US Military Jet Intercepts UFO Over George Town, Kentucky, USA On Dec 21, 2020.

Date of sighting: Dec 21, 2020
Location of sighting: George Town, Kentucky, USA  

 

This is a great video of a military jet intercepting a UFO over Kentucky this week. The UFO is accelerating and leaving a contrail, however the UFO has no trail and is going the same speed. The UFO obviously did not fear the jet or it would have shot away. When enlarged it does look like thick disk, otherwise known as a tictac. 100% proof the US military intercepts UFOs but can do nothing to stop them. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

 

Eyewitness states: 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFO Seen Over Cemetery Over Netishyn, Ukraine June 10, 2018, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: June 10, 2018

Location of sighting: Netishyn, Ukraine

 

I thought this video was amazing and it demonstrated a lot of what I find in MAJESTIC and Project Blue Book reports. For instance the UFO appears white when far away. The UFO is silent although its clear its moving very fast. The UFO has a glow around it...almost like a fuzzy fog but probably due to the propulsion systems. This is a real UFO, even though its two years old, I have never seen it and needed to post it here for all to view. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

Asky-watcher was taking some evening shots of the moon with a Nikon P900 on December 20, 2020 at 4.52 pm when a large red UFO comes into view from the left side on which the UFO then crosses the moon until it disappears into space. 

While crossing the moon the UFO casts its shadow on the lunar surface indicates that it is not something that flies close to the camera, but that it does indeed fly just above the surface of the moon. 

The first clip is the close-up, and the second is the original version.

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

3-4 pulsating blue spheres. One sphere, around 50 -100 feet ahead of the “main” spheres. It kept pulsating from one solid to 3-4. 

The weird phenomenon in the sky that appeared in Bella Vista, Arkansas on December 22, 2020, raises many questions as witnesses have no idea what it may have been. Mufon.

  

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

UFO activity filmed over Lake Elsinore, California 22-Dec-2020

Here’s one new video of a strange UFO activity in the sky above Lake Elsinore in California. This happened on 22nd December 2020.

https://youtu.be/eZu-kzIdpK8

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

What was that glowing object in the sky above Lake Elsinore?

That bright light in the sky over Lake Elsinore on Tuesday night, Dec. 22, wasn’t an asteroid or a local church trying to replicate the Star of Bethlehem before Christmas.

Nor was it a UFO or Santa’s sleigh.

The glowing object was part of a show from the local skydiving facility.

While many users on social media claimed it was aliens, Santa Claus or even swamp gas, Daniella Martin of Skydive Elsinore said the thrilling stunt was part of a “production show” over the lake after 5:30 p.m.

“We do all kinds of stuff here, sometimes even military stuff,” Martin said. “If you see anything that looks like a shooting star over the south part of the lake, over the airport, that’s us.”

Martin added that the divers jump into the night sky “with pyrotechnics” that look like sparklers.

Martin declined to give more information about the production, or who was behind it.

One Lake Elsinore resident posted on Twitter that she saw the skydivers from her backyard, and that it wasn’t the first time.

“At first I thought it was the start of a meteor shower, but the way it was moving, didn’t look like a meteor,” said Rachel Marry-Karmie, who witnessed the surprise light show from her neighborhood in the Tuscany Hills area.

Another video suggested it was the skydiving team from Red Bull, which has participated in recent nighttime dives — using pyrotechnics — during the winter solstice.

Lake Elsinore city officials said they received no calls. Neither Lake Elsinore police nor the Red Bull skydiving team could be reached for comment, but staff in nearby Wildomar confirmed in a social media post that it was “skydivers doing stunts” from Lake Elsinore’s drop zone for the Skydive Elsinore facility.

{ https://www.pe.com/ }

France, China developing biologically engineered supersoldiers: report

Just two weeks after it was announced China was developing biologically enhanced super soldiers, France has joined the fray in creating terminator troops that can be “bred to kill” according to a new report.

Last week, France gave the go-ahead for augmented soldiers, and some fear the super troopers could be the new norm in the recent future.

The French seek to improve “physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities,” and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers. Among the ministry’s research were drugs to keep troops awake for long periods of time and combat stress, and even surgery to improve hearing.

The new species of augmented soldiers, dubbed “homo robocopus” could also have altered DNA to give them enhanced speed and strength as well as robotics.

Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at Kings College London (KCL), told the Sun participating could be “using DNA as a farmer would in a herd of cattle.” 

 “We’ve reached the point now where we could potentially manipulate people’s DNA to breed into them extra strength, endurance and other things just as we do with animals,” Clarke said. “Just as we’ve done with standard cattle to give them more back, we can do that now very precisely with humans.”

Clarke added that the bio-race is being fueled internationally due to fears of China’s program.

“What they’re all thinking about is what might come up in 30 years’ time, given another 10 years development and experimentation,” Clarke told the paper. “The Chinese in 30 years’ time might have a cohort of people who are 20 years old who’ve got particular characteristics they might have tried to breed into them by manipulating DNA.”

Due to DNA manipulation, future soldiers could also be immune to disease and feelings. 

A recent report by the International Society for Military Ethics in Europe obtained by the Sun, reveals a dystopic arena full of bionic men capable of fighting “all the time.”

“Enhanced soldiers would be reduced to bionic men, who run fast, do not need sleep, eat and drink very little, and can fight all the time,” the report states. “A new species is born: Homo robocopus.” 

Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor of war studies at KCL, told the Sun robotics are of more importance: “There are people going back into combat in ways they wouldn’t have been able to before because prosthetics have been improved. You can use Google glasses, there’s lots of things you can now do with a modern soldier that makes them much more effective than they were in the past. If you want people to act just according to orders going in to great danger, the other trend you can see that is pretty active at the moment is drones, autonomous vehicles and so on.”

While France claims it will abide by humanitarian law, French armed forces minister Florence Parly warned, “we have to be clear, not everyone has the same scruples as us and we have to prepare ourselves for such a future,” she said.

Here is some of the tech in progress to create “homo robocopus,” according to the Sun.

• Brain microchips — France has been given the all-clear to develop microchips to enhance soldier brain power.
• Bionic eyes — Being developed in Hong Kong, this gives users infrared and night vision.
• Super hearing — The US’s Tactical Communication and Protective System are smart earbuds which boost soldiers’ hearing to be near superhuman.
• Health implant — DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, is developing cyborg implants to monitor combat efficiency.
• Enhanced limbs — A Devcom report revealed plans to equip US soldiers with enhanced limbs for increased strength.
• Exoskeleton legs — The US Army has tested an exoskeleton which can be attached to soldier’s legs and can increase their productivity by up to 27 times.
• Synthetic blood — Respirocyte is a theoretical red blood cell that could help soldiers not get out of breath and stay underwater for hours.
• Pain immunity — DARPA’s Persistence in Combat initiative would allow soldiers to have their pain suppressed for 30 days.

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{ https://nypost.com/ }

US Astronaut Saw 100s Of UFOs In Germany & Filmed UFO Landing In California, 1957

Space pioneer Leroy Gordon Cooper, who died in 2004, believed in the existence of aliens who had been traveling from other habitable places to Earth. Not only he believed in extraterrestrials but also claimed that he personally encountered UFOs and other inexplicable phenomena while flying in a fighter jet in Germany in the early 1950s.

Cooper was one of the seven astronauts of Project Mercury, the first human space program to get a man on the Moon before the Soviet Union. He traveled to space as part of the manned mission Mercury-Atlas 9, which took place in 1963. Then, in 1956, he set a new space endurance record by traveling 3.3 million miles aboard Gemini 5 to prove that astronauts could survive in space on a journey to Moon and back to Earth.

He left NASA in 1970 and spent the rest of his life studying unidentified flying objects. Cooper believed in the UFOs even before he got into the space programs. After his encounter with UFOs in Germany, he became a staunch supporter of the hypotheses of the existence of civilization outside Earth.

Cooper said in an interview that he saw a UFO the first time in his life in the early 1950s, when he was posted at Landstuhl Air Base, West Germany. He said that during that time, Russian MiG-15s often flew over to his base. So, once he was flying at 15,000 meters and saw strange vehicles that flew in formation much higher and faster than their aircraft. He claimed that they were discs shaped with metallic casing.

Then in 1957, when Cooper served as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California, he saw a flying saucer with a diameter of about 10 meters that hovered nearby and landed on the dried lake.

He said: “I had a camera crew filming the installation when they spotted a saucer. They filmed it as it flew overhead, then hovered, extended three legs as landing gear, and slowly came down to land on a dry lake bed.”

After that, Cooper sent the recordings to Washington and filed a report of the UFO encounter.

“After a while, a high-ranking officer said when the film was developed I was to put it in a pouch and send it to Washington.

He didn’t say anything about me not looking at the film. That’s what I did when it came back from the lab and it was all there just like the camera crew reported.”

The saucer was similar to the one he encountered in 1951.

“Basically the same planform vehicle they were double saucer lenticular. If you’re going to be going in and out of atmospheres like earth or other places might have you certainly need a little more aerodynamic type of vehicle. And the saucer has the capability of going through the air at tremendous rates of speed and handling the bow and trailing wave without making shockwave. So it can be very silent while traveling big rates of speed through the atmosphere.”

