Interactive US map shows nearly 10,000 drone, UFO encounter incident reports

Ishveena Singh

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) receives dozens of uncrewed aircraft sighting reports every month. With incident reports coming in from pilots, citizens, and law enforcement officials alike, the FAA’s database of drone and unidentified aircraft sightings runs into thousands of Mandatory Occurrence Reports (MORs) today. So, now, an enterprising online publication is featuring these reports in an interactive map of the United States – thus making it easier for people to zoom into their neighborhood for details or explore hotspots of sightings more intimately.

To create the interactive map, The War Zone’s Adam Kehoe and Marc Cecotti combed through approximately 10,400 incident reports published online via a number of Excel spreadsheets. The data spans from November 2014 to December 2020.

Now, the FAA doesn’t offer too many details about how the reports are collected, or how they are ultimately selected for the public dataset. What is clear though is that a MOR must be generated whenever a pilot reports “unauthorized UAS activity or authorized UAS activity that is conducted in an unsafe or hazardous manner.”

Exploring the dataset

One of the biggest challenges before the reporters was to assign approximate locations using the city and state information provided in the report because MORs do not contain precise location information. Also, as Kehoe explains:

There are a large number of spelling errors and other issues in the original data, so not all locations have been matched to date. Currently, our mapping system has geocoded 9566 reports. We are working to resolve the location information on the remaining reports.

Nonetheless, you can use the interactive map to search for incidents either by keywords or by filtering a minimum altitude. Also, since drone incidents around strategic infrastructure are of special interest, the authors have marked the locations of active nuclear reactors in the United States on the map to help users better find incidents.

The degree of severity of the incidents in the dataset expectedly varies dramatically, the reporters note, adding:

Many of the reports describe common but nonetheless concerning safety hazards posed by errant recreational drones flown at low altitudes. Buried within the reports are also much more concerning incidents involving aircraft operating near sensitive facilities, such as nuclear installations and military bases, or at highly peculiar, and illegal, altitudes. The reports also vary considerably in terms of the type of aircraft described. Beyond the expected menagerie of commercial and recreational drones, a number of unusual vehicles are mentioned, including some balloon-drone hybrids, and a small smattering of references to what pilots described as UFOs.

Interactive map of drone safety incidents in the US

You can explore the map by either clicking here or on the picture below:

Uncrewed aircraft sighting incidents map

• Also read: Florida man shoots down Sheriff’s Office drone investigating possible burglary

Meanwhile, a summary of some of the most bizarre and interesting cases can be found here. The reporters plan to make updates and improvements to the system over time.

How can I report a drone safety incident to the FAA?

Glad you asked. The FAA now uses NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System to encourage confidential, voluntary, and non-punitive reporting of drone safety incidents. The database not just allows you to submit reports, but you can also view other submitted incidents, hopefully, to learn from the mistakes of others. Colleague Scott Simmie has covered this reporting system in detail here and here.

• Read more: FAA updates safety guidelines for recreational drone flyers

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading DroneDJ — experts who break news about DJI and the wider drone ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow DroneDJ on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

---

Subscribe to DroneDJ on YouTube for exclusive videos

{ https://dronedj.com/ }

Pentagon Has 23-Minute Video Showing Many Eerie Objects Moving in Strange Patterns, Insider Claims

by Max Gorbachev

{ https://sputniknews.com/ }

The UFO files: exploring the findings of the Pentagon’s report

The report, released last month, examines mysterious phenomena in the skies. What does it tell us?

{ https://www.theweek.co.uk/news-opinion }

Stealth Fighters, Not UFOs—What Really Goes On in Area 51

Area 51's location - Groom Lake - was perfect as an experimental aircraft testing site: it was far from prying eyes and "smooth as a billiard table."

Here's What You Need To Remember: The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.

Area 51, the highly secretive U.S. Air Force test facility in the deserts of southern Nevada, is enjoying a resurgence of popular interest thanks to an internet meme—as if being featured in X-File episodes, arcade shoot’em up games and films weren’t enough.

Despite the countless dubious conspiracy theories attributed to the site also known as “Dreamland” or “Groom Lake,” there’s no doubt that for over six decades the base hosted all sorts of “black project” aircraft whose existence was not formally disclosed by the Pentagon. 

Though the CIA only obliquely admitted to the site’s existence in 2013, we actually know a fair bit about how Area 51 came to be—and even how it first became a subject of juicy UFO stories.

A Private Testing Ground for Eisenhower’s Top-Secret Spy Plane

In the early 1950s, the United States was super keen on monitoring the Soviet Union’s rapidly developing nuclear ballistic missile program. As the first spy satellites remained a few years away from being launched, the only way to reliably spy on these sights was to fly above them and snap pictures with giant cameras. But by the early 1950s, the Soviet Union’s new air defense system and high-flying jet interceptors made spy flights excessively risky.

To overcome these defenses, Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson proposed a glide-liker spy plane that would simply fly too high to be intercepted at over 70,000 feet. This still involved illegally violating Soviet airspace—but as long as the spy planes couldn’t be shot down, Moscow couldn’t prove the spy flights were happening at all.

In November 1954, Eisenhower approved development of this U-2 spy plane in a program known as “Project Aquatone” to be operated by the CIA. While the plane would be built at Lockheed’s famous Skunkworks facility, an aircraft designed for illegal spy overflights needed to be tested somewhere more discrete.

Johnson asked Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier to find a suitably clandestine airfield. As described in the book Dark Eagles by Curtis Peebles, test pilot Tony LeVier departed from the Skunkworks facility in Palmdale, California flying a Beechcraft Bonanza light plane, ostensibly on a “hunting trip.” In reality, they proceeded to survey 50 decertified sites in Arizona, California and Nevada over two weeks—but none seemed sufficiently remote.

However, Air Force liaison Col. Osmond Ritland recalled an abandoned X-shaped landing strip that had served as a gunnery field during World War II.

CIA officer Richard Bissell, LeVier and Johnson flew down to inspect the strip, which lay next to a dry Nevada salt flat called Groom Lake. Bissell described the site as “…a perfect natural landing field… as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it.”

Johnson indicated “We’ll put it right there. That’s the hangar.”

A fake company called CLJ, created to obscure Lockheed’s involvement, recruited contractors to build up the facilities in the sweltering summer of 1955 at a cost of $800,000.

The desolate site, deceptively nicknamed “Paradise Ranch,” started out with a nearly mile-long runway, two hangars, a control tower, fuel and water storage tanks, an access road, and trailers for onsite personnel. LeVier personally road about the lakebed to clear it of debris and spent shell casings to make it safe for landing.

Finally, on July 24, 1955, the prototype U-2, dubbed Article 341, was disassembled and stowed into a hulking C-124 Globemaster transport plane, which transported it to the “Ranch”—landing with deflated tires so as not to break through the thin runway.

LeVier took the gawky aircraft around on taxi tests, hitting 80 miles per hour on the runway—only for the aircraft’s lengthy wings to lift his plane twenty feet into the air during his second run. The U-2 flew over a quarter-mile, before LeVier was able to get the lift-prone aircraft back down on the lakebed on his second attempt—though the hard landing caused one of the jet’s tires to burst and catch fire.

The U-2 went on to see several successful flight tests and in a matter of months was deployed on spy flights over the Soviet Union with CIA pilots.

Civilian airline pilots and air traffic controllers began spotting the silvery U-2s flying at supposedly impossible heights. Given that the Air Force couldn’t explain the sightings by telling the truth, it devised weather-related incidents to explain them away. These often unconvincing explanations only fed the fervor of conspiracy theorists.

The Blackbirds: A-12, D-21 and SR-71

The Groom Lake facility at this time acquired the designation “Area 51” as it expanded and developed specialized facilities for the striking supersonic jets: larger additional hangars, a longer 10,000 foot runway, safer backup landing areas, over 130 housing units for personnel, and enlarged fuel stores for the exotic high-temperature JP-7 fuel used in the A-12.

The first A-12s arrived in 1962 along with elite military pilots temporarily discharged and placed in the employ of the CIA, a protocol known as “sheep-dipping.” Though the White House never dispatched A-12s on overflights of the Soviet Union, they did fly thirty-two missions over Vietnam and North Korea in Project Blackshield before being retired in favor of the Air Force’s SR-71s, which had side-looking cameras that didn’t require overflight of hostile airspace.

Lockheed also devised a D-21 spy drone that resembled a miniature, single-engined Blackbird, carried on top of a Blackbird-derived carrier aircraft called the M-21.   

Tragically, one of the piggybacked D-21 drones collided with its M-21 carrier during a test launch. Though both of the M-21’s crew ejected, one drowned before he could be rescued, and Johnson canceled M-21 program.

However, the CIA did later try to make use of the D-21s by launching them from B-52 bombers to snap footage of Chinese nuclear test sites. However, a series of mishaps meant the Air Force was unable to recover footage from any of the five drone missions it dispatched.

Birthplace of the Stealth Jet

While the A-12 and Blackbird had limited stealth characteristics, by the 1970s, the Air Force was interested in taking another crack at a low-radar-observable jet, this time with combat application.

In 1977, the Skunk Works used new computer modeling technology to design and build two pale aircraft with diamond-like faceted surfaces coated with radar-absorbent iron ball paint. These “Have Blue” aircraft were disassembled and flown to Area 51 in a giant C-5 cargo jet November 16, then rebuilt and test flown.

Lo and behold, the Have Blues did exhibit drastically reduced radar cross-sections—but they were also highly aerodynamically unstable, and both crashed in 1979.

Lockheed evolved Have Blue into the F-117 Nighthawk attack jet, which used computer fly-by-wire systems to correct the aircraft’s inherent instability. A YF-117 prototype too made its first flight at Groom Lake on June 17, 1981. Production F-117s were then stationed at Area 51 before being redeployed to the nearby Tonopah Test Range.

Though the Pentagon admitted to the existence of a stealth jet in 1983, the secrecy surrounding the F-117 was so effective that the public never had any inkling of the Nighthawk’s true appearance, nor even its designation (widely believed to be the “F-19”) until was finally unveiled in 1988.

Meanwhile, Northrop, too, began refining its stealth technology with the Tacit Blue demonstrator, dubbed the “whale” or “alien school bus” for its decidedly unglamorous appearance. This made its first flight at Groom Lake in February 1982—the first of 135 in all before the demonstrator was retired in 1985.

Conceived as stealthy surveillance plane with a discrete Low Probability of Intercept Radar, Tacit Blue instead pioneered the use of computer-engineered curved-surfaces in stealth aircraft which heavily informed Northrop’s forthcoming B-2 stealth bomber.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.

• This article first appeared in 2019 and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

{ https://nationalinterest.org/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 24 - 07 - 2021

Strange Alien Creature Found ( July 23, 2021 )

Strange Alien Creature Found : What is this??? : The video shows a strange creature. Is this a Alien or something else?

UFO Sighted Over Roswell, New Mexico ( July 21, 2021 )

Strange UFO was sighted over the skies of Roswell, Chaves County, New Mexico on July 21, 2021

STATEMENT : Roswell, New Mexico

• credit : Unanswered Universe

UFO Sighted Over Unión de Tula, Mexico ( July 22, 2021 )

Massive UFO Sighted Over the skies of Unión de Tula, in the Sierra de Amula region of the state of Jalisco in central-western Mexico on July 22, 2021.

• credit : Oscar Rincon

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

There have been many UFO incidents over the years, involving a wide range of phenomena that cover the spectrum from the explainable to the full-on bizarre. Some of the more intriguing UFO incidents are those that involve reliable witnesses and radar and military confirmation, and these are the cases that really make the imagination go wild. One such case played out in 2017 over Northern California and Oregon, involving an airborne intruder that baffled pilots and radar crews, and which would actually be engaged by F-15 fighter jets.

On October 25, 2017, a very strange, almost surreal series of events would play out in the skies near the California-Oregon border, in the United States. At approximately 4:30 p.m. an object was picked up by radar operators flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet and travelling “very fast.” At the time it was broad daylight and whatever the aircraft was, it was dangerously zipping through an area with heavy air traffic, yet it was not emitting any transponder signals, did not respond to attempts to establish radio contact, was completely silent, and according to all records was not supposed to be there. It would later turn out that the Air Force had also been tracking the object as it sped southward, and eyewitnesses who saw it said it was a “large white object.” The object flew directly into heavy air traffic going the opposite direction, being sighted by numerous airline pilots who made panicked calls to ground control, before abruptly changing course to head northbound and disappear from radar altogether.

