Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Op de foto is het zuidelijke sterrenbeeld Centaur te zien. Er zijn meer dan 200.000 sterren te spotten.
We zien hier o.a. de rand van de Kolenzaknevel (rechtsboven) en de heldere ster Beta Centauri (linksonder). Uiteindelijk zal TESS een gebied in de gaten houden dat meer dan 400 keer groter is dan het gebied op deze foto. Het kiekje is gemaakt door één van de vier TESS-camera’s. De camera gebruikte een belichtingstijd van twee seconden.
Scheervlucht langs de maan NASA’s volgende planetenjager TESS vloog voor het weekend op een afstand van 8.000 kilometer van de maan. Op 30 mei voert het ruimtevaartuig een laatste koerscorrectie uit. Dan zal TESS zich nestelen in een hoge elliptische baan om de aarde. Iedere 13,7 dagen legt de satelliet een rondje om onze planeet af.
De tweede foto In juni maakt TESS een tweede foto, die een nog betere kwaliteit heeft. Als de kalibraties eenmaal voltooid zijn, gaat de Amerikaanse sonde beginnen met het echte werk. Naar verwachting is dit op z’n vroegst midden juni.
Wat gaat TESS doen? Het is de bedoeling dat TESS de komende twee jaar zeker 500.000 nabije sterren gaat bestuderen. NASA hoopt zeker 3000 kandidaat-planeten te vinden, waaronder ongeveer 500 planeten die net zo groot zijn als de aarde en superaardes (straal kleiner dan twee keer de straal van de aarde).
Voor het eerst een interstellaire planetoïde ontdekt die zich in ons zonnestelsel thuis voelt
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De planetoïde is er al 4,5 miljard jaar en is niet meer van plan om weg te gaan.
Vorig jaar ontdekten onderzoekers de allereerste interstellaire planetoïde: ‘Oumuamua. En nu is opnieuw een interstellaire migrant ontdekt: planetoïde (514107) 2015 BZ509. In tegenstelling tot ‘Oumuamua – die op doortocht is en zich uit ons zonnestelsel haast – heeft 2015 BZ509 zich echter in ons zonnestelsel gevestigd. Dat schrijven onderzoekers in het blad Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. Ze baseren zich onder meer op simulaties.
Retrograde omloopbaan De planetoïde (514107) 2015 BZ509 is een vreemde eend in de bijt. Observaties wijzen uit dat de ruimtesteen er een retrograde omloopbaan op na houdt. Dat betekent dat deze – ten opzichte van alle planeten en de meeste andere objecten in ons zonnestelsel – in tegenovergestelde richting rond de zon cirkelt. En dat is vreemd. “Hoe de planetoïde op deze manier kan bewegen terwijl deze de baan van Jupiter deelt, was tot voor kort een mysterie,” zo stelt onderzoeker Fathi Namouni. “Als 2015 BZ509 in ons zonnestelsel geboren zou zijn, zou deze in dezelfde richting moeten bewegen als alle andere planeten en planetoïden.” Al die planeten en planetoïden zijn namelijk voortgekomen uit een gas- en stofschijf die miljarden jaren geleden rond de jonge zon cirkelde en dus de draairichting van de objecten die deze genereerde, bepaalde.
Simulaties In een poging de retrograde baan van (514107) 2015 BZ509 te verklaren, voerden de onderzoekers simulaties uit. Ze simuleerden de locatie die de planetoïde door de tijd heen, had. Daarbij gingen ze terug tot zo’n 4,5 miljard jaar geleden: de periode waarin de planeten die ons zonnestelsel rijk is, net ‘af’ waren. En de simulaties tonen aan dat (514107) 2015 BZ509 in die tijd al in tegenovergestelde richting rond de zon cirkelde. Het kan maar één ding betekenen: de planetoïde is niet voortgekomen uit de gas en stofschijf rond de zon.
Hier zie je de stellaire kraamkamer NGC 604. In een vergelijkbare omgeving werd onze zon geboren. Sterren zitten er dicht op elkaar gepakt, waardoor ze onder meer planetoïden kunnen uitwisselen.
Afbeelding: NASA / Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI).
Gestolen De onderzoekers vermoeden dat (514107) 2015 BZ509 eigenlijk in een ander systeem thuishoorde, maar door onze zon is ‘gestolen’. “Immigratie van planetoïden uit andere stersystemen vond plaats doordat de zon geboren werd in een dichtbevolkt stercluster, waar elke ster zijn eigen uit planeten en planetoïden bestaand systeem had,” aldus onderzoeker Helena Morais. “Het feit dat de sterren dicht bij elkaar stonden, zorgde er – geholpen door de zwaartekracht van de planeten – voor dat deze systemen elkaar aantrokken en planetoïden van elkaar afnamen en invingen.”
En nu hebben we dus voor het eerst zo’n van een andere stersysteem gestolen planetoïde ontdekt. Het is een waardevolle ontdekking, want (514107) 2015 BZ509 is getuige geweest van de kinderjaren van ons zonnestelsel en kan meer inzicht geven in de omstandigheden waaronder ons zonnestelsel is ontstaan. Bovendien sluiten de onderzoekers niet uit dat immigranten zoals (514107) 2015 BZ509 een cruciale rol hebben gespeeld in de evolutie van het zonnestelsel en uiteindelijk zelfs een bijdrage hebben geleverd aan het ontstaan van leven. “Aangezien elk stersysteem een onderscheidende chemische samenstelling heeft, kunnen immigrerende planetoïden zoals (514107) 2015 BZ509 ons zonnestelsel verrijkt hebben met elementen die hier van nature niet voorkwamen,” aldus Morais. “Op die manier kunnen ze hebben bijgedragen aan het ontstaan van leven op aarde.”
Dark Futures: Does Humanity Really Need a Backup Earth?
By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor
If things went south on Earth, could Mars or an exoplanet be Earth 2.0?
Credit: T. Pyle/NASA/JPL-Caltech
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a vision: He wants to get humans to Mars as soon as possible. He already wowed the world this year, when the Falcon Heavy launched and flung a Tesla car toward the asteroid belt. And this heavy-lift rocket will be dwarfed by the boosters Musk plans for Mars exploration, which he says will carry colonists in fleets of ships to the Red Planet.
While getting to Mars is an end in itself, there's another compelling reason to go. Science fiction is full of dystopian futures for Earth if humanity remains limited to this planet. There are the asteroid strikes of the "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" films, the robot wars of the "Battlestar Galactica" TV series and "Terminator" film franchise, the medical problems and overpopulation in the "Children of Men" and "Elysium" movies, and many other disasters natural and artificial. Dark futures and colonizing other planets will be covered in "AMC Visionaries: James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction," which runs its fourth episode tonight (May 21).
Science fiction inspired the first rocket pioneers to explore beyond Earth. Robert Goddard, who pushed forward liquid rocketry in the early 1900s, was clearly a fan of the genre, because he wrote some science fiction himself, according to io9. The Apollo moon rockets of the 1960s and 1970s were designed by Wernher von Braun, who enjoyed science fiction as a child and partnered with Disney in the 1950s to create educational films about spaceflight. [Gallery: Visions of Interstellar Starship Travel]
And a quick glance around the solar system shows us one real-life reason scientists — and indeed, all of us — should take a page from science fiction and be concerned about Earth's future. The moon, Mars and many of the "airless" moons around the neighborhood are littered with craters. These came from space rocks and other small worlds that slammed into the moon's and planet's surfaces over billions of years.
Lest you imagine that Earth is immune because of its thick atmosphere, think of the dinosaurs, felled about 66 million years ago when a large asteroid or comet around 10 to 15 kilometers (6.2 to 9.3 miles) in diameter slammed into the Earth. We also just passed the five-year anniversary of Chelyabinsk, when a 17-meter (56 feet) small body exploded over a town in Russia, causing many injuries and property damage from shattered glass.
NASA does have an active asteroid-search program and some plans for dealing with asteroids menacing Earth, but even preparing for those intruders isn't enough; there's another, bigger inevitable threat to our planet. In about 4 billion years or 5 billion years, the sun will swell into a red giant after it consumes all of its hydrogen and begins fusing helium. As the star expands, it will swallow up Mercury and Venus and get close to Earth. Our planet will be roasted to a crisp, thrown out of its orbit or swallowed altogether. In any of these scenarios, that's bad news for humans and life on Earth in general.
Legendary director James Cameron talks the dark futures of science fiction with director Christopher Nolan in the fourth episode of AMC Visionaries: James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction, which airs May 21, 2019.
Credit: AMC
Get your a— to Mars
One popular destination for escaping Earth in science fiction is Mars. At first, this was because people thought other beings like us may live there. In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli reported observing channels on Mars, but stopped short of saying whether they were natural or artificial. U.S. science popularizer Percival Lowell, however, went much further in the early 1900s, coming up with explanations as to why the channels were there. Perhaps the Martians were trying to drain water to support a dying planet, Lowell said. (The channels, or canals, were later explained as telescope artifacts when robotic missions to Mars showed the formations don't exist.)
This turn-of-the-century musing greatly influenced science fiction of the era. There was the famous "War of the Worlds" novel by H.G. Wells in 1898, which portrayed a Martian invasion of Earth. (It was recapped in a 1938 national radio broadcast, as well as a 2005 film starring Tom Cruise.) Also, Edgar Rice Burroughs published "A Princess of Mars" in 1912, kicking off a series about Mars (which he called Barsoom) full of living beings. (The widely panned 2012 movie "John Carter" was based on some of these stories.) [Film Review: 'War of the Worlds' Update Hits Home]
Robert Zubrin, founder of the human exploration advocacy group The Mars Society, told Space.com that Mars will someday be an inhabited planet as science fiction writers envisioned. As only two examples of many showing that future, there's the 2015 Matt Damon movie "The Martian" or the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Total Recall," which included the famous line, "Get your a— to Mars."
But why does science fiction make exploration look so much easier than we find in real life? Zubrin said, in part, it's because of our mindset.
"Here we are, 500 years or so after [Nicolaus] Copernicus [who said Earth orbits the sun], and most people still talk about the Earth as the world, and there's a thing above us called the sky. Most people still have this geocentric viewpoint," Zubrin told Space.com, pointing out that Earth is in space and we rarely think about that fact in our everyday lives.
Zubrin said our approach of going to Mars via low Earth orbit and the moon is incremental. This approach to space exploration, he said, is similar to telling Lewis and Clark to just go 100 miles (160 kilometers) out beyond the Mississippi River and to wait for the next group of explorers to move farther west.
"If someone asks you why space is so important, it's comparative to somebody in a small village somewhere saying, 'Why is the rest of the world important?' which is sort of an absurd question," Zubrin said. So, he advocates going elsewhere in search of resources, knowledge or a safe haven that we couldn't find on Earth. Interstellar travel would be the ultimate dream, Zubrin said, but in the meantime, we should focus on what we have at hand: Mars, which is close enough to visit using today's technology.
"The most important step is deciding that you want to do it. This is really the dramatic step that Elon Musk is taking," Zubrin said. "There are people at NASA who want to do it, but as an institution, it has been dragging its feet and providing every excuse to the political class not to embrace the challenge."
Moving to Mars — or beyond?
Zubrin's plan (which he outlined in a 1991 paper called "Mars Direct," and which he has expanded on greatly since then) advocates for a direct flight to Mars, with minimal or no on-orbit assembly of the spacecraft. Using current propulsion systems, a spacecraft could get to the Red Planet in six months — the standard rotation astronauts spend on the International Space Station, Zubrin pointed out.
The first missions would bring most of the supplies those travelers would need to live, such as food and water. But the early trips could also bring along architecture so later missions could do more "living off the land," such as greenhouses or habitats. (The first Mars voyagers may eat more meat brought with them, while future generations would be more vegetarian due to the resources on hand, Zubrin said.) He said the habitats of the Mars Society's Mars Desert Research Station and Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station are designed to preview what real Red Planet homes could look like.
The return vehicle would include propellant made from Martian carbon dioxide and water, specifically to generate the fuels methane and oxygen. Zubrin said it's the cheapest propellant combination, with only a hydrogen-oxygen mix providing better exhaust velocity.
But there's a big problem with Mars — it's not very much like Earth. Sure, people could conceivable live on it with technology to manage the risks. Its day is similar in length to Earth's day, too. But the planet has only one-third of Earth's gravity. Martian air isn't breathable. Water, if it exists at all on the surface, would be in scarce quantities. Conditions are even worse on the moon, which has one-sixth Earth's gravity, a longer day-night cycle than our home planet and no air whatsoever.
"They're not places that we are necessarily going to colonize in large numbers," Roger Launius, a retired curator from the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, told Space.com. He predicted that by the end of the century, there may be research stations at the moon or Mars, similar to what exists now in Antarctica.
But to really find another home for humanity, we'll have to follow the lead of "Battlestar Galactica" and search for another Earth. Because, otherwise, children are going to be born in lunar or Martian environments that have a lesser gravity than Earth. How this will affect their development when humans are built for Earth is an unknown, Launius said.
But quickly getting to other stars, where second Earths may exist, will be slow unless we figure out a method for faster-than-light speed, or a way to sustain a spacecraft over multiple generations, Launius said. Another possibility is to extend astronaut life spans through hibernation (as done in the movies "Alien" and "Avatar") or by becoming a sort of "Star Trek"-like Borg that would integrate robotics into the human body to extend lives.
The video was captured above the French overseas port town of Saint-Pierre in Reunion Island on May 14, as a group of friends took a walk on the beach.
They noticed something bizarre in the sky and began to film.
The clip shows what appears to be a triangular craft hovering above the water before taking off into the distance.
It was later submitted to MUFON – an American-based non-profit organisation that investigates cases of alleged UFO sightings – where the witness explained how the event unfolded.
MUFON
IZARRE: Could this be a spy plane?
“Three lights appeared – two white and one red with a strong intensity in the form of a triangle”
Eyewitness
The post read: "Every night we admire the view of the coast which is very visible from where we live.
"But tonight three lights appeared – two white and one red with a strong intensity in the form of a triangle.
"Having never seen this on the area I took my camera to take photos and film.
"The object remained on the spot for about four minutes and began to move in a straight line at a fairly high speed at low altitude."
The video was later uploaded to popular YouTube conspiracy channel The Hidden Underbelly, where viewers gave their own opinions on what was captured.
One comment read: "I've seen this triangle-shaped UFO before."
Before another speculated: "That is definitely the TR-3B."
The TR-3 Black Manta is the name of a surveillance aircraft of the United States Air Force, speculated to be developed under a black project.
It is said to be a supersonic stealth spy plane with a flying wing design.
Believers in the theory say it was used during the Gulf War to provide laser designation for Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk bombers.
And it is not the first time it has reportedly been spotted.
Is this PROOF of alien testing at Area 51? Frenzy as 'UFO spotted' near secret facility
BIZARRE footage has emerged that proves the United States Air Force is testing alien activity at their top-secret Area 51 base, according to wild claims online.
The video, which was captured during the night on May 4, shows the UFO hovering above a mountain range in the Nevada desert.
Steven Baron captured the event from his garden in Las Vegas and was left puzzled by what unfolded.
The clip shows a glowing article moving across the sky, appearing to pulsate and then disappear completely.
It is believed the scope in which the subject is moving could be somewhere on the grounds of Area 51.
UFOS OVER VEGAS
UFO? The bizarre object is yet to be identified
“Behind those mountains lies Area 51 and there have been a ton of these sightings recently”
YouTube viewer
It was later uploaded to Steven's YouTube channel UFOs over Vegas, where it has gained 1,000 hits so far.
And viewers are convinced it is proof that the US government is testing alien technology at the Homey Airport facility.
One comment read: "Behind those mountains lies Area 51 and there have been a ton of these sightings recently."
And another added: "When you see such light in real life, it's astounding. You know you're in the presence of something non-terrestrial, something magical, to us."
And a third simply stated: "You should go out there and camp by Area 51 to get a better look."
Conspiracists have long linked the USAF's highly classified Edwards Air Force base as being a UFO testing zone.
Some believe it is used for the storage examination and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft.
While others believe the government is developing and testing the use of exotic energy weapons and weather control technology.
In January 2017, alien chasers claimed a new video appeared to show a burst into a ball of light after “leaving a volcano” while in 2016, there were numerous other stories on UFOs flying over active volcanos.
UFO hunters are convinced that witness accounts of bright, pulsating light, caught around the active volcanos is evidence their activity is within the nature of Earth.
Writing in Livingist.com, an author said: “When a medium volcano erupts it releases around 27 megatons of thermal energy. That’s a lot. Could it be that these mysterious crafts have found a way to reap the energy that is released during these events?”
ENERGY: UFO hunters have a new theory about aliens crafts spotted around volcanos
“ Could it be that these mysterious crafts have found a way to reap the energy”
Livingist.com
Other UFO bloggers such as Scott C Waring, who runs ufosightingsdaily.com made wild claims about alien monitoring seismic activity, or even triggering volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Mr Waring said of an alleged UFO sighting by the erupting Colima volcano in Mexico: “The UFO is long, and cigar-shaped much like many of the past UFOs seen around Mexican volcanoes on live cams.
“The UFO could not leave from the mouth since there was an eruption, so they took a side path.”
But, UFO expert Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, told Express.co.uk there was a more scientific explanation.
He said: “In Canada, Michael Persinger and Gyslaine Lafrenière made a statistical study of the correlation between UFO sightings and seismic-related locations.
“Their book Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events put forward the evidence suggesting that tectonic strains in the Earth’s crust produce enough energy to produce columns of electrical energy and glowing balls of light in the atmosphere.
“This Tectonic Strain Theory explains why UFOs appear at window areas or certain hot spots.
“Michael Persinger, has gone on to consider and experiment with the possibility that the EM fields of these type of UFOs can trigger hallucinations or trance states in people who get to near to them.
“This would explain the many stories of ‘alien’ abductions and other strange encounters that are experienced after a witness has seen a light in the sky.”
Designers have drawn up plans for a luxurious, space-aged superyacht - based on the famous Roswell UFO.
The concept craft is inspired by the supposed discovery of a crashed alien spacecraft at a ranch near the New Mexico town in 1947.
Mysterious pieces of silver debris were reportedly found at the scene and the superyacht's Monaco-based designer George Lucian says he wants his 'My Roswell' vessel to feature similar colours and material.
The UFO theme does not stop there with Lucian planning on making the ship as elusive as possible on the high seas.
Sharp angles and a reflective hull surface have been included to intentionally minimise radar detection while it will cruise in near silence with fully electric running capability.
Lucian said he wanted to create 'an iconic worldwide recognisable yacht inspired from the future' - complete with a helicopter deck, swimming pool and enough space for 12 guests and 12 crew.
