This Week's Top Space Stories!

Photo Credit: Bob Franke / Focal Pointe Observatory

Photo Credit: Ben Smegelsky/NASA

Photo Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Photo Credit: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post/Getty

5. The sun and the death glow

Photo Credit: ULA

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: Aris Tritsis/ESA

Photo Credit: China Great Wall Industry Corporation

Photo Credit: NASA/Flickr

This Is The Largest And Oldest Wheel Found On Earth

According to history books, the wheel was ‘invented’ in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3500 BCE and possibly as early as 4000 BCE. However, the oldest and largest wheel on Earth was discovered in 2002 in Slovenia. The wheel dates back around 5,300 years, but could possibly be even older.

If we take a look at our history books, well find that the invention of the wheel has been credited to the Late Neolithic and may have arisen together with a number of other technological advances that kickstarted the Bronze age.

However, many civilizations, including the Incas and the Aztecs, did not have wheeled vehicles.

The oldest graphic representations of the wheel come from ancient depictions in the city of Ur (which date back to around 3500 BC), in present-day Iraq, but no physical remains of the wheels have been found there.

From there, it is believed that the invention spread quickly across the rest of the world.

Ancient Sumeria, home place of the wheel?

It is believed that the ancient Sumerians introduced a number of technologies that had never before been seen in the world.

The wheel, say experts, was one such technology.

According to historians the ancient Halaf (Syria) culture of 6500–5100 BCE is sometimes credited with the earliest depiction of a wheeled vehicle, but this is doubtful as there is no evidence of Halafians using either wheeled vehicles or even pottery wheels.

But have you ever wondered about where the oldest discoveredwheel is located?

Despite the fact that the Sumerians are credited with the ‘invention’ of the wheel, the oldest wheen on Earth was not found in Mesopotamia, but in Europe.

The Ljubljana Marshes Wheel, the oldest and largest wheel discovered on Earth

Ljubljana Marshes Wheel.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

In 2002, when archaeological excavations carried out in Sloveniarevealed a wooden wheel whose radiocarbon dating revealed that it was between 5,100 and 5,350 years old, the scientific community was left awestruck.

This excavation performed near Ljubljana marked the discovery of what is now considered the oldest wheel in history.

It is believed that the oldest inhabitants settled in the region as early as 9,000 years ago; in the Mesolithic, they built temporary residences on isolated rocks in the marsh and on the fringe and they lived by hunting and gathering.

The discovery of the Slovenian wheel kickstarted a debate among archaeologists who wondered whether it was possible that the wheel had not been invented by the Sumerians, but by an ancient culture in Europe, or whether the wheel appeared simultaneously, on two locations, separated perhaps by a few hundred years?

The wheel and its axis.

Image credit: Mazej Igor

The Age of the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel was obtained by studies performed by the VERA laboratory (Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator) in Vienna, which used measurements of the strata in the ground and the rings of trees in the area where it was found, as well as the radiocarbon dating.

The ancient wheel was discovered by a team of Slovene archeologists from the Ljubljana Institute of Archaeology, as part of the Research Center at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, lead by Anton Velušček.

According to experts, this ancient wheel, discovered in 2002 in a marshy area near the Slovenian capital, is at least a century older than its counterparts found in Switzerland and Germany, which were considered until the discovery of the Slovenian wheel the oldest existing examples.

But in addition of being the oldest example on Earth, experts say that the importance of the Slovenian wheel resides in the fact that “in addition to its exceptional antiquity, this wheel and axle are incredibly technologically advanced”.

The wheel has a radius of 72 centimeters (28 in) and was made of ash wood.

Its 124-c124-centimeter-long) axle is made of oak.

According to experts, the axle was attached to the wheels with oak wood wedges, which meant that the axle rotated together with the wheels.

The wheel was made from a tree that grew in the vicinity of the pile dwellings and at the time of the wheel, construction was approximately 80 years old.

It is believed that this ancient wheel was most likely part of a prehistoric two-wheel cart – a pushcart and this technology shows that there was already a long tradition and experience in the development of wheels and axles in the region.

Featured Image Credit: Reddit.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

Ancient Assyrian Clay Tablets Reveal Location Of 4,800-Year-Old Lost City

After researchers recovered around 90 cuneiform tablets from the ancient Assyrian empire, philologists translated them and identified the location of a lost ancient city that existed some 4,800 years ago.

The 92 clay tablets belonging to the ancient Assyrian empire were discovered at the archeological site of a large Bronze Age settlement which was explored in 2017 by experts from the University of Tübingen.

The translation of the ancient writings has allowed archaeologists to identify the ruins of the lost Royal City of Mardama.

The name of the lost city was only revealed when 92 cuneiform tablets found at the site were translated. 

Image Credit: Matthias Lang/ Benjamin Glissmann, University of Tübingen eScience-Center

The cache of clay tablets date back to around 1250BC, to the Middle Assyrian empire and have been translated by University of Heidelberg philologist Betina Faist.

“To our surprise, Dr. Faist was able to identify the site as the ancient city of Mardama,” the archaeologists said.

“This important northern Mesopotamian city is cited in ancient sources, but we didn’t know where it lay.”

“It existed between 2200 and 1200 BC, was at times a kingdom or a provincial capital, and was conquered and destroyed several times.”

One of the clay tablets on the floor of the palace of the Assyrian governor, and a broken ceramic vessel.

Image Credit: Matthias Lang/ Benjamin Glissmann, University of Tübingen eScience-Center

The ancient city of Mardama was mentioned in a number of ancient sources, but no one has been able to determine its exact location until now.

The ancient city is believed to have existed between  2,200 BC and 2,100 BC and reached its peak between 1900 BC and 1700 BC.

The ancient city is believed to have been conquered by the Akkadian empire but eventually regained its independence under a Hurrian monarch called Tish-Ulme.

The city then followed a period of prosperity, until it was destroyed by the Turukku from the Zagros mountains, who are sometimes identified as the Sea People.

However, this was not the end of the city. Mardama continued to exist until the era in which the Assyrians ruled over it, during which the recently discovered clay tablets were written.

Ancient writings from the Third Dynasty of Ur, between the years 2100 and 2000 BC portray Mardama as an important city on the northern periphery of the Mesopotamian empire.

“Mardama certainly rose to be an influential city and a regional kingdom, based on its position on the trade routes between Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Syria,” said professor Peter Pfälzner, a professor of ancient near-Eastern archaeology at the University of Tübingen in the statement.

“At times, it was an adversary of the great Mesopotamian powers.”

The ancient tablets mentioned the city being part of the powerful Assyria empire, and that it was the home of an Assyrian ruler believed to have been called Assur-Nasir.

Professor Pfälzner and this team were amazed by the discovery, “all of a sudden it became clear that our excavations had found an Assyrian governor’s palace.”

In addition, the ancient clay tablets offer unprecedented insight into the history and lives of the people of the ancient city of Mardama, as well as never-before-seen details about its administration, economy, and commerce.

However, most importantly, the recently-uncovered clay tablets not only show the location of the city which remained lost for thousands of years, but it offers important historical accounts of that time in history.

Now, thanks to the tablets, experts can understand so much more about the cultures and civilizations that ruled the region.

In the near future, experts will continue studying ancient clay tablets hoping to discover more ancient cities that may have existed in ancient Mesopotamia.

Featured Image Credit: 

• Matthias Lang/ Benjamin Glissmann, University of Tübingen eScience-Center

Source: 

• Cuneiform tablets from Bassetki reveal the location of the ancient royal city of Mardaman

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

Une famille de Mareeba observe un incroyable OVNI

Source 

www.cairnspost.com.au 

{ http://activite-paranormale.net/ }

Is Teleportation Hypothetically Possible In The Universe?

These Are Real Pentagon Reports On Warp Drive, Extra Dimensions, Anti-Gravity, And More

The official Defense Intelligence Agency reports have surfaced that deal with propulsion concepts that are truly out of this world.

Strange 'stone circle' spotted on Mars

A mysterious ‘stone circle’ has been spotted on the surface of Mars, according to alien hunters.

The image, captured by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, was featured on the secureteam10 YouTube channel after it was spotted by a UFO hunter.

• 'ANCIENT TREE STUMP’ SPOTTED ON MARS?

In the YouTube video, secureteam10 describes the image as “a very strange formation of rocks that are put together in what appears to be a very artificial way, arranged in a perfect circle.”

The formation is “much different from the craters that we normally see on Mars and the moon and the other planets in the solar system,” secureteam10 added. “This almost looks like these rocks were arranged in this circular formation – either that, or these could potentially be some sort of ruin that is a part of a much larger structure, potentially buried.”

• HUGE, DEEP HOLE ON MARS LEAVES SCIENTISTS BAFFLED

The rocks sparked plenty of comment on YouTube, with not everyone convinced that the rocks had been arranged in the circular pattern. “It really just looks like a crater to me,” noted one commenter. “Looks like a boulder that is weathered,” wrote another commenter. “The circle on Mars is clearly part of a bagel,” quipped another.

Features on the Red Planet’s surface continue to be a source of fascination.

Earlier this year, for example, UFO hunters claimed that an image taken by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover shows an ancient tree stump on the surface of the Red Planet.

• NASA'S CURIOSITY ROVER SPOTS PURPLE ROCKS ON MARS

In 2015, UFO hunters also claimed to identify a mysterious woman-like shape in a picture taken by the Curiosity Rover.

The largest rover ever sent to Mars, Curiosity launched on Nov. 26 2011 and landed on the Red Planet on Aug. 5, 2012.

{ http://www.foxnews.com/index.html }

Brick Township's UFO triggered Air Force probe

Jersey Roots is a look at the history of Monmouth and Ocean counties. Have a local historical topic you would like more information about? Contact Erik Larsen at elarsen@gannettnj.com.

An article from the front page of the Asbury Park Press on March 28, 1966.

(Photo: Asbury Park Press archives)

Fifty years ago, seeing something strange or unrecognizable in the night sky was taken with some modicum of seriousness.

Perhaps this was due to the national paranoia associated with the Cold War. On the contrary maybe it was a reflection of an optimistic zeitgeist. In the 1960s, humankind was at the dawn of a new era, one in which it would no longer be confined to the exploration of one world. This was a time when popular culture was capturing the imagination of a public coming to terms with the idea that we may neither be alone nor the oldest civilization in the universe.

For several weeks in the spring of 1966, there was a wave of UFO sightings across the United States that had made national headlines. The reports were coming from credible eyewitnesses – police officers and firefighters – in addition to ordinary citizens, who all calmly recalled their encounters with fantastic objects in the sky, while occasionally giving pause to express incredulity at their own experiences.

Later that year, in response to this rash of sightings, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite hosted a prime time special, “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?”
That September, “The Byrds” fantasized about such visits from the outer cosmos in the song, “Mr. Spaceman." And, in the fall television lineup that year, a little series called "Star Trek" premiered on NBC.

'UFO: Friend, Foe Or Fantasy'

“Michigan’s weird, blinking lights apparently have extended their appearances to Ohio and Wisconsin,” read an Associated Press dispatch from March 27, 1966. “As before there was no full explanation.”

In Washington, Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Michigan, who would be president a decade later, called for a congressional investigation into what was happening.
Many Michigan residents felt the number of incidents were “sufficient to justify some action by our government,” Ford said.

On the same day that Ford called for House and Senate committee hearings on the matter, some residents at the Jersey Shore were seeing something strange in the sky over northern Ocean County.

A clipping from the front page of the Asbury Park Press on March 29, 1966, after several other eyewitnesses came forward and the Air Force announced it was investigating a UFO over Brick Township two days earlier.

 (Photo: Asbury Park Press archives)

“Space creatures Shore bound? Four residents in Brick say they spotted UFO,” was the headline on the front page of the Press on March 28, 1966.

The previous day, Air Force veteran James Novello, 63, of Brick, watched a brightly-lit, lemon-shaped object seem to hover over his Breton Woods neighborhood on the Metedeconk River.

Novello, who had logged more than 6,000 flight hours in the Air Force, where he had served as a radar operator, told a Press reporter that the object looked to be about 100 feet in length and 70 feet wide, at about a distance of a 1½-miles away and at an altitude of 1,500 feet.

His 13-year-old son, Raymond, had been the first in his family to see the object. The teen had awakened at about 4:30 in the morning on March 27 because of a bright light penetrating through the night sky. He watched it through his telescope before waking up his parents.

“I just don’t know what to say,” Novello told a Press reporter. “Based on our observations, we’re almost positive it couldn’t have been a balloon, an airplane or temperature inversion.”

The family even woke up a neighbor, Joan Clayton, to have a look and share in the experience.

All of them stood in bewilderment for more than an hour at what they were watching. At times, the object seemed to alter its shape and luminosity. They constantly checked with each other to make certain their eyes were not playing tricks on them. Clayton confirmed the account to a Press reporter at the time.

“We all saw it, we checked each other’s observations, and we know it’s incredible – but there it was,” Novello said, who telephoned the police.

The following day, officials at then-McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown confirmed they were investigating reports of a UFO over the Jersey Shore. An official at then-Lakehurst Naval Air Station said the base had launched two weather balloons that day, though neither one would have coincided with the time of the Brick sightings.

Meanwhile, the New Jersey State Police had received two other reports about the object from other eyewitnesses in Brick, who had seen the same thing at the same time as the Novellos and their neighbor.

“We get a lot of these reports, especially at this time of year when atmospheric conditions make them common, but we can readily explain 99 percent of them,” an Air Force spokesman told the Press. “This one, though, does not fit most quick explanations.”

{ https://www.app.com/ }

Van Allen Radiation Belts: Facts & Findings

What will Earth look like in 5,000 years?

BY ROBERT LAMB

Human technology has advanced significantly over the past 5,000 years, and the Earth bears the scars to prove it. We've altered the landscape, the climate and the biological diversity. We've erected skyscrapers for the living and colossal tombs for the dead. Perhaps most important, we've learned to harness a portion of the planet's energy, but we still thirst for so much more power.

This insatiable appetite for energy will continue to chart the course of human civilization in the 5,000 years to come. As a result, it will also dictate what Earth will look like in A.D. 7010.

In 1964, Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev theorized that a civilization's technical advancement directly correlates to the amount of energy its citizens can manipulate. Along these lines, he defined three classifications for advanced civilizations in the galaxy:

Cosmologists use this Kardashev Scale to predict the technical advancement of future and alien civilizations. Currently, modern humans don't even rank on the scale. We're essentially a type 0 civilization, but we'll eventually become a type I. Kardashev himself predicted that this transition would occur. But when?

Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku forecasts this transcendence occurring within a mere century. Physicist Freeman Dyson raises that estimate to less than 200 years. Back in the day, Kardashev envisaged that it would take only 3,200 years to reach type II status.

If humanity only reaches type I status by A.D. 7010, then it will still have the ability to manipulate and control atmospheric and geothermal forces. Warfare and self-destruction might still pose a threat to humanity's survival, but ecological concerns will be a thing of the past.

If we achieve type II status by that point, then 71st century humans will wield even greater technological power. Dyson proposed that such a civilization would be capable of encapsulating a star with a swarm of satellites to harvest its energy. Other theorized type II feats include interstellar travel and the ability to move entire planets -- and all this on top of whatever breakthroughs have occurred in genetics and computing.

Such future humans will likely differ greatly from us culturally or even neurologically. They may well be what futurists and philsophers refer to as posthumans or transhumans.

Regardless, a lot can happen in 5,000 years. We might destroy ourselves with warfare or unwittingly ravage the planet with nanotechnology. Perhaps we'll fail to mitigate the threat posed by asteroid and cometcollisions. We might even encounter an alien type II civilization long before we achieve that level ourselves.

Explore the links on the next page to learn even more about humanity's future.

{ https://www.howstuffworks.com/ }

Parker Solar Probe: deze nieuwe ruimtesonde gaat de zon aantikken

Jurjen de Jong

De ruimtesonde wordt deze zomer gelanceerd en zal dwars door de hete atmosfeer van de zon vliegen.

Onze zon bevat 99,86% van alle massa in ons zonnestelsel en toch zijn we nog nooit zo dicht bij deze gigantische massa geweest. Binnenkort gaan we een record verbreken door met de Parker Solar Probe(PSP) dichterbij dan ooit te komen. Daarnaast hopen we uiteraard op nieuwe interessante ontdekkingen over de zon!

Parker
De Park Solar Probe is vernoemd naar de wetenschapper Eugene Parker. Deze Amerikaanse astrofysicus heeft veel bijgedragen aan onze kennis over de zon en met name de zonnewind. Desondanks weten we eigenlijk nog verrassend weinig over beiden. Laten we eerst kijken wat we wel al weten.

Afbeelding: University of Florida.

De zon
De zon staat op een afstand van ongeveer 150 miljoen kilometer en met een leeftijd van 4,59 miljard jaar is ze essentieel voor ons leven op aarde. Als we astronomen moeten geloven is onze zon een vrij gemiddelde ster, op ongeveer de helft van haar leven. De zon bestaat in de buitenste lagen voor 70% uit waterstof en voor 28% uit helium. De kern bestaat voor 35% uit waterstof en 63% uit helium. De overige percentages zijn zwaardere elementen. De dichtheid en temperatuur zijn in de kern hoog genoeg voor kernfusie, zodat de zon door middel van dit proces waterstof omzet naar helium. Hiernaast zie je hoe de zon er schematisch ongeveer uitziet. De zon lijkt voor sommigen misschien op een soort grote vuurbal, maar in feite is de zon niets anders dan een gigantische bal plasma. We kennen allemaal gasvormig, vloeibaar en vast als aggretietoestanden. Deze toestanden zijn afhankelijk van de temperatuur. Als we nu een gas nog verder verhitten, zullen de elektronen van de atomen van dit gas losraken van de kern. Fysici noemen dit ionisatie. Een verzameling van deze geïoniseerde deeltjes is niet meer elektrisch neutraal en wordt daarom ‘geladen’ genoemd. Deze deeltjes vormen samen nu een plasma. Dat de zon een bal plasma is, is niet vreemd als we kijken naar de temperaturen die zich hier bevinden. De kern van de zon heeft een temperatuur van 15,5 miljoen graden Celsius. Dit neemt af tot 6000 graden Celsius aan het oppervlak en tot ongeveer 4300 graden Celsius in de atmosfeer van de zon. Daarna gebeurt er iets opvallends in het buitenste gedeelte van de atmosfeer van de zon: de corona. In dit gedeelte wordt de temperatuur weer heel hoog. Het kan hier rond de 2 tot soms wel 20 miljoen graden Celsius zijn. Overigens kunnen we de corona op aarde waarnemen bij een zonsverduistering als de ring die nog zichtbaar blijft als de maan zich voor de zon bevindt. Vervolgens gaat de corona over in de zonnewind. Deze ‘wind’ bestaat vooral uit restproducten van waterstof en helium (elektronen, protonen en alfadeeltjes), die de ontsnappingssnelheid van de zon bereiken en daardoor het zonnestelsel ingeblazen worden. Dit gebeurt zo frequent dat de zonnewind daarom een constante stroom is. Op aarde worden we deels afgeschermd tegen deze zonnewind door ons aardmagnetisch veld. We kunnen de zonnewind indirect waarnemen door middel van de poollichten (aurora borealis en aurora australis). Dit licht ontstaat na een interactie van de zonnewind met ons aardmagnetisch veld, waardoor er botsingen van geladen deeltjes in de hoge atmosfeer van de aarde optreden. Voor satellieten is de zonnewind ook belangrijk, want deze kan flinke verstoringen veroorzaken als de zon erg actief is.

Activiteit
De activiteit van de zon is zichtbaar door: zonnevlekken, zonnebevingen, zonnevlammen en protuberansen. Zonnevlekken nemen wij waar als zwarte vlekken op de zon. Dit zijn plekken waar veel magnetische activiteit is, waardoor het energietransport van de binnenkant naar de buitenkant wordt verhinderd. Dit resulteert in lagere oppervlakte temperaturen. Dan heb je zonnebevingen. Deze zijn vergelijkbaar met aardbevingen, maar hebben andere oorzaken. Dit wordt bestudeerd in de helioseismologie. Protuberansen zijn wolkachtige verschijnselen aan de zijkant van de zon in de atmosfeer van de zon, welke we niet direct kunnen waarnemen, maar wel met een coronograaf of een speciaal filter. Deze protuberansen bestaan uit een veel kouder plasma dan de corona. Als een protuberans uiteenvalt, kan dit een zonnevlam veroorzaken. Dit is een explosie die ontstaat als er veel energie vrijkomt, die eerst vastgehouden werd door het magnetische veld van de zon. Zo’n zonnevlam gaat vaak gepaard met een plasmawolk. Op aarde kunnen we het goed merken als er een sterke plasmawolk ons aardmagnetisch veld bereikt, aangezien de poollichten dan over een groter gebied op aarde zichtbaar zijn. Zo is het in de geschiedenis enkele keren voorgekomen dat van de polen tot aan de evenaar de poollichten zichtbaar waren.

Deze zojuist genoemde fenomenen zijn sterk afhankelijk van de 11-jarige zonnecyclus, waarin er een minimale en maximale activiteit van de zon is. Hoe actiever de zon, hoe meer zonnevlekken waarneembaar zijn en groter de kans op zonnevlammen en andere activiteit. Aangezien zonnevlekken met het blote oog waarneembaar zijn (ga nu niet in de zon kijken!), worden deze al lang door de mens bestudeerd. De oudste gedocumenteerde waarnemingen komen uit 364 v.Chr. uit China. Tussen 1826 en 1843 kon Samuel Heinrich Schwabe bevestigen dat de zon een 11-jarige cyclus doormaakt, aan de hand van zonnevlek waarnemingen. Echter houdt de zon zich niet altijd zo strikt aan deze cyclus. Soms duren cycli namelijk een stuk korter of langer. Het is daarom van belang dat we de zonneactiviteit beter leren begrijpen en daardoor beter kunnen voorspellen.

PSP
Nu komen we op het punt dat de PSP belangrijk wordt. Dit ruimtevaartuig gaat namelijk tussen 31 juli en 19 augustus 2018 gelanceerd worden vanaf Cape Canaveral Air Force Station door een Delta IV Heavy draagraket en heeft als doel ons meer te leren over de zon. Zo moet de PSP onder meer de structuur en dynamica van de magnetische velden waaruit de zonnewind ontstaat, ontrafelen. Er wordt door fysici gebruik gemaakt van de wiskunde van de magnetohydrodynamica, maar helaas is dit niet voldoende, omdat het chaotische gedrag van de zon moeilijk te vatten is. Daarom kan de PSP ons met nieuwe metingen en observaties hopelijk weer verder op weg helpen om de magnetische velden en het ontstaan van de zonnewind beter te begrijpen.
Zoals we al zeiden, zijn er in de corona enorm hoge temperaturen. Dit is al sinds de jaren veertig van de vorige eeuw bekend, maar een sluitende theorie, die beschrijft hoe dit kan, bestaat nog niet. Er wordt gedacht aan verhitting door energietransport vanuit de kern van de zon door middel van magnetohydrodynamische golven. Ook zijn er theorieën waarbij heet plasma de warmte transporteert vanuit de kern van de zon. De hoop is er dat de PSP fysici zal helpen een keuze te maken tussen de verschillende theorieën, of helpt met het opzetten van een betere/nieuwe theorie.
Een ander doel van de PSP is het begrijpen van de mechanismen die de versnelling en transport veroorzaken van deeltjes met een hoge energie. Dit soort deeltjes kunnen een sterke en vooral negatieve invloed hebben op aarde en op satellieten rond de aarde. Het is daarom goed om beter te begrijpen hoe deze deeltjes onze aarde bereiken en wat de rol en relaties precies zijn van verschillende elementen van de zonneactiviteit.

Voor het eerst vernoemt NASA een ruimtevaartuig naar een nog levende wetenschapper. Hier krijgt Eugene Parker (in het midden) uitleg over de ruimtesonde die zijn naam draagt.

Afbeelding: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Instrumenten
De wetenschappelijke experimenten worden gecategoriseerd aan de hand van de volgende afkortingen: FIELDS (Fields Experiment), IS☉IS (Integrated Science Investigation Of The Sun), WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar PRobe) en SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons). Met FIELDS zal PSP metingen doen aan de elektrische en magnetische velden en golven, de plasma dichtheden, de temperaturen van de elektronen en radio emissies met behulp van twee magnetometers. IS☉IS is een instrument om deeltjes, zoals protonen en zware ionen die flink versneld worden, te meten in de atmosfeer van de zon en in het binnenste gedeelte van de heliosfeer (het gebied waarin de zon invloed uitoefent). WISPR is een telescoop die simpel gezegd foto’s zal maken van de corona, het binnenste gedeelte van de heliosfeer, de zonnewind en andere fenomenen die PSP passeren. Deze foto’s kunnen dan bestudeerd worden. Dan is er nog SWEAP, waarmee de meest voorkomende deeltjes van de zonnewind (de elektronen, protonen en alfadeeltjes) bestudeerd zullen worden aan de hand van metingen van hun snelheid, dichtheid en temperatuur.

Ingewikkelde weg
Om de zon te bereiken zal de PSP een lange ingewikkelde weg afleggen. Allereerst zal het ruimtevaartuig naar Venus vliegen om daar zeven scheervluchten te doen. Op deze manier kan door middel van zwaartekrachtsslingers de PSP in de juiste richting versnellen en dichterbij de gewenste baan rond de zon te komen. De PSP zal 24 maal rond de zon vliegen en de kortste afstand tot het oppervlak van de zon zal 6.2 miljoen kilometer zijn. Daardoor is het mogelijk om voor de eerste keer door de corona heen te vliegen. De missie van de PSP zal zeker zo’n zeven jaar duren.

De PSP nadert de zon.

Afbeelding: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben.

Het is een enorme uitdaging om zo dichtbij de zon te vliegen, aangezien de enorm hoge temperaturen in de nabijheid van de zon afgeweerd moeten worden. Hiervoor is een hitteschild dan ook een vereiste. Het schild van de PSP is 11.43 cm dik en gemaakt van een licht en sterk koolstofvezelcomposiet, zodat schade van hoge temperaturen tegengehouden kan worden. Op deze manier kunnen de meetinstrumenten en de computerystemen blijven functioneren. Erg belangrijk is de energievoorziening. Hiervoor wordt gebruikgemaakt van zonnepanelen. Echter, wanneer de PSP te dichtbij de zon komt, zullen deze zonnepanelen moeten worden ingetrokken, zodat ze afgeschermd worden door het hitteschild. Vervolgens worden dan een paar kleinere zonnepanelen uitgeklapt. Deze panelen hebben een speciaal ingebouwd koelsysteem, zodat ze niet oververhit raken. De nadering van PSP tot de zon zal toch niet schadeloos zijn. Naar verwachting zal straling van de zon toch zorgen voor lichte schade in het materiaal en een verslechterde werking van de elektronica. Ook zal de communicatie onderbroken worden als de PSP dichtbij de zon komt. Daarom zullen de banen heel erg elliptisch moeten zijn, zodat er ook lange perioden zijn dat de PSP ver genoeg is om bij te komen en zich op te laden met de grote zonnepanelen.

De Parker Solar Probe kan, net als Eugene Parker, onze kennis over met name de corona en de zonnewind enorm vergroten. Laten we daarom hopen dat de missie met succes gelanceerd zal worden en dat de weg naar de zon vlekkeloos zal zijn, zodat we over een tijdje weer over nieuwe inzichten over het gedrag van de zon en de zonnewind kunnen schrijven.

• Jurjen de Jong (1993) is masterstudent Space Studies aan de KU Leuven. Daarvoor heeft hij een propedeuse werktuigbouwkunde in Breda, een bachelor wiskunde en een bachelor natuurkunde in Utrecht behaald en afgelopen juli een master in de wiskundige natuur-en sterrenkunde in Gent afgerond. Jurjen leest graag over de verschillende ontdekkingen ontwikkelingen op wetenschapsgebied en door er over te schrijven hoopt hij zijn kennis te delen met een groter publiek. Later hoopt hij een baan in de ruimtevaartsector te krijgen. Eerder verschenen van Jurjens hand al dit interessante artikel waarin hij uitzoekt of het nodig is dat ook de ruimtevaart groener wordt. Ook zocht hij voor Scientias.nl uit of de ruimtelift werkelijk toekomst heeft. Recent publiceerde hij ook twee artikelen over de quantumcomputer die voor een revolutie kan gaan zorgen.

Bronmateriaal:

NASA, link: http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/, geraadpleegd op: 4/22/2018
N.J. Fox et al. (2016). “The Solar Probe Plus Mission: Humanity’s First Visit to Our Star”. Space Sci Rev 204:7-48. DOI: 10.1007/s11214-015-0211-6
A. Hanslmeier. (2007). “The Sun and Space Weather”. Springer

Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel:

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

{  https://www.scientias.nl/ }

Get to the Chopper! NASA Is Sending a Helicopter to Mars in 2020

In a mission scheduled for the summer of 2020, NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars, the organization announced Friday.

The Mars 2020 mission, or the Red Planet rover mission, scheduled to launch in July of that year, will include the Mars helicopter, which NASA described as a “small, autonomous rotocraft.”

“NASA has a proud history of firsts,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “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.”

The use of the helicopter is designed to show Mars’ ability to handle heavier-than-air vehicles. It will fly as an attachment to the belly pan of the Mars 2020 rover.

Curiosity Rover

✔@MarsCuriosity

Get to the chopper! A small helicopter will travel with @NASA's next Mars rover. Check out the @NASAJPL-made tech demo preparing to fly in the Red Planet's thin atmosphere. https://go.nasa.gov/2IC8tIh  #Mars2020 #MarsCopter

11:18 PM - May 11, 2018

• 2,576
• 982 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

The development on the Mars helicopter began nearly five years ago at NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in California.

{ http://time.com/ }

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) says:“Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease. It is caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and can invade an infected person’s brain and spinal cord, causing paralysis.” So, you may well ask, what relevance does that have to the kinds of things that get discussed here at Mysterious Universe? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a strange story which has its origins in the late 1940s, specifically July 1, 1949. That was the date on which a still-unknown doctor and his wife encountered a UFO of the Flying Saucer kind while they were on vacation in Canada.

So impressed and amazed by what they saw, the pair – whose names are blacked-out in the now-declassified U.S. Air Force files on the affair – decided to contact the military and share their experience. The Air Force stated in its 1949 files, prepared by agent Elbert W. Farris, of Scott Air Force Base, Illinois: “Dr. and Mrs. [Deleted] of Decatur, Indiana, were interviewed on August 15, 1949, and stated that they had seen an unidentified aerial object which they thought to be a flying saucer. The sighting took place July 1, 1949 on Highway 70 about 50–70 miles north of Ft. Francis, Ontario, Canada, and near the east side of Lake of the Woods, Canada.”

That was far from being the end of the story, though. From documentation forwarded to staff at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, we learn that: “The object was described as silvery gray in color, flying in a westerly direction and was in sight for about 5 seconds. No vapor trails or protruding objects were noted. The object pursued a straight path of flight with an erratic motion comparable to that of an oblong object being thrown through the air. The aerial anomaly appeared to be faster than an airplane. It did not hover and was likened to a small aircraft at two thousand feet. Dr. [Deleted] observed no fins, no vapor trail and heard no sound. After passing across his line of vision, the object was lost from view behind the trees. The day was bright and sunny, and Dr. [Deleted] emphasized that he had definitely observed an object in the air unlike any other known to him. Mrs. [Deleted] corroborated her husband’s statements.“

It wasn’t just the Air Force that looked into the matter. It was the FBI, too. Indeed, the FBI’s office at Indianapolis addressed the issue because the doctor “found himself in the midst of a polio epidemic and that as a result he had read as much literature as possible with respect to polio, its symptoms, diagnosis, etc. Dr. [Deleted] told that in his opinion, the cases which were thought to be polio in the vicinity of Decatur, Indiana, were not polio, but possibly the result of uranium poisoning and that he felt the presence of flying saucers had direct bearing on the polio epidemic.”

Aliens spreading the polio virus? Or contaminating people with uranium?  The FBI also recorded: “[The Doctor] pointed out that flying saucers were observed in the Carolinas in 1948 and there was a polio epidemic in the vicinity at that time. Dr. [Deleted] stated he had consulted one of the physicians at the Benjamin Harrison Air Base and had also checked the records with reference to allegations concerning the sighting of flying saucers and had done a little research with respect to correlating the presence of flying saucers and any polio epidemic.”

The documentation shows that personnel at the Indiana University Medical School considered the whole thing to be a waste of time – a huge joke and nothing else. That didn’t stop the Air Force from taking a careful and close look at the available data, however. On this aspect of the story, the Air Force files reveal the following: “Tabulation of flying saucer sightings from the available sources of the Indianapolis Starand the Indianapolis News, reveals that the majority of sightings took place in July and August for the years 1947, 1948 and 1949,” agent Farris recorded.

Farris added: “A responsible medical authority, confidential informant, CI-1, advised that the theory is ‘interesting’ and worthy of further research. [The Doctor] produced membership cards which show him to be a member of the Masons, Scottish Rite, Knights of Pythias, Loyal Order of Moose and the Eagles. He served as a Naval officer for 14 months and also held a commission in the United States Public Health Service. He is an associate member of the Association of Medicine, Bloomington, Indiana, and he is an associate member of the Association of Military Surgeons. He is a physician and surgeon.“

The uranium angle, brought up by the doctor, was also addressed. Agent Farris contacted, in his own words, “a reliable medical authority at Benjamin Harrison Air Force Base, Indiana,” who could hopefully “determine whether the possibility of uranium poisoning, as expounded by Dr. [Deleted] had any basis in fact.” Farris had more to say on this matter: “The authority, who preferred to remain anonymous, is hereinafter known as Confidential Informant CI-1. Informant CI-1 advised the writer that the Polio period extends from April to October, with the peak months of the disease being reached in July and August. Informant CI-1 was doubtful if the answer to the question of uranium poisoning could be readily answered, and he was of the opinion that the possibility and its connection with the Polio epidemic prevalent throughout the United States had never been explored.”

Personnel at the Aero Medical Laboratory Research Department at Wright-Patterson were also questioned by Farris: “Does [the] uranium element produce any physiological reaction in human beings corresponding to symptoms applicable to many of the so-called Polio clinical and sub-clinical conditions?” “Are topographical areas where so-called Flying Disc are predominantly seen (or known uranium deposits) pinpoints of endemic areas of clinical symptoms resembling Polio?”

On October 6, 1949, another Air Force report was prepared, this one revealing the following: “While it is true that some of the clinical symptoms of poliomyelitis may be similar to uranium poisoning, the over-all clinical syndrome is quite different. Progress in the case of uranium poisoning is very dismal, with recovery unlikely. Besides the heavy metal poisoning effect of uranium poisoning, there is also the prolonged and continuous radiation effect of uranium which cane be detected in the broad picture.”

The report adds: “This is quite a distinctive clinical feature of uranium poisoning which any physician should readily be able to recognize. It is also a feature which does not diminish with time and, hence, the patient does not recover. This results because the uranium is a long-lived radioactive isotope, which becomes fixed in the body and cannot be eliminated to any appreciable extent. Because of the above considerations, it is the opinion of this office that there is little, if any, ground for the theory that the annual poliomyelitis epidemics are related to radioactivity in any way. It is also to be noted that the annual outbreak of poliomyelitis during the summer months has been prevalent for many years prior to flying saucers and the widespread use of radioactive isotopes.”

The strange saga of a Flying Saucer, a doctor and his wife, the polio virus and the matter of uranium poisoning, was finally over. The file was closed on what was undeniably one of the weirdest UFO-themed investigations that the U.S. Air Force found itself involved in.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Astronaut Scott Kelly Witnessed A UFO While On Spacestation! May 2018, UFO Sighting News

Date of sighting: 2017
Location of sighting: International Space Station
News source: 

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/culture/space/273377/astronaut-scott-kelly-saw-the-unexplainable-in-space


Astronaut Scott Kelly said he saw things out in space while he was onboard the space station. He of course keeps with his signed contract with NASA to keep quiet about what he believes it to really be. He talks about having doubts about if it was stars or unidentified flying objects that he witnessed. Its clear that Scott Kelly wants to hint to the public the truth of seeing extraterrestrial craft while in orbit around earth, but he is still afraid of the repercussions from the US government, which in essence could strip him of his retirement. 

Scott Kelly is not the only astronaut to see things in space. Over 15 astronauts from Russia and America have witnessed strange flying objects that cannot be explained. So if so many experience astronauts say they have seen UFOs while in space, why are the public still doubting the existence of aliens? 
Scott C. Waring

News states:

“Flying in airplanes and flying in space, you know, I have had experiences where if I let my imagination run wild. I could say, ‘Wow. That’s an alien spaceship,’” Kelly explains. “Even on the space station. I mean, I would often see something, and I would be like, ‘That’s not behaving like a star or a satellite.’” 

Kelly says he also experienced this when flying jets, especially over the water at night.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Astronomers have begun searching for signals from extraterrestrials in the Galaxy

On the radio telescope CSIRO Parkes in Australia began a large-scale search for messages from extraterrestrial civilizations. Astronomers survey a fair part of the Galaxy, and now they are hoping to find signals from aliens.

The idea of ​​interstellar radio communication was expressed long ago. In the end, in the universe there are not so many ways to transfer information over long distances. Almost the only opportunity to learn something about the distant cosmos is to receive and analyze the electromagnetic radiation of celestial bodies. So, if a certain civilization has astronomy in general, that is, telescopes.
And surely these tools cover all possible types of radiation, from radio waves to gamma rays. For any serious astronomy, this is simply necessary, given how different the sky looks in different ranges. And from the receiver (telescope) one step to the transmitter.
Why radio waves, not, say, visible light or X-rays? They have a number of advantages. For radio communication is not an obstacle interplanetary dust and atmosphere of almost any composition. Radio waves are best focused, which allows you to choose where to send the signal and where to wait for it. The radio signal is most easily changed if it is necessary to put information into it. Finally, radio emission requires less energy, which is also very important.
The first searches for such signals were made back in the 1960s and have since been repeatedly renewed on an increasingly advanced technical basis. Although no one received a greeting from the brothers by reason, or in any case did not notice, humanity does not lose hope and is ready to try again and again.
“Vesti.Nauka” (nauka.vesti.ru) already talked about the project Breakthrough Listen, founded by Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner. One of the tools involved in this initiative is the Australian telescope.
The search for alien messages with his help began in 2016. But then it was about “listening” to a few stars in the immediate vicinity of the Earth.
Now the work came out literally to the galactic level. This was facilitated by the modernization of the telescope, carried out with the help of a Russian billionaire.
The radio telescope nowadays simultaneously looks at 13 directions in the sky. This allows him to survey the entire area of ​​the Milky Way, visible from this point on the globe. It covers the galactic latitudes from minus 6.5 to plus 6.5 degrees and longitudes from minus 174 degrees to plus 60 degrees. The total area is 3000 square degrees, which is 15,000 times larger than the full Moon.
Astronomers expect to “hear” a transmitter sent to Earth, equivalent to only 20 Arecibo locators, even if it is not closer to Earth than the center of the Galaxy. True, if aliens radiate radio waves not in a narrow cone, but evenly in all directions, they will need more impressive power at this distance: 1014 watts. But a populated planet may be closer, and who knows what energies are subject to the brothers in the mind?
New high-speed receivers perceive 130 gigabits of information per second. Only in 2018 it is planned to spend 1500 hours of observations and accumulate almost 100 petabytes of data. This is one of the most ambitious projects to search for extraterrestrial civilizations (SETI).
The main task in processing information is to identify signals of artificial origin. Developers use for this purpose their own mathematical algorithm and invite everyone to participate in its improvement.
In addition, it is necessary to reject the interference of terrestrial origin. Among the sources of such signals are satellites, airplanes and so on.
This will help the fact that the telescope now receives radio waves from several directions at once. The fact is that terrestrial and near-Earth radio sources are quite powerful (because they are close). They break through even into those petals of the radiation pattern, which “look” is not at all on them. Therefore, such a signal, unlike a truly cosmic signal, looks outgoing from several directions at once.

“We hope to find evidence that our planet is not the only one among the hundreds of billions in the Galaxy where a reasonable life has arisen,” concludes Danny Price of the University of California at Berkeley.
Of course, astronomers are not going to spend the observational time of the instrument, which has become so perfect, solely on the search for a hypothetical “Ay, earthlings!”. In parallel, in the same data, specialists will look for rapid radio bursts – mysterious outbursts, of which we have talked a lot.

{ https://www.planet-today.com/ }

L’INTELLIGENCE ARTIFICIELLE AU SERVICE DE LA RECHERCHE D’UNE VIE EXTRATERRESTRE ?

Le SETI travaille sur de nombreux projets différents et l’un d’eux a pour but d’utiliser une intelligence artificielle afin de nous aider à rechercher et à trouver une forme de vie extraterrestre. Comment ? Tout simplement en lui apprenant à penser différemment de nous.

L’Institut est un organisme sans but lucratif. Créé au milieu des années 80 par Thomas Pierson et Jill Tarter, il a pour but d’explorer, de comprendre et d’expliquer l’origine et la nature de la vie dans l’Univers.

En tout, le SETI compte une cinquantaine de chercheurs différents et il a également eu de nombreux mécènes tout au long de son histoire.

Le SETI, une histoire très mouvementée

Parmi les plus connus se trouvent Carl Sagan, David Packard ou encore les incontournables William Reddington Hewlett et Paul Allen.

L’institut finance plusieurs programmes différents et l’un d’entre eux a pour but de chercher des signaux d’une vie extraterrestre intelligente en utilisant des télescopes et des radiotélescopes.

Et tout le problème est là, finalement. Le SETI, comme tous les organismes du même genre, cherche des signes d’intelligence en se focalisant sur des techniques et technologies de communication semblables aux nôtres.

Toutefois, cette stratégie a bien entendu ses limites. Si une civilisation extraterrestre existe réellement, alors rien ne dit qu’elle utilise les transmissions radio pour communiquer.

Prenez notre propre planète par exemple. Contrairement à ce que pensent beaucoup de gens, l’être humain n’est pas la seule espèce intelligente à vivre sur ce monde. Les fourmis, par exemple, vivent elles aussi en société et elles ont même développé des techniques d’agriculture semblables aux nôtres… et ce avant même que nous en ayons l’idée.

Or justement, pour communiquer entre elles, les fourmis n’utilisent pas les ondes radio. Elles font appel à une forme de communication olfactive.

En toute logique, si une vie extraterrestre intelligente existe quelque part dans l’Univers, alors sa technologie a de fortes chances d’être très différente de la nôtre. Dans ce cas, les observations menées par le SETI ou même par le Breakthrough Listen sont loin d’être suffisantes.