Gordon also believed in the crash of an alien spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, and the military found several aliens at the crash site.

“I had a good friend at Roswell, a fellow officer. He had to be careful about what he said. But it sure wasn’t a weather balloon, like the Air Force cover story. He made it clear to me what crashed was a craft of alien origin, and members of the crew were recovered.”

In one of his interviews, Cooper repeatedly argued that aliens who visit our planet on research missions are much more technically advanced than humans. The astronaut believed that the UN should carefully record all reports of UFOs, and was also confident that the governments of different countries were hiding data about extraterrestrial life.

In 2007, NLSI Interim Director David Morrison released a statement where he denied all the claims made by Gordon Cooper about UFOs and alien life. He said: “Sorry, but there is no compelling evidence for space aliens, and certainly not from NASA astronauts.”

Gordon was not the only person who believed in the existence of aliens and UFOs. Edgar Mitchell and Helen Sharman are two renowned astronauts who also believe in alien life outside Earth.

According to Edgar, aliens have contacted people several times, and UFOs had been visiting our planet for a long time.

“It’s been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it’s leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.”

On the other hand, Helen Sharman said: “Aliens exist, there’s no two ways about it.” She began her space career back in 1989, when she passed a difficult selection among other astronauts and confirmed her abilities, getting into one of the first joint projects in the UK and the USSR.

She added that aliens may not be like humans, while it is possible they are here living with humans but invisible to us.

References:

• https://www.history.com/topics/paranormal/ufo-sightings-astronauts-sighting-video
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Cooper
• https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51003374
• https://sservi.nasa.gov/?question=astonauts-and-ufo-sightings

Read also:

• Ex-US Air Force Serviceman Claimed Tall White Aliens Visited Nevada Casinos In Human Outfits In 1950s
• Green Aliens Welcomed Polish Farmer On Their Spacecraft And Offered Him Honey-Like Food In 1978
• Aliens Abducted Colorado Man Multiples Times & Put Betty Hill’s Dress Onto Him After Conducting Experiment
• US Air Force Officer Pulled into UFO By Serpentine Arm In New Mexico Desert In 1956

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{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

Childhood home of Jesus ‘found’ by Brit archaeologist in Nazareth under ruins of convent

Robot workspace to get human touch remotely

Assemble, stitch, fasten, box, seal, ship. Wait, what can get done if assemblers, stitchers, and the others are staying at home?

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

Sadly, it met its end in the Sun's corona.

 by Alexandru Micu

An amateur astronomer discovered a new sungrazer comet during last week’s solar eclipse, NASA reports. The body has been christened C/2020 X3 (SOHO).

Sungrazing comets are like their brethren in every way except they pass very close to the Sun, sometimes within a few thousand kilometers of its surface. C/2020 X3 (SOHO) has been discovered by Worachate Boonplod on December 13 (a day before the eclipse) as part of the Sungrazer Project — a citizen science project which allows the public to look for comets in images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO.

New old comet

The sungrazer belongs to the Kreutz family of objects, NASA explains, which are the fragments of a larger comet that broke apart around one millennia ago. C/2020 X3 (SOHO) evaporated on approach towards the Sun, but other grazers still orbit around our star, the agency adds.

During its last moments, the comet was traveling at around 450,000 miles per hour, reaching as close as 2.7 million miles from the star’s surface. It was about 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter and disintegrated into dust on approach.

“But wait!”, you might say — “what eclipse?”. Last week saw the last eclipse of 2020, which was visible from a relatively narrow region in the Pacific, southern South America, and Antarctica. People in Chile, Argentina, and communities living in the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans could see it as a total eclipse.

This is the 3,524th Kreutz sungrazer spotted by SOHO. None have yet been seen to actually hit the star, as they burn away in the lower corona (the Sun’s atmosphere) or pass around 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) away from its surface. SOHO works similarly to a solar eclipse, NASA adds, which is why it’s so good at spotting sungrazers. The telescope uses a solid disk to block out light coming in directly from the Sun, letting us analyze its dimmer atmosphere and close-by objects.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

2020: A Year in Space

Despite the global pandemic that has brought much of the world to a grinding halt, space scientists have continued to push the boundaries of our knowledge throughout 2020.

 by Rob Lea

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

We Persevered This Year @NASA – December 21, 2020

2020 was historic for NASA. We launched humans to the International Space Station from America again, made progress on our plans to return humans to the Moon and explore Mars, had an unprecedented encounter with an asteroid, and displayed perseverance and resilience in space and on Earth … all, while helping the country deal with a global crisis. Here’s a look back at highlights from those and other things we did this year at NASA.

Download Link: https://images.nasa.gov/details-NASA%...

Producer: Andre Valentine
Editor: Sonnet Apple
Music: Universal Production Music

{ https://images.nasa.gov/ }

4 mysterious UFO sightings that are still unexplained

Some UFO sightings can be explained away – but we still don't know the truth behind these ones.

Many objects have been mistaken for UFOs, from natural phenomena such as lightning sprites and meteors, to experimental aircraft and weather balloons. The French UFO research group, GEIPAN, found that 3.5 per cent of sightings remained unidentified. Here are a few that, so far, have defied explanation.

In 1954, two local football clubs were playing in Florence, Italy, when the crowd stopped watching the game. Instead, around 10,000 fans were looking upwards at a strange craft.

It was described by witnesses as either cigar-or egg-shaped along with silvery-white threads falling from the sky. Samples mostly disintegrated on contact, but some were examined at the University of Florence and found to contain boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium.

While migrating spiders, which use webs as sails, were suggested as a rational answer to this aspect of the sighting, their silk is an organic compound and does not contain any of those elements.

Around 350 children and teachers at Westall High School in Melbourne, Australia, watched five planes surround a silvery flying-saucer-shaped UFO in 1966. The planes attempted to aerially herd the craft for about 20 minutes before it disappeared.

A UFO-themed play park commemorates the event and, to this day, witnesses meet once a year to discuss their experience.

In 1997, thousands of people reported lights across several hundred miles of night sky in Arizona and Nevada in the United States, and Sonora in Mexico. These lights were either stationary, or on a moving V-shaped craft in a triangular formation (artist’s impression above).

The United States Air Force stated that the lights over Phoenix were military flares but the V-shaped UFO remains a mystery.

In December 1980, US airmen stationed at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England were investigating reports of lights in Rendlesham Forest when they saw red and blue lights and a UFO land. It was described as around three metres high and three metres in diameter and appeared to be standing on fixed legs. The material of the craft was like ‘smooth, opaque black glass.’

The next day, indentations were seen on the ground and radiation levels recorded. On a separate night, another member of the US Air Force set out to disprove his colleagues with a tape recorder. He reported lights in the sky that looked ‘like an eye winking at you’ and observed ‘a beam coming down to the ground’. Three years later, the US government released a report that described the encounter, which has become known as Britain’s Roswell.

While there remain believers, psychologist Prof Chris French – who has also visited the site – is among many of those who are unconvinced. A local forester said the indentations were caused by rabbits, and the levels of radioactivity were not especially high. As for the lights? “I’ve heard the tape,” says French, “and the lights are in complete synchrony with Orfordness Lighthouse nearby.”

• This article first appeared in issue 357 of BBC Science Focus Magazine – find out how to subscribe here

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{ https://www.sciencefocus.com/ }

Video: World's Largest Wooden Bigfoot Sculpture Unveiled in South Dakota

By Tim Binnall

A talented chainsaw artist in South Dakota has created what is believed to be the world's tallest wooden Bigfoot sculpture. According a local media report, the monstrous piece was unveiled over the weekend at the community of Keystone's 'Bigfoot Bash' event. The man behind the enormous Sasquatch is Jarrett Dahl, who began fashioning the individual parts of the sculpture out of pieces of pine, cedar and cottonwood back in October. Alongside a crew of workers from Kentucky, he assembled the complete sculpture over the course of eight days.

At the 'Bigfoot Bash,' the Keystone Chamber of Commerce measured the artwork and determined that it is "exactly 22.8 feet from sitting on his butt to the top of his head." The epic size of the statue has the community feeling confident that can now boasting having the "world's largest wooden chainsaw sculpture of Bigfoot." While they very well may hold that specific record, it's worth noting last month's unveiling of 'Gasquatch' in Oklahoma, which measures a whopping 30 feet tall and, therefore, likely still holds the title for the world's tallest depiction of Bigfoot.

Whether or not you believe in Bigfoot or Sasquatch, there’s no denying that the existence of this half-man/half-beast has been the subject of conversation for the better part of 180 years when reports of this creature first surfaced in the Pacific Northwest back in the 1840s.

And while there’s never been any definitive proof of Bigfoot, except for a grainy photograph or shaky home movie, one thing is certain – all 50 states (except Hawaii) have reported sightings over the years – including South Dakota.

According to numbers compiled by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), the Mount Rushmore State is on the board with 19 reported Bigfoot encounters over the years.

And while that number may be disturbing to some, it’s among the fewest sightings in America, the ninth-lowest to be exact.