Designers have drawn up plans for a luxurious, space-aged superyacht (pictured) - based on the famous Roswell UFO
The concept craft is inspired by the supposed discovery of a crashed alien spacecraft at a ranch near the New Mexico town in 1947
Monaco-based designer George Lucian says the 'shape, colour and texture' of the vessel are similar to the materials found at the scene
With its sharp angles and reflective hull surface, the shape of the superyacht is also partly inspired by radar-dodging military stealth planes
The result is a jaw-dropping vessel which he says is inspired by the UFO saga in America more than 70 years ago. The US military have said the item was a nuclear test surveillance balloon, however conspiracies still abound about the otherworldly source of the object.
The entirely aluminium 213ft yacht is designed to have full electric running capabilities, supported by two diesel electric engines and large electric panels that cover the numerous horizontal surfaces of the superstructure of the vessel.
Lucian said: 'The shape, colour and texture of the material covering the yacht are similar to the materials found at the Roswell Incedent UFO crash.'
The designer made waves in 2017 with the bold 'Dare To Dream' superyacht concept, which saw a 330ft airship tethered to the vessel.
Lucian said he wanted to create 'an iconic worldwide recognisable yacht inspired from the future' - complete with a helicopter deck, swimming pool and enough space for 12 guests and 12 crew
The entirely aluminium 213ft yacht is designed to have full electric running capabilities, supported by two diesel electric engines and large electric panels that cover the numerous horizontal surfaces of the superstructure of the vessel
The 213ft superyacht will be capable of carrying 12 crew and 12 guests and will also feature a helicopter deck and swimming pool
His new concept is equally as eye-catching. He said: 'Unlike its radar footprint, its presence in any harbour will for sure be anything else but discrete.
'On the bow side of the main deck you can find a large outdoor covered living area, including a beam length swimming pool, a lounge and a dining area.
'This shall be the main living area of the yacht, being connected to the main salon and the stern deck with large glass doors and walls, giving the sensation of a huge open loft like space.
'The bridge deck is located on the upper deck, together with a helicopter platform, and a sky lounge. The yacht can welcome onboard 12 guests together with 12 crew members.'
Could radiation readings be key to understanding Rendlesham UFO’s?
Katy Sandalls
Gary Baker and Colonel Charles I. Halt walk the UFO trail in Rendlesham Forest.
Picture: TOM POTTER
Radiation readings taken around the former RAF Woodbridge site could hint to UFO activity in the 1980s according to one scientist.
Rendlesham Forest.
Picture: TOM POTTER
Tim Acheson, measured the levels of radiation at locations around the site to see if they varied from other areas of the forest.
“There has been much debate about radiation readings from the 80s,” said Mr Acheson.
He found that there were a number of radiation ‘hot spots’ at locations linked to the extra terrestrial sightings back in December 1980.
“As a scientist, I find all the debate without scientific evidence incredibly frustrating. I couldn’t believe nobody has taken the time to do a thorough scientific study to settle the issue one way or another,so I took matters into my own hands.”
For Mr Acheson the biggest question posed by these radiation readings is do the readings show the presence of UFO’s or were the UFO’s attracted by the high radiation levels?
“We can’t qualify it,” said Mr Acheson, “but there is definitely a relationship.”
Nick Pope was the Ministry of Defence’s UFO desk officer between 1991 and 1994 and led a review into the Rendlesham case.
“This is a highly impressive and significant piece of work. The levels of radioactivity in Rendlesham Forest are an important piece of physical evidence, and a better understanding of this aspect of the story may prove critical when it comes to resolving the question of what took place back in 1980.
“In the original Ministry of Defence investigation, the Defence Intelligence Staff assessed the levels of radioactivity documented in Lieutenant Colonel Halt’s official report as being “significantly higher than the average background”.
“This new radiation survey gives us considerably more data and is the sort of serious research and investigation that I wish more people in the UFO community, be they sceptics or believers, would undertake.”
An MOD spokesperson said: “All our historic files which refer to UFOs, including Rendlesham Forest, have either been released, or are in the process of being released to The National Archives. The MOD continues to have no opinion on the existence, or otherwise, of extra-terrestrial life and does not investigate reported unidentified flying object sightings.”
The video, captured at 2pm on Tuesday, in Vero Beach, Florida, shows a UFO among the clouds above.
It appears to be travelling in the opposite direction, as an onlooker attempts to get a closer view.
And witnesses are convinced it is proof that the object is using some sort of camouflaging technology.
SUNNY3
STAR TREK? Could something huge just have been uncovered?
“It's a Klingon battle cruiser”
YouTube viewer
A statement read: "It went into the cloud and I couldn’t see it, I realised after that it might have been something and I should have stayed focused on it."
The video was posted on YouTube channel Sunny3 on May 13 and has already racked up more than 1,000 hits.
And viewers were left speculating what it could be.
One commenter revealed: "I see them every day and night in Floria."
Another added: "This is seriously strange."
And a third even claimed: "It's a Klingon battle cruiser," referring to the spacecraft seen in science fiction show Star Trek.
It is not the first claim alien life is here on Earth, though.
On Tuesday, conspiracy theorists were sent into meltdown after spotting what they believed to be a craft taking off from Area 51.
Representational Image of cave painting in India dated from 1500-2000 BC found in Bhimbetka, a UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
(Creative Commons)Raveesh Vyas
India, the land of a gloriously rich tradition might be once the hottest hub of aliens and extraterrestrial beings. Many historians and archeologists in India believe that cavemen who lived in the pre-historic age have painted pictures of aliens and UFOs in rocks at Charama, Chhattisgarh.
Did aliens visit India in the past?
These rock paintings discovered in Charama depicts alien-like figures wearing suits very similar to modern space suits. The drawings also feature flying saucers, each with a fan-like antenna and three legs. It should be noted that these drawings were apparently drawn before 10,000 years, an era in which space travel was not even in the distant dream of human beings.
Top archaeologists who investigated the site reveal that these paintings were made in natural colors, and they have hardly faded despite the long years. In some of the pictures, the alien-like figures are seen carrying some sort of weapons.
Interestingly, people in nearby villages of Charama have the tradition of worshipping small 'Rohela' people who used to land from the sky in round shaped flying saucers.
Archeologists in India believe that people in pre-historic ages might have seen aliens either in real life or in imagination, and this might have made them draw such figures on rocks.
Other sightings of UFO in modern India
following me ( peter2011) it's only a drone
Apart from this UFO evidence from the pre-historic age, it was on March 15, 1951, that an authentic flying object sighting was reported in India. The incident happened in New Delhi when 25 members of a flying club witnessed a cigar-shaped flying object hovering in the sky. The object was apparently hundred feet long, and after a few moments, it vanished into thin air.
Another interesting UFO sighting reportedly happened in 2013 as residents of Mogappiar, Chennai observed five packs of bright orange lights moving across the skies.
Apart from these sightings, people who live in the Northern parts of India, especially in Ladakh, and Arunachal Pradesh borders have several times claimed that they have seen UFOs.
Similar drawings in other parts of the world
Apart from the drawings discovered in India, there are various other similar paintings found in other nooks of the globe. Archeologists have previously discovered drawings of alien-like figures at Legends Rock in Wyoming. This site has more than 250 petroglyphs and it clearly indicates that humans in the ancient ages were in touch with extraterrestrial beings.
Another mysterious painting discovered in Cayuse Creek in Idaho shows a humanoid figure inside a UFO which resembles flying saucers which we have seen in Hollywood sci-fi flicks. Interestingly, the space vehicle featured in this image is seen emitting trails of smoke behind it.
Many people who live in these areas believe that 'Star Men' used to visit humans many generations ago, and these extraterrestrial beings had brought spiritual teachings to our planet.
Alien looking eggs that spew out lava have been spotted in Hawaii after the volcanic eruption.
The strange egg-shaped mounds look as though they have come straight out of a science fiction movie but are the result of the lava that is still coming out of the huge volcano.
Photographer Took Time to Capture Photos of Strange Alien-like Lava Eggs
Lava can be seen at the top of the egg (Caters)
The Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii is doing it's worse after it erupted earlier on in the week. Locals in the region have been left having to deal with the fallout from the volcano, but one photographer took time out to capture the unique looking alien lava eggs that have been forming around the island.
Emissions from the volcano are slowing down, but there are some big movements from the volcano that have continued happening. One of them was measured as being an earthquake of 4.4 magnitudes. Ash plumes were seen rising high up into the air, and it was said they reached around 12,000 feet. One person said that it warmed the heart to see the true spirit of the people of Aloha during the eruption and aftershocks. They went on to say that, the relief effort has been something of a community one.
Ant Nebula Blasts Lasers, Suggesting Hidden Double-Star System
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com Contributor
The Ant Nebula releases a rare type of laser emission, suggesting that the nebula's core houses two stars rather than one.
Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team (STScL/AURA)
Unusual laser emissions beaming from the Ant Nebula suggest that it is home to a hidden double-star system and that one of the companion stars is nearing the end of its life.
When stars similar to our sun start to die, they become dense white dwarf stars and then expel their outer layers to form an interstellar cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. Any lingering gas close to the center would soon fall back onto the star, leaving the surrounding area empty. However, that is not what has been observed around the Ant Nebula, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA).
"When we observe Menzel 3, we see an amazingly intricate structure made up of ionized gas, but we cannot see the object in its center producing this pattern," Isabel Aleman, lead author of a new study detailing the observations and a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, in Brazil, and the Leiden Observatory, in the Netherlands,said in the statement. "Thanks to the sensitivity and wide wavelength range of the Herschel observatory, we detected a very rare type of emission called hydrogen recombination line laser emission, which provided a way to reveal the nebula's structure and physical conditions."
This image shows possible evolutionary pathways for stars of different masses. Sunlike stars can be seen swelling into red giants before releasing their outer gas, creating colorful nebulas around a collapsed core called a white dwarf.
Credit: ESA
Specifically, the new observations show that the density of the laser-emitting gas surrounding the Ant Nebula is 10,000 times higher than that of the gas seen in typical planetary nebulas. This finding suggests that the Ant Nebula is actually home to two stars, since a companion star would help capture the dense gas ejected from the dying white dwarf star, according to the statement.
"The only way to keep gas close to the star is if it is orbiting around it in a disc," study co-author Albert Zijlstra, an astrophysicist at The University of Manchester in the U.K., said in the statement. "In this case, we have actually observed a dense disc in the very center that is seen approximately edge-on. This orientation helps to amplify the laser signal. The disc suggests the white dwarf has a binary companion, because it is hard to get the ejected gas to go into orbit unless a companion star deflects it in the right direction."
Although the researchers have not yet directly detected the companion star, their observations and models support the presence of a pair of stars, and mass from the dying companion star may be ejected and then captured by the nebula's central white dwarf, helping to create the disk, according to the statement.
"We used Herschel to characterize various components of gas and dust in nebula[s] around old stars, but we were not necessarily looking for a laser phenomenon," co-author Toshiya Ueta, principal investigator of the Herschel Planetary Nebula Survey project, said in the statement. "Such emission has only been identified in a handful of objects before; this was a remarkable discovery that we did not anticipate. There is certainly more to stellar nebulae than meets the eye!"
Therefore, their findings, published May 16 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, will help astronomers refine current models of stellar evolution, the researchers said.
NASA’s Lost Satellite Just Made Its First Contact With Earth in 17 Years
It’s official: ISEE-3, the 36-year-old satellite that NASA left for dead over a decade ago, is back in touch with humankind. This afternoon, a group of citizen scientists who raised almost $160,000 to fund the process of taking control of ISEE-3 announced that two-way contact has been established with the little satellite that could. So what’s next?
“Over the coming days and weeks our team will make an assessment of the spacecraft’s overall health and refine the techniques required to fire its engines and bring it back to an orbit near Earth,” explained the Reboot team in a triumphant comment released today. Contact was made at Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico, where scientists collaborated with a worldwide network of like-minded space fans to fund and engineer the project.
Now comes the fun part: Getting ISEE-3 back to the business of studying space. We’ll have more updates as they come.
NASA Is Letting Citizens Commandeer a Long-Lost Satellite
Yesterday evening, NASA officially granted permission to a group of scientists and enthusiasts who want to do what NASA can’t afford: Make contact with a 36-year-old satellite called ISEE-3 that’s still capable of taking directions for a new mission. It’s the first agreement of its kind—and it could hint at where the space industry is going.
So, a little back story. As our sister site io9 explained last month, ISEE-3 was launched back in 1978 to study the relationship between the Sun and Earth. It enjoyed many more missions over the next three decades, but NASA officially cut the cord in 1997. Still, ISEE-3 kept on trucking.
It wasn’t until a decade later that NASA discovered she was still at it, despite the lack of commands from her benefactors at NASA. Why not send her on a new mission? Well, that’s the trouble: We have no way of communicating. The antenna used to contact ISEE-3 had been removed.
Enter the group of scientists including SkyCorp, SpaceRef, Space College Foundation, and others. They want to use a different antenna, at Morehead State University, to contact ISEE-3. “Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 spacecraft, command it to fire its engines and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission,” said Keith Cowing, a former Nasa engineer and owner of Nasa Watch, told the Guardian.
The ISEE-3, (later ICE), undergoing testing and evaluation.
Sounds good, right? Well, it’s not so simple. The group, which calls itself ISEE-3 Reboot, needs to essentially rebuild the entire software used to communicate with ISEE-3 back in the 70s. That means digging through archives to find the original commands, then recreating them. With zero funding available from NASA and only a month or two until the little satellite makes a close pass in mid-June. The technical challenges are huge:
We need to initiate a crash course effort to use ‘software radio’ to recreate virtual versions all of the original communications hardware that no longer physically exists. We also need to cover overhead involved in operating a large dish antenna, locating and analyzing old documentation, and possibly some travel.
But, the creators of the project explained in their pitch letter on R ockethub, “if we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet.”
If there was any doubt about whether modern Americans were still enamored with space, the results of their crowdfunding campaign squash it. The group blew through their $100,000 goal, and are currently getting close to a $150,000 stretch goal. There are only two days left to donate—and you should—but the fact that they’ve raised so much money in so short a time is remarkable.
The ISEE-3 Reboot mission patch.
Yesterday, NASA announced it has signed an agreement with the group called a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement (NRSAA), which is a contract it signs with its external partners to describe a collaboration. It gives the group the green light to go ahead and make its attempt at taking control of ISEE-3—it essence, it gives Skycorp the right to take over the operation of a satellite that NASA built almost 40 years ago.
Here’s what astronaut John Grunsfeld had to say about the agreement:
The intrepid ISEE-3 spacecraft was sent away from its primary mission to study the physics of the solar wind extending its mission of discovery to study two comets. We have a chance to engage a new generation of citizen scientists through this creative effort to recapture the ISEE-3 spacecraft as it zips by the Earth this summer.
It’s an incredible development—and it tells us something about where space travel and research is going. NASA and other state-funded research entities are being strangled by downsized budgets, but the push into space amongst independent scientists, engineers, and citizens is booming. As Elon Musk sues to let commercial space companies compete for government contracts, students and scientists are launching their own satellites.
Over the next few decades, plenty of other NASA-built spacecraft will begin to age—just like ISEE-3. And unless something drastic changes about NASA’s budget, it may not have the cash to keep them up. Imagine a future in which craft built by NASA in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, are inherited by independent groups of scientists and space companies who take over operations, just like Skycorp is. The privatization of space might not be so far away—and NASA might play a heavy role in its creation.
Orbits of Jupiter Moons Transformed into Mind-Bending Optical Illusions and Music
By Steve Spaleta, Space.com Senior Producer
Order has risen from the chaos of the creation of our solar system, and that systemization is on display through the gravitational push and pull of the bodies it harbors. A clear example of this is Jupiter and its four largest moons: When their orbital dynamics are converted into rhythms, musical notes and time-lapsed illusions, you'll likely be astounded by what you see and hear.
To understand how it works, you have to first break down the orbits.
After the three innermoons of the Jupiter systemwere created, they eventually settled into a simple 4:2:1 orbital resonance. In other words, it takes twice as long for Europa, Jupiter's second-closest moon, to orbit Jupiter as it does Io, the closest moon. And, in turn, the third-closest moon, Ganymede, takes four times as long as Io to orbit Jupiter. [Hear the orbits of Trappist-1 system planets turned into music]
The Galilean moons Ganymede, Europa and Io orbit at a 4:2:1 resonance.
The fourth moon, Callisto, completes the quartet of Galilean moons — which were discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610 — and it is the farthest of the bunch. It orbits at a 12:5 resonance: 12 orbits of Ganymede are equal to five orbits for Callisto. Using these statistics, Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida and Dan Tamayo of system-sounds.com have created a musical representation of the orbits. Io, Europa and Ganymede are "playing the same note but in different octaves," when the orbits are converted into musical pitches, according to an explainer on their website — the pitches metaphor is appropriate because octaves follow a similar resonance structure; to go an octave higher, you double the frequency of the sound. In the case of Callisto, the pitch occurs at an "interval of an octave plus a minor 3rd," they wrote, since its resonance differs from that of the other moons.
This graphic shows the periods of time it takes for the moons to complete an orbit around Jupiter, the closest note and frequency (hertz) used to create a musical representation of Jupiter and its four closest moons.
Credit: System-Sounds.com
The trio used the ratios of the moons' orbits, combined with an animation of Jupiter and its moons, to generate a rhythmic beat that is based on each moon's resonance, before slowly speeding it up from 30,000 to 250 million times the actual orbital speed (seen at the top of this page — turn on sound). "As [the moons] begin orbiting faster than 20 times per second (20 Hz), the repetitive beat morphs into sustained musical harmony," the explainer goes on to say — based on those octaves mentioned above.
The geometric patterns that form in the animation as it speeds up are obviously not a true representation of what the orbits look like. The patterns occur because the frame rate that the video was created with just can't keep up. The result is a stroboscopic effect, which the System Sounds website compares to a "wagon wheel" optical illusion you see when a "car wheel (is) spinning so fast that it appears to stop and start spinning backwards."
The stroboscopic effect created in a new animation of the Jupiter system makes the orbits of the gas giant's four closest moons appear as geometric shapes.
Credit: System-Sounds.com
All those factors combined turn into a mind-blowing, 70-second experience that we highly recommend you watch in full screen with a good sound system or headphones. You can even get interactive with it below — just click Play and drag NASA's Juno spacecraft to speed up the orbits; you can also turn the moons' orbits on or off by clicking on them.
To take a deeper dive into the musical details and to see some more "hypnotic" orbit animations, visit the System Sounds website.
Top Secret UK Project Reveals the Real-Life X-Files On UFO Mysteries
The UK’s Ministry of Defence former official has new revelations regarding a secret government UFO study done during the 1990s.
The Mod commissioned a defence contractor in 1996 to produce a comprehensive report on UFO sightings in the UK. The report was conducted amidst a vast public interest in UFOs with the popularity of the X-Files TV series and the 50th anniversary of the famous Roswell Incident.
The report carefully avoided using the term UFO as it described sightings as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
The report analysed a database of sightings between 1987 and 1997 through code-named Project Condign, and it was delivered to officials in 2000. Found in the study “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region” was that a variety of known phenomena, both natural and human-made could explain the sightings. It noted the incidence of relatively rare natural events. The report said there was no proof to associate the phenomena with any particular nation.
The Project Condign has been compared to a U.S. air force initiative to investigate UFOs dubbed as Project Blue Book, which was ended in 1969.
A journalist and author Nick Pope claimed he was part in setting up the study as a former MOD UFO investigator with his counterpart in the Ministry’s Defence Intelligence Staff. He explained via an emailed statement that they set up the study because they had done very little trend analysis in their decades-long UFO sighting investigations on a case-by-case basis. He revealed that Project Condign was aimed to rectify it and serve as a proper intelligence assessment that would look into the patterns in data they already had.
He added that they were looking everything together about UFOs, including the assessment of what they were dealing, what are threats, and what are the opportunities.
In 1993, initial discussions about the study started, according to Pope, who already not part of it when the work on the report itself began.
According to Pope, the study itself was highly confidential and extremely sensitive as the Mod consistently told the public, the media, and the parliament that UFOs were of limited interest and no defence significance. He explained that they decided to make the study highly classified to avoid exposure to an internal position on the phenomenon that was not the same from public opinion.
It was only in 2006 that the report entered the public domain through a Freedom of Information request from academic Dr David Clarke. The author of the report has been kept secret.
Clarke, a principal research fellow at the Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, obtained a new set of unseen documents recently, which have put Project Condign into the spotlight once again. According to the record, the Mod officials had overworked to reduce their commitment to investigating UFO sighting reports. Base on the findings, Project Condign, had made the foundations for the Mod to begin scaling back its operations on UFOs. Since 1967, the DI55 department of the Ministry secretly collected data on potential UFO sightings and closed at the end of 2000. In 2009 the MoD’s UFO Desk closed.
Pope found the final report of Project Condign disappointing. He said that the report looked like a conclusion-led study using a data to support a personal opinion. However, he acknowledged the challenges in compiling a confidential report such as this one.
Pope said that those involved in an intelligence study like Project Condign don’t reach out to the experts on the subject matter outside the intelligence community, which is the problem. He explained that consultation with other scientists and academics would have been helpful.
The discussion of novel military applications that could be supported by a greater understanding of the UFO phenomenon has surprised the former Mod employee. He said it was primarily a reference to weaponisation, including a directed energy weapon’s construction.
Mod explained in a statement that all its historical UFO-related files have either been released or are soon to be released to the National Archives of the UK. It added that the MOD maintains to have no opinion regarding extraterrestrial life existence or otherwise and does not investigate UFO sightings.
The book describes incidents where towns were left ‘burned out’ by UFOs – but which have somehow been covered up by the mainstream media.
Even Hollywood stars may have fallen victim, with Carole Lombard thought to have been bumped off in a UFO-related killing (and some UFO fans claim JFK and Marilyn Monroe were bumped off for ‘knowing too much’.
Not only that, but UFO researchers have been murdered (possibly by aliens, or by their allies in government), and a bunch of celebs have been bumped off, too.
UFO expert Nigel Watson, who contributes a chapter to the book, says, ‘Fortunately, death by UFO is a very rare event. Most instances have occurred in remote places and might be due to secret government testing or rumours that have grown into ‘facts.’
Quite a lot going on on this cover
‘Some ufologists believe that the propulsion systems of UFOs are so deadly to humans and that you should keep your distance if you see one landing nearby. Like most things in the UFO subject there are no solid facts to support the idea hundreds of people have been killed by alien spacecraft, nonetheless this won’t stop the speculation!
Are UFO researchers being bumped off?
Max Spiers Rex
It’s almost the perfect conspiracy theory – that the government is actually killing off anyone who gets too close to the truth about UFOs.
But some people seriously believe it – and point tohttps://metro.co.uk/ a grisly catalogues of supposed ‘accidents’ and ‘suicides’ as proof.
As long ago as 1971, researcher Otto Binder claimed that at least 137 UFO investigators had died under mysterious circumstances during the 1960s.
Recently, many believed that conspiracy theorist Max Spiers (pictured) was killed by sinister forces, after he ‘vomited black liquid’.
But the figures might be deceptive: there are a huge number of UFO believers, ‘researchers’ and authors, most of whom have lived normal lives.
Nigel Watson says, ‘Certainly, several UFO researchers have died in unusual circumstances or have committed ‘suicide’ but they are a very small number compared to the number of UFO researchers who have spoken openly about UFOs for decades and have never been troubled by MIB or alien murder squads.’
You may also be interested in Part One of this two-part UFO series, where we cover other striking encounters with UFOs that landed, crashed, and buzzed by Earth landmarks.
1. UFO LANDING IN RENDLESHAM FOREST, UK
“I’ve gone on record saying Rendlesham might be the turning point in history that leads to the explanation of the UFO phenomenon.” —Nick Pope, UK Ministry of Defense
It was December 1980, and on a US military base in England, a security patrol observed a strange light descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest, and assumed one of their aircraft must have gone down.
Re-creation of the Craft that Landed in Rendlesham Forest
Sergeants John Burroughs and James Penniston were dispatched to investigate, and instead of a downed plane, they discovered a strange craft with glowing yellow and blue lights, approximately nine by six feet in size. Static electricity seemed to be emanating from it. The men stood and stared at the object for about 10 minutes, finally deciding that it did not appear to be a threat. They moved closer and observed strange hieroglyphic markings on the side of the craft.
Suddenly, an explosion of light from the ship knocked both men down; “I thought I was going to die that night,” Penniston said later. Penniston got up and touched the craft; it felt smooth and warm.
The men stayed near the UFO for 45 minutes until it began to rise through the trees, then shot into the night so quickly that Penniston later wrote in his log book, “Speed: Impossible!”
The next morning, investigators found deep, triangle-shaped impressions in the ground where the craft had been sighted. Tests showed high levels of radiation.
The ship returned for two consecutive nights; on the final night, it was witnessed by nearly 60 people.
2.THE KECKSBURG UFO CRASH
At first, they thought it was some kind of crazy meteor. The fireball that streaked across skies over Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in 1965 dropped metal debris and caused sonic booms. Eyewitnesses in the small town of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania saw the UFO crash into a forest, followed by blue smoke that rose from amongst the trees. They called authorities.
Reproduction of What Witnesses Saw Near Kecksburg, PA
Meanwhile, a few brave individuals ventured into the woods to see what had crash-landed. They found the object partially buried in the ground; it was bronze in color and metallic, about the size of a car, shaped like an acorn. The witnesses noticed strange markings on its surface that resembled Egyptian hieroglyphs. Jim Romanesky, one of the observers, said that the UFO was completely seamless, almost as if it had been made of liquid metal that was poured into a mold.
When the military arrived, they cordoned off the area, detaining and removing everyone from the forest. Witnesses saw them load the object onto a flatbed truck and remove it; when an official report was issued, it said that “absolutely nothing” had been found—case closed.
3. PHOENIX LIGHTS
Phones at the police station were ringing off the hook, UFO reporting agencies were inundated with calls, the news media were receiving a flurry of reports, people were standing in the streets and pointing at the sky: there were strange lights hovering over the city of Phoenix! Thousands of people saw the Phoenix Lights that March day in 1997, including police offers, military personnel, and Arizona governor Fife Symington; eye-witnesses said that the lights appeared to be part of a massive black V-shaped craft that moved slowly and silently as it passed over their rooftops.
The first reports of the UFO came from Henderson, Nevada, where witnesses said the craft was drifting along in a southeasterly direction; it passed over other towns until it appeared over Phoenix. Air traffic controllers at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport could see the lights through their window but registered no sign of anything on radar.
The local Air Force base denied that any activity had taken place that night—then later changed the story and said that the lights had been aircraft flares they’d dropped between 9:00 and 10:00 PM that night. Problem is, the UFO lights had appeared over Henderson, Nevada just before 8:00 PM and over Phoenix just after 8:30 PM.
4. UFO OVER O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
“I am still in absolute wonder and amazement at what I saw that afternoon.”
—Eye-witness to the O’Hare UFO
It had been a normal afternoon at busy O’Hare International when airport employees began to notice something strange in the sky.
A Strange Disc Hovers Over O’Hare International Airport
On November 7, 2006, a metallic, saucer-like craft appeared above the airport and hovered over Gate C-17. A ramp employee was the first to see it as he helped a jet, flight 446 bound for North Carolina, push back to prepare for takeoff. Chatter on two-way radios alerted a dozen other employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who all ran to see the disc hovering in the sky.
The UFO lingered over the airport for about two minutes, then, as witnesses described, shot straight up at an incredible velocity and vanished, leaving a clear, sky-blue hole in the clouds.
The Federal Aviation Administration first denied they had any evidence of the matter. When a local reporter discovered a recording of an FAA official discussing the sighting with a United Airlines employee, the FAA changed the story: it was just a weather phenomenon, and there was no need for further investigation.
SPITTING IMAGE Simulated collisions between two moonlets can lead to oddly shaped moons (bottom row) that closely resemble some of Saturn’s moons (top row; from left to right: Pan, Atlas and Prometheus).
IMAGES: JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE; SIMULATIONS: A. LELEU, M. JUTZI AND M. RUBIN/NATURE ASTRONOMY 2018
A space ravioli. A planetary baguette. A cosmic Kaiser roll. Some of Saturn’s moons have shapes that are strangely reminiscent of culinary concoctions.
Adrien Leleu , a planetary scientist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and colleagues developed computer simulations that let the scientists virtually smack together similar-sized moonlets at various speeds and angles. The team found that, at low angles and relative speeds of tens of meters per second (roughly equal to a car on country roads), impacts can create offbeat shapes that look like the misfits around Saturn.
Head-on collisions result in a flattened moon like Pan, which resembles an empanada (SN Online: 3/10/17). An impact angle of just a few degrees leads to an elongated satellite such as Prometheus, which looks like a French loaf.
Many moons
A variety of moon shapes could result from two moonlets coming together at different angles and speeds, according to computer simulations. Dark areas are original moonlet surfaces, whereas in the light areas the surface has been ejected or contorted. Speeds are relative to the escape velocity, the speed at which ejected material escapes the gravity of the combined moonlets.
A. LELEU, M. JUTZI AND M. RUBIN/NATURE ASTRONOMY 2018
Not all run-ins create a weird looking moon. At higher angles, for example, moonlets might hit and run. Or they could form highly elongated rotating moons that subsequently break apart.
Leleu and collaborators focused on the smaller moons of Saturn that orbit within the planet’s rings. But the team also found that a similar collision between two larger moonlets could also account for the odd shape of Iapetus (SN Online: 4/21/14), a more distant walnut-shaped moon with a pronounced ridge along its equator that has puzzled scientists since the belt’s discovery. Other speculative origins for the ridge include volcanoes, plate tectonics or ring debris that rained down on the moon.
“After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world.”
Excitement has been building for NASA’s next rover mission to Mars, scheduled to launch sometime in 2020. Although it looks a lot like the current Curiosity rover, its mission will be to search directly for possible evidence of past life. Curiosity, on the other hand, is studying the ancient habitability of Gale Crater on Mars, which we now know used to hold a lake or series of lakes, focusing more on geology than biology.
And now the upcoming 2020 mission just got even better – NASA has approved the inclusion of a tiny drone-like helicopter to accompany the rover!
This is something never done before, and assuming it’s successful, will be the first time that Mars has been robotically explored by something other than an orbiter, lander or rover.
Artist’s concept of the Mars Helicopter, which will be sent to Mars along with the 2020 rover.
The Mars Helicopter will be a small, drone-like autonomous rotorcraft, designed specifically for Mars’ very thin atmosphere; it will provide a unique and exciting new way to see the Martian landscape as never before – a bird’s-eye view, if you will.
And of course, it’s just very cool. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine commented:
NASA has a proud history of firsts. The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars.
Having a helicopter would be useful in scouting out sites for further investigation by the rover. Being up in the air is a definite advantage. You can get a better overall view than from the ground or even from orbit.
The Mars Helicopter will be a first test of this kind of technology. Weighing under four pounds (1.8 kilograms), and with a body the size of a softball, the concept has already gone through four years of design, testing and redesign. Operating in Mars’ thin atmosphere isn’t as easy as on Earth, so the twin, counter-rotating blades will need to spin at almost 3,000 rpm, 10 times faster than a conventional helicopter. On the Martian surface, the atmosphere is equivalent to an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,000 meters) on Earth, so the helicopter needs to be able to fly in those conditions.
By comparison, the highest altitude record for a helicopter on Earth is 40,000 feet (12,000 meters).
Artist’s concept of the helicopter on Mars’ surface. After deployment, it’ll make a short first test flight, and then longer flights to different locations on Mars.
Mimi Aung, Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL, said:
To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be.
The Mars Helicopter also includes solar cells to charge its lithium-ion batteries and a heater to keep it warm. The 2020 mission provides a perfect opportunity to test this first attempt at Mars aviation. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said:
Exploring the red planet with NASA’s Mars Helicopter exemplifies a successful marriage of science and technology innovation and is a unique opportunity to advance Mars exploration for the future. After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world.
NASA will conduct a 30-day flight test campaign of the helicopter. For the first flight, it will climb to about 10 feet (3 meters), and then hover for about 30 seconds. If all goes well, it will take gradually longer flights, up to a few hundred meters. Zurbuchen said:
The ability to see clearly what lies beyond the next hill is crucial for future explorers. We already have great views of Mars from the surface as well as from orbit. With the added dimension of a bird’s-eye view from a “marscopter,” we can only imagine what future missions will achieve.
The 2020 rover itself will be the most sophisticated ever sent to Mars so far. While other rovers have focused on geology and habitability, this one is designed to look directly for evidence of past microbial life on the red planet, with updated instruments, and will be the first life-focused mission since the Viking landers in the 1970s. It will also take rock and soil samples which will be preserved in small tubes, to be sent back to Earth at a later date and test technologies which could be used for future human missions.
The rover will launch in 2020 and land in February 2021. Meanwhile, NASA’s newest Mars mission, the InSight lander, was launched on May 5 and will land later this year. InSight will stay in one place, however, using a wide range of instruments to study the composition of the interior of Mars, to help scientists learn how the planet formed and evolved.
View larger. | Mars 2020 rover is similar in design to the Curiosity rover, but will focus on searching for evidence of past microbial life. The helicopter, now approved, will serve as a scout.
Bottom line: Mars’ atmosphere is thin. In order to stay aloft, the planned softball-sized Mars Helicopter – which will accompany the Mars 2020 mission – will have twin, counter-rotating blades that’ll bite into Mars’ thin air at about 10 times the rate of a helicopter on Earth.
Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell is a documentary filmmaker and contemporary artist. He launched his series Extraordinary Beliefs in 2015 and since then has created several compelling documentaries on various paranormal phenomena, mostly centered around UFO and alien abduction themes. Jeremy has been able to gain access to witnesses few others have had the opportunity to interview and shares their stories in an engrossing and intimate manner, careful not to steer his audience but to allow them to make up their own minds.
In this interview, we discuss another exciting project in which Jeremy has gained unprecedented access to extraordinary events. What has been dubbed the “Skinwalker Ranch” in the Uintah Basin of Utah, is a location where many types of paranormal phenomena have been reported for decades. The site gained worldwide notoriety with the 2005 bookHunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah co-authored by investigative journalist George Knapp and scientist Colm Kelleher. Since then very few have gained access to the ranch. Jeremy has been able to work with George Knapp to create a documentary with footage that has never been seen by the public of an investigation by Bigelow Aerospace’s Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) division. It has recently been revealed this investigation was funded in part by the Department of Defense.
According to a ranking member of the U.S. House Science Subcommittee on Space, the recent revelation the Pentagon investigated UFOs piqued his interest. He says he suggested to the head of the subcommittee and the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that hearings be held on the matter. A fellow politician and an advisor to the White House on space agree that it is a subject that should be taken seriously.
The comments were made during an event held by Politico launching their weekly space news briefs. Politico Defense Editor Bryan Bender moderated panel discussions with his fellow Politico reporter Jaqueline Klimas. Bender was familiar with the UFO topic and the Pentagon study because he had authored an article that was posted within hours of The New York Times posting their storybreaking the recent big UFO news.
Reps. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) and Mary Lynne Dittmar, president and CEO, Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, speak during the POLITICO Space Launch Event.
(Image credit: Politico)
The UFO question came up in a panel with Ami Bera (Democrat, California), ranking member of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Space, Randy Hultgren (Republican, Illinois), a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and Mary Lynne Dittmar, CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. Dittmar is also an advisor for the president’s space council, a group that advises the White House on space policy.
Bender asked the group if given the recent UFO news whether the topic should be taken more seriously or if it is just “sci-fi stuff.”
Bera answered first stating that he thought the topic was credible, so much so that he spoke with the head of the space subcommittee and the head the of the overall committee on science, space, and technology suggesting a hearing the matter.
Hultgren and Dittmar agreed unidentified aircraft should be something that is taken seriously and investigated.
You can read more about their comments in my story on Den of Geek here.
China on track to the first-ever landing on the ‘dark side’ of the moon
China has made plans to launch a satellite Sunday with an ambitious goal of being the first nation to land on the ‘dark side’ of the moon.
The mission involved in the satellite launch is known as Change-4. The satellite, known as the Queqiao relay satellite, will be launched to Lagrange L2 Point where it will be able to communicate with the Earth and the far side of the moon. This is important regarding phase 2 of the mission, which is landing on the moon at a destination furthest away from Earth.
China Plans to be the First Nation to Land on the Dark Side of the Moon
Here's the launch trajectory, taking the Queqiao Chang'e-4 relay sat to the second Earth-Moon Lagrange point via a lunar swing-by, and reaching it's destination in around 8-9 days.
This is significant because we never get to view this side of the moon due to the moon being tidally locked to Earth. This tidal lock is important because it prevents direct communication. Change-4 is anticipated to change this.
Queqiao was developed by the Chinese Academy of SpaceTechnology (CAST). Communication will be attainable for Queqiao on both the moon and the Earth at an orbit in between 65,000km and 80,000km beyond the moon. This location is desired because it is considered a gravitationally stable spot in orbit.
The Netherlands Chinese Low-Frequency Explorer (#NCLE) successfully passed the last assessment by the Chinese space agency! The instrument will be launched on board the Chinese Chang'e 4 relay satellite to a position behind the Moon in May. @RadRadioLab@isis_space
Queqiao, weighing in at 425kg, will be put in the position roughly six months before its’ landing mission to test its’ functionality. Additionally, Queqiao will be carrying the Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer with a purpose of finding radio signals from the early days of our universe.
Queqiao is scheduled for a May 21st lift off at 5 am eastern standard time. The launch window consists of three days. The lander and rover for the Change-4 mission were initially manufactured at the same time as the Change-3 spacecraft that landed on the moon in 2013. This was done intentionally so a backup mission for Change-4 could be initiated in case issues arise.
Change-4 is the fifth mission for China. If everything works out with the mission, China plans to put people on the lunar surface within the next twelve years.
This footage was captured on the 20th of May 2018. It was captured by a drone that carried a 4K camera. The object seems to flying over a populated area. The object looks like a small silver disc that is hoovering above the area. The camera operator only noticed the object after he reviewed the footage.
It’s long been said that “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” How long? The quote is attributed to French playwright Charles-Guillaume Étienne in the early 1800s. The saying in French is “On n’est jamais servi si bien que par soi-même,” which translates literally to the more cumbersome “One is never served so well as by oneself.” Two hundred years later, the saying resonates stronger than ever, and now it’s becoming a driving force in the world of UFOs (see Tom DeLonge). Politico, the Washington DC-based political journal, recently began a website called POLITICO Space, a “weekly must-read briefing on the policies and personalities shaping the second space age.”
To launch POLITICO Space, Politico Defense Editor and Space writer Bryan Bender held an announcement panel discussion in mid-April. Joining him were fellow space Jaqueline Klimas, President and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration Mary Lynne Dittmar and US Congressional Representatives Ami Bera (Democrat, California) and Randy Hultgren (Republican, Illinois). This was no space junket — Dittmar is an advisor President Trump on space policy and Bera and Hultgren are members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
When you’re doing things yourself, you don’t let the opportunity to question space heavyweights and policy makers pass you by, so Bryan Bender referred to the Pentagon UFO revelations of last December and hit them with both barrels of his photon torpedo launcher:
“You hear these reports. We have been hearing them for decades from many credible people. Other countries take it more seriously. They have government researchers who, in the open, not in secrecy, try to explain the unexplainable. Should we be doing more? Or is this just crazy sci-fi stuff that is a waste of time?”
Talk about a loaded question! It would have been easy to deflect it (after all – they’re politicians) and move to what they really want to talk about (campaign donations), but Representative Bera gave a straightforward and unexpected answer.
“I’ve actually talked to the chairman of the subcommittee, Brian Babin, as well as Lamar Smith, the chairman of the full committee. I said we ought to have a hearing on this, right? We ought to bring some folks in. Look, if you want to boost our C-SPAN ratings, a lot of people would be really interested. We don’t know what these phenomena are. Obviously, it’s important enough to allocate some funds and we ought to talk about what we can talk about.”
Bera said the magic word … “funds.” Spending money shows he’s serious. And he wants to put it on TV, which should get the president interested. Republican Hultgren agrees.
“It definitely piques interest. It gets people engaged.”
We’re already piqued and engaged — it’s time for Congress to catch up. Will government money really get allocated and spent on opening up secret files and getting new UFO research started? Will the discussions be held out in the open on C-SPAN? (Would they get more viewers on Netflix?)
Representatives Bera and Hultgren have committed and they name-dropped Brian Babin and Lamar Smith – both Republicans from Texas. Smith is retiring so Babin better get onboard. He doesn’t have to worry about the 2018 election because his only opponent is the Green Party candidate (which in Texas means he’s running unopposed). Will they follow through? Expect POLITICO to keep reminding them.
And a special thanks to POLITICO Space for reminding us once again:
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
Areas in the US Where You’ll Most Likely See A UFO
One of the most bizarre reported UFO sightings took place in North Carolina, which has had 7,570 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects since 1940. So odd that some of the UFO sightings inspire conspiracy theories of secret military experiments that have been going on in the state.
But what could be the chances to spot a UFO right now in either of Carolinas?
Statisticians at Casino.org had finally figured that out. They divided the reported sightings in each year throughout the past 78 years into the overall population.
It turns out that North Carolina has had a 1 in 135,000 chance of seeing a UFO after stepping out the door. Meanwhile, South Carolina faces a 1 in 117,300 chance with its 4,285 sightings, according to Casino.org.
When it comes to the number of actual UFO reports, North Carolina is one of the top 10 states with several reports recently in Lake Norman area and Charlotte, says National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport, Wash.
However, the calculations done by Casino.org are not based on the number of actual UFO reports as they are based on the population of the state. The smaller the community, the higher the odds.
One of the examples of Casino.org calculations is California, which has had 23,419 reported sightings, but with its vast population, people have a 1 in 168,700 chance of seeing a UFO in the state.
Among the 50 states in the Casino.org list, North Carolina was ranked at 16 and South Carolina at 21.
People are most likely to see a UFO in Wyoming, Vermont, Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska.
So, were aliens busier on earth in the 40s and 50s, or are they just better covered up now? Here's a graph to help you see just how common UFO sightings have been in the US for the last 80 years.
ESA ziet heftige laserstralen uit ruimtenevel schieten
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het wijst erop dat in het hart van de nevel wat verborgen zit.
Wie denkt aan aliens, heeft het mis. Volgens ESA ontstaat de laseremmissie doordat in deze planetaire nevel niet één, maar twee sterren te vinden zijn.
Miernevel Astronomen ontdekten de laseremissie met behulp van ruimtetelescoop Herschel. De emissie is afkomstig uit het hart van de Miernevel. Dit is een planetaire nevel die ontstaan is nadat een ster de handdoek in de ring heeft gegooid (zie kader).
Wanneer een niet al te zware ster (zoals onze zon bijvoorbeeld) door zijn brandstof heen is, stoot deze zijn buitenste lagen de ruimte in. Zo ontstaat rond de kern van de ster – die aangeduid wordt als een ‘witte dwerg’ – een vaak spectaculaire planetaire nevel.
Gas De laseremissie die Herschel heeft opgemerkt, suggereert dat rond de witte dwerg die zich in het hart van de planetaire nevel bevindt, veel gas te vinden is. De dichtheid van dat gas zou zo’n 10.000 keer hoger liggen dan in de twee ‘kwabben’ van de Miernevel. Dat is op het eerste gezicht vreemd: het gebied nabij een witte dwerg is doorgaans vrij leeg, doordat de stervende ster zijn buitenste lagen van zich heeft afgeduwd en gas dat daarbij is achtergebleven al spoedig op de witte dwerg terug zal vallen. “De enige manier waarop gas dicht bij de ster kan blijven, is door er in een schijf omheen te draaien,” vertelt onderzoeker Albert Zijlstra. De laseremissie wijst er dan ook op dat in de Miernevel zo’n gasschijf te vinden is en Herschel kijkt tegen het randje van die schijf aan. “Die oriëntatie versterkt het lasersignaal,” aldus Zijlstra.
De Miernevel. Afbeelding: NASA, ESA & Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI / AURA).
Niet alleen De aanwezigheid van de schijf wijst er sterk op dat de witte dwerg in de Miernevel niet alleen is: de stervende ster moet bijna wel deel uitmaken van een dubbelstersysteem. “Want het is moeilijk om uitgestoten gas in een omloopbaan te dwingen, tenzij er een tweede ster is die het gas in de juiste richting duwt.” Het is astronomen nog niet gelukt om de tweede ster te spotten. Maar ze denken dat de massa die de stervende ster afstaat door die tweede ster wordt afgevangen en vervolgens in een schijf wordt gedwongen waarin het lasersignaal gegenereerd wordt.
Hoe het ook precies zit: het is een spectaculaire ontdekking. In de ruimte hebben onderzoekers op verschillende golflengtes en onder specifieke omstandighden nog maar enkele malen sterk gefocuste straling ontdekt. En er zijn slechts een paar kosmische ‘infraroodlasers’ bekend.
Bronmateriaal:
"" - Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: NASA, ESA & Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA)
UFO spotters looking out over the Forth Valley in central Scotland where unexplained sightings are said to be frequent.
(Credit: Colin McPherson/Sygma/Getty Images)
In 2017, several news organizations revealed the existence of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a U.S. government funded investigation into unidentified flying objects from 2007 to 2012. This secret $22 million program, however, was not the first of its kind. In fact official government UFO studies began in the 1940s with Project Sign providing some of the most credible videos of aerial phenomenon to date. The 2017 revelation that the U.S. government was actively researching UFOs reignited world interest in UFOs and aliens. Let’s revisit five of the most believable UFO sightings of the 21st century.
1. The Lights Above the New Jersey Turnpike (2001)
It takes a lot for motorists to stop alongside a highway to look towards the sky, but on July 14, 2001, drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike did just that. For around 15 minutes just after midnight, they marveled at the sight of strange orange and yellow lights in a V formation over the Arthur Kill Waterway between Staten Island, New York, and Carteret, New Jersey. Cataret Police Department’s Lt. Daniel Tarrant was one of the witnesses, as well as other metro area residents from the Throgs Neck Bridge on Long Island and Fort Lee, New Jersey near the George Washington Bridge. Air traffic controllers initially denied that any airplanes, military jets or space flights could have caused the mysterious lights, but a group known as the New York Strange Phenomena Investigators (NY-SPI) claimed to receive FAA radar data that corroborated the UFO sightings of that night.
An image taken from a video released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program of a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object. (Credit: U.S. Department of Defense via The New York Times/Redux)
2. The USS Nimitz Encounter (2004)
On November 14, 2004, the USS Princeton noted an unknown craft on radar 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. For two weeks, the crew had been tracking objects which appeared at 80,000 feet and plummeted to hover right above the Pacific Ocean. When two FA-18F fighter jets from the USS Nimitz arrived in the area, they first saw what appeared to be churning boiling water in an oval shape underneath the surface. Then, in a few moments, a white Tic Tac-like object appeared above the water. It had no visible markings to indicate an engine, wings, or windows, and infrared monitors did not reveal any exhaust. Commander David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 attempted to intercept the craft, but it accelerated away, reappearing on radar 60 miles away—it moved three times the speed of sound and twice the speed of the fighter jets. This encounter was one of the stories reported along with the news of AATIP.
3. O’Hare International Airport Saucer (2006)
Flight 446 was getting ready to fly to North Carolina from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, when a United Airlines employee on the tarmac noticed a dark grey metallic craft hovering over gate C17. That day, November 7, 2006, a total of twelve United employees, and a few witnesses outside the airport, spotted the saucer-shaped craft around 4:15 p.m. The witnesses say it hovered for about 5 minutes before shooting upward where it broke a hole in the clouds, enough that the pilots and mechanics could see the blue sky. The news report became the most read story on Chicago Tribune’s website to that date and made international news. However, because the UFO was not seen on radar, the FAA called it a “weather phenomenon” and declined to investigate.
4. The Stephenville Sightings (2008)
The small town of Stephenville, Texas 100 miles southwest of Dallas, is mostly known for its dairy farms, but in the evening of January 8, 2008, dozens of its residents viewed something unique in the sky. Citizens reported seeing white lights above Highway 67, first in a single horizontal arc and then in vertical parallel lines. Local pilot Steve Allen estimated that the strobe lights “spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide” traveling about 3,000 miles per hour. No sound was reported. Witnesses believed the event was reminiscent of the Phoenix Lights sightings of 1997. While the U.S. Air Force revealed weeks later that F-16s were flying in the Brownwood Military Operating Areas (just southwest of Stephenville), many townspeople didn’t buy that explanation, believeing that what they saw was too technologically advanced for current human abilities.
5. East Coast GO FAST Video (2015)
Leaked in 2017 along with the news of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was a video that revealed an encounter between an F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unidentified flying vehicle. Seen along the East Coast on a Raytheon Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod, the craft was similar to that spotted off San Diego in 2004: It was a fast-moving white oval about 45-feet-long without wings or exhaust plume. The pilots tracked the object at 25,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean as it flew away and simultaneously rotated on its axis. Whether the vehicle was a product of another country’s technology or alien airship remains a mystery.
For more, watch the season premiere of Ancient Aliens Friday, April 27 at 9/8c on HISTORY.
Weird Space Rock Provides More Evidence for Mysterious 'Planet Nine'
By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor
The potential orbit of Planet 9, illustrated with the existing orbit of several trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
Credit: R. Hurt/JPL-Caltech
The solar system just got a bit stranger. As astronomers continue their ongoing quest to find the elusive Planet Nine, a team found a space rock that lends credence to the idea that a huge super-Earth planet really exists in the outer reaches of our solar system.
The newfound asteroid, called 2015 BP519, adds to a growing body of evidence about little worlds in the solar system being perturbed by something big. Astronomers detailed its discovery and description in a new paper, adding that the bizarre angle of its orbit gives more weight to the idea that a big planet is out there — somewhere — tugging on the asteroid's path around the sun.
"We also consider the long term orbital stability and evolutionary behavior within the context of the Planet Nine hypothesis, and find that 2015 BP519 adds to the circumstantial evidence for the existence of this proposed new member of the solar system," read the abstract of the paper, which is available now on preprint website Arxiv and has been submitted to The Astronomical Journal. [How Astronomers Could Actually See 'Planet Nine']
Following up on the discovery,Quanta Magazine recently published an articlesurveying several astrophysicists who specialize in studying small worlds, including the discoverers of 2015 BP519. While not everybody agreed that Planet Nine was responsible for the strange orbit, the overwhelming majority agreed the new discovery gives more credence to the idea. "The second you put Planet Nine in the simulations, not only can you form objects like this object, but you absolutely do," lead author Juliette Becker, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, told Quanta. (You can look at the object's orbit onlinehere.)
It's not the first time Planet Nine was blamed for pushing an object around. Back in 2014, before Planet Nine was officially hypothesized, astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo noticed orbital irregularities in several small bodies beyond Neptune's orbit. These included dwarf planet Sedna, a newfound object called 2012 VP113, and several other trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
Then, in January 2016, astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown saw more evidence of TNOs with perturbed orbits. They were the ones who first gave "Planet Nine" a name, size and distance. They suggested that the mysterious planet could be 10 times more massive than Earth, located 600 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One AU is the average distance between the Earth and the sun, which is 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.)
A possible ninth planet in the solar system, known as Planet 9, is illustrated orbiting far beyond Neptune's orbit (shown as a ring around the sun).
Credit: Tom Ruen.nagualdesign/ESO
A flood of studies followed about TNOs and how Planet Nine might have affected their orbits; the following summary is just a sampling. Not all teams were enthusiastic, with one group from the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) cautioning that many of these surveys could be just observational bias.
But astronomers persisted, with Sheppard and Trujillo discovering at least two new TNOs possibly affected by Planet Nine. Another study showed Planet Nine perhaps influenced the tilt of planets in our solar system. And in 2017, astronomers from the University of Madrid in Spain found peculiarities in the orbits of 22 "extreme" TNOs that orbit the sun that could also be explained by a large, distant body exerting gravitational influence. (These TNOs never get closer to the sun than Neptune — which is 30 AU away, orbiting the sun in a rough circle — and have an average distance of at least 150 AU.)
By October 2017, Batygin said, there were at least five different lines of evidence that suggest the existence of the planet. "If you were to remove this explanation and imagine Planet Nine does not exist, then you generate more problems than you solve. All of a sudden, you have five different puzzles, and you must come up with five different theories to explain them," he said in a statement.
The Alien Observatory: "Signals of Extinct Extraterrestrial Civilizations --Echo Throughout the Milky Way"
“The signals will be from the civilization as it was,” said Frank Drake, creator of the famous Drake Equation. “It is not a remote possibility — it is a high probability — that signals we receive will be from a "civilization that no longer exists.”
If signals from an alien civilization ever reach Earth, odds are the aliens will already be dead. In an effort to update the 1961 Drake Equation, which estimates the number of detectable, intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way, physicist Claudio Grimaldi and colleagues calculated the area of the galaxy that should be filled with alien signals at a given point in time.
“If the civilization emitted from the other side of the galaxy, when the signal arrives here, the civilization will already be gone,” says physicist Claudio Grimaldi, of the Federal Polytechnical School of Lausanne in Switzerland.
The team, reported Science News and Mercury News, which includeed Frank Drake (now a professor emeritus at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and the University of California, Santa Cruz), assumed technologically savvy civilizations are born and die at a constant rate. When a civilization dies out and stops broadcasting, the ghostly signals it had sent continue traveling like concentric ripples on a pond.
Electromagnetic signals (blue circles) from alien civilizations shown in the image above will continue traveling through the Milky Way even after the aliens are gone. The appearance of a doughnut hole represents when a civilization dies out.
Scientists gathered at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California this past March to chart new approaches to answering the question: are we alone? The conference, titled “Decoding Alien Intelligence”, sought to broaden perspectives and expand the methodologies applied in the effort to detect extraterrestrial technology:
“New tools are available that can enable this approach and help us decipher the evolutionary and probabilistic nature of advanced alien life,” said organizer and SETI Institute Director Nathalie Cabrol. “We can build a new roadmap that is multidisciplinary, that opens the toolbox.”
A recently released update to the Drake Equation – a framework for discussing the probability of intelligent life existing beyond Earth – is receiving a fair bit of media buzz. The Drake equation was developed during the outset of the modern SETI field to act as a framework for the scientific community to discuss the probability of advanced extraterrestrial life. The probabilistic argument was devised by pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Dr. Frank Drake, who participated in the new study.
According to the study, if advanced aliens exist on the furthest edge of the galaxy from us, any signals traveling at the speed of light will not reach us for quite some time. Any signals that do reach our planet will likely be vestiges of a long dead civilization.
“The signals will be from the civilization as it was,” said Drake. “It is not a remote possibility — it is a high probability — that signals we receive will be from a civilization that no longer exists.”
There’s the chance that it’s still alive “but no longer be transmitting,” Drake said. “Or it may have changed in a very big way, such as migrating from the planet to escape its expanding star.”
Senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, Seth Shostak, still sees the value in collecting such a message: “To me, it is like finding a bottle on a beach with a note in it,” said Shostak. “It may be that whoever put the note in is long gone. But at least you know there’s somebody on the other side of the world.”
It’s important to remember that determining the longevity of a potential alien race based on the still-developing example of our own survival has a limited value, as SETI Institute's Andrew Fraknoi points out: “Until we know more about our longevity, it is pure guesswork,” he said. “Every year we don’t destroy ourselves, we add one more year to what we know civilizations can do.”
If the civilization lasted less than 100,000 years — the time it takes light to cross the galaxy — then the odds of the signals reaching Earth while the civilization is still broadcasting are vanishingly small, the researchers reported February 27 at arXiv.org. Humans, for example, have been transmitting radio waves for only about 80 years, so our radio waves cover less than 0.001 percent of the Milky Way.
Surprisingly, the team also calculated that the average number of E.T. signals crossing Earth at a given time should equal the number of civilizations currently transmitting — even if the civilizations we hear from aren’t the same ones presently broadcasting. Grimaldi is now working on a paper about what it means that we’ve found none so far.
China is taking its first steps towards the dark side of the Moon.
Image credits NASA / JPL.
The Chinese space agency is paving the way for its unmanned Moon landing. On Monday, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation launched a Long March 4C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The launch, which delivered relay satellite Queqiao (Magpie Bridge), wasn’t broadcasted but went smoothly, says state news outlet Xinhua.
To boldly go
“The launch is a key step for China to realize its goal of being the first country to send a probe to soft-land on and rove the far side of the Moon,” Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project, told Xinhua.
Roughly 25 minutes after the launch, the 425kg Queqiao spacecraft separated from the rocket’s upper stage and aimed toward a halo orbit of the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point L2. It will spend the next six months undergoing tests to ensure that all onboard systems are running smoothly in preparation for its mission — relaying messages between ground control and the dark side of the Moon.
If Queqiao proves itself reliable, China will move forward with the launch of the Chang’e 4 spacecraft, scheduled for later this year. The mission — humanity’s first attempt to land on the far side of the Moon — will also include a rover intended to explore any areas of interest around the landing site.
Because the Moon’s body lies between Earth and the landing site, Queqiao will need to fly overhead and beam messages between the rover and mission control.
Apart from this, Queqiao will also carry two onboard instruments: a Dutch radio antenna, intended for the study of celestial radio signals blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, and a large-aperture laser angle reflector to measure the range between Earth and the spacecraft.
Queqiao should reach its L2 halo orbit in about eight days — fingers crossed for the little guy.
If you’ve been following the science news, you’re probably aware of the new study claiming octopuses come from outer space. “Octopuses are from space, scientists say” was one of the catchy headlines published in Australia, while The Express wrote that“Octopuses came to Earth from space as frozen eggs millions of years ago”. These aren’t two cherry-picked instances, the internet was abuzz with variations on the same theme. Unfortunately, however, this is almost certainly not the case. Let’s see what really happened.
What the study says
The new study, penned by over 30 researchers, essentially rehashes the theory of panspermia — the idea that life on Earth emerged in outer space, hitching a ride on meteorites or other objects that crashed into Earth at one point, something often referred to as the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of cosmic biology.
The research starts from the Cambrian Explosion an event approximately 541 million years ago, during an age called the Cambrian period. The Cambrian Explosion was an age of extreme diversification of life, during which most major animal phyla started to emerge. The study’s authors question whether that happened naturally, with just the elements existing on Earth.
“One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ∼500 Ma. Such viruses are known to be plausibly associated with major evolutionary genomic processes. We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction of H-W theory whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events,” the study reads.
Cartoonish depiction of life in the Cambrian. Alien-like? Sure! Alien? Probably not.
Image credits: Rice University.
In other words, what they’re saying is that life didn’t just emerge on its own, it was “seeded” from life-bearing comets that pummeled our planet at various times throughout history. These comets could have brought a myriad of novel life-forms from other planets, including viruses. This is one of the main assumptions of the H-W thesis — that small bodies such as asteroids and comets can protect the “seeds of life”, including DNA and RNA. So far, so good; this is a plausible idea, that has been investigated since the 1970s and continues to be analyzed by various groups. There’s not much evidence to say that it did happen, but with what we know so far, it might have happened.
Then, the authors make a big leap: if you’re not convinced by the panspermia theory, you need not look farther than the octopus. Octopuses have very complex nervous systems and big, specialized eyes — two unprecedented features.
“A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus,” the study continues.
This is where it starts to get thorny. Cephalopods, the group in which octopuses belong, did emerge in the Cambrian — the fossil records clearly suggest so. But the early cephalopods were Nautiloids, a very diverse group of creatures which exist to this day. But Nautiloids look completely different to octopuses, and they don’t share many of their impressive features. In fact, octopuses didn’t emerge until the Devonian, 323 million years ago. This means that there’s a window of over 200 million years from the Cambrian explosion to when the first true octopuses emerged, which is plenty of time to selectively develop specialized features (there are studies which say octopuses developed a bit earlier, but not significantly in this context).
Artistic depiction of Orthoceras — an early nautiloid.
Furthermore, when the octopus genome was mapped in 2015, it was shown that the nervous system genes split from the squid’s only around 135 million years ago — again, long after the Cambrian explosion. In all practicality, the evolution of the octopus was never really regarded as a mystery requiring additional explanation. This is an ancient group with some remarkable features, but these features didn’t appear in the earliest creatures, developing gradually over the course of hundreds of millions of years.
Occam’s Razor
Instead, what the new study suggests is that fertilized octopus eggs hitcher a ride aboard an icy comet and crashed into the sea at the onset of the Cambrian explosion. Alternatively, researchers write, an extraterrestrial virus infected a population of early squid, causing them to evolve in this unusual way. The genes responsible for the octopus evolution, they say, don’t appear to have come from their ancestors.
“The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral nautilus to the common cuttlefish to squid to the common octopus are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form,” the study, published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, claims.
“It is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant ‘future’ in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large.”
Again, this is technically possible. It might have happened. But that doesn’t mean it did. Occam’s razor suggests that the simpler explanation is usually the better, and this is probably the case here — there’s no reason to go and speculate about extraterrestrial origins.
It’s noteworthy that in his review of the paper, medical researcher Keith Baverstock from the University of Eastern Finland, concedes that there’s a lot of evidence that plausibly aligns with the H-W thesis, such as the curious timeline of the appearance of viruses — and yet, herein lies the problem: plausibility does not mean probability. Basically, just because something can happen doesn’t mean it did. The new paper goes to great lengths to prove that it could happen, and to open some interesting discussions. Make no mistake, this is not an amateurish study published in a predatory journal. However, the scope of the paper is oversold, and as Ken Stedman, a virologist and professor of biology at Portland State University, told Live Science, the authors didn’t carefully review existing literature, and they make extremely speculative claims.
Of course, mainstream media was all over this. The idea that life on Earth came from outer space is terribly appealing — particularly when we’re talking bizarre creatures like octopuses, and everyone gasped at the idea of an alien octopus. Unfortunately, that’s probably not the case. Octopuses are fascinating creatures, and I hope we can cherish them even if they’re not aliens.
Journal Reference:
Steele et al. “Cause of Cambrian Explosion – Terrestrial or Cosmic?”, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2018.03.004
The immigrant in case is an asteroid. Currently nestled in Jupiter’s atmosphere, it’s the first interstellar object that resides in our solar system.
Images of 2015 BZ509 obtained at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO) that established its retrograde co-orbital nature. The bright stars and the asteroid (circled in yellow) appear black and the sky white in this negative image.
Credit: C. Veillet / LBTO.
Not a tourist
Last year, a different asteroid made headlines after it became the first interstellar object we’ve found in our solar system. But that was just a tourist, a passer-by — whereas this new asteroid, given the catchy name 2015 BZ509, is here to stay.
We’ve seen the object for quite some time, but its origin was only now explained. All the planets (and most of the other objects) in our solar system rotate around the Sun in the same direction — but 2015 BZ509 is different: it moves in the opposite direction, something called a ‘retrograde’ orbit.
“How the asteroid came to move in this way while sharing Jupiter’s orbit has until now been a mystery,” explains Dr Fathi Namouni, lead author of the study. “If 2015 BZ509 were a native of our system, it should have had the same original direction as all of the other planets and asteroids, inherited from the cloud of gas and dust that formed them.”
Image of stellar nursery NGC 604 (NASA/HST), where star systems are closely packed and asteroid exchange is thought to be possible.
Credit: NASA / Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI).
Namouni and his colleagues used the current orbit of the asteroid to extrapolate its whereabouts and movement 4.5 billion years ago — during the early age of our solar system, when planets were still forming. They found that even then, 2015 BZ509 was moving the same way — meaning that it couldn’t have possibly formed in our solar system, and instead came from somewhere else.
In other words, 2015 BZ 509 emigrated from its parent star and settled around the Sun in a similar environment.
“Asteroid immigration from other star systems occurs because the Sun initially formed in a tightly-packed star cluster, where every star had its own system of planets and asteroids,” comments Dr Helena Morais, the other member of the team. “The close proximity of the stars, aided by the gravitational forces of the planets, help these systems attract, remove and capture asteroids from one another.”
The finding isn’t just remarkable in itself, but also sheds some important light on how our solar system form, and perhaps, how life itself emerged. Understanding exactly how and when 2015 BZ509 arrived and settled in the Solar System provides clues about the Sun’s original star nursery, and about the potential enrichment of our early environment with components necessary for the appearance of life on Earth.
The article “An interstellar origin for Jupiter’s retrograde co-orbital asteroid”, by F. Namouni & H. Morais, was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters (2018), in press (DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/sly057).
In the school scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s terrifying 1963 classic, The Birds, a flock of black birds rapidly multiplies, steadily filling a spooky, silent playground. Imagine that, but multiply it by thousands and whip it into a swirling funnel hundreds of feet high. That’s what an intrepid photographer captured in the stormy sky over a placid countryside in an otherworldly photo posted to Reddit’s r/WTF thread this week. The photo has been dubbed by at least one useras a “birdnado.”
Unlike the premise of Sharknado, however, this is not a flock of birds unwittingly swept up into an actual tornado. Rather, it’s far more likely to be a flock of thousands of starlings flying together in a formation known as a murmuration.
Starlings, birds common to North America and Europe, are famous for forming immense flocks, sometimes containing up to 4 million individuals. Despite their otherworldly appearance, murmurations form naturally through an oddly specific organizational mechanism that scientists laid out in a 2013 PLOS Biologypaper.
This "birdnado" is likely a flock of starlings forming a 'murmuration'.
Murmurations, the scientists write, are made possible by an individual starling’s ability to track the movements of exactly seven of their neighbors at any one time while flying in a flock. In the past, scientists had already determined that flock formation is beneficial for birds for a number of reasons, like easing the amount of energy required to travel and offering protection from predators. But the nature of how a flock forms — and stays together — was not clear. The team, focusing on starlings, knew that the birds had to strike a “balance between group cohesiveness and individual effort.”
The starlings in this birdnado manage to stay together because focusing on only the six or seven individuals in their immediate vicinity allows them to optimally “manage uncertainty” in highly uncertain environments. In other words, if a random disturbance causes the flock to shift suddenly, the flock will be optimally cohesive if every member pays attention to only the movements of its six or seven closest neighbors.
The birdnado may not be an actual natural disaster, but it can certainly be considered a storm — especially to the people who have to clean up the copious amounts of shit they’re known to leave behind. As Inversereported previously in an article on murmuration, starling guano has proven to be especially hard to deal with in Rome, where they are known to pass through:
The biggest issue is that they poop everywhere, covering streets, buildings, Vespas, and trees with thick layers of foul guano. Since the starlings feast in the copious olive groves outside of Rome, their poop is also especially oily.
Fortunately, in this apocalyptic photo, the birdnado seems to be forming over some desolate-looking fields. It’s scary-looking stuff, but fortunately, it’s far less threatening than actual tornados — though the mess it leaves in its wake likely smells far worse.
Scientists have reported the discovery of a “Trans-Neptunian object” whose orbital movements are highly unusual. Researchers suggest this strangely behaving rock could be orbiting a larger planet in deep space, bringing astronomers one step closer to finding Planet Nine.
A team of astronomers representing 35 universities and institutions announced the detection of the mystery rock this week, dubbed 2015 BP519, and have observed its eccentric orbital stability with new insight. The researchers published their dynamical analysis this week and describe the mystery rock within the context of the Planet Nine Hypothesis. The published data suggests that 2015 BP519 “adds to the circumstantial evidence for the existence of this proposed new member of the Solar System.”
The team, led by Juliette Becker of the University of Michigan, discovered 2015 BP519 by using data from the Dark Energy Survey, an ongoing project that seeks to map parts of space beyond what is known. The team had not expected to find orbiting objects in the data, let alone an object that orbits at a different angle than the known eight planets in the Solar System.
Trajectory of 2015 BP519 over its measured four-opposition arc. Red dots along the trajectory indicate points at which it was observed by the Dark Energy Survey
Whereas the known planets move along the same orbital plane due to the sun’s gravitational pull, Becker’s team says 2015 BP519 is tilted 54 degrees from that plane. This could mean that the object is influenced by a separate gravitational pull, such as a giant “ghost planet” that 2015 BP519 orbits much like a planet’s moon.
Astronomers have been searching for Planet Nine since early 2016, when astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown from the California Institute of Technology found a group of distant objects orbiting the sun at an axis different from the known planets. These Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) created eccentric orbital patterns, leading Batygin and Brown to suggest they were being pulled by something much larger than Earth and lurking somewhere farther from the sun than Neptune.
Becker’s paper expounds on these concepts and presents new data to support the Planet Nine Hypothesis, but will still need to be peer-reviewed and formally published. While the strange orbital behavior of 2015 BP519 may not confirm the existence of Planet Nine just yet, it offers a glimpse of how little is known about deep space and will serve as an asset to the scientists actively looking for the contested ghost planet.
Photos via Becker et al.DISCOVERY AND DYNAMICAL ANALYSIS OF AN EXTREME TRANS-NEPTUNIAN OBJECT WITH A HIGH ORBITAL INCLINATION, Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
Wikimedia Commons/Genny AndersonEen Californische zeehaas. Ondanks de duidelijke verschillen zijn er gelijkenissen in de manier waarop de zenuwcellen van slakken en die van mensen functioneren.
WETENSCHAP In sciencefictionfilms worden al tientallen jaren herinneringen getransplanteerd. Nu zijn wetenschappers er voor het eerst echt in geslaagd bij slakken.
Amerikaanse onderzoekers konden herinneringen van de ene slak transplanteren naar een andere door ribonucleïnezuur (RNA), een vorm van genetische informatie vergelijkbaar met DNA, uit het zenuwstelsel te halen en over te plaatsen.
Een eerste groep Californische zeehazen, een soort zeeslak, was getraind om een verdedigingsreactie te ontwikkelen. De wetenschappers gaven de diertjes lichte elektroshocks aan de staart, waarop de slakken in elkaar doken. Als de onderzoekers de slakken vervolgens een tikje gaven, deden ze hetzelfde en bleven ze gemiddeld zo’n 50 seconden ineengedoken liggen. Bij de slakken die niet getraind waren, duurde dat amper een seconde.
Na de ingreep waarbij het RNA uit het zenuwstelsel van de eerste groep slakken werd overgeplaatst naar de niet-getrainde slakken, gedroegen die laatsten zich echter alsof ze hetzelfde proces ondergaan hadden. Na een tikje van de onderzoekers doken ze in elkaar en bleven zo gemiddeld 40 seconden liggen.
Een gelijkaardig effect werd vastgesteld wanneer de onderzoekers hun studie herhaalden met sensorische zenuwcellen in een petrischaaltje.
Geheugenonderzoek
Onderzoeker David Glanzman van de universiteit van Californië in Los Angeles (UCLA), die benadrukt dat de slakken tijdens het experiment geen pijn voelden, zegt dat het is “alsof we het geheugen van de slakken hebben getransplanteerd”. De studie, die gepubliceerd is in het vakblad eNeuro, kan nieuwe inzichten verschaffen over het geheugen. Meestal wordt aangenomen dat lange-termijnherinneringen opgeslagen worden in de synapsen in de hersenen, de verbindingspunten tussen zenuwcellen. “Maar dan zou ons experiment nooit hebben kunnen werken”, zegt Glanzman. De UCLA-professor heeft een eigen theorie, namelijk dat herinneringen worden opgeslagen in de kern van zenuwcellen en dat RNA een rol speelt bij geheugenvorming.
‘Het is alsof we het geheugen van de slakken hebben getransplanteerd’
David Glanzman, onderzoeker
Volgens de onderzoekers zijn de cellen en moleculaire processen bij zeeslakken vergelijkbaar met die van mensen, al heeft de slak ongeveer 20.000 zenuwcellen in zijn centraal zenuwstelsel en de mens zo’n 100 miljard. Dat het onderzoek daadwerkelijk zal leiden tot geheugentransplantaties bij mensen, is echter klein. De onderzoekers zien deze resultaten eerder als een belangrijke stap in het onderzoek naar ziektes als alzheimer en post-traumatisch stresssyndroom.
Al gehoord van ‘laze’? Lava bereikt kust van Hawaï en dat leidt tot nieuw gevaar -HLN.be
Tessa Rens
AFP
Lava stroomt de oceaan in.
MILIEUDe autoriteiten van Hawaï maken zich grote zorgen over de hete lavastromen van de uitgebarsten vulkaan Kilauea. Die hebben intussen de Stille Oceaan bereikt en dat brengt een nieuw gevaar met zich mee. Wanneer de lava in contact komt met het koude water, ontstaat namelijk een schadelijk product.
De combinatie wordt in het Engels ‘Laze’ genoemd, een samentrekking tussen ‘lava’ en ‘haze’ (nevel). Het gaat om een bijtend product, waarbij zoutzuurgas en vulkanische gasdeeltjes in de lucht terechtkomen.
Het product kan irritatie veroorzaken aan de longen, de ogen en de huid. Bij een vorige uitbarsting in het jaar 2000 kwamen zelfs twee mensen om het leven door de lavanevel. De inwoners van het eiland krijgen daarom de raad om zo ver mogelijk weg te blijven van plaatsen waar lava de oceaan instroomt.
AP
Lava op been
De vulkaan Kilauea, een van de meest actieve vulkanen ter wereld, liet al een spoor van vernieling achter. Tientallen huizen werden opgeslokt en nog tientallen andere worden bedreigd.
Intussen is ook sprake van één zwaargewonde. Een man kreeg een klonter lava op zijn been toen hij op zijn balkon zat. De lava kwam terecht op zijn scheenbeen, en verbrijzelde alles vanaf daar tot onderaan zijn been. De man werd naar het ziekenhuis gebracht.
Tot wel 8000 buitenaardse megastructuren in het heelal. Deze astronomen speuren naar raadselachtige Dysonbollen
Een team astronomen heeft aanwijzingen gevonden dat er in het heelal tot wel 8000 buitenaardse megastructuren rond verre sterren zijn gebouwd.
Ze analyseerden gegevens die zijn verzameld door ruimtesonde Gaia van de Europese ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA en vonden mogelijke tekenen van enorme structuren die Dysonbollen worden genoemd.
Deze Dysonbollen zouden worden gebouwd om energie aan sterren te onttrekken.
Meerdere zoektochten
Astronomen van de Universiteit van Uppsala in Zweden en de Universiteit van Heidelberg in Duitsland schreven: “De energie kan vervolgens worden gebruikt voor supercomputers, het aandrijven van vaartuigen of lange-afstandscommunicatie.
De onderzoekers merken op dat er al meerdere zoektochten zijn opgezet naar Dysonbollen, maar dat ze nog niet zijn gevonden.
Het zou veel tijd in beslag nemen om zo’n enorm object te bouwen.
8000
De astronomen zochten niet naar één gigantisch object rond sterren, maar naar een zwerm satellieten, waarbij iedere satelliet een klein deel van de straling absorbeert.
Tijdens het analyseren van de gegevens stuitten ze op duizenden kandidaten, hoewel het onwaarschijnlijk is dat ze allemaal zijn gemaakt door een buitenaardse beschaving.
Volgens de wetenschappers voldoen 8000 van de onderzochte sterren aan de criteria om omringd te kunnen worden door een Dysonbol.
Meest interessante
Een ster genaamd TYC 6111-1162-1 bleek de meest interessante individuele kandidaat te zijn voor verder onderzoek, wat betekent dat de kans het grootst is dat daar een Dysonbol kan worden gevonden.
Eerder stelden astronomen dat het vreemde gedrag van de ster KIC 8462852 kon worden verklaard door een buitenaardse megastructuur.
In 2016, Google Maps – the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to images of things that look paranormal or jsut plain weird – gave the world a strange photograph of what appeared to be a round island in a slightly larger round body of water that appeared to circling around the edge in an unexplainable manner. That island in a remote Argentine forest was dubbed “The Eye” by Argentine producer and film director Sergio Neuspiller, who found it while looking for a location to shoot a horror movie about UFOs. Although locals were familiar with the site and reported seeing bright flashes of light emitting from it that they thought might be related to a nearby Indian burial ground, the film crew was unable to hack its way through the vegetation to view it firsthand. A Kickstarter program was set up to raise the money for an expedition. That was two years ago. This week, it was reported that “new studies” found that the circular island and pond could be an “extraterrestrial base.” Did Neuspiller make it through the jungle and meet some aliens?
“The phenomenon is real and would explain several of the supernatural stories connected with the presence of UFOs in the area and other paranormal aspects.”
UFO Spain seems to be the source of the story on what it claims are new studies and new talks of an extraterrestrial base. It includes a depiction of what the base might look like and the coordinates of The Eye (34 ° 15’07.8’S 58 ° 49’47.4 “W ) so anyone can see it on Goggle Maps for themselves. (To save you some time, here’s the link. You’re welcome.)
What’s a little jungle when you’re hunting for an ET base?
The Eye is clearly visible – as is the lack of any paths through the jungle leading up to it. No roads, no fallen trees, no machete-cut paths. It’s been two years since the discovery and the Kickstarter campaign. What happened?
$9,698 pledged of $50,000 goal 157 backers 0 seconds to go Funding Unsuccessful This project’s funding goal was not reached on October 10.
Cry for Argentina because it’s definitely not Hollywood, where $50,000 is not a movie budget, it’s a bar tab. Why were these filmmakers and their proposed team of scientists and ufologists unable to raise even 20% of the funding needed to make and film their expedition to The Eye? Is The Eye or whatever is behind it somehow preventing them from further investigation? And what were the “new studies”?
“The legends told by the residents of this area of Buenos Aires leave anyone who listens to them speechless. From stories of souls in pain that roam the surroundings, to lights of extraterrestrial ships that enter the island.”
Apparently, the “new study” consisted of talking to more people in the area to get their stories and opinions on The Eye. Really? Here’s a better idea. If you can raise $10,000, that sounds like enough to rent a helicopter and fly over The Eye. Maybe even dangle a camera directly over it or drop some instruments into it. If you’re that interested in The Eye, wouldn’t you try some other ways to poke a finger into it?
Unless you truly believe it’s an ET base based solely on native legends and fear that approach would be dangerous. Then again, is it any more dangerous than showing up on the ground armed with machetes?
This isn’t Antarctica … it’s Argentina. It’s time for a better examination of The Eye.
94-year-old mathematician and theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson is the mind behind many groundbreaking mathematical concepts and theoretical technologies related to harnessing the potential of outer space. Dyson proposed the Dyson tree, a genetically-engineered plant capable of growing inside a comet, producing a breathable atmosphere and allowing humanity to transform comets into natural space stations. Dyson is perhaps more famous for his Dyson sphere concept, a hypothetical megastructure which completely surrounds stars, harnessing 100% of its radiant energy. Such a structure was suspected in the strange saga of Tabby’s Star which played out throughout 2016 and 2017.
Still kickin’ out the jams at 94.
Dyson is back in the news this year with a new proposed technology the English-born visionary believes could seed life throughout the universe. Dyson calls his idea the “Noah’s Ark Egg” and describes it as a “way of making space colonies highly cost-effective.” In an interview with influential science fiction author Neal Stephenson and Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director of the theoretical research center Institute for Advanced Study, Dyson outlined his vision for sending the eggs out into the cosmos in order to spread the Earth’s biodiversity to distant exoplanets and speed up the colonization process:
The Noah’s Ark Egg is an object looking like an ostrich egg, a few kilograms in weight. But instead of having a single bird inside, it has embryos — a whole planet’s worth of species of microbes and animals and plants, each represented by one embryo. It’s programmed then to grow into a complete planet’s worth of life. So it will cost only a few million dollars for the egg and the launch, but you could have about 1,000 human beings and all the life support, and all the different kinds of plants and animals for surviving. The cost per person is only a few thousand dollars, and it could enlarge the role of life in the universe at an amazingly fast speed.
Dyson says the technology to design these “eggs” may only be a hundred years away or so, but that many advances in embryology and robotics are needed before the eggs could be developed.
As far-fetched as the idea might sound, more and more evidence points to the idea that life on Earth may have come from space. It’s no stretch, then, to assume that it }also work the other way. Could humans seed life throughout the universe using technologies similar to Dyson’s proposed Noah’s Ark Eggs? It makes me wonder: what if one of these eggs went through a wormhole in the future and is caught in a causal loop? Could we have seeded life on Earth ourselves from the future as our planet dies around us? Has this all happened before and will it all happen again?
Nah, probably not. We all know a wizard in the sky made us with his powerful magic. Now close your eyes and thank him for your Hamburger Helper before he sends down more cancer to punish us.
Fire in the sky: Multi-colored UFO cloud appears over São Paulo, Brazil
A rare sky phenomenon above the state of São Paulo, Brazil has delighted people.
The multi-colored glow appeared in the sky on May 19, 2018 and it was likely a fire rainbow, which occurs when sunlight refracts through ice-crystal clouds.
Others have said it could have been cloud iridescence, which happens when water droplets or crystals scatter light, or could it be an earthquake light? Anyway it remains a very strange phenomenon.
THE ALLIES OF HUMANITY, BOOK 3 BY MARSHALL VIAN SUMMERS SEVENTH BRIEFING
We are pleased to be able to respond to these questions, for we know they are important in giving you a greater understanding. You will need this understanding now, for the world is changing and your future and destiny is before you. It is our privilege to share this greater wisdom with you. We can only hope that it can be comprehended correctly and applied correctly, for such things can be misconstrued and grave error can arise from them. Let us begin now.
“How are you different from those forces who are intervening in the world today?”
We represent those free races in your region of space who still value individual freedom and who have stayed out of the larger networks of trade and commerce conducted by nations that, though powerful, do not honor individual freedom and do not recognize the power of Knowledge in the individual as a blessing and as a great resource.
We come here not to intervene but to share our wisdom and perspective that humanity will need now to proceed with greater certainty and greater strength and understanding in its engagement with life in the universe. You cannot give yourself this education. It cannot be taught in your universities or centers of learning. Therefore, it must be given to you by others who value your presence in the universe and do not want to see you fall under the persuasion and domination of foreign powers.
Therefore, our intent is entirely different from that of the Intervention. Our societies are entirely different. Our focus and our wisdom are entirely different. If you can understand that humanity must unite itself and gather its own strength and wisdom without foreign control, then you will understand why we are not intervening in the world, but instead only offering our wisdom, perspective and guidance for you to use or not to use, as you so choose.
“What does the Intervention want here on Earth?”
The Intervention seeks to control this world and the world’s peoples. It does this not only to meet its own goals of wealth and resource acquisition, but to serve larger powers who secretly will use the Intervention to gain control of the world. These larger powers would not dare to enter the world as the Intervention is doing now, but they will use these more unscrupulous forces to achieve their own goals of influence and acquisition.
The Intervention wants a compliant humanity. It does not want a rebellious humanity, for it could not manage that. The Intervention wants humanity to work agreeably—believing in its goals, principles and promises. These, of course, are false and deceiving, and it would be the gravest of errors if humanity were to follow these mandates.
Therefore, understand that you now have competition from the universe—competition for the value and the resources of this world, its strategic position and those things that are secretly hidden here beyond human awareness, which are of immense value to those races in the universe who are aware of them.
From this point forward, you will have to defend your world from intervention and from persuasion, which can be very powerful and very influential. These powers have been exerted in our worlds to the great detriment of our peoples, and we had to fight and struggle to regain our freedom and to ward off these influences and to keep them out of our districts. It is the price in the universe where freedom is rare.
Freedom requires vigilance. Freedom requires great care and great discernment. Humanity must develop these skills and these qualities if it is to survive in a diverse and influential universe, if it is to remain free and self-determined amidst the presence of other powerful forces.
“Are any of the visitors beneficial to humanity?”
No one who is visiting your world now or in recent times is beneficial to humanity. They all represent competing forces vying for power and influence here. They are all part of the Intervention, which is made up of more than one race. If you could understand your situation more thoroughly, then you would recognize that intervention in any form is detrimental to humanity and that such intervention is being carried out for self-interest to gain control and to gain domination.
No true ally of humanity would be in the world trying to manipulate human awareness, trying to control human behavior, trying to steer human destiny to its own ends.
Therefore, you are facing an unequivocal situation. You do not have the burden of trying to tell friend from foe amongst those who are intervening in the world. That would be very difficult for you to do, given the powers of persuasion that are being placed upon humanity at this time.
You have the benefit of facing a clear and unequivocal situation. Those who are visiting your world are here to manipulate and to deceive. They feel that their goals are correct and that they more than you could rule humanity beneficially. But that is according to their values, which does not esteem in any way individual freedom, nor does it value the greater qualities of the human nature and the achievements of humanity.
“Will anyone from space come to save humanity?”
No one will come to save humanity, and those who claim to be here for this purpose represent the Intervention itself. If humanity is ever to become strong and self-determined in the universe, it must save itself. What it needs from other races in the universe is the kind of wisdom and guidance we are providing through these sets of Briefings. This is what any other society in the universe who cares about humanity’s future and freedom could give in a world where a divided humanity is struggling with itself, despoiling its world and under-mining the three basic achievements that are necessary for freedom: unity, self-sufficiency and discretion.
Do not think that others will come here to save humanity, for they will come here to save the world for themselves, and humanity will be but a resource they will use to achieve their own goals. Do not be foolish and naïve. Do not think that other races would expend the energy and invest themselves to such a great degree just to assure your freedom, for such an investment must be for their own purposes. This requires careful thought and consideration on your part, a very sober approach and a greater objectivity.
“If conquest is not allowed in this region of space, how can an Intervention occur and be successful?”
Conquest is not allowed in this region of space, so other means are sought through inducements, through the offering of gifts of technology and through persuading a native race that it alone cannot govern itself or assure its own future. It is these same persuasions that humanity places upon itself through its commercial and political persuasions.
Humanity has a greater destiny and a greater potential. Humanity can establish a sustainable use of this world. It can establish this security and stability, but it will have to proceed very differently than it is proceeding now. Otherwise, it will think that others will come to give it gifts, to uplift its science and technology, to show it how to live in peace.
But this is where you are vulnerable and fall easily under foreign persuasion. For such a peace does not exist amongst those who are intervening in the world. And there is no free energy in the universe that is truly free.
They will come to exploit you and to take advantage of your expectations and your naiveté. Therefore, you must be very wary here and very cautious. It is these powers of persuasion and powers of influence in the mental environment that will have such a great impact upon human thinking, human expectations and human emotions.
Here you either make yourself available to such persuasion, or you recognize you must resist it. Here humanity’s approach will make all the difference, for truly a small non-military force could gain ascendancy in the world without the use of force. It could do this through the power of persuasion and by offering the native people things that they think they want. This is how native peoples have been seduced throughout human history by other intervening powers. Now you are facing intervening from the universe, whose persuasion is much more sophisticated and much more powerful. If you are in their proximity, they can control your thinking, your feelings and your perception. This is the power they have of influence in the mental environment.
You can withstand this power because of the presence of Knowledge within yourself, the Knowledge that the Creator of all life has placed within you. For it cannot be persuaded. It cannot be deceived. And it cannot be corrupted. You will need to gain access to this greater Knowledge if you are to remain free and to develop wisdom and maturity in the Greater Community.
“What role, if any, do our governments play in assisting the activities of the Intervention?”
Some governments have assisted the Intervention, only to find it is working against them, and that it is deceptive and untrustworthy. Major governments in the world today have had contact in the past and have made certain agreements to allow the Intervention to function here in exchange for certain kinds of technology. But this has given license to a very dangerous intrusion into the human world and into human societies. Its influence is considerable and is directed to those individuals who are deemed to be the most compliant and the most easily persuaded.
But in recent times, there has been a shift to influence those in positions of leadership in commerce, for they are not accountable to the public. They are unelected and go largely unrecognized by the human population. They garner tremendous wealth, and they do not claim to have great scruples, such as your elected officials might proclaim. They can operate in secrecy, with very little accountability to anyone.
There has been a change, therefore, in the Intervention’s emphasis to move towards individuals in positions of leadership in commerce, particularly regarding resource acquisition and distribution. For these individuals hold great power in these arenas and are far more easily persuaded. Your people know not of what is occurring in your midst.
“Are any of the world’s governments resisting the Intervention?”
Yes, the United States and Russia are resisting the Intervention. That is one of the reasons they have ceased their competition that was so destructive over many decades. They are more cooperative now, for they realize they need one another to be successful in offsetting the impacts and the persuasion that is being cast upon humanity.
There are smaller governments assisting now, but primarily it is these two greater powers that hold such great military strength and persuasion in the world. It is they who had fallen under alien deception, and it is they who have now turned against the Intervention. That is why our contact on Earth, Marshall Vian Summers, can receive this information and can receive our Briefings and counsel without fear of government suppression. He is being watched, we are sure, though we cannot tell to what extent.
He is providing a service not only to the peoples of the world, but also to those governments who are aware of the Intervention and who are now opposing its presence and its activities in the world.
“Human scientists say that no one can travel faster than the speed of light. Therefore, how is it possible that the Intervention can come here or even that you could come here?”
This premise is certainly one that limits human understanding. If you could not travel faster than these speeds, you could not travel in space at all, and that perhaps is the assumption of many who still think that this is a barrier that cannot be surpassed.
Even before there were any human civilizations in the world, space travel was underway to a very large and sophisticated extent. You can travel faster than the speed of light and counteract its effect on time and aging, and this has been practiced far longer than any human civilization.
But travel is not as fast as you might think or imagine. It still takes time to travel between solar systems—sometimes, in your estimation and time frame, days and weeks or even months, depending on the distance one has to traverse. This, of course, would be astoundingly fast according to your notion, but you are still crawling along at a slow pace while other nations have been engaged in commerce, trade and travel for hundreds of thousands of your years, even in your region of space.
You do not live in some newly developed part of the universe. There has been a long history in this region, longer even than we can account for—a history of early war, conquest and conflict. This has been surpassed by a greater unity, a great network of trade and a great network of control—which has suppressed war and conflict, but which has also suppressed freedom and self-determination amongst its participating nations.
Therefore, you must consider that this barrier, called the speed of light, is something that humanity, in some distant future, will be able to overcome. Even on its own it will find a way to do this. But surely it cannot hold to such a limit as being defining. For we have come to be near the Earth, and now we are far away from the Earth, and the Intervention has come to intervene in the world, which it is doing now ever so greatly with each passing year. Trade and commerce is going on in many regions inside the galaxy, and we may only assume in other galaxies as well. So never think that technology in the universe is limited by human understanding or accomplishment.
“When will humanity be able to travel outside this solar system?”
Your travel outside this solar system may be possible within the next two centuries, but we say “may be possible” because you will have to face the great environmental change that is occurring in your world, which has the power to undermine human civilization. And you also have to face the consequences of intervention in your world, which could usurp human authority here and place humanity under foreign control and domination. Either of these two events could alter the course of human destiny thoroughly, could stifle and control humanity’s accomplishments and its destiny as a free and self-determined peoples in the universe.
Therefore, there are great dangers facing you now, and that is why our Briefings are so important and why we have been called by greater Spiritual Powers to come to the Earth to deliver our messages to a worthy world and a worthy people.
“You speak of individual freedom being rare in the universe. Why is this so?”
Freedom is difficult to cultivate. It can be unruly and disorganized. It can lead to dangerous individual assertions. It can have disastrous consequences if it is not governed wisely and conscientiously. It is far easier for nations to exert control and to establish authority over their peoples and societies. That is why most nations choose this easier and more expedient path, even though it leads to a far less productive and creative outcome.
Freedom is difficult to cultivate even on an individual level. It requires responsibility. It requires awareness. It requires wise governance and counsel. It requires a wise leadership and a willing and educated population. These things are all very challenging to establish, and that is why many nations choose the alternative route to stability.
We believe, however, that the path of individual freedom leads to a stronger nation and to greater creativity and accomplishments amongst its citizens for the benefit of all. We believe that repressive societies, though they may be common in the universe, do not have this creativity and cannot benefit from the wisdom and the greater purpose that each person carries. Thus, their achievements are limited, and they tend to copy one another, for they are not creative. New technology, new wisdom and new ways of creative social governance are not established in these nations. They are conservative, and they resist progressive thinking and progressive accomplishments.
Here humanity must see that it has one of two pathways to follow in establishing greater security and stability in the world. It will either create a repressive regime that will enforce order and stifle the creativity and freedom of individuals. Or it will choose the more difficult path of establishing a freer, more creative and more productive society.
It is our hope and wish that humanity will choose the path of freedom and build the freedom that it has already established in many parts of the world. It has of course, a long way to go in doing this, and it is not an easy task. But now with the prospect of diminishing resources in the world and the presence of intervening, manipulative forces, humanity faces a great challenge in this regard.
You can never take your freedom for granted in the universe. Freedom is a privilege and not merely a right. It must be built with strength and wisdom, and it must be protected with vigilance, always.
“If you were caught by the Intervention, what would happen to you and would there be consequences for your own worlds?”
If we were to be caught by the intervening forces, we would be tortured and exposed to cruel punishment to extract from us any information that we might have. Our home worlds would be discerned, and great external pressure would be brought to bear upon the leaders of our nations regarding our presence and influence here in the world. For our worlds have established agreements of non-interference in regions outside of our own, and this is what gives us our autonomy, an autonomy that is always fragile and under scrutiny for the possibility of revision.