Although the thing had vanished from radar, for the next 30 minutes there were panicked calls from various airliners reporting the mysterious, fast-moving object, over a range of hundreds of miles, while both the FAA and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) were trying to figure out what to do. No one seems to have been able to get a good look at the thing, merely describing it as large, white, and very fast, but details such as what sort of aircraft it might be were elusive, and it moved too fast and never stayed in one place long enough for anyone to get a clear visual. However, it was obvious from the harried recordings that would later be released that these pilots did not think it was any normal aircraft, with one exclaiming “That looks crazy!” It would also be described as making maneuvers that were beyond what a normal airliner would have been capable of, making turns of which one witness would say were “Way harder/faster than what a commercial aircraft could handle at that speed/altitude without ripping the wings off.” One Southwest Airlines pilot remark that would be gleaned from audio recordings of the pilot accounts procured through Freedom of Information Act requests made by the site The War Zone, who first broke the story, would say of his own sighting:

If it was like a Lear (private jet) type airframe I probably would not have seen it this clear. This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were… It was a larger aircraft yeah.

Throughout all of this, although visual sightings were pouring in, radar operators could not get a lock on it. The object was also maintaining complete radio silence, ignoring all attempts to hail it, and also did not show up on crews’ digital traffic collision avoidance systems (TCAS). It was all very odd and unsettling, to the point that F-15s from the 142nd Fighter Wing based at Portland International Airport were scrambled to go investigate. From here it gets even stranger, because the fighters would first head south, despite the fact that the mystery object was reported as heading north, for reasons unknown. Also strange is that the F-15s would report not being able to find the object at all. The War Zone would say of the F-15 incident:

The F-15s first appear on radar as they climb out of Portland to the south at time index 33:33 as “Rock” flight—a common callsign used for the alert F-15s stationed at PDX. Alaska 439 asks for an update on the unidentified aircraft and the controller notes they still have nothing on him, saying colloquially that it must be in a kind of “stealth mode or something.” It’s also interesting that the F-15s first went south when it seems as if the object would have been north of PDX by the time they finally launched.

NORAD also said that the incident did result in F-15s from Portland being scrambled to investigate, but by the time they got up and “looked around” the mystery aircraft couldn’t be found. A quick note on the fighter jet aspect of this story—the 142nd Fighter Wing operates F-15Cs upgraded with the most capable air-to-air radar set in the world (AN/APG-63V3) and Sniper advanced targeting pods for long-rang visual identification. Their pilots are some of the best in the world and are highly trained in the homeland air defense mission. Once in the air the F-15s are capable of traversing the entire state of Oregon in just a matter of minutes if need be, so if they were launched promptly it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have been able to intercept the aircraft being pointed out by commercial pilots over Southern Oregon. The fact that they “didn’t find anything” is surprising to say the least. Maybe this was due to the nature of the aircraft being searched for, or the possibility that they launched long after it was first sighted, or that we simply aren’t being told the whole story.

The War Zone confirmed that all of this did indeed happen, with much recorded evidence of the conversations between the airliners, ground control, the FAA, and NORAD, as well as radio exchanges and pilot interviews, although there are parts of the audio that have been redacted, going mute in several places regarding responses to requests for information about the military’s activities, showing that indeed we may not be being told the whole story. Indeed, the FAA and NORAD have stated that they have nothing left to add, merely confirming that the incident happened and refusing to say much else on the matter, while the 142nd Fighter Wing has said nothing on the matter at all, neither confirming or denying anything. Clearly there had to have ben some follow up investigation, as this was an unidentified aircraft that does not show up on radar, acting very strangely in U.S. airspace in an area with heavy commercial air traffic for an extended period of time and able to evade F-15 fighter planes. It is a breach on national security at the very least, so it must have stirred the hornet’s nest among the military, but as to what this follow-up investigation turned up, it is currently unknown. It is all very intriguing, with tons of very reliable witnesses, with The War Zone saying:

Collectively these materials give us incredible insight not only into this incident, but also into how such an event is actually handled in real-time by those who are responsible for the safety of those in the air and those on ground below. What they don’t offer is any sort of an explanation for what happened on that fall evening. But really, the fact that all those involved, from air traffic controllers, to Air Force radar operators, to airline pilots, and even special FAA officials tasked with responding to all types of out of the ordinary incidents that occur in the sky on a daily basis seem just as puzzled with this event as we are makes the story all that much more intriguing.

Considering that there is not much more information to go on, we are forced to speculate on what could have been going on here, with all sorts of theories flying since the report broke. One idea is that the military was testing some sort of top-secret experimental aircraft, perhaps a next generation stealth bomber, but if that is true, then it seems like a strange choice to do it among heavy civilian airline traffic in broad daylight. If this was some sort of classified test, then why do that? Also, why allow it to show up on radar at all? Another idea is that this might have been illegal drug runners trying to move contraband across the Canadian border. This would explain the radio silence, but does not explain how they could perform the maneuvers they did, or how they could just disappear from radar. Drug runners would also be more likely to fly at lower altitudes, and it has been pointed out that it would probably be easier to conduct a drug run over land across the border rather than using an aircraft. Of course there is also the idea that this was aliens, and the case has been popular among UFO nuts. In the end, we just don’t know. All we know is that the incident did happen, something went speeding across the sky to baffle pilots, radar operators, and military officials, but what that might have been is anyone’s guess.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

After a computer glitch caused the Hubble Space Telescope to turn off on June 13^th, NASA engineers were finally able to repair it on July 17^th and the new images that it captured of two very bizarre galaxies are spectacular.

The two galaxies that the Hubble was photographing are part of a program led by Julianne Dalcanton from the University of Washington in Seattle that surveys bizarre galaxies in the universe.

NASA released two photos with the one of the left showing a rare event called ARP-MADORE2115-273 of two interacting galaxies which are located in the southern hemisphere about 297 million light-years away from us. The fact that Hubble was able to capture high-resolution images of it is incredibly valuable as astronomers first thought that it was a “collisional ring” system that was formed by two galaxies merging in a head-on collision. However, Hubble’s recent observation revealed that the interaction between the two galaxies is a lot more complicated with dusty gas and countless stars.

The picture on the right is of a giant spiral galaxy named ARP-MADORE0002-503 that has very bizarre extended spiral arms that stretch out to a radius measuring 163,000 light-years. To put this into better perspective, it extends three times further than our own Milky Way Galaxy. Furthermore, the majority of disk galaxies contain an even number of spiral arms but ARP-MADORE0002-503 has three. This galaxy is located 490 million light-years away from Earth.

Both of the images can be seen here.

In a statement, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “I’m thrilled to see that Hubble has its eye back on the universe, once again capturing the kind of images that have intrigued and inspired us for decades,” adding, “This is a moment to celebrate the success of a team truly dedicated to the mission.” The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in April of 1990 in a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency.

Hubble Space Telescope

Now that the Hubble is back working again, we will hopefully see even more stunning photos as those galaxy pictures were only two of numerous test pictures that it took after being rebooted. “Everyone is incredibly grateful, and we’re excited to get back to science!” Dalcanton said. I know that I’m personally excited to see what more breathtaking photos the space telescope will send back to Earth.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Mural in the pyramids of Nubia depicts a ‘Giant’ carrying two elephants

The pyramids of Nubia are located in the city of Meroë, former capital of the Kingdom of Kush. In these structures there is an old mural where a giant is seen lifting two elephants.

In the royal cemetery of the ancient Kingdom of Kush , there is a group of 50 pyramids made of sandstone and red brick.

Many of these are dilapidated, the fault of time and looters. The decorations on these monuments speak volumes about how global the kingdom was. However, there is one that is especially striking.

The giant of the ancient mural

The different pyramids found in the city of Meroë make it coveted by tourists. Among these are the famous Nubian pyramids .

This deposit was discovered by Europeans in 1821, thanks to the French mineralogist Frédéric Cailliaud. The most interesting of these pyramids is in reliefs and paintings of the burial chambers.

The one that caused the most concern in the experts was the ancient mural that represents a giant of enormous proportions lifting two elephants .

The features of this character are not characteristic of the area, but Caucasian . Many theorists have hinted that this is proof that red and white giants inhabited Earth.

This theory has been around since 79 AD. C., when the Roman historian Josefo Flavio , wrote that the last race of Egyptian giants lived in century XIII a. C. , during the government of Josué.

Flavio wrote that these were huge, their faces evoked fear, as did their thunderous voice, which they compared to the roar of a lion.

This is assumed by the different paintings found in ancient Egypt , where the pyramid builders are depicted as giants.

Experts believe that these people were over 5 meters tall and could lift up to 4 tons of blocks.

Some of those paintings also showed giant kings ruling Egypt. Others show ordinary people, very small in comparison to such characters.

This theory could be confirmed with a discovery in 1988. Gregor Spoerri , a Swiss businessman and passionate about ancient Egyptian history, found a giant finger after meeting with grave robbers.

Mural found in the burial chamber of one of the pyramids.

White giants in other cultures

The appearance of “Caucasian giants”, such as that of the ancient mural of the pyramids of Nibua, is also mentioned in other cultures.

The Paiutes , an ancient North American tribe native to Nevada, have an oral tradition that they related to settlers.

These include a race of giant, white and red-haired individuals known to their ancestors as “Si-Te-Cah”, which inhabited an ancient cave.

The Choctaw Amerindian people also tell legends where their ancestors fought against a race of Caucasian giants that inhabited the territory that is now Tennessee.

Even the first settlers who arrived in South America, said that in the Patagonia region , they saw a town of tall, white and red-haired people.

All these legends, including that of the ancient Nubian pyramid mural, could have a common origin; the Atlantis .

Historians, theorists, and alternative researchers have suggested a hypothesis about the survivors of the cataclysm . These would have fled to different regions of the world, where they settled and created different civilizations, based on the ancient Atlantean knowledge.

The Pyramids of Mero in Bazarwia, Sudan

Is this ancient mural a representation of an Atlantean giant? It’s possible. Historians assure that all these stories are simple mythology, however, it is hardly credible that so many cultures around the world have such similar legends.

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

{  https://www.nasa.gov/ }

Rather than letting the recent revelations about UFOs spell hope and intrigue, the US government is spreading ‘fear porn’

Reuben Langdon is a filmmaker and former stuntman who has spent a decade investigating UFOs 

©  Reuben Langdon

For my ninth birthday, my brother got me a telescope. In rural Northern Wisconsin, on my family’s farm, I would look at the stars across the night sky with no light pollution to block the waves of patterns webbing across the dark. Michael, my older brother, patiently set up my telescope and showed me the constellations and told me their ancient names; we would also wonder about possible other worlds and UFOs. 

The first time I could find the constellations on my own, I was lit up and forever transfixed by stars. My brother explained the history, “This is the Ursa major and Ursa minor, the bears, the protectors.” I looked up at him, strong and tall, Michael, like the bear constellation, was my constant protector until his death took him somewhere beyond the stars.

Recently, international media began reporting more and more stories about Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) sightings, following the release of American government information relating to secret projects on the subject. For a long while, UFOs weren’t taken seriously by mainstream media, they featured them only as clickbait for ‘cranks’ on the internet. But now, as more and more credible people have come forward with their experiences, a shift has occurred in public perception. 

There was a movement for the American government to release under the Freedom of Information Act documentation relating to projects involving UFOs. Former Navy pilots and civilians have since come forward for interviews about what they witnessed in the skies and the way the military chose to conceal sightings of the advanced technology demonstrated by UFOs. Yet, for all the supposed transparency there was a message of fear creeping into the narrative. 

As the American empire always seeks to justify its bloated weapons spending to the tune of trillions of dollars, the sudden release of these CIA documents seems at best suspect and at worst diabolical with a view to blaming the presence of this unrecognized technology on Russia or China. Unfortunately, instead of seeing the opportunity to expand awareness for humanity the framing of the new information became one with a thread of distrust and war. 

In the words of filmmaker and actor Reuben Langdon, the corporate media gives us “fear porn.” 

He added: “The people doing the work (researching UFOs) seem to have the best of intentions. It comes down to the media and forcing their hand. We have a media that is so focused on the negative news with very few positives. A lot of the researchers in the field have trouble to even bring forth the information. Like, Chris Mellon who said, first we have to have the conversation and unfortunately many will not listen unless it has that negative spin.”

Reuben began his career as a stuntman and has featured in Hollywood blockbusters including Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as numerous video games, and became interested in UFOs following an experience he had while filming the James Cameron sci-fi epic. For over a decade he has been researching extraterrestrial phenomena amongst other things and entered a successful documentary making career. 

Is the CIA controlling the messaging around this using the media to justify some other agenda? As we hear more stories about the phenomenon, the American government defaults their messaging to fear.

Several years ago, Reuben was involved in a citizen congressional hearing including former members of Congress discussing the history of UFOs and the coverup by the American government. Several high-ranking military intelligence figures shared information at this mock hearing to show what a real investigative Congressional hearing could be like if it were ever allowed. The hope was that it would raise enough awareness to force a public inquiry. 

One of the highlights was watching the late Senator Mike Gravel demand that information that was hidden from the public by the US intelligence about UFOs and the history be released for everyone. As I discussed this project with Reuben Langdon, he described what it was like to coordinate the emulated hearing, quite unique in its approach.

He added: “I disagree with projecting fear with the UFO stories. It is an approach to get it in the media but not my approach to this phenomena. The national (American) media seems to be about selling fear and scaring as many people as possible because… fear sells.…” 

One of the biggest challenges regarding the UFO coverage is getting it to be taken in a serious way at all. Reuben described the challenge of bringing forth information. 

“I think that the Government may see this as an opportunity to put forth their agenda which is one of control of power…taking a bird’s eye, how it is approached by media… be prepared for false flags in the media, like an alien invasion.… We can choose to support people with a fear based narrative or support people with a non-fear based narrative. There is no reason to be in fear, if you are aware of it.” 

Reuben had also made a documentary exploring alternative energy sources and the inventors who created them. The documentary was ultimately rejected by top executives for distribution. Undaunted, Reuben outlined how with his own equipment he embarked on the journey of two seasons of his show, Interviews with Extra Dimensionals, which ended up being a top show on the network GAIA. Reuben’s tenacity is driven by a curiosity based on his own personal experiences. 

He said:“To some it may seem like the end of the world when in actuality it is humanity waking up to our true potential. The realization we are sovereign, independent beings that can create our own reality and not rely on others to do it for us.” 

Reuben’s new project is a film about the adventurer F.A. Mitchell Hedges (the man Indiana Jones character was based on) and the crystal skull. It was discovered in the 1920’s at a Mayan temple, by his daughter. Reuben explores the mystique surrounding the object and its larger meaning to those who believe it has spiritual powers.

He added: “There seems to be an interaction between sacred spots and different places on the Earth, that indigenous hold in sacredness. The feature is setting up Hedges’ research and work. The film will also uncover the legend about the possibilities that there are 13 skulls around the Earth and if all found the legend says, humanity will enter a new era.” 

The Crystal Skull is thought by some to be similar to an ancient computer that holds some sort of sacred knowledge like the Akashic records and other information available from ancient civilizations. People show up from all over the world to simply sit in the presence of the Crystal Skull to experience its power and report mystical attunement with multi-dimensional realms. 

I imagine my brother Michael’s delight at watching the unfolding of all this new information. Near the end of my brother’s life, Michael gestured vaguely one night at the sky, took my hand in his and looked at me intently. Too weak to form all the words, I looked into his eyes and he turned his head upward to the night sky. I nodded and understood. “Look for me in the stars, I am with you.” I imagined him saying, “I will always be here to protect you. I love you.” Tears rolled down his face slowly as I kissed his hand. 

Michael instilled in me the gift of wonder for discovering more about the Universe. I remain open and curious. Even now, I look up at night as I still search the same familiar constellations, I look for my protector, my brother, his smile now hidden somewhere behind the stars. 

I am encircled with the thought of all the possibilities. 

As Reuben Langdon suggests, “Instead of fear, why not be curious?”

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

{ https://www.rt.com/ }

Classified ‘brief’: Secret UFO report only 17 pages long

{ https://nypost.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 23 - 07 - 2021

UFOs Sighted During A Plane Takeoff Over Korea ( July 20, 2021 )

This amazing video comes not only to reaffirm that ′′ they are already among us ", but that they act at such speed and reality very much beyond our senses and perceptions...
Rus Choi made this extraordinary UFO activity record during a plane takeoff in Korea on July 20, 2021
Here I present the original and following with approximation and speed reduction so that you can understand the reality of a world we are not seeing.
They're already here!!!

UFO Sighted Over Chile ( June 19, 2021 )

This impressive UFO was sighted over the skies of Chilie on the evening of June 19, 2021 : More evident every day

• credit : Hitalo Roland Mottin

RELATED VIDEOS

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

UFO filmed over Muan, South Korea YESTERDAY

This UFO report is coming from Muan, a city located in south-west part of South Korea. On 22nd July 2021 at around 8 pm multiple cameras filmed this strange activity in the skies.

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

Some people consider Russell Brand to be a comedy god. Others consider the man who claims to have bedded 1,000 women to be a sexual god. Russell Brand would probably disagree (reluctantly) with both because he considers aliens to be gods and he’s not an alien. Or is he? After all, his popular 2013 comedy show was called “Messiah Complex.” Does Brand know something we don’t … or is this just another celebrity ploy for publicity?

“He says it ain’t advanced human tech, there is s**t in there that defies the laws of physics. The [US] government have known about it for ages and they are slowly making these releases.”

In an interview with The Mirror, Brand reveals that his enlightenment on the subject of aliens came after becoming friends with Jeremy Corbell – the now famous documentary filmmaker who has been slowly releasing U.S. government videos of military encounters with UFOs – encounters that the government admits it cannot explain. In the U.S., when in doubt about a subject of this magnitude, we turn to comedians and talk show hosts, so it’s no surprise that the British are doing the same with Brand, who is not only a comedy performer and media star but also a controversial and outspoken political activist.

“It is not a distraction from Covid, it is happening because there is no choice because there has been a whistleblower situation where a bunch of data is being released.”

Brand credits Corbell for pressuring the Pentagon to reveal more videos and forcing them to comment on them. At that point, he naturally turns the story back to himself.

“So it seems to me that life is out there somewhere with crazy creatures and new cultures that will come to you shortly.”

“New cultures” implies higher forms of intelligent life and, while he says they’re coming shortly, he believes they’ve “been communicating with us for years.” However, the big shocker is that Brand follows the ancient aliens theory that these communications  influenced earlier humans enough to make them believe they were coming from “gods.” Is that a good thing or a bad thing, Russell?

“If you don’t choose heroes, heroes will be chosen for you, and they will not represent values that empower you, they will represent powers that will enslave you.”

Brand may have given us the answer in “Messiah Complex.” Perhaps early humans chose to make heroes or gods out of the mysterious beings communicating and possibly even inspiring them rather than the human leaders who were out to enslave them.

Far-fetched? Have you watched the news lately?

Russell Brand is certainly not someone many would consider to be a hero, a god or even just a wise sage. Then again, a sizeable portion of Americans admit they’d rather get their news and guidance from late night talk show hosts who are usually comedians. Is it time to start getting our UFO and extraterrestrial guidance from them as well?

We could do worse … and have.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

In recent years there has been increasing coverage of military encounters with UFOs, with the U.S. government surprisingly acknowledging such incidents, and while avoiding saying these things are otherworldly, not denying it either.  Yet while most people have their eyes trained to the skies, a lesser known aspect of this ongoing phenomenon is what seems to be going on underwater. One area of the UFO phenomenon that doesn’t seem to get as much coverage is that of what are called USOs, or Unidentified Submersible Objects, basically underwater UFOs, which are every bit as strange as their sky-going brethren and with which military submarines have had very bizarre encounters.

Some interesting cases of USOs have been reported by personnel within the US Navy, from which there has been footage released showing UFOs entering the water. Chief among the proposed evidence for this is a video taken off the coast of San Diego in July of 2019 by crew aboard the USS Omaha. The video, which was released by UFO researcher and investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, shows a spherical object fly over the vessel before coming down to make a controlled descent into the water, with a crewmember heard to exclaim “Wow, it splashed!” The video caused quite a stir online, but it would become even more interesting when information would come out that at around the same time, US submarines were also picking up mysterious objects underwater that seemed to defy physics. The Navy confirmed that the footage was authentic and unexplained, and the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan has said of this in connection with the USS Omaha footage:

Relevant to this video, an area we will learn more about is the interaction between US Navy submarines – nuclear ballistic submarines and attack submarines – picking up sonar contact of things moving at hundreds of knots under the water. There is an undersea dimension to this, on top of what the pilots are seeing above water. Hundreds of knots under water? I don’t think people can even digest that. That is what I have heard from very good sources and that the US Navy has the data.

Another report concerning submarines came in the wake of the well-known USS Nimitz UFO incident, during which a fleet of US Navy vessels was constantly buzzed by unidentified flying objects. According to former United States Air Force intelligence expert Mike Turber, in one incident a US Navy submarine encountered a mysterious craft hurtling at 550mph through the water in 2008, which looked exactly like the tic-tac-shaped craft sighted by the crew of the USS Nimitz. Turber would say of the incident:

There was a submarine situation – that report will probably come out further down the line. It (the tic-tac object) was travelling at 550mph. As far as I know, it was a Los Angeles-class submarine. It was kind of in passing when someone mentioned it – I thought it was just a torpedo. But, apparently not.

Another incident came to light in 2017, when the former Blink-182 front man, avid UFO researcher, and founder of the UFO research group the To The Stars Academy, Tom DeLonge, released a previously unknown report that is allegedly a first-hand account of astronomer and UFO researcher Marc D’Antonio, who often works with the Navy and was granted a ride aboard a nuclear fast attack submarine in the North Atlantic and had a rather mysterious experience. He would say of this:

As a thank you for doing some work for them Navy asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a submarine so I said yes. Once we got under I was sitting in the sonar station and the sonar operator was sitting right next to me. Submarines are loud – people think they are very quiet and it’s true they are on the outside because the sound doesn’t get out. But inside you hear fans, noise – it’s a constant din on a sub. I was sitting there zoning out a little because I was sea sick and all of a sudden the sonar kid shouts ‘fast mover, fast mover’ and I’m jolted awake – thinking ‘What’s happening? Is it a torpedo?’ The executive officer comes out and the operator shows him the path of the object and the officer says ‘How fast is that going?’ And the kid said ‘several hundred knots’. I start to lean forward to listen in – and the officer said ‘Can you confirm it?’ So he goes to another sonar machine and confirmed it wasn’t a machine anomaly – it was real. I thought ‘Wow that is incredible’. When the sonar guy said ‘What do I do with this?’ the officer said ‘log it and dog it’ – in other words log it and bury it.

According to DeLonge, multiple nuclear attack submarines would track the strange object through the North Atlantic for about a week. Not only this, he claims that there is a government organization devoted to tracking these underwater objects. When a few years later Marc spoke to a senior Naval officer about the incident, he was given the cold shoulder but he was able to confirm that what he calls the “Fast Mover Programme,” a military investigation of USOs, exists. He has said of this:

I asked him ‘Can you tell me about the Fast Mover Programme?’ He looked at me and said ‘Sorry Marc I can’t talk about that programme’. So he basically confirmed to me that the programme exists – he said everything without saying anything. What that told me was that USOs are common – we even have a programme in place to classify and log and determine the speed of them and it goes into a vault.

According to the site The Drive, they interviewed a veteran sonar operator and instructor turned pro gamer called ‘Jive Turkey’ and asked him about any strange experiences he had ever had with USOs, and he had this to say:

I don’t know what they are…  We usually logged it as seismic or biologic. We were instructed that nothing is ever ‘unknown.’ That’s the thing, it’s so quick you can’t measure the speed. In the examples I am thinking of, it is a detection that lasts a few seconds on the towed array. There is no way to measure the speed accurately because there isn’t enough data…

The Drive is rather skeptical of the 2017 DeLonge report, though, citing that the Navy does not give out free rides aboard submarines to civilians and the release of the story was done in an amateurish way. While they come to the conclusion that Navy submarines do indeed have some unusual encounters and hear some strange things down in the deep, the 2017 DeLonge/ D’Antonio incident:

We talked with a number of sources during our investigation. What we learned is that yes, unexplained noises and even tracked contacts do pop-up on submarines’ sonars, some of which seem to move at incredible speeds, but it is rare and the data is often inconclusive as to what was actually detected. But maybe most interesting, and peculiarly so, is that the Navy doesn’t actually have a way to classify these strange sounds as unknown and tag them for further review.  The biggest takeaway here is that mysterious sounds do emanate from the deep and are heard by the most talented sonar operators in the world working the most advanced underwater listening equipment ever created. But the Navy seems to have made it all but impossible to classify these events for further review as sonar operators aren’t allowed to ‘not know’ what something is. As for a quartet of American submarines pinning an impossible to identify craft down in the depths of the Atlantic, we are still waiting to see any evidence of anything like that occurring. It doesn’t do the To The Stars Academy or DeLong any favors teasing such information in such an amateurish way either. This is unfortunate considering the high aims of To The Stars Academy and the impressive brain trust they have amassed.

