, newer research has shown that a thin atmosphere like that of modern Earth could have produced the same result. That means an ancient Venus with an Earth-like atmosphere could have had the same rotation rate it has today.

Manta Ray Ascending and Descending s into the Ground

By Dr. Bruce Cornet

On a number of occasions Bruce Cornet and others have witnessed the Manta Ray UFO rising up from a forest or descending through trees and disappearing into the ground.  Dr. Ellen Crystall in her book, “Silent Invasion,” reported seeing the same thing, and believed that there was an underground alien base in the Wallkill River Valley of New York State.  As a geologist I tested her theory by performing a three-year magnetic survey over a 24 square mile area to the east of Pine Bush, NY.  I discovered numerous areas where anomalous magnetic data or signals were detected, which seemed to support Crystall’s hypothesis.

What was difficult for me at the time was the concept that these craft were defying our concepts of physics, and literally dematerializing or changing their atomic frequencies enough that their structures could pass through matter in our world.  Yet there is much evidence from alien abduction research to suggest that our Visitors have the capability of passing themselves and their human captives through doors, walls, and windows without damaging them.  Derrel Sims has focused on collecting anomalous imprints in glass windows, doors, and impressions of alien handprints and fingers, which are barriers to us, indicating that some residue of their physical being can be recorded in the objects they passed through.  If they have the technology to do this, then why couldn’t they dematerialize an entire ship and pass it through the ground into an underground chamber or base?

There is much speculation that a shadow US government operation has retrieved and copied some types of alien spacecraft, which may account for the significant increase in sightings of Black Triangles over the United States since  1997.  See discussions in Filer’s Files #6 and #7.  It would appear that humans have achieved antigravity capability, but does this technology also include the capability of passing through material objects in our world?

I present data below to document what witnesses have seen, including myself, that the Manta Ray sightings in New York State do not belong to our government.

Vincent Polise conducted a decade of research on the Pine Bush UFO Phenomenon, beginning in the early 1990s, and wrote a book by that name in 2005.  He describes witnessing a large craft in the woods at the end of Heritage Lane.  I say “in the woods,” because the craft occupied the same space as the forest trees, and eventually disappeared into the ground.  As far as I know, humans have not developed such technology, nor capability of dematerializing all of its structure except its lights, which can still be seen in our dimension.  He states in his book (p. 74-75):

 “I drove to the end of West Searsville Road and made left onto Heritage Lane. From the top, I was able to see the pulses of light starting to pick up speed. They were now pulsating at a rate of one flash per three seconds. They were becoming extremely rapid and as they pulsed quicker, I drove even faster to find them! I pulled the car over as fast as I could– the strobes were coming from the dense forest at the end of this street!  I was in such a hurry to get to the origin of the lights that in my haste, I left all my camera equipment in the front seat.  The gentleman I had just met parked right behind me as I ran into a neighbor’s backyard to get a closer look at the flashes. Curious, he cautiously followed and ended up standing next to me.

“We watched the lights from that close distance for a few minutes before the pulsing got more rapid and more intense.  They were now flashing at a speed of one flash per second – it was like a laser light show! Suddenly the treetops were enveloped in a white mist through which we could still see the strobes. This mist was chalky white and highly unusual! We saw an enormous half-moon-shaped object rise above the trees.

We could see only half of the craft over the tree line but we could tell that the object was huge! When the craft rose above the trees it was very bright, but not so bright that we couldn’t peer into it. It was brilliant and full of colors much like a Ferris wheel on fire! The outer edges had balls of sparks rotating in a clockwise direction. These little balls were composed of beautiful colors: blue, yellow, red and some green.  The craft’s center was lit up in a brilliant bright orange with shooting sparks all around the outer edges.  I couldn’t see any metallic structure within the craft but such a light display had to be supported by one.  The craft floated above the tree line for a full five seconds before it descended back into the ground.” (Polise, The Pine Bush Phenomenon, 2005)

The phenomenon witnessed by Polise and another witness is similar to what I and other sky watchers on West Searsville Road. observed and photographed on 24 October 1994.  http://www.abcfield.force9.co.uk/b_cornet/Vol_2/toc.html

Across a field at the north end of West Searsville and Hill Ave. we saw the Manta Ray turn on its paired plasma lights surrounded by an ionized orange-red glow and slowly move forward just above the ground behind a row of trees.  It then ascended high into the air, reversed direction, and flew south towards the Wilde farm, where it descended in a spiral loop before plunging into a dense forest at the eastern side of a farm field. Major George Filer was there with the Skywatch Group on West Searsville Road. that evening of 24 October 1994 when this performance took place, and witnessed this takeoff and disappearance into the forest.

 Cliff Larson obtained a sunburned face during the sighting and George Filer

The picture below shows the lights of this craft seemingly oblivious to trees in its path, supporting what Polise describes in his book.

The Manta Ray can passes through matter in our dimension as if it didn’t exist, and disappear into the ground.

Eight (8) is ground level. Black line unrecorded path.

Another sighting by Tommy Sinisi and myself on 10 August 1996 occurred when we were camping on the eastern side of a low ridge next to the Wilde farm.  We first heard a noise coming from the same forest where the above picture of the Manta Ray passing through the forest was taken. We looked across the fields surrounding the Wilde farm, and saw a blinking red light rising up from that very forest.  When it got to about 500 feet altitude, a set of white plasma lights were turned on, and the Manta Ray began flying south.  Soon thereafter it began turning west towards us and flew directly over us on the ridge.  I have several recorded sounds of the Manta Ray that night fling over us, then going back to that forest, and descending into it, presumably into an underground hanger or cavity.The picture was taken from where I had parked my van on the east side of the low ridge overlooking the valley.  The path of the Manta Ray, which was captured on time exposures, is shown as an inverted B&W image overlying the daytime picture.  Conclusions: The Manta Ray is a specialized diamond-shaped antigravity platform capable of projecting different images to different skywatchers on the ground, and is capable of contracting its tail so that it becomes a flying triangle. It can pass into a parallel dimension, rendering itself invisible, and pass through the ground, presumably into an underground chamber or hanger.  Dr. Ellen Crystall observed what I observed in the field, and hypothesized that there is an alien base underground.  A 24 square mile magnetic survey which I conducted between 1992 and 1995 documented underground magnetic anomalies and signals coming out of the ground, supporting Crystall’s hypothesis.  It is highly unlikely that this technology belongs to a covert Secret Space Program, although we can be reasonably certain that the US military is fully appraised of its existence and capability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RehTHw0TD8Y&t=15s, Manta Ray Performs Tricks for Skywatch Group

• http://www.sunstar-solutions.com/AOP/SOW/swampgas.htm

Asteroid Redirection Planetary Defense

Every few days asteroids pass close to Earth. An Asteroid named 2017 YZ4, the size of a bus that Nasa only spotted on Christmas Day made a ‘near miss’ with Earth on Dec 28, 2017. It passed by Earth at a distance of just 139,433 miles.

Jan 3, 2018 – An asteroid the size of a truck shot past Earth, It’s not going to hit us, but it’ll come within one fifth of the distance to the moon on. Feb 9, 2018. Known as 2018 CB, the asteroid will get as close as 44,000 miles from our planet around 5 p.m. EST.

A newly discovered asteroid  flew safely past Earth on Feb 9, 2018 –  may be larger than a celestial object that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, five years ago. Called 2018 CB, it’s estimated to be from 50 to 130 feet in diameter,  An asteroid VR -12 the size of a sports stadium zoomed close by Earth at 898.000 miles on Wednesday March 7, 2018. 
NASA is designing a spacecraft that could nudge asteroids out of Earth’s way. With its new Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, NASA is hoping to do just that: The refrigerator-sized missile is now in a preliminary design. “Our current objective is to find those down to 140 meters [wide], and we think the population of those is somewhere around 25,000 asteroids” Johnson says.

The threat of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth is a real-life concern. In 2013, for instance, a roughly 20-meter-wide meteor exploded over Russia, injuring about 1,500 people with its shock wave. “The hazard of asteroids crossing Earth’s orbit and being a potential for collision and impact with the Earth is a real thing,” says NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson. He leads the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which finds, tracks and characterizes potentially hazardous asteroids and comets.

But what if we could nudge an asteroid out of our way by shooting a missile at it, changing the asteroid’s orbit just enough to avoid a collision with Earth? With its new Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, NASA is hoping to do just that: The refrigerator-sized missile is now in a preliminary design phase. If built, DART would take aim at an asteroid called Didymos B, which will (non-threateningly) approach Earth in 2022, and again in 2024.

“The DART mission is a technology demonstration,” DART co-investigator Andy Cheng says. “It will demonstrate the method of deflecting an asteroid by running a spacecraft into it and changing its orbit.” Cheng explains that after leaving Earth’s orbit, the spacecraft would use a long-range telescope to home in on Didymos. The craft would ultimately ram into the asteroid at a speed of roughly six kilometers per second, “which is about nine times the speed of the bullet from an AK-47.”

Didymos was chosen as a target because it’s actually a binary asteroid system — the 160-meter Didymos B orbits the 780-meter Didymos A. Striking Didymos B with DART would change its orbit around the larger body, which Cheng says could help scientists measure the effect of the deflection.

” Cheng says. “We’re not going to knock it into a dangerous orbit and show that we deflected the asteroid. Scientists are discovering more near-Earth asteroids all the time probably in the millions,” Johnson says. Of those, he estimates that about 93 percent of asteroids 1 km wide and larger have already been found. But medium-sized asteroids — the kind that DART could potentially deflect — are abundant, and based on current estimates, somewhere around 25,000,” Johnson says. So far, his program has only found about 7,700 — less than a third of the estimated total. INASA’s catalog includes more than 16,000 near-Earth asteroids of all sizes.

Detecting, tracking and characterizing near-Earth asteroids costs $35 to $40 million a year, Johnson says. “The total amount of our program this fiscal year 2017 was $60 million.” DART is a modest investment, compared to the scale of disaster it could potentially avert. If you hit a city, you’re talking many billions of dollars of damage and potentially millions of casualties,” that could be averted.” Thanks to NASA

Grand Teton National Park UFO

 Robert Stiles writes, “Hello Major Filer. The craft on the current file looks remarkably like the photo I took last summer in Grand Teton National Park. They both have a round pod on bottom.”

I think my photo provides a little more detail.  The craft is very small next to the insert which I enlarged.

It looks like these things are real whatever they are. I love your posts. Thank you Robert M Stiles

Evangelist Billy Graham has gone on with the Angels and UFOs

Billy Graham, the charismatic pastor who took his evangelizing crusades around the country and the globe, died on Wednesday morning at 99 years of age. Graham achieved a reach unlike any other evangelist, serving as a counselor or minister to presidents. He was buried next to his wife. The grave marker reads: “Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Evangelist Billy Graham has had a ministry for 50 years to a dozen presidents since Truman. In his bestselling book, “Angels God’s Secret Agents” Graham states, “Some reputable scientists deny and others assert that UFOs do appear to people from time to time. Some scientists have reached the place where they think they can prove that these are possibly visitors from outer space.

Some Christian writers have speculated that UFOs could very well be a part of God’s angelic host who preside over the physical affairs of universal creation. While we cannot assert such a view with certainty, many people are now seeking some type of supernatural explanation for these phenomena. Nothing can hide the fact, however, that these unexplained events are occurring with greater frequency. (Page 21)

“The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels.” “His chariots of conveyance, which he sends for his friends, as he did for Elijah …his chariots of state, in the midst of which he shows his glory and power.“. “For he will give his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways.” Psalm 68 & 91.

MUFON CMS Reports 548 February UFO Sightings

Santa Anna, California on Sunday, October 22, 2017

CMS continues to amass sighting reports from around the globe. In February 2018 there were 548 sightings reported to MUFON through CMS from the following countries;

• United States 362,
• Canada 43,
• United Kingdom 42,
• France 18,
• Australia,11,
• Germany 7,
• Brazil and Ireland 5.

Peter Davenport at his National UFO Reporting Center had 212 sighting reports in February 2018

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

Filer’s Files # 10 – 2018 Planetary Defense - PART II

UFO Sightings in the United States

Phoenix —  In the recent Filer’s Files #9 under “Nevada Lights” you have a picture (attached) of three lights similar to the photo that I took in Phoenix, AR in April of 2015. The object below in my photo of the three lights, in the center of the photo, I believe, is an airplane because it moved to the right towards the airport in subsequent frames while the three lights stayed relatively in the same position all of the time. My picture was taken from a distance of about three miles from this object in Gold Canyon, so I wasn’t able to judge it’s size, but I think that it was rather large judging from the ground lights around Phoenix. Also, the three lights, I saw at times, turned into four as a light would appear and then it would soon disappear. Then there were three lights again. All of these photos are similar to the Phoenix lights, are they not? Thanks to Dan Johnson

California Object

Long Beach — My wife and I went for a bike ride to the park in the Golden East Regional Park on March 10, 2017, and stopped for a while. We turned to look at the sky and there were the objects. I took my camera and started recording. At the beginning you see how one red object passes under the other that appear to be two spheres together, after a while it changes color and the two appear white. They changed color and changed to a white sphere. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Florida Lights

Naples — Taking photos of sunset on November 10, 2016, I didn’t notice a white disc until I was reviewing them a year later. It didn’t move that I know, but there were black spots when I zoomed in on the picture. I’m just looking for an explanation. It looked unnatural to me, and I’m always watching the sky as I live on the beach. When the sunset completely, it wasn’t visible. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Florida Triangle

Orlando — I was at work photographing some flowering trees on February 23, 2018. I noticed a very fast moving Concord like jet with sleeker wings and no tail. I saw it for 10 seconds and turned my camera on but missed it since it was so fast. I heard no noise and saw no contrails. It was traveling northwest and disappeared in the clouds. I’m 10 miles from Orlando International Airport and this white aircraft was flying higher than commercial jets. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Kentucky Object

Lexington — On March 3, 2018, a friend and I were heading back to Louisville from the Red Mile Gaming facility at about 5:30 PM. We were heading west on Highway 64w.

The sun was starting to set, being a sky watcher I noticed this elongated looking object that appeared to be hovering (not moving), and then we saw several fast moving objects moving from South to North at almost horizon level. I was able to snap a few photos but I was unable get better shots. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Nebraska Light

North Platte — Got home and got out of my truck and saw this light hovering in the sky on March 3. 2018. It had four lights on it blinking red and to Green. It then moved around making impossible maneuvers. I recorded it on my cell phone and it flew away quickly and disappeared. A minute later it came back for two more minutes and I recorded it again. I’m hoping to get an answer to what I saw. Thanks to MUFON CMS

New Jersey Objects

Mt. Laurel — After I uploaded my pictures on March 8, 2018, I noticed that one of them had round objects in it, I did not see anything while I was taking the picture…I had enlarged the picture trying to figure out what these could be, this happened between 1:15-1:30:pm. I did notice that these objects in the picture seem to be above the power lines that were down due to a snow storm that we had the day before.

New York Orb

Lake George — I found pictures of this UFO on Google Earth street view on March 3, 2018..

The picture was taken on the east side of Lake George by the radio tower near Shelvin rock . Thanks to MUFON CMS

Tennessee Object

 Nashvillle — On a road trip from Louisiana with two girlfriends in the front seats while I was lying down in the back seat watching the sky pass by on October 29, 2017.

I noticed a massive object of dull, metallic grey descend slowly from the bottom of the cloud cover. I watched it for 45seconds before asking my two friends if they could see what I was seeing. They both looked out and one said, “Oh wow…that’s a UFO”
I then took out my LG phone and took the pictures of it as it was ascending back into the clouds. Strangely the pictures don’t show that it was a huge rectangular object but instead show a circular disk on its side. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Wyoming Cylinder

Lander — I noticed a very interesting looking cloud bank on July 17, 2017.  i was standing on a sidewalk in front of my girlfriends house. I took several zoom and regular photos my iPhone 6s plus. I did not see the object. Several weeks later I realized there was a cigar shaped UFO in the last picture. The very best part is when I was taking photos of this cloud bank It looked like a UFO disguised as a cloud. To me it appears as if this craft is docking with a mothership of sorts. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Worldwide UFO Sightings

Australia Cigar

 Melbourne — I got home from work on March 5, 2018, and I looked up and was stunned to see a large dark cigar object. I was shocked and ran inside to get my iPhone to film it. When I came back out it had darted to high altitude very rapidly. With my eyes I could still see the dark color and the elongated shape but in video it only shows as blinking lights. It was there for about 15 minutes. The flashing lights were random I took video of a plane to show the normal height for comparative reasons. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Brazil Lights

Santo Antônio Da Platin — I was filming several UFOs on February 3, 2018, that appear to me almost every day. That day many came and this one was the last that flew over my house. My father and I were watching the UFOs. I later realized I saw a triangular ship. (I’ve seen 5 triangular ships) who shone in front of a plane last year. I filmed this object quietly because my family and I are use to them. Thanks to MUFON CMS

India Triangle

Eattumannor Kerala — I am a Software Engineer working in Infopark Kochi which is about 95 kilometers away from my home town. I commute every day between Kochi and Tiruvalla either by bus, train or by my bike.. The incident happened on 23rd February 2018 at around 5:35 AM. I was biking to work starting at 4:15 AM and reached Eattumanoor at 5:10 AM. I met a friend near by the Ezhara Ponnana Shiva Temple and we saw a glowing light moving with a constant speed. I took a video using my HTC Phone camera and as it flew over its shape changed to a triangle. Suddenly light started dimming and it shot west.

Note: The video is grainy and doesn’t reveal much detail. The witnesses disagree on the shape that the light changed to (triangular or round). The video doesn’t reveal any shape and probably doesn’t depict what the witnesses saw. Thanks to William Puckett, Director Http://www.UFOsnw.com

Mexico Light

I was shooting the night stars with my Nikon d3200 on a tripod. 1600 iso 2.5 seconds exposures.

I shot 4 frames one right after the other and when I reviewed I noticed the strange anomaly on the final frame. Photos were taken on November28, 2017. Thanks to MUFON CMS

 Poland Object

Ełk — We entered a wood pulpit, as my friend took pictures. We felt strange vibrations and sounds at the same time. Suddenly, we all noticed a strange light and vibrations with the whole pulpit moving as it might blow down. My Friend said he saw the object for 10 seconds,. When the lights appeared, a friend recorded a movie. After playing it after the whole situation, the sound seemed to be very distorted. We all felt very weak while seeing this light. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Portugal Objects

Azores — I noticed a strange hole in the clouds and took some pictures since the hole in the clouds was really unusual. At the time of the photo on February 24, 2018, I didn’t see any object. Some days after, I was checking the photos and realized it had a strange dark object where the hole in the cloud is. I took several photographs, one after another, in a matter of 3 to 5 seconds, and the object only appears in one photo. I did some contrast analysis in the photo and it doesn’t resemble any normal object. Thanks to MUFON CMS

UK/England Lights

Three objects were observed on 29 January 2018 at 14:51 hours passing overhead in the direction E to W. There was an 12 mph west wind gusting at 23 mph. The objects were filmed with a full spectrum converted SLR camera fitted with a 760 mm infrared filter.
No sound was noticed and the objects appeared to fly in strict formation for the four minutes I was able to observe them.  They appeared to be dumbbell shaped. All three objects appeared to be identical in shape, size and did not rotate. I was able to follow until they went behind. Thanks to MUFON CMS

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I have put out these files for twenty years; and I’m a disabled veteran with poor eyesight due to cataracts and macular degeneration so forgive any spelling errors. As you read this I’ve had heart surgery on my clogged arteries at Deborah Hospital on December 5, 2017. I plan on continuing these files as the operation is successful but has taken a couple weeks to recover. It has been a pleasure writing these files for twenty years, that I feel is the most important endeavor of mankind. We could use your help  in paying for web costs, Wi-Fi , internet, etc.

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As some readers of Mysterious Universe will know, one of my big interests is the Contactee/Space Brother phenomenon, which was most prominent in the 1950s. It’s a subject which is very often derided by many in Ufology (and, at times, with good reason…). But, that doesn’t take away the fact that the issue is an important one. Of those who tackled the whole controversy, certainly one of the most knowledgeable was the late Colin Bennett. He wrote what – in my opinion – remains the most important and insightful book on contactee George Adamski. The title of Colin’s book? Looking for Orthon – Orthon being the alleged name of the equally alleged alien that Adamski claimed to have met in November 1952.

Back in 2009, I interviewed Colin about his ideas on Adamski, the Space Brothers and the Contactee crowd. And, today, I thought I would share with you – and without interruption – Colin’s observations on those long-gone times of the 1950s when the Contactee movement ruled the ufological roost. Colin, who died in 2014, told me:

“Many Orthons have appeared throughout history. The equivalents to Adamski’s Venusian ‘space brother’ have appeared on mountain tops, in deserts, and have appeared to walk on water, or fly in the sky. Their sole function is to sow seeds in the head; just as a farmer grows a particular crop. These seeds act on the imagination, which replicates and amplifies whatever story-technology is around at the time. People such as Adamski and the rest of the contactees were, and still are, like psychic lightning-rods for certain brands of information. Undoubtedly, rich or poor, clever or dumb, they are possessed by a kind of higher cerebral disturbance, and like Moses, they are as prepared for the ‘visitation’ as they anxiously await for a new product brand, for the equivalent to RFID-type branding is what ‘contact’ is all about.

“Contactees are host-nutrients for whatever cultural sales lines are on offer from visions conjured up by clouds, sea or sand. The message is ‘consumed’ and thoroughly processed exactly as a viral product is absorbed. The incomprehensibility of the received stories is irrelevant. They represent a heavily codified branch of postmodern intellectual consumerism. In receiving ‘messages’ at all, Contactees are bar coded as it were, and elements of the induced story-technology are ready to crystallize out into that final alchemical stage called the mechanical real.  But we must be careful here. As the alchemist said to his apprentice, ‘The game may be rigged, but it’s the only game in town.’

“Deception and all its ramifications is the key to this whole business. This does not burst the bubble of the mystery however, for manipulative levels of faction may well be our first clue as to how a possible alien mind might work. If the levels of deception of all kinds in human culture are anything to go by, the range of such within an alien culture must be both multiple and profound.

“The ‘space-folk’ are sculptured by wars between rival viral memes competing for prime-time belief. It may be that, as an independent form of non-organic life, memes as active viral information can display an Orthon entity at a drop of a hat. They come complete with sets of cultural agendas. After they have rung the doorbell as it were, and the goods are sold, these metaphysical salesmen disappear like the traditional Men in Black, no doubt traveling on to seed other dreams in other towns and other heads. The goods we have unwittingly bought are half-formed memories of having met someone from another world.

 “Over a half-century later, we can no more erase the legendary Contactees from our heads than we can erase Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe. Once induced by mere transient suggestion, these powerful images become permanent fast-breeders, turning out scripts and performances in all our heads – for no-one can escape – even as we sleep. It might come as a disappointment to extraterrestrial nut-and-bolters, but as [Jacques] Vallee says in Passport to Magonia, Orthon and his brood may be a form of ‘alien’ life that has been with us for a long time. Such ethereal beings are part of the structure of that much-despised and rather unfashionable idea described by the phrase mystical experience.

“A man says he has seen a fairy being. Another man says that is impossible, because fairy beings do not exist. When we subtract the two beliefs we do not get zero as an answer. We have the thinnest of belief-tissue remaining, but perhaps mechanical quantity is irrelevant. The smallest part of an HTML address contains the whole address, rather like a fractal. These creatures, though seen and photographed, leave no trace of fights, no food swath, no blood, no sweat. They appear as partially formed displays rather then flesh and blood as we know it. As soon as we are into display we are into Media. It is somewhat chilling to think that if an Orthon or even perhaps a Jesus can appear in this manner, then so can many things else, including objects and even situations. In this it is possible that we are host-receptors of skunk-smoke from life forms not yet known to us.

“There is no doubt that Contactee claims allow access to a refreshing world which includes humor, and inspired absurdity. They allow humanity to breathe and access a Matrix world in which anything that can be imagined can happen. It might be denied by social-scientific left, but the truth is that dreams, fantasies, and mystical experiences of all kinds play an absolutely essential part in all human mental operations.

“George Adamski played a significant part in establishing New Age thinking. It might be well to remember that the entire body of our moral philosophy and spiritual life is formed by visions and inspirations. It does not come from science or technology. Those who thoughtlessly dismiss mystical experience cut themselves off from all art, literature, and no small part of all thought and philosophy. As mystics and prophets know, when desert light strikes the retina, anything that can be imagined can happen. The greatest tribute that can be paid to Adamski is that through both foul means and fair, he helped to create one of the very few routes to the unconscious that we have.”

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Have you always wanted to explore space and find strange new alien worlds? Are you too lazy to leave your comfortable chair and the warm, reassuring glow of your computer screen? Google has some good news for you armchair star-ship captains out there. The machine-learning code responsible for the discovery of two exoplanets back in December has been released to the public, so you can now join the ongoing search for exoplanets and help uncover the strange secrets of our universe.

In a blog post published Thursday, March 8, senior Google software engineer Chris Shallue detailed the machine-learning code and how it can be used to help search for alien planets. To detect planets outside our solar system using tools like the Kepler space telescope, astronomers look at the light and other cosmic radiation that hits the telescope’s photometer. When there’s a conspicuous dip in an otherwise stable amount of light being detected by the telescope, there’s a chance that a planet, star, or something else may be responsible for blocking out some the light. There’s a chance, too, that it might just be instrumental noise. Once an anomaly in the signal is noticed, an algorithm makes a calculation as to the probability of an exoplanet’s existence. It’s not confirmed, however, until an astronomer manually looks through the data and can make an informed decision about what is causing the anomaly.

Because of the immense amount of data being analyzed, astronomers had to develop a way to avoid being overwhelmed by false positives caused by instrumental noise. A signal-to-noise cutoff ratio is applied to the data and any signals below the cutoff point are deemed too likely to be noise to warrant further review. While necessary, such a practice means there may be a number of actual exoplanets who’s signal was below the cutoff ratio, most likely smaller Earth-sized planets, the planets most likely to harbor alien life. That’s where Google’s code comes in.

This telescope needs your help to find weird alien planets.

Google’s code looks through the rejected Kepler signals and, like the terrifying piece of artificial intelligence it is, learns more ways to separate signal noise and actual anomalies.  To test this, Google put its code to work on the data from 670 stars observed by the Kepler telescope and rejected by the automated analysis. From that formerly rejected data, Google identified two more exoplanets, Kepler-90 i and Kepler-80 g.

There is much more rejected Kepler data to sort through and Google has released its code to the public in hopes that open-sourcing it can help improve it. There is another space telescope being launched next month, too: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will launch on April 16, 2018 for a two year mission to observe potential exoplanets. This mission also uses the transiting method of detection, and Google’s code will likely be instrumental in distinguishing noise from potential alien worlds.

This is what planet discovery looks like. Isn’t the future great?

You can find the download for the code, and instructions on how to use it, on GitHub. If the thought of a machine-learning code on your computer makes you uneasy, you can also help sort data with your eyes, the old fashioned way.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Declassified Military Video Shows 'UFO' Off East Coast

WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR RELIGION IF WE FIND EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE?

How will humankind react after astronomers hand over rock-solid scientific evidence for the existence of life beyond the Earth? No more speculating. No more wondering. The moment scientists announce this discovery, everything will change. Not least of all, our philosophies and religions will need to incorporate the new information.

Searching for signs of life

Astronomers have now identified thousands of planets in orbit around other stars. At the current rate of discovery, millions more will be found this century.

Having already found the physical planets, astronomers are now searching for our biological neighbors. Over the next fifty years, they will begin the tantalizing, detailed study of millions of planets, looking for evidence of the presence of life on or below the surfaces or in the atmospheres of those planets.

And it’s very likely that astronomers will find it. Despite the fact that more than one-third of Americans surveyed believe that aliens have already visited Earth, the first evidence of life beyond our planet probably won’t be radio signals, little green men or flying saucers. Instead, a 21st century Galileo, using an enormous, 50-meter-diameter telescope, will collect light from the atmospheres of distant planets, looking for the signatures of biologically significant molecules.

Astronomers filter that light from far away through spectrometers – high-tech prisms that tease the light apart into its many distinct wavelengths. They’re looking for the telltale fingerprints of molecules that would not exist in abundance in these atmospheres in the absence of living things. The spectroscopic data will tell whether a planet’s environment has been altered in ways that point to biological processes at work.

If we aren’t alone, who are we?

With the discovery in a distant planet’s light spectrum of a chemical that could only be produced by living creatures, humankind will have the opportunity to read a new page in the book of knowledge. We will no longer be speculating about whether other beings exist in the universe. We will know that we not alone.

An affirmative answer to the question “Does life exist anywhere else in the universe beyond Earth?” would raise immediate and profoundly important cosmotheological questions about our place in the universe. If extraterrestrial others exist, then my religion and my religious beliefs and practices might not be universal. If my religion is not universally applicable to all extraterrestrial others, perhaps my religion need not be offered to, let alone forced on, all terrestrial others. Ultimately, we might learn some important lessons applicable here at home just from considering the possibility of life beyond our planet.

In my book, I investigated the sacred writings of the world’s most widely practiced religions, asking what each religion has to say about the uniqueness or non-uniqueness of life on Earth, and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe.

Extrasolar sinners?

Let’s examine a seemingly simple yet exceedingly complex theological question: could extraterrestrials be Christians? If Jesus died in order to redeem humanity from the state of sin into which humans are born, does the death and resurrection of Jesus, on Earth, also redeem other sentient beings from a similar state of sin? If so, why are the extraterrestrials sinful? Is sin built into the very fabric of the space and time of the universe? Or can life exist in parts of the universe without being in a state of sin and therefore without the need of redemption and thus without the need for Christianity? Many different solutions to these puzzles involving Christian theology have been put forward. None of them yet satisfy all Christians.

Mormon worlds

Mormon scripture clearly teaches that other inhabited worlds exist and that “the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (Doctrines and Covenants 76:24). The Earth, however, is a favored world in Mormonism, because Jesus, as understood by Mormons, lived and was resurrected only on Earth. In addition, Mormon so-called intelligences can only achieve their own spiritual goals during their lives on Earth, not during lifetimes on other worlds. Thus, for Mormons, the Earth might not be the physical center of the universe but it is the most favored place in the universe. Such a view implies that all other worlds are, somehow, lesser worlds than Earth.

Bahá’í without bias

Members of the Bahá’í Faith have a view of the universe that has no bias for or against the Earth as a special place or for against humans as a special sentient species. The principles of the Bahá’í Faith – unifying society, abandoning prejudice, equalizing opportunities for all people, eliminating poverty – are about humans on Earth. The Bahá’í faithful would expect any creatures anywhere in the universe to worship the same God as do humans, but to do so according to their own, world-specific ways.

Light years from Mecca

The pillars of the faith for Muslims require the faithful to pray five times every day while facing Mecca. Because determining the direction of Mecca correctly could be extremely difficult on a quickly spinning planet millions of light years from Earth, practicing the same faith on another world might not make any sense. Yet the words of the Qu’ran tell us that “Whatever beings there are in the heavens and the earth do prostrate themselves to Allah” (13:15). Can terrestrial Muslims accept that the prophetically revealed religion of Muhammad is intended only for humans on earth and that other worlds would have their own prophets?

Astronomers as paradigm-shatterers

At certain moments throughout history, astronomers’ discoveries have exerted an outsized influence on human culture. Ancient Greek astronomers unflattened the Earth – though many then chose to forget this knowledge. Renaissance scholars Copernicus and Galileo put the Earth in motion around the Sun and moved humans away from the center of the universe. In the 20th century, Edwin Hubble eliminated the very idea that the universe has any center at all. He demonstrated that what the universe has is a beginning in time and that, bizarrely, the universe, the very fabric of three-dimensional space, is expanding.

Clearly, when astronomers offer the world bold new ideas, they don’t mess around. Another such paradigm-shattering new idea may be in the light arriving at our telescopes now.

No matter which (a)theistic background informs your theology, you may have to wrestle with the data astronomers will be bringing to houses of worship in the very near future. You will need to ask: Is my God the God of the entire universe? Is my religion a terrestrial or a universal religion? As people work to reconcile the discovery of extrasolar life with their theological and philosophical worldviews, adapting to the news of life beyond Earth will be discomfiting and perhaps even disruptive.

Source www.rawstory.com

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted this 360 video on March 8, 2018. If you’re able to view it, the video will let you virtually explore a Mars simulation facility – the In-Situ Instrument Lab – located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The lab is being used by engineers to practice operating NASA’s InSight lander, scheduled for launch in May 2018. The voice you hear is engineer Marleen Martinez Sundgaard. To explore, just set your cursor on the video, and move it around.

NASA said of the In-Situ Instrument Lab:

They use this testbed to simulate all the functions of the spacecraft, preparing for any scenario it might meet once it touches down on the Red Planet.

InSight is unique in that it’s a lander rather than a rover; once it touches down, it can’t reposition itself. Its job is to stay very still and collect high-precision data. JPL’s testbed for the lander sits on piles of crushed garnet … This garnet simulates a mix of sand and gravel found on the Martian surface but has the benefit of being dust-free. The testbed’s legs are raised or lowered to test operations in an uneven landing area with up to 15 degrees of tilt.

Engineers also pile garnet at different tilts in the testbed’s “workspace” – the area in front of the lander where it practices setting down three science tools: an ultra-sensitive seismometer; a shield that isolates the seismometer from wind and temperature swings; and a heat-flow probe. These three objects are formally called the Science Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS); the Wind and Thermal Shield (WTS); and the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe (HP3).

All this practice ensures InSight can set these objects down safely no matter what surprises its landing site has in store.

InSight will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California. The launch window opens on May 5. Insight is scheduled to land on Mars in November 2018.

Artist’s concept of Mars Insight launch. InSight is scheduled to launch under pre-dawn skies from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central coast of California in May 2018. The mission’s launch period is May 5 through June 8, with daily launch windows that last 2 hours per day. Launch opportunities are set five minutes apart during each date’s launch window. The first opportunity begins at approximately 4 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on May 5. InSight will launch from Launch Complex 3 and ride atop an Atlas V-401 rocket.

Image and caption via NASA.

Bottom line: 360 video at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where space engineers are practicing for the upcoming Mars InSight mission.

• Read more about this video from NASA JPL
• Click here for more about InSight lander mission

{ http://earthsky.org/}

The First Manned Interplanetary Spaceship Will Be Ready In 2019

Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla and SpaceX, has said in a surprise question and answer session at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas that the first interplanetary spaceships—for Mars—will be ready by 2019. 

Musk commented how it was imperative to create colonies on the Moon and on Mars, and how these colonies could help preserve the human civilization and accelerate its regeneration on Earth in the event of a Third World War, or a different apocalypse that may strike Earth. 

“We are building the first Mar or interplanetary ship, and I think well be able to do short trips, short up and down flights, by the first half of next year,” Musk responded Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan, who was moderating the talk.

Despite this, the Musk 46, said that his deadline might be too optimistic;

“Although sometimes, my timelines are a little, you know…”

It’s time to take Mars.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

In 2017, Elon Musk announced that exciting times are approaching and that SpaceX was working to send a cargo mission to the surface of the red planet by 2022, which will help future Martian colonists settle down on Mars.

Stepping up the game

“I think once we build it we’ll have a point of proof something that other companies and countries can go and do. They certainly don’t think it’s possible, but if we do they’ll up their game,” said Musk.

When someone asked Musk how ordinary people can help his mission to reach Mars, he said that at this time it is about general support and encouragement.

A HiRISE image from Mars’ surface.

Image Credit: NASA

“I think that once we build it, we will have a test point of something that other companies and countries can do. They certainly do not think it’s possible, but if we do, they will improve their action.”

The futuristic tycoon said that a flight on the BFR rocket (Big Fucking Rocket) – designed specifically for this mission – will actually cost less than the initial flights of Falcon 1, which were between 5 and 6 million dollars. Still, he admitted that the first humans who dare to make the trip would risk a lot: “It will be much more dangerous, difficult, dangerous, with a good chance that you will die.”

Image Credit: SpaceX

However, the positive sides outweigh the negative things.

“I think mars should have great bars… Mars bars,” Musk joked.

Musk explained that the bases on the Moon and Mars could help preserve human civilization and accelerate its regeneration on Earth in the event of a Third World War.

“There is likely to be another dark age (…) particularly if there is a third world war,” Musk stressed, arguing that in such a case “a Martian colony will carry forward the torch of human culture.”

Featured image credit: SpaceX

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

Gene Inherited From An Extinct Species Of Humans Helps Tibetans Thrive At High Altitudes

Among all the physical characteristics, there is one in particular that distinguishes Tibetans from the rest of the humans on the surface of the planet.

The Tibetans have an extraordinary ability to live without problems in the highest mountains, where most of us could not. Extreme altitudes do not pose an issue for them.

The reason for this unique adaptation resides in a gene, transmitted to their ancestors when they crossed with another human species to whose extinction, paradoxically, the Tibetansalso contributed.

That gene was identified by a group of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, who publish their findings in Nature.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The Super Human Gene

A rare variant of a gene related to the production of hemoglobin(the molecule responsible for transporting oxygen in the bloodstream) spread among Tibetans after they moved, several thousand years ago, to the high plateaus they currently occupy.

And it is precisely this genetic variant that has allowed them, and allows them even today, to survive despite the low levels of oxygen that are present at altitudes of 5,000 meters above sea level, where most people would have serious health issues.

“We have very clear evidence that this version of the gene came from Denisovans,” said principal author Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology.

“This shows that humans evolved and adapted to new environments by obtaining their genes from another species.”

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The Gene, called EPAS1 boosts hemoglobin and red blood cellproduction only slightly, avoiding the negative cardiovascular effects seen by those with other variants of the gene that causes thicker blood.

“We found that part of the EPAS1 gene in Tibetans is nearly identical to the gene found in ancient Denisovans and very different from all other humans,” Nielsen said.

“We can do a statistical analysis to demonstrate that this gene must have originated from the Denisovans. There is no other way of explaining the data.”

This mystery gene was discovered in 87 percent of Tibetans who were tested in the study.

A Tibetan Buddhist monastery located near Kaza City in the Spiti valley region of Himachal Pradesh, India.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

On the Tibetan plateau, oxygen levels are about 40 percent lower than at sea level.

“There may be many other species from which we also obtained today’s DNA, but we don’t know it because we don’t have the necessary genomes,” Nielsen said.

“The only reason we can say that this bit of DNA is Denisovan is because of this lucky accident of sequencing DNA from a little bone found in a cave in Siberia. We found the Denisovan species at the DNA level, but how many other species are out there that we haven’t sequenced?

{https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

Russian Scientist Claims ‘Mummified Creatures’ With Elongated Skulls Found In Peru Are Aliens

“They appear human, but they are not. Their anatomic structure is different.”

Despite the fact that the alleged mummified remains of ‘an unknown species’ discovered in Peru have been dismissed by mainstream scientists as a hoax, a number of researchers believe that the ‘three-fingered’ mummies with elongated skulls, found in Peru in 2017 are real alien remains.

The Russian scientist claims to have performed DNA tests on one of the mummies, providing evidence they are not human.

The ‘expert,’ Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, professor of Computer Science and Biophysics at Saint-Petersburg Federal University firmly believes the mummies are in fact the mummified remains of ancient ‘aliens.’

However, Professor Korotkov is known for extraordinary claims. The researcher was widely criticized after claiming to have invented a device that has the capability to ‘photograph’ the human soil in 2008.

One of the alleged mummies from Peru, called Maria, was found by a group of experts led by one of the most famous Ufologists and paranormal authors of America, Jaime Maussan.

According to preliminary tests, Maria, the Peruvian mummy discovered in a tomb near the Nazca Lines lived during the fifth century AD.

Poting towards the strange shape of the skulls as well as elongated fingers, researchers were convinced they had found a species unlike any other on Earth.

Interestingly, back in 2017 when Jaime Maussan and his team discovered the weird mummies, Dr. Korotkov of Saint-Petersburg University said that the features were not a deformity and that the discovery was actually ‘another creature, another humanoid.’

Nearly a year later, Dr. Korotkov says he has performed genetic tests on a set of tissue samples from the mummies, reports Russian News Agency Sputnik.

Genetic tests have shown that Maria “is a humanoid being, meaning that she also has 23 chromosomes like us.”

X-rays images of the alleged mummified remains.

Image credit: YouTube

“Right now, we are performing a detailed analysis to see if the shape of the position of all the chromosomes, of all the amino acids, coincides with ours,” Konstantin Korotkov, said speaking to Sputnik.

However, experts note that the rib structure of the Peruvian mummy greatly differs from that of an ordinary human.

“We see the contours of the trachea and the bronchi, of the heart and its chambers; we can even see the shape of the valves. We can also see quite clearly the contours of the diaphragm, the liver, and the spleen,” radiologist Natalia Zaloznaya said.

Researchers have also found what the mysterious ‘white’ substance covering the mummies was. According to reports, the ‘alien mummies’ were covered with cadmium chloride – a chemical whose antibacterial effect has kept Maria and the other mummies so well preserved.

And despite the fact that the mummies look eerily similar to humans, they are anything but that.

As noted by Dr. Korotkov, “Each of the mummies has two arms, two legs, a head, a pair of eyes and a mouth. Tomographic scans have revealed their skeletons. The tissue is biological in nature, and their chemical composition indicates that they are humans. Their DNA features 23 pairs of chromosomes, just like humans have. All the four of them are males, each with a Y-chromosome. And despite the fact that they appear human, they are not. Their anatomic structure is very different.”

During Dr. Korotkov’s visit to Peru, the Russian researcher was shown four more mummies, 70 centimeters each.

Dr. Korotkov says that the mystery 70CM mummies all have three fingers and an extremely elongated skull. The mummies have another mysterious characteristic according to Korotkov; their Nasal cavity is missing, and their superciliary arches are not pronounced.

“Most surprisingly, the mouth cavities are there, but the lower jaws are not flexible and present a single whole with the rest of the skull, said Kortovov speaking to Sputnik.

When asked about what the mysterious beings could be, the Russian expert answered:

“They could be extraterrestrials or bio-robots,” he added. “As for the 70cm creatures I’m not sure, but Maria and Vavita could have been representatives of a certain race which had possibly reached a stage of advancement much earlier than we did. Maybe thousands of years earlier.”

“By the way, three-fingered creatures can be seen on petroglyphic drawings found in Peru,” Korotkov added, suggesting that ancient inhabitants of Peru may have seen these strange beings alive.

Featured image credit: Gaia/YouTube

{https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

We probably won’t hear from aliens. But by the time we do, they’ll be dead.

A new Drake Equation calculation suggests ghost signals haunt parts of the Milky Way

BY 

LISA GSMAN 

 

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?  Electromagnetic signals (blue circles) from alien civilizations will continue traveling through the Milky Way even after the aliens are gone. The appearance of a doughnut hole represents when a civilization dies out.

GEOFF MARC

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

Have Astronomers Found A ‘Second Earth’? Potentially Habitable Super Planet Discovered

Japanese scientists have found 15 new planets— including a “Super Earth” –that orbit small, cold stars known as red dwarfs.

Among the recently discovered alien world, experts have found a planet dubbed as K2-155d, which is 1.6 times the size of our planet and orbits its star in the so-called Habitable Zone, some 200 light years away.

The finding was made by astronomers led by Teruyuki Hirano of Tokyo Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

This discovery proofs that red dwarfs are a good bet when looking for potentially habitable planets.

In the past, astronomers avoided searching for alien life and Earth-like planets around red dwarfs because habitable zones around these stars are small. Astronomers were convinced that any worlds orbiting red dwarfs would be so close to the stars that one side would constantly face the star, which could make one planet’s extremely hot while the other side would be freezing cold and dark, meaning that life would have to develop under extremely difficult conditions.

Three-dimensional global climate simulations captured by data from NASA’s Kepler probe indicate that the surface of that super-earth could host water.

However, to affirm with certainty that this alien world is habitable, astronomers will have to make a more accurate estimate of the radius and temperature of K2-155.

The outermost planet has a radius 1.6 times that of Earth and could be located within the host star’s habitable zone. Based on climate simulations, astronomers conclude that planet K2-155d could host liquid water on its surface (artist’s impression).

“In our simulations, the atmosphere and the composition of the planet were assumed to be Earth-like, and there’s no guarantee that this is the case,” said Dr. Hirano.

Even if we do find that there’s liquid water on the surface of the planet, reaching it with today’s technology is impossible.

However, future generations of super-fast spacecraft could allow tomorrow’s astronomers to visit the planet without issues.

As of now, the fastest spacecraft conceived b mas is the New horizons prove, traveling at staggering 51,500 kilometers per hour.

With this speed, it would take 4 million years for New Horizons to reach K2-155d.

Scientists say that Red Dwarfs are the most common type of stars in our galaxy.

These small and relatively cool stars are often not observed due to their luminosity, and from Earth, not a single Red Dwarf is visible to the naked eye.

The nearest Red Dwarf to earth is Proxima Centauri.

“It’s important to note that the number of planets around red dwarfs is much smaller than the number around solar-type stars,’ said Dr Hirano. Red dwarf systems, especially coolest red dwarfs, are just beginning to be investigated, so they are very exciting targets for future exoplanet research.”

Dr. Hirano, as well as other astronomers around the globe, look forward to the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in April 2018 which will hopefully prove a good tool for astronomers allowing them to spot many more potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.

“TESS is expected to find many candidate planets around bright stars closer to Earth,’ said Dr. Hirano. This will greatly facilitate follow-up observations, including investigation of planetary atmospheres and determining the precise orbit of the planets.”

Source: K2-155: A Bright Metal-poor M Dwarf with Three Transiting Super-Earths

Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

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Today's "Planet Earth Report" --'The U.S. Military Keeps Reporting UFOs. What's Going On?'

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Mystery of Three-Fingered Peruvian Mummies: ETs or Humans?

The mysterious mummy was found in a tomb near the Nazca Lines in southern Peru in early-2017.

According to preliminary analysis, the mummy, named Maria, found in a tomb near the Nazca Lines in southern Peru, dates back to about 5th century A.D., about a millennium before the discovery of America.

The analysis also found that Maria “is a humanoid being, meaning that she also has 23 chromosomes like us.”

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'Crucial Piece of the Puzzle': Egyptian Mummies Genome Value for Genetics

“Right now we are making a detailed analysis to see if the shape of the position of all the chromosomes, of all the amino acids, coincides with ours,” Russian National Research University professor Konstantin Korotkov, said.

The mummy’s rib structure is very different from that of a human being. Keel-shaped in its upper part, the rib cage consists of a handful of semicircular ribs. Its unusual shape has helped scientists carefully study the mummy’s internal organs.

"We clearly see the contours of the trachea and the bronchi, of the heart and its chambers; we can even see the shape of the valves. We can also see quite clearly the contours of the diaphragm, the liver and the spleen," radiologist Natalia Zaloznaya said.

The scientists have even managed to find out that the white powder the alien civilization used to mummify their dead is cadmium chloride – a chemical whose antibacterial effect has kept Maria preserved.

All set to break the mysterious creature’s DNA code, the Russian  scientists plan to work closely with their Peruvian colleagues. They even want to seek permission to bring the mummy to St. Petersburg.

Mummy’s Daughter and Tiny “Verdants”

Besides Maria, the St. Petersburg scientists have also been analyzing the genome of another mummy found in Peru. While Maria was an adult woman, the other one – Vavita – was nine months old when she died. The researchers think that the two could have been mother and child.

Konstantin Korotkov said that his Peruvian colleagues had shown him four more mummies, 70 centimeters each, whom they called “Verdants.” For some strange reason, one carbon dating analysis made in the US said that they were 6,500 years old, while another said they died about 4,000 years ago.

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Study Reveals How Mankind Would React to Contact With Space Aliens

“Each of the little mummies has two arms, two legs, a head, a pair of eyes and a mouth. Tomographic scans reveal their skeletons. The tissue has biological nature and their chemical composition indicates that they are humans. Their DNA features 23 pairs of chromosomes, just like we have. All the four of them are males, each with a Y-chromosome. They appear human but they are not. Their anatomic structure is different,” Korotkov explained.

He added that the 70cm males have three fingers and their  skulls are elongated at the back of the head. The nasal cavity is missing and superciliary arches are not pronounced.

“Most surprisingly, the mouth cavities are there but the lower jaws are not flexible and present a single whole with the rest of the skull.

When asked who these “little men” really were, Korotkov said it was hard to tell.

“They could be extraterrestrials or bio robots,” he added. “As for the 70cm creatures I’m not sure, but Maria and Vavita could have been representatives of a certain race which had possibly reached a stage of advancement much earlier than we did. Maybe thousands of years earlier.”

He added that all these members of that advanced race had probably perished as a result of either some great flood or from a comet hit. 

"A handful of those who survived met savage tribes of prehistoric men and taught them handicrafts and farming. They mated with local women. They were three-fingered and this genetic feature could make itself evident in future generations,” Korotkov continued.

He didn’t rule out that they could have live separately from the rest and reproduced with one another resulting in genetic degeneration, such as the three unnaturally long fingers.

“By the way, three-fingered creatures can be seen on petroglyphic drawings found in Peru,” Korotkov noted.

• READ MORE: For Science! World's Oldest Mummies Get a DNA Scan

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ADVANCED (POSSIBLY EXTRATERRESTRIAL) GERMAN TECHNOLOGY FROM BEFORE WW2

“A German newspaper recently published an interview with George Klein, famous German engineer and aircraft expert, describing the experimental construction of ‘flying saucers’ carried out by him from 1941 to 1945.” (source)

Exotic technology has been around for a long time, and so have the agencies within the Department of Defense that use it. Just imagine what type of technology the NSA — an intelligence agency whose existence was denied until the mid-1960s — was using in the 1950s. Then there’s the National Reconnaissance Office, which was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 30 years. Secret technologies have been wrapped up in the Black Budget and Special Access Programs (SAPs) for years, and many of these SAPS remain unacknowledged by anybody within the government. They’re exempt from standard reporting requirements to Congress.

“It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark.”

– Former Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer 

When it comes to exotic aerial technology, there is no shortage of information. For examine, in the mid-1920s, Townsend Brown discovered that gravitational mass and electric charge are coupled. He found that when a capacitor is charged to a high voltage, it moves toward its positive pole. This became known as the “Biefeld-Brown” effect, which, like many new concepts today that challenge longheld belief systems (that then become scientific dogma), was opposed by conventional-minded physicists of his time.

As Theodore C. Loder, a Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of New Hampshire, states:

The Pearl Harbor Demonstration. Around 1953, Brown conducted a demonstration for military top brass. He flew a pair of 3-foot diameter discs around a 50-foot course tethered to a central pole. Energized with 150,000 volts and emitting ions from their leading edge, they attained speeds of several hundred miles per hour. The subject was thereafter classified. Project Winterhaven. Brown submitted a proposal to the Pentagon for the development of a Mach 3 disc shaped electrogravitic fighter craft. Drawings of its basic design are shown in one of his patents. They are essentially large-scale versions of his tethered test discs.

German Flying Saucers

Here is an authentic image/story of a large UFO hovering over L.A., which was witnessed by 1 million people. Dubbed the “Battle of Los Angeles,” it was an event that showed us how the U.S. military was learning to lie about UFOs, five years prior to the Roswell Incident.

During World War Two, multiple strange sightings occurred, of disc-shaped objects travelling at incomprehensible speeds. When the Associated Press and New York Times covered the topic in 1945, they speculated the objects might be a new form of German weaponry.

There is no shortage of strange documents in the CIA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) electronic reading room. Many reveal  the agency’s efforts to keep tabs on the technological developments of other countries, especially during and after World War II.

One document brings up a famous German engineer named Georg Klein, who, as the document states, expressed that “though many people believe the ‘flying saucers’ to be a postwar development, they were actually in the planning stage in German aircraft factories as early as 1941.”

The document then goes on to mention an experiment described by Klein:

 “The “flying saucer” reached an altitude of 12,400 meters within 3 minutes and a speed of 2,200 kilometers per hour. Klein emphasized that in accordance with German plans, the speed of these “saucers” would reach 4,000 kilometers per hour. One difficulty, according to Klein, was the problem of obtaining the materials to be used for the construction of the “saucers,” but even this had been solved by German engineers toward the end of 1945, and construction on the objects was scheduled to begin, Klein added.

Three Different Models

According to Klein, by 1944 the Germans had already built three saucers for testing. Were these the “foo” fighters all of these American pilots were reporting?  The document describes the three disks:

One type actually had the shape of a disc, with an interior cabin, and was built at the (unidentified) factories, which had also built the V2 rockets. This model was 42 meters in diameter. The other model had the shape of a ring, with raised sides and a spherically shaped pilot’s cabin placed on the outside, in the center of the ring . . . [and] both models had the ability to take off vertically and to land in an extremely restricted area, like helicopters.

The engineers were ordered to destroy these saucers, including all of the plans for them. “The engineers at the Mite factories in Breslau, however, were not warned in sufficient time of the Soviet approach, and the Soviets, therefore, succeeded in seizing their material. Plans, as well as specialized personnel, were immediately sent directly to the Soviet Union under heavy guard.”

German Saucer Technology Has Been in the Lore for a Long Time

Aviation writer Nick Cook is one of many to have investigated this topic, and in 2002 he came to the conclusion that the Nazis had experimented “with a form of science the rest of the world had never remotely considered” and which continues to be suppressed today.

It makes you wonder what the United States received given that, through Operation Paperclip, a number of top German scientists were transported to the United States.

“[Italian researcher] Renato Vesco argued that Germans had developed antigravity. Disc-shaped and tubular craft were built and tested near the end of the Second World War, which, he argued, was the proper explanation of foo fighters. These concepts, he maintained, were developed by the Americans and Soviets and led directly to flying saucers.”

– Richard Dolan

Another researcher Joseph P, Farrell, a professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkely, believes that some of the Nazi’s developments were

• A means to tap into zero-point energy, or to phrase it differently, the energy of the physical medium of space-time itself
• As a means to manipulate gravity itself, i.e. as an advanced prototypical field propulsion technology; and,
• As a means to the ultimate, potentially planet-busting, weapons

Former head of the CIA Roscoe Hilenkoetter put it best in 1960 when he told the nation that “behind the scenes, high ranking air force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.” (source)

UFOs, Manmade or Extraterrestrial? 

Related CE Articles: It’s Official: 

• We Now Know That UFOs or UAP Are Real – So Are They Extraterrestrial or Not?
• A Top Secret Black Budget Secret Space Program That’s Reverse-Engineered Extraterrestrial Technology?

“Oh yes we discuss it at every conference that we had with the military, and they never were able to make me a concrete report on it. . . . There’s always things like that going on, flying saucers and they’ve had other things, you know.” 

– President Harry Truman

I’ve been researching the UFO/extraterrestrial phenomenon for more than two decades now, and the more I do, the more I realize just how little I know, and how much information is out there that I have yet to examine. What I have learned, from documents like the one above, is that many of these crafts are most likely manmade, by our own agencies.

That being said, although UFOs are now officially verified, this wasn’t so just a few years ago. Just as there was evidence for the UFO phenomenon when it was ridiculed, so too does the extraterrestrial hypothesis have plenty of evidence to back it up, despite not being accepted by the mainstream yet.

I’ve covered why I believe so in many of my articles, most of which you can find in the exopolitics section of our website.

I’ll leave you with a couple of my favourite quotes.

“It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our Earth for centuries.”

– Hermann Oberth , the founding father of rocketry and astronautics

There is abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been monitoring us for a very long time.”  

– Dr. Brian O’Leary, former NASA Astronaut and Princeton Physics Professor  (source)

Other Sources Used:

• UFOs for the 21st Century Mind, By Richard Dolan 
• Photo Credit

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TAXI IN HONG KONG OVERVAKKEN DOOR BOVENNATUURLIJK " IETS " ( VIDEO )

Er gaan op dit moment beelden viraal van een taxi in Hong Kong die 's avonds in het donker rijdt als er plotsklaps "iets" opduikt. 

Dat "iets" lijkt op een soort mist die de auto lijkt aan te vallen, waarna deze dan ook prompt van de weg raakt. 

Er zijn van die dingen die ineens viraal gaan en het onderstaande verhaal is daar een dergelijk voorbeeld van.

Hong Leung uit Hong Kong reed in zijn auto op een avond achter een taxi door bochtige straten van Hong Kong. Hij had zijn dashcam aan en was daardoor in staat iets bijzonders vast te leggen.

De gebeurtenis vond afgelopen september plaats, maar gaat nu, vooral via sociale media, viraal.

Je ziet op een gegeven moment "iets" links in beeld verschijnen, het lijkt op een kleine mistwolk.

Die wolk schijnt het specifiek gemunt te hebben op de taxi, alsof het deze doelbewust wil aanvallen.

En dat gebeurt vervolgens ook, wanneer de taxi als het ware wordt "opgeslokt" door de mistwolk.

Wanneer je echter de wolk wat uitvergroot, net voordat het de taxi omringt, dan is er een soort gezicht te ontdekken, waardoor veel mensen denken dat we hier niet met een mistwolk te maken hebben, maar met een bovennatuurlijk wezen.

Hieronder volgen de bewegende beelden en oordeel zelf wat het is: Een "gewone" mistwolk die een bijzondere route neemt, een bovennatuurlijk wezen of complete nep, wat natuurlijk ook altijd nog een mogelijkheid is.

Dat deze gebeurtenis zo viraal gaat, geeft wel aan dat het een onderwerp is dat behoorlijk leeft onder mensen. 

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UFO in the sky above Summerlon, Las Vegas 12-mar-2018

Here’s one new footage of a UFO activity in the night sky above Summerlin area of Las Vegas, Nevada. This was filmed yesterday (on 12th March 2018).

What do you think this is??

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

Amazing UFO fleet recorded over Canada France Hawaii Telescope 6-Mar-2018

On 6th March 2018 the observatory’s webcam captured a series of strange objects seemly flying in formation through the sky. The observatory is located atop the summit of Mauna Kea, a 4200 meter, dormant volcano located on the island of Hawaii.

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