Physicists Just Released Step-by-Step Instructions for Building a Wormhole

By Paul Sutter 

All you need are a couple of black holes and some cosmic strings. No biggie.

(Image: © Shutterstock)

Everybody wants a wormhole. I mean, who wants to bother traveling the long-and-slow routes throughout the universe, taking tens of thousands of years just to reach yet another boring star? Not when you can pop into the nearest wormhole opening, take a short stroll, and end up in some exotic far-flung corner of the universe. 

There's a small technical difficulty, though: Wormholes, which are bends in space-time so extreme that a shortcut tunnel forms, are catastrophically unstable. As in, as soon as you send a single photon down the hole, it collapses faster than the speed of light.

But a recent paper, published to the preprint journal arXiv on July 29, has found a way to build an almost-steady wormhole, one that does collapse but slowly enough to send messages — and potentially even things — down it before it tears itself apart. All you need are a couple of black holes and a few infinitely long cosmic strings. 

Easy-peasy.

The wormhole problem

In principle, building a wormhole is pretty straightforward. According to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, mass and energy warp the fabric of space-time. And a certain special configuration of matter and energy allows the formation of a tunnel, a shortcut between two otherwise distant portions of the universe.

• Related: 8 Ways You Can See Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in Real Life

Unfortunately, even on paper, those wormholes are fantastically unstable. Even a single photon passing through the wormhole triggers a catastrophic cascade that rips the wormhole apart. However, a healthy dose of negative mass — yes, that's matter but with an opposite weight — can counteract the destabilizing effects of regular matter trying to pass through the wormhole, making it traversable.

OK, matter with negative mass doesn't exist, so we need a new plan.

Let's start with the wormhole itself. We need an entrance and an exit. It's theoretically possible to connect a black hole (a region of space where nothing can escape) to a white hole (a theoretical region of space where nothing can enter). When these two odd creatures join together, they form a brand-new thing: a wormhole. So you can jump into either end of this tunnel and instead of getting crushed into oblivion you just harmlessly waltz out the other side.

Oh, but white holes don't exist, either. Man, this is getting tricky.

Charge it up

Since white holes don't exist, we need a new plan. Thankfully, some clever math reveals a possible answer: a charged black hole. Black holes can carry an electric charge (it's not common because of the way they're formed naturally, but we'll take what we can get). The inside of a charged black hole is a strange place, with the normal point-like singularity of a black hole stretched and distorted, allowing it to form a bridge to another oppositely charged black hole.

Voila: a wormhole, using only things that might actually exist.

But this wormhole-via-charged-black-holes has two issues. One, it's still unstable, and if something or someone actually tries to use it, it falls apart. The other is that the two oppositely charged black holes will be attracted to each other — both through gravitational and electric forces — and if they fall together you just get a single, big, neutrally charged and altogether useless black hole.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Put a cosmic bow on it

So to make this all work we need to make sure the two charged black holes stay safely far away from each other, and make sure the tunnel of the wormhole can hold itself open. A potential solution: cosmic strings.

Cosmic strings are theoretical defects, similar to the cracks that form when ice freezes, in the fabric of space-time. These cosmic leftovers formed in the early, heady days of the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang. They are truly exotic objects, no wider than a proton but with a single inch of their length outweighing Mount Everest. You never want to encounter one yourself, since they would slice you clean in half like a cosmic lightsaber, but you don't have to worry much since we're not even sure they exist, and we've never seen one out there in the universe.

Still, there's no reason they can't exist, so they're fair game.

They have another very useful property when it comes to wormholes: enormous tension. In other words, they really don't like being pushed around. If you thread the wormhole with a cosmic string, and allow the string to pass along the outside edges of the black holes and stretch out of either end all the way to infinity, then the tension in the string prevents the charged black holes from being attracted to each other, holding the two ends of the wormhole far away from each other. Essentially, the distant ends of the cosmic string act like two opposing tug-of-war teams, holding back the black holes.

Calming the tremors

One cosmic string solves one of the problems (holding the ends open), but it doesn't prevent the wormhole itself from collapsing if you were to actually use it. So, let's toss in another cosmic string, also threading the wormhole, but also looping it through normal space between the two black holes. 

When cosmic strings are closed in a loop, they wiggle — a lot. These vibrations churn the very fabric of space-time around them, and when tuned just right the vibrations can cause the energy of space in their vicinity to go negative, effectively acting like negative mass within the wormhole, potentially stabilizing it.

It seems a little complex, but in the recent paper, a team of theoretical physicists gave step-by-step instructions for constructing just such a wormhole. It's not a perfect solution: Eventually the inherent vibrations in the cosmic strings — the same ones that might keep the wormhole open — pull energy, and therefore mass, away from the string, making it smaller and smaller. Essentially, over time the cosmic strings wiggle themselves into oblivion, with complete collapse of the wormhole not far behind. But the kludged-together wormhole may stay stable long enough to allow messages or even objects to travel down the tunnel and actually not die, which is nice. 

But first we need to find some cosmic strings.

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of Your Place in the Universe.

• 9 Ideas About Black Holes That Will Blow Your Mind
• Interstellar Space Travel: 7 Futuristic Spacecraft to Explore the Cosmos
• Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts

Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

One hypothesis is that some catastrophe, a single event such as a powerful storm, had befallen a large group of people. But DNA analysis of 38 of the skeletons has turned that idea on its head.

The remains appear to come from distinct groups of people from as far as the Mediterranean, and they arrived at the lake several times over a 1,000-year span.

"Through the use of biomolecular analyses, such as ancient DNA, stable isotope dietary reconstruction, and radiocarbon dating, we discovered that the history of Roopkund Lake is more complex than we ever anticipated," said geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School.

The story began to unfold a decade ago. Geneticist Kumarasamy Thangaraj of India's CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of 72 of the skeletons.

As Thangaraj and his late colleague Lalji Singh had expected, some of the skeletons had DNA consistent with a local Indian origin. But some did not. Several skeletons appeared to have originated around West Eurasia.

This warranted further investigation - a deep dive by way of whole genome sequencing. Genome-wide DNA was successfully generated for 38 individuals. These 38 genomes were then compared against 1,521 ancient and 7,985 present-day individuals from around the world.

(Himadri Sinha Roy)

This analysis revealed three distinct groups. The largest consisted of 23 individuals with DNA similar to that of people from present-day India. Apart from this, they seemed genetically unrelated.

The second-largest group, comprising 14 individuals, was a huge surprise. Their DNA was most similar to people in present-day Crete and Greece.

Finally, the one remaining individual had DNA suggesting a Southeast Asian origin.

"We were extremely surprised by the getics of the Roopkund skeletons," said evolutionary biologist Éadaoin Harney of Harvard University.

"The presence of individuals with ancestries typically associated with the eastern Mediterranean suggests that Roopkund Lake was not just a site of local interest, but instead drew visitors from across the globe."

Analysis of isotopes extracted from the bones supported these findings. Certain stable isotopes in the soil can be taken up into plants, which are then consumed by people. The isotopes replace some of the calcium in teeth and bones; these can then be matched to geographical locations.

"Individuals belonging to the Indian-related group had highly variable diets, showing reliance on C₃ and C₄ derived food sources. These findings are consistent with the genetic evidence that they belonged to a variety of socioeconomic groups in South Asia," said archaeologist Ayushi Nayak of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

"In contrast, the individuals with eastern Mediterranean-related ancestry appear to have consumed a diet with very little millet."

(Pramod Joglekar)

Even more surprising was the staggered arrival times of the groups. Radiocarbon dating placed the Indian-related bones between the 7th and 10th centuries CE. It's possible they were divided into different groups at different times within this timespan.

But the other two groups, from the Mediterranean and from Southeast Asia, were dated to between the 17th and 20th centuries CE. That's just a few hundred years ago. And it's possible that the remains that haven't been tested could include other groups, from other times and other regions.

It's possible we may never know - but future research could contain answers.

"It is still not clear what brought these individuals to Roopkund Lake or how they died," said geneticist Niraj Rai of the Birbal Sahni Institute of PalaeosciencesRai.

"We hope that this study represents the first of many analyses of this mysterious site."

• The research has been published in Nature Communications.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

Metal-detecting couple find one of Britain's biggest ever treasure hoards as they discover almost 2,600 ancient coins worth around £5m in an unploughed field

• Adam Staples and Lisa Grace unearthed 'once in a lifetime' find of 2,600 coins
• Although smaller than famous Staffordshire Hoard  it is about £1m more valuable
• The silver coins made up of King Harold II pennies from Anglo-Saxon England
• There were also William the Conqueror coins, from after 1066 Norman conquest
• Many in the find in Somerset in mint condition and could be worth £5,000 each

By JAMES GANT FOR MAILONLINE

A metal-detecting couple have found one of the biggest treasure hoards in British history which is believed to be worth around £5million.

Adam Staples and partner Lisa Grace unearthed the 'once in a lifetime' find of almost 2,600 ancient coins that date back 1,000 years.

Although the find is smaller than the famous Staffordshire Hoard - the biggest collection of buried coins and artefacts discovered in Britain - it is thought to be at least £1million more valuable.

Adam Staples (right) and partner Lisa Grace (left) unearthed the 'once in a lifetime' find of almost 2,600 ancient coins that date back 1,000 years

The 2,571 silver coins are made up of King Harold II (pictured) pennies from the end of Anglo-Saxon England and William the Conqueror coins, after the 1066 Norman conquest

The 2,571 silver coins are made up of King Harold II pennies from the end of Anglo-Saxon England and William the Conqueror coins, after the 1066 Norman conquest.

Many of the coins are in mint condition and could be valued anywhere between £1,000 and £5,000 each.

Experts say the coins would have been a substantial amount of money at the time and belonged to an important, wealthy person who probably buried them for safekeeping.

The couple (pictured) notified both the county's local finds liaison officer as they were obliged to by law and have given the coins to the British Museum in London to evaluate

Mr Staples and Miss Grace, 42, made the astonishing find with their metal detectors while searching an unploughed field on a farm in the north east Somerset area in January.

As King Harold's reign only lasted nine months, before he was famously struck in the eye by an arrow at the Battle of Hastings, coins from that period are incredibly rare.

The hoard is also thought to contain coins struck by previously-unknown moneyers.

In an interview with Treasure Hunting Magazine, they described the hoard as 'amazing' and 'absolutely mind-blowing'

The couple notified both the county's local finds liaison officer as they were obliged to by law and have given the coins to the British Museum in London to evaluate. 

Experts there have spent the last seven months assessing and cataloguing them and will later this week unveil them to the public for the first time.

If the hoard is declared treasure it will be up to a museum to compensate Mr Staples and Miss Grace with the monetary value of the coins - making them overnight millionaires.

The landowner will also be entitled to 50 per cent of the proceeds.

If the hoard is not deemed important enough for a museum then they will be returned to the finders who will will be able to sell the coins.

Mr Staples and Miss Grace, from Derby, have remained tight-lipped over their 'find of a lifetime'.

But in an interview with Treasure Hunting Magazine, they described the hoard as 'amazing' and 'absolutely mind-blowing.'

The metal detecting grapevine has also been rife with news of the find, with scores of people posting messages of congratulations to the couple.

What was the 'Staffordshire hoard'?

A treasure hunter made the find in 2009.

It was the most valuable hoard of Saxon gold in history - estimated to be worth £3.3million ($5 million) - and includes 500 pieces such as gold sword hilts, jewels from Sri Lanka and early Christian crosses.

The 1,300-year-old treasure was discovered by unemployed Terry Herbert in July in a field owned by a friend in Staffordshire.

Some of the artefacts uncovered in Fred's field that went on to be valued at more than £3m

Within days, the 55-year-old former coffin factory worker from Walsall had filled 244 bags with gold objects weighing in at more than 11lbs (5kg).

Mr Herbert, who bought an old metal detector for £2.50 18 years ago, said he was overwhelmed by the find – regarded as one of the most important in decades.

‘I have this phrase that I say sometimes – “spirits of yesteryear take me where the coins appear” – but on that day I changed coins to gold,’ he said.

Some of the artefacts uncovered in Fred's field that went on to be valued at more than £3m

‘I don’t know why I said it that day, but I think somebody was listening and directed me to it. Maybe it was meant to be, maybe the gold had my name on it all along.

‘I was going to bed and in my sleep I was seeing gold items.’

The jewels are thought to have come from Sri Lanka - carried to Europe by traders.

The gold probably came from the Byzantine Empire, the eastern remnant of the Roman Empire based in what is now Istanbul.

The treasure dates from 675 and 725AD, the time of Beowulf – the great Anglo-Saxon poem.

Nigel Mills, a coin expert and consultant for London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb, said: 'I am told the coins are absolutely stunning.

'Each coin will have the moneyers name on and the mint of where it was issued.

'In the case of the Harold II coins, some will be from moneyers that we have not seen before.

'Harold II coins are rarer than William coins and could be worth between £2,000 to £4,000 each.

'The William I coins will be between £1,000 and £1,500. This hoard could be worth between £3m and £5m.

'Museums have been buying up all of the hoards found, but in this case the hoard may be too great for them. It maybe that an appeal for sponsors is launched to try and acquire them.'

He added: 'They would have been buried within two or three years after 1066 and probably before 1072.

'The Romans buried their coins for the Gods but in this case they were probably hidden and the owner died before they could go back for them.

'It would have been a substantial amount of money back not. Not a king, but somebody high up and important, somebody of substance.

'They didn't have banks back then so where else were they going to store their money safely?'

A spokesman for the Metal Detectives Group said: 'When you find something like that you keep where you find it very quiet.

'If it is treasure it will be put out to tender to museums to acquire. A museum and treasure valuation committee will give the hoard a value.

'But you are talking a minimum of £500 per coin and with 2,500 coins that is a lot. But some will be rarer and more valuable than others.'

A spokesman for the British Museum said: 'We can confirm that a large hoard of late Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins was discovered in January and has been handed in to the British Museum as possible Treasure under the terms of the Treasure Act (1996). This appears to be an important discovery.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Adam Staples and Lisa Grace were out searching in an unploughed field on a farm in the Somerset area in January of this year when they discovered one of the biggest ever treasure hoards in British history. They found nearly 2,600 ancient coins that date back 1,000 years and have an estimated worth of approximately £5million (just over $6.1 million in American money). Many of the coins were in mint condition and could be worth as much as £1,000 and £5,000 each.

The silver coins included King Harold II pennies which were from the end of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as William the Conqueror coins which date back to after the 1066 Norman Conquest. Since King Harold only reigned for nine months, coins from that time period are extremely rare. Experts believe that a wealthy person of importance probably buried the coins as they were worth quite a bit of money at that time. It has been estimated that whoever buried the coins would have done so after the year 1066 but before 1072.

After the couple found the coins, they contacted the county’s local finds liaison officer and the “treasure” was brought to the British Museum in London so they could evaluate them. The coins will be displayed for the public to see later this week. If the coins are declared as a treasure, the museum will pay the couple for the coins (landowner will get 50% of their value), however, if the museum decides that they don’t want the coins, they will be returned to the couple who would then be able to sell them on their own.

A spokesman for the British Museum stated, “We can confirm that a large hoard of late Anglo-Saxon and Norman coins was discovered in January and has been handed in to the British Museum as possible Treasure under the terms of the Treasure Act (1996). This appears to be an important discovery.”

(Not the coins mentioned in this article)

The largest collection of buried coins and artifacts ever discovered in Britain was the “Staffordshire Hoard” that a treasure hunter found in 2009. The large 1,300-year-old collection of Saxon gold included gold sword hilts, early Christian crosses, and jewels from Sri Lanka. The hoard was valued at around £3.3million (just over $4 million in American funds). And while Mr. Staples and Ms. Grace’s discovery is smaller, it is at least £1million more valuable.

The couple have remained pretty quiet about their findings, but they did do an interview with Treasure Hunting Magazine where they described their discovery as “amazing” and “absolutely mind-blowing”. You can see pictures of the coins here.

not the first time ( peter2011)

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Among the oldest city sites found in Mesoamerica is the enigmatic cultural center of Monte Albán, the ancient political hub of the Zapotec people. This remarkable cultural group, who during their reign were called Be’ena’a, or “The People” in the indigenous Zapotec language, ruled from around 700 BC–1521 AD. Monte Albán served as the hub of a loosely-knit alliance of several Zapotec groups that had been rivals up until around 2000 years prior to the arrival of the Spanish.

Monte Albán is a structural marvel in itself, resting atop and artificially leveled hilltop in Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley. The city rests between the confluence of the Rio Atomic and the Rio Salado rivers, and quickly became the economic anchor of the region, promoting trade and craftsmanship that may have attracted more than 30,000 residents at the height of its growth and political influence over the region.

However, what has remained among the site’s most famous—and curious—attractions are not just the building structures that were once the great city of Monte Albán, but also the famous carvings that adorn the site, known today as Danzantes.

Danzantes on display at Monte Alban; note that many of the stone slabs on display are replicas, with the originals kept inside the complex for protection

(Credit: Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons).

The Danzantes are a remarkable collection of carved stone slabs that feature bas-relief art depicting humans in various striking poses. Their name (“Los Danzantes” in Spanish) means “the dancers,” in reference to the curious gestures and contortions many of the figures on the stone faces depict, which are reminiscent of dancers. This early interpretation of the nature of these images may have given rise to their name, but little else about the Danazntes suggests dancing or festivity; as a result, the meaning behind these images has remained an item of debate among archaeologists for decades.

One peculiar feature of many of the Danzantes bas-reliefs is the presence of facial hair in the form of long beards worn by many of the figures. Facial hair is not common among the indigenous peoples of the region, which makes the images all the more curious; could this mean that some of the Danzantes actually depict foreigners?

Bearded figure depicted on one of the Danzantes slabs; note the curious positioning of the figure’s hands

(Credit: Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons).

This may provide a clue to the meaning behind the images, since another problem with the “dancer” theory has to do with the fact that most of the Danzantes are also depicted nude. Dancers, whether male or female, would not have been depicted nude by the cultures of Central Mexico during this period, as it was considered disgraceful. However, nudity does appear in art from other locations in the region, generally in depictions of captives from warfare who have been stripped in humiliation, often prior to their execution. The fact that many of the Danzantes appear to be foreigners would make sense, particularly if these figures represent the captives of war.

Other peculiarities in the appearance of the Danzantes include the fact that their feet appear to be placed at vertical angles, which has led some to theorize that the movements represented by the posing of the figures could actually denote swimming, as proposed by Augustín Villagra in the 1939, within a report he produced for the International Congress of Americanists in Mexico City.

While it is true that certain art depicting the Danzantes does appear to imply curving lines and similar features that might represent water, the “swimmer” theory has its own problems. Some of the figures appear to possess genital mutilation, as well as the appearance of glyphs, scrolls, or perhaps even tattoos adjacent to the apparent emasculations. Some have interpreted this as possible evidence of shamanic practices, where “ecstatic emasculation” might have served some kind of ritual purpose with the characters, especially if they might represent priests. Further, the notion of emasculation could be consistent with the bearded depiction of some of the characters, which might convey accelerated aging after castration has occurred.

Stelae depicting Danzantes figure with possible entrails spilling from the abdomen region

(Credit: Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons).

Altogether, the best theory appears to be that of prisoners, or perhaps even slain bodies lying on the ground; this would appear to reconcile most, if not all of the features associated with the Danzantes, from the mutilations and placement of the limbs, to the fact that the feet do not appear to convey that they stand on level ground.

In John F. Scott’s 1978 The Danzantes of Monte Albán, he noted the likelihood that the images depicted slain bodies:

The Danzantes have contorted and highly asymmetrical postures; their arms sprawl in front of their torsos or over their heads. Most significant are the leg positions, which usually avoid any suggestion of resting on a ground line; quite possibly the Danzantes should be seen as if lying on the ground. The position of the limbs, the frequent indication of closed eyes on the grimacing faces, and the horizontal placement of slabs with elongated figures, all indicate that they represent slain victims lying on their sides or backs.

However, if the images of the Danzantes actually do illustrate slain enemies, what message was this intended to convey about Monte Albán to those who came there at the height of the Zapotecs?

Danzantes stela depicting scroll-like glyphs and symbols, some of which overlay the body of the character; note the placement of the limbs, suggesting a prostrate position of an individual lying on the ground

(Credit: Anagoria/Wikimedia Commons).

“This is the kind of propaganda that one associates with an emerging state that is fighting to take control over previously autonomous regions and wants to discourage resistance,” wrote Joyce Marcus, a Latin American archaeologist and professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Marcus continues:

“Of the shared conventions in Mesoamerican iconography some of the most widespread are those depicting captives. Prisoners are displayed in humiliation: they are stripped naked and bound, and their posture is awkward. The captors, in contrast, are dressed in elegant regalia and are posed in rigid dignity. If a prisoner has been sacrificed, he is  shown with his eyes closed and his mouth open, and in many instances with flowery scrolls, presumably representing blood, issuing from his wounds.”

It would indeed seem likely that this is the best explanation for the enigma that is the Danzantes imagery at Monte Albán. In any case, their name appears to be a misnomer, as they certainly don’t seem to be dancers. And yet, unraveling the significance of these strange and, at times, rather grisly images tells us much about the politics and practices of this region of the ancient world. Nonetheless, Monte Albán and its curious stone stelae is a place that–to the modern observer–is, and probably will remain quite mysterious.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Antarctica Irrefutable Evidence Of Hidden Civilization! New Location Reveal Stunning Finds!

Google Earth Pro 2019 Updated Imagery(!)

• Terra Nova Canyon Gray Alien Seen Exiting Cave…. 69°14’50.90″S 156°59’0.42″E
• Pleisiosaur (Elasmosaur ) Head, Neck and Body….. 69° 4’10.56″S 156°13’32.48″E
• Evidence of Tracks/Activity.. 69° 4’34.19″S 156°14’10.87″E
• Brown Ice/Kill Site… 69°13’57.69″S 157°45’9.08″E
• Saucer Crash Site… 69°25’45.23″S 156°22’48.57″E
• Ancient Trails/Foot paths.. 69°13’11.84″S 157°43’41.39″E 69°11’35.53″S 157°38’53.96″E

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Two UFO Seen From Passenger Jet Over Mexico, Aug 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 2019
Location of sighting: Over Mexico

This object was recorded by a person in a passenger jet over Mexico. The object seems to pass below the jet. The control is too big to be a jet or even several jets. There are only two possible explanations. 1st its a UFO entering earths atmosphere. Or 2nd, it is meteor entering earths atmosphere breaking up. 

To me it seems to be going too slow to be a meteor. This is a UFO. Its hidden in the cloud but is black and huge. Parts of it are sticking out of the front end showing reflectiveness. Clearly this UFO was trying to quickly hide from view of the passenger jet and created this cloud around it, but you can see it moving forward and the black UFO revealing itself a little bit. There is also a white diamond shaped UFO hovering above the black larger UFO. Can you see it? Its two UFOs! One guiding the other. 

There are several volcanos near Mexico city where huge UFOs have been seen entering and exiting on live cam. This UFO was headed to one of those volcanos, where an underground alien base sits 5-6km below the ground.
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

A Doomed Comet Just Fell Into the Sun. Here's the Video.

There Are Thousands of Tardigrades on the Moon. Now What?

By Mindy Weisberger 

Did they survive their crash landing? If so, what happens to them now?

Dehydrated tardigrades that crash-landed on the moon in April won't come back to life anytime soon

(Image: © © Shutterstock)

Tardigrades, which live on every continent on Earth, are also (maybe) living on the moon, following the crash of a lunar lander carrying thousands of the microscopic water bears.

Did any of them survive the impact? If they did, what happens to them now?

When the tardigrades were placed on the Israeli moon mission Beresheet, they were in a tun state — dehydrated, with their chubby limbs and heads retracted and all metabolic activity temporarily suspended. Their arrival on the moon was unexpectedly explosive; Beresheet's crash landing on April 11 may have scattered the microorganisms onto the lunar surface. 

Tubby tardigrades are notoriously tough, but were the Beresheet tardigrades hardy enough to survive that impact? It's certainly possible that some of them made it to the moon intact. But what would that mean for the moon to have what might be thousands of Earth microbes as new inhabitants? And what might it mean for the tardigrades?

• Related: 8 Reasons Why We Love Tardigrades

First of all, is anyone in trouble for accidentally spilling tardigrades on the moon? That's a complicated question, but the short answer is no. Space agencies from around the world follow a decades-old treaty about what is permissible to leave on the moon, and the only explicit prohibitions are against weapons and experiments or tools that could interfere with missions from other agencies, according to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

In the decades that followed the treaty, other guidelines were created that acknowledged the risks of seeding other worlds with Earth microbes, and these stipulations outlined practices for sterilizing mission equipment to avoid contamination. But even though large space agencies typically follow these rules, there is no single entity enforcing them globally, Live Science previously reported.

Scientists have yet to find any evidence that the moon ever hosted living organisms (other than visiting astronauts and microbial hitchhikers from Earth) that could be threatened by microscopic invaders. However, contamination could carry serious consequences for missions to planets where life might yet be found, such as Mars; experts suggest that one potential consequence of colonizing Mars could be the extermination of native microbial life through exposure to Earth bacteria.

It's possible that even before the Beresheet tardigrades crashed on the moon, other forms of terrestrial microbes were already there: gut bacteria in abandoned bags of astronaut poo, said Mark Martin, an associate professor of biology at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington.

"I'd be very surprised if you couldn't culture a few things out of the center of that freeze-dried material," Martin told Live Science. "Especially spore-formers. They make a very thick outer layer of their spore proteins that's known to protect them against dehydration, radiation — a variety of things."

Sole survivor

Tardigrades survive conditions that would destroy most other organisms; they do so by expelling the water from their bodies and generating compounds that seal and protect the structure of their cells. The creatures can remain in this so-called tun state for months and still revive in the presence of water; scientists even resuscitated two tardigrades from a 30-year deep freeze in 2016.

As a tun, a tardigrade can weather boiling, freezing, high pressure and even the vacuum of space, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported in 2008, after sending water bears into orbit. Ultraviolet radiation turned out to be the tardigrades' kryptonite, as few of the creatures survived full exposure to UV light during the ESA experiments.

This could be good news for the desiccated Beresheet tardigrades. If they landed in a spot on the moon shielded from UV radiation, the microscopic creatures might stand a chance of survival, Martin said.

"My guess is that if we went up in the next year or so, recovered the wreckage, and found these tiny, little tuns and put them in water, a few of them would come back to life," he explained. 

But as long as the tardigrades remain on the moon, their chances of spontaneously awakening are low. Without liquid water, the tiny creatures will remain in a tun state, and while there's evidence of ice on the moon, liquid water is nowhere to be found. 

Even if the lunar tardigrades did somehow encounter liquid water while still on the moon, without food, air and a moderate ambient temperature, they wouldn't last very long once they revived, Kazuharu Arakawa, a tardigrade researcher with the Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Keio University in Tokyo, told Live Science in an email.

"Much as I would love to see the establishment of the Lunar Tardigrade Republic, I don't think that's going to happen," Martin said.

• Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures
• 5 Strange, Cool Things We've Recently Learned About the Moon
• Top 10 Amazing Moon Facts
• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

NASA chief Jim Bridenstine says 'Pluto is a planet' and claims the distant world should not have been demoted as he reignites a decade-long row

• Pluto was demoted to the 'dwarf planet' category in ruling from 2006  
• Categorisation caused outrage among experts and fuelled a decade-long row
• Mr Bridenstine is a committed Pluto believer as  'it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it' he said during an interview  

By JOE PINKSTONE FOR MAILONLINE 

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has reasserted his belief that Pluto should be a classed as a planet and reignited a debate which has raged for more than a decade, 

Astronomers and leading scientists have long squabbled over the issue of Pluto and its classification as a non-planet since its demotion in 2006.  

Mr Bridenstine st N ated in a recorded, but not broadcast, interview excerpt that he is still firmly of the belief that Pluto should be classed as a legitimate planet. 

Scroll down for video  

 Mr Bridenstine stated in a recorded, but not broadcast, interview excerpt that he is still firmly of the belief that Pluto (pictured) should be classed as a legitimate planet 

'Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet,' he said while on a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder.

'You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it.'

It comes on the 13th anniversary of Pluto's fall from grace and formal demotion to a 'dwarf planet'. 

WHY IS PLUTO NOT A PLANET?

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to 'clear' its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit.

The IAU used this to shake up the planetary world and remove Pluto from the ranks of the solar system's elite bodies, taking the number of planets down to nine. 

Since Neptune's gravity influences its neighbouring planet Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in the Kuiper belt, that meant Pluto was out of planet status. 

But despite the official ruling, many have never accepted it. 

Mr Bridenstein is one of the die-hard supporters of Pluto and his latest remark backs this up. 

'Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet,' Mr Bridenstine (pictured) said while on a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder. 'You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it'

Cory Reppenhagen

✔@CReppWx

My favorite soundbyte of the day that probably won't make it to TV. It came from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. As a Pluto Supporter, I really appreciated this. #9wx #PlutoLoversRejoice @JimBridenstine

• 532

9:22 PM - Aug 23, 2019

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However, it is unlikely to sway the official bodies and spur them into action to reinstate Pluto.  

A study from last year however, is one of the latest to ad more robust support than the whimsical wishes of the NASA administrator. 

Research from the University of Central Florida in Orlando claims the reason Pluto lost its planet status is 'not valid'. 

It reviewed scientific literature from the past 200 years and found only one publication - from 1802 - that used the clearing-orbit requirement to classify planets, and it was based on since-disproven reasoning.

'The IAU definition would say that the fundamental object of planetary science, the planet, is supposed to be a defined on the basis of a concept that nobody uses in their research,' said UCF planetary scientist Philip Metzger, who is with the university's Florida Space Institute.

'And it would leave out the second-most complex, interesting planet in our solar system.'

Metzger said moons such as Saturn's Titan and Jupiter's Europa have been routinely called planets by planetary scientists since the time of Galileo. 

'We now have a list of well over 100 recent examples of planetary scientists using the word planet in a way that violates the IAU definition, but they are doing it because it's functionally useful.'

'It's a sloppy definition

'They didn't say what they meant by clearing their orbit. If you take that literally, then there are no planets, because no planet clears its orbit.'

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Pluto should STILL be classified as a planet, Nasa chief claims

Charlotte Edwards, Digital Technology and Science Reporter

POOR Pluto was declassified from being a planet in our Solar System to just a humble dwarf planet 13 year ago.

Despite it being over a decade since this decision was made, the topic is still hotly disputed and there are those who think Pluto should be labelled as a planet once more.

Pluto was considered to be a planet until it was declassified 13 years ago Credit: PA:Press Association

The International Astronomical Union made the final decision but it seems NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has put himself firmly in Pluto's corner.

Bridenstine recently spoke out about his support for Pluto as a planet during a tour of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The Nasa chief said: "Just so you know, in my view, Pluto is a planet.

"You can write that the NASA Administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I'm sticking by that, it's the way I learnt it, and I'm committed to it."

Cory Reppenhagen

✔@CReppWx

My favorite soundbyte of the day that probably won't make it to TV. It came from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. As a Pluto Supporter, I really appreciated this. #9wx #PlutoLoversRejoice @JimBridenstine

• 532

21:22 - 23 Aug 2019

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• 229 people are talking about this

Many people were taught that Pluto was one of the planets in our Solar System Credit: Getty - Contributor

Bridenstine's lighthearted comment doesn't change Pluto's classification but it does bring to light the ongoing debate once more.

Pluto was removed from the list of nine planets in August 2006 mostly because its properties were more suited to the definition of a dwarf planet.

The difference between a dwarf planet and a planet is largely to do with the space around it.

Planets have a clear area around their orbit whereas dwarf planets do not.

There are also many other celestial objects a similar size to Pluto with unclear orbits so some scientists have argued that if Pluto where to be considered a planet then all those other objects would have to be too.

However, Pluto has other features like a multilayered atmosphere, moons, weather and organic compounds that all make the issue regarding its planet status even trickier.

Pluto facts

Here's what you need to know...

• • Pluto was discovered in 1930
  • It was considered to be one of nine planets in our Solar System until 2006
  • The decision to declassify Pluto was controversial because, even though it is small and doesn't have a clear orbit, it has lots of other planet like features like an atmosphere and weather
  • Pluto is the largest dwarf planet
  • Pluto has five known moons
  • Pluto was visited by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, during which pictures were taken of its surface

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

Is Pluto dan toch een planeet? Volgens NASA-directeur wel - HLN.be

Bron: The Independent

Toen Pluto in 1930 werd ontdekt door de Amerikaanse astronoom Clyde Tombaugh, werd het hemellichaam geclassificeerd als planeet en werd het zo de negende planeet van ons zonnestelsel. Toen men 62 jaar later ook andere even grote objecten in de ruimte ontdekte, kwam men op die beslissing terug. In 2006 werd uiteindelijk beslist om buitenbeentje Pluto, die kleiner is dan de overige planeten, als dwergplaneet te benoemen. Sindsdien hoort Pluto dus niet meer bij de overige planeten Mercurius, Venus, de Aarde, Mars, Jupiter, Saturnus, Uranus en Neptunus.

Lees ook

“Pluto misschien toch een volwaardige planeet”

Sindsdien zijn er geregeld verhitte discussies over die degradatie. En nu mengt dus ook de NASA-directeur zich in het debat.  Hij staat resoluut aan de pro-planeetzijde en trekt de beslissing van dertien jaar geleden in twijfel. “Ik blijf erbij, het is de manier waarop ik het geleerd heb, en ik blijf erachter staan”, verdedigde hij gisteren op een bijeenkomst van het FIRST Robotics event in Oklahoma.

Planeet

Volgens de definitie is een hemellichaam een planeet van zodra het aan drie criteria voldoet: het draait in een baan rond een ster, het heeft voldoende zwaartekracht om een ronde vorm aan te nemen en het bevindt zich in de baan baan rond een ster waar het  zijn eigen baan heeft schoongeveegd van andere objecten.

Hoewel Pluto de eerste twee eigenschappen kan afvinken, is het niet groot genoeg om ook aan de derde eis te voldoen. Om die reden werd in 2006 dus beslist om het hemellichaam tot dwergplaneet te degraderen.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

Ancient Skeletons with Alien-Like Heads Unearthed in Croatia

POLICE RAID UFO SIGHTING HOTSPOT FOR SUSPECTED FOREST ENCROACHMENT

By Asaree Thaitrakulpanich, Staff Reporter

Police and Forestry officials at Khao Kala in Nakhon Sawan on Aug. 16, 2019.

NAKHON SAWAN — Police are investigating whether a meditation center known for UFO sightings is encroaching on protected forests, after dual raids on Thursday and Friday. 

Dozens of policemen and rangers rushed Khao Kala mountain for a second time Friday to determine whether the Khao Kala Meditation Center, run by a group of UFO believers, is encroaching on forest area. Police have also issued summons for the landowners of the meditation center. 

“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,” Police Maj. Gen. Damrong Petpong said. 

Police were drawn to raid the area after the UFO Kaokala group organized a UFO-watching event for Saturday, with locals reporting that some adherents believe they are mediums for aliens from Pluto.

UFO Kaokala is a group of UFO believers who maintain that aliens communicate with them via meditation. They say their communications with aliens enhance their Buddhist practices and even help them predict natural disasters (a group member predicted in 2017 that World War III will ignite by 2022). 

The group was founded in 1998, when nurse Somjit Reapeth said she saw aliens at Nakhon Sawan mountain. Since then, the mountain has become Thailand’s go-to UFO sighting spot. 

Saturday’s event is actually Somjit’s birthday. As of press time, an organizer named “Jack,” whose phone number is on the event page, said that the event will still go on, but at the foothills rather than the peak of the mountain. Admission is free and transportation via van from Bangkok will be provided. Contact Jack at the number listed on the event page if interested.

• Read: I Went to a Bangkok Hotel to Hear Apocalyptic Alien Prophecies

Officials armed with coordinate measuring machines canvassed the mountain from its foothills to its peak on Thursday and Friday. 

“The Forestry Department will use satellite GPS to check whether, and how much, the center is on forest space. We will proceed according to the law,” Pinit Laoyuu from the local Forestry Department said. 

Pinit said Friday that he estimated about 3 to 5 rai (0.48 to 0.8 hectares) of the meditation center encroaches on forest. He said that forest officials will be securing the area. 

“For the time being, we will not allow people to pitch tents or hold activities here since a case is ongoing,” Pinit said.

Adherents camped at Khao Kala in Nakhon Sawan on Aug. 16, 2019.

Charoen Raepetch, the listed owner of the meditation center, was not on site Thursday. When contacted, he said that he would not be returning to the mountain any time soon and half-jokingly said that he was “afraid the Forestry people would capture him.” 

Police have summoned Charoen as well as others suspected of being involved in the meditation center for questioning. 

Despite the police presence, locals have flocked to the mountain to take photos, exchanging alleged UFO sightings. Some say that the lights at night can be explained away by shooting range practice at a nearly military case. Others are UFO Kaokala adherents with tents, set on seeing aliens via meditation, with or without forestry officials nearby. The mediums include a doctor and a captain in the military.

Chaliew Phoocharoen, the sub-district head of Khao Kala tambon, said that most people living in the area are not alien believers, and that most of the followers are from out-of-town. µ

blob:https://vdokh.matichon.co.th/82db0f7a-756e-4862-a201-85884dc803e4

The Friday raid on Khao Kala.

blob:https://vdokh.matichon.co.th/abc3d32d-da76-43f4-b96d-d0f7cbbf3b3a

The Thursday raid on Khao Kala.

Related stories:

• I Went to a Bangkok Hotel to Hear Apocalyptic Alien Prophecies

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What Everybody Needs to Know About the Amazon Rainforest

By Geraldo Luís Lino

The Amazon Rainforest biome has an extension of about 6.7 million square kilometers shared between Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and the French Guyana. Some 62% of it is in Brazil, where 84% of its original area at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 A.D. are preserved. This mostly untouched area is about the size of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Spain and Portugal together; if it were a country, it would be the world seventh in extension, larger than India.

The Amazon Rainforest must not be confused with the Legal Amazon (Amazônia Legal), a geographical region delimited for the purpose of establishing special tax regimes in order to encourage economic activities in the nine Northern Brazilian states. These states comprise 61% of the national territory but harbor less than 13% of the country’s population, and account for less than 8% of Brazil’s GDP. Their low living standards can be assessed by the fact that only 13% of its urban inhabitants have access to sewage systems; a great part of the 4 million Brazilians who do not have a simple toilet at home live there. The region also holds significant parts of other two Brazilian biomes, the Cerrado (savannah) and the Pantanal (wetlands). The Legal Amazon has 5.1 million sq.km; the Brazilian part of the Rainforest, 4.2 million sq.km.

The Rainforest is not the “lungs of the world”; its vegetal and animal biotas consume all the photosynthesis-generated oxygen in their process of respiration (yes, plants do breathe), so the net budget is near zero. (And lungs do not produce oxygen, after all.)

It is not a functional “carbon sink” either, because as a stable climax ecosystem its net carbon budget is also close to zero (except when it burns). Anyway, if people are worried about carbon, they should support the clearing of the forest and its replacement by the secondary regeneration vegetation (called “capoeira”) instead, that captures the atmospheric carbon during its growth, indeed. By the way, between 2008 and 2012, the area of “capoeiras” increased twice and a half faster than the area of cleared forest (there aren’t more recent data). (Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting this course of action.)

The Rainforest is obviously relevant for the biogeochemical cycles of the biosphere but it does not have any significant impact upon the world climate. Its chief contribution for the atmospheric dynamics is to recycle some half of the rainwater coming westwards from the Atlantic Ocean back to the atmosphere by means of evapotranspiration, forming a water vapor flow that is partly re-directed southward. This process is important for the Rainforest itself and its surroundings but its influence can hardly be regarded as being global.

• Shutting off Tap Water: Revenge of the Rainforest

The much-ballyhooed projections about a feared “tipping point” of deforestation beyond which the Rainforest would supposedly suffer an irreversible “dieback” are just products of mathematical models without factual evidence. These models may be useful as academic drills but should not be the turf of policymaking. If other biomes are useful for comparison, the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica), with a biodiversity similar to the Rainforest, covered 1.3 million sq.km of the Brazilian territory along the coast in the 16^th century, and has lost over 80% of its original area since but it has not suffered such a “dieback” so far. The hypothetical deforestation “tipping point” for the rainforest is 20%, a number that grants appealing apocalyptic forecasts and shocking media headlines but does not fit with the hard facts and the common sense.

The annual deforestation rates in the Legal Amazon have been decreasing steadily since the last decade, and are now well under 10,000 sq.km a year. Taking into account that much of this deforestation occurs in the Cerrado, a hypothetical linear projection using such rates suggests that it would take well over 400 years to clear the Rainforest entirely – an absurd scenario that is unimaginable by anyone in their right mind except some delusional and uninformed radical environmentalists, anyway.

Much of the deforestation occurs in private properties and government-sponsored settlement areas for small family farmers, meaning that it is legal. The Brazilian 2012 Forest Code allows that 20% of the property areas in the Rainforest and 50% in the Cerrado be cleared for economic use. Unfortunately, the deforestation rates regularly trumpeted in the media do not make this needed distinction.

The number of fires in the Legal Amazon (including the Cerrado) has also been falling since the record years of 2004-05; the projections for 2019 point that they will reach half or so the numbers of those years. A good deal of such fires occurs in private properties where people have been using fire as a method of cleaning the terrain for centuries; it’s not the best method but it is what they have access to. It’s relevant to notice that most of the fires are not located in the Rainforest itself but in its Southern transition zone to the Cerrado and in the Cerrado itself, as can be seen in the Fire Information for Resource Management System website (See this – the Rainforest is roughly delimited by the huge dark green and light green area north of parallel 15^oS). Incidentally, one can also observe that Brazil is far from being alone in the current worldwide fire season.

There are over 25 million people living in the Legal Amazon, most of them in precarious socio-economic conditions. The vast majority of people who cut trees or make use of fire are not criminals but do it because they need to eke out a living somehow (of course, there are criminals that manage to avoid the law enforcement and the due punishment, like everywhere else). Keeping in mind the respective proportions, nobody but some stubborn environmentalists is regarding the Germans as environmental criminals because the remnants of the Hambach Forest near Köln are intended to be felled by the RWE energy company, in order to get the lignite in the subsoil needed to fuel thermoelectric plants, after chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the closing of several of the country’s nuclear plants for purely political reasons.

Brazil is a developing country and is still struggling to find its way towards the full development of its human and natural resources. For the Amazon region, the path is not “preserving” it as a gigantic combo of botanic garden and zoo, as many people seem to think naively. It must begin with the long overdue tasks of land rights regularization, ecological-economic zoning, adding value to the local productions and resources with the best techniques available, improving and expanding the infrastructure needed to enable quality of life gains for the local populations and a massive effort of research and development of its vast biodiversity resources, combining research institutions, private enterprises and the precious traditional knowledge of its inhabitants. In short, a kind of an Industrial Amazon 4.0, an impulse capable of bringing most of its inhabitants to the levels of wellbeing permitted by the 21^st century knowledge. All this can and must be done with the needed care for the environment and, hopefully, we will be able to put this rational agenda in practice but a fundamental prerequisite for this is to dispel the myths and hysteria about the region and its development.

So, people, including foreign leaders and personalities, should inform themselves better before ridiculously blaming Brazil of “threatening the world climate”, or asking for sanctions against the country (mostly motivated by political and economical reasons). And the same goes for many Brazilians who are always willing to reverberate any criticisms against the country coming from abroad, regardless of their seriousness or lack thereof.

• https://www.globalresearch.ca/everybody-needs-know-about-amazon-rainforest/5687352

Geraldo Luís Lino is a Brazilian geologist, former environmental consultant and co-founder and director of the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIa – www.msiainforma.org); e-mail: geraldoluislino@gmail.com. 

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Geraldo Luís Lino, Global Research, 2019

Articles by: Geraldo Luís Lino

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PPS Report – The Mysterious Elongated Skulls of Peru!

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Antarctica Anomaly Hunter Spots Massive 'Face' There Via Google Earth

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Everything that happens in space is generally considered to be a “first.” While we’ve no confirmed verification of it, there’s probably even been a first sex act in space. What we haven’t had is the first crime in space … until now. The spouse of an astronaut is accusing her of stealing her identity while serving on the International Space Station and using it to illegally access her bank account while the couple is in the process of getting divorced. Who is responsible for policing space? NASA? The FBI? Interpol? The Space Force? Robocop? And who is responsible for handling the ensuing personal scandal that the accusation brought to light? NASA? Dr. Phil? Oprah?

“Just because it’s in space doesn’t mean it’s not subject to law.”

Mark Sundahl, director of the Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University, told The New York Times he believes this crime in space is unprecedented. The accused is astronaut Anne McClain, who was onboard the ISS from December 3, 2018, to June 24, 2019, and achieved a bit of space notoriety when the first all-female spacewalk she was scheduled to be part of had to be scrapped due to a lack of two spacesuits small enough for women.

Astronaut Anne McClain

The accuser is Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer, who married McClain in 2014, filed for divorce in 2018 and complained to NASA in 2019 that McClain had sent her threatening emails and accessed her files illegally from space. The complaint was reported last week in The New York Times, effectively outing McClain and making her the first known gay astronaut of either sex. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was also gay but that was not revealed until after her death.

“The more we go out there and spend time out there, all the things we do here are going to happen in space.”

Sundahl certainly is right about that, although it appears NASA isn’t too happy about either the alleged identity theft nor the outing. McClain’s attorney says his client did nothing wrong, and the astronaut was interviewed under oath by the inspector general, where she explained that accessing Worden’s bank accounts was something she’s always done while away in order to make sure Worden had the finances available to care for their six-year-old child – a child they’re now fighting for custody of. McClain is a decorated Army pilot who flew over 800 combat hours in Operation Iraqi Freedom and is on a list of candidates NASA is considering to be the first woman on the moon. Worden is a former Air Force intelligence officer, so she should know about breaking into accounts and crimes. This sounds like an epic space crime battle the likes of which has never been fought before. Where will it take place and who will be the judge?

According to a 2014 interview with NASA engineer and instructor Robert Frost, the question first goes to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. In Article VIII of the treaty states that:

“A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body.”

International Space Station

That governs a spacecraft where all of the crew members are from the nation that launched it. However, the ISS has its own rule because its crew members come from so many different countries. For a crime committed there, we turn to an Intergovernmental Agreement signed by all parties in 1998. With regard to criminal conduct, it states:

“Canada, the European Partner States, Japan, Russia, and the United States may exercise criminal jurisdiction over personnel in or on any flight element who are their respective nationals.”

So the nation of the accused has jurisdiction over him or her. But which court would handle it? Worden filed her complaint with the Federal Trade Commission while McClain works for NASA. Based on how things have been going lately in lower courts, should this case go right to the Supremes?

Or higher? Oprah?

The universe is waiting to find out.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s yet another group of mysterious lights in the sky. Shortly after a group of claimed UFOs were filmed by residents of Cincinnati, and a baffling string of sightings were reported over Wyoming, another group of UFOs has recently been spotted over the Crimean peninsula, which is either in Ukraine or Russia depending on whether you ask Ukraine or Russia, respectively.

Three separate videos of the incident were collected and uploaded to YouTube by the UFO channel The Hidden Underbelly 2.0—check the video out for yourself here. In all three videos, which all look to be shot around dusk, you can see six strange orange lights hanging in the sky, in what looks like a deliberate formation. The three videos all show very different views of the group of lights, but it’s still clear that they are all showing the same thing. This tells us two things: first, that this is an actual group of objects in the sky (seeing as how they’re subject to perspective and all that); and two, that the mysterious lights are fairly low in the sky.

The “UFOs” look to be in an intentional sort of formation. The third video in the group shows this the clearest, as if there are three groups of two lights all circled around a central point.  It’s fairly certain, in fact, that whatever these lights are, there is an intention behind them.

So what are they? Folks in the comments on YouTube videos are usually pretty sure of themselves, so against my better judgement I entertained what they had to say for a minute or two. If it wasn’t definitely aliens, it was definitely flares from the Russian navy. So I looked up some videos of naval flares, including some from Russia, and nothing I could find looked like what was in the video. The color was right, for sure, but the thing about flares is they fall really fast. Flares don’t just hang out in the sky. These lights hang hovered around for a decent amount of time. So they’re probably not flares, and all we’ve learned is that shot-from-the-hip YouTube comments are hot garbage. Which is to say we’ve learned nothing at all.

Don’t worry it’s not aliens. World War III is just going to look really, really cool.

Although, to be fair, it probably does have something to do with the Russian military. After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, they have kept a military presence on the peninsula; and according to an article published today by TASS, a Russian news site, the Russian air force just finished up combat exercises in Crimea involving air-to-air combat training against simulated airborne targets. Considering the videos were posted three days ago, there’s a distinct probability that these lights may be those simulated airborne targets.

But, you know, that could be Russia covering up that they’re absolutely lousy with aliens.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Pareidolia: the tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.

72°00′ 36.00” S , 168° 34′ 40.00” E: location of what many pareidoliacs see on Google Earth as a gigantic “grey alien face” bulging out of the ice in Antarctica.

Credit: Google Earth

Pity the poor person who finds an amazing likeness of Jesus burnt into their tortilla or toast. They can’t get anyone to pay attention to them now that Google is making satellite images available of the surfaces of the Earth, the Moon and Mars where anyone can piece together enough rocks, shadows and wind-blown sand or snow to see aliens, space ships, giant faces or any number of out-of-place images that put the burnt toast back in the toaster where it can get 15 minutes of flame instead of fame.

The latest example comes from the craggy white surface of Antarctica, where the anonymous owner of the ufo _scandinavia account posted a Google Earth image of what they describe as an “grey alien face.” While one can certainly find evidence of each of those things individually, is it that collectively? And if so, what if anything does it mean?

Credit: Google Earth

“GIGANTICA! Ancient Alien [NEW] Discovery “THE FACE” Antarctica? 2019-2020”

The YouTube channel thirdpahseofmoon managed to fill a 10-minute video (see it here) with as much as they could possibly come up with on the Google Earth image. The comments on the video and on the image posted by ufo_scandanavia are proof that imagination is not dead. On the other hand, if that’s a giant grey alien trying to chew its way to the surface of Antarctica, it definitely is dead. Is it a giant statue? If it is, it puts Mount Rushmore to shame. Or is it a message to future extraterrestrials visiting Earth, like “Kilroy was here”? Maybe the mouth opens and reveals an alien base?

Makes about as much sense as leaving messages with circles in a cornfield or lines in a desert, doesn’t it?

What do YOU think it is?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

“Spanish Stonehenge” Appears In Reservoir Thanks To A Drought

When the water levels began lowering outside Peraleda de la Mata in Cáceres, Spain, large standing stones revealed themselves in the reservoir. Nicknamed the “Spanish Stonehenge”, the location may have once been the site of ritual worship.

Of the 144 standing stones, several of them are as a tall as two meters high and have serpents engraved on them. The stones were arranged in a circular shape (just like Stonehenge), but nobody knows why they were put there in the first place or by whom.

Just like England’s Stonehenge (pictured here), some of the stones from the Spanish Stonehenge are two meters tall

It is believed that the site was created in the second and third millennia BC and was used as a sun temple on the banks of the River Tagus as well as a burial ground. “The site would have been created over thousands of years, using granite transported from kilometers away,” local official Angel Castaño stated to The Local. As for its purpose, Castaño explained, “They seemed to have a religious but also economic purpose, being at one of the few points of the river where it was possible to cross,” adding, “So it was sort of a trading hub.”

Nobody has seen the site for nearly six decades since it was submerged under water in 1963 after the construction of a dam made a reservoir. But with no rain, warm weather, and water extraction creating a drought in the area, the water levels lowered so much that the “Spanish Stonehenge” has re-emerged after hiding under water for many years. “We grew up hearing about the legend of the treasure hidden beneath the lake and now we finally get to view them” Castaño said. He also mentioned that while there may possibly be treasures hidden underneath the stones, just witnessing the stones themselves is enough of a treasure.

(Not an illustration of the Spanish Stonehenge)

Castaño and a group of locals are currently trying to preserve the site before it gets submerged under water again by campaigning to have the stones moved to another location on dry land. “If we miss this chance it could be years before they are revealed again,” Castaño insisted, adding, “And the stones, which are granite and therefore porous, are already showing signs of erosion and cracking, so if we don’t act now it could be too late.” They certainly have a valid point, as the last time the site was witnessed (until now) was 56 years ago. You can see pictures here of the “Spanish Stonehenge”.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

With the pace of everyday life in the modern world, it can become easy to forget the more fundamental questions we have about who we are, and what it means to be a part of the great enigma that is humankind.

To borrow the words of historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, “As evolution slowly grinds out species, who’s human? Who’s to say? It is tempting to reserve the term human for ourselves—members of the species we call Homo sapiens.” Along similar lines, the late Philip Adler of East Carolina University acknowledged that “Paleoanthropologists continue to dig up specimens that challenge believers in human uniqueness,” and cause us to have to consider what, precisely, it means to be “human.” 

Indeed, with time we may have to drastically rethink the uniqueness of humans in relation to the long line of ongoing hominin discoveries. A more remote possibility—but one which may nonetheless prove to be true—is the discovery of new hominin types that may have existed far more recently, or which might even still exist in small numbers today; a tantalizing, though increasingly unlikely prospect as time goes on. Technologies that are ever-steadily mapping remote corners of the world, in addition to issues like climate change, deforestation, population growth, and other environmental issues would no doubt present considerations in terms of the discovery of any new species, let alone those that might be large mammals resembling humans.

Nonetheless, several archaeological discoveries in recent years do suggest that unique kinds of early humans probably did, at very least, exist more recently than once believed.

As far back as 1979, a discovery was made in a cave in the Guanxi region of China that, decades later, would prove to be of remarkable significance in our broader understanding of human ancestry and the curious persistence of hominid types into recent times. Found at Longlin Cave a similar discovery was made one decade later at the Red Deer Cave site in Yunnan Province, China.

Charcoal remnants extracted from the same areas the fossils were tested in 2012, and found to be of remarkably recent ages: the fossils from Red Deer Cave yielded dates of between 14,300 and 12,600 years, while the earlier Longlin Cave discovery dated to even more recently at around 11,500 years ago.

Partial skull (reconstructed) found in Longlin cave in 1979

(Credit: PLOS One, Wikimedia Commons).

Named after the Red Deer Cave, which became the type site for the discoveries, this mysterious group of hominins bore a number of unique features that seem to place them in between modern humans and those of an earlier archaic variety. With the prevalence of Denisovan DNA remnants that exist among human populations in Southeast Asia, it has been proposed that the Red Deer Cave people might have been human-Denisovan hybrids.

The remains bear remarkable similarities to early archaic human types such as Homo erectus; however, since attempts at extracting DNA from the Red Deer Cave fossils have proven unsuccessful thus far, anthropologists have been at odds over whether to classify these as a new species.

Mandibles recovered from Red Deer Cave in Yunnan Province, China in 1989.

(Credit: PLOS One, Wikimedia Commons).

Opinions on the matter are wide and varied. Darren Curnoe, and evolutionary biologist with the University of New South Wales, Australia, gave an enthusiastic statement on the discovery to National Geographic in 2012.

“We have discovered a new population of prehistoric humans whose skulls are an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those seen in our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago… In short, they’re anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree.”

Alternatively, some critics have argued that the fossils may simply be modern humans with an odd appearance.

Erik Trinkaus, Professor Emeritus of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in Saint Louis, called the discovery “an unfortunate over-interpretation and misinterpretation of robust early modern humans, probably with affinities to modern Melanesians,” stating that the finds were “nothing extraordinary.”

While attempts at gathering genetic information about the Red Deer Cave people have proven unsuccessful so far, could there actually be evidence for similar human relatives in our own DNA?

Recent genomic studies also seem to point to mysterious archaic human types that can also be traced in modern human DNA, but which remain unknown in the archaeological record. In other words, we can prove that in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans, there are at least two other unknown archaic human types that anatomically modern humans met, lived alongside, and even interbred with within the last several tens of thousands of years.

Homo habilis skull reconstruction, which has been compared to certain features present with the Red Deer Cave specimens

(Public Domain).

Recently, I reported on a study published in the journal PNASwhich detailed genetic evidence for two unrecognized hominin species that existed in Asia. According to the study’s authors:

“At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area.”

In other words, if this recent DNA evidence is any indication, we’re already certain there are indeed “missing links” in our evolutionary past, waiting to be corroborated in the fossil record.

Whether those fossils will be found or not, and later corroborated with evidence found in DNA remains to be seen. However, it is clear enough already from the data discussed here that there are plenty of mysteries about humanity’s past to keep us busy for some time to come.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Alien Ship Seen On Surface Of Sun In Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 2019
Location of discovery: Sun, lower right corner.
Source: Helioviewer.org 

I noticed this black triangle UFO about two weeks ago and have been following it. Some people tried to explain it away as dust on the lens of the sun satellite, but dust doesn't travel across the sun. Dust would stay in place. 

This object is dark black and that tells me its much colder than the surface of the sun. Alien technology could achieve this. If an alien species was billions of years ahead of our technology, such materials immune to heat would exist. 

This object is about the size of earths moon. The ship is huge and seems to be caught in the suns gravity. I believe the ship has some propulsion left because its sinking lower and lower slowly. Perhaps its hiding there from someone. Or perhaps its caught in the suns gravity and cannot escape, which would take months or even years for something the size of the moon to be pulled into the sun, especially if the ship is fighting it with some propulsion systems. 

Scott C. Waring-Taiwan

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

While looking at Google Earth images of Antarctica, a researcher noticed what appears to be a mountain-size face of an alien.

According to coasttocoast the weird find came to light on August 20th when it was posted on the Instagram account 'ufo_scandinavia.'

Coincidence or not but the alien face resembles to the 'face on Mars which was first photographed by the Viking 1 in 1976.

Coordinates Google Earth: 72°00'36"S 168°34'53"E

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

UFO SIGHTING: Angelic alien space ship the size of JUPITER seen near Sun – shock claim

A HUGE UFO which took the form of an angel-like spaceship was spotted whizzing through the Sun at the speed of light, alien hunters believe.

Nat Geo Photographer Says He Encountered Advanced Underwater Aliens

National Geographic director of underwater photography, and member of OceanX has revealed in a recently published video he has encountered 'underwater aliens' that were much more advanced than humans.

Nat Geo Photographer Says He Encountered Underwater Aliens “More Advanced Than Humans”

The UFO subject has become an entirely liberal one in the last few months.

Never before have people had the freedom to speak out about Unidentified Flying Objects, Close Encounters, and potential alien sightings on Earth.

A Subject that was once deeply shrouded in a conspiracy, has now become the subject of study not only for science but the military and governments around the globe.

Videos have surfaced where we see pilots chasing down flying objects that are able to perform outlandish maneuvers; accelerating at incredible speeds, making nearly impossible turns, or stopping mid-air.

Pilots have described the objects they’ve encountered in the air as “unlike anything they’ve ever seen.”

But stories about aliens and UFOs don’t seem to plan on stopping anytime soon.

Now, it has been reported by the IBT that a Nat Geo photographer and member of the OceanX team has encountered underwater aliens during his diving assignments.

According to the photographer, the alien beings resemble stingrays although they appear to be much more advanced than humans.

This is according to Luis Lamar, National Geographic’s director of underwater photography, and member of OceanX.

According to his website, the underwater photographer “has sent robotic camera systems into one of the deepest ocean trenches on earth & he has logged hundreds of hours in manned submarines, including on five expeditions with the U.S. Navy’s deepest-diving manned research submersible ALVIN, diving beyond 12,000 feet deep in the abyss to photograph environments at the edges of the ocean frontier.”

The claims made by Lamar were presented in a short video made by his company, where the underwater photographer speaks about the different lifeforms he has encountered beneath the surface.

And while describing the numerous strange marine species he saw beneath the ocean, he discussed encountering what appeared to be alien beings, much more advanced than humans.

“I’ve seen giant deep sea arachnids, venomous sea snakes far offshore with, like bright-yellow heads,” Lamar revealed.

“Sharks in a frenzy, Orcas swarming all around me,” the underwater photographer continued.

“Some sort of you know, hyper-advanced aquatic alien creatures inhabiting the shallow waters, which almost look like stingrays.”

But although he has faced many ‘terrifying’ creatures while cataloging the beauties of our oceans, Lamar still argues the oceans are an incredible place to explore and be in.

But the claims made by Lamar are the first encounters.

US Navy Encounters

In fact, a report released in January of 2019 suggested that United States Nuclear Submarine have had their fair share of encounters with 0unidentified submerged objects, also known as USOs.

The report, released by the War Zone details encounters of US Navy personnel with Unidentified Submerged Objects.

One encounter, as detailed in the report, reveals how an attack submarine patrolling the North Atlantic picked up a fast moving object in the water.

Despite the fact that the military personnel could not identify the object, the report does suggest whatever it was, it was moving through the water at a speed of several hundred knots.

Sunken Alien Spaceships?

In 2018, it was reported that a shipwreck explorer and star of Discovery Channel’s documentary series “Cooper’s Treasure,” Darrel Miklos, encountered the crashed remains of an Alien spaceship inside the infamous Bermuda Triangle.

Using maps drawn by former NASA Astronaut Gordon Cooper to identify magnetic anomalies, Miklos has been hunting for shipwrecks in the Caribbean.

It was revealed that during one particular dive in the Bahamas, the Discovery Channel explorer came across a massive unidentified submerged object.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Miklos revealed: “It was a formation unlike anything I’ve ever seen related to shipwreck material, it was too big for that.”

{ https://curiosmos.com/ }

The desolation of Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway gives you plenty of time to think "what if?"

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

When you get mixed up with the UFO people, your life becomes deeply weird. Ask Matty Roberts, the 20-year-old engineering student from Bakersfield who created the #StormArea51 meme. He posted something dumb and funny on Facebook, proposing a nighttime invasion to “see them aliens,” and millions of people immediately signed up.

Most know it’s a joke. A few do not. More than a few will be headed up the Extraterrestrial Highway on Friday, Sept. 20, just to see what happens.

The Netflix documentary "Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers" has a lot of people thinking about that mysterious desert military installation 150 miles north of Las Vegas. 

In 1989, Bob Lazar appeared on the KLAS-TV news to claim he worked on backward-engineered flying saucers. There were a few hundred holes in the story, but it hit a nerve. Area 51 became a meme of the first kind, a mythology that burrowed into the collective consciousness and never really left. "The X-Files" and "Independence Day" brought the paranoid tales to life. Video games, pop music and comic books elaborated the theology. Like Roswell before it, Nevada’s Area 51 became a dreamland of extraterrestrial secrets.

 

In this July 22, 2019 photo, Terris Williams visits an entrance to the Nevada Test and Training Range near Area 51 outside of Rachel, Nev. The U.S. Air Force has warned people against participating in an internet joke suggesting a large crowd of people "storm Area 51," the top-secret Cold War test site in the Nevada desert.

John Locher, AP

Pilots had been referring to the top-secret Air Force base at Groom Lake as “Dreamland” for years. Strange things were seen over this easternmost extension of Edwards Air Force Base, wonders in the sky. Some of these aerial oddities were later revealed as SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 spy planes. Some were Russian jet fighters stolen from Soviet airfields. And some remain unexplained: Lights dancing in the sky, things that hover with no visible or audible means of propulsion, sinister black triangles making 180-degree turns and shooting off like meteors.

Nevada is mostly federal land, and Area 51 is part of a vast, secret complex that includes the nation’s nuclear testing grounds at Yucca Flat, Nellis Air Force Range and the proposed nuclear waste dump within Yucca Mountain. Storming the base from all sides, as proposed by #StormArea51’s deliberately goofy battle plans, is impossible. But on the northeast side, where Highway 375 skirts the base’s buffer zone, tourists have been coming for a quarter-century to drink alien-labeled bottles of beer at the Little A’Le’Inn and take some pictures by the rural mailbox that marks a dirt road leading to the edge of the base. There’s the Alien Research Center down the road in Hiko, too, with a giant metallic space alien standing sentry outside the souvenir shop.

That’s where Roberts decided the millions would meet before the half-suicidal mob stormed Groom Lake under cover of darkness. Only those who could run like a beloved anime ninja named Naruto would survive to “see them aliens.” Woe to the Kyles, energy-drink-loving bros who would all be sacrificed to Area 51’s ruthless security forces so the speedier runners could slip through.

When a meme is embraced by the masses, jokes cease to exist. People are coming, and Roberts has now endorsed a peaceful festival on the fated day — hopefully the UFO Woodstock and not the Alien Altamont.

State of emergency: 'Storm Area 51' event pushes rural Nevada county to declare emergency

But it’s happening, there is no longer any doubt. Come Sept. 20, it’ll be bumper-to-bumper on the E.T. Highway from Las Vegas to the lonesome high desert of Lincoln County. It’s an easy two-hour drive from the suburban Vegas grid to Dreamland. Of course people are coming. The handful of mobile-home motel rooms were all booked up in Rachel, behind the Little A'Le'Inn, long before the U.S. Air Force and Nevada Highway Patrol were compelled to acknowledge at least some kind of looming invasion on the last weekend of summer. A media and tourist invasion, at least. A lot of people who didn’t quite get the joke, at worst.

If you couldn’t follow the anime character references or recognize the intentionally bad grammar and spelling, well maybe it sounded like a perfectly good idea, to storm the most mysterious military installation on the planet. It’s a natural and insane evolution of our current snarling discontent, the gleefully self-destructive populism, the impotent bafflement as everything actually falls apart, and the unavoidable awareness —especially in the desert with yet another power outage leaving you sweltering without air conditioning — that it’s getting harder to live on this Earth. It makes people loopy, makes people look for messiahs.

A souvenir shop that houses a brothel in an annex beckons visitors near a junction that leads to Area 51 on July 19, 2014 at Amergosa Valley, Nevada. Area 51 is another name for a portion of Edwards Air Force Base that UFO enthusiasts have theorized contains evidence of visitors from outer space.

Sean Gallup, Getty Images

The UFO phenomena is deeply weird and chaotic, like the subculture around it.

A close-range encounter shakes a person’s very soul. During the 1997 Phoenix Lights event, people pulled over on the freeways, gazing up in astonishment and horror at mile-wide silent aircraft that appeared to be right on top of them. The sense that the government is lying about UFOs is hard to avoid when, as happened in Phoenix, former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington made fun of the event and concealed his own up-close sighting on that otherworldly night of March 13, 1997. (Symington eventually admitted all, a decade later on CNN.)

There’s a baffling strangeness to these events. They rarely make any practical sense. The laws of physics are routinely and absurdly broken. And yet they are objectively real to the witnesses, regardless of what’s really behind the flying saucers and black triangles and other bizarre apparitions that haunt our skies and our social media. Military pilots chase them. Commercial pilots nervously report them. Millions of people around the world see Unidentified Aerial Phenomena every year. Maybe we are reaching a new level of global acknowledgement. Something is happening.

September event: After 'Storm Area 51' gets 2 million RSVPs, its creator announces alien-themed music fest

Wanna get away? Belize offers free trips to residents of Nevada town who want to escape 'Storm Area 51'

Rachel, Nevada: Hunting for Area 51's aliens along Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway

UFOs are socially disruptive. The effects are unpredictable. An obvious meme or a science-fiction story can be taken at face value. Absurdities become reality. Jokes, hoaxes, lies, con-men and chaos are not bugs in the UFO operating system. They’re a feature.

Around the world but most vividly in the indigenous culture of the American Southwest, the trickster wreaks havoc for good or ill or just for the hell of it, right here in our everyday world. The trickster isn’t condemned to rule an underworld, because the trickster is an equal among gods. A lot of credible people have looked at Lazar’s story and rationally concluded that he made it up, as he claimed to have fanciful academic credentials — simultaneous masters degrees from MIT and Caltech, of which no trace can be found. He was convicted of felony pandering in Nevada, the year following his wild claims about working on alien saucers. And since childhood he has courted local publicity, first for his rocket-powered bicycle. Yet for 30 years, he has mostly stuck to the details of his flying saucer story.

That tale was mostly forgotten outside of the small and graying contingent of late 20th-century UFO researchers — and they had mostly dismissed it. Jeremy Corbell, an independent filmmaker who lives part-time near Pioneertown in the California desert, is fascinated by Lazar. Corbell has made a trio of feature-length documentaries about the UFO world, but the Lazar movie blasted right out of the flying-saucer cult and became a full-on pop culture phenomenon. "Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers" spent much of the summer as the No. 1 documentary on Netflix, right there on the home screen for millions of subscribers worldwide. It was already doing well when the monstrously popular podcaster Joe Rogan brought Corbell and Lazar to his show.

A still from the documentary "Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers," which will play at the 2019 Freep Film Festival/

FFF2019, Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Sauc

'Bob Lazar: Area 51': In documentary, director investigates UFO whistle-blower's story

'Dangerous': Air Force responds to plans to 'storm Area 51' and 'see them aliens'

Roberts, our meme lord of Bakersfield, caught some of the Rogan episode. He watched the documentary. Inspired, he posted his meme to a Facebook group dedicated to nonsense. That should’ve been the end of it. Instead, Roberts became a global meme himself.

“It seems like a very Bakersfield thing to come out of here,” he told his hometown newspaper on July 27, with nearly four million people pledging some sort of interest in the formerly fake event. "I’ll just be scrolling through Facebook and I’ll just see my face photoshopped on the Extraterrestrial Highway.”

Roberts is now a part of UFO culture. Corbell sought him out as soon as the meme took off in July, and Las Vegas television reporter George Knapp interviewed him; Knapp is the reporter who originally interviewed Lazar. And Roberts now finds himself lord of a real UFO festival, his counsel and approval sought by these well-known names from the UFO world.

Reece D'Silva (holding camera) and Alexis Esparza take a selfie outside the entrance to Area 51 in Nevada while on a tour of the Extraterrestrial Highway.

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

I have become part of the UFO world, too. It always loomed large in my private life, even if mostly kept out of my work as a reporter and journalist. But five years ago, I left my last media job and started Desert Oracle, a small periodical and weekly radio show/podcast from Joshua Tree. UFOs are an inescapable and crucial part of desert history and culture: Roswell, Groom Lake, the Integratron, Gram Parsons and Keith Richards watching for flying saucers from a barber’s chair they dragged up Cap Rock. It wasn’t long before Corbell introduced himself to me, in the high desert restaurant La Copine, and said we needed to know each other. He was right.

Six weeks before #StormArea51 took over social media, Corbell and I were in the back seat of a Toyota 4Runner headed straight up a mountain dirt road just beyond Area 51. Knapp and his KLAS I-Team partner, chief photographer Matt Adams, were up front. They had joined me for an archeological field trip. I was seeking Pahranagat Man, the distinctive figure found only in the ancient rock art of Lincoln County around Groom Lake. This entity is so similar to the popular conception of “space aliens” supposedly kept at Area 51 that I thought it might be worthwhile to gaze upon these remote petroglyph panels, and contemplate the ridiculous synchronicity.

A giant alien sculpture looks out onto Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway from the Alien Research Center.

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

What is Area 51?: We made contact with experts

Area 51: We visited Amargosa Valley where a brothel, truck stop await 1.7 million people

Jeremy, George and Matt had just returned from a UFO festival in Oregon, where they had appeared with both Lazar and Top Gun fighter pilot David Fravor, who chased fantastic unidentified craft all around the USS Nimitz carrier group training off the coast of San Diego in 2004. Because alongside the Lazar furor, the U.S. Navy has picked this time in history to reveal some of the interesting incidents its pilots have experienced over the past 15 years, including “Tic Tac” UFOs that supposedly hover just beneath the ocean’s surface and then shoot up to 30,000 feet in the blink of an eye. It’s a weird time.

And when the meme became reality, it was Jeremy on the phone to tell me that I would be emcee of the Sept. 20 festival at the Alien Research Center, owned by local businessman George Harris. It had all been decided. The UFO world works that way, sometimes. Who knows what interesting characters I’ll get to introduce to thousands of the faithful and curious. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, any world.

“Through all the joking, all this laughter, all the memes, I truly believe we have an opportunity to shine a light on the secrecy,” Corbell told me at the end of July. “We can have an impact on the way the topic is handled. Whatever’s going on is bigger than we can imagine.”

He doesn't look happy, but this little green man welcomes visitors to the Little A'Le'Inn on Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway.

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

It was only a year or two ago when the easiest argument against the reality of Unidentified Aerial (or Underwater) Phenomena was to mention camera phones. If everybody’s got a camera in their pocket, why aren’t we inundated with UFO photos and footage?

And then, despite a phone camera’s infamous inability to even get a clear picture of the full moon, the videos and photos began flooding Instagram and YouTube. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean. Not the obvious CGI fakes with science-fiction spaceships, but the humble backyard footage of mysterious lights doing weird things in the evening or even daylight sky, traveling against the wind, forming diamonds and triangles and then just blinking off like somebody hit a switch, often with the perplexed audio commentary of a nearby child as the adult struggles to find and focus upon the weirdness overhead: Is it aliens? Are we gonna get abducted?

It took new imaging technology in the Navy fighter jets to produce those weird videos we saw on the front page of the New York Times. And when an East Coast-based carrier group was outfitted with the new gear, the oddball mystery craft began buzzing the training exercises on the Atlantic coast. Yet pilots saw the things with their own eyes, too — including a “sphere encasing a cube” that flew right between a pair of F/A-18s in close formation. Raytheon was so pleased with the media coverage that “UFO-spotter” systems are now mentioned in the aerospace contractor’s marketing materials. 

Of the great historical waves of sightings, the most dramatic can predict future Earth technology, like the aerodynamic marvels seen up and down California during the mystery airship flap of 1896. Within 20 years of that hysteria, such airships were ferrying passengers across the skies, but they could never maneuver like those bizarre airships over San Francisco and Sacramento, with their impossibly bright spotlights and ability to vanish.

The black triangles predicted the shape and color if not the performance of the B-2 stealth bomber, which lacks the ability to hover silently over shocked motorists on a desert highway before shooting off into the atmosphere without producing so much as a breeze. (I have witnessed one of these peculiar craft, on the 395 in the Eastern Sierra, as have thousands of other California drivers who will never forget that particular road trip.)

This mural along Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway reminds visitors of rumors of cow mutilations.

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

Now, maybe, our technology is making it a little easier to capture some of these phenomena on video. The U.S. Navy has announced it will no longer scorn pilots who file reports. The History Channel has a nearly all-UFO schedule, especially focused on the military sightings. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — a native of Searchlight, Nevada — has come out of retirement not to stump for Democrats, but to encourage serious work on the UFO enigma.

And then there’s the networking technology, in large part based on UFO researcher Jacques Vallée’s work on the early Internet. You no longer need to submit a UFO report to some amateur or for-profit organization and await their judgment or investigation. Just post it on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter or YouTube. If it’s compelling, it will soon be seen by thousands, maybe millions.

And if you’re Matty Roberts, trying out your meme skills, you might just win a permanent place in the culture. None of us know exactly what will happen on Sept. 20 out in tiny Hiko, Nevada, but none of us will be all that surprised if a fleet of UFOs buzzes our impromptu desert festival.

Ken Layne lives and works in Joshua Tree, as publisher of Desert Oracle and host of its companion podcast and radio show on Z 107.7 FM. Find out more at DesertOracle.com.

A painting on the side of the Little A'Le'Inn along Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway hints at the reason for tourists to visit.

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

{ https://eu.desertsun.com/ }

X-37B Military Space Plane Breaks Record on Latest Mystery Mission

By Mike Wall

Nearly 719 days of orbital spaceflight and counting.

Artist's illustration of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane in orbit.

(Image: © Boeing)

The U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane just broke its spaceflight-duration record.

At 6:43 a.m. EDT (1043 GMT) today (Aug. 26), the robotic X-37B sailed past the program mark of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes, which was set by the previous mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle 4 (OTV-4).

The current mission, OTV-5, began on Sept. 7, 2017, with a liftoff atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It's unclear what the space plane is doing up there now, or what it has done on past flights; X-37B missions are classified, and the Air Force therefore tends to speak of the vehicle and its activities in general terms.

• Related: The X-37B Space Plane: 6 Surprising Facts

"The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth," Air Force officials wrote in the X-37B fact sheet.

"Technologies being tested in the program include advanced guidance, navigation and control, thermal protection systems, avionics, high temperature structures and seals, conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, advanced propulsion systems, advanced materials and autonomous orbital flight, reentry and landing," the officials added.

The test campaign seems to involve pushing the X-37B's endurance, because each of the five missions has lasted longer than its predecessor. OTV-1 launched in April 2010, and returned to Earth that December after 224 days in space. OTV-2 ran for 468 days, from March 2011 through June 2012. OTV-3 launched in December 2012 and landed in October 2014, racking up 675 days of spaceflight. And OTV-4 landed in May 2017 after nearly 718 days in orbit.

OTV-5 is nowhere near the overall spaceflight-duration record, however. Earth-observation and communications satellites commonly operate for five years or more, as do robotic planetary explorers. NASA's Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars for more than seven years, for example, and the agency's twin Voyager probes are still going strong in interstellar space more than four decades after their launches.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

NASA Astronaut Anne McClain Refutes Space Crime Claim by Spouse as Divorce Details Emerge

NASA is going to Jupiter's funky moon Europa

The Europa Clipper gets the official green light from NASA.

Europa as seen by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

NASA/JPL

Europa is a beautiful icy beast of a moon. It's one of Jupiter's largest moons, and scientists suspect it's hiding an ocean under its frigid crust. 

We have a lot of questions about Europa, and NASA plans to answer them by giving the Europa Clipper mission the official go-ahead nod. 

This NASA illustration shows the Europa Clipper at the moon, with Jupiter in the background.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

The mission was proposed years ago, but NASA announced on Monday that it'll now progress to completion of the final spacecraft design, followed by construction and testing of the craft. 

Like many NASA missions, Clipper will be looking for potential signs of life. 

"We are building upon the scientific insights received from the flagship Galileo and Cassini spacecraft and working to advance our understanding of our cosmic origin, and even life elsewhere," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.  

Europa is a wild place. It's home to mysterious geysers and scientists recently revealed that the moon's surface is full of sodium chloride, better known to us as table salt.

NASA hopes to have Clipper ready to launch by 2023, but the space agency is giving it some leeway to take off as late as 2025. Here's hoping for smooth sailing. 

{ https://www.cnet.com/ }

A FORMER X-Files boss says he quit a secret US government programme over an alien encounter “cover-up”.

Luis Elizondo swears that the existence of aliens, travelling at speeds of up to 8,000mph, has been proven "beyond reasonable doubt”.

Former head of the Pentagon’s real life X-Files programme, Luis Elizondo

Credit: YouTube

The distinguished former intelligence officer ran the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Programme in the US, which looked into UFOs

Credit: Getty - Contributor

New TV series explores UFO sightings

Elizondo has spoken up as part of a crack team of UFO researchers exposing the incredible secrets of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), the American government’s secret UFO operation.

He features in a new six-part TV show, "Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation".

It sheds new light on unidentified flying phenomena in the US and around the world, according to television network History, which is airing the show in the UK from August 26.

The show has uncovered “shocking revelations from sources close to the Pentagon, the FBI and the US government”, History claimed.

Elizondo, a distinguished former intelligence officer, was the head of the secretive AATIP, run by a team of 12 in the Pentagon.

MORE WORK ON UFOS

But he quit the job in 2017, telling military bosses that the government was not taking sightings of unidentified craft by American warplanes seriously enough.

His letter, which was leaked, asked why more time wasn't being spent on the issue, to work out "capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation".

Elizondo claims that several countries, including Britain, have been visited by beings in extremely advanced and unidentified aircraft, given that UFOs observed had "extreme manoeuvrability and hypersonic velocity".

In an interview with The Sunday Times last year, he said that there were UFO sightings where "performance parameters were so off the charts" they could not have been dismissed as a drone, missile or aircraft.

History said 'Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation' exposes 'incredible secrets'

The show also features revelations from former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge

One such example was an encounter between US commander David Fravor and an alien aircraft "shaped like a 40ft Tic Tac sweet".

The retired Navy pilot said: "It was rounded on both ends and had a cylindrical body."

Although he tried chasing it, the UFO sped off faster than any other aircraft and disappeared. Elizondo recently revealed a cockpit video of Fravor's 2004 encounter.

After quitting the clandestine government UFO investigation unit, the X-Files expert joined like-minded people in the "To The Stars Academy", led by Blink-182 co-founder Tom DeLonge.

A public benefit corporation set up in 2017, the academy is a “collaboration between academia, industry and pop culture to advance society’s understanding of scientific phenomena and its technological implications.”

History's 'Unidentified' show features UFO-believer DeLonge and researchers such as Elizondo, who reveals details of the US government’s awareness, and cover-up of, extra-terrestrial lifeforms on earth.

The network said that the episodes include “footage recorded from the cockpit of supposed encounters and testimony from pilots whose planes flew by these 'craft' as well as classified reports from foreign governments”.

'CREATURE OF THE SHADOWS'

Elizondo said: “I am a creature of the shadows; I spent my entire life in the shadows and it was a matter of survival for me.

“Being able to have the conversation now with the American people so they can finally know what’s going on… is a great privilege and honour for me.”

He admitted, however, that as ex-military intelligence, “I have a non-disclosure agreement with the US government. I still can’t talk about classified things.”

DeLonge told History he hoped the show would help switch the conversaton about UFOs “from being a fringe subject for the tin-foil hat brigade to a legitimate subject for discussion.

“My hope for the future is that people are no longer discussing if this is real or not.”

History UK tweeted: “This series is going to change people’s perception and it’s going to change it quickly.”

Tom DeLonge tweeted about the research, uncovered on 'Identified: Inside America's UFO Investigation'

Credit: Twitter/@tomdelonge

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

“There have been signs, symbols and objects in the skies of earth described as snakes, swords, lights and rockets. Slow-moving so-called meteors have zig-zagged their way above the clouds, and stratospheric explosions have rocked the land below. Mysterious rays stopped airplane motors over the world’s largest city as unidentified phantom planes puzzled the war departments of four nations. Ships and men were observed to drop from the heavens in isolated areas only to vanish.”

The rather bombastic passage above may bear a certain familiarity for some readers, particularly among those who have enjoyed the work of Charles Hoy Fort, that reclusive and often recalcitrant chronicler of all things “Damned” by the sciences. During the early part of the 20th century, Fort wrote of unusual phenomena in nature, penned in an idiosyncratic style of prose that paired florid passages with quick, jerky sentences. Ultimately, his unusual style of offerings would define an entire genre, and inspire other writers to seek out similar “forbidden” knowledge in the decades to come.

The quoted passage at the outset was not one of Fort’s offerings, however. These had been the words of one of Fort’s many admirers and imitators, although one that is perhaps too-often overlooked for his influence: Vincent Hayes Gaddis, an American writer who was perhaps best known for coining the term “Bermuda Triangle.”

Vincent Gaddis

Gaddis, born in Ohio in 1913, had worked as a writer in a number of career professions throughout the 1940s and 50s, before becoming a freelance writer. He also authored a number of books, among them American Indian Myths and Mysteries, a sensational contribution to the enduring genre of ancient mysteries, which was once described by Rutgers University historian William K. Powers as “histrionic and sensational, differing from Greek tragedy only in that it requires a deus ex machina beginning, rather than ending,” and an altogether “outrageous and intolerable book” similar in effect to the works of Erich von Däniken.

In his article “Creators of the Paranormal,” Joe Nickel noted in the May/June 2016 edition of Skeptical Enquirer how Gaddis ultimately gave a name to the allegedly mysterious region of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and planes were said to go missing:

His article in the February 1964 Argosy landed on major American newsstands and gave the mystery area a definitive name and ominous tone: “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.” Gaddis followed a year later with a book on sea mysteries, Invisible Horizons (1965), in which a chapter gave an alternate, even more ominous name for the area, “The Triangle of Death.”

It might be argued, however, that the Bermuda Triangle had not been the only paranormal concept that Gaddis had helped to develop with his writing. In the June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories, an edition of the popular pulp magazine famous for having put the so-called “Shaver Mystery” on the map, Gaddis contributed an article entitled “Visitors from the Void,” in which he described a number of instances of unexplained aerial phenomena. For example:

“In April a light was observed at Jefferstown, Ky., in the midnight sky. It was over Fisherville, to the east, size of a large cantaloupe, glowed and receded in brillance like a heart throb, casting its light like a lampshade over the town. After ten minutes it vanished. On May 4 in the early morning there was a flash of light and an explosion reported over six states. Visible for three seconds. Buildings shaken.”

The emulation of Fort is obvious, right down to the sentence fragments and omission of copula (i.e. connecting words). However, what makes Gaddis’s 1947 article interesting apart from its unabashed Fortean derivation is the timing of the subject matter. In June of 1947, around the same time that his article appeared in print, the modern UFO phenomenon first entered the public zeitgeist with pilot Kenneth Arnold’s report of seeing “flying saucers” over Mount Rainer, Washington, on June 24th.

Obviously, Gaddis had to have written his article prior to June 1947 for it to have been included for publication in the edition of Amazing Stories for the month in question. Hence, his selection of subject matter could not have been influenced by the sudden media attention the “saucers” would be getting after Arnold’s sighting, which occurred just weeks later.

Another sample of Gaddis’s offerings from Visitors from the Void reads as follows:

“At 7:30 p. m. on the evening of June 1, 1945, something whizzed through the sky over Morganton, N. C, traveling northwest,” Gaddis reported in the article. “Tubular in shape, shiny, gleaming in the light as if covered with aluminum, five or six feet long, with a blue flame spurting from its tail. It disappeared in the vicinity of the mountains near Lake James and shortly later an explosive sound was heard.”

This description sounds almost reminiscent of the now-famous “Tic Tac” object or aircraft observed by Navy pilots in 2004, in association with the radar-visual UAP encounter reported by the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group at that time off the coast of southern California. With the exception of the “blue flame” the object produced, it is eerily similar in description to the object pilots Dave Fravor and others at the time of the 2004 incident described seeing.

It is also notable for the location, since Morganton, NC and the nearby Lake James are both near the area of Brown Mountain, which has long been associated with sightings of unusual nocturnal illuminations. This fact was not missed by Gaddis either, who noted the following:

“Near Morganton is Brown Mountain, scene of mysterious lights since the Civil War that are so puzzling that government geologists have conducted fruitless investigations. In my files is a long article on the Brown Mountain mystery that appeared in the Literary Digest for Nov. 7, 1925. These lights are about the size of a toy balloon, vary in color, move about, and appear and disappear abruptly.”

In addition to writing about aerial phenomenon in a way that seemingly anticipates modern UFOlogy (and only weeks before the appearance of flying saucers in the American media), Gaddis also notes a number of locations in his 1947 article which would later become staples of paranormal books and other media. For instance, Point Pleasant West Virginia also makes an appearance, as Gaddis describes an incident from October 11, 1931, where the alleged wreck of a dirigible was observed in the sky. “There were many witnesses who stated that the crash had occurred in the hills south of the city,” Gaddis wrote, noting that “White objects, believed to have been parachutes, fell with it,” as the mystery airship–of which no wreckage was ever found–allegedly went down.

John Keel, circa 1967

(Credit: Doug Skinner/JohnKeel.com)

More than two decades later, the town of Point Pleasant would become the famous epicenter of writer John Keel’s investigation into a mysterious “Mothman,” which became the focus of his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. 

It is interesting (although very likely just coincidental) that Gaddis had managed to anticipate several aspects of the modern UFO craze, which would erupt in the months and years following his article in Amazing Stories. Thus, Joe Nickel’s acknowledgment of Gaddis as one of the many “creators” of modern paranormal subjects certainly appears to be accurate, and might even be extended beyond just his “naming” of the Bermuda Triangle.

 { https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

The cause of elongated skulls – alien intrusion aside – is generally accepted to be the sadistic practice of binding a baby’s skull during its early soft state through subsequent growth years to curse the person with a long pointed head that was funny on Saturday Night Live but caused a life of pain and possible mental illness, with the only fame coming centuries later when the strange skulls were unearthed by puzzled archeologists. The reasons anyone would inflict such torture on innocents (as opposed to other tortures humans inflict on innocents to this day – a topic for greater philosophical and psychological minds) are still a mystery. However, a recent discovery of elongated skulls in Croatia points to a strange ancient nomadic culture that may have spread the practice as it traveled.

“We were inspired to study these individuals based on their unusual burial context as well as the identification of two different types of artificial cranial deformation in two of the individuals.”

Example of an elongated skull

In a press release announcing the study published recently in the journal PLOS ONE, co-author Daniel Fernandes, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at University of Vienna, describes the recent discovery of the remains of three young males age 12 to 15 in a burial pit in the city of Osijek in eastern Croatia. (Pictures here.) What caught his eye was that two of the three had different types of elongated skulls and that that seemed to have been placed together deliberately with pottery and dead animals. Further analysis of these 5th century CE skeletons at first added to their mysterious appearance and burial because it appears the three came from widespread locations.

CT scan of the elongated skull. 

(© M. Cavka/University Hospital Centre Zagreb)

The elongated skull (without the facial region)

 (© M. Novak/Institute for Anthropological Research)

The elongated skull during the excavation.

(© D. Los/Kaducej Ltd)

The burial pit where the skeletons were found 

(© D. Los/Kaducej Ltd)

“Results of ancient DNA analyses indicate that the individual without artificial cranial deformation shows broadly West Eurasian associated-ancestry, the individual with the elongated skull has East Asian ancestry and the third individual has Near Eastern associated-ancestry.”

Ron Pinhasi, head of the ancient DNA laboratory at the University of Vienna and co-director of the study, reveals that the young man with an elongated skull from East Asia is the earliest East Asian to be found in Europe. This means the so-called Migration Period – the era from about 375 CED to 538 CE when the declining Western Roman Empire was invaded by Germanic tribes and the Huns – also included intrusions by East Asians as well. But why an East Asian with an elongated skull?

“Based on the presented results, we propose that the type of artificial cranial deformation may have been a visual indicator of membership in a specific cultural group, and that these groups were interacting closely on the Pannonian Plain during the Migration Period.”

Because of the rich artifacts found in other tombs of individuals with artificial cranial deformation, many researchers believe elongated skulls were a sign of nobility. However, these Croatian skeletons and their artifacts indicated they were poor, undernourished, nomadic and part of a common cultural group despite being from distinctly different geographic locations and having different (or no) forms of elongation. What does it mean that they all ended up in the Pannonian Plain during the Great Migration Period? Were they novices in the Distinguished Gentlemen of the Elongated Skull?

“This leads us to ask: is this a random peculiarity or part of a larger-scale pattern of association between ACD type and group membership? We believe that future multi- and inter-disciplinary studies combining archaeology, bioarchaeology, history, stable isotopes analysis, and ancient DNA, conducted on a larger skeletal sample from a wider region will aid us in answering this question.”

Ah! A new question requiring more research to compare elongated skulls around the world in a completely different way. These archeologists definitely know how to create job security. We await their future answers.

 { https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Millions of years ago, some of the most remarkable creatures ever to walk the earth would begin to emerge out of East Africa. Loping along with ease, their forelimbs could just as easily carry them at speed along the ground as they could into the heights of trees. These remarkable creatures were adept in several different kinds of locomotion: in addition to their climbing prowess and their four-legged movement across the ground, they could also stand upright and, perhaps stumbling at first, carry themselves aloft on two legs for impressive distances.µ

With time, these arboreal creatures began to learn that standing upright gave them several advantages; no less among them had been the ability to see greater distances and to spot predators when they were further out. On such occasions, the little creatures could emit sharp whistles and other sounds that, with time, became more and more complex as the sounds turned from shrill warnings to outright mimicry of the sounds produced by the other creatures around them.

Over the passing of generations, these arboreal apes also began to create unique sounds of their own, which they could use to communicate with a depth and clarity no other creatures in the animal kingdom had ever mastered.

These early apes where hungry, like all creatures in nature, but they had something else that motivated their actions apart from a sheer desire for food: curiosity. As they moved about, they began to master their environments, first using stones to break open nuts, seeds, and shells and to grind simple grains that grew in their habitat. Pounding these rocks against hard surfaces often caused them to fracture; there is little doubt that these creatures soon realized how much more could be done with a stone that bore chipped, sharpened edges.

Their curiosity carried them further and further along, and by around 2 million years ago, early migrations by the upright walking ancestors of modern humans out of Africa and into other parts of the world were well underway. These early humans spread first into parts of the Middle East, and then into Europe; by around 25,000 years ago, the genus Homo could be found on each of the world’s continents, with the exception of Antarctica.

The debate has continued as to when, precisely, modern humans first arrived in the Americas. With each new discovery that pushes back the timescales on such migrations to the new world, all new controversies ensue; but this is by no means anything new in the history of anthropological study.

Even at the time of the groundbreaking discoveries of the Folsom and Clovis cultures in the American Southwest during the early part of the last century, which clearly showed that humans had arrived in America by the end of the last ice age (and perhaps even earlier), much doubt was expressed by experts in the anthropological field. Most notably, Aleš Hrdlička, founder and first curator of physical anthropology of the U.S. National Museum (later renamed and known today as the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History), presumably went to his grave having never acknowledged the discoveries, preferring to believe that humans simply couldn’t have been on the American continent any earlier than 3000 or so years ago.

Today, archaeological sites like the Gault site in Texas, as well as Bluefish Caves in Alaska, clearly show that humans were there well in advance of 13,000 years ago, and perhaps even tens of thousands of years ago. Compelling discoveries at locations like Monte Verde, Chile—where radiocarbon dates may indicate a human presence as far back as 33,000 years—continues to tempt us with the idea of much earlier human arrivals in the Americas. Even more controversial sites like the Topper site in Allendale County, South Carolina, suggest dates going even further back to 50,000 years for human occupation, an idea which, understandably, remains controversial today.

But could there have been even earlier arrivals than these?

In 2017, one of the most controversial archaeological papers in recent memory was published in the journal Nature, having to do with a possible early human site in San Diego County, California. Known as the Cerutti Mastodon site, the paleontological remains found at the site, which the 2017 research team found close to stones they believe were used as hammerstones and anvils, boast a seemingly incredible radiocarbon date of 130,700 years.

“To demonstrate such early occupation of the Americas requires the presence of unequivocal stone artifacts,” said archaeologist Michael Waters of the claims. “There are no unequivocal stone tools associated with the bones… this site is likely just an interesting paleontological locality.” Detractors made the reasonable assertion that marks on the mastodon remains that indicated possible butchering were likely to have been the result of highway construction projects underway at the location in recent years. Adding to the extraordinary nature of the claimed discoveries at the site is the fact that along with an absence of any human bones, or irrefutable tools in context with extinct megafaunal remains that can be reliably dated, the site remains an outlier: where are the other sites of similar age in the region, let alone in North America?

Interestingly, less than three hours from the Cerutti site is what had once been the most controversial archaeological site in North America: the Calico Mountain site, located near Barstow, California. Proponents of the site’s legitimacy contend that it is the oldest archaeological site anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, where more than 60,000 possible lithic tools were recovered during excavations, which led to a shocking discovery: some of the tools from Calico appeared to date as far back as 200,000 years.

If true, this presents a number of problems. In addition to their incredible age, this is around the same time that anatomically modern humans begin to appear in the fossil record in Africa. Hence, if tools found at the Calico Mountain site were to be reliably dated back to 200,000 years, it could only mean that their makers must have been an earlier archaic human ancestor such as Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis, or even the latter’s close relatives, the enigmatic Denisovans (an implication which would equally apply to the Cerutti site).

Understandably, the extraordinary nature of these claims was not received well by the anthropological community at large. However, neither were they met with complete opposition, as J. M. Adovasio notes in his Strangers in a New Land: The First Americans:

“The Calico site was by no means unanimously discredited at the time—indeed, news of the findings there garnered interest among the growing ranks of archaeological scholars whose criticism of the Clovis First model had been gathering through the 1970s and 1980s. But Calico is now held in widespread disregard among professional archaeologists, largely due to the lack of indisputable artifacts in the Lake Manix and Calico Lithic Industry assemblages, the lack of valid cultural features, a suspicion that the age of any valid archaeological deposit at the location is radically younger than that proposed, and the site’s apparent position as a secondary deposit in an alluvial fan.”

Needless to say, both the Calico site, and the Cerutti site just a few hours further south, will continue to have their proponents—particularly among those advocating controversial ideas about earlier arrivals in the Americas (notably, author Graham Hancock discusses these locales, and others like them, in his new book America Before, which has no doubt introduced the controversy to an all-new audience). To be able to accept such incredible antiquity for sites like these, as noted earlier, calls for more than just an open mind as to when modern humans arrived on the continent: it would also appear to require acceptance that our early hominid cousins were more highly mobile than once thought.

Interestingly, new studies in the field of genomics are helping to shed light on some of the mysteries of human ancestry. Today, traces of both Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA can be found in human populations around the world; however, the notable prevalence of Denisovans in Southeast Asia up until their demise around 40,000 years ago would likely have placed them closer to the Beringia land bridge that would have existed for a time during the Pleistocene, suggesting these mysterious archaic humans as possible contender for sites like Cerutti and Calico.

That is, of course, if they are ever reliably proven to represent conclusive evidence of a hominid presence in the early Americas. By that time, perhaps other sites will have emerged, and we will ultimately have gained a more broad understanding of humanity’s arrival in the Americas… and whether the first immigrants were really “human” in the same sense that we would recognize today.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Deer Found On Power Line 22 Feet Up! Aug 2019, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 2019

Location of discovery: North East USA

Source: 

• https://www.facebook.com/coasttocoastam/photos/a.419111792348/10157229928002349/?type=3&theater

Here is a report that was turned into Coast To Coast about a deer that was found on top of a power line. The power line is 22 feet up and seems to have been dropped from above. I don't believe an each is big enough to carry such an animal. That is one big deer. So the question is...did a UFO drop the deer out after doing experiments on it? I think to know that for sure we need a closer look at the deer to examine it for puncher woulds, cuts, bites and such. That would be the only way to learn what it was that caused this to happen. UFOs are known to sometimes abduct a person or explore and examine things in nature. 

 

There was even an old UFO report about such an incident being witnessed in the mounts of the US. Its was Feb 25, 1999 in the Cascade mountains near Mount St Hellens, Washington. A team of forest workers watched as a UFO came down from the sky and hovered over a elk. Then the UFO rose up and lifted the elk with an invisible force. The forest workers watched as it moved higher and higher vanishing above. (redition photo below). So you see, its very possible a UFO abducted the deer and its even backed up by past sighting evidence. Not to mention thousands of animal mutilation incidents caused by aliens doing medical research on the animals. 

Scott C. Waring

 

Coast to Coast states: 

Conservation worker and C2C listener Bruce shares this bizarre photo of a deer that somehow wound up atop a power pole in a rural area somewhere in the 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."

peter2011 

• VIDEO 2011

• Video of 2008

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Amazing Entities Or Mega Structures? On Sky Map, Taurus Constellation, UFO Sighting News.

I was looking over Taurus constellation using a sky map and found these two giant orbs objects. They are actually moving and there is a glowing trail behind them from where they came. That means they were moving very fast, and then came to a stop. 

I see a lot of similarities between these donut objects and the pulsing donut UFOs seen by NASA during the Tether incident. The objects that looked like this actually broke the 5 mile long tether in the middle by passing through it. The UFOs during the tether incident were huge! Several miles across! Many people mistakenly assume the objects were just inches in size. 

I am also thinking that they could be mega structures, space station like spacecraft that jump from location to location. Its really hard to tell unless we can send a space craft to investigate it, but I'm sure its long gone by now. This thing travels fast, but these seems to be a lot out there according to the tether incident NASA video. 

Watch my video and please subscribe to my Youtube channel ET DATA BASE. 
Scott C. Waring-Taiwan 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

Snake-Like UFO Returns as New York Resident Captures the Latest One On Video Over Clayville

A conspiracy theorist has claimed that a snake-like UFO has been captured on camera for the first time in several weeks.

Last month, UFO conspiracy enthusiasts were rocked about the videos of cylindrical objects flying over the US.

With the last clip appeared on July 13, it seemed the sightings had dried up.

But now, a Clayville, New York resident in the US believes they may have recorded one on camera.

YouTube username beamsinvestgations1 posted the footage showing a black cylindrical UFO hovering in the sky. The incident reportedly happened on August 6.

The witness said it was a gigantic snake UFO moving like it was alive.

Online UFO conspiracy theorists said the UFO has segments or spheres with the mysterious articulated body.

It appears in the video the camera struggles to focus, but the object in question is said to be at a high altitude, so it must have been massive as the witness described.

Some UFO enthusiasts believe captures like this should be treated with great scientific importance, but academics do not seem to take such material seriously.

Sceptical observers of UFO sightings such as this one have claimed in the past that they could be just strange-shaped balloons across the sky.

Others think that this kind of objects may be advanced spacecraft of the United States Air Force.

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

Investigation Into 'Oumuamua’s “Alien” Status Reveals a Natural Explanation

We might have to rethink what is "normal."

Scientists have been keeping a close watch on ‘Oumuamua, the cigar-shaped object from far beyond our own solar system that wandered toward us in 2017. Soon after, Harvard scientists proposed that it could be an alien probe sent from far away, stirring up even more interest in the mysterious object. A new article published Monday in Nature Astronomy, however, officially rules out the alien probe hypothesis — but that doesn’t mean we’ve learned all we can from ‘Oumuamua.

When scientists first took a close look at ‘Oumuamua in 2017, its strange shape raised eyebrows, as did its unexpected acceleration, which at first could not be explained by gravity alone. Those observations, among other strange characteristics, are what led the Harvard team to propose their alien hypothesis. But the new analysis, led by Matthew Knight, Ph.D., a research scientist at the University of Maryland’s astronomy department, leverages years of observations to argue that even ‘Oumuamua’s most suspicious qualities can be explained by the impressive natural forces that govern our universe.

Knight tells Inverse that our work on objects like ‘Oumuamua is just getting started. By 2022 he believes that new technology will help us answer a bigger question: Is ‘Oumuamua weird, or is it our solar system that’s unusual?

“We might have to rethink what is normal and instead think of our solar system as being weird!” says Knight.

How Do We Account for Oumuamua’s Weirdness?

Research published in March 2018 suggested that Oumuamua came from a binary star system with a hot, high-mass star. Knight and his team also propose that it was flung our way from its home system. They believe that it’s a planetesimal, which is a building block of a planet (or, at least, a piece of one). Knight favors the idea that it’s “a comet-like body that contained buried ice with a rather unusual composition

With its origin established, the paper then offers natural explanations for Oumuamua’s weirder aspects.

The strange upticks in speed can be explained by outgassing, as a 2018 study also noted. Outgassing is a release of gasses from an object, like a comet, as they are heated by the sun. That process likely propelled the Oumuamua along, resulting in a speed boost. 

Its strange, cigar-like shape can be explained in a few ways.

One idea is that ‘Oumuamua was reshaped passing close by a giant planet or a low-mass star that “tidally disrupted” its structure (essentially tore it apart using gravity). There are also two related theories proposing that it was either pelted by loads of tiny dust grains moving at high speeds or was squished between two other, large planetesimals.

Knight admits that he and his co-authors aren’t satisfied with any of these explanations so far, which is why they concede that ‘Oumuamua’s shape is still an open question. He is hopeful that we’ll have answers soon, though, because he thinks we will detect more objects like ‘Oumuamua.

A New Barometer for What Is “Weird”

Knight explains that ‘Oumuamua’s oddness raises a bigger question about what we consider odd. Is Oumuamua weird, or is our own solar system strange?

That, he says, depends on your reference point. We’re only beginning to have the capability to scan the skies for strange objects of all sizes. As our technology improves, we may start to notice many more objects like ‘Oumuamua before they come wandering into our view by accident.

“If we start seeing an appreciable number of interstellar objects and they frequently display properties that seem unusual compared to things in our solar system (such as their shapes being highly elongated or having seemingly exotic compositions), then we will be forced to reconsider how representative our solar system is compared to other solar systems,” says Knight.

The team is excited about a new telescope project called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is intended to begin operations around 2022. It’s slotted to take a 10-year survey of the sky and collect 15 terabytes of data every night. “LSST will be more powerful than any existing surveys,” says Knight, and thus will allow us to see fainter, more distant objects that come from faraway systems.

Those far-flung systems may be a lot different from our own, and there is some evidence that they too may have giant planets orbiting close to their stars. Because giant planets like our own Jupiter likely played a role in shaping the nature of comets and asteroids in our own solar system, these “hot Jupiters,” as Knight calls them, could be shaping objects in their own way that’s totally foreign to us since our solar system isn’t configured that way.

“It wouldn’t be terribly surprising to me if we started seeing evidence that our comets and asteroids are unusual,” he adds.

In the future, it may become clear that it’s not ‘Oumuamua that’s weird. It might just be us.

Abstract: The discovery of the first interstellar object passing through the Solar System, 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), provoked intense and continuing interest from the scientific community and the general public. The faintness of ‘Oumuamua, together with the lim- ited time window within which observations were possible, constrained the information available on its dynamics and physical state. Here we review our knowledge and find that in all cases, the observations are consistent with a purely natural origin for ‘Oumuamua. We discuss how the observed characteristics of ‘Oumuamua are explained by our extensive knowledge of natural minor bodies in our Solar System and our current knowledge of the evolution of planetary systems. We highlight several areas requiring further investigation.

When it Comes to Gamma Radiation, the Moon is Actually Brighter Than the Sun

Most gamma rays in our Solar System come from distant sources like quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN.) The Moon is an indirect source of gamma radiation, and produces gamma rays through its interaction with cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays are a type of high-energy radiation that for the most part is produced outside our Solar System. They’re produced by things like supernovae and active galactic nuclei. When cosmic rays strike matter, like the surface of the Moon in this instance, they create gamma rays.

Two scientists at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Mario Nicola Mazziotta and Francesco Loparco, have been studying the Moon’s gamma radiation as a means to understand cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are fast-moving particles, and they gain their acceleration from their sources, like the aforementioned supernovae and AGN.

“Cosmic rays are mostly protons accelerated by some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe, like the blast waves of exploding stars and jets produced when matter falls into black holes,” explained Mazziotta in a NASA press release.

The particles that make up cosmic rays are electrically charged. When they strike a magnetic field, like the Earth’s magnetosphere, they’re mostly deflected. But the Moon lacks a magnetic field. As a result, even the weakest cosmic rays strike the Moon’s surface directly, and that produces gamma rays. The Moon actually absorbs most of the gamma rays it creates, but some escape out into space.

And the Fermi Telescope can see them, turning the Moon into a kind of inadvertent particle detector.

The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope (FGRST) has been at work for 11 years now. Mazziotta and Loparco have studied images of the Moon from the length of the telescope’s mission, and over that time, the view has improved.

“… the Moon would never go through its monthly cycle of phases and would always look full.”

Francesco Loparco, Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics.

The strength of the Moon’s gamma rays is not always consistent. It varies over time. Mazziotta and Loparco gathered together data of the Moon’s gamma rays that exceeded 31 million electron volts, which is 10 million times more powerful than visible light, and organized them over time. That resulted in the following image, which shows the view improving over time.

“Seen at these energies, the Moon would never go through its monthly cycle of phases and would always look full,” said Loparco.

The fact that the Moon emits these gamma rays is cautionary. NASA’s Artemis Program will see more astronauts on the Moon for potentially longer periods of time than other Moon missions. They’ll have to be protected from both the cosmic rays that strike the Moon, and the Moon’s gamma rays that result.

A Complex Interaction

The interplay between cosmic rays, gamma rays, the Moon and the Sun can be complex. Gamma rays can have different energy levels. For instance, these FGRST images only capture gamma rays that exceeded 31 million electron volts (MeV) by a certain amount. But gamma rays can be far more energetic than that, and can be in the billions or even trillions of MeVs.

Since the electrical charge of cosmic rays means they can be deflected by magnetic fields, and the Sun has a powerful magnetic field, only the most powerful ones can strike the Sun. In turn, these powerful cosmic rays strike the dense part of the Sun’s atmosphere and create very powerful gamma rays. So the Sun is actually brighter in gamma rays above 1 billion electron volts than the Moon is.

The Sun’s 11-year cycle also affects the cosmic rays that strike the Moon, and the gamma rays that result. During that cycle, the Sun experiences variations in its magnetic field. As a result, sometimes more cosmic rays strike the Moon than other times. This variability in cosmic rays striking the lunar surface creates a variability in lunar gamma rays. According to Fermi data, it can vary by 20%.

Gamma rays coming from the Moon, and the cosmic rays that cause them, both pose a threat to astronauts because both are ionizing radiation with great penetrating power. It takes a lot of shielding to prevent them from striking astronauts. Materials with high atomic numbers are effective shields. Lead (atomic number 82) is a good shield because it’s also very dense.

For lower energy gamma rays, the risk to astronauts is due to exposure over time. Think of an x-ray technician vs. an x-ray patient. A patient’s lifetime exposure to x-rays is not very high, so a patient accepts the risk. For the technician however, things are different. They’re exposed each work day, so they leave the room and are shielded from the x-rays by materials like lead.

It’s similar for astronauts. The more time they spend on the Moon in a gamma ray/cosmic ray environment, the more they need to limit their exposure. Not only by shielding, but by timing.

Trying to Understand the Moon’s Radiation Environment

This Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope data is helping scientists understand the gamma ray/cosmic ray risk on the Moon. If there are times when the Moon emits 20% less gamma radiation because of the Sun’s 11-year cycle, then it may be sensible to make use of that time.

Exposure to radiation is one of the main barriers to space travel and long-term space missions. Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere are both radiation shields. But even in Low-Earth Orbit, astronauts risk exposure to greater radiation.

If we’re going to have a human presence on the Moon, it’s imperative that we understand the radiation environment there. NASA has been looking into the lunar radiation environment as far back as 2005 in anticipation of a human outpost on the Moon. When they launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in 2009, it contained an instrument called the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER).

CRaTER’s job is to characterize the Moon’s radiation environment and the biological impact it will have on astronauts. It uses plastics to mimic human tissue and placed them behind different shielding materials. At the time, Harlan Spence, the Principal Investigator CRaTER said, “Not only will we measure the radiation, we will use plastics that mimic human tissue to look at how these highly energetic particles penetrate and interact with the human body.”

The Fermi images of the Moon’s gamma rays are another piece of the radiation puzzle. And that’s a puzzle that has to be solved before there’s a realistic hope of a long-term lunar base, or crewed missions to Mars.

More:

• Press Release: Moon Glows Brighter Than Sun in Images From NASA’s Fermi
• NASA: Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
• NASA: Tour of the Electromagnetic Spectrum: Gamma Rays
• Press Release: NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope Sharpens its High-energy Vision
• Press Release: Understanding the Magnetic Sun
• NASA: The Radioactive Moon

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

What is producing methane on Mars? That is a question that scientists have been trying to answer for quite some time now. There are various possibilities, both geological and biological, but narrowing them down has been a challenge. Could it really be a sign of … life? Now, a new study has shown that at least one of the geological scenarios is very unlikely: wind erosion of rocks.

Researchers at Newcastle University in the U.K. published their peer-reviewed findings in Scientific Reports on June 3, 2019, and a new press release was issued on August 12, 2019. From the article abstract:

Seasonal changes in methane background levels and methane spikes have been detected in situ a metre above the martian surface, and larger methane plumes detected via ground-based remote sensing, however their origin have not yet been adequately explained. Proposed methane sources include the UV irradiation of meteoritic-derived organic matter, hydrothermal reactions with olivine, organic breakdown via meteoroid impact, release from gas hydrates, biological production, or the release of methane from fluid inclusions in basalt during aeolian erosion. Here we quantify for the first time the potential importance of aeolian abrasion as a mechanism for releasing trapped methane from within rocks, by coupling estimates of present day surface wind abrasion with the methane contents of a variety of martian meteorites, analogue terrestrial basalts and analogue terrestrial sedimentary rocks. We demonstrate that the abrasion of basalt under present day Martian rates of aeolian erosion is highly unlikely to produce detectable changes in methane concentrations in the atmosphere. We further show that, although there is a greater potential for methane production from the aeolian abrasion of certain sedimentary rocks, to produce the magnitude of methane concentrations analysed by the Curiosity rover they would have to contain methane in similar concentrations as economic reserved of biogenic/thermogenic deposits on Earth. Therefore we suggest that aeolian abrasion is an unlikely origin of the methane detected in the martian atmosphere, and that other methane sources are required.

One of the more recent theories was that wind erosion of rocks could produce the methane detected in the lower atmosphere. But the team’s findings showed that it wouldn’t be able to produce methane in the amounts observed, according to Jon Telling, a geochemist at Newcastle University:

The questions are – where is this methane coming from, and is the source biological? That’s a massive question and to get to the answer we need to rule out lots of other factors first.

We realized one potential source of the methane that people hadn’t really looked at in any detail before was wind erosion, releasing gases trapped within rocks. High resolution imagery from orbit over the last decade have shown that winds on Mars can drive much higher local rates of sand movement, and hence potential rates of sand erosion, than previously recognised.

In fact, in a few cases, the rate of erosion is estimated to be comparable to those of cold and arid sand dune fields on Earth.

Using the data available, we estimated rates of erosion on the surface of Mars and how important it could be in releasing methane.

And taking all that into account we found it was very unlikely to be the source.

What’s important about this is that it strengthens the argument that the methane must be coming from a different source. Whether or not that’s biological, we still don’t know.

Observations from both orbiting spacecraft and the Curiosity rover, as well as telescopes on Earth, have shown that methane levels in the Martian atmosphere appear to be seasonal, peaking in the summer and fading again in the winter. Just why that is isn’t known yet, but it indicates a regular process is occurring, whether geological or biological. Oddly, ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) hasn’t detected any methane yet, although that is one of its main objectives. But that may simply be because of the seasonality of the methane, or because TGO focuses its observations on the upper levels of the atmosphere, and most of the other methane detections have been closer to the ground.

Most scientists now think the methane originates from underground, perhaps as ice clathrates that thaw in the summer and release methane, or maybe a biological source that responds to the warmer temperatures. Even if the methane is bound up in clathrates, the actual origin of it could still be either geological of biological (ancient life). Or it may be produced by warm groundwater interacting with olivine in rocks. If so, that would indicate that there is still some residual geological activity below Mars’ surface, and that itself could provide a habitable environment for microorganisms, even if they didn’t actually produce the methane. Other causes, such as meteorites or comets, probably wouldn’t produce enough of the gas to match observations, either, according to recent studies.

Last April, a new report showed that a spike in methane levels was detected at the same time – for the first time – by both the Curiosity rover and the orbiting Mars Express back in 2013. And last June, Curiosity detected its largest-evermeasurement of methane so far. Why are there these peaks in methane emissions, only for the gas to virtually disappear afterwards? There is still a lot we don’t know, as Emmal Safi, a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University, indicated:

It’s still an open question. Our paper is just a little part of a much bigger story.

Ultimately, what we’re trying to discover is if there’s the possibility of life existing on planets other than our own, either living now or maybe life in the past that is now preserved as fossils or chemical signatures.

Illustration depicting what processes could create and destroy methane on Mars. The methane most likely originates from below the surface and is released into the atmosphere through subsurface cracks.

Image via ESA.

The idea that Mars’ methane might come from life is an exciting one, of course, since most of the methane on Earth is produced by living organisms. But non-biological explanations would need to be eliminated first. The research from Newcastle University shows that at least one of the possible geological explanations for the methane is unlikely, but there is still a lot of work for scientists to do to determine just what is producing it.

• Bottom line: This new study would seem to eliminate one possible source of Mars’ methane: wind erosion of rocks on the surface. This bolsters the probability that the methane originates from underground.
• Source: Aeolian abrasion of rocks as a mechanism to produce methane in the Martian atmosphere
• Via Newcastle University

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

The weird, repeating signals from deep space just tripled

Fast radio bursts are getting more attention from scientists, who can now detect more of them.