Just a reminder, experts estimate that for every reported sighting there are 2-3 sightings that go unreported. Some people don’t want the ridicule.

{ https://www.coasttocoastam.com/ }

{ https://markozen.com/ }

While other astronomers are scanning deep space for signs of the existence of the mythically theoretical Planet Nine, a group of researchers in Colorado has been looking down instead of up and found evidence in a meteorite of what may have been a small planet in the early days of our solar system. Is it still around? Can it help find Planet Nine? If it’s designated a planet, will Pluto be upset?

“Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites record the earliest stages of Solar System geological activities and provide insight into their parent bodies’ histories.”

According to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are like a diary, history book or crystal ball into the celestial bodies they once were. Chondrites are stony, non-metallic chunks that have never been changed by heat, cold or other outside forces, so they are identical to the larger rock they came from. Only a small percentage of them (4.6%) are carbonaceous – containing high percentages (3% to 22%) of water, silicates, oxides, sulfides, and the minerals olivine and serpentine. The uniqueness of the combinations tells researcher like Dr. Vicky Hamilton, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Staff Scientist and first author of the study, the identity of the parent and much about its own characteristics.

Some carbonaceous chondrites. From left to right: Allende, Tagish Lake and Murchison.

While most of the asteroids that are remnants of the formation of the solar system are in orbit between Jupiter and Mars, a few break away and collide with Earth. Such an event happened in 2008 when a 9-ton, 13-foot diameter asteroid named Almahata Sitta (AhS) exploded into about 600 meteorites that crashed into Sudan – exactly where scientists had predicted, which allowed them to recover 23 pounds of pieces and fragments. Hamilton and her team were given a 50-milligram (.0017 ounce) shard to analyze. Believe it or not, according to the press release, that was enough.

“Spectral analysis identified a range of hydrated minerals, in particular amphibole, which points to intermediate temperatures and pressures and a prolonged period of aqueous alteration on a parent asteroid at least 400, and up to 1,100, miles in diameter.”

Amphibole, a silicate mineral that forms needlelike crystals, has only been found in one other meteorite – the Allende which exploded over Chihuahua in 1969 and is the largest carbonaceous chondrite ever located. Over 2 tons of material was recovered and it has become the most studied meteorite of all time. Almahata Sitta is not Allende, and its estimated maximum diameter shows it wasn’t Pluto either (Pluto’s diameter is 1,476.8 miles). However, it would have been twice as big as Ceres (587.8 miles), the largest object in the asteroid belt, so it was definitely a dwarf planet. Are they sure it no longer exists? Could it be out of sight in a Planet Nine-type orbit?

Pluto

“Hamilton explains that the body that the meteorite came from will no longer exist, at least not in large form, but the evidence the meteorite provides could change our understanding of the materials that asteroids contributed towards the formation of the Earth and other planets.”

Oh well. On the positive side, the samples from asteroids Ryugu and Bennu brought back by Japan’s Hayabusa2 and in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex will be compared to those that have crashed to Earth, giving the researchers more insight on what their parents looked like and how much, if any, change Almahata Sitta and Allende went through as they passed thought the Earth’s atmosphere.

It all adds up to a growing picture of the early days of our solar system coming from mere shards of what were once dwarf planets … and maybe larger ones. While we shouldn’t give up on Planet 9, Planet 8 ½ is real and here.

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{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Threshold for dangerous climate warming will likely be crossed between 2027–2042

by McGill University

The threshold for dangerous global warming will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042—a much narrower window than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate of between now and 2052. In a study published in Climate Dynamics, researchers from McGill University introduce a new and more precise way to project the Earth's temperature. Based on historical data, it considerably reduces uncertainties compared to previous approaches.

Scientists have been making projections of future global warming using climate models for decades. These models play an important role in understanding the Earth's climate and how it will likely change. But how accurate are they?

Dealing with uncertainty

Climate models are mathematical simulations of different factors that interact to affect Earth's climate, such as the atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface and the sun. While they are based on the best understanding of the Earth's systems available, when it comes to forecasting the future, uncertainties remain.

"Climate skeptics have argued that global warming projections are unreliable because they depend on faulty supercomputer models. While these criticisms are unwarranted, they underscore the need for independent and different approaches to predicting future warming," says co-author Bruno Tremblay, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at McGill University.

Until now, wide ranges in overall temperature projections have made it difficult to pinpoint outcomes in different mitigation scenarios. For instance, if atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are doubled, the General Circulation Models (GCMs) used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predict a very likely global average temperature increase between 1.9 and 4.5C—a vast range covering moderate climate changes on the lower end, and catastrophic ones on the other.

A new approach

"Our new approach to projecting the Earth's temperature is based on historical climate data, rather than the theoretical relationships that are imperfectly captured by the GCMs. Our approach allows climate sensitivity and its uncertainty to be estimated from direct observations with few assumptions," says co-author Raphael Hebert, a former graduate researcher at McGill University, now working at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut in Potsdam, Germany.

In a study for Climate Dynamics, the researchers introduced the new Scaling Climate Response Function (SCRF) model to project the Earth's temperature to 2100. Grounded on historical data, it reduces prediction uncertainties by about half, compared to the approach currently used by the IPCC. In analyzing the results, the researchers found that the threshold for dangerous warming (+1.5C) will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042. This is a much narrower window than GCMs estimates of between now and 2052. On average, the researchers also found that expected warming was a little lower, by about 10 to 15 percent. They also found, however, that the "very likely warming ranges" of the SCRF were within those of the GCMs, giving the latter support.

"Now that governments have finally decided to act on climate change, we must avoid situations where leaders can claim that even the weakest policies can avert dangerous consequences," says co-author Shaun Lovejoy, a professor in the Physics Department at McGill University. "With our new climate model and its next generation improvements, there's less wiggle room."

• New approach to global-warming projections could make regional estimates more precise

• Raphaël Hébert et al, An observation-based scaling model for climate sensitivity estimates and global projections to 2100, Climate Dynamics (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s00382-020-05521-x

{ https://phys.org/ }

Artificial Intelligence Classifies Supernova Explosions with Unprecedented Accuracy

Artificial intelligence is classifying real supernova explosions without the traditional use of spectra, thanks to a team of astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. The complete data sets and resulting classifications are publicly available for open use.

By training a machine learning model to categorize supernovae based on their visible characteristics, the astronomers were able to classify real data from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey for 2,315 supernovae with an accuracy rate of 82-percent without the use of spectra.

Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, is a supernova remnant located 10,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, and is the remnant of a once massive star that died in a violent explosion roughly 340 years ago. This image layers infrared, visible, and X-ray data to reveal filamentary structures of dust and gas. Cas A is amongst the 10-percent of supernovae that scientists are able to study closely. CfA’s new machine learning project will help to classify thousands, and eventually millions, of potentially interesting supernovae that may otherwise never be studied.

Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO

The astronomers developed a software program that classifies different types of supernovae based on their light curves, or how their brightness changes over time. “We have approximately 2,500 supernovae with light curves from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey, and of those, 500 supernovae with spectra that can be used for classification,” said Griffin Hosseinzadeh, a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA and lead author on the first of two papers published in The Astrophysical Journal. “We trained the classifier using those 500 supernovae to classify the remaining supernovae where we were not able to observe the spectrum.”

Edo Berger, an astronomer at the CfA explained that by asking the artificial intelligence to answer specific questions, the results become increasingly more accurate. “The machine learning looks for a correlation with the original 500 spectroscopic labels. We ask it to compare the supernovae in different categories: color, rate of evolution, or brightness. By feeding it real existing knowledge, it leads to the highest accuracy, between 80- and 90-percent.”

Although this is not the first machine learning project for supernovae classification, it is the first time that astronomers have had access to a real data set large enough to train an artificial intelligence-based supernovae classifier, making it possible to create machine learning algorithms without the use of simulations.

“If you make a simulated light curve, it means you are making an assumption about what supernovae will look like, and your classifier will then learn those assumptions as well,” said Hosseinzadeh. “Nature will always throw some additional complications in that you did not account for, meaning that your classifier will not do as well on real data as it did on simulated data. Because we used real data to train our classifiers, it means our measured accuracy is probably more representative of how our classifiers will perform on other surveys.” As the classifier categorizes the supernovae, said Berger, “We will be able to study them both in retrospect and in real-time to pick out the most interesting events for detailed follow up. We will use the algorithm to help us pick out the needles and also to look at the haystack.”

The project has implications not only for archival data, but also for data that will be collected by future telescopes. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to go online in 2023, and will lead to the discovery of millions of new supernovae each year. This presents both opportunities and challenges for astrophysicists, where limited telescope time leads to limited spectral classifications.

“When the Rubin Observatory goes online it will increase our discovery rate of supernovae by 100-fold, but our spectroscopic resources will not increase,” said Ashley Villar, a Simons Junior Fellow at Columbia University and lead author on the second of the two papers, adding that while roughly 10,000 supernovae are currently discovered each year, scientists only take spectra of about 10-percent of those objects. “If this holds true, it means that only 0.1-percent of supernovae discovered by the Rubin Observatory each year will get a spectroscopic label. The remaining 99.9-percent of data will be unusable without methods like ours.”

