Space Force Reluctant to Investigate UFOs

UFO stigma, alien conspiracy theories are relics of Cold War paranoia

Huge UFO slowly flying over Calgary, Canada 9-Aug-2021

This huge bright UFO was filmed by a security camera over Calgary in Alberta, Canada on 9th August 2021 and it was submitted to my through our Facebook page.

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Japan and China have their dragon tales. So do England and Ancient Greece. But Australia? Well, the island has plenty of other strange creatures – why not dragons? Looks like you can add them to the list – paleontologists have discovered fossils of a creature with a 23-foot (7 meters) wingspan and a huge, spear-like skull that inspired one to flatly declare:

“It’s the closest thing we have to a real life dragon.”

University of Queensland paleontologist and professor Tim Richards led the research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, identifying the fossils of an extremely rare Australian pterosaur – in the 40 years since the first one was found, fewer than 20 have been identified. This one was taken from the Toolebuc Formation near Richmond, North West Queensland – a hotbed of Australian pterosaurs. The specimen (KKF494) is the rostral (front nose and mouth) portion of a crested mandible (jawbone) and it got paleontologist Richards excited immediately because it appeared to be from the largest pterosaur ever to have flown over Australia.

The competition is tough in this category

“The new pterosaur, which we named Thapunngaka shawi, would have been a fearsome beast, with a spear-like mouth and a wingspan around seven meters. It was essentially just a skull with a long neck, bolted on a pair of long wings. This thing would have been quite savage. It would have cast a great shadow over some quivering little dinosaur that wouldn’t have heard it until it was too late.”

There’s your opening scene to “Attack of the Australian Dragons.” Richards estimated the skull at just over 1 meter (3.3 feet) long with a mouth filled with 40 razor teeth, swooping “like a magpie during mating season” – watching these monster dragons mating sounds like that scene in the movie where you start to take a liking to them … and then they finish mating and go back to killing and eating anything in their reach. Those estimates and descriptions are from just the lower portion of the jaw – co-author Dr. Steve Salisbury says in the press release that the upper jaw would help tell more about this new species of pterosaurs known as anhanguerians, including how they were able fly with such massive heads and skinny necks. For now, the lower mouth will have to do – it was enough to use words from the now-extinct language of the indigenous Wanamara Nation to name it.

“The genus name, Thapunngaka, incorporates thapun [ta-boon] and ngaka [nga-ga], the Wanamara words for ‘spear’ and ‘mouth’, respectively. The species name, shawi, honors the fossil’s discoverer Len Shaw, so the name means ‘Shaw’s spear mouth’.”

Thapunngaka shawi lived during the Early Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago. But this is Australia – could one or more of these dragons still be found somewhere in the outback? The Aboriginal peoples told tales of the Rainbow Serpent, which was said to cause rainbows as it moved from one river or waterhole to another. The Kanmare was descried as a large snake with a mane around its head that attacked fishermen. It’s said that just about all native tribes had a variation of the Rainbow Serpent, but stories of flying serpents or dragons seem to e rare. Either the Thapunngaka shawi died off completely or survivors have managed to keep extremely well hidden.

Or did it fly to New Zealand?

Pterosaur fossils worldwide are rare due to their fragility, but this research team hopes the existence of one jawbone of these Australian “dragons” means more will be found.

Screenwriters tired of penning Godzilla and King Kong variations hope so too.

Artist’s impression of the fearsome Thapunngaka shawi.

(Credit: Tim Richards)

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

These Strange Events Over Our World Can't Be Explained! 2021

These Strange Events Over Our World Can’t Be Explained! 2021

‘Since 2008, THIRDPHASEOFMOON has changed the way people look up at the skies and wonder, “Are we Alone?” With over 773,000 subscribers and millions of views, our goal is simple! We speak with UFO EYE WITNESSES from around the globe, including ground reporting with Experts and Professionals, such as Astronauts, Scientists, Government Officials, ETC.

With permission granted, THIRDPHASEOFMOON, will share, discuss, enhance and analyze UFO videos. And along with our research and opinion of the evidence, THIRDPHASEOFMOON also produces 100% Original Documentaries in regards to the UFO PHENOMENON happening everyday! Our Aim is to bring Truth and Evidence in the field directly to the Public!

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

NASA’s TESS Tunes Into an Unprecedented All-Sky “Symphony” of Pulsating Red Giant Stars

Using observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have identified an unprecedented collection of pulsating red giant stars all across the sky. These stars, whose rhythms arise from internal sound waves, provide the opening chords of a symphonic exploration of our galactic neighborhood.

TESS primarily hunts for worlds beyond our solar system, also known as exoplanets. But its sensitive measurements of stellar brightness make TESS ideal for studying stellar oscillations, an area of research called asteroseismology.

“Our initial result, using stellar measurements across TESS’s first two years, shows that we can determine the masses and sizes of these oscillating giants with precision that will only improve as TESS goes on,” said Marc Hon, a NASA Hubble Fellow at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. “What’s really unparalleled here is that TESS’s broad coverage allows us to make these measurements uniformly across almost the entire sky.”

This visualization shows the new sample of oscillating red giant stars (colored dots) discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The colors map to each 24-by-96-degree swath of the sky observed during the mission’s first two years. The view then changes to show the positions of these stars within our galaxy, based on distances determined by ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Gaia mission. The scale shows distances in kiloparsecs, each equal to 3,260 light-years, and extends nearly 20,000 light-years from the Sun.

Credit: Kristin Riebe, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam

Hon presented the research during the second TESS Science Conference, an event supported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge – held virtually from Aug. 2 to 6 – where scientists discuss all aspects of the mission. The Astrophysical Journal has accepted a paper describing the findings, led by Hon.

Sound waves traveling through any object – a guitar string, an organ pipe, or the interiors of Earth and the Sun – can reflect and interact, reinforcing some waves and canceling out others. This can result in orderly motion called standing waves, which create the tones in musical instruments.

Just below the surfaces of stars like the Sun, hot gas rises, cools, and then sinks, where it heats up again, much like a pan of boiling water on a hot stove. This motion produces waves of changing pressure – sound waves – that interact, ultimately driving stable oscillations with periods of a few minutes that produce subtle brightness changes. For the Sun, these variations amount to a few parts per million. Giant stars with masses similar to the Sun’s pulsate much more slowly, and the corresponding brightness changes can be hundreds of times greater.

Listen to the rhythms of three red giants in the constellation Draco, as determined by brightness measurements from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. To produce audible tones, astronomers multiplied the oscillation frequencies of the stars by 3 million times. It’s clear that larger stars produce longer, deeper pulsations than smaller ones.

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA), M. Hon et al., 2021

Oscillations in the Sun were first observed in the 1960s. Solar-like oscillations were detected in thousands of stars by the French-led Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) space telescope, which operated from 2006 to 2013. NASA’s Kepler and K2 missions, which surveyed the sky from 2009 to 2018, found tens of thousands of oscillating giants. Now TESS extends this number by another 10 times.

“With a sample this large, giants that might occur only 1% of the time become pretty common,” said co-author Jamie Tayar, a Hubble Fellow at the University of Hawaii. “Now we can start thinking about finding even rarer examples.”

The physical differences between a cello and a violin produce their distinctive voices. Similarly, the stellar oscillations astronomers observe depend on each star’s interior structure, mass, and size. This means asteroseismology can help determine fundamental properties for large numbers of stars with accuracies not achievable in any other way.

When stars similar in mass to the Sun evolve into red giants, the penultimate phase of their stellar lives, their outer layers expand by 10 or more times. These vast gaseous envelopes pulsate with longer periods and larger amplitudes, which means their oscillations can be observed in fainter and more numerous stars.

The bright red giant Edasich in the constellation Draco is about 12 times larger and 1.8 times the mass of our Sun. Edasich oscillates three times a day, brightening and fading slightly as it does. For comparison, the Sun pulsates about every five minutes. Left: The star’s changing brightness as measured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Right: An illustration of the star and its varying brightness.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle)

TESS monitors large swaths of the sky for about a month at a time using its four cameras. During its two-year primary mission, TESS covered about 75% of the sky, each camera capturing a full image measuring 24-by-24 degrees every 30 minutes. In mid-2020, the cameras began collecting these images at an even faster pace, every 10 minutes.

The images were used to develop light curves – graphs of changing brightness – for nearly 24 million stars over 27 days, the length of time TESS stares at each swath of the sky. To sift through this immense accumulation of measurements, Hon and his colleagues taught a computer to recognize pulsating giants. The team used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to make decisions based on general patterns without explicitly programming them.

To train the system, the team used Kepler light curves for more than 150,000 stars, of which some 20,000 were oscillating red giants. When the neural network finished processing all of the TESS data, it had identified a chorus of 158,505 pulsating giants.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) imaged about 75% of the sky during its two-year-long primary mission. This plot dissolves between the TESS sky map and a “mass map” constructed by combining TESS measurements of 158,000 oscillating red giant stars with their distances, established by ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Gaia mission. The prominent band in both images is the Milky Way, which marks the central plane of our galaxy. In the mass map, green, yellow, orange, and red show where giant stars average more than 1.4 times the Sun’s mass. Such stars evolve faster than the Sun, becoming giants at younger ages. The close correspondence of higher-mass giants with the plane of the Milky Way, which contains our galaxy’s spiral arms, demonstrates that it contains many young stars.

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA), M. Hon et al., 2021

Next, the team found distances for each giant using data from ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Gaia mission, and plotted the masses of these stars across the sky. Stars more massive than the Sun evolve faster, becoming giants at younger ages. A fundamental prediction in galactic astronomy is that younger, higher-mass stars should lie closer to the plane of the galaxy, which is marked by the high density of stars that create the glowing band of the Milky Way in the night sky.

“Our map demonstrates for the first time empirically that this is indeed the case across nearly the whole sky,” said co-author Daniel Huber, an assistant professor for astronomy at the University of Hawaii. “With the help of Gaia, TESS has now given us tickets to a red giant concert in the sky.”

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

{  https://scitechdaily.com/ }

UFO falls to Earth and causes a strong explosion in Turkey (Video)

A video shows the moment when the skies over Smyrna, Turkey, lit up bright green when a mysterious object crashed into Earth.

Images of the bizarre incident that have been posted on social media show the object passing through the city of Izmir, before disappearing in a bright flash.

The seemingly inexplicable event has shocked residents, leading to speculation that the burning object is a satellite or an unidentified flying object (UFO).

The incident occurred around 2 a.m. on Saturday, July 31. One of the videos shows the object hitting the ground causing a loud explosion and changing the color of the sky to green for a few seconds.

Another video shows the object’s flare a bright greenish white before falling towards Earth.

Needless to say, the videos have gone viral intriguing netizens around the world. While many suggested it was a satellite or space junk, others chose to believe that they could be aliens.

However, Dr. Hasan Ali Dal, a Turkish astrophysics professor, denied these theories and explained a simple reason for the incredible scenes.

In a Twitter post, he said that the event known as a “fireball” occurs when a meteor begins to burn in the atmosphere.

“It usually burns in the upper atmosphere,” wrote Dr. Ali Dal. “It should be considered as a more specific version of the phenomenon known as a shooting star among people and that is often experienced during periods of meteor showers.”

According to the professor of astrophysics, the meteor could be part of the Perseid Rainfall , which occurs every year during July and August.

But it goes without saying that this explanation has not convinced everyone, since there are those who claim that it is a crashed alien spacecraft. There were even those who claimed to have seen the military in the area.

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

ANCIENT PROTO-MATH FOUND IN BABYLONIAN TABLET

TUCKED AWAY in a seemingly forgotten corner of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Daniel Mansfield found what may solve one of ancient math’s biggest questions.

First exhumed in 1894 from what is now Baghdad, the circular tablet — broken at the center with small perpendicular indentations across it — was feared lost to antiquity. But in 2018, a photo of the tablet showed up in Mansfield’s inbox.

Mansfield, a senior lecturer of mathematics at the University of New South Wales Sydney, had suspected the tablet was real. He came across records of its excavation and began the hunt. Word got around about what he was looking for, and then the email came. He knew what he had to do: travel to Turkey and examine it at the museum.

Hidden within this tablet is not only the oldest known display of applied geometry but a new ancient understanding of triangles. It could rewrite what we know about the history of mathematics, Mansfield argues.

These findings were published Wednesday in the journal Foundations of Science.

It’s generally thought that trigonometry — a subset of geometry and what’s displayed on the tablet in a crude sense — was developed by ancient Greeks like the philosopher Pythagoras. However, analysis of the tablet suggests it was created 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born.

Babylonian mathematics, which already holds a place of renown in the pantheon of ancient math, might’ve been more sophisticated than historians have given it credit for.

“The way we understand trigonometry harks back to ancient Greek astronomers,” Mansfield tells Inverse. “I like to think of the Babylonian understanding of right triangles as an unexpected prequel, which really is an independent story because the Babylonians weren’t using it to measure the stars, they were using it to measure the ground.”

Dr. Mansfield observes the tablet.  University of New South Wales Sydney

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW FIRST

Mansfield is no stranger to a pair of white gloves and following his mathematical curiosity.

Years before discovering this latest tablet, dubbed Si.427, Mansfield was hot on the trail of another ancient Babylonian “document:” Plimpton 322. While the location of this artifact was known (it’s located at Columbia University) its true purpose was not.

Like Si.427, which dates back to roughly 1900 to 1600 BCE, Plimpton 322 is covered in geometric markings — riddles academics have tried to decipher for years. While the reigning theory was that these markings were a kind of teacher’s cheat code for Babylonian homework problems, Mansfield and colleagues were not convinced.

In a 2017 paper, Mansfield and colleagues propose Plimpton 322 might be a kind of proto-trigonometry table of values — suggesting it predates the development of trigonometry as we know it today.

“A modern analogy would be to say that it contains a mix of elementary school problems alongside the unsolved conjectures of mathematics,” writes Mansfield in the new paper.

WHAT’S NEW

Now, Mansfield argues the discovery of Si.427 could confirm his Plimpton 322 hunch.

In essence, Si.427 is argued to be a case study of how this proto-trig could be used in practice.

Si.427 is what’s known as a cadastral document. These are used to document the boundaries of land ownership. There are other examples on record, but Mansfield argues this tablet is the oldest known example from the Old Babylonian period — a range that stretches from 1900 BCE to 1600 BCE. On the tablet are legal and geometry details about a field that was split after some of it was sold.

This research suggests Plimpton 322 was used similarly: It might have been a surveyor’s cheat sheet, instead of a teacher’s. It’s possible Plimpton 322 was the theoretical solution to the practical problems a surveyor using Si.427 might have encountered.

“It’s a discovery that has come to us far outside our mathematical culture,” Mansfield says. “It seems new and fresh to us, even though it’s almost 4,000 years old.”

Using the principles of right triangles and perpendicular lines, ancient surveyors could evenly divide land to avoid disputing neighbors. University of New South Wales Sydney

WHY IT MATTERS

While these tablets are the kind of thing you might easily walk past on display in a museum, Mansfield said this discovery could actually have a huge implication for how we understand these ancient mathematics.

Namely, it means mathematicians were working with so-called Pythagorean triples (trios of numbers that satisfy the infamous a^2+b^2 = c^2 equation) long before Pythagoras himself was even born.

It also helps answer a slightly less academic question: How do you evenly divide up disputed land?

“This is from a period where land is starting to become private — people started thinking about land in terms of ‘my land and your land,’ wanting to establish a proper boundary to have positive neighborly relationships,” Mansfield explains in a statement.

“And this is what this tablet immediately says. It's a field being split, and new boundaries are made.”

HOW DOES IT WORK?

As for how triangles sketched in clay translate to farmer’s fields, it all comes down to perpendicular lines.

Essentially, surveyors would choose two Pythagorean triples (which were inherently right triangles) and extend the boundary line of the resultant rectangle by eye to create true perpendicular lines that spread across the entire field.

“This proves that our Babylonian surveyor had a solid theoretical understanding of the geometry of rectangles and right triangles and used it to solve practical problems,” Mansfield says in the video.

Extending the boundary of these triangles allowed surveyors to create incredibly straight lines without manually measuring or laying them out beforehand. University of New South Wales Sydney

There are also instances of resizing these triangles to better fit the physical shape of the field at hand, which surveyors would’ve liked done by referencing a table of trig values like Plimpton 322, the study suggests. This table would’ve been a comprehensive list of Pythagorean triples and the steps to resizing them.

WHAT’S NEXT

This discovery may have laid to rest one ancient math mystery, there’s still plenty more where that came from, Mansfield says.

“Ancient mathematics is not as sophisticated as modern mathematics,” he says. “But sometimes you want to simple answers instead of sophisticated ones.”

He’s not “just talking about how mathematics students want their exams to be.” The advantage of a simple approach is its quickness — and Mansfield wants to examine whether or not this approach has any real-world applications.

“This approach might be of benefit in computer graphics or any application where speed is more important than precision,” he says.

Abstract: 

Plimpton 322 is one of the most sophisticated and interesting mathematical objects from antiquity. It is often regarded as teacher’s list of school problems, however new analysis suggests that it relates to a particular geometric problem in contemporary surveying.

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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“THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STORY, IN MY OPINION, IS THAT IT ACTUALLY CHANGED THE DIRECTION OF NASA.”

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

NASA SAMPLE MYSTERIOUSLY GOES MISSING AS PERSEVERANCE ROVER SEARCHES FOR ALIEN LIFE

Andrew Griffin@_andrew_griffin

Credit:

• www.independent.co.uk /

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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Watch NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity explore intriguing Raised Ridges in new video

It won’t be worse than Matt Damon’s fictional solo experience on Mars because there will be a group, and hopefully it will be better than the combined Russian/ESA attempt to simulate living on Mars. It’s not much of a recruiting pitch but that’s the reality of NASA’s new search for volunteers to spend a year in isolation as part of its new Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) project. Will they emerge in a year believing that Mars will fear their botany powers?

“Each mission will consist of four crew members living in Mars Dune Alpha, an isolated 1,700 square foot habitat. During the mission, the crew will conduct simulated spacewalks and provide data on a variety of factors, which may include physical and behavioral health and performance.

The 3D printed habitat will include private crew quarters, a kitchen, and dedicated areas for medical, recreation, fitness, work, and crop growth activities, as well as a technical work area and two bathrooms.”

No pyramids?

That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Each of the three year-long missions will have a crew of four — NASA is looking for healthy, motivated U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are non-smokers, age 30 to 55 years old, and proficient in English. Ideal candidates would have a master’s degree in a STEM field such as engineering, mathematics, or biological, physical or computer science or a minimum of one thousand hours piloting an aircraft. Medical doctors, test pilots and applicants with less advanced degrees but more applicable experience will be considered. Here’s what they’ll be (hopefully) experience:

“To obtain the most accurate data during the analog, the habitat will be as Mars-realistic as feasible, which may include environmental stressors such as resource limitations, isolation, equipment failure, and significant workloads. The major crew activities during the analog may consist of simulated spacewalks including virtual reality, communications, crop growth, meal preparation and consumption, exercise, hygiene activities, maintenance work, personal time, science work, and sleep.”

No transportation testing?

If you were hoping for the full Matt-Damon-as-Astronaut Mark Watney experience, NASA will make sure that none of this happens:

“If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab beaches, I’ll just kind of implode. If none of those things happen. I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.”
— Matt Damon as Mark Watner in “The Martian.”

And of course, someone will stop them if anyone attempts to dip a potato in crushed up Vicodin. Hopefully, nothing like Damon’s experiences will happen and these simulations will be better than the Mars 500 mission in 2013 when six people paid $100,000 each (there’s a difference right there) and ended up being in prolonged funks, having considerable trouble sleeping, depression issues, avoiding exercise or just moving about, and hiding from their observers. Was that just a bad experiment or could that be what will really happen on Mars?

We’re waiting for you.

“Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.”

— Matt Damon as Mark Watner in “The Martian.”

Let’s hope NASA’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) missions meet Mark Watner’s idealistic expectations.

For more information on the Mars analog mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/chapea.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 09 - 08 - 2021

UFO Eject Multiple UFOs Over Porterville, California ( August 6, 2021 )

UFO ejects multiple fiery objects over Porterville, California on August 6, 2021

STATEMENT : I have other footage, 10 cars had pulled over to take video of it!! it look like it was trying to weld itself and it was dripping molten lava

Here i present the video and following in approach

More evident every day

• credit : J Gulso

UFO Sighted Over Sycamore, Illinois ( August 1, 2021 )

UFO was sighted over Sycamore, in DeKalb County, Illinois on August 1, 2021

STATEMENT : UFO Flying over Sycamore

They are here

• credit : Ellie Rains

UFOs Sighted Over Phoenix, Arizona ( July 7, 2021 )

Impressive UFO Sighting over Phoenix, Arizona on July 7, 2021 showing UFOs appearing doing manoeuvres

STATEMENT : In Phoenix Arziona

They are everywhere

• credit : Leonel Mendoza : 8 August 2021 

RELATED VIDEOS

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

A top Harvard astronomer is studying UFOs, thanks in part to the Pentagon report

Some peers dismissed him, but the government's UFO report and an out-of-the-blue visit from a billionaire sent him on the hunt for something "weird.

{ https://www.nbcnews.com/ }

On August 8, 2021 the LASCO C2 satellite captured a massive unknown explosion on the sun and it doesn't look like a solar filament or solar flare. 

Now, on November 1, 2020 NASA's satellite EIT 304 captured an alien spacecraft firing a huge beam at the sun (see video) and even though the reason is not known, it is said that intelligent races might survive by collecting, storing and harnessing the power of the sun. 

As such we might wonder whether such a craft has fired something at the sun causing the massive explosion.

  

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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

Alfred Webre: “Mars is inhabited by human-like beings”

Alfred Webre was the first visionary to define Exopolitics in the world, focusing on the existence of societies with interstellar relationships. And humanity could have already created diplomacies outside of Earth, since there could be humans and extraterrestrial hybrids inhabiting Mars.

Currently, Alfred Webre, being a general counsel for the New York Environmental Protection Agency and advisor to the Ford Foundation , former professor of economics at Yale and the University of Texas, in addition to being a delegate to the Texas Democratic convention in 1996, is considered like one of the main authorities of the Exopolitics.

Currently, he is the International Director of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, or ICIS, for its acronym in English. From that rostrum, it promotes disarmament in space and the transformation of the permanent war economy to a peaceful and cooperative society . Based on the exploration of space and studying life in the Universe .

Alfred Webre: Exopolitics for the development of society

In his book “Exopolitics: Politics, Government and Law in the Universe”, Webre shows us a different vision of the Cosmos . It reveals to us that the Earth is an isolated world, in the midst of an intergalactic and multidimensional society that evolves more and more.

In addition, he affirms that the entire history of humanity that we have always been told is wrong .

In the interview in the magazine “Athanor”, where they made him an 11-page report called: “Exopolitics, the ins and outs of space warfare and a positive future”, he mentioned the Martian contacts that the near future holds for us.

Each of his statements is backed by statements from ex-military personnel, astronauts, historians, and researchers.

Simply put, Alfred Webre leaves little room for doubt about the next contact and the few years we have left for impressive revelations.

Excerpt from the interview on the revelation of Mars

It is possible that the extraterrestrial contact is close.

Alfred Webre begins the interview with the following words:

I am 67 years old. I was born on a naval base in Florida during World War II. I live in Vancouver. Doctor of Law, judge of the Kuala Lumpur Court on War Crimes. Married, I have a son and two stepdaughters.

We live in a universe of intelligent origin . There is evidence that ethical civilizations more advanced than ours are involved in the process of our development.

Give me proof

Statements from employees of the United States government who have testified to participate in secret programs of relations with certain extraterrestrial civilizations.

Does that mean that there has already been contact with aliens?

Yes, since the 1950s the United States government, according to these witnesses, has been secretly working with them. Andrew Basiago , the son of a CIA officer, was enrolled at age seven in a secret program for gifted children who were trained to be ambassadors to extraterrestrial races .

Any contact?

He had an encounter with three astronauts from the planet Mars . In January 2009, Virginia Olds , a CIA employee, confirmed that the CIA knows that there is a humanoid civilization living under the surface of Mars.

We believe that in the year 9500 a. C. fragments of the supernova Vela entered the solar system and destroyed the ecology of Mars. The Martians, some 1,500 years more advanced than us ethically and technologically, took refuge underground.

… In December 2008 we published a report that includes photographs taken by the NASA robot Rover Spirit in which certain species of humanoids, animals and structures on the surface of Mars are identified.

Alien Contacts and How the Universe Works

How the universe works, according to Webre.

Buzz Aldrin who traveled on Apollo XI said that when they reached the Moon in 1969 there were two large alien spacecraft around the great crater, his version was verified by senior NASA officials.

Why not divulge life on Mars?

For political reasons. We are going to file a lawsuit under the freedom of information laws for NASA to recognize intelligent life on Mars.

¿ And why not present in society themselves, the Martians?

Ours is a low-order planet that we assume is under a quarantine imposed by the government of the universe .

And the first contact will be with the Martians?

Yes, because there are many mutual advantages, they can give us technologies and knowledge and we have a beautiful green planet to which they can migrate .

How does the universe work?

There are many dimensions and universes parallel to ours. Some alien civilizations come from another dimension, another parallel universe , that is why UFOs can appear and disappear.

How are these more evolved civilizations?

It seems that we live in an organized universe and the most ethical civilizations have managed to dominate the time dimension and it is they who probably develop our reality.

… Well, they do it fatal

According to some theories, we are rapidly evolving away from the permanent war economy and towards a sustainable economy. Human consciousness develops to enter the universal age and openly relate to those other civilizations.

Help for humanity?

Could they help the development of humanity?

There is a primary directive: do not interfere with the evolution of a civilization on another planet. But in a very short time, man will learn to use quantum teleportation and to draw energy from space.

We are in an era of transition in which we must decide whether we are going to destruction or evolution.

Is your job to study the great government of the universe?

Exopolitics is a social science, studying the relationships between our human civilization and other intelligent civilizations in the universe. One of our first steps towards universal diplomacy will be through the Martian civilization.

I understand

I personally work with Dr. Norman Miranda , chief of staff of the president of the UN General Assembly, so that the UN represents the Earth before the civilization of Mars.

According to Alfred Webre, our planet is more like a prison and has been designed that way by intergalactic society. However, we could be about to establish relationships with other civilizations …

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

UFO Trailer Reveals First-Look At JJ Abrams Flying Object Documentary

UFO, a four-part documentary series executive produced by JJ Abrams, sheds light on objects in the sky and government conspiracies in the new trailer.

BY TIMOTHY MCCLELLAND

The new trailer for executive producer J.J. Abrams' documentary series, UFO, arrives online. The series is directed by Mark Monroe, who previously served as the writer for Netflix's 2017 documentary, Icarus. UFO looks to delve into the truth behind extraterrestrial phenomena while peeling back layers of government interference. Starting August 8th at 9 pm, UFO will be released every Sunday throughout the month on Showtime.

In the trailer shared by Showtime on their YouTube page, real footage of UFO sightings from around the world is accompanied by narration from interviewees who have had experiences. Beyond exploring UFOs, the trailer highlights the emotional side felt by those who share their stories, as they feel no one ever believes them. Accentuated by an intense score, the trailer shows the declassified footage released by the United States government only a few years ago, and it promises an exciting dive into the unknown.

Check out the trailer for UFO below:

Click Here for Original Trailer Link

RELATED: 

• Why JJ Abrams Didn’t Direct The Last Jedi

Abrams is no stranger to tackling ideas that most would label science fiction. Abrams' resume includes several projects, such as Star Wars, Super 8, and even Star Strek, that prove he loves to dabble in ideas beyond Earth, so bringing that fascination for otherworldy phenomena to the small screen seems like a natural fit. UFO also looks to come with the slick production value Abrams' Bad Robot is more than capable of providing. With a documentary series, Abrams looks to bring real evidence and eyewitness accounts into the spotlight with an eye toward the truth. Audiences will get to experience UFO when it premieres next month.

{ https://screenrant.com/ }

A possibly habitable super-Earth may be residing in a nearby planetary system. In fact, the system already has a world that is about half the size of Venus as well as another planet that could contain an ocean.

Located just 35 light-years away from Earth is a bright red dwarf star called L 98-59 (also known as TOI-175). So far, researchers have confirmed four planets in the system and there is possibly a fifth. When astronomers found the first three exoplanets in the system two years ago, they were compared to “…looking at Venus, Earth and Mars in the solar system”.

(Not any of the exoplanets mentioned in this article.)

In the latest research, a team wanted to find out the mass of the three planets by using the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) instrument on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. More specifically, they looked at how much the star wobbled when the planets tugged at its gravitational force and they were able to calculate their masses. They were successful in studying the three known planets and even found another world (possibly two of them).

The planet closest to the star is the lightest – it has just half the mass of Venus. This planet and the one second-closest to the star are believed to have small iron cores and could even have a small amount of water in their atmospheres. The next-furthest planet seems to have a similar iron core but it appears to have much more water and gas – possibly one-third of the world’s mass could be water.

(Not any of the exoplanets mentioned in this article.)

The experts found a fourth planet and possibly even a fifth, but further analysis needs to be conducted in order to gather more information on them. If the fifth planet is confirmed, this would be hugely significant as it would be located in an area where it would receive approximately the same amount of heat and light from its star as Earth gets from our sun. Furthermore, the surface temperature might even be perfect enough to hold and protect water in addition to possibly supporting life. (An image of where the exoplanets are spaced in their system compared to Venus, Earth, and Mars, as well as a video about the research can be seen here.)

A graphic compares the L 98-59 system (above) with our own solar system (below). The systems are not shown to scale, instead, the diagram is arranged so that the habitable zones of the L 98-59 and the sun align. 

(Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser (Acknowledgment: O. Demangeon))

The research will continue regarding this fascinating system and hopefully more information will be gathered on the potential fifth and maybe even habitable world.

The study was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Evidence of a 2,800-year-old biblical earthquake is found in Jerusalem after archaeologists uncover ‘layer of destruction’ of collapsed walls and broken pottery

• The Old Testament discuses an earthquake that hit Jerusalem some 2,800 years ago and now, archaeologists have found the first evidence of the event

• Researchers found a layer of destruction while conducting excavations

• It consisted of collapsed walls and broken pottery dating to the 8th century BC

By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Books of Amos and Zechariah in the Old Testament describe an earthquake that rocked the city Jerusalem about 2,800 years ago and archaeologists have now found the first evidence of biblical event.

The Israel Antiquities Authority's (IAA) excavations in the City of David National Park uncovered a layer of destruction during excavations, which consists of collapsed walls, broken pottery and bits and pieces of other goods.

Researchers say that since there was no signs of fire or an ancient conquest the destruction had to have been caused by an earthquake that hit Israel during the 8th century BC.

Some evidence of the event has been found in surrounding areas, but this is the first time archaeologists can prove it hit the major city.

Scroll down for video 

The Israel Antiquities Authority's (IAA) excavations in the City of David National Park uncovered a layer of destruction during excavations, which consisted of collapsed walls, broken pottery and bits and pieces of other goods

In the book of Amos, the passage reads: 'The words of Amos, a sheep breeder from Tekoa, who prophesied concerning Israel in the reigns of Kings Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam son of Joash of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

'And the Valley in the Hills shall be stopped up, for the Valley of the Hills shall reach only to Azal; it shall be stopped up as it was stopped up as a result of the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah,' reads another passage in Zechariah, recalling the event some 200 years later, to suggest how strong of a collective memory it left.'

Among the artifacts, archaeologists found were fragments of pottery, some nearly intact that they could be put back together, and small tables, The Jerusalem Post reports.

Since the artifacts were discovered deep into excavation site, experts say residents had to have built on top of the ruins following the earthquake, which preserved traces the event occurred.

Researchers say that since there was no signs of fire or an ancient conquest the destruction had to have been caused by an earthquake that hit Israel during the 8th century BC. Pcutred are collapsed walls that ruins of the event

Among the artifacts, archaeologists found were fragments of pottery, some nearly intact that they could be put back together, and small tables

IAA excavation directors Dr. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf said in a statement: 'When we excavated the structure and uncovered an 8th century BCE layer of destruction, we were very surprised, because we know that Jerusalem continued to exist in succession until the Babylonian destruction, which occurred about 200 years later.

'We asked ourselves what could have caused that dramatic layer of destruction we uncovered.

'Examining the excavation findings, we tried to check if there is a reference to it in the biblical text.

'Interestingly, the earthquake that appears in the Bible, in the books of Amos and Zechariah, occurred at the time when the building we excavated in the City of David collapsed.'

Another biblical find was discovered in Israel last month - a pottery fragment unearthed in Israel bears the name of the biblical judge 'Jerubbaal,' which was inked on the artifact 3,100 years ago

Another biblical find was discovered in Israel last month - a pottery fragment unearthed in Israel bears the name of the biblical judge 'Jerubbaal,' which was inked on the artifact 3,100 years ago.

Mentioned in the Hebrew bible, Jerubbaal was a military leader, judge and prophet whose story is recounted in chapters 6 to 8 of the Book of Judges.

The ceramic artifact was discovered in an archeological excavation at Horbat al-Ra'i, near Kiryat Gat in Israel, which experts say it was part of a small jug that carried precious liquids.

'The name written on the jug, Yarubaal, may allude to biblical Jerubbaal, also known as the judge Gideon ben (son of) Yoash, but we cannot be sure if he owned the inscribed vessel,' the Israel Antiquities Authority shared in a statement.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Based on damaged artifacts found in Jerusalem, experts are convinced that they have proof of a 2,800-year-old devastating earthquake that was mentioned in the Bible. According to the books of Amos and Zechariah, there was a great earthquake that shook Israel “in the days of Uzziah king of Judah”.

A collection of shattered vessels that included cooking utensils, bowls, storage containers, and lamps, were unearthed in a layer of destruction by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority. It is believed that these items would have been damaged when the walls of an old building collapsed due to an earthquake because there wasn’t any evidence of a fire or any other natural phenomena. These vessels have been dated back to the 8th century BC. (Pictures can be seen here.)

The excavation area of an 8th century BCE layer of destruction in the City of David likely resulting from an earthquake from the same period that rocked the Holy Land and was mentioned in the Bible.

(Ortal Kalaf/ Israel Antiquities Authority)

Remains of tools discovered in Jerusalem's City of David within a layer of destruction from the 8th century BCE, which coincided with a massive earthquake mentioned in the Bible. The tools were likely shattered during the quake.

(Eliyahu Yanai/ City of David)

Vessels discovered in Jerusalem's City of David within a layer of destruction from the 8th century BCE, which coincided with a massive earthquake mentioned in the Bible. They are photographed after their restoration by Joseph Bocangolz.

(Dafna Gazit/ Israel Antiquities Authority)

Dr. Joe Uziel, right, and Ortal Kalaf from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

(Yaniv Berman/ Israel Antiquities Authority)

The researchers also described where the items were found, “This was most notable on the earliest floor of the southernmost room.” “In this room, a row of smashed vessels was uncovered along its northern wall, above which fallen stones had been found. It appears that these stones were the upper part of the walls of the room, which had collapsed, destroying the vessels which had been set along the wall.”

Dr. Joe Uziel and Ortal Chalaf, who are the directors of the excavation, explained in further detail how they came to the conclusion that an earthquake caused the damage, “We asked ourselves what could have caused that dramatic layer of destruction we uncovered,” adding, “Examining the excavation findings, we tried to check if there is a reference to it in the biblical text. Interestingly, the earthquake that appears in the Bible in the books of Amos and Zechariah, occurred at the time when the building we excavated in the City of David collapsed. The combination of the finds in the field together with the biblical description, led us to the conclusion that the earthquake that struck the Land of Israel during the reign of Uzziah king of Judah, also hit the capital of the kingdom – Jerusalem.”

Furthermore, they have found evidence of the earthquake in other parts of Israel as the researchers explained, “The earthquake that occurred in the middle of the 8th century BCE was probably one of the strongest and most damaging earthquakes in ancient times, and evidence of its occurrence has been discovered in the past in excavations conducted at a variety of sites throughout Israel, such as Hazor, Gezer, Tel Agol, and Tell es-Safi/Gath.”

Their findings will be presented next month at the “City of David Research” conference.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Annunaki Intervention with the Human Species

A clip featured from the highly anticipated Divine Intervention documentary brought to you by David Icke’s Ickonic platform.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 08 - 08 - 2021

UFO Sighted Over Istanbul, Turkey ( August 6, 2021 )

UFO was sighted over İstanbul, Turkey on August 6, 2021

STATEMENT : Yesterday, I went out in Turkey and this is serious, UFO disappeared

They are here

• credit : Pablo Ortiz
• note : background song : Kanunlar Gibi 

UFO Sighted Over Arequipa, Peru ( August 7, 2021 )

UFO was Sighted over a mountain in Arequipa, Peru on August 7, 2021 : video was taken by Eric Estrada
VIDEO 2 : STATEMENT : This happened in my city and it's not the 1st time it's happened, they always come out of the volcanoes.
ORIGINAL : Esto pasó en mi ciudad y no es la 1era vez que sucede, siempre salen de los volcanes.

• credit : Carlos Drums

Strange Phenomenon Sighted Over Sweden ( August 3, 2021 )

Strange Skies Video Compilation and it is only August 7

VIDEO 1 : Sweeden : A rare celestial optical illusion called Parelio, an optical phenomenon that occurs with the refraction of light in ice particles from clouds, took place in the sky of Sweden. by MegaCurioso : Aug 3, 2021
VIDEO 2 : New Brunswick, Canada : credit :Sharon Thibeault-Lizotte : August 3, 2021

VIDEO 3 : Cali, Colombia : August 2, 2021 : credit : Brain Chauxx

VIDEO 4 : Bielsko-Biala Poland : August 4, 2021 : credit : Henryk Bozek

VIDEO 5 : California : August 2, 2021 : Name withheld

Dark Disk UFO Zooms Away Over Manhattan, New York ( August 7, 2021 )

Disk object zooms away closeup : This is Mutual UFO Network Case 117196 file1
Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117196
The audio was removed because I was freaking out & cussed while recording this thing. I couldn't beleive what I was looking at it really freaked me out!!!

Date Submitted : 2021-08-07
Date of Event : 2021-08-07
MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : 08072021.mp4

UFOs Sighted Over Huamantla, Tlaxcala, Mexico ( August 6, 2021 )

STATEMENT : Yesterday in a plot south of Huamantla Tlaxcala Mx I caught my attention to the sparks of light that they made, which can be I observed for a while, unfortunately I was in hours of work and I was not able to record or see them until I lost.
ORIGINAL : El día de ayer en una parcela al sur de Huamantla Tlaxcala Mx me llamo la atención los destellos de luz que hacían, que puedan ser los observé por algún rato, desafortunadamente estaba en horas de trabajo y no me fue posible grabar ni verlos hasta perderse.

Closer and more evident every day

• credit : Aurelio Servin

RELATED VIDEO

Strange Extraterrestrial Entity Attacks Man ( August 2, 2021 )

Paranormal or Extraterrestrial Entity : Security Camera capturing a Entity or Energy being attacking a man in the municipality of Quindio, Armenia, Colombia on August 2, 2021 at approx : 11:25PM

Paranormal or Extraterrestrial maybe the entitie is from other dimension. This unexplained light could be Alien or interdimensional or spirit orb : Introducing the original video and getting closer every day

They are everywhere now

note : no audio : video looped at approx 24 second mark

• credit : A.v.e.l.f

UFO Battle Sighted Over Argentina ( August 5, 2021 )

UFO Battle Sighted Over Argentina on August 5, 2021

STATEMENT : Wonder what happened in the heavens of Argentina?
Explain this to me!!!
ORIGINAL : ¿Qué pasó en los cielos de Argentina?
¡¡¡Explícamelo!!!

Have the Argentine Air Force been ordered to shoot down an Unidentified Flying Object : Argentina's Air Force has many reports of Unidentified Flying Objects.

They are everywhere

• credit : Max Santos
• note : video loops at approx 16 second mark

UFO Sighted Over Yopal, Colombia ( August 5, 2021 )

STATEMENT : This was seen in Colombia, Yopal - Casanare yesterday at 11:24 pm did anyone else see it? After that, the army helicopters were late... they tell me that more people reported it!!

ORIGINAL : Esto se vio en Colombia, Yopal - Casanare ayer a las 11:24 pm alguien mas lo vio? Despues de eso estuvieron hasta tarde los helicópteros del ejército...me indican que ya mas personas lo reportaron!!

• credit : Edwin Rodriguez

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

UFOs Are Already A Fact, But What About Alien Implants?

The case of Alien abductions and alien implants has been a fascinating subject for years, if proven to be true, it could be considered as one of the best pieces of evidence that points towards the existence of otherworldly beings.

After years of researcher on the UFO phenomena by different individuals worldwide, there is a tremendous amount of “official” information that has been made available for people around the globe.

{ https://anomalien.com/ }

Interior of Mars Revealed by NASA InSight Lander’s Seismic Observations

Artist’s impression of the internal structure of Mars.

Credit: © IPGP / David Ducros

The first direct seismic observations from NASA

">NASA’s InSight lander, presented in three studies in this issue, provide clues to the composition of Mars

">Mars. Researchers across these studies report preliminary findings from the Insight mission and begin to map — for the first time — the interior of a planet apart from Earth.

“These three studies provide important constraints on the present-day structure of Mars and are also key for improving our understanding of how the planet formed billions of years ago and evolved through time,” write Sanne Cottaar and Paula Koelemeijer in a related Perspective.

Studying a planet’s interior layers — its crust, mantle and core — can reveal key insights into its formation and evolution, as well as uncovering any geomagnetic and tectonic activity it hosts. Such deep interior regions can be probed by measuring the waves that travel through the planet’s body following seismic events like a quake. Such methods have been instrumental in surveying the internal characteristics of Earth.

The two largest quakes detected by NASA’s InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fossae. Scientists previously spotted signs of tectonic activity here, including landslides. This image was taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

In early 2019, NASA’s Martian lander InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) began to detect and record marsquakes from its position on the surface of Mars, including several subcrustal quakes that resemble tectonic events on Earth. Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun and colleagues used marsquakes and ambient seismic noise to image the structure of the Martian crust below the InSight landing site, finding evidence for a multi-layered crust with either two or three interfaces. Extrapolating this data to the entire planet, Knapmeyer-Endrun et al. show how the average thickness of Mars’ crust lies between 24 and 72 kilometers (km).

Amir Khan et al. used direct and surface reflected seismic waves from eight low-frequency marsquakes to probe deeper and reveal the structure of Mars’ mantle to a depth of nearly 800 km. Their findings suggest that a thick lithosphere lies close to 500 km below the surface and, like the Earth, likely has a low-velocity layer beneath it. According to Khan et al., Mars’ crustal layer is likely highly enriched in heat-producing radioactive elements, which heats this region at the expense of the planet’s interior.

Illustration of NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight)

Credits: NASA

Deeper still, Simon Stähler and colleagues used the faint seismic signals reflected off the Martian core-mantle boundary to investigate the Martian core. They found that Mars’ relatively large liquid metal core has a radius of nearly 1,830 kilometers and begins roughly halfway between the surface and the center of the planet, suggesting that the planet’s mantle consists of only one rocky layer, rather than two, like in Earth. According to Stähler et al., the findings indicate that the iron-nickel core is less dense than previously thought and enriched in lighter elements.

“Direct seismic observations on Mars represent a major leap forward in planetary seismology,” write Cottaar and Koelemeijer. “Over the coming years, as more marsquakes are measured, scientists will refine these models of the red planet and reveal more of Mars’ enigmatic mysteries.”

For more on this research:

• NASA’s InSight Mission Reveals the Detailed Internal Structure of Mars
• Scientists Analyze Marsquakes To Determine the Structure of Mars’ Crust

References:

• “Upper mantle structure of Mars from InSight seismic data” by Amir Khan, Savas Ceylan, Martin van Driel, Domenico Giardini, Philippe Lognonné, Henri Samuel, Nicholas C. Schmerr, Simon C. Stähler, Andrea C. Duran, Quancheng Huang, Doyeon Kim, Adrien Broquet, Constantinos Charalambous, John F. Clinton, Paul M. Davis, Mélanie Drilleau, Foivos Karakostas, Vedran Lekic, Scott M. McLennan, Ross R. Maguire, Chloé Michaut, Mark P. Panning, William T. Pike, Baptiste Pinot, Matthieu Plasman, John-Robert Scholz, Rudolf Widmer-Schnidrig, Tilman Spohn, Suzanne E. Smrekar and William B. Banerdt, 23 July 2021, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abf2966
• “Seismic detection of the martian core” by Simon C. Stähler, Amir Khan, W. Bruce Banerdt, Philippe Lognonné, Domenico Giardini, Savas Ceylan, Mélanie Drilleau, A. Cecilia Duran, Raphaël F. Garcia, Quancheng Huang, Doyeon Kim, Vedran Lekic, Henri Samuel, Martin Schimmel, Nicholas Schmerr, David Sollberger, Éléonore Stutzmann, Zongbo Xu, Daniele Antonangeli, Constantinos Charalambous, Paul M. Davis, Jessica C. E. Irving, Taichi Kawamura, Martin Knapmeyer, Ross Maguire, Angela G. Marusiak, Mark P. Panning, Clément Perrin, Ana-Catalina Plesa, Attilio Rivoldini, Cédric Schmelzbach, Géraldine Zenhäusern, Éric Beucler, John Clinton, Nikolaj Dahmen, Martin van Driel, Tamara Gudkova, Anna Horleston, W. Thomas Pike, Matthieu Plasman and Suzanne E. Smrekar, 23 July 2021, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abi7730
• “Thickness and structure of the martian crust from InSight seismic data” by Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun, Mark P. Panning, Felix Bissig, Rakshit Joshi, Amir Khan, Doyeon Kim, Vedran Lekic, Benoit Tauzin, Saikiran Tharimena, Matthieu Plasman, Nicolas Compaire, Raphael F. Garcia, Ludovic Margerin, Martin Schimmel, Éléonore Stutzmann, Nicholas Schmerr, Ebru Bozdag, Ana-Catalina Plesa, Mark A. Wieczorek, Adrien Broquet, Daniele Antonangeli, Scott M. McLennan, Henri Samuel, Chloé Michaut, Lu Pan, Suzanne E. Smrekar, Catherine L. Johnson, Nienke Brinkman, Anna Mittelholz, Attilio Rivoldini, Paul M. Davis, Philippe Lognonné, Baptiste Pinot, John-Robert Scholz, Simon Stähler, Martin Knapmeyer, Martin van Driel, Domenico Giardini and W. Bruce Banerdt, 23 July 2021, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abf8966

{ https://scitechdaily.com/ }

The arrogant mentality that saw Galileo derided still exists today, claims Harvard professor who wants to prove aliens exist

Chris Sweeney

Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines. Follow him on Twitter @Writes_Sweeney

“The only reason I’m willing to go through it is because I think it’s an extremely important question for the future of humanity. That’s probably the most important scientific question you can ask. It’s not about me, we should be open, rather than assume we know the answer in advance, that’s what Galileo taught us.” 

Even though the Galileo Project was only launched last week, it has already attracted the attention of amateur astronomers, as thousands have landed emails in Loeb’s inbox. The venture was partly in response to the US government’s June 2020 Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) report, which offered more questions than answers.

“You expect the scientific community to be blue sky, open minded, but the government seems to be more open minded in declaring that and the scientific community ridicules it out of a habit. There is this tendency of staying conservative and not dealing with it, which I think is inappropriate,” Loeb said.  

Oddly, Loeb didn’t plan to start the Galileo Project, the interest stemmed from his book, ‘Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth’, about the unexplained object glimpsed from a Hawaiian observatory in 2017. Arriving at his office recently, he was informed a new research fund had been created in his name. Loeb said: “Soon after I had a multi-billionaire on the porch of my home with questions about my book.” 

The next morning, the fund had $1.75 million from two mystery donors. Loeb added, “That never happens in academia, you have to understand that. A lot of people seek funding and work very hard to get funding and most often don’t get funded, but here I didn’t engage in any fundraising.” The cash allowed him to follow his instinct and recruit a team of 50 scientists. 

It will also enable him to buy telescopes, cameras and computer systems. 

The Galileo Project is going after two types of targets, and the first is UAPs. Loeb explained: “Astronomers usually look at distant objects so if a bird flies above the telescope, it’s ignored. We will pay attention to that bird and make sure it’s a bird, and not something else. We’ll be looking at the sky but not focusing on the usual suspects that astronomers are looking at far away, we’re looking at nearby objects. It’s a fishing expedition, you throw the hook and you don’t know what kind of fish you will find, and then you get as much data as possible.” 

The other is interstellar objects from outside our solar system. Loeb continued: “I’m not after recruiting thousands of people with their cell phones looking at the sky, we want a large telescope more than 10cm in size or up to a metre, that’s 1,000 times the aperture of a cell phone. We want to read off the label if it’s Made in Country X versus Made on Planet Y.” 

The US government report confirmed to Loeb the gaping lacuna in the status quo. The wrong people are investigating matters, he believes. “That report was an admission of failure of these intelligence agencies as that is their job, they are paid to figure out what flies in the sky,” he said. “I realised that this subject should not be limited to the talking points of politicians or military personnel, it should be in the realm of science because you would never ask a plumber to bake you a cake.”

That’s not to say that The White House doesn’t have some fascinating information, but it doesn’t share it with academics because of the well-worn reason of national security.

Loeb said: “The data the government has was gathered by classified sensors, they are sensors monitoring the sky and the US government prefers its adversaries not to know what sensors it is using. It cannot release the data for that reason, not because all of the data is classified. 

“Frankly, I’m not interested in that data, I want to collect my own data. I behave like that kid that is told by adults this is the truth, often they don’t pay attention, the kids want to find it by himself or herself by checking it out. Science is an extension of our childhood curiosity and about reproducible evidence.” 

The Galileo Project should swing into action in 12 months. What members of the public may be surprised to discover is that Loeb is not actually expecting to see aliens, he is looking for their equipment. That for him will be enough to prove there is a more advanced species than us in the universe. 

Loeb said: “We live in the 21st century, not in the Dark Ages, and we know that if we have the instruments that can collect the evidence we need, we should just go ahead and do it, rather than argue forever philosophically whether it makes sense or not, or ridicule it. The right approach is this is an intriguing question because it could indicate there is a smarter kid on the block, we should consider that possibility.” 

There is a valid reason why Loeb anticipates only seeing machinery. “Biological creatures were not selected by Darwinian evolution to survive in space, it takes light which travels at the fastest speed, four years to reach us from the nearest star,” he said.  

“If you imagine chemical rockets that we use to cross the galaxy, it would take them 100 million years. No biological creature can survive that long even if you have multiple generations because of the impact of cosmic rays, but there is no need to send them, you can send artificial intelligent systems.” 

And expanding on his theory, it truly does become hard to visualise. Loeb said: “If there was a civilisation, more advanced than we are, that sent self-replicating AI systems, that are connected to 3D printers that can make more of the same as they get to other places, you could easily full up the Milky Way galaxy with such probes within a billion years, and most of the stars in the universe formed billions of years before the Sun. If you just imagine another star that predated us, that’s enough to fill up the galaxy with probes.” 

Once the cameras and computers are calibrated, Loeb will place them in different parts of the world. Mountaintops are a likely spot but if he can reach $10 million in funding, then he will have over 100 sets of equipment to deploy in a variety of locations. He said: “Then we will have a high likelihood of resolving this question of what UAPs are all about. If it turns out to be some atmospheric phenomena that we’ve never anticipated, so be it. We will just report back and clear up the fog.” 

Underlining how tough it may be is the fact that NASA has already snubbed Loeb. But with his status as a professor at the world’s most prestigious university, he is hoping to inspire others to push the boundaries. He said: “Around the same time (of the US government report) the head of NASA Bill Nelson said scientists should look into that, I was very happy to hear that so I approached people under him and said ‘here I am, to serve and make your boss happy’. Nobody got back to me. 

“This subject appeals to the public, it’s an opportunity if it were to be brought to the mainstream of science to attract more funding to science, and to attract talent into science, young people that will become scientists because it’s exciting.” 

The example of Galileo is inescapable. Loeb is staking a lot on his theory and generations to come could look back at him as we now do at the famed Italian astronomer. Who else is leading an educated surge to countenance that we may not be the shot callers that we think we are? 

Loeb said: “I don’t think we’re special or unique and the reason I say that is whenever we’ve pretended we’re really special, it ended up being wrong. We thought we were the centre of the universe, that’s wrong and that’s what Galileo showed by looking through his telescope. 

“The philosophers at the time said, ‘we know the Sun moves around the Earth and you’re claiming the Earth moves around the Sun, therefore, we will not look through our telescope because we know the truth’. 

“They put him in house arrest, today he would have been cancelled on social media. Reality doesn’t care what we say, we can pretend there are no neighbours and there is no smarter kid on the block by not looking through our windows and closing the curtains, that won’t get rid of that smarter kid.  

“The point is not to repeat again the mistakes made during the days of Galileo.” 

{ https://www.rt.com/ }

Government officials couldn't explain Kaikōura lights UFO sightings, documents show

Declassified government documents show officials were struggling to debunk TV1 footage of the Kaikōura lights UFO sightings in December 1978.

In a report submitted to the United Nations in January 1979, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) classified the objects as "UFOs until identified", but said the "prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote".

The document is one of a large group of declassified documents regarding "Unidentified Flying Objects" at Archives New Zealand, which came from New Zealand's post at the UN between 1977 and 1982.

In the briefing, DSIR debunks one film of the famous event, but has trouble in doing the same with TV1's footage.

READ MORE:

•  No ET, no answers: US intelligence report is inconclusive about UFOs
  
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"Both Crockett's and TV1's films are highly distorted," the briefing reads.

"Crockett's film now considered unmeritous because of visual discrepancies produced by filming through an argosy window. DSIR have actually duplicated Crockett's results by shining a torch light onto the plane's window.

"TV1's film proving more interesting as it was a straight shot free of any distortion produced by filming through glass and plastic.

"However, aberrations are apparent in the film which is making it difficult to analyse. DSIR are now converting the film to computer readout and are hopeful that distortions can be erased."

DSIR said atmospheric conditions could explain false radar readings at the time of the sightings, where both Christchurch and Wellington air traffic control registered signals.

They said the readings weren't consistent with the sightings of pilots, or ground sightings.

"DSIR are not willing to make definite statements yet but their conjecture is that the objects filmed will turn out to be no more than general illumination (possibly produced by Jupiter or Venus) on the horizon.

"The objects remain classified as UFOs until identified. Prospect of extra terrestrial intervention being proved is regarded as extremely remote."

Other documents show the lobbying New Zealand received from the nation of Grenada, which wanted the United Nations to "initiate, conduct and co-ordinate research into the nature and origin of unidentified flying objects and related phenomena".

New Zealand was chairing the Western European and Other States Group in November, 1978, when Grenada wanted to table their suggestion, and was not too pleased at the suggestion.

"We are disenchanted with Grenada resolution and would hope that the item can be disposed of without vote," one document reads.

"If put to the vote our inclination would be to vote against."

Another document said: "A number of countries who were members of the Outer Space Committee (particularly Austria) were unhappy at the proposal. They felt it would damage the Committee's credibility and divert resources from more imporant work."

New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it shared the opinion of the committee.

"The matter is not appropriate for discussion in a United Nations context.

"We would hope, therefore, that the matter would be disposed of without vote.

"If put to the vote a negative vote would be appropriate though the delegation has discretion to abstain in appropriate company."

Grenada eventually pulled its pursuit of an UFO investigations unit in the UN, at the urging of the United Kingdom.

{ https://www.stuff.co.nz/ }

UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?

For better or worse, sightings of unidentifiable things in the sky have become inextricably linked to spacecraft from outer space.

Earlier this summer, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a much publicized nine-page report titled, with deliberate blandness, “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” Although the report was requested by Congress, in many ways it was the culmination of three-and-a-half years of public attention to military reports regarding unidentified flying objects. ODNI did not use the acronym “UFO,” which dates back to the 1950s (government officials now prefer “UAP,” for unidentified aerial phenomena), and never even mentioned the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin for the sighted objects. But that didn’t keep news outlets from concluding that the report “stops short of ruling out aliens.”

Military and intelligence officials have consistently framed these mysterious incidents in terms of national security. The Preliminary Assessment stated that ODNI’s charge from Congress was to provide policymakers with an overview of “the challenges associated with characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP.” The office was directed to focus on “identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.” Even those who promote the study of UFOs agreed that possible military threats—not extraterrestrials—were the focus of the new report.

So why do the press and social media keep bringing up aliens? Because, for better or worse, sightings of unidentifiable things in the sky have become inextricably linked to visitors from outer space. Aliens are now our default explanation for such events, and the reason is no accident: For nearly 75 years, people have worked hard to make it the default.

When reports of flying saucers first began to surface during the summer of 1947, extraterrestrials were hardly brought up. Yes, there were some who took seriously the prospect that Martians or other beings from outer space were behind all the commotion. Kenneth Arnold—the man credited with first reporting a UFO sighting—is said to have encountered a distraught woman in an Oregon café, who ran out sobbing and shouting, “There’s the man who saw the men from Mars,” adding that she “would have to do something for the children.”

Most people, though, didn’t take this possibility seriously. Opinion writers tended to think it most likely that the U.S. or Soviet Union were testing experimental rockets or aircraft. The general public also seemed dubious that flying saucers might be the work of extraterrestrials. In August 1947, George Gallup published the results of a poll in which he asked those surveyed—all Americans—what they thought the flying objects reported in the newspapers might be. Twenty-nine percent thought witnesses had been mistaken, 15 percent thought they were secret American weapons, and one-third said they didn’t know. If there were people who believed they were ships from outer space, their responses were included among the nine percent who answered “other.”

A Dutch survey in October 1952 revealed similar sentiments in the Netherlands, with no apparent support for the idea of alien visitors. And 43 percent confessed that they had no idea what the flying saucers were.

The fact that almost half the general public in the late 1940s and early 1950s were undecided about the nature of UFOs meant that, in principle at least, they were open to different explanations. This provided an opportunity in 1950 for pulp and entertainment writers Donald Keyhoe (The Flying Saucers are Real), Frank Scully (Behind the Flying Saucers), and Gerald Heard (The Riddle of the Flying Saucers) to find receptive readers for their claims that unidentified flying objects were visitors from outer space. Over the course of the 1950s, first local, then nationwide flying saucer clubs and groups sprouted up across the United States. These offered subscribers both a way to keep up with UFO news through newsletters and bulletins, and a forum for speculating about the intentions of the extraterrestrials free from fear of public ridicule.

By 1956, the terms “unidentified flying object” and “UFO” were being used in place of “flying saucer” by some military officials and amateur civilian researchers. Within a decade and a half, the acronym UFO had effectively replaced its predecessor. If the new terminology was meant to bring precision to reports of sightings, however, it achieved nothing of the kind. Just as any account of an odd thing in the sky had been quickly branded by media outlets to be a potential flying saucer, so too “UFO” served as a convenient rubric under which the media categorized just about any perplexing observation. All the while, “UFO” continued to carry with it the same association with aliens that “flying saucer” once had. The current term, “unidentified aerial phenomena” is a prisoner of this same past.

What then, should we make of this most recent report? Does it add anything new to the long history of UFOlogy? How does it compare with previous official statements?

Unfortunately, the document is thin on details, so there is much we don’t know. What we have been told, however, is that the Department of Defense has formed an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) to study the issue. For the purposes of the report, this task force examined 144 incidents involving U.S. government personnel and assets, all of which occurred between November 2004 and March 2021. Most of the cases are considered explainable, though they haven’t all been completely explained due to the fact that “the reporting lacked sufficient specificity.”

The most worrying UAP episodes for national security-minded readers involved 18 outlier instances in which it was reported that the object displayed “unusual flight characteristics.” In these cases, investigators could not rule out the possibility that it was the result of sensor errors, cyberattack, or misperception. In the end, intelligence authorities recommend increased funding to the task force to develop a more robust data collection and analysis system.

This is by no means the first government fact-finding effort in this arena. After 1947, the U.S. Air Force established a series of UFO investigation task forces, the most prominent being Project Blue Book during the years 1952-1969. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency convened a small panel of consultants to look into the matter. Finally, the Air Force sponsored a scientific study of the UFO phenomenon by the University of Colorado between 1966 and 1968.

Civilian UFO researchers and enthusiasts have soundly criticized these undertakings for what they see as evidence of bias and secrecy. Nevertheless, in all these cases, officials publicly concluded that most reports of UFOs were explicable and presented no reason for concern, and that the residue of inexplicable cases did not pose a national security threat.

In short, the ODNI Preliminary Assessment is all too familiar. Modern investigation of UAPs has been hampered by inconsistent standards of reporting and limited resources, and as in the past, officials on the whole appear unruffled by such reports. And once again, government agencies leave room for ambiguity in admitting that there are a number of anomalous incidents.

ODNI’s preliminary report does break some new ground, however. It clearly states that most unidentified aerial phenomena reported are physical objects. It also admits that a culture of dismissiveness and ridicule within the military and intelligence communities has inhibited witnesses from coming forward, which may partly explain the shortcomings in reporting. In fact, the Preliminary Assessment appears to open the way for more scientists and technical experts to join the discussion, although how they should do that remains unclear.

We can expect that intelligence analysts will continue to monitor the situation. Activists will take to social media to demand full disclosure by government agencies. And both skeptics and believers in alien visitation will come away feeling that their side has won the day. Far from the end of the UFO controversy, this is just the beginning of a new chapter.

RELATED VIDEOS, seleced and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.airspacemag.com/ }

A senior defence source told the Daily Star Sunday that the government was having to very carefully word its statements on the existence of aliens and the presence of UFOs in our skies

Aliens may well be shooting through the skies above us 

(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Military bosses have refused to rule out the existence of extraterrestrials.

The Ministry of Defence admitted it had been receiving reports of UFO sightings for more than 50 years.

But the Government said that because none of them posed a threat to UK security it had “no opinion on the existence of extraterrestrials”.

One senior defence source said last night he ­believed the Government was worried about ­commenting on alien life.

He said: “The MoD can’t deny the existence of UFOs because there are reports coming in every week, so it tries to fudge the issue by saying that no UFOs have posed a military threat.

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“It’s interesting that it doesn’t mention anything about UFOs which don’t represent a threat.”

Details of the Government position was revealed in a Freedom of Information request.

An MoD spokesman said: “While I note your interest in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, you may wish to be aware that the MoD has no opinion on the existence of extraterrestrials.

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• UFO believers launch support group dubbed 'Aliens Anonymous' to bond over sightings

“This is because, in over 50 years, no UFO sighting reported to the department has indicated the existence of any military threat to the UK.”

Author Nick Pope, who used to run the British Government’s UFO Project, said: “The MoD’s response is disappointing, but predictable.”

Back in June, the Star reported how more than 200 close encounters have been reported in Yorkshire over the past two decades.

READ MORE

• Former CIA agent admits to collection of devices 'found inside alien abduction victims'

The latest came at the end of May, when a jet passenger filmed a long cigar-shaped object flying close to their aircraft as it cruised over the county.

"Anyone who doesn’t believe they exist should spend a few days here watching the skies."

He reckons the visits are linked to two secret listening stations at RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate, and RAF Fylingdales close to Whitby.

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{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

Dark Disk Over Manhattan, New York, Aug 7, 2021, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 7, 2021

Location of sighting: Manhattan, New York, USA

Source: MUFON

 

This dark craft was caught over Manhattan yesterday. I'm not too surprised that only one report came in about it, since many people hide inside to stay safe from covid worldwide. At first I thought it might be a smoke ring made by a volcano amusement ride, but its unlikely there is anything like that open let alone working during covid. Then I thought it could be a dark cloud that got hit by a wind stream...which might explain it shooting away at the end of the 57 second video. But I have a feeling it's much more. I believe its a alien craft, disk shaped and has a black smoke tinting (coloring) on its clock around it. I do think this is an alien craft observing the public below. Aliens are watching us.

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

 

Eyewitness states: 

The audio was removed because I was freaking out & cussed while recording this thing. I couldn't believe what I was looking at it really freaked me out! 

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

Major General John A. Samford On UFO And “Flying Saucers”, Pentagon, Washington, DC, 07/31/1952

The first featured film was shot four months after the genesis of Project Blue Book, and two days after a press conference held by the Air Force to address a rash of UFO sightings over Washington, D.C. In this interview, Major General John A. Samford explains the Air Force’s mandate to identify and analyze potential threats that come by air, while also assuring the citizenry that there was no known threat.
Also present in this film to offer a differing opinion is Major Donald Keyhoe. Keyhoe was a vocal believer in the existence of extraterrestrial visitors. His book, The Flying Saucers are Real, is referenced in this interview.

RELATED VIDEO, selected and posted by peter2011

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

The Real Story of the ‘Bearded God’ Named Quetzalcoatl

Many myths have cropped up in the centuries since Columbus landed upon the shores of Hispaniola. While some of these myths have come to be seen for what they are, many more persist in the zeitgeist as fact. One such myth is that the Aztecs believed that Hernan Cortes, the leader of a band of conquistadors, was in fact a reincarnated deity by the name of Quetzalcoatl.

As the story goes, the Aztec believed in a white, bearded god named Quetzalcoatl, who, long ago, had disappeared into the east. Before he left, however, he promised to return. When Cortes and his crew of Spaniards came ashore in Mexico in 1519, many thought they were gods.

And when their march inland took them to the Aztec emperor’s doorstep, he recognized who Cortes truly was. A pious man, Montezuma proclaimed Cortes was in fact Quetzalcoatl himself, come to fulfill the prophecy. He then graciously handed over the keys to his empire to the bearded, white god.

This tale has become so pervasive in the modern ethos that I even learned it in my 9th grade world history class. Told by our teacher that this story was historical fact, I went on believing the myth for years. It wasn’t until graduate school, when I became more interested in the history of the Atlantic World and the colonial societies it produced, that I learned that the story of a white bearded god named Quetzalcoatl was a myth.

In this article, I’d like to explore this myth, examining why it’s untrue, how it came about, and why both European and Indigenous people of post-Conquest Mexico came to believe in it. But first, let’s quickly delve into the history of the real Quetzalcoatl and his theological origins in Mesoamerica.

The Real Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent

The Plumed Serpent made his first appearance in the archaeological record over 2,000 years ago. In the heartland of the Olmec civilization, at a site known as La Venta in the present-day state of Tabasco, Mexico, archaeologists discovered a carving of a snake sporting a beak and feathered crest, with birds (or quetzal in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs ) on either side. Under the Olmecs, La Venta flourished from 900 BC to somewhere between 300 and 200 BC. Credited as the mother of civilization in Mesoamerica, the Olmec spread their culture throughout the region, including their belief in the Plumed Serpent deity.

A photo of La Venta Stela 19, the earliest known representation of the Feathered Serpent in Mesoamerica.

( Audrey and George Delange )

The next great civilization that left signs of worshiping Quetzalcoatl was Teotihuacan. While scholars do not know who built and inhabited this magnificent ancient city, its people etched their reverence for Quetzalcoatl into stone. The site contains three large pyramids: the Pyramid of the Sun, the Citadel, and the Temple of Feathered Serpent.

Built around 150 AD, the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, also known as the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, was the third largest pyramid in the city. Made up of seven tiers, the facade of the pyramid swarms with carvings of snakes. The symbolism of Quetzalcoatl here is intriguing.

Archaeologists have argued that the ornate headdresses found on the serpents represent time. This suggests the people of Teotihuacan gave Quetzalcoatl a role in the creation of the calendar, a role he would continue to play in later civilizations. Though Teotihuacan lay abandoned by 750 AD, it represents an important point in the evolution of Quetzalcoatl in Mesoamerican thought.

Quetzalcoatl head in Teotihuacan .

( Josue /Adobe Stock)

By the time the Aztecs emerged on the scene in fourteenth-century Mesoamerica, Quetzalcoatl had become an important god for many peoples of the region. And during the centuries of the Aztecs’ rise to power, the god came to play a variety of roles in Aztec belief .

For one, they credited him with the creation of the universe, humanity, the calendar, and their most important crop, corn. The Aztecs also drew upon long standing traditions that associated Quetzalcoatl with science, arts, and learning, as well as the planet Venus. And, as if this were not enough, he was also closely associated with rain.

Despite the various roles and deeds ascribed to Quetzalcoatl in Aztec theology, he was not the most important god worshipped in Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. Indeed, nowhere in the traditions of the Aztec, or the Olmec, Toltec, Maya, or numerous other cultures for that matter, did the Plumed Serpent god disappear, promising one day to return.

Quetzalcoatl.

( guillermo /Adobe Stock)

Lost in Translation

So how did this myth come about? As with most historical phenomena, many events fed into the Cortes-as-Quetzalcoatl legend, like tributaries into a river. Perhaps one of the first to occur, chronologically, was a simple matter of mistranslation.

When the Spanish arrived on the Mexican coast in 1519, they were a complete unknown in the Mesoamerican world. Thus, as the Spanish made their way inland, the towns they passed, and sometimes destroyed, had no idea what to call them.

In sixteenth-century Mesoamerica, part of a person’s identity was their city of origin or the social role they filled. Eventually, Nahuatl speakers denoted the Spaniards as Caxtilteca, or people of Castile; but that was years in the future. For now, no one knew from whence the Spanish had come, and so could not label them in traditional fashion.

It seems, however, that many people in the region were impressed with Spanish guns and horses. After all, nothing like this existed in Mexico at the time. When the Spanish recorded the interactions they had with the various peoples of central Mexico, they noted that these people called them ‘teotl.’ In Nahuatl, teotl can mean god, and this was the translation the Spaniards latched onto.

‘The Conquest of Tenochtitlán’

( Public Domain )

But, teotl had other meanings as well. As historian Matthew Restall explains, “it could be combined with other words… to qualify them not as specifically godly or godlike, but as fine, fancy, large, powerful, and so on.”

Impressed by the horses and goods the Spanish brought with them, the people who met Cortes on his march inland surmised the Europeans were important people. And, lacking any other way to distinguish them in speech, used the word ‘teotl’ to denote this, which later Spanish chroniclers misinterpreted as ‘god.’

Not So Reverent Actions

If the Aztecs had truly believed that Cortes was a god, Cortes himself would certainly have made note of it. But in all the letters he wrote to King Charles V in which he attempted to establish political and moral legitimacy for the war he started, he never mentions it. Even when describing his first encounter with Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, Cortes portrays Montezuma as recognizing the Spaniard’s humanity. In a letter to Charles V, Cortes recounted how Montezuma told him, “See that I am of flesh and blood like you and all other men, and I am mortal and substantial.”

Whether or not Montezuma ever actually spoke those words, we can never know. But, if the Aztec emperor had proclaimed Cortes’s divinity, why did the conquistador leave it out of his letter? Surely, such a thing would have gone far in his attempts to justify the conquests he sought in the New World.

Additionally, in the midst of the battle for that conquest, the Aztec did not sit passively by and watch the Spanish take their capital of Tenochtitlan. While they found Spanish horses and guns rather fascinating, the Spaniards themselves had quickly worn out their welcome.

In traditional Aztec warfare, soldiers captured enemies for sacrifice, which was thought to be an honorable death. In their war against the conquistadors, however, Aztec warriors delivered a devastating blow to the back of their opponent’s head whenever they could. In pre-conquest Tenochtitlan, such a death had been reserved for the city’s criminals.

Through the re-examination of the word ‘teotl’ and closer look at the actions we know the Aztecs took in regards to the Spanish presence , we can say with certainty they did not view Cortes as a god. To get a better understanding of how this myth came to permeate both European and Mesoamerican histories of the conquest, we need to examine the works of prominent thinkers in post-conquest Mexico.

Planting the Seeds of a Myth

One of the most prominent of these thinkers is the Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente, known to history as Motolinía. While in the decades following the Aztec-Spanish War, many Spanish chroniclers made mention of the variant forms of teotl used to identify the conquistadors, most left it at that. They simply observed its use, telling their readers it translated as ‘god’ or ‘gods’ and moved on. But Motolinía took it a step further.

He saw this mistranslation as evidence of God’s approval. Writing about the conquest and post-conquest era while living in the Valley of Mexico as a missionary, Motolinía noted that the Nahua people “called the Castilians teteuh, which is to say gods, and the Castilians, corrupting the word, said teules.” For Motolinía, the use of this word denoted that the Mesoamericans had been awaiting the Spanish arrival. As Restall notes, this “anticipation… proved the Conquest was part of God’s plan for the Americas.”

Some 30 years after Motolinía scribbled those words, the Cortes-as-Quetzalcoatl myth reached its penultimate form in the work of Bernardino de Sahagún. Known as the Florentine Codex , this gargantuan work comprised 12 books that took around 45 years to compile.

Spaniards disposing of the bodies of Moctezuma and Itzquauhtzin in the Florentine Codex.

( Public Domain )

An intelligent man with an aptitude for languages, Sahagún travelled to Mexico as part of the Franciscan order’s attempts to convert the Indigenous populations to Christianity. During his time there, Sahagún learned to speak Nahuatl.

With his newly earned Nahuatl skills, Sahagún recruited the children of Nahua elites to work with him on creating the Codex. With Sahagún essentially filling the role of project manager, his Nahua assistants wrote most of the Florentine Codex .

This gave the Codex a decidedly Indigenous point-of-view on the conquest of Mexico. Yet, in this text composed by young Aztec scholars in the decades following the conquest, we see the following depiction of Montezuma preparing for Cortes’s arrival:

“When Moteucçoma heard the news, he immediately sent people for the reception of Quetzalcoatl, because they thought it was him who was coming, because they were expecting him daily.”

Aztec Gods in the Florentine Codex.

(Gary Francisco Keller/ CC BY 3.0 )

Reasons for Believing

Even though the form of the Cortes-as-Quetzalcoatl myth so many of us were taught as children didn’t come about until the 1560s, some forty years following the fall of the Aztec empire, both European and Nahua populations had reason to buy into it.

By the time the Florentine Codex was published, the days of the conquistadors were long gone and Spain’s New World empire established. For some Europeans, the notion of Indigenous inferiority sufficed as an explanation for the success of the Spanish conquistadors. Other Spaniards who immigrated to the colony built on the ruins of the Aztec empire, known as New Spain, undoubtedly observed the unjust treatment the Indigenous populations faced at the hands of the Spanish empire.

Luckily, the Cortes-as-Quetzalcoatl myth helped to assuage, at least in part, whatever guilt colonists may have felt. As historian Camilla Townsend put it, the myth showed that “the Europeans had not only been welcomed, they had been worshipped.”

• Quetzalcoatl: From Feathered Serpent to Creator God
• Xolotl – The Underworld Dog God of the Aztecs
• River of Mercury in Underworld of Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl may lead to Royal Tomb

The Nahua had the opposite question to answer: How did we fall from power? The Nahua who helped Sahagún create the Florentine Codex knew the Indigenous populations of the New World were not inferior to the Europeans. After all, their ancestors had built the most sophisticated city in the world, Tenochtitlan, and the Aztec empire had never before known defeat. And on top of that, they had personal memories of fathers and grandfathers who had fought against Cortes and his conquistadors.

To account for the fall of the Aztec from power, the Nahua writers of the Florentine Codex ascribed a generally positive attribute, piety, to their ancestors, rather than the negative attribute used by some Europeans, inferiority. By explaining the Aztec loss through this positive lens, the Nahua of post-conquest Mexico could remain confident in their ancestor’s strength and intelligence, while also accounting for their defeat in the Aztec-Spanish War. Could Montezuma and his empire be blamed for losing if they had been stunned, even just temporarily, by overwhelming reverence to their gods?

Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent.

( Kazakova Maryia /Adobe Stock)

Exposing the Cortes-as-Quetzalcoatl Myth

The Cortes-as-Quetzalcoatl myth had been building steam for a few decades before work on the Florentine Codex began. By the 1560s, it had reached its final form, the one that survives to this day. In order to truly understand what happened in the years of the Spanish invasion and conquest of Mexico, indeed to understand the history of European colonization in general, we must expose this myth, and others like it, as falsehood.

Myths like this deny agency to the colonized, cause European victory to seem inevitable when it was not, and keep us from knowing the true, much more interesting story.

• Top Image: Quetzalcoatl, detail. Source: Manzanedo/ Deviant Art

By Jordan Baker

• Jordan Baker blogs about history at  eastindiabloggingco.com. 

{ https://www.ancient-origins.net/general }

Meet our sun's 'solar twin': NASA discovers a nearby star that may be just 600million-years-old and looks like a young version of the sun… and it could shed light on how life formed on Earth

• NASA astronomers used multiple observations to study a nearby young star 

• Kappa 1 Ceti has a similar mass, radius, temperature and brightness to the sun 

• The star is much younger than the sun at just 600 to 750 million years-old 

• This means astronomers can use it as an analogue for a young solar system

• In a NASA study they looked at the likely power of stellar winds from the star 

By RYAN MORRISON FOR MAILONLINE 

A nearby star that looks like a young version of the sun has been discovered by NASA astronomers, and it could shed light on how life on Earth first formed.

The star, Kappa 1 Ceti has a similar mass and surface temperature to our sun, is about 30 light years away, the team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland said, adding it is just 600 to 750 million-years-old. 

The sun is considered middle-aged, at 4.6 billion-years-old, so finding a similar star in its younger years can help understand conditions in the early solar system.

'The work allows scientists to better understand how [the sun] may have shaped the atmosphere of our planet and the development of life on Earth,' said NASA. 

Part of the work involved studying coronal mass ejections and stellar winds flowing from the young star to see how the sun's expulsions may have impacted the Earth. 

Illustration of what the sun may have been like four billion years ago, around the time life developed on Earth

An artist concept of a coronal mass ejection hitting young Earth's weak magnetosphere

However, there are more than 100 billion stars within the Milky Way, with one in ten of which are of a similar size and luminosity to our own star.

Many of these stars are in the early stages of development. 

'Imagine I want to reproduce a baby picture of an adult when they were one or two years old, and all of their pictures were erased or lost,' said study author Vladimir Airapetian from NASA.

'I would look at a photo of them now, and their close relatives' photos from around that age, and from there, reconstruct their baby photos,' he said. 

'That's the sort of process we are following here – looking at characteristics of a young star similar to ours, to better understand what our own star was like in its youth, and what allowed it to foster life on one of its nearby planets.'

Kappa 1 Ceti is one such solar analogue star, within our stellar neighbourhood.

The star is located about 30 light-years away, which NASA says in space teerms is like living on the next street over.

Study second author, Meng Jin, a heliophysicist with the SETI Institute and the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in California said it is a 'twin' of the sun when it was young. 

The team adapted existing models of the solar system to try and predict some of the more difficult to measure characteristics of Kappa 1 Ceti. 

This includes the strength of stellar winds and coronal ejections coming from the star as they flow out towards any potential planets - yet to be formed or discovered - within the system.

They used data from a range of space telescopes include Hubble, TESS, NICER and the ESA XMM-Newton satellites.

Like human toddlers, young stars are known for their high bursts of energy and activity - released in the form of a stellar wind. 

Stellar winds, like stars themselves, are mostly made up of a superhot gas known as plasma, created when particles in a gas have split into positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. 

The most energetic plasma, with the help of a star's magnetic field, can shoot off away from the outermost and hottest part of a star's atmosphere, the corona, in an eruption, or stream more steadily toward nearby planets as stellar wind. 

'Stellar wind is continuously flowing out from a star toward its nearby planets, influencing those planets' environments,' Jin said.

Global structure of the stellar magnetic corona of 1 Ceti in 2012 (left) and 2013 (right panel), with the superimposed plasma pressure along the field lines specified by the colour bars.

Such outbursts can affect the atmosphere and chemistry of planets nearby, and possibly even catalyse the development of organic material – the building blocks for life – on those planets.

Stellar wind can have a significant impact on planets at any stage of life. 

But the strong, highly dense stellar winds of young stars can compress the protective magnetic shields of surrounding planets, making them even more susceptible to the effects of the charged particles. 

The sun is a perfect example of this process and how it changes over the lifetime of the star - from youth to middle-age. 

Compared to now, in its toddlerhood, our sun likely rotated three times faster, had a stronger magnetic field, and shot out more intense high-energy radiation.

These days, for lucky spectators, the impact of these particles is sometimes visible near the planet's poles as aurora, or the Northern and Southern Lights. 

Airapetian said that four billion years ago these lights would have been visible from many more different places around the globe than they are today. 

That high level of activity in our sun's early years may have pushed back Earth's protective magnetosphere, and provided the planet with the right atmospheric chemistry for hte formation of the first biological molecules.

This wouldn't have happened for Venus, which was close enough to have its atmosphere torched, or Mars too far away for the radiation to reach at strength. 

Similar processes could be unfolding in stellar systems across our galaxy and universe including in Kappa 1 Ceti.

'It's my dream to find a rocky exoplanet in the stage that our planet was in more than four billion years ago, being shaped by its young, active star and nearly ready to host life,' Airapetian said. 

'Understanding what our sun was like just as life was beginning on Earth will help us to refine our search for stars with exoplanets that may eventually host life.'  

The team used multiple instruments including Hubble and TESS to study the star to see how it compares to the young sun 

THE SUN: YELLOW DWARF STAR IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Name: Sun
Known planets: Eight
Spectral type: G2
Distance: 2.7×10^17 km
Mass: 1.9885×10^30 kg
Radius: 696,342 km
Luminosity: 3.828×10^26 W
Temperature: 9,929 F
Age: 4.6 billion years

The Sun is the star at the heart of the Solar System, it is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, radiating energy supporting life on Earth.

It has a diameter of 1.39 million km, and is 330 times the mass of the Earth.

Three quarters of the star is made of hydrogen, followed by helium, oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.

It is a G-type main sequence star and is sometimes called a yellow dwarf.

The Sun formed from the gravitational collapse of matter in a large molecular cloud that gathered in the centre.

The rest flattened into an orbiting disc that formed planets, moons, asteroids and comets.

Multiple agencies have sent instruments into space capable of measuring the stellar winds from the sun - but it is not yet possible to directly observe the stellar wind of other stars in our galaxy, like Kappa 1 Ceti, because they are too far away.

When scientists wish to study an event or phenomenon that they cannot directly observe, scientific modelling can help fill in the gaps.  

While scientists have previously modelled the stellar wind from this star, Airapetian said they used more simplified assumptions than the new NASA study.

The basis for the new model of Kappa 1 Ceti is the Alfvén Wave Solar Model, which is within the Space Weather Modelling Framework, that works by inputting known information about a star, including its magnetic field and ultraviolet emission line data, to predict stellar wind activity. 

When the model has been tested on our Sun, it has been validated and checked against observed data to verify that its predictions are accurate.

'It's capable of modelling our star's winds and corona with high fidelity,' Jin said. 

'And it's a model we can use on other stars, too, to predict their stellar wind and thereby investigate habitability. That's what we did here.'

Previous studies have drawn on data gathered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to identify Kappa 1 Ceti as a young solar proxy, and to gather the necessary inputs for the model, such as magnetic field and ultraviolet emission line data. 

'Every model needs input to get output,' Airapetian said, adding that to get useful output the input needs to be from a solid data source, or multiple sources.

'We have all that data from Kappa 1 Ceti, but we really synthesised it in this predictive model to move past previous purely observational studies of the star.'  

The team is now working on a project looking more closely at the particles that may have emerged from early solar flares, as well as prebiotic chemistry on Earth.

The researchers hope to use their model to map the environments of other Sun-like stars at various life stages.

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Specifically, they have eyes on the infant star EK Dra – 111 light-years away and only 100 million years old – which is likely rotating three times faster and shooting off more flares and plasma than Kappa 1 Ceti. 

Documenting how these similar stars of various ages differ from one another will help characterise the typical trajectory of a star's life.

Their work, Airapetian said, is all about 'looking at our own Sun, its past and its possible future, through the lens of other stars.' 

The findings have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Read more:

• iopscience.iop.o...

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

They are, astronomers discovered, being produced by winds from two active supermassive black holes at a distance of about a billion light-years. They have been named PKS 2130-538, and much about them remains mysterious.

While the 'ghosts' and the two radio galaxies thought responsible for their formation have been seen before, no previous observations have captured them in such glory.

The ghosts, and the galaxies making them.

(Norris et al., arXiv, 2021)

"When we first saw the 'dancing ghosts' we had no idea what they were," explained astrophysicist Ray Norris of Western Sydney University and CSIRO in Australia.

"After weeks of work, we figured out we were seeing two 'host' galaxies, about a billion light-years away. In their centers are two supermassive black holes, squirting out jets of electrons that are then bent into grotesque shapes by an intergalactic wind. 

"New discoveries however always raise new questions and this one is no different. We still don't know where the wind is coming from? Why is it so tangled? And what is causing the streams of radio emission? It will probably take many more observations and modelling before we understand any of these things."

The peculiar objects were just one in a trove made by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope array, as part of its Pilot Survey of the EMU (Evolutionary Map of the Universe) survey.

One of the most sensitive radio telescopes ever built, and the world's fastest survey radio telescope, ASKAP is designed to see deep into the radio Universe and reveal secrets we had no idea were out there.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it's an ORC!

(Norris et al., arXiv, 2021)

That's exactly what it's doing. Last year, the survey revealed the presence of what have been called Odd Radio Circles, or ORCs, which seem to be giant circles of radio emission a million light-years across, surrounding distant galaxies. We still don't know what they are.

To date, the EMU pilot survey has amassed a catalogue of around 220,000 sources of various sorts, many of which had never even been suspected.

"We are even finding surprises in places we thought we understood," Norris said.

"Next door to the well-studied galaxy IC5063, we found a giant radio galaxy, one of the largest known, whose existence had never even been suspected. Its supermassive black hole is generating jets of electrons nearly 5 million light-years long. ASKAP is the only telescope in the world that can see the total extent of this faint emission."

Giant, previously invisible galaxy plumes.

(Norris et al., arXiv, 2021)

Most known radio sources are from active supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. This is because as these black holes devour matter, material is funneled around the outside of the event horizon along magnetic field lines and blasted away from the poles in the form of radio-loud jets.

These sources are the brightest in the radio sky, and therefore that's what radio telescopes tend to pick up. ASKAP is starting to show us the extent of the radio Universe – those fainter sources that we don't usually see, such as synchrotron emission from radio relics in galaxy clusters, and more mysterious objects, like ORCs and dancing ghosts.

And this is just the pilot survey. The EMU survey is expected to continue for years, peering deep into the night to uncover the mysteries in the dark.

"We are getting used to surprises as we scan the skies as part of the EMU Project, and probe deeper into the Universe than any previous telescope," Norris said. "When you boldly go where no telescope has gone before, you are likely to make new discoveries."

• You can visit the EMU Project website here, and zoom in to explore ASKAP's radio sky.
• The team's paper cataloguing 180,000 compact radio sources has been accepted in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, and is available on arXiv.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

Commander assures that the US has the technology to teleport people

Teleportation, or teleportation, is the process of moving objects or particles from one place to another instantly.

Depending on the narrative in question, it may or may not be done using a machine or device. Literally it means “to move at a distance” , understood as a movement that occurs without the need to establish direct physical contact with the object for it to move.

For example, if we teleported the exact copy of a human being, we should destroy the original so that it is considered teleported and not cloned .. Or is it not entirely so?

Late last year, Lt. Gen. Steven L. Kwast, commander of the Education and Training Air Command at San Antonio-Randolph Base in Texas, revealed surprising classified information during a conference in Washington DC.

Kwast, who retired in 2019, believes advanced technology will determine who will lead the world in space. But at one point in the conference, he made a shocking revelation:

“The United States already has the ability to teleport humans anywhere on Earth using radically advanced technology.”

“The technology is in the engineering benches today,” said Lt. Gen. Kwast. “But most Americans and most members of Congress haven’t had time to really look at what’s going on here.”

“But I have had the benefit of 33 years of study and friendship with these scientists. This technology can be built today with non-development technology to take any human being from anywhere on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour ”

According to the official, in addition to people, already existing advanced technologies can provide Wi-Fi and power from space, eliminating the need for mobile phone antennas and chargers, with the technology also applicable at a particular level.

“The power of space will change world power, and it doesn’t have to be a big country to do it,” the former officer emphasized.

 { https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

One weird feature of the world of UFOs and aliens is that of the phenomenon of cattle mutilations. This is when cattle or other livestock are found dead and in very strange circumstances. The carcasses are usually cut up, drained of blood, missing soft-tissue organs or other extremities, dismembered, or otherwise mutilated in a variety of ways, always showing a surgical precision to the cuts not consistent with the attack of a predator such as a coyote or mountain lion. There are typically other oddities as well, such as a lack of flies or strange substances seeping from the wounds, which are sometimes even cauterized. Dead, butchered cattle will be reported miles away from where they disappeared or in inaccessible places. There is never any sign of tracks of any perpetrator around the body, no scuff marks or sign of a struggle, and sometimes there aren’t even tracks from the dead animal, as if it has just materialized there or been carefully placed from the air. Usually there is no blood at all, and a distinct lack of decomposition or damage from scavengers. Even insects are usually said to shun these mystery corpses. This is all usually found after the fact, with no explanation, but one case of cattle mutilation going back all the way to the 19^th features a witness who saw this happening, and which has remained a controversial case to this day.

One of the only known reports of someone actually witnessing a cow being abducted by aliens, and which would become a spooky case of cattle mutilation, supposedly happened all the way back in 1897, in the rural area of LeRoy, Kansas, in the United States. One evening in April of that year, a local cattle rancher by the name of Alexander Hamilton and his son were apparently woken up at around 10:30 PM by the sound of a “noise among the cattle.” It was at first thought that this was just their dog up to some prankish behavior with the cows outside, but when Hamilton went to the window to look outside, he was astonished by what he saw. He claimed that he witnessed a very strange-looking and enormous “airship” hovering above the cow lot around 600 feet away, with “strange beings” visible within it, and he would say of what happened:

Calling my tenant, Gid Heslip, and my son Wall, we seized some axes and ran to the corral. Meanwhile the ship had been gently descending until it was not more than thirty feet above the ground and we came within fifty yards of it. It consisted of a great cigar-shaped portion, possibly three hundred feet long, with a carriage underneath. The carriage was made of glass or some other transparent substance alternating with a narrow strip of some material. It was brightly lighted within and everything was plainly visible-it was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together but we could not understand a word they said. Every part of the vessel which was not transparent was of a dark reddish color. We stood mute with wonder and fright. Then some noise attracted their attention and they turned a light directly upon us. Immediately on catching sight of us they turned on some unknown power, and a great turbine wheel, about thirty feet in diameter, which was revolving slowly below the craft, began to buzz and the vessel rose lightly as a bird.

As the three of them looked on in absolute astonishment, the flying craft seemed to have taken an interest in the cattle below it. In particular, it seemed to float over to and hover above a heifer that it seemed especially drawn to. Then, a very bizarre sequence of events would play out. Hamilton would say:

When about three hundred feet above us it seemed to pause and to hover directly above a two-year-old heifer which was bawling and jumping, apparently fast in the fence. Going to her, we found some material fastened in a slip knot around her neck and going up to the vessel from the heifer tangled in the wire fence. We tried to get it off but could not, so we cut the wire loose to see the ship, heifer and all, rise slowly, disappearing in the northwest.

The following day, Hamilton went out to look for the cow, but could find no trace of it, not even any tracks. There were signs that the animal had been at that spot, but after that it seems to have just evaporated into thin air. The baffled rancher went around to other ranchers in the area, but no one had seen the missing animal. However, he would soon find someone who had made a rather gruesome find a few miles away, of which Hamilton would say:

Coming back in the evening I found that Link Thomas, about three or four miles west of LeRoy, had found the hide, legs and head in his field that day. He, thinking that someone had butchered a stolen beast, had brought the hide to town for identification, but was greatly mystified in not being able to find any tracks in the soft ground. After identifying the hide by my brand, I went home. But every time I would drop to sleep, I would see the cursed thing, with its big lights and hideous people. I don’t know whether they are devils or angels or what; but we all saw them, and my whole family saw the ship, and I don’t want any more to do with them.

Rather eerily, it was reported that the remains had no footprints around them, no sign of predator activity, in fact no signs of any struggle, as if they had just been carefully placed there from above. The whole sensational account would be published in the Yates Center Farmers Advocate and once it was out in the wild become big local news. At the time, the region was in the throes of a series of mysterious sightings of strange airships, often described as highly advanced flying machines covered with electric lights and well ahead of anything available at the time, often seen manned by very strange looking humanoid occupants. Such mysterious airships had been sighted in such far-flung places as the Midwest, California, Texas, and Utah, so they were already making the rounds in the news at the time, but Hamilton’s report was especially amazing. When the odd news hit, there immediately came in a deluge of witnesses saying they had seen the same ship in the area where the cow abduction had occurred, and Hamilton even had over a dozen high-profile, well-respected citizens sign an affidavit vouching for his tale and his honesty, including several Sheriffs, pharmacists, attorneys, a banker, a doctor, the State Oil Inspector, the Justice of the Peace, the Postmaster, and the Register of Deeds. Considering that at the time Hamilton was a very respected, upstanding citizen, a stock dealer and successful businessman, most people believed his story and it generated a lot of excitement. One statement made of his impeccable character reads:

Hamilton’s popularity in the community is unmistakable not only on account of his fidelity to duty in public office, but also because of his honorable business career, his fidelity to manly principles and his reliability in private life. During the long years of his residence in Kansas he has left the impress of his individuality for good upon the communities with which he has been connected and he feels just pride in the splendid advancement made by his adopted state. We have never heard his word questioned and that we do verily believe his statement to be true and correct.

Despite how much it had been talked about, the Hamilton cow abduction story would eventually sort of fade away into obscurity until it was dug up again in the 1960s. Jacques Vallee would mention it in his book Anatomy of a Phenomenon (1965), and after that it would feature in a best-selling book by ufologist Frank Edwards in his book Flying Saucers—Serious Business in 1966, which really brought it into the limelight, after which it would be mentioned in various other books and magazine articles over the years. For a long time it was considered to be a very intriguing early UFO account and perhaps the only time a cattle mutilation had been actually witnessed by someone, but a 1977 article in Fate Magazine would take some of the wind out of its sails. Author Jerome Clark would uncover the fact that Hamiton had allegedly at the time been a member of a local “Liar’s Club,” in which prominent citizens would make up wild yarns to see which ones would make it into the news and fool people the most. Clark cited as evidence a 1943 article from a Kansas newspaper called The Buffalo Enterprise, which held the testimony on a Mrs. Donna Steeby of Wichita Kansas, who related how her 93-year-old mother, Ethel L Shaw, had know Hamilton, and that he had told her that it was all a big, wild yarn that had gotten out of hand. Shaw would apparently tell Clark of it all:

How well I remember that beautiful afternoon, almost as though it were yesterday. I, as a young girl about fourteen years old, was visiting in the Hamilton home with Mrs. Hamilton and their daughter Nell when Mr. Hamilton came home from town, put up his team and came into the sitting room where we were visiting. He pulled up a chair and almost immediately began relating this story by saying, ‘Ma, I fixed up quite a story and told the boys in town and it will come out in the Advocate this weekend.’

Not only that, but she also claimed that all of the ones who had signed the affidavit had been members of the very same Liar’s Club, and that he had hoaxed the other airship sightings in the area by using fake airships that he had crafted out of cleaning bags, candles and balsa wood. Clark also mentions the discovery of a Robert Schadewald, an American correspondent of the British publication Fortean Times, who in 1976 uncovered an article in the Buffalo Enterprise of January of 1943 an account by a man named Ed F. Hudson, who claimed that he had been the editor of the Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate and that Hamilton had admitted to faking the sighting and even claimed to have seen the workshop where he had been making his fake UFOs. Hudson would say of this:

I had just bought and installed a little gasoline engine, the first I believe to come to Yates Center, using it to run my machinery replacing the hand-power on the old County Campbell press and kicking the job presses. I invited many of my friends into the back shop to see the engine work. Hamilton was one of them. He exclaimed, ‘Now they can fly,’ hence the airship story that we made up. After we had published it, the story was copied in many of the largest newspapers in the country, England, France, and Germany, some illustrating it with pen-drawn imaginings by their staff artists. There were also hundreds of inquiries from every part of the globe. Soon afterwards there came the various experiments in flight, but I have always maintained that Alex Hamilton was the real inventor of human flight.

This all seems to be pretty damning, and the story has gone on to be seen as a big historical hoax largely thanks to Clark’s article, but there are those willing to defend Hamilton’s story and have raised some points in their defense over the years. For one, Hamilton never really publicly admitted to it all being bogus, and was long dead by that time and was in no position to defend himself. There also is the fact that this is a second-hand tale from an elderly lady, so who is to say that she really knows what she is talking about or is telling the truth herself? As for Hudson, how do we know we can believe him either? There is actually no hard evidence that Hamilton was a part of a Liar’s Club, or that the others who had vouched for him were, just these admissions uncovered long after the fact. Although the main consensus now is that Hamilton was indeed lying, what if he wasn’t? One argument from a defender of his was written by The Last Sisyphus on Medium, who says:

The vast majority of “experts” hold that it was a hoax. A couple thoughts on the issue. One reason “experts” disagree with Hamilton’s testimony is that he belonged to “The Liars Club.” There is no doubt that this was probably the case, but to suggest that Hamilton’s UFO testimony is an elaborate hoax because he was involved in a liar’s club raises questions. The first: Since he was a member of “The Liars Club,” we could, in theory, dismiss every word Hamilton ever said based on his involvement with the group. But that is not fair. Hamilton probably told the truth on a number of occasions despite being a part of a liars club. Why is it not possible that he told the truth about the UFO? (He is, after all, backed by [literally] countless UFO reports.) The second: Hamilton did not give the “hoax” up (if it was, indeed, a hoax). We have no evidence that he admitted his story was a hoax. Also: There were others who witnessed this phenomenon. Hamilton even signed an affidavit (which is not something to joke about — no matter how elaborate the prank) and was practicing law in Leroy, Kansas. The hyper-skeptics have no basis to dismiss this testimony. Nothing. The most radical position for them to hold — while maintaining consistency in their own logic and scientific worldview (ie we are not at the pinnacle of scientific discovery)— is to remain indifferent to Hamilton’s testimony. The wisest response for a skeptic is thus: “We simply do not have enough information to dismiss Mr. Hamilton’s testimony, therefore we must keep silent on the matter.”

While the Alexander Hamilton case has long been written off as a hoax, some people believe Clark’s debunking of it all, some people don’t. We are left to wonder, is this all just a ruse conjured up by the “Liar’s Club” or something more? It is all most certainly a hoax, but some people still seem to defend it, and it has taken on a life of its own and has made its mark. Whatever the case may be, it is still one of the earliest cattle mutilation reports on record, and the only one that seems to have been allegedly witnessed by someone, back in the day when UFOs weren’t really a thing, so true or not it is an intriguing case nonetheless.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Over the years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has very generously released into the public domain numerous pages of UFO-related files from its vaults. Those papers – made available through the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – involve files on more than a few of the Contactees of the 1950s, such as George Van Tassel, Truman Bethurum, George Adamski, Wayne Aho and George Hunt Williamson. Other files of the mysteriously UFO-tied kind, and that the FBI has declassified, include ones on cattle mutilations, extra-sensory perception, crashed UFOs, the controversial Majestic 12 documents, and much more. Although the FBI has declassified literally thousands of its pages on the Contactee movement of the 1950s and later, they have released just one document pertaining to the alien abduction issue. In all probability, of course, that’s because the FBI only ever received just one report from a U.S. citizen claiming to have been carried away by ETs! Nevertheless, that one document is well worth taking a look at. It dates from 1967 and tells – albeit briefly – what sounds very much like a classic alien abduction experience. Notably, the FBI shared the data, and the document, with an agency whose name has been deliberately blacked out in the relevant papers. The likelihood, however, is that that solitary sheet of paper reached the U.S. Air Force’s UFO program, Project Blue Book.  The specific date is January 18, 1967 and is captioned as follows: “Unidentified Flying Object Allegedly Sighting [sic], January 17, 1967.”

It reads as follows:

What was I supposed to do?

“At 4:10 a.m., January 18, 1967, [deleted] advised that he desired to report that he had observed a large oblong-shaped object which alighted in the street in front of him when he was on his way home from his television repair shop, the [deleted], Chesapeake, Virginia. He believes that he was taken into this craft which he recalls as being made of a glass-like substance and being transparent. It was manned by several individuals who appeared to be undersized creatures similar to members of the human race, probably not more than 4 feet tall. They were allegedly wearing regular trouser pants and T-shirts. [deleted] believes that he was transported by this craft for an undetermined distance and returned to his point of take-off approximately one hour later. [Deleted] spoke in a coherent manner although he appeared to be under certain emotional strain. He claimed he had not been drinking any intoxicants but he was unable to account for the time between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. he stated he was telephoning from his workshop but had no recollection of being elsewhere between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m.”

And that’s where the document comes to its end. As you’ll see, the story that the FBI received was an intriguing one. In fact, it’s not very often that someone jumps in their car and chooses to head-off to the offices of the FBI after allegedly having being kidnapped by black-eyed aliens from another world. Or, even, from another galaxy. While the reference to the aliens allegedly wearing “regular” clothing is admittedly strange, there is no denying, at all, the fact that the experience closely mirrors so many of those accounts of latter day times. There was, for example, the fact that the aliens were “not more than 4 feet tall,” which is something that strongly suggests the man’s captors were of the Grey alien kind that are undeniably ingrained in our pop-culture of today. And, that the victim “was unable to account for the time between 8:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m.” is prime evidence of the phenomenon of what is famously known as “missing time.” Okay, it’s not the greatest report of the alien abduction variety; but, in many respects it’s unique, due to it having been handled and scrutinized by the FBI, no less. Who knows what J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, at the time, thought of it all?  Maybe, it didn’t reach him. After all, I’m sure that the FBI had much more to do on that 1967 night than chase down alien abductees. Or, maybe I’m wrong!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

A new theory has emerged regarding the “Great Dimming” period of Betelgeuse. Known as one of the biggest and most luminous stars in the night sky (it is located in the Orion constellation), it is also very mysterious.

Between October 2019 and March 2020, this red supergiant star’s brightness dimmed 2.5 times which was the biggest drop in 50 years. Known as the “Great Dimming”, the decrease in brightness caused a drop in surface temperature of about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (149 degrees Celsius).

While scientists scrambled to figure out what was causing such a dim in the star, several theories emerged, such as a giant dust cloud that moved between Earth and Betelgeuse that temporarily blocked us from seeing the light; it was about to go supernova; and “cool star spots” that covered about 70% of the star’s surface. Even though the star’s luminosity had dipped dramatically, the theory of it going supernova was dismissed when it started brightening up again.

Betelgeuse

And now, there is a new theory that suggests a large dark spot is covering parts of the star’s surface. While this is another interesting hypothesis, experts can’t confirm or deny the idea as a large dark spot has never been directly observed on the star.

The research team studied Betelgeuse’s temperature by analyzing the high-resolution near-infrared spectra of the star on four specific dates — January 31, March 19, April 4, and April 6, 2020. These four dates coincide with the dimming and post-dimming phases of the star.

Dr. Sofya Alexeeva explained their research in further detail, “Our method is based on the measurement of titanium oxide (TiO) and cyanide (CN) molecular lines in stellar spectra.” “The cooler a star is, the more these molecules can form and survive in its atmosphere and the molecular lines are stronger in the stellar spectrum.” “In a hotter atmosphere, these molecules dissociate easily and do not survive.”

Since the decrease in brightness caused a surface temperature drop of about 300 degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers realized that the results of an earlier study predicting that 70% of the star’s surface was covered in spots was similar to their findings. However, they believe that it is just one gigantic dark spot that is actually quite common on red supergiants.

Spots on our sun captured by amateur astronomer Alan Friedman in July of 2012.

While this is just the most recent of several theories regarding Betelgeuse’s “Great Dimming” period, the mysterious red supergiant star will continue to amaze and baffle us at the same time. (More pictures of Betelgeuse can be seen here.)

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications where it can be read in full.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

NASA's Perseverance tries to collect Mars rocks, fails

The Perseverance rover is on a mission to hunt for signs of past life on Mars. But something went wrong in its first attempt to gather rock samples.

{ https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097 }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - 07 - 08 - 2021

UFO crosses the air route of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules ( July 27, 2021 )

Dark colored UFO crosses the air route of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules. A American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft on 27/7/21: Here i present the video and in approach the original.

Every day they are closer and more evident

note : no audio

ORIGINAL VIDEO TITLED : queda de ufo ovni avião

ORIGINAL VIDEO OWNER : Arquivos do Mundo Sobrenatural

ORIGINAL VIDEO URL : https://youtu.be/4QSiUjFkGxY

UFOs Sighted Over Baltimore, Maryland ( August 5, 2021 )

Strange UFO activity over Baltimore : UFOs were sighted over the night skies of Baltimore, Maryland by Jay Orr on August 5, 2021 : Here I present the original

Every day they are closer and more evident

• credit : Jay Orr

Circle Shaped UFO Sighted Over Chile ( August 5, 2021 )

UFO / UAP Sighted Over Ventura, California ( July 31, 2021 )

Strange UFO / UAP or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena was sighted over Ventura, California on July 31, 2021

STATEMENT : VENTURA , CALIFORNIA - 31/07/2021

They're everywhere already

note : no audio : video looped at 16 second mark

• credit : H.P.M.B

RELATED VIDEO

UFO Sighted Over Boston, Massachusetts ( August 2, 2021 )

Strange moving UFO was sighted over Boston, Massachusetts on August 2, 2021

STATEMENT : I saw this Tuesday night Here I present the original and in the wake with approach.

More evident every day

• credit : Michael Hunter

Nazi Die Glocke Bel Type UFO Sighted Over Switzerland ( July 2, 2021 )

Is this the new Swiss Army Flying Vehicle resembling the Nazi Die Glocke Bell : Sighted over Solothurn Military Base
STATEMENT :

The region is a hilly region, as can be seen, and that there are cave systems and some military facilities here. No one is allowed near these military areas, there are definitely some extraordinary things going on here and the army is aware of it. And they hide many things from us. That's why we are not even allowed to go to that area and take images from a distance.

• credit : Can Özkan

Das Lied von der Glocke

They are here

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

LATEST UFO SIGHTINGS AND VIDEOS - MUFON CASES - - 7 - 8 - 2021

MUFON CASE : 117180 Isla Cristina, Huelva, Spain ( August 5, 2021 )

Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS : Objeto a gran velocidad : Object at high speed
Long Description of Sighting Report - Case 117180

Me encontraba en la sala manejando la cámara de seguridad con conexión Wifi previamente instalado en el tejado de la casa. Encendí lámpara de infrarrojo desde el portátil en el software del dispositivo unos minutos después contemple un objeto que pasaba a gran velocidad así que inicie la grabación del vídeo. Pude seguir la trayectoria del mismo mediante el control del software.

Long Description of Sighting Report Translated- Case 117180

I was in the living room managing the security camera with a Wi-Fi connection previously installed on the roof of the house. I turned on the infrared lamp from the laptop in the device software a few minutes later I saw an object

Date Submitted : 2021-08-05
Date of Event : 2021-07-02
MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : 117180_submitter_file1__Huelva001922001958.mp4 : no audio

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

World’s Earliest-Known Coin Mint and Spade Coin Discovered in China

{ http://www.sci-news.com/ }

THE MYSTERY OF THE BRIDGEWATER TRIANGLE

BY JENNIFER DEUTSCHMANN

The Bridgewater Triangle, which is a 200-square-mile section of land in Eastern Massachusetts, is a reported hotbed of paranormal activity and unexplained occurrences. According to legend, the area, which is between Abington, Freetown, and Seekonk, attracts ghosts, UFOs, mythological creatures, and other unusual and unexplainable activities.

As reported by Boston.com, the epicenter of the Bridgewater Triangle is the Hockomock Swamp. In addition to being New England's largest swamp, Hockomock is known for its biological and geological diversity. The swamp is one of Massachusetts' most stunning landmarks. And, according to legend, it is also one of the most haunted.

The name Hockomock, which means "place where spirits dwell," was given to the swamp by the Wampanoag tribe. In later years, Colonial settlers referred to it as the "Devil's Swamp."

Roadtrippers reports the dense swampland is difficult to navigate, and it is easy to get lost in the nearly impenetrable brush. However, local folklore suggests the swamp is specifically dangerous because it is home to a creature called the "Thunderbird." According to legend, the Thunderbird is a massive prehistoric-like bird, which has a wingspan up to 12 feet.

Boston.com reports the swamp has also been a hotbed for Bigfoot sightings. According to local folklore, the creatures have been responsible for attacks on livestock, including pigs and sheep. After receiving a number of similar reports, authorities searched the Hockomock Swamp with the assistance of K-9 units. However, they did not find anything to suggest the swamp was inhabited by anything unusual.

REPORTEDLY HAUNTED SITES WITHIN THE BRIDGEWATER TRIANGLE

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Another supposedly haunted site within the Bridgewater Triangle is the abandoned Taunton State Hospital. As reported by Boston.com, the hospital has been closed for decades. However, people who have explored the deserted buildings reported "having their shoulders and legs touched and pulled" by unseen entities. According to local legend, the property was popular with satanic cults in the 1960s and 1970s, and the entities they disturbed are still present.

The Fall River-Freetown State Forest, which is also inside the Bridgewater Triangle, is another rumored site of satanic cult activity. However, unlike most of the other Bridgewater Triangle sites, a number of confirmed crimes have taken place in and around the forest. Boston.com reports the park is secluded but easily accessible. Therefore, it became a popular site for committing violent crime and even dumping bodies.

Although the location of The Fall River-Freetown State Forest likely contributed to the number of crimes committed there, paranormal investigators believe something far more sinister is to blame. According to legend, the site has an unusually strong negative energy, which draws people to the location and encourages them to commit violent crimes.

Other reportedly haunted sites within the Bridgewater Triangle include the Assonet Ledge, where people have reported seeing ghosts leaping from the cliffs, Copicut Road and Route 44, which reportedly have ghastly hitchhikers, and the Horbine School, where people have reported hearing unexplained voices. 

People have also reported seeing UFOs and unexplained lights throughout the region.

THE BIZARRE TRUE STORY OF BIGFOOT, AMERICA'S MISSING APE

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BY NICHOLAS CONLEY 

Every part of the world has its legends, whether they're elves, djinns, or green-suited little bearded men perched at the end of rainbows. In the United States and Canada, our local mythological figure is a bipedal, hairy primate that goes by the strange name "Bigfoot." When the big ol' ape isn't tromping around the woods with his size 30-something feet, he's getting his picture snapped by photographers, having his language secretly recorded, or starring in beef jerky commercials.

For as long as human beings have looked into the forest's shadows, they've speculated about whether Bigfoot is out there. Whether these creatures are real or not, people have been telling stories about Bigfoot encounters for centuries, across many cultures and regions, to the point where even the most fervent disbeliever has to at least raise an eyebrow. Either way, Bigfoot is one of North America's greatest icons. Here's the true story about how this big-soled gorilla-man became a big deal.

SASQ'ETS WAS AN IMPORTANT FIGURE IN NATIVE AMERICAN BELIEFS

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If Bigfoot is real, he didn't just traipse into the country sometime after the U.S. constitution was signed. One of the most fascinating parts of Bigfoot mythology is the fact that a tall, hairy, man-like figure plays a key role in the mythologies of numerous North American indigenous peoples, according to Native Languages. For example, the Sioux believed in a powerful, burly figure they called Chiye-Tanka, or "Big Elder Brother." The Cheynne tribe told tales of an aloof "Hairy Man" named "Maxemista," who may have played a key role in their creation story. Even the now-familiar term "sasquatch" is merely an Anglicization of the more Halkomelem name, "Sasq'ets."

Different tribes each had their own take on the Bigfoot figure, but for the most part, very few saw the creature as being monstrous, aggressive, or evil. Rather, as described by Indian Country Today, Bigfoot's place in many tribal mythologies was that of a gentle guardian, a protector, a "Keeper of the Earth." Over the centuries, as the Bigfoot legend has grown, the Oregon Historical Society states that Native Americans in Oregon have increasingly come to see Bigfoot as an important piece of their culture with great significance to their history.

BIGFOOT MEETS THE INVADERS

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As we know today, North America was fated to become the landing dock of countless European settlers. From the 1600s onward, these Europeans experienced their own alleged Bigfoot encounters, though the colonizers found the creatures a lot scarier than the native peoples usually did. One of the more popular historical writings among cryptozoology aficionados is a 1604 passage from French navigator Samuel de Champlain, who ominously described a "frightful monster, which the savages call Gougou." Though Champlain said Gougou was an enormous, feminine beast that devoured human beings and made horrible noises, his description was vague enough that, reading it today, Gougou could've been anything from Bigfoot to a swamp monster. Champlain decided that Gougou was an unholy devil of some sort, because ... well, that's what Europeans said about every weird phenomenon back then.

As the New World was increasingly colonized, reports of encounters with more distinctly Bigfoot-like creatures continued trickling in. In 1811, according to Rolling Stone, explorer David Thompson was hiking through the Rockies when he stumbled upon some seriously massive footprints, which he followed for nearly 100 yards before the trail went cold. One of the biggest stories appeared in the July 1884 edition of a British Columbia newspaper called the Daily Colonist, now archived online. The paper reported the capture of a young, gorilla-like primate called "Jacko." Was Jacko a young Bigfoot, a hoax, a stunt? You decide. Regardless, little Jacko was never reported on again.

THE 1924 BIGFOOT ATTACK IN APE CANYON

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According to Slate, it was a warm summer night in July 1924, and a group of five miners decided to call it a night in their little homemade cabin, perched up in what is now called "Ape Canyon," a narrow gorge found in the hike up Mount St. Helens in Washington. Allegedly, as the miners tried to get some sleep, a group of crazed, hairy "apemen" came screaming out of the hills and started launching heavy stones at their cabin. The creatures continued railing on the cabin all night, at one point even reaching inside through a gaping hole in the wall and attempting to steal an ax. The whole thing sounds like a real-life Evil Dead, but with Bigfoot instead of deadites.

Finally, the assault died down at daybreak, and the miners reemerged from the cabin. One miner, Fred Beck, reported that he saw an apeman standing in the distance, so he shot the creature, sending it tumbling down into the rocks. Years later, Beck went on to propose that the hostile animals he encountered were actually ghostly beings from another reality. On the other hand, many people have speculated that the "apemen" were just a gang of rowdy teenagers. Either way, it sounds like a scary night. As you've probably guessed, this incident is why this particular mountain gorge is now referred to as Ape Canyon.

THE FOOTPRINTS ARE FOUND, AND THE NAME "BIGFOOT" IS BORN

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According to Rolling Stone, American ape sightings continued coming in throughout the next few decades. In 1940, a Canadian family reported an 8-foot apeman had come out of the woods and broken into their shed, leaving 16-inch footprints in its wake. Then, on one October morning in Northern California in 1958, workers for the Granite Logging Company found a series of giant footprints — once again, 16 inches long — submerged in the damp bed of one of their newly built roads. Less than a week later, the workers spotted a creature in the woods that "ran upright like a man, swinging long hairy arms ... it looked ten feet tall." They found more footprints the next day. The local Humboldt Times picked up the story, publishing a photo of the megalithic footprint's cast, with journalist Andrew Genzoli lending the unknown creature a name that would soon become legendary: "Bigfoot."

The hubbub didn't stop there. At the construction site, footprints kept appearing. Equipment was flipped over. Workers reported feeling like something in the woods was watching them, and the paranoia grew so intense that 15 men quit. When Ray Wallace, a partner in the firm, was accused of perpetrating a hoax, he angrily retorted, "Who knows anyone foolish enough to ruin their own business?"

Anyhow, "Bigfoot" became big news. More tracks were discovered up in Washington, and spotting Bigfoot became a tradition as American as apple pie.

BUT HEY, WAIT, WERE THOSE BIG FEET A BIG HOAX?

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Ray Wallace made a good argument for why the footprints weren't a hoax (caused by him), but here's the thing. As any good prankster knows, if you get caught, you're left with two options: Give up or double down. Guess what Wallace chose?

In 2002, according to the New York Times, Wallace died at age 84. Once Wallace's children finished laying their father to rest, they finally came clean with the greatest joke that their "prank-loving pop" ever pulled on the world. Evidently, the famous "feet" were wood carvings, and Ray had slowly rolled along in a truck to create the massive gait between the tracks. Ray's son Michael told the Times, "It's weird because it was just a joke, and then it took on such a life of its own that even now, we can't stop it." You know, Ray would've pulled it off, too, if it wasn't for his meddling kids. Of course, he did pull it off for over half a century. Vote Ray Wallace for prankster king. 

You'd think this postmortem revelation would've hit the sasquatch community like a baseball bat, but for the most part, believers were unfazed. That's because even though the Wallace tracks did launch a lot of the Bigfoot hubbub, major Bigfoot researchers had long suspected that the 1958 incident was a hoax. Besides, by 1967, those tracks were overshadowed by a far more dramatic piece of evidence...

THE BIGFOOT VIDEO YOU KNOW BY HEART

Maybe someday, a close-up Bigfoot selfie will be posted on Instagram. Until then, the Patterson-Gimlin footage remains the holy grail of Bigfoot evidence. Back in 1967, according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Roger Patterson approached his old rodeo buddy Bob Gimlin for the explicit purpose of finding Bigfoot after more giant tracks were found in Northern California. Patterson and Gimlin set out on horseback. Unlike almost every other Bigfoot expedition in history, the pair allegedly stumbled onto the legendary creature walking around the creek, just 30 meters away. Patterson, wielding the camera, jumped off his horse in an effort to get closer, accounting for the infamous shaky-cam effect.

So, was this Bigfoot, dubbed "Patty," the real deal? Over five decades later, Patterson's footage has become one of the most studied video clips in history, and it's never been summarily debunked. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, anatomy professor Jeffery Meldrum strongly believes in the footage, theorizing that when compared to other primate special effects of the time — namely, Planet of the Apes — Patty's anatomical features are much too advanced to be a phony costume. Not everyone is convinced. In 2004, the Charlotte Observer reported that costume designer Philip Morris, then deceased, claimed to have sold a gorilla suit to Roger Patterson.

As for the men behind the video, Patterson died of cancer in 1972. Bob Gimlin maintains that the Bigfoot encounter truly happened, and says the decades of interrogation he received because of it "ruined his life."

BIGFOOT BECOMES A POP CULTURE CELEBRITY

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Was the Patterson-Gimlin footage real or fake? We don't know, but either way, it set the stage for Bigfoot mania. Since then, enthusiasm for the hairy one has never really died down. Through the 1970s, after the Patterson-Gimlin footage went '70s viral, the public was bombed with Bigfoot TV specials, magazine articles, tourist traps, and more. Speculation over the creature's possible existence went rampant, a phenomenon that journalist Michael McLeod describes as "the first widely popularized example of pseudoscience in American culture." Bigfoot mania brought about plenty of other Bigfoot sightings, photos, and footprints. Who doesn't have at least one family member or friend who claims to have spotted Bigfoot in the woods? 

In the latter half of the 20th century, Bigfoot grew into one of North America's most potent cultural icons. The wild apeman starred alongside John Lithgow in the 1987 film Harry and the Hendersons, is the focus of the Animal Planet series Finding Bigfoot, has a publishing company named after it, and became the mascot of Jack Link's beef jerky. Quickly being co-opted into pop culture and marketing? Now that's American.

WHAT BIGFOOT LANGUAGE SOUNDS LIKE: THE SIERRA SOUNDS

Despite the work of such organizations such as North America Bigfoot Search (NABS) and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), definitive proof of Bigfoot hasn't yet manifested. All the hair samples have ended up being bears, the bodies aren't real, Bigfoot feces never turns up in Old Man Jenkins' cow pasture — none of that. If sasquatches are real, the creatures cover their tracks really, really well. However, if Ron Morehead and Al Berry are to believed, we might have an idea of what Bigfoot sounds like. According to Scientific American, Morehead and Berry say they captured the so-called "Sierra Sounds" by dangling a microphone over a tree in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Though the "language" in the recordings is interesting and is broadcast in many Bigfoot TV specials, such human-sounding noises could also be a relatively easy hoax, so the Bigfoot community isn't exactly united in the call of the Bigfoot.

On the other hand, what if Bigfoot speaks without ever moving its mouth? There are some who believe Bigfoot possesses telepathic powers, but we won't delve into that. It's probably better to prove these creatures exist in the first place before we get all X-Men about it.

WHOA, THERE'S A BIGFOOT IN MY FREEZER!

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In 2008, according to CNN, two hikers named Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton announced that they'd found the dead body of a nearly 8-foot "half-ape, half-human" in the Georgia wilderness. They brought the "carcass" home, stuffed it in a freezer, and shared photos online, hoping to make money from the marketing and promotion rights. The deception was short-lived. Testing soon proved that the "carcass" was just a rubber costume, and the duo publicly apologized.

However, Rick Dyer's Bigfoot fakery days were far from over. According to the Huffington Post, the Georgian man hit Bigfoot headlines again in 2012 when he claimed to have killed a Bigfoot in Texas, whom he then named "Hank." Dyer also claimed that tests run by a "university" (cough, cough) had proven that the corpse belonged to a previously unknown species. Dyer wanted to take the dead Bigfoot on a national tour and charge admission for anyone who wanted to see Hank. C'mon, what is this, the 1800s? 

Not surprisingly, Dyer's efforts flopped again. In 2014, Dyer's second phony Bigfoot was outed to the public, and he re-apologized. Only time will tell if Dyer attempts the same stunt again in a few years.

THE DNA 'PROOF' AND THE CALL FOR TRIBAL RECOGNITION

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As the years go on, Bigfoot evidence gets weirder and weirder. In 2012, a veterinarian named Melba S. Ketchum brought Bigfoot back into the headlines, according to Live Science. Ketchum, citing prior experience in genetics research, claimed that after analyzing 100 DNA samples, she had uncovered genetic proof that sasquatch was real. Not only that, but Ketchum also determined that the cryptid's humanoid features were because an earlier species of primate had mated with Homo sapiens about 15,000 years ago, resulting in the Bigfoot we (sort of) know today. Ketchum argued fiercely on behalf of her work, even asking the U.S. government to recognize Bigfoot as "an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and constitutional rights," against potential hunters. 

But then, the Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger took a closer look and found some holes. In addition to discovering Ketchum had self-published her work rather than sending it to a reputable scientific journal, Berger also had Ketchum's evidence tested by a distinguished geneticist in Texas, who wasn't impressed with the results. Berger admitted to feeling let down about the whole thing, saying, "I'm honestly really disappointed. A world with Bigfoot would be a little softer. A little more fun. But in my world science is the arbiter of reality." Nonetheless, Dr. Ketchum's efforts on the "Sasquatch Genome Project" continue to this day, and she still posts updates on Facebook.

BIGFOOT ISN'T THE ONLY APEMAN MYTH IN THE WORLD ... BUT MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE OF US?

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Legends of wild apemen are prevalent in cultures all over the globe, whether it's North America's Bigfoot, the Yeti that prowls the Himalayas, or Australia's Yowie. What is it that makes these half-man, half-apes so popular? Writing for The Atlantic, Edward Simon ponders if, perhaps, the widespread obsession with Bigfoot is due to a human fascination with the wilderness from which we came. A creature that is so similar to human beings, yet still so wild and free, piques our imagination — and makes us wonder, deep inside, if we're really so evolved from our prehistoric ancestors. Perhaps Bigfoot hearkens back to the ancient concept of an uncorrupted man — call him Adam, call him sasquatch, call him whatever — whose soul has not been torn asunder by the sins of humankind.

Of course, the truth might be simpler: A world with Bigfoot is way more exciting than a world where Bigfoot doesn't exist. Famous chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall once made the surprising confession to NPR that she believed in Bigfoot, but said, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted that." In this one line, Goodall captures the central truth of why, when it comes to Bigfoot, hope springs eternal. So for now, maybe we should just enjoy the myth, keep our eyes on the woods, and have fun telling stories to each other.

WHEN THE FBI TAKES YOUR BIGFOOT SAMPLE AND NEVER RETURNS IT

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If you read that a federal intelligence agency had investigated some Bigfoot shenanigans, you would probably assume you were reading the synopsis for a new Men in Black movie. But no, this happened in real life.

The Washington Post reports that back in the cryptozoology-crazed days of the '70s, a Bigfoot researcher named Peter Byrne sent a small hair sample ("about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin") to the FBI, writing that he had been unable to identify what creature they belonged to. The FBI did, surprisingly enough, agree to test the samples ... but then ghosted Byrne. What a bummer, right? (And not suspicious at all.) While you might imagine that the hairs were passed around the office as a joke, in reality, the agency actually took Byrne's request quite seriously. In 2019, a Freedom of Information Act request made the FBI's Bigfoot homework go public, and the documentation revealed that the FBI's tests — unfortunately for Byrne, who by this point was 93 years old — proved the furry stuff had belonged to a regular ol' deer rather than a North American ape-man. Poor guy. Nothing like bad news that gets delivered 40 years late, eh?

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The Real UFOs: These Are the Secret Planes the U.S. Air Forces Tests in Area 51

The Air Force test facility at Groom Lake, Nevada—better known as Area 51—has harbored a wide variety of experimental aircraft the Pentagon would rather keep away from the prying eyes of the public.

While fanciful stories of alien spaceships continue to captivate the public, as recent internet memes attest, there’s little doubt that Groom Lake’s actual activities are of considerable interest—sufficiently so that in April 2019 Russia even dispatched one of its treaty-authorized Tu-154M Open Skies surveillance planes to spy on the base.

The facility has considerably expanded from the small, remote landing field adjacent to a salt flat first used to test the Lockheed U-2 spy plane in 1955. Now it lies within a twenty-three by twenty-five-mile perimeter of restricted airspace located within the larger 4,500-square mile Nevada Training and Test Range. Other nearby bases include Nellis Air Force Base and Tonopah Test Range—the latter which also has hosted numerous “black project” programs.

While a companion piece looks at Area 51’s original role in developing the CIA’s U-2 and A-12 spy planes, here we’ll look at the “black projects” known to have been flown there in the 1970s, to those speculated to be there in the present day.

While the F-117 has been officially retired from the Air Force service, photos and video footage reveal that at least one or two of the venerable stealth jets continue to fly over Area 51 as of 2019—possibly used to test sensors and air-to-air tactics against stealth aircraft. 

Soviet Warbirds

Air Force and Navy pilots suffered unexpected difficulties in the early years of the air war over Vietnam when confronted by agile Soviet-built MiG-17 and MiG-21 jets. 

Conveniently, Israel acquired a MiG-21 from a defecting Iraqi pilot in 1966. Then in 1968, two Syrian MiG-17F pilots got lost and mistakenly landed in Israel. All three jets were shipped over to Groom Lake, where Air Force pilots extensively tested the planes in a series of head-to-head dogfights with a wide variety of U.S. jets. They came to an uncomfortable conclusion: they were evenly matched in a head-to-head fight even with more sophisticated F-4 Phantom jets, and the better-trained pilot was likely to win—a conclusion which led to the formation of the Navy’s Top Gun program.

Evaluations continued in the 1970s under a special unit of “Red Hats” known as the 6513^th Test Squadron, who received their own section of the base aptly nicknamed “Red Square” which accumulated a growing collection of Soviet warbirds. 

However in 1984, General Richard Bond, a fifty-four-year-old decorated combat pilot and retiring head of the Air Force systems command, decided to take a MiG-23BN “Flogger” swing-wing fighter out for a spin without thoroughly familiarizing himself with the infamously temperamental aircraft. While racing at twice the speed of sound, he lost control of the MiG as its afterburners became stuck in the active position and was killed attempting to eject—in fact, he was the second U.S. Air Force pilot to die piloting a MiG-23 in two years.

While the 6513^th was long ago inactivated, photos and footage of MiG-29s and Su-27s flying over Area 51 reveal that Red Hats continue to test the limits of Russian engineering to this day. After an Air Force test pilot died in a crash in 2017, Aviation Week’s Guy Norris reported he had been flying a foreign-built airplane.

Missing In Action: the Mythical ‘Aurora’ Spyplane

During the 1990s, several respected aviation writers wrote of their conviction that the Air Force had sequestered in Groom Lake a top-secret Blackbird successor dubbed the “Aurora” that could attain hypersonic speeds, i.e. exceeding five times the speed of sound. Supposedly, the triangle-shaped Aurora was powered by either a scramjet or a “pumpkin seed” shock-wave pulse engine which used the flat airframe to “squeeze” the aircraft forward.

No, not the Klingon starships from Star Trek—but a prototype stealth jet that vaguely resembled one with its upward-swept wings. Like its science-fiction counterpart, the Boeing Bird-of-Prey may also have possessed an active camouflage “cloaking device” designed to minimize its shadow and blend it visual signature with the surrounding sky—a technology first deployed on ships and aircraft during World War II. 

The jet, fashioned out of a single piece of composite material, also tested radar-stealth features such as shielded engine intakes and a tailless fuselage which remarkably did not require a fly-by-wire system to remain aerodynamically stable.

The demonstrator made thirty-nine test flights between 1996-1999 before being unveiled to the public in 2002, and is now on display at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

Lockheed P175 Polecat Stealth Drone

The “Polecat” was a 4.5-ton flying wing high-altitude stealth drone made of two hundred composite parts glued together. Resembling a miniature B-2 stealth bomber with wings 27 meters wide, the P175 was conceived of as a high-altitude surveillance and attack platform with a thousand-pound payload. The stealth UAV began testing in 2006, but that December a failure in its remote-control system reportedly caused it to self-destruct by crashing into the ground.

The Northrop-Grumman RQ-180? The Lockheed SR-72?

ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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 Huge Obelisk on Jupiter's Moon LO

An image of an area called Telegonus Mensa on Jupiter's moon Io, taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2001, reveals a huge cigar-shaped object that stands out in the surrounding landscape. 

Aside from the possibility that the object could be an ordinary rock formation, it resembles a huge tower or obelisk. 

Next to the huge obelisk, it looks like artificial structures have been built. Could it be that Jupiter's Moon LO was once inhabited by an intelligent race?

 Source: 

• https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=PIA03528

  

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UFO flying over Glendale, AZ 1-Aug-2021

This bright UFO was filmed slowly flying over Glendale, Arizona on 1st August 2021. Posted on Reddit today!

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

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“I saw an alien get on the space shuttle,” says retired astronaut

Astronaut Clark C. McClelland was fired from NASA, filed and sentenced with loss of all social privileges and pension for speaking openly about aliens and broadcasting censored videos of the missions in which he participated.

McClelland, a former astronaut and former member of the MUFON commission (in charge of collecting information about UFOs), revealed that he and NASA know that aliens exist and that during a space mission from their ship they were able to see a smart disk.

Upon returning to Earth, Musgrave was questioned about the encounter and the scientist reviewed a video recording of the encounter between the Columbia and the UFO as they flew over Denver, Colorado.

He indicated that the object appeared to be controlled by an intelligence changing its flight vector. Most disconcerting was that it seemed to follow Columbia and its crew through space.

After the mission, the scientist became convinced not only of the existence of aliens, but that they are here. The astronaut decided to go on a personal discovery mission.

At a lecture on astronomy, Musgrave, at the end of his presentation, displayed images on a big screen, showing an artistic rendering of the evil gray aliens, and shook his audience by saying, “These guys are real, I guarantee it!” .

This testimony adds to another serious revelation made by retired United States military who ask the government not to continue hiding the truth and narrated how aliens interfered with nuclear bases.

Other members of NASA who have testified about aliens are Gordon Cooper , Donald Slayton, Gene Cernan, Frank Borman, Neil Armstrong, and Scott Carpenter, who insist that UFOs are real and that intelligent extraterrestrial beings exist.

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

Voyager left NASA 'happily bewildered' by what it saw at Jupiter

Voyager’s views of Jupiter’s colorful cloud tops reminded many people of an impressionist painter’s canvas. Fine details in and around the Great Red Spot changed significantly in the four months between the Voyager 1 flyby and Voyager 2 (pictured).

NASA/JPL

Until the mid-1990s, when planets were at last being discovered orbiting distant stars, Jupiter was the largest world known. Eleven times Earth’s diameter and 318 times our planet’s mass, Jupiter possesses more than twice the combined matter of all the other planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in the solar system. Made mostly of hydrogen (89.8 percent by volume) and helium (10.2 percent), Jupiter is essentially a bottomless atmosphere that, beneath the clouds, transitions into an exotic fluid. Its largest moons, so big they rival Mercury in size, appear to hold substantial amounts of liquid water and beckon scientists as potential abodes for life beyond Earth.

For centuries, humanity could view this giant world only through ground-based telescopes. But in 1973 and 1974, respectively, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft raced past the planet, providing the first close-up images of its stormy atmosphere, probing its internal structure, and charting its intense radiation belts and magnetic field. The Pioneer probes blazed a trail for further exploration of the outer solar system. Even as scientists reveled in the data the probes returned, NASA already was working on a far more ambitious encore.

The huge, umbrella-shaped plume of the volcano Pele rises some 185 miles (300km) above Io’s surface. Ejecta from the massive eruption covers an area the size of Alaska.

NASA/JPL/USGS

The mission, originally called Mariner Jupiter-Saturn 1977, received a name change before launch to the one we know today: Voyager, the longest-running space mission in history. The twin Voyagers carried better cameras, more advanced instruments, and more computing power than the Pioneers. Both spacecraft launched in 1977 and are still returning data as they cruise away from our planetary system and journey into the unending night of interstellar space. Voyagers 1 and 2 are now so far away that their radio signals take more than 15 hours to reach us. The more distant probe, Voyager 1, has passed beyond the heliopause, a boundary separating the interstellar environment from charged particles and magnetic fields flowing from the Sun, known as the solar wind. Voyager 2 is cruising through the heliosheath, a zone where pressure from interstellar gas begins slowing the solar wind.

“It’s been a remarkable journey,” says Voyager project scientist Ed Stone at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “We keep discovering things nobody knew we were going to discover.” He says both spacecraft may be able to return measurements from a single science instrument until 2030 if their power sources — called radioisotope thermoelectric generators — hold out as expected.

Encounter with Jove

On January 6, 1979, Voyager 1 was 36 million miles (58 million kilometers) from Jupiter and two months from its closest approach. Views of the planet’s cloudy, banded disk already exceeded the best images from Earth. Among other assignments, the probe began accumulating a time-lapse movie by taking images every 10 hours, one for each Jupiter rotation.

By early February, the resolution and image quality were comparable to the best pictures returned by the Pioneers. From that point on, Jupiter would be seen as never before.

When viewed from Earth through a small telescope, the planet’s atmosphere shows alternating bright white zones and darker brown belts. These are the visible manifestations of east-west jet streams that alternate direction from the equator to the poles and carry oval-shaped weather systems of all sizes.

Voyager 1 captured this view of Jupiter on January 9, 1979. Even though the spacecraft was 34 million miles (54 million km) away, its camera captured details impossible to see from Earth.

NASA/JPL

The Voyager imaging team tracked a pair of similarly sized brown ovals, watching them merge, tumble, and eject a dark streamer. Atmospheric models had not predicted such strange behavior. Eddies, waves, and turbulent clouds churned everywhere. At a February 28 press briefing, imaging team leader Bradford Smith described his team as “happily bewildered” by what they were seeing. “Jupiter is far more complex in its atmospheric motions than we had ever imagined,” he said.

The planet’s largest feature, a vast southern storm called the Great Red Spot, had been observed continuously from Earth for 150 years. But now, for the first time, scientists could study its rotation and watch it interact with neighboring features. Large enough to hold a pair of Earth-sized planets, the Great Red Spot rolls between two jet streams and completes a rotation in about six days. It spins counterclockwise, the opposite direction as hurricanes in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, classifying it as a high-pressure system. Its cloud tops extend nearly 5 miles (8km) above neighboring layers. Although winds whip around its periphery at 425 mph (680 km/h), the interior is calm. Its size and position vary slightly, and long-term ground-based monitoring shows that the longest-lived storm known to science is shrinking steadily.

Amy Simon at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, leads a team studying Jupiter with the Hubble Space Telescope. The observations show the storm’s long axis is half what was reported in the 1880s and about 30 percent smaller than during the Voyager flybys. And since 2014, the Great Red Spot has turned an unusually intense shade of orange.

Io (in front of the Great Red Spot) and Europa appear against Jupiter’s cloud tops in this Voyager 1 image from February 13, 1979. Io’s odd coloration already stands out from a distance of 12 million miles (20 million km).

NASA/JPL

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena have conducted laboratory experiments that suggest the storm’s color, which has ranged from pale orange to brick red, is a result of reddish coloring agents produced when ultraviolet (UV) sunlight breaks down ammonia and acetylene, gases common in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. The high clouds within the Great Red Spot and similar storms receive more solar UV, and the storms’ rotation helps retain colored particles that result in stronger shades. Scientists suspect these changes in color and size are related to storm strength, but they remain poorly understood.

In 1998, two of three 60-year-old white oval storms in a cloud band south of the Great Red Spot merged, and in early 2000, the third oval joined them. The resulting weather system, named Oval BA, is about half the size of the Great Red Spot and persists today. In August 2005, amateur astronomers noticed it was acquiring a reddish color. The hue gradually deepened; by 2006, the storm was nicknamed “the Little Red Spot” and “Red Spot Jr.”

Yet despite the Voyager probes and later missions, vital questions about Jupiter’s atmosphere remain. Why are the jet streams and large storms stable for so long? What’s the energy source for the jets? And do the winds continue into the planet’s interior?

Diving into Jupiter

The top of Jupiter’s atmosphere consists of haze layers formed by complex hydrocarbons like ethane, ethylene, and acetylene. These chemicals assemble from the fragments of methane molecules broken apart by solar UV, a process similar to how smog forms in Earth’s atmosphere. About 25 miles (40km) deeper, the pressure approaches 60 percent of that at Earth’s surface (1 bar), but the temperature is only –193° F (–125° C). A deck of bright white clouds formed by ammonia ice crystals occupies this level.

The Voyagers revealed several brown ovals in Jupiter’s atmosphere. These appear to be openings in the high-level clouds that give a peek to darker regions below. Note the high white cloud protruding over this oval’s northern edge.

NASA/JPL

Plunge deeper, to twice Earth’s surface pressure, and the temperature rises to –76° F (–60° C). Here we encounter a tawny, yellow-orange cloud deck built from droplets or crystals of ammonium hydrosulfide. Usually we cannot see past these clouds, but spacecraft measurements and models indicate that the next cloud layer — at pressures of about 3 to 7 bars and temperatures from freezing to about 60° F (16° C) — contains water ice crystals at the colder levels and water droplets lower down, just like clouds on Earth. Any familiarity pretty much ends there, though.

Minute frequency changes in spacecraft radio signals allow scientists to map the structure of Jupiter’s gravitational field; this enables them to develop models of what lies beneath the clouds. Pressures and temperatures increase steadily, but the hydrogen atmosphere simply grows denser and hotter with depth until, hundreds of miles beneath the clouds, molecular hydrogen starts to resemble a hot liquid. At depths 10 times greater, only 20 percent of the way to Jupiter’s center, pressures approach a million bars, and temperatures soar to 10,000° F (5,700° C) — nearly as hot as the Sun’s surface. Here the interior transforms into a more exotic substance called liquid metallic hydrogen, an electrically conductive soup of protons and electrons that makes up most of Jupiter’s mass.

Some 28,000 miles (45,000km) farther down, about 80 percent of the way to the planet’s center, the composition may change to a mix of water, methane, and ammonia at enormous temperatures and pressures. Another 4,400 miles (7,000km) down, and we’re 10 percent from the center; the pressure rises to around 40 million bars and the temperature to some 40,000° F (22,000° C). At this point, Jupiter’s composition may gradually morph into a dense core, perhaps containing up to 20 Earth masses in a mix of rock and iron that may also include water, methane, and ammonia.

At these pressures, dense materials may become soluble in liquid hydrogen, some scientists suggest. This means Jupiter’s original core may have dissolved partially or completely away, its high-density materials dispersed throughout a larger portion of the planet. One of the main goals of NASA’s Juno mission, which has been orbiting the planet since July 2016, is to answer the many remaining questions about how the solar system’s largest world is put together. (See “Under the veil,” above.)

Magnetic tango

Like Earth, Jupiter generates a magnetic field, which at the cloud tops is about 15 times stronger than our planet’s. The field traps, stores, and controls the flow of charged particles inside it, forming a vast, comet-shaped bubble — called a magnetosphere — that shields the planet from direct exposure to the solar wind. Pressure from the solar wind pushes the Sun-facing side into a rounded bow shock that slows and deflects most of the incoming charged particles in much the same way that water flows around the bow of a moving ship. The opposite side tapers into an immense magnetotail whose farthest portions wave and flap like the tattered end of a windsock.

Sinuous rivers of lava flow down the flanks of Io’s volcano Ra Patera. The volcano’s vent measures about 19 miles (30km) across, while the lava flows extend up to 155 miles (250km) from there. The summit rises only about 0.6 mile (1km) above the surroundings.

NASA/JPL

Jupiter’s magnetosphere is the solar system’s largest planetary structure. “If you look up and identify Jupiter in the sky, its magnetosphere would be about the size of the Moon,” says Goddard’s John Connerney, deputy principal investigator for the Juno mission. Its bow shock typically lies about 40 Jupiter diameters sunward of the planet and its magnetotail stretches some 3,500 diameters behind it, nearly reaching Saturn’s orbit. We know this because as Voyager 2 approached Saturn in 1981, two years and 400 million miles (650 million km) after its Jupiter encounter, the spacecraft slipped in and out of Jupiter’s frayed magnetotail multiple times. (By comparison, Earth’s bow shock lies three to five Earth diameters toward the Sun, and its magnetotail may extend hundreds of diameters.)

Between February 28 and March 2, 1979, the magnetosphere seemed to be playing hard to get with the approaching Voyager 1. The solar wind was gusty, producing unusually strong and variable pressures that pushed the bow shock closer to the planet. When the wind eased, the bow shock re-expanded. Pioneers 10 and 11 made their crossings 50 diameters from Jupiter, but Voyager 1 crossed it five times, the last at scarcely half that range (28 diameters).

On March 5, the spacecraft made its closest approach, passing within 128,400 miles (206,700km) of Jupiter’s cloud tops, barely one-third the distance at which Voyager 2 would pass July 9. Scientists selected this path so they could measure a hypothesized electrical circuit connecting Jupiter and its moon Io, and it took Voyager 1 deep into the most hazardous radiation belts in the solar system. Based on measurements from the Pioneers, the Voyager design included shielding that hardened sensitive electronics to the bombardment of high-energy electrons, protons, and ions stored in Jupiter’s equivalent of Earth’s Van Allen Belts. But an unprotected human passenger riding aboard Voyager 1 during closest approach would have received a thousand times the lethal radiation dose.

Four new worlds

An extraordinary planet deserves extraordinary moons, and Jupiter’s four big satellites do not disappoint. Discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, they are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (in order of distance from the planet). Ganymede, the largest and most massive moon in the solar system, is slightly bigger than Mercury, while Callisto is nearly the planet’s diameter. Both Io and Europa are roughly the size of Earth’s Moon.

The moons’ complexity and individuality, which scientists hardly suspected despite centuries of telescopic observations, proved a major surprise of the Voyager missions. Reporting their results in the journal Science three months after the Voyager 1 encounter, the imaging team noted that the large moons do not closely resemble either the planets in the inner solar system or one another. “The sense of novelty,” they wrote, “would probably not have been greater had we explored a different solar system.”

“They’re quite distinct,” says Stone, “and I think the one thing we have learned is that nature is remarkably diverse, and you don’t see replicas. Each body seems to have its own life history written on the surface and in its interior.”

There had long been hints that the big moons might be doing something interesting. Galileo’s 17th-century plots showed that Europa and Io always meet up on the side of Jupiter exactly opposite from where Europa and Ganymede do. In the 7.15 days it takes Ganymede to go around Jupiter once, Europa orbits twice and Io four times. This 1:2:4 resonance forces the moons’ orbits to maintain a slight eccentricity, which in turn causes their bodies to flex slightly due to tides raised by Jupiter’s gravity. Just as repeatedly bending a paper clip warms up the metal, this forced flexing warms the interiors of Jupiter’s big moons.

Giant Ganymede — larger than Mercury — sports two different types of terrain. The dark material is oldest, while the lighter bands cut by grooves and ridges are significantly younger. A relatively recent impact threw out the bright material at bottom.

NASA/JPL

Stanton Peale at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues first described the mechanism in a paper submitted to Science in January 1979. They presciently concluded: “Voyager images of Io may reveal evidence for a planetary structure and history dramatically different from any previously observed.” The paper was published March 2, three days before Voyager 1’s closest approach. By then, images of the weirdly colored moon, reminiscent of a cheese pizza, already were making headlines. Scientists had expected Io to resemble our Moon, but it lacked anything that looked like an impact crater and was coated with richly colored deposits that wouldn’t look out of place around active fumaroles on Earth.

On March 8, as Voyager 1 raced out of the Jupiter system, its camera captured a routine navigation image of a crescent Io as part of a program to refine knowledge of the spacecraft’s trajectory. The next day, JPL engineer Linda Morabito enhanced this image to locate background stars and uncovered another crescent shape on Io’s sunlit limb. It looked like the edge of another satellite peeking out from behind Io, but scientists determined that an unknown satellite so large would have been detectable from Earth. “No one understood what they were seeing, reinforcing the degree of difficulty associated with interpreting this image,” she later wrote.

The Voyagers revealed dark streaks crisscrossing the surface of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s Galilean moons. In some cases, the streaks stretch more than 1,000 miles (1,600km). Scientists later deduced that the streaks are cracks in the moon’s icy crust filled with material from its interior.

NASA/JPL/USGS

By March 12, the imaging team had confirmed the presence of active volcanoes. What Morabito had noticed was a plume of ejecta associated with a heart-shaped volcano now known as Pele. Remarkably, the same picture also held a second plume, one erupting from a feature now called Loki and catching sunlight as it rose high over Io’s night side.

Scientists now know of at least 150 active volcanoes on Io. Some of them blast umbrella-shaped plumes containing sodium, potassium, sulfur, sulfur dioxide, and more to altitudes as high as 310 miles (500km). Some of the ejecta falls back to paint Io’s terrain in garish hues, and the rest forms a thin, distended atmosphere around the moon. Particle interactions ionize some of these atoms, and they then become swept up in Jupiter’s fast-moving magnetic field, which rotates with the planet’s 10-hour rotation. “About a ton per second of that material is picked up by the jovian magnetic field, and that mass of stuff inflates the Jupiter magnetosphere to about twice the size it should be,” Stone says.

The ionized gas spreads along Io’s orbit to form a doughnut-shaped cloud called the Io plasma torus. Some of the heavy ions in the torus migrate outward, and their pressure supersizes the magnetosphere. As Io moves through the torus, it continuously generates an electrical current that flows along a conduit, called the Io flux tube, linked to Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Two billion kilowatts flow through the flux tube, comparable to the average global power consumption on Earth. The Voyager 1 team deliberately tried to pass through the tube, but the material around Io shifted its position from what was expected, and the spacecraft instead flew alongside it.

While imaging from Earth in 1993, Connerney and his colleagues discovered a spot of infrared emission in Jupiter’s polar atmosphere. The glow tracked with Io in its orbit and arose from energy coursing down the flux tube. But Io isn’t alone in this regard. In 2002, Hubble imaged Io’s spot in the UV and found two more glows from Europa and Ganymede, showing they generate their own flux tubes. “The system is highly coupled and connected, where the magnetic fields and the particles are all interacting with the moons,” Stone says. And the phenomenon isn’t unique to Jupiter. In 2011, scientists identified a UV spot associated with the active moon Enceladus in images from the Cassini mission orbiting Saturn.

Voyager 1 discovered Jupiter’s faint, dusty rings during its flyby, and they posed for this Voyager 2 portrait once the probe passed into the planet’s shadow. The curved rings appear orange-red; Jupiter’s multicolored limb comes from the long exposure through two filters.

NASA/JPL

The outer trio

Europa, the next moon out from Jupiter, couldn’t be more different from its siblings. Low-resolution images from Voyager 1 showed a bright surface of frozen water with no discernible craters, along with hints of dark linear features. Voyager 2 passed much closer to Europa on July 9, and its images revealed frozen plains crisscrossed by dark streaks, giving it the look of a cracked egg. Europa’s surface is the smoothest in the solar system. Features display so little topographical relief that imaging team member Larry Soderblom compared the moon to a billiard ball. Later that year, the scientists who explained the heating of Io suggested that tidal flexing of Europa could provide enough heat to sustain an ocean beneath its icy shell, which is widely thought to be 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24km) thick. The ocean itself may be at least 30 miles (48km) deep, or more than 10 times the average depth of Earth’s seas.

In fact, several lines of evidence now support the presence of briny global oceans within Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, each containing more water than Earth’s seas. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which in 1995 became the first to orbit Jupiter, flew close to these moons and found that Jupiter’s rotating magnetic field induces currents in electrically conducting layers within them. These currents, in turn, generate secondary magnetic fields Galileo could detect. Europa’s induced response matches what researchers would expect for a salty subsurface ocean many miles thick. And different teams using Hubble in 2012 and 2016 discovered tantalizing evidence that Europa occasionally erupts plumes of water vapor reaching heights of 125 miles (200km), suggesting the icy shell may be quite thin in some locations.

The Juno spacecraft’s camera preferentially targets Jupiter’s poles. This view of the south pole reveals several oval cyclones up to 600 miles (1,000km) in diameter.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

The first low-resolution glimpses of Ganymede revealed two starkly different terrain types. A dark material covers about 35 percent of the surface. Peppered with impact craters and their bright halos of icy ejecta, this is the moon’s geologically oldest surface. The rest of the moon features light materials crosscut by an intricate patchwork of grooves and ridges. Voyager 1 images showed that fault lines cut some of the light bands, which were then offset by surface movement. “There is transverse motion along these faults,” Soderblom said at a March 6 briefing. “Things get offset, apparently, for hundreds of kilometers.” This suggested that tidal heating had powered a brief period of intense tectonic activity in Ganymede’s icy crust early in its history.

The Galileo mission revealed in 1996 that Ganymede generates its own permanent magnetic field, the only moon in the solar system known to do so, and therefore makes its own miniature magnetosphere. This complicates the interpretation of its induced field, but recent models, as well as Hubble observations of Ganymede’s aurorae, suggest the interior contains shells of different phases of water ice separated by salty seas.

Callisto, the farthest of Jupiter’s big moons, hosts the solar system’s most heavily cratered and geologically ancient surface. Its terrain is nearly saturated with bright impact craters. The largest visible feature, named Valhalla, resembles a bull’s-eye about 2,200 miles (3,600km) across, the frozen remnant of a giant impact. Galileo spacecraft observations indicate the presence of a salty, subsurface global ocean despite little tidal heating at Callisto now. Perhaps ammonia and other contaminants lower the freezing point enough for a liquid layer to survive.

Opening act

The Jupiter flybys mark the first chapter in the Voyagers’ exploration of the outer solar system. They provided new views of an enormous, complex, and dynamic atmosphere that is still far from understood. They explored a vast magnetosphere loaded with particles from its moons, especially Io, and intimately connected to them. Close-ups of unique new worlds uncovered incredible properties, including the first example of active extraterrestrial volcanism and the first clues that frozen moons could sport internal seas. Further discoveries included a faint ring of dust extending 80,000 miles (129,000km) from the planet’s center, and two new moons, Metis and Adrastea, orbiting just beyond it. The probes also found a third satellite, Thebe, in a more distant orbit, though still well inside Io’s.

With Jupiter now in the rearview mirror, Voyager scientists could begin digging deeper into the data — and wondering what awaited them at their next destination, Saturn.

{https://astronomy.com/ }

NASA's solar sail technology wants to power space exploration using sunlight

NASA has announced plans to test its updated solar sail technology in 2022. known as ACS3 (advanced composite solar sail system), the aim of the mission is to replace conventional rocket propellants by developing and testing solar sails using sunlight beams to move nanosatellites. 

‘just as a sailboat is powered by wind in a sail, solar sails employ the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, eliminating the need for conventional rocket propellant,’ NASA wrote in a june 23 statement.

the NASA solar sail propulsion systems have been designed for future small interplanetary spacecrafts destined for low-cost deep-space and science missions requiring long-duration and low-thrust propulsion. the benefit of nanosatellites with solar sails is a continuous thrust without using expending propellants, enabling orbits that are not possible with conventional propulsion systems.

‘the primary objective of the ACS3 mission is to demonstrate the successful deployment of the composite boom solar sail in low-earth orbit,’ said NASA. ‘after reaching space, the mission’s CubeSat spacecraft will deploy its solar power arrays and then begin unfurling its solar sail via four booms that span the diagonals of the square and unspool to reach 7 meters (about 23 feet) in length. after approximately 20 or 30 minutes when the solar sail is fully deployed, the square-shaped solar sail measures approximately 9 meters (about 30 feet) per side or about the size of a small apartment. a suite of onboard digital cameras will obtain images of the sail during and after deployment in order to assess its shape and alignment.’

 interest in solar sailing as an alternative to chemical and electric propulsion systems continues to increase. using sunlight to propel small spacecraft in lieu of consumable propellants will be advantageous for many mission profiles and offers flexibility in spacecraft design to help NASA meet its missions’ objectives most efficiently.

project info:

name: advanced composite solar sail system (ACS3)
initiator: NASA
company: NanoAvionics

{ https://www.designboom.com/ }

{ https://nationalufocenter.com/ }