My interview with astronaut Leland Melvin is going viral. Figures. UFO Sighting News.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

How Does NASA Search For New Planets and How Do They Find Them?

by Anna Kucirkova.

How does NASA search for new planets, and how do they find them?

Sometimes we take for granted all the things we know about our solar system. After centuries of intrepid exploration and scientific breakthroughs, we now have nine (err, eight?! Sorry, Pluto) planets in our own Milky Way.

We also understand why the sun rises and sets, what ‘shooting stars’ really are, and how the moon affects the tides. However, for all that we know and all the time it’s taken us to learn it, we’re still barely scratching the surface of space exploration.

As we fill in our own solar system’s cosmic map with the near-in planets, scientists are increasingly turning to exoplanets (that is, planets outside the solar system) to understand our universe at-large. Here is a little more about how scientists find new planets.

How Do Scientists Find New Planets?

Discovering new planets that can’t be observed from Earth’s surface requires getting well beyond the Earth’s orbit in order to ‘look’ for new planets from a distant and darker vantage point.

NASA just launched a satellite called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) that’s headed beyond the moon on its way out of our solar system so it can watch for ‘transits,’ which occur when a planet passes in front of a star from the perspective of the equipment or observer.

This is similar to a miniature eclipse, where a distant body passes over the star it orbits, creating a marked change in the observed light emitted from the star. In many cases, even high-powered equipment cannot directly observe distant planets, but it can measure a periodic dip in a star’s brightness that is attributed to an orbiting planet passing in front of it. According to NASA, more than 78 percent of the 3,700 confirmed exoplanets have been discovered using transits.

The last major exoplanet search spacecraft, Kepler, found over 2,600 exoplanets by watching for transits. Most of them were orbiting distant (read: dim!) stars 300 to 3,000 light-years from Earth. TESS is seeking stars that are ten times closer than Kepler did–30 to 300 light-years away–and thus 30 to 100 times brighter than the Kepler mission’s targets.

Another fascinating NASA project, the James Webb Telescope, is set to launch later this year. Instead of measuring light like TESS, the James Webb will act more like a traditional telescope, gathering images of faraway space using a staggering array of highly-accurate mirrors and lenses to capture data that will be turned into infrared and other similar images that scientists can use to get a clearer ‘picture’ of faraway sections of space.

By focusing on brighter target stars, researchers can use spectroscopy to learn far more about the exoplanets they detect. By measuring the stars’ light emissions and observing how much light the transiting planets absorb, they will be able to make detailed inferences about planets’ masses, densities, and atmospheric compositions. This includes the potential to observe water and other key molecules known to support life.

The closer, brighter stars will provide for more accuracy and information about the planets that orbit them, which scientists hope will allow them to learn not just  the location and distance of other solar systems but also the elemental composition of the planets within them. This provides scientists a much clearer picture of how related different galaxies are and whether the building blocks of life as we know it may exist elsewhere.

What Is Planet Hunters?

In December 2010, the crowdsourced research platform Zooniverse launched Planet Hunters, a public-facing project that enlisted volunteers to review data from the Kepler satellite in order to see if humans could identify patterns that machines missed. If a satellite misses a transit or two, it may create a pattern too irregular for computers to detect. Similarly, some transits are periodic enough to suspect the presence of an exoplanet but may not create enough of a dip in light for the computers to mark them.

That telltale dip in measured light caused by transits might be missed by computer software for a variety of reasons. By showing multiple volunteers the same 30 day log of observed light patterns, the system aggregates human observations and then passes the correlated markings on to scientists to review in-depth.

The project received help from over 500,000 volunteers and led to the discovery of a number of confirmed planets and an even longer list of suspected planets or other celestial bodies that require further investigation. By combining human intuition and powerful computing software, the Planet Hunters project combines hundreds of thousands of passionate volunteers with NASA’s latest satellite technology to accomplish a staggering amount of research on an impressive timeline.

The team behind Planet Hunters estimates that over 200 years of review work has been accomplished in the seven years since the project launched, while Version 2.0 is being updated to support new features in anticipation of the first round of data to review from TESS.

One of the biggest challenges Planet Hunters and other space scientists face is the overwhelming amount of data produced by each new satellite. With the help of half a million volunteers, the project has accomplished 200 years of work in seven years, but this still points to one of the biggest hurdles that exoplanet hunters face: no equipment we have can actually see these distant bodies, so the only way to find them is by using specialized equipment and sifting through the massive amounts of data each mission gathers.

TESS promises to provide us even more data than before as its spectrometers will not only detect transits but will also measure individual planetary properties through the nature of light absorption and diffraction around them.

Why Finding New Planets Matters

Whether you’re convinced that there are aliens around every cosmic corner or you firmly believe that Planet Earth is the only one that supports life, understanding the composition of distant galaxies is a mesmerizing thought exercise.

For example, the recently-discovered planets within the TRAPPIST-1 solar system seem to have many of the ingredients that we think of as being vital for supporting life. There are also staggering differences between TRAPPIST-1 and our own solar system–the central star (akin to our own sun) is far smaller and dimmer, so the planets all orbit it far closer than our own closest planet, Mercury, orbits the sun.

That means that a ‘year’ on one of TRAPPIST-1’s nearest planets (that is, how long it takes to complete one trip around its own sun) lasts the equivalent of a day and a half while the longest takes less than a month. Contemplating what we consider ‘normal’ from the length of a year to the elements that are the building blocks for our idea of life is a thought-expanding exercise in galactic exploration, while potentially discovering new planets or life forms is a critical part of placing ourselves as citizens not only of nation or planet but of the universe at-large.

Many scientists believe that understanding faraway planets and solar systems can provide us with relevant knowledge about our own solar system and about our own sense of place as the only planet in the universe that supports life… or not.

The Next Era of Space Exploration

NASA and other organizations are still working hard to put men on Mars, but they also have their sights set well beyond our planetary neighbors. For all of the logistics that go into sending humans to space, it is perhaps even more valuable to put equipment into orbit that focuses on deep space and sheds light on the distant, dimmest stars.

If there were life on Mars, the rovers likely would have found it. As for planets dozens of light-years away? We’re only just now figuring out that they exist, so there’s no telling what might be on them.

Though we are still a long ways (literally) from getting near them, the idea of familiar elements and atmospheres on faraway planets has the potential to dramatically broaden our horizons. As we discover more planets every day, the odds of finding something even more significant than a transit blip on a light reader only go up.

And as we get better at building precision devices used to observe and measure objects in deep space, ideas that once sounded impossible become reality. Both the TESS and James Webb Telescope use technological advances that only a few years ago would have sounded like far-fetched science fiction.

With each new advance in materials and designs, we grow one step closer here on Earth to seeing what exists many galaxies away. The next time you look up at the night sky, try to notice the dimmest stars you can see with your eyes. Then contemplate looking for stars that are many times farther away and dimmer and studying the planets that orbit them. It may make you feel small, but it also makes life on earth seem extra special.

• publication by permission of Anna Kucirkova.
• link article + blog https://www.iqsdirectory.com/blog/how-does-nasa-search-for-new-planets-and-how-do-they-find-them/
• IQS NEWSROOM

Video peter2011

NASA's mission to find new life on exoplanets

{ http://www.iqsdirectory.com/blog }

Treasure hunter claims he found evidence of USO's beneath Bermuda Triangle

A treasure hunter has made an astonishing "unexplained" discovery deep beneath the Bermuda Triangle that he believes could provide the first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to Earth hundreds of years ago.

Explorer Darrell Miklos has been using secret maps created by his close friend and famed NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean.

A close up of one of the horizontal structures

the right jutting section of the USO

"something that was completely different from anything that I've seen"

Here you can see the gigantic mound rising above the ring of structures

Treasure Hunter believes he's found first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to Earth.

nzh.tw/...

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Detailed Space Force Plans To Be Revealed In Today's Pentagon Speech

According to the Washington Post, Vice President Mike Pence will give a speech at the Pentagon today to explain the government's plans for the Space Form in detail.

The speech is scheduled for 11:15 AM EST.

In June, US President Trump announced "the sixth branch of the Armed Services". The first new military branch created in more than 70 years.

Watch live

The speech will also be streamed on the Pentagon's website 

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Space Shuttle Astronaut Encountered Something Organic Alien-Like In Space

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

This Meteor 'Exploded' Over Greenland, But Nobody Saw It. Here's Why It Matters.

Einstein's Genius: Describing the Geometry of Space-Time

NASA Spotted a Vast, Glowing 'Hydrogen Wall' at the Edge of Our Solar System

By Rafi Letzter, Live Science Staff Writer

What New Horizons definitely sees, the researchers reported in a paper published Aug. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is some extra ultraviolet light — the kind the researchers would expect such a wall of galactic hydrogen to produce. That replicates an ultraviolet signal the two Voyager spacecraft — NASA's farthest-traveling probes, which launched in the late 1970s — spotted all the way back in 1992. [Images: Dust Grains from Interstellar Space]

However, the researchers cautioned, that signal isn't a sure sign that New Horizons has seen the hydrogen wall, or that Voyager did. All three probes could have actually detected the ultraviolet light from some other source, emanating from much deeper in the galaxy, the researchers wrote.

But Alice, the instrument on board New Horizons responsible for this finding, is much more sensitive than anything the Voyagers had on board before beginning their own journey out of the solar system, the researchers wrote. And they said they expect Alice to function 15 to 20 more years.

New Horizons will continue to scan the sky for ultraviolet light twice a year, the researchers wrote, and report what it sees back to Earth.

"If the ultraviolet light drops off at some point, then New Horizons may have left the wall in its rearview mirror," the researchers explained in an accompanying statement. "But if the light never fades, then its source could be farther ahead — coming from somewhere deeper in space."

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

The universe’s rate of expansion is in dispute – and we may need new physics to solve it

 BY TIBI PUIU

Next time you eat a blueberry (or chocolate chip) muffin consider what happened to the blueberries in the batter as it was baked. The blueberries started off all squished together, but as the muffin expanded they started to move away from each other. If you could sit on one blueberry you would see all the others moving away from you, but the same would be true for any blueberry you chose. In this sense galaxies are a lot like blueberries.

Since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding. The strange fact is that there is no single place from which the universe is expanding, but rather all galaxies are (on average) moving away from all the others. From our perspective in the Milky Way galaxy, it seems as though most galaxies are moving away from us – as if we are the centre of our muffin-like universe. But it would look exactly the same from any other galaxy – everything is moving away from everything else.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

RAADSEL VAN DE MAAN NOG LANG NIET OPGELOST ( VIDEO )

De discussie over of wij als mens nu wel of niet op de maan zijn geweest en of hij überhaupt wel bestaat zal nog wel even voort duren. 

Bij nader inzien blijkt Buzz Aldrin toch wel gezegd te hebben dat ze op de maan zijn geweest en zijn er opnieuw een basis en een toren ontdekt op diezelfde maan. 

De video die wij gebruikten is slechts een klein deel van het totale interview dat Aldrin gaf in 2015 en wanneer je de complete video bekijkt, dan krijg je toch een ander beeld, zoals een lezer ons schreef: 

Hij zegt we zijn niet gegaan omdat we niet zijn gegaan. Hij doelt daar, in de context van de vraag, overduidelijk op het feit dat ze TERUG zijn gegaan. De vraag gaat over TERUG gaan! 

"It didn't happen", met it zijnde het terugkeren. 

En dat feit, het niet terug gaan, betreurt hij ook, en zegt dat het voornamelijk over missend geld ging. En hij zou graag hebben gezien dat we WEL terug gegaan zouden zijn, maar dat zijn we niet. Terug gegaan dus. 

Hij zegt dat duidelijk, zeker als je even nadenkt in de context, maar in het citaat - zonder de vraag vooraf, zonder toelichting van Buzz achteraf - komt vreemd over. En hij zegt ook eerder in het interview dat hij echt geweest is. 

Nu dat misverstand is opgehelderd en Aldrin zegt dat ze wel op de maan zijn geweest, blijft natuurlijk nog altijd de vraag open staan of dat inderdaad zo is en of de maan überhaupt wel bestaat. 

Los daarvan, blijven er interessante zaken over de maan naar buiten komen zoals de volgende foto die gemaakt zou zijn tijdens één van de Apollo missies. Het betreft hier een foto van het maanoppervlak gemaakt tijdens de Apollo 10 missie.

Op bovenstaande foto is door ufoloog Scott Waring een bijzondere ontdekking gedaan. Wanneer je inzoomt op het bovenste deel van de foto dan zie je een gebouw wat een soort basis zou kunnen zijn en heel duidelijk een toren. 

Scott vindt deze vondst zo bijzonder dat hij van mening is dat je alleen al met deze foto NASA voor de rechter zou kunnen slepen en hen zo dwingen om toe te geven dat er buitenaardse bases bestaan op de maan.

Er is nog iets bijzonders ontdekt op de maan en dat heeft gelukkig niets met NASA te maken. De foto en telescoop-apparatuur waarover ook gewone mensen kunnen beschikken worden gelukkig steeds beter. 

Daardoor kon iemand uit Turkije onlangs de volgende opname maken van de maan. Je ziet hem geleidelijk steeds verder inzoomen en dan rond de 2 minuten 50 in de video verschijnt er een soort zwarte UFO die zich boven de maan lijkt te bewegen. 

Hij kan het object minuten lang volgen totdat het op een gegeven moment in de duisternis verdwijnt. 

Nog even voor hen die graag een aards voordeel willen behalen:

{ http://niburu.co/ }

“… I thought I saw something organic/ alien like floating out of the payload bay. Translucent. Curved. Organic looking.”

That would make a great opening line for a sci-fi movie, but it’s actually a quote from a retired Space Shuttle astronaut responding to a question on Twitter asking about the existence of intelligent alien life in the solar system. Did this astronaut just let an extraterrestrial cat (an organic looking translucent one) out of the bag?

“@AstroKomrade and I called the ground to ask what it could be and it was ice that had broken off of the Freon hoses.”

Retired astronaut and possible alien spotter Leland Melvin

The retired astronaut doing this interesting tweeting is Leland Melvin (@Astro_Flow), a veteran of two space shuttle missions, the second of which being the one where he saw something strange floating out of the payload bay. Melvin flew on the Space Shuttle Atlantis as a mission specialist on STS-122 (February 7 – February 20, 2008) and as a mission specialist 1 on STS-129 (November 16 – November 27, 2009). Also on STS-129 was @AstroKomrade, known in pre-Twitter days as astronaut Randy Bresnik. This mission to the International Space Station was one of the last space shuttle missions, but nothing out of the ordinary was listed in the official records of the mission nor the three spacewalks.

Leland Melvin is one of the more interesting astronauts ever to pass through the space program. After getting a degree in Chemistry from the University of Richmond, where he attended on a football scholarship (and still holds at least one receiving record), Melvin was drafted by the NFL Detroit Lions but released due to an injury, his same fate with the Dallas Cowboys. After trying out with the CFL Toronto Argonauts, he retired and moved from catching passes to catching aliens.

Leland Melvin and his dogs

Did Leland Melvin actually see an alien life form or does he believe it was just ice? He’s one of the more creative and diverse astronauts, having appeared as a guest judge on Top Chef, a dog owner on The Dog Whisperer and the host of two seasons of Child Genius. He also helped found Spaceship Earth Grants, a program to make space more accessible to non-astronauts. Leland Melvin sounds like someone who loves science and space and wants others to do the same. Does jock/scientist/creative-type really think he saw an alien and NASA told him it was ice just to distract him?

“Hmmm. Don’t think so but you never know.”

That was Melvin’s answer to a Twitter question from Scott C. Waring of UFO Sightings Daily, who has made it one of his many missions to ask NASA about the existence of other life forms. Unfortunately, while Melvin gave Waring an intriguing answer, he provided no pictures or other evidence to back it up. Was he told not to? If that’s the case, why bother answering at all? Will Randy Bresnik back him up?

With his dedication to space and opening it up to the masses, perhaps Leland Melvin is leaking just enough about what he saw to pique interest. Has he?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

In Michael Crichton’s 1987 novel Sphere, the U.S. Navy assembles a team of scientists to study an enormous submerged object found on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, an object which turns out to be an alien spacecraft inhabited by an intelligent alien entity named Jerry. Life may now be imitating art, if the claims of a group of treasure hunters are confirmed. While filming the Discovery Channel docu-series Cooper’s Treasure, a group of explorers and treasure hunters claim to have discovered a massive unidentified submerged object in the Caribbean ocean. Could this be evidence of ancient aliens lying undiscovered on the seafloor?

Gordon Cooper was the last American to conduct an entirely solo orbital mission.

We’ll see. But don’t hold your breath. Explorer and treasure hunter Darrell Miklos claims to have made the discovery while he was scouring the area using maps given to him by former NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper. Gordon Cooper was an advocate for UFO research, and after his NASA career made several claims about witnessing unexplained aircraft or aerial phenomena and that the U.S. government actively suppressed sightings by military or space agency personnel. Cooper reportedly witnessed many anomalous dark shapes in the waters of the Caribbean while in space, and mapped these with the intention of later exploring the area for shipwrecks and lost treasure. Cooper’s Treasure sets out to determine if Cooper’s hunch might be correct.

While a few shipwrecks and minor caches of treasure have indeed been found – the Caribbean was historically a major shipping route, after all – this new discovery is something different entirely. So far, only the Discovery Channel and tabloids have run the story, so take it for what you will. Miklos told the Daily Mail that he was searching for shipwrecks in the areas identified by Gordon when he came across an anomalous structure or set of structures on the sea floor:

I was trying to identify shipwreck material based on one of the anomaly readings on Gordon’s charts when I noticed something that stuck out, that shocked me. It was a formation unlike anything I’ve ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that. It was also something that was completely different from anything that I’ve seen that was made by nature.

Miklos claims to have discovered identical formations in three separate areas of the sea floor which look unlike anything he’s found. The structures, whatever they are, lie 300 feet below the ocean surface and are covered in coral which Miklos’ team believes may be thousands of years old. The team also claims to have found many magnetic anomalies in the areas corresponding to the possible shipwreck locations marked by Gordon Cooper. The Daily Mail published images has of some of the ambiguous shapes which look like they might be manufactured, but then again might simply be odd-looking coral.

Might evidence of ancient aliens, or modern ones for that matter, indeed be lying on the bottom of the ocean? Then again, could this all be a ploy to build hype for a new cable TV series? Whether that may be, given that upwards of 80% of our planet’s oceans are still unexplored, there’s no telling what we might found in the deepest reaches of the Earth’s mysterious waters. Should NASA and other space agencies turn their attention towards underwater exploration before we attempt to conquer the stars? 

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

A classic example of unexplained cattle mutilation has just hit Argentina, and veterinarians are at a loss to explain what could have caused the unfortunate animals’ injuries. According to Argentine newspaper Clarín, a rancher in the village of Colonia Durán woke up to discover seven of his cows horrifically mutilated without a trace of blood nearby. Even more horrifying, each of the seven was pregnant.

Why do they always go for the anuses?

Clarín reports that the animals were found with their tongues and genitals surgically removed with “precise cuts.” Local rancher Norberto Bieri told Clarín that experts have inspected the animals and are at a loss to explain how these wounds might have been inflicted with such precision and cleanliness:

Veterinarians have come from the place and no one can tell me how or with what they could do something like this. They say there is no scientific explanation. Everything appears cut with a laser, they didn’t leave any traces of blood, and also pieces of the animals were missing.

Even stranger, eyewitnesses reported that scavengers and insects refused to touch the mutilated carcasses lying in their fields. Of course, the legendary chupacabra has been thrown around as a possible suspect, but Norberto Bieri believes the mutilations might have extraterrestrial explanation, claiming to have witnessed anomalous aerial phenomena coinciding with similar unexplained mutilations in the area. “The thing about the lights is true,” Bieri told reporters. “I’ve seen it.”

If aliens are responsible, why do they only seem to choose cows for their victims?

Cattle mutilations remain one of the more macabre modern mysteries. Argentina is a major beef producer, so livestock mutilations are fairly common there as a result. It’s often claimed that alien experimentation is to blame for this gruesome phenomenon, although there is little hard evidence suggesting that may indeed be true. Are military groups testing new forms of weapons on livestock? Could these cattle be the unfortunate victims of occult rituals? Why is there rarely any blood left at the scenes of these mutilations? And what is being done with all of those cow anuses and genitals?

Oh, right. 

UFO Files - Cattle Mutilations

ALIEN ABDUCTIONS GONE BAD

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

In a chat on Twitter with fans about his experiences in space, astronaut Leland Melvin who worked as an engineer on board Atlantis was asked by Scott Waring from UFO Sightings Daily if he had ever witnessed UFOs or intelligent alien life living in outer space.

Melvin replied to Scott and revealed that he had seen something organic/alien like floating out of the payload bay and that he called the ground to ask what it could be.

Ground control then answered by telling Melvin that it was ice that had broken off of the Freon hoses.

Then Scott asked Melvin: “ I think ethics would say that your opinion of it being organic is more reliable than the opinion of someone on ground control over 400 miles away, is it possible they lied and called it ice to calm you down and make u focus on the shuttle."

Melvin: “Hmmmm, don’t think so but you never know.”

Many thanks to Scott Waring for his efforts to reveal the truth about the existence of aliens and UFOs.

We know NASA for their misleading answers and in this case Leland Melvin has probably encountered some sort of bioform, living entities which inhabit the cosmic void.

Already dozens of organic compounds have been identified in space, including formaldehyde, prussic acid, and cellulose. In short, there is an abundance of basic building blocks out there to allow for the evolution of these entities.

These alien-organic entities may have migrated to all sectors of space - both within and without galaxies. Endowed with both mobility and intelligence, it is conceivable that some may have actually penetrated our zone of existence.

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

Daytime UFO caught on tape over Pontyclun, UK

Here’s one new video of a bright unidentified flying object making maneuvers over UK. This was filmed on 9th July 2018.

Witness report: 

reflective object gliding over my house before sunset, went outside for second video and the object reversed
I had started seeing objects in the sky at the end of June (June 29th) when me and my two sons (3 and 5) were travelling across the country to see a friend. On the way there we stopped at a service station and my oldest son pointed out a bright ‘ball’ in the sky. He said “theres a ball in the sky and its so big and low , what is it?” this ball, i was convinced, followed us all the way there and followed us back the next day. I had a very very uneasy feeling when we got to the location, and as soon as i returned home i was consumed with terror almost, although i didnt really know why. It was around 2am on the 30th June, id just put the children in bed, and i felt like i was being observed. I got my phone, and i went to look out of the windows into the garden, and could see nothing at first, but then i saw the ball of light hovering by the trees. I took a photo, looked back, and realised it had not only captured the sphere of light but it also captured another one which was a lot closer to me, in the garden (in the photo they came out looking like a donut shape but to the naked eye it was a sphere shape).

Two days later, my son (who had initially seen the ‘ball’ reported hearing a cracking noise in the night and it woke him up, and he saw a set of large eyes in his room. I told him it was definitely the cat and he had nothing to worry about, although i knew that id shut the cats out for the night. He said it scared him at first, but then he went back to sleep. Which is very odd for him, because if he wakes up in the night he ALWAYS comes into my bed.

A week later, It was 30 minutes before sunset and myself and my partner were getting ready for bed in our upstairs bedroom where there is a large window. I saw a glint in the sky and so i went to the window and i could see a small light reflecting object (silver/metallic) moving steadily in the direction of my house. I desperately lunged for my phone and put the camera on, and once id located the object again (now a bit closer) i started filming. On the film the object appeared to be a ball of light but to the naked eye it was metallic, so after a minute of filming i ran downstairs and out onto my front drive to take a better bit of film. By that point the object had cleared my house and was floating away. There was no sound whatsoever, and i could tell the object was relatively small because it was clearly very low above the roof of my house. The object suddenly changed direction- it looked like it was reversing back a bit, but then continued on its path. It did this again (all captured on the second video), i had to move the phone with the movement of the object.

Author (source: MUFON)

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

Google Earth Showing A Bizarre Object Sparks Crashed UFO Conspiracy Theory

Alien craft has reportedly crash-landed into the ocean, according to wild claims online. A bizarre clip captured on Google Earth apparently proves the existence of real alien spacecraft.

The discovery was reportedly in the Aegean Sea, just off the coast of Greece. Some people are baffled at the UFO discovery.

Using the online mapping service, a round shape emerges below the water when zoomed in on the coordinates.

The anomaly bears a resemblance to a flying saucer upon closer inspection. The UFO is estimated to measure over 220 feet in width.

The clip was uploaded to YouTube under a channel called The Hidden Underbelly.

Viewers were fast to add their opinions about what the strange phenomenon is all about.

One viewer claimed that it could be an unidentified submerged object (USO). The viewer added that they love to hear the official excuse for this one.

Another viewer said that the object in the clip does not belong there.

One viewer stated that the object is weird having a rough and deep look around the top of it. They added that nothing in the surrounding looks remotely like it

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

UFO probe after glowing ball of light streaks across the sky over Russia - and space expert says it is too slow to be a meteor

• Video of what looks like a UFO captured flying in sky over west Siberia
• Number of witnesses caught the streaking 'greenish glowing ball'
• Russian TV station claims shape could be 'aliens'as there was no reports of meteor shower

By VICTORIA BELL FOR MAILONLINE

Mysterious footage shows what appears to be a UFO flying across sky

Mysterious footage shows what appears to be a UFO flying in the sky over west Siberia.

Russian experts are analysing footage of the glowing spherical shape shooting across the sky over the oil cities of Surgut and Nefteyugansk amid disagreements over the dramatic phenomenon.

A number of witnesses caught the 'greenish glowing ball' on tape and posted them online.

A major Russian TV station claimed the UFO was 'either a meteor or aliens'. The spherical, glowing orbs of light were spotted throughout the Russian province.

Other theories were a Russian missile or space rocket but Russian emergency officials said there had been no reports of meteorites or other mystery objects hitting the ground.

A number of witnesses caught the streaking 'greenish glowing ball' with a tail flying over the oil cities of Surgut and Nefteyugansk

A major Russian TV station claimed the UFO - also described as 'yellow' - was 'either a meteor or aliens'

Some experts insisted the most likely explanation was a Perseid meteor shower - common at this time of year.

But Professor Mikhail Larionov, of the Urals Federal University, insisted it was unlikely to be a meteor because it looked to be 'too slow' in the footage.

'The trajectory of the object's fall is quite flat and its speed is quite slow,' he said.

'Proceeding from this, we presume this was space debris burning up.

'The Chelyabinsk meteorite in 2015 had streaked across the sky at a much higher speed,' he said.

The Chelyabinsk meteor was a superbolide caused by an approximately 20-metre near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia and crashing to earth leaving a six-metre wide hole in the ground. 

Meteorites fall at between 6 and 45 miles a second. But according to Larionov, this UFO was travelling at less than 5 miles a second. 

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

In 1959, popular TV comedian Jackie Gleason became so obsessed with life on galaxies far, far away that he built his house to look like a giant spaceship — and now, the round, winding structure is on the market for $12 million.

Anthony Acocella Photography

Using The Honeymooners star’s love of outer space and UFOs as inspiration, architect Robert Cika designed the house and an adjacent cottage in Cortland Manor, New York, from scratch. Everything in the two buildings — nicknamed “The Spaceship” and “The Motherhsip” by Gleason — is circular, with the structure supported by exposed wooden ship beams spiraling out from the middle.

Anthony Acocella Photography

Gleason, who rose to fame after landing small roles in 1940s movies and eventually landing a prime comedy slot on CBS’ The Jackie Gleason Show in 1949, took six years to build the house specifically to his liking. Even today, the Spaceship and the Mothership look like something straight out of the future — the stairs, curved floorboards, master bed and cabinets are all built as a spiral without a single right angle in view.

Anthony Acocella Photography

Listed by Keller Williams’ Margaret Bailey, Howard Payson and Jacqueline Campanelli, the estate boasts five bedrooms, six bathrooms and more than eight acres of land. From the marble staircases and curving kitchen to the winding bar that can accommodate up to 14 people, each detail was built to honor Gleason’s lifelong love of space and science fiction.

Anthony Acocella Photography

But perhaps the most significant part of the Spaceship House is its history as a place of entertainment — Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon and Frank Sinatra have all partied in its halls at the height of Gleason’s fame. The current owner, a recently retired orthodontist, bought the house in 1976 for $150,000.

• Email Veronika Bondarenko
  

• Article image credited to The spaceship-shaped house that comedian Jackie Gleason built in 1959 is listed on the market for a price of $12 million.

{ https://www.inman.com/ }

China successfully tests its hypersonic Starry Sky-2 aircraft that will fire nuclear missiles capable of travelling at 4,563 miles-per-hour to evade existing anti-missile defence systems

• The hypersonic weapon rides on the shockwaves it generates, reports suggest
• It can travel at six times the speed of sound – around 7,344km/h (4,563mph)
• The flight test was deemed a 'huge success' by scientists involved in the project
• Experts say it could signal China is now neck-and-neck with Russia and the US 

By PHOEBE WESTON FOR MAILONLINE 

China has successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons that evade existing anti-missile defence systems, according reports.

The next-generation weapon, known as Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2, will ride the shockwave generated by the initial launch, which is handled by a rocket, to travel at six times the speed of sound, or Mach 6 – around 4,563mph (7,344kmph). 

Starry Sky-2 will purportedly be able to switch direction during its flight, making it harder to track and intercept.

When the aircraft fires its missiles, these will also travel at top speeds of 4,563mph (7,344kmph) and will easily defeat conventional anti-missile defence systems. 

Scientists involved in the latest test flight have heralded it as a 'huge success', with experts saying the aircraft signals China is now neck-and-neck with Russia and the United States in the race to create hypersonic warheads.

China has long been suspected of building an arsenal of hypersonic weapons, but this new test flight is the first proof the technology is actively being developed.

Scroll down for video

China has tested a hypersonic aircraft called Starry Sky-2 (pictured) that could carry nuclear weapons and evade anti-missile defence systems, reports suggest 

The China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA) said in a statement the latest test flight – carried out at an undisclosed location in northwest of the country – was a 'huge success', writes South China Morning Post.

The Starry Sky-2 aircraft was carried into space before separating from the launcher rocket and flying on its own power.

Known as a 'waverider', these hypersonic aircrafts uses the shockwaves from its own flight as a lifting surface to travel through the air at fast speeds.

In the latest tests, the aircraft was able to maintain speeds greater than five-and-a-half times the speed of sound for 400 seconds at an altitude of 30km (19 miles).

Local reports suggest it also achieved a top speed of Mach 6.

'The test … has laid a solid technological foundation for engineering applications of the waverider design,' the CAAA statement claimed.

Hypersonic weapons can defeat existing anti-missile defences as they are designed to switch direction during their flight.

These missiles do not follow a predictable ballistic arc like conventional projectiles, making them much harder to track and intercept.

According to the CAAA, the aircraft landed 'whole' in the designated target zone.

However, this technology is not ready to be rolled-out yet.

The next-generation weapon, known as Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2, will ride the shockwave generated by the initial launch, which is handled by a rocket, to travel at six times the speed of sound, or Mach 6 – around 4,563mph (7,344kmph)

Starry Sky-2 (pictured) will purportedly be able to switch direction during its flight, making it harder to track and intercept

'I think there are still three to five years before this technology can be weaponised,' said Beijing-based military analyst, Zhou Chenming.

'As well as being fitted to missiles, it may also have other military applications, which are still being explored.'

Russia is widely-tipped to be developing a hypersonic weapon known as 'Zircon'.

The Zircon cruise missile purportedly travels between 3,800mph (6,115kph) and 4,600mph (7,400kph) – five to six times the speed of sound – putting Russia 'half a decade ahead of the US'.

According to Russian news agency Tass, it is set to go into production this year.

When the aircraft fires its missiles, these will also travel at top speeds of 4,563mph (7,344kmph) and will easily defeat conventional anti-missile defence systems

Known as a 'waverider', these hypersonic aircrafts uses the shockwaves from its own flight as a lifting surface to travel through the air at fast speeds

In the latest tests, the aircraft was able to maintain speeds greater than five-and-a-half times the speed of sound for 400 seconds at an altitude of 30km (19 miles)

In June, it was also revealed a US hypersonic missile had taken a step closer to reality.

Defence firm Lockheed Martin revealed details of a $928 million (£661 million) contract to make a radical new weapon that will travel more than five times the speed of sound.

The aerospace firm is working on an air-launched weapon system, dubbed the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW), under a new deal with the US Air Force.

In the first phase, the team will finalise the system requirements before moving on to design, flight tests, and initial production and deployment. 

Work on the ultra-fast missile is taking place in Huntsville, Alabama, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and Orlando, Florida, according to Lockheed Martin.

Russia is believed to be developing a hypersonic weapon called the Zircon. The missile is capable of travelling twice as fast as the Royal Navy's Sea Ceptor missile (pictured), which would be responsible for shooting it down were it to attack British troops or mainland UK

The US Air Force will grant Lockheed Martin up to $928 million for development of the weapon through early operational capability.

'Our goal is rapid development and fielding of the HCSW system, and this contract is the first step in achieving that goal,' said John Snyder, vice president of Air Force Strategic Programs at Lockheed Martin.

'Design, development, production, integration and test experts from across Lockheed Martin will partner with the Air Force to achieve early operational capability and deliver the system to our warfighters. 

'We are incredibly proud to be leading this effort.' 

It was first revealed back in April that the Pentagon pushed through development of the highly maneuverable weapons, which are designed to outpace detection and defensive capabilities.

The move follows repeated warnings from senior officials about rapid advances by China and Russia, who have unveiled their own versions in recent months.

Defence firm Lockheed Martin revealed details of a $928 million (£661 million) contract to make a radical new weapon that will travel more than five times the speed of sound. This 2010 file photo shows rival Boeing's X-51A WaveRider hypersonic vehicle under a B-52 bomber

Hypersonic weapons can beat regular anti-missile defences.  This artist's impression, courtesy of the US Air Force, shows Boeing's hypersonic X-51A Waverider cruise missile currently under development

Arsenals of the ultra-fast intercontinental weapons could also be equipped with nuclear warheads with the capability of delivering devastating strikes across the planet. 

In a statement, the Pentagon said Lockheed will receive up to $928 million to build a new, non-nuclear missile it is calling the 'hypersonic conventional strike weapon.'

'This contract provides for the design, development, engineering, systems integration, test, logistics planning, and aircraft integration support of all the elements of a hypersonic, conventional, air-launched, stand-off weapon,' the statement read. 

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's new defense undersecretary for research and engineering, said China had built 'a pretty mature system' for a hypersonic missile to strike from thousands of kilometres (miles) away.

'We will, with today's defensive systems, not see these things coming,' Mr Griffin said.

WHAT DOES RUSSIA CLAIM TO HAVE IN ITS MILITARY ARSENAL?

The Russian Ministry of Defence has been keen to promote a range of new super weapons currently believed to be in development.

President Putin unveiled a catalogue of doomsday weaponry as part of his annual 'State of the Nation' speech in March 2018.

However, questions remain about the true nature of their capabilities, how far into development the weapons truly are, and when they will be combat-ready.

RS-28 Sarmat ICBM

The RS-28 Sarmat is intended to replace the Soviet-designed SS-18 Voyevoda, the world's heaviest ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile).

It is known as 'Satan' in the West and carries 10 nuclear warheads.

Sarmat can unleash ten large thermonuclear warheads, 16 smaller ones, or a combination of both, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.

Each warhead is purportedly capable of taking aim at a different target.

The hypersonic glide vehicle, dubbed Avangard, launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile (IBM) before sailing on top of the atmosphere toward its target. Russia tested its latest IBM, the Sarmat missile, for the first time last year (pictured)

The (ICBM) weapons can strike targets via both the North and South poles.

TV broadcaster Zvezda, which is run by the Russian Ministry of Defence, has previously claimed the missile will be capable of wiping out areas the size of Texas or France. 

It is also capable of carrying up to 24 of Russia's new Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, designed to sit atop of an ICBM.

Putin says both weapons will be combat-ready in 2020. 

Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle 

Russia is also believed to be developing a hypersonic weapon that can breach even the world's most advanced missile defence systems.

The Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle purportedly travels at 20 times the speed of sound and can hit targets anywhere in the world within half an hour.

The vehicle launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, before gliding on top of the atmosphere toward its target.

It is loaded with advanced countermeasure systems that allow it to skirt around the latest-generation of missile defence systems, Russia claims.

The vehicles are equipped with onboard countermeasure systems capable of dodging even the most advanced missile defence systems. This artist's impression shows how the glider could manoeuvre at high speed to bypass missile defences

The gliders are also highly unpredictable thanks to their manoeuvrability, making them almost impossible to track using conventional systems.

Each weapon could be loaded with a nuclear warhead, however military experts say the sheer speed of the vehicles means they could do damage even without an explosive payload attached.

Putin described his hypersonic arsenal as 'invincible' during a state-of-the-nation address in March 2018.

He claimed Avangard strikes 'like a meteorite, like a fireball' and was capable of reaching targets at 20 times the speed of sound.

At this speed the weapon could circle the Earth in just over half an hour. 

Speaking to MailOnline, Neil Gibson, senior weapons analyst for Jane's by IHS Markit, said: 'I think the ability of hypersonic systems to defeat air-defence system is highly exaggerated.

'They have advantages and disadvantages as per any other weapon system. 

'The fact is, the vast majority of ballistic missiles are already hypersonic anyway, it's the controlled flight when still hypersonic that we are talking about here.

'If nuclear armed, they just come under 'mutually assured destruction' style posturing. Using them is always possible of course.

'Conventionally-armed versions are more likely to be used, though any confusion with what they carry - nuclear or conventional warhead - could start an exchange of nuclear weapons if it is mistaken for a nuclear attack.'

Kinzhal Hypersonic Air Launched Missile

Another new missile, the hypersonic Kinzhal, travels at ten times the speed of sound, Putin says.

It is currently undergoing tests in southern Russia.

The hypersonic Kinzhal missile is launched from a high-altitude MiG-31 fighter jet and can be fitted with either nuclear, or conventional weapons.

This still shows the hypersonic Kinzhal, which travels at ten times the speed of sound and is currently undergoing tests in southern Russia

It has an effective range of 1,250 miles (2,000 km), although Putin claims its total range is actually 'unlimited'.

Russia has already conducted some 350 training missions with the military unit tasked with testing the Kinzhal.

Putin claims the new missile would be capable of striking 'anywhere in the world', and that its high speed and manoeuvrability allowed it to pierce any missile defence.

However, despite Putin's major promises, the missile has still not been able to stay airborne for more than a few minutes, according to US intelligence sources.

The new missile has purportedly been tested four times between November and February and crashed every time.

Burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile

The burevestnik, or thunderbird, nuclear propulsion system for Russian cruise missiles aims to give them 'unlimited range and unlimited ability to manoeuvre', according to Sergey Pertsev, a developer.

 Ministry of Defence officials  said in July, 2018, that work on the unlimited-range missile is going according to plan.

Footage purported to show the missile in action, although it is unclear whether it was being powered by nuclear or conventional fuel.

The 'Burevestnik' nuclear propulsion system for Russian cruise missiles, pictured, is said to have 'unlimited range and unlimited ability to manoeuvre' 

'Launching systems are also being designed, while technological processes to manufacture, assemble and test the missile are being improved,' an official said at the time. 

However, experts have criticised the missile, including Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

He told Vice's Motherboard: 'The nuclear-powered cruise missile is new—and bats**t crazy.'

Poseidon Drone Submarine 

The Poseidon drone submarine is a sister project to burevestnik.

It is essentially a giant, nuclear-capable torpedo capable of carrying a two megaton nuclear warhead capable of obliterating military ports.

The Kremlin's Poseidon torpedo sub is designed to destroy 'enemy navy bases' and will be able to travel up to 70 knots (80 miles per hour), it claims.

Russian state news agency TASS says it has not been able to confirm details of the weapon.

The Poseidon drone submarine - with a miniature nuclear propulsion system - is shown undergoing a static test

However, it quoted a military source as saying: 'It will be possible to mount various nuclear charges on the 'torpedo' of the Poseidon multipurpose seaborne system, with the thermonuclear single warhead similar to the Avangard charge to have the maximum capacity of up to two megatonnes in TNT equivalent.'

With its nuke, the weapon 'is primarily designed to destroy reinforced naval bases of a potential enemy,' the report added.

Peresvet Combat Laser System 

Named after a medieval warrior monk, very little is known about this system.

Many believe Peresvet is a jamming system carried on the back of military lorries, which can be used to 'blind' optical electronic equipment inside enemy vehicles using a laser beam.

According to ex-Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov the 'combat laser systems' that Putin addressed in his State of the Nation speech back in March had already been delivered to the nation's armed forces last year.

Many believe Peresvet is a jamming system carried on the back of military lorries (pictured), which can be used to 'blind' optical electronic equipment inside enemy vehicles using a laser beam  

Once found only in works of fiction, Mr Borisov said such devices were now a very real and necessary tool of modern warfare. 

'We can talk a lot about laser weapons and movies were made about them a long time ago and fantastic books have been written, and everyone knows about this,' Mr Borisov said in comments translated by the state-run Tass Russian News Agency.

But the fact that these systems have started entering service is indeed today's reality.'

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

China Just Tested a Hypersonic Weapon That Could Launch Nukes at 6 Times the Speed of Sound

Here, an illustration of a flight of the warhead of a hypersonic boost-glide weapon.

Credit: TASS\TASS via Getty Images

China successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft on Friday (Aug. 3), one that could one day be capable of firing nuclear missiles around the planet at up to six times the speed of sound, according to China's state-run news site China Daily.

The aircraft, known as Starry Sky-2, is reportedly capable of screaming across the sky at speeds of up to 4,563 mph (7,344 km/h) and rapidly switching direction mid-flight, China Daily reported, potentially allowing the rocket to blast right past existing missile defense systems.

China has tested a hypersonic aircraft called Starry Sky-2 (pictured) that could carry nuclear weapons and evade anti-missile defence systems, reports suggest 

Video of the Starry Sky-2 test launch (which was conducted in an undisclosed location in northwestern China) showed the aircraft being launched into space on a multistage rocket. The aircraft then separated from its launcher and continued flying on its own power, soaring at about Mach-5.5 (five and a half times the speed of sound) for 400 seconds, China Daily reported. The aircraft then performed several maneuvers at an altitude of about 18 miles (29 km) before landing in a designated target zone — a demonstration that witnesses heralded as a "huge success," according to a statement quoted in the South China Morning Post.

A second buried Sphinx has just been discovered in Egypt

An infrastructure project in Egypt has come to a halt after workers doing construction on a road came across a second ancient Egyptian Sphinx.

Statue Has a Human Body with Lions Head

Mohamed Abel Aziz, the Director General of Antiquities, said the construction workers had come across a statue of a "lion’s body with a human head". However, due to the nature of the environment in which the statue was found, it is yet to be evacuated above the ground, so it remains in the ground. Khaled al Anani, the national heritage chief said that people are more welcome to visit the region where the sphinx was found.

The complex of Luxor and Karnak temples are in the ancient city of Thebes. The temples are from 1400 BCE. Excavations of the Luxor temple began in 1884 when archaeologists found many discoveries said to be significant. The excavation of the site continued until 1960.

Ancient Egyptians Regard the Sphinx as Symbol of Royalty

The ancient Egyptians thought the Sphinx to be a symbol of royalty. They said pharaohs of the time would have their heads carved into stone then placed on their tombs. This was said to be as a way of marking relationships with Sekhmet, the solar deity, which was a lioness. The most famous along with most visited of all sphinx is the one at Giza, close to the Great Pyramids.

Giza Sphinx May Be Entry to a Hidden Labyrinth of Tunnels

People have always been fascinated by the pyramids, along with the Sphinx of Egypt. In late 2017, historians made the claim that the Sphinx in Giza might conceal an entrance to a secret underground city. Many believe it sits on top of a labyrinth of tunnels along with passages leading to a huge underground metropolis, which the authorities in Egypt have covered up.

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• 5 Genders Acknowledged By Native Americans Even Before Europeans Took Over North America

Giza Plateau Second Sphinx Revealed?

New Ancient Egyptian SPHINX found buried near the Valley of the Kings in b ombshell discovery

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

Enigmatic creatures that lived 630 million years ago were animals — but not like anything we’ve seen before

BY MIHAI ANDREI 

The Ediacaran Organisms - Did they Move, What did they Eat?

The year is 600 million BC — and the Earth is a completely different place from what we know it to be. The most advanced creatures on Earth are (probably) the so-called Ediacaran fauna. To the untrained eye, they look just like plants, static and seemingly inactive. But things are not always as they seem.

The Ediacaran fauna has fascinated scientists for years, trying to figure out whether they were algae, fungi, animals, or of a completely different kingdom. Now, a group of scientists believes they finally have the answer. In a new study, they present convincing arguments that the Ediacaran fauna were indeed animals.

Dickinsonia costata, an iconic Ediacaran organism.

Image credits: Verisimilus / Wikipedia.

They dominated the seas all around the world, with traces of their fossils appearing in all corners of the Earth. The Ediacaran fauna first emerged some 635 million years ago, only to disappear quickly after the Cambrian Explosion, some 542 million years ago. Part of the reason why these creatures have been so hard to pin down is their unique anatomy. They featured tubular-type fronds, which branch out in a fractal matter. They bear a resemblance to mollusks (and other creatures with a similar symmetry), but they also resemble some sponges and even jellyfish. Some paleontologists have suggested that they represent a completely extinct branch of life, perhaps even a link between plants and animals.

But a new study says that they were definitely animals — and it brings the evidence to back it up.

Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Jian Han at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, analyzed more than 200 fossils of a 518-million-year-old marine species named Stromatoveris psygmoglena.

It was already believed that this creature was some sort of animal, but it was not clear whether it also belonged to the Ediacaran fauna. If this connection could be established, then it would indicate that the Ediacaran fauna were indeed animals.

Cuthill and Han ran a computer analysis, using anatomical features to reconstruct evolutionary relationships between Stromatoveris and creatures genetically close to it. They found that Stromatoveris, just like all other Ediacaran organisms they analyzed, didn’t belong to any living animal group (or phylum). They have their own branch, somewhere between the simple sea sponges and more complex animals such as worms and mollusks.

“This branch, the Petalonamae, could well be its own phylum, and it apparently lacks any living descendants,” Hoyal Cuthill says.

There’s a very good chance that the Ediacaran fauna were the world’s first animals, but this opens up another thorny question: the extinction of the Ediacaran was linked to Cambrian animals. But if they themselves were animals (and some survived well into the Cambrian), the explanation isn’t so elegant anymore.

“It’s not quite so neat anymore,” she says. “As to what led to their eventual extinction I think it’s very hard to say.”

The study was published in Paleontology.

Ediacaran fossils

Why the Ediacaran fossils are significant

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY OF 44 EXOPLANETS AFTER TECHNICAL FAULT

"Two out of the four control-reaction wheels failed, which meant Kepler couldn't perform its original mission to stare at one specific patch of the sky," explained study author Motohide Tamura of the University of Tokyo in a statement. "This led to its contingent mission, 'K2'—our observations came from campaign 10 of this mission.”

"The original Kepler...discovered thousands of interesting planets," study author John Livingston told Newsweek. "However, I think the mechanical failure was in many ways a blessing in disguise, because K2 enabled the discovery of many interesting planets that were simply not part of the original Kepler mission design."

The researchers found a wide range of weird and wonderful planets—some as small as our own and some that zip around their host star in less than a single Earth day. Researchers reported their findings in The Astronomical Journal.

"[These] 'ultra-short period' planets are very interesting from a theoretical perspective. We’re pretty sure they can’t form so close to the star, so it’s an open question how they came to be in such orbital configurations," Livingston told Newsweek. Such planets, he explained, are very close to their star and move very quickly.

"It was [also]...gratifying to verify so many small planets," he said in the statement. "Sixteen were in the same size class as Earth, one in particular turning out to be extremely small—about the size of Venus—which was a nice affirmation as it's close to the limit of what is possible to detect."

The team are particularly excited about 18 planets in multi-planet systems. Livingston hopes these will help us understand our own solar neighborhood. "The investigation of other solar systems can help us understand how planets and even our own solar system formed," Livingston said. "The study of other worlds has much to teach us about our own."

In addition to these validated planets, researchers also found 27 candidates that may prove to be real planets after further study.

The future of Kepler, which has been floating in space for almost a decade, has been the subject of much discussion in recent weeks. “We're lucky Kepler continues to function as well as it does," Tamura said.

Low on fuel, engineers had switched it into a sort of hibernation to conserve enough energy to beam data haul to Earth, NASAannounced in July. The veteran telescope woke up in early August, and began sending observation data back home, Space.com noted Friday.

The telescope has found more than 2,600 exoplanets over its Kepler and K2 missions. In fact, NASA recently announced Kepler had proved there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way.

NASA Kepler and K2

✔@NASAKepler

This article has been updated to include further comment from John Livingston.

{ https://www.newsweek.com/ }

NASA scientist reveals details of icy Greenland's heated geologic past

by Lonnie Shekhtman for GSFC News
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 08, 2018

Is NASA giving its early rocket engineers who were extracted from Germany after their country was defeated in World War II one last salute before they’re all gone? That’s what some are implying as it fires up the New Horizons spacecraft to ready it for a visit to Ultima Thule – a peanut-shaped space rock (or possibly rocks) named after the mythical homeland of the Aryan race and popularized by a favorite book of Heinrich Himmler. Should the spaceship be renamed Nazi Horizon?

7 Facts About NASA's New Horizons Pluto Mission!

Remember New Horizon? That’s the tiny space probe which visited Pluto in July 2015 and sent back dazzling photos of the dwarf who is still ap planet to many. After the flyby ended in October 2015, New Horizon became the fifth manmade probe to leave the solar system on its way to its next mission – a rendezvous with Kuiper belt object (486958) 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019.

Artist’s depiction of 2014 MU69

However, in this age of cigar-shaped intergalactic asteroids that might be space ships, 2014 MU69 is far too boring of a name, so NASA held a nicknaming contest and the winner was “Ultima Thule” (pronounced ultima thoo-lee). The press release explained that: “Thule was a mythical, far-northern island in medieval literature and cartography. Ultima Thule means “beyond Thule”– beyond the borders of the known world—symbolizing the exploration of the distant Kuiper Belt and Kuiper Belt objects that New Horizons is performing, something never before done.”

Apparently, they didn’t go far enough into the Wikipedia pageto read that “extreme right occultists believed in a historical Thule, or Hyperborea, as the ancient origin of the “Aryan race.”” This was spread by the Thule Society, which promoted its close ties links to the Nazi party and its origin story, which came from the Oera Linda Book, which was allegedly discovered in the 1800s and, after being translated into German, became a favorite of Himmler. While too late to stop the Nazis, the book was discredited by experts as “a temporary hoax to fool some nationalist Frisians and orthodox Christians and as an experiential exemplary exercise in reading the Holy Bible in a non-fundamentalist, symbolical way.”

New Horizons Spacecraft Could Visit Kuiper Belt Objects After Pluto

How did NASA miss this? The nicknaming contest, which ended on December 6 after a 5-day extension due to its massive popularity, received 115,000 submissions of 34.000 names which were narrowed down to 29 (plus 8 from NASA) before Ultima Thule was chosen.

“We are grateful to those who proposed such an interesting and inspirational nickname.”

NASA Wants You To Nickname New Horizons' Next Target

Interesting and inspirational? To whom? Operation Paperclip secretly brought over 1.600 German rocket and space scientists, including Wernher von Braun and other former members and leaders of the Nazi Party, to work on the U.S. space program. There is no question their contributions were significant and, despite their backgrounds, they were recognized for them. However, Georg von Tiesenhausen, considered to be the last one, died in June 2018 at the age of 104.

Pluto

Is the naming of the space rock Ultima Thule really an innocent choice? What about the Thule Air Base in Greenland where a meteor recently exploded and the U.S. Air Force was strangely silent? Is there a sinister connection?

How far out do you want to go? What’s the real story behind the Ultima Thule space rock? Is it the home of the long-rumored Nazi space base? Is it a hint about something else? Will we ever find out?

Inside story of NASA's groundbreaking visit to Pluto - Space Documentary

NASA Releases Amazing Video Of Descent To Pluto By New Horizons. (Space News)

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Ancient MAYA - Why the Collapse?

What causes civilizations to collapse? Surely, it has to be something as monumental and awe inspiring as the civilization itself: the arrival of a strange alien invading force from beyond the ocean, mass outbreak of disease, the turning of the cosmic clock signaling the changing of the ages. Maybe sometimes. Sometimes, however, it’s a lot more mundane, banal, and terrifying in its own right. That seems to be the case with the collapse of the Mayan empire, the mysterious and often misunderstood empire that dominated the Yucatan peninsula for thousands of years. According to a paper published in the journal Science, scientists say they’ve finally been able to measure and quantify one of the main factors in the slow decline of the mysterious classical Mayan civilization: just not enough water.

Mayan pyramid.

The first Maya villages formed around 2,000 BCE, from there a massive and singular empire grew for the next 2,800 years. The Maya developed their own hieroglyphic system, calendars, and astronomical measurement systems. They built pyramidsand developed a time-keeping system not just for their growing seasons but for the passing of whole ages. Remember that part about the Mayas being misunderstood? Exhibit A is a film you might remember called 2012 (starring John Cusack). The Maya reached the height of their power between 600 and 800 CE. Huge city-states filled with pyramids and temples sat flourishing in the middle of the jungle, with populations between 50,000 and 120,000 and a political climate akin to classical Greece or renaissance Italy. It was a true force of civilization. Then, around 800 CE, something happened. The next 150 to 200 years saw the Mayas disperse from their city-states and a quick crumbling of an Mesoamerican empire.  To be perfectly clear, this did not end Mayan civilization, the same way that the collapse of the Roman empire didn’t end Roman civilization, but it did mark the end of an era and a point of no return for the opulence and power of the classical Mayan civilization.

Severe drought has long been held as a probable cause of the Mayan collapse, but it’s only now that scientists have been able to measure how severe that drought was.  The paper, titled Quantification of drought during the collapse of the classic Maya civilization details how, by looking at the water isotopes in the gypsum—a mineral found in lake beds and other water sources—in Lake Chichancanab, Mexico, researchers were able to track the course of the long drought and plot it against the period of rapid decline in Maya power during what is known as the Terminal Classic period of the Mayan empire.

Gypsum forms in lake and river beds and water in incorporated directly into the structure of the mineral. In periods of drought, the lighter water isotopes evaporate faster, leaving the heavier water isotopes behind. By measuring which isotopes of water are left behind in a source of gypsum, it’s possible to calculate the rate of evaporation and annual rainfall from a given period. Looking at the gypsum from 800-950 CE, the Terminal Classic period, scientists say that Mayas experienced a 41-54% decrease in rainfall during those years, with periods of up to 70% reduced rainfall. This, they say, was a key factor in the collapse of the Mayan empire.

We take fresh water for granted. Half the average rainfall over the course of a century is all it can take to dramatically change a society. Sure, we have have water purification and reclamation technology now. We’re in a totally different technological era than they Mayas, it’s true. It’s just something to think about.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The Westall UFO incident remains one of Australia’s most infamous and mysterious events involving anomalous aerial phenomena. On the morning of April 6, 1966, over 200 students and teachers at two different schools in Melbourne witnessed a bizarre object nearly the size of a car descend from the sky and hover motionless near a stand of trees near the Westall State School.

The object was described by the 200+ eyewitnesses as saucer-shaped, either grey or silver, and featuring a rod or antenna on its top. Some of the students reported it had a slight purple hue, while other witnesses thought it appeared greenish. The object hovered for nearly twenty minutes, leaving a circle of yellow flattened grass, before launching back into the sky at a high rate of speed after five other unidentified aircraft began circling the object. Several children reportedly collapsed from fright.

Of course, no records of any civilian aircraft in the area were found, while the Royal Australian Air Force also reported no flights in that area. Newspapers at the time reported that it “might have been a weather balloon.” Of course.

It’s always a weather balloon.

To add to the mystery of the Westall incident, just this week a rare and seemingly long-lost audio recording surfaced on YouTube in which Australian UFO researcher and photographer James J. Kibel describes his initial interview with Andrew Greenwood, a science teacher at Westall High School (now Westall Secondary College) who witnessed the event. Kibel recorded his recollection of the interview to send to American physicist and UFOlogy pioneer James. E McDonald.

Kibel recounts to McDonald how Greenwood recalled the object’s movements as the “most amazing flying he had ever seen in his life.” When students first alerted Greenwood to the object, Kibel notes, he was initially skeptical until he saw it for himself:

Greenwood told me the UFO was first brought to his attention by a hysterical child who ran into his classroom and told him there’s a flying saucer outside. He thought this child had become deranged or something so he didn’t take any notice, but when the child insisted that this object was in the sky he decided to go out and have a look for himself.

The object’s flight behavior described by Greenwood sounds eerily familiar to anyone who’s read reports of UFOs being pursued by traditional aircraft:

The planes were doing everything possible to approach the object and he said how they all avoided collision he will never know. Every time they got too close to the object it would slowly accelerate, then rapidly accelerate and then move away from them and stop. Then they would take off after it again and the same thing would happen.

Greenwood told Kibel that the school’s headmaster eventually told students and staff to return to their classes and to never speak of the incident again or face strict disciplinary measures. Several students and staff refused to speak to Greenwood about the incident in the days following.

While this audio recording doesn’t offer up any new information about the Westall incident, the audio offers a new near-first-hand account of the incident from one of the principal witnesses. It is also disturbing to hear that students and staff were threatened to never speak of the incident again – what did the headmaster know? Or what did he not want to know?

To this day, the mystery of the Westall incident remains unsolved. The site of the encounter is now a memorial park complete with a flying saucer-shaped playground. Many former Westall students who witnessed the event met at a reunion in 2006 to commemorate the sighting, and time had done little to alter their recollections. For skeptics, it has been suggested that the object was likely either an off-the-books experimental military craft or a drogue towed behind aircraft for target practice. For believers, the incident remains one of the most compelling UFO events given the large number of eyewitnesses and the fact that they all gave nearly the same testimony.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Military Insiders Confirm Thousands of Extraterrestrials Live Among Us

MICHAEL SALLA

{ http://exonews.org/ }

NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars for 6 years now — here's what the red planet's surface looks like up close - PART I

Kevin Loria

A location on Mars associated with the best-selling novel and Hollywood movie, "The Martian" This area is in the Acidalia Planitia region and in the novel and the movie, it is the landing site of a crewed mission named Ares 3. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The surface of Mars is weird and beautiful.

For six years now, since its landing on August 5, 2012, the Mars Curiosity rover has been exploring one area of our next-planet neighbor .

Curiosity has spent all of its time in the Gale Crater, where it's traveled just over 12 miles, yet the rover has captured plenty of stunning images. NASA has also collected photos of the Martian surface using spacecraft and other rovers like Opportunity, which is more than 15 years old .

At times, photos of the surface of Mars depict the prototypical idea of the red planet: rocky, dry, dusty, and not unlike a desert you might see on Earth. Yet other formations of craters and canyons are completely different from anything on our planet — there are patches of dark and light colors, carbon dioxide dry ice, and otherworldly patterns.

There's weather too, like the huge dust storm that recently covered the entire planet.

Here are some of the images that show how stunning the surface of Mars really is, though there's still far more to be discovered, of course. Just recently, scientists announced that they think there might be a 12-mile-long lake of liquid water hidden underneath one of the red planet's ice caps.

Curiosity captured this selfie on the Vera Rubin Ridge at the beginning of 2018. The rover's arm has been edited out, since the photo is a composite of a number of images.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS via AP

Just after arriving in 2012, Curiosity took this shot of the base of Mount Sharp, its eventual destination. Many of the mountains and canyons of Mars have names, just like geological features on Earth.

Reuters/NASA

This was one of Curiosity's first looks at the Gale Crater in 2012. The edge of the crater is broken up by a network of valleys that scientists think were formed by water.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

It didn't take long for Curiosity to find more evidence of water. It spotted these rounded gravel fragments on a rock outcrop in September of 2012, at the base of Aeolis Mons. The shapes are indicative of rock that formed in the presence of water.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

At the end of 2012, Curiosity took this shot showing inclined layering — known as cross-bedding — in the Shaler outcrop.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity mostly sees this kind of prototypical red-planet imagery in the Gale Crater. It arrived in Yellowknife Bay, the lowest point of the crater, in 2013.

REUTERS/NASA

In Yellowknife Bay, the rover discovered evidence that water could have percolated through pores in the sediment.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered Martian orbit in 2006 and has been sending back images ever since. In this enhanced-color view from Orbiter taken in June 2013, Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

In 2015, the Orbiter provided this aerial view of the Ophir Chasma on the northern portion of a vast Mars canyon system called Valles Marineris.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

NASA regularly keeps an eye on the active dune field known as Nili Patera because it changes frequently. The Orbiter captured this shot of the region in 2014.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Orbiter showed us this spectacular impact crater in November of 2013.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The flowing features in the terrain at Mars’ middle latitudes could have once been formed by water and ice. Orbiter sent this image back in 2017.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

In January of 2014, Orbiter photographed these sand dunes far to the north as they emerged from their winter carbon-dioxide dry-ice cover.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Fans of 'The Martian' are familiar with the Acidalia Planitia region of Mars, shown here as seen by Orbiter in 2015.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

This long row of channels, ranging from 1-10 meters wide, is found in the Hellas impact basin in Mars' southern hemisphere. Orbiter shot this image, too.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

This view of the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars, perched high on the Tharsis rise in the upper reaches of the Valles Marineris canyon system, is particularly otherworldly. Orbiter sent this image back in 2013.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Near the Martian equator, the Victoria Crater at Meridiani Planum looks like abstract art. In this 2006 image captured by Orbiter, you can see the Opportunity rover as a tiny speck on the outside of the crater, between 9 and 10 p.m. if this were a clock.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Caltech

The Mars Opportunity Rover has been on the red planet for more than 15 years. It spotted this iron meteorite back in 2005 — the first meteorite identified on another planet.

REUTERS/NASA/JPL/Cornell

{  https://www.businessinsider.com/ }

NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars for 6 years now — here's what the red planet's surface looks like up close - PART II

They All Shine On! Galaxy Survey Yields Stunning Cosmic View

VIDEO. Britse brandweer filmt vuurtornado bij brand in Leicestershire - HLN.be

Bron: Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service

Het wervelende effect van vuurtornado’s ontstaat doordat de hitte van het vuur de luchtlaag aan de grond verhit en snel doet opstijgen, terwijl er aan de basis van de luchtkolom koelere lucht uit de omgeving wordt aangezogen. 

Het fenomeen kan zich in principe overal voordoen waar het heet is en er brand ontstaat, maar is eerder zeldzaam. Recent kwamen er echter nog vuurtornado’s in het nieuws: ook bij de bosbranden in Californië ontstonden ze. Daar zit de aanhoudende hitte en droogte voor iets tussen.

Bekijk ook:

• Grootste bosbrand ooit in Californië: brandhaard ter grootte van Los Angeles

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Ontdekkingsreiziger vindt ‘buitenaards ruimteschip’ in de Bermudadriehoek: “Zoiets heb ik nog nooit gezien” - HLN.be

Bron: Daily Mail

Ontdekkingsreiziger Darrell Miklos jaagt samen met zijn team op oude scheepswrakken op de bodem van de oceaan in het programma ‘Cooper’s Treasure’ op Discovery Channel. Deze keer trok Miklos naar een verborgen plek in de Bermudadriehoek, nabij de Bahama’s, die bezaaid is met gezonken schepen. 

Om scheepswrakken op de bodem van de oceaan te vinden, gebruikt Miklos de geheime kaarten van zijn vriend en NASA-astronaut Gordon Cooper, die in 2004 overleed. In de jaren zestig stelde de astronaut ‘geheime kaarten’ samen om zo meer dan honderd magnetische ‘onregelmatigheden’ in de Caraïben vanuit de ruimte te identificeren. 

"USO”

Wat de doorwinterde ontdekkingsreiziger op de bodem van de oceaan vond, overtrof zijn stoutste verwachtingen. “Het was een formatie die anders was dan alles wat ik ooit heb gezien. Het ‘ding’ was veel te groot om een scheepswrak te zijn.”

Het ding is negentig meter lang en heeft vreemde uitstulpingen. Miklos concludeerde dat het gigantische object wel een USO, een unidentified submerged object, moest zijn. “Het zag er niet uit als iets dat door de mens of natuur werd gemaakt. Ik heb een jarenlange ervaring en we identificeerden al zoveel verschillende scheepswrakken, maar zoiets heb ik nog nooit gezien”. 

Naast het vermeende ruimteschip, vond de ontdekkingsreiziger ook andere bizarre formaties rondom het grote object, bedekt met een dikke laag koraal. Miklos gelooft dat ze waarschijnlijk honderden of duizenden jaren oud zijn.

Na zijn ontdekking, dook Miklos meteen in de kaarten en papieren van Cooper op zoek naar verdere aanwijzingen. De astronaut schreef ‘unidentified object’ neer op de kaart waar Miklos het vreemde object vond. Volgens Miklos moest Cooper wel verwijzen naar “iets dat niet van deze wereld was”. Nu wil Miklos samen met zijn team het zogenaamde ‘buitenaards ruimteschip’ uit het water halen voor verder onderzoek. 

Gordon Cooper

Gordon Cooper was een pionier in de ruimtevaart. Maar naast zijn leven als astronaut, zou hij er een geheime agenda op nagehouden hebben. De Amerikaanse regering zou hem in de jaren zestig gevraagd hebben om naar ‘nucleaire dreigingen’ op zoek te gaan. Daarmee werden waarschijnlijk Russische onderzeeërs of nucleaire raketten bedoeld. Miklos meent dat Cooper de vreemde positie van de scheepswrakken opmerkte in de Caraïben, terwijl hij een spionagemissie vanuit de ruimte uitvoerde en daarbij een kaart creëerde.

Cooper zou Miklos lang geleden de kaarten - inclusief gedetailleerde info en exacte coördinaten - gegeven hebben nadat hij de diagnose van Parkinson kreeg en in 2004 stierf op 77-jarige leeftijd.

Of de astronaut effectief spionagewerk verrichte en de scheepswrakken in kaart bracht, wordt sterk betwijfeld. Volgens sommigen is het onmogelijk dat Cooper uit het raam van het ruimteschip kon kijken, vreemde formaties op het wateroppervlak kon waarnemen en de lengte- en breedtegraad kon noteren. Cooper nam wel degelijk foto’s vanuit de ruimte, maar niet in het gebied van de Caraïben. Bovendien zou geen enkele van die foto’s een plek kleiner dan een stad kunnen weergeven.

Mysterie Bermudadriehoek verklaard

Voor ‘scheepswrakjagers’ zoals Miklos en zijn team is de Bermudadriehoek tussen Miami, de Bermuda-eilanden en Puerto Rico, een aantrekkelijke plek. De bodem ligt namelijk bezaaid met schepen en vliegtuigen die er in de loop der jaren zonken. Sommigen zijn ervan overtuigd dat aliens of kraters, het antwoord vormen op het misterie. Nu lijkt er toch een nieuwe wetenschappelijke verklaring te zijn voor het fenomeen. 

Een groep oceanografen aan de universiteit van Southampton, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, is ervan overtuigd dat ‘rogue waves’ of monstergolven de honderden schepen lieten zinken. “Monstergolven kwamen voor in mythes en in de verhalen van schippers, maar vandaag kunnen satellieten golven meten. Golven van zo’n dertig meter werden al waargenomen en geverifieerd.”

De monstergolven ontstaan doordat stormwinden uit drie verschillende richtingen op de plek samen komen en zo de perfecte omgeving creëren voor monstergolven. De gigantische golven maken altijd deel uit van een storm en kunnen even snel weer verdwijnen als ze opkwamen. 

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Rare 1966 Audio on Westall UFO Encounter Australia

The Westall UFO encounter is an event that occurred on 6 April 1966 in Melbourne, Australia. For more than 20 minutes 200 students and teachers at two schools allegedly witnessed an unexplained flying object which descended into a nearby open wild grass field.

The paddock was adjacent to a grove of pine trees in an area known as The Grange. According to reports, the object then ascended in a north-westerly direction over the suburb of Clayton South, Victoria, Australia.

This video of QUFOSR (Queensland UFO sightings and Research) contains rare audio of James J. Kibel (commonly confused as James E. McDonald as it was later sent to him) discussing the infamous Westall UFO incident after meeting with the science teacher who witnessed the object.

Below some notes of interest if you're having trouble understanding the audio:

01 - Science master, two other staff and 300 kids watched a UFO maneuver over the school.
02 - 5 planes tried to intercept the UFO.
03 - Science master was in the same club as Mconalds brother-in-law, a bizarre coincidence. Because of this connection Mcdonald invited the Science teacher over and discussed in depth what he witnessed.
04 - Believes it wasn't the officials who squashed the sighting, it was the head master. He was so scared he refused to go into school yard even after it was back in the sky.
05 - When the Royal Australian Air Force tried to contact the headmaster he told them 'go jump in a lake'.
06 - Children ran into science masters room hysterical so he went to look himself.
07 - Couldn't see UFO at first but saw other children looking towards the north-east. When he joined the children he saw the UFO hovering just above power lines.
08 - Science master described the object as a bright silver object, size of a tire with a 'bar/rod' into the air.
09 - At this point he noted a light plane moving towards it about 1000ft up, 2000ft from where he was standing.
10 - Now joined by more children and the physical education teacher they watched.
11 - The light plane supposedly called in other planes and 4 converged on object with this light plane.
12 - Science master says most amazing flight maneuvering he ever seen in his life commenced, planes were doing everything possible to approach the object. Amazed there was no collision.
13 - Every time planes got near the object it would slowly accelerate, then rapidly accelerate away from the planes and then stop again. Every time they chased it would do the same.
14 - This continued for 20 minutes, by this stage 360 people (children, staff) were watching
15 - The thing shot away in seconds (I don't know if I heard that correctly, so sorry).
16 - The headmaster then come out and demanded everyone to return to their classes at once and gave the school a lecture. He told the students they would be punished if they discussed it and told staff they'd lose their jobs if they did.
17 - Science master has 3 degrees, was not stupid. He was very annoyed with the headmaster.
18 - When asking the PE teacher to describe what she saw in detail she wouldn't say anything.
19 - One of the older children confirmed the full story and accurately described the object. When going to re-ask the student she was no long there, she had gone home and wouldn't discuss it again.

Australia's 1966 Westall Ufo Encounter

Westall ‘66: A Suburban UFO Mystery - Mass Australian UFO landing and sighting (50th anniversary)

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

As many of you will know, the mystery of the Men in Black is one which has fascinated me for years. It’s a subject that quietly began in the late 1940s – but which really took off in the early 1950s. It was all as a result of the creepy encounters of Albert Bender, a resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who established the International Flying Saucer Bureau. Not long after, Bender closed it down: he was threatened by a trio of strange characters dressed in black, and who literally materialized in his attic-based abode. While I have given my views on Bender in my various books on the MIB, it’s always good to get the views of others too. Which brings me to Ray Boeche – UFO researcher and priest – who I interviewed to get his views on the matter of Bender and the Men in Black. Ray told me the following, which I present without interruption:

“I was actually in touch with Albert Bender in the early to mid-70s, which was years after his Men in Black experience. This was in California, when he was involved in helping preserve the work of film composer Max Steiner, and he just would not discuss it: the experience, the Men in Black, none of it. It had obviously affected him.

“I was a kid when I was first in contact with [Gray] Barker [controversial writer/publisher on the paranormal, and a friend to Bender] , and stayed in contact right up until a few months before he passed away. He was always helpful on the phone and in correspondence; he was a very amenable guy. From the contact and conversations I had with Barker, I do think something happened with Bender. Just how much of the actual written account we have is confabulation and how much is exaggeration, I don’t know. But something did happen to Bender, and it may very well have involved FBI agents. And, I tend to think that Bender’s experience was precipitated by a visit from someone in the government.

“Bender may well have been visited by FBI agents. And that whole image of black suits and threats that were possibly playing on Bender’s mind may have dictated how these forces, Bender’s MIB, appeared for him as his involvement with the occult proceeded and he had the experience in his bedroom. He did have a longstanding fascination with the occult, and I think that the FBI visit could have had a definite impact on how he might have experienced these other things, and how ‘they’ might have appeared to him in a context that would serve their ends: the dark suits and hats. There’s a distinct possibility that the phenomenon was pulling this imagery – the FBI agents, black suits, and their visits and warnings – out of Bender’s subconscious and masquerading as something connected to the saucer people to lure him further into the occult.

“There’s a lot we can take from some of the early research into psychedelics, where the major thrust of what type of experience the person would have would be dictated by mindset and setting. And I think that ties into the Bender story, in a sense. I think there’s this idea that if we open ourselves to outside influences – I’m speaking in spiritual terms here – or we seek contact or an experience with an alien, then you assume it to be that – an alien – if and when it appears. It may not be what it purports to be. I think these forces can play on our own mental predispositions of what we expect we see.

“I have always thought that one of the most important things that John Keel ever said was that if you have kids or teenagers, this is not something to encourage them to get involved  with. Keel  was a pretty dyed-in-the-wool atheist. But he understand that, at some level, there’s something, in some sense transcendent over us, that can, if nothing else, ‘mess’ with us. And it can cause a lot of damage.

“Sometimes, I think I’m singing a one-note song with this, from a Christian perspective. I would not consider myself theologically liberal or a theological fundamentalist. My beliefs are solidly orthodox, and rooted in my view of the Bible as God’s inerrant Word. But there are things that we just aren’t equipped  to deal with from a mechanistic, naturalistic worldview. There are malevolent forces out there that will be happy to take advantage of just about any opening we give them. And, so, we need to be very cautious. I tend to think that may be what happened to Albert Bender, but he might not have been so cautious.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Sky Turns BLACK In Remote Russian Towns – Locals Blame secret weapons test, aliens or the DEVIL?

These are incredibly strange times! Remote Russian towns were plunged into total darkness for several hours last week — sparking lots of rumours of a secret Kremlin weapons test, UFOs or even the devil’s work!

Mystery surrounds the sudden appearance of the massive black cloud that turned day into night across an area bigger than the British Isles.

There has also been claims that the terrifying phenomenon could have been the caused by the dust from a meteorite strike or the test of an apocalyptic weapon.

Eerie clouds sweep over parts of Russia as an area bigger than the British Isles is mysteriously plunged into darkness

Other explanations for mystified locals are a UFO, an unreported eclipse, the “work of the devil”, or smoke from unidentified wildfires.  Strangely enough, Moscow’s defence and meteorological officials have STILL failed to comment on the cloud — which hit three vast mainly Arctic districts in Yakutia region. There were no reports of meteorites, eclipses or weapons tests – let alone sightings of alien spacecrafts.

A local resident in from Eveno-Bytantaisky said: “Messages are going around about about a light flash registered by the US satellites, followed by increase of radioactive level and unusual activity of the military.

“We are never going to be told is this was true or false.”

Some claimed it could be a “new type of weapon” being tested by the Russian military.

Another source said: “This can only be explained by a UFO.”

Locals reported having difficulty breathing is a the mystery cloud engulfed the region

Residents reported darkness beginning around 11.30am and lasting almost three hours on Friday.

Gloom descended on Eveno-Bytantaisky, Zhigansky and Verkhoyansky but none of these districts have been hit by wildfires that are raging in other Siberian localities.

The areas are so far north that at this time of year they have virtually 24-hour light — but as one local said: “Day suddenly turned into a dark night”.

Another said:

“I couldn’t see a thing without switching lights on.

“We took torches to walk outside, but actually no-one wanted to be on the street because the feeling was as if something heavy in the air was pressing on your chest.”

Accounts spoke of a thick layer of dust after the darkness but this has been denied by some officials, who also expressed doubts that pollution from wildfires was the cause.

The sun struggled to be seen through the thick cloud cover

Villagers feared the work of the devil had caused the mystery darkness

A local official in Nizhne-Bytantaisky settlement said: “At first it looked like it was a strong thunderstorm coming.

“The air went dark, and got darker and darker, but this time unlike anything else we have seen before the darkness had a rich yellow undertone.”

Konstantin Starostin, head of the settlement, said: “When the sun vanished, people started calling us.

“Many got scared, especially elderly people.

“The sun was gone from 11.30 until 14.00 on Friday 20 July.”

Head of Verkhoyansk town Yevgeny Potapov was quoted by The Siberian Times saying: “Something strange happened on that day.”

Almost all Arctic districts reported a significant temperature fall around the time of the daytime darkness.

The Russian Government and military STILL will not comment or have any answers for this strange event!

U.I.P SUMMARY

These are strange times people and appear to be getting even stranger! No matter what the rumours are there is still NO official confirmation for what caused this strange darkness!

Could it be a top secret weapon unleashed by the Russians, or perhaps Aliens could be responsible for this bizarre event (there were strange sounds recorded at the same time of the event!?). We are doing a lot of research into this and will keep you all updated with our findings!

MWV

{ http://www.ufointernationalproject.com/ }

BREAKING CLAIM: Aliens collect stars to stay ALIVE in space

It appears that the TRUTH towards disclosure is building! ALIEN civilisations could be harnessing the power of caged stars to stay alive in an expanding universe, a scientist has claimed.

Dan Hooper, a scientist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, suggested extraterrestrials could store and collect stars through technology knows as Dyson Spheres.

Dyson spheres are theoretical structures capable of confining a star to syphon its vast stores of energy.

In a pre-publication research paper, Dr Hooper theorised alien species use Dyson spheres to stay ahead of expanding space.

Dr Hooper wrote: “The presence of dark energy in our universe is causing space to expand at an accelerating rate.

An artists impression of an Alien Dyson Sphere

“As a result, over the next approximately 100 billion years, all stars residing beyond the Local Group will fall beyond the cosmic horizon and become not only unobservable, but entirely inaccessible, thus limiting how much energy could one day be extracted from them.

“Here, we consider the likely response of a highly advanced civilisation to this situation.

“In particular, we argue that in order to maximise its access to useable energy, a sufficiently advanced civilisation would chose to expand rapidly outward, build Dyson Spheres or similar structures around encountered stars, and use the energy that is harnessed to accelerate those stars away from the approaching horizon and toward the centre of the civilisation.”

According to the hypothetical scenario, technologically advanced alien species could target stars smaller than that in our solar system to utilise their incredible power.

Research on the presence of dark matter in the universe suggests space is rapidly expanding and the distance between planets and stars is growing.

The presence of dark energy in our universe is causing space to expand

Dan Hooper, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

The so-called Hubble Constant, first introduced by astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1992, claims the universe is growing at a rate of 68km/s.

The expansion is understood to be an aftermath of the Big Bang when the universe erupted into the existence.

More recent estimates on the rate of expansion peg the number in the range of about 71.9km/s (44.7 miles/s) but different measurements appear to give different results.

Sherry Sulu, of the Mx Planck Institute, said: “The expansion rate of the universe is now starting to be measured in different ways with such high precision that actual discrepancies may possibly point towards new physics beyond our current knowledge of the universe.”

Dr Hopper agued within around 100 billion years from now, all matter which is not gravitationally bound to the Milky Way Galaxy will “casually drift away” into the void.

Dyson sphere-bound stars could circumvent this problem by creating gravitational pools around which civilisations could gather.

The scientists wrote:

“Given the inevitability of the encroaching horizon, any sufficiently advanced civilisation that is determined to maximise its ability to utilise energy will expand throughout the universe, attempting to secure as many stars as possible before they become permanently inaccessible.

“To this end, they could build Dyson Spheres or other such structures around the stars that are encountered, and use the energy that is collected to propel those stars toward the centre of the civilisation, where they will become gravitationally bound and thus protected from the future expansion of space.”

There was once a time that Scientists would have been laughed at and lost their jobs with these types of claims – things are definitely changing!

U.I.P SUMMARY

Well it appears that more and more scientists are now starting to drip feed us disclosure about the extraterrestrial beings in space, perhaps this is a government funded worldwide project to start waking the masses up?

There will be those who will laugh off such claims, however, lets not forget the recent discovery of Tabby’s star, as star which shows very clear signs of potentially having some huge ‘made’ alien structure surrounding it (please read below for more information on this).

Compared to other civilizations we are prehistoric in comparison, still dependent on fossil fuels for energy – it is important for us all to remember this!

MWV

{ http://www.ufointernationalproject.com/ }

NASA-zonnesonde die zaterdag ruimte in gaat, heeft Belgisch tintje - HLN-be

Parker is de eerste satelliet die zo dicht bij de zon zal cirkelen

Bron: Belga

De zonnesonde Parker is een project van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA. Parker - vernoemd naar de astrofysicus Gene Parker, die zestig jaar geleden het bestaan van zonnewind voorspelde - zal tot op iets meer dan zes miljoen kilometer van de zon naderen. Het wordt de eerste satelliet die zo dicht bij de zon cirkelt. 

Bedoeling van de missie is om de energiestromen in het buitenste deel van de atmosfeer rond de zon - de corona - te onderzoeken, net als de fysische mechanismen achter de zonnewind. 

Telescopen

Het ruimtevaartcentrum van de universiteit van Luik ontwikkelde één van de vier instrumenten aan boord, de WISPR of Wide-Field Imager For Solar Probe Plus. Het gaat om twee telescopen die opnames maken van de corona en de zonnewind, zo legt Pierre Rochus van de Luikse universiteit uit. De telescopen kunnen niet rechtstreeks in de zonnecorona kijken, omdat het dan te heet wordt. Maar ze observeren het licht dat door elektronen en stof van kometen en andere ruimteobjecten gediffuseerd wordt. 

WISPR kan daarna de link leggen met de bevindingen van de andere drie instrumenten aan boord. Het gaat onder meer om een geavanceerd toestel dat elektrische en magnetische velden en golven opmeet. 

Zes jaar

Parker zal er meer dan zes jaar over doen voordat het in zijn definitieve baan rond de zon is gemanoeuvreerd. NASA maakt daarvoor gebruik van de planeet Venus, die zeven keer van dichtbij wordt genaderd. Om de enorme zonnestraling te overleven, is de Parker Solar Probe uitgerust met een elf centimeter dik koolstofcomposietschild, dat temperaturen tot 1.400 graden celcius aankan.

De zonnesonde wordt zaterdag gelanceerd vanop de lanceerbasis Cape Canaveral in het Amerikaanse Florida.

Parker Solar Probe--Mission Overview

Parker Solar Probe

Parker Solar Probe

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

KAN EEN METEORIET DE DERDE WERELDOORLOG VEROORZAKEN ?

De reden dat wij als mensheid elkaar nog niet van deze planeet hebben weggeblazen met kernwapens is omdat er goede systemen zijn die het gebruik in de hand houden. 

Echter, onlangs explodeerde een meteoriet vlakbij een Amerikaanse radarinstallatie die is geprogrammeerd daarop te reageren omdat het dat registreert als een raketaanval met kernwapens. 

{ http://niburu.co/ }

SUPER LOW-FREQUENCY SPACE SIGNAL HAS SCIENTISTS MYSTIFIED

Mysterious 'Alien' Radio Signal: Here's What You Need to Know

Ryan F. Mandelbaum

The CHIME telescope under constructionPhoto: Mateus A. Fandiño - The CHIME collaboration (Wikimedia Commons)

You may have seen recent headlines about a strange radio signal picked up by a Canadian telescope. Some go as far as to say it was caused by all-caps ALIENS. 

It probably wasn’t from aliens, as far as we can tell—nor are these “fast radio bursts” something you should be worried about. The truth is, the FRB spotted by Canada’s CHIME radio telescope on July 25 wasn’t much different from other FRBs that telescopes have spotted. But it’s still pretty cool and the first of its kind, so let’s talk about why.

Mysterious SETI signal sends alien hunting telescopes scrambling

“It’s interesting because it was seen down to lower radio frequencies than we’ve seen an FRB before,” astronomer Emily Petroff from ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, told Gizmodo. “We just don’t know a lot about FRBs at these frequencies, so it’s great to see that they are at least detectable and CHIME is finding them.”

It’s true that FRBs are a cosmic mystery. First detected in 2001 but not reported until 2007, only around 50 of these events have been spotted by radio telescopes. They are quite literally fast radio bursts, bright-and-quick signals in the radio band, the longest wavelength and lowest-frequency electromagnetic radiation, beyond infrared and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum.

Astronomers don’t know what causes these bursts, but they might be surprisingly common. Top FRB candidates include neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, called magnetars. Some physicists have suggested dark matteror extraterrestrial intelligence. Perhaps there are several different sources. Scientists are still trying to figure it out.

CHIME’s fast radio burst, in green

Graphic: CHIME/FRB Collaboration

This hyped-up burst, called FRB 180725A, arrived at the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a large radio telescope in southern British Columbia, at around 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific time on July 25. It lasted for approximately two milliseconds, and had a frequency as low as 580 MHz, according to its Astronomer’s Telegram entry. The FM radio band spans frequencies from 88 to 108 MHz, for comparison, while a microwave oven excites molecules using an electric field with an alternating 2,450 MHzfrequency.

What makes this FRB so weird? It’s probably not much different from the rest, said Petroff, but 580 MHz is the lowest-frequency FRB scientists have spotted so far. Usually, these blips hit Earth with frequencies between 1,000 and 1,500 MHz. But it probably won’t be the last such blip. CHIME caught the signal during its commissioning phase, meaning the telescope is still getting up and running.

FRB 180725A is just a taste of what’s to come. CHIME’s enormous field of view could allow it to find one FRB per day. “So the main exciting thing about CHIME is that it will probably find lots of FRBs, meaning more chances to learn where they’re coming from,” said Petroff.

Is it exciting? Most certainly. Is it aliens? Probably not. It’s just another piece on the fast radio burst puzzle. In order to truly determine their source, scientists need to find more of them, especially ones that repeat, which could provide reliable observations.

 

Fast Radio Bursts Probably Aren’t Aliens, BUT We Haven’t Ruled It Out

{ https://gizmodo.com/ }

EXCLUSIVE: Discovery Channel treasure hunter claims he’s found evidence of an extra-terrestrial spaceship while exploring ancient shipwrecks beneath the Bermuda Triangle

• Explorer Darrell Miklos has been using secret maps created by famed NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean
• Diving at an undisclosed location near the Bahamas he found what  he believes is the  first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to earth hundreds of years ago
• What he thought could be an ancient shipwreck turned out to be  huge USO (unidentified submerged object)with  15, 300ft long obtrusions jutting from its sides
• 'It was a formation unlike anything I've ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that,' Miklos tells DailyMail.com
• Miklos' discoveries have featured over two seasons of hit Discovery Channel docu-series Cooper's Treasure

By RYAN PARRY WEST COAST CORRESPONDENT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A treasure hunter has made an astonishing 'unexplained' discovery deep beneath the Bermuda Triangle that he believes could provide the first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to earth hundreds of years ago.

Explorer Darrell Miklos has been using secret maps created by his close friend and famed NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper to find shipwrecks in the Caribbean.

His amazing discoveries have featured over two seasons of hit Discovery Channel docuseries Cooper's Treasure.

But in recent months his team stumbled on something that he believes will shock the world.

Using maps put together in the 1960s by Cooper to identify more than 100 magnetic 'anomalies' in the Caribbean, Miklos dived at an undisclosed location near the Bahamas to investigate what he thought could be an ancient shipwreck.

Darrell Miklos and his team discovered the USO (unidentified submerged object) in the Bermuda Triangle close to the Bahamas. He spotted the large obtrusions while exploring the area in a submersible looking for shipwrecks. 'I was trying to identify shipwreck material based on one of the anomaly readings on Gordon's charts when I noticed something that stuck out, that shocked me,' said Miklos in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com

Horizontal cylinder structures jut out from this large dome feature at the center of the site. Geophysicists on the team report that the coral covering these structures appears to be more than 5000 years old. 

A close up of one of the horizontal structures which has scientists baffled. Because of the extreme currents at the location it's almost impossible for coral to grow at all, let alone into a anything this large

Here, what he describes as the right jutting section of the USO.  According to scientists on Darrell's team, no coral anywhere in the world could grow in this formation naturally, there would have to be an underlying structure to support that type of growth

Miklos, 55, described what he found while filming episode seven of Cooper's Treasure and tells how he and his team want to bring the 'alien spaceship' to the surface 'It was a formation unlike anything I've ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that. 'It was also something that was completely different from anything that I've seen that was made by nature'

These horizontal structures are massive, each measures as much as 300 feet straight out, the length of a US football field. The explorer also found other bizarre and unexplained formations around the main object, all of which are covered in thick coral which he believes are hundreds if not thousands of years old

These mystery shapes score the top of the massive central mound. Each of these lines is the width of a family home

Here you can see the gigantic mound rising above the ring of structures that stick out from the center. The entire site's diameter is some 600 feet - the length of two football fields

But instead the veteran treasure hunter found a bizarre structure like nothing he's ever seen.

The huge unidentified submerged object (USO) has 15, 300ft long obtrusions jutting from its side.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Miklos, 55, described what he found while filming episode seven of Cooper's Treasure and tells how he and his team want to bring the 'alien spaceship' to the surface.

He recalls: 'We were doing a scene where I was sitting in a two man submersible.

'We were out in the Bahamas and we were on an English shipwreck trail, somehow related to Sir Francis Drake.

'I was trying to identify shipwreck material based on one of the anomaly readings on Gordon's charts when I noticed something that stuck out, that shocked me.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com Miklos, 55, described what he found while filming episode seven of Cooper's Treasure and tells how he and his team want to bring the 'alien spaceship' to the surface

'It was a formation unlike anything I've ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that.

'It was also something that was completely different from anything that I've seen that was made by nature.

'It's almost like there are five arms coming out of a steep wall cliff and each one of these is the size of a gun on a battleship. They're enormous and then there's five over here and five over there, 15 in total.

'There's identical formations in three different areas and they don't look nature made, they don't look man made, certainly nothing I've ever seen based on my experience and I have years of experience at doing this, we've identified multiple different types of shipwreck material, this doesn't match or look anything like that.'

The deepest part of the site is 300 feet below the surface, divers had to use special breathing apparatus and a state of the art submarine to access it.

The explorer also found other bizarre and unexplained formations around the main object, all of which are covered in thick coral which he believes are hundreds if not thousands of years old.

Blown away by the discovery, when back on board his ship, Miklos decided to dig further into Cooper's files to find further clues.

Significantly, the astronaut had written 'unidentified object' on the chart of the area rather than mentioning any historical shipwreck.

'I investigated some of Gordon's charts, I realized that there was something else on there that Gordon was referring to,' he said.

'Then it made sense to me why it wasn't identified as a shipwreck... he had to mean it might be something from another world.

'Gordon believed in aliens. He believed that we had visitors from other planets and he also believed that a lot of these things landed in this particular part of the world.'

The treasure hunter has made the astonishing 'unexplained' discovery deep beneath the Bermuda Triangle.  Miklos believes  it could provide the first evidence of an extra-terrestrial visit to earth hundreds of years ago.

The deepest part of the site is 300 feet below the surface, divers had to use special breathing apparatus and a state of the art submarine to access it

Gordon Cooper successfully piloted the Mercury-Atlas 9 Faith 7 Spacecraft around the Earth 22 times in 1963 paving the way for men to reach the Moon.

He was a pioneer who became the first American to sleep in space and the first to fly twice.

He was also the first American televised from space.

But as well as researching the limits of human endurance he was also charged with a secret spy mission while in orbit.

Using special 'long range detection equipment' Cooper was asked by the US government to look for 'nuclear threats' - which likely meant Russian submarines or nuclear missile sites.

But Miklos says Cooper - an avid treasure hunter - also noted the positions of Caribbean shipwrecks while he conducted this spy mission, and created a map on his return to Earth.

The shipwreck hunter claims long time friend Cooper gave him the maps - which included detailed charts and exact coordinates - after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's and then died in 2004 aged 77.

In the first season of the show Miklos and his team used Cooper's map to make a remarkable discovery in the Caribbean - a centuries-old anchor believed to be from one of Christopher Columbus’ ships.

Cooper's maps led Miklos to dozens of other significant ship wrecks across the Caribbean worth millions of dollars.

But with this latest discovery the Californian is conscious of being labeled 'crazy' by coming out with wild claims that Cooper's map might now have led him to an alien spaceship submerged under the ocean.

That's why he says he wants to remain 'neutral' until he can investigate the mysterious site further.

Miklos and TV production company AMPLE Entertainment are now hoping the Discovery Channel will commission a third season of Cooper's Treasure so they can do just that.

United States astronaut Gordon Cooper (1927-2004) pictured wearing his Mercury space suit used in early phases of the Project Gemini training program in the United States circa 1961. (Photo by Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

Miklos said: 'I want to investigate it. I want to see what it is, because it may be nature made, just a freak of nature, but given its placement in this particular part of the Caribbean and given what Gordon has told me about visitors from another planet and the things that I've seen, I think it's definitely worthwhile investigating.'

AMPLE Entertainment founders Ari Mark and Phil Lott, who are behind Cooper's Treasure, are equally as excited.

Mark told DailyMail.com: 'In the first two seasons we didn't enter too far into Cooper's UFO interests and what he had told Darrell about what he had seen.

'I don't feel like we've even scratched the surface of what's in Cooper's files, but that's what we hope to do in a third season.

'The bottom line is that Cooper spotted anomalies and it is his maps that led Darrell to this discovery.

'Cooper was a reliable source for treasure, then based on his findings Darrell found something that does not appear to be a shipwreck or anything that anybody has ever seen.

'We want to find out exactly what it is and establish whether it ties in with Cooper's belief that we're not alone.'

During his post-NASA career, former US Air Force Cooper became well known as an outspoken believer in UFOs and claimed the government was covering up its knowledge of extra-terrestrial activity.

'I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth,' he told a United Nations panel in 1985.

'I feel that we need to have a top-level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the Earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion.'

He added: 'For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us.'

Miklos said Cooper often told him stories of UFO sightings and believed a lot of the world's technological advances had been passed on to governments by messengers from alien planets.

Cooper even designed his own miniature 'UFO' based on an alien design he claimed to have seen.

Using special 'long range detection equipment' Cooper was asked by the US government to look for 'nuclear threats' - which likely meant Russian submarines or nuclear missile sites. But Miklos says Cooper - an avid treasure hunter - also noted the positions of Caribbean shipwrecks while he conducted this spy mission, and created a map on his return to Earth. The shipwreck hunter claims long time friend Cooper gave him the maps - which included detailed charts and exact coordinates

Miklos said Cooper often told him stories of UFO sightings and believed a lot of the world's technological advances had been passed on to governments by messengers from alien planets

Producers Ari Mark (top left) and Phil Lott (top right) with treasure hunter Miklos, host of Discovery Channel's 'Cooper's Treasure

But as for Cooper being a UFO 'nut job', Miklos couldn't disagree more.

He described him as a 'close friend' and 'father figure' who was of 'sane mind'.

'I can tell you one thing for sure, there was a lot of conspiracy theorists and UFO nut jobs that he wanted nothing to do with,' said Miklos.

'Just because he had actual encounters with something that he couldn't explain and other encounters to which he did have an explanation for, but he wasn't going to go and befriend all of these crazy different types of groups.

'In the early days he wasn't going to overstep the bounds of what he could reveal out of fear of getting killed (by the government) and what good would that do. So he kept a lid on it, he kept a lot of it quiet until later in his life.

'So the man I knew wasn't a whack job, he wasn't hallucinating and he wasn't making things up to gain attention, that wasn't him.

'He truly believed in what he saw and he tried to tell it in such a way to make people believe it and he knew because of his background in NASA as a rocket scientist that he was more credible than most.'

Nevertheless, Cooper was often discredited for expressing his beliefs on extra-terrestrial activity, but Miklos added: 'As serious as I'm talking here right now with a clear mind to you, that's who he was.

'He was an honest, straight forward individual who only wanted to investigate and explore the possibilities of the unknown, even if it meant risking his professional career.'

The next episode of Cooper's Treasure airs this Friday on the Discovery Channel at 9pm (PST)

{ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Why Even AI-Powered Factories Will Have Jobs for Humans

YAGI STUDIO/GETTY IMAGES

It was going to be the factory of the future. Dubbed the “Alien Dreadnought,”Tesla’s new manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, was designed to be fully automated — no humans need apply. If all went well, AI-powered robots would enable the company to achieve a weekly production of 5,000 Model 3 electric cars to keep up with burgeoning demand. But Tesla fell far short of that mark, manufacturing just 2,000 vehicles a week. The problem, as the company painfully discovered, was that full automation wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. According to CEO Elon Musk, the sophisticated robots actually slowed down production instead of speeding it up.

Tesla’s solution was to shut down production to address the bottlenecks and then to erect a large temporary structure — essentially a tent — for additional capacity. The company has also hired hundreds of workers to revamp production processes, train (and retrain) the robots, and swap them out when needed, among other tasks. As Musk himself tweeted last April, “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”

Tesla is not the only company to learn the pitfalls of excessive automation. In our global study of more than 1,000 companies at the forefront of implementing AI systems, we have found that the greatest performance gains are achieved not when machines are used to replace employees, but when they are deployed to work alongside them. In such collaborative relationships, people help machines become better, and machines enable people to achieve step-level increases in performance.

Adding Humans to the Mix

For Tesla, adding more human labor to the mix means extending traditional jobs with additional responsibilities that would help ensure the smooth and efficient operation of the Alien Dreadnought. So, for instance, an equipment maintenance supervisor must be able to do more than just supervise hourly technicians and manage the repair of equipment. The worker must also possess robotics and controls engineering skills, according to our analysis of Tesla’s recent recruiting efforts. Similarly, equipment maintenance technicians need more than just the know-how to diagnose and troubleshoot industrial equipment. They must also be able to use a variety of analytics, such as thermography and vibration analysis, to proactively determine when certain maintenance procedures should be performed on machinery before a breakdown occurs.

And it’s not just traditional jobs that are being extended to encompass new tasks. Our analysis has uncovered that entirely new categories of jobs are being created. Just as the internet revolution ushered in completely novel jobs — for example, web designer and search-engine optimization engineer — so will the new era of AI. Telsa, for instance, is recruiting robot engineers, computer vision scientists, deep learning scientists, and machine learning systems engineers. And the company has also posted job listings for more-esoteric AI specialties such as a battery algorithms engineer and a sensor-fusion object tracking and prediction engineer. For the former position, the requirements go beyond knowledge of lithium-ion cells (cell capacity, impedance, energy, and so on) to include expertise to develop algorithms for state-of-the-art feedback control and estimation. Moreover, it’s not just technology-related jobs that are being reimagined with AI. In fact, as Tesla and other companies have discovered, AI technologies are having a profound impact throughout the enterprise, from sales and marketing, to R&D, to back-office functions like accounting and finance. As just one example, Tesla deploys an AI system to process its customer data, including information from an online forum, in order to identify common problems with the company’s vehicles.

Some Training Required

Obviously, finding the right individuals to fill roles like “battery algorithms engineer” is not an easy task, especially given the severe shortage of AI expertise, which has pushed some annual salaries well above $300,000. As such, many companies are trying to grow the talent they need in-house. Yet in our global study, we found that although executives have realized that their reskilling programs will require a bigger and different set of activities than in the past, nearly three-quarters of the 1,500 global companies we surveyed said they have struggled with how to proceed.

The solution will require significant new investments in reskilling — especially given that only about 3% of companies are planning along these lines — and may call for collaboration with outside partners as well as government agencies. Consider Adidas’s “Speedfactory,” an advanced manufacturing plant that recently started production outside Atlanta. To open the 74,000-square-foot robotic plant, which will enable manufacturing flexibility for making sneakers designed specifically for local consumers, Adidas worked closely with local authorities in Georgia and with German-based partner OECHSLER Motion. Currently, the facility employs about 150 people in numerous jobs that are highly technical: planners, engineers, stitchers, and technicians. As the factory was being built, OECHSLER staff worked from a startup hub that was run as a partnership between Chattahoochee Technical College, the Cherokee Office of Economic Development, and the Woodstock Office of Economic Development. Other incentives included a state tax credit of $3,500 per job created, as well as assistance from Georgia Quick Start, a state program that provides training support. In addition, Adidas flew employees to Germany for training, to work with the specialized AI-based robotic machinery.

As the amount of employee training increases, some companies have begun to develop their own certification programs to help employees acquire the knowledge and expertise they’ll need. Take, for example, GE Global Research, which has set up online programs to teach machine learning and other specific skills. Several hundred employees have already completed the company’s certification program for data analytics, which have enabled people to assume new roles.

Back at Tesla, Model 3 workers receive more training than other production staff, and this includes classroom training in both manufacturing essentials and manufacturing fundamentals. Tesla has also been launching new technician training programs that, for example, help people make the transition from working on internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. And the company has partnered with colleges to provide students with the education they’ll need for a career in the electric-vehicle industry.

As much as Tesla has embraced automation and AI, the company’s success will ultimately depend on humans. To meet burgeoning demand for the Model 3, Musk has expressed his desire to eventually run three shifts of manufacturing a day, essentially keeping the assembly line in nonstop operation. To accomplish that, the plan is to hire about 400 employees a week, resulting in considerable demands for onboard training to accommodate that influx. Meeting that challenge of employee training will be crucial to attain the necessary economies of scale, given the Model 3’s relatively low entry price point, starting at $35,000. According to one analysis, the car has the potential to achieve a 30% margin, which would be unprecedented for a battery-powered vehicle. Yet even as the company finally achieved the targeted production of 5,000 vehicles in the last week of June, whether it can maintain and accelerate that aggressive pace remains to be seen. Ironically, even in the factory of the future, humans may be needed now more than ever.

{ https://hbr.org/ }

Russian meteor found made of diamond-like alien material never seen on Earth

The material is hard, almost as hard as a diamond that has never been seen before on Earth

By : Immanuel Jotham

Strange new mineral found in a Russian meteorite-Representational image  University of New Mexico

Prospectors hunting for gold in southern Russia stumbled upon a chunk of material that turned out to be a meteorite made of material that has never been seen before on Earth.

This alien piece of rock has been named Uakitite after the town it was found in. Scientists presented the discovery of the Uakit meteorite at the Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Moscow.

Impossible "Alien Crystal" Found In Meteorite?

Researchers say that 98 percent of the meteorite is made up of kamacite, an alloy of iron and nickel. This alloy is made of nearly 90 to 95 percent iron and about 5 to 10 percent nickel. It is formed in space and only found in its natural state in meteors, notes a report by LiveScience.

The remaining 1 to 2 percent of the Uakit meteorite was found to be made of about a dozen minerals that are known to have formed only in space. The composition of this meteorite suggests that it was formed under extreme heat of well over 1,000 degree C, say the researchers.

Kamacite is an alloy commonly found in meteorites. In the case of a new discovery in Siberia, it was found to contain traces of a new mineral completely alien to science.

Photo / Supplied

On further study, researchers found the uakitite as miniscule grains in the rock, no larger than 5 micrometres—less than 25 times the size of a grain of sand. The quantity of Uakitite was so small that scientists could not even accurately put together all of its properties, notes the report.

However, researchers found that it is structurally comparable to two other out-of this-world minerals—carlsbergite and osbornite. Referred to as mononitrides, these minerals contain one nitrogen atom in their make up, notes the report.

Mononitrides are described as being hard and can even be used as an abrasive, said lead researcher Victor Sharygin, from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy.

While rumours have spread that uakitite is actually harder than diamond—the hardest naturally formed mineral on Earth—Sharygin clarified that this claim is untrue. In fact, "the hardness of uakitite was not measured directly," because the grains were too small, he said. Researchers instead estimated the hardness of uakitite using vanadium nitride, because it closely resembles Uakitite.

The meteorite found in the Siberian region of Uakit. It has been found to contain a hard, never-before-seen, mineral.

Photo / Supplied

Researchers have said that uakitite falls between 9 and 10 on the Mohs hardness scale where a diamond is placed at 10. That means it is hard, but not diamond hard.

{ https://www.ibtimes.co.in/ }