Unlike past efforts, where data sets and classifications have been available to only a limited number of astronomers, the data sets from the new machine learning algorithm will be made publicly available. The astronomers have created easy-to-use, accessible software, and also released all of the data from Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey along with the new classifications for use in other projects. Hosseinzadeh said, “It was really important to us that these projects be useful for the entire supernova community, not just for our group. There are so many projects that can be done with these data that we could never do them all ourselves.” Berger added, “These projects are open data for open science.”

• This project was funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI).

Contacts and sources: 

• Amy Oliver
  Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Publication: 

•  SuperRAENN: A semi-supervised supernova photometric classification pipeline trained on Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey supernovae, A. Villar et al, The Astrophysical Journal, 2020 December 17

[doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc6fd, preprint: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04921.pdf]

• Photometric Classification of 2315 Pan-STARRS1 Supernovae with Superphot by G. Hosseinzadeh et al, The Astrophysical Journal, 2020 December 17,
  [doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc42b, preprint: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04912.pdf]

{ https://beforeitsnews.com }

Pole Shift Antarctica Cycle and the Sahara Winter Storm and the Procession

Pole Shift Antarctica Cycle and the Sahara Winter Storm and the Procession 

As we shift signs from Pisces to Aquarius in the procession of the equinox, a quickening of energies is expected which would explain the 30,000 earthquakes in Antarctica a 20X increase. Record snows are blanketing the N. Hemisphere leaving forecasters shocked at the depths and speed of accumulations.

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{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

Over the years NASA's Curiosity Rover has photographed many unexplainable artifacts including skulls on the planet Mars. One of those skulls has been discovered in image MSL 2620 MR uploaded by Neville Thompson on his Gigapan page. 

Although it is our tendency to see certain shapes and patterns in random objects, called pareidolia; I think that this object could be a real skull that apparently lies in a kind of coffin appeared to resemble the remains of an alien creature, which may be evidence of past intelligent life on Mars. 

Besides the images of the alleged alien skull there is much more for you to discover in Thompson's Gigapan Mars image.

Link: 

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/219140

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

UFO following a plane over George Town, Kentucky 21-Dec-2020

This daytime UFO video was filmed in the sky above George Town in Kentucky on 21st December 2020.

Witness report: 

Looked up to see a plane with vapour trail and under it a white object hover directly underneath it. It was going at exactly the same speed as the plane, maintained the same distance apart from the plane and the same direction for as long as I could see it. There was no noise but the plane was very high

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

NASA's Juno spacecraft sheds new light on 25-year Jupiter 'hot spot' mystery

A generation after a NASA spacecraft's probe found an unexpectedly hot and dense atmosphere at Jupiter, a newer agency mission may have some answers to the puzzle.

NASA's Juno spacecraft discovered that these "hot spots" on the gas giant planet — which the Galileo spacecraft discovered in 1995 — are wider and deeper than previous models and observations suggest, according to results revealed Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall conference, held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Juno, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, makes periodic close-up swoops by Jupiter called "perijoves" to learn more about the planet's atmosphere, in a bid to better figure out the formation history of big gas giant worlds. Juno is now on its 29th pass of the planet, dipping in and out of the intense radiation environment to send data back to Earth. 

• Related: Fly over Jupiter in this stunning video from NASA's Juno spacecraft

Insights about Jupiter help us understand not only the giant gas planets in our solar system, but also large exoplanets beyond the solar system — of which we know of thousands.

"Giant planets have deep atmospheres without a solid or liquid base like Earth. To better understand what is happening deep into one of these worlds, you need to look below the cloud layer," Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, said in a NASA statement. 

The mystery results came from NASA's Galileo mission, after it hurled an atmospheric probe into Jupiter's atmosphere on Dec. 7, 1995. The probe spent about an hour transmitting data before it was crushed. (Galileo itself persisted until 2003, when scientists deliberately hurled the spacecraft into Jupiter to avoid possible contamination of potentially habitable icy moons.) 

Galileo's probe reported a dry and windy environment within Jupiter's atmosphere. At first, scientists thought the probe hit an unexpected "desert" within a more generally moist northern equatorial region. More recent results from Juno, however, show that the entire equatorial belt is dry.

"The implication is that the hot spots may not be isolated 'deserts,' but rather, windows into a vast region in Jupiter's atmosphere that may be hotter and drier than other areas," NASA said in the same statement. "Juno's high-resolution data show that these Jovian hot spots are associated with breaks in the planet's cloud deck, providing a glimpse into Jupiter's deep atmosphere. "

• Related: Scientists get their best-ever look at Jupiter's atmosphere and storms

The new findings also may explain recent studies of "shallow lightning" Juno observed on Jupiter, which are high-altitude electrical discharges that happen when ammonia mixes with water.

"High up in the atmosphere, where shallow lightning is seen, water and ammonia are combined and become invisible to Juno's microwave instrument. This is where a special kind of hailstone that we call 'mushballs' are forming," Tristan Guillot, Juno co-investigator at the University of Côte d'Azur in France, said in the same statement. 

"These mushballs get heavy and fall deep into the atmosphere, creating a large region that is depleted of both ammonia and water. Once the mushballs melt and evaporate, the ammonia and water change back to a gaseous state and are visible to Juno again."

It appears there is still much to understand about Jupiter's atmosphere, as Juno also produced puzzles as it followed up on observations of six cyclones at the planet's south pole that it performed last year. One storm disappeared while changing from a pentagon to a hexagon shape, and the other five remain. Scientists are still trying to figure out how the vortices form and why some are more stable while others appear to die quickly, the team said in its update.

The research was released during a virtual media briefing Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union's fall conference. 

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Two strange blobs of X-ray energy are swirling out of the galaxy's center

This false-color map shows the newfound X-ray bubbles (yellow and red) towering over the galactic center.

(Image: © MPE/IKI)

• Related: 15 Unforgettable images of stars

Visible only in X-ray emissions, these newfound bubbles are considerably less energetic (and less hot) than the Fermi blobs but are nearly as gargantuan, measuring about 45,000 light-years from end to end. Like the Fermi bubbles, these orbs of hot gas tower above and below the galactic plane in a distinct hourglass shape, pinned to the galactic center at the point where the two blobs meet.

Given their similar shape and common midpoint, it's likely that the Fermi and eROSITA bubbles share a physical connection, and probably emerged from the same eruption of galactic fireworks millions of years ago, the authors wrote in their study. What caused the bubbles to blow in the first place is still a mystery, but astronomers suspect it involves an explosive outburst of energy from our galaxy's central black hole, Sagittarius A*.

That explanation fits for the newfound X-ray bubbles, the study authors wrote, considering the amount of energy required to inflate them. The team calculated that an energy release equivalent to that of 100,000 supernovas (powerful stellar explosions) was needed to create these structures — a figure on a par with X-ray energy releases observed in other galaxies with active black holes at their centers. Even if this hypothetical explosion is millions of years old, its traces would still be visible.

"The scars left by such outbursts take a very long time to heal," study co-author Andrea Merloni, a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, said in a statement.

Merloni and his colleagues discovered the X-ray bubbles using the eROSITA X-ray telescope, which rides around the cosmos aboard the Russian-German Spektr-RG satellite. The telescope scans the entire sky every six months, constantly updating our view of the X-ray universe.

• Originally published on Live Science.

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{ https://www.space.com/ }

FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: “UFOS COULD BE MANNED BY LIFE FORMS BEYOND THE PHYSICAL WORLD”

Every week we are surprised by a new revelation referring to the UFO and extraterrestrial phenomenon . On this occasion, a former CIA director has reported that UFOs would be manned by “other forms of life.”

In a new interview, former CIA Director John Brennan , who served under former US President Barack Obama for four years, grappled with Pentagon UFO videos that appeared publicly in an investigative report from The New York Times in 2017.

Brennan said during the interview conducted by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University :

“I have seen some of those videos of the Navy pilots, and I must tell you that they are quite amazing when you look at them.”

The 2017 NYT report shed light on a secret Pentagon operation created to investigate the mysteries surrounding the sightings of “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Several videos, recently declassified by the Pentagon, showed what appear to be unidentified objects flying in unusual patterns. A video, originally captured in 2004 by Navy pilots, showed a “tick tock” shaped object rapidly ascending as pilots approached it about 100 miles off the Pacific coast.

Revelations

Brennan said:

“You try to make sure you have as much data as possible in terms of images and also different types of sensor collection, maybe technical, that you have at the time. You really have to approach it with an open mind, but get as much data as possible and get as much applied experience as possible. “

When asked about his views on theories surrounding extraterrestrial life, Brennan avoided being too literal.

Brennan said:

“Life is defined in many different ways. I think it is a bit presumptuous and arrogant of us to believe that there is no other form of life anywhere in the universe. “

When asked what he thinks about whether unknown objects are manned by aliens, Brennan suggested the notion that they could be very different life forms than what we know, even beyond the physical world.

Brennan added:

“But I think that some of the phenomena that we will see remain unexplained and could, in fact, be the result of something that we do not yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some could say constitutes a different way of life.