Une IA pour penser différemment

Le SETI en a parfaitement conscience et l’organisation a ainsi monté un nouveau groupe de travail intitulé Decoding Alien Intelligence, un groupe piloté par Nathalie A. Cabrol, la directrice du Centre Carl Sagan.

La première session s’est déroulée entre le 14 et le 16 mars dernier et plusieurs scientifiques multidisciplinaires se sont ainsi réunis pour débattre de l’intelligence extraterrestre et tenter de déterminer les formes qu’elle pourrait potentiellement revêtir.

Nathalie A. Cabrol s’intéresse depuis longtemps à cette délicate question et elle avait même écrit un article entièrement dédié à la chose en 2016, un article dans lequel elle disait en substance que l’être humain allait devoir apprendre à penser en dehors de ses propres connaissances pour espérer découvrir une forme de vie extraterrestre.

Plusieurs pistes sont bien entendu envisageables et l’une d’elles en particulier semble dotée d’un fort potentiel. Graham Mackintosh, un consultant travaillant en collaboration avec le SETI et spécialisé dans toutes les questions liées à l’IA, pense en effet que l’intelligence artificielle pourrait jouer un rôle décisif dans la recherche d’une forme de vie extraterrestre intelligente en cherchant des signaux bien différents de ceux envisagés par nos propres scientifiques.

Compte tenu de sa nature, une IA n’est pas limitée par son vécu ou par son expérience et elle a donc la possibilité d’aborder des problématiques sous un angle très différent de celui de l’esprit humain.

En conséquence, Graham Mackintosh pense que la clé de la recherche d’une forme de vie extraterrestre réside peut-être dans l’IA.

Bien sûr, rien n’est encore acté pour le moment, mais il faut avouer que cette piste semble assez prometteuse

{ http://www.fredzone.org/ }

How Cold War anxiety and citizen science fuelled Canada's massive UFO report files

Canadian government quietly collected thousands of citizen reports of UFO and alien sightings

They're all common elements in reported sightings of paranormal phenomena from around the world.

One might wonder who would take the time to listen to accounts of aliens from people who were otherwise going about their daily business.

It turns out that, for decades, the Canadian government did just that.

Matthew Hayes, a PhD student at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., has been looking into nearly 15,000 pages of documents detailing UFO sightings that the Canadian government had collected between the 1950s and 1990s.

T (Steph Hayes)

Matthew Hayes, a PhD student at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., has been looking into nearly 15,000 pages of documents detailing UFO sightings. They're publicly available in an online database run by Library and Archives Canada.

"I'm not out to prove it one way or the other: whether aliens exist, or whether UFOs exist. I'm really just interested in it as a social phenomenon," he told Ideas.

"What did UFOs mean to scientists and politicians, and to the military in Canada? What did they do about it, and how do they understand it?

The earliest recorded UFO reports date back to shortly after the end of the Second World War. During the war, Canadians might have looked to the sky worried they would spot incoming enemy aircraft. Some people reported sightings to the RCMP.The government came up with a formal questionnaire for investigators to use when people reported a UFO sighting.

(Ben Shannon/CBC)

Many of the documents Hayes is studying come from the results of this questionnaire. Others are memos between government officials debating what to do with the questionnaire responses.

Among some of the encounters described in the files:

• Four separate witnesses in Peterborough described an aircraft about 50 feet (15 metres) long travelling at high speeds at high altitudes. They didn't know what it was, only that it did not look like any kind of airplane they were familiar with.
• While cleaning the dishes in her home on the Bloodvein First Nation, Man., a woman observed a three-foot-tall creature with an egg-shaped head, sharp pointy ears and wrinkled eyes. She didn't see a nose or a mouth.
• In 1967, mechanic Stefan Michalak described seeing a flying saucer-like object while prospecting around Falcon Lake, Manitoba. The object somehow severely burned and injured him. It's arguably the best-known and most extensively documented encounter with a so-called UFO in Canada.

By 1990, the government's documentation of UFO sightings slowed considerably, according to Hayes. In 1995, Canada shut down the program altogether.

But back in the '50s, officials were much less ready to dismiss UFO reports as crazy stories.

A witness's drawing of an unidentified object found in the archive of UFO reports. (Library and Archives Canada)

• Falcon Lake incident is Canada's 'best-documented UFO case,' even 50 years later

• AS IT HAPPENED
  As it Happened: The Archive Edition - The Aliens Episode

As historian Edward Jones-Imhotep explained, paranoia around the unidentified in that era was very real, fuelled in part by stories of aliens but also by more immediate anxieties regarding the Soviet Union.

"If you take a globe of the world in 1950 and you look down on the North Pole, you realize very quickly that the shortest line between the Soviet Union and the United States," he explained.

"So the line that Soviet bombers would take to attack U.S. cities with hydrogen bombs, for instance, passes directly over Canada."

Cold War anxiety, fear

Canada became, rather incidentally, an area of "intense interest" during the Cold War. Its skies had to be monitored constantly and extensively.

That ended up including any citizen reports about unusual phenomena, which may describe anything from a possible Soviet attack to the product of a child's overactive imagination.

But it could also be partly attributed to basic fear: not of actual aliens, for the most part — but fear of the unknown.

"The real fear, it seems, is the fact that these things are simply unidentified," said Jones-Imhotep.

Historian Edward Jones-Imhotep explains that the paranoia around aliens in the late 21st century can be partially explained by real-world anxieties of the Cold War. 

(Angela Lewis)

"It's the idea that perhaps they're aliens, perhaps are extraterrestrials, but more threatening than that is just the idea that there are things that you don't know about — the things that you can't identify."

From a political viewpoint, fear of the unknown can percolate down to colour citizens' perception of the unknown. The language about aliens in popular culture at the time, which could reflect intrigue or xenophobia, could just as easily be applied to a hostile foreign power.

If you can create or stoke this kind of fear of aliens ... you can also end up translating that same language into fear of the Soviets.-

Edward Jones-Imhotep

"They have hostile motives. They can't be trusted. They're up to these secret projects," said Jones-Imhotep.

"If you can create or stoke this kind of fear of aliens, there's a way that you can also end up translating that same language into fear of the Soviets."

Citizen science

Whatever one may think of the veracity of the UFO reports — or of the reliability of the people who made these reports — it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the files that currently live in the government's digital archives.

And while the approach might seem scattershot at first glance, it was in fact done with a purpose in mind.

Lorraine Daston, executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, describes the project as "an involuntary exercise in citizen science" that covered more ground than any single scientific mission could.

(Ben Shannon/CBC)

"It's often very difficult to detect patterns unless you have an enormous haul of data," she explained.

"Even though 15,000 [pages] sounds like a large number, if you're scanning the sky every night for a decade, it's not that many. So they're [relatively] rare."

There aren't enough scientists or government inspectors interested in possibly paranormal events to cover all that ground — so they turned to volunteers.

Professional skepticism

In the end, none of the reports gathered by the Canadian government — or any other government, as far as we're aware — provided undisputed proof that aliens have ever made contact with humans.

But they still provide some insight into the intelligence-gathering strategies of the time. They also provide some entertaining reading.

An excerpt from a 1990 report out of Bloodvein First Nation, Man., where multiple community members alleged to have witnessed 'a U.F.O. and little men.' 

(Library and Archives Canada)

Take this note that Hayes found, of a meteorological officer from the Department of Transport describing a 1968 report of an unidentified flying object over Frobisher Bay.

"[The officer] is of the opinion that the object was an experimental or weather balloon at a height of well over 100,000 feet."

It continues: "There have been no reports of landing by little green men or other weird non-world creatures. Furthermore, there have been no reports that all our women are pregnant."

• Written by Jonathan Ore. This episode was produced by Nicola Luksic and Tom Howell.

---

Our guests for this program:

• Matthew Hayes is a PhD student in Canadian Studies at Trent University. His thesis centres on the roughly 15,000 pages of UFO-related documents archived by the Canadian government from the early Cold War to 1995.
• Edward Jones-Imhotep is an associate professor of history at York University. His work centres on the social and cultural life of machines. He is the author of The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War.
• Stan Michalak's father Stefan experienced Canada's most famous UFO sighting at Falcon Lake in 1967.
• Chris Rutkowski co-authored the book about the Falcon Lake incident with Stan Michalak. He is a science writer with a special interest in UFO sightings.
• Lorraine Daston is the director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. She is the author of numerous books on the history of science and co-editor of Biographies of Scientific Objects.
• Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at City University New York and author of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk.

Amerikanen sturen helikopter naar Mars - HLN.be

Bron: ANP

De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft de plannen vandaag aangekondigd. De Mars Helicopter moet samen met een onbemand karretje, Mars 2020 genaamd, worden gelanceerd. De helikopter weegt net geen twee kilo en de wieken draaien 3000 rondjes per minuut, ongeveer tien keer zo snel als op aarde. Dat is nodig omdat de lucht op Mars veel ijler is dan de lucht hier.

De helikopter moet helemaal zelf zijn vlucht plannen en beslissingen nemen. Elke opdracht van de vluchtleiding op aarde zou pas een paar minuten later aankomen op Mars, te laat om in te grijpen als dat nodig is.

De helikopter is een experiment. Als het niet lukt, is er niets aan de hand, zegt de NASA. Maar als het wel werkt, kunnen ‘marskopters’ gebieden verkennen waar karretjes niet naartoe kunnen rijden.

Video selectie, gekozen door peter2011

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

It was in August 1951 that renowned mountain-climber Eric Shipton embarked upon his fifth expedition to Mount Everest, along with climbers Sir Edmund Hillary, Earle Riddiford, Mike Ward, Sherpa Sen Tensing, and several others. As the expedition neared its end, and while the team explored an area to the southwest of Everest known as Gauri Sankar, mysterious footprints were found – and photographed. Shipton stated: “It was on one of the glaciers of the Menlung basin, at a height of about 19,000 feet, that, late one afternoon we came across those curious footprints in the snow.” He continued: “I have in the past found many sets of these curious footprints and have tried to follow them, but have always lost them. Sen Tensing, who had no doubt whatever that the creatures – for there had been at least two – that had made the tracks were ‘Yetis’ or wild men, told me that two years before, he and a number of other Sherpas had seen one of them at a distance of about 25 yards at Thyangboche.”

Shipton added that: “He [Tensing] described it as half man and half beast, standing about five feet six inches, with a tall pointed head. Whatever it was that he had seen, he was convinced that it was neither a bear nor a monkey.” And the idea that the prints were made by the famous Yeti was bolstered in the minds of Shipton, his colleagues, and the media of the day, as a direct result of the startling fact that they were an impressive 13 inches long and 8 inches wide.

Not everyone was convinced, however. Dr. T.C.S. Morrison-Scott of the Natural History Department of the British Museum was certain that Shipton had been fooled by nothing stranger than the tracks of a langur monkey – an animal that is common to the Himalayas, and that is not unlike the creatures reportedly seen by Sherpa Tensing. The flaw in this theory, however, was that the langur is five-toed and generally walks on all-fours; whereas the creature that made the prints in the Shipton photographs was clearly four-toed, massive, and appeared to walk exclusively on two feet.

Langur Monkey

Indeed, Shipton himself recognized the problems with the langur theory when he stated in The Six Mountain Travel Books: “Of the various theories that have been advanced to account for these tracks, the only one which is in any way plausible is that they were made by a langur monkey, and even this is very far from convincing, as I believe those who have suggested it would be the first to admit.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the controversy was never firmly resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and, as a result, has rumbled on at a steady pace in monster-hunting circles ever since. Moving on from the Shipton photographs, further intriguing evidence exists that leads many modern-day Yeti-seekers to conclude that the Abominable Snowman is far more than just the stuff of legend, fantasy and misidentification.

The creature has a long history in both Nepal and Tibet, and tales of encounters with the hairy animal have been reported for centuries. As far back as 1832, for example, explorer B.H. Hodgson reported in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal that the existence of a large, ape-like creature of the Himalayas had long been known to the people of Nepal. Similarly, in 1889, in the pages of Among the Himalayas, writer and adventurer L.A. Waddell recorded that he had heard countless stories of the legendary giant ape from those who lived among the mountains. Most feared of all by the locals of Tibet and Nepal centuries ago was the Nyalmo: a fierce and gigantic beast said to be related to the Yeti that reputedly inhabited the mountain-tops and supposedly grew to an astonishing height of fifteen feet.

The Yeti takes its name from the ancient Tibetan word yeh-teh, which literally translates as “rock bear.” For many Tibetans, however, the Yeti is not a physical animal. Rather, it is perceived as being a paranormal creature: a spectral animal that is most successfully seen while the witness is in a trance-like, altered state. The far more evocative term of Abominable Snowman originated in 1921, with Henry Newman, a writer for the Calcutta, India-based Statesman newspaper. It was in 1921 that Britain’s Royal Geographical Society launched an expedition to the Himalayas that was led by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Howard-Bury. During the course of the expedition, Howard-Bury came across unusual footprints that the local Sherpa guides claimed originated with what they called the metoh-kangmi – or “the man-bear snowman.”

When the story was told to Henry Newman of the Statesman, however, Newman mistakenly interpreted the word “metoh” to mean “filthy.” And while the term “filthy snowman” sounded merely amusing, Newman eventually came up with the far more headline-grabbing and ominous name of the Abominable Snowman. And, thus, the monster of the Himalayas quickly became a household word and sightings of the beast abounded. In 1925, Greek photographer N.A. Tombini claimed to have seen a Yeti high on the Himalayas. “Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes,” he said, adding: “It showed up dark against the snow and, as far as I could make out, wore no clothes.”

Sir Edmund Hillary

In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary reported finding large, unknown footprints while he climbed Mount Everest; and in 1970 British mountain-climber Don Whillans watched through binoculars as a hairy, ape-like animal apparently searched for food a short distance from his camp on Annapurna, a series of 55-kilometre-long peaks in the Himalayas. In January 1987, a small Yeti was said to have attacked a young boy in northern Kashmir, who reportedly proceeded to hit the creature on the head with a pot until it released him. And, in 2000, a woman claimed to have seen a giant, hairy, man-like animal roaming her land in Medog County, which can be found in southeast Tibet. Since then, sightings have dramatically declined.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

There’s only one way to know for certain if Congress is behind something … if it opens its wallet (well, our wallet) and pays for it. Congress has proposed a new “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2018” bill and buried in its 53 pages is a recommendation to spend $10 million on the “search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions” per year for the next two fiscal years. This is the first time in 25 years that Congress has considered using tax dollars to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Those who believe the US government (or any government) has already been in contact with – and is possibly working with – aliens will wonder why it would be spending money for something it has already done. OK, governments do that all the time – it’s called “keeping your constituents happy.” But why suddenly spend money again on SETI? Is this a coverup or a distraction?

“You need to remember that this is an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill. Even if it passes, the appropriators may not provide any SETI funding in their bill. But if they do, that would be a very big deal.”

That’s astronomer Jill Tarter, the former director of the SETI Institute and inspiration for Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact” and played in the movie by Jodie Foster, explaining to Live Science what kids would already know if they still watched Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill.” As someone who has fought all her life for funding, Tarter is obviously excited about the possibility of getting $20 million from the government. But what are the REAL chances of the bill being passed and SETI getting the money?

The answer starts with the sponsor of the bill – Texas congressional representative Lamar Smith. That booing and hissing you hear when his name is mentioned comes from those who know he’s the Head of the House Science Committee and a climate change denier who has taken contributions from the oil and gas industries. On the positive side (most politicians really do have both sides), Smith has an interest in astronomy and is willing to put his name on a bill that actually spends money on NASA – not exactly a popular cause in Washington these days.

However (there’s always a ‘however’), Smith is retiring at the end of his term and will not run for re-election in 2018. Knowing he won’t be around to fight for it, is Smith sponsoring this bill just for show? Also, this comes at the same time President Trump’s administration ended funding for NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) which tracked carbon dioxide and its role in … you guessed it … climate change.

If this is a serious proposal to fund NASA in future attempts at communications with ETs, that’s great. But is it? Why is SETI funding being proposed to a Congress and administration that is clearly not a fan of the parts of NASA that have to do with the planet we live on? Is this a distraction to cover up a contact that has already occurred? Does this bill have any chance of passing?

Can Jodie Foster help?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Strange UFO with blue light caught over Orange County, California

Ashley McAdams has filmed a strange UFO in the sky over Orange County, California on May 10, 2018.

While driving on the highway she saw a strange object with a blue light flying parallel with the highway.

The UFO is certainly not a reflection in the window because the object disappears behind the trees and at a certain moment the object even speeds up. Could it be a drone or is it something else.

  

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

Ancient statue and face found Near Mars Curiosity Rover, May 11, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: May 11, 2018

Location of discovery: Mars Sol 2029

NASA Source:

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/rawid=2029MR0107090010902961E01_DXXX&s=2029

I found another figure on Mars today. I think this makes the total around 15 or so. This figure is similar in appearance to a human and is an ancient statue of a intelligent species that once lived in this area of Mars. As you can see, it has arms and legs, and even a pointed hat. The statue is about 12-16 inches tall. I wonder if this statue was once a real person who was petrified by some unknown type of weapon. When it comes to governments...they like weapons that instill fear into its enemies...what does this more than a weapon that turns the flesh to stone...to stand as a symbol for thousands of years to warn others. 

 

This figure is close to another discovery I made today...a large Greek style face. The face is large and on the edge of a structure. 

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Ancient Structure On Mars Is 1.8 KM Long! Found On Google Mars Map, May 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: May 9, 2018

Location of discovery: Mars

Google Mars coordinates: 10°20'41.53"S 75°11'31.99"W

 

I found this ancient structure on Mars using Google Mars Map. According to Google ruler, the structure is .35 km tall and 1.84 km long. That is one massive building. There are also two roads or ramps that lead away from the structure. The building has a flat smooth top, possible for landing something on top of. Defiantly gives astronomers a lot to think about with this one. 

 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFO Hunters Discover Apparent Alien Warrior Statue On Mars

UFO researchers believe they have finally discovered proof of life on Mars after finding what they think to be a hat of an ancient warrior after scouring photos of the Red Planet’s surface.

Bristol space video journalist Joe White claimed he had found images of a fallen statue from Curiosity Rover images. The images appear to show the head of an ancient warrior woman.

Mr White uploaded the images to his YouTube channel ArtAleinTV – MARSZOO. He said in the video descriptions that he found a seemingly small feminine statue head in Gale Crater on Mars in the Curiosity image from NASA.

He said that it seemed to only have a few inches in size or less.

The statue looks like a female warrior with a helmet from the middle ages on Earth. It has an apparent emblem on the forehead and with facial features similar to an Egyptian.

Mr White claimed that this is one of the hundreds of similar artefacts he has discovered on Mars in recent years, which he believed may go further to show that Mars had an ancient and artistic civilisation in the past.

How long ago is the question.

Some followers of Mr White believed it was a statue. However, many others thought it was just a part of pareidolia phenomenon.

Pareidolia is when the eyes are tricked by the brain into seeing familiar shapes or objects, such patterns, textures, faces, animals, clouds, the surface of a rock, etc.

One viewer wrote that was most likely a rock that looks like a face. They don’t believe it was something unusual in any way.

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

Has a space war BEGUN? UFO spotted 'firing energy weapon' in US sky sparks conspiracy

FOOTAGE has emerged that proves a war in space has already started, according to wild claims online.

By Callum Hoare 

The video, which was captured in Minnesota, USA, shows the moment one woman spotted something bizarre going on in the skies above.

he was ordering at a drive-through Taco Bell restaurant when she noticed a white orb in the night sky. 

According to the witness, the anomaly began to emit an energy weapon towards another flying vehicle. 

UFOMANIA

SPACE WAR? The bizarre activity has sparked a conspiracy

The video has since been shared on YouTube where it has racked up more than 24,000 hits in one day. 

And viewers were left speculating what it could be. 

One believed: "It is a coming from a high tech spaceship – the military is testing the technology in case there is an alien invasion."

And another believed: "HAARP is messing with the night sky."

But some were not as convinced, claiming it is, in fact, a star or planet. 

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

What Are Cosmic Rays?

Planetary Disaster Recovery Program (P.D.R.P.)

Look up, way up when you are outside at night. What do you see?  If you are fortunate enough to live in a low light pollution area you should see many, many tiny points of light.  Each of those tiny specks of light represents varying degrees of our universal collective past.  Most of those little specks of light are in actuality stellar mass objects, all fusing hydrogen and depending on its place on the main sequence of stars will fuse Helium into heavier elements.  Humanities best and technologically advanced eyes can see millions if not billions of light years away.  Everywhere stars, everywhere vast emptiness of one particle per meter density in interstellar space. The Universe essentially looks the same in every direction. There is no center of mass or center of the Universe. No specialty, no regions of space are any more or less special than the rest. Our 90’ish billion light years wide Hubble volume does not play favorites.

Most of these crucibles of helium are not sufficiently different than our closest crucible the Sun. These crucibles come in a vast range of sizes but all function generally the same.  Science has gathered irrefutable evidence over the past decade that most stars have planetary systems. Seems to the rule to have planets as opposed to the exception. The grand homogenous appearance of the Universe is key.

Stars come and go in varying degrees of subatomic crunch or mammoth nebula creating explosions. Our Sun is at least a second generation star in this local region of our galaxy. The first star in our neighborhood lived its life and died. It went supernova creating all the elements that make up our periodic table and beyond. Our planet was formed through the powers of accretion.  We are supernova detritus.  Our planet itself and all life owe everything to that first generation star that gave up the fusion.

Through the mystic arts of chemistry, physics, and of deep time chemical and cellular organization occurred. Life the most basic of life came to be.  Life on Earth is an incredibly strong and resilient thing. Our ancient ancestors have survived at least 7 mass extinction events.  Yet we persevered and thrived. We have survived very long odds indeed. Every living thing represents a very long unbroken line of winning organisms. Those are the ones that survived to divide and multiply themselves.  We are all winners of a very dangerous and very prolonged game of life.

That makes us, all life on Earth,  a very improbable very unlikely thing in the grand scheme of things. But yet here we are. When the totality of all the real estate, vast emptiness of interstellar space, and deep time is considered we are of value in our uniqueness.  Our uniqueness in our life expressions is vast. There are over 12 million different forms of life spanning all kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. Our tree of life is fractal in nature when you look back through the eons.

NHI – Non-Human Intelligence

Whether you believe that this phenomenon is just machine constructions from some distant off-world construction yard or if you believe that they come from a different reality than ours may not matter. Our limited monkey brains may not be able to discern the two apart.  Either what we are seeing is sufficiently advanced technology or of a high strange nature, or both. In this day and age Clarke’s three laws need a new interpretation:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Being a scientist since the zygote I realize that our human expression of what we call science is woefully incomplete. When you see a scientist speaking in absolutes you can assume that some form of tunnel vision is going on. We just do not know all that much about how the Universe works. We have had science for only a couple hundred years. Only a few hundred rotations around the sun seem to give some people the idea that the current understanding of the Universe is somehow complete. We only think we know a lot about the Universe in comparison to our complete ignorance of centuries past. Our knowledge is an asymptote that approaches zero.  Think of it this way, we do not even know what makes up 84.5% of the universe’s mass and thus its corresponding gravity fields. Not a single living human can claim to know what dark matter is. I hate that name “dark matter”. It is not physical matter at all it is something completely different. It is not any of our know states of mater nor energy. It is something that our science has no accepted hypothesis to explain it’s shadowy influence. Dark matter is permeating YOU at this very moment. You can’t see it, can’t feel it, but its there.  It is a very real phenomenon that our 5 senses can not perceive. Our best instruments cannot even directly see it, we can just see it indirectly through its influence.

Being a logical being I can not be so arrogant or narrow-minded in my belief that I or any other dominant primate have it all figured out. I would have to be self-deluded to think I or anyone else was an expert or last word on anything in which 84.5% of the problem is completely unknown.  But that is what science does. It is great at analyzing and making all the cool gadgets we all use. But it is the wrong toolbox to truly understand the Universe. Our primate logic and anthropomorphic belief systems make us think we are mighty. We are just children in the Universe. We are the problem children.

Last year I had a series of very high strange events. What happened to me shook me out of my closed-minded science only view of the Universe.  I am still an atheist to any and all religions. But, I do now know that there is much more to all this then we can see and observe, or ever will observe with our very human consensus reality. In an offhanded way, I publicly asked for it to happen to me. Be careful what you ask for with conviction sometimes something is listening. Some of my readers certainly noticed a different tone in my articles. There was a reason for that.

I started to research the voluminous accounts of Non-Human Intelligence contacts.

I feel it safe to assume that anyone that is reading this and has made it thus far believes that UFO’s/UAP’s are more than just misidentifications and earthy high-tech constructions. I have seen an up-close triangular UFO at no more than 100 meters in broad daylight. That was about 5 years ago. So I know something is here. No belief required. Many of you have had similar experiences.

Now, this is where you,  my dear reader may take what follows in whatever form that you can digest.

They communicate in our consciousness. I do not refer to dreams in any way. Anything that happens in dreams cannot possibly be subjectively analyzed or ever be separated from internal imagery, those accounts I dismiss (but not invalidate) for my analysis. The Universe is not that simple where we can expect Klatu to tool up in a shiny new saucer get out and speak English.  A true alien will have truly alien communication methodology.

If you investigate the myriad of accounts of high strange events it soon becomes evident that there are common threads of experience from people that are separated in both distance and time. This intelligence may be the occupants of those crafts in the sky or it could be something we have not thought of yet or could think of.

There appears to be some sort of mass contact going on.

People from all walks of life are having experiences they cannot explain during wakeful hours. I do realize that the majority of people who read this are not going to be in this minority that has had high strange contact… Yet! If it helps you think about this take it as science fiction. Just remember that science fiction becomes accepted reality as we develop and solve previously insurmountable problems with new eyes and dedication.  To meme it.. science fiction becomes science fact more often than not.

This is a “First Contact” situation for people that have had it.

To hypothesize an intelligence that is either billions of years more evolved, from dimensions and\or regions unfathomable to us, or some high powered version of Carl Jung’s “Collective Unconscious” may not ultimately matter in this equation. We are the limiting factor in this communication. The contact modalities vary greatly like human minds vary greatly.

This communication of contact is traumatic to some and exalting to others. But it is clear when you see all the commonalities and synchronicities that something has taken great interest in us. By us, I mean all life on Earth, not just us dominant primates. It is a communication that has no parallel in colloquial life. Words do not describe it to any sufficient degree.

To me, it looks like there is a Planetary Disaster Recovery Plan (P.D.R.P.) being executed.  It is a process or set of procedures to recover and protect a concern in the event of a disaster. That disaster is one we humans are causing willfully every day when we support the status quo. This intelligence being possibly masters of time and space from our perspective may know our planetary fate. Something is being done about it. If you are familiar with the canon of UFOlogy this idea fits better than any other hypothesis to explain what we are seeing. Some people are being educated, some people are being abducted, some people are having a much less violating experience. But without exception, a contactee is profoundly changed by the experience. They are shaking us out of our slumber in a way. A slumber that we can no longer afford.

I have no idea as to the criteria of contact. There does not seem to be any geographic, socio-economic, or ethnic correlations that I can find. No one is more likely to have it than any other at least statistically.  There must be other aspects of us humans that are being identified as worthy of contact. It probably comes down to the ability to perceive them. Possibly some peoples neurology and psychology makes this contact impossible or at least improbable.

There is an organization that has done ultimately more research in all this than I.  I would like to introduce you to FREE.

FREE was formally incorporated as a not for profit academic research institute on July 15, 2015, by various retired Ph.D. physicists, scientists and lay researchers to research “WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS” by undertaking cross-comparative research on individuals who have had various types of contact with non-human intelligence via diverse paranormal “Contact Modalities”.  The majority of our FREE Board of Directors hypothesize that all of these “Contact Modalities” are interconnected through what is commonly called “CONSCIOUSNESS” and that advanced physics, in particular, the Quantum Hologram Theory of Physics and Consciousness, as developed by Dr. Edgar Mitchell and Dr. Rudy Schild  can possibly describe how all of these diverse paranormal “Contact Modalities” are interrelated.

FREE and Experiencer.org are what UFOlogy and phenomenology have been waiting for.  UFOlogy has always been in dire need of academics, doctors, and scientists to get involved. You will be amazed at all the respected scientists involved in this effort.

Well, here it is. This is UFOlogy 2.0.

Just remember that we know nearly nothing about the Universe and how it operates. It is a way too early in our collective quest to understand the unknown to be sure about anything. It would be intellectual laziness to think that what we see is all there is.

{ http://www.theangryufologist.us/ }

Has the British Ministry of Defence Released All of Its UFO Files?

Robert Hastings says “No!” and Nick Pope Agrees

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2013

A new BBC online article, dated June 20, 2013 and titled “UFO sightings: Files explain why MoD closed down special desk”, discusses what I consider to be a calculated decision by the British government to feign a lack of interest in the UFO phenomenon, even as public sighting reports in the UK reached a very high level. At the conclusion of this article, former MoD UFO specialist Nick Pope comments, agreeing with my assessment.  In response to the story, I posted the following comment:

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles 5-10-18

“The U.S. Air Force used this same sleight-of-hand in 1969 to get the American public off its back by closing down Project Blue Book. Years later, FOIA requests forced the release of U.S. government files which proved that other groups, including the CIA and NSA, continued to secretly study national security-related UFO incidents in America. Hopefully the British public won't be duped by this ruse.” Were it not for a word-count limit, I would have added that the USAF’s Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) were also involved in sensitive UFO investigations, something not mentioned by the Pentagon during its Blue Book closure announcement.

Similarly, the real situation regarding official interest in UFOs in the UK is far different than the MoD—and its de facto debunking spokesman, Dr. David Clarke—portray when discussing the topic in the media. For example, over the past five years, information has emerged relating to the famous Rendlesham Forest incidents, in December 1980, which confirms that a bona fide UFO was indeed tracked by both British and American radars in the area. 

My 2007 tape recorded interviews with the two USAF air traffic controllers on duty at RAF Bentwaters during that time-frame may be read in an article at my website, which also contains a published statement by retired MoD UFO Desk administrator, Nick Pope, regarding former RAF radar operator Nigel Kerr’s independent radar tracking of the same unidentified aerial object.

Significantly, one of the USAF controllers, Ike Barker, told me that the UFO—which appeared as an orange-colored sphere, approximately the size of an F-111 fighter/bomber—had been spotted out the window of the air traffic control tower at the exact moment it was observed to be momentarily hovering on the tower’s radar scope. It then moved rapidly away in the direction of the base’s Weapons Storage Area (WSA) which contained tactical nuclear bombs, according to multiple USAF sources I have interviewed.

RAF Bentwaters’ American Deputy Base Commander at the time, then-Lt. Col. Charles Halt, has been on-the-record about the incident at the WSA since 1991, saying that while he was leading a security team in nearby Rendlesham Forest that night, investigating strange lights seen there, he had heard frantic radio chatter from Security Policemen posted at the bomb depot, reporting that the UFO was hovering near the facility and directing laser-like beams down into it.

While Barker’s testimony differs somewhat in the details, compared with Halt’s account, it does provide a general corroboration of a UFO presence near the WSA in the pre-dawn hours of December 28, 1980. (It may well be that the UFO made more than one pass near the facility, which would explain the discrepancies in their statements: Barker said the UFO flew extremely fast in a southwesterly direction, passing just to the west of the WSA; he did not see it hover nearby the bunker complex or send down beams into it, as the radio chatter heard by Halt indicated.)

So, according to a former USAF deputy base commander and a USAF air traffic controller, a bona fide UFO actually maneuvered very near the largest nuclear weapons storage depot in Western Europe, located in Suffolk, England. Moreover, Col. Halt says security personnel at the site reported that the aerial object apparently targeted at least one of the bunkers there with laser-like rays.

(In 1994, I interviewed another retired USAF colonel, whose identity must remain confidential, who confirmed the incident and further stated that two tactical nukes were subsequently removed from the Bentwaters WSA and flown aboard a C-5A cargo aircraft to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, for analysis. This individual said that the report he read about the event did not mention the technical findings resulting from that investigation and, therefore, he could not say whether the two bombs had been adversely affected by the beams.)

In spite of these dramatic revelations, the MoD officially claims that its records show no evidence of a UFO threat to the UK’s national security. Clearly, important facts about the Rendlesham Forest incidents are still being suppressed by the British government, despite its recently-hyped claim that it is being transparent with the public regarding its knowledge—or more accurately, lack of knowledge—about the UFO phenomenon.

Moreover, one of the now-retired USAF Security Policemen involved in the multiple UFO events at Rendlesham/RAF Bentwaters that week, Technical Sergeant Jim Penniston, says that Ministry of Defence personnel were present for his harsh debriefing following his encounter with a landed UFO in the woods during the early hours of December 26th. While their role may have been a passive one—leaving the questioning to two USAF officers who were not introduced and whom Penniston did not recognize—the mere presence of persons working for MoD's Air Staff secretariat DS8 hints at an interest in the events in Rendlesham Forest not reflected in the files declassified by the MoD's UFO Desk in the recent past.

In summary, it appears that what the MoD has been engaging in is the selectivedeclassification of UFO-related files, whereby low-level, generally mundane documents are released with much media fanfare, while very sensitive files continue to be withheld from public view. The practice is commonly called “spin”. The purpose of this propaganda tactic is to alter the actual story of official interest in the UFO phenomenon, so that it appears as if there exists only minimal concern or none at all.

My comprehensive exposé on the MoD’s deliberate duplicity and debunker David Clarke’s witting or unwitting role in foisting this UFO disinformation on the British people, may be read at my website.

Robert Hastings adds:

Upon completion of this article, I sent it to former Ministry of Defence UFO Desk administrator Nick Pope, and requested his candid opinion regarding my contentions.
In particular, I asked Pope to provide his assessment of Dr. David Clarke’s self-created role as the authoritative interpreter of the reasons for, and significance of, the MoD’s release of classified UFO documents—a self-serving ploy that members of the British media seem to have swallowed unreservedly. As one will read, Mr. Pope puts things in their proper perspective.

Nick Pope responds:

Classified Documents in the MoD's UFO Files

Project Condign's final report was classified Secret UK Eyes Only, as were some of the supporting papers. Some of the minutes recording discussions relating to the setting up of the Flying Saucer Working Party were classified Top Secret. However, the UK's Freedom of Information Act contains wide-ranging exemptions covering areas such as defense, security and intelligence, among others.

All documents passed to the National Archives will have been reviewed by MoD before being sent out (this is one of the reasons why the release program took five years), so anything released to the public is either unclassified, or is now judged to be unclassified, whatever the original classification. Careful scrutiny of the released material shows plenty of documents have been redacted or withheld in entirety. And that's not including several of the more interesting files, documents, films and photographs that the MoD claims have been "inadvertently destroyed" or "lost".

Access to Classified Information

In government, access to classified information is a product of your security clearance and your 'need to know'. Thus, in a sense, you can never say for sure whether you're privy to all the information on any particular topic, because even if you're the "Subject Matter Expert", there may not just be specific things to which you're denied access, but areas the existence of which you're not even aware. Think of this in terms of 'unknown unknowns'. So while I had a Top Secret SCI security clearance for much of my MoD career and certainly believe I saw all the UFO files, I can't be certain: "I don't know what I don't know" is another way that those of us who have dealt with highly-classified material sometimes characterize this situation.

David Clarke

To clarify David Clarke's role, he's a ufologist, formerly with the British UFO Research Association. He's done some volunteer clerical work for the UK's National Archives on the Ministry of Defense UFO files and got to do a few interviews on the subject when each batch of files was released—generally when I was unavailable. In relation to the final batch of files he got a few more interviews than usual, simply because I now live in America and there were limits to what I could do with the UK media.

Having done as a government job what he did as a hobby, I can confirm that Clarke has never worked for the MoD or held a security clearance. MoD redacts the files before sending them to the National Archives, so he's only ever seen the same unclassified material as any other member of the public[Hastings’ emphasis].

One MoD document referred to him as a "UFO spotter"—a disparaging term used to describe somebody with a nerdish and slightly obsessive attitude to the subject. He's a folklore buff who's interested in fairies and goblins and I've been told he privately thinks some UFOs and alien abductions may represent "some sort of supernatural phenomenon". He keeps this opinion to himself, presumably because he's worried people would think he's a nut. So he's no sinister debunker—just a slightly odd hobbyist, reading out the government press release. Some people would probably use the term "useful idiot" to describe his parroting the MoD "no defense significance" sound bite, which was designed solely to keep Parliament, the media and the public off our backs.

{ https://www.theufochronicles.com/ }

Artefacts With Extraterrestrial Carvings And Engravings Found In A Mexican Cave

Mysterious artefacts with engravings of "extraterrestrials" and "Nacelle" unearthed in a Mexican cave  is just mind blowing stuff and is next to incredible if you was to ask my opinion based on the evidence, the story and the actual statues themselves I can't help but get a little excited.

The prospects that this could literally change our history as we know it, but for the better and for a clean out of the lies, contradictions and other shady recognition from dubious sources?

A group of explorers discovered in a Mexican cave evidence of what they boast to be the best evidence of extraterrestrial contact on Earth. The group of explorers recently visited the cave and explored it in detail. In two cases, the researchers made unexpected discoveries, including several stones sculpted with images depicting etchings related to extraterrestrials. On the surface of the stones, the group of researchers found evidence of what many people interpret as "extraterrestrial spacecraft" and "humanoid beings"; One of the stones, apparently fractured in the past, evidently shows the top of a spaceship with a being that some people believe is not of this world.

The painting shown here contains an alleged alien who is next to a former leader of a prehispanic culture who receives a corn seed, as well as some other symbols that have not yet been deciphered; these artifacts have been nicknamed "stones of the first encounter".

It is said that local legends speak of a mysterious "ship" that has been hidden somewhere near the caves since time immemorial. This is the main reason why the group of explorers searched the area three months ago.

His research yielded totally unexpected results. They found what they believe is the ultimate proof that the aliens visited the Earth thousands of years ago and that they had direct contact with the ancient cultures that inhabited Mexico at that time. What the discovery suggests or what implications the group of explorers will have to see. José Aguayo explained how the INAH - National Institute of Anthropology and History - can not say anything about the discovery because it is not a typical archaeology for a main reason; the artifacts describe things that contradict the dominant story and differentiate everything we have been told about our history and origins.

If, at some point, the National Institute of Anthropology and History decided to collect the artefacts, it would have enormous implications for both parties since INAH, an official government agency, would essentially accept one of the most important "facts": the existence of beings. not earthly, they have directly influenced the ancient cultures of the whole world.

The story can be found in two places here in Spanish and here in English.

Here is another bit of research that I found online and guys it get's even more stranger and stranger because of the look of these incredible statues? I must admit that I wasn't them mini statues having the look of an Alien grey? That absolutely threw me for six! The classic look of the big tear shaped eyes and the big head with a small mouth, that is the look these mini sculptures, statues have. I mean, they even have a mini baby Alien grey in the arms of the "mother Alien".

Here is a quote from the Daily Star.

Other sculptures appear to show spaceships flying through the air. The mystery objects are reportedly popular among locals who live near the caves in an unspecified area of Mexico.

Very old statues could be up to 7,000 years old some top researchers have claimed?

In this next stone is a really, odd looking and very, very bizarre engraving of what can only be described and called a UFO? You just have to look at it in full, take it in and you can see exactly what the person who engraved this stone was trying to tell us? That Aliens are real and we've been contacted by Alien in our ancestors past? It is up for grabs and up for debate but here is a tangible, physical proof of the legend, story so that for me is as good as any evidence which quite literally proves it.

UFO MANIA - The Truth Is Out There YouTube Video link can be found here:

This next stone statue is exactly how I would carve an Alien in stone. This is what it is, if you take it for what it is and don't put any long winded spin on to it, then it is just a statue of an Alien. If you put spin on to it, then it becomes anything you want it to be?

I've found some amazing images from the actual cave in Mexico and there is overwhelming evidence of Aliens who (at one time) visited Earth and who knows, they may of even influenced the concepts of ships, trade and the exchange of ideas among each other knowing the route humanity would take.

So yeah, everything since the first contact could all of been known in advance because of the Aliens known information that once a species is enlightened to trade, travel and intelligence of inventions and numbers then the route taken is pretty much mapped out already? Who knows, the Roswell crash might of been the time when sophisticated and extremely small technology was introduced to keep us on track and stop us from killing each other in more wars like world war one and world war two?

It's pure speculation but my opinions could of happened and they might of been slightly different but not a lot because all I need to do is take away the Alien element and the rest of what I said pretty much happened like I said! So don't be quick to shrug it off because just because I said the Alien word that doesn't mean it is all rubbish from then on wards?

The supposedly ancient sculptures have sparked claims that aliens visited earth thousands of years ago. Maybe they did because if this was to represent a human at that time, this would be rejected as not looking anything like a human? So it begs the question, is this really depicting a real Alien visitor because maybe these people never depicted other humans in their artwork and only their Gods and them being the visiting Aliens.

That looks uncannily similar to an Alien as we would say they look in today world? Maybe they look like this and it's an innate thought that we all have inside of what they look like?

{ https://www.ufosightingsfootage.uk/ }

From the pyramids to Stonehenge – were prehistoric people astronomers?

 BY CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR

Credit: Pixabay.

Ever since humans could look up to see the sky, we have been amazed by its beauty and untold mysteries. Naturally then, astronomy is often described as the oldest of the sciences, inspiring people for thousands of years. Celestial phenomena are featured in prehistoric cave paintings. And monuments such as the Great Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge seem to be aligned with precision to cardinal points or the positions where the moon, sun or stars rise and set on the horizon.

Today, we seem to struggle to imagine how ancient people could build and orient such structures. This has led to many assumptions. Some suggest prehistoric people must have had some knowledge of mathematics and sciences to do this, whereas others go so far as to speculate that alien visitors showed them how to do it.

But what do we actually know about how people of the past understood the sky and developed a cosmology? A scientific discipline called “archaeoastronomy” or “cultural astronomy”, developed in the 1970s, is starting to provide insights. This subject combines various specialist areas, such as astronomy, archaeology, anthropology and ethno-astronomy.

Simplistic methods

The pyramids of Egypt are some of the most impressive ancient monuments, and several are oriented with high precision. Egyptologist Flinder Petrie carried out the first high-precision survey of the Giza pyramids in the 19th century. He found that each of the four edges of the pyramids’ bases point towards a cardinal direction to within a quarter of a degree.

But how did the Egyptians know that? Just recently, Glen Dash, an engineer who studies the Giza pyramids, proposed a theory. He draws upon the ancient method of the “Indian circle”, which only requires a shadow casting stick and string to construct an east-west direction. He outlined how this method could have been used for the pyramids based on its simplicity alone.

So could this have been the case? It’s not impossible, but at this point we are in danger of falling into a popular trap of reflecting our current world views, methods and ideas into the past. Insight into mythology and relevant methods known and used at the time are likely to provide a more reliable answer.

This is not the first time scientists have jumped to conclusions about a scientific approach applied to the past. A similar thing happened with Stonehenge. In 1964, the late astronomer Gerald Hawkins developed an intricate method to use pit holes and markers to predict eclipses at the mysterious monument. However, this does not mean that this is how Stonehenge was intended to be used.

Way forward

To start understanding the past we need to include various approaches from other disciplines to support an idea. We also have to understand that there will never be only one explanation or answer to how a monument might have been aligned or used.

So how can cultural astronomy explain the pyramids’ alignment? A study from 2001proposed that two stars, Megrez and Phad, in the stellar constellation known as Ursa Majormay have been the key. These stars are visible through the entire night. Their lowest position in the sky during a night can mark north using the merkhet – an ancient timekeeping instrument composing a bar with a plumb line attached to a wooden handle to track stars’ alignment.

The benefit of this interpretation is that it links to star mythology drawn from inscriptions in the temple of Horus in Edfu. These elaborate on using the merkhet as a surveying tool – a technique that can also explain the orientation of other Egyptian sites. The inscription includes the hieroglyph “the Bull’s Foreleg” which represents the Big Dipper star constellation and its possible position in the sky.

Similarly, better ideas for Stonehenge have been offered. One study identified strange circles of wood near the monument, and suggested these may have represented the livingwhile the rocks at Stonehenge represented the dead. Similar practices are seen in monuments found in Madagascar, suggesting it may have been a common way for prehistoric people to think about the living and the dead. It also offers an exciting new way of understanding Stonehenge in its wider landscape. Others have interpreted Stonehenge and especially its avenue as marking the ritual passage through the underworld with views of the moon on the horizon.

Cultural astronomy has also helped shed light on 6,000-year-old passage graves – a type of tomb consisting of a chamber of connected stones and a long narrow entrance – in Portugal. Archaeologist Fabio Silva has shown how views from inside the tombs frame the horizon where the star Aldebaran rises above a mountain range. This might mean it was built to give a view of the star from the inside either for the dead or the living, possibly as an initiation ritual.

Fieldwork at one of the passage graves in Portugal, Dolmen da Orca. Next to the stone structure is a replica tent to simulate the view from inside of the passage grave.

Credit: Daniel Brown.

But Silva also drew upon wider supporting evidence. The framed mountain range is where the builders of the graves would have migrated with their livestock over summer. The star Aldebaran rises for the first time here in the year – known as a helical rising – during the beginning of this migration. Interestingly, ancient folklore also talks about a shepherd in this area who spotted a star so bright that it lit up the mountain range. Arriving there he decided to name both the mountain range and his dog after the star – both names still exist today.

Current work carried out by myself in collaboration with Silva has also shown how a view from within the long, narrow entrance passages to the tombs could enhance the star’s visibility by restricting the view through an aperture.

But while it is easy to assume that prehistoric people were analytic astronomers with great knowledge of science, it’s important to remember that this only reflects our modern views of astronomy. Findings from cultural astronomy show that people of the past were indeed sky watchers and incorporated what they saw in many aspects of their lives. While there are still many mysteries surrounding the meaning and origins of ancient structures, an approach drawing on as many areas as possible, including experiences and engaging in meaning is likely our best bet to work out just what they were once used for.

• Daniel Brown, Lecturer in Astronomy, Nottingham Trent University
• This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/  }

APOCALYPTISCHE GELUIDEN KONDIGEN AARDBEVING EN VULKAANUITBARSTING HAWAII AAN ( VIDEO )

Afgelopen week verschenen er berichten over hoe het leek alsof de aarde op Hawaii van binnenuit werd opengescheurd. 

Waar echter niemand het over heeft, is dat vlakbij de Kilauea vulkaan apocalyptische trompetgeluiden werden gehoord kort voor de uitbarsting. 

Het raadsel van de vreemde geluiden die door mensen wereldwijd worden waargenomen is nog lang niet opgelost, maar iedere keer weer worden dit soort geluiden in verband gebracht met de eindtijd.

Dit zal waarschijnlijk voornamelijk komen omdat dit soort geluiden vaak wordt omschreven als trompetgeluiden, iets dat ook in de bijbel in verband wordt gebracht met eindtijden, zoals wij schreven in een eerder artikel: 

In de tijd waarin er in de Kolbrin bijbel wordt gesproken van de Verwoester. 

Ook in de Kolbrin Bijbel wordt gesproken over vreemde geluiden: “Zij zullen de trompetten horen en de strijdkreet van de Verwoester” en “De ster zong zoals nog nooit eerder was voorgekomen".

Maar, ze komen ook voor in de christelijke bijbel:

Het achtste hoofdstuk van het laatste Bijbelboek Openbaring beschrijft 7 engelen die op 7 bazuinen blazen, die ieder catastrofale gebeurtenissen op Aarde in gang lijken te zetten, zoals aardbevingen, oorlogen en insectenplagen.

Ongeveer een maand vóór de recente aardbeving en vulkaanuitbarsting werd er op Hawaii een dergelijk trompet-achtig geluid gehoord, waar toen nog uitgebreid over werd bericht in de mainstream media van Engeland tot Rusland.

Hier is de opname van het bepaalde geluid: 

 
De locatie waar dit geluid werd waargenomen wordt aangegeven op het volgende kaartje:

Dit is slechts luttele kilometers verwijderd van de vulkaan waar ongeveer een maand later de uitbarsting plaatsvond die wordt omschreven als het van binnenuit openscheuren van de aarde.

Is dit alles toeval of vormen de trompetgeluiden, samen met de enorm heftige aardveranderingen, onderdeel van de symptomen

Een combinatie van een aardbeving en een vulkaanuitbarsting en daarvoor trompetgeluiden is te omschrijven als zeer zeldzaam.

Net zoals het feit dat de aarde langzamer gaat draaien zoals eind vorig jaar bekend werd. Iets dat volgens de wetenschap veroorzaakt zou worden door de maan, maar wat waarschijnlijk wordt veroorzaakt door de aanwezigheid van één of meerdere grote hemellichamen bij ons in de buurt.

Daarnaast hebben we gezien dat de zon zich vreemd gedraagt, dat de aarde wordt gebombardeerd met schadelijke straling en dat het aardmagnetisch veld dat ons moet beschermen in rap tempo afneemt.

Maar al dat soort dingen zijn toeval en hebben absoluut niets met elkaar te maken, zeggen de mensen die blijven ontkennen dat de Verwoester in aantocht is. 

{ http://www.niburu.co/ }

Oogverblindend mooi: Californische kust kleurt felblauw en dit is waarom- HLN.be

WETENSCHAP & PLANEET Een streling voor het oog, waar je gebiologeerd naar kan blijven kijken. Aan het strand van de Californische kust werd het zeewater gisteren opgelicht door gloeiend plankton. 

Bioluminescentie, doopte de wetenschap dat betoverende fenomeen. Lichtgevend plankton laat zich niet voortdurend zien; de aanmaak van de chemische stoffen om te kunnen gloeien kost immers te veel energie. Over de precieze redenen waarom de organismen soms schitterende stofjes het water inspuiten, tasten onderzoekers nog in het duister. Hoogstwaarschijnlijk heeft het te maken met aantrekking, afstoting, camouflage of communicatie. Getuigen van het lichtspektakel langs de Amerikaanse westkust waren gisteren allesbehalve licht onder de indruk van de natuurpracht. Ze deelden massaal foto’s van het blauwe schouwspel op Instagram en Twitter, en lieten zo de rest van de wereld ook meegenieten.

View image on Twitter

ノック@NoVacancyGaming

The waves in SD are glowing blue at night right now. This is a random occurrence, no one know what causes the bioluminescent phytoplankton to wake up, can happen at any time and is rare.

5:17 PM - May 9, 2018

• 1
• See ノック's other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

View image on Twitter

Texoma's Homepage

✔@TexomasHomepage

A red tide is causing the surf to glow in parts of California. An algae bloom filled with bioluminescent phytoplankton has been lighting up the ocean from La Jolla to Encinitas since Monday.

http://bit.ly/2HZaIWi?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_TexomasHomepage …

2:01 PM - May 9, 2018

• See Texoma's Homepage's other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

View image on Twitter

Lori Nolin@lonowrites

#bioluminescent #phytoplankton The wannabee #marine biologist in me has just lost her mind. #redtide #algae #bloom #sandiego #encinitas

#nofilter #igers #moonlightbeach #swamis #pacificocean #blue #ocean

#abc7eyewitness #visitsandiego #goodvibes #i… https://ift.tt/2Ivhti2 

7:26 AM - May 10, 2018

• See Lori Nolin's other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

View image on Twitter

KPBS News

✔@KPBSnews

An algae bloom filled with bioluminescent phytoplankton is causing the surf to glow along parts of the #SanDiego coast https://kpbs.us/2KPndBv 

4:03 AM - May 10, 2018

• 27
• See KPBS News's other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

rhidian thomas@rhidian_t

Loving all the pictures of Amazing glowing surf in California from bioluminescent phytoplankton ..natural beauty!

9:11 PM - May 10, 2018 · Marlow, South East

• 12
• See rhidian thomas's other Tweets

Twitter Ads info and privacy

While the big three major world religions get all of the publicity, there are plenty of other spiritual collectives between them and atheism. One group that attracts a lot of paranormal fans are the UFO religions whose members subscribe to the existence of extraterrestrials traveling to Earth in unidentified flying objects, often to take part in the evolution of humanity. Two such groups coincidentally popped up in the news recently, proving that they’re not as obscure as some might think (or hope).

A hearing was held in Boston this week in the case of Olga Paule Perrier-Bilbo, a French national who wants to become an American citizen … except for the part about taking an oath of citizenship that ends with the words “So help me God.” Perrier-Bilbo’s objection comes from her membership in the Raëlian movement, which is a UFO religion founded in 1974 by French car racing journalist Claude Vorilhon, who changed his name to Raël after being contacted by an ET in a spacecraft who claimed to have selected him to deliver a new origin message to humanity and start a religion based on it.

In his first book, Le Livre qui dit la vérité (“The Book Which Tells the Truth“), Vorilhon says the alien’s species sent scientists called Elohim (“those who came from the sky”) who created all life on Earth through DNA manipulation. The alien, also an Elohim, took Vorilhon or Raël to their planet where he allegedly met Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, who told him to be more like the aliens, who were peace-loving and had no money, sickness or wars. Raël’s followers support human genetic engineering, genetically-modified foods and other futuristic technology.

Perrier-Bilbo just wants to be a good Raëlian-American and she was given the opportunity to take a modified oath in a private ceremony, but in this litigious, political and social media world, that wasn’t enough.

“My hope is for the phrase, ‘So help me God’ to be stricken from future naturalization ceremonies and for this lawsuit to encourage other atheists or agnostics who want to defend the constitution to fight against this anti-constitutional oath.”

As of this writing, the results of the hearing are not known.

Meanwhile, members of the Aetherius Society announced its “Operation Prayer Power” pilgrimage in July to Holdstone Down in north Devon, England, where its founder, George King, claimed to have met Jesus in 1958 and received some shocking news:

“I knew, although he didn’t tell me, I knew he was Jesus and he had come from the planet Venus – I didn’t have to be told, I just knew this.”

King was apparently chosen for this meeting because in 1955 he founded the Aetherius Society after claiming he received a telepathic communication from Aetherius, an alien intelligence representing an “Interplanetary Parliament” that existed on Venus, as well as Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. King, who died in 1997, was said to have delivered more telepathic messages with predictions of UFO sightings. The religion itself borrows from yoga, Eastern mantra and New Age and promotes spiritual self-advancement and world service. Not a bad mission.

Another benefit for Aetherians is that Holdstone Down isn’t the only “holy mountain.” Besides Yes Tor, also in Devon, there’s Castle Peak in Colorado, Mount Ramshead in New South Wales, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Le Nid d’Aigle in France. If you’re going to make a pilgrimage, it’s nice to go to beautiful spots.

Of course, no matter where they go, the “cosmic mission” of George King and the Aetherians always gets overshadowed by that “Jesus is from Venus” thing, which is why they were once again in the news.

Will we ever be able to accept the beliefs of others and get along?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

When we think of stars, we tend to conceive of them of immovable, fixed objects, but stars travel through space just like planets and other objects do. The Earth and all the other planets in our solar system rotate around the Sun, but the Sun also rotates around the center of the Milky Way galaxy once every 225-250 million years. All stars orbit something. Well, except for certain “rogue” stars astronomer are beginning to discover. Rogue stars, also known as intergalactic stars, are stars which have escaped the gravitational pulls of their home galaxies and travel independently through intergalactic voids. Yeah, they’re pretty terrifying.

Many of those rogue stars are ejected when galaxies collide with one another.

One particular rogue star, the dwarf star Gliese 710, is especially terrifying. It’s been known for some time that Gliese 710 will eventually pass through our solar system as it careens through the universe, potentially causing a lot of damage to anything unlucky enough to be in its way. Now, new calculations using the most accurate map of the stars ever created have revealed that Gliese 710 might arrive much sooner than we realized. How worried should we be?

It all depends on your timeline.

Well, unless you’re an immortal or plan on becoming immortal, you shouldn’t be too worried. Based on the newest calculations, it turns out Gliese 710 won’t come crashing through our solar system for another 1.29 million years. Plenty of time to finish The Foundation series. 1.29 million years might sound like a long time, but the previous estimate was 1.36 million years – a difference of 60,000 years. Think how many people could escape in 60,000 years. Of course, that is if any people are left in the solar system at all. Hopefully humanity will have found a way out of this hellish simulation by then.

If not, Gliese 710 could cause a torrential rain of icy meteors to pelt the Earth into oblivion. The rogue star is set to pass through the Oort Cloud, a ring of icy comets, meteors, and planetesimals at the farthest edge of our solar system. This could potentially cause millions of asteroids to be ejected towards the center of the solar system, pelting unfortunate planets into Swiss cheese like a cosmic hailstorm. Maybe immortality isn’t so great after all.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

What’s red in the daytime, and glows an eerie blue at night? Although it may sound like some illuminated prop from the forthcoming film Solo: A Star Wars Story, the answer to this oceanic riddle has less to do with science fiction, and everything to do with one of nature’s little marvels: bioluminescent phytoplankton.

Nighttime beachgoers in San Diego have recently been treated to this unusual spectacle, as the recent arrival of a red tide has resulted in natural luminous phenomena that occur as plantlike microorganisms present in ocean waves tumble downward with the incoming tide, producing a visible glow.

According to NOAA, there are two main varieties of phytoplankton: diatoms and dinoflagellates, the latter being the type that are presently seen along San Diego’s shoreline.

As stated on the NOAA website:

“Dinoflagellates use a whip-like tail, or flagella, to move through the water and their bodies are covered with complex shells. Diatoms also have shells, but they are made of a different substance and their structure is rigid and made of interlocking parts. Diatoms do not rely on flagella to move through the water and instead rely on ocean currents to travel through the water.”

The appearance of these phytoplankton has to do with the occurrence of red tides, where oceanic algal blooms–sometimes harmful ones–grow in such abundance that they become overrun in certain coastal environments. This can have dangerous effects on not just the indigenous marine life in affected areas, but also humans. Illnesses that are known to occur in conjunction with these potentially toxic algal blooms have been known to cause debilitating illness or even death.

There are a variety of unique luminous displays that occur in nature, particularly with bioluminescent marine life. However, it may be the case that not all oceanic luminous displays necessarily have biological origins. On April 29, 1982, a most unusual visual display occurred in the China Sea, which resulted in a six-page report on the incident. The details of this nighttime encounter, presented here in abbreviated form, consisted of parallel bands of phosphorescence that appeared to be rushing toward the ship at an estimated speed of 40 miles per hour.

Upon contact with the luminous bands, they appeared to separate into rotating “wheels”, which became oriented roughly in quadrant formation around the ship. It is particularly noteworthy, however, that these luminous manifestations were seen above the surface of the water. Each of the spinning wheels appeared to be 50-100 cm above the water, with beams of light being cast from these formations which the sailing vessel’s crew described as having “stretched to the horizon” as they rotated. Additional luminous phenomena were reported during this incident, which appeared to be composed of “worm-like segments” of light.

Other key features of the incident involved the presence of atmospheric electrical activity (i.e. lightning) throughout the incident; at various intervals, it was further noted that shining an Aldis lamp at portions of the luminous manifestations had no effect, while flashing it caused the intermittent disappearance of the phenomenon altogether (this is similar to reports of what are believed to be natural plasmas that appear at locations like Hessdalen, Norway, which have been known to interact similarly with flashing lights aimed in their direction).

The symmetrical, and at times nearly kaleidoscopic displays presented in the case above, documented in the Marine Observer in 1983, are certainly perplexing. While dissimilar in variety to the unusual illuminations that are presently occurring off the San Diego coast, each represents a unique manifestation of natural luminous phenomenon that occasionally apear in or around our oceans.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

What’s red in the daytime, and glows an eerie blue at night? Although it may sound like some illuminated prop from the forthcoming film Solo: A Star Wars Story, the answer to this oceanic riddle has less to do with science fiction, and everything to do with one of nature’s little marvels: bioluminescent phytoplankton.

Nighttime beachgoers in San Diego have recently been treated to this unusual spectacle, as the recent arrival of a red tide has resulted in natural luminous phenomena that occur as plantlike microorganisms present in ocean waves tumble downward with the incoming tide, producing a visible glow.

According to NOAA, there are two main varieties of phytoplankton: diatoms and dinoflagellates, the latter being the type that are presently seen along San Diego’s shoreline.

As stated on the NOAA website:

“Dinoflagellates use a whip-like tail, or flagella, to move through the water and their bodies are covered with complex shells. Diatoms also have shells, but they are made of a different substance and their structure is rigid and made of interlocking parts. Diatoms do not rely on flagella to move through the water and instead rely on ocean currents to travel through the water.”

The appearance of these phytoplankton has to do with the occurrence of red tides, where oceanic algal blooms–sometimes harmful ones–grow in such abundance that they become overrun in certain coastal environments. This can have dangerous effects on not just the indigenous marine life in affected areas, but also humans. Illnesses that are known to occur in conjunction with these potentially toxic algal blooms have been known to cause debilitating illness or even death.

There are a variety of unique luminous displays that occur in nature, particularly with bioluminescent marine life. However, it may be the case that not all oceanic luminous displays necessarily have biological origins. On April 29, 1982, a most unusual visual display occurred in the China Sea, which resulted in a six-page report on the incident. The details of this nighttime encounter, presented here in abbreviated form, consisted of parallel bands of phosphorescence that appeared to be rushing toward the ship at an estimated speed of 40 miles per hour.

Upon contact with the luminous bands, they appeared to separate into rotating “wheels”, which became oriented roughly in quadrant formation around the ship. It is particularly noteworthy, however, that these luminous manifestations were seen above the surface of the water. Each of the spinning wheels appeared to be 50-100 cm above the water, with beams of light being cast from these formations which the sailing vessel’s crew described as having “stretched to the horizon” as they rotated. Additional luminous phenomena were reported during this incident, which appeared to be composed of “worm-like segments” of light.

Other key features of the incident involved the presence of atmospheric electrical activity (i.e. lightning) throughout the incident; at various intervals, it was further noted that shining an Aldis lamp at portions of the luminous manifestations had no effect, while flashing it caused the intermittent disappearance of the phenomenon altogether (this is similar to reports of what are believed to be natural plasmas that appear at locations like Hessdalen, Norway, which have been known to interact similarly with flashing lights aimed in their direction).

The symmetrical, and at times nearly kaleidoscopic displays presented in the case above, documented in the Marine Observer in 1983, are certainly perplexing. While dissimilar in variety to the unusual illuminations that are presently occurring off the San Diego coast, each represents a unique manifestation of natural luminous phenomenon that occasionally apear in or around our oceans.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

I’m not entirely sure why, but just recently a 71-year-old statement on UFOs has been circulating here and there on the Net. It cropped up just a couple of days ago in the comments section of one of my Facebook posts.  And it also popped up on the website of a radio show I was on recently. It’s also a statement that has caused some confusion and outright mistakes. Basically, it’s one person’s theory on what is behind the UFO phenomenon. The writer makes a lot of controversial claims that take matters far away from the regular “nuts and bolts” aspect of Ufology. As for why some people have gotten all excited about it, there’s no doubt that it’s because the statement is available at the FBI’s website, The Vault.

The statement at issue – titled “A Memorandum of Importance” – was prepared in early July 1947. And, as the writer noted: “This Memorandum is respectfully addressed to certain scientists of distinction to important aeronautical and military authorities, to a number of public officials and to a few publications.” He or she continues: “The writer has little expectation that anything of import will be accomplished by this gesture. The more fact that the data herein were obtained by so-called supernormal means is probably sufficient to insure its disregard by nearly all the persons addressed; nevertheless it seems a public duty to make it available. (The present writer has several university degrees and was formerly a university department head).”

Our source warns: “A very serious situation may develop at any time with regard to the ‘flying saucers.’ If one of these should be attacked, the attacking plane will almost certainly be destroyed. In the public mind this might create near panic and international suspicion. The principal data concerning these craft is now at hand and must be offered, no matter how fantastic and unintelligible it may seem to minds not previously instructed in thinking of this type.” We are then given a list of nine issues that the writer claimed knowledge of:

“1. Part of the disks carry crews, others are under remote control.

2. Their mission is peaceful. The visitors contemplate settling on this plane.

3. These Visitors are human-like but much larger in size.

4. They are NOT excarnate earth people, but come from their own world.

5. They do NOT come from any ‘planet’ as we use the word, but from an etheric planet which interpentrates with our own and is not perceptible to us.

6. The bodies of the visitors, and the craft also, automatically “materialize on entering the vibratory rate of our dense matter. (Cp. ‘apports.’)

7. The disks possess a type of radiant energy, or a ray, which will easily disintegrate any attacking ship. They re-enter the etheric at will, and so simply disappear from our vision, without trace.

8. The region from which they come is NOT the ‘astral plane’, but corresponds to the Lokas or Tales. Students of esoteric matters will understand these terms.

9. They probably cannot be reached by radio, but probably can be by radar, if a signal system can be devised for that apparatus.”

We are then told: “We give information and warning, and can do no more. Let the newcomers be treated with every kindness.” There’s no doubt that the statement is an interesting one. After all, it was written only around two weeks after the historic Flying Saucer encounter of Kenneth Arnold, near Mt. Rainier, Washington State, on June 24, 1947. And, it’s intriguing because the source’s words cover things which are far removed from the likes of “rocket ships” and “Martians” and other sci-fi-themed issues that were popular in the ’40s. Now, I don’t know if the writer of the statement was onto something or not. But, here’s the important thing: as I said at the beginning of this article, I have seen people recently put a lot of faith in this statement, purely because it’s on the FBI’s website.

The fact is that the FBI declassified its UFO files – under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – way back in the 1970s. The statement above was included in that approximately 1,700-pages of declassified material. And, the statement was available to anyone and everyone, post-1976. In other words, there’s nothing new about this at all.  And you can access it at this PDF link, and by scrolling down to page 22. But, let’s put things in perspective: the FBI got  a lot of correspondence in the summer of 1947 (when the Flying Saucer craze was at its height), much of which revolved around not just sightings of UFOs, but theories for what they might be, too. There’s no evidence at all that this statement was acted on by the FBI, aside from sharing it with the military and filing it away.

All of which brings us to today. One guy very recently sent me a draft of an article he was preparing on this July 1947 statement. I was amazed to see that he had spectacularly misread it and thought it was an official FBI document, rather than what it really is: a statement prepared by a member of the American public and retyped by an FBI secretary for internal purposes!  So, if you happen to see this particular one-page document over the next few days and weeks, by all means take a good look at it. It does, admittedly, make for thought-provoking reading. But, just because someone’s theory for the UFO phenomenon reached the eyes of the FBI, and was kept on-file by the FBI too, doesn’t mean it’s the truth behind the mystery of Flying Saucers. In ’47, the FBI was absolutely swamped with letters from people giving their views on UFOs. The July 1947 statement is just one of many.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

A Video Showing Cluster OF UFOS Over Middlesbrough Sparks Online Debate

The video shows strange flying objects, which left a question whether it’s a military activity, a weather balloon, or evidence of space alien.

The object in question has a shape similar to a jet, and a cluster of four other UFOs surrounded it, which appear to be connected. The film of the UFOs was reportedly captured on April 5.

According to the report of the witness, they noticed some dark objects in the sky while walking home from a house of their friend around 7 pm.

The witness initially thought it was a flock of birds, but soon realised it appeared to be some kind of military plane flying in a slightly curved path with four small, round objects following it.

The witness managed to get their phone out and began recording. They reportedly observed it for approximately one and a half minutes before losing sight of the UFOs in the distance.

The witness reportedly heard just the sound of the plane as it passed over them.

The Hidden Underbelly 2.0 shared the film on YouTube, which caused fierce debate among the viewers.

Many think it is a weather balloon while others believe it is a fighter jet and some say it is something more mysterious.

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

Voor het eerst een koolstofrijke planetoïde ontdekt in de Kuipergordel

Caroline Kraaijvanger

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

Breakthrough Listen breidt jacht op buitenaards leven uit

Caroline Kraaijvanger

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

Astronomen onthullen wat er gebeurt als onze zon doodgaat

Caroline Kraaijvanger

Er ontstaat een zichtbare planetaire nevel.

De meeste onderzoekers zijn het erover eens: onze zon heeft nog zo’n 5 miljard jaar te leven. En dan zal de ster sterven. Maar wat er daarna precies gaat gebeuren: dat was niet helemaal duidelijk. Een nieuw onderzoek – verschenen in het blad Nature Astronomy – brengt daar verandering in. Met behulp van een model onthullen onderzoekers dat er na de dood van de zon een planetaire nevel zal ontstaan.

Planetaire nevel
Een planetaire nevel is een enorme heldere ring die bestaat uit gas en stof. De ring ontstaat wanneer de ster in een overgangsfase zit en transformeert van een rode reus naar een witte dwerg. We spreken van een rode reus als de dode ster zijn buitenste lagen de ruimte in heeft geblazen. “Hierdoor komt de kern van de ster bloot te liggen die in dit stadium van het leven van de ster bijna door zijn brandstof heen is en uiteindelijk stilvalt,” legt onderzoeker Albert Zijlstra uit. Maar gedurende een korte periode – grofweg 10.000 jaar – is deze hete kern nog in staat om de weggestoten buitenste lagen van de ster te laten schijnen. “Dat is wat de planetaire nevel zichtbaar maakt.”

De planetaire nevel Abell 39.

Afbeelding: T.A.Rector (NRAO / AUI / NSF & NOAO / AURA / NSF) & B.A.Wolpa (NOAO / AURA / NSF).

Zichtbare nevel
Zo’n 90% van alle sterren vormt aan het eind van het leven zo’n planetaire nevel. Maar lang wisten onderzoekers niet goed of onze zon er ook eentje kon genereren. Sommige onderzoekers dachten namelijk dat onze zon een te lage massa had om een zichtbare planetaire nevel te creëren. Maar Zijlstra en collega’s stellen nu dus dat onze zon er ook toe in staat is. Het nieuwe model onthult namelijk dat sterren nadat ze hun buitenste lagen hebben afgestoten drie keer sneller opwarmen dan gedacht. Hierdoor is het ook voor sterren met weinig massa – zoals de zon – mogelijk om een heldere planetaire nevel te vormen.

Het wil niet zeggen dat alle sterren een planetaire nevel kunnen genereren. Onze zon is zo ongeveer de lichtste ster die nog in staat is om een zichtbare planetaire nevel te maken. Sterren die slechts een paar procent kleiner zijn, kunnen het niet.

Bronmateriaal:

"What will happen when our sun dies?" - Manchester University
Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: T.A.Rector (NRAO / AUI / NSF & NOAO / AURA / NSF) & B.A.Wolpa (NOAO / AURA / NSF)

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

Middeleeuwse astronomen kunnen het bestaan van planeet X bewijzen

Caroline Kraaijvanger

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

UFO mysteries unraveled: How the ‘real-life X-Files’ emerged from a top secret UK project

By James Rogers | Fox News

{ http://www.foxnews.com/ }