According to our agreements, we are not allowed to be in the vicinity of your world giving such counsel, even if we are not directly intervening. But we are nearby, and our purpose is noble and worthy and guided by a greater Source. So certainly we would be tortured and destroyed, those of us who are gathered for this purpose. And our worlds would come under greater scrutiny and tremendous pressure, and our contracts guaranteeing our autonomy would be threatened and challenged.
This would be grave for our leadership. Therefore, we act with the greatest secrecy. That is why we do not describe our appearance. That is why we do not give our names, describe our worlds or tell you where our worlds reside. It is of the utmost importance to us that these things remain secret. We have not even revealed them to our contact here on Earth. Nor would we do so. For any human mind can be interfered with, and its understanding can be extracted by those intervening forces in the world now.
Therefore, you must understand the importance of discretion. That is why it is one of the three requirements for establishing and maintaining freedom in the universe: unity, self-sufficiency and discretion. You are only at the beginning of learning about the power of the mental environment. You are only beginning to learn how other races can gain access to human wisdom and understanding. You are only beginning to realize how much your freedom will have to be guarded and protected if it is to be sustained in a universe where freedom is rare.
“The Briefings state that the Intervention is promoting human conflict. How does it do this? Can you give us an example of what you have seen so far?”
You have but to promote religious extremism and nationalism and to convince the leaders and persuasive individuals that other peoples represent their enemy and a threat. You have only to project the images of spiritual saints and emissaries proclaiming the need to overcome adversaries. This is how the Intervention can promote conflict in the world. The United States’ engagement and its war in the nation of Iraq is a very good example of leaders being persuaded to do something that is utterly foolish, to engage in an intractable conflict with no certain outcome, committing so much of its resources, even risking world opinion to engage in this manner. Other nations, particularly nations that are powerful and influential, will be engaged in this way through persuasion by the Intervention—to diminish their power, to diminish their influence, to diminish the morale of their own peoples and to diminish their economies. For the Intervention needs humanity to decline in order to present itself as truly beneficial to human destiny.
Therefore, the Intervention will seek to weaken the strongest powers to degrade their influence in the world and to create an overall situation where the Intervention will be deemed truly valuable, and its counsel and its guidance will be attended to and followed.
“You also indicate that the Intervention is pacifying people. How can it pacify people and yet promote human conflict?”
The Intervention is pacifying certain populations—the young people, the educated, those who are spiritually inclined, those who could not be encouraged to wage war or conflict against others. Those who could be the greatest emissaries for the Intervention will be pacified and directed. They will believe in the new leadership. They will believe that the Intervention is here to save a struggling and declining humanity.
Those who cannot be pacified can be encouraged to engage in their ancient animosities and their distrust of their neighbors, and to fortify their resistance and hostility towards their historic enemies. Lands can be contested. Resources will be contested increasingly. Even within nations, there will be groups who will arise, who will seek to destabilize and overtake those nations. Many groups will be governed by religious ideology, governed not only by the defaults of human nature, but also by the influence and guidance exerted by the Intervention itself.
“Is the Intervention manipulating food production or any other industries here on Earth?”
The Intervention does not need to manipulate food production, as it is declining as a result of humanity’s impact on your own environment. Other industries, such as the military industries—industries that supply and support military efforts and military adventures—these are certainly being encouraged. There are forces encouraging human conflict. This represents the impact of the Intervention. While there is an incentive for peace, there is also an incentive for conquest. That is why many nations are building their military capacity. At least they were when we were last in the vicinity of your world, and we must assume that this is continuing.
This is not only the result of human mistrust and human fear. It also represents the impact of the Intervention. The Intervention is not threatened by your weapons. Only nuclear power and nuclear weapons threaten its existence here. And these things cannot be used without great consequence to the welfare and to the future of humanity.
The Intervention is using power in the mental environment—the powers of persuasion, powers which humanity is only beginning to discern and to understand. Humanity still thinks that military power will determine its fate and its future, but in a universe of greater skill and greater influence, this will not prove to be effective. This represents a new threshold of learning and accomplishment for the human family.
“Can you reveal where the Intervention bases on Earth are so that we can shut them down?”
We do not have full knowledge of this. Certainly, the first bases were established in the oceans and shallow waters, away from the presence of human military forces—in the Arctic regions and in areas where there is no military establishment. Bases underground, which are far more difficult to establish, have been built in mountain regions. Transmitters have been established in mountain regions, which have cities at their base—transmitters to affect the mental environment and pacify the public. This represents one of the efforts of the Intervention.
We do not know where all of these transmitters have been placed, but we do know they are being used. We do not know where all the bases have been established, particularly on land. We were never near enough to the surface of the Earth to be able to witness these things ourselves and can only understand their existence by deciphering the transmissions of the Intervention. Yet it is enough for you to know that such bases exist here and that there is a significant alien presence in the world. It is not a military presence. It represents the skillful use of commercial forces by those who have gained power and influence in the mental environment.
You will have to change your understanding of the use of power to realize how strong an influence this is and how much more effective it is towards establishing your goals and priorities than the exertion of military power. The exertion of military power is restrained in your world, and it is greatly suppressed in this part of the galaxy.
“If the Intervention is overcome, what should humanity do with all the individuals who are a result of the hybridization program?”
If the Intervention can be overcome, you will face future interventions. But regarding the presence of such individuals, you will have to reincorporate them into the human society, and that will require a great investment of time and energy. These individuals will actually be able to be beneficial participants in society, but their understanding and the influences upon them will have to change remarkably.
Some could become wise seers. But it is their allegiance to humanity that will have to be fully established, and they will have to learn to shield themselves from the effects of the Intervention, which can influence them even if the Intervention is not present in the world. For in space, influence in the mental environment can accrue over vast distances. Once influence has been established, this can take place.
This will be a challenge. These individuals can become beneficial to humanity if their allegiance can be placed here and if persuasions upon them can be minimized or eliminated.
“Inter-dimensional travel seems to be the fastest way to get around in space. Why is it not being used?”
Inter-dimensional travel, though greatly promising, has proven to be disastrous, for you cannot control your reentry, and even if you could find one of the portals, which are constantly in motion, you would not be able to ascertain where you would emerge—into what kind of physical environment or physical condition you would find yourself. That is why so many craft that have attempted this transference have never returned.
The portals remain a mystery. Interdimensional travel remains a hypothesis. We know that certain races have been able to bridge the gulf between dimensions. They have been able to communicate from the other dimension, but they were not able to return, and contact with them was short lived, leading to an uncertain outcome.
Humanity hopes and believes that such things will be available to it so that it can travel anywhere it wants, to move across the galaxy in an instant, to emerge in any environment. But the reality of the Greater Community will change these notions, will temper your ambitions and will show you a very different reality than the one that you imagine for yourself.
Even if you could emerge through such travel, you would end up in the vicinity of foreign worlds with whom you do not have relations or in physical environments that are entirely hazardous. You would have no way of charting a corridor route there unless you had allies existing in that region. And such alliances would be very difficult to establish, for no race wants to be intruded upon by races from afar in this manner. This would be a challenge to their security and to their network of local trade. They would be greatly threatened by the appearance of a foreign race with whom they had no history or relations.
You have but to think of these things more carefully, more objectively, to see and to understand what we are conveying to you. This requires a serious consideration. Otherwise, you will continue to indulge in fantasies of high technology and instantaneous space travel. But you will have to face a very different reality as you emerge into a Greater Community of life.
“Many people here on Earth would love to travel to other worlds and meet other races there, yet you indicate that this would be very limited. Why is this the case?”
Most nations do not welcome visitation unless it is from those who are its longstanding trading partners, and even here visitation will be limited, for societies do not want to be influenced by other societies. Certainly any free nation would not be welcome to visit a nation that is not free.
Then there is the problem of biological contamination. We can think of no world where humanity would be welcome at all given the biological reality of your world and the tremendous threat it could impose upon a foreign world. They are not prepared to deal with the innumerable biological agents and influences that exist here, and to receive an emissary from Earth would be a very challenging prospect for them.
If they were not a free society, they would not be interested in your individual expressions. They would be threatened by your music and your art. They would not want these influences to be exerted upon their cultures. They would not want their own populations to witness you or to understand you, for in this, you would be a great threat to them and to all they have invested in establishing their highly controlled societies.
You would not be able to reach other nations because you would have to cross territories owned by others. You would have to use trade routes governed by trading authorities. You would have to make agreements and compromises. You would have to come to terms with many other powers just to travel freely in this region of space. If you traveled outside these established routes, you would always face the danger of piracy. You would also face the danger of becoming lost.
Even amongst our worlds, we would not welcome human visitation at this time, for you are not yet wise enough, united enough or discerning enough for us to establish active relations with you. That is why no one should be intervening in the world. No one should be attempting to establish relations with the human family, and those that do are here for their own purposes, to establish their own quest for power and domination.
You, who are naïve and do not understand the realities of life and travel in the universe, have yet to see these things clearly. But if you think carefully about this, you will understand. There are nations even within your own world that you could not visit freely at this moment because they are not free, because they would not welcome your influence and your presence in their midst. Though such nations are few, their examples serve to illustrate what we are saying.
The universe is far more diverse, and its societies are far more different from one another than anything you have established here on Earth. Races are far more different from each other. And trust in relations can take a very long time to establish and is always maintained with great scrutiny and care. This represents the reality that you will face as you emerge into this larger arena of life.
“It appears very likely that we will run out of at least some of our essential resources in the near future. How can human civilization continue if we do not receive technology and assistance from our neighbors in space?”
If you seek to gain technology and assistance, you will be drawn into the persuasions, requirements and the commercial trade networks of other nations. They will limit your freedom. They will limit what you can do here on Earth. They will influence the kind of societies you will create in the future and will greatly limit the freedom allowed your citizens. You would give up so much for this technology and assistance. You do not yet realize what a great loss this would be and how much humanity would lose in the exchange.
You have enough here on Earth if humanity will govern itself wisely and if nations will cooperate sufficiently to preserve the resources of the world and to use them in a sustainable manner. You will need to build new technology, but even more than technology, you will need the will and the cooperation to do this.
Over time, humanity will have to find beneficial and humane ways of limiting its population and limiting its consumption. It would be a very different world than the world you live in today, which is based upon the desire and the expectation of endless growth and expansion.
To be self-sufficient is one of the requirements for freedom. For humanity to be self-sufficient in this world would require a very different creation of society and a very different set of priorities for your leaders and your citizens.
What will bring about this great change but necessity itself? You are facing great change in the world—great environmental change, great change that all advancing technological societies have had to face or will have to face inevitably in their evolution. It is how you recognize and prepare for this, how you respond to this and what kind of society you build, whether it be free or repressive, that will determine the future of human existence in this world.
“Are there many worlds such as ours in space?”
There are many worlds that have been stripped of their natural resources and have become barren as a result. Certainly, terrestrial worlds such as yours are rare, maybe one out of five or six thousand planets contain the biological diversity that you enjoy and take for granted here in your world. That still accounts for many planets in the universe. But such planets are always occupied, are always valued and the native races always have to defend their rights, their privileges and their stewardship as they begin to emerge into the Greater Community.
Terrestrial planets create biological hazards for visitors. And that is why colonization is usually attempted once the native race has either established a usable network that the visitors can use, such as is the case here on Earth, or have destroyed themselves through conflict and war, leaving an open door for intervention to occur, even military intervention. Military intervention is allowed in this region of space under such conditions. This represents part of the ethics of contact that are assumed and are practiced by many nations in this part of the Greater Community.
“Many people conclude that the visitors are beneficial because they haven’t already attacked us and taken over. What would you say to this?”
The Intervention is not here to attack humanity but to persuade humanity. The Intervention needs a compliant humanity to work for it and to engage with it to become part of its Collective. This assumption that humanity would be attacked and overtaken is entirely wrong. It is how you view gaining access to new lands and new resources.
But even in your modern world, economic, more than military, forces are used to gain acquisition to resources, and this is what is happening to the world regarding its relations in space. You are encountering small, economic Collectives who are here to begin the process of acquisition that larger nations can assume later on, if the Intervention is successful in establishing its presence and its power in your world.
To think that you would be attacked is wrong, and to think that because you have not been attacked that the forces that are here are beneficial is wrong. Both are based upon false assumptions. Therefore, the conclusions are incorrect.
Humanity, living so long in isolation and being so warlike yourselves, is certainly likely to make such assumptions and to continue to believe in them and to uphold them. It is human ignorance that gives rise to such things, and human arrogance as well. For you may be preeminent in your own world, but you have no preeminence in the Greater Community, and you are not looked upon favorably by your nearest neighbors because of your warlike tendencies and destructive use of your environment.
Those neighbors who are not free will look upon the freedoms that you have cultivated thus far with great anxiety and with great concern, not wanting these influences to be exerted within their own worlds. You have no idea what your music and your dance could evoke in such worlds and why they are viewed as a threat to those controlling powers that dominate them.
“How do free races maintain their autonomy and keep races that are not free from interfering?”
Ah, this is the challenge! This is the challenge that awaits you if you are able to offset the Intervention that is occurring in the world today. The interest in your world will not cease, and attempts to influence you will continue. How would you keep such influences at bay? For free races living in larger neighborhoods of worlds that are not free, often this requires the signing of non-interference contracts, which stipulate generally that the free nations will not participate beyond their boundaries and areas or regions of influence. They will not try to exert or promote their freedom abroad. In exchange for this, other nations agree to stay out of their areas of influence and to not contact them directly.
So various kinds of contracts like this are often made in highly inhabited regions of space, but such contracts are subject to change and reevaluation, and that is why the free nations do not travel beyond their districts or seek to promote freedom abroad. For that would violate their own autonomy and their own insulation from the Greater Community itself.
In areas where there is not a large concentration of nations, free nations will have to maintain their security through military means, aggressively challenging anyone who would come into their vicinity.
This is less desirable, of course, but in sparsely populated regions in uncharted territories, this is definitely required. Everyone in the universe is looking for resources. Many in the universe want to have influence over other nations. Even in largely inhabited regions such as this, these desires and these needs continue.
Therefore, it is a tenuous balance that a free nation or a group of free nations must establish in order to keep the Greater Community out of their territories and to prevent the kind of intervention that is occurring in the world today.
Humanity still thinks the universe is a great empty place awaiting exploration, awaiting colonization, with infinite resources there for the taking, if only humanity can establish a sufficient technology to gain access to them. Yet these assumptions all stem from your isolation and your profound ignorance about the nature of life, commerce and interactions in the Greater Community.
We understand this, and we do not condemn you for it, for we too had many of the same assumptions before contact with the Greater Community began for us, before intervention was attempted in our worlds. Since then, we have established greater autonomy, but it must be guarded carefully, both in the physical environment and in the mental environment.
Other nations employ seers who try to see into our worlds, to see what kind of technology we are producing and to see where our power and our weakness reside. We must offset these intrusions in the mental environment with seers of our own, who are guided by Knowledge, who would obstruct this kind of intervention in the mental environment.
This is all a new frontier to you and to human science and to human religion. Power in the mental environment in many ways can be equivalent to power in the physical environment, and the dangers and defenses that must be established here are significant. This is the price of freedom in the universe—constant vigilance, constant care and great responsibility.
“You keep mentioning that Knowledge is the most powerful force in the universe. How can that be true when there are so many other powerful forces to deal with?”
Knowledge represents the power to see, to know and to act with certainty. It also represents the power to resist persuasion, deception and influence in the mental environment. The individual or the nation that has this strength has the power to resist intervention and to comprehend the intentions and the activities of other nations who might be threatening to its freedom or existence.
It is the ultimate form of intelligence, you see, and seers who are guided by Knowledge are more powerful than seers who are not. Here you are able to discern the future and future events before they happen, with varying degrees of accuracy. Here you are able to discern the intentions of others and the capabilities of others without the use of technology. Here you can pretend to be weak when in fact you are really strong. Here you can appear to be non-aggressive when in fact you can be incisive in your inquiries. Here you can be well protected and well defended without requiring a great military force or infrastructure. Here you can make wise decisions regarding your relations with other nations even if their intentions are questionable or uncertain. Here you can engage in diplomacy with other nations with far more certainty than you would have otherwise.
It is this power and this Knowledge that humanity will need if it is to gain the strength and commitment to establish greater unity amongst its nations and the wise and sustaining use of the world. This will overcome greed and avarice. This will overcome competition, conflict and war. This will overcome grievance and hatred and inequality.
That is why Knowledge is the greatest power in the universe. It is a power that the Intervention is not using, or it would not be here engaged in the activities it is undertaking. This is the power that will give humanity the power to offset intervention and to prevent future interventions. This is the power to give humanity the stability to establish a new world with far greater equanimity and equality, justice and freedom.
GRAND CANYON UFO CRASH SITE – THE 4000 YEAR OLD SECRET
Over the last few months I have stumbled upon several articles relating to a possible Grand Canyon UFO crash site. We decided to gather what little we could find on the subject and cover the case in the article below.
See what you think…
The Vessel
Several months ago a specialized team of experts were apparently hired to examine debris found at the Grand Canyon. When they arrived at the scene they were said to have discovered the body of a UFO that had rested there for over 4,000 years.
The team of experts were thought to be the core of a secret joint military task force on UFOs.
The craft they located was constructed out of an unknown metallic substance and also showed signs of low levels of radiation. Once found it was quickly removed to a secure military location.
A California based astronomer named Dr. Henry Leaumont claims to have inside information on the Grand Canyon UFO crash site. He believes that the craft was of a decent size and able to carry about twenty individuals of a certain height.
He also believes that the carbon dating on the ship indicates that it crashed around the 2,000 B.C. period.
Inside The Vessel
When experts finally managed to get inside the craft they discovered that the cabin area was designed for humanoids of about 4-5 foot in height. There were machines that resembled oxygen tanks and there were signs of old supplies ( food and water ).
The vessel was atom powered and had a steering system that was based on magnetic steering.
Comanche Point
The UFO was apparently located in an area known as Comanche Point – it was lodged deep inside a limestone formation.
When the experts carried out a thorough search of the area they determined that the inhabitants of the vessel lived near it for years after the crash.
Comanche Point – Grand Canyon
Nearby Indian caves show paintings of strange humanoid creatures with bulbous heads. These illustrations are thought to depict the creatures from inside the craft.
The experts believe that the all the alien life disappeared from the surrounding area about 50 years after the initial crash landing. They have no idea what might of happened to the beings that had lived around the fallen vessel.
The Grand Canyon UFO Crash Site
Dr. Henry Leaumont goes on to explain that the craft measured approximately 50 feet widewith a length of at least 100 feet.
He also claims that the American government are doing all they can to keep this amazing find from the public.
What are your thoughts on Dr. Henry Leaumont’s claims? Please leave your opinions in the comment section below.
Life On Mars? Scientists Say There May Be 12,000 Olympic-Sized Pools Of Organic Matter On Mars
A new study published by scientists from the Imperial College London suggests there could be as much as 12,000 Olympic sized pools of organic matter on the red planet.
After examining Dorset’s acidic stream, scientists believe there could be as much as 12,000 Olympic sized pools of organic matter on the red planet.
Based on analysis of acidic streams in St. Oswald’s Bay on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England, scientists believe up to 12,000 Olympic sized pools of organic matter may exist on the red planet. Experts say that modern-day streams found in Dorset are similar to Mars0 ancient waterways.
Scientists studied acidic streams in Dorset because they are ‘eerily similar’ to the environment on Mars, billions of years ago.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
The study from Imperial College London has found traces of fatty acids—a key ingredient in the development of life, on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset’s acidic streams.
By applying their discovery from Dorset to Mars, experts say that there could be around 12,000 Olympic sized pools of organic matter on Mars, bearing traces of past life on the red planet.
Dorset’s acidic sulfur streams are home to bacteria capable of surviving extreme conditions. These precise conditions say scientists may have been present on the surface of Mars in the distant past.
Scientists from Imperial College London examined the organic matter preserved in rock deposits near Dorset.
Water existed on Mars billions of years ago.
It is believed that an iron-rich mineral called goethite—which transforms to hermatite—is the reason why Mars is gifted with its traditional red color.
Professor Mark Sephton Sephton from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science & Engineering said: “We thought that if these iron-rich minerals harbor traces of life on Earth, then they might hold clues to past microbial life on the Red Planet.”
Scientists believe if the iron-rich minerals harbored traces of life on Earth, these may also hold important clues of possible past microbial life on the surface of Mars.
Speaking about the new study and what it implies, co-author Jonathan Tan, from the Department of Earth Science & Engineering said:
“St Oswald’s Bay is a present-day microcosm of middle-aged Mars. As the acid streams dry up, like during Mars’ “drying period,” they leave goethite minerals behind which preserve fatty acids that act as biological signatures.”
Water On Mars
According to Professor Sephton, the red planet had water billions of years ago, and it is possible that life, as we know it, may have thrived on Earth’s neighboring planet.
“Mars harbored water billions of years ago, meaning some form of life might have thrived there. If life existed before the water dried up, it would probably have left remains that are preserved to this day in Martian rock. We have yet to find convincing traces of organic matter that would indicate previous life on the Red Planet – but now we know which rocks to focus on,” explained Professor Sephton.
To test out their theory, the researchers are looking to the next life-searching mission to Mars, Mars 2020, to look for these dried streams and examine the sediment for possible traces of fatty acids.
London has three times more UFO sightings than any other UK town or city — with 336 incidents since 2001
Celebrity UFO believers include Robbie Williams, Shaun Ryder and Kim Wilde - who had a close encounter in her back garden in 2009.
EXCLUSIVE
By Sarah Ridley
LONDON is the UFO capital of the UK with THREE times more sightings than any other town or city.
New statistics show that 336 UFO incidents have been officially reported there since 2001 - with a host of celebs including David Bowie, Robbie Williams and Prince Philip among the believers.
GETTY
London has more UFO sightings than any other UK city
Manchester is the second with 110 close encounters while there were 79 in Birmingham and 56 in Liverpool.
North of the border Glasgow topped the list with 69 and Cardiff logged 35 reports.
Overall the UK is the third highest in the world for UFO sightings with 5,234 reports in the past 16 years.
The US has had the most sightings with 139,876 - the equivalent of one report every hour.
GETTY IMAGES - GETTY
Robbie Williams is among the celebs who have said they believe in UFOs
Canada is second with 5,780.
Mexico had 607 and India 574.
New York based journalist Cheryl Costa revealed the latest figures after reports flooded into the Mutual UFO Network - the world’s biggest civilian UFO group - and the National UFO Reporting Centre.
Many could be explained as aircraft misidentifications or natural phenomena but around five per cent remain unsolved and defy explanation.
She said: "Top investigators with MUFON tell me about 5 per cent of annual reported UFO sightings fall in this mysterious unknown category.
"Percentage wise that means nationally we have about 500 of these mysterious unknown events yearly, with an average of about 40 per month.
"That's a big deal.”
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
UFO sightings usually peak at the end of autumn
Top British UFO hunter Philip Mantle, former director of investigations for the British UFO Research Association, receives reports on a daily basis - some dating back decades.
Philip, 60, of Pontefract, West Yorks, said: “UFO reports in the UK have been coming in at a steady rate compared to other years.
“The peak in UFO sightings is usually at the end of autumn.
"Why this is no one knows.
“The witnesses to these events are usually encouraged to report an old UFO sighting when they see something else.
“I personally have received, this year, a mixture of old and new UFO reports.
STONE - GETTY
British UFO hunter Philip Mantle receives reports on a daily basis - some dating back decades
“Most of the reports that have landed in my office have come from the north-east of England during February and March. Why these are, again, no one knows.
“The oldest report that I've personally received dates back to 1955 from Batley in West Yorkshire."
Cheryl reckons the best time to see a UFO is on a Saturday - by the seaside or a lake.
She added: “People ask me all the time how they can see UFOs, I tell them to turn off their phones and stop yakking.
“Five per cent of people filing a UFO report neglect to enter the city where it was seen.
Another thing we discovered is the vast amount of UFO sightings are around great lakes and sea coasts.
Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder wrote a book about UFOs called 'What Planet am I on?'
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
Kim Wilde claims she saw a UFO in 2009 over her garden
“Saturday is the top day of the week for sightings. And drugged and drunk people don’t fill out UFO reports."
Eastenders hardman Danny Dyer once made a documentary on BBC3 called 'Danny Dyer: I believe in UFOs' in which he referred to aliens as "that mob up there”.
Shaun Ryder, lead singer of the Happy Mondays, made his own documentary and wrote a book about UFOs called 'What Planet am I on?'.
He travelled around the UK, America and South America in his quest for the truth.
Paul O'Grady recently admitted he spotted several UFOs hovering over his house in Kent.
The Blind Date host told his Radio 2 listeners he was "terrified" of waking up to be greeted by alien beings.
And 80s singer Kim Wilde claims she saw a UFO in 2009 over her garden which inspired her pop comeback with her new album Here Comes the Aliens.
Railway workers left shaken by mysterious fleet of 10 UFOs above skies in Miami
Mankind Threatens To Destroy A Third Of Earth’s Protected Areas
And it’s some worrying sh*t.
Up to 32.8 percent of protected land on our planet is already highly degraded due to human activity and infrastructure.
“It is time for the global conservation community to stand up and hold governments to account so that they take the conservation of their protected areas seriously…”
Scientists have recently come to the conclusion that a third of the world’s protected areas are under intense human pressure. Our way of life is directly threatening a third of our planets protected areas that have been set aside for wildlife.
The latest study suggests the human race is in need of ‘a stunning reality check’ for causing a ‘biodiversity crisis’.
Cities, towns, and rural industries have made a nearly irreparable damage.
Published in Science, the new study draws much-needed attention to human impact in the world most vulnerable, protected areas.
Shocking Discoveries
The research, led by the University of Queensland, Australia, found that six million square kilometers of protected land–equivalent to two thirds the size of China, or an area twice as large as Alaska –are in a state in which they are unlikely to conserve the biodiversity at risk.
Scientists used the most comprehensive global map of human pressure on the environment, the so-called human footprint, in order to analyze the consequences of human activity across more than 50,000 areas worldwide.
Worrying stuff
Kendall Jones, a doctoral student who participated in the study, says that in some cases the damage scale was surprising, with the greatest impacts found in densely populated places, such as Asia, Europe, and Africa.
“A well-run protected area network is essential in saving species.”
“We found major road infrastructures such as highways, industrial agriculture, and even entire cities occurring inside the boundaries of places supposed to be set aside for nature conservation.”
“More than 90 percent of protected areas, such as national parks and nature reserves, showed some signs of damaging human activities.”
Furthermore, according to University of Queensland Professor James Watson, a Wildlife Conservation Society research director, the new study is evidence that countries around the globe are overestimating the space available for nature inside protected areas.
“Governments are claiming these places are protected for the sake of nature when in reality they aren’t,” Professor Watson said.
“It is a major reason why biodiversity is still in catastrophic decline, despite more and more land being protected over the past few decades.”
The numbers
The new study suggests that around 32.8 percent of protected land our planet is already highly degraded thanks to human activity and infrastructure.
42 percent of protected lands remain free of any human pressure. Scientists note that areas free of human pressure tend to be more remote and isolated regions such as places in Canada in Russia.
“There are also many protected areas that are still in good condition and protect the last strongholds of endangered species worldwide,” Professor Watson explained.
“The challenge is to ensure those protected areas that are most valuable for nature conservation get the most attention from governments and donors to ensure they safeguard it.”
Scientific Study Claims There Are Up To 8,000 Alien Megastructures In the Universe
By constructing a Dyson sphere (Dyson 1960) out of material from dismantled planets, extremely advanced civilizations could in principle tap into a significant fraction of the radiation power of their host star, thereby climbing the Kardashev scale towards type II status (Kardashev 1964).
A recently published scientific study written by researchers from Sweden’s Uppsala University and the University of Heidelberg, Germany has suggested that there could be more than 8,000 alien megastructures located in deep space.
The team of experts is said to have located ‘signs’ that would suggest these so-called megastructures have in fact been built around distant suns.
The study suggests experts found tell-tale signs of up to 8,000 alien megastructures.
“We find that a small fraction of stars indeed displays distance discrepancies of the type expected for nearly complete Dyson spheres,” wrote scientists in the study.
“We find that 8000 stars ([roughly] 4% of the object in common between both surveys) have sufficient data quality to allow potential Dyson-sphere candidates to be efficiently singled out.”
One of the prime candidates of the new study is a star dubbed TYC 6111-1162-1 which was the ‘most interesting individual candidate for further investigation,’ meaning that it is considered the most likely star to have a Dyson sphere around it.
Scientists came to this conclusion after analyzing data obtained by the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which has recently completed a run, mapping more than ONE BILLION stars in three dimensions.
“The Gaia mission will in coming years allow for Dyson-sphere searches that are complementary to searches based on waste-heat signatures at infrared wavelengths. A limited search of this type is also possible at the current time, by combining Gaia parallax distances with spectrophotometric distances from ground-based surveys,” wrote experts in their study.
Experts claim that within this massive map gathered by GAIA, they’ve found evidence of possible signs of supermassive structures commonly referred to as Dyson Spheres, massive technological structures in space, constructed around distant alien Stars to harness their energy.
As noted in the study, a number of searches for potential Dyson spheres have been made in the distant past.
Sadly, all previous studies have failed to find traces of the so-called megastructures.
Scientists note that building a Dyson sphere in space isn’t an easy task. In addition to requiring enormous amounts of material, these structures would take an extremely long time to build.
Therefore, scientist devised a new way of hunting for Dyson spheres. They assume that instead of being a huge, solid structure, Dyson spheres could also be a series of smaller power plants, placed strategically around an alien star.
“The Dyson sphere is typically not envisioned as a solid shell, but rather as a dense, spherical swarm or shroud of absorbing satellites, with each satellite absorbing a small fraction of the stellar radiation.”
Luckily for us humans, we’ve already cooked up a plan that could see us place our first Dyson sphere around our sun in just five years.
By enveloping the sun with a massive array of solar panels, humanity would graduate to a Type 2 Kardashev civilization capable of utilizing nearly 100% of the sun’s energy output, writes George Dvorsky from sentientdevelopments.com
Researchers Find Evidence Of Oldest Human Occupation In South America
40,000 years ago, a mysterious people—possibly explorers—lived in Argentina.
Archaeologists have uncovered remarkably well-preserved human remains that date back around 40,000 years in Argentina. These skeletal remains are not only the oldest in Argentina, but could be the oldesthumanremains ever discovered in SouthAmerica.
Don’t you just love when archeology digs up something like this? It changes everything, yet it changes nothing,
The more we dig, the more we understand how little we know.
A team of archaeologists led by professor Carlos Aschero had discovered what is believed to be evidence of the oldest human occupation in Argentina, and possibly in South America.
The discovery was made in Antofagasta de la Sierra, a province of Catamarca, Argentina.
Ancient Explorers?
40,000 years ago a group of people—possibly explorers—lived between the northwest of Catamarca and part of Salta, in the area that integrates the salty Puna.
It is unknown how long the group remained in the Argentine Northwest, but their traces were very well preserved in the desert lands, at more than 3,500 meters above sea level.
Antofagasta de la Sierra is almost 600 kilometers north of the capital of Catamarca.
Its climate is rigorous, cold and dry, with minimum temperatures below 0 ºC.
It is precisely the above-mentioned conditions that most likely made it possible for the remains to remain as well preserved as frozen over time.
It was an extensive search.
In fact, researchers excavated 4 kilometers in the upper section of the Punilla River, in a small ravine known as Cacao.
More precisely in a cave which houses a huge variety of rock art and various stone structures.
There, archaeologists recovered two strands of human hair, which had been cut.
They also found stone tools used for cutting and scraping, copper earrings, as well as bone fragments (complete ribs and tooth remains).
Previous to this discovery, the scientific community maintained that the oldest human presence in the area could be traced back around 10,000 years.
However, the discovery offers new insight into the human population in the area, changing everything we thought we knew about South America and its early inhabitants.
The tests used to determine the age of the skeletal remains were carried out in two specialized laboratories in the USA. (Arizona and CAIS-UGA) using radiocarbon dating.
Jorge Martinez, an archaeologist at the National University of Tucumán and a researcher at the Higher Institute of Social Studies of CONICET, said that the oldest traces of human presence in Argentina prior to this, were located in the province of Buenos Aires (Pampean region), and can be traced back to around 14,000 years.
Meanwhile, in Latin America in general, the oldest alleged human remains are located in Piedra Furada (Brazil), these remains date back between 27,000 and 30,000 years.
However, Martínez believes that the skeletal remains discovered in Brazil are very controversial, among other things due to the method by which their age was determined.
According to reports, scientists used Radiometric dating to determine the age of the skeletal remains from Brazil. Radiometric dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed, reports El Litoral.
DNA tests will reveal more
Martinez looks forward to learning more about the skeletal remains discovered in Argentina after DNA tests result are done.
Experts will then know who these mysterious people were, and to what genetic lineage they belong to.
“The theory that prevails is that the inhabitants of America came from Asia through the Bering Strait and that they belong to four great lineages. We want to corroborate or refute that origin, perhaps we will find they belong to a different ancestry,” he ventured out saying.
These discoveries offer a wealth of previously unknown information to experts.
“It means that the settlement processes were pervasive and diverse. And those records correspond to the Puna, where there is a lot of height and a complicated climate. What can we imagine of the occupation that could have existed in much lower areas, where life is easier! “, Professor Aschero surmised.
In the 1840s the topic of germ theory in medicine was laughable and considered fringe thinking. Then in 1850, a prickly Hungarian obstetrician named Ignaz Semmelweis told his doctor colleagues in Vienna Medical Society’s lecture hall, “Wash your hands!”
Over the next few years, thanks to the pioneering work of Louis Pasteur and later Robert Koch in the 1880s, the science of germ theory finally established firm footing and became less laughable in the field of medicine.
Prior to 1900, the experts said the idea of a man flying in heavy aircraft was laughable. But on Dec. 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright proved them wrong.
In 1940, professors at major American technical colleges thought rocket science was the stuff of science fiction. When U.S. Army engineers visited Robert Goddard, an American rocket pioneer, they saw no practical application to his rocket research in warfare. Yet the German Nazi Reich demonstrated rocketry’s practical applications in warfare–in spades.
In the late 1940s, aviation engineers said that the sound barrier could not be broken. But on Oct. 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 and broke the sound barrier.
For the past 70 years, we’ve been conditioned to think that the topic of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) was an absurd notion. We were told that people who report UFOs are delusional. But for years trained observers have reported them. In recent months, we’ve seen declassified military video showing us aerial phenomena. Major news organizations are starting to take this topic much more seriously.
The problem is that within the Defense establishment and governmental circles like Congress, they still think that UFOs are a laughable subject. Being politically safe in their minds means they can stick their fingers in their ears and sing “La La La,” while unexplained science and advanced technology flies circles around our best aircraft.
Being safe in their minds means they should ignore the fact that this unexplained aviation technology is regularly loitering around our world’s most advanced defensive technologies, no matter whether it’s ours, the Russians or the Chinese.
You would think that after disasters like Pearl Harbor and the events of 9-11, our political and military leadership would have learned a lesson and say, “Hey maybe we better stop laughing at UFOs and look at their potential threat and try to understand what we are dealing with.”
Where are the forward-thinkers, the people who can imagine the unthinkable?
If you have a UFO sighting to report, use one of the two national database services: the National UFO Reporting Center or the Mutual UFO Network. Both services respect confidentiality.
Cheryl Costa is the 2018 recipient of the International UFO Congress, “Researcher of the Year” award.
How UFO sightings have captured human imagination for centuries
For centuries, mankind has reported seeing UFOs in various parts of the world. The alleged sightings have captivated the public imagination and raised questions about life beyond our planet.
Early cave drawings, ancient texts and centuries-old paintings appear to depict or describe human contact with extraterrestrial beings and UFOS, or unidentified flying objects. For instance, the 1710 painting by Dutch artist Aert De Gelder appears to show a UFO illuminating the baptism of Jesus Christ.
In modern times, purported sightings of UFOs have captured headlines and newscasts worldwide. Most recently, media attention turned to an audio recording released by the Federal Aviation Administration in which two pilots flying on different aircraft above Arizona in late February report having close encounters with a mysterious object.
According to the FBI, a “rash of sightings” of UFOs swept the United States in 1947, after World War II amid a heightened interest in aerospace flight and technology. The FBI says it helped investigate the claims between 1947 and 1954.
“Although the newly formed U.S. Air Force was the primary investigator of these sightings, the FBI received many reports and worked for a time with the Air Force to investigate these matters,” the agency says on its website, where records of some of the reports are published.
Perhaps the most famous incident took place northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947, when a foreman of a ranch came across mysterious debris, including metal rods and paper-thin, metallic-looking scraps. The man, William Brazel, reported the strange wreckage to the local sheriff, who contacted the nearby Roswell Army Air Field.
Maj. Jesse Marcel and other intelligence officers were sent to recover the materials, according to the Roswell Daily Record.
A public information officer for the Roswell Army Air Field then released a statement saying officers had retrieved a “flying disc,” which had crashed on the ranch near Roswell.
Military officials later retracted the statement after investigating the debris, saying it was actually remnants of a downed weather balloon.
“I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon,” Brazel told the newspaper in an interview in July 1947.
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