Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
August 25, 1951 was a quiet summer night in Lubbock, Texas. That evening, a handful of scientists from Texas Technical College were hanging out in the backyard of geology professor Dr. W.I. Robinson, drinking tea and chatting about micrometeorites. It was quite the brain trust: chemical engineering professor Dr. A. G. Oberg, physics professor Dr. George and Dr. W. L. Ducker, head of the petroleum-engineering department.
Which made the story of what they witnessed that night all the more curious.
“If a group had been hand-picked to observe a UFO, we couldn’t have picked a more technically qualified group of people,” wrote U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt later in his definitive 1956 casebook, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.In the early 1950s Ruppelt served as lead investigator for Project Blue Book, the official Air Force investigations into UFO sightings, after working on its precursor effort, Project Grudge.
The Lubbock Lights, photographed by 19-year old Carl Hart, Jr. on August 30, 1951 in Lubbock, Texas.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Sightings of the blue-green lights kept growing
Around 9:20 p.m., the university colleagues saw something otherworldly in the expansive Texas sky: a V-shaped formation of 15 to 30 blueish-green lights passing overhead. Stunned, but still using their trained scientific reasoning, they figured the lights would reappear. And they did, about an hour later, in a more haphazard formation. The scientists were all in agreement: They had witnessed something fantastic—but what was it?
The professors weren’t the only credible witnesses to the mysterious blue-green lights that night. At dusk, in Albuquerque, New Mexico (about 350 miles away from Lubbock), an employee of the Atomic Energy Commission’s top-secret Sandia Corporation—a man with a high-level “Q” security clearance—had been sitting outside with his wife. According to Ruppelt:
They were gazing at the night sky, commenting on how beautiful it was when both of them were startled at the sight of a huge airplane flying swiftly and silently over their home… On the aft edge of the wings, there were six to eight pairs of soft, glowing, bluish lights.
Edward Ruppelt oversaw Project Blue Book for the U.S. Air Force, a program that monitored and investigated UFO reports.
Everett
An hour or so after, according to a retired rancher from Lubbock, his wife had seen something terrifying in the night sky. Ruppelt described it this way:
Just after dark, his wife had gone outdoors to take some sheets off the clothesline. He was inside the house reading the paper. Suddenly his wife had rushed into the house…“as white as the sheets she was carrying.” The reason his wife was so upset was that she had seen a large object glide swiftly and silently over the house. She said it looked like “an airplane without a body.” On the back edge of the wing were pairs of glowing bluish lights.
By the time Ruppelt flew into Lubbock to investigate the sightings in late September, hundreds of residents had seen the lights over a period of two weeks.
But not everyone had waited for the government to start looking into the matter. After alerting local papers like the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, the Texas Tech professors started their own informal investigation. In the weeks after their initial August 25sighting, they and their friends observed the lights 12 more times. They measured the lights’ angles, roughly calculated their speed and noted that they always traveled from north to south. Armed with walkie-talkies, the scientist-sleuths and their friends formed two teams and attempted to measure the UFO’s altitude, with little success.
As the days went on, more and more Lubbock residents claimed to have seen the lights. And when the professors cross-checked these reports against what they themselves had seen and recorded, many of the facts lined up, Ruppelt wrote. Of course, few if any had recorded the phenomena with the same level of detail as the professors.
But while many observers offered incomplete or poorly expressed recollections, there’s little doubt that whatever people were seeing was something real. UFO sightings are usually one-off events, but these blue-green lights were observed multiple times, by hundreds of people.
Plus, for many, there was physical proof: black-and-white photos taken by a Texas Tech freshman named Carl Hart, Jr. On August 31—the same night an Air Force wife and her daughter claimed to have seen a UFO while driving northwest from Matador, Texas, to Lubbock—Hart was keeping vigil in his bedroom, looking out for the infamous lights. According to Ruppelt:
It was a warm night and his bed was pushed over next to an open window. He was looking out at the clear night sky, and had been in bed about a half hour, when he saw a formation of the lights appear in the north… cross an open patch of sky, and disappear over his house. Knowing that the lights might reappear as they had done in the past, he grabbed his loaded Kodak 35, set the lens and shutter at f 3.5 and one-tenth of a second, and went out into the middle of the backyard. Before long, his vigil was rewarded when the lights made a second pass. He got two pictures. A third formation went over a few minutes later, and he got three more pictures.
These hotly debated images, which show a cluster of dim lights in a V-formation moving through the night sky, are the only visual representation of what hundreds were now claiming they saw.
Captain Edward Ruppelt, standing between the two seated men, with other officers of the U.S. Air Force at a 1952 news conference where they announced the installment of more than 200 cameras in attempts to obtain data on the unidentified flying objects reported from various parts of the nation.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Was it birds? Or planes? The government's investigator goes coy
As Ruppelt began his formal investigation, he found that the lights had affected all who saw them, including a hardened old man from Lamesa, who had witnessed them with his wife. “He broke off his story of the lights and launched into his background as a native Texan, with range wars, Indians and stagecoaches under his belt,” Ruppelt recalled of their interview session. “What he was trying to point out was that despite the range wars, Indians and stagecoaches, he had been scared. His wife had been scared, too.”
The old Lamesa man had suggested that the lights were actually plover birds, a theory to which Ruppelt would lend some credence. But just like many people Ruppelt interviewed, the old man admitted he and his wife had been looking for the lights after reading about them in the paper. This was a common thread tying together many of the witnesses. “One point of interest was that very few claimed to have seen the lights before reading the professors’ story in the paper,” Ruppelt wrote. “But this could get back to the old question, ‘Do people look up if they have no reason to do so?’”
So, what exactly did all these people witness? In The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt—by all accounts an honorable and fair man who oversaw what many describe as the “golden age” of the government’s official UFO investigations—offers a strangely evasive explanation:
I thought that the professors’ lights might have been some kind of birds reflecting the light from mercury-vapor street lights, but I was wrong. They weren’t birds, they weren’t refracted light, but they weren’t spaceships. The lights that the professors saw…have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon…I can’t divulge exactly the way the answer was found because it is an interesting story of how a scientist set up complete instrumentation to track down the lights. Telling the story would lead to his identity and, in exchange for his story, I promised the man complete anonymity... With the most important phase of the Lubbock Lights “solved”—the sightings by the professors—the other phases become only good UFO reports.
And so, the mystery of the Lubbock Lights remains unsolved.
“The Lubbock Lights incident persists in the memory of many older citizens, and to this day captivates researchers from across the country,” Dr. Monte L. Monroe, Southwest collection archivist at Texas Tech University told Texas Highways Magazine. “Mention the event, and everyone has an opinion. Some believe the bright, semicircular, so-called ‘string of beads’ crossed the sky at great speed, high in the stratosphere. Few agree with the streetlight-illuminated, migratory duck-bellies theory ventured at the time by skeptics or in the Air Force report.”
According to Monroe, the professors and other witnesses—tired of explaining themselves and what they saw—almost totally ceased giving interviews by the 1970s. In a rare informal interview, more than 40 years after the sightings, Carl Hart, Jr. reportedly told author and UFO researcher Kevin D. Randle he still had no idea what he had photographed that pleasant August night many moons ago. But like hundreds of others witnesses in and around Lubbock that strange Texas summer, he saw something he would never forget.
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NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge that kicked off in 2015 has challenged teams around the U.S. to render, prove the structural integrity, and construct a model of a habitat that could one day shelter humans on the surface of the Moon or even Mars.
And yesterday, NASA crowned the top three winners of the Challenge’s latest round, challenging the participating teams to “complete a virtual construction level.” The top three teams, which split a prize of $100,000, hail from New York, Arkansas, and New Haven — and their designs are bold visions of off-world habitation.
First Place
The winner of this round of the Challenge is team SEArch+/Apis Cor for a vertical habitat design that can be continuously reinforced with additional 3D printing. Light enters through circular ports around the outside and the top.
Second Place
Second place goes to Team Zopherus for a design that would be constructed by a roving 3D printer.
Third Place
Team Mars Incubator was awarded third place. Its pods are made out of hexagonal pieces of 3D printed plates consisting of polyethylene, fibers, and locally sourced regolith, could one day house a team of astronauts.
It’s a fascinating competition that paints an incredibly detailed picture of what the future of Moon or even Mars exploration could look like one day — and we’ve never been closer to that future.
Mission to Europa Gets New Instrument to Look for Signs of Habitability
Amid technical and political hurdles, a veteran planetary scientist takes charge of a key part of Europa Clipper, a spacecraft targeted at the solar system’s most intriguing moon
NASA is changing one of the key scientific instruments on Europa Clipper, its next major mission to the outer planets of the solar system, and has brought in a scientific luminary to lead it, project leaders announced today. Clipper is set to orbit Jupiter and study Europa, the icy Jovian moon, across multiple flybys. Earlier this month, NASA headquarters terminated the mission’s ICEMAG magnetometer instrument, citing overruns in its estimated budget. The move left the spacecraft without an essential tool to study Europa’s interior ocean, where astrobiologists hope extraterrestrial organisms might be found.
Margaret Kivelson, a professor emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles, will lead the effort to develop a simplified magnetometer to replace ICEMAG. The instrument will measure Europa’s magnetic field and gather data on the ocean’s depth and salinity. Kivelson previously ledthe magnetometer team on the spacecraft Galileo, which orbited Jupiter in the 1990s. She is credited with discovering the ocean beneath Europa’s ice shell.
ICEMAG’s estimated cost had grown to $45 million—nearly three times its proposed price—according to NASA headquarters. Sophisticated internal sensors had vexed the ICEMAG science team and led to much of the extra expense. The new magnetometer will do away with those sensors, using simplified components instead. The downside is that the new sensors will likely lose calibration over time and drift in response to temperature variations. The team is now devising strategies to compensate for these effects.
Robert Pappalardo, the project scientist of the Europa Clipper mission, made the announcement earlier today at the spring meeting of the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science in Washington, D.C. “I recommended to NASA that we immediately stand up a team leader from within the team, and with established magnetometry expertise,” Pappalardo said. “I have the pleasure of announcing that Dr. Margaret Kivelson has accepted that role.”
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
NASA headquarters officially signed on to the Clipper mission in 2015. The spacecraft is due to launch in 2023, and upon entering Jupiter’s orbit, will collect data on Europa by making multiple close encounters with the icy moon. Today, Clipper is in the middle of perhaps the most critical part of its development. By the end of the year, decades of dreams by hundreds of people should finally begin manifesting as physical realities, in the form of instrument and spacecraft components. Next year, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., which is leading the spacecraft’s design and construction, will begin putting the pieces together.
Everyone who has ever held a science textbook is familiar with some of the results of famous space missions—big, beautiful images of Saturnfrom the Cassini orbiter, for instance, or the famous Pale Blue Dot portrait of Earth by the Voyager 1 probe. But the long road to launch is less understood. Todd May, the former director of Marshall Space Flight Center, noted in a talk several years ago that journalists tend to describe the “real work” as beginning once the spacecraft has left Earth. But, he asserted, getting through development—bringing a spacecraft from PowerPoint to the launchpad—is the real challenge. “The first inch off the ground is the hardest part,” he said. The Clipper science and engineering teams have for years honed and tested every aspect of design, implementation and operation of the spacecraft. The only thing they have not done is build the thing.
Europa presents unique challenges and potential rewards. The moon is located in Jupiter’s radiation belts, a punishing environment similar to the aftermath of a nuclear bomb detonation. Moreover, the spacecraft’s energy source—its solar panels—requires scientists to carefully map its trajectory to collect every available photon so far from the sun. When it reaches the far side of Jupiter, the spacecraft must be able to survive sunless, cryogenic temperatures. The prize for overcoming these challenges is a global saltwater ocean beneath its ice shell hypothesized to have the chemistry and energy necessary to sustain life. If there is non-Earth life anywhere in the solar system, it is there, experts say.
“We are gearing up for one last review needed for confirmation of the mission by NASA,” Pappalardo says. “That is where NASA says that you are ready and cleared to go build the instruments and spacecraft.” In April, the project will go through its “delta preliminary design review” (PDR)—a reevaluation of certain elements of the spacecraft that had given NASA pause. An independent board will assess whether the spacecraft’s designs match up with the mission’s requirements, and that cost, risk and schedule correspond to reality. Once completed successfully, the project will go through another review at NASA headquarters called “key decision point C.” The agency will commit to the calendar and cost determined during the PDR, and the process of finalizing design and fabricating the hardware can begin. “It’s a really fascinating part of the process seeing how everything fits together,” says Zibi Turtle, principal investigator of the Europa Imaging System investigation. “Everybody builds their own instrument, and when they stick them all on the spacecraft, you have to make sure there aren’t any unexpected interactions.”
One of the issues troubling NASA has been the marriage of Clipper’s solar panels with its ice-penetrating radar, called REASON. Originally, the massive radar antennas—used to study the structure of the ice shell, locate lakes within it and find interfaces between the ice and the ocean—was to be mounted on the spacecraft like any instrument. But the radar team and JPL engineers determined that building the radar into the solar array would prevent interference between the two components, while taking up less physical space. This was a fairly radical design in a business where “heritage”—the use of proven technologies—customarily carries the day. In January, REASON passed its “integrated wing review”—an evaluation of its integration with the solar arrays, following separate preliminary design reviews of each. “They showed me off the steps of the scaffolding,” says Don Blankenship, REASON principal investigator, joking that he avoided execution.
But perhaps the greatest unknown for the mission is its ride to space. According to the law funding the spacecraft, Europa Clipper must launch in 2023 on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket currently under development. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that this rocket will not be ready in time, which means Clipper might have to ride on a smaller commercial rocket. Such a change would require altering the law—something easier said than done—and would also add a delay, as the heavy-lift SLS would be able to send the spacecraft on a direct, 28-month flight to Jupiter. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a backup commercial option, is not powerful enough for such a trajectory and would require a six-year tour of the solar system to deliver Clipper to its target.
THE BENEFACTOR
Another challenge for Clipper is the recent loss of its benefactor in Congress. As chair of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee of the House of Representatives, John Culberson, the former Texas Republican representative, proved to be Europa’s protector. Unlike every other mission in NASA’s portfolio, he put Clipper not in “report language” that accompanies an appropriations bill (but is not legally binding), but rather, for several years now, into the actual bill. Accordingly, he has been known to boast, by federal law Clipper and Europa Lander (a follow-on mission that would use Clipper data to touch down on the surface and dig around for evidence of life) are the only two missions that it is illegal for NASA not to fly.
When Culberson was defeated for reelection last year, things looked grim. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve, however. “Before I left,” he says, “I won the support of a number of my House colleagues to be sure that they would protect those missions.” And tying Clipper to SLS should help. The rocket is being built in Alabama, home of the powerful chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, as well as the ranking member of the House appropriations subcommittee responsible for NASA. Those representatives have a vested interest in keeping SLS alive and giving it something to do. Clipper will be ready to launch long before any other payloads for the rocket, such as major missions to the moon or Mars.
In the fiscal year 2019 budget that passed Congress, Culberson directed $545 million to Clipper—enough to get the project over its peak funding year, keeping the team on track for an on-time launch. Moreover, because Congress in recent years has passed continuing resolutions in lieu of full budgets, the record $2.8 billion planetary science allocation will likely remain in force beyond 2019.
After the April design review, Clipper will likely enter the final design and fabrication phase in August. If all goes well, it will lift its first inch from the launchpad in 2023.
When marine biologist Steve Barbeaux first saw the data in late 2017, he thought it was the result of a computer glitch. How else could more than 100 million Pacific cod suddenly vanish from the waters off of southern Alaska?
Within hours, however, Barbeaux's colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington, had confirmed the numbers. No glitch. The data, collected by research trawlers, indicated cod numbers had plunged by 70% in 2 years, essentially erasing a fishery worth $100 million annually. There was no evidence that the fish had simply moved elsewhere. And as the vast scale of the disappearance became clear, a prime suspect emerged: "The Blob."
In late 2013, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water, roughly one-third the size of the contiguous United States, formed in the Gulf of Alaska and began to spread. A few months later, Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, dubbed it The Blob. The name, with its echo of a 1958 horror film about an alien life form that keeps growing as it consumes everything in its path, quickly caught on. By the summer of 2015, The Blob had more than doubled in size, stretching across more than 4 million square kilometers of ocean, from Mexico's Baja California Peninsula to Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Water temperatures reached 2.5°C above normal in many places.
By late 2016, the marine heat wave had crashed across ecosystems all along North America's western coast, reshuffling food chains and wreaking havoc. Unusual blooms of toxic algae appeared, as did sea creatures typically found closer to the tropics (see sidebar). Small fish and crustaceans hunted by larger animals vanished. The carcasses of tens of thousands of seabirds littered beaches. Whales failed to arrive in their usual summer waters. Then the cod disappeared.
The fish "basically ran out of food," Barbeaux now believes. Once, he didn't think a food shortage would have much effect on adult cod, which, like camels, can harbor energy and go months without eating. But now, it is "something we look at and go: ‘Huh, that can happen.’"
Today, 5 years after The Blob appeared, the waters it once gripped have cooled, although fish, bird, and whale numbers have yet to recover. Climate scientists and marine biologists, meanwhile, are still putting together the story of what triggered the event, and how it reverberated through ecosystems. Their interest is not just historical.
Around the world, shifting climate and ocean circulation patterns are causing huge patches of unusually warm water to become more common, researchers have found. Already, ominous new warm patches are emerging in the North Pacific Ocean and elsewhere, and researchers are applying what they've learned from The Blob to help guide predictions of how future marine heat waves might unfold. If global warming isn't curbed, scientists warn that the heat waves will become more frequent, larger, more intense, and longerlasting. By the end of the century, Bond says, "The ocean is going to be a much different place."
The Blob begins
Even as ominous headlines warned of what National Geographic dubbed "The blob that cooked the Pacific," researchers scrambled to decipher what was happening. They consulted satellite readings; crisscrossed the Pacific on research ships, sometimes dredging the depths with nets; picked through the carcasses of birds and whales; and huddled over microscopes and lab aquariums.
The Blob was spawned, experts say, by a long-lasting atmospheric ridge of high pressure that formed over the Gulf of Alaska in the fall of 2013. The ridge helped squelch fierce winter storms that typically sweep the gulf. That dampened the churning winds that usually bring colder, deeper water to the surface, as well as transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere—much like a bowl of hot soup cooling as a diner blows across it. As a result, the gulf remained unusually warm through the following year.
But it took a convergence of other forces to transform The Blob into a monster. In the winter of 2014–15, winds from the south brought warmer air into the gulf, keeping sea temperatures high. Those winds also pushed warm water closer to the coasts of Oregon and Washington. Then, later in 2015 and in 2016, the periodic warming of the central Pacific known as El Niño added more warmth, fueling The Blob's growth. The heat wave finally broke when La Niña—El Niño's cool opposite number—arrived at the end of 2016, bringing storms that stirred and cooled the ocean.
Satellites and instrumented buoys made it relatively easy for scientists to track The Blob's bloom and fade. But the vast sweep of its ecological impact was harder to see.
That story starts with some of the ocean's tiniest inhabitants, which sit at the base of the marine food chain. In the Gulf of Alaska, phytoplankton blooms shrank during the warm years, a trend scientists trace to a lack of the nutrients that the winds usually churn to the surface with colder, deeper water. The decline in phytoplankton appears to have rippled out to copepods—fat-rich crustaceans the size of a sesame seed—that feed on the algae, says Russell Hopcroft, a zooplankton ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. During Blob years, the copepods grew leaner at the same time as phytoplankton ebbed and water temperatures climbed, he says. When warmer water moved north to Alaska, it also carried in different, less nutritious copepod species.
By early 2015, the unusually warm water known as The Blob covered a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean.
GENTEMANN, C., ET AL. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 44.1, 312, (2017)
Krill—tiny shrimp that, like copepods, are a key food for many fish—felt the heat, too. In 2015 and 2016, as The Blob engulfed the coasts of Washington and Oregon, the heat-sensitive creatures vanished from biologists' nets.
As the base of the food chain crumbled, the effects propagated upward. One link higher, swarms of small fish that dine on copepods and krill—and in turn become food for larger animals—also became scarce as warm waters spread. On a remote island in the northern gulf, where scientists have tracked seabird diets for decades, they noticed that capelin and sand lance, staples for many bird species, nearly vanished from the birds' meals. In 2015, by one estimate, the populations of most key forage fish in the gulf fell to less than 50% of the average over the previous 9 years.
Of the fish that remained, some offered little nourishment. Sand lance caught in 2016 were so stunted that Yumi Arimitsu, a fisheries ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Juneau, thought she was holding fish that had recently hatched. But a check of their ear bones showed they were a year old. The fish had so little fat that each one provided just a tenth of the energy content of one average fish from other years.
Finger-length juvenile cod that spend their first summer feeding in the gulf 's shallow waters also disappeared. In 2014, when NOAA researchers on an annual survey cast their nets into two bays off Kodiak Island in Alaska, they came up almost empty. There were "no fish around," recalls Ben Laurel, a NOAA fisheries ecologist based at the agency's lab in Newport, Oregon. "There's just this big hole."
Even as these food stocks declined, the warmer water delivered a second blow to the cold-blooded creatures there, from copepods to adult cod. The heat dialed up the metabolism of the animals, forcing them to eat more to keep their bodies fueled—just as prey became scarcer.
Barbeaux thinks that one-two punch is what did in Pacific cod, gray-flanked fish that can grow to more than a meter. After his initial shock at discovering the 2017 cod crash, he started to assemble a picture of a creeping underwater famine. Looking back, researchers noticed adult cod caught in 2015 and 2016 were skinnier than normal. The stomachs of cod caught in 2015 were half-empty compared with boom years, and contained few energy-rich capelin and tanner crabs.
Despite their ability to go months without eating, the cod could not withstand this double whammy. Computer simulations developed by federal scientists suggest that, as warm waters lingered, the fish ran a deep caloric deficit. Barbeaux suspects the weakened fish became more vulnerable to disease and predators, such as salmon sharks.
A wave of death
The cod's demise wasn't easily observed. But other changes occurring in the ocean's depths became visible in sudden, morbid convulsions on beaches and in bays. In late 2014, thousands of starved Cassin's auklet seabirds began to wash ashore in Washington and Oregon. On New Year's Day 2016, a retired bird biologist in Whittier, Alaska, stumbled across the white and gray bodies of 8000 common murres lining a beach, like so many abandoned buoys. In the following days, people found the normally hardy seabirds—known for their ability to fly hundreds of kilometers in a day to find fish—dead and dying across much of southern Alaska. They piled up on beaches and staggered along highways like little zombies. As many as half a million died, scientists estimate.
Then there were the disappearing whales. In the summer of 2015, 2 years into The Blob, just 166 humpback whales returned to Alaska's Glacier Bay from their winter calving grounds near Hawaii and Mexico, a 30% drop from 2013. All the humpback calves seen in Glacier Bay that year disappeared later and are presumed dead. And the bodies of 28 humpback and 17 finback whales washed up on beaches in Alaska and British Columbia in Canada.
It’s getting warm in here
The portion of the world’s oceans experiencing moderate to extreme marine heat waves has been growing since the 1980s.
19820.000.250.500.751.00198619901994199820022006201020142016Percent of total ocean areaYearExtreme-severeStrongModerateNo warming0.050.12
(GRAPHIC) V. ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE; (DATA) HOBDAY ET AL., OCEANOGRAPHY, 31 (2), 2018
Toxic algae blooms that stretched along much of the west coast in 2015 might have played a role in the seabird and whale deaths. But some of the animals might have simply starved because competing predators had vacuumed up available forage fish. The seabird die-off, for example, peaked in the winter of 2015–16, just as warmer waters would have revved up the appetites of fish like cod, notes John Piatt, a USGS marine ecologist based in Port Townsend, Washington. "If murres and whales are dying en masse everywhere, what does it tell you?" Piatt asks. "That there's no food anywhere."
Researchers are still puzzling over many Blob mysteries. Even as common murres suffered, for example, tufted puffins that feed on the same fish showed few problems, notes Heather Renner, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Homer, Alaska. And although the cod story seems to fit together neatly, there are still unknowns, such as exactly how warmer water temperatures affected baby cod. Laurel hopes some answers will emerge from ongoing laboratory experiments that involve raising young cod in aquariums with different water temperatures. The findings could help illuminate how tiny temperature shifts influence growth and survival, particularly during crucial winter months when the fish live largely on fat reserves.
Other clues could come from the bodies of baby cod that researchers have collected from Kodiak Island beaches every year since 2006, then packed into lab freezers. Laurel has long wanted to study the collection to see how climate, ocean conditions, and diet shape development. Now, the urgency of understanding The Blob has unlocked money for that work.
Lingering signs
Although the blob has dissipated, its impact lingers. Of five common murre colonies in the gulf surveyed in 2018, only two seem to be breeding at normal levels. Just 99 humpback whales returned to Glacier Bay last year, with only one new calf in tow, far below the 3-decade average of more than eight calves per year. Cod numbers this year are projected to be even lower than they were last year. That means more tough times for cod fishers. Federal officials cut the allowable catch by 80% after the 2017 collapse, and the 2019 limits are even lower.
But a recovery may be in the offing. With cooler waters, tiny cod filled the bays at Kodiak Island in the summer of 2018. Larger, high-fat copepods showed an uptick, as did forage fish. Seabirds have resumed breeding in some places. Krill have rebounded off the west coast. "It indicates that to some extent the ecosystem is able to restabilize once [more typical] conditions return," says Janet Duffy-Anderson, a NOAA fisheries ecologist based in Seattle.
Now, scientists are ramping up efforts to study similar firestorms that are gathering strength in other corners of the ocean. Warmer temperatures are threatening corals in the Red Sea, kelp forests in southern Australia, and fisheries off the coasts of New England and eastern Canada. Rising temperatures are also affecting ecosystems near New Zealand, the Mediterranean, and the coast of Argentina. In northern Australia, record air temperatures late last year sparked warnings of more damage to the Great Barrier Reef. Back-to-back marine heat waves in 2016 and 2017 are estimated to have killed half the reefs there.
"Marine heat wave" became a common part of scientific parlance in just the past decade. Now, research on the waves "is kind of taking off," says Eric Oliver, a physical oceanographer and marine heat wave expert at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. In 2016, he and a group of Australian, U.K., and U.S. scientists moved to give the field some common metrics by proposing that a marine heat wave be defined as a string of five or more days in which ocean water temperatures are in the top 10% compared with the previous 3 decades. Last year, recognizing that ocean warming might soon get public attention like other natural disasters, some of the same scientists suggested ranking their severity much like hurricanes, ranging from Category I to Category IV. They also proposed naming marine heat waves based on their location and year—so The Blob might have been called Northeast Pacific 2013.
Each heat wave has its own constellation of causes. But there is one common and increasingly potent factor, researchers say. As oceans soak up more heat from a warming planet, heat waves are becoming more common and more intense. The number of days with a marine heat wave somewhere on the globe has doubled since 1982, according to a 2018 study by Swiss scientists published in Nature. Those researchers warned that, if warming continues on the current trajectory, marine heat waves will become 41 times more frequent by the end of the century. They will also be longer and bigger. Heat waves would typically last more than 100 days, with maximum temperatures 2.5°C above average. The western tropical Pacific and Arctic oceans would be the hardest hit. The changes, the authors wrote, would probably push "marine organisms and ecosystems to the limits of their resilience."
That scenario fits with what Bond foresees for the northeast Pacific. The climate and ocean models he uses produce sobering scenarios. By 2050, without major curbs on planetary warming, average ocean temperatures in that region will likely be between 1°C and 2°C above historic levels—meaning Blob-like temperatures will become typical. As a result, Bond says, "When we have a marine heat wave in 2050, it's going to be way out there—in the uncharted territory."
Other tastes of that future might be just around the corner. Even as researchers close the book on The Blob, they are keeping a close watch on new heat waves off Alaska. In the winter of 2017–18 the northern Bering Sea was devoid of ice for the first time on record. And last summer, a warming trend that started in 2014 turned feverish. Water temperatures in the Bering Sea, where walleye pollock support one of the world's biggest fisheries, hit 4°C above normal in some regions. Already, the heat appears to be having an impact. Late last year, researchers found that numbers of fatty copepods—a favorite of young pollock—were 90% below average. The big question is what impact the copepod shortage will have on fish trying to survive their first winter, Duffy-Anderson says. That won't be known until later this year.
Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Alaska, calm, warm weather this past fall has spawned a new patch of unusually warm water, one that is eerily like the baby Blob. In October 2018, Barbeaux logged into Facebook to share a news story warning The Blob might have a sequel. His comment succinctly captured what many scientists are thinking as they probe the effects of the last heat wave: "Oh, crap."
*Correction, 11 February, 3:05 p.m.:The credit for the image of Earth’s temperatures has bee updated.
Onderwaterhittegolven: ook de oceaan kreunt onder toename tropische dagen
Onderwaterhittegolven? Wij hadden de term zelf nog nooit gehoord, terwijl het natuurlijk de logica zelf is. Want waarom zou de opwarming van de aarde zich ook niet manifesteren onder de zeespiegel? Misschien zelfs nog significanter dan aan land, geven twee recente studies aan.
Onderwater is er sprake van een hittegolf wanneer, vergelijkbaar met op het vasteland, de maximumtemperatuur vijf dagen op een rij significant hoger ligt dan normaal. ‘Normaal’ varieert dan, ook net zoals aan land, van watermassa tot watermassa.
Eerst wees een onderzoek onder leiding van kwantitatief ecoloog Christopher M. Free (Rutgers University) in Science op een afname van het visbestand met 4% tussen 1930 en 2010, als gevolg van de klimaatopwarming. Kort daarna stelde de meest uitgebreide studie van maritieme hittegolven tot nu toe een forse toename vast van zowel het aantal consistente temperatuurpieken als hun heftigheid.
Het meest indicatieve cijfer uit de publicatie in Nature Climate Change: het aantal hittedagen onder de oceaanspiegels lag tussen 1987 en 2016 maar liefst 54% hoger dan in de periode 1925-1954. Het meest sprekende voorbeeld dat onderzoeksleider en benthisch bioloog Dan Smale (Marine Biological Association) aanhaalt, is ‘The Blob’.
Die ‘Klodder’ is een gigantische massa veel te warm water voor de Amerikaanse Westkust die zich op haar voorlopige hoogtepunt in de periode 2014-2016 uitstrekte over zo’n 5,6 miljoen vierkante kilometer. Van Mexico tot Alaska, om dat op zich misschien abstract grote cijfer hallucinant tastbaar te maken.
NASAEen meanderende bedding van een oude rivier op Mars. De foto werd ingekleurd om hoogteverschillen aan te duiden: blauw is laag, geel is hoog.
WETENSCHAP Mars is vandaag koud en droog, met een ijle atmosfeer. Maar ooit - en minder lang geleden dan gedacht - stroomden er grote, woeste rivieren op de rode planeet. Ze waren dubbel zo breed als de rivieren op aarde, ontdekten wetenschappers van de universiteit van Chicago.
De conclusies maken het niet makkelijker voor onderzoekers die Mars’ drastische transitie van de natte naar de droge periode bestuderen. Die zou tot later in de geschiedenis van de planeet hebben geduurd dan tot nu toe gedacht. Met andere woorden: er was tot minder lang geleden dan gedacht water op Mars, tot het allerlaatste moment van de natte periode. Tussen 3,6 en 1 miljard jaar geleden stroomde dagelijks 3 tot 20 kg water per vierkante meter door de rivierbeddingen over de hele planeet verspreid. De nieuwe studie schat het nu op 1 miljard jaar geleden en zelfs nog later. Of: minstens 1 miljard jaar recenter dan vorige berekeningen.
Edwin Kite en zijn team onderzochten meer dan 200 oude, al lang opgedroogde rivierbeddingen op Mars aan de hand van foto’s gemaakt met NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), die rond de planeet cirkelt. De diepe geulen op de foto’s bevatten informatie over het water dat er ooit doorstroomde en over de klimatologische omstandigheden waarin dat gebeurde. De grootte van de beddingen wijst op een continue eerder dan op een tijdelijke waterstroom enkel ’s middags.
AP
De gemiddelde dagtemperaturen lagen dus boven het vriespunt, wat dan weer een sterk broeikaseffect suggereert. “Maar dat wordt niet gestaafd door de bestaande modellen van Mars’ klimaatveranderingen”, zegt de studie. De atmosfeer van Mars was vroeger zo dik dat er maar een derde van zonnestralen die wij nu op de aarde ontvangen doorkwam. Onvoldoende voor vloeibaar water.
Als de vooropgestelde periodes van stromende rivieren op Mars kloppen, dan zou dat kunnen betekenen dat de atmosfeer van de rode planeet sneller verdween dan eerder werd gedacht. Uit vorige studies bleek dat de verdunning 4 miljard jaar geleden zou zijn ingezet en zo zou hebben geleid tot het geleidelijk uitdrogen van de rivieren. De nieuwe studie plaatst dat uitdunnen van de Martiaanse atmosfeer nu miljarden jaren later.
Kite schuift nog een andere optie naar voren: mogelijk versprong het klimaat op Mars herhaaldelijk als een op/aan-knop van droge naar natte periodes.
Poolse oud-president Walesa zorgt voor verrassing met uitspraken over aliens. Zijn er andere intelligente beschavingen geweest op aarde?
De Poolse oud-president Lech Walesa heeft voor verrassing gezorgd door in het openbaar te spreken over UFO’s en buitenaardsen.
Walesa, die tussen 1990 en 1995 president was, deed zijn uitspraken tijdens een bijeenkomst in de stad Krosno.
De gepensioneerde politicus, die eerder voor de geheime dienst werkte, zei te geloven dat intelligente buitenaardsen bestaan en een bedreiging kunnen vormen voor de aarde, schrijft website NaTemat.pl.
Drie verschillende niveaus
Walesa zei dat er drie verschillende niveaus van intellectuele ontwikkeling zijn in sterrenstelsels en dat de mens zich op het laagste niveau bevindt.
“Als we ingaan tegen de buitenaardsen hakken ze ons in de pan. De aarde zal vergaan,” zei hij, toevoegende dat we dan weer van voren af aan moeten beginnen.
Vier of vijf keer
Walesa suggereerde dat dergelijke scenario’s zich al eens hebben afgespeeld op aarde. “Men zegt dat er vier of vijf keer een beschaving was zoals de onze en dat zij dezelfde fouten hebben gemaakt die wij nu maken – ze konden niet communiceren,” klonk het.
Hij wees op verschillende archeologische mysteries, waaronder de piramides, als mogelijk bewijs voor hoogontwikkelde menselijke rassen die in een ver verleden zijn uitgeroeid.
YouTube
“We hebben geen idee waar ze vandaan komen!” zei hij over de piramides.
De voormalige president zegt zijn informatie vooral van YouTube te halen.
“Volkomen glad omhulsel van een schip.” Beroemdste UFO-hacker aller tijden geeft voor het eerst in jaren een interview: bekijk het hier
De Brit Gary McKinnon is de beroemdste UFO-hacker aller tijden. Hij werd in 2002 gearresteerd en dreigde uitgeleverd te worden aan de Verenigde Staten.
McKinnon stuitte op bewijs voor een geheim ruimteprogramma en verwijzingen naar ‘niet-aardse officieren’.
Hij ontdekte ook dat er schepen werden bevoorraad die officieel niet bestonden.
Majestic 12
De schepen die onderdeel uitmaakten van de vloot waren voorzien van namen, maar op internet kon de hacker daar niets over vinden.
Enkele namen van de schepen hadden betrekking op leden van Majestic 12, een verondersteld geheim genootschap.
Ongefilterd
Hij opende daarnaast een foto van een glad, sigaarvormig schip die in de ruimte was gemaakt.
De foto stond op een computer van de NASA en was opgeslagen in een map genaamd ‘ongefilterd’.
Straf
Gary praat met onderzoeker Richard Dolan over de straf die de Amerikaanse overheid hem wilde opleggen, zijn depressie, suïcidale gedachten en nog veel meer.
Reptilians on Earth: The Secret 70,000 Year Old History
There is evidence from as far back as 70000 BC, in Africa, of a serpent race living on Earth. There is an inter-dimensional aspect to this phenomena, considering space is very quiet, they must be getting here another way, maybe through portals.
There are certain ways these doorways can be opened, humans were the ones opening these doorways 7000 years ago. Are the pyramids a portal?
What were our ancestors doing and what about the reptilians connection to gold? What is the value of this gold, as Barry Fitzgerald explains, its more to do with mono-atomic elements.
New Insider Reveals His Incredible Experiences Within the Secret Space Program
This refers to an existing organization known as the “Secret Space Program”. Jason Rice, has provided a disclosure of that program, what he revealed means that the Secret Space Program is not a secret any more.
Jason Rice was a member of a Secret Space Program. He has stated that he is coming forward now to disclose that there are thousands of other people who are also involved with this program that is known as “20 and Back”.
He feels that the stories of some who gave their lives for humanity and have not come back need to be told.
A small asteroid has been caught in the process of spinning so fast it’s throwing off material, according to new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories.
Images from Hubble show two narrow, comet-like tails of dusty debris streaming from the asteroid (6478) Gault. Each tail represents an episode in which the asteroid gently shed its material — key evidence that Gault is beginning to come apart.
The asteroid 6478 Gault is seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars. The Gault asteroid is located 214 million miles from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), O. Hainaut
(European Southern Observatory)
Discovered in 1988, the 2.5-mile-wide (4-kilometer-wide) asteroid has been observed repeatedly, but the debris tails are the first evidence of disintegration. Gault is located 214 million miles (344 million kilometers) from the Sun. Of the roughly 800,000 known asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, astronomers estimate that this type of event in the asteroid belt is rare, occurring roughly once a year.
Watching an asteroid become unglued gives astronomers the opportunity to study the makeup of these space rocks without sending a spacecraft to sample them.
This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the gradual self-destruction of an asteroid, whose ejected dusty material has formed two long, thin, comet-like tails. The longer tail stretches more than 500,000 miles (800,000 kilometers) and is roughly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long. The streamers will eventually disperse into space.
Credits: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), and O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory)
“We didn’t have to go to Gault,” explained Olivier Hainaut of the European Southern Observatory in Germany, a member of the Gault observing team. “We just had to look at the image of the streamers, and we can see all of the dust grains well-sorted by size. All the large grains (about the size of sand particles) are close to the object and the smallest grains (about the size of flour grains) are the farthest away because they are being pushed fastest by pressure from sunlight.”
Gault is only the second asteroid whose disintegration has been strongly linked to a process known as a YORP effect. (YORP stands for “Yarkovsky–O’Keefe–Radzievskii–Paddack,” the names of four scientists who contributed to the concept.) When sunlight heats an asteroid, infrared radiation escaping from its warmed surface carries off angular momentum as well as heat. This process creates a tiny torque that can cause the asteroid to continually spin faster. When the resulting centrifugal force starts to overcome gravity, the asteroid’s surface becomes unstable, and landslides may send dust and rubble drifting into space at a couple miles per hour, or the speed of a strolling human. The researchers estimate that Gault could have been slowly spinning up for more than 100 million years.
Piecing together Gault’s recent activity is an astronomical forensics investigation involving telescopes and astronomers around the world. All-sky surveys, ground-based telescopes, and space-based facilities like the Hubble Space Telescope pooled their efforts to make this discovery possible.
The initial clue was the fortuitous detection of the first debris tail, observed on Jan. 5, 2019, by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Hawaii. The tail also turned up in archival data from December 2018 from ATLAS and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) telescopes in Hawaii. In mid-January, a second shorter tail was spied by the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii and the Isaac Newton Telescope in Spain, as well as by other observers. An analysis of both tails suggests the two dust events occurred around Oct. 28 and Dec. 30, 2018.
Follow-up observations with the William Herschel Telescope and ESA’s (European Space Agency) Optical Ground Station in La Palma and Tenerife, Spain, and the Himalayan Chandra Telescope in India measured a two-hour rotation period for the object, close to the critical speed at which a loose “rubble-pile” asteroid begins to break up.
“Gault is the best ‘smoking gun’ example of a fast rotator right at the two-hour limit,” said team member Jan Kleyna of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.
An analysis of the asteroid’s surrounding environment by Hubble revealed no signs of more widely distributed debris, which rules out the possibility of a collision with another asteroid causing the outbursts.
The asteroid’s narrow streamers suggest that the dust was released in short bursts, lasting anywhere from a few hours to a few days. These sudden events puffed away enough debris to make a “dirt ball” approximately 500 feet (150 meters) across if compacted together. The tails will begin fading away in a few months as the dust disperses into interplanetary space.
Based on observations by the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope, the astronomers estimate that the longer tail stretches over half a million miles (800,000 kilometers) and is roughly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. The shorter tail is about a quarter as long.
Only a couple of dozen active asteroids have been found so far. Astronomers may now have the capability to detect many more of them because of the enhanced survey capabilities of observatories such as Pan-STARRS and ATLAS, which scan the entire sky. “Asteroids such as Gault cannot escape detection anymore,” Hainaut said. “That means that all these asteroids that start misbehaving get caught.”
The researchers hope to monitor Gault for more dust events.
The team’s results have been accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
Contacts and sources:
Donna Weaver / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
When a current or former world leader professes a belief in UFOs, the public ponders about their sanity and about what they might really know concerning the cause of unidentified flying objects. When that world leader also warns about potentially catastrophic extraterrestrial invasions, ears and antennas both go up. That was the case last week in Poland, when former Polish president and head of the Solidarity movement Lech Walesa pontificated on UFOs, aliens and their role in the potential demise of Earth as we know it.
Lech Walesa
“There are three levels of intellectual development on other galaxies. We are the lowest. And the higher civilization comes as a UFO and others, and looks at what they are doing here. If we threaten to destabilize here with Macron, Putin there, they will interrupt us, cut us in half, the Earth will collapse, everyone will crush.”
Multiple Polishmedia sources reported on a speech Walesa made to a civic club in Krosno, an ancient city in southwestern Poland. While not there to talk about UFOs, Lech wandered off the script (as world leaders seem to do a lot these days) and worked UFOs and “higher civilizations” into the conversation. While he doesn’t seem to have spoken publicly about his belief in UFOs and aliens, his comments suggest he’s of the opinion that they’re the type that’s observing us without interference (the ‘zoo’ theory) but will move in if they feel the need. Then he warns that actions by current politicians (French president Emmanuel Macron and Russian president Vladimir Putin) could trigger just such a decision by a higher civilization of watchers. Walesa believes their interference would not be benevolent and the consequences would be long-lasting. (If you understand Polish, you can watch the entire speech here. The UFO comments begin at 1h 04m 56 sec.)
“(The higher civilization (can hold us that way for five thousand years. They will send Adam and Eve and we will build the world again.”
It also appears from his comments that Walesa at least considers the possibility that an alien civilization has interfered with humans before.
“People find things, dig in stones, these pyramids … no answer, where did it come from?”
Why didn’t the higher civilization interfere with this?
Does Lech Walesa know something we don’t? While there’s no indication that he himself has had a UFO or alien encounter, Poland has had a number of them. The most famous is the so-called Emilcin incident in 1978 when a farmer from that eastern Polish town allegedly met olive-skinned aliens who took him onboard their ship. Polish UFO researcher and author Piotr Cielebiaś says there were plenty of reports of alien encounters by military pilots until Poland joined NATO in 1999. Walesa was president from December 1990 to December 1995 so he undoubtedly was aware of these reports.
Why did Lech Walesa feel the need to talk about UFOs and extraterrestrial invasions now? What does he REALLY know?
Another month has passed, and the mystery boom phenomenon continues without a definitive explanation. Throughout March, several incidents of unexplained explosion noises have added to the already large and still growing body of evidence suggesting either an unknown natural occurrence or some type of unidentified man made activity is leading to these loud, powerful, and anomalous noises. I’ve collectedhundreds of reports of these mystery boomsover the past few years in an attempt to discover what may be behind the phenomenon, but so far an explanation remains elusive. Are these separate events actually related? And why aren’t they receiving more attention?
On March 7, residents of Block Island in the U.S. state of Rhode Island were rattled by what was described as an “unexplained boom” early in the morning of Friday, March 1. Sound familiar? Some Block Islanders reported the noise was so loud that they thought something could have exploded inside of their own homes. While scores of residents reported being terrified by the noise, The Block Island Times reports that theories put forth on local social media sites “were mostly whimsical,” with most eyewitnesses choosing to crack jokes about the sky-splitting noise. As has been noted throughout ufology circles for years, joking about something being “aliens” is a great way to discredit those who take the phenomenon seriously. Could someone be leveraging social media to actively discourage serious research into mystery booms?
A few days later on March 6, another eerily familiar boom shook the northern Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. The U.S. Geographical Survey said the event was not an earthquake, while meteorologists with the National Weather Service reported that there were no weather conditions that could explain the boom. According to the Coastal Review Online, the boom was heard over a broad area, making it unlikely that a singular sonic boom from an aircraft overhead could have caused it. As in many other cases, some type of unknown atmospheric temperature inversion was cited as a possible cause, although there is little hard evidence to support that speculation.
The next day on March 8, another mysterious boom described as a “loud explosion” was heard throughout Liberty, Ohio. “You could feel it like a shock wave,” one Liberty resident told emergency dispatchers after calling 911. “It knocked me out of bed.” Fire crews at the Liberty Fire Station also felt the boom, reporting that the entire fire station shook. So far, the cause of the boom has not been found.
No further booms were reported until March 22, when several cities near Birmingham, Alabama were rattled by a massive explosion in the sky. Like in North Carolina, the U.S. Geological Survey and National Weather Service were baffled. The typical hypotheses were put forward, after which the story was buried by the news cycle as in so many other cases.
In Sacracmento, California, residents of Fair Oaks reportthey’ve have been shaken from their beds at night in recent months by powerful, unexplained booms strong enough to set off car alarms. With no official explanation, people are throwing around all sorts of theories including weather phenomena and secret SpaceX launches. Meanwhile, local police believe the booms are being caused by illegal fireworks.
On March 26, a loud boom shook southern Idaho, the latest in a recent spate of similar booms. According to local radio station KEZJ, the booms are being caused by munitions testing at the nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base.
Also on March 26, North Carolina experienced another mysterious event, but this time whatever happened was powerful enough to register on seismographs. Several counties in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina were rattled by an eerily familiar boom. “I’ll tell you right now, that was the loudest — it shook the whole damn house partner,” one frightened caller told police dispatchers as emergency services in the area were inundated with calls about the boom.
Shortly thereafter, the USGS reported recording two separate 2.6-magnitude earthquakes throughout the state, one of which was not far from the site of several other mysterious booms heard throughout 2018 for which conflicting explanations were offered. While this most recent boom could possibly be explained by seismic activity, there is always the possibility that whatever caused the boom wasn’t an earthquake per se but was powerful enough to rattle the ground and register on seismographs.
Many aerospace agencies and military branches have been researching hypersonic craft and weapons over the last several years. Could they have anything to do with the phenomenon?
While I normally wouldn’t jump to conclusions without evidence, the spate of other similar events in recent weeks makes this earthquake explanation seem incomplete to me. Then again, sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy, seeing things in the cracks between seemingly disparate news stories and trends which may not really be there. Whatever the case may be, I and other Mysterious Universe writers have been tracking these reports week after week for years, and we’re not alone. Many readers have reached out to me in recent months with their own experiences with mystery booms or their own theories on the phenomenon. Are these incidents in fact related, or could many separate phenomena or forces be causing these booms? If that’s the case, why are so many reports so similar, and why are they occurring with such frequency lately?
So many questions. Are unknown seismic events violently rattling the Earth, or could unknown aircraft be wantonly breaking the sound barrier over residential areas? Is an unknown atmospheric or meteorological forces causing ‘skyquakes’ or other anomalous disturbances, or could industrial operations be to blame? Meteors? Psychological warfare? Aliens? Anybody’s guess is as good as anyone else’s at this point (but it’s likely not aliens).
Although it’s great news that these species have been rediscovered, the question still remains: why are these supposedly “extinct” animals suddenly reappearing? Were they even extinct in the first place? According to the IUCN Red List, a species is only listed as extinct when “…there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” It’s also required that “…exhaustive surveys in known and/or expected habitat, at appropriate times… throughout its historic range [which] have failed to record an individual. Surveys should be over a time frame appropriate to the taxon’s life cycle and life form.”
Galápagos giant tortoise
The last time that people see a certain species is often calculated in the decision on whether it is in fact extinct or not, and that’s not entirely correct, as many species are very elusive and prefer to stay away from populated areas and people in general. So, just because they haven’t been seen in several years, doesn’t mean that they are extinct. Sightings can come in many forms, from actually seeing the species face-to-face, or capturing a picture of it, t more indirect evidence like footprints or people retelling stories of their encounters.
What’s even more confusing is the fact that the word “rediscovered” means that someone or something was lost or forgotten about, but we also interpret it as returning from the dead. As for the Fernandina Island Galápagos tortoise, although it hadn’t been spotted since the early 1900s, footprints, bite marks on pear cacti, and tortoise faeces had been discovered as recently as 2013. In 2015, it was declared “Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct), and apparently species are presumed extinct until it is proven that they are still living.
And while Wallace’s giant bee hadn’t been seen in 38 years, it was listed as “Data Deficient” and more recently as “Vulnerable”, but never as an extinct species. One of the species, however, that was listed as Extinct was the Formosan clouded leopard, as many hunters said they hadn’t seen the animal and no footage was ever captured from the several cameras in the area.
Clouded leopard
The giant tortoise and bee were declared alive after living specimens were discovered, but the clouded leopard’s existence is still uncertain as there have only been eyewitness testimonies so far and no solid proof.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before several more “extinct” species are suddenly “rediscovered”. Since pretty much everyone nowadays has a cell phone with video/photo options, and many others fly drones in wooded areas, it’s very possible that more eyewitnesses will come forward with video and/or photographic proof. And maybe not, since some species just want to be left alone in their secret locations, safely hidden away from humans.
On December 9, 2014, in Capilla del Monte Argentina, a woman named Cele who was on vacation near a site called the clods 9 km from the chapel of the Argentine mountain when she captured with her cell phone a sphere of light following the car in the back.
Although the amazing video was shot in 2014, this phenomenon is still something that is not understood.
The video comes from the well known UFO researcher Maussan and is subtitled in English.
Now I wanted to check an old discovery of mine back from 2013-14 to see if it was still there. You see, NASA has deleted about 50% of my discoveries from their archives. Google Map has deleted about 80% of my discoveries from their maps. So I try hard to keep up and keep the public aware. This is really an incredible structure. The round dome is the main part, but there are three other connecting structures that just make this one of the most important pieces of evidence to date. You may have seen others reporting this long ago, they got it from me. I do share my info freely. Only by sharing wholeheartedly can the UFO community unite and grow. Feel free to use my videos on your own channel. I do not have Adsense on my Youtube or my UFO Sightings Daily site. I probably would've made hundreds of thousands of US dollars by now, but I would have been manipulated by money instead of passion. I have seen others doing it only for the money, reporting fake sightings, even making their own sightings and videos. Money creates power and power corrupts. That I cannot have. Knowledge is true power...and meant to be free for all. Scott C. Waring
Some researchers became more convinced that the foo fighters had then simply been hallucinations.
The name “foo fighters” has become synonymous with Dave Grohl’s rock band of that name, but prior to the late 1990s, when the band Foo Fighters achieved worldwide fame, the name “foo fighter” was primarily known only in conspiracy theory circles or UFO research groups.
It refers to mysterious flying objects sighted by pilots in the last few years of the Second World War – objects variously described as glowing red, orange, yellow or white balls of light, or balls of fire – that seemed to appear out of nowhere, flew with aircraft in formation, and conducted aerial maneuvers that no aircraft could have performed.
Sometimes they were described as orbs, sometimes as cigar-shaped. Sightings of foo fighters were primarily reported by Allied pilots flying over Western Europe, but similar sightings were also reported by German and Japanese pilots. To this day, nobody knows exactly what they were.
Photograph of “an unusual atmospheric occurrence observed over Sri Lanka”, forwarded to the UK Ministry of Defence by RAF Fylingdales
The first sightings of foo fighters were reported in November 1944 by American pilots of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. The first plane to report a foo fighter sighting was piloted by Lieutenant Edward Schlueter. Lieutenant Donald Meiers was the radar observer and Lieutenant Fred Ringwald was the intelligence officer onboard.
They were flying over the French-German border when Ringwald spotted a row of eight to ten lights, glowing orange. He called ground radar to see if they were enemy aircraft, but they couldn’t pick anything up. Suspecting that the lights were some sort of new German weapon, they prepared to engage them – but then the lights vanished.
415th Night Fighter Squadron Northrop P-61 Black Widow
The strange lights were given a name by Meiers: foo fighters. The term “foo” was taken from a popular comic strip of the time, called Smokey Stover. In the comic strip, the character Smokey (a firefighter) used to say “where there’s foo there’s fire.” Meier’s use of the name “foo fighters” stuck, and after this, that was the term used to describe these strange phenomena.
Over the next few months, reports continued to pour in of foo fighter sightings, many of which were seen by pilots of the 415th.
While the description of what they looked like sometimes varied, what was always consistent about the sightings was that the foo fighters seemed to be under some sort of intelligent control, were spectacularly maneuverable, impossible to shoot down or outmaneuver, not hostile (they never once attacked or made any attempt to attack or damage the aircraft that sighted them), and that they both appeared out of nowhere and then vanished into thin air.
Sightings were not only reported by the 415th, of course. The foo fighters were also observed by members of the Eighth Air Force and the Royal Air Force.
An Associated Press war correspondent spoke to airmen of the 415th toward the end of 1944, and soon the story he penned about foo fighter sightings was appearing in newspapers across America.
A number of explanations were put forth to explain the phenomenon – they ranged from the more prosaic, such as the suggestion that the pilots had simply seen weather balloons or were suffering from battle fatigue and thus having hallucinations, to the more outlandish, such as suggestions that the foo fighters were visitors from outer space.
Diorama of a Nazi Foo-Fighter by G. W. Dodson, Roswell UFO Museum, Roswell, New Mexico, USA.
Photo: mr_t_77 CC BY-SA 2.0
Suggestions were made that it was some sort of electrical discharge stimulated by atmospheric conditions, similar to St Elmo’s fire, but given the nature of how the foo fighters moved and conducted aerial maneuvers, this was ruled out.
It was also suspected, of course, that the foo fighters were some sort of hitherto-unseen secret German weapons, but this seemed rather unlikely, given that they never attacked the Allied aircraft or did any damage to them.
St. Elmo’s fire on a ship at sea
These foo fighter sightings eventually became so widespread that the US Army Air Command put together a panel of officers to conduct an official investigation into the phenomenon. The report which detailed the panel’s eventual findings, however, was lost after the war.
The sightings also contributed to the US Navy investigating in 1945 the degree of visual hallucinations experienced by aviators operating at night, for which they conducted a number of experiments.
Some researchers became more convinced that the foo fighters had then simply been hallucinations, even though the airmen who had sighted them were known to have been utterly sound of mind and not under any kind of extreme stress at the time they reported the sightings.
Photograph of an alleged UFO in Passaic, New Jersey, taken on July 31, 1952.
While the frequency of foo fighter sightings died out toward the end of the war, sightings of “flying saucers” and UFOs by civilians throughout the continental US (and the rest of the world) soon became a widespread cultural phenomenon in the decades following WWII.
As for the foo fighters of the Second World War, they remain an unexplained mystery, and we are no closer to understanding what they really were now than were the airmen who saw them in 1944 and 1945.
Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study
Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.
As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, “You have absolutely no idea what is out there!” The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.
Cover of the October 1957 issue of pulp science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This was a special edition devoted to ‘flying saucers,’ which became a national obsession after airline pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted a saucer-shaped flying objects in 1947.
I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.
With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there’s plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.
The Fermi paradox
The nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi was famous for posing thought provoking questions. In 1950, at Los Alamos National Laboratory after discussing UFOs over lunch, Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?” He estimated there were about 300 billion stars in the galaxy, many of them billions of years older than the sun, with a large percentage of them likely to host habitable planets. Even if intelligent life developed on a very small percentage of these planets, then there should be a number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Depending on the assumptions, one should expect anywhere from tens to tens of thousands of civilizations.
With the rocket-based technologies that we have developed for space travel, it would take between 5 and 50 million years for a civilization like ours to colonize our Milky Way galaxy. Since this should have happened several times already in the history of our galaxy, one should wonder where is the evidence of these civilizations? This discrepancy between the expectation that there should be evidence of alien civilizations or visitations and the presumption that no visitations have been observed has been dubbed the Fermi Paradox.
This photograph was taken in Wallonia, Belgium.
J.S. Henrardi
Carl Sagan correctly summarized the situation by saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The problem is that there has been no single well-documented UFO encounter that would alone qualify as the smoking gun. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that many governments around the world have covered upand classifiedinformation aboutsuch encounters. But there are enough scraps of evidence that suggest that the problem needs to be open to scientific study.
UFOs, taboo for professional scientists
When it comes to science, the scientific method requires hypotheses to be testable so that inferences can be verified. UFO encounters are neither controllable nor repeatable, which makes their study extremely challenging. But the real problem, in my view, is that the UFO topic is taboo.
While the general public has been fascinated with UFOs for decades, our governments, scientists and media, have essentially declared that of all the UFO sightings are a result of weather phenomenon or human actions. None are actually extraterrestrial spacecraft. And no aliens have visited Earth. Essentially, we are told that the topic is nonsense. UFOs are off-limits to serious scientific study and rational discussion, which unfortunately leaves the topic in the domain of fringe and pseudoscientists, many of whom litter the field with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.
I think UFO skepticism has become something of a religion with an agenda, discounting the possibility of extraterrestrials without scientific evidence, while often providing silly hypotheses describing only one or two aspects of a UFO encounter reinforcing the popular belief that there is a conspiracy. A scientist must consider all of the possible hypotheses that explain all of the data, and since little is known, the extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot yet be ruled out. In the end, the skeptics often do science a disservice by providing a poor example of how science is to be conducted. The fact is that many of these encounters – still a very small percentage of the total – defy conventional explanation.
The media amplifies the skepticism by publishing information about UFOs when it is exciting, but always with a mocking or whimsical tone and reassuring the public that it can’t possibly be true. But there are credible witnesses and encounters.
Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?
I am often asked by friends and colleagues, “Why don’t astronomers see UFOs?” The fact is that they do. In 1977, Peter Sturrock, a professor of space science and astrophysics at Stanford University, mailed 2,611 questionnaires about UFO sightings to members of the American Astronomical Society. He received 1,356 responses from which 62 astronomers – 4.6 percent – reported witnessing or recording inexplicable aerial phenomena. This rate is similar to the approximately 5 percent of UFO sightings that are never explained.
As expected, Sturrock found that astronomers who witnessed UFOs were more likely to be night sky observers. Over 80 percent of Sturrock’s respondents were willing to study the UFO phenomenon if there was a way to do so. More than half of them felt that the topic deserves to be studied versus 20 percent who felt that it should not. The survey also revealed that younger scientists were more likely to support the study of UFOs.
UFOs have been observed through telescopes. I know of one telescope sighting by an experienced amateur astronomer in which he observed an object shaped like a guitar pick moving through the telescope’s field of view. Further sightings are documented in the book “Wonders in the Sky,” in which the authors compile numerous observations of unexplained aerial phenomena made by astronomers and published in scientific journals throughout the 1700s and 1800s.
Evidence from government and military officers
Some of the most convincing observations have come from government officials. In 1997, the Chilean government formed the organization Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos, or CEFAA, to study UFOs. Last year, CEFAA released footage of a UFO taken with a helicopter-mounted Wescam infrared camera.
Declassified document describing a sighting of a UFO in December 1977, in Bahia, a state in northern Brazil.Arquivo Nacional Collection
The countries of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, France, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been declassifying their UFO files since 2008. The French Committee for In-Depth Studies, or COMETA, was an unofficial UFO study group comprised of high-ranking scientists and military officials that studied UFOs in the late 1990s. They released the COMETA Report, which summarized their findings. They concluded that 5 percent of the encounters were reliable yet inexplicable: The best hypothesis available was that the observed craft were extraterrestrial. They also accused the United States of covering up evidence of UFOs. Iran has been concerned about spherical UFOs observed near nuclear power facilities that they call “CIA drones” which reportedly are about 30 feet in diameter, can achieve speeds up to Mach 10, and can leave the atmosphere. Such speeds are on par with the fastest experimental aircraft, but unthinkable for a sphere without lift surfaces or an obvious propulsion mechanism.
In December 2017, The New York Times broke a story about the classified Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, which was a $22 million program run by the former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and aimed at studying UFOs. Elizondo resigned from running the program protesting extreme secrecy and the lack of funding and support. Following his resignation Elizondo, along with several others from the defense and intelligence community, were recruited by the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which was recently founded by Tom DeLonge to study UFOs and interstellar travel. In conjunction with the launch of the academy, the Pentagon declassified and released three videos of UFO encounters taken with forward looking infrared cameras mounted on F-18 fighter jets. While there is much excitement about such disclosures, I am reminded of a quote from Retired Army Colonel John Alexander: “Disclosure has happened. … I’ve got stacks of generals, including Soviet generals, who’ve come out and said UFOs are real. My point is, how many times do senior officials need to come forward and say that this is real?”
A topic worthy of serious study
There is a great deal of evidence that a small percentage of these UFO sightings are unidentified structured craft exhibiting flight capabilities beyond any known human technology. While there is no single case for which there exists evidence that would stand up to scientific rigor, there are cases with simultaneous observations by multiple reliable witnesses, along with radar returns and photographic evidence revealing patterns of activity that are compelling.
Declassified information from covert studies is interesting, but not scientifically helpful. This is a topic worthy of open scientific inquiry, until there is a scientific consensus based on evidence rather than prior expectation or belief. If there are indeed extraterrestrial craft visiting Earth, it would greatly benefit us to know about them, their nature and their intent. Moreover, this would present a great opportunity for mankind, promising to expand and advance our knowledge and technology, as well as reshaping our understanding of our place in the universe.
Dr. Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Albany (SUNY), and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Entropy (MDPI). He is a former NASA research scientist having worked for four years at NASA Ames Research Center in the Intelligent Systems Division designing artificial intelligence algorithms for astrophysical data analysis. His current research interests include the foundations of physics, quantum information, inference and inquiry, autonomous robotics, and the search for and characterization of extrasolar planets. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has been invited to give over 80 presentations in 14 countries.
Kevin was also a recent presenter at the Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena Conference (AAPC) hosted by the Scientific Coalition for Ufology (SCU) held near the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Kevin’s talk was titled, “Constraints on Societies Engaged in Relativistic Interstellar Travel,” and covered the odd spacetime effects this sort of travel would entail. In this episode, Kevin discusses the effects individuals traveling in this manner would experience, and the odd effects and problems that would occur with a group traveling in this manner interacting with others. We also discuss Kevin’s experience and thoughts on how the scientific community views the UFO topic.
Scientists are trying to bottle solar energy and turn it into liquid fuel
"A solar thermal fuel is like a rechargeable battery, but instead of electricity you put sunlight in and get heat out."
Professor Kasper Moth-Poulsen holding a tube containing the catalyst in front of the ultra-high-vacuum setup that was used to measure the heat release gradient in the molecular solar thermal energy storage system.
Johan Bodell
By Wayt Gibbs
What if we couldbottle solar energyso it could be used to power our homes and factories even when the sun doesn't shine?
Scientists have spent decades looking for a way do just that, and now researchers in Sweden are reporting significant progress. They've developed aspecialized fluid that absorbs a bit of sunlight's energy, holds it for months or even years and then releases it when needed. If this so-called solar thermal fuel can be perfected, it mightdrive another nail in the coffin of fossil fuels — and help solve our global-warming crisis.
Unlike oil, coal and natural gas, solar thermal fuels are reusable and environmentally friendly. They release energy without spewing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
"A solar thermal fuel is like a rechargeable battery, but instead of electricity, you put sunlight in and get heat out, triggered on demand," says Jeffrey Grossman, who leads a lab at MIT that works on such materials.
A MOLECULAR JEKYLL AND HYDE
On the roof of the physics building at Chalmers University of Technology in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, Kasper Moth-Poulsen has built a prototype system to test the new solar thermal fuels his research group has created.
As a pump cycles the fluid through transparent tubes, ultraviolet light from the sun excites its molecules into an energized state, a bit like Dr. Jekyll transforming into Mr. Hyde. The light rearranges bonds among the carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen atoms in the fuel, converting a compound known as norbornadiene into another called quadricyclane — the energetic Mr. Hyde version. Because the energy is trapped in strong chemical bonds, the quadricyclane retains the captured solar power even when it cools down.
The energy system works in a circular manner. First, the liquid captures energy from sunlight, in a solar thermal collector on the roof of a building. Then it is stored at room temperature. When the energy is needed, it can be drawn through the catalyst so that the liquid heats up.Yen Strandqvist
To extract that stored energy, Moth-Poulsen passes the activated fuel over a cobalt-based catalyst. The Hyde-like quadricyclane molecules then shapeshift back into their Jekyll form, norbornadiene. The transformation releases copious amounts of heat — enough to raise the fuel's temperature by 63 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).
If the fuel starts at room temperature (about 21 degrees C, or 70 degrees F), it quickly warms to around 84 degrees C (183 degrees F) — easily hot enough to heat a house or office.
"You could use that thermal energy for your water heater, your dishwasher or your clothes dryer," Grossman says. "There could be lots of industrial applications as well." Low-temperature heat used for cooking, sterilization, bleaching, distillation and other commercial operations accounts for 7 percent of all energy consumption in the European Union, Moth-Poulsen says.
A- solar thermal fuel could be stored in uninsulated tanks inside houses or factories — or perhaps piped or trucked between solar farms and cities. Very little of the fuel or the catalyst is damaged by the reactions, so the system can operate in a closed loop, picking up solar energy and dropping off heat again and again. "We've run it though 125 cycles without any significant degradation," Moth-Poulsen says.
HEAT WITHOUT FIRE
Moth-Poulsen has calculated that the best variant of his fuel can store up to 250 watt-hours of energy per kilogram. Pound for pound, that's roughly twice the energy capacity of the Tesla Powerwall batteries that some homeowners and utilities now use to store electricity generated by solar panels.
"I'm very excited by what Kasper is doing," Grossman says of the research. After a burst of work on norbornadiene fuels in the 1970s, he says, chemists were stymied. The fuels kept breaking down after a few cycles. They didn't hold their energy very long, and they had to be mixed with toxic solvents that diluted the energy-grabbing fuel. Moth-Poulsen "has gone back to that molecule and is using state-of-the-art tools to fix it," Grossman says.
The new results, published in a series of scientific papers over the past year, have caught the attention of investors. Moth-Poulsen says numerous companies have contacted him to discuss the potential for commercialization.
FROM PROTOTYPE TO PRODUCT
For all the promise of solar thermal fuels, years of development lie ahead. "We've made a lot of progress," Moth-Poulsen says, "but there is still a lot to figure out."
A crucial next step will be to develop a single fuel that combines the best characteristics of the many fuel variants the Chalmers team has developed — including long shelf life, high energy density and good recyclability.
Wei Feng, who leads a research group working on solar thermal fuels at China's Tianjin University, points to solvent-free operation as another "big challenge for future commercialization."
Moth-Poulsen's prototype fuels are made via common industrial processes and from widely available industrial agents, including derivatives of acetylene. But it's unclear how much a commercial version of the fuel would cost.
One important factor in the cost will be the fuel's efficiency, which currently is quite low. The prototype fuels respond only to the shortest wavelengths of sunlight, including ultraviolet and blue, which account for just 5 percent of the solar energy available. Moth-Poulsen says he's working to extend the fuel's sensitivity to include more of the spectrum.
He's also aiming to break his own record of a 63-degree C temperature increase. When that heat is added to water that has been preheated to 40 degrees C or more by conventional solar collectors, he says, "That's just enough to boil water into steam." The steam could then drive turbines to make electricity. But with more tweaks to the chemical structure, he says, "I think we could push [the temperature increase] to 80 degrees C or higher." For electricity generation, hotter is better.
"When I started, there was really only one research group working on these kinds of systems," the 40-year-old Moth-Poulsen recalls. But progress has drawn others to the challenge. "Now there are teams in the U.S., in China, in Germany — about 15 around the world," he says.
A UFOseen plummeting towards Earth has left US Air Force bosses baffled.
Footage, filmed in Anchorage in the US state of Alaska, shows what looks like two plumes of black smoke trailing a mysterious object, which appears to have a light guiding its way.
A variety of military aircraft operate out of the nearby Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, but spokeswoman Erin Eaton said the sighting was nothing to do with them.
"That doesn't look like any of our planes," she said.
Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration added that the object in the video was not an aircraft, and that it hadn't received any reports of aviation issues at the time.
The bizarre object was spotted in the sky above Alaska, USA(Image: Pen News)
But some experts still think a plane is the likeliest explanation.
Peter Davidson, director of the Washington-based National UFO Reporting Center, said that the video showed "a high-altitude jet airliner, with a contrail behind it".
"It is in level flight, but because it is flying away from the camera, it appears to be falling," he said.
"It is not, but parallax makes it look that way."
Adonus Baugh, who shot the video, was not convinced.
The 18-year-old said the object looked like something coming into the atmosphere.
Eyewitnesses say it looked like it was a meteor or something coming into the atmosphere(Image: Pen News)
"Me and my mom were just coming in to the parking lot of our house and that's when I noticed that something was falling from the sky," he said.
"I thought it was a meteor or something coming into the atmosphere.
"I actually never saw something like this before."
Another witness, Bebe Kang, agreed: "It didn't look like an airplane or one of those jets. It was big, super slow and red.
"I really just thought it might be an asteroid."
Aircraft operating out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson include F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III transports, and E-3 Sentry AWACS command jets.
USS Nimitz UFO incident took place during November of 2004 when U.S. fighter pilots encountered an unidentified flying object, which later become known as “tic-tac”. In 2017 the footage of the occurrence was released to the public and became one of the most hotly discussed topics among ufologists.
The video itself does not offer a clear image, due to the nature of radar systems. However, there are several factors that make this case one of the most fascinating studies in the field. Firstly, the existence of an audio recording of pilots experiencing the visual contact the object. Secondly, Interview given by one of the pilots. Thirdly, a report was done by Washington post about Department of Defense’s operations to analyze the sighting and was later confirmed by the Pentagon itself, giving the sighting more legitimacy.
David Fravor, a Navy Pilot with decades of experience, is the centerpiece of USS Nimitz UFO incident. His skepticism in the subject quickly evaporated, when the training mission encountered something that could not be explained. Skeptics often explain such events by a secretive technology being tested, weather balloons, or unreliability of the witnesses. None of them applies to this eye witness.
Not only would he be aware of something that could be explained by our current technologic capabilities, but also the routine nature of their training operations would make the area unsuitable for any testing by different military branches. This also makes him immune to the claims of him not being able to differentiate something as mundane as a weather balloon, natural occurrence or mechanical dysfunction from UFO.
One of the main reasons that cause the USS Nimitz UFO incident to be a fascinating study is its continuous nature. The encounter with “tic-tac” was not a one-off incident. US Navy was following the unknown object for almost two weeks. At one point over 8 objects were seen on the radar. This was not some sort of the glitch on a radar system of the single ship. This was an organized operation by a fleet of ships to track down an unknown intruder.
The occurrence, in which David Fravor took part in when he and several other pilots directly encountered the UFO was a culmination of the chase. However, even after that event, several anomalies on the ocean surface where seen. Some point looked disturbed as if something has been hovering over them, however, no further visual contact was made. What truly transpired during USS Nimitz UFO incident is debated till this day. Several things are known for certain, the U.S. Navy fleet deemed the occurrence noteworthy enough to initiate the chase, which lasted for two weeks. No one who took the part in it can give an explanation of what happened.
David Fravor, a veteran Navy pilot was shaken by the incident and after 2 years retired from the navy. He said that after his jet returned to the carrier, his description of the events were ridiculed by his colleagues. What showed up on U.S. fleets radars for two weeks and what managed to evade most sophisticated military in the world, remains a mystery till this day.
Un gigantesque “Vaisseau Mère bloque le soleil’ dans une vidéo de SpaceX
Un astronome aux yeux de faucon a repéré un objet mystérieux bloquant une partie du soleil lors du feed en direct de SpaceX.
Les images montrent ce qui semble être un grand objet sombre qui bloque une grande partie du soleil.
Le chaîne complotiste The Grimreefar a trouvé le point noir en regardant en direct le satellite Es’hail-2, qui a été lancé à bord de la SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket la semaine dernière.
En parlant de l’objet, ils ont dit : “À mon avis, si c’était un objet bloquant le soleil, il serait trop grand pour être compris.”
La vidéo a été visionnée des centaines de fois depuis qu’elle a été publiée hier, et des théoriciens ont affirmé que l’objet pourrait être extraterrestre.
Une personne a écrit : “c’est un vaisseau mère extraterrestre. Si énorme.”
Un autre a fait des commentaires : “C’est un objet massif ! Dieu seul le sait !”
“Peut-être que certains fanatiques religieux ont raison ? Peut-être qu’il y a une guerre dans les cieux.”
Un troisième s’étonne : “C’est beaucoup trop grand pour être une tache solaire, alors qu’est-ce que c’est ? Ça ne peut pas être un astéroïde massif, c’est si bizarre.”
C’est la deuxième observation étrange depuis le lancement de la fusée Falcon 9 dans l’espace le 15 novembre.
Juste après le lancement, les téléspectateurs ont affirmé avoir vu le tristement célèbre satellite Black Knight se déplacer sur leurs écrans.
Pas plus tard que la semaine dernière, les autorités américaines ont autorisé SpaceX d’Elon Musk à mettre en orbite une constellation de 12 000 satellites.
À ce sujet, Musk a dit : “Le diable est dans les détails, et SpaceX semble repousser les limites de ce qui a déjà été fait sur plusieurs fronts simultanément.”
Russia's military-industrial complex has developed the Avangard strategic intercontinental ballistic missile system equipped with a gliding hypersonic maneuvering warhead. Credit: Getty Images
Both the United States and Russia last monthpulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty(INF), a Cold War–era pact that prohibited land-based ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between 311 and 3,420 miles. That agreement limited just one class of weapons, but it is not the only accord poised to end: The much-broader New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire on February 5 next year, unless both parties agree to extend it—whichthey may not do.
New START limits the number of missiles the U.S. and Russia deploy, with an eye toward reducing the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world. Without it, for the first time since 1972 there would be no limit on how many warheads either nation can build and deploy. As tensions rise, both countries are looking to modernize their nuclear weapons, and Russia in particular is teasing terrifying new missiles that—if they work—could bypass the U.S.’s elaborate system of ground- and satellite-based defenses.
“The Russians really hate missile defense,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear policy expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif. “They really don’t like the possibility that they might be outmatched technologically. So there’s a whole battery of Russian programs—from the doomsday torpedoes, to nuclear-powered cruise missiles, to hypersonic reentry vehicles, to anti-satellite weapons.”
Last year Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled six new weaponsduring a governmental address. The most impressive, according to nuclear experts, were the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, the nuclear-powered cruise missile Skyfall and the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). These three are the crown jewels in Russia’s aggressive new nuclear policy, capable—according to Putin—of circumventing U.S. missile defense systems. Currently, American defenses are designed to knock an incoming nuke out of the air before it can hit its target—but this was already a complicated and difficult task before the development of hypersonics.
Although Russia’s new weapons sound frightening, none has actually been deployed yet. They may be ready in the next year or two, but “none of them are fully operational,” says Philip Coyle, a board member of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Coyle (who has also served as U.S. assistant secretary of defense), explains that some have been tested, but “none of them have been so successful that they can claim to have operational capability.”
But that doesn’t mean Coyle is not worried, especially about hypersonic threats. “Some of those would be impossible for United States missile defense systems [to counter],” he says, “especially the hypersonic air-to-ground-system and the hypersonic glide system, both of which [Putin] said had been successfully tested.” The current crop of weapons that defense experts label as hypersonic reach speeds greater than 3,000 mph.
INSIDE THE NUCLEAR ARSENAL
Other countries, including the United States and China, have also tested hypersonic weapons—but it is Russia’s hypersonic glide vehicle, the Avangard, that has garnered the defense community’s most intense attention. Glide vehicles could theoretically combine the maneuverability of a cruise missile with the speed of an ICBM. On a traditional nuclear launch involving an ICBM, a powerful rocket sends the warhead on a trajectory similar to a space launch (long-range ICBMs even go suborbital) before it turns around and plummets to Earth at hypersonic speeds. Glide vehicles like the Avangard would ride an ICBM into the sky, but they would then be released and soar along at the top of the atmosphere—above sensor range—before heading to their targets.
However, not everyone is fretting about high-speed glide vehicles. “I’m not so impressed by those,” Lewis says. He says the vehicles themselves, once released, will no longer be traveling at hypersonic speeds (although other experts disagree with this assessment). “The missile is gliding, so it actually slows down quite a bit and makes a much better target [than traditional ICBMs] for missiles defenses,” Lewis says. The vehicle could supposedly move to evade a defense system, but Lewis remains unconvinced. “It’s great that it can maneuver so that it doesn’t come into the range of missile defenses. But if it does, it’s going to be a much brighter target because it’s moving more slowly and it’ll be superhot,” he says. “The hypersonic gliders people are talking about actually represent slower reentry than what currently exists.”
Instead Lewis worries more about the Skyfall, the nuclear-powered cruise missile carrying a nuclear warhead. “I’m a little bothered by the menagerie of science fiction ideas that the Russians are working on,” he says. “We don’t know much about the technology behind that one (Skyfall), but certainly when the U.S. investigated the idea it was pretty nasty in terms of radiation released just to power it.” According to Putin, the Skyfall is a superpowered Tomahawk cruise missile launched via ground or air. The best Tomahawks can travel 1,550 miles—but with a nuclear reactor powering it, the Skyfall effectively has an unlimited range. Russian military sources reported the country had successfully tested the cruise missile in January 2019; however, U.S. intelligence suggests that it has yet to demonstrate a range greater than 22 miles, and may not reach its full potential for another 10 years.
Still, a radiation-spewing cruise missile with unlimited range is not Russia’s only frightening new weapon. It is also testing the RS-28 Sarmat, a liquid-fueled ICBM designed to brute-force its way through U.S. missile defense systems. The missile is fast, huge—119 feet tall with a weight of more than 220 tons—and full of weapons: It carries a 10-ton payload, big enough to include 24 separate nuclear-tipped Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles.
And the Sarmat is dangerous for reasons beyond its size. According to Coyle it also has a shorter-than-usual boost phase (the period of an ICBM’s launch when it is rocketing into the atmosphere), which gives U.S. missile defenses less time to shoot it down. If a brief launch window is not enough to protect the missile, Coyle says, “[Putin] also said that Sarmat would carry countermeasures designed to confuse U.S. anti-missiles systems.”
The Sarmat’s short boost phase exemplifies what really makes these missiles so terrifying: time. Nuclear warheads are always dangerous, but the U.S. has long relied on its ability to create lead time between launch, detection and response. Essentially, the longer the commander-in-chief has to decide how to react to the news of an ICBM launch, the better. The abilities of these new weapons—short boost times, hypersonic speeds and unlimited range—all eat into those precious minutes. “It’s going to tighten the noose around our necks,” Lewis says. “These systems add complexity and reduce decision time. That’s the kind of change that can really threaten stability.”
Meanwhile, the most recent U.S. Nuclear Posture Review and Missile Defense Review promised to develop America’s own hypersonic weapons. The reviews also teased the creation of new sensors, floated the idea of turning the F-35—the new U.S. fighter jet—into an ICBM killer, and suggested developing space-based sensors to augment American missile defense systems. But both reviews were long on theory and short on details. In particular, Coyle says, “The Missile Defense Review is unclear about what it is we would deploy in space.”
However, these protections are still theoretical. At the moment, no one has a concrete solution to the threat—and Russia continues to build and test new and potentially devastating nuclear weapons.
A Physicist Claims He’s Figured Out Why We Haven’t Met Aliens Yet, And It’s Pretty Worrying
The question “where is everyone?” is the crux of theFermi Paradox. If life on Earth is not particularly special and unique, where are all the alien civilizations? Many explanations have been proposed to explain why we seem to be alone in the vast universe. None have been 100 percent convincing, and people continue to puzzle over a solution.
According to one scientist, any civilisation that is capable of colonising beyond its own planet 'necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion'
(Stock Image)
Russian physicist Alexander Berezin, from the National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET), has another idea. He calls it the “First in, last out” solution of the Fermi Paradox. He suggests that once a civilization reaches the capabilities of spreading across the stars, it will inevitably wipe out all other civilizations.
The grim solution doesn’t hypothesize a necessarily evil alien race. Simply, they might not notice us, and their exponential expansion across the galaxy might be more important to them than what would happen to us.
“They simply won’t notice, the same way a construction crew demolishes an anthill to build real estate because they lack incentive to protect it,” he writes in the paper, which is available on pre-print and yet to be peer-reviewed.
While the picture he paints is quite grim, there’s an even less cheery aspect. He suggests that the reason we are still here is that we are not likely to be the ants. We are the future destroyers of countless civilizations.
“Assuming the hypothesis above is correct, what does it mean for our future? The only explanation is the invocation of the anthropic principle. We are the first to arrive at the [interstellar] stage. And, most likely, will be the last to leave,” Berezin explained.
Berezin’s solution for the paradox comes from several simplifications of assumptions. For example, our definition of life depends on seven parameters, but for Berezin, there’s only one that matters: growth. Growth is the push for expanding beyond the planet of origin, and if the push to expansion becomes the dominant force, it will trample any other existing life in the universe. Colonialism and capitalism are two historical example of such forces.
So, is this it? We need to either go out there and conquer or be destroyed? Well, Berezin hopes that he’s wrong. One other requirement of his solution is that life can only be found when very close rather than at a distance. So finding alien life before we are on the destruction path might just make us a decent civilization.
WHAT IS THE FERMI PARADOX?
The Fermi Paradox questions why, given the estimated 200bn-400bn stars and at least 100bn planets in our galaxy, there have been no signs of alien life.
The contradiction is named after its creator, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.
He first posed the question back in 1950.
Fermi believed it was too extraordinary that a single extraterrestrial signal or engineering project has yet to be detected in the universe — despite its immense vastness.
Fermi concluded there must a barrier that limits the rise of intelligent, self-aware, technologically advanced space-colonising civilisations.
This barrier is sometimes referred to as the 'Great Filter'.
If the main obstacle preventing the colonisation of other planets is not in our past, then the barrier that will stop humanity's prospects of reaching other worlds must lie in our future, scientists have theorised.
Professor Brian Cox believes the advances in science and engineering required by a civilisation to start conquering the stars ultimately lead to its destruction.
He said: 'One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that.
‘It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster.'
Other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox include that no other intelligent species have arisen in the universe, intelligent alien species are out there — but lack the necessary technology to communicate with Earth.
Some believe that the distances between intelligent civilsations are too great to allow any kind of two-way communication.
If two worlds are separated by several thousand light-years, it's possible that one or both civilisation will be extinct before a dialogue can be established.
The so-called Zoo hypothesis claims intelligent alien life is out there, but deliberately avoids any contact with life on Earth to allow its natural evolution.
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi devised the so-called Fermi Paradox in the 1950s. It explores why there is no sign of alien life, despite the 100 billions planets in our galaxy
A.A. Berezin cautions that rogue AIs that rebelled against their creators could pose a threat to humanity if it does not begin colonising the stars first
These rocks are a good indicator that water once flowed on Mars.
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm, on March 24, 2019, Sol (day) 2356 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
The images that Curiosity and the otherMars Roverssent back to Earth have been nothing short of amazing. They’ve offered us a breathtaking window into a planet which shares bothstriking similaritiesanddramatic differences to our Earth. But generally, these pictures have one thing in common: they’re clearly from Mars. The image above, in contrast, looks like it could have been snapped from most rivers on Earth.
A few things are intriguing in this image. For starters, the rocks seem a bit paler than the usual rust-red we’re used to seeing on Mars. Secondly, the rocks are rounded off as if they are river rocks — and to top it all off, there’s a couple of strangely-looking spherical white-ish rocks which you just wouldn’t imagine on Mars.
While NASA says these are almost certainly not river rocks, they still hint at Mars having a wet past.
These rounded rocks are formed through a phenomenon called concretion. Concretionary rocks are quite common on Earth: they form in water-rich environments, hardening over time. A concretion is formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between particles and is found in sedimentary rock or soil. Concretions are often ovoid or spherical in shape, although irregular shapes also occur.
This type of rocks are very susceptible to erosion (not necessarily water erosion), and the outer layers erode faster than the inner ones, leaving behind the rounded shapes we see here.
It’s a fantastic reminder that the geological processes we are so familiar with here on Earth are also often present on other bodies — and at least in some ways, Mars is very much like the Earth.
A self-portrait of the Curiosity Mars rover on Vera Rubin Ridge, which it’s been investigating for the past several months. Directly behind the rover is a clay-rich slope scientists are eager to begin exploring.
Indian authorities claim to have successfully tested an anti-satellite missile.
“India is now a major space power,” said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to local news. “India has achieved a big feat today.”
Election Season
The destroyed satellite was one of India’s own, orbiting the Earth at 186 miles (300 km). The Independent reports that it may have been a mini-satellite launched into orbit a month ago for this purpose. The interceptor missile was launched from a launch complex on the East coast of India on Wednesday morning.
“India has always maintained that space should not be an arena for warfare and that remains unchanged in spite of this,” Mohdi said, according to local media. “India has always been a nation of peace, but we also defend ourselves. It is with that intention that we achieved this capability.”
The news comes in the midst of election season in India, with polls opening in several weeks. The move could be a bid to bolster Modi’s chances at re-election, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Space Arms Race
India isn’t the only world nation that has carried out such a test. China claims to have carried out a successful test in 2007, the U.S. in 1985. The Pentagon has recently warned of both China and Russia developing anti-satellite technology, including jammers and even lasers capable of disrupting or damaging satellites in orbit.
Whether India’s test will fuel the race to become the dominant nation in low-Earth orbit and beyond, or, as India claims, “secure and further peace” is still uncertain.
Why hasn't Earth received any messages from extraterrestrials yet? Perhaps because we're already unwitting inhabitants in a so-called galactic zoo.
This was one of the scenarios a group of international researchers explored on March 18 at a meeting organized by the nonprofit organization Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). The gathering, which took place at the City of Science and Industry museum in Paris (Cité), brought together about 60 scientists who research the possibility of communication with hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrials.
There, they debated "The Great Silence" — why aliens haven't contacted us — exploring one possibility known as the "zoo hypothesis." First proposed in the 1970s, it describes Earth as a planet that is already under observation by "galactic zookeepers" who are deliberately concealing themselves from human detection, Forbes reported. [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens Yet]
"When we try to better understand the universe, the question of whether we are alone is unavoidable," meeting attendee Florence Raulin-Cerceau, an associate professor at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Paris-Match.
That Earth would be the lone planet to evolve and host intelligent life among potentially billions of planets in our galaxy alone seems very unlikely. But if there are intelligent extraterrestrials out there, where are they, and why haven't we found them yet? This conundrum, posed in 1950 by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, is known as Fermi's Paradox, and it still stymies experts today.
Fermi didn't live to see evidence of the first exoplanets, which were discovered decades after his death. Since 2014, NASA's Kepler space telescope has confirmed the existence of hundreds of distant worlds, and its findings have hinted at potentially 2,300 more. And yet, despite these exciting exoplanet discoveries, contact with extraterrestrials seems no closer now than it did in Fermi's day.
Under alien observation?
One explanation that scientists explored at the METI meeting, is that aliens are aware of Earth and are observing us as we would observe animals kept in a zoo, METI President Douglas Vakoch said in a workshop. If this is the case, humans should increase their efforts to create messages capable of reaching our "keepers," to demonstrate our intelligence, Vakoch explained.
For example, if a captive zebra were to suddenly tap out a pattern of prime numbers, humans would be required to re-evaluate their understanding of zebra cognition, "and we would be compelled to respond," according to EarthSky.
But what if we're not part of a vast alien zoo — what if, instead, humanity has been evaluated by alien civilizations, and subsequently "quarantined" from our galactic neighbors?
It's possible that extraterrestrials are actively isolating us from contact for our own good, because interacting with aliens would be "culturally disruptive" for Earth, meeting co-chair Jean-Pierre Rospars, honorary research director at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), said in a workshop.
Of course, it's also likely that we haven't heard from aliens because they're locked under a layer of ice in subsurface oceans; trapped on massive "super-Earth" worlds by gravity's intense pull; or dead because their advanced civilizations have already destroyed themselves — as humanity might — through runaway consumption of their planet's natural resources.
Though, maybe if we want to hear from aliens we just need to relax and be patient. After all, Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years, while extraterrestrial research is less than 100 years old, Paris-Match reported.
WETENSCHAPOnderzoekers zijn er voor de eerste keer in geslaagd om directe observaties te doen van een planeet buiten ons zonnestelsel. Ze gebruikten daarvoor een compleet nieuwe techniek. HR8799e draait rond een ster in het sterrenbeeld Pegasus en blijkt een soort super-Jupiter te zijn.
HR8799e werd voor het eerst gespot in 2010 en bevindt zich op 129 lichtjaar van onze Aarde, dat is 1.220.434.230.962.923 kilometer van ons verwijderd. Nooit eerder slaagden wetenschappers erin om rechtstreekse observaties te doen van een planeet buiten ons zonnestelsel. Dat komt door het verblindende licht van de sterren waarrond ze draaien.
Deze keer lukte het wél, met een techniek die het licht van verscheidene telescopen combineerde. Via zogenaamde ‘optische interferometrie’ konden de vier telescopen van de Very Large Telescope (VLT) – een geavanceerd astronomisch observatorium in de Atacamawoestijn in Chili – gecombineerd worden tot één super-telescoop: Gravity. Dat beeldvormingssysteem was zó gevoelig en precies dat het in staat was om het licht van de planeet en het licht van zijn ster uit elkaar te halen.
Wat de wetenschappers zagen, was iets wat ze nooit eerder hadden gezien. HR8799e bleek groter en jonger te zijn dan de planeten in ons eigen zonnestelsel. Het was een bal van gas en in zijn atmosfeer woedde een gigantische en krachtige storm. De oppervlakte werd gedomineerd werd door wolken van ijzer en silicaten (de grondstof van glas). (lees hieronder verder)
RV
De Very Large Telescope (VLT) in de woestijn van Chili.
ESO/P. Horálek
“Onze observaties suggereren dat het om een bal gas gaat die van binnenuit verlicht wordt”, aldus teamleider Sylvestre Lacour van het Observatoire de Paris in Frankrijk en het Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. “Stralen warm licht wervelen door stormachtige donkere wolken.”
Volgens de man zou de heel jonge planeet een “dynamische atmosfeer” hebben en complexe fysische en chemische processen ondergaan. Hij zou nog ‘maar’ 30 miljoen jaar oud zijn en de wetenschap een kijk geven op hoe planeten en planetaire systemen gevormd worden.
Niet bewoonbaar
Voor alle duidelijkheid: de planeet is nog in de verste verten niet bewoonbaar. Door de energie die vrijkwam bij zijn ontstaan en een krachtig broeikaseffect loopt de temperatuur er op tot ongeveer 1.000 graden Celcius. De atmosfeer zit bovendien vol koolstofmonoxide.
WETENSCHAPDe Indiase premier Narendra Modi zegt dat India een satelliet heeft neergehaald met een antisatellietwapen, en omschrijft de test als een grote doorbraak in het ruimteprogramma van zijn land.
Modi deed de aankondiging in een televisietoespraak. “Onze wetenschappers hebben een satelliet in een lage baan om de aarde op een afstand van 300 kilometer neergehaald”, zei de hindoeïstische nationalistische leider.
Hij benadrukte dat niemand zich bedreigd hoefde te voelen door de test. “Ons doel is om vrede te brengen en niet om een oorlogssfeer te creëren, dit is niet gericht tegen welk land dan ook”, zei hij.
Volgens de premier is India nog maar het vierde land dat zo’n antisatellietwapen gebruikt, na de Verenigde Staten, Rusland en China. “India heeft een ongeziene prestatie geleverd geleverd vandaag”, zei Modi. “India heeft zijn naam geregistreerd als ruimtevaartmacht.”
Volgende maand vinden in India parlementsverkiezingen plaats.
Massive Greenland glacier said to be one of the main contributors to global sea level rise is GROWING again due to cooling local temperatures - but NASA warns it’s only temporary
In 2012, Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier was retreating about 1.8 miles annually
A new study found it started growing again at about same rate in past two years
Natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic water likely caused it to reverse course
Scientists say it's only temporary, as surrounding waters will soon be warming
A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.
The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually.
But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday's Nature Geoscience.
Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.
Scroll down for video
Patches of bare land at the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland are shown. The major glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds
'That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,' said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box.
'The good news is that it's a reminder that it's not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.'
Box, who wasn't part of the study, said Jakobshavn is 'arguably the most important Greenland glacier because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere. For all of Greenland, it is king.'
A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project.
Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation - a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific.
The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler (2 degrees Celsius) than a few years ago, study authors said.
While this is 'good news' on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author.
Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.
'In the long run we'll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,' Willis said.
Think of the ocean temperatures near Greenland like an escalator that's rising slowly from global warming, Khazendar said. But the natural North Atlantic Oscillation sometimes is like jumping down a few steps or jumping up a few steps.
HOW IS GLOBAL WARMING AFFECTING GLACIAL RETREAT?
Global warming is causing the temperatures all around the world to increase.
This is particularly prominent at latitudes nearer the poles.
Rising temperatures, permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets are all struggling to stay in tact in the face of the warmer climate.
As temperatures have risen to more than a degree above pre-industrial levels, ice continues melt.
For example, melting ice on the Greenland ice sheet is producing 'meltwater lakes', which then contribute further to the melting.
This positive feedback loop is also found on glaciers atop mountains.
Many of these have been frozen since the last ice age and researchers are seeing considerable retreat.
Some animal and plant species rely heavily on the cold conditions that the glaciers provide and are migrating to higher altitudes to find suitable habitat.
This is putting severe strain on the ecosystems as more animals and more species are living in an ever-shrinking region.
On top of the environmental pressure, the lack of ice on mountains is vastly increasing the risks of landslides and volcanic eruptions.
The phenomena is found in several mountain ranges around the world.
It has also been seen in regions of Antarctica.
The water can get cooler and have effects, but in the long run it is getting warmer and the melting will be worse, he said.
Four outside scientists said the study and results make sense.
University of Washington ice scientist Ian Joughin, who wasn't part of the study and predicted such a change seven years ago, said it would be a 'grave mistake' to interpret the latest data as contradicting climate change science.
What's happening, Joughin said, is 'to a large extent, a temporary blip. Downturns do occur in the stock market, but overall the long term trajectory is up. This is really the same thing.'
Big U-turn: Key melting Greenland glacier is growing again
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
This 2016 photo provided by NASA shows patches of bare land at the Jakobshavn glacier in Greenland. The major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But the last two years it started growing again at about the same rate, according to a study released on Monday, March 25, 2019, in Nature Geoscience. Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.
(NASA via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.
The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience . Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.
“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box. “The good news is that it’s a reminder that it’s not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.”
Box, who wasn’t part of the study, said Jakobshavn is “arguably the most important Greenland glacier because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere. For all of Greenland, it is king.”
A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation — a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific.
The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler (2 degrees Celsius) than a few years ago, study authors said.
While this is “good news” on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author. Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.
“In the long run we’ll probably have to raise our predictions of sea level rise again,” Willis said.
Think of the ocean temperatures near Greenland like an escalator that’s rising slowly from global warming, Khazendar said. But the natural North Atlantic Oscillation sometimes is like jumping down a few steps or jumping up a few steps. The water can get cooler and have effects, but in the long run it is getting warmer and the melting will be worse, he said.
Four outside scientists said the study and results make sense.
University of Washington ice scientist Ian Joughin, who wasn’t part of the study and predicted such a change seven years ago, said it would be a “grave mistake” to interpret the latest data as contradicting climate change science.
What’s happening, Joughin said, is “to a large extent, a temporary blip. Downturns do occur in the stock market, but overall the long term trajectory is up. This is really the same thing.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Grote ommekeer: gletsjer op Groenland weigert te smelten en groeit zelfs. Wetenschappers staan voor verrassing
Een grote gletsjer op Groenland, tot voor kort één van de snelst krimpende ijsmassa’s op aarde, groeit weer. Dat blijkt uit een nieuwe studie van de NASA.
Rond 2012 verloor de Jakobshavn-gletsjer zo’n 40 meter aan ijs per jaar. Daarnaast trok hij zich met drie kilometer per jaar terug.
Maar de afgelopen twee jaar groeide de gletsjer weer ongeveer net zoveel aan, blijkt uit de studie die is gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift Nature Geoscience.
Natuurlijke cyclus
“Dit kwam voor ons als een verrassing,” zei klimaatwetenschapper Jason Box tegen persbureau AP. “We waren eraan gewend dat de gletsjer in omvang afnam.”
De gletsjer is waarschijnlijk gegroeid als gevolg van een natuurlijke cyclus waarbij de Atlantische Oceaan afkoelt, aldus hoofdonderzoeker Ala Khazendar van de NASA.
Het water in Disko Bay, waar de gletsjer uitkomt bij de oceaan, is ongeveer twee graden Celsius kouder dan twee jaar geleden, zeggen de onderzoekers.
Warmte
Vorig jaar toonden wetenschappers voor het eerst aan dat gletsjers op Groenland smelten als gevolg van warmte die uit het binnenste van de aarde ontsnapt.
“In het noordoosten van Groenland bevinden zich verschillende geisers waar het water temperaturen van 60 graden Celsius bereikt,” zei hoofdonderzoeker Soren Rysgaard van de Universiteit van Aarhus in Denemarken.
“Er is geen twijfel over mogelijk dat de warmte uit het binnenste van de aarde de verplaatsing van het ijs beïnvloedt,” voegde hij toe.
CRIMINELE OVERHEDEN HOUDEN BUITENAARDSE ZEGENINGEN VOOR ONS VERBORGEN ( VIDEO )
De wereld zou al lang een veel betere plaats kunnen zijn als overheden en dan met name de Amerikaanse, de kennis van buitenaardsen met het volk zouden delen.
Er zou dan gratis schone energie zijn, water en voedsel voor de hele wereldbevolking en enge ziektes konden worden genezen.
Eigenlijk de enige manier waarop wij dingen te weten kunnen komen over geheimzinnige projecten zoals die van bijvoorbeeld de Amerikaanse overheid, is via klokkenluiders.
Mensen die zelf dingen hebben gezien en meegemaakt en vinden dat ze hun mond open moeten doen en hun kennis delen met de wereld.
Eén van die mensen is Emery Smith, de man die jarenlang heeft gewerkt bij en voor de Amerikaanse luchtmacht.
Smith heeft een opleiding genoten tot operatie assistent en volgde talloze andere paramedische opleidingen. Maar zijn specialiteit was naast bovengenoemde zaken, het voorbereiden van weefselonderzoek,
Zo kreeg hij delen van lichamen en moest daar bepaalde zaken van ontleden en voor onderzoek opsturen naar een andere afdeling zonder dat hij in het begin zelf ook maar enig idee had van wie die lichaamsdelen waren of wat er onderzocht zou worden.
Tijdens dat soort activiteiten die veelal werden uitgevoerd in ondergrondse laboratoria van de luchtmacht, kwam Smith ook in aanraking met andere dingen die tot op de dag van vandaag geheim zijn, zoals nulpunt energie, antizwaartekracht en holografische technieken.
Het meeste van de technologie die hij zag was afkomstig van reverse engineering. Techniek, nagebouwd van buitenaardsen en veelal afkomstig uit neergestorte ufo’s.
Het gemene is natuurlijk zoals altijd, dat overheden dit soort dingen voor zichzelf houden en niet delen met de bevolking. Wanneer ze dit wel zouden doen, volgens Smith, dan hadden wij de mogelijkheid om allerlei nare ziektes te genezen, gratis energie en genoeg water en voedsel om de gehele wereldbevolking te voorzien.
Door de jaren heen is Emery Smith precies te weten gekomen hoe alles in elkaar steekt met betrekking tot de buitenaardsen. Dit alles vertelt hij in onderstaand interview dat absoluut de moeite van het bekijken waard is.
Het neemt je mee naar een andere wereld en ineens zijn andere dimensie en teleporatie geen vreemde begrippen meer. Het is er allemaal, om ons heen en dichterbij dan we denken.
En ook hier komt ter sprake waar wij al heel lang over schrijven en dat is de geheime ruimtevloot. Waar wij als publiek kijken naar een ruimteprogramma waar raketten nog steeds met donderend geraas en voorzien van fossiele brandstoffen de ruimte in worden gestuurd, terwijl de geheime ruimtevloot over de meest moderne buitenaardse technieken beschikt.
Wat Smith zegt is dat we eigenlijk geen moeite hoeven doen voor Disclosure, want dat door de veranderingen van het weer op aarde het ijs in poolstreken bijvoorbeeld zal smelten, waardoor enorme ruimteschepen tevoorschijn zullen komen, waar op een gegeven moment voor de autoriteiten geen ontkennen meer aan zal zijn omdat de hele wereld hiervan getuige is.
Het is natuurlijk altijd lastig om te beoordelen of iemand de waarheid vertelt of niet.
In het geval van Emery Smith volgt hierna een recente verklaring van David Wilcock waarin deze uitlegt dat hij Smith al tien jaar kent en dat hij ervan overtuigd is dat de verhalen zoals Smith die vertelt, op waarheid berusten. Gedurende 10 jaar is de man niet afgeweken van zijn getuigenverslagen.
De naam Smith valt vaak samen met die van Corey Goode, ook een goede bekende van Wilcox, waar wel de nodige twijfel over bestaat, zoals wij in een eerder artikel schreven.
Russian Strange Ray of Light Emerges From The Sky Captured on Camera
Russian photographer Zhiganov, who initially planned to photograph some of his friends lounging in a hot tub with the aurora overhead in the city of Aptity, Russia quickly changed when he noticed a strange phenomenon, explained as a vertical aurora, in the sky upon he started to film it.
“It was the first time I ever saw an aurora in such a rarified form” Zhiganov said but I wonder whether it was an aurora or some sort of a laser/plasma beam since it turned into an enormous bright sphere that moved across the surface until it disappeared.
Here is the amazing video and please decide for yourself whether it is a rare vertical aurora or not.
The Secret Space Program Gary McKinnon 1st Interview in Years by Richard Dolan
UK citizen Gary McKinnon is the most famous UFO “hacker” of all time. Arrested in 2002, he was in danger of extradition to the US for ten years.
What he found was apparent evidence of a secret space program, including references to “non-terrestrial officers” and ship to ship transfers of vessels not in the U.S. military inventory.
Moreover, a high-resolution photograph, taken from space, of a smooth, cigar-shaped craft. Gary also talks about the repercussions of being sought by the U.S. government, his depression, suicidal thoughts, and more.
Richard Dolan who interviews Gary is one of the world’s leading researchers and writers on the subject of UFOs and believes that they constitute the greatest mystery of our time.
UFO Disclosure: They’re Here! And They've Crashed on Earth Many Times!
Whoever or whatever is watching us is looking to see what we are doing with our own technology. There have been many UFO Crashes, did they just crash or did we take them down?
So what triggered project blue book, was it pilot sightings or did something happen? There are many cases from project blue book that defy rational explanation.
Because of her international perspective on extraterrestrial related phenomena, Paola Harris has consulted with many researchers, including J Allen Hynek and Col. Philip Corso about the best avenues for planetary disclosure with emphasis on the “big picture” and stressing the historical connection.
What do anthropology and UFOs have in common? In his new book, a noted anthropologist looks at the physical descriptions of the bodies and behaviors of extraterrestrials and theorizes that the reason they resemble us so much is that they’re our descendants from a future time and UFOs are actually time machines transporting them back for some kind of strange family reunion. Is this the future version of genealogical DNA tests?
“The phenomenon may be our own distant descendants coming back through time to study us in their own evolutionary past. The extra-tempestrial are ubiquitously reported as being bipedal, upright-walking, five fingers on each hand and foot, bi-lateral symmetry that they have two eyes, a mouth a nose, they can communicate with us in our own languages.”
In a recent appearance on KXLF (“Montana’s News Leader”) and in previous interviews like this one by Darkness Radio and on his website, Montana Tech professor of anthropology Dr. Michael P. Masters summarizes his new book, “Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon,” and his quest to “begin a new and more informed discussion among believers and skeptics alike.” That quest is to use the analytical techniques of an anthropologist who normally looks at human ancestors who partially resemble us and apply them to a study of other human-like species we know only through eyewitness accounts of alleged encounters – extraterrestrials. The end result is that Masters’ analysis suggests we should stop using the description “extraterrestrials” and instead start calling at least some of these future visitors extra-tempestrials.
“As an anthropologist who has worked on and directed numerous archaeological digs in Africa, France, and throughout the United States, it is easy to conceptualize just how much more could be learned about our own evolutionary history, if we currently possessed the technology to visit past periods of time.”
Dr. Masters sees the accounts of alien sightings and particularly alien abductions and the subsequent probings and analyses as indications that the visitors are anthropologists like himself, studying their ancestors with a tool he would love to have – a time machine. Imagine how much more we would know of ourselves, our planet and our universe if we could physically travel back millions of years to observe and possibly (let’s not ignore the “butterfly effect”) examine them.
“Many changes characterize human evolution, but it is primarily tenacious shifts toward habitual upright walking, changes in brain size and shape, facial reduction, reduced body hair, higher intelligence, and the development of increasingly complex tools and culture that most define our lineage. These changes occurred throughout hominin evolution, and have persisted in spite of marked modification to our subsistence strategy, climate, ecology, environment, and system of social, economic, and political organization.”
The is Dr. Masters’ ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck’ line of abductive reasoning. Through millions of years of evolution and sometimes catastrophic environmental events, humans haven’t changed much physically. It’s the subtle changes that translate into leaps in intelligence and behavior. It makes sense that future humans would want more information on their lesser-developed ancestors too (there goes our self-esteem and superiority complex). In a similar manner, we obviously would like to find out what we’re going to become. Masters warns that this would be difficult.
“Modern and past human groups would only be capable of comprehending the biology, culture, and technology of these extratempestrials in a limited capacity, as we represent a far more primitive stage of their remote ancestral past.”
See the resemblance?
This theory of extratempestrials obviously adds a twist to the the idea of ancient astronauts, with the ‘aliens’ being future humans helping their primitive ancestors build pyramids in return for remembering them with statues and paintings and not destroying the Earth and ruining their future lives. That sounds like the positive conclusion Masters draws from his theory.
“Coupled with a thorough understanding of the past and modern human condition, these accounts point to the continuation of established biological and cultural trends here on Earth, long into the distant future.”
We’ll still be here, we’ll still be walking upright, we’ll become smart enough to invent time machines and we won’t turn out too badly.
Next time you meet an ‘alien’, tell them “You’re welcome.”
Ryan Sprague is a lead investigator and co-host of the CW television series,Roswell: Mysteries Decodedand the author ofSomewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon. He is also the creator and host of theSomewhere in the Skiespodcast on the eOne Podcast network. As a UFO journalist, Ryan has interviewed witnesses from all walks of life about UFO sightings and encounters. He has also interviewed military and intelligence officials about UFOs, writing for such news sites as Open Minds Magazine, Rogue Planet, Omni Reboot, andFuturism. Speaking on the UFO topic, he has been featured on ABC News, Fox News, Science Channel, and is a regular on Travel Channel’s series, Mysteries at the Museum. He is currently working on his second book.
Here, Ryan talks to me about what he has and hasn’t learned from his years in a field that can be inspiring and maddening in equal measure…
RG: Your podcast recently celebrated its 100th episode. Is it a challenge to deliver quality content every week? How do you select your topics?
It’s definitely challenging, but the reward far outweighs the challenge. I get messages from listeners from all over the world almost on a daily basis. Some good, some bad, but almost always constructive. I value my listeners’ opinions because, ultimately, the show is for them and not for me. My goal was to shake things up with the show; ask new questions of the UFO phenomenon. So, I wanted to bring unique voices to the UFO discourse. I’ve met so many new people and have learned so much from simply stepping outside the echo chamber.
RG: What inspires you most about UFOlogy?
The staggering amount of people who have witnessed the phenomena firsthand. Also, the attention that “Ufology” has gotten these past few years (yes, no matter what anyone says, To the Stars Academy has played a huge part in that). The topic is certainly seeing a resurgence, and even mainstream scientists and academics are taking it more seriously. I need not look further than at least three college/university-level professors who now teach UFOs in their curriculum. The conversation is growing both in terms of how many people are interested and even in the complexity of the phenomena.
Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy of Arts and sciences is spending big money to position itself in the public eye as the go-to organisation for UFO truth.
RG: What annoys you most about UFOlogy?
The divide. There’s room for everyone at the saucer-shaped table, so instead of talking down to one another, in terms of research, approaches, or beliefs, we should engage in healthy debate, take what we want from one another’s work, and build off of it. I’ve personally gleaned something from every person I’ve talked to about UFOs, even if it involved me learning that someone was straight up lying to my face, hoaxing, or simply a fantasist. At least I learned to move on from them and focus on the work at hand.
RG: Who are your top three UFOlogical heroes or role models, and why?
The first would have to be my mentor, both in UFO research and my other passion in life, theater. And that is Peter Robbins. He welcomed me with open arms into a world I never knew existed. He is a man of many words and those words pack a punch. We spend hours at our favorite diner in Manhattan, chatting about UFOs, the theater world, and everything in between. They’ve been some of my most memorable moments of living in New York City for the last decade or so, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Left to right: Stanton Friedman, Cheryl Costa, and Peter Robbins.
My second UFO hero would have to be Cheryl Costa. Her dedication and resilience continue to marvel me. She created the most comprehensive reference book on UFOs ever written, and I know her work has only just begun. While I focus my research on individuals and stories, she enhances witness testimony with hard data. It’s a task that not many could wrap their head around, let alone put in to such a comprehensive format for the public at large. Lest we forget, she had a very credible and serious interview about UFOs in the New York Times prior to the Secret Pentagon UFO Program story broke. Costa remains one of the most important researchers this field has ever had.
Stanton T. Friedman would be my final choice. The time he has dedicated to unraveling the UFO mystery is beyond commendable. He has paved the way for so many of us. His contributions to individual cases, to the field, and to the topic overall, are undeniable, and he remains one of the most level-headed, eloquent, and damn nicest people this field has ever produced.
RG: What is your own personal goal in this field? Do you have a vision for what you’d like to accomplish?
My goal is and always has been the same: to make the topic of UFOs accessible to younger people and to legitimize it in any way I can. If I find answers along the way, that’s great. But I’m more interested in the journey than the destination. And that journey has opened my eyes, my mind, and my perspective on this mystery, and so many others. It’s a very personal journey, but I also really enjoy picking up hitchhikers along the way!
Ryan Sprague in the CW’s ‘Roswell: Mysteries Decoded’ (2019), with co-host Jennifer Marshall.
RG: Some scholars have suggested that UFOlogy, or the UFO subculture, has clear religious aspects. Do you see any parallels between the pursuit of UFOs and the pursuit of God?
Absolutely. I often look at the work of Carl Jung when it comes to this intersectionality. He once stated, “By ‘self,’ we mean psychic wholeness, but what realities underlie this concept we do not know… in religious experience man comes face to face with a psychically overwhelming Other.” To me, this means that belief strengthens faith and vice versa. And a huge part of the UFO phenomenon also involves belief. But when it comes to staring up at that UFO, we each bring something truly unique and powerful to the interpretation of what we’re experiencing. In religion, we perceive a divine being as something all powerful and we give it meaning beyond that which we know to be true. We often do this with UFOs as well. We do not know what they are or what they represent entirely, but we give it meaning according to our own life experiences. They are so intrinsically linked, that perhaps we are, as many have contemplated, looking at a modern myth—a technological AND spiritual modern-day religion. I strongly urge all those interested in UFOs to read the recent offering by Diana Walsh Pasulka. After interviewing her on the podcast and reading her book, American Cosmic, I think she’s on to something groundbreaking and revelatory.
RG: There are many hypotheses to account for the UFO enigma, including man-made secret technologies, exotic natural phenomena, mass hallucination and delusion, and, of course, extraterrestrial intelligences. Which theory do you feel is most credible, and why?
This may sound non-committal, but I honestly believe it to be all of these and none of these. The more I look in to UFO phenomena, the more I’m convinced we are not dealing with simple nuts-and-bolts saucers from another planet. The phenomenon is deeply malleable and it is ever-evolving. Some UFOs are most definitely man-made and natural phenomena. Some “UFO flaps” could easily be mass hysteria while some could have been an invasion on a miniature scale. Each of the theories has some merit in my eyes because I’m still stumbling my way through all this, just like everyone else. The one thing I can say to anyone out there who may just be dipping their toes in the UFO waters is this: if anyone claims to have a single definitive answer to the UFO phenomena, run. Run as fast as you can and don’t look back. Look forward to those who are still theorizing. We are on the timetable of the phenomena. Always have been. Probably always will be.
RG: You’ve been studying UFOs for a significant portion of your life; do you feel you’re any closer to understanding the phenomena today than you were, say, 10 years ago? Where do you see the UFO field 10 years from now?
My sobering answer is no. I don’t think I’m any closer, but I do think I’ve personally made great strides in understanding certain cases, incidents, and how to conduct my own research. If I could go back ten years, I’d tell myself to be more patient and more empathetic. I think my lack of knowledge early on led me to cast judgment very quickly on certain cases. And now, almost a decade later, I am realizing that things aren’t always as they seem. Some cases have become more credible for me and some have unfortunately been cast in to bowels of hoaxes, fabrications, or misidentifications. I was extremely skeptical when I first started out. I’ve definitely become more open to the phenomena and those experiencing it. In ten years’ time, I hope we have a convergence of science and witness testimony, where both can be satisfied with some semblance of an answer to all this.
RG: What’s next for you? What other projects are in the pipeline?
Right now, I’m working on some television projects with the wonderful people I worked with on Roswell: Mysteries Decoded. Let’s just say that our investigation into this seventy-two year old case isn’t over. And there are plenty of more mysteries we hope to decode in the very near future. Other than that, the podcast continues weekly, along with my Youtube channel. And I am working on a follow-up book that takes me places I’ve never been before, both with UFOs and possibly interconnected phenomena. It’s a challenge and a journey I’ve set for myself, and one I hope people will want to join me in along the way. Expect my book some time in 2020. I also have some speaking engagements coming up, including Alien Con in Los Angeles! More info on all of my projects and the podcast and book can be found at www.somewhereintheskies.com
“Is there evidence of life on Mars? An international team of research scientists, in a just published monograph titled “Evidence of Life on Mars? –consisting of a scholarly review of nearly 200 peer reviewed scientific studies– answer this age old question with a resounding “yes.” And they’ve included pictures of Martian specimens, photographed by NASA, which they say support their claims.”
What would you say if a team of legitimate scientists released a research paper claiming they have analyzed numerous photographs of Mars taken by the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers and concluded that there are mushrooms, algae, lichens and fungi growing not just on the surface of the planet but also on the surface of the rovers themselves? As the cry of “Pareidolia!” (assigning human-related characteristics to objects) rises from the skeptical and educated masses, study co-author and research team member Dr. Regina Dass of the Department of Microbiology at the School of Life Sciences in India responds in a press release with:
Experts think the white specimens in this Nasa image from Mars are fungi
“There are no geological or other abiogenic forces on Earth which can produce sedimentary structures, by the hundreds, which have mushroom shapes, stems, stalks, and shed what looks like spores on the surrounding surface. In fact, fifteen specimens were photographed by NASA growing out of the ground in just three days!”
With an exclamation point yet! That press release is referring to “Evidence of Life on Mars?”, a study published in the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews which includes the images taken by the rovers which show the life forms. (Read the study and view the images here.) This isn’t one of those pay-for-publishing-without-peer-review journals either. The editors were so concerned about “negative blow back” that they gave the study to fourteen experts (eight Senior Editors and six independent scientists) for review, and eleven recommended publication.
NASA has made no comments so far on this controversial paper. That doesn’t surprise co-author Dr. Giorgio Bianciardi of the Department of Medical Science at Siena University. He recalls the equally controversial findings from the 1976 Mars Viking landings.
“Biological activity on Mars was first detected in 1976. NASA dismissed that evidence then inexplicably refused to equip any subsequent mission with life detection technology. As we detail in our review, there is now considerable evidence supporting Viking’s original findings of life on Mars.”
NASA generally attribute strange anomalies in Martian photographs to shadows and eroded rocks and says that the methane detected on the planet could have come from other sources besides decaying life forms. The authors agree, saying: “Similarities in morphology are not proof of life.” However, co-author, Dr. Nicolo Cantasano, a geobiologist at Italy’s National Research Council in Rome, reveals the thig however spotted in at least two of the photographs.
“However, wind would not account for what appears to be masses of black fungi growing on the rovers, and what appears to be white fungi, or bio-corrosion within a sheltered compartment atop the rover Curiosity.”
The study uses those photos to point out what astronauts on the International Space Station already know … there’s no way to completely sterilize spacecrafts and the fungi could very well have been brought there on the rovers. However Number 2 – if this is the case, it at least confirms that mushrooms and fungi can grow in the harsh Martian environment. It could also reveal where the ground mushrooms came from – chucks of fungi-loaded Earth hurled into space when it was hit by massive asteroids.
The researchers admit that the only way to prove their speculations is to bring Martian soil back to Earth and urge NASA to pursue this more vigorously. They also admit the obvious:
“In many respects the observations presented here could be described as circumstantial and do not rise to the level of “extraordinary evidence” thus precluding “extraordinary claims.” Although, collectively, the evidence, in total, weighs in favor of biology, we can only conclude that the question of life on Mars remains unanswered.””
Does the evidence – photographs that look like mushrooms – really weigh in favor of biology?
Will the possibility of ‘shrooms on Mars entice more people to apply for the trip?
Will you?
NASA
The study states that some experts believe this image shows lichens growing on Mars
Anthropology Expert Claims UFOs are Time Machines Of Our Distant Descendants
Most people think UFOs visit Earth from other planets way too far than we could imagine. However, a professor at Montana Tech believes otherwise.
Michael P. Masters says UFOs are much closer to home. He explains the phenomenon may be our race coming from the future and traveling through time to study their evolutionary past.
Masters reveals this theory in his newly released book “Identified Flying Objects.” Masters says he uses the science of his explanation about the reason people who report close encounters with aliens always describe these ETs the same way.
Masters states the alleged aliens are reported as having five fingers on each hand and foot, bi-lateral symmetry with two eyes, a mouth, a nose, as being bipedal, upright-walking and they can communicate with us using our languages.
Masters, who has a doctorate in anthropology from Ohio State University, understands this study may be called fringe science. However, in the book, he defends the research.
Maters stresses he stands by the product and happy to talk about it with anyone. He explains the study is written for his academic peers much as it is for anyone in the UFO community.
Most people make flippant comments about little green men to show they don’t take it seriously, but the American Defense Department spent $22 million investigating the UFO phenomenon. Dr. Masters believes it is the right time scientists take a serious approach to the study of the phenomenon.
Would Aliens Save or Destroy Us? Seven Possible Scenarios for Extraterrestrial Contact
Janey Tracey
Would aliens want to help us or hurt us? In a paper by researchers Seth D. Bauma and Jacob D. Haqq-Misra of Pennsylvania State University and NASA's Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman, the prospect of extraterrestrial contact is analyzed from every conceivable angle.
[Credit: Seth D. Baum, Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, & Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman]
Here are seven of the most interesting possibilities:
1) Detection without any direct contact
While this seems to be the least exciting option, detection of extraterrestrial intelligence alone would actually have a complex impact on humanity. In the realm of philosophy and psychology, knowing that we are not alone in the universe would change the way we view humanity and our place in the universe. The authors of the paper argue that the impact would be primarily positive, as humans are generally eager for answers to these curious, and sometimes existential, questions. They acknowledge, however, that some would argue that there would be negative consequences as well, particularly in the discovery's effects on religion, particularly Christianity. SETI astrobiologist Paul Davies claimed that, since certain religions are predicated on the notion that humans are uniquely "saved" by a Messiah, religion can only be reconciled with the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials by acknowledging the existence of other iterations of Messiahs on other planets, or explaining why humans are worthy of being saved while the aliens are not. Similarly, creationist Ken Ham recently stated that intelligent aliens most likely do not exist, but if they do, then they are going to Hell, as Jesus is specifically the savior of humanity. This is a common belief within the Christian religion, but not a universal one. Outer Places interviewed a pastor in Roswell, New Mexico who disagreed with this view: "We don't know the story of other life forms... ours is a story of sin and salvation... but certainly we would believe that God is capable of writing... any story that God wants."
But even if the discovery of extraterrestrial life seemed to have a negative impact on those who subscribed to certain religions, the authors of the paper argue that blaming this crisis directly on the discovery is the result of a "philosophical mistake," as the extraterrestrials exist whether we discover them or not. Either way, the comfortable notion of our uniqueness in the universe is false, this discovery would only make the pious aware of that fact: "It is the existence of ETI that challenges such worldviews and not the act of detection. If ETI do in fact exist, then the harm has already been done in the sense that such worldviews are already invalid. Detection simply alerts us to this invalidity."
2) They help us with literally everything
If the extraterrestrials are more advanced than us, and they are interested in helping us, then they would open our civilization to a whole host of possibilities. They could teach us more about math and science, provide solutions for seemingly intractable problems like hunger, poverty, disease, etc. While this option may seem like wishful thinking, it is consistent with the Sustainability solution to the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox essentially asks: if there are intelligent aliens in the universe, where are they? If there are technologically advanced beings who have achieved interstellar travel, why haven't they tried to colonize Earth yet? The Sustainability solution asserts that it is in the nature of intelligent beings to expand exponentially, and as a result they do not last very long as this rate of expansion is unsustainable. The inverse states that, if there are intelligent beings that have been in existence long enough to overlap with us, then they would likely follow certain habits of sustainable populations. They would see value in and protect their ecosystem, and therefore would be unlikely to colonize for resources. They would also be less likely to expand for expansion's sake, and instead only explore out of curiosity. If they have no need or desire to colonize or conquer us, then it is more likely that they would be cooperative and helpful.
3) The aliens try to colonize or destroy us, but we turn the tables on them
This option is fairly self-explanatory; like in the book/movie/television show War of the Worlds, the film Independence Day, and countless other works of science fiction, the aliens attempt to harm us but are thwarted, either by our human pluckiness or sheer luck. For example, they could be unprepared for the microbial infections found on Earth, like in War of the Worlds. This would mostly be beneficial as a moral victory, although there is also a possibility that we could benefit in other ways, such as reverse engineering their advanced technology.
4) They kill us with the extraterrestrial equivalent of smallpox blankets
While we often think of alien invasion as a deliberate destruction of humanity, there is a chance that they could hurt us completely unintentionally by bringing unknown diseases to our planet for which our immune systems have no defense. Similarly, they could destroy our ecosystem even further by bringing invasive species, or destabilize society in a more subtle manner by bringing us advanced technology that we're simply not ready for.
5) Aliens are just like us, in the worst possible way
It's possible that at some point in a species' evolution, they become more moral and less selfish. But if that happens, we haven't seen it yet. As a result, it seems likely that selfishness is an inherent quality to intelligent beings. Geographer Jared Diamond discussed the reasons he believes that optimistic scenarios for extraterrestrial contact are unlikely: "The astronomers and others hope that the extraterrestrials, delighted to discover fellow intelligent beings, will sit down for a friendly chat. Perhaps the astronomers are right; that's the best-case scenario. A less pleasant prospect is that the extraterrestrials might behave the way we intelligent beings have behaved whenever we have discovered other previously unknown intelligent beings on earth, like unfamiliar humans or chimpanzees and gorillas. Just as we did to those beings, the extraterrestrials might proceed to kill, infect, dissect, conquer, displace or enslave us, stuff us as specimens for their museums or pickle our skulls and use us for medical research. My own view is that those astronomers now preparing again to beam radio signals out to hoped-for extraterrestrials are naïve, even dangerous."
The authors of the paper concede that some astronomers believe that aliens would be friendly, but go on to say that just as many believe that aliens may attempt to colonize or enslave us, use us as a source of food, harm us in an attempt to evangelize, or even keep us for entertainment purposes, such as in zoos or gladiator arenas.
6) They destroy us for the most random of reasons
This scenario involves aliens that are universalist in their ethics, or beings that have certain principles that have inherent value in themselves, and are not dependent on whether they are beneficial to their particular species (humans do not generally fall in this category). We associate universalism with benevolent, peaceful beings, as they would have no particular reason to harm us simply for being "other" to them. However, whether they intend to harm us or not would be completely dependent on their specific value system. The authors use the example of the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which aliens are attempting to destroy Earth simply because they value infrastructure, and our planet is in the way of a hyperspace bypass.
7) They destroy us because they think we're kind of terrible
This one is also relatively self-explanatory. Whether they believe we are a threat to their species or not, if they are universalist then they may destroy us if they believe that we are a threat to other civilizations as a result of our tendency to step on any civilization that is less technologically advanced than we are, or a liability to the universe in general as a result of our tendency to destroy ecosystems.
Would Aliens Save or Destroy Us? Seven Possible Scenarios for Extraterrestrial Contact
Janey Tracey
Would aliens want to help us or hurt us? In a paper by researchers Seth D. Bauma and Jacob D. Haqq-Misra of Pennsylvania State University and NASA's Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman, the prospect of extraterrestrial contact is analyzed from every conceivable angle.
[Credit: Seth D. Baum, Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, & Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman]
Here are seven of the most interesting possibilities:
1) Detection without any direct contact
While this seems to be the least exciting option, detection of extraterrestrial intelligence alone would actually have a complex impact on humanity. In the realm of philosophy and psychology, knowing that we are not alone in the universe would change the way we view humanity and our place in the universe. The authors of the paper argue that the impact would be primarily positive, as humans are generally eager for answers to these curious, and sometimes existential, questions. They acknowledge, however, that some would argue that there would be negative consequences as well, particularly in the discovery's effects on religion, particularly Christianity. SETI astrobiologist Paul Davies claimed that, since certain religions are predicated on the notion that humans are uniquely "saved" by a Messiah, religion can only be reconciled with the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrials by acknowledging the existence of other iterations of Messiahs on other planets, or explaining why humans are worthy of being saved while the aliens are not. Similarly, creationist Ken Ham recently stated that intelligent aliens most likely do not exist, but if they do, then they are going to Hell, as Jesus is specifically the savior of humanity. This is a common belief within the Christian religion, but not a universal one. Outer Places interviewed a pastor in Roswell, New Mexico who disagreed with this view: "We don't know the story of other life forms... ours is a story of sin and salvation... but certainly we would believe that God is capable of writing... any story that God wants."
But even if the discovery of extraterrestrial life seemed to have a negative impact on those who subscribed to certain religions, the authors of the paper argue that blaming this crisis directly on the discovery is the result of a "philosophical mistake," as the extraterrestrials exist whether we discover them or not. Either way, the comfortable notion of our uniqueness in the universe is false, this discovery would only make the pious aware of that fact: "It is the existence of ETI that challenges such worldviews and not the act of detection. If ETI do in fact exist, then the harm has already been done in the sense that such worldviews are already invalid. Detection simply alerts us to this invalidity."
2) They help us with literally everything
If the extraterrestrials are more advanced than us, and they are interested in helping us, then they would open our civilization to a whole host of possibilities. They could teach us more about math and science, provide solutions for seemingly intractable problems like hunger, poverty, disease, etc. While this option may seem like wishful thinking, it is consistent with the Sustainability solution to the Fermi paradox. The Fermi paradox essentially asks: if there are intelligent aliens in the universe, where are they? If there are technologically advanced beings who have achieved interstellar travel, why haven't they tried to colonize Earth yet? The Sustainability solution asserts that it is in the nature of intelligent beings to expand exponentially, and as a result they do not last very long as this rate of expansion is unsustainable. The inverse states that, if there are intelligent beings that have been in existence long enough to overlap with us, then they would likely follow certain habits of sustainable populations. They would see value in and protect their ecosystem, and therefore would be unlikely to colonize for resources. They would also be less likely to expand for expansion's sake, and instead only explore out of curiosity. If they have no need or desire to colonize or conquer us, then it is more likely that they would be cooperative and helpful.
3) The aliens try to colonize or destroy us, but we turn the tables on them
This option is fairly self-explanatory; like in the book/movie/television show War of the Worlds, the film Independence Day, and countless other works of science fiction, the aliens attempt to harm us but are thwarted, either by our human pluckiness or sheer luck. For example, they could be unprepared for the microbial infections found on Earth, like in War of the Worlds. This would mostly be beneficial as a moral victory, although there is also a possibility that we could benefit in other ways, such as reverse engineering their advanced technology.
4) They kill us with the extraterrestrial equivalent of smallpox blankets
While we often think of alien invasion as a deliberate destruction of humanity, there is a chance that they could hurt us completely unintentionally by bringing unknown diseases to our planet for which our immune systems have no defense. Similarly, they could destroy our ecosystem even further by bringing invasive species, or destabilize society in a more subtle manner by bringing us advanced technology that we're simply not ready for.
5) Aliens are just like us, in the worst possible way
It's possible that at some point in a species' evolution, they become more moral and less selfish. But if that happens, we haven't seen it yet. As a result, it seems likely that selfishness is an inherent quality to intelligent beings. Geographer Jared Diamond discussed the reasons he believes that optimistic scenarios for extraterrestrial contact are unlikely: "The astronomers and others hope that the extraterrestrials, delighted to discover fellow intelligent beings, will sit down for a friendly chat. Perhaps the astronomers are right; that's the best-case scenario. A less pleasant prospect is that the extraterrestrials might behave the way we intelligent beings have behaved whenever we have discovered other previously unknown intelligent beings on earth, like unfamiliar humans or chimpanzees and gorillas. Just as we did to those beings, the extraterrestrials might proceed to kill, infect, dissect, conquer, displace or enslave us, stuff us as specimens for their museums or pickle our skulls and use us for medical research. My own view is that those astronomers now preparing again to beam radio signals out to hoped-for extraterrestrials are naïve, even dangerous."
The authors of the paper concede that some astronomers believe that aliens would be friendly, but go on to say that just as many believe that aliens may attempt to colonize or enslave us, use us as a source of food, harm us in an attempt to evangelize, or even keep us for entertainment purposes, such as in zoos or gladiator arenas.
6) They destroy us for the most random of reasons
This scenario involves aliens that are universalist in their ethics, or beings that have certain principles that have inherent value in themselves, and are not dependent on whether they are beneficial to their particular species (humans do not generally fall in this category). We associate universalism with benevolent, peaceful beings, as they would have no particular reason to harm us simply for being "other" to them. However, whether they intend to harm us or not would be completely dependent on their specific value system. The authors use the example of the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which aliens are attempting to destroy Earth simply because they value infrastructure, and our planet is in the way of a hyperspace bypass.
7) They destroy us because they think we're kind of terrible
This one is also relatively self-explanatory. Whether they believe we are a threat to their species or not, if they are universalist then they may destroy us if they believe that we are a threat to other civilizations as a result of our tendency to step on any civilization that is less technologically advanced than we are, or a liability to the universe in general as a result of our tendency to destroy ecosystems.
Considered to be the Roswell of the UK, it is safe to say something extremely strange happened on the early morning following Christmas day in Rendlesham Forest, just outside the RAF Bentwaters / Woodbridge complex in England. The book UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record documents Sergeant James Penniston account of what happened, who at the time, held a top-secret U.S. and NATO security clearance. Shortly after midnight on December 26th, Penniston was briefed that some lights had been seen in Rendlesham Forest. He then ordered Airman First Class Edward Cabansag and Airman First Class John F. Burroughs to respond with him.
“When we arrived near the suspected crash site it quickly became apparent that we were not dealing with a plane crash or anything else we’d ever responded to… As we approached on foot, a silhouetted triangular craft about 9 feet long by 6.5 feet high came into view… there were blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior as though part of the surface and the air around us were electrically charged.”
After determining the object did not appear to present a threat, Penniston was able to complete a thorough on-site investigation, including photos and notebook entries. He was even able to touch the craft.
“I put my hand on the craft, and it was warm to the touch. The surface was smooth, like glass, but it had the quality of metal… After roughly forty-five minutes, the light from the craft began to intensify. Burroughs and I then took a defensive position away from the craft as it lifted off the ground without any noise or air disturbance. It maneuvered through the trees and shot off at an unbelievable rate of speed. It was gone in the blink of an eye.”
To the great surprise of Colonel Charles Halt, deputy base commander of RAF Bentwaters, the object returned on December 27th, allowing himself and four other military personnel to observe and record the object. A formal report was filed of the incident but an official explanation was never provided.
“I have confirmation that (Bentwaters radar operators)… saw the object go across the scope of their 60 mile (96Km) scope in two or three seconds, thousands of miles an hour, he came back across their scope again, stopped near the water tower, they watched it and observed it go into the forest where we were,” said Col Halt.
2. Japan Air Lines Flight #1628 – 1986
John Callahan was the division chief of the Accidents, Evaluations, and Investigations Division of the FAA in Washington from 1981 to 1988. In his own words
“… I was involved with an investigation of an extraordinary event but was asked not to talk about it. Since retiring, I decided that the public had a right to this information, and that they could handle it.”
On November 7th, 1986, a Japanese 747 cargo jet with a pilot, copilot, and flight engineer were flying from Iceland to Anchorage just after 5 pm when they all saw a gigantic, round object, much larger than their cargo jet with colored lights flashing around it. Captain Kenju Terauchi, a pilot for 29 years, also saw two smaller objects but described the largest “spaceship” — as he called it — to be at least the size of an aircraft carrier because he had it on his radar which provided range marks. The object proceeded to fly level with the 747 until it suddenly approached very close. Following the directives of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Terachi dropped his jet 4,000 feet and even made a 360-degree turn to avoid the objects, but they continued to follow, even appearing in front of his cockpit.
Over the next half-hour, the UFO could appear eight miles in front of him, and in one radar sweep ten seconds later, it could be seven miles behind him. Captain Terauchi said the technology was “unthinkable… because the UFOs appeared to have control over both inertia and gravity.”
John Callahan, who was involved in the investigation of this incident, was called to FAA headquarters to provide a briefing to scientists of President Reagan and CIA officials. In Callahan’s words, after reviewing the information, including radar trackings, a CIA official told him,
“This event never happened; we were never here. We’re confiscating all this data, and you are all sworn to secrecy.” Like any sane person would, Callahan asked what the CIA officers thought it was, and he was told it was a UFO, and that “If we were to tell the American public there are UFOs, they would panic”.
It all started when two federal policemen were patrolling a road between Eupen and the German border on November 29th, 1989, where they reported seeing a field lit with such intense light that they could read a newspaper in their car. They also observed a triangular object with a red light in the center and three major spotlights on the corners which hovered silently.
Over the next two hours, the policemen observed two more craft of similar description around the town of Eupen and witnessed red light beams emitting from a craft and retracting. Hundreds of civilians also reported seeing the same objects and radar registrations from that night were analyzed by Major General Wilfried De Brouwer, which implied that “the reported objects committed an infraction against the existing aviation rules.” 13 total policemen saw the objects and seventy official reports were fully investigated — none of which could be explained by conventional flight technology. The U.S. embassy also confirmed that they were not flying any experimental aircraft in the area that night.
Surprisingly, the reports didn’t stop that night either. After this event on November 29th, four more sightings of similar craft were reported on December 1st and on December 11th, twenty-one witnesses reported seeing a triangular craft, one of which was captured on color slides and analyzed by two members of the French national space research center CNES, and a former senior scientist with NASA. The slides were determined to be untampered with and showed a craft moving slowly with what appeared to be a magnetic field around it.
Imagine its November 7th, 1990, and you’re swimming in a rooftop pool at the Montreal Hotel. You look up and see a round, metallic object projecting bright light beams. Naturally, you might tell the lifeguard — as a woman in this particular situation did. The lifeguard then called the hotel security guard, who called the police and a journalist from La Presse newspaper.
After they arrived to observe the object, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the military, and even NASA were called to record this sighting that lasted almost three hours, from 7:20 pm to 10:10 pm, making this UFO event one of the most remarkable and well documented. Although some skeptics say it was the Northern Lights, Montreal UFO researcher Bernard Guenette and former NASA scientist Richard Haines produced a 25-page report on the incidentwhich concluded that “the evidence for the existence of a highly unusual, hovering, silent, large object is indisputable.” The object that caused the lights was estimated to be around 540 meters wide (1770 feet) but no official explanation has ever been provided.
On March 13th, 1997, what is considered to be one of the largest — if not the largest — UFO sightings ever recorded, occurred over Phoenix, Arizona. “Hundreds of people reported an enormous object, or objects, in the night sky”, reported USA Today, in June of 1997. A little after 8 pm on that night in March, the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Washington received a call from a retired police officer in Paulden, 60 miles north of Phoenix, to report a cluster of 5 red lights in the sky heading south. A couple of minutes later, another call came in from the city of Prescott, 15 miles south of Paulden. Only a minute later, phones rang off the hook with calls from Phoenix and surrounding cities, with reports of an enormous V-shaped object with 7 lights.
Of the hundreds, if not thousands of eyewitnesses, (some of which captured video), there is general agreement on three major points: one, the object was massive, some saying several football fields long; second, it was silent, and third; it was moving very slowly, about 30 miles per hour or sometimes not moving at all. Air traffic controllers in the region stated that they could see the lights, but did not return anything on radar. During the time of the sighting, the governor of Arizona, Fife Symington, also saw the object. In his own words, he stated,
“In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality. I witnessed a massive delta-shaped, craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak, a mountain range in Phoenix, Arizona. It was truly breathtaking. I was absolutely stunned because I was turning to the west looking for the distant Phoenix Lights.
To my astonishment this apparition appeared; this dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky. As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I’d ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don’t fly in formation.”
Symington was referring to the official explanation the air force provided of military flares but concluded that “I was never happy with the Air Force’s silly explanation. There might very well have been military flares in the sky that evening, but what I and hundreds of others saw, had nothing to do with that.”
6. Highland Illinois UFO — 2000
Not too long after calendars entered a new millennium, the town of Highland, Illinois was quickly distracted by a UFO that was seen in three different counties by residents as well as police officers.
One of the first people to see the object was local business owner Melvin Noll, who was standing outside of his miniature golf-course in Highland around 4 am on January 5th, when he saw a curious light in the sky that he originally thought was a bright star. It then descended from the sky and that is when he realized it was definitely something else.
“It was two different floors. It had big windows — three on the lower deck and three on the top deck. Way up on top, there was like a penthouse with a dim light in it. Underneath, it had red lights in a diamond shape,” Noll said.
Noll mentioned that it flew so close to him that “if somebody had looked out one of the windows, I could have seen it.” No one did, however, Noll did not see any wings or engine on the craft and noted that it moved silently. Once the craft came to a halt in the air, “that is when it scared me,” Noll said. It then continued slowly to the Southwest toward Lebanon, Illinois, at which point Noll went straight to Highland Police Department to file a report.
Although Noll was concerned that the police wouldn’t take him seriously; they did, and his sighting was quickly confirmed by Craig Stevens of the Millstadt Police Department who was tracking the object that morning and described it as “kind of V-shaped”. Soon, area police officers in Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt, and Dupo saw the object too.
Police radio calls to dispatch were recorded, including Lebanon Police Officer Ed Barton who stated, “Be advised. There’s a very bright, white light east of town… and it keeps changing colors. I’ll go over there and see if maybe it’s an aircraft. Doesn’t look like an aircraft though.” … “That’s affirmative. It’s not the moon and it’s not a star.” … “Would you contact Scott Air Force Base and see if they have anything flying in this area please?”
Ultimately, police dispatch did contact Scott Air Force Base that night about the object, but officials said they knew nothing about it and no official investigation was ever conducted.
When the objects were spotted again a few days later, an officer on thePrinceton contacted two U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets from theUSS Nimitz that were flying a combat exercise at the time. The pilots were instructed to change their course to investigate the unidentified radar spots. When the pilots arrived at the target site, they did not see anything or observe anything on radar, at which point the Princeton’s radar observed that the objects dropped from 28,000 ft to near sea level in less than a second. The pilots then looked down and observed churning water and frothy waves as if the waves were breaking over an object below the surface. A few seconds later, they observed an unusual object with erratic movements above the churning water.
Lead Super Hornet pilot, Commander David Fravor, described the object as a large, bright, white, Tic Tac, 30 to 46 feet long with no windshield, no wings, and no visible engine or exhaust. After he began a circular descent toward the object, it began to ascend almost as if to meet him half-way. Commander Fravor then plunged toward the object in an aggressive maneuver, at which point the UFO accelerated out of sight in less than two seconds, leaving the pilots feeling “pretty weirded out”.
On November 7th, 2006, a disc-shaped object was seen hovering over the United Airlines terminal at the Chicago O’Hare airport for about five minutes before rocketing into the sky leaving a hole in the clouds. A United Airlines ramp worker was one of the first to notice the object around 4:30 pm and a pilot quickly made a call over in-bound ground radio for all grounded planes once he observed the object hovering at around 1,500 feet above the ground. Some witnesses believed it was rotating while others didn’t, but one thing they did agree on was that the object was silent and it was definitely there.
A mechanic told the Chicago Tribune “But I know what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out clearly, and it definitely was not an (Earth) aircraft.”
Pilots waiting for takeoff could also see the object from their windows which looked roughly the size of a quarter or half-dollar at arm’s length — making it roughly 20 to 80 feet in diameter. The FAA and United Airlines first denied having any information about the incident, until a tape of the United supervisor’s call to the air traffic control tower was released after a Freedom of Information Request.
This story broke on the front page of The Chicago Tribune on January 1st, 2007, two months after the event, and quickly became the Tribune’s most read piece in the entire history of the newspaper’s website with over a million hits. Since the UFO wasn’t captured on radar, the FAA decided it was a weather phenomenon and declined to investigate. One of the original news reports on the event can be watched on YouTube.
9. The Stephenville Texas Sightings — 2008
In early January of 2008, just after 6 pm, over thirty people in the Stephenville, Texas area were taken aback when around sunset, they witnessed an object a mile long and half-mile wide, flying low and fast with very intense bright lights, but making no sound.
One particular witness was Claudette Odom, who was clearing brush near her house with her husband and two friends. Being on top of a hill, they had visibility of twenty miles in every direction. Claudette described watching the object in wonder as it approached Stephenville and then silently hovered outside of town. She then watched the lights shape into a massive arch, before forming a bright vertical line that split into two. As they were watching the object, they were startled by the explosive sound of two F-16s flying directly above them at low altitude toward the UFO.
Meanwhile 50-year-old pilot Steve Allen was at a campfire with some friends when he saw the object which he stated was a mile long and a half mile wide. Allen said the object traveled at amazing speed and made no sound.
Allen told ABC News. He also described the same arch shape which transformed into a vertical shape before the lights “turned into just fire and it was gone”.
Adding more mystery to the situation, after the local Air Force base at Carswell Field near Fort Worth was contacted about the situation, they originally claimed they definitely did not have any fighter jets over Stephensville that night and suggested that the UFO witnesses may have just seen an optical illusion or two commercial airliners.
It should be noted that the videos released by TTSA include pilots that are some of the most credible observers of aircraft in the world. The Department of Defense declined to comment on the video.
Sounds heard from deep space could be evidence of advanced alien technology
Some experts believe the fast radio bursts could be evidence of alien technology
Supernova remnants, one of the suggested sources for 13 FRBs discovered by a Canadian-led team.
File photograph: Nasa via The New York Times
Mysterious repeating energy bursts from deep space that some experts have suggested could be evidence of advanced aliens have been detected for the second time.
The repeating bursts are an example of what are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), millisecond-long flashes of radio waves whose origin is unknown.
Most scientists believe they are generated by powerful astrophysical phenomena such as black holes or super-dense neutron stars. But a few scientists have suggested more outlandish theories.
Prof Avid Loeb, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US, argues that they could be evidence of incredibly advanced alien technology.
FRBs were first detected accidentally in 2007, when a burst signal was spotted in radio astronomy data collected in 2001.
The new discovery, reported in the journal Nature, was made by a Canadian-led team of astronomers on the hunt for FRBs.
Over a period of three weeks last summer, the team detected 13 FRBs using a new type of radio telescope, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (Chime).
One of the FRBs was repeating. Of the more than 60 FRBs detected to date, such repeating bursts have only been picked up once before, by the Areciboradio telescope in Puerto Rico in 2015.
Where the FRBs come from is not known, although they are thought to emanate from sources billions of light years away outside our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Chime astrophysicist Dr Ingrid Stairs, from the University of British Columbia, Canada, said: “Until now, there was only one known repeating FRB.
“Knowing that there is another suggests that there could be more out there. And with more repeaters and more sources available for study, we may be able to understand these cosmic puzzles – where they’re from and what causes them.”
‘Scattering’
Most of the 13 FRBs showed signs of “scattering”, suggesting their sources could be powerful astrophysical objects in locations with special characteristics, the scientists said.
Team member Dr Cherry Ng, from the University of Toronto, Canada, said: “That could mean in some sort of dense clump like a supernova remnant. Or near the central black hole in a galaxy. But it has to be in some special place to give us all the scattering that we see.”
In 2017 Prof Loeb and Harvard colleague Manasvi Lingham proposed that FRBs could be leakage from planet-sized alien transmitters.
Rather than being designed for communication, they would more likely be used to propel giant spaceships powered by light sails.
Prof Loeb, who discusses the idea in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, said: “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.” – PA
The Hubble Space Telescope saw the formation of a 'Great Dark Spot' last year.
This composite picture shows images of storms on Neptune from the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the Voyager 2 spacecraft (right). The Hubble image of Neptune, taken in September and November of 2018, shows a new dark storm (top center). In the Voyager image, a storm known as the Great Dark Spot is seen at the center. It is about 8,000 miles by 4,100 miles (13,000 by 6,600 kilometers) in size. The white clouds seen hovering in the vicinity of the storms are higher in altitude than the dark material.
For the first time ever, astronomers have witnessed the birth of one of Neptune's enormous "Great Dark Spot" storms.
Astronomers were studying Hubble Space Telescope images of a relatively smallNeptunemaelstrom that formed in 2015 when they noticed bright white clouds forming in a different locale on the ice giant. By 2018, a dark storm as wide as Earth had boiled up in that region, the researchers announced in a study published today (March 25) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"We were so busy tracking this smaller storm from 2015 that we weren't necessarily expecting to see another big one so soon," study lead author Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.
The find brings the total tally of observed Great Dark Spots on Neptune to six. The first two such disturbances were detected by NASA's Voyager 2 probe during its Neptune flyby in August 1989, which provided the first up-close look at the mysterious blue planet. Hubble discovered the other four spots.
Indeed, Hubble imagery has been key in characterizing these dramatic, otherworldly storms. For example, photos captured by the space telescope in 1994 revealed that the two tempests seen by Voyager 2 had dissipated, revealing that Great Dark Spots don't last very long, at least by giant-planet standards.
"It was certainly a surprise," Simon said. "We were used to looking at Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which presumably had been there for more than 100 years."
The Great Red Spot, which has been observed continuously since at least 1830, is confined to a narrow latitude range by Jupiter's jet streams. But Neptune's Great Dark Spots wander around the planet much more freely before they're finally ripped apart by high-altitude winds, the researchers said.
Witnessing the birth of a Great Dark Spot sheds additional light on these mysterious features. For example, the association between the newborn storm and those bright white clouds, which are composed of frozen methane, suggests that the spots take shape deeper in Neptune's atmosphere than previously thought. The methane clouds likely float above Great Dark Spots the way "lenticular" clouds hover over tall mountains here on Earth, study team members said.
Simon conducted the new study with Michael Wong and Andrew Hsu, both of whom are at the University of California, Berkeley. In a second study — also published today, in the Astronomical Journal — the researchers used Hubble observations to estimate the frequency of Great Dark Spot formation on Neptune.
The cyclic motion of the Great Red Spot imaged by the Cassini spacecraft. Unlike on Neptune, Thin jet streams on Jupiter keep the Great Red Spot from breaking apart and from changing latitude; it rotates around Jupiter but doesn’t move north or south.
Credit: NASA.
Such storms likely crop up every four to six years, the scientists found. And each Great Dark Spot probably lives for just two years or so, though some may reach the ripe old age of six.
There's still a lot to learn about Great Dark Spots, however, such as their wind speeds. Further Hubble observations and analyses could help unlock these and other mysteries, study team members said.
A view of the first Great Dark Spot scientists observed on Neptune.
Credit: NASA.
"We have never directly measured winds within Neptune’s dark vortices, but we estimate the wind speeds are in the ballpark of 328 feet (100 meters) per second [223 mph, or 359 km/h], quite similar to wind speeds within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot," Wong said in the same statement.
Not content to purely rove on Mars, NASA is also taking to the air. The Mars 2020 Rover(which is scheduled to land on the Red Planet in early 2021) will include a helicopter — the first heavier-than-air vehicle to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere.
Animation of Mars helicopter and Mars 2020 rover. Image credits: NASA / JPL / CalTech
The helicopter will be deployed from the rover. The rover then will be driven away from the helicopter to a safe distance from which it will relay commands. After its batteries are charged and a myriad of tests are performed, the helicopter will begin the first autonomous flight on an extraterrestrial body in history. The helicopter offers a new way of exploring Mars, one which offers a novel way of exploring places such as Mars.
“The Mars Helicopter’s initial flight will represent that planet’s version of the Wright Brothers’ achievement at Kitty Hawk and the opening of a new era,” said Susan Gorton, NASA’s manager for the Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology (RVLT) project. “For those of us whose research revolves around all things related to flight, that would be a remarkable, historic moment.”
The body of the helicopter will be about as big as a softball. It will weigh just under four pounds (1.8 kilograms) and have two sets of rotor blades — each measuring four-feet long — spinning at 2,400 RPMs. That’s about 10 times faster than any helicopter you might find on Earth. A solar array on the top of the vehicle will recharge the batteries, which will be used to both rotate the blades and keep it warm during Mars’ cold nights (Insight recorded a balmy high of 4 degrees Fahrenheit [-15 Celsius] on March 24).
The helicopter will only fly some 15 feet above the Martian surface, but don’t dismiss that distance. The intended landing point for the 2020 Rover is the equivalent to 100,000 feet (30,000 meters) above the surface of our home planet, which is almost 19 miles up. No helicopter has reached even half that height here.
NASA plans to attempt up to five flights, from 330 feet to 3,300 feet (100 to 1,000 meters) away from the lander, each lasting 90 seconds. While it won’t have any scientific instruments on it, the helicopter will have a small high-resolution color imager.
“We envision helicopters opening doors to new types of exploration on Mars,” said Håvard Grip, flight-control and aerodynamics lead for the Mars Helicopter. “In the future, we could imagine doing things like (engaging in) regional exploration using multiple helicopters or going to inaccessible areas or biologically sensitive areas using small helicopters.”
This isn’t NASA’s only rotor-flight machine in the works. A mission aptly-named Dragonflywill hope to introduce a quadcopter lander to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in 2020.
The Very Strong Connection Between UFOs and Nuclear Weapons Storage Facilities
The photo you see above is a real picture taken in August of 1952, it’s a photograph of multiple UFOs taken by the Coast Guard photographer at the time above a US military installation, a common place for UFO sightings. The photo was classified by the US government, and then later approved for release. It was witnessed by multiple ‘professional’ people. (source) (source)
There is no shortage of pictures and videos when it comes to UFOs, here'sanother ‘official’ example you can read about from the Canadian military. Here is another one the Pentagon recently released.
“It seems to me that the Bentwaters incident is a classic case where an apparent intrusion into our airspace and indeed a landing in our country was witnessed by serious minded people in the military, responsible people doing a responsible job…Bentwaters is in a sense, a benchmark of how not to deal with these matters in the future…I know a good bit about the bentwaters incident…There are only two explanations for what happened that night…The first is that what the people concerned…they claimed that something from outside the Earth’s atmosphere landed at their Air Force base, they went and stood by it, they inspected it, they photographed it, the following day they took tests on the ground where it had been and found radioactive traces. They reported this…and sent it to our ministry of defense.”
The quote above comes from Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, and Chairman of the NATO military committee regarding what’s known as the Bentwaters incident. It’s an incident that took place in Rendlesham Forest, and remains a very important event and one of the most controversial UFO cases ever – because it’s supported by military testimony as well as military documentation. The area houses nuclear weapons, a fact that was denied for years by authorities, but then admitted to be true.
Norton is one of several hundred (and more than 1000 worldwide) military witnesses coming forward to testify to the reality of extraterrestrial visitation. He later went on to say that:
“There are objects in our atmosphere which are technically miles in advance of anything we can deploy, that we have no means of stopping them coming here … [and] that there is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations. That it behooves us, in case some of these people in the future or now should turn hostile, to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want. This should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.”
The incident at Bentwaters, according to the UK ministry of defence, was described as having “no defence significance.” This didn’t make much sense – how can you tell people that after a Colonel of a nuclear weapons facility and his many men either experienced what they experienced, or all suffered a giant hallucination together, is of no defence significance? Doesn’t make sense, does it?
There are examples from all over the world. The same thing has been happening in Russia, with even Wikileaks articles titled, “Unidentified Flying Objects Over Algeria,” providing details regarding the Secretary General of The Ministry of Defense, Colonel Abdelhamid Latrech, and his interest in “strange machines which had been maneuvering over Algerian airspace in recent weeks.”
The document outlines how these strange objects had “been seen near military installations by responsible people.” The “responsible people” list is blocked out and states “Limited Official Use,” because the people in question are military personnel. Hundreds of these people have come forward publicly, however, and here is one example.
Professor Robert Jacobs (first officer ever awarded with the Air Force guided missile insignia), who was the officer in charge of optical instrumentation at Vandernburg Air Force Base, was responsible for supervising the instrumentation photography of every missile that went down the test range. In those days, the nuclear missiles were called “inter country ballistic missiles” (ICBM’s) because most of them blew up on launch. Their job was also to provide data on why they blew up, so they could provide the engineers good enough engineering sequential photography so that they could see what was wrong with the missile as it took off in flight.
“What we photographed up there affected me for the rest of my life, and made a huge impact on my understanding of the universe, and of, governmental manipulation of our minds.” (source)
In the video below you can also see a recreation of the event.
Another incident occurred at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, and is one of the most remarkable events in this history of UFO encounters with the military. This occurred in March of 1967 at a base that was responsible for a large amount of nuclear weapons. Witnesses here saw a red, glowing UFO hovering just outside the front gate. After that happened, all of the nuclear missiles shut down, and went completely dead.
Below is a clip of Captain Robert Salas, one of the men involved in the incident, giving his testimony at the Citizens Hearing on Disclosure that took place a few years ago, where a number of academics, politicians, and ex-military gathered in front of several congresspeople to discuss the matter and what happened there.
So, Why Is This Happening?
There are many theories out there. When military witnesses gathered at the national press club in 2010, the feeling among them was that these UFOs and whoever they are operated by, are sending a message that we are “playing with fire.” But testimony from another high ranking officer who spent his life working in and around nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons facilities offers up a different explanation based on the information he’s been privy to.
His name is Colonel Ross Dedrickson, and he said that he and his team constantly received “reports of visits by UFOs over the storage facilities and even some of the manufacturing facilities, and that went on continuously.” He went on to say that they “found that the reports were few and far between, but the security people were reluctant to report many of them because the protocol and the bureaucracy involved in reporting them, they just avoided reporting.”
“We observed the UFOs were very much interested in the facilities (nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities) that were visiting…A couple of nuclear weapons that were sent out into space were destroyed by the extraterrestrials.”
After stating the above, he goes on to use the Vandenburg incident (mentioned earlier in the article) as an example, where they photographed the missile and the UFO as the missile climbed into space.
He goes on to state:
“And that is their (extraterrestrials) major concern, to preserve the integrity of the Earth because it affects their own system…There was one incident when we exploded a nuclear weapon over the pacific…and the disturbance that it caused because it shut out communications entirely over the pacific base for a number of hours in which no radio transmission was available at any time…This was one of the things that the extraterrestrials later I learned were highly concerned about because it affected our ionosphere and, in fact, space-craft were unable to operate because of the pollution in the magnetic field, which they depended upon. At the very end of the 70s and early 80s, we attempted to put a nuclear weapon on the moon and explode it for scientific measurements and other things (assess scientific data, reaction and so forth..), which was not acceptable to the extraterrestrials…They destroyed the weapon before it got to the moon….The idea of any explosion in space by any Earth government was not acceptable to the extraterrestrials, and that has been demonstrated by extraterrestrials over and over.”
Watch the full interview where these quotes were taken, HERE.
So, from all of this information we have a few theories. Extraterrestrials are warning us to stop playing with fire and building nuclear weapons, that it’s not in our best interest and we should stop. Secondly, a nuclear explosion is huge, and the energy travels far beyond the physical blast radius and not only affects our solar system, but others as well. Also, as mentioned above, nuclear explosions pollute the magnetic field, something that they rely on to operate their craft.
One things for certain, the deactivation of these weapons, along with our willingness to not use our intelligence to create deadly weapons is a must if the human race wants to move forward. Human consciousness is changing, and it is us who must be that change. It is the person working to develop these weapons, seeing through the lies of the justification of making these weapons, and more.
Humanity must wake up, and realize that this is a big no no, and, year after year we get closer and closer to more people having that realization.
Definitely some interesting things to think about. What are your thoughts?
Two ‘Alien’ Beings Can Be Seen Inside A UFO – From Footage Verified By The Turkish Government
I know, reading the title would instantly have a ‘non believer’ click the X button on the top righthand corner of the screen, and that’s fine, but the truth remains. And that truth is the fact that “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” Those are the words of Luis Elizondo, who is one member of the To The StarsAcademy, a manwith a long career within the U.S. Department of Defense, who recently retired from the Pentagon, and was a director of the “Ariel Threats Identification Program.”
Does it mean the footage below is real? No, but the source is interesting and myself as well as many other UFO researchers in the field, would tell you that it might be one of the few authentic ones out there where occupants of these ‘UFOs’ are seen. The US government has now released UFO footage, more on that below.
Through To The Stars, the U.S. government has been, and will continue to release footage they’ve collected over many years of UFOs that perform maneuvers which defy, as Elizondo states, our understanding of aerodynamics. They’ve released some pretty amazing ones so far that come with actual electrooptical data and radar tracking reports. Keep in mind, as stressed by Elizondo and various documents that’ve been released prior to this disclosure, that military encounters with UFOs have occurred many times. There are many examples and reports to choose from and I recently wrote an article about an incident which occurred with the Chilean Air Force.
What’s interesting about the recent mainstream coverage is that they released actual video footage and to be honest, it’s quite discouraging that UFO footage has to be released by the U.S. government in order for it to be considered ‘real.’ Sure, there are still many out here who are going to call it fake, which means one thing, there are a group of defense officials making fake videos, putting them out in the public, and saying they’re real or, it’s actual authentic footage.
To contemplate the first one is just as intriguing to contemplate the second, but in my mind, there is no doubt that these are indeed real, and we don’t need these videos to come out to prove that.
The story as to what they are, however, will most likely be controlled by some ‘powerful people’ who oversee governments. Who knows what spin they will put on it via mainstream media, but right now we are currently seeing ‘official disclosure.’
This is the first time we’ve seen media ‘owned by the establishment’ present the UFO topic in a credible way, which is peculiar for multiple reasons. They told the truth, yet there still seems to be some misinformation with regards to the materials that have been collected in association with these UFOs, as pointed out by the New York Times. You can read more about that here where I go into a deeper discussion and provide details about what the New York Times did not elaborate on.
This is why the footage below is also intriguing. Elizondo admitted that this type of thing has happened thousands of times and the ‘unofficial’ reports and sightings from citizens of the world have never been considered credible, when some of them very well could be. But we didn’t need Elizondo, again, we’ve had evidence, and even physical evidence of these crafts for a long time.
Whether or not they are alien is a completely different question and discussion.
The footage below comes from Dr. Roger Leir, a Doctor of Podiatric medicine, and arguably the best known individual with regards to extracting alleged alien implants. He has performed more than fifteen surgeries that removed sixteen separate distinct objects. These objects have been investigated by several prestigious laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico Tech, and many others. Unfortunately, he passed away in March 2014, but his legacy lives on.You can watch a video of him at the Citizens hearing on disclosure in 2013, here.
In the film below, you will see what appears to be two beings inside of a UFO. Filmed by multiple film crews in Turkey, it made headlines there. It’s known as the Kumburgaz, Turkey UFO incident, and involves several witnesses who live in the local village. The video was analyzed by the Scientific and Technology Research Board of Turkey(which is sponsored by the government). They concluded and vouched for its authenticity.
In conclusion, even though a detailed analysis of the footage is conducted, it might still remain unidentified. Hence, other reference objects need to be recorded in the same frame with the disputable object and further shootings need to be done by ourselves with special equipment in the same location and conditions.
Accordingly, the term “UFO” (Unidentified Flying Object) which has been used for these sort of dubious objects can also be used for these objects. But, this definition does not mean that these objects are from extraterrestrial (flying saucer etc.) origin.
The incidents were dramatic. Apparently, for several days disc, metallic spheres, round, and oval shaped unknown craft visited the Sea of Marmara just off the coast of Kumburgaz, Turkey.
It also so happens that Dr. Lier was there as well and had a powerful camera on hand. Below is a snippet from one of many interviews he’s given describing the experience,
“We’re standing on an elevated deck, which has nothing between us and the water. It was a rather warm night and there was a very very bright full moon. The camera we were using had a 300 mm lens and an electronic doubler. In other words we were able to push or close in on the object 600 times magnification. We started by looking at the moon… the moon was very bright and under these circumstances it’s just the absolute worst time to look for UFOs because the light from the moon pollutes the surrounding sky it’s like, you know, trying to film something at night in the sky in the middle of the city…But anyway…We saw a little bright dot to the left and below the moon and then after getting our focus on the moon we moved the camera over to this little bright light and then started to zoom in on it… and when we got probably 3 quarters of the way from magnification and we’re looking through the view finder and we’re also recording this on the monitor, we see that this light is not a plane. It’s not from a star, it’s not a helicopter, it has a shape to it, which was cylindrical in the front, and then it would turn time to time and you could see that it was probably crescent shaped…And as we pushed on what we considered the front of the object, now that’s when we were so startled by…we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing…This was a craft that had, whatever you choose to call it…Viewing ports, windows, whatever, three, one big one in the front and one towards each side and the craft externally was being lit by the moon…So you could see that it was a shiny… sort of metallic material. What you could see through these ports was light that was emanating from the internal portion of the craft and standing there in these portals were some of these beings….They knew we were there filming them it, was like “oh hello, go ahead film away.” (Interview with Dr. lier)
Whether it be a former Chairman of the Royal Navy telling us that “there is a serious possibility that we are being visited, and have been visited by people from outer space,” a former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Barry Goldwater telling us that “I do know that whatever the Air Force has on the subject is going to remain highly classified,” or an Apollo 14 astronaut saying that“there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered,” we have no shortage of high-ranking insiders attesting to the reality of this phenomenon.
General Carlos Cavero told the world in 1979, “everything” has been “in a process of investigation both in the United States and in Spain, as well as the rest of the world.” On a global scale, “the nations of the world are currently working together in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon” and there is “an international exchange of data.” (source)
Global Paradigm Shifts & The Human Psyche
The thing about global paradigm shifts and human beliefs is that there seems to be a general accepted version of reality. Many people are happy, raising families, enjoying life, and not really worrying about the planet. And that’s ok, as long as it doesn’t turn into a hatred for activists because that seems to be common. The point is, it can be terrifying, belief destroying, and destructive for some to even consider the possibility that this type of thing is real. Our first response, that I believe has been programmed into us, is fear.
It’s natural to fear the unknown, but where is the line drawn between not being concerned and completely denying a reality?
At what point does something become a reality? What is ‘reality’ is often what’s presented to us by a small group of people, and that’s far from a conspiracy theory.
Why don’t we question what’s happening in our world? Perhaps the planet is more important than we are, Earth has been extremely patient with us and is calling for us to change our ways!
What does this have to do with ET’s? I don’t know, but it’s not all scary stories out there. Just take a look at this one with regards to UFOs and their relationship with nuclear weapons, where the objects deactivated nuclear missiles. This has happened multiple times worldwide, and it’s quite mainstream knowledge. You can read more about it here.
Based on my research, it seems ‘they’ have been here for a very long time, if there was any real ‘invasion threat’ type of scenario in the works, it would have already happened.
However, a fake alien invasion scenario could be in the works too, who knows? You can read more about that in detail here.
The UFO/extraterrestrial phenomenon forces us to expand our minds, think outside the box, perhaps show a little more intelligence and come up with more educated guesses with regards to why ‘they’ might be visiting us, and have been. Alien invasion is one of countless possible explanations. Use your imagination 🙂 I don’t feel there is any type of sinister intentions with the majority of races that could be out there, but with some, there most probably is as well. Who knows.
The topic leaves no area of humanity untouched, and in the greater scheme of reality, it’s probably one very small tiny truth, that doesn’t even represent the tip of the ice berg 🙂
Meer van UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
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