Americans are not the only ones who have had military submarine encounters with these mysterious USOs. British UFO investigator Philip Mantle has mentioned several such cases involving Soviet submarines in his book Russia’s USO Secrets, which is based on information coming from declassified documents and testimony from Russian military veterans. One such account comes from former nuclear submarine commander Yury Beketov, who says his submarine was doing maneuvers somewhere near the Bermuda Triangle when they had a strange encounter, of which he says:

We repeatedly observed that the instruments detected the movements of material objects at unimaginable speed, around 230 knots (400 km per hour). It’s hard to reach that speed on the surface – only in the air is it possible. The beings that created those material objects significantly exceed us in development.

A particular harrowing report mentioned in the book allegedly happened in 1951, when a Soviet submarine encountered a massive underwater object, which measured 200-250 meters long and was supposedly rising from the depths as it headed towards shore. According to the account, the captain actually ordered depth charges to be dropped on the object, which seemed to have no effect, but which nevertheless caused it to stop its ascent, change course, and head out to deeper water at great speed. What was going on here? Indeed, what is going on in any of these cases? It would seem that these craft, whatever they are, are just as active below the surface as they are above, and it leads us to wonder just what is going on. Are these some sort of misidentification, a top-secret new type of underwater vessel, or what? There is no way to tell, but it seems that whatever they are, they have baffled military officials and serve to show that the USO phenomenon is no joke, and is probably worth looking into further.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 BILLION years is discovered in the imprint of a horseshoe and is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system

• The astonishing charcoal-black meteorite was found earlier this year near Woodmancote in Gloucestershire

• Scientists think it travelled more than 110 million miles from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

• It's likely a fragment of the same meteorite that left another chunk on the driveway of a home in Winchcombe 

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE 

An ancient meteorite dating back 4.6 billion years that landed in England earlier this year is likely a remnant of cosmic debris left over from the birth of the solar system, experts say.

A fragment of the priceless charcoal-black object, no more than two inches wide, was found by chemist Derek Robson on the second day of a ground search back in March, near the village of Woodmancote in Gloucestershire.

The 'incredibly delicate' sample, which resembles loosely held-together concreted dust and particles, was found lying in the imprint of a horseshoe in a field. 

Experts received special permission from Tewkesbury Council to organise the search in March this year during the Covid lockdown after the meteorite was seen shooting through the skies just before 10pm on February 28. 

The fragment found in Woodmancote is thought to be part of the same meteorite that deposited another 300g chunk on the driveway of a family home in nearby Winchcombe, also in Gloucestershire, which has just been assessed and valued at £100,000 and donated to the Natural History Museum in London.

Scientists think the meteorite travelled more than 110 million miles from its 'primordial home' in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter – and that it may answer questions about how life began on Earth.

Image from Loughborough University shows the meteorite found in Woodmancote, Gloucestershire in March by chemist Derek Robson

The ancient rock is a rare example of a carbonaceous chondrite, a type of meteorite that often contains biological material. Fewer than 5 per cent of meteorites that fall to Earth belong to this classification. 

'Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic compounds including amino acids, which are found in all living things,' said Robson, who found the meteorite on the morning of March 28 in muddy fields outside Woodmancote.

Robson is director of astrochemistry at the East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation (EAARO).  

'Being able to identify and confirm the presence of such compounds from a material that existed before the Earth was born would be an important step towards understanding how life began,' he said.  

The priceless charcoal-black fragment was found near the village of Woodmancote in Gloucestershire, England, which is close to Cheltenham

Scientists based at Loughborough University are analysing the small fragment from Woodmancote to determine its structure and composition, and will likely publish their results in an upcoming study. 

They're using techniques including electron microscopy to survey the surface morphology at up the nanometre scale – equal to one billionth of a metre – and have released stunning new images showing its detail in high precision.  

Vibrational spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, which reveal information about chemical structure, crystallinity and molecular interactions, are helping to determine its structure and composition. 

RELATED ARTICLES

• Incredible new photo of a supermassive black hole confirms...
• Dinosaur-killing asteroid generated a giant TSUNAMI nearly...
• Winchcombe meteorite is now official! 'Extremely rare' space..
• The most devastating cosmic impact to hit the Earth since...
• Megacomet that is 1,000 TIMES larger than a normal comet has...
• Small satellite with solar sail could be built to try and...

Secondary electron image of mineral chondrule embedded in the rare carbonaceous chondrite meteorite

(image taken using an electron micrograph)

So far, they have found that the meteorite never underwent the violent cosmic collisions that most ancient space debris experienced as it smashed together to create the planets and moons of our solar system. 

But it possibly contains 'previously unknown chemistry' or a physical structure that's never before seen in other recorded samples. 

'The internal structure is fragile and loosely bound, porous with fissures and cracks,' said Shaun Fowler, a specialist in optical and electron microscopy at the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC).

Pictured is an optical micrograph of the carbonaceous chondrite meteorite, showing embedded mineral chondrules, according to Loughborough University

'It doesn't appear to have undergone thermal metamorphosis, which means it's been sitting out there past Mars, untouched, since before any of the planets were created meaning we have the rare opportunity to examine a piece of our primordial past. 

'The bulk of the meteorite is comprised of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, with other mineral inclusions called chondrules, which, for example, can be minerals such as magnetite or calcite. 

'But the composition is different to anything you would find here on Earth and potentially unlike any other meteorites we've found.' 

Secondary electron image of mineral chondrule in the meteorite revealing spherical mineral inclusions

(electron micrograph image)

Secondary electron image of the meteorite showing delicate layered leaf-like structures at 10,000x magnification.

(electron micrograph image)

Professor Sandie Dann at Loughborough University, who is involved with the analysis and has previously worked with Robson, called the meteorite 'a scientific fairy-tale'. 

'First your friend tracks a meteorite, then finds it and then gifts a bit of this extra-terrestrial material to you to analyse,' she said. 

'At this stage, we have learned a good deal about it, but we've barely scratched the surface. 

'There is huge potential to learn about ourselves and our solar system – it's an amazing project to be part of.' 

Explained: The difference between an asteroid, meteorite and other space rocks

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Resting neatly inside of a horseshoe imprint in Gloucestershire, England, were the remnants of a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite from the birth of our Solar System. In fact, the meteorite was around before the planets even began forming. The remnants of a charcoal-black object (approximately two inches in width) were discovered in a field close to the village of Woodmancote by a chemist named Derek Robson.

It is believed that the meteorite came from over 110 million miles away in its “primordial home” in the main asteroid belt that’s located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. This is a very significant discovery as it is a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrite and belongs to an incredibly rare group of meteorites that have fallen to Earth (less than 5% of meteorites). “Carbonaceous chondrites contain organic compounds including amino acids, which are found in all living things,” explained Robson, adding, “Being able to identify and confirm the presence of such compounds from a material that existed before the Earth was born would be an important step towards understanding how life began.

Asteroid belt

Scientists at Loughborough University are analyzing the meteorite fragments with X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy in order to figure out its composition and structure. Additionally, they are using electron microscopy to analyze the surface morphology and they took some pretty interesting pictures in incredible detail and precision (the photos can be seen here).

Image from Loughborough University shows the meteorite found in Woodmancote, Gloucestershire in March by chemist Derek Robson

What they have discovered so far is that the meteorite wasn’t involved in powerful collisions when the Solar System was first born which is incredible as there were countless collisions that ultimately created the planets and moons. Furthermore, it could have “previously unknown chemistry” (or a physical structure) that is unique compared to previous meteorite samples.

Shaun Fowler, who is a specialist in optical and electron microscopy at the Loughborough Materials Characterisation Centre (LMCC), explained this in further detail, “The internal structure is fragile and loosely bound, porous with fissures and cracks.” “It doesn’t appear to have undergone thermal metamorphosis, which means it’s been sitting out there past Mars, untouched, since before any of the planets were created meaning we have the rare opportunity to examine a piece of our primordial past.”

He went on to explain the composition of the meteorite, “The bulk of the meteorite is comprised of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, with other mineral inclusions called chondrules, which, for example, can be minerals such as magnetite or calcite,” adding, “But the composition is different to anything you would find here on Earth and potentially unlike any other meteorites we’ve found.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

For decades, there have been people in various locations around the world who claim to be able to perceive a strange, low-frequency throbbing noise of undetermined origin.

The debate over the cause of the sound—as well as whether it exists at all—had at one time been an item of frequent debate in the scientific community. One of the earliest instances involving the curious phenomenon had been reported in the English Sunday Mirror in 1977, which began with a single account of a UK resident who claimed to be annoyed almost constantly by such a low humming sound. After the account was published, hundreds of letters in response began to flood the offices of the Mirror, with additional accounts from people who said that they also could hear this maddening humming sound at all hours of the day.

The widespread public response resulted in doctors examining some of the individuals, which did lend to the possibility that some of the sounds people claimed to hear might have internal origins, which might involve afflictions like tinnitus. While tinnitus sufferers often hear an almost whining, high-pitched sound, several of the people that doctors spoke to described hearing something much different: this was described as a low-pitched droning hum, which many believed to have an external source. The doctors agreed, attributing the roughly 40 Hz hum, modulated at 1.6 kHz, to be the result of industrial noise; yet despite this, there was never any actual industrial source determined.

A variety of other possible sources that had been suggested ranged from jet stream noises to sounds emanating from the ocean. Another novel idea involved that small percentages of the population suffered from an unusually acute ability to perceive sounds at around 40 Hz! Soon, similar accounts from other places around the world that included the United States would also begin to surface, with descriptions of the anomalous low-frequency sound being popularly associated with areas like Taos, New Mexico, among other locations.

Welcome sign at Taos New Mexico, location of an unusual hum reported by residents for decades

(Billy Hawthorn / Wikimedia Commons 3.0)

The ongoing complaints about these unusual sounds resulted in an investigation into their possible causes in the 1990s, funded by the UK Department of Energy. “The move is seen as an acknowledgment that some sufferers at least are not imagining the noise which causes them so much misery,” New Scientist reported following the DoE’s announcement that it would fund the research.

Even prior to the DoE-funded studies in the 1990s, a physicist at Chelsea College in London had been investigating the similar phenomenon afflicting UK residents and found data on the phenomenon that dated all the way back to 1973, in which a university study had identified at least 50 individuals who had experienced similar problems with hearing ongoing humming noises.

As early as 1988, the DoE had already commissioned the University of Salford to begin collecting information about the hum that so many residents claimed to be troubled by. With an estimated 500 individuals complaining about the noise on an annual basis, in 1989 the Low-Frequency Noise Sufferers Association was formed, an organization of both the afflicted and those lobbying on their behalf, which began to place additional pressure on the DoE to take action and get to the bottom of whatever had been causing the unusual sounds.

Throughout the 1990s, a range of purported causes was explored, which ranged from the existing theories about industrial noise to vehicular noise emanating from highways, and even underground pipes used to pump gas from high power turbines, which it was suggested might be capable of causing pipe organ-like sounds (interestingly, unidentified sounds reported in a variety of locales over the years have been likened to almost “ethereal” organ music, which appears to arise from someplace underground).

Aerial view of Taos, New Mexico

( Billy Hawthorn / Wikimedia Commons 3.0)

Around the same time that UK studies were underway, similar investigations into the hum reported by residents near Taos, New Mexico were undertaken, which produced very similar results. Among the takeaways had been that around two percent of the population in either location claimed to be “hummers”, the name given to those in the UK who could hear the noise. Equal percentages of male and female sufferers were reported, and the phenomenon appeared to be most prevalent among middle-aged people. The noises appeared to occur at frequencies anywhere from 32 Hz to around 80 Hz, modulated from 0.5 to 2 Hz. In the case of the Taos hum, some residents claimed that they were able to move away from the source of the hum, stating that they could no longer hear it at a distance of more than 30 miles from Taos.

Since the studies that were undertaken in the 1990s, a few additional possible explanations for the strange humming sounds have been offered. One suggests that the movement of deep ocean currents may actually be the source of the noises, which are naturally “amplified” in certain regions, making these otherwise unnoticeable sounds evident at locations like Taos and in the UK.

However, to date, there is no single proposed solution that seems to fully account for the ongoing mystery of “hummers” around the world, or the unusual—and very annoying—audible plight they suffer from.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Astronomers make first clear detection of a moon-forming disc around an exoplanet

by ESO

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 22 - 07 - 2021

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 22 - 07 - 2021

UFOs sighted over Buckinghamshire, England on July 21, 2021 

STATEMENT : Spotted just now over Buckinghamshire.. 4 ufos spotted.. All flying different speeds

• credit : Sam Pearcey

UFO / TR3B Sighted Over New York ( July 20, 2021 )

STATEMENT : Is this the UFO video we all were looking for ???

Oh! This is not a Chinese lantern. In fact this is no lantern at all!
This is not a weather balloon. Nor the Loon. This is not swamp Gas. This is not the ISS. And this is not a passenger aircraft landing at Heathrow. It's not a military flare and it's not a reflection.
Oh ! You can hear the sound of an aircraft ? Wow ! Good for you.
This is an Unidentified Flying Object. Okay that we can use the abbreviation now ?
U.... F....O....!
Okay... So this is an actual UFO captured on video by a New Yorker.
Should this not be on major news headlines around the world ?
Anybody want details ???
What are we waiting for ?
Oh... the new Project Deep Blue hard cover book ? Oh! That's obsolete ? Gosh ! I didn't know!
What's that ??? It's now the Pentagorphological report on the UAPs is it ??? Eh!?? Really ?
WTF!!!
A government agency investigation report on ... What ? UAP ? What's that now ??? No more UFO ? But this is a video of a UFO !!!
Okay... I will calm down!
I promise!!!
But... wasn't the last investigative purpose by a government led million dollar project actually a state planned initiative to debunk genuine sightings and encounters according to the ... Mmmm ... Australian government?
Oh! So what exactly do we do with this video now ?

• credit : P.R.E.T

UFOs Sighted Over Spain ( July 20, 2021 )

Impressive display of UFOs were sighted over the skies of Spain from a field on July 20, 2021, Similar to the UFOs over England on July 8, 2021

• credit : U.S.F

Intraterrestrial Being Sighted In Waterfall in Brazil ( July 19, 2021 )

Strange Creature Sighted In Waterfall in Brazil on July 19, 2021 is this a Alien

STATEMENT : Será um ser intraterreno?

Will it be an Intraterrestrial being?
(ufology) Any of a race of sapient beings who live inside the Earth and operate UFOs. microbiology) Which lives deep underground.

{  https://www.youtube.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - MUFON CASES - 22 - 07- 2021

MUFON CASE : 117004 Holiday, Florida ( July 21, 2021 )

Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : I think we saw an unidentified aircraft.

Long Description of Sighting Report

I think we saw an UFO in the evening sky. It was dusk, so there were no stars visible, the moon was not visible yet. I have photos and videos. I'm not sure what I saw

Date Submitted : 2021-07-21

Date of Event : 2021-05-20 8:53PM

MUFON SUBMITTER FILES :

• 20210520205432.mp4 
• 20210520205136.mp4

{  https://www.youtube.com/ }

Giant Black Triangle On Suns Surface 1/5 The Size Of Earth! July 21, 2021, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: July 21, 2021

Location of sighting: Earths Sun
Source: Helioviewer.org

 

I first reported this black triangle UFO about 2 years ago. It's still there today, but moves from one place to another. Its location about 5 years ago was in the upper left corner of the sun. Then suddenly it disappeared and reappeared in the lower right corner of the sun just 2 years ago. Since then...I have been watching it, asking about it in emails to astronomical organizations worldwide, yet have never once received a response. 

 

This huge object appears to be a large black triangle craft. It stays black which means its has resistance against the heat of the sun. Normally if it was burning material from the sun, it would also be burning, but not this. It remains black 24/7.

 

Look at the Helioviewer earth sample next to it to measure the size of the triangle. Its 1/5 the size of Earth...and yet no astronomers have ever mentioned it. No scientific organization has ever acknowledged its existence. There is clearly someone of power trying to keep this knowledge out of the hands of the public. Perhaps someone so powerful, so rich that they themselves own the ship and left it there for a quick getaway one day. Got anyone in mind? Any billionaires getting your attention impressing you lately? I got a few on my mind...Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and of course...Jeff Bezos. At least one of them is an alien, but maybe more. In time we will find out the truth.

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

 

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

For almost two hundred years, archaeologists have been looking for a plausible explanation for the ancient rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya in Central Turkey. 

Over 3,200 years ago, stonemasons artfully cut more than 90 reliefs of deities, animals, and chimaeras into the limestone bedrock.  

An international team of researchers now presents an interpretation that for the first time suggests a coherent context for all of the figures. 

Accordingly, the stone-carved reliefs in two rock chambers symbolize the cosmos: the underworld, the earth, and the sky, as well as the recurring cycles of the seasons, the phases of the moon, and day and night.

  

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

Richard Dolan’s UFO Chronicles YouTube TV Series Announcement

Richard Dolan, presents the most concise and up to date examination of the UFO subject, in a brand new 32 part mini television series ‘Richard Dolan’s UFO Chronicles Ahead of premiere screening, Richard interviewed Steve Mera, the executive producer of the series.

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

Astronomy Art: Voices Of Apollo 11

Posted by Theresa Wiegert

View larger. | An image of a full moon, made entirely of words. They are the transcripts of the onboard voice transmissions of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.  Image via J-P Metsavainio.

Voices of Apollo 11

As we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the first human footsteps on the moon – which took place on July 20, 1969 – we’d like to bring some new astronomy art to your attention. Finnish astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio collected all the Apollo 11 transmissions and used them to construct an image of a full moon. He did this as a tribute to lunar astronaut Michael Collins, who died this year, on April 28, 2021. Metsavainio described his new image on his blog.

He wrote:

I downloaded NASA’s original full transcript of Apollo 11’s onboard voice conversations. The idea was to turn this text into an image of the moon. After a few weeks of intense work at a feverish pace, my tribute was ready. Now the moon is made up entirely of Apollo 11 voice transcription letters. 

This is also a tribute to the entire Apollo 11 team: Commander Neil A. Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. [Buzz] Aldrin Jr.

Michael Collins died just nine days after tweeting about a previous work by Metsavainio (an incredible Milky Way image that took 12 years to make). Metsavainio recounted:

I was most gratified and deeply moved when Michael Collins – the Apollo 11 and Gemini 10 astronaut, author, explorer and artist – tweeted […] about my work on April 19, 2021. The news of his passing, just nine days later, hit me all the harder. It was a very emotional moment for me. Out of the blue, I got inspired to create this artwork. I absolutely had to do it right away, which I did.

Michael Collins was also an artist. His iconic photos made from moon orbit are true art and part of mankind’s greatest cultural heritage treasure.

View full image. | A close-up of the image of a full moon, made of words spoken by Apollo 11 astronauts while visiting the moon in 1969. Image via J-P Metsavainio.

The loneliest man in history

At the same time Neil Armstrong was making history as the first human to set foot on the moon, Michael Collins was all alone aboard a spacecraft orbiting the moon. He was the astronaut who stayed behind on the command module, Columbia, while his two crew mates were testing out the moon’s surface in person.

And that’s why many affectionately called Michael Collins the loneliest man in history.

When he flew solo behind the moon, he was without radio contact with anyone. Meanwhile, his colleagues, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, were making history with their first steps on the moon.

So, here at EarthSky, we think that this is a fitting image to celebrate the July 20 moon landing. Like most astronomical images, it is not only a beautiful image, but full of information. Apart from the Apollo 11 communications, Metsavainio also pointed out the landing site. If you zoom into the image far enough at the right spot, you can find it marked by two letters in red.

View larger. | Two red letters mark the spot where the Apollo 11 lander touched down on lunar soil. Image via J-P Metsavainio.

The Eagle as it has left the moon and is approaching Columbia. Image via M. Collins/ NASA.

Working in solitude

Metsavainio recounts how he connected to Collins’ lonely and otherworldly experience as he was working:

A similar solitude gripped me while I was creating this tribute image. For being an astronomical photographer and a visual artist often is a very lonely job. Especially this time as I was deeply emotional throughout my creative process for this artwork. Even though I never met him personally, the end of his Earthly mission meant more to me than I was prepared for. I needed to make this photo-based artwork to process the inner storm of my thoughts and feelings.

View larger. | A close-up of the artwork shows how the image is made up entirely of only letters, letters from the transcription of Apollo 11’s Command Module recorder data. Image via J-P Metsavainio.

• Bottom line: Astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio has created an image of the moon, using all the words spoken to Earth by Apollo 11 astronauts, while on the moon. The image serves as a tribute to Michaels Collins, who died in April, 2021, as well as the entire Apollo 11 crew on this the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

Astronomy Art: Voices Of Apollo 11

Posted by Theresa Wiegert

View larger. | An image of a full moon, made entirely of words. They are the transcripts of the onboard voice transmissions of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.  Image via J-P Metsavainio.

Voices of Apollo 11

As we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the first human footsteps on the moon – which took place on July 20, 1969 – we’d like to bring some new astronomy art to your attention. Finnish astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio collected all the Apollo 11 transmissions and used them to construct an image of a full moon. He did this as a tribute to lunar astronaut Michael Collins, who died this year, on April 28, 2021. Metsavainio described his new image on his blog.

He wrote:

I downloaded NASA’s original full transcript of Apollo 11’s onboard voice conversations. The idea was to turn this text into an image of the moon. After a few weeks of intense work at a feverish pace, my tribute was ready. Now the moon is made up entirely of Apollo 11 voice transcription letters. 

This is also a tribute to the entire Apollo 11 team: Commander Neil A. Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. [Buzz] Aldrin Jr.

Michael Collins died just nine days after tweeting about a previous work by Metsavainio (an incredible Milky Way image that took 12 years to make). Metsavainio recounted:

I was most gratified and deeply moved when Michael Collins – the Apollo 11 and Gemini 10 astronaut, author, explorer and artist – tweeted […] about my work on April 19, 2021. The news of his passing, just nine days later, hit me all the harder. It was a very emotional moment for me. Out of the blue, I got inspired to create this artwork. I absolutely had to do it right away, which I did.

Michael Collins was also an artist. His iconic photos made from moon orbit are true art and part of mankind’s greatest cultural heritage treasure.

View full image. | A close-up of the image of a full moon, made of words spoken by Apollo 11 astronauts while visiting the moon in 1969. Image via J-P Metsavainio.

The loneliest man in history

At the same time Neil Armstrong was making history as the first human to set foot on the moon, Michael Collins was all alone aboard a spacecraft orbiting the moon. He was the astronaut who stayed behind on the command module, Columbia, while his two crew mates were testing out the moon’s surface in person.

And that’s why many affectionately called Michael Collins the loneliest man in history.

When he flew solo behind the moon, he was without radio contact with anyone. Meanwhile, his colleagues, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, were making history with their first steps on the moon.

So, here at EarthSky, we think that this is a fitting image to celebrate the July 20 moon landing. Like most astronomical images, it is not only a beautiful image, but full of information. Apart from the Apollo 11 communications, Metsavainio also pointed out the landing site. If you zoom into the image far enough at the right spot, you can find it marked by two letters in red.

View larger. | Two red letters mark the spot where the Apollo 11 lander touched down on lunar soil. Image via J-P Metsavainio.

The Eagle as it has left the moon and is approaching Columbia. Image via M. Collins/ NASA.

Working in solitude

Metsavainio recounts how he connected to Collins’ lonely and otherworldly experience as he was working:

A similar solitude gripped me while I was creating this tribute image. For being an astronomical photographer and a visual artist often is a very lonely job. Especially this time as I was deeply emotional throughout my creative process for this artwork. Even though I never met him personally, the end of his Earthly mission meant more to me than I was prepared for. I needed to make this photo-based artwork to process the inner storm of my thoughts and feelings.

View larger. | A close-up of the artwork shows how the image is made up entirely of only letters, letters from the transcription of Apollo 11’s Command Module recorder data. Image via J-P Metsavainio.

• Bottom line: Astronomy artist J-P Metsavainio has created an image of the moon, using all the words spoken to Earth by Apollo 11 astronauts, while on the moon. The image serves as a tribute to Michaels Collins, who died in April, 2021, as well as the entire Apollo 11 crew on this the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

A century of astronomy revealed Earth’s place in the universe - PART I

A series of revolutions in astronomy have bumped us from the center of things

A century of astronomy revealed Earth’s place in the universe -PART II

A series of revolutions in astronomy have bumped us from the center of things

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

Chinese Company Claims to be Working on a Starship-Like Rocket

The animation was recorded and uploaded to the Chinese social network Weibo (video above), which was accompanied by the following description (translated directly from Mandarin):

“The promotional animation of “One-Hour Global Arrival in Space Transportation System” of the First Academy of Aerospace Engineering, compare? This afternoon was recorded from [2021 Chinese Astronomy Day] Booth of China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology at the Aerospace Industry Achievement Exhibition. If you want to make an appointment to visit Lunar Land, please go to the bottom of this blog.”

In the video, we can see two different concepts for achieving suborbital passenger flights that could be operational by the 2040s. The video came to the attention of Eric Berger at Ars Technica, which mirrored it on Youtube so that it could reach a wider audience. The animation begins by showing a spaceport with several launch pads nearby. On each, we see two-stage vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) rockets that look strikingly similar to the Starship and Super Heavy

Also similar to the Starship is the way the first stage booster returns to Earth after separation, indicating that it is a totally reusable system. We then see passengers scening views of Earth and experiencing temporary weightlessness before the spacecraft begins making a powered descent. The flight ends with the spacecraft landing in a major city clearly several time zones away (since it’s nighttime where they land).

In addition to its appearance and configuration, the animation is also similar to the “Earth to Earth” concept video released by SpaceX in September of 2017 (shown below). In that animation, a Starship ferries passengers from a platform at sea off the coast of New York and land on a similar platform off the coast of Shanghai in just 34 minutes.

The second point-to-point concept in the Chinese animation shows a horizontal takeoff and landing (HTOL) vehicle being launched via an electromagnetic rail. Once this “spaceplane” is catapulted into the air, it engages what appears to be a hybrid-propellant rocket engine to accelerate from Mach 2 to Mach 15 (supersonic to hypersonic) and achieve suborbital flight.

Both of these concepts incorporate technology and ideas that are widely popular right now with both space agencies and commercial space. Between NASA, the ESA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Reaction Engines, and other federal and private programs, multiple reusable rocket and spaceplane concepts are currently under development.

What’s more, both are consistent with China’s long-term aim to become the world’s leading space power by 2045. According to the roadmap released by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in 2017, China hopes to develop a “suborbital carrier vehicle” by 2025 that will eventually grow into a fleet, one which is capable of delivering cargo anywhere in the world by 2035 and passengers by 2045.

However, the clear resemblance between CALT’s rocket concept and the Starship is also in keeping with the way China has monitored SpaceX’s progress practically from inception. As Eric Berger noted in his recently-published book Liftoff – which recounts the early struggles of SpaceX – a Chinese spy boat was stationed off the coast of Omelek Island (part of the Marshall Islands, South Pacific) in 2006 to watch the inaugural flight of the Falcon 1.

More recent examples include the incorporation of “grid fins” to the Long March 2C rocket (similar to the Falcon 9) for the sake of future reusability, as well as developing the Long March 8 to land on sea platforms. China’s long-term plan for the Long March 9 – which will be the country’s most powerful heavy-lift system once it is in service (slated for the 2030s) – includes making it partly reusable.

In the meantime, it is not clear if China plans to develop a Starship-like rocket would include equipping it for missions to the Moon and Mars (in addition to point-to-point suborbital flights). But since regular missions to the Moon and Mars were also part of the roadmap, it’s entirely possible China intends to adopt the Starship design and mission profile in its entirety.

One thing is for certain: China intends to be the superpower in space by the mid-21^st century, and not merely one of several. While they have some catch-up to do before that can happen, their rate of growth is unparalleled.

• Further Reading: Ars Technica, Weibo

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

Former worker reveals secrets about Area 51, aliens and “StarGate”

A former Area 51 worker has released a wealth of revealing information about aliens, time machines, the plans of the elite, and a possible extinction of humanity.

Dan Burisch, is a Former Worker in the United States Military Forces . He has a doctorate in microbiology and was in the secret facilities of Area 51, where he was able to observe amazing things.

In 1986, Burisch received an unexpected visitor while at the University of Las Vegas. His visitor was the well-known “secret” government. They offered him to work on a classified project where he should put all his knowledge into practice.

The secret projects of the American government and Area 51

The following year, Burisch began working in a Nevada State Government office . It was related to the probation of inmates.

In 1989, tissue samples began to arrive , which he examined in a separate location and reported where they came from.

In 1994, Burisch was moved to an underground base known as ” Fourth Century ,” which was part of Area 51. The “Aquarium Project” began there .

It was there that he discovered that the government had spacecraft and extraterrestrial beings. In one of the departments there was information on a race known as ” Orions, ” from the Z Reticuli star system .

He was also able to read a copy of the treatise made by Eisenhower with beings known as P-50 and the Orions.

He learned that in a place called ” Galileo’s Bay “, there were different spaceships. One of them was the one described by Bob Lazar and the one that crashed in Roswell .

According to Burisch’s information, the concept of aliens is totally wrong . Aliens and aliens are not the same . The aliens are beings coming from other worlds, while the aliens are humans who come in the future.

The latter are the evolution of the human race over thousands of years.

Aliens: Humans of the Future

These aliens are divided into four groups and are classified with the letter P, which means ” present “, plus the years that take us into the future .

As an example, the Roswells are known as P-24 , which means ” present plus 24,000 years .” The others are known as J ROD P-45, J ROD P-52 and P-54.

The “J RODs” suffer from a very painful disease and he was a participant in the project trying to find a cure. He assured that he took blood samples from a female of this breed and that he worked on it for 2 years.

According to Burisch, the aliens are actually time travel masters.

He says that, during that time, he managed to establish a friendly relationship with her and that, in an act that violated all security protocols, that being hugged him.

At that time he telepathically transmitted much information about the future of humanity and a nuclear catastrophe .

In this event many people died, another part of humanity hid underground in order to survive. 24,000 years later, the most advanced beings on the planet had mastered time travel . It was for that reason that they traveled to Roswell.

Civilizations in our Galaxy

From this event, it was also learned that a part of the survivors settled on the Moon, Mars and Orion . From there come the P-52 or Orions that, despite having been terrestrial, came to colonize other worlds.

P-45s are hostile beings. They are responsible for the nuclear disaster and they are also the ones who do most of the abductions .

Eisenhower’s meeting was with these beings in an attempt to prevent the nuclear disaster from repeating itself. They were diplomatic pacts and the famous Abductions agreement in exchange for technology.

The Orions presented the president with a cube three inches long and wide that was able to predict the future . This instrument continues on Earth and is used by the most powerful.

Majestic 12 and the StarGates

Burish also made a statement that he worked under the Majestic 12. In this context, he also spoke of the ” StarGate “; devices built on Earth, but based on alien technology .

According to their statements, the instructions for its manufacture are found in the Sumerian tables. They were used to communicate with other civilizations outside of our Solar System. Through them a wormhole could also be made.

In this way, people or objects were teleported to other points in our universe instantly.

However, Burisch assures that these experiments are not very reliable, since he saw a person die . This device was also called “Looking Glass” since it was used to observe the probabilities of future events.

In this way they were able to verify that there was a high probability that the nuclear catastrophe occurred due to the StarGates. Currently, he assures that there are around 50 of these devices, although they have been disassembled.

It all looks like something out of a science fiction movie, but Dan Burisch has offered such detailed evidence and arguments that, at least, they cast doubt on what governments are hiding from us.

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

'Alien abduction' stories may come from lucid dreaming, study hints

By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer 

People have described bizarre extraterrestrial encounters that take place in a dreamlike state.

Scientists guided lucid dreamers to emulate encounters with aliens and UFOs during REM sleep. 

(Image credit: David Wall/Getty Images)

Lucid dreaming, in which people are partially aware and can control their dreams during sleep, could explain so-called alien abduction stories, a study suggests.

Claims of such abductions date to the 19th century; the circumstances of the kidnappings often sound dreamlike and trigger feelings of terror and paralysis. Certain dream states are also known to produce such feelings, leading Russian researchers to wonder if dream experiments could provide clues about alleged extraterrestrial experiences. The scientists prompted lucid dreamers to dream about encounters with aliens or unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and found that a number of sleepers reported dreams that resembled actual descriptions of alleged alien abductions. 

• Related: 7 mind-bending facts about dreams 

During lucid dreams, sleepers are aware they are dreaming and can then use that awareness to manipulate what happens in the dream. About 55% of people experience lucid dreaming once or more in their lifetimes, and 23% have lucid dreams at least once a month, according to a 2016 study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition that analyzed five decades' worth of sleep research. 

Recently, researchers with the Phase Research Center (PRC), a private facility in Moscow that researches lucid dreaming, conducted experiments with 152 adults who self-identified as lucid dreamers, instructing them to "find or summon aliens or UFOs" during a lucid dream, the scientists reported July 2 in the International Journal of Dream Research.

The researchers found that 114 of the participants reported dreaming about having some type of successful interaction with an extraterrestrial. Of those, about 61% described meeting "aliens" that resembled extraterrestrials from science-fiction novels and films, while 19% met aliens that "looked like ordinary people," according to the study. 

Little blue men

One female participant spoke of seeing "little men" with blue skin, oversize heads "and huge, bulging eyes," the study authors reported. When the aliens invited her onto their spaceship, "I was blinded by a very bright light, like from a searchlight," she said. "My vision was gone, and I felt dizzy and light." 

Another participant said that he dreamed he was lying in his bed when he felt as though he were being "dragged somewhere," ending up in a room with a white silhouette that reached into his chest and started "doing something inside with tools," the researchers wrote.

Conversations with dream aliens took place in 26% of the encounters, and 12% of the participants spoke with aliens in their dreams and interacted with them physically. UFOs showed up in 28% of the meetings, and 10% of the dreamers who saw UFOs described being brought inside an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

RELATED CONTENT

• Top 11 spooky sleep disorders
• Mushrooms on Mars? 5 unproven claims that alien life exists
• 5 surprising sleep discoveries

Of those who described their encounters as "realistic," 24% also experienced sleep paralysis and intense fear. Such emotions often accompany reports of supposed alien abductions, and though individuals who describe being kidnapped by aliens might truly believe that what they experienced was real, these people were likely experiencing an extraterrestrial meeting while in a lucid dream, the study authors reported.

Feelings of paralysis, fear and helplessness in vivid dreams can be so powerful that they blur the line between dreams and reality, so it's no wonder that people who may have unknowingly been dreaming instead insist that they actually met with aliens who stole them away and transported them to UFOs, said PRC head researcher and founder Michael Raduga.

For these unknowing dreamers, "abductions are real," Raduga told Live Science in an email. "They just don't know how to explain it." 

• Originally published on Live Science.

{ https://www.livescience.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 21 - 07 - 2021

UFO Sighted Trying To Abduct Calf Over Chos Malal, Argentina ( July 20, 2021 )

UFO was sighted trying to abduct a calf on a dusty dirt road in Chos Malal, Neuquén Province, Argentina. on July 20, 2021

• credit : Weber Evangelista Rodrigues

UFO Sighted Over San Diego, California ( July 20, 2021 )

UFO sighted over the skies of San Diego, California on July 20, 2021 : Third time this year .

First in Mesa, Arizona, May 9, 2021 : https://youtu.be/ZNND1q-9G2Y 

Second : New York, May 9, 2021 : https://youtu.be/HFRV-j6sCJc 

They Are Already Here

• credit : U.S.F

UFO Sighted Over Makati, Philippines ( July 15, 2021 )

UFO Sighted Over Makati, Philippines on July 15, 2021 

STATEMENT : UAP real footage Makati : All of my video is UAP even image I captured here in the Philippines...

ORIGINAL VIDEO OWNER : Jonev D Lubiyo

ORIGINAL VIDEO URL : https://youtu.be/JYf2uI0lVe4

note : welcome new Secureteam subs. Please send my kind regards to Tyler : I do not watch but is this his music ? : make you feel at home lol

UFO Sighted Over Hästveda, Sweden ( July 18, 2021 )

STATEMENT : UFO over "Hästveda" Northeastern Scania (18/07/2021) (06:42) Cylindrical UFO over the village of "Hästveda" in Northeastern Scania (18/07/2021) (06:42) This was the second of five cylindrical UFOs we saw that night between circa 05:30 to 09:30 We will try to get better footage if it returns tonight with multiple camera angles.

ORIGINAL VIDEO OWNER : Matter in Motion

ORIGINAL VIDEO URL : https://youtu.be/HoPIAV2NdSQ

RELATED VIDEOS

Golden UFO Passing Over China Recorded By The ISS

Gold colored UFO accompanied by a strange flash of light spotted by the ISS on July 21 2021.

UFO discovered by Tom Brown

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XmsQ...

Video Source NASA Live Stream

RELATED VIDEO

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

The image of Wrinkle ridge in Elysium Planitia on Mars was taken by the HiRISE camera on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft on April 2, 2008.

The image shows what looks like two hatches fixed to the surface of Mars. 

The sun reflects off the first rectangular hatch, which may be metallic, while the opposite side shows a dark rectangular shadow where the sun's light is blocked by the second hatch. 

The hatches of about 7 x 12 meters are slightly open. This is a doorway that gives access to an underground basement? 

Suppose it's not about something natural but artificially, we may wonder, other than who built it, what was it used for? 

Google Mars coordinates: 8°50'17.09"N 150°36'32.13"E

  

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

VIDEO: UFO spotted over Junagadh and Jamnagar, India

Unidentified Flying Object UFO spotted over Junagadh and Jamnagar district of Gujarat.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

Researcher affirms that “UFOs come from the Moon” (Video)

A “sky watcher” captured on video a surprising formation of UFOs on the Moon. Are they coming from our satellite?

We have learned that the Earth, from our perspective of smallness, seems flat, but, everything seems to indicate that it is round or at least that is what we were taught.

From there it is the starting point to come to understand that the universe is so big and vast that we cannot assure that we are alone in it.

Everything matches, when unknown objects appear in the sky.

The UFO phenomenon continues to speak, thus a construction of rational thought is being created, to elucidate and found spaces to try to know what we are watching happen in the sky.

The images in the video (below) show three flying objects in an apparently triangular formation, and gliding at a high speed so that later 2 more appear following the same trajectory.

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

A new study on DNA has revealed that people living today are only between 1.5% and 7% modern humans. No, this doesn’t mean that we’re over 90% alien (or are we…?), but it does indicate that we have very old DNA belonging to our ancient ancestors.

According to the study, only a very small percentage of our genome is uniquely human. Researchers extracted DNA belonging to skeletal remains of Neanderthals and Denisovans as well as from 279 people living in different parts of the world today. Then the experts took that information regarding sequenced genomes and developed a family tree for Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

They found two important factors that really stood out: the first bombshell was that between 1.5 and 7% of our genome is unique to our species which means that at least 93% of our genome is a result of a mixture between Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. The second discovery was that in the past 600,000 years, there were numerous bursts of genetic adaptations regarding brain development and function of humans.

By creating the evolutionary trees, the team of researchers were able to find very important times in history when Homo sapiens adapted and separated from our ancient ancestors. In order to find out how closely related we actually are to Neanderthals and Denisovans, experts had to study both the genes as well as when the genes were turned into proteins.

In an interview with Inverse, Nathan Schaefer, who is a bioinformatician at the University of California, San Francisco, explained this in further detail, “When you ask that question, we are very similar to Neanderthals.” “We have, you know, around 20,000 genes, and somewhere around 40 of them have these actual coding differences that all humans have one version, and the Neanderthals have the other version.” “That’s already like, ‘Wow, we’re really, really close to them.”

Fernando Villanea, who is a population geneticist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, but wasn’t involved with the study, told Inverse, “Their results support the most exciting new views on the interactions between humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.” He went on to talk about the human brain development over the past several hundred thousand years, “These adaptation events which define our species possibly happened around [600,000] and [200,000] years ago in Africa.”

In other words, this new study seems to indicate that the most genetically unique difference between modern humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans is our cognitive development over the past several hundred thousand years as explained by University of California, Santa Cruz computational biologist Richard Green, “We can tell those regions of the genome are highly enriched for genes that have to do with neural development and brain function.”

As for the researchers’ next steps regarding their studies, Schaefer stated, “What I’m interested in doing now is trying to learn more about how genes work and what these genes do.” The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

One of the signs that a planet may have once supported life is the presence of methane gas. While it can have inorganic causes, it’s most often due to decaying organic matter as it is on Earth. That’s why scientists have been searching for it in Mars – the one planet where we have both landers and orbiters constantly scanning the surface. While methane has been detected on the Red Planet, its source has never been pinpointed … until now.

“During its five years of operation, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS) on board the Curiosity rover has detected six methane spikes above a low background abundance in Gale crater.”

Curiosity

While new rover on the block Perseverance and its ground-breaking (air-breaking?) Ingenuity helicopter have been getting all of the recent publicity, Curiosity has been trudging along and reliably doing its job since 2012. In that time, it has picked up six blips or ‘burps’ of methane in and around the Gale crater, a 96-mile impression in diameter impression dating back 3.8 billion years. However, it didn’t know the exact locations where the gas was emitted from the ground so it could rover over for a look. According to a new not-yet-peer-reviewed study published in Research Square, researchers at the California Institute of Technology decided to take a new approach – they modeled the methane gas particles where they were detected and split them into small groups. Using the wind speed and direction at the time of detection, along with geographic and topographical maps of the crater and its surrounding area, they were able to trace the methane ‘burps’ back to their belching points.

“Inside Gale crater, the northwestern crater floor casts the strongest influence on the detections. Outside Gale crater, the emission region with the strongest influence extends towards the north. The contrasting results from two consecutive methane measurements point to an active emission region to the west and the southwest of the Curiosity rover on the northwestern crater floor.”

Reviewing the data, Live Science points out that one of those locations is just a few dozen miles from Curiosity’s current location. While that may not seem very far, Curiosity has only traveled about 15.7 miles in total since it landed in 2012. The European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is constantly looking for methane, but it has been unable to detect those recorded by Curiosity. This could change with these new coordinates. However, it would be ideal if Curiosity could get an up-close look or sniff. Methane has a 330-year lifespan, so this could be life existed just a few centuries ago … and perhaps is still there producing it today.

Curiosity roving

Before you ask, Perseverance is about 2,300 miles from Curiosity – to far to travel or send the Ingenuity helicopter. Perseverance has different instruments and missions, but Curiosity’s data can still help it find methane, if it’s being emitted nearby and hasn’t been blown away by Ingenuity. The first manned Mars mission can’t come soon enough.

And yes … the Alien Methane Burps would be a good band name.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Throughout the long history of planet Earth, our world has undergone several cataclysmic events of varying magnitude. Arguably the most widely recognized of these, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, involved an impact between Earth and a massive asteroid or comet estimated to have been as much as nine miles wide. The result of this impact had been the mass extinction of most life forms on the planet, with as much as three-fourths of all species on Earth at the time—both animals and plants—being wiped from existence.

Although the mass extinctions that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period had long been recognized by scientists, confirmation of a large-scale impact event as its underlying cause did not begin to surface until the 1980s with the work of experimental physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter. The following decade, the discovery of the Chicxulub crater which forms much of the Gulf of Mexico, provided additional evidence that an asteroid impact had been responsible.

Smaller-scale impact events have also been proposed for other mass extinctions recognized throughout time, including the die-offs of megafauna that began to occur at the end of the last ice age. While some of these impact events remain disputed, the reality of cataclysms throughout time is something that many scientists have sought to understand, resulting in a variety of theories about what their various causes might be, and how often they occur.

Among the more unique theories in this regard had been first proposed by William Napier and Victor Clube in 1979, as detailed in their Nature paper titled “A Theory of Terrestrial Catastrophism.” The study took a novel approach, in that it looked at whether subtle gravitational disturbances in our Solar System might cause comets to occasionally become jostled from their positions in the Oort cloud, sending them hurtling toward the inner Solar System and thereby on a potential collision course with any number of our planetary neighbors, or even Earth itself.

In the 1979 paper, Napier and Clube theorized that galactic spiral arms containing small planets which our solar system passes through could account for the current locations of comets, as well as various transient objects in our solar system. They also noted that many apparent extinction events recognized in the fossil record appear to convey impacts with comets that collided with our planet. Napier and Clube concluded that such impacts likely occurred every 30 million years or so, sometimes resulting in large-scale impacts on par with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

The authors found additional support for their theory in locations other than Earth, too. One example had been evidence of the long-term frequency in appearances of craters on the moon, as well as inner planets within our solar system. The authors identified what they believed to be “brief periods of enhanced bombardment,” as well as a nearly constant rate of craters appearing on the moon and inner planets within the last three billion years. This, they attributed “the decay of primordial bodies and the capture of [small planets] into the Oort cloud upon the sun’s passage through Gould’s belt of the Orion arm.”

The authors considered a wide range of theories about the effects such impact events might have had throughout time, citing evidence in stratigraphic records that seemed to convey “patterns indicating transitions between geological periods, catastrophic extinctions and ice ages.”

Things might have ended there in 1979 as far as Napier and Clube’s idea goes, had it not been for the continuing interest it generated among a few scientists. In the middle 1980s, their original idea began getting a makeover when researcher Michael R. Rampino began to expand on it, who during the following decade teamed up with Bruce Haggerty and gave Napier and Clube’s concept an all-new name: the Shiva hypothesis.

Named for the Hindu god of destruction, the Shiva hypothesis as it is known today essentially entails intervals at which cataclysms occur and, in theory, might even be predictable on account of changes in the position of the Sun in relation to the Milky Way. As recently as 2020, Rampino has continued publishing evidence that may support this idea, which analyzed the ages of ten recognized extinction events involving tetrapods throughout time. According to his research, Rampino found “a statistically significant (99% confidence) underlying periodicity” of such events occurring roughly every 27.5 million years.

As Rampino and his colleagues noted in 2020, “These findings suggest that global cataclysmal events with an underlying periodicity of ~27.5 [million years] were the cause of the coordinated periodic extinction episodes of non-marine tetrapods and marine organisms.”

The Shiva hypothesis also appears to share certain elements with (or may have even inspired) other emerging theories about the causes behind extinction events that occur over time. One notable example involves the so-called “Nemesis hypothesis,” which entails the hypothetical existence of a red or brown dwarf which is responsible for extinction events that occur every 26 million years. The idea was first presented in 1984 by paleontologists David Raup and Jack Sepkoski in a paper titled “Periodicity of Extinctions in the Geologic Past” that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Today, there is still much work to be done as far as determining whether a periodicity or “cycle” of cataclysms that led to extinction events on Earth truly exists. Nonetheless, if ever proven, it could possibly do more than just explain what led to widespread die-offs throughout time; it might even help prevent future deadly impact events that may eventually return to threaten life on our planet.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Jeff Bezos Launches into Space on Blue Origin’s First Astronaut Flight

Jeff Bezos Launches into Space on Blue Origin’s First Astronaut Flight

Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos launched into space on Tuesday, carried aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft in its first human flight. Bezos, the richest person in the world, was joined by his brother, Mark Bezos, female aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and a Dutch student, Oliver Daemen.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

UFO Found On Moon In 1967 NASA Lunar Photo, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: June 29, 2021

Location of discovery: Earths moon

Source photo: 

• https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunarorbiter/frame/?3162

This UFO was found by Youtuber Terry's Theories and he found it in an old NASA archive from a 1967 Lunar orbiter mission. When he zooms in I see a detailed metallic ship over horizon. Its 100% clear to me that this is an alien craft that was sent to this location to both observe and to warn the astronauts that...this moon is taken. Humanity intrigues aliens, but only to a point. We also disgust aliens with our illogical and self destructive decisions and behaviors. Therefore they have not make worldwide contact yet. But the time is coming close, and I predict alien species will unite and agree upon a formal disclosure to humanity this decade. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

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

Ring UFO Over Ogden, Utah, USA On July 15, 2021, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: July 15, 2021

Location of sighting: Ogden, Utah, USA

Source: MUFON 

 

Donut UFOs or ring UFOs as I call them are not new. They have been documented throughout time. For instance in the Bible the famous Ezekiels Wheel comes down before him, rotating like a wheel and out steps a human like being. Also back in 1957 a US Army sergeant took many photos of a ring UFO as it made a white cloud slowly around itself at the US military base Fort Belvoir. 

 

This my friends is a real UFO. It's flying like a disk, but can fly sideways like a wheel. It is unmanned and often controlled by an alien AI and sometimes controlled by an alien far away. This video below is undeniable proof that UFOs exist. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

 

Eyewitness states: 

Nearly flat, donut looking object traveled across the sky, looked almost like a balloon, but it was way faster and there was no wind; not even a breeze. 

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

UFO Sighting- Caught on Camera [Montello WI, June 13, 2021]

While trying to photo the milky-way I spotted a UFO above my house. I was able to quickly take four photos of this UFO. What is this thing?

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

Donut-shaped UFO flying over South Ogden, UT 15-Jul-2021

This daytime footage of a donut-shaped unidentified flying object was filmed over South Ogden, a city in Weber County, Utah. This happened on 15th July 2021.

Witness report: 

Nearly flat, donut looking object traveled across the sky, looked almost like a balloon, but it was way faster and there was no wind; not even a breeze.

RELATED VIDEO, selected and posted by peter2011

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

Hubble Space Telescope Is Back in Action After NASA Fixes Odd Glitch – The Wall Street Journal

After a month of frantic tinkering, NASA said Friday that its aging Hubble Space Telescope was on the mend, recovering from a computer problem that crippled what many astronomers call the most productive scientific instrument ever built.

As the bus-size observatory circled Earth, space agency engineers worked by remote control to switch Hubble from its vintage electronics to backup hardware. In the final step, they powered up a payload computer that restored control of its six cameras and sensors, which peer through visible, infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths of light to the edge of space and the dawn of time.

“We are absolutely delighted that the observatory is up and running again,” said Kenneth Sembach, director of the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which handles the Hubble science operations. “All indications are that it’s doing well and we will get back to doing science again this weekend.”

In more than a million mind-expanding images of the universe snapped over the past 31 years, the solar-powered telescope has presented to astronomers and amateur stargazers alike a psychedelic tapestry of infant stars, dying supernovae, colliding galaxies, towering billows of stellar dust, dark matter and black holes feasting on spiral nebulae.

Hubble data has been used in more than 18,000 scientific papers that have documented the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies and studies of planets beyond our solar system, NASA officials said.

“I think there’s a very credible case that the Hubble Space Telescope is the most scientifically productive instrument ever made,” said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division. “The output of peer-reviewed published papers from Hubble certainly exceeds any of its competitors in any field of science.”

But then on June 13, Hubble was hobbled—and not for the first time. Technical problems that threatened to end the mission have plagued the telescope since the moment it reached its orbital perch some 340 miles above our planet’s surface on April 25, 1990.

Since its launch in 1990, five space shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded and replaced systems on the telescope.

Photo: /Associated Press

Since its launch—with flawed optics causing its photos to be so blurry that the $4.7 billion observatory was initially deemed an embarrassing failure—five space shuttle missions repaired, upgraded and replaced systems on the telescope. All five of its main instruments were fixed, and a $50 million set of corrective lenses was installed to address its manufacturing flaws.

Last repaired by space shuttle astronauts in 2009, Hubble has lasted twice as long as originally expected, space agency officials said.

The latest trouble began when a voltage overload in an onboard payload computer built in the 1980s tripped a circuit breaker and shut down the telescope. It was the most serious technical failure that NASA project engineers had encountered in the 11 years since the last shuttle repair.

“We did a lot of debugging,” said James Jeletic, deputy project manager for the Hubble Space Telescope Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. After three weeks of painstaking analysis, they decided to switch the telescope to its remaining backup systems.

“Every single thing worked as planned,” Mr. Jeletic said. “The computer came back up. All the backup hardware works fine. I don’t think we’re biting our fingernails anymore.”

• Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com

{ https://newsfeeds.media/category/news/ }

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope spots four mysterious 'free-floating' planets that appear to be alone in deep space, unbound to any host star

• Four 'rogue' planets discovered with similar masses to that of our home planet 

• They were found by NASA's Kepler telescope using gravitational microlensing 

• The planets may have been ejected by heavier planets within their solar system 

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has found a mysterious population of 'free-floating' or 'rogue' planets that aren't bound to any host star. 

Based on a technique called gravitational microlensing, researchers reveal there are four new rogue planets in total, which likely have similar masses to that of Earth. 

Gravitational microlensing relies on chance events where from a certain viewpoint, one star passes in front of another star. 

The planets may have originally formed around a host star before being ejected by the gravitational tug of other, heavier planets in the system, the experts say. 

The host star is likely still burning brightly in space, but just with fewer planets in its orbit. 

Scroll down for video 

The four newly discovered planets that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth

(stock image)

'We don't know exactly how far away they are,' study author Professor Iain McDonald at the University of Manchester told MailOnline.

'They are not among the nearest stars, but closer than the centre of our Galaxy. So it's probably most accurate to say they are several thousand light years away. 

Professor McDonald said they're not sure exactly what these planets are like, but are 'probably rocky' with frozen oceans. 

'If a planet like the Earth was flung out into deep space, far from the heat of a star, we'd expect the oceans to freeze over and the atmosphere to condense out onto the surface,' he said. 

'Life could still continue, but only in places like hydrothermal vents, where there is another energy source.' 

This is an artist impression of the Kepler Space Telescope that was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 after nearly a decade of service

The now retired Kepler telescope spent nearly a decade in space looking for Earth-size planets orbiting other stars, but scientists are still analysing its data. 

Kepler launched in 2009 and was decommissioned by NASA in 2018 when it ran out of fuel needed for further science operations. 

It was launched specifically by NASA with the aim of identifying planets outside of our own Solar System, known as exoplanets. 

For this project, researchers used data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope – an extension of its original mission.  

During its two-month K2 campaign, Kepler monitored a crowded field of millions of stars near the centre of our Galaxy every 30 minutes in order to find rare gravitational microlensing events. 

Gravity from the closer star acts as a lens and magnifies the distant star over the course of the transit. 

The study team found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days. 

Many of these had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground. 

However, the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth. 

These new events do not show an accompanying longer signal that might be expected from a host star, suggesting that these new events may be free-floating planets.   

'These signals are extremely difficult to find,' said Professor McDonald. 

'Our observations pointed an elderly, ailing telescope with blurred vision at one the most densely crowded parts of the sky, where there are already thousands of bright stars that vary in brightness, and thousands of asteroids that skim across our field. 

Artist's impression of a free-floating planet. Such planets may perhaps have originally formed around a host star before being ejected by the gravitational tug of other, heavier planets in the system

'From that cacophony, we try to extract tiny, characteristic brightenings caused by planets, and we only have one chance to see a signal before it’s gone. 

'It’s about as easy as looking for the single blink of a firefly in the middle of a motorway, using only a handheld phone.'    

Since its launch in 2009, Kepler spotted thousands of exoplanets outside our solar system, despite experiencing mechanical failures and being blasted by cosmic rays. 

In 2013, Kepler's primary mission was concluded when a second reaction wheel broke, which meant that the space craft couldn't hold a steady gaze at its original field of view.

But Kepler was given a 'new lease on life' by NASA on its K2 mission, which required it to shift its field of view to new portions of the sky about every three months. 

NASA initially assumed that K2 would only be able to conduct 10 campaigns with the remaining fuel, but it went on to complete an astonishing 16 campaigns. 

Confirming the existence and nature of free-floating planets will be a major focus for NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and possibly the ESA's Euclid mission – both expected to detect microlensing events.  

'Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets,' said study author Eamonn Kerins at the University of Manchester.

'Now it passes the baton on to Roman that will be designed to find such signals, signals so elusive that Einstein himself thought that they were unlikely ever to be observed.'     

The results have been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.    

WHAT IS THE KEPLER TELESCOPE?

The Kepler mission has spotted thousands of exoplanets since 2014, with 30 planets less than twice the size of Earth now known to orbit within the habitable zones of their stars.

Launched from Cape Canaveral on March 7th 2009, the Kepler telescope has helped in the search for planets outside of the solar system. 

It captured its last ever image on September 25 2018 and ran out of fuel five days later.

When it was launched it weighed 2,320 lbs (1,052 kg) and is 15.4 feet long by 8.9 feet wide (4.7 m × 2.7 m).

The satellite typically looks for 'Earth-like' planets, meaning they are rocky and orbit within the that orbit within the habitable or 'Goldilocks' zone of a star.

In total, Kepler has found around 5,000 unconfirmed 'candidate' exoplanets, with a further 2,500 'confirmed' exoplanets that scientists have since shown to be real. 

Kepler is currently on the 'K2' mission to discover more exoplanets. 

K2 is the second mission for the spacecraft and was implemented by necessity over desire as two reaction wheels on the spacecraft failed. 

These wheels control direction and altitude of the spacecraft and help point it in the right direction.

The modified mission looks at exoplanets around dim red dwarf stars.  

While the planet has found thousands of exoplanets during its eight-year mission, five in particular have stuck out.

Kepler-452b, dubbed 'Earth 2.0', shares many characteristics with our planet despite sitting 1,400 light years away. It was found by Nasa's Kepler telescope in 2014

1) 'Earth 2.0'

In 2014 the telescope made one of its biggest discoveries when it spotted exoplanet Kepler-452b, dubbed 'Earth 2.0'.

The object shares many characteristics with our planet despite sitting 1,400 light years away.

It has a similar size orbit to Earth, receives roughly the same amount of sun light and has same length of year.

Experts still aren't sure whether the planet hosts life, but say if plants were transferred there, they would likely survive.

2) The first planet found to orbit two stars

Kepler found a planet that orbits two stars, known as a binary star system, in 2011.

The system, known as Kepler-16b, is roughly 200 light years from Earth. 

Experts compared the system to the famous 'double-sunset' pictured on Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine in 'Star Wars: A New Hope'.

3) Finding the first habitable planet outside of the solar system

Scientists found Kepler-22b in 2011, the first habitable planet found by astronomers outside of the solar system.

The habitable super-Earth appears to be a large, rocky planet with a surface temperature of about 72°F (22°C), similar to a spring day on Earth.

4) Discovering a 'super-Earth'

The telescope found its first 'super-Earth' in April 2017, a huge planet called LHS 1140b.

It orbits a red dwarf star around 40 million light years away, and scientists think it holds giant oceans of magma.

5) Finding the 'Trappist-1' star system

The Trappist-1 star system, which hosts a record seven Earth-like planets, was one of the biggest discoveries of 2017. 

Each of the planets, which orbit a dwarf star just 39 million light years, likely holds water at its surface.

Three of the planets have such good conditions that scientists say life may have already evolved on them.

Kepler spotted the system in 2016, but scientists revealed the discovery in a series of papers released in February this year. 

Kepler is a telescope that has an incredibly sensitive instrument known as a photometer that detects the slightest changes in light emitted from stars

How does Kepler discover planets?

The telescope has an incredibly sensitive instrument known as a photometer that detects the slightest changes in light emitted from stars.

It tracks 100,000 stars simultaneously, looking for telltale drops in light intensity that indicate an orbiting planet passing between the satellite and its distant target.

When a planet passes in front of a star as viewed from Earth, the event is called a 'transit'.

Tiny dips in the brightness of a star during a transit can help scientists determine the orbit and size of the planet, as well as the size of the star.

Based on these calculations, scientists can determine whether the planet sits in the star's 'habitable zone', and therefore whether it might host the conditions for alien life to grow. 

Kepler was the first spacecraft to survey the planets in our own galaxy, and over the years its observations confirmed the existence of more than 2,600 exoplanets - many of which could be key targets in the search for alien life

Read more:

• Kepler K2 Campaign 9 – I. Candidate short-duration events from the first space-based survey for planetary microlensing | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Oxford Academic
• ESA Science & Technology - Euclid

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Kepler Data Reveal Four Earth-Mass Free-Floating Exoplanets

Using data from NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission, astronomers have detected four new microlensing events that are consistent with free-floating planets of similar masses to Earth.

Gravitational microlensing is an observational effect that was predicted in 1936 by Albert Einstein using his general theory of relativity.

When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star become bent due to the gravitational attraction of the foreground star.

This star is then a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star, so astronomers refer to the foreground star as the lens star.

If the lens star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short deviation in the brightness of the source.

Roughly one out of every million stars in our Milky Way Galaxy is visibly affected by microlensing at any given time, but only a few percent of these are expected to be caused by extrasolar planets.

“These signals are extremely difficult to find,” said Dr. Iain McDonald, an astronomer in the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester and Open University.

“Our observations pointed an elderly, ailing telescope with blurred vision at one the most densely crowded parts of the sky, where there are already thousands of bright stars that vary in brightness, and thousands of asteroids that skim across our field.”

“From that cacophony, we try to extract tiny, characteristic brightenings caused by planets, and we only have one chance to see a signal before it’s gone.”

“It’s about as easy as looking for the single blink of a firefly in the middle of a motorway, using only a handheld phone.”

Dr. McDonald and colleagues analyzed archival data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.

They found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days.

Many of these had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground.

However, the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth.

These new events do not show an accompanying longer signal that might be expected from a host star, suggesting that these new events may be free-floating planets.

“Kepler has achieved what it was never designed to do, in providing further tentative evidence for the existence of a population of Earth-mass, free-floating planets,” said Dr. Eamonn Kerins, an astronomer in the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.

“Now it passes the baton on to other missions that will be designed to find such signals, signals so elusive that Einstein himself thought that they were unlikely ever to be observed.”

The results appear in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

_____

• I. McDonald et al. 2021. Kepler K2 Campaign 9 – I. Candidate short-duration events from the first space-based survey for planetary microlensing. MNRAS 505 (4): 5584-5602; doi: 10.1093/mnras/stab1377

{ http://www.sci-news.com/ }