In response to Brennan’s response, the interviewer asked, “As an agnostic, don’t you think it’s supernatural?”

To which Brennan replied: Well, the supernatural is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s not something I would rule out. That is why I am an agnostic instead of an atheist. I just want to leave my mind open about what something could be. Who knows what these things could be?

Brennan also indicated that all the revelations given to this day are a matter to be approached with an open mind, but always obtaining the greatest amount of data and experiences.

Everything seems to indicate that the disclosures will continue, in a process that could be the prelude to a big announcement in the coming years. The question that arises is: are we ready for an extraterrestrial revelation ?

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

Those interested in proving the existence of alien species are no doubt familiar with Frank Drake’s Equation which estimated the number of possible alien civilizations in the Milky Way in the millions, and with Enrico Fermi’s paradox, asking “But where is everybody?”. Now we have a new calculation which, in a strange way, combines the Drake Equation and Fermi’s Paradox into a new astrobiological posit which agrees with Drake on the possibility of alien civilizations in the Milky Way and answers Fermi’s question with, ‘They’re all dead.’ What do we call this formula – the Cemetery Calculation? The Dead Didactic? The Morbid Musing?

“In the field of Astrobiology, the precise location, prevalence and age of potential extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) have not been explicitly explored. Here, we address these inquiries using an empirical galactic simulation model to analyze the spatial-temporal variations and the prevalence of potential ETI within the Galaxy. This model estimates the occurrence of ETI, providing guidance on where to look for intelligent life in the Search for ETI (SETI) with a set of criteria, including well-established astrophysical properties of the Milky Way.”

In a new study published in the arXiv database, Jonathan H. Jiang, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, two other Caltech physicists and one high school student, explain their quest to update calculations like Drake’s Equation with new data learned through the use of the Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler Space Telescope. That information – new numbers on stars with Earth-like planets and habitable zones, frequency of deadly radiation, etc. – along with further psychological studies on the propensity of the one so-called intelligent species we know of to destroy itself, was fed into a new model of the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy. Live Science reports on the results:

“They found that the probability of life emerging based on known factors peaked about 13,000 light-years from the galactic center and 8 billion years after the galaxy formed. Earth, by comparison, is about 25,000 light-years from the galactic center, and human civilization arose on the planet’s surface about 13.5 billion years after the Milky Way formed (though simple life emerged soon after the planet formed.)”

This means a lot of intelligent civilizations should have formed in the Milky Way before ours. And, for all of the Fermi-wannabes out there:

“Even if the galaxy reached its civilizational peak more than 5 billion years ago, most of the civilizations that were around then have likely self-annihilated.”

You may have noticed that they concluded “most” civilizations. That means a few should still be around, right?

“Even an extraordinarily low chance of a given civilization wiping itself out in any given century — say, via nuclear holocaust or runaway climate change — would mean that the overwhelming majority of peak Milky Way civilizations are already gone.”

For SETI optimists, the study concludes that the glass is microscopically full – not even enough in it to toast with in the event that another lonely intelligent civilization somehow finds us in the vastness of the Milky Way. Is that enough incentive to keep listening anyway?

Do you find yourself turning the cup over to drink the last drop of coffee? There’s your answer.

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{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

My good friend, cryptozoologist, and former zoo-keeper, Richard Freeman, has very generously let me use the following. It’s Rich’s very own words on Bryan Sykes, who sadly died just a few days ago, and who Rich knew well.  With that said, over to Rich, who wrote this before Sykes passed away: “Many books have been written on mystery hominids and hominins over the years including a number of classic titles. Ivan T Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: A Legend Come to Life, Ralph Izzard’s Abominable Snowman Adventure and Janet and Colin Board’s Bigfoot Casebook spring to mind. The Nature of The Beast is something quite different to anything that has come before. Not only is it the best book ever written on the subject, it is the most important. The book is authored by Professor Bryan Sykes one of the world’s leading geneticists. Sykes is Professor of Human Genetics of Oxford University. For a scientist of such standing, to put his head over the parapet in such a contentious subject takes a lot of guts but the end result is worth it.

“Together with Michel Sartori the Director of the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland Professor Sykes instigated The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project. The idea was to bring hard science into the search for man-like monsters. Sykes and Satori invited people to send them supposed hair samples from unknown primates such as the yeti, sasquatch, almasty and orang pendek.

Sykes has researched human origins for over twenty-five years via the study of mitochondrial DNA. This is inherited from the maternal line and is generally the best preserved DNA. Mitochondria are found between the call wall and nucleus of each cell and release energy, ergo they are relatively abundant. Simply put the Professor has perfected a technique that examines a DNA segment called 12S RNA, part of a gene that helps mitochondria assemble the enzymes required for aerobic metabolism. This sequence is known for all known species of mammal. Hence there could be no confusion in any sample sent to the Project, they would be from one of the known species or from something new. A hypothetical new species could have its place on the genetic tree revealed by its closeness to other species. This meant that human contamination could be avoided. Even Neanderthal 12S RNA differs from modern man.

“The book is the result of the analysis of thirty samples sent to the project and the Professor’s own travels and personal researches. Sykes finds himself in the wilds of the American North West listening to what may or may not be an unseen sasquatch banging the walls of tunnel beneath a tree. He ventures to Russia, home of the Snowman Commission, an official government backed project to hunt hominins in the former Soviet Union. Set up in the 1950s it only lasted three years but has recently been re-formed. The Russian scientists he meets are all confirmed believers and oddly seem to think it important that Bryan only published positive results from his work and not negative. At the museum in Lausanne he examines the massive wealth of information, clippings, letters and writing bequeathed by Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, the man widely excepted to have created the discipline of cryptozoology in its modern form. There is a highly interesting chapter on the Minnesota Iceman debacle were Heuvelmans and his friend the Scottish zoologist Ivan T Sanderson seem to have been duped by a clever fake, a faux ape-man in a block of ice. Correspondence between the two does not show the ‘father of cryptozoology’ in the best of lights.

The Professor meets modern explorers and cryptozoologists such as Jon Downes and myself at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, Loren Coleman, Dr Jeff Meldrum and the mountaineer Reinhold Messner. The hair samples were collected from all across the world and sent in to the Project. Each and every one turned out to be from known species. Bears, horses, humans and goats were among the creatures found to be the former owners of the hairs.

Richard Freeman (picture taken by Nick Redfern)

“The book is completely honest and open in its treatment of the subject. The Professor is clear in pointing out that just because these samples turned out to be from known species this does not mean that anomalous primates do not exist. Sykes criticizes some cryptozoologists for not being rigorous enough and going through the right channels in the analysis of samples. He equally lambasts some scientists for rejecting the notion of large unknown creatures out of hand. Despite the negative results of the hair analysis the Professors personal view is more positive.

“Funnily enough, even though there were no anomalous primates in among the hairs I tested, I think my view has altered more to ‘something out there’ than the reverse. The change of heart comes from speaking to several people, some not even mentioned in The Nature of the Beast, who have nothing to gain but who have seen things in good light while in the company of other witnesses, that are hard to explain otherwise. To automatically reject these accounts is just as blinkered as accepting that every broken branch has been snapped or twisted by a sasquatch.

“In the books stunning postscript, the Professor’s optimism may just have been proven well founded. This section of the book astounded me so much I had to re-read it in order to make sure I had not been mistaken. The Professor may now be on the edge of a jaw dropping discovery. Whilst in Russia he was able to secure a tooth from a remarkable skull once owned by the Darwin Museum in Moscow but subsequently sold to a private collector. The skull was from a man named Khwit. Khwit who died in the early 1950s was said to be one of several hybrid children born from an almasty mother and a human farther. The almasty are said to be large, powerfully built, hair covered wild people reported from the mountains of Russia and the former USSR. They are more man-like than the yeti but clearly not modern humans.

“In the 1850s a female almasty was captured in a forested region of what is now Abkhazia in the Caucasus. Tall, muscular with an ape-like face and covered in reddish black hair she was named Zana. Zana was taken to the farm of a local nobleman in the village of T’khina. She finally became tame and could do menial tasks around the farm with her immense strength. She never learned speech but made inarticulate noises. Zana became the mother of a number of hybrid children via a village man Edgi Genaba. The first two children died after their mother tried to wash them in a cold river. Subsequent children were taken from her and raised by villagers. The two boys, Dzhanda and Khwit Genaba (born 1878 and 1884), and the two girls, Kodzhanar and Gamasa Genaba (born 1880 and 1882), were assimilated into normal society, married, and had families of their own. Zana herself died in 1890. Russian researchers located the grave of Khwit and recovered his skull.

“Extracting mitochondrial DNA from the tooth Professor Sykes found that it was 100% sub-Saharan African. This was confusing as Zana was clearly no kind of modern human. Her behaviour and appearance seemed to be far more primitive than a Neanderthal. Further work showed the DNA was from an exceptionally ancient lineage from Western Africa and furthermore it may have been pre Homo sapien. Sykes thinks that this lineage may have left Africa over 150,000 years ago, before modern man. If he is correct than Zana may have been an unknown species of pre-human hominin, a species still lurking in the Caucasus and other areas today. I was in recent e-mail contact with Professor Sykes. Like all good scientists he is proceeding with caution. He and another geneticist are still working on the sample. He has likened Zana’s DNA to old fragments of old photographs that have filtered down through time. I await the results with baited breath. The Nature of the Beast could easily have been a dry tome but it is written in a highly entertaining and accessible manner yet without losing its scientific credibility, a very impressive feat. It is a must read for any cryptozoologist or fortean.” There’s no doubt about that at all; a superb book from a man who will be greatly missed.

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{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Craniums and Controversies of the Chachapoya Cloud Warriors

Over a thousand years ago, in the mists of the cloud forests of northern  Peru, near the source of the mighty Amazon River, the Cloud Warriors reigned supreme. Long before the emergence of the  Inca State , these mysterious, shamanic warlords ruled a vast swath of the Andes before being defeated by the Inca, abandoning their great citadel, and vanishing into history. In recent decades, additional archaeological evidence has come to light from two primary sources, the fortress city known as Kuelap, and the cliff face necropolis at the Lagoon of the Condors. Because these cultures left no written records (that we’re currently aware of), the only sources of information relating to them were native, oral traditions, and documentary accounts by early European explorers, which has lead to centuries of speculation and controversy. 

Kuelap and the Lagoon of the Condors

Rising up nearly ten thousand feet (3,048 m.) above the Utcubamba Valley, surrounded by clouds, orchids, and epiphytes, the walled settlement of Kuelap dominates the landscape. Sometimes called the  Machu Picchu  of the North, Kuelap is an underrated wonder of the ancient world. The perimeter walls of the settlement are sixty feet (thirty meters) high, protecting over four-hundred circular dwelling structures which originally had thatched conical roofs, which is absolutely anomalous in  pre-Columbian architecture. There are many other features unique to Andean civilization, like the twenty-foot (7 m.) tall defensive towers from which stone spheres were used as projectiles from slings.

In 1997, about 500 miles (805 km) to the north of Kuelap, over two hundred mummies were discovered high in the cliffs around this remote lake. The mummies were wrapped in seated positions and sealed within individualized, anthropomorphic sarcophagi overlooking the lake, all of which is highly abnormal amongst Andean cultures. Many of the mummies had been looted, and some had strange cranial features such as elongated skulls or holes from trepanning (a premortem cavity drilled into the skull). Kuelap also had human skulls embedded within the walls, which also isplayed stone sculptures of decapitated victims.

• Cloud Warriors: The Mysterious Power of the Lost Chachapoya Culture
• Kuelap, Peru - Ancient Fortress of the Cloud Warriors
• Peruvian Necropolis Destroyed by Looters and Tourists is Preserved by Salvage Archaeology

The two hundred mummies discovered at the lake were astonishingly well preserved considering how humid the region is. Scientists later discovered that the caves and crags that the Cloud People modified in mausoleums are very cold and dry microclimates, perfectly suited for long term preservation. Scores of human remains, artifacts, and biological remnants were discovered at Kuelap, including hallucinogenic plants, sacrificial animal bones, and stone weapons. 

Evidence of violence and fire were discovered at Kuelap, random age and gender skeletons were discovered in scattered, open locations, suggesting they were not interred there, but rather, that they died suddenly in that spot. The two-hundred and thirty mummies are now quietly kept at the Museo Leymebamba, but the remains and artifacts from Kuelap are not being displayed, publicly studied, and their exact location is unknown.

Archaeological remains, including a reconstructed circular dwelling, at Kuelap in Peru, a walled settlement built by the Chachapoya culture.

( LindaPhotography / Adobe Stock)

Controversies Regarding the Origins of the Chachapoya Cloud Warriors 

The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarcheology of Human Conflict  quotes the European chronicler Pedro Cieza de Leon’s 1553 description of the Cloud People: 

“Among the Chachapoya  Huayna Capac  (an Incan ruler) met great resistance, so much that twice he had to make hasty retreat to the fortresses he had built for defense. But with reinforcements brought to him, he marched on the Chachapoyas once more and inflicted such a defeat on them that they sued for peace and laid down their arms. The  Inca granted them favorable terms and ordered many of them to take up their residence in  Cuzco, where their descendants still live; he took many of their women because they are handsome and comely and very white; he set up garrisons of mitimaes as soldiers, to guard the frontier .” 

This description, combined with several others, the anomalous and Old World nature of their architecture and funerary practices, have lead to many theories that the Chachapoya originated in Europe or Eurasia.

Hail to Independent Researcher #1: Dr. Hans Giffhorn

In 1998, German professor Dr. Hans Giffhorn journeyed to the remote cloud forests of northern Peru in search of a rare hummingbird, but left bewildered by what he had seen: the ruins of Kuelap. In his essay “Chachapoya: Was America Discovered in Ancient Times,” Bell explains how Giffhorn reasoned the most irrefutable hypothesis for the  Chachapoya having migrated from the Old World. 

Giffhorn identified six complex and typical cultural traditions which appeared out of nowhere, which are inadequately explained by archaeologists and which are essential to testing theories regarding the origins of Chachapoya culture. They manifest in a) Kuelap construction methods, b) trophy heads and head sculptures, c) funerary (fetal positioning and high up in inaccessible cliffs), d) unique trepanation techniques, and e) the fabrication and utilization of stone projectile slings.

After sixteen years of research, Giffhorn found strong evidence linking the sudden, aboriginal emergence of Chachapoya Culture to Old World Cultures that matched the previously mentioned criteria. Specifically, he reasoned that these practices mirrored Galacian, Celtiberian, and Balearic traditions. Even the casual observer can make the obvious connection between the Celtic Castros Ruins of the Spanish Islands to these ruins in Northern Peru; furthermore, the principal weapon of both cultures was the  sling and stone sphere projectile. 

According to mainstream archaeologists, the sling first emerged in South America at this time and in this region, and the pattern runs much deeper, circular stone dwellings, towers, trepanation,  elongated skulls , these aspects can be traced across islands of the Mediterranean and far into prehistory. But possibly the most intriguing link is the unique practice of wearing these slings tied around the head, which is practiced even today by the Majorcans (modern descendants of Celtiberians), and was found to be practiced by the  Cloud Warriors  who were mummified with their slings tied around their heads. 

The Lagoon of the Condors, also known as the Lagoon of the Mummies, is famous because of the cliff face mausoleums containing ancient mummies.

( JOSEROGER / Adobe Stock)

Skulls Crushed by Sling Balls in Human History

Returning to the trusty but dusty  Bioarcheological Handbook of Human Conflict , a long pattern of skulls crushed by and the use of the  stone projectiles  is cultural phenomenon that can help us trace ancient migratory patterns. “Cilingiroglu (2005) argues that sling missiles, either of clay or stone, are found repeatedly throughout Southwest Asia, Anatolia, and Southeast Europe during the PPN (pre-pottery Neolithic), suggesting that slings were known to the Neolithic peoples around the Mediterranean.” 

When putting these cultural puzzle pieces together in a macro, ancient perspective, it becomes rather obvious that there was a fractured migration and assimilation of people radiating outwards from the Black/Caspian Sea/Caucus Mountain region. This culture’s footprints can be traced by the trail left behind of elongated skulls, stone slings, trepanned craniums, towers, megalithic structures, sacrificial and mummification funerary practices, but it is  DNA that is the smoking gun key to unlocking exactly who these people were, unfortunately, academic and scientific authorities are desperately evading these analyses because to bring them to light would be catastrophic to the human history narrative they have been peddling for the past two centuries. 

Celts and Gauls: Similarities to the Chachapoya Cloud Warriors

Who were these Mediterranean island dwellers with such similar culture? Ancient Greek historians like Strabo and Diodorus Siculus in his  Bibliotheca Historica  (volume eighteen, book six, chapter five), have some interesting reports about the Balearic Island inhabitants. They tell that the inhabitants would live naked or clad only in sheepskins until they were colonized by the Phoenicians, who admired their legendary skill with the sling and employed them as mercenaries. 

They also tell of how they used to live in artificial caves and hollow rocks, they were insatiably lusty, and had very peculiar marriage and funerary customs compared to those of the Hellenistic observer. The etymology of the Celts and Gauls is suspected by scholars to have Proto-Celtic tribal roots. They were known as  galno which in Old Irish means power, ferocity, or strength, although linguist Patrizia De Bernardo Stempel believes this term to be coined by the Greeks and translates as the tall ones. 

A Paracas skull with its red hair.

( Brien Foerster )

Hail to Independent Researcher #2: Brien Foerster

Is there any other evidence to corroborate Giffhorn’s theory? Independent researcher  Brien Foerster  (who deserves a medal for striving to genetically analyze skeletons of the  Paracas Culture ), has uncovered genetic evidence that links the ancient inhabitants of Southern Peru (who had  elongated skulls , auburn hair, practiced trepanation, and were wiped out) to Eurasia. In his book  Beyond the Black Sea: The Mysterious Paracas of Peru , Forester has successfully identified traces of DNA haplogroups and blood types that should not exist according to the mainstream human history narrative. 

If the conventional narrative were accurate, the genes of ancient South Americans should be relatively monolithic and so should their blood types (meaning haplogroups A-D, mostly B, and blood type O). However, Forester has discovered the strong presence of haplogroups H, U, and R along with several other discoveries that challenge the narrative and strongly suggest a migration from another part of the world.

Forester also points out that when Francisco Pizzaro asked who these pale skinned, red haired people were, the  Incareplied that they were the last descendants of  Viracocha (a fair skinned, bearded Incan deity/demi-god). “The Viracochas, they said, were a race of divine white men with beards. They were so like the Spanish that the Europeans were called Viracochas the moment they came to the Inca Empire. The Inca supposedly thought that they were the  Viracochas who had come sailing back.” A similar instance allegedly occurred between the Aztecs, Hernan Cortes, and their belief that hey was Quetzalcoatl (another or possibly the same fair skinned, bearded Mesoamerican deity) returning from across the sea. 

Intriguing Discoveries: Father Crespi’s Collection and Manuscript No. 512

Not too far north of the Chachapoya stronghold, in an Ecuadorian government bank vault, are curious artifacts that were the vast collection of Salesian monk known as  Father Crespi . In short, Father Carlos Crespi Coci was an Italian monk/missionary who accumulated great favor with local Ecuadorian tribes due to his endless warmth and generosity, and to repay him for his kindness, the natives began presenting him with strange relics allegedly from a great hoard hidden away in a remote cave. Father Crespi correctly identified some of the iconography to be of Mesopotamian origin, but upon his death, the Ecuadorian government swooped in and acquired his collection only to squirrel it away in bank vault where it remains to this day gathering dust and not being studied.  

Legendary explorer Percy Fawcett, who vanished in 1925 searching for lost cities in the Amazon, discovered an intriguing document in the Rio de Janeiro library archives in 1920. The document included the 1743 report of a Portuguese expedition who had came upon a massive stone city near where the Amazon Jungle meets the Andean Mountains (the Chachapoya region). The stone included inscriptions that were explicitly described and decades later were observed to resemble Celtic Ogham, an extinct Irish language. The expedition also reported being followed by “white Indians” and when Fawcett himself explored the area, he also documented the sparse presence of fair-skinned, red or blonde haired tribal people. 

The Chachapoya mummies should be archaeological superstars. Does their DNA link these ancient inhabitants of Southern Peru to a migration from another part of the world?

(pmoroni /  CC BY-SA 2.0 )

Curious and Contradictory Remarks of the Authorities

Dr. Sonia Guillen is the leading authority on  Peruvian mummies and the director of the Museo Leymebamba which houses the collection of  Chachapoya mummies . In 2017, in an interview with an Egyptian mummy expert, Guillen was asked about genetic testing of the mummies, to which she expressed that it was “ongoing” and that it was difficult to obtain “scientifically sound” genetic material from the mummies. 

This is a valid point. The public commonly believes that it’s a simple matter of sending of material and awaiting results (it’s not). But shortly after this remark, Guillen states that scientifically sound material has been harvested from “most” of the mummies. She then concludes with an extremely odd statement “then we have the problem of what do we compare them to?” 

These mummies should be archaeological superstars. At least a couple dozen of them should be touring the planet to the amazement of the public and delight of scientists worldwide. Instead, no genetic results have ever been published. In relation to Guillen’s final statement about comparisons, the only possibility for comparison is of course the compendium of all human genetic data:  GenBank. It almost seems like Guillen is accidentally or deliberately revealing that there’s something genetically anomalous about these mummies which defies comparison.  

• Top image: The sarcophagi of Carajia, the emblematic image of the lost Chachapoya culture.
• Source:  newfotografer / Adobe Stock

By Mark Andrew Carpenter

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/ }

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse …

“The fungi infect two Danish fly species (Coenosia tigrina and Coenosia testacea). As they do, they create a large hole in the abdomen of their infected hosts. The flies buzz about for days as fungal spores are released into the air from this hole and drift upon new victims.”

Does it sound like these fungi are auditioning to play aliens in a new sci-fi movie? In the press release for a new study published in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, Jørgen Eilenberg, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen and study co-author, gives the gory details about Strongwellsea tigrinae and Strongwellsea acerosa, both found in the Capital Region of Denmark near Copenhagen and Frederiksberg. the zombification begins when the fungi enter the flies and then begin to eat their way out, creating holes in the fly bodies to eject spores. The flies look normal – in fact, they can still mate and spread more spores to the unsuspecting partner. They exist in the zombie state for a few days, slowly being eaten away, until they finally fall to the ground, roll over, spasm and die for good. Even then, the bodies still spew spores.

“We suspect therefore that these fungi may produce amphetamine-like substances which keep a fly’s energy level high up until the end. At the same time, we have a theory that the fungi also produce substances which keep microorganisms away from the fly’s fungal wound.”

In other words, as Jørgen Eilenberg explains, the fungi make the flies buzz while buzzed, and that’s the part these researchers think could be tried on humans. At the same time, they protect the fly’s wounds from infection by other microorganisms. This combination could be a benefit to surgeons as a means to keep patients alive and infection-free in the OR.

“It is fascinating how the life cycles of these fungi are so well adapted to the lives of the flies they target.”

Before you start to think nice thoughts about the fungi, Eilenberg notes that they’ve adapted to hibernate in the winter when the flies are inactive and germinate in the spring when they start moving around again. Don’t feel too sorry for the flies either – they’re both predatory species in the house and stable fly family.

It would take more than a swat of the tail to stop a zombie horse fly. Good movie promo? Let’s hope these adaptable zombifying fungi don’t get the idea first.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

NASA Announces its Artemis Astronauts: 18 People Training to Fly to the Moon

UFO Presses Down Into Cloud Ceiling Over South Yorkshire UK, Dec 9, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 9, 2020
Location of sighting: South Yorkshire, UK

Someone on twitter caught this amazing photo of a UFO pressed down into the clouds. The UFO presses down from above and slowly pushes the clouds around it which allows us to see its true shape, but since it cloaked we cannot actually see the craft itself. This is one way we have of telling its shape, size and location. Aliens try to outsmart humans...its like you going to a zoo run by monkeys...would you really  respect the inferior species? Because not everyone would, most would not. So aliens too are arrogant and full of themselves. So much so, they think you a mere human could never detect their ships in the sky watching us. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

 

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFOs Over Parking Lot Of Berwyn, Illinois, USA Dec 15, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 15, 2020
Location of sighting: Berwyn, Illinois, USA

 

This video is a great catch from Illinois this week. However the glare from the parking lot lights are a bit irritating. You do have to separate the glares from the UFOs. So be careful when watching. It looks like a whole UFO fleet is passing overhead. Absolutely silent and they are not glowing, but instead we see them because the lights from the ground are reflecting off them. Very fascination sighting. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

UFO Seen Over Yuma, Arizona, USA On Dec 16, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 16, 2020
Location of sighting: Yuma, Arizona, USA

 

I love this video, because he didn't just record through his car window, but instead pulled over to the side of the road so he could record the UFO more clearly. This is appropriate behavior when witnessing a UFO. This UFO is a white disk and probably came from Area 51 which is 300 miles north of Yuma. The white disk is just hovering in place, not going anywhere, but its sitting in a clear blue sky with no clouds anywhere. Absolute amazing and cool catch! 100% proof that UFOs are not only seen in the hot desert locations, but are so relaxed about it...they don't care if they are seen and are in no hurry to leave. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

On December 18, 2020 when reviewing an image that a photographer took of the project of the new public market of Chitré in Panama, he observed something strange in the photo. 

He took two photos with a few seconds of difference, in one a UFO appears in the image. 

Although he took the images inside his car the photographer is convinced that the object was not a reflection of something inside or outside the car nor a reflection of the sun on his cell phone. Mufon. 

Assuming it was not a reflection, the photographer may have photographed a TR-3B or a classified antigravity aerospace craft similar to a TR-3B?

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

UFO Sighting Video Makes UFO Followers Very Excited

In the last few days, UFO followers have become very excited about a video that shows what they believed to be proof that aliens have come to Earth. YouTube channel The Hidden Underbelly 2.0 says in the video that the UFO following an airplane doesn’t surprise them because it happens many times.

They explain that whenever these chemtrails are about, we always see these white orbs, which seem to be moving along the airplane like in this video or sometimes hovering around airplanes.

The Hidden Underbelly believes it’s some terraforming going on while the government is trying to spray chemicals at us in the form of chemtrails or what is commonly known as contrails.

Conspiracy theorists suggest that chemtrails left by airplanes are chemicals deliberately sprayed into the atmosphere by the government as part of military tests dispensing chemicals that make us sick to increase the profits of drug companies.

Chemtrails are also being used for mind control purposes, according to the chemtrail conspiracy theory. Some conspiracists even go as far as to suggest chemtrails could cause biblical flooding that possibly wipe out humanity. Advocates include Chuck Norris and Alex Jones.

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

Black holes may not exist, but fuzzballs might, wild theory suggests

By Paul Sutter

(Image: © Shutterstock)

Black holes are, by far, the most mysterious objects in the universe. They are objects in the cosmos where all of our knowledge of physics completely breaks down. 

And yet, despite their apparent impossibility, they exist. But what if these gravitational monsters aren't black holes at all, but rather the cosmic equivalent of fuzzy, vibrating balls of string? 

New research suggests that may be the case, and that with upcoming observations we may actually be able to see them.

• Related: The biggest black hole findings

The problem of black holes

Black holes appear in Einstein's theory of general relativity, and by all rights they simply shouldn't exist. In that theory, if a clump of matter crunches down into a tiny enough volume, then gravity can become overwhelmingly strong. This insane gravitational compression can out-compete any of the other four fundamental forces of nature — like the strong nuclear force that holds that clump of matter together. Once a certain critical threshold is reached, the clump of matter just squeezes and squeezes, compressing down into an infinitely tiny point.

That infinitely tiny point is known as the singularity, and it's encircled by a surface known as the event horizon — the place where the inward pull of gravity exceeds the speed of light.

Of course, there's no such thing as an infinitely tiny point, so this picture seems wrong. But in the mid-20th century astronomers began to find objects that looked like black holes, acted like black holes and probably smelled like black holes too. Despite their impossibility, there they were, floating around the universe.

And that's not the only problem. In 1976, physicist Stephen Hawking realized that black holes aren't completely black. Due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, black holes slowly evaporate. This led to a paradox: All the information that falls into a black hole gets locked inside. But Hawking's radiation doesn't carry away that information (at least, as far as we understand). So when the black hole eventually evaporates, what happens to all that information?

• Related: Stephen Hawking's most far-out ideas about black holes

A stringy solution

Over the decades, theoretical physicists have been hard at work to find something — anything — to explain black holes. Something that explains the information paradox and something to replace the singularity with math that works. 

Among those theorists are the ones working on string theory, which is a model of the universe that replaces all the particles and forces that you love with subatomic, vibrating strings. In string theory, these strings are the fundamental constituents of matter in the universe, but we can't see them as strings because they're so small. Oh, and in order for the math of string theory to work, there must be extra dimensions — all tiny any curled up on themselves to subatomic scales so that we don't see those, either.

String theory claims to be a theory of everything, capable of explaining every kind of particle, every kind of force, and basically everything in the universe (and, for completeness, the whole entire universe itself).

So string theory should be able to explain the unexplainable: it should be able to replace black holes with something less frightening.

And, indeed, string theorists have proposed a less-scary replacement for black holes. They're called fuzzballs.

Unraveling the yarn

In string theory, black holes are neither black nor holes. Instead, the best metaphor to explain what a fuzzball is to look at another compact-and-weird object in the universe: neutron stars.

Neutron stars are what happens when an object doesn't quite have enough gravity to compress into what we call a black hole. Inside a neutron star, matter is compressed into its highest density state possible. Neutrons are one of the fundamental constituents of atoms, but they usually play along with other particles such as protons and electrons. But in a neutron star, that kind of atomic camaraderie breaks down and dissolves, leaving behind just neutrons crammed together as tightly as possible.

With fuzzballs, the fundamental strings stop working together and simply crowd together, becoming a large, well, ball of strings. A fuzzball.

Fuzzballs aren't fully fleshed out, even in theory, because as cool as string theory sounds, nobody has ever been able to come up with a complete mathematical solution for it — and so fuzzballs aren't just fuzzy in physical reality, but also fuzzy in mathematical possibility.

Still, we might be able to find fuzzballs with upcoming surveys, as described in a review article published Oct. 27 in the preprint journal arXiv. We are just now beginning to move past proving the existence of black holes and toward probing the details of how they behave, and our best way to do it is through gravitational waves.

• The biggest unsolved mysteries in physics
• 8 ways you can see Einstein's theory of relativity in real life
• The 11 most beautiful mathematical equations

When black holes collide and merge, they release a tsunami of gravitational waves, which wash across the cosmos, eventually reaching our detectors on Earth. For all the dozens of black hole mergers that we've witnessed so far, the gravitational wave signature is exactly what general relativity predicts black holes to do.

But future instruments, like the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (a proposed space-based gravitational wave detector), might have the sensitivity to tell the difference between normal black holes and stringy fuzzballs. I say "might" because different fuzzball models predict different variations from standard black hole behavior.

If we are able to find evidence for fuzzballs, it wouldn't just answer the question of what black holes really are; it would reveal some of the deepest underpinnings of nature.

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

Did a UFO visit the Rogue River in 1949?

UFO's and the Rogue River Incident

China's Chang'e 5 capsule lands on Earth with the 1st new moon samples in 44 years

We probably aren’t the first civilization in the Milky Way. It’s just that the others are dead

A new study suggests that it is likely that other civilizations have existed before us in the Milky Way -- before they annihilated themselves.

 by Tibi Puiu

Are there other intelligent lifeforms in the universe besides humans capable of founding a civilization? That’s the million-dollar question that people of all walks of life have, to their best of their ability, attempt to answer. There are many theories that attempt to explain the utter lack of, well, alien signals. For instance, one new study concludes that intelligent life may have appeared several times in the Milky Way, however, the vast majority of these civilizations have wiped themselves out already.

Ever since people first realized we are all living on a giant rock orbiting one of many stars, a heartbreaking thought must have crept the mind: we’re not that special after all. But since there are countless stars in the Milky Way, and countless galaxies in the universe, there must be other civilizations out there. This thought comes as a consolation, so we might not be the only ones drifting through the frightening darkness of outer space.

But if it’s true that we’re not that special after all, where is everybody else? Enrico Fermi, the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor, thought about this long and hard, and his correspondence with fellow scientists on the subject has remained known in history as the ‘Fermi Paradox’ — the notion that there is a virtually limitless number of stars, but nevertheless you don’t see any life floating around besides us. Where is everybody?

The question is a valid one when considering:

• There’s nothing special about our sun – it’s young, medium-sized and similar to billions of other stars in our galaxy.

• It’s believed there are between 100 and 400 billion planets in the Milky Way. Considering intelligent life appeared on one, it’s reasonable to consider there should be at least some other kind of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy.

• Millions of years of technological progress mean that an intelligent species should have the capability to travel to distant stars and even other galaxies. Just look at how our world has changed in the past 100 years alone.

• According to mathematicians Duncan Forgan and Arwen Nicholson from Edinburgh University, self-replicating spacecraft traveling at one-tenth of the speed of light — admittedly a quick speed — could traverse the entire Milky Way in a mere 10 million years. This means that civilization could potentially colonize the whole galaxy in a mere couple of millions of years. Except it didn’t happen.

Then there’s the Drake equation, first proposed in 1961 by American astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake, which describes the variables involved in fostering intelligent life. This equation estimates the number “N” of civilizations in the Milky Way based on variables such as the rate of star formation, the number of planets in solar systems that may support life, or the necessary technological prowess to signal a civilization’s existence.

Drake’s equation was made famous by the late Carl Sagan, who featured it during an episode of his timeless series Cosmos. But since Sagan first talked about Drake’s equation, much has changed. Thanks to observations by the Kepler telescope, we now have a much firmer grasp of how many Earth-like worlds may be out there.

In a new study, researchers affiliated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech, as well as a high school student, have updated Drake’s equation with all the new things scientists have learned in the past decades, including the prevalence of sun-like stars harboring Earth-like planets or the frequency of supernovas that are unfriendly to life.

When they modeled the evolution of the Milky Way, the researchers found that life was most likely to emerge around 13,000 light-years from the galactic centers, where there is the greatest density of sun-like stars. The optimal time frame for the development of alien civilizations was also estimated at 8 billion years after the formation of the galaxy. For comparison, Earth is about 25,000 light-years from the galactic core and complex intelligent life evolved around 13.5 billion years after the Milky Way formed.

Earth is actually located outside the Milky Way’s hotspot of words likely to foster civilizations. Credit: Cai et al./arXiv.

In other words, this study suggests that there are other regions of the Milky way where life is more likely to appear than in our corner of the galaxy. What’s more, other civilizations might have had a five billion-year headstart. The problem is they may have had a headstart for their self-annihilation.

According to the researchers, most civilizations that have appeared before us have likely self-annihilated. Other civilizations that are still active in the galaxy are likely young, due to the propensity of intelligent life to eradicate itself. Over a long-enough timeframe, the probability of self-annihilation borders on certainty.

“As we cannot assume a low probability of annihilation, it is possible that intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy is still too young to be observed by us. Therefore, our findings can imply that intelligent life may be common in the Galaxy but is still young, supporting the optimistic aspect for the practice of SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence),” the authors wrote in their study that appeared in the pre-print server arXiv.

“Our results also suggest that our location on Earth is not within the region where most intelligent life is settled, and SETI practices need to be closer to the inner Galaxy, preferably at the annulus 4 kpc (kiloparsec) from the Galactic Center.”

The search for alien life is nowhere settled, though. The study’s biggest limitation is its sample size of confirmed civilizations: just one. Humans are biased to think that other civilizations might behave just like us. As such, these inherent biases may cloud our judgment, believing that other civilizations might also nuke themselves out of existence.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }