Triangle-Shaped UFO Spotted by Astronomers On The Moon’s Surface Sparks Conspiracy

Earth’s moon is a strange place… apparently.

From mysterious alleged structures on the moon’s surface to stories that Apollo never landed on the moon, countless ‘controversial’ theories have emerged in recent years.

But even before crazy theories about structures on the moon started appearing in recent years, two Russian scientists Mikhail Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, published in July of 1970, an article in the Soviet journal Sputnik called “Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?”

The paper proposed by the two experts offers arguments that would explain the countless enigmas surrounding the moon and its creation. Shcherbakov and Vasin proposed that massive machines were used to melt rock and form long cavities within the Moon, spreading the molten refuse onto the lunar surface.

Their study marked what many ufologists the beginning of countless theories that proposed the moon was heavily connected to advanced alien life.

Now, astronomers have spotted a mysterious triangle-shaped craft on the moon, which conspiracy theorists claim originated from a secret base on the moon’s surface.

The video and images of the mysterious craft show an unidentified object moving on the moon’s surface, and ufo hunters claim, it cannot be ignored by skeptics.

The footage was captured with a high-powered telescope, the shots appear to show a gigantic, black, triangular shape against the backdrop of the moon’s rocky surface, reports the Daily Mail.

The video of the mystery craft was posted on YouTube by Secure Team 10, a YouTube account that explores mysterious occurrences on the moon, as well as UFO footage.

‘You can tell that this is a shadow because you can see the shadow wrapping around the craters’, the narrator of the footage said.

‘This was emailed to me by not only an amateur astronomer but a guy who was the CEO of a corporate jet fleet in Texas.’

Skeptics have already come forward trying to explain the mysterious triangle-shaped craft, arguing that the enigmatic object is nothing more than the shadow cast by a craggy formation on the surface.

However, UFO believers argue that this explanation does not solve the mystery as to how the object is moving.

Other theories suggest that the triangle-shaped object is just a telescope anomaly or even a flaw within the telescope’s lens.

However, and yet again, the theory does not explain how the object is moving between the images.

This footage is just one of the many strange finds that UFO hunters and amateur astronomers have spotted on the moon.

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NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Reveals What Lies Beneath Jupiter’s Clouds In Stunning Images

Since the time of Galileo, the observers of the stars have looked at Jupiter and wondered what lies beneath the striking clouds that cover the Gas giants atmosphere.

The analysis of the latest data from the Juno probe, published in March of 2018, will help answer that question. The scientific papers also help understand what lies beyond Jupiter’s thick envelope of gases and whether there is a nucleus that was formed from rock, which could help astronomers answer one of the biggest mysteries about the origin of the Solar System.

According to the latest mission reports and a series of scientific studies, NASA’s probe observes huge storms, detected winds more than 3,000 kilometers below the clouds that cover its atmosphere and details about an almost unknown nucleus.

An image of the North polar region of Jupiter.

Photograph: MSSS/SwRI/JPL-Caltech/NASA

Jupiter has more mass than the rest of the planets of the Solar System together.

Jupiter has the shortest days of all the planets in our Solar System. Since Jupiter is a gas planet, it does not rotate as a solid sphere. Jupiter’s equator rotates a bit faster than its polar regions at a speed of 28,273 miles/hour (about 43,000 kilometers/hour). This makes the Gas Giant the fastest spinning planet in our Solar System rotating on average once in just under 10 hours.

With these characteristics, its gravitational field should be uniform, but for some reason, it is not, there are areas where the giant’s pull is greater, and until now researchers had no idea why.

However, four studies published in Nature provide an explanation for this phenomenon and describe what the interior of the planet is like.

This composite image, derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter, shows the central cyclone at the planet’s north pole and the eight cyclones that encircle it.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Scientists analyzed data obtained by NASA’s Juno probe and have found that ‘odd Gravity and rapid jest streatms lie around 3,000 kilometers below the surface of the clouds that cover the planet.

Furthermore, experts have found that at each pole on Jupiter exists a cyclone which is thousands of miles in diameter. The study also explains how these cyclones appear to be surrounded by a polygonal arrangement of storms — eight in the north and five in the south.

“Before Juno, we had no idea what the weather was like near Jupiter’s poles. Now, we have been able to observe the polar weather up-close every two months,” said Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome, and lead author of the paper.

“Each one of the northern cyclones is almost as wide as the distance between Naples, Italy and New York City — and the southern ones are even larger than that. They have very violent winds, reaching, in some cases, speeds as great as 220 mph (350 kph). Finally, and perhaps most remarkably, they are very close together and enduring. There is nothing else like it that we know of in the solar system.”

The discoveries reveal unprecedented details about Jupiter’s interior and could help experts finally understand the dynamics that exist inside the gas giant’s atmosphere and other similar planets across the galaxy.

“These astonishing science results are yet another example of Jupiter’s curve balls and a testimony to the value of exploring the unknown from a new perspective with next-generation instruments.  Juno’s unique orbit and evolutionary high-precision radio science and infrared technologies enabled these paradigm-shifting discoveries,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio.

“Juno is only about one third the way through its primary mission, and already we are seeing the beginnings of a new Jupiter.”

“Juno’s measurement of Jupiter’s gravity field indicates a north-south asymmetry, similar to the asymmetry observed in its zones and belts,” said Luciano Iess, Juno co-investigator from Sapienza University of Rome, and lead author on a Nature paper on Jupiter’s gravity field.

This computer-generated image is based on an infrared image of Jupiter’s north polar region that was acquired on February 2, 2017, by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard Juno during the spacecraft’s fourth pass over Jupiter.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

“Galileo observed the stripes on the Gas Giant more than 400 years ago,” said Yohai Kaspi, Juno co-investigator from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, and lead author of a Nature paper on Jupiter’s deep weather layer.

“Until now, we only had a superficial understanding of them and have been able to relate these stripes to cloud features along Jupiter’s jets. Now, following Juno’s gravity measurements, we understand how deep the jets extend and what their structure is beneath the visible clouds. We are basically going from a 2-D picture to a 3-D version in high definition.”

The result was a huge surprise for the Juno mission scientists because it indicated that the weather layer of Jupiter was more massive, extending much deeper than previously thought. The Jovian weather layer, from its very top to a depth of 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers), contains about one percent of Jupiter’s mass, which is approximately 3 Earth masses.

“By contrast, Earth’s atmosphere is less than one-millionth of the total mass of Earth,” said Kaspi “The fact that Jupiter has such a massive region rotating in separate east-west bands is a surprise.”

The finding is important for understanding the nature and possible mechanisms driving these strong jet streams.

In addition, the gravity signature of the jets is entangled with the gravity signal of Jupiter’s core.

The scientific studies:

The measurement of Jupiter’s asymmetric gravity field:

 http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25776 

Jupiter’s atmospheric jet-streams extending thousands of kilometers deep:

 http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25793 

A suppression of differential rotation in Jupiter’s deep interior:

http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25775

Clusters of Cyclones Encircling Jupiter’s Poles:

 http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25491

Featured image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

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Exposing Puma Punku: 50 Unbelievable Facts About The Mysterious Ancient Ruins

One of the most mysterious ancient sites composed of supermassive megaliths and stones that appear to be worked with laser-like tools was built thousands of years ago in modern-day Bolivia.

Located not far from another amazing site—Tiahuanaco—the ruins of Puma Punku have puzzled experts for decades.

Some 45 miles west of the city of La Paz in Bolivia, we find an ancient site that is unlike any other on Earth.

Shattering traditional views on ancient cultures, the archaeological site of Puma Punku features incredibly precise stones, precision cuts, and polished surfaces on stones that have defied explanation for centuries.

Some of the stones at Puma Punku were so finely polished that they appear smooth as glass.

Only a few places on earth display this type of stonework.

It’s as if thousands of years ago, an unknown culture used advanced tools to shape and form massive andesite stones. Some of these rocks have been cut with such precision that they fit together perfectly and are interlocked with each other without the use of mortar.

Even more fascinating is the fact that not a single sheet of paper can fit between some of these stones.

In this article, we take a look at Puma Punk and its history, bringing you 50 incredible facts about one of the most mysterious archaeological sites on the surface of the planet.

The ancient ruins of Puma Punku are located in modern-day Bolivia.

Puma Punku is located near Tiahuanaco, in fact, it’s less than a quarter-mile northeast of Puma Punku.

Puma Punku and Tiahuanaco may have been in fact one massive complex.

Tiahuanaco’s most distinctive feature, other than the wall of faces, is the Gate of The Sun.

It is believed that, because of certain markings on stones found at Puma Punku, the Gate of the Sun was originally part of Puma Punku.

Puma Punku has a length of 116.7 meters and a width of 167.36 meters.

The archaeological site of Puma Punku consists of an unwalled western court, a central unwalled esplanade, a terraced platform mound that is faced with stone, and a walled eastern court.

Tiahuanaco may have been an ancient metropolis according to experts, as more than 40,000 inhabitants called it home.

Tiahuanaco features a massive wall which, according to some authors, displays all the races of mankind, even elongated skulls, people wearing turbans, people with broad noses, people with thin noses, people with thick lips, people with thin lips.

At its peak, the Tiwanaku culture dominated the entire Lake Titicaca basin as well as portions of Bolivia and Chile.

In the vicinity of Tiahuanaco, experts excavated a mysterious object called the Fuente Magna Bowl. The Ceramic bowl has Sumerian cuneiform and Proto-Sumerian hieroglyphic written on it.

Since Puma Punku is of great interest to scholars, the area within the kilometer separating the Puma Punku and Kalasasaya complexes have been surveyed using ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, induced electrical conductivity, and magnetic susceptibility.

In Aymara—an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes—Puma Punku’s name means “The Door of the Puma.”

The archaeological site is a treasure of ancient history located deep within the Andean mountain. Puma Punku is located at an altitude of nearly 13,000 feet.

Given the fact that Puma Punku lies at an altitude of almost 13,000 feet, it means that the ancient site is above the natural tree line, which in turn means NO trees grew in that area.

The fact that no trees grew in the area challenges the idea that the ancient builders used wooden rollers to transport massive stones from where they were quarried.

Mainstream scholars argue that the massive stones used in the construction of Puma Punku were transported thanks to a large labor force.

Another theory suggests that the ancient builders of Puma Punku made use of the llama skin ropes and the use of ramps and inclined planes.

Researchers have found no evidence whatsoever that the ancient builders of Puma Punku knew about the wheel.

Despite the fact that Puma Punku is believed to have been built around 500 AD, many researchers claim that this ancient site, just as Tiahuanaco, could predate the Inca themselves.

The Ancient Inca denied having anything to do with the building of Tiahuanaco or Puma Punku.

This means that the culture that built these sites existed INDEPENDENTLY of the Inca, predating them as well.

Puma Punku is not isolated. It is part of a massive complex of temples, plazas and even pyramids, and is believed to have belonged to the ancient Tiahuanaco culture, which predates the ancient Inca by millennia.

Puma Punku features massive stones. But the fact that there are so many of them make makes Puma Punku’s stones amongst the largest found on the planet.

Puma Punku consists of a mixture of andesite and red sandstone.

Despite having been researched, analyzed, and studied by experts around the globe, not a single researcher has managed to explain how the ancient builders of Puma Punku managed to cut, polish and transport the stones at the site.

Modern day engineers argue that the base of the Puma Punku temple was constructed using a technique called layering and depositing.

Oral legends indicate that the first inhabitants of Puma Punku were unlike ordinary humans.

These ‘early people’ had the ability to ‘carry’ megalithic stones through the air with the use of SOUND.

The eastern edge of the Puma Punku is occupied by what is called the Plataforma Lítica.

The so-called Plataforma Lítica consists of a stone terrace that is 6.75 by 38.72 meters (22.1 by 127.0 feet) in dimension.

This terrace is paved with multiple enormous stone blocks.

One of the largest stones at Puma Punku is 7.81 meters long, 5.17 meters wide, averages 1.07 meters thick.

The estimated weight of this massive rock is 131 metric tons.

But this isn’t the only one. Another massive rock at Puma Punku is 7.90 meters long, 2.50 meters wide, and averages 1.86 meters thick. Its weight has been estimated to be 85.21 metric tons.

Both of these stone blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica and composed of red sandstone

Puma Punku’s H Blocks are the best-known feature of the site.

The H blocks at Puma Punku have approximately 80 faces each.

Some authors suggest that given the precision cuts and incredible angles seen on Puma Punku’s blocks, it is possible that the ancient builders made use of prefabrication and mass production, technologies far in advance of the Tiwanaku’s Inca successors hundreds of years later.

Experts note that the precision with which these angles have been used to create flush joints is indicative of a highly sophisticated knowledge of stone-cutting and a thorough understanding of descriptive geometry.

As noted by researchers, many of the joints are so precise that not even a razor blade will fit between the stones. Much of the masonry is characterized by accurately cut rectilinear blocks of such uniformity that they could be interchanged for one another while maintaining a level surface and even joints.

One of the closest stone quarries used by the builders of Puma Punku was located some 10 km away, near Lake Titicaca.

The furthest identified quarry is believed to have been located near Copacabana Peninsula about 90 km away from and across Lake Titicaca.

According to archeological investigations, Puma Punku’s H blocks match each other with such an extreme precision that the architects most likely used a system of preferred measurements and proportions.

While it is amazing what the ancients achieved thousands of years ago in terms of transportation, design, and logistics, the ancient engineers that built Puma Punku and Tiahuanaco were also adept at developing a civic infrastructure at this complex, constructing functional irrigation systems, hydraulic mechanisms, and waterproof sewage lines.

Despite the fact we see ruins today, Puma Punku is thought to have been “unimaginably wondrous,” adorned with polished metal plaques, brightly colored ceramic and fabric ornamentation, and visited by costumed citizens, elaborately dressed priests, and elites decked in exotic jewelry.

There are some still unfinished stones found near Puma Punku.

Experts say that the unfinished stones show some of the techniques that were used to shape the blocks.

Experts say that Puma Punku’s blocks of stone were initially pounded by stone hammers, which can still be found in numbers on local andesite quarries, creating depressions, and then slowly ground and polished with flat stones and sand.

Excavations have documented “three major building epochs, in addition to small repairs and remodeling”.

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New NASA data reveals many of Jupiter’s hidden secrets

BY MIHAI ANDREI

A series of four papers using data from NASA’s Juno mission reveals intriguing information about Jupiter, including its gravitational field, its atmospheric flows, its interior composition and its polar cyclones.

Jupiter’s winds are tightly connected to the planet’s gravitational and magnetic fields. Image credits: NASA / ESA / UC Berkeley.

When the Juno mission was successfully launched in 2011, astronomers worldwide were thrilled. The shuttle had the potential to reveal valuable information about Jupiter and its satellites — and that potential has been thoroughly fulfilled. The new papers are the latest in a long chain of remarkable findings about the most massive planet in our solar system, adding some much-needed pieces to the puzzle.

In the first paper, researchers led by Luciano Iess of the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy used Doppler data to study Jupiter’s gravitational field. The data allowed researchers to measure Juno’s velocity down to 0.01mm/s accuracy, even while the shuttle is traveling at speeds of up to 70 km/s in orbit.

Jupiter’s gravitational field is famously asymmetrical, which is unusual for fast-rotating and oblate (squashed at the poles) gas giants. This gravitational asymmetry is caused by hydrogen-rich gas is flowing asymmetrically deep in the planet, and Juno was able to study this process.

This picture of the Jupiter’s South Pole is a mosaic of many images acquired by the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper on board the Juno shuttle. The images have been taken in different times while Juno was leaving the planet after the closest approach. What you see here is the heat (measured as radiance) coming out from the planet through the clouds: yellow indicates the presence of thinner clouds and dark red the thicker ones.
Credit: NASA/SWRI/JPL/ASI/INAF/IAPS

Two other papers looked at different physical parameters of Jupiter. A team led by Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel used another asymmetry, that of Jupiter’s magnetic field, to calculate the depth of Jupiter’s atmosphere, finding that the mass of the atmosphere amounts for about 1% of the planet’s total mass. Meanwhile, Tristan Guillot and co-authors report that at depths greater than 3,000 kilometers below cloud level, Jupiter’s deep interior is made up of a fluid mixture of hydrogen and helium, rotating as a solid body. They also found that the speed of the above-mentioned winds extend some 3,000 km beneath the cloud level, dropping in intensity with altitude.

Even with all this information, we’re still just barely scratching the surface of what we know about Jupiter.

“We’re at the beginning of dissecting Jupiter,” says Juno mission leader Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

However, there’s also a downside to the Juno mission: it offered so much valuable data that it’s gonna be very hard to top it. In an accompanying News&Views article, planetary scientist Jonathan Fortney of the University of California Santa Cruz praised the work, writing:

“The work demonstrated here is extremely robust,” Fortney wrote in his editorial. “I do not foresee another leap in knowledge on Jupiter’s interior after the Juno mission ends, unless astronomers are able to study the planet’s internal oscillations, as has been done for the Sun.”

Fortunately, Juno will remain in orbit for at least a couple of years, so we’ll certainly have more to learn about Jupiter.

Journal References:

• Measurement of Jupiter’s asymmetric gravity field. Corresponding Author: Luciano Iess (Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy). DOI: 10.1038/nature25776. http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25776
• Jupiter’s atmospheric jet streams extend thousands of kilometres deep. Corresponding Author: Yohai Kaspi (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel). DOI: 10.1038/nature25793. http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25793
• A suppression of differential rotation in Jupiter’s deep interior. Corresponding Author: Tristan Guillot (Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France). DOI: 10.1038/nature25775. http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25775
• Clusters of cyclones encircling Jupiter’s poles. Corresponding Author: Alberto Adriani (INAF-Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome, Italy). DOI: 10.1038/nature25491. http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature25491

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Researchers create the ‘crop hotspot’ map of Mars so we know where to settle

 BY ALEXANDRU MICU

We may not be on Mars yet, but new research has made sure that when we get there, we’ll know exactly where to settle.

You don’t know this yet but those blue areas? They mean food!
Image credits Wieger Wamelink, Line Schug / Wageningen University & Research

What would life be without food? Well, for starters, really short; but also quite unpleasant. Precisely because of that, colonists going to Mars in the future will need to settle in a place that’s good for agriculture — as good as can be, on a planet with almost no atmosphere.

To their aid comes a study from the Wageningen University & Research, which has identified the areas on Mars which are favorable for the growing of plants. Even though the crops will be grown indoors, local factors still play a part — chief among them being the presence of regolith and ice deposits, both of which will be used to sustain the crops.

Mars’ cropspots

In order to estimate which areas of the planet would be most suitable, the team combined data on Martian geography and geology to create a 3D, Mars-wide landing map, showcasing the best spots for agriculture. The datasets included information about mineral content — relating to calcium and heavy metal content in the soils, for example. Other important element ‘maps’ were those for potassium, chloride, iron, and silicon. The team also mixed in data pertaining to climate, terrain altitude, and radiation exposure.

That’s a lot of data, and several scientific bodies — including the JPL, the Arizona State University, and NASA — pitched in.

“Without them this endeavour would not have been possible”, says Wieger Wamelink, one of the two researchers who created the map.

That’s because each of these elements has a hand to play in the suitability of each area for agriculture. They needed all this data to control for as many factors as possible — and any missing piece could have drastically reduced the work’s applicability. All the maps were merged and, based on the data each contained, were used to calculate a ‘score’ for every area — with high scores marking the best sites, just like in a video game.

Some factors, naturally, were more decisive than others:

“High levels of heavy metals in the soil and strong radiation make a location unsuitable for establishment,” explains Line Schug.

The map revealed that the Mars Pathfinder and Viking 1 landed at ‘hotspots’ for colonies, while the MSL Curiosity and Viking 2 crafts landed on less favorable spots.

The research is part of the larger “Food for Mars and Moon” project unrolling at Wageningen. It aims to develop a sustainable agricultural system that we can take with us to space. The most important element it relies on is the presence of soils and water, both on Mars and the moon.

The first experiments in the project started in 2013. Researchers used soil simulats supplied by NASA — from a volcano in Hawaii (Mars) and a desert in Arizona (moon) — to try and grow crops. At first, the results weren’t very encouraging. But today the team can grow over a dozen crops. The only species that has stubbornly refused to take the plunge to space-soils is spinach. Chemical analysis showed that the plants are safe for human consumption, but there were fears that the plants would accumulate heavy metals more readily than in Earth soils — that’s why this factor was given more importance when creating the agricultural potential map of Mars.

After they were tested, the veggies were cooked and served to those who supported the project via its crowdfunding campaign. I imagine the attendees considered the food to be “stellar” and “out of this world”.

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Cosmic rays hitting Earth are ‘bad and getting worse’ says NASA

Have you ever been hit by a beam of high energy particles from above? Surely you have since it happens all of the time. And the cosmic ray situation is WORSENING. Cosmic rays hitting Earth are bad and are getting worse. That’s the conclusion of a new paper just published in the research journal Space Weather, showing that radiation from deep space is dangerous and intensifying faster than previously predicted.

The story begins four years ago when Schwadron and colleagues first sounded the alarm about cosmic rays. Analyzing data from the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), they found that cosmic rays in the Earth-Moon system were peaking at levels never before seen in the Space Age. The worsening radiation environment, they pointed out, was a potential peril to astronauts, curtailing how long they could safely travel through space.

This figure from their original 2014 paper shows the number of days a 30-year old male astronaut flying in a spaceship with 10 g/cm2 of aluminum shielding could go before hitting NASA-mandated radiation limits:

In the 1990s, the astronaut could spend 1000 days in interplanetary space. In 2014 … only 700 days. “That’s a huge change,” says Schwadron.

Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are a mixture of high-energy photons and sub-atomic particles accelerated toward Earth by supernova explosions and other violent events in the cosmos. Our first line of defense is the sun: The sun’s magnetic field and solar wind combine to create a porous ‘shield’ that fends off cosmic rays attempting to enter the solar system. The shielding action of the sun is strongest during Solar Maximum and weakest during Solar Minimum–hence the 11-year rhythm of the mission duration plot above.

The problem is, as the authors note in their new paper, the shield is weakening: “Over the last decade, the solar wind has exhibited low densities and magnetic field strengths, representing anomalous states that have never been observed during the Space Age. As a result of this remarkably weak solar activity, we have also observed the highest fluxes of cosmic rays.”

Back in 2014, Schwadron et al used a leading model of solar activity to predict how bad cosmic rays would become during the next Solar Minimum, now expected in 2019-2020. “Our previous work suggested a ~ 20% increase of dose rates from one solar minimum to the next,” says Schwadron. “In fact, we now see that actual dose rates observed by CRaTER in the last 4 years exceed the predictions by ~ 10%, showing that the radiation environment is worsening even more rapidly than we expected.” In this plot bright green data points show the recent excess:

The data Schwadron et al have been analyzing come from CRaTER on the LRO spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, which is point-blank exposed to any cosmic radiation the sun allows to pass. Here on Earth, we have two additional lines of defense: the magnetic field and atmosphere of our planet. Both mitigate cosmic rays.

But even on Earth the increase is being felt

Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus have been launching space weather balloons to the stratosphere almost weekly since 2015. Sensors onboard those balloons show a 13% increase in radiation (X-rays and gamma-rays) penetrating our planet’s atmosphere:

X-rays and gamma-rays detected by these balloons are “secondary cosmic rays,” produced by the crash of primary cosmic rays into Earth’s upper atmosphere. They trace radiation percolating down toward our planet’s surface. The energy range of the sensors, 10 keV to 20 MeV, is similar to that of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.

How does this affect us?

Cosmic rays penetrate commercial airlines, dosing passengers and flight crews so much that pilots are classified by the International Commission on Radiological Protection as occupational radiation workers. Some research shows that cosmic rays can seed clouds and trigger lightning, potentially altering weather and climate. Furthermore, there are studies linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias in the general population.

Why are cosmic rays intensifying?

The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth’s magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.

Cosmic rays will intensify even more in the years ahead as the sun plunges toward what may be the deepest Solar Minimum in more than a century.

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Space Weather, APOD

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Mack Lamoureux

The year was 1967 and the Canadian government was super into aliens.

A collection of documents from 1967 found in the national archives give us a hint into just how seriously the government used to take UFO sightings.

The documents outline how the government investigated UFOs—a process that most likely lasted for years afterwards—and breaks down six cases that are “of interest” to the government in detail. The investigations include a man burned by a UFO in Manitoba, some incredibly weird radar sightings by the Department of Defence, an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia who watched a UFO dive below the water and disappear, and a crop circle found in Alberta that was the first investigated by a government.

The documents were found in the national archive by Chris Rutkowski—a man that could probably be best described as Canada’s Fox Mulder—and recently posted to his Ufology blog. Rutowski routinely goes through Canada’s national archives looking for things like this and described the find as “a gem.”

"What we do have in here is rather interesting reports from qualified personnel and qualified sources and investigated by qualified investigators and still there is no explanation," Rutkowski told VICE. "What that tells me is that the UFO phenomena was taking quite seriously by them indeed."

The intro to the document.

Photo via screenshot.

While the government has some of tUFO research readily available online in a database it is still relatively unknown—especially among the general public—how they actually investigated cases and what the bureaucracy was like. This, Rutkowski says, might be “our best snapshot” into this process.

"This is certainly an interesting snapshot because it does show what was happening before and how it was going to move forward and I think it set the stage for how the Canadian military and government were looking at UFOs from that point onward,” said Rutkowski.

The 27 page set of documents—which Rutkowski was kind enough to direct VICE towards—was prepared by Wing Commander Douglas Robertson (a Canadian Forces officer well-known in the UFO community) for someone we do not know in November of 1967. Rutkowski speculates it could’ve been for a newly-appointed Minister of Defence as “the infamous Paul Hellyer [one of the world’s highest ranking alien believers] had left the position a few months earlier.” At the time, as Robertson writes, the National Department of Defence was the body in charge of investigating UFO reports.

The briefing breaks down the seven military categories of UFOs which include hoaxes, mass hysteria, misinterpretations of natural events, advanced military technology, and psychological conditions. However, the seventh and final category is “unusual sightings which the viewer is unable to identify or explain, namely, UFOs.” Hell yeah.

The documents show that the investigation into UFOs was a little bit of a hot potato in Canada as in it was frequently handed off between departments. When a new report came in, researchers would first decide if the object was a meteor or fireball—if so it would be directed to the NRC. If it was something else it would then be put in one of three categories Class A: worthy of investigation Class B: interesting but you don’t need to look into it; and Class C: boring.

Photo via screenshot.

The investigations varied and could be as simple as an interview or as a complicated as getting several other agencies including the RCMP, NRC, Defence Research Board (DRB) or (weirdly) the Department of National Health and Welfare on board. In many of the cases, you can see that post-secondary institutions like the University of Toronto and the University of Manitoba would help out with analysis. The government would also send professionals to investigate the sites in-depth and if the case was intense enough, partner with the United States.

The document was written during an interesting time for UFOs in Canada. As Rutkowski puts it, 1967 was a high water mark for this type of activity in the Great White North. The briefing indicates there was a jump in reports from 1966 to 1967—from about 40 to 167. The case files showcase A) just how strange these occurrences were and B) just how seriously the government was taking the investigations.

Here are breakdowns of the case studies Robertson concludes “may be of interest” to whoever the intended reader of the briefing may be:

Falcon Lake

The first one outlines perhaps Canada’s most infamous “UFO encounter,” the Falcon Lake case. The case revolved around Steven Michalak, a Manitoba man, who says he encountered two UFOs 90 miles east of Winnipeg. While Michalak was analyzing a rock formation he said two flying saucers appeared before him. One flew off at high speed while other landed about 100 feet in front of him. When he reached out and touched the object with his gloved hand, it burned him immediately. The object took off and the exhaust fumes reportedly burned him as well. Michalak was hospitalized for several days as a result.

In the briefing, Robertson writes that soil samples at the site were “analyzed and found to be radioactive to a degree that the samples had to be safely disposed of.” In the briefing, Robertson admits that “neither the DND nor the RCMP investigative teams were able to provide evidence which could dispute Mr Michalak’s story.” Furthermore, the radiologist dispatched to the area was unable to explain why the area was contaminated with radiation. The section ends with “although the investigation has been completed, a satisfactory ending or conclusion is still lacking.”

Many, many things have been written about the Falcon Lake case, including a book Rutkowski wrote with Michalak's son.

Calgary UFO Photo

The second case, again made in 1967, revolves around a famous Canadian photograph taken of a UFO near Calgary. It tells the story of Warren Smith who was out for a hike near Nanton, Alberta.

“A UFO suddenly appeared outside of an area of trees a few hundred feet above the observers,” reads the briefing which goes on to explain how Smith was able to snap two photos of the objects. Smith made prints of these shots, which were then sent to the DND. “The prints were subjected to a detailed analysis by the Photo Intelligence Interpretation Centre. The Centre concluded its investigation by stating, assuming the photos by Mr Smith to be genuine, the UFO fit the description of the objects by Mr Smith.”

Clear Water Bay

The next case outlined in the briefing is focused on a family that was returning to their home in Clear Water Bay by boat when they encountered a UFO. According to the briefing the object appeared about 50 feet away from “Mr. Green” (how he is referred to in the document) and Green decided to investigate it. When he approached the object ripped towards Green and he “immediately retreated using maximum power.” Then the object returned to its original spot.

Green and his family docked the boat and ran to a nearby home to wake all the occupants so they could come and look at the object. They were able to do so for about 15 minutes until it took off. In a nearby home, a neighbour that was interviewed by the government said that while he didn’t see the object he was “listening to his radio at the time the UFO was sighted and received so much static he was forced to turn it off.”

A “detailed investigation conducted by the DND in cooperation with the RCMP” found that Green was a “reliable, competent, and sincere witness with no indulgence tendencies.” They also checked to see if alcohol was consumed at the time, found none, and tested Green’s eyes. Wilted leaves were found at the top of the trees near where the object was allegedly hovering and some were sent to the University of Manitoba for lab testing. The Department of Forestry also checked and found “that they are unable to explain the reason for the wilting.”

The section ends with “the investigation has been concluded without any fixed conclusions or findings being made.”

The RCMP’s Diving UFO

The next sighting was seen by an RCMP corporal out near Barrington Passage, Nova Scotia. The RCMP officer describes seeing an object about 60 feet in length with white lights flying over the water at a low altitude. The object started making a high pitched whistling sound and slammed into the water leaving only one white light visible. RCMP Cpl Wereisky approached the light by boat and it rapidly sank underneath him as he got close. The area was then searched by the Canadian Coast Guard and other boats but nothing was found.

The government conducted a rigorous investigation into this sighting which included an underwater search and wasn’t able to find anything. The government investigation ended, once again, “without finding any fixed findings.”

Department of Transportation Radar Sighting

The next investigation outlined in the briefing is one Rutkowski described as being “very unique.” In July of 1967, the Department of Transportation reported that “an unidentified radar target was tracked through seven sweeps of their radar, witnessed by three controllers, and two technicians some 70 miles east of Winnipeg.”

The target was ripping at intense rate. As outlined in the briefing, it increased from a speed of “720 knots [1,333 km per hour] to 3,600 knots [6,667 km per hour] in one minute and ten seconds.” The briefing explains that the five people who witnessed the radar object are “certain it was a radar target and not something associated with mechanical, electrical, or equipment faults.” On the same day in Kenora, Ontario, a similar object was picked up on the radar.

“The unknown object was under the positive radar for 29 minutes,” reads the briefing about the Kenora sighting. “The object followed Air Canada Flight 405 for a period before disappearing from scope. It reappeared and followed Air Canada Flight 927 for a period of time. DOT are unable to explain these radar returns.”

The DND again did an investigation into this and again were unable to find any conclusions.

Camrose Crop Circle

The final case outlined in the briefing is one in Alberta and, according to Rutowski, contrary to popular belief shows that it was in Canada, not Britain, where a government first investigated crop circles. It occurred outside of Camrose Alberta in August of 1967 when “several deep impressions were made in an unknown object in a pasture.”

The Department of Defence sent out a man who is referred to as “Dr. Jones” in the document to investigate and he found “no physical evidence of any damage to trees or shrubs in the field and no evidence to suggest a deliberate interference or involvement by a person.” Rutowski was able to find further documentation of Dr. Jones investigation and again was kind enough to share them with VICE. In the documents, you can see just how in depth the government got with their investigation.

In the documents, Jones said that he believed it could be a “deliberate hoax” but the hoaxers would “require some equipment and a great deal of determination.” He estimates that in order to do such spherical circles the hoaxers would need two wheels on a 30-foot axle that put pressure of three-quarters of a ton on a pasture. Next Jones has us “consider the UFO possibility” and he breaks down the math behind what size a flying vehicle would need to be in order to produce such marks and comes upon 135 tons.

“This load of 135 tons would be in the right ballpark for a large aircraft, or presumably, small space craft,” ends this section of Jones’ report.

Epilogue

After the case studies, Robertson uses the briefing to discuss possible future plans regarding UFO research in Canada and give several recommendations to our unknown reader. He proposes that the DND hands off the responsibility of investigating UFOs to the National Research Council and that the Director of Operations works as the coordinating agency between the DND units providing field investigations and the NRC.

“It is evident that from investigations conducted by the DND, and from the findings made by prominent and highly qualified personnel, that the primary interest of UFOs lies in the field of science, and to a lesser degree, to one that is associated with national security,” writes Robertson.

Robertson writes that the workload in 1967 regarding UFOs was so large that it was actually becoming detrimental to government workers as it took up so much time. He also writes that the government should be more open with the public about their work in UFOs. This is something Rutkowski—even over 51 years removed—still admittedly agrees with.

"By not being able to comment it made it look like there was something to hide. Of course, this document does show there was some very interesting conclusions, some unexplained cases that should have been made more public,” said Rutkowski. “But when a public relations officer just keeps saying no comment, no comment, it shows that perhaps there is something that is being hidden.

"My reading from this document is that the Canadian Forces didn't really know what to do with UFOs either. It's not that they were hiding everything they just didn't have the expertise in the field and the scientific community didn't want anything to do with it so they were kinda hung out to dry."

• Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Searching for Alien Technology on a Mysterious Asteroid

{ https://www.vice.com/en_ca }

Tiangong-1: Chinese space station could emit highly toxic vapours when it crashes to earth within weeks, scientists warn

Lucy Pasha-Robinson 

@lucypasha 

{ http://www.independent.co.uk/ }

Gary McKinnon: The Hacker Who Exposed NASA’s Secret UFO Files

IT expert and so-called hacker Gary McKinnon has claimed in an interview with RichPlanet TV that he came across information relating to UFOs and extraterrestrial life during his infamous foray into NASA’s computer system.

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

Large UFO Seen Passing In Front Of The Moon 2-Mar-2018

Large UFO Seen Passing In Front Of The Moon On March 2nd.

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

Webb: Crop circles plagued Illinois in 1990. One farmer blamed UFOs

Paranormal researcher Chad Lewis will share most unusual crop circle cases.(Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Police said it was a hoax, but James Lawson wasn’t so sure.

The flattened circle in the middle of his sea of corn looked perfect. It looked, if he was being honest, like something had landed on it.

“Whatever it was, it came down from the elements and took off,” he told The Associated Press a few days after discovering the crop circle on his farmland in Milan, Illinois. “I think it’s a UFO landing.”

Webb: The night police reported UFOs

Crop circles became a small epidemic in the fall of 1990. About a month after Lawson found the round disturbance tattooed on his land on Oct. 16, Mike Thompson discovered something similar only eight miles away.

A co-worker named Mike Searle had been riding his John Deere through Thompson’s cornfields on Nov. 23 when he unexpectedly came to a clearing: an immaculate 64-foot circle.

“I about ran into it, so I backed out and went around it,” Searle said. “I was surprised. All the corn around it was standing.”

Thompson was surprised, too.

Webb: Two tales of UFOs invading the Tri-State

“People might think it’s crazy,” he said. “But it was there.”

No one disputed the crop circle’s existence. The question was, who made them? For Rock Island County Sheriff Tod VanWolvelaere, the answer was simple.

“We think it’s probably just kids,” he said.

Police said there was plenty of evidence to support the hoax theory. On Thompson’s land, they found a hole that looked like it had once been filled with a wooden stake. That could have been used to mark off the circle so the hoaxers could flatten the crops.

Webb: Here are 7 Evansville UFO sightings

They also claimed a local newspaper got an anonymous call not long after Lawson’s discovery. The caller warned authorities that another crop circle was coming.

But none of that does much to explain the high number of UFO sightings that plagued Illinois and the rest of the Tri-State that fall.

According to Francis L. Ridge’s book “Regional Encounters: The FC Files,” 1990 was a busy year. Ridge and his team of UFO field investigators based in Mount Vernon, Indiana, handled almost 70 reports, including 21 close encounters. Seven sightings occurred between Oct. 16 and Nov. 23.

The night of Lawson’s discovery, a 23-year-old woman reported a strange craft hovering over Fort Wayne. Two days later in Argos, Indiana, a father and son driving down the road saw a silent aircraft shaped like a bow-tie lingering over the road. They watched it for 15 minutes before it disappeared.

Webb: Sunday sales are here. Weed may be next

There were sightings in Culver and Plymouth. The strangest, however, occurred in Louisville, Kentucky.

A woman looking out the 12-floor window of her office building in the middle of a sunny day saw a saucer rise from below her and shimmy through the sky in half-circle loops. Co-workers joined her and watched for 20 minutes. Then a second craft appeared. Shaped like a boomerang, it shot toward the saucer. The two merged and vanished.

Meanwhile, the interest in crop circles was igniting. According to the book “Crop Circle: Exploring the Designs & Mysteries” by Werner Anderhub and Hans Peter Roth, there were at least 60 reports of crop circles in the U.S. in 1990.

The problem was even bigger in the United Kingdom where countless fields were branded with ornate patterns. From the sky, they looked like ancient keys or beautiful sewer grates.

Researcher Colin Andrews spearheaded several investigations, and even claimed to coin the term “crop circle.”

Interest grew so much in the U.S. that Lawson accepted an offer to appear on “Unsolved Mysteries.” But his segment was canceled after two other crop circle victims in North Dakota and Missouri declined to appear.

School shooting survivor: 'It makes you sick'

By the fall of 1991, a London tabloid thought they had discovered the source of the phenomenon. Two “jovial con men” named David Chorley and Doug Bower took credit. Giggling, they said they created the crop circles with “two wooden boards, a piece of string and a bizarre sighting device attached to a baseball cap.”

Crop circles fanatics, who had given themselves the science-y title of “cereologists,” didn’t buy it. After all, where did the patterns in Canada and Europe and India come from? Were these two 60-year-old men swimming in frequent flyer miles?

And what about Illinois? Searle certainly didn’t have an answer.

“There’s got to be a reason for it,” he told the Associated Press. “When you figure it out, tell me.”

• Contact columnist Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com

STEEDS MEER VREEMDE  DINGEN IN DE LUCHT ( VIDEO)

"Maar ook viel mij iets anders veel meer verontrustend op. Namelijk een 2e zon. Ik dacht meteen dit kan niet waar zijn." 

Naast een planeet nabij onze zon zien mensen ook steeds vaker hele vreemde luchten, waar geen enkele verklaring voor is. 

Langzaam maar zeker beginnen er zich steeds meer vreemde zaken voor te doen aan onze hemel. Zelfs de zogenaamde nuchtere mensen vinden het soms moeilijk om hun eigen ogen te geloven.

We beginnen vandaag in de Amerikaanse staat Utah waar iemand rond een uur of één 's nachts richting huis gaat en dan plotseling stopt, want hij ziet een vreemde lucht. Een vreemde oranjekleurige lucht op een moment dat er geen sprake is van een zon.

De man rijdt er iedere dag langs en nog nooit heeft hij zoiets gezien. Wanneer hij gaat zoeken naar een bepaalde lichtbron is er helemaal niets te vinden.

In het begin van de video hoor je, wat wij niet echt mooie muziek plegen te noemen, maar daarna hoor je gewoon de stem van de man die hoogst verbaasd is over wat hij ziet. 
 
Van Utah gaan we naar ons land en wel naar de dijk tussen Lelystad en Enkhuizen. Een lezer schrijft het volgende (dank!):

Hierbij stuur ik een foto welke mijn vrouw vanuit de auto door het raam nam van de zon. We reden op de dijk van Lelystad/Enkhuizen, op 20-02-2018. Na het bekijken valt iets op wat we niet kunnen verklaren. Heeft u hierover een mening?

Het is duidelijk dat er zich gedeeltelijk achter de wolken iets verbergt dat heel sterk lijkt op een planeet. Eén die daar normaal gesproken niet hoort te zijn en die zeker niet als een lensflare kan worden uitgelegd omdat er duidelijk wolken zichtbaar zijn die voor het object langs lopen, iets wat niet gebeurt in het geval van een lensflare.

Van Lelystad gaan we naar de andere kant van de wereld en wel naar het Zuid Amerikaanse Ecuador. De volgende video laat een bizar verschijnsel zien in de lucht. Iets dat het midden houdt tussen een soort vreemde wolk, een lichtstraal of iets anders, maar waarvoor ook geen enkele verklaring is. 

 

Soms zijn er vreemde verschijnselen waar misschien wel een heel "normale verklaring" voor is, zoals de volgende foto die gemaakt is door een lezer vanuit de cabine van zijn vrachtwagen. Hij schrijft (dank!):

Ik heb ook even terug zitten zoeken in mijn fotos. Omdat jullie het al een paar keer over paarse/roze luchten hebben gehad.

Het zijn hoe dan ook uitzonderlijk mooie opnames. Wat ook mooi is in dit geval is dat de getuige in de zitkamer zit en naar buiten kijkt waarbij iets ongewoons opvalt. Dat betekent dan in ieder geval dat het geen lensflare of iets dergelijks is omdat hij het ook met zijn eigen ogen ziet en ja, het lijkt ontegenzeggelijk op een tweede zon, achter onze eigen zon of, wie weet, wel omgekeerd? Dit laatste omdat er berichten zijn over deze planeet waarbij wordt uitgelegd dat deze tussen onze zon en de aarde kan staan op bepaalde momenten.

Wat dan verder opvalt, is dat dit onbekende hemellichaam plots groter lijkt dan in opnames die nog niet zolang geleden werden gemaakt. Dat zou kunnen aantonen dat het object inderdaad veel dichterbij onze aarde staat nu.

{ http://niburu.co/ }

What’s that in the sky? Group analyzes local UFO sightings

By Michelle Basch | @MBaschWTOP

On left, a “dark, worm-like shape” hovered midair in a Northwest D.C. neighborhood in October 2016, a witness said. On right, in August 2017, a family was visiting D.C., when one person said they noticed a little black disc to the right of the Washington...

WASHINGTON — Last month, something strange hovered in the sky just a few miles from the Pentagon, a witness reported.

The witness, who took photos, said whatever it was appeared to rotate and then morph into a group of glowing objects that split apart. The photos are hard to make out, but one does seem to show a set of glittering, airborne lights.

Maybe there’s a good explanation, but the incident is one of the most recent UFO sightings reported in the D.C. region to the Mutual UFO Network, also known as MUFON.

MUFON collects reports of sightings worldwide and investigates them. Another organization, the National UFO Reporting Center, or NUFORC, also accepts reports of UFOs.

“Our first credo is believe the witness. At least listen to the witness,” Susan Swiatek, MUFON’s Virginia director said to WTOP. “That’s a big therapeutic thing we can do for people and get their remarks on the record for hopefully a greater whole that will emerge.”

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Swiatek said some people are happy to have a strange encounter, while others are definitely not.

“Just seeing something in the sky that they know they can’t explain, that’s enough to really upset people. And if you can just come alongside them and say, ‘It’s OK, we get those reports all the time,’ then that can help. Conversely, I’ve had people get really upset. They’d rather say ‘I’m crazy, give me a pill,'” she said.

There were more than 100 sightings reported in Virginia last year — up 13 from the number of 2016 sightings reported, MUFON reported.

In 2017, Virginia had more sighting reports than Maryland and D.C. combined. There were 65 reports in Maryland and 11 in the District.

Reports can be filed online, and submissions can remain anonymous.

Tony Angiola, assistant state director of MUFON Virginia and an investigator, has appeared on TV’s “NASA’s Unexplained Files” and “Hangar 1: The UFO Files.”

“Our goal is to take ufology to the point where we’re taking information, giving it to scientists at NASA and being able to do something with it,” he said.

In addition to studying new UFO reports, Angiola and Ben Moss, chief field investigator for MUFON Virginia, also reinvestigate some sightings that were made decades ago.

One reason? It’s easier to fake UFO photos and video today.

Swiatek admits good evidence is hard to find.

“It’s pretty scant. We’re holding on to feathers that are kind of blowing in the wind, and it’s a little tough. But we’re trying to perform science where we can and when we can.”

“I think we are getting somewhere,” she added.

Here are some more interesting alleged sightings from the D.C. area that were reported to MUFON:

• Christmas night, 2017: From a balcony in Annandale, Virginia, someone reported seeing “an extremely bright light in the sky” that didn’t move or make a sound. But the witness said it stayed there for hours, and at one point more lights appeared and formed a triangular shape near the first light before disappearing. “I go out to my balcony every single night and never saw anything like this,” the witness wrote. A video was submitted with the report.
• August 2017: A family visiting D.C. took a series of photos in quick succession of the Washington Monument. While looking at the photos later, they say they noticed something odd in one of them.  “The first picture was totally normal, but in the second one, on the right of the Washington [Monument], I saw a little black disc shaped object just hovering next to it,” reported the submitter.
• July 2017: A submitter in Ridge, Maryland, reported waking up to “very bright pulsating light outside my window.” The witness went outside and recorded video of it. “The object was larger then (sic) a normal star and seemed to be rapidly evolving/transforming as it moved across the sky. Then in an instant it went from the transforming sphere into a tiny bright dot,” which moved back and forth before disappearing.
• October 2016: A person walking home in Northwest D.C. said they saw something weird hanging in midair, 30 to 40 feet up. “It was a dark, worm-like shape and it hovered in the same position for roughly 3 minutes while I was able to take photos. At first I thought it could have been an unusual entanglement of those narrow balloons used to make balloon animals, however, I don’t believe they could have floated in this position with helium,” that person wrote.
• April 2016: Someone who took a dramatic nighttime photo of the Washington Monument also reports capturing something unexplained in one image. It looked like four glowing lights floating in formation next to the monument. “I am an amateur photographer and have taken hundreds of night time shots. I know what airplane and satellite trails look like. This is not one of those,” the sighting description reads. “I have no clue what it is nor am I insinuating it is of alien nature. Just strange and thought you might take a look.”

You can browse through MUFON’s sightings database online, using the “Track UFOs” page.

Editor’s note: This is the third story in a three-part series about UFOs, studies into them and local sightings. Read part one. Read part two.

{ https://wtop.com/ }

Op hol geslagen ruimtestation stort binnen enkele weken neer op aarde. Maar waar? - HLN.be 

Tine Kintaert 

Bron: Guardian, DM, Metro UK

Het Amerikaanse Aerospace Corporation schat dat Tiangong-1 in de eerste week van april opnieuw in onze atmosfeer zal komen. De European Space Agency (ESA) houdt het op ‘ergens tussen 24 maart en 19 april’. Het ruimtestation, dat ’hemelse plaats betekent, weegt meer dan 8 ton, en volgens de Aerospace Corporation is het goed mogelijk dat het niet volledig zal opbranden in de atmosfeer. Het puin zou dan kunnen neerkomen in een gebied van enkele honderden vierkante kilometers groot.

De kans dat dit in België gebeurt is alvast nihil. Volgens de ESA kunnen de brokstukken terechtkomen ‘overal tussen de breedtegraden van 43ºN en 43ºS’. En daar ligt zowat de halve wereld tussen: van Zuid-Frankrijk en Spanje tot Australië, Noord- en Zuid-Amerika. “Op dit moment is een precieze schatting van waar Tiangong-1 de atmosfeer zal binnendringen onmogelijk.” Het kan dus evengoed in de oceaan zijn.

Geen reden tot paniek

Maar zelfs als er brokstukken op het vasteland vallen, is dat geen reden tot bezorgdheid. “Zelfs wanneer een locatie wordt getroffen, dan nog is de kans dat een specifiek persoon wordt geraakt ongeveer een miljoen keer kleiner dan de kans om de nationale loterij te winnen”, aldus Aerospace Corporation. “In de geschiedenis van de ruimtevaart is nog niemand slachtoffer geworden van ruimtepuin. Slechts één iemand zou ooit getroffen zijn, en zij raakte niet eens gewond.” 

Jonathan McDowell, een astrofysicus van de universiteit van Harvard, maant wel aan tot voorzichtigheid. Tegen de Britse krant The Guardian wees hij op fragmenten van een raket van vergelijkbare omvang die in januari in Peru neerkwamen. “Om de paar jaar gebeurt zoiets als dit, maar Tiangong-1 is groot en compact, dus we moeten het in de gaten houden.”

In 2016 gaf China toe dat het de controle over Tiangong-1 had verloren en dat het niet in staat zou zijn om een gecontroleerde re-entry uit te voeren. McDowell stelt dat het ruimtestation de laatste maanden steeds sneller daalt, momenteel aan een snelheid van ongeveer 6 kilometer per week. Het is moeilijk te voorspellen wanneer de module zal neerstorten, omdat de snelheid wordt beïnvloed door het constant veranderende “weer” in de ruimte. 

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Some of those Lights up there aren't Stars

The Canada France Hawaii Telescope observatory hosts a world-class, 3.6 meter optical/infrared telescope. The observatory is located atop the summit of Mauna Kea, a 4200 meter, dormant volcano located on the island of Hawaii.

On March 6, 2018 the observatory’s webcam captured a series of strange lights seemly flying in formation through the sky.

Although it is difficult to determine what these objects are, the lights are certainly not stars.

  

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

As I have mentioned here at Mysterious Universe on a few occasions, I’m not a big fan of sci-fi. Violent horror is far more my thing. But, there are a few sci-fi-based TV shows I did like, such as The Invaders, The X-Files (for a while, until it got crap) and Dark Skies. In other words, sci-fi with a lot of conspiracy attached to it is something I like – when it’s done well. As for sci-fi-driven movies, I thought the first installment in The Matrixseries was very good. The two sequels were just “meh.” Dark City was a good one, too. I guess, with the Area 51 conspiracy connection, I should have liked Independence Day. But, no, I didn’t: it was just a bunch of swaggering, high-fiving, kick-ass bullshit. All of which brings me to the matter of two more sci-fi movies with conspiracy aspects attached to them. And both of them were released in the latter part of 1988. There is a specific reason why I mention the date.

Both movies led to rumors that their combined release amounted to a case of “the Government” preparing us for “the truth” behind the UFO phenomenon. Yes, we’re talking about UFO disclosure – another subject that I have no love for. As I have also stated here previously, I’m sick and tired of all the garbage along the lines of, “I have an insider source who tells me that disclosure is coming at noon three weeks from tomorrow. But, if it doesn’t, don’t worry. It will turn up next year. Or the next. Or the…” My words for these people: “Put up, shut up, or just go away and die.” If the latter, preferably slowly. As for those two 1988 movies they were They Live and Alien Nation.

The former was written and directed by John Carpenter (of The Fog and Halloween fame – two of my favorites). They Livestarred Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. It’s a witty, watchable movie of how aliens are secretly taking over the planet in a very unusual and alternative way – and how the human global elite is totally selling its collective soul to the ETs. In fact, it’s very much a satire on 1980s-era society and the “greed is good” phenomenon. At first glance, the aliens look just like us. Identical, in fact. Put on a pair of special sunglasses, however, and you’ll see how they really look: like decaying corpses.

As for Alien Nation, it’s Lethal Weapon, but with extraterrestrials instead of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. The leading cast are James Caan, Mandy Patinkin (who is now in the excellent Homeland show), and Terrence Stamp. Set in the early 1990s, Alien Nation tells the story of what happens when more than a quarter of a million ETs – “The Newcomers,” as they are termed – reach the Earth and are assimilated into human society. And with varying degree of success and failiure. There is prejudice, fear and extraterrestrial racism. If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil things by revealing the plot, except to say that there is an unforeseen conspiratorial angle to the story which ensures you’ll keep watching. So, what does this have to do with UFO disclosure? Well, I’ll tell you.

I started attending UFO/Fortean/paranormal conferences and lectures in the U.K. probably around 1985/1986. Something happened in 1989 onward in the U.K. which I had not seen at conferences before. Namely, parallels with today’s disclosure farce. On at least four or five times at various events around the country, I heard people speculating that the releases of both  Alien Nation and They Live – which surfaced in the United States just four weeks apart, the former on October 7, 1988 and the latter on November 4, 1988 – was the work of – who else? – that aforementioned ” the government.”

The truth was just around the corner. People really did want to believe. With the public acclimatized to more and more fictional ET-human interaction (good, bad or somewhere in between), it would surely only be a matter of time before we would finally have the answers. I can recall hearing such rumors throughout the year; the final time – and the most vocal – being at the annual UFO Magazine conference held in Yorkshire, England in September 1989.

Of course, the fact that I’m now writing these words shows that no such disclosure ever came. There was never a plan to use They Live and Alien Nation as a means to initiate disclosure. Thirty years on, though, people are still going on about disclosure and plans to prepare the public. All of these claims and scenarios (in 1988/1989 and now) have one thing in common: they never, ever amount to anything. They didn’t in the late eighties with a pair of fun movies. And they won’t now.

 http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Ever since we as a species have become aware of other stars and planets beyond our own we have let our imaginations run wild with what might lie out there or if we really are alone in the universe upon this spinning rock we call Earth. Are there other creatures or beings inhabiting other stars, and if so we will we ever see them or even talk to them? These are the dreams of our kind, the questions that still loom large across the landscape of our psyche. Is there someone else out there? Further adding to our questions is if there was some other race out there, and we did actually manage to make contact with them across the sea of stars, what would they be like? Would we be able to talk to these alien visitors and perhaps more importantly, what would we say? The conundrum of how we would communicate with extraterrestrials has in recent years been seriously considered, and despite all of the very smart people working on it we are mostly still left in the dark and unprepared for what talking to an alien might actually be like.

If aliens were to come down and greet us, say, tomorrow, we would likely immediately be faced with numerous challenges even beyond language, such as culture, customs, ways of thinking, and even possibly a different concept and perception of reality itself. We might not even recognize them as any type of life as we know it. But if we were to assume that we could just start talking, there would be several potential obstacles right off the bat, not the least of which is that our bodies would likely be completely different, and this could have a lot of possible repercussions.

For one, since language is a representation of our thoughts, which are largely based in how we perceive and interact with the world, human languages reflect the concepts of our senses of sight, smell, touch, and other cues from our physical form, our shared evolution and physical actions and reactions such as laughter or crying. What then happens if an alien race has no eyes or ears or mouth, or experiences the world in a totally different way? What if they do not have the same physical relationship with their as we do with our own? What if they don’t laugh or cry, or emote as we do? They may have no understanding at all of what our concepts of perception are in the first place, a totally different way of experiencing and thinking about time and reality, and so this would reverberate throughout their whole way of thinking and communication, and indeed their very being. This was all rather well-explored in the film Arrival, in which a team of linguists is tasked with deciphering the mysterious language of a decidedly non-humanoid species with a very different language and view of time and space, and within the understanding of which hangs the balance of our survival.

Even within human languages here on Earth we can see how the effects of our sensory abilities, our upbringing, and our perceptions of the world around us can change methods and means of communication. For instance, deaf people use sign language as a means to communicate when the sense of hearing is robbed from them. However, although human languages do all sound very unique and even alien at times, and there are sign languages and whatnot, they are still based on our shared perception of the universe through the same common biology, morphology, anatomy, and physiology, and therefore they follow rules that we can all fathom and which give us at least a chance of reproducing them. With aliens, all bets would be off.

Another important hurdle with differences in physical form would be how we produce and detect sounds, and thereby language, in the first place. For humans we use a vocal tract and our ears, and there is a very finite, set frequency through which we are able to detect the sounds we utter. With aliens they would be working with a whole different set of organs, frequencies, and physiology for speech, that is if they even “spoke” as we know it at all. Their utterances would possibly be made through strange organs for which we have no close approximation or even understanding of, would probably be made at frequencies, vibrations, or cadences that we would not be able to detect or recognize as language, and would be made through a different atmosphere to make it all even worse.

These would be completely non-human sounds, we may not be able to physically discern the distinctions they make, and considering that many animals on our very own planet are thought to be able to speak in language and we are completely in the dark as to what they are saying, this would likely be even more pronounced in something from out beyond the stars. Perhaps impossibly, indecipherably so. Simply put, if we cannot physically detect their sounds and cannot reproduce them, then vocal communication is virtually impossible.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that we can get past these obstacles, and that we can hear and be heard by each other in a meaningful way. The problems would still not end there. The very rules of our language and the way they are laid out are all intrinsically linked to our biology and mindset as well. An alien language might not have any of the parts of language that we take for granted, such as verbs, adjectives, and nouns, would possibly not view things such as cause and effect or the passage of time the same as us, and would potentially follow certain internal rules, logic, and structures so different from us that we are unable to even mutually comprehend them. We as humans have shared cognition and linguistic structures, basic psychologies, and features, but aliens cannot be counted upon to do so. Jessica Coon, a professor of linguistics at McGill University in Montreal who was consulted on the film about extraterrestrial communication, Arrival, said of this:

What linguists have discovered about human languages is that even though they can sound very different from one another and their grammars do show a lot of variation…languages tend to fall into certain patterns. Most of the world’s languages fall into one of those patterns or the other. The variation isn’t completely unconstrained. Humans seem to be hardwired for this capacity to learn language. Because it is part of our genetics and part of being human, it’s very unlikely that other creatures would have the same kinds of constraints or show the same kinds of similarities that human languages do. We would just have to hope that we would still be able to recognize patterns and match it up with we’re seeing.

The notable American linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky has also offered his thoughts on the inherit linguistic problems with trying to talk with extraterrestrial beings with which we have no shared cognitive understanding of how language works. He has said:

If a Martian landed from outer space and spoke a language that violated universal grammar, we simply would not be able to learn that language the way that we learn a human language like English or Swahili. We’re designed by nature for English, Chinese, and every other possible human language. But we’re not designed to learn perfectly usable languages that violate universal grammar.

The formidable challenge this would present can already be seen even among human languages here on our own planet, where there are sometimes things we have no word for, or a lack of a word for something we take for granted. A tropical people might have no word for “snow,” for instance. Some remote, isolated languages are so alien to others that they do not even have words, concepts or phrases for things most speakers of other languages would likely take for granted. For instance, the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon have no words for counting things. It is either “one” or “more than one,” that’s it. They also have no clear words for certain directions such as “left” or “right,” and this is a daunting challenge to understanding them, even though they are human. Imagine a completely non-human entity with even more outlandish rules of language and grammatical idiosyncrasies and you can see how meaningful exchanges could be a problem. Jesse Snedeker, a Harvard psychologist who studies the development of language in children, has said of this:

We know that every child can learn every possible human language. Every child has to have some sort of internal capacity that allows them to learn language. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Would we have the capacity to learn alien language, and would they have the capacity to learn ours?’ And different people would give you very different answers to that question. On the other hand, there’s the argument that any species that achieves a high level of technology would necessarily understand certain concepts, so that ought to provide a basis for at least a limited degree of communication.

This is where we begin to see that all hope is not necessarily lost, and one thing seen as the key to actually being able to start towards communication with aliens is to find some commonality to use as a starting point. A good way to do this would be to have some sort of key, something like the Rosetta Stone, which helped us to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. This has been an idea tossed around in science fiction before, such as the use of the tones in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or the use of prime numbers in Carl Sagan’s book Contact. If we could have some common frame of reference and somewhere to start, then there is the chance we could work towards further meaningful communication.

One of the best ways of doing this has been seen in recent years as being to use mathematics or scientific information such as physics as a sort of “universal language” and starting point. After all, as the laws of physics and reality are the same throughout the universe, then it stands to reason that any advanced society would have a grasp of these things in a similar way, regardless of how we ultimately think about them or express them in language. No matter what our physiological differences or deviations in ways of looking at the world and universe, physics are the same everywhere, and so would be a commonality we could use.

Carl DeVito, an emeritus faculty member in the mathematics department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, believes that although this exchange of scientific information is perhaps the key to communication with aliens, it nevertheless still faces some challenges. First is that the idea that it is still reliant on understanding the aliens’ systems of measurement, as well as relying on the supposition that they can count and do arithmetic as we do, that they recognize the same elements of the periodic table, that they have adequately studied the different states of matter, and that they know enough chemistry to carry out chemical calculations in the same way we do. He also points out that even though the physics would be the same, these extraterrestrials might calculate their rules of motion and mechanics based on their own unique geometry. DeVito has said of this:

The mathematics of motion is differential calculus. Can we assume that an alien race shares this with us? Differential and integral calculus are so fundamental in so many areas of science that it is hard to imagine a science without them. But this is, perhaps, a human bias. We, of course, can’t know, but we must be aware that the physics of an alien race, even in a fundamental area like mechanics, might differ in subtle but important ways from our own.

Using mathematics and physics is nevertheless still seen as a potential way of breaking through our communication barrier, to the point that it is used by those organizations seeking to reach out and make contact, such as SETI. However, even if we can express simple messages to each other with math, there are still the intricacies of culture and thinking that would shape how messages and ideas are expressed and interpreted. Doug Vakoch, the president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, METI, and respected researcher of xenolinguistics, has said of this conundrum thus:

If they can build spacecraft to come to come to Earth, they have to have an understanding of good engineering, physics, science, math. But doing the nitty-gritty work of going back and forth and making guesses at what an alien says, trying to interpret swirls and determining a sentence or concept? It’s hard. Conveying matters. You need flexibility of language with its infinite combinations. Our art and culture — that’s all from language, that’s not from just raw numbers.

In addition to the promise of using math, there is also the hopeful fact that it is possible that the alien’s psyches and physicality are not as different from our own as we may think after all. For instance, on our own planet we can see vastly different organisms that have nevertheless developed strikingly similar ways of dealing with the environment and world around them, such as evolving eyes, ears, legs, wings and similar organs separately across species, often evolving independently or sometimes the same structures multiple times, all in the process called “convergent evolution.”

Perhaps in other areas of the universe extraterrestrials have evolved similarly enough to ourselves, especially an intelligent tool-using one that would have developed communication and technology in the first place, that our mental architectures and languages are not necessarily mutually unintelligible. This theory postulates that there are enough universal elements to how we think and evolve to certain environmental challenges that this would be enough solid ground for us to delve into a basic framework from which further communication would be possible. Making this even more promising still is that with all of the broadcasts we have spewed out into the stars the aliens would potentially have a good enough sampling of our languages and communications to make talking between us easier without having even met us yet, a possibility of which Coon has said:

If you have enough information and enough of the context and the history, I think there’s hope that even without a lot of interaction you could be able to make at least significant progress in understanding the grammar of a language—again depending on how likely we are to be able to understand alien life at all. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if creatures who could make giant spaceships that just show up on Earth could easily figure out our languages from the many broadcasts we put into outer space, and that we might be able to do the same thing with sufficient resources and sufficient information.

One thing that is worth considering is that even if we overcome all of these considerable challenges and are able to communicate, look at us here on Earth. With our different cultures, ways of thinking, values, and linguistic nuances, even communication between us humans can be confusing and difficult, with misunderstandings and gaffes commonplace. How can we hope to resolve these issues with an alien civilization from another star? In the end, we just don’t know. Since we have never made contact with aliens, at least as far as we know, there is no precedent for it, and we cannot possibly know what to expect when such a day comes to pass. It is impossible to know what form these beings will take, how they will think, or how they will communicate. Will it come easy or will we forever remain closed behind mutual doors of incomprehensibility? The answers remain complex, it is all left entirely to speculation and the imagination, and we will only know when we finally make that first contact we have always dreamed of.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

Filer’s Files #9 – 2018 Venus Is Earth Like - PART II

UFO Sightings in the United States

Arizona Light

Sonotia — My son and I were camping at Parker Lake on February 19, 2018, looking for a break in the cloud cover around 6 am. I spotted a light below clouds 3 miles south that moved to less than a mile very quickly. The light pulsed from bright to dark in three phases.

I took 3 photos before my phone failed. It had a grid on the screen that I have not ever seen before. After the light went dark for the last time the phone worked normally. My truck stalled three times when I started it around 10 am to leave. Around home it stalled again and would not start. The fuel pump was affected, I removed it and ran a direct current to it and it started to work again. The object was due south and traveled 3 miles north in an instant.. There were no vehicles moving anywhere. It went from very bright to almost dark. It continued this cycle for 30 minutes before going completely dark at which time my phone began to function normally again. Thanks to MUFON CMS

California Object

Fort Bragg — I see these orb UFOs all the time. Since the end of January 2018, I have seen them every clear night. I see between 1 and 10 of these orbs and occasionally will see other crafts. I’ve been keeping a ufo log for the last 6 years.
On February 10, 2018,  5 were seen
at 6:20 pm. One large orb came from top of Orion. Saw two more small ones. Then from the west at about 7:05 saw very large yellow orb, that came straight at me and flew right over my head!. Got lots photos, It went behind the large trees and disappeared. I saw one every night for 6 days straight.. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Florida Object

Naples — Driving north on CR 951, I saw the object moving across the sky on February 28, 2018.

. I thought maybe it was an ad banner or something, but it seemed to change speed and shape. I took pictures while driving then the object disappeared into the clouds. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Mississippi Cylinder

Olive Branch — On January 2, 2018, my husband (former airline pilot with 22,000 hours) and I were traveling on Lamar Ext. (Hwy. 78), heading to Memphis just before the Tennessee line, I witnessed two cylindrical objects or shadows moving vertically over the face of a full wolf moon. My husband viewed one, and I viewed both.  #2 was higher than #1.  He was driving and #2 was out of the bright face of the moon and could no longer be seen when he observed #1. Once the objects or shadows were out of the bright face of the moon, they were no longer visible.  Other people viewed this I am sure.  If they did, I urge them to speak up.” Thanks Peter Davenport www.ufocenter.com

Missouri Lights

Independence — My husband and three young boys were driving home at about 11:30 PM, on February 28, 2015. I happened to look to NW sky to point the moon out to our kids and saw 5 rectangular columns of light below the cloud deck. They were bright but transparent.
1. They seemed to be free standing but not a spotlight beam. There was absolutely NO connecting beam from the bottom of the columns to the ground.
2. The columns of light do not bounce off the cloud deck.
3. In the full hour these were observed, they did not change in size, movement, shape, pulsate, or location.. Later, I went outside to find them in the same place and unchanged. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Nevada Lights

Las Vegas — My fiancée and I were driving home after picking up food on February 23, 2018, and noticed 3 lights in the sky which from a distance, at first glance. It appeared to be 3 planes flying in unison. Once the craft came closer and as we got a better view, we saw it was one massive craft. I took my phone out and tried to video it. We were moving so it was difficult to capture. The craft made no noise and at its lowest altitude appeared to be around 1,000 ft. It stopped and hovered abruptly and then continued on its path west towards Red Rock. Thanks to MUFON CMS

New Jersey Disc

Doug writes he was driving 55 mph on Route 3 and spotted something about a mile away. As I got loser I took out my phone camera and took a photo.

It was a total dry summer day but naysayers claim it it’s a drop of water. But it was a flying disc. Thanks to Doug Auld Artist

Oregon Object

Eugene — I’m in direct contact with these beings. They constantly hover over my apartment complex or wherever I am as they did on February 26, 2018.  This particular event I heard it hovering over me and sent my boyfriend out to see what it was. Upon my boyfriend exiting the residence he rushed back inside and told me it was a saucer shaped UFO hovering over us. I could hear it flying away and got it on video. We are living on the top floor of a 3 story apartment complex. As I started recording is when it started picking up speed. I lost sight of it as it flew over buildings and out of sight. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Astronaut  Sees Texas Orange Orbs

North Texas — About 10:15 pm on July 5, 2017, my family and I were sitting outside. When I looked up into the sky, I saw a fairly large orange glowing orb moving rapidly overhead right about 90 degrees of elevation on July 1, 2013 .
It moved from east to west (retrograde, so was not a satellite) and lasted about a minute. The brightness did not seem to change other than dimming as it moved away from us. The visual angle subtended an arc of about 120 degrees across the sky. About one or two minutes later, we saw a group of three similar objects along the same flight path as the first one. My daughter used an iPhone to take video, but it is fairly dark and hard to distinguish the objects. About 3 minutes later two more objects passed overhead, again on the same flight path. There was no sound from the objects. It appeared as if they were glowing from heating up the atmosphere. They moved much faster than orbital satellites or airplanes, but much slower than meteors and did not change brightness as a meteor would upon entering the atmosphere. I am a retired military fighter pilot, retired commercial airline pilot and former astronaut. I have no explanation for what we saw.
((NUFORC Note: Report submitted by former U. S. astronaut. We spoke via telephone with the source of the report, and we suspect that he is a superlative, and highly qualified, witness. PD)) Thanks Peter Davenport www.ufocenter.com

Washington Object

Marysville — I was on my front porch photographing Red tail Hawks on March 1, 2018, and visually scanned the treetops when I noticed a rapidly moving glint way off in the distance between the treetops. I took a photograph. By the time I got my camera to refocus, It was nowhere to be seen. At first I thought it was just another jetliner off in the distance but it left no contrail and it was traveling faster than aircraft fly. Thanks to MUFON CMS

Worldwide UFO Sightings

Australia Shadow

Taking pictures of the moon with a Nikon P900, I did not notice until checking the memory card on the computer.

The photo was taken of a strange shadow on moon or near earth on November 27, 2017.  Thanks to MUFON CMS

Brazil Sphere

Porto Alegre — My name is Marco Solano and I’m sending a photos I took on December 2, 2017. I took 3 photos from the terrace of a 14 story building where a business event was taking place. Between my cell phone and the horizon above other buildings there are no windows. One thing appeared in a photo. Using ZOOM, an “unidentified” “object” appears where there was nothing a minute before as I looking at a building where I lived when single. I used my Samsung J2 Galaxy Prime G532MT.

Thanks to MUFON CMS

Canada Orb

Oshawa, Ontario — I have once again witnessed two UFO sightings on February 25,2018. Not sure if it was the same one doing a 180 back and forth. Attached are the picture enhancements of what was witnessed and filmed. Here’s what I observed on Sunday, February 25,2018, while outside on my deck. I was having a tea admiring a clear sky. After some minutes I noticed a very high bright roundish object in amber white light at 4:55 pm. The object came overhead from the east heading westward over Whitby, Ontario. I ran in the house to return outside in 30 – 40 seconds with my camera but it gone!

Four minutes later a bright white glistening object came towards my position from the west that I snapped to film this unknown. It crossed directly above me heading east at 5:00 pm. This is my first UFO sighting for 2018. Thanks to Paul Shishis

Chili Cylinder

Los Lagos — Here are some of our photos, recently captured on January 16th in the interior of the city of Los Lagos, inside the capital of the Region of Los Ríos, city of Valdivia. It happened that taking a batch of photos to upload to the network of rural sector Folilco-Las Huellas, I took a photo twice of the alleged object that can be seen on the right side.
This happened at 20:57 seconds so I made a second take 4 seconds later.

My idea was to photograph a cloud at the bottom of the valley that crosses the Las Huellas sector, located 24 km from Los Lagos to Riñihue, entering by sector Folilco. Since I used a XVision table that has only a front camera, I did not see what I was photographing. This was at 2 am and I was so surprised!  Thanks to MUFON CMS

China Object

Beijing – – On March 14, 2017, an unknown flying object was seen flying over clear sky at 4:57 PM (GMT +0800). The camera was pointed to the West direction.

The author’s  place was around 4-5 kilometers to the center of Beijing city–Tiananmen Square or The Imperial Palace, where air traffic is totally forbidden.

Thanks to MUFON CMS

Columbia Object

Manizales Mountains — I was travelling from Manizales to Bogota, at a point of the mountain you could see a spectacular view of the country below. I stopped to take a picture of the landscape on November18, 2017. I took out my phone and recorded a short video, and two quick photos of the scenery. When I got home I saw in the first picture a dark object of an egg shape. The second picture had a more triangular shape. Thanks to MUFON CMS

France Flying Balls

Mérindol — It was 1931 hours, and I started watching two orange balls on February 13, 2018. I took my cell phone and took a picture.  (I was shaking). Two minutes later there were now 5 balls. The balls headed together, getting closer to each other and I felt these were certainly unidentified flying objects  The 4 balls flew east all together until the 5th appeared.

After seeing this, I continued my journey home, while watching what it was going to produce. The 5th ball was still there while his friends were already gone, then the 5th ball disappeared like a simple snap of a finger, like on a switch turned off.

Thanks to MUFON CMS

Germany Disc

Stuttgart — We were at the zoo and apparently there were several round objects around the treetops on October 5, 2017.

Did not notice what we had till recently we were looking at our Germany pictures.

Thanks to MUFON CMS

Norway Disc

–Romsdalen Valley — . Hiker filmed mysterious disc-shaped UFO with glowing lights hovering over mountain in Romsdalen Valley,

Photo taken in March 2016.  Thanks to MUFON CMS

 Portugal Objects

Lisbon — I was taking pictures of this fortress called Forte do Guincho, near Cascais, Lisbon.
I didn’t notice the object until I saw the picture. I took one in the same place less than a minute before and another a minute after and the object does not appear before and after.
When I saw it I thought of a cigar shape UFO.
I only can describe it as something clear cigar shape, very high in the sky, grey. I would like to know what can it be…a plane, or UFO? What do you think about it? Thanks to MUFON CMS

 Spain Sphere

I was taking pictures of some clouds on February 9, 2018, that formed a storm.  When editing on the computer I saw this spherical object.

Thanks to MUFON CMS

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UFO Wingnuts Confuse a Fallen Boulder for a Crashed Alien Spacecraft

George Dvorsky

{ https://gizmodo.com/ }

The truth is UP there? Triangular UFO filmed flying low in the night sky could be the 'best evidence ever' for alien life

• Alien enthusiasts believe this video is confirmation of TR-3B crafts being used
• A TR-3B is alleged to be a US government alien surveillance aircraft 
• TR-3Bs were suspected to be developed under a 'black project' which theorists claim is funded by money unaccounted for in official government budgets

By Charlotte Dean For Mailonline

This clip of a triangular UFO flying through the air has been dubbed the 'best evidence ever' for proof of extraterrestrial life.

The bizarre object soars through the skies from an unknown location in the US and UFO enthusiasts believe that it could be a TR-3B, the alleged surveillance aircraft of the United States Air Force.

Theorists have been quick to point ut that the footage shows a craft with three lights at each point that do not flash.

Planes have to have blinking lights by regulation which has led people to believe that it is something out of this world.

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The object appears to be moving left to right at high speed as it is it filmed by a dashcam.   

The YouTube description read: 'On the 26 of January this amazing video was shot from a dashboard camera.

'The footage captured a TR-3B UFO in mid-air and it might be the best evidence ever of the TR-3B UFO ever.

'The triangular object is coming in from the left of the screen and you can see that this object doesn't have any blinking lights like a normal airplane should have   

This clip of a triangular UFO flying through the air has been dubbed the 'best evidence ever' for proof of extraterrestrial life

'It is flying at a very low altitude which is very strange for a normal airplane.'

The TR-3B was suspected to be developed under a 'black project', which allegedly use money unaccounted for in official government budgets.  

Conspiracy theorists conclude that the craft is able to fly into space and report back to the US government. 

The allegations suggests that these ships are created at top-secret military bases such as Area 51 in Nevada, by reverse engineering alien technology.     

Viewers have claimed that this video is evidence that the 'TR-3B' is being used by the government to monitor aliens.   

The bizarre object soars through the skies and UFO enthusiasts believe that it could be a TR-3B, the alleged surveillance aircraft of the United States Air Force

One posted on YouTube: 'I believe this to be reversed engineering from NASA or the Military Industrial Complex.

'Most objects we see in our skies nowadays are human made, but there is a small percentage that are unexplained.'

And another added: 'Of course it's a TR-3B, the US built about 60 of them.

'It's powered by nuclear energy and it's a military spy plane.'

However there is yet to be solid evidence proving that this was a TR-3B.

Founder of ufofinterest.org Scott Brando, told the Express he believes the video is a hoax due to anomalies with the 'motion tracking'.

He added that landing lights of planes can also make a triangle shape when filmed at night. 

Theorists have been quick to point out that the footage shows a craft with three lights at each point that do not flash

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

SEARCH FOR LIFE FOCUSES ON MARS, MOONS OF JUPITER AND SATURN—AND EARTH

NASA Is Hiding Evidence Of Life On Mars Claims Scientists Who Says Has Evidence

Evidence of alien life is being covered up by NASA, according to a researcher from Buckingham University.

NASA is hiding fossil footprints of extraterrestrial activity on the surface of Mars, said Barry DiGregorio, who works at the Center for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham (United Kingdom) and plans to publish a report promising to reveal all hidden details to the public.

DiGregorio plans to release a ‘bombshell report’ which will reveal, once and for all, how NASA is well aware of this discovery, and how the American Space Agency has chosen to keep the truth hidden from the public.

According to NASA, these are most likely crystals, while a scientist from the Center for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham claims they may be trace fossils.

Image Credit NASA.

According to the researcher, who has already been dubbed as a ‘controversial scientist’ by numerous internet new outlets, NASA might be ignoring the discovery because of its plans for a manned mission to Mars in the 2030’s.

However, despite the fact that Dr. DiGregorio plans to reveal the truth to the public, NASA says that the shapes captured in the images from Mars which DiGregorio claims are evidence of alien activity are nothing more than rock crystals that are still being investigated.

DiGregorio specializes in studies of microscopic life found on Earth.

The expert argues how some of the images beamed back by the Curiosity rover show clear evidence of patterns similar to Ordovician trace fossils found on Earth.

According to the researcher from the University of Buckingham, there’s evidence of trace fossils on Mars.

These are made as living beings go on about their lives, leaving behind footprints like burros and waste, rather than the remains of the creatures themselves.

DiGregorio believes how the fossils on Mars may represent evidence of soft-bodied creatures that may have once existed on the surface of the red planet.

According to Dr. DiGregorio, fossils on Mars represent signs of soft-bodied creatures which may have roamed its surface in the distant past. This image shows trackways from a slug-like animal, dating back from the Cambrian period, found in Blackberry Hill, central Wisconsin.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

In an interview with the Daily Express, the researcher explained:

“If not trace fossils, what other geological explanations will Nasa come up with?”

“Nasa has turned its back on trying to get the data on this. The order came down from HQ that they should move the rover on to the next point. They didn’t feel it was important enough to look at, I thought that was very odd, despite the fact Gale Crater was host to probably a series of lakes for billions and billions of years. We’re talking about something that might have been equivalent to the Ordovician period on Earth.”

NASA, on the other hand, claims how DiGregorio’s discovery is most likely crystals.

“The crystals theory does not add up. The crystals do not branch or twist. We are talking about something that could have been similar to the Ordovician period on Earth,” he said in reference to the geological period that occurred between 485 and 444 million years ago.

A mineral vein with bright and dark portions distinguishes this Martian rock target, called “Rona,” near the upper edge of “Vera Rubin Ridge” on Mount Sharp. The MAHLI camera on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took the image after the rover brushed the dust off the gray area, roughly 2 inches by 3 inches.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The agency ordered Curiosity, claims the British scientist, to continue its journey without meticulously studying the ‘fossils’ found in the Gale crater area, which was supposed to be a lake area billions of years ago.

And despite being called out for his claims, DiGregorio isn’t the only one who believes there could have been living on the surface of Mars.

In the past, numerous claims have been made about Mars and how the red planet may have been inhabited at one point.

Dr. John Brandenburg, for example, is another scientist who claims that Mars was home to alien life.

However, and unlike DiGregorio, Dr. Brandenburg indicates that Mars was once home to complex alien life, rather than simple soft-bodied creatures, as proposed by DiGregorio.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

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Professor Stephen Hawking Says Knows What Existed Before The Big Bang

According to the latest comments made by Professor Stephen Hawking, Before the Big Bang, time existed in a bent state that was distorted along another dimension.

The famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has an answer to the enigma of what existed before the Big Bang, the beginning of the Universe, 13,800 million years ago.

In an interview with his colleague Neil deGrasse Tyson in the TV show ‘Star Talk‘ broadcasted on the National Geographic Channel, Hawking explained what existed before the universe.

“The boundary condition of the universe…is that it has no boundary,” Hawking said.

According to this theory, the history of the universe is not a flat line but a four-dimensional, curved object, “just as the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions,” Hawking said. As explained by Professor Hawking, the Big Bang was practically the formation as we today understand as ‘time,’ since this event, 13,800 million years ago, broke the known laws of physics. It also means that anything that may have existed before the event, simply cannot be applied to our understanding of time and existence.

In other words, Professor Hawking argues that there isn’t really anything such as ‘a time before the big bang’.

Professor Hawking added that one can regard imaginary and normal space-time as beginning at Earth’s south pole – a point where the normal laws of physics hold.

However, the world-renowned astrophysicist explained; “There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang.”

To better understand what Professor Hawking means, you would have to imagine a remote control that controls the universe and press the Rewind button.

The universe is constantly expanding.

As you go back in time, the universe contracts.

Rewinding to the Big Bang, the entire universe is reduced to the size of a single atom, Hawking said.

This subatomic ball of everything is known as the singularity.

Within this small and enormous mass of heat and energy, the laws of physics and time as we know them cease to function.

In other words, time as we understand it literally did not exist before the universe began to expand.

On the contrary, the arrow of time contracts infinitely as the universe gets smaller and smaller and never reaches a clear starting point.

As noted by TechTimes, Hawking says during the show that before the Big Bang, time was bent — “It was always reaching closer to nothing but didn’t become nothing,” according to the article. Essentially, “there was never a Big Bang that produced something from nothing. It just seemed that way from mankind’s point of perspective.”

In a lecture on the no-boundary proposal, Hawking wrote: “Events before the Big Bang are simply not defined because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them. Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang,” reports Space.com.

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock.

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10 Ancient Artifacts That Hint We May Have Been Visited By Ancient Astronauts

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Those are the words of Carl Sagan in his novel Contact.

So yeah, the universe is big. Scratch that. The universe is so big, we can’t really understand it.

Out of the billions of stars and trillions of planets that make up the known universe, modern-day scholars argue only Earth has life.

However, in recent years we have made extraordinary progress in exploring our solar system which has led us to a number of discoveries that suggest that not only are we not alone in the universe, but alien life could exist in our solar system, in the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, or even on Mars.

One of my favorite quotes about alien life comes from a man called Giordano Bruno, born in 1548.

Bruno was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist, perhaps best-known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model.

Bruno suggested how stars we see in the night sky are nothing other than sun’s surrounded by their own alien worlds.

He was one of the first to ponder whether or not it was possible for alien life to exist on those distant exoplanets:

“In space, there are countless constellations, sun’s, and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless Earth’s circling around their sun’s…” ― Giordano Bruno, Despre infinit univers si lumi.

Bruno also suggested there was a possibility the universe was infinite and could have no celestial body at its “center”.

Because of his ‘modern thinking,’ Bruno was found guilty of heresy and he was burned at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori in 1600.

Another very interesting quote, which I felt compelled to share in this article comes from Bruno’s On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds: Five Cosmological Dialogues, where he wrote:

“The ancients observed, and we also observe, that sometimes things fall to earth, or some things leave the earth, or whatever parts we may be near…”

Go further back in time before Giordano Bruno, say 2,000—3,000 years, and you’ll arrive at a time when great ancient civilizations like the ancient Aztecs, Maya, and ancient Egyptians ruled the Earth.

These ancient civilizations, and many others across Southern America, North America, Asia, and Africa were great pioneers during their times in various fields, including engineering, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, etc.

Their level of advancements was huge, and the Maya, for example, were considered as one of the greatest pre-industrial civilizations of the world.

The Egyptians built some of the most impressive ancient structures on the surface of the planet, the pyramids, and managed to transport massive blocks of stone, some weighing more than 50 tons across great distances without ‘simple’ technologies such as the wheel.

Halfway around the world, pre-Inca civilizations did the same thing when they managed to quarry andesite rock and transport it across vast distances, building some of the most impressive archaeological sites on the surface of the planet.

So, how did they do it?

Was it all brute force?

Slaves?

Did they possess some sort of technology we are unaware of?

Or is it possible, as some ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that an otherworldly influence was at play?

Thankfully, these ancient civilizations recorded their history as best as they could and left behind a number of ancient writings, monuments, and figurines that tell an impressive story.

Here, we take a look at ten amazing ancient figurines that were created by the ancient thousands of years ago, which, according to ancient astronaut theorists around the globe, suggest ancient aliens were in contact with ancient cultures around the globe, thousands of years ago.

The handbag of the gods. Scholars are unable to explain why these mysterious ‘handbags’ appear in illustrations from ancient cultures across the globe.

Is that a humanoid in some sort of space suit? This ancient figurine dates back to 600-900 AD.

Olmec Monument 19, from La Venta, Tabasco, shows a man holding the handbag in his hand.

Image Credit: Flickr Xuan Che.

The El-Baul stele in Guatemala. 

Image credit

Mystery Estela found in Mexico. 

Image Credit

The sarcophagus of king K’inich Janaab’ Pakal or more commonly known as King Pakal is one of the most talked about subjects when it comes to the ancient alien theory.

Is that an ancient astronaut?

Ancient Aliens in Egypt?

Is that an ancient Astronaut?

Image Credit: Tumblr

The evidence is here, all we have to do is decipher it.

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Curiosity Tests a New Way to Drill on Mars

After more than a year without the use of the Curiosity Mars rover's drill, engineers have devised a workaround and tested it for the first time on the Red Planet. More testing of the drill method is planned for the future.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has conducted the first test of a new drilling technique on the Red Planet since its drill stopped working reliably.

This early test produced a hole about a half-inch (1-centimeter) deep at a target called Lake Orcadie -- not enough for a full scientific sample, but enough to validate that the new method works mechanically. This was just the first in what will be a series of tests to determine how well the new drill method can collect samples. If this drill had achieved sufficient depth to collect a sample, the team would have begun testing a new sample delivery process, ultimately delivering to instruments inside the rover.

The drill is used for pulverizing rock samples into powder, which are then deposited into two of Curiosity's laboratory instruments, Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, and Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin. Curiosity has used its drill to collect samples 15 times since landing in 2012. Then, in December of 2016, a key part of the drill stopped working. The drill was designed to use two finger-like stabilizers to steady itself against rock; a faulty motor prevented the drill bit from extending and retracting between these stabilizers.

After months of effort, Curiosity's engineering team was able to extend the drill all the way out past the stabilizers, but the motor issue persisted. The team posed a challenge for themselves: could they hack the space robot's drill so that it didn't require stabilizers?

After months of effort, Curiosity's engineering team was able to extend the drill all the way out past the stabilizers, but the motor issue persisted. The team posed a challenge for themselves: could they hack the space robot's drill so that it didn't require stabilizers?

Images of a new hole on upper Vera Rubin Ridge, Curiosity's current location, suggest this “MacGyvering” is paying off. By leaving the drill in an extended position, engineers were able to practice this freehand drilling for months during testing here on Earth. This hole at Lake Orcadie provides the first insights into how this operation will work in the Martian environment.

If the previous method was like a drill press, holding the bit steady as it extends into a surface, it's now more freehand. The NASA rover is using its entire arm to push the drill forward, re-centering itself while taking measurements with a force sensor. That sensor was originally included to stop the rover's arm if it received a high-force jolt. It now offers Curiosity a vital sense of touch, preventing the drill bit from drifting sideways too much and getting stuck in rock.

"We're now drilling on Mars more like the way you do at home," said Steven Lee, deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Humans are pretty good at re-centering the drill, almost without thinking about it. Programming Curiosity to do this by itself was challenging -- especially when it wasn't designed to do that."

It hasn't been easy. JPL engineers spent many double-shifts testing the new method, including on weekends and holidays. They also had to perform "invasive surgery" on their testbed -- a near-exact replica of Curiosity -- installing a force sensor to match the one on Mars. The Earth-based testbed's sensor had stopped working before Curiosity's launch in 2012, but there had never been reason to replace it before now.

"This is a really good sign for the new drilling method," said Doug Klein of JPL, one of Curiosity's sampling engineers. "Next, we have to drill a full-depth hole and demonstrate our new techniques for delivering the sample to Curiosity's two onboard labs."

Leaving the drill in its extended position means it no longer has access to a device that sieves, portions and delivers the rock powder to the rover's instruments (called Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis, or CHIMRA).

JPL also had to invent a new way to deposit the powder without this device. The new solution makes Curiosity look as though it is adding seasoning to its science, shaking out grains from the drill's bit as if it were tapping salt from a shaker.

This tapping has been successfully tested here on Earth -- but Earth's atmosphere and gravity are very different from that of Mars. Whether rock powder on Mars will fall out in the same volume and in a controlled way has yet to be seen.

In the days ahead, Curiosity's engineers will evaluate the results of this recent test and likely drill again nearby. If enough sample is collected, they will test portioning the sample out, using the rover's Mastcam to estimate how much powder can be shaken from the drill bit.

Though this first test of the drill didn't produce a full sample, Curiosity's science team is excited to see this step on the path back to routine drilling. There's high interest in getting multiple drilled samples from Vera Rubin Ridge, especially from the upper ridge that contains both gray and red rocks. The latter are rich in hematite, an iron oxide mineral that forms in the presence of water. Drilled samples might shed light on the origin of the ridge and the history of its interaction with water.

For more information about Curiosity, visit:

• https://www.nasa.gov/curiosity

• https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

The Roswellian Syndrome: How Some UFO Myths Develop

An analysis of four classic flying-saucer incidents reveals how debunking can send a mundane case underground, where it is transformed by mythologizing processes, then reemerges—like a virulent strain of a virus—as a vast conspiracy tale. Defined by the Roswell Incident (1947), this syndrome is repeated at Flatwoods (1952), Kecksburg (1965), and Rendlesham Forest (1980).

Near the very beginning of the modern UFO craze, in the summer of 1947, a crashed “flying disc” was reported to have been recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. However, it was soon identified as simply a weather balloon, whereupon the sensational story seemed to fade away. Actually, it went underground; after subsequent decades, it resurfaced as an incredible tale of extraterrestrial invasion and the government’s attempt to cover up the awful truth. The media capitalized on “the Roswell incident,” and conspiracy theorists, persons with confabulated memories, outright hoaxers, and others climbed aboard the bandwagon.

We identify this process—a UFO incident’s occurring, being debunked, going underground, beginning the mythmaking processes, and reemerging as a conspiracy tale with ongoing mythologizing and media hype—as the Roswellian Syndrome. In the sections that follow, we describe the process as it occurred at Roswell and then demonstrate how the same syndrome developed from certain other famous UFO incidents: at Flatwoods, West Virginia (1952); Kecksburg, Pennsylvania (1965); and Rendlesham Forest (outside the Woodbridge NATO base) in England (1980). Between us, we have actually been on-site to investigate three of the four cases (Joe Nickell at Roswell and Flatwoods, and James McGaha—a former military pilot—at Rendlesham).

Roswell (1947)

Here is how the prototype of the Ros­wel­lian Syndrome began and developed:

Incident. On July 8, 1947, an eager but relatively inexperienced public information officer at Roswell Army Airfield issued a press release claiming a “flying disc” had been recovered from its crash site on an area ranch (Berlitz and Moore 1980; Korff 1997). The next day’s Roswell Daily Record told how rancher “Mac” Brazel described (in a reporter’s words) “a large area of bright wreckage” consisting of tinfoil, rubber strips, sticks, and other lightweight materials.

Debunking. Soon after these initial reports, the mysterious object was identified as a weather balloon. Although there appears to have been no attempt to deceive, the best evidence now indicates that the device was really a balloon array (the sticks and foiled paper being components of dangling box-kite–like radar reflectors) that had gone missing in flight from Project Mogul. Mogul represented an attempt to use the airborne devices’ instruments to monitor sonic emissions from Soviet nuclear tests. Joe Nickell has spoken about this with former Mogul Project scientist Charles B. Moore, who identified the wreckage from photographs as consistent with a lost Flight 4 Mogul array. (See also Thomas 1995; Saler et al. 1997; U.S. Air Force 1997.)

Submergence. With the report that the “flying disc” was only a balloon-borne device, the Roswell news story ended almost as abruptly as it had begun. However, the event would linger on in the fading and recreative memories of some of those involved, while in Roswell rumor and speculation continued to simmer just below the surface with UFO reports a part of the culture at large. In time, conspiracy-minded UFOlogists would arrive, asking leading questions and helping to spin a tale of crashed flying saucers and a government cover-up.

Mythologizing. This is the most complex part of the syndrome, beginning when the story goes underground and continuing after it reemerges, developing into an elaborate myth. It involves many factors, including exaggeration, faulty memory, folklore, and deliberate hoaxing.

For example, exaggeration played a large role in the Roswell case. Major Jesse Marcel, who had helped retrieve the wreckage, often made self-contradictory and inflated assertions, giving, for example, grossly exaggerated statements about the amount of debris, its supposed imperviousness to damage, and other matters. It is now known that Marcel made claims about his own background—that he had a college degree, was a World War II pilot who had received five air medals for shooting down enemy planes, and had himself been shot down—that were proved untrue by his own service file (Fitz­gerald 2001, 511). Kal Korff (1997, 27), who uncovered many of Marcel’s deceptions, found him “exaggerating things and repeatedly trying to ‘write himself’ into the history books.” As he described the debris, Marcel said the sticks resembled balsa but were “not wood at all” and had “some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher” (apparently referring to the floral designs). As well, there were “small pieces of a metal like tinfoil, except that it wasn’t tinfoil” (Berlitz and Moore 1980, 65).

Faulty memory was another problem. For example, Curry Holden, an anthropologist from Texas Tech, claimed a student archaeological expedition he led had actually come upon the crashed flying saucer and the bodies of its extraterrestrial crew. Holden’s wife and daughter, however, insisted that he had never told them of such an event; neither was there any corroboration in his personal papers. Holden was ninety-six when he provided his account to UFOlogist Kevin Randle, at which time his wife told Randle her husband’s memory “wasn’t as sharp as it once had been. He sometimes restructured his life’s events, moving them in time so that they were subtly changed” (Fitz­gerald 2001, 514). Roswell mortician W. Glenn Dennis, who provided information on alien “bodies” at the Roswell AAF Hospital, also seriously misremembered and confabulated¹ events. According to James McAndrew’s The Roswell Report: Case Closed (U.S. Air Force 1997, 78–79), Dennis’s account “was compared with official records of the actual events he is believed to have described” and showed “extensive inaccuracies” that included “a likely error in the date by as much as twelve years.”

The processes that create folklore also played a role in shaping the Ros­well legend. As reported in Leonard Stringfield’s book Situation Red: The UFO Siege (1977), a great number of tales proliferated about an alleged crash of an extraterrestrial craft and the retrieval of its humanoid occupants. The many versions of the story—what folklorists call variants—are proof of the legend-making, oral-tradition process at work. The aliens were typically described as little, big-eyed, big-headed humanoids, a type that began to be popularly reported after they were described by “abductees” Betty and Barney Hill in 1961 (Nickell 2011, 184–86). The pickled corpses were secretly stored—mostly anonymous sources claimed—at a (nonexistent) hangar-18 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, or some other location subsequently supposed to be Area 51 (the U.S. govern­ment’s secret test facility). From a folkloristic point of view, the crash/retrieval stories seem to function as “belief tales,” that is, legends told to give credence to a folk belief—in this instance a burgeoning one (Nickell 1995, 196–97).

Roswell folklore was obviously fed in part by deliberate fakelore. Related hoaxing began in 1949 when—as a part of the forthcoming sci-fi movie The Flying Saucer (1950)—an actor posing as an FBI agent avowed its claim of a captured spacecraft was true. In 1950, writer Frank Scully reported in his Behind the Flying Saucers that the U.S. government possessed three Venusian spaceships complete with humanoid corpses. Scully got his information from a pair of confidence men who were hoping to sell a petroleum-locating gadget allegedly derived from alien technology. By 1974, a man named Robert Spencer Carr was giving talks in which he claimed firsthand knowledge of where the preserved aliens were hidden; however, the late claimant’s son reported that his father made up the entire yarn. Other Roswell hoaxes in­cluded the ineptly forged “MJ-12 documents” (that continue to fool UFOlogist Stanton T. Friedman); a diary that told how a family came upon the smoldering crashed saucer and injured aliens (but was written with an ink not manufactured until 1974); and the notorious “Alien Autopsy” film, showing the dissection of a rubbery extraterrestrial who appeared to be from the distant Planet Latex (Nickell 2001, 118–21).

Reemergence and Media Bandwagon Effect. In 1980 the story resurfaced in the media with publication of the book The Roswell Incident. Its authors were Charles Berlitz (who had previously written the mystery-mongering best seller The Bermuda Triangle, containing “invented details,” exaggerations, and distortions [Randi 1995, 35]) and William L. Moore (who was a suspect in the previously mentioned “MJ-12” hoax [Nickell with Fischer, 1992, 81–105], as well as author of The Philadelphia Experiment, an expanded version of another’s tale that itself proved to be a hoax [Clark 1998, 509]). The Roswell Incident’s book jacket gushed: “Reports indicate, before government censorship, that occupants and material from the wrecked ship were shuttled to a CIA high security area—and that there may have been a survivor!” It adds that “. . . Berlitz and Moore uncover astonishing information that indicates alien visitations may actually have happened—only to be hushed up in the interest of ‘national security.’”

The book is replete with distortions. Consider rancher Mac Brazel’s original description of the scattered debris he found on his ranch—strips of rubber, sticks, tinfoil, tough paper, and tape with floral designs (Nickell 2009, 10)—the same as shown in photos (U.S. Air Force 1997, 7) and consistent with a Mogul balloon array with radar reflectors. However, Berlitz and Moore impose a conspiratorial interpretation, saying that in a subsequent interview Brazel “had obviously gone to great pains to tell the newspaper people exactly what the Air Force had in­structed him to say regarding how he had come to discover the wreckage and what it looked like.” In fact, Brazel quite outspokenly insisted, “I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon,” and he was right: the debris was from a Project Mogul array, much of it foiled paper from the radar targets (Berlitz and Moore 1980, 40).

Berlitz’s and Moore’s The Roswell Incident launched the modern wave of UFO crash/retrieval conspiracy beliefs, promoted by additional books (e.g., Friedman and Berliner 1992), television shows, and myriad other venues. Roswell conspiracy theories were off and running, typically linked to strongly anti–U.S. government attitudes. The Roswellian Syndrome would play out again and again.

Flatwoods (1952)

About 7:15 pm on September 12, 1952, at the tiny village of Flatwoods, Brax­ton County, West Virginia, some boys on the school playground saw a fiery UFO apparently land on a hilltop. Running to a nearby home, they ob­tained a flashlight and were joined by a beautician, her two sons, and a dog. As the unlikely group went up the hill toward a pulsating light, one boy aimed a flashlight at a pair of eyes shining through the dark. The group saw a tall “manlike” entity with a round face surrounded by a “pointed hood-like shape.” Suddenly the monster emitted a high-pitched hissing sound and swept at them with “a gliding motion as if afloat in midair,” while exhibiting “terrible claws.” The group ran in panic, and the next day skid marks and a black gunk were found at the site (Nickell 2000).

The incident attracted journalists, writers (like paranormalist Ivan San­der­son), and apparently two Air Force investigators in civilian clothes. Soon, the UFO was identified as a meteor; seen in three states, it had only ap­peared to land when it disappeared behind the hill. The pulsating light was obviously one of three airplane beacons in view at the site. The tall “monster” was believed to have been a large owl on a limb (since then, more evidentially determined to have been a barn owl [Nickell 2000]), and a local man identified the ground traces as caused by his pickup truck and its leaking oil pan. The case soon slipped into obscurity.

Fifteen years elapsed, then Sander­son included the case as Chapter 3 of his Uninvited Visitors (1967). The credulous Sanderson (once fooled by a rubber Sasquatch frozen in ice [Nickell 2011, 87–90]) opined that the Flat­woods incident involved multiple UFOs—citing contradictory accounts of, in each instance, a single object. Instead of suspecting that witnesses were mistaken or that the meteor might have broken apart, he insisted that “to be logical” we should believe that there was “a flight of aerial machines” that were “maneuvering in formation.” For some reason they lost control, but one managed to land at Flatwoods. Its pilot emerged “in a space suit” but, observed, headed back to the craft, which—like two others that “crashed”—soon “vaporized” (Sander­son 1967, 37–52).

Sanderson was followed in 2004 by Frank C. Feschino Jr., who published—with an introduction and epilogue by Stanton T. Friedman—The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed. Feschino interviewed elderly witnesses, who, according to the book’s promotional copy, “wanted to talk about the story for the first time in fifty years.” For example, Kathleen May, the beautician who was with the boys when they encountered the “monster” in 1952, recalled a mysterious “government” letter that had been shown her by local reporter A. Lee Stewart Jr. She claimed it told of experimental craft the “Navy Depart­ment” operated in the area the evening of the incident. Feschino huffs: “The test ship explanation told to Mrs. May in the mysterious letter was not even remotely possible in 1952. The Air Force knew that Mrs. May did not see a meteor in Flat­woods. So they convinced her that it was something explicable, like an experimental ship. But there were no experimental ships in 1952!” (Feschino 2004, 336). Actually, according to reporter Stewart, what he had shown May was only a press release for an issue of Collier’s magazine with an at­tached photo of a moon ship (Feschino 2004, 323–36).

Kecksburg (1965)

About forty miles southeast of Pitts­burgh, in Kecksburg, Pennsyl­vania, on December 9, 1965, a boy playing outdoors saw an object plummet into nearby woods. In fact, a brilliant aerial object had been seen by numerous observers over a large area. The Greens­burg Tribune-Review reported in its county edition of December 10, “Unidentified Flying Object Falls Near Kecksburg” and “Army Ropes Off Area.” However, that newspaper’s city edition headlined its story “Searchers Fail To Find Object” (Gordon 2001, 288). From photographs of the cloud train from the object, Sky & Telescope magazine (February 1966) identified it as a very bright meteor (a type of fireball known as a bolide). The story went underground.

The Kecksburg incident remained ob­scure until September 19, 1990, when it became the season opener for NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries. The show launched the story as one of a crashed UFO, its secret retrieval, and a government conspiracy to hide the truth. Nearly a quarter of a century after the original incident, two local men had begun to claim that before authorities arrived they had entered the wooded area and encountered a large metallic object, shaped like an acorn, partially embedded in the earth. At the back of the object, the witnesses said, using wording that is curiously similar to that of the Roswell incident, were markings like ancient Egyp­tian “hieroglyphics.” And, also like the Roswell case, the UFO was allegedly transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, where it was kept in a sealed building (Gordon 2001, 288–90). Such shared motifs (as folklorists call story elements) suggest the Kecksburg incident was influenced by the Roswell story. One source even claimed bodies were recovered at Kecksburg but subsequently retracted the claim (Young 1997).

The various later claims do not fare well, and more than fifty residents of Kecksburg sent a petition to Unsolved Mysteries attempting to forestall the broadcast. These included the fire chief in 1965, Ed Myers, and a couple, Valerie and Jerome Miller, whose home the TV show wrongly claimed had served as a “military command post” during the UFO recovery. Actually, both the Air Force and the state police reported the day after the incident that nothing had been discovered and that all that had been carried from the site was search equipment (Young 1997).

Rendlesham Forest (1980)

For three days in late December 1980 in East England, a series of UFO close-encounter incidents occurred in Ren­dle­sham Forest, located between two British NATO bases—RAF Bent­waters and RAF Woodbridge—that were at the time being leased by the United States Air Force. The incidents began in the early morning of Decem­ber 26 (although sources disagree, some giving December 25 or December 27) and lasted for three successive days. Security patrolmen witnessed a bright streaking light that appeared to crash into the forest. Investigating, the men soon saw lights they attributed to a UFO—a bright white light plus an apparent vehicle with “a pulsing red light on top” and “blue lights underneath.” As the patrolmen proceeded closer, the object “maneuvered through the trees and disappeared” (Halt 1981). The following day, three seven-inch-diameter depressions were found at the site. That night “burn marks” were seen on trees, and radiation readings were also obtained. On an audiotape made by Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt that same night, one hears an unidentified person call out regarding the bright light, “There it is again . . . there it is,” with a five-second interval (“Rendle­sham” 2011). Later that night “three starlike objects” were seen in the sky; one to the south, Halt (1981) said, “was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time” (Butler et al. 1984; Ridpath 1986; Hesemann 2001).

As we now know, a bolide (a brilliant meteor) streaked over southern England at the time of the first Ren­dle­sham sighting. Subsequently, the Suffolk police investigated the initial sighting and determined that the only light visible from the area was that of the Orford lighthouse (Ridpath 1986). The Orford Ness beacon stood in the very direction airmen were looking and flashed at the same five-second interval reported for the UFO. Later, other claims were convincingly de­bunked: the red and blue lights were from a police car; the “landing” depressions were rabbit diggings; “burn marks” on pines were axe blazings oozing resin; the low radiation readings had been taken with equipment not intended to measure background radiation and were therefore meaningless; and the starlike lights were probably indeed stars, namely Sirius, Vega, and Deneb (“Rendle­sham” 2011; Ridpath 1986). Mean­while, the Rendlesham story remained unpublicized for almost three years.

In October 1983 the story leaked out and made headlines in the British tabloid News of the World: “UFO Lands in Suffolk—and That’s Official.” It was followed by a book, Sky Crash: A Cosmic Conspiracy (1984), written by Brenda Butler, Jenny Randles, and Dot Street and based in part on hypnosis sessions with “Art Wallace”—actually former U.S. Airman Larry Warren who was the News of the World’s informant. Warren’s claim to have been a witness to the Rendlesham incident has been disputed by others, including Halt (“Rendle­sham” 2011). By this time bizarre rumors had surfaced that a com­mander had met three little humanoid extraterrestrials who had emerged from the landed UFO, but the alleged contactee denied it (Butler et al. 1984, 86).

In time, Jenny Randles, who helped hype the Rendlesham incident, came to doubt the extraterrestrial connection, stating, “While some puzzles remain, we can probably say that no unearthly craft were seen in Rendle­sham Forest. We can also argue with confidence that the main focus of the events was a series of misperceptions of everyday things encountered in less than everyday circumstances” (qtd. in “Rendle­sham” 2011).

* * *

No doubt other instances of the Ros­wellian Syndrome could be given (even beyond UFO encounters), but the ones we have presented here are major examples of the type. Of course, each is different in its own way (for example, the Rendlesham Forest case had a much briefer period of submergence than did Roswell). And some famous UFO incidents—the Phoenix Lights of 1997, for instance (Daven­port 2001)—have not followed the same course. (For one apparent reason, it did not involve a specific site on the ground visited by investigators.)

Nevertheless, we believe we have identified a genuine pattern in cases in which, during a period of submergence, the mythologizing tendency has been at work followed by a reemergence—rather like a new, more virulent strain of a virus. It appears that UFOlogists are always looking for a Holy Grail case to verify their belief in extraterrestrial visitation, and when that does not pan out (most UFO reports prove little more than misidentifications, ambiguous sightings, fake photos, and the like) they seek out the old cases and are rewarded with much more sensational testimony. By identifying and analyzing this process, we hope to promote more critical thinking regarding these and other sensationalized cases.

Source www.csicop.org

{ http://www.alien-revelations.com/ }

Fundamental quantum mechanics equation can also describe large-scale objects in the universe

BY TIBI PUIU

Schrodinger’s equation is a fundamental equation of quantum mechanics that describes how particles behave at the subatomic level. Caltech researchers were astonished to learn, however, that the same equation popped up when they modeled the behavior of self-gravitating astrophysical disks. Examples of such disks include the rings of Saturn or the disks of gas and dust that surround young stars. However, there’s nothing ‘quantum’ about these objects — and yet there seems to be a connection.

Illustration of a planetary system surrounded by a debris disk.

Credit: NASA

Schrodinger’s equation is one of the cornerstones of quantum physics. It plays a similar role to Newton’s laws and conservation of energy in classical mechanics, describing how quantum objects (such as atoms and subatomic particles) tend to behave in the future based on their current state. When you get to that level, things start to get a bit bizarre.

One counter-intuitive behavior that Schrodinger’s equation describes is that subatomic particles behave more like a wave than like a particle, a phenomenon which physicists refer to as wave-particle duality. 

Massive astronomical objects often have smaller objects gravitating around them, whether it’s stars going around a black hole or space debris around a star. This debris often arranges itself in a disk, like our solar system, for instance. The problem is that it’s always been challenging to study the behavior of self-gravitating disks because they exhibit distortions, bending and warping like ripples. Capturing the disks’ complexity can be challenging, which is what a team of researchers at Caltech is trying to address.

Konstantin Batygin, a Caltech assistant professor of planetary, and colleagues turned to perturbation theory in order to develop a mathematical representation of disk evolution. This simplified model, which is based on an equation developed by 18th-century mathematicians Joseph-Louis Lagrange and Pierre-Simon Laplace, assumes that the constituents of astronomical disks are mathematically smeared together into thin “wires”. These wires form concentric circles that loop around the disk and exchange orbital angular momentum.

Batygin looked at the extreme cases where the concentric circles get thinner and thinner until they merge into a continuous disk, and what this limit rendered proved quite surprising.

“When we do this with all the material in a disk, we can get more and more meticulous, representing the disk as an ever-larger number of ever-thinner wires,” Batygin said in a statement. “Eventually, you can approximate the number of wires in the disk to be infinite, which allows you to mathematically blur them together into a continuum. When I did this, astonishingly, the Schrodinger Equation emerged in my calculations.”

“This discovery is surprising because the Schrodinger Equation is an unlikely formula to arise when looking at distances on the order of light-years,” says Batygin. “The equations that are relevant to subatomic physics are generally not relevant to massive, astronomical phenomena. Thus, I was fascinated to find a situation in which an equation that is typically used only for very small systems also works in describing very large systems.”

Credit: James Tuttle Keane, California Institute of Technology.

The study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that the shape of the disk is well-represented by the wave function of a quantum particle that bounces around the inner and outer walls of a disk-like cavity. It’s unexpected to learn that such a fundamental equation to quantum mechanics, which scientists are used to dealing with almost exclusively in the domain of the “very small”, can also describe the long-term evolution of astrophysical disks. It’s an intriguing discovery that two seemingly unrelated branches of physics can be described so similarly, mathematically speaking — and such knowledge should prove useful for researchers who model astrophysical objects.

“Fundamentally, the Schrodinger Equation governs the evolution of wave-like disturbances.” says Batygin. “In a sense, the waves that represent the warps and lopsidedness of astrophysical disks are not too different from the waves on a vibrating string, which are themselves not too different from the motion of a quantum particle in a box. In retrospect, it seems like an obvious connection, but it’s exciting to begin to uncover the mathematical backbone behind this reciprocity.”

{https://www.zmescience.com/ }

UFO filmed in Texas January 2018

The triangular-shaped strange lights, similar to tr-3b, were filmed near a ranch in Catarina, Texas, around 8:45 p.m. The day 1-24-18. This catarina texas triangular UFO has not yet been explained. The information about this sighting is filtered in the deep web and everything suggests that it is a kind of secret military prototype similar to the tr-3b of the 90s but others say no, that it is an alien artifact

{ https://www.disclose.tv/  }

Amazing UFO sighting filmed over Vero Beach, Florida 27-Jan-2015 + UPDATE

Here’s this interesting UFO video that was recorded from Vero Beach, a city in Indian River County, Florida. This was filmed on Tuesday, 27th January 2015.

Check out this amazing piece of footage here:

And here are some interesting comments from Youtube:

What do you think about this sighting? Please leave your comments below!

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

5th February 2015 UPDATE:

A lot of people are contacting me and reporting more sighting from this area. It looks like Vero Beach recently became a very popular UFO hotspot!

Here’s one report from Mark, he had a sighting on 31st January, four days after the video above was recorded:

A constant bright orange dot in the southwest that would occasionally drift sideways to the west.
At first, I thought it was a night launch – they’re kinda common around here – but launches typically are seen to the north. This was to the southwest.
The color and brightness was reminiscent of a launch, but it was more constant, no flicker to it..
It seemed to stay at the same altitude, but moved sideways a couple of times, slowly, to the west..
I watched it for about a minute or two, and it faded out.

When I got home, I posted on Facebook ‘Did anyone else see that’? but got no responses.
The thought crossed my mind that it could be a Chinese lantern drifting in the wind, but it seemed too high and too bright.
I wouldn’t have reported this, had I not just now seen the January 25th report of similar sightings in the same town.
Thanks.

– – – – – – – – – – –

Another interesting photo was taken in the same place on Tuesday, 3rd February 2015:

Vero Beach UFO

Vero Beach UFO // Click on the photo to enlarge

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

NASA doubted the discovery of traces of bacteria on Mars

Mysterious microscopic structures similar to bacteria found recently by the Curiosity rover appeared as a result of the drying out of lakes or the movement of water currents, rather than were left by extraterrestrial organisms.

“When we looked at these structures and got more detailed photos of them, we realized that they really look like wands, but they do not have a round but angular shape. In other words, they are more like crystals than traces of microbial activity “Said Ashwin Vasavada, head of Mission Curiosity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, USA.

In mid-December this year Curiosity rover stopped for a few days at one of the points on the surface of the Vera Rubin ridge, located on the slopes of Mount Sharp. It is composed of hematite, a mineral, presumably created as a result of chemical processes in the waters of hot springs and volcanic lakes of Mars.

During this parking, the MAHLI camera, installed in the rover’s arm, received several photographs of nearby stones and the surface of Mars, which attracted the attention of the British planetologist Barry DiGregorio, a proponent of the theory that there had once been life on the surface of the red planet .

The British researcher found on one of these photographs dark undulating structures, similar in shape to the worms or the fossilized traces of colonies of microbes, which geologists often find in the oldest rocks of the Earth. In his opinion, such “fossils” could hardly have appeared on Mars abiogenic way.

This discovery, as Vasavad noted at the time, caused the scientific team of the mission to stop and deploy the rover to re-study these unusual structures. After that, the fourth rover continued its journey to the top of Mount Sharp, and discovered several other interesting geological formations in January and February that clarified the nature of its December find.

Not far from the habitat of these “bacteria”, according to the representative of NASA, the rover managed to find dark tubercles, similar to the deposits of gypsum, appearing on the bottom of the lakes on Earth at the moment when they completely dry up. In the neighborhood with these hillocks, as geologists suggested, crystals could also be formed from other salts and compounds.
Later, some of these crystals could “overgrow” sediments of other sedimentary rocks that did not have a crystalline structure, resulting in those deposits similar to bacteria that were found on the Vera Rubin ridge. The crystals themselves could later be washed with water, which is why the nature of these bizarre “sticks” caused so much controversy among scientists.

It is not yet clear when and how these crystals were formed. As the scientists note, they could have been born as at the bottom of a drying lake in those epochs when the Martian water reserves began to come to an end, and in the relatively “wet” period of its life in the deep layers of sediments on the lake bottom, where the water got worse all the time “overgrowth” of the bottom of the reservoir.

The scientific team Curiosity hopes that this mystery will be solved in the coming months and years, if the rover will find similar structures in other regions of the crater Gail.

{ http://www.planet-today.com/ }

'Truth' about the swirling 'alien UFO fleet' caught on TV which left presenters speechless

A BIZARRE swarm of swirling "UFOs" filmed on live TV left presenters and viewers baffled. The sight was inadvertently filmed by TV cameras in the background for US TV station Fox 6 News as a news bulletin was broadcast showing the night time skyline in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Dark U-Shape UFO Over Coimbra, Portugal On March 5, 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 5, 2018

Location of sighting: Coimbra, Portugal 

Source: MUFON #90598

This U-shaped UFO is beyond rare! Often disks or spheres are seen, but this rare UFO popped up over Portugal this week. Lucky for us, a person was recording the sky and accidentally caught the UFO as it was slowly passing by. 
Scott C. Waring

 

Eyewitness states: 

During the video recording for time lapse I noticed that something crossed the sky coming from south to north-it has a U shape. I cut part of the video for submission.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Sphere UFO Found On Google Earth Map, March 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: March 7, 2018

Location of sighting: East Lake George, New York, USA
Source: MUFON #90613 

Here is a UFO orb found on Google Earth today. The eyewitness found it at Lake George, New York. Many past UFO reports describe round sphere UFOs and it does seem to be the most common shape of UFOs around the world. 

Also know, all of the UFOs that I have reported on this site found on Google Earth have been deleted, so count on this one being up for only a few months before Google finds it. 
Scott C. Waring

 

Eyewitness states: 

I found pictures of this UFO on Google Earth street view. East side of Lake George by the radio tower near Shelvin rock

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Strange Orange Glow spotted in the skies over Clearfield, Utah and Middlesbrough, UK

More and more people around the world are witnessing a strange glow in the night skies. The glow varies from orange to purple and nobody knows where it comes from.

Here are two witness reports including videos showing the strange orange glow in the night sky.

On March 3, 2018 at about 12.55 am coming home from work Nicodimus Visser saw a very strange glow in the sky. He said “I never saw a sky looking that in Clearfield or anywhere in my life.”

Nicodimus quickly made a video of the strange phenomenon and went to look for the source of the glow but found nothing what could explain the glow.

Then he thought maybe there was a huge fire, but there was no fire otherwise it would be in the news and he could have smelled it.

Several days later on March 6, 2018 the same orange glow has been spotted over Middlesbrough, England.

According to Craig Alderton who has filmed the sky phenomenon there was no fire and the glow was absolutely not coming from the street lights, moreover the glow keeps pulsating in the sky.

  

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

Physicist Michio Kaku: We May Soon Meet Aliens, But To Them, Were Not More Than ‘Forest Animals’

The American theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku, famous for the revolutionary string theory has said that before 2100 we will find alien life exists, despite the fact that to aliens, humans are nothing more than forest animals.

Still, Kaku explained, “For the most part, the aliens are not going to be interested in us because we’re so arrogant to believe that we have something to offer them.”

Whether or not we are alone in the universe is one of the most discussed topics on Earth. Is there extraterrestrial life, or are we alone in the vast universe?

For American physicist Michio Kaku there is no doubt that there is alien life, and he even believes that we will soon establish contact with beings from another world.

The professor of theoretical physics at The City College in New York has said during a question session on Reddit that before the year 2010 we will get in touch with an alien civilization.

We will find out about alien life, according to Kaku, by listening to radio communications.

View image on Twitter

Dr. Michio Kaku

✔@michiokaku

Questions about hyperspace, the physics of the impossible, or THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY? Ask Me Anything on @reddit_AMA at http://iama.reddit.com , today @ 4:30 pm ET. #reddit #AskMichioKakuAnything

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Although communicating with them will be more complicated, “since they could be dozens of light-years away,” says Kaku.

Even so, these communications will allow us, in Kaku’s words, to decipher their language and understand their level of technology.

“Let me stick my neck out. I personally feel that within this century, we will make contact with an alien civilization, by listening in on their radio communications. But talking to them will be difficult since they could be tens of light years away. So, in the meantime, we must decipher their language to understand their level of technology. Are they Type I, II, or III??? [These represent three categories in the Kardashev scale, measuring technological achievement in civilizations based on their level of energy use for communication.] And what are their intentions. Are they expansive and aggressive, or peaceful.”

Kaku added, “Another possibility is that they land on the White House lawn and announce their existence. But I think that is unlikely since we would be like forest animals to them, i.e. not worth communicating with.”

Despite Kaku’s opinion, different researchers and futurists have spoken out about when they think we’ll finally meet E.T.

Shutterstock

Some experts claim we’ll find out about alien life in the next 1,500 years, while others like Seth Shostak said that we could encounter intelligent alien life as soon as 2,040; “By 2040 or so, astronomers will have scanned enough star systems to give themselves a great shot of discovering alien-produced electromagnetic signals.”

“Instead of looking at a few thousand-star systems, which is the tally so far, we will have looked at maybe million-star systems” 24 years from now, Shostak said. “A million might be the right number to find something.”

Meanwhile, famous British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warns that humans should not respond to presumed signals coming from space since aliens could represent a danger to humanity.

When asked how much more advanced an alien civilization might be morally and philosophically, Kaku responded on Reddit by saying:

“I get asked if the aliens are evil and want to destroy us. Maybe, but I think in the main they will be peaceful because they have had thousands of years to resolve sectarian, fundamentalist, nationalist questions. However, they still might be dangerous if they simply don’t care about us and we get in the way. In War of the Worlds, the aliens did not hate us. We were simply in the way. In the same way that a developer is a threat to forest animals because he can pave the first, the danger there is from someone who sees that we are just in the way. But for the most part, I think they will be peaceful, but view us like we view forest animals.”

Source: I am Michio Kaku, physicist, futurist and author of **The Future of Humanity**. AMA!

Featured image credit: Shutterstock

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

UFO Spotted On Google Earth: Did Aliens Crash In Antarctica?

Alien hunters believe that a mysterious object spotted in Antarctica through Google Earth is a crashed UFO. Is this finally the proof that we need to confirm that aliens exist? 

( SecureTeam1 | YouTube )

A mysterious object spotted on Google Earth is apparently a UFO that crash landed in Antarctica, according to a YouTube channel of alien hunters.

Is this finally the proof that we need to confirm that aliens exist? Or is it nothing more than conspiracy theories trying to make something out of nothing?

UFO Crash Or Natural Phenomenon?

On first look, the mysterious object spotted in Antarctica certainly looks unnatural, with an estimated length of about 63 meters. With its narrow shape and a nearly perfect symmetrical trail of snow that is over 3,000 feet long behind it, it is easy to see why alien hunters would think that this is an alien spacecraft that crashed into the South Georgia Island, located in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.

"It appears to be some sort of massive elongated or cigar-shaped object that at some point — and we don't know when — came to a screeching halt in the snow," said the hosts of a YouTube video uploaded by the SecureTeam10 channel.

Is the object really an alien spaceship, and is this proof of alien life once again being covered up?

Not everybody is convinced. Typing in the coordinates on the Google Earth website to take a look at a zoomed-out image of the object, it appears that the trail left behind by the supposed UFO leads back to a mountain, at the foot of which lies a significant amount of disturbed snow.

Richard Waller, a geologist from Keele University, believes that the object is the result of a large avalanche that occurred at the nearby mountain, echoing the explanations left behind by several users on SecureTeam10's video.

"Part of a hanging glacier appears to have collapsed, you can see the avalanche debris at the foot of the slope, and this could be a large block of ice that has travelled further as a consequence," Waller noted.

The First Alien Sighting Of 2018

The mysterious object in Antarctica is not the first widely reported UFO sighting this year. That distinction goes to a UFO in Mexico that was spotted in mid-January, when a woman recorded footage of a strangely-shaped object hovering vertically in the air.

However, unlike the supposed Antarctica UFO that may be explained by various scientific possibilities, the nature of the vertical UFO remains unknown. UFO expert Pedro Ramirez, meanwhile, attributed the recent increase in alien sightings to the rocket launches of NASA and SpaceX. Aliens are monitoring Earth because they have become concerned over our activity, Ramirez claimed.

{ http://www.techtimes.com/ }

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a cloud in space where new stars are forming – called 30 Doradus – aka the Tarantula Nebula. The enlarged inset shows a star that appears to have been kicked out of the nebula. In the inset, an arrow points to the stellar runaway and a dashed arrow to its presumed direction of motion. Read more about this image from NASA.

The sun and all of the Milky Way’s stars are moving in orbit around the center of our galaxy. It’s more or less orderly, but there are local movements within this general stream of stars, too. In recent decades, astronomers have identified some Milky Way stars that are moving faster than expected, or in a direction that seems unusual. They use the term runaway star to describe these renegades.

Stars are born in clouds of gas and dust. Multiple stars are born from a single cloud, and so many Milky Way stars move through space in loose associations, or more tightly bound open star clusters. By tracking the motions of a runaway star, astronomers can sometimes see which stellar association it once belonged to, before something happened to kick the star into fast motion, on a path through space different from its original cluster or association.

Astronomers point to two possible mechanisms for runaway stars:

The first involves two binary star systems – two systems, each containing two stars – that pass close to each other. The encounter can disrupt both systems, so that one or more stars are ejected at relatively high speeds.

The second involves a supernova explosion in a multiple star system. These powerful explosions can propel associated stars that didn’t explode along new paths, at much-higher speeds.

One runaway star is GD 50, a white dwarf star with a bit more mass than our sun, but smaller than the Earth. A dime as dense as GD 50 would weigh 2,600 pounds (~1,200 kilos). GD 50 is located in our sky in the direction of the constellation Eridanus the River. But, around 2009, astronomers who’d been studying this star found that it moves through space in the same direction and at the same speed as the Pleiades star cluster, which is located not far from Eridanus on the sky’s dome. GD 50 is also about the same age as stars in the Pleiades. These astronomers concluded that GD 50 was born in the Pleiades, then flung out, possibly after passing too close to another star.

Another example of runaway stars is the case of AE Aurigae, 53 Arietis and Mu Columbae. They’re all moving away from each other at velocities of over 100 km/s (for comparison, our sun moves through the Milky Way at only about 20 km/s faster than the local average). Tracing their motions backwards on the sky’s dome, astronomers can see that – about 2 million years ago – the paths of these stars intersected near the Orion Nebula. There is a great loop or bubble of gas – called Barnard’s Loop – surrounding Orion’s three prominent Belt stars. Barnard’s Loop may be the remnant of the supernova that launched these stars as runaway stars.

Explore runaway stars on Wikipedia

Four runaway stars plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas and creating bright bow waves and trailing tails of glowing gas. The stars in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope images are among 14 young runaway stars spotted by the Advanced Camera for Surveys between October 2005 and July 2006.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Bottom line: Runaway stars move apart from the general stream of stars in our Milky Way. They might have been kicked from their original star clusters by encounters between two pairs of binary stars, or by a supernova explosion.

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION, THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLDER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

New Dates for Egypt’s Pharaohs

Just when did Egyptian pharaohs such as King Tut and Rameses II rule? Historians have heatedly debated the exact dates. Now a radiocarbon study concludes that much of the assumed chronology was right, though it corrects some controversial dates and may overturn a few pet theories.

“This is an extremely important piece of research that shows clearly that historical dating methods and radiocarbon dates are compatible for ancient Egypt,” says Kate Spence, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Egyptian records, such as the writings of the 3rd century B.C.E. historian Manetho and inscriptions found at key sites such as Saqqara and Karnak, provide what are called “floating chronologies” because they are internally consistent but not anchored to absolute dates. On the other hand, they sometimes refer to astronomical events whose dates can be calculated today. Thus, scholars are confident that they are not wildly off the mark. But it’s difficult to be precise. For example, the first known pyramid, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was built as a tomb for King Djoser, and historians usually put the beginning of his reign between 2667 and 2592 B.C.E. But one recent paper by Spence, based on astronomical calculations, put it as much as 75 years later. Radiocarbon dating has been too imprecise to resolve these contradictions because in this period it usually has error ranges of between 100 and 200 years.

A team led by Christopher Bronk Ramsey of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom adopted a two-pronged strategy to get around radiocarbon’s limitations. First, researchers searched museum collections around the world for plant remains directly associated with the reigns of particular kings or periods, often using offerings from pyramids where the kings were buried. The 211 plant samples were radiocarbon dated.

Second, the team used a mathematical modeling approach called Bayesian statistics to compare the patterns in the radiocarbon and historical dates and come up with the most likely correlation between them. The researchers constructed a separate model for each of the three main Egyptian periods: Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom. This allowed them to increase the precision of radiocarbon dating of each period to 76, 53, and 24 years, respectively.

As the researchers will report in tomorrow’s issue of Science, they found that the Old Kingdom, which kicked off with Djoser’s reign, began between 2691 and 2625 B.C.E. The New Kingdom, which starts with the reign of Ahmose, began between about 1570 and 1544 B.C.E. New Kingdom pharoah Rameses II, considered the greatest of the Egyptian kings by historians, clocks in between 1297 and 1273 B.C.E., and King Tut between 1353 to 1331 B.C.E. The dating ranges are earlier than some historians had previously proposed. For example, in a 2000 Nature paper, Spence argued, based on the astronomical alignments of Egyptian pyramids, that Djoser’s reign was somewhat later. “I am more than happy to accept” the new results, Spence says, adding that the Old Kingdom dating is “particularly important” because “this is the first time there has been anything firm to which to pin our historical relative chronologies.”

Yet the new study does not resolve all of the outstanding issues. In a Perspectiveaccompanying the paper, archaeologist Hendrik Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel points out that one major controversy remains unresolved: the timing of the massive eruption of the volcanic island of Thera in the Aegean Sea, which transformed the history of the eastern Mediterranean and has important implications for understanding the relationship between Egypt and the Minoans, another powerful culture of the time. Previous radiocarbon dating suggests that the eruption took place at least 100 years before the New Kingdom began, which the new dating puts at no earlier than 1570 B.C.E. But radiocarbon and historical dating by University of Vienna archaeologist Manfred Bietak’s team at Tell el-Dab’a in Egypt has concluded that the Thera eruption took place during the New Kingdom era.

Bietak says that although the new study is a “serious and innovative approach,” the team’s need to use Bayesian statistics to narrow its radiocarbon date ranges “expose[s] the weakness of radiocarbon chronology.” But Sturt Manning, an archaeologist at Cornell University, says that the field must now accept that “there is something wrong” with the stratigraphy and dating of the site of Tell el-Dab’a rather than the chronology as a whole.

Source www.sciencemag.org

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

Scorching Saturn-Size World Has 3 Times the Water of Ringed Planet

Grote hoeveelheid water op ‘hete Saturnus’ verrast astronomen en maakt vorming planeten verwarrender - HLN.be 

Bron: Spacetelescope.org

De astronomen baseren zich op gegevens afkomstig van de Hubble- en Spitzer-ruimtetelescoop, die het optisch spectrum van de exoplaneet WASP-39b in kaart brachten via metingen met spectrografen. Daaruit blijkt dat de atmosfeer van de gasreus opvallend veel water herbergt, namelijk drie keer zoveel als Saturnus.

Lees ook

NASA ontdekt miniversie van ons zonnestelsel dankzij artificiële intelligentie

Deze vondst is opmerkelijk, omdat WASP-39b erg dicht rond zijn ster cirkelt. De afstand tussen de ster en de exoplaneet is slechts een achtste deel van de afstand tussen onze zon en Mercurius, terwijl de planeet in slechts vier dagen zijn baan om de ster voltooit. De planeet kent een zogenaamde gebonden rotatie. Altijd is dezelfde zijde van de planeet naar de ster gericht, waardoor de temperatuur kan oplopen tot ongeveer 750 graden Celsius.

Door de korte afstand staat de planeet te boek als een ‘hete Saturnus’, waardoor niet werd verwacht dat relatief grote hoeveelheden water in de atmosfeer zouden worden gedetecteerd. De onderzoekers hadden wel verwacht waterdamp te vinden, maar niet in zulke hoeveelheden. Op basis daarvan menen ze dat de atmosfeer een grote hoeveelheid zwaardere elementen moet bevatten.

Dat betekent dat de planeet vermoedelijk ooit is gebombardeerd door ijsachtig materiaal, dat is opgehoopt in de atmosfeer. Dit is volgens de onderzoekers alleen mogelijk geweest als WASP-39b is ontstaan op een veel grotere afstand van zijn ster, wat dan weer impliceert dat de zou zijn ‘gemigreerd’ door het bewuste planetenstelsel. Voor de astronomen betekent dit dat de vorming van planeten veel complexer en verwarrender is dan tot nu toe werd aangenomen.

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MYSTERIEUS OBJECT BOVEN EINDHOVEN, NEDERLAND

Mensen die naar de lucht kijken, zien soms dingen waar hun mond van openvalt en die dikwijls moeilijk zijn te geloven door anderen. 

Zo ook in Eindhoven, waar een dame recentelijk op een vroege zondagochtend vanuit haar woning op de zesde verdieping naar buiten keek. 

Vaak hebben mensen die een bijzondere waarneming doen te maken met allerlei minder prettige zaken. Ze hebben regelmatig het gevoel dat ze zich moeten verdedigen, zoals onder andere de volgende lezer schrijft (dank!): 

Met veel interesse heb ik het artikel van Josie Zwinenberg over haar ontmoeting met een Ufo gelezen en begrijp volkomen haar steeds weer te moeten uitleggen en vooral te verdedigen ervaring. 

Die heb ik namelijk enige jaren geleden ook gehad en vooral haar verklaring over de felle lichten komt mij héél bekend voor.

Ook ik heb er met diverse mensen over gesproken en toch hun scepsis ervaren, terwijl ik 100% zéker weet wat ik gezien heb!! 

Bovenstaande is een steeds weerkerend thema van mensen die een buitengewone ervaring hebben gehad en vervolgens het gevoel krijgen alsof ze een beetje alleen op de wereld zijn omdat het toch voor velen een niet te begrijpen fenomeen is. 

En als ze iets niets begrijpen, dan is de beste tactiek meestal om maar net te doen alsof het niet bestaat, met als gevolg dat er veel onbegrepen mensen rondlopen. 

Iets dergelijks is ook een beetje het geval met een dame die op de zesde etage van een flat in Eindhoven woont en het volgende schrijft: 

Ik had de gordijnen open en was al wakker, het was zondagmorgen 25 februari 2018. De tijd was 6.40 uur en de horizon begon op te lichten maar het was nog donker boven de horizon en zeker boven de hoge bomen waar ik over uitkijk. 

Opeens kwam er vanaf het Zuiden of misschien eerder van het Zuid-Westen een groot triangle-, boomerang-, V-shaped object overvliegen, in een boog, over de hoge bomen naar het Oosten toe. 

Het was erg groot, maar het ging als een speer, ik denk dat alles niet langer heeft geduurd dan 2 seconden. Maar het was heel duidelijk zichtbaar en ik denk dat het ook best wel hoog zat, maar het kwam toch in een grote boog en vervolgens verdween het in rechte baan naar het Oosten. 

Het maakte geen geluid, het was geen vliegtuig of een donkere Stealth. Het had geen ronde lichten, rode knipperende lichten of wat dan ook waarvan je zou kunnen denken dat het een vliegtuig had kunnen zijn . 

De V-shape was daarentegen helemaal blauw verlicht. Net zoals een lichtreclame, van dat hele lichtblauwe licht. Daaromheen zat duidelijk een witte verlichtte omlijning. Het zag er ook vrij plat uit. Maar dat kan gezichtsbedrog zijn. Het ging zo vreselijk snel en ik ben er erg van geschrokken omdat ik nog nooit zoiets dergelijks heb gezien. 

Ik ben er ook nooit mee bezig geweest. Na het incident ben ik gaan zoeken op internet of er dergelijke sightings geweest zijn. Er zijn foto's van V-shaped objecten maar die zijn meestal zwart of hebben ronde lichten. Dit helemaal niet! Het was een rare gewaarwording. 

Ik heb het direct dezelfde dag gemeld op UFO meldpunt Nederland, moest een schets online maken en heb dat ook gedaan. Ik heb niets terug gehoord. 

Tot op heden heb ik geen idee wat dit geweest zou kunnen zijn. Ik weet wel wat ik gezien heb. Dat kun je vertellen, maar wie gelooft het. Dankjewel dat ik mijn waarneming heb kunnen overbrengen. De schets is simpel en de kleur blauw is niet helemaal zoals ie was, maar misschien helpt het bij de uitleg.

Er zijn eerdere waarnemingen geweest van deze hele bijzondere vorm en een heel mooi voorbeeld daarvan is een waarneming uit 2015. 

Een dame zit aan boord van een vliegtuig en vertelt het volgende verhaal: 

Op woensdag 4 juni 2015 rond 16.45 zat ik aan boord van Avianca vlucht O66302, onderweg van Sao Paulo in Brazilië naar Recife. 

Het vliegtuig was net opgestegen en ik zat aan de rechterkant van het toestel, op stoel 24K. Ik keek uit het raam en zag een zwart object, klein en het had de vorm van een boemerang. Het had geen uitsteeksels, geen lichten, geen zichtbare aandrijving zoals een turbine of propellers en het vloog op dezelfde hoogte als het vliegtuig.

Aan de hand van haar gedetailleerde beschrijving is de volgende afbeelding gemaakt die laat zien wat zij die dag zag vanuit het vliegtuigraam.

Door de jaren heen zijn er talloze meldingen geweest van mensen die een object hebben waargenomen in de vorm van een V of een boemerang. 

Aangezien de waarneming in Eindhoven op een zondagmorgen vroeg was, zullen er waarschijnlijk niet veel mensen zijn geweest die dit hebben gezien. Mochten die er toch zijn, laat het ons weten.

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