‘Biofluorescent World’ may not have the same cachet as Jurassic World, but it may be closer to reality … and it just might be the place where we finally find extraterrestrial life forms. A new study proposes that the exoplanets with the highest probability of hosting life forms are often hit with heavy doses of ultraviolet radiation and life there may develop the same protective mechanism that some undersea coral use on Earth to protect themselves – biofluorescence. The end result would be that these life forms would glow in soft blues, greens and other colors that could easily be picked up by telescopes trained to look for them. Will the catchphrase of the inevitable remake of everyone’s favorite extraterrestrial movie be “ET, put on a shade!”?

“Our first targets in the search for signs of life are orbiting nearby M stars, such as the planets in the Proxima Centauri, Ross-128, LHS-1140, and TRAPPIST-1 systems.”

In the latest edition of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Jack O’Malley-James, a research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, describes how he and co-author Lisa Kaltenegger from the Cornell astronomy department decided where to look for glowing aliens. Those four M-stars are spot. Especially when they’re already peering at M-type stars. Also known as red dwarfs, those are the most common stars in our universe, and they happen to host a lot of planets in their Goldilocks zone.

Unfortunately for any planets orbiting them, they also emit solar flares that can engulf these planets with ultraviolet radiation, especially if they’re in the Goldilocks zone where life is most likely to develop. As the saying goes – if the radiation doesn’t kill it, it will make it stronger … or at least adaptable to it. That’s what some forms of coral do in shallow waters – absorb blue and ultraviolet photons and re-emitting them at longer wavelengths which just happen to be fluorescent. That’s bioflorescence — the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light of a shorter wavelength. (FYI:  bioluminescence is a chemical reaction that generates light and is independent of radiation.)

“If you and I would have evolved on such a world, we would probably glow too, as that would have had advantages in survival.”

Kaltenegger’s point in LiveScience is logical, but would there be enough of us glowing brightly so that we could be seen by telescopes in other solar systems? Possibly, if enough of us and all of the other life forms on Earth were biofluorescent. Of course, that’s not the case since we have an atmosphere that blocks most of the rays from us (and sunblock for the rest). O’Malley-James and Kaltenegger are hoping that planets orbiting nearby red dwarfs in their Goldilock zones will have enough bioflourcent beings to light up the planet, even briefly, so that one of our telescopes can pick it up. One of our future telescopes, that is. Our current models can’t pick it up – or they would have already.

What about when life forms from these glowing planets send their ships to Earth? Will we be able to spot them at night? Will they look at our pitiful non-glowing bodies with disdain?

ET wouldn’t do that … would he?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Incoming: Is Earth About to Get Struck by the Big One?

How many headlines have we seen lately talking about space rocks, you know asteroids or meteors the size of something fierce? Well, today is no exception for those of you paying attention.

In the International Congregation of Lord RayEl on VK today, Angelus Domini, the Imperial Regent of Lord RayEl, posted the following article stating:

Soooo yeah… The European Space Agency (ESA) just released this video about an asteroid striking Earth… 

… As Officer Barbrady would say, ‘Move along… Nothing to see here!’ 😑

With the title “Asteroid warning: ESA’s chilling imminent Earth-strike prediction – ‘Millions to evacuate’”, the Express makes it seem a bit clickbait-ish, but they show the ESA’s hypothetical video. Now, you may not consider this the best source of information and you can think what you want about it, but it should still be considered a warning or at least get you thinking.

CHILLING footage has emerged of the European Space Agency (ESA) dealing with the hypothetical imminent threat of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth.!

Asteroids capable of destroying cities on Earth have the potential to slip through NASA satellites, giving humans just days to prepare. As a result, scientists at the ESA concerned about the threat to Europe are launching a new £915,000 telescope in the next week. Flyeye will be able to scan space and identify any possible objects heading to Earth, giving enough time to plan accordingly.

Source

Here is the future telescope according to the ESA’s website.

Source

Source

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

On August 1, 2019 I was fishing with two friends at the Hudson River in the Adirondacks. We thought we were alone, but suddenly there was a large crowd of people in rafts coming down the river as well as a pedal-driven train tour along the railroad tracks.

My friend took a picture of the crowd. We did not see anything unusual at the time, but on looking at one of the pictures later, there is a very strange image in the upper right hand corner. It appears to show a possible ring-shaped object flying over the bridge, with a jet trail or something behind it.

I am a paranormal investigator with the TAPS Family, so my friend sent it to me for my opinion. I was there when it was taken, and I know that it has not been modified in any way.

The only thing I can come up with for a natural explanation is that it could possibly be a water droplet on the lens, just causing a very strange light reflection.

But I thought you guys would have more experience looking at such photos than I so I would be interested in your opinion.

We checked all the other photos taken at the time and there are no other such anomalies. There is no photo taken directly after this one, but one taken right before has nothing on the lens. Mufon case 102827.

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

Glowing Fireball UFO Shoots Out Mysterious Orb Over Egyptian Pyramid

The aerial object in the video is not something that can be generally seen across the sky, but opinions differ over whether it is the product of intelligent aliens or a natural phenomenon.

The footage of the UFO sighting was reportedly recorded over the pyramids of Egypt. It has caused bizarre claims, including from people who believe that the real builder of the pyramid had returned to check out their creation.

It shows a glowing white fireball streaking across the sky reportedly above an Egyptian pyramid when a white orb appears to suddenly shoot off and move in the opposite direction from the space rock.

A tourist reportedly recorded the video and uploaded it to the Chinese YouTube channel Bizarre World back in June.

Most commenters suggest that it is a flying saucer, but there are others who believe that it’s a fragment of a meteor.

The UFO streaks across the sky and part of it shoots out another white orb, which seemingly travels in the opposite direction. It looks to some UFO enthusiasts that intelligent beings who built the pyramids were doing a flyby to check on them.

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

Meet Skybot F-850, the Humanoid Robot Russia Is Launching into Space

By Tom Metcalfe 

Russia's Skybot F-850: "Not a Terminator" but a space robot, and will launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz space capsule in August 2019.

(Image: © Roscosmos)

When a Russian Soyuz spacecraft launches from Kazakhstan for the International Space Station tomorrow night, it will carry a single, if strange, passenger — a humanoid robot, sitting in the commander's chair of the crew capsule.

The robot, dubbed Skybot F-850, is one of the latest versions of Russia's FEDOR robots, which have been developed as an all-purpose stand-in for humans in everything from rescue work to driving cars — and now, flying into space.

It's the first time that a robot will take the commander's place in a Soyuz — the Skybot will monitor and report on conditions during the otherwise uncrewed flight, including the forces on the spacecraft as it enters orbit and the start of zero gravity.

• Real-Life 'Replicants': 6 Humanoid Robots Used for Space Exploration

Advanced robotics

Russia's humanoid The Skybot F-850 can act autonomously, or mimic the actions of a human controller.

(Image credit: Androidnaya Technika)

Russia has been developing the FEDOR robots since 2014. Bloshenko said the Skybot version that will fly to the ISS is made from robust materials designed to withstand vibrations during the launch and the demands of operating in space.

Special movement algorithms have also been installed and the actions of the Skybot will be purposefully limited to ensure that it doesn't cause any damage to the ISS by accident, he said.

Artificial intelligence allows the Skybot to move and act autonomously, or it can work in "avatar" mode under the control of an operator wearing a full-body "control suit," Bloshenko said.

The robot's humanoid design, and in particular its advanced robot hands, allow it to work with standard "human" tools: Videos show it walking, turning a valve, unlocking a door, and working a fire extinguisher, an electric drill and a gas torch for welding.

Videos of the robot have shown it driving a car and a quad bike — and even, on one notable occasion in 2017, firing two automatic pistols at targets on a gun range.

That prompted then Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to insist Russia was not developing robots as weapons: "We are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in various fields," he wrote on Twitter.

• Photos: NASA's Valkyrie R5 Space Robot in Pictures

Robots in space

Russia's space agency Roscosmos says the Skybot F-850 will serve as a "social companion" for human crew on the International Space Station.

(Image credit: Androidnaya Technika)

The Skybot F-850 may be the first Russian robot on the ISS, but NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have been working with robots on the space station for several years already.

NASA's Robonaut 2, a humanoid without legs designed to work alongside astronauts, flew to the ISS in 2011 and performed well until 2014 — but it started having problems after that and was brought back to earth in 2018. It's now being updated, and is expected to return to the ISS next year.

Meanwhile, ESA's roughly spherical "social robot," CIMON — which stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion — has flown on the ISS since 2018. 

CIMON is designed to recognize faces, take photographs and video, and help astronauts communicate with IBM's natural-language processing computer, Watson, here on Earth.

The most advanced robots on the ISS arrived earlier this year, with NASA's Astrobee project.

Two of the cube-like, free-flying robots were flown to the ISS in April, with a third due next month. They are designed to take over from the venerable SPHERES satellites, which have flown on the ISS for over 10 years as an experimental hardware platform.

But the replacement Astrobees are a lot smarter than SPHERES, and they will serve as payload carriers for experiments. In due course they may take over some routine tasks on the ISS, such as instrument surveys and carrying out inventories of equipment.

"Crew time will always be a precious resource during crewed spaceflight," Maria Bualat, the Astrobee project manager,told Space.com. "Assistant robots like Astrobee or Robonaut or the new Russian humanoid are going to help free up astronaut time by taking over some of the repetitive or even dangerous tasks that the crew must currently do."

While the current generation of ISS robots, including the Astrobees and Skybot, were designed to work only inside the ISS, development work was being carried out on robots that could work on the outside, in space itself, she said.

"If you have, like, an external robot, then you can maybe do some repair work, like repairing an external leak without having astronauts suit up and perform an EVA [extravehicular activity]," Bualat said. "So it can also make it safer for astronauts."

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

•  Do the Robot! NASA's Valkyrie Gets Down in New Video 
•  Watch NASA's 'Lemur' Robot Climb a Cliff in Death Valley as Practice for Mars 
•  Tiny Robot 'Bumbles' Through the Air Aboard Space Station 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Are Near-Death Experiences Just Comforting Illusions?

Verified perception during NDEs suggests they may have some basis in reality.

{ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us }

© Copyright (c) NineForNews.nl

After Watching This You Will Wonder What Is Going on Underground!

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Asteroid shock: NASA preparing for ‘colossal God of Chaos’ rock to arrive in next 10 years

NASA has begun preparations for the upcoming ‘God of Chaos’ Apophis asteroid which is considered potentially hazardous to Earth as it passes so close to the planet it will be UNDERNEATH TV satellites.

By GERRARD KAONGA

NASA has already begun preparations for the arrival of asteroid 99942 Apophis - dubbed the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid - which will skim past the earth in 10 years. The asteroid measures 340 meters across and will pass within just 19,000 miles of Earth’s surface. Apophis is one of the largest asteroids to pass so close to the Earth's surface and a collision with the planet has the potential to be devastating for all life on Earth.

RELATED ARTICLES

• 
  UFO sighting: NASA satellite snaps alien spacecraft 'bigger than Earth
• 
  Asteroid shock: How asteroid Bennu revealed something NASA didn't know

The asteroid is set to get closer to the earth than communication and weather satellites in orbit. Most satellites in Earth's orbit are geostationary orbit 36,000 km away (22,236 miles) from the planet.

Apophis is travelling at almost 25,000 mph meaning a slight detour from its trajectory could be catastrophic. 

Apophis' size and proximity to Earth have resulted in it being categorised as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) and NASA is keen to learn as much from the asteroid as possible to help prevent further asteroid issues in the future.

NASA scientist are aware that as the asteroid flies by the planet in 2029, its orbit trajectory may also change thus raising fears that in the future the massive rock could collide with the planet.

The rock is expected to shine exceptionally bright in the sky and pick up speed as it flies across the sky in 2029.

JUST IN: A large space rock found two weeks ago is hurtling in Earth's direction

NASA have become preparing for the asteroid Apophis passing by the Earth in 2029 

(Image: NASA)

The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science according to NASA scientists 

(Image: NASA)

It will be travelling so fast it is will cross the width of the Moon in a minute and be as brightly lit as stars in the night sky.

According to some researchers, the immense size of the rock is not a cause for concern as there is a 1 to 100,000 chance of the asteroid striking the earth.

NASA have begun preparing to study the rock as it flies past earth and insisted it would be a great opportunity for the world to learn more about similar asteroids.

Radar NASA scientist Marina Brozovic said: “The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science.”

Astronomer Davide Farnocchia added: “We already know that the close encounter with Earth will change Apophis’ orbit.

The asteroid will first be visible to the naked eye in the night sky over the Southern Hemisphere in Australia 

(Image: Getty)

Asteroids true value - revealed (Image: EXPRESS)

“But our models also show the close approach could change the way this asteroid spins and it is possible that there will be some surfaces changes, like small avalanches.”

The path of the asteroid as it passes by the planet has also been estimated by scientists.

It will be first visible to the naked eye when it arrives in the night sky over the Southern Hemisphere, shooting across the east coast to the west coast of Australia.

It will continue to make its way around the world, cross the Indian Ocean on its way to the US.

READ MORE:
NASA satellite snaps alien spacecraft 'bigger than Earth' near the Sun [UFO]
Asteroid skims dangerously close to Earth but nobody noticed [VIDEO]
NASA experts believe there could be even more water on the Moon [SCIENCE]

RELATED ARTICLES

• 
  Asteroid close approach: 2019 OK 'near miss' - ‘more awareness needed'
• 
  Asteroid ALERT: Space rock found two weeks ago is hurtling past Earth

The Apophis 'God of Chaos' asteroid was named after the Egyptian God Apep 

(Image: Getty)

TRENDING

• 
  Asteroid horror: NASA panic as freak DOUBLE asteroid Didymos hurtles towards Earth
• 
  Asteroid shock: NASA preparing for ‘colossal God of Chaos’ rock to arrive in next 10 years
• 
  Asteroid warning: ESA's chilling imminent Earth-strike prediction – 'Millions to evacuate'

Its closest approach will be over the Atlantic Ocean, as the evening arrives in the US.

Due to the immense speed, the asteroid is travelling at it will cross the ocean in an hour and continue to fly off into space.

Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS added: “Apophis is a representative of about 2,000 currently known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.

“By observing Apophis during its 2029 flyby, we will gain important scientific knowledge that could one day be used for planetary defence.”

Scientists named the rock Adopts after the Egyptian God of Chaos, also known as Apep. 

RELATED ARTICLES

• NASA news: Hubble pictures shows what will happen to the Sun
• Asteroid ALERT: Space rock found two weeks ago is hurtling past Earth
• NASA latest: Chief confirms NASA is on track to land on the Moon

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

A giant asteroid nicknamed the God of Chaos will be passing dangerously close to Earth very soon and may actually collide with the planet on one of its future trips. Fortunately, we have Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, the Daily Express and NASA on the case … not necessarily in that order (also fortunate). Should we be worried? About the asteroid, I mean.

@joerogan
Asteroid shock: NASA preparing for ‘colossal God of Chaos’ rock to arrive in next 10 years
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1166919/NASA-asteroid-warning-Apophis-God-of-chaos-2029-earth-hit-news-Apep-99942-Apophis/amp …

Let’s start with Joe Rogan, since he gets more publicity that the rest of the parties combined. He tweeted that “asteroid shock” message on August 18 after reading an article in the Daily Express about asteroid 99942 Apophis – which measures 370 meters (.23 miles) in diameter and will make a well-publicized trip very close to Earth (within 19,000 miles away) in 2029. That’s a massive asteroid that would put the dinosaur-killing one to shame, which is why it caused a minor panic when it was discovered in 2004 and a miscalculation gave it a high probability (2.7%) of hitting Earth in 2029 and a higher probability in 2036. The error was found and new calculations reduced the odds on an impact substantially, although it will still be close enough for the best observations ever of an asteroid of that size, both by scientists and Earthlings. However, the nickname God of Chaos is still there, so publications like the Daily Express use it whenever they can, along with simulations showing what kind of damage an impact could do … it’s business, baby.

An illustration of the distance between the Apophis asteroid and Earth at the time of the asteroid’s closest approach. The blue dots are man-made satellites that orbit our planet, and the pink represents the International Space Station.

Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Great name! Wouldn’t worry about this particular one, but a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defense.

https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/1163198089328390145 …

Joe Rogan was probably betting that his doobie-smoking buddy Elon Musk would see his tweet, and he was right. As CEO of SpaceX, Musk should know his space stuff and he’s right that Apophis won’t live up to its nickname but another asteroid surely will sometime in the future … perhaps near, perhaps far. However, his assessment that we have “no defense” may not be quite right. While it’s probably true that a completely unexpected asteroid (and we see plenty of them) would leave us defenseless, one as well-known as Apophis with a similar lead time could conceivably be deflected by a current nuclear-tipped rocket or one developed specifically for it. That’s what Elon Musk may have his eye on with his SpaceX rockets. Some people could also be evacuated to Mars or the Moon on his rockets, assuming the upcoming impact was revealed to the public by NASA and world governments – or hidden to avoid panic and financial problems … which is conspiracy theorist Joe Rogan’s area of expertise.

The truth is, NASA is actually looking forward to studying Apophis on its flyby – both to learn more about it and asteroids in general and to get an even better handle on the probability of it hitting Earth in the future, not to mention what signs to look for with other potentially collision-possible near-Earth asteroids.

Apophis (he’s the serpent)

While it’s entertaining to poke fun at Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and the Daily Express, in this case they brought Apophis, asteroids, NASA and the reality of an asteroid impact and asteroid avoidance much brooder attention than they normally get. The only party who might be disappointed in all of this would be Apophis himself – the actual ancient Egyptian god of chaos whose namesake is refusing to live up to his reputation.

Too bad.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

 (Supplied: Graham Pearson)

People have long speculated on the wonders that might be hidden deep within the Earth’s surface. While so far no one has found dinosaurs, an interior black hole, or a breakaway Nazi civilization, geologists have found evidence for a vast and mysterious reservoir of primordial magma that has been completely undisturbed for more than 4 billion years. They haven’t quite found it yet, but they’ve found some compelling and shiny evidence: a treasure trove of rare super-deep diamonds older than Earth’s moon.

The super-deep diamonds are recognizably different than the well-known diamonds formed at more shallow depths (you know, the ones we’ve been conned into caring about by the De Beers Group) and were discovered when volcanic eruptions in Brazil brought them to the surface. In their paper recently published in Science, researchers say that examining these diamonds has resulted in chemical proof that a magma reservoir which has remained stable and unchanging since the formation of planet Earth does in fact exist. Geochemist Suzette Timmerman of the Australian National University says:

“Diamonds are the hardest, most indestructible natural substance known, so they form a perfect time capsule that provides us a window into the deep Earth.”

Earth’s mantle is the layer that is squeezed between the molten core of our planet and the outer crust (where we live) and is nearly impossible to study. It’s hundreds of miles straight down and not only would it be impossible to drill down there, the heat and pressure would simultaneously crush and boil anything we might send down. We think that the Earth’s mantle is solid, but since the 1980’s there has been speculation that there may be a reservoir of the “primordial soup” that hasn’t been turned over and solidified in the few billion years the planet has been around.

There may be a reservoir of magma older than the Earth’s moon somewhere deep in Earth’s mantle.

The theory is based off isotopes of helium found in volcanic lava. Some volcanic lava has a remarkably high ratio of helium-3 to helium-4. This unusual ratio of helium isotopes is also found in extremely old meteorites that have fallen to Earth, but not in the rock an soil we find up here on the crust. But because the ancient helium signature is only found coming out of the hottest volcanoes, it’s impossible to tell where it originated.

According to researchers, this batch of super-deep diamonds offers proof that the primordial reservoir exists. The diamonds contain trapped remnants of helium that may have been formed before the collision that created the Earth’s moon. According to the researchers, finding the isotopic pattern in these diamonds means that the helium must have come from where the diamonds were formed, or even deeper. According to Tinnerman:

“My research is unique in that it gives the first direct depth constraints on where this primordial reservoir is located (more than 410 km depth), as we know the diamonds formed in the transition zone (410-660 km depth).”

Diamonds are nothing but rock poop, people.

Eargh scientist Matthew Jackson from the University of California Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research but has studied the helium isotope patterns for decades, believes this is an important step forward. He says:

“This is an interesting result, with a lot of potential to ‘map out’ where elevated 3He/4He domains are located in the Earth’s deep interior

Helium can diffuse rapidly at mantle conditions, so it will be important to evaluate whether the ancient helium signature reflects compositions trapped at diamond-formation depths, or the composition of the host lava that transported to diamonds to the surface.”

It’s amazing how much we’re finding out about the composition of our own planet, and how much we still have yet to learn. It’s also amazing that we’ve been sold the idea of the extreme rarity of diamonds when they quite literally shoot out of the ground.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Earlier this month, gravitational-wave sensor arrays in the United States and Italy detected ripples in space and time which point to a previously unseen event of cataclysmic proportions — a black hole consuming a neutron star. We’re safe in our corner of the solar system, however: the event took place around 8,550 million trillion kilometres away from Earth.

Professor Scott, also a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), says that the discovery completes the “trifecta of observations” that the team has been striving towards: the merger of two black holes, the collision of two neutron stars, and the merger between a black hole and a neutron star.

“The ANU SkyMapper Telescope responded to the detection alert and scanned the entire likely region of space where the event occurred, but we’ve not found any visual confirmation,” she explains.

Researchers are still crunching the data to confirm the exact size of the two stellar bodies. Until the final results are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, take them with a pinch of salt — however, preliminary data suggests it’s highly that what we’re seeing is a black hole enveloping a neutron star.

“Scientists have never detected a black hole smaller than five solar masses or a neutron star larger than about 2.5 times the mass of our Sun,” Professor Scott said.

“Based on this experience, we’re very confident that we’ve just detected a black hole gobbling up a neutron star.

“However, there is the slight but intriguing possibility that the swallowed object was a very light black hole—much lighter than any other black hole we know about in the Universe. That would be a truly awesome consolation prize.”

The data was recorded by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), the most advanced instrument of its kind ever build that comprises twin detectors in the US, and Virgo, a gravitational-wave detector in Italy run by the European Gravitational Observatory.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

{ https://futurism.com/ }

Private Facts About Ufo Sightings Only the Experts Know Exist

Who Else Wants to Learn About Ufo Sightings?

Usually once you speak about UFO sightings, most men and women feel that I mistook it for something else or they may think that it is only a crap. UFO sightings aren’t a modern phenomenon, they aren’t a US-only phenomenon. UFO sightings are now able to easily be captured on video, while it’s through a telephone or video camera. In any event, UFO sightings aren’t something which’s new to society. They have become an ever-popular subject. On weekdays it appears that UFO sightings are driven by men and women that are routinely outside daily, rain or shine. The most frequently known UFO sighting in the USA is called the Roswell UFO sighting of 1947.

UFOs aren’t so hampered. The UFO looks like it’s been seen by a great deal of individuals. Throughout that time period, there were two triangle UFOs sighted in the exact place.

Understanding Ufo Sightings

The planet has to be in a comparatively circular orbit otherwise it will stray from the habitable zone. It must be large enough to hold an atmosphere. Earth is nowhere to be viewed. Even when you kept to a great deal of earth based templates for life it would be quite simple for chance and accident to create something very different from that which we know.

For aliens to produce a round trip they would need to live for at least 6,000 decades. Real aliens are less inclined to be evil. In terms of Bigfoot sightings, ape-like creatures are seen all over the usa and Canada. There’s no unitary creature known as the government, which is in fact a group of interrelated hierarchies with diverse incentives and power structures. A lot of people have long believed that they’re not the only creatures that inhabit the universe. It’s not clear to me that the only means to produce an intelligent creature that evolves to the cover of the food chain is to make a human with bilateral symmetry.

There’s more to the story. It’s possible to read my hub stories on what I’ve sighted. If you get a crazy or creepy story all you need to do is call and inform them, or email it to them. There are many haunting stories and unexplained events which are the makings of a multitude of cinematic pleasures.

The evidence might have been much more compelling, in the event the very first recorded incident was not revealed as a hoax. Before you make a decision as to what you believe, we implore you to comprehend the evidence. For starters, so many men and women say reflexively that there’s no evidence of an ET presence engaging our planet, when they don’t really know the evidence. There are not many very good explanations for the majority of the Hudson Valley sightings. Among the arguments that scientists use to debunk UFO sightings is that our planet has existed for over four billion decades, hence the odds are incredibly small that the aliens would just chance to arrive here during the few decades that we’ve got technology.

Somewhere beyond all of the tumult lies the reality. Somewhere in the middle of all the controversy lies it. There’s very little doubt that the net has played a part in the development of UFO reports in the past several years, though most can be explained by natural or human-caused phenomena. In the Washington Post Dan Drezner implies that the simple fact that the Department of Defense is starting to engage with the notion of UFOs weakens their thesis, but I am not certain that’s perfect. Why is everyone slightly obsessed with the thought of extraterrestrial life. Though there are plenty of questions regarding the JFK assassination, it is a prime example of individuals attempting to earn sense about something which you can’t make sense of. Each year, the subject of UFOs grows in popularity, and that’s primarily because of the simple fact they’re actually real.

Source: 

• http://footageofufos.com/2019/08/private-facts-about-ufo-sightings-only-the-experts-know-exist/

{  https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

Mars Mysteries Encounter Human Intelligence

In recent months, according to a number of scientific reports, the dusty winds and sand dune formations on the planet Mars have grown even more mysteries. In this episode, we explore why Electric Universe geology may hold the key to resolving both the mysterious processes in Mars’ past, and those happening today.

Source story: 

• https://earthsky.org/space/odyssey-weird-hexagonal-dune-field-mars

Source: 

• http://tapnewswire.com/2019/08/mars-mysteries-encounter-human-intelligence/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

Conservation worker and C2C listener Bruce shared a bizarre photo on CoastToCoast Facebook page of a deer that somehow wound up atop a power pole in a rural area somewhere in the US northeast.

According to Bruce, the most likely explanation for how the deer wound up there is that it was hit by a train, since there are train tracks several yards away.

However, he notes, "the deer would have to have traveled in the air approximately 45 feet (across) to the pole and reach a height of approximately 22 feet (up) to reach the top of the pole."

But being hit by a train seems unlikely, that kind of impact would have made the picture to gruesome however the deer shows no signs of external wounds.

Could it be that a large and strong bird like an eagle or something like the legendary creature the so-called thunderbird must have tried carrying it and dropped it because too heavy or maybe the deer has fallen victim to a failed alien abduction?

The question remains, how did the deer ended up on top a power pole?

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

“If we find anyone guilty of wrongdoing, we will file a criminal case against them. If a UFO descends and parks here, that’s even better. We’ll capture them all.”

What kind of world do we live in when people who have been contacted by extraterrestrials can’t find a place on their own planet to meet and talk about it? That’s what happened in Thailand last week as dozens of police officers and park rangers twice stormed the meeting place of the UFO Kao Kala group – an assembly of UFO believers and claimed contactees who meet on Mount Khao Kala, considered to be one of the top UFO hotspots in Asia, to meditate, discuss their experiences, hear about the latest messages from extraterrestrials and train to become alien communicators. It’s no surprise that outsiders are suspicious of the group and its meeting place in the popular mountain park and recently forced these raids on the premise that the private group was getting too large for the building and encroaching onto public land. Fact, fallacy or fear?

Notification of Activities for Coordination for Warning Groups (Khao Kala) 

 

 

Saturday, August 17, 2019, the group invites everyone to join at

6:00 pm to host a meal for participants. Anybody can cook as well.
19.00 hrs. Dharma lecture, with video screenings by Ajarn Somchit Rueangpetch (responsible person in the area department).

We invite everyone interested in aliens and disasters. Join activities to meet and exchange experiences.

*** Can bring a tent to sleep on his shell. Or will go to sleep at the Scout camp Below are
*** Khao Kala, Khao Kala UFO Observatory,
Moo 10, Phu Ta Ching Sub-district, Phra Non Subdistrict, Mueang District, Nakhon Sawan Province

This innocent-sounding announcement (except for the “warnings” and “disasters” parts) triggered the raids on August 15 and 16 at the Khao Kala Meditation Center. The event was being held in part to celebrate the birthday of Somjit Reapeth, the founder of the group, who in 1997 received a call from her father to come to Khao Kala where she and her sisters claim to have seen the UFO he said contained aliens who were communicating with him while he meditated. Her father taught Somjit how to communicate with them and translate their messages. They then founded UFO Khao Kala to train more people and meet with other contactees.

“Each of us is assigned to do a different task by the aliens. The main mission is to learn how to deal with the upcoming disaster that will wipe out half the humans in the world. We are getting ready for that day.”

In a 2015 interview with the Bangkok Post, Dusadee Prasonsuk, one of 60 members trained by Somjit to be part of the group’s first alien squad, explained the alien messages and warnings of disaster that brings the group together. In the same article, Somjit described some of the aliens she’s interacted with. (Photos here.)

Mrs Somjit Raepeth, 56, member of Khao Kala group

Paranormal activity: Somjit Raepeth, 56, runs the UFO Khao Kala group. Her father was the first one in their family to make contact with aliens, she says.

Spooky spot: The UFO group meditate on top of Hill 145. The hill also allegedly hides a wormhole, which they say aliens use as a gateway to travel through dimensions.

“The aliens we contacted are from Pluto and a planet outside of our solar system called Logu Kata Paka Tigong. They have high virtues and morals. The only way to make contact with them is to practise dhamma to the highest levels.”

Pluto

At a UFO Khao Kala seminar in 2017, contactee and Harvard-trained doctor Dephanom Muangman revealed a prediction the aliens gave him:

“There will be a Third World War in the next five years because Trump is president. This will be true, because they told me that Bangkok would flood back in 1997.”

Is UFO Khao Kala a collection of real contactees, a heavy-duty Buddhist meditation group, just another New Age organization or something else? More importantly, no matter which they are, did they deserve to be raided … twice? Are locals concerned because the group may be camping on the mountain, afraid of people who think differently than they do or terrified that these are real alien contactees who may be facilitating disaster rather than predicting it?

The event apparently took place without incident on August 18.

What will happen at the next one?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Throughout human history there have been those who have claimed to have chanelled the higher knowledge of celestial or divine beings, much of which has ended up in volumes of texts for us to peruse and try to wrap our heads around, looking for some meaning in this chaotic cosmos we call home. One very strange such text showed up in the 1950s, purporting to give glimpses into secrets beyond our imagination, and whose contents remain disputed and authorship unknown to this day.

The incredibly weird story of the book known only as The Urantia Book supposedly begins back in 1911, when a married pair of doctors in Chicago, William and Lena Sadler, were approached by a woman who had a strange tale to tell. She claimed that her husband would go into unusually deep trances from which he could not be woken from, and during which he would seem to become possessed by outside forces. The Sadlers came to observe the man during these episodes, and indeed he seemed to be conveying verbal messages from spiritual beings he called “student visitors,” which would then be recorded on paper until there were voluminous transcriptions of these supposed communications. Sadler was deeply skeptical at first, as he was a long time debunker of psychic powers and spiritual mediumship, and in 1929 would even write a book on how fraudulent he thought it all was, entitled The Mind at Mischief. However, in this case he says he found that he was compelled and unable to come to a rational explanation for what he and his wife had witnessed, one of only two cases he had ever encountered that he could not explain, writing of it:

The other exception has to do with a rather peculiar case of psychic phenomena, one which I find myself unable to classify. I was brought in contact with it, in the summer of 1911, and I have had it under my observation more or less ever since, having been present at probably 250 of the night sessions, many of which have been attended by a stenographer who made voluminous notes. A thorough study of this case has convinced me that it is not one of ordinary trance. This man is utterly unconscious, wholly oblivious to what takes place, and, unless told about it subsequently, never knows that he has been used as a sort of clearing house for the coming and going of alleged extra-planetary personalities. Psychoanalysis, hypnotism, intensive comparison, fail to show that the written or spoken messages of this individual have origin in his own mind. Much of the material secured through this subject is quite contrary to his habits of thought, to the way in which he has been taught, and to his entire philosophy. In fact, of much that we have secured, we have failed to find anything of its nature in existence.

The Sadlers would spend many sessions with this mysterious individual, becoming more and more convinced that something truly strange was occurring. The patient would come to the attention of a group of Sadler’s friends, who also came to observe these sessions after reading some of the transcripts, and at one point whatever entities were speaking through the man invited them to ask whatever questions they wanted of it. The group would compose 30 individuals, who called themselves “The Forum” and end up asking hundreds of questions to these “beings,” recording all of the answers. It is the original transcripts and the answers to these questions that would inevitably be compiled into what has come to be called The Urantia Book, with “Urantia” being the entities’ name for “Earth.” In 1925, The Forum made a pledge not to discuss what they had learned with the outside world, and the manuscript was largely hidden away, being revised and added to over the years with further communications with the spirits, in some cases even having whole sections purportedly just magically appear out of thin air.

This would go on for decades, with the book growing and being expanded and revised as these “celestial entities” were contacted through the original medium, all while it and the subject’s identity were kept a total secret, until in 1955 permission to publish it was granted by the spiritual beings that they had allegedly been in contact with. The Urantia Book was then finally released by a tax-exempt educational society in Illinois specifically formed for this purpose, called The Urantia Foundation. The copyright for the material would pass into public domain in 2006, and it has been widely published by others since then. Now that we have the origins of this bizarre book out of the way, you might be wondering what it is actually about, and that is a pretty strange story in its own right.

The Urantia Book is more or less essentially a very long, often rambling hodgepodge of spiritualism, philosophy, and pseudo-science, covering such heady topics as the nature of the universe, the origins of mankind, the meaning of life, the nature of God and the universe itself, the life of Jesus, a very bizarre and elaborate alternate history of Earth, a cosmology of extraterrestrial spirit beings, and extensive pondering on the relationship between God and humans. It is all far too detailed and long to really get into too many details here, but among the book’s many “revelations” is that there is a multiverse and “superuniverses,” that Jesus is the most important spirit being in this universe and shares much of his lore in other sources, although it is claimed here that he was born of natural means of conception rather than a virgin birth and did not perform many of the miracles he is credited with in the Bible, and that God is a being that operates on several levels of reality. There are also references to other celestial beings and entities. It is all presented in an extremely long, detailed text pervaded with numerous illustrations, and it is quite utterly mind-boggling on first look, and it is all presented as authoritative fact.

Of course considering the apparent paranormal source of the manuscript and its otherworldly claims, there has been quite a lot of skepticism aimed its way, and none of this is helped by the fact that many of the “scientific facts” it spews are flat-out wrong and very much a product of their time, not really in keeping with the supposition that this comes from omnipotent advanced beings. Nevertheless, this has not stopped the popularity of the book from spreading. In the 1970s, The Book of Urantia was popular among musicians, and it has its adherents to this day, some who believe it literally, with some channelers claiming to even be still in contact with the entities responsible for the original texts, and others who think it is the truth disguised as fiction, open to interpretation and requiring us to think it through. Still others take it to be nothing more than purely a form of science fiction, historical fiction or fantasy, although it is very well thought out, with noted skeptic Martin Gardner calling it highly imaginative, with “cosmology that outrivals in fantasy the cosmology of any science-fiction work known to me.” Less positive reviews come from a skeptic who says it is all “fascinating, inspiring, compelling, haunting, entertaining, annoying, incomprehensible, and always wordy,” although it is almost universally said to demonstrate a high level of writing ability despite its density.

To this day The Urantia Book remains much discussed and debated, with its original author completely unknown, its history unconfirmed, and the identity of the supposed original channeler of it all completely a mystery. It has been called the real deal, a message of divine inspiration from higher forces, as well as a piece of fiction or even a total hoax or propaganda pulled off by humans, maybe even Sadler himself, with much of it possibly plagiarized from other works. So what are we dealing with, a divine compilation of universal secrets bequeathed upon us by forces beyond our understanding, or a collection of absurd ramblings written by false prophets, charlatans, and hoaxers? Whatever the case may be, it sure is a strange odyssey all the same.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For the past several months, I’ve been conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a clearer picture of global UFOlogy today.

This week, our global UFO trek takes us to Sweden, and to Clas Svahn. The author of more than 25 books, Clas features regularly on TV, radio and in printed media as an expert in UFOs, astronomy and space research. He is the editor of UFO-Sweden’s quarterly magazine UFO-Aktuellt and has been Head of Education of field investigators since the late 1990s. He has personally investigated somewhere in the region of 1,500 reports of alleged UFOs.

Clas Svahn, International director for UFO-Sweden and chairman for the Foundation Archives for the Unexplained (AFU).

RG: Who have been the defining figures in Swedish UFOlogy over the past 70 years, for better or for worse, and why?

The first big name in Swedish UFOlogy was Gösta Rehn who published four books (one translated into English) between 1966 and 1976. Rehn, though an ET believer, advocated a more scientific approach to the topic as a reaction to the early-1960s Adamski-and-contactee-oriented debate. After Rehn, several more ET-oriented authors followed, like Staffan Stigsjöö and Boris Jungkvist. In the early 1990s, several new age-focused authors like Sune Hjorth and Kristina Wennergren took yet another step from the scientific approach suggested by Rehn. Since the middle o the 1990’s I have tried to change this and today the Swedish UFO debate is more balanced. My books have been read by tens-of-thousands of Swedes and I am often interviewed on TV, radio and in newspapers.

Gösta Rehn, a pioneer in Swedish UFOlogy.

RG: In terms of UFOlogy, Sweden is known for its historic ‘Ghost Rocket’ sightings of 1946. Could you explain the general nature of these sightings and share with us the best theories to account for them?

It is not possible to answer this question short and concise since the material covering the Ghost Rockets is huge and compelling. What I can say is that the Ghost Rockets are one of the truly mysterious phenomena connected to UFOs. They got their name from a Swedish newspaper editor in May 1946 since they looked like the V-bombs used by Nazi-Germany during the last years of WWII. On August 14th, Swedish Air Force pilot Lieutenant Gunnar Irholm and Corporal Möller were flying on a training mission between Malingsbo and Krylbo in Dalecarlia. The time was a couple of minutes after ten o’clock in the morning and the visibility was good with a rainstorm coming in from the southeast. The two men were flying a B18A bomber at 650 feet (200 meters) over a forest area 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) east-northeast of Malingsbo church when Gunnar Irholm suddenly saw an unknown aircraft coming from his left on a southeasterly course in front of their airplane. Gunnar Irholm remembered when interviewed in 1986: “Just over the horizon I could see an elongated object without the typical features of an aircraft. It had no tail fin, for example. What we saw was the picture of a cigar, a torpedo. We were close enough to be sure that this was not an aircraft.”

His report was filed just minutes after landing in Västerås. There, Gunnar Irholm wrote that after spotting the object they lost eye contact for a short period of time, but after adjusting their height it reappeared 20 seconds later. “I immediately put my aircraft on a parallel course and put on full power. The shortest distance we had to the craft was just over 3,000 feet [one kilometer] but I soon realized that we were not able to catch up with the craft which speed I estimate to between 370 and 430 miles [600 kilometers and 700 kilometers] per hour. Two minutes later it had vanished to the South East,” Irholm wrote in the official report. The unknown object vanished into the storm cloud.

The Swedish Ghost Rocket Committee

A full investigation was made and Lieutenant Irholm and Corporal Möller were both summoned to a meeting with one of the prime investigators from the Ghost Rocket committee, Eric Malmberg, eight days later. Eric Malmberg’s conclusion was that the object had not been a Swedish aircraft. But what was it? Malmberg later said in an interview: “He must have seen something. I later got to know Gunnar Irholm very well and he was always a very balanced person.” And Gunnar Irholm was a pilot with great experience. At the time of the observation he was in charge of a division of B18s and would later the same year fly to Britain in charge of bringing four J28 Vampires back to Sweden. He was later appointed to head the military testing grounds at Malmslätt where new aircraft, missiles and rockets were tested before being used by the armed forces.

Beside this report, the crashes are still one thing that puzzles me. I have spent days together with the witnesses of the July 19th crashes where four objects dived into lakes during four hours. Search teams from the Swedish military looked for them but found only holes at the bottom of the lakes, no debris. What did they see? I do not know but I am sure that they witnessed a real, physical phenomenon.

RG: What is the Swedish government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?

During the last five years or so the Swedish armed forces have distanced themselves from the topic and are not publishing any statistics anymore. I have even been denied a short summary of how many ”unknowns” the air force investigated during 2000 to 2018. This is a break with how the military used to handle UFOs. After the Ghost Rocket wave the military put a great effort into investigating sightings and did so for many years until 1965 when this responsibility was handed over to the Defense Research Institute (FOI). After that, real investigations ceased and the reports coming to the military were just filed without any interviews or investigations being conducted. Our proximity to Russia makes the military cautious to publish reports of unknowns since they could be used by other countries as a means to measure the capacity of the Swedish radar systems.

Rosenbad in Stockholm, the seat of the Swedish government.

RG: Does the Swedish Ministry of Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?

No, not any more. There is still a ”UFO desk” but it never investigates UFO reports from the public but sends the observers to UFO-Sweden instead.

RG: Has the Swedish government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?

Hard to say. A couple of years ago UFO-Sweden had all the reports in the FOI files scanned and handed over on a hard drive when I asked for them. And I have never had any problems with getting comments regarding UFOs when I have asked for them – until now. As I see it, the Swedish military doesn’t know much more about the origin a of the unknowns than I and UFO-Sweden do.

RG: Tell us a bit about your organisation, UFO-Sweden. How many members do you have, and what kind of activities do you engage in? How many smaller Swedish UFO groups are you aware of, if any?

UFO-Sweden started in 1970 (and we will be 50 years 2020) as an organization more inclined to publish cases that showed that we had an ET presence on Earth than to try and find explanations to those reports. Ten years later UFO-Sweden was divided into two groups, one that took a more scientific stance and one that continued on the ET path. It was a very painful process since most of the persons once founding UFO-Sweden were convinced that the UFO enigma already was solved and that all that now had to be done was to inform the Swedish citizens and our leaders that the Earth was visited by beings from other worlds. This standpoint made several serious investigators leave the organization or decide not to join it in the early years.

Today UFO-Sweden is a stable and very well maintained group of dedicated researchers. We have around 500 members and a circulation of our glossy magazine UFO-Aktuellt of 1,200 copies. Our report centre investigates between 250 and 300 reports every year.

UFO-Swedens delivers lectures and training courses, and, since 2019, also holds regional meetings with members. We publish yet another magazine beside UFO-Aktuellt called Rapport-Nytt aimed at members and field investigators (500 copies).

There are no other groups in Sweden anymore.

RG: What are the most active regions of Sweden for UFO sighting reports?

The most active regions are the regions where UFO-Sweden has field investigators or groups. Where people can find someone to report to. There are no “hotspots;” the reports are evenly distributed over Sweden. When UFO-Sweden, during several years, made a survey by knocking doors and asking people all over the southern part of Sweden if they had seen anything in the sky that they couldn’t explain ten per cent of the 1,600 we talked to said that they had. Just a few of them had reported their observation to the authorities or to UFO-Sweden which makes us think that there are one millions possible UFO observations out there (Sweden has a population of ten millions) that we still don’t know of. Today UFO-Sweden has 20,000 reports in our files.

RG: Have you personally had any UFO sightings?

Since I am an amateur astronomer I have been standing outside beneath the dark and starry sky for hundreds of hours. I have seen a couple of strange lights and objects but only one that still baffles me. It was in November 1995 when me and my wife stood outside our house just after 1am after returning home from a friend looking to the East. A couple of minutes earlier we had passed two men standing at a bus stop pointing to the sky looking at something, which we at the time could not see. Trying to locate whatever it was we both scanned the sky but saw nothing but stars. Suddenly three white-glowing objects, all formed like a cross with even arms like plus signs, flew out of the darkness from East. They flew over us without changing positions and my first thoughts that they were birds reflecting the lights from the city below soon turned out to be wrong. As I ran around the corner of our house I could see the three objects vanishing from my sight. I have no idea of what they were or where they came from and the investigator that was assigned to investigate our observation never found an explanation.

Clas Svahn

RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?

I started out as an avid amateur astronomer when I was eleven years old in the late 60s, and astronomy is still one of my biggest interests. But soon I got interested also in UFO anomalies. I started reading as many books as I could find and cut out newspaper articles and pasted them on paper (I still have them!). When I was 16, in May 1974, I started a local UFO group in my hometown and began to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects. Since then I have investigated around 1,500 cases but have not one simple single explanation for all of them. To me UFOs are not just one phenomenon but many, and I am cautious when it comes to saying what it all could be. But I think it is way too early to say that we have visitors from other planets coming here in spaceships. To me, the UFO enigma is much more complex than that.

I consider myself to be a critical investigator and all answers, as long as they could be substantiated, are good answers. To me there are no easy answers to be found when it comes to UFOs. If you stick with one favourite hypothesis, that could be ETH or many skeptics point of view that there is nothing to UFOs at all, you are bound to miss vital information. For me, UFOs are a label for many different phenomena. I do not think that what often is called The UFO Enigma has just one answer. Reading reports of strange lights, “crafts, ”“aliens” and other anomalies in books and newspapers from earlier days it is clear to me that the alien answer is not the only one. Some reports that I have investigated have had a very physical part which to me points to these objects being a real phenomena.

RG: How can Swedish UFOlogy, and UFOlogy in general, better itself?

In many ways of course. We are good at many things like educating our field investigators which we’ve done since the mid-1970s during yearly courses. But we need to get better in making them stay within the organization. But that is a problem we share with all other UFO organizations around the world. There are only so many very good and interesting reports every year and the field investigators must work with loads of mundane and not very exciting observations before getting to a ”good case.” That is a problem because many of the investigators get frustrated and drop out while waiting.

I am also chairman for Archives for the Unexplained (AFU), the world’s largest archive when it comes to the unknown. We are growing all the time, but so fast that we are lacking money for making our holdings available in the way we would like them to be. I hope that AFU (www.afu.se) will get more funding from interested persons around the world and maybe my new book (”Files of the Unknown) about AFU and a crowd funding effort we are starting soon will change that.  AFU is hugely important for researchers and I would like the archive to be used even more.

When it comes to UFOlogy, in general I think that we all must be better researchers and better educated in physics, psychology and the misinterpretations that may account for than 90 per cent of the observations. Real UFO phenomena are not as common as you may think.

For more information about UFO Sweden, visit their website.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

(Image: Danielle Futselaar)

Fast radio bursts – those mysterious short yet powerful signals from other galaxies – are pretty rare. While some people claim they’re signals from alien civilizations, others doubt that theory because only two of the dozens discovered so far were repeated from the same location. That theory may have just received some much-needed credibility with the discovery of eight different repeating signals, with one set coming from a nearby galaxy. Can we yell “It’s aliens!” now?

“There is definitely a difference between the sources, with some being more prolific than others. We already knew from FRB 121102 that the bursts can be very clustered: sometimes the source doesn’t burst for hours and hours and then suddenly you get multiple bursts in a short amount of time. We have observed the same thing for FRB 180916.J0158+65, for which we report ten bursts in this paper.”

Physicist Ziggy Pleunis (a top candidate for “Best Astronomer’s Name”) of McGill University is a co-author of the report accepted by the Astrophysical Journal Letters announcing the discovery of eight repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB) signals using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope. CHIME has been optimized for finding FRBs by searching a wide section of the sky for a lower range of frequencies than most radio telescopes. In an interview with ScienceAlert, Pleunis explained that some of these FRBs repeated only once while one flashed 10 times. Because the intervals between repeating FRBs varied so much in length, some astronomers suspect that all FRBs repeat eventually.

Another interesting observation from these new FRBs is that their wave frequencies get successively lower over time – what the paper calls a “downward frequency drift.” While this could be a sign that whatever is generating the signal is fading away, researchers aren’t ready to call them distress calls from a dying civilization. The polarization of one of the signals showed it came from an extreme magnetic environment – most likely a black hole or a neutron star. Finally, the FRB signals varied in their dispersion. As expected, a highly dispersed signal indicates it has traveled a long distance. One of these eight FRBs had the lowest dispersion rate ever detected, meaning it could be located very close to our galaxy – astronomically speaking, of course.

Speaking of speaking astronomically …

“I think (and I hope!) the paper will prompt other astronomers to point their telescopes to these newly discovered sources. Then, there is a lot of information here for model builders to work with. I think it will help them figure out what produces repeating FRBs. Also, I think our findings will influence the search strategy of other teams that try to discover repeating FRBs.”

Pleunis and the large team of astronomers who co-authored the report are obviously excited about their discovery. Coupled with the recent announcement of development of an AI FRB-detection system, we could be hearing about a lot more repeaters very soon … and hopefully on their origin.

It’s aliens! (We hope!)

(Image: Shutterstock/Danielle Futselaar)

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released its files on another famous name in the annals of ufology: George Van Tassel, alleged UFO contactee, and builder of California’s famous Integratron.

Van Tassel was like many in the 1950s UFO scene, who prior to his interest in visitations by “Space Brothers” had been heavily involved with metaphysical subjects and groups. What set him apart from many others, however, was Van Tassel’s legitimate involvement with mechanical engineering and aviation. Van Tassel was barely out of his teens when he relocated to California from his hometown in Jefferson, Ohio, to work in a garage owned by his uncle.

It was while working there that he met a German immigrant and part-time prospector named Frank Critzer. Staking his claim near Giant Rock, California, Critzer was later killed during a police raid that occurred at the location in 1942; it was later revealed that Critzer had been a suspected German spy.

Van Tassel in 1964

(Credit: KVOS Channel 12 Films, Center for Pacific Northwestern Studies, Western Washington University)

After Critzer died, Van Tassell took an interest in an abandoned airport near Giant Rock and was later granted a contract by the Federal Government to undertake a restoration of the property under the Bureau of Land Management. With his background in mechanical engineering and prospective airstrip near Giant Rock, Van Tassel went on to work for some of the more high profile names in aviation during the ensuing years; these included Lockheed, and flight innovator Howard Hughes’ own Hughes Aircraft, among others. Eventually, Van Tassel would also turn his airport and surrounding attractions near Giant Rock into a sort of “Mecca” for the soon-to-be-booming flying saucer craze.

The FBI’s file on Van Tassel, numbering 315 pages, is mostly concerned with photocopies of pamphlets Van Tassel co-authored, which includes one titled, “Proceedings from the College of Universal Wisdom” (Van Tassel was Director of the College of Universal Wisdom in the early 1950s, according to the pamphlet). The batch of documents opens with a letter by an individual (whose identity is redacted) sent to John F. Malone, the Special Agent in Charge at the FBI’s Los Angeles, California field office. The letter explains that the author is filing the information with Malone “at the request of my friend” (a name that is also redacted), who had been “Seeking some information concerning the activities of individuals and the group known as the College of Universal Wisdom.”

“The group ostensibly is devoted to a study of space ships and interplanetary communication,” the unnamed individual writes, “but its consistent ‘line’ in its publication is an attack upon atomic weapons and preaching of a nebulous peace. George W. Van Tassel is listed as Director of the College of Universal Wisdom, and I know nothing whatever concerning him.

“However, at least one of the prominent guests at the space ship convention at Giant Rock Airport, Sunday, April 4th, has been questioned about supposed communist affiliations,” the informant writes.

However, in addition to Van Tassel’s associations with the Giant Rock area and his organization, the files do elaborate on the Bureau’s concerns about Van Tassel’s airstrip, and the location’s former connections to a possible German spy during the war.

“You may recall that this area was the scene of some sensational happenings during World War II,” the author of the letter to Special Agent Malone writes, “when it was believed to be the projected site for refueling of suicide planes, possibly to be launched from Japanese submarines on the Gulf of California in an attempt to reach and bomb Hoover Dam’s penstocks and power houses to cripple the airplane industry here. Your office no doubt has the full story on what happened then including the destruction by dynamite in an underground room beneath Giant Rock of the then owner.”

Incidentally, Van Tassel and his family actually lived in quarters within these areas excavated by Critzer in the 1940s, and beginning in 1953, he began holding public meditation events in these underground chambers. The same year was the launch of the annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention, as referenced in the letter to Special Agent John Malone, which ran until Van Tassel’s death in 1978.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The Big Bang Theory hasn’t been having a good year. First, of course, the iconic television sitcom of the same name ended. Besides being a top-performing show right up until the end, it did wonders for convincing the general public that nerds can be cool while showing nerds that they can meet attractive soulmates as long as they don’t spend too much discussing Star Trek movies or string theory. Then last week, THE Big Bang theory itself was brought into question by new data which seems to show that an old star appropriately dubbed “Methuselah” is actually older than the universe. If that hit to its big ego was wasn’t big enough, a study released this week showing how dark matter, which was thought to have been created by the Big Bang, actually predates it. What next? Secret documents showing Dr. Sheldon Cooper cheated on his IQ test?

“If dark matter were truly a remnant of the Big Bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already.”

Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and author of “Dark Matter from Scalar Field Fluctuations” published recently in Physical Review Letters, uses the enemy of many weak theories – mathematics – to put the Big Bang theory into question. Tenkanen developed a simple mathematical framework (graphs can be seen here) which illustrates a scenario where dark matter was produced in a period of cosmic inflation BEFORE the Big Bang, causing a massive production of scalars. Scarlars (also called scalar boson – you can see where this is going) are boson particles whose spin equals zero. The only boson particle ever found is the Higgs boson, also known affectionately as the ‘God particle’ because it gives all other particles their mass. In other words, it created the mass of the universe, which up until now was believed to have birthed the universe.

Figure 1

The parameter space relevant for the “fuzzy DM” scenario [25]. Contours show the value of $H_{\ast }$ required for $\chi$ to constitute all DM. The regions below the horizontal red dashed line and between the dotted green lines are in tension with observations of the Lyman-$\alpha$forest [26] and the recent Event Horizon Telescope data due to the black hole superradiance mechanism [27], respectively. See also Ref. [28] which placed tentative constraints excluding the entire region shown here. The lower limit for $x$ axis, ${\chi }_{\ast }/H_{\ast }\simeq 7\times {10}^4$, is given by the isocurvature constraint (14).

Figure 2

The region of the model parameter space where the scalar simultaneously constitutes all DM (along the red curve) and avoids the DM isocurvature constraints (blue region). Also the region $m\le 0.4\mathrm{GeV}$, $H_{\ast }\lesssim {10}^5\mathrm{GeV}$ in the lower left corner is allowed. The result is not sensitive to the exact value of $\beta$. Above the blue region, $m>H_{\ast }$, the scalar fluctuations during inflation are strongly suppressed.

Does this mean dark atter really existed before the Big Bang?

“We do not know what dark matter is, but if it has anything to do with any scalar particles, it may be older than the Big Bang. With the proposed mathematical scenario, we don’t have to assume new types of interactions between visible and dark matter beyond gravity, which we already know is there.”

Well, if the math says it did … then it did – although it would be nice to have some physical evidence to back it up. Tenkanen told Phys.org that’s coming in 2022 when the Euclid satellite is launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium. It will be carrying a near-infrared space telescope that will accurately measure the acceleration of the universe as it expands, thus giving scientists the means to trace back to the origins of dark energy (the theoretical cause of the expansion) and dark matter (the content of up to 85% of the universe).

Or not.

“It’s going to be very exciting to see what it will reveal about dark matter and if its findings can be used to peek into the times before the Big Bang.”

That’s a BIG if … meaning the Big Bang theory — and the universe and all that is in it — is safe.

For now.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

I like my black holes like I like my internal organs: doing what they’re supposed to and not surprising anyone. After all, we barely even understand black holes beyond descriptions that would fit perfectly in an H.P. Lovecraft novel—a dead star at the center of the galaxy, collapsed under its own tremendous mass to an impossible singularity, warping the very fabric of reality around it like a cloak blacker than the blackest night, as even light itself struggles feebly and fails to escape its terrible pull. Yeah, I don’t want any surprises from black holes.

But alas, the great old one has awakened and all humanity’s brightest minds know not for what weird purpose. According to astronomers, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way has been acting really strange. Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a pretty quiet and mundane supermassive black hole (as far as they go). It’s fluctuations in the brightness of the “electromagnetic counterpart” are normally relatively small. This summer, however, that seems to have changed. Observations from the Keck telescope have recorded massive spikes in the brightness of Sgr A*, including one when the black hole spiked to 75 times its normal brightness and held there for a period of two hours.

Astronomer Tuan Do at the University of California Los Angeles, who observed the unprecedented spike in Sgr A* says:

“I was pretty surprised at first and then very excited. The black hole was so bright I at first mistook it for the star S0-2, because I had never seen Sgr A* that bright. Over the next few frames, though, it was clear the source was variable and had to be the black hole. I knew almost right away there was probably something interesting going on wit h the black hole.”

Tuan Do’s research was recently published in the Journal of Astrophysical Letters, but astronomers still don’t know what’s caused these massive spikes. Black holes don’t emit light on their own (go figure), but the swirling disk of stuff around it does. The so-called accretion disk consists of dust and gas and busted up cosmic debris that is pulled towards the black hole but doesn’t make it past the event horizon. Sometimes unlucky stars passing through the neighborhood have their matter ripped out by the supermassive black hole’s enormous gravity and assimilated by the accretion disk. The working hypothesis for the spikes in Sgr A*’s brightness is that it got its claws on an unusually large object and pulled it into the accretion disk, though what the object could be is unknown.

Astronomers will keep studying Sgr A* and try to figure out just what it’s up to. The Keck telescope only has a few more weeks where it will have the right angle to observe Sgr A*, but there are four more telescopes that have been pointed at it all summer with their data yet to be released. After that, the center of our galaxy won’t be observable again until 2020. Which leaves an approximately six month blind spot, and as everyone knows, black holes only strike when you’re not looking.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

One of America’s most secretive and yet also highly publicized research facilities sure knows how to stay in the headlines. As the hype surrounding the controversial and misguided “Storm Area 51” event continues to grow, the off-limits and extremely classified Air Force testing ground appears to have held a massive test of some kind this past weekend.

While there are no details coming from the Armed Forces themselves, several Notices to Airman (NOTAMs) which were published publicly seem to indicate that the skies over the Nevada Test and Training Range were occupied by something spooky this past weekend. NOTAMs are documents filed with aviation authorities like America’s FAA which notify pilots of potential hazards or off-limit airspace. 

Much of the airspace surrounding Area 51 was off limits over the weekend, even to military aircraft.

Beginning on August 8, several aviation enthusiasts and observers began noticing curious NOTAMs and posting them to Twitter. The notices indicated several massive blocks of airspace surrounding Groom Lake and Tonopah Test Range, some of America’s most secretive locations where the most cutting-edge and classified aerospace technologies are developed and tested. The airspace above those areas were restricted from August 10 until the early morning on August 12.

The NOTAMs all specified an unlimited ceiling for these areas, meaning the airspace above these ranges was off limits essentially all the way up to outer space. Aviation journalists around the internet speculated that this likely indicates a test of some type of space-to-surface or surface-to-space technology, although it could simply be a way of ensuring that nobody without the proper security clearances got to see whatever shiny new toys the Air Force was testing over the weekend.

Many speculate the exercise was a test of a directed energy weapon, rocket, or missile.

While there’s no telling what may have been tested over the weekend, some aerospace experts have suggested it was likely a classified drone exercise, a rocket launch of some kind, a test of an exotic directed energy weapon, or perhaps even an early flight of the B-21 Raider, the Air Force’s upcoming next-generation stealth bomber.

Whatever it was, this weekend proves why we won’t get anywhere close to the secretive test range next month when we try to storm Area 51. That entire complex is one of the most heavily-guarded and restricted places on Earth and the site of some of the world’s most sophisticated weapons development. Are a bunch of Naruto-running millennials really going to be able to storm the barriers and evade armed guards?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

UFO sighting? Mystery flying object spotted in Amsterdam tornado sparks BIZARRE theories

A MYSTERY object spotted flying in the skies above Amsterdam during a tornado has sparked multiple theories online.

By MILLIE BULL

The strange object sparked theories of possible extraterrestrial sightings  and even “dark angels”. A video showed the mystery object on YouTube channel Mavi777, which depicts a strange glowing object flying in the sky above the tornado. One user commented on the video claiming the “orb lights” are the “fallen ones”.

RELATED ARTICLES

• 
  Area 51: UFO wreckage 'could be hidden all over the world’ says author
• 
  Area 51 mystery amid claims of 'significant testing' at US base

The user claimed that “cattle mutilations are the work of these orbs which are dark angels.”

They continued: “They are also responsible for the crop circles.”

Another said: “Unbelievable footage. We are not alone.”

However, one user offered a more mundane explanation for the flying object.

• READ MORE: UFO claim: ‘Stunning’ US Navy sightings are ‘most important in 70 yrs'

A mystery object has been spotted above Amsterdam above a tornado 

(Image: GETTY/YOUTUBE @Mavi777)

The strange object sparked theories of possible extraterrestrial sightings and even “dark angels”

 (Image: YOUTUBE @Mavi777)

They said that the objects are just weather drones sent to gauge the power of the tornado.

Another strange phenomenon was spotted this month in the skies above Brazil.

A massive shining figure was recorded flying in the cloudy sky.

The footage showed the peculiar entity changing direction whilst maintaining its shape.

RELATED ARTICLES

• 
  Life on Mars? Alien hunters spot ‘statues’ on the Red Planet
• 
  NASA shock: Mysterious UFO seen on live stream

One user said the object could be weather drones 

(Image: YOUTUBE @Mavi777)

A video was uploaded on YouTube showing a T-shaped shining object roughly resembling an angel in a long robe.

The cameraman said in the video: “It looks like light refraction but then again it looks like some type of energy source.

“It’s even got the harmonious appearance of an angel.”

An explanation for both events remains unclear.

RELATED ARTICLES

• UFO sighting news: New Area 51 underground base found on Google Maps
• UFO sighting: Did NASA film 'extraordinary' alien UFO outside ISS?
• Alien life on Mars PROOF? NASA Spirit Rover spots ‘alien UFO base’

{ https://www.express.co.uk/ }

UFO Sightings: Glowing Fireball Shoots Out Mysterious Orb Above Egyptian Pyramid

There is no doubt that the object in the footage is extraterrestrial, but opinions differ over whether it is a natural phenomenon or the product of intelligent life.

Footage of a purported UFO sighting, filmed above the pyramids in Egypt, has prompted outlandish claims that ‘the real pyramid builders’ had returned to see their creation.

A glowing white fireball is seen streaking across the sky over an Egyptian pyramid, when suddenly a white orb seems to shoot off and travel in the opposite direction from the space rock.

The video was filmed by a tourist and uploaded to the Chinese YouTube channel Bizarre World back in June.

While most commenters argued that the mysterious object was a fragment of a meteor, there were also suggestions that it was a flying saucer.

“The UFO streaks across the sky like a meteor, but then part of it shoots out another white orb and that orb travels in the opposite direction,” Scott C Waring, a prominent UFO hunter, wrote on his website ET Database.

“It looks to me like the people who built the pyramids were doing a flyby to check on it.”

{ http://www.cosmosobserver.com/ }

'Just imagine an alien world glowing softly in a powerful telescope'

Animation showing the randomness of FRBs. (NRAO Outreach/Vimeo)

At the start of 2019, just one of these mysterious signals, FRB 121102, was known to flash repeatedly. In January, scientists reported a second repeating one (FRB 180814).

This new paper - available on preprint server arXiv, and submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters - describes eight new repeating signals detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope.

This brings the known total of repeating FRBs to 10. It means we're starting to build a statistical database of repeaters, which could help astronomers to figure out what these signals actually are.

Fast radio bursts are certainly perplexing. They are detected as spikes in radio data, lasting just a few milliseconds. But, in that time, they can discharge more energy than 500 million Suns.

Most FRBs are only detected once and can't be predicted, so tracing them back to their source is really tricky (although, as demonstrated earlier this year for the first time, not impossible).

That's why repeaters are so important. And the news that they are not as rare as we thought means it might be possible to trace more back to their source galaxies, and determine what kinds of environments they come from.

We can also start looking for similarities and differences between repeating FRBs.

"There is definitely a difference between the sources, with some being more prolific than others," physicist Ziggy Pleunis of McGill University told ScienceAlert.

"We already knew from FRB 121102 that the bursts can be very clustered: sometimes the source doesn't burst for hours and hours and then suddenly you get multiple bursts in a short amount of time. We have observed the same thing for FRB 180916.J0158+65, for which we report ten bursts in this paper."

On the other side of the scale, six of the FRBs reported in the paper only repeated once, and the longest pause between signals was over 20 hours. The eighth one (FRB 181119) repeated twice after the initial detection, pinging a total of three times.

We don't yet know what this means, but it could indicate - as hypothesised in a paper last month by Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Vikram Ravi - that all FRBs are actually repeaters, but some are a lot more active than others.

"Just as some volcanoes are more active than others, and you can think a volcano is dormant because it has not erupted in a long time," Pleunis noted.

But there are similarities between FRBs, too. The individual bursts from repeaters seem to last a little bit longer than the bursts from one-off FRBs. That's pretty interesting.

There's also the frequency drift. The first two repeaters - FRB 121102 and FRB 180814 - showed a downward drift in frequency, with each burst getting successively lower. Think of a sad trombone sound effect.

Most of the eight new repeaters,also demonstrated this downward frequency drift. This could be a clue as to what's producing the signals.

"I just think it is so amazing that nature produces something like that," Pleunis said. "Also, I think that there is some very important information in that structure that we just have to figure out how to encode and it has been a lot of fun to try to figure out what exactly that is."

CHIME is optimised for monitoring a very broad swathe of the sky, across a lower range of frequencies than radio telescopes like ASKAP or the Parkes Observatory in Australia, which have also detected FRBs.

So far, CHIME's approach is proving remarkably effective at detection. In addition to these repeaters, and the repeater announced in January, CHIME has detected a number of one-off bursts, too. It's not optimised for tracing those detections to a source, though.

That's where the broader scientific community comes in. Just today, a different team of researchers, including Ravi, announced they had made headway localising the eight new repeaters to known galaxies, just based on the direction the signals came from.

We can even roughly tell how far away the bursts may have originated based on how dispersed the signal is - the higher these measures, the farther the distance.

In fact, this is where it gets intriguing, because one of the signals, FRB 180916, has the lowest dispersion seen yet, indicating that it could be nearby.

"Even with the biggest telescopes, if it's closer to you, you always get a better view than if it's something farther away," astronomer Keith Bannister from Australia's national science agency CSIRO, who was not involved in the research, told ScienceAlert.

"So that particular low dispersion measure was super exciting, because there's a good chance that that will be nearby. And that means it will be easier to look at, once we really know exactly where it is in the sky."

The polarisation of the signals (how twisted the signal is) is informative, too. If the signal is really twisted up, it means it came from an extreme magnetic environment, such as can be found around a black hole or neutron star. This is what the signal from FRB 121102 was like.

But the team was able to measure the polarisation of one of the new signals, FRB 180916, and it was really low. This tells us that not all repeating FRBs come from extreme environments.

We don't know what this means yet. We don't know if there are several different classes of objects or events producing these signals. We don't know if they all repeat, or why they repeat. But these results are bringing us tantalisingly close to finally having some answers.

"I think (and I hope!) the paper will prompt other astronomers to point their telescopes to these newly discovered sources," Pleunis said.

"Then, there is a lot of information here for model builders to work with. I think it will help them figure out what produces repeating FRBs.

"Also, I think our findings will influence the search strategy of other teams that try to discover repeating FRBs."

• The research has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal and is available on arXiv.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

Straight out of sci-fi? Researchers say that aliens use black holes to travel

 by: Edsel Cook

(Natural News) Black holes possess immense amounts of energy, and this very property has given a researcher the idea to use black holes as “launch pads” for starships preparing to explore the deep space. The black holes would curve laser beams back toward a receiving starship, and the boost in energy would help accelerate large spacecraft to relativistic speeds.

Astronomers could also investigate if alien civilizations relied on such a “halo drive,” as the study calls it, by seeing if pairs of black holes combine more often than expected.

Current spacecrafts burn huge amounts of fuel to push themselves through space; propellants occupy precious space and weight; and of course, the fuel supply aboard any spaceship eventually runs out.

Laser propulsion offers an alternative to fuel-based drives. Firing powerful beams of light at the reflective sails of a spaceship accelerates the craft forward. Since lasers consume electricity instead of fuel, they will function as long as the ship has power.

To accelerate heavier starships at a substantial percentage of light speed (relativistic speeds), more powerful lasers will be necessary. Columbia University in New Yorkresearcher David Kipping believed that gravity might help supercharge laser beams. (Related: Has the second “alien megastructure” been found?)

Taking the gravitational slingshot maneuver to a relativistic level

A “slingshot maneuver” takes advantage of the gravitational field of a celestial body to increase the speed of a spacecraft. Larger bodies possess more mass and gravity, so they impart higher speeds.

Researcher Freeman Dyson has taken that concept to the extreme. His “Dyson slingshot” uses a compact pair of white dwarf stars or neutron stars for the slingshot maneuver. The powerful gravity of those binary systems would speed up the spacecraft to relativistic speeds.

However, white dwarf stars and neutron stars emit intense radiation. Their gravitational forces might also rip apart the starship that tries to use them for a slingshot maneuver.

Kipping improved Dyson’s proposal by substituting a laser beam for the starship itself for the slingshot maneuver. Furthermore, he recommended using black holes instead of dying or dead stars.

The gravitational field of a black hole is so strong that it prevents anything that enters it from leaving. (Some believe the captured matter will eventually get released.) Even if photons only pass by, their course changes as the gravity tugs on the particles.

Kipping got the idea from a 1993 study by researcher Mark Stucker on gravitational mirrors. Stucker brought up the possibility of slinging a photon back to its source by using the immense gravity of a black hole.

Expanding on this, Kipping surmised that if the black hole was traveling in the direction of the source of the photon, the light particle would absorb some of its gravitational energy. A laser beam would come back stronger.

Black holes might propel alien starships with halo drives at sub-light speeds

Kipping dubbed his gravitational mirror-accelerated laser propulsion system as the “halo drive” for the ring of light it produced around the black hole. His calculations showed that the drive would speed up objects with the mass of Jupiter to relativistic speeds.

“A civilization could exploit black holes as galactic waypoints,” he wrote in his study.

Faster-moving black holes imparted more energy on a halo drive. Kipping sought out pairs of black holes that gravitated toward each other.

He calculated the increases from binary black hole systems where the partners orbited each other at relativistic speeds. These pairs were rare since they merged much faster than the other 10 million binaries in the universe.

Halo drive-equipped starships might also use solitary supermassive black holes that rotated at relativistic speeds.

Kipping advised other researchers to search for clues that alien civilizations tapped binary black hole systems for powering halo drives. Since the drive absorbed energy from the pairs, they increased the rate at which the black holes came together.

Sources include:

• LiveScience.com
• Space.com

{ https://www.naturalnews.com/ }

Is this proof of LIFE on Mars? NASA's Curiosity rover snaps photos of Martian mushrooms that prove the red planet is home to organic lifeforms, scientists claim in controversial study

• Images from NASA's Mars Curiosity show pictures of mushrooms and funghi
• Some scientists claim these NASA images show the red surface is not barren   
• The claims from the researchers have yet to be confirmed or refuted by NASA

By JOE PINKSTONE FOR MAILONLINE 

Images from the surface of Mars reveal the presence of mushrooms, a group of scientists claim in a controversial new study. 

It states some images captured by NASA's Curiosity show fungi is growing on the surface of the supposedly barren planet. 

The claims have yet to be confirmed or refuted by NASA.

Scroll down for video  

A study claims some objects captured by NASA's Curiosity show fungi is growing on the surface of the supposedly barren planet (pictured)

The research lists 15 images as evidence of algae, lichens and 'Martian mushrooms'.

Photographic evidence of such flourishing lifeforms, should the discovery be confirmed, would likely revolutionise our understanding of Mars and life outside of Earth. 

Dr Regina Dass, of the department of microbiology at the school of life sciences, India, the study's co-author said: '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,' the Express reports. 

'In fact, fifteen specimens were photographed by NASA growing out of the ground in just three days.' 

It remains unknown why life may have sprouted on Mars but it is possible conditions are more suitable for cultivating life underground than on the surface.  

The claims have been published in Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews.

A controversial piece of research such as this is subjected to extensive vetting by peers within the scientific community. 

The research states 15 images include evidence of algae, lichens and 'Martian mushrooms' (pictured). The claims have been published in Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews

Photographic evidence of such flourishing lifeforms, should the discovery be confirmed, would revolutionise our understanding of Mars. Images from the rover include purported evidence of 'life' on martian rocks 

Editors of the journal say six independent scientists and eight senior editors were recruited to scrutinise the study. 

Eleven recommended publication on the grounds certain revisions were implemented and three rejected the results. 

Other academics proposed an alternative explanation and say it is more feasible the specimens are hematite, a form of iron oxide. 

The journal stated: 'Evidence is not proof and there is no proof of life on Mars.

'Abiogenic explanations for this evidence can't be ruled out.'

Read more:

• Life on Mars? Growing ‘FUNGI’ spotted in Mars Curiosity Rover photos - SHOCK CLAIM | Science | News | Express.co.uk
• Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

NASA has pictures of Martian “mushrooms” indicating proof of life, says controversial new research

 by: Edsel Cook

(Natural News) Years ago, NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped a set of photos of the surface of Mars. A provocative new study interpreted those images as evidence that mushrooms were growing on the Martian soil.

The researchers pointed out features in 15 images that resembled algae, lichens, and mushrooms on Earth. They added that the shapes were impossible to replicate by non-living forces like geological movements.

“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,” claimed Pondicherry University researcher Dr. Regina Dass. “In fact, fifteen specimens were photographed by NASA growing out of the ground in just three days.”

Dass and her colleagues published their findings on the Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews. Due to their bold claims of finding fungal life on the surface of Mars, their research paper received thorough vetting by other researchers.

Some academics have suggested that the “Mars mushrooms” found by the researchers were more likely to be hematite, a form of iron oxide that was plentiful on Mars. The journal itself stressed the difference between evidence and proof, and classed the findings under the former. (Related: Geological curiosity: Mars “blueberries” reveal what ancient Mars may have looked like.)

The search for more evidence of life on Mars

Researchers don’t know why life may have developed on Mars. Some of them theorize that the conditions underground may prove more hospitable to life than its surface.

While movies depict alien life in various exciting and horrifying ways, real life would probably turn out to be tamer. Experts think that any lifeforms found on Mars would appear as fossils of bacteria that died long ago.

The strongest evidence of life on Mars involves water, meteorites, methane, and actual life signs.

The Red Planet is currently rocky and barren. The majority of its water is trapped in the ice caps at the polar regions.

However, researchers have uncovered evidence that liquid water once flowed across the surface of Mars. In 2000, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor photographed gullies that might have been dug out of the ground by flowing water.

They also evaluated several meteorites originating from Mars that crashed on Earth. These chunks of metal and rock provide a glimpse of Mars during earlier periods.

Found in Antarctica in 1996, the ALH 84001 meteorite bears features that resemble fossilized bacteria. While a 2012 study eventually attributed the formation to volcanic origins instead of biological life, other Martian space rocks may present more concrete evidence.

Organic molecules in ancient lake beds and methane spikes during certain seasons

When Mariner 4 arrived at Mars in 1964, it sent back the first close-up photographs of the planet. Researchers noticed the presence of terrain features that might have formed during a time when Mars enjoyed a moist climate conducive to organic life.

Over the decades, orbiters, landers, and rovers found evidence that water lurked beneath the dry surface of Mars. They even came across clues that the planet experienced precipitation on rare occasions that its thin atmosphere gathered enough condensed water vapor for the weather event.

In 2019, the Curiosity rover came across organic molecules in the bedrock of Gale Crater, a Martian lake bed dated 3.5 billion years old. These molecules had the potential to become the building blocks of simple lifeforms.

Curiosity also sniffed out regular spikes of methane levels in the atmosphere over three Martian years. In the northern hemisphere, the gas greatly increased during late summer. In the southern half of Mars, the spikes appeared deep into the winter season.

Sources include:

• DailyMail.co.uk
• JournalOfAstrobiology.com

A study claims some objects captured by NASA's Curiosity show fungi is growing on the surface of the supposedly barren planet (pictured)

{ https://www.naturalnews.com/ }

Baffling mystery: Star that’s older than the universe

It’s something that shouldn’t be possible. Scientists have been left baffled by a star that appears to be older than the universe itself.

Astronomers are stumped over a star that appears to be older than the universe.

So how is that possible? That’s the question that an international conference in California attempted to answer.

But instead of solving the mystery, theorists are now questioning whether there is something wrong with the current scientific model of the universe — based on Einstein’s famous theories.

The star known as HD 140283 appears to be older than the universe.

Picture: ESA/HubbleSource:Supplied

The best estimates put the universe’s age at about 13.8 billion years. But the star, HD 140283, appears to be 14.5 billion years old — a difference of 0.7 billion years.

“It’s a riddle of cosmic proportions: How can the universe contain stars older than itself?” physicist Robert Matthews wrote for The National.

“That’s the conundrum now facing astronomers trying to establish the age of the universe — and its resolution could spark a scientific revolution.”

Dubbed the “Methuselah star”, HD 140283 is about 200 light-years away from Earth. It’s one of the oldest stars known.

“Astronomers now know it contains very little iron — which means it must have been formed before this element became common in the universe,” Dr Matthew wrote.

“And that implies HD 140283 must be almost as old as the universe itself.”

So what should we make of the discrepancy?

The exact age of the universe is imprecise. Scientists say it could be 800 million years younger or older.

According to Dr Matthews, new research into gravitational waves could also resolve the paradox.

Einstein’s famous theory of gravity is also in the spotlight.

His general theory of relativity, one of the towering achievements of 20th-century physics, is one of the most successful theories devised.

It’s also been repeatedly backed by observational evidence.

But Dr Matthews said applying the theory to the whole universe had led to surprising results.

“In the meantime, theorists have been busy dreaming up new physics that might solve the problem,” he wrote.

{ https://www.news.com.au/ }

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy suddenly lit up brighter than scientists had ever seen, and nobody knows why

An artist's concept of a supermassive black hole surrounded by a swirling disk of material falling onto it.

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is normally quiet, but in May it surprised astronomers with an unprecedented explosion of infrared light.

The closest supermassive black hole to Earth, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, suddenly got 75 times brighter than normal along the near-infrared region of the light spectrum for two hours on May 13, a team of scientists has found.

According to a new paper they published on August 5 in arXiv, a Cornell University repository for scientific papers that are not yet peer reviewed, this was the brightest flash scientists had seen in 20 years of observing the black hole - and twice as bright as any previously recorded.

"The black hole was so bright I at first mistook it for the star S0-2, because I had never seen Sgr A* that bright," Tuan Do, an astronomer and lead author of the paper, told ScienceAlert. "I knew almost right away there was probably something interesting going on with the black hole."

The new findings "push the limits of the current statistical models," since those don't account for infrared flux levels this high, and suggest scientists' understanding of our galaxy's central black hole is not up-to-date, the team wrote in the paper.

The Milky Way's spiral centres around a supermassive black hole. Scientists think that every galaxy has one at its center.

Scientists think every galaxy has an especially dense "supermassive" black hole at its center. The proximity of Sgr A* makes it the easiest black hole for scientists to study. The team that discovered this unprecedented flare-up observed Sgr A* for four nights with an infrared camera at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

They were hoping to test Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity by observing how the black hole warped a nearby star's light. They got what they came for, plus the unprecedented infrared flare.

Do tweeted a time lapse of the event on Saturday.

"We think that something unusual might be happening this year because the black hole seems to vary in brightness more, reaching brighter levels than we've ever seen in the past," Do told Vice.

But the researchers aren't sure what exactly is going on.

In black holes, matter gets packed into a tiny space, giving them extremely powerful gravity - Sgr A*, for example, has the mass of 4 million suns. The pull of a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape, so researchers have to observe the infrared or X-ray light that radiates out from the black hole and interacts with nearby gas and stars.

The researchers think such an interaction could have caused this bright flash. Specifically, they said, an interaction with a nearby star that passed near Sgr A* in 2018 could have disturbed gas flows at the edge of the black hole's grasp.

They also pointed to a dust cloud that passed near Sgr A* in 2014 but didn't get dramatically torn apart the way astronomers thought it would. The brightness could be a "delayed reaction," they wrote.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory captured an unprecedented X-ray flare from Sagittarius A* in 2013. This event was 400 times brighter than the usual X-ray output from the black hole.

In 2013, scientists detected an equally mysterious X-ray flare-up from Sgr A*, which was 400 times brighter than its normal levels of X-ray radiation.

Scientists should continue monitoring Sgr A* to see if it's experiencing significant changes, Do's team wrote. More research could also be used to update models of the regular flux of the black hole's radiation levels.

"Many astronomers are observing Sgr A* this summer," Do told Vice. "I'm hoping we can get as much data as we can this year before the region of the sky with Sgr A* gets behind the sun and we won't be able to observe it again until next year."

{ https://www.msn.com/en-au }

© Copyright (c) NineForNews.nl

Rare Blue UFO Seen From Plane Over Ocean Near Taiwan, Aug 12, 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 12, 2019 
Location of sighting: Ocean, 1 hour from Taiwan 

This was sent to me by a friend who saw this blue disk over the cloud during sunset. They were about one hour away from Taiwan when they noticed this glowing blue disk over the dark clouds. The disk seems to be hiding behind the darker cloud. The person said they kept it in sight as long as they could, but soon it was behind the plane. This is great raw footage of a rare glowing blue UFO over the ocean. The best time to see a UFO is during sunset, because the suns angle cuts through any cloaked craft in the sky revealing it for a few minutes. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

NASA Caught Using Photoshop Yet Again! Aug 16, 2019, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 16, 2019
Location of discovery: Moon Neptune and Triton
Source Photo:  

• https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01491

Guys this really makes me angry. Its one thing to see those Instagramers using photoshop for selfies, but its another to catch NASA using it for photo that they make public. 

I wanted to have a better look at this photo, so I downloaded it and added light to it. Suddenly I saw a mess all around the edges of the photo and across its surface. The photo looks grainy and sandy. Its got scratches and brush marks on it, as if someone used a paint brush to wipe off the dirt from a camera lens. I'm really not sure what NASA did. Did they paint this scene and pretend its a photo? Or did they turn this horrible photo into a HD perfection by using photoshop to fool the public? That original photo was literally garbage! And the used photoshop to make it acceptable by the public. Thats like feeding people recycled food when they thought they were eating freshly made food. It sickens me. 

One thing is certain, we cannot trust NASA to release unedited photo to the public. This is 100% proof they edit photos and if they do that, they also will edit out alien structures and ships. 
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }