Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
In October, the Australian Space Agency and NASA signed a deal to send an Australian-made rover to the moon under the Artemis program, with a goal to collect lunar rocks that could ultimately provide breathable oxygen on the moon.
Although the moon does have an atmosphere, it’s very thin and composed mostly of hydrogen, neon, and argon. It’s not the sort of gaseous mixture that could sustain oxygen-dependent mammals such as humans.
That said, there is actually plenty of oxygen on the moon. It just isn’t in a gaseous form. Instead it’s trapped inside regolith—the layer of rock and fine dust that covers the moon’s surface. If we could extract oxygen from regolith, would it be enough to support human life on the moon?
The Breadth of Oxygen
Oxygen can be found in many of the minerals in the ground around us. And the moon is mostly made of the same rocks you’ll find on Earth (although with a slightly greater amount of material that came from meteors).
Minerals such as silica, aluminum, and iron and magnesium oxides dominate the moon’s landscape. All of these minerals contain oxygen, but not in a form our lungs can access.
On the moon these minerals exist in a few different forms including hard rock, dust, gravel, and stones covering the surface. This material is the result of impacts of meteorites crashing into the lunar surface over countless millennia.
Some people call the moon’s surface layer lunar “soil,” but as a soil scientist I’m hesitant to use this term. Soil as we know it is pretty magical stuff that only occurs on Earth. It has been created by a vast array of organisms working on the soil’s parent material—regolith, derived from hard rock—over millions of years.
The result is a matrix of minerals which were not present in the original rocks. Earth’s soil is imbued with remarkable physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Meanwhile, the materials on the moon’s surface are basically regolith in its original, untouched form.
One Substance Goes In, Two Come Out
The moon’s regolith is made up of approximately 45 percent oxygen. But that oxygen is tightly bound into the minerals mentioned above. In order to break apart those strong bonds, we need to put in energy.
You might be familiar with this if you know about electrolysis. On Earth this process is commonly used in manufacturing, such as to produce aluminum. An electrical current is passed through a liquid form of aluminum oxide (commonly called alumina) via electrodes, to separate the aluminum from the oxygen.
In this case, the oxygen is produced as a byproduct. On the moon, the oxygen would be the main product, and the aluminum (or other metal) extracted would be a potentially useful byproduct.
It’s a pretty straightforward process, but there is a catch: it’s very energy hungry. To be sustainable, it would need to be supported by solar energy or other energy sources available on the Moon.
Extracting oxygen from regolith would also require substantial industrial equipment. We’d need to first convert solid metal oxide into liquid form, either by applying heat, or heat combined with solvents or electrolytes. We have the technology to do this on Earth, but moving this apparatus to the Moon—and generating enough energy to run it—will be a mighty challenge.
Earlier this year, Belgium-based startup Space Applications Services announced it was building three experimental reactors to improve the process of making oxygen via electrolysis. They expect to send the technology to the Moon by 2025 as part of the European Space Agency’s in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) mission.
How Much Oxygen Could the Moon Provide?
That said, when we do manage to pull it off, how much oxygen might the Moon actually deliver? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.
If we ignore oxygen tied up in the Moon’s deeper hard rock material—and just consider regolith which is easily accessible on the surface—we can come up with some estimates.
Each cubic meter of lunar regolith contains 1.4 tons of minerals on average, including about 630 kilograms of oxygen. NASA says humans need to breathe about 800 grams of oxygen a day to survive. So 630 kilograms of oxygen would keep a person alive for about two years (or just over).
Now let’s assume the average depth of regolith on the Moon is about ten meters, and that we can extract all of the oxygen from this. That means the top ten meters of the Moon’s surface would provide enough oxygen to support all eight billion people on Earth for somewhere around 100,000 years.
This would also depend on how effectively we managed to extract and use the oxygen. Regardless, this figure is pretty amazing!
Having said that, we do have it pretty good here on Earth. And we should do everything we can to protect the blue planet—and its soil in particular—which continues to support all terrestrial life without us even trying.
The James Webb Space Telescope, shown in this artist's illustration, successfully unfolded its mirrors and sunshield after launch.
Credit: Adriana Manrique Gutierrez/NASA GSFC/CIL
After several tense days of unfurling and clicking its various parts into place, the biggest and most sophisticated space telescope ever launched is now complete.
On 8 January, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope slowly swung the last 3 of its 18 hexagonal mirror segments into position, locking them together into one 6.5-metre-wide, gold-coated cosmic eye. The move capped an essentially flawless two weeks of engineering manoeuvres — the most complex astronomical deployments ever attempted in space — since the telescope’s Christmas Day launch.
“The Webb deployments have been perfect,” says Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division in Washington DC.
“I am feeling absolutely elated," says Antonella Nota, the European Space Agency's project scientist for Webb. "We are now all part of history as we watch this magnificent machine getting ready to explore the Universe.”
The US$10-billion observatory still faces many significant tasks, such as aligning its mirror segments and calibrating its 4 scientific instruments. But it has finished the riskiest engineering moves, without which it would have been inoperable. Those include deploying a kite-shaped, tennis-court-sized sunshield to shade the telescope from the Sun’s heat, and positioning its primary and secondary mirrors to capture light from stars, galaxies and other cosmic objects.
Photons are now bouncing between Webb’s mirrors, making it an operational observatory. “This is unbelievable,” said Bill Ochs, NASA’s project manager for Webb, in a 5 January webcast from mission control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “We actually have a telescope.”
Smooth moves
Webb, which launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, is now more than one million kilometres from Earth. It should reach its final destination, a gravitationally stable point in space known as L2, on 23 January. From there, it will study astronomical phenomena such as the most distant galaxies in the Universe, newborn stars enshrouded in dust and the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.
Unlike its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb detects infrared wavelengths of light. That allows it to peer into previously unexplored realms, but also requires it to work at extremely cold temperatures, so that it can spot faint heat signals coming from the distant Universe. Webb’s sunshield is crucial to achieving that frigidity.
Engineers on Earth test the sunshield opening up in this high-speed footage.
Credit: NASA
That’s why many scientists were most nervous about opening it and stretching it into place. After launch, Webb had to unfold two rectangular pallets containing the sunshield, unroll its protective covers, pull it into a kite shape and finally tug its five gossamer layers to be taut. The process had been tested multiple times in a laboratory on Earth, but never in zero gravity in space, which could have introduced unexpected problems.
“I think I was just nervous about deploying something big and floppy,” Hertz says. No other space observatory has had such a shield, so it is “new and unfamiliar”, he adds.
Any step could have failed dramatically, but none did. Webb pulled the last of its sunshield layers into the correct tension on 4 January. “There was a lot of joy — a lot of relief,” said Hillary Stock, an engineer with Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, which designed and built the sunshield. After that, Hertz says, he wasn’t nervous anymore.
But other scientists were anxious until the next day, when Webb deployed its secondary mirror. This process involved extending a giant hinged tripod out in front of the telescope’s primary mirror to lock its 74-centimetre-wide secondary mirror into place. Light bounces off the concave primary mirror and hits the convex secondary mirror, which focuses the light and sends it back through a small hole in the primary mirror and into the scientific instruments for analysis. Once the secondary mirror was deployed, Webb became an operational telescope by definition.
Cool it now
The last major step came at 10:29 a.m. US Eastern time on 8 January, when the final segment of the primary mirror swung into place. That mirror is so large that, like the sunshield, it had to be folded up for launch to fit atop the Ariane 5 rocket that carried it to space.
Other successful deployments during the past two weeks include swinging out a radiator that will funnel excess heat away from the telescope’s scientific instruments and dump it into space.
Next up, Webb will begin tweaking the positions of the primary mirror’s 18 segments to align them to properly focus light that they collect. The telescope also continues to cool down towards its operating temperature of around 40 °C above absolute zero, or –233 °C. It is currently nearly –200 °C on its cold side, behind the sunshield.
After Webb reaches L2 in about two weeks, it will have around five more months of set-up before it can start returning science results. "I cannot wait to see the first data," Nota says.
Webb took three decades to develop and repeatedly ate into NASA’s budget. The European and Canadian space agencies are also partners in the project.
NASA SAYS SPACE DEBRIS WILL DEFINITELY SLAM INTO THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
IT'S ALL PART OF THE PLAN.
ADRIANA MANRIQUE GUTIERREZ/NASA
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is “fully deployed,” according to the agency’s science administrator Thomas Zurbuchen — and that’s certainly a reason to celebrate after decades of hard work and tens of billions of dollars spent.
But the massive space observatory isn’t out of the woods just yet. As it spins around the Sun in a chaotic orbit, it will likely encounter plenty of space debris along the way — and an impact, its team says, is likely inevitable.
“Some small impacts from micrometeorites will happen,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Michelle Thaller said during a livestream over the weekend. “You know, over the lifetime of the mission there will be some damage to the mirrors of the telescope.”
The telescope itself is indeed vulnerable, but the team says it’s likely it’ll be able to survive some damage.
“Let’s say a piece of debris hits it,” said Julie Van Campen, a NASA engineer, during the stream. “And then we had a problem like that broke a mirror.”
In terms of protection, there’s “not much,” she explained. “What you see is what you get.”
However, Van Campen said, if a micrometeor were to rip a tear into the telescope’s protective sunshield there would be at least four more layers to keep the shield together.
“It was part of our lifetime calculations,” she added.
Things could get pretty hairy for the JWST team back on the ground, though, as there is no way to actually service the observatory in person. That’s unlike NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which the agency’s Space Shuttle visited five times between 1993 and 2009 for repairs and upgrades.
But there’s one crucial difference: Hubble was operating in a much more cluttered orbit in low-Earth orbit. The JWST will be orbiting the Sun at L2 (Lagrange Point 2), a far more distant location that allows it to form a straight line with the Earth and Sun.
“It’s actually a very nice place to be,” Thaller explained during the stream, adding that it is a “cleaner place when it comes to space junk.”
Fortunately, engineers have thought ahead and also built in some additional redundancies. The telescope’s mirrors, for instance, are designed to take some damage without forcing its scientific endeavors to grind to halt.
NASA has set the ambitious goal of having the JWST last for at least ten years, a number that’s primarily limited by the amount of fuel the telescope needs to keep itself in orbit and running its instruments.
For now, the pressure is off. Engineers pulled off a huge feat with the telescope’s unfolding, a harrowing process that involves hundreds of steps.
But space debris and meteorites will always be a threat — even when extra precautions are being taken.
The “most eccentric” exoplanet ever found has been detected by a team of international researchers led by the University of Bern. This exoplanet, which has been named TOI-2257 b, is a “sub-Neptune” which means that it is smaller than the furthest planet in our Solar System.
Thanks to data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a small red dwarf star was found and studied for four months. Experts were able to gather important additional data by using the SAINT-EX telescope in Mexico. TOI-2257 b was detected by the transit method which means that it was seen passing in front of its host star by causing a dip in the red dwarf’s brightness.
(Not TOI-2257 b)
The researchers found that the exoplanet has a short orbital period and may possibly have water as explained by the University of Bern, “With its 35-day orbital period, TOI-2257 b orbits the host star at a distance where liquid water is possible on the planet, and therefore conditions favorable for the emergence of life could exist.” But don’t get excited yet, as there probably isn’t any life since its radius is approximately 2.2 times bigger than Earth’s which “suggests that the planet is rather gaseous, with high atmospheric pressure not conducive to life.”
Nicole Schanche from Bern University noted, “In terms of potential habitability, this is bad news,” adding, “While the planet’s average temperature is comfortable, it varies from -80°C to about 100°C depending on where in its orbit the planet is, far from or close to the star.”
Another discovery they made was that the planet has a very odd orbit around its star. “We found that TOI-2257 b does not have a circular, concentric orbit,” Schanche said. It has even been described as being the “most eccentric planet” that has ever been found orbiting a cool star.
(Not TOI-2257 b)
As for why it has such an unusual orbit, one possibility is that there could be a massive planet located further away from the star which is affecting the orbit of TOI-2257 b. However, that is just a theory for now as further analysis needs to be conducted in order to know for sure.
For the first time ever, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) watched as a red supergiant star died out and went supernova. In fact, they were able to observe the star during the last 130 days of its life prior to exploding. The massive star, which was about ten times larger than our sun, was located in the NGC 5731 Galaxy which is approximately 120 million light-years away from us.
Based on previous observations, it was thought that red supergiant stars were pretty much dormant prior to going supernova; however, this latest observation has completely changed that theory. Throughout the last months before the star exploded, observations detected bright radiation from it. This means that the internal part of the star would have went through a lot of changes just before emitting gas and collapsing.
The star was first spotted during the summer of 2020 by the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for AstronomyPan-STARRS on Haleakalā, Maui. Then just a short time later, during the fall of that year, the star went supernova. Researchers were able to watch this supernova, which has been named 2020tlf (or SN 2020tlf), by using the W.M. Keck Observatory’s Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi.
Wynn Jacobson-Galán, who is the lead author of the study, discussed the significance of watching the star just before it exploded, “This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die,” adding, “Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode.”
Raffaella Margutti, who is an adjunct associate professor at CIERA and the senior author of the paper, described the moments before the explosion, “It’s like watching a ticking time bomb.” “We’ve never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now.”
Jacobson-Galán finished off by stating how this observation will affect future research in regards to the moments prior to a star going supernova, “Detecting more events like SN 2020tlf will dramatically impact how we define the final months of stellar evolution, uniting observers and theorists in the quest to solve the mystery on how massive stars spend the final moments of their lives.” Their study was published in The Astrophysical Journal where it can be read in full.
A short video depicting the supernova can be viewed here.
Britten vinden grote en bijna complete ‘zeedraak’ van 180 miljoen jaar oud: “Eén van de beste fossielenvondsten in het Verenigd Koninkrijk ooit”
Een grote prehistorische ‘zeedraak’ die is teruggevonden in de Engelse Midlands wordt omschreven als één van de beste fossielenvondsten in de geschiedenis van de Britse paleontologie. Het gaat over een ‘ichthyosaurus’, dat waren enorme zeereptielen die miljoenen jaren geleden in onze wateren leefden. Het g
evonden exemplaar is maar liefst 180 miljoen jaar oud.
Het fascinerende fossiel werd ontdekt in februari 2021, tijdens een routineuze drooglegging van een lagune-eiland bij het waterreservoir van Rutland, nabij de stad Leicester. Het skelet is zo’n 10 meter lang, de schedel weegt ongeveer een ton. Het gaat om het grootste en meest complete fossiel in zijn soort ooit bovengehaald in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, schrijft de Britse krant The Guardian maandag.
Ichtyosaurussen, die ook wel ‘zeedraken’ worden genoemd door hun erg grote en angstwekkende tanden en ogen, verschenen voor het eerst zo’n 250 miljoen jaar geleden en raakten zo’n 90 miljoen jaar geleden uitgestorven. Ze varieerden in grootte tussen 1 tot wel 25 meter. Als je kijkt naar de algemene lichaamsbouw van de zeewezens lijken ze het meest op enorme dolfijnen, met agressievere kenmerken.
De eerste ichtyosaurussen werden in de vroege 19de eeuw ontdekt door de beroemde Engelse fossielenjager en paleontoloog Mary Anning. Nu mag Joe Davis van het ‘Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust’ zich de ontdekker van dienst noemen.
De resten werden in augustus en september door een team van experten uit heel het Verenigd Koninkrijk uitgegraven. In de jaren 70 werden tijdens de constructie van het waterreservoir in het natuurreservaat van Rutland overigens al eens twee onvolledige en veel kleinere ichtyosaurussen gevonden. Maar de recentste onthulling is veel groter, en ook het eerste complete exemplaar.
Dean Lomax, een paleontoloog die al jaren de soort bestudeert en de kolos mee opgroef, legt bij The Guardian het belang van de vondst uit: “Hoewel er meerdere fossielen van deze zeereptielen zijn teruggevonden in het Verenigd Koninkrijk, is de ichtyosaurus van Rutland het grootste skelet dat hier ooit is blootgelegd. Het is werkelijk een ongeëvenaarde ontdekking en één van de grootste vondsten in de Britse paleontologische geschiedenis.”
Mark Evans van de Britse overheidsorganisatie ‘British Antarctic Survey’ bestudeert al meer dan 20 jaar specifiek de reptielenfossielen uit Rutland en Leicestershire. Hij zegt dat het al vanaf de eerste glimp van het gedeeltelijk blootgelegde fossiel duidelijk was dat het om de grootste ontdekking in de regio ooit ging. “Het was echter pas na onze verkennende opgraving dat we beseften dat het fossiel praktisch compleet was, van top tot teen.”
Nadat het fossiel zorgvuldig door het team was opgegraven, werd het kwetsbare skelet in een gipsen omhulsel met houten spalken gewikkeld, meldt watermaatschappij Anglian Water nog, de beheerder van het waterreservoir van Rutland. “Deze conserveringsmethode biedt extra bescherming voor de overblijfselen en maakte het mogelijk om ze in delen van de grond te tillen en veilig naar een onderzoeksfaciliteit te verplaatsen voor verdere analyse.” De maatschappij hoopt de vondst na onderzoek tentoon te kunnen stellen.
Ross Coulthart UFOs Journalism Investigating the UAP Story!
Ross Coulthart is an investigative journalist, most recently for Australian news and current affairs program 60 Minutes on Channel Nine. He was previously chief investigations reporter for the Sunday Night news program. Coulthart has won five prestigious Walkley journalism awards, including the most coveted top award for Australian journalism.And has recently been heavily involved in investigating UFO’s.
REMEMBER THE “MOON CUBE”? CHINA JUST PUBLISHED A NEW PHOTO AND UHHHHH
THIS IS WHAT WE GET FOR GETTING OUR HOPES UP.
CNSA
Dark Side of the Moon
It was just a month ago that the world was introduced to what appeared to be a bizarre cube on the Moon — and just like that, now it turns out the object was little more than an optical illusion.
As SpaceNews correspondent Andrew Jones tweeted, the latest Chinese images of the “Moon Cube” from closer up now show that the mysterious object appears to be… well, a perfectly normal Moon rock. Sorry, folks. Sometimes space is boring.
“Oh, this is amazing,” Jones wrote. “Close to tears.”
Moonsta Hut
The latest photos of the “mystery hut,” as it was originally known in Chinese media, show that this relatively small rock sitting on the edge of a lunar crater isn’t extraordinary in any way — and as the SpaceNews reporter wrote, the newly-dubbed “jade rabbit” is “so underwhelming it’s brilliant.”
“The Moon’s surface is 38 million square kilometres of rocks, so it would have been astronomically exceptional for it to be anything else,” Jones wrote in a subsequent tweet. “But while small, the jade rabbit/玉兔 rock will also be a monumental disappointment to some.”
Galaxy Brain
Before this underwhelming discovery, conspiracy theories about the Moon Cube abounded, with netizens half-jokingly comparing it to the scourge of monoliths that plagued Earth in the first pandemic summer, and others still advising the Chinese Yutu 2 rover to “go back in the other direction” and avoid it as if contaminated.
There was always a great likelihood that the cube was going to be a plain ol’ rock. But this does, if nothing else, set a hilarious tone for what’s gearing up to be a huge year in space exploration.
CHINA SAYS ITS LANDER HAS DETECTED WATER ON THE MOON
HYDRATION STATION!
GETTY / FUTURISM
Drink Up
A global team of scientists led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing says they’ve detected water under the surface of the Moon using data the China National Space Administration provided from the country’s Chang’e-5 lander — a stunning technical achievement on its own, as the first lunar sample return mission since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
The team used a panoramic camera, lunar mineralogical spectrometer (LMS) and lunar penetrating radar to look for evidence of water, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances this week in collaboration with researchers from the National Space Science Center of CAS, the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of CAS and Nanjing University.
“It’s like a ‘field trip’ out on the Moon, the first opportunity to detect signs of water at close range and high resolution on the lunar surface,” said lead author and Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher Lin Honglei, according to a statement obtained by the South China Morning Post.
It’s Complicated
The team observed signals indicating the presence of water in reflectance spectral data acquired by the Chang’e-5 lander. The theory is that solar wind has gradually swept hydrogen atoms toward the Moon, according to SCMP‘s reporting, where it
We’ll be honest. Given the recent Moon cube moment that turned out to be — like we suspected — a humble rock, we’re a little skeptical of any big space claims by China. But scientists have long suspected that there’s likely ice and water on the Moon — and, if the research holds up, water would be a tantalizing resource for a long-term presence on the Moon by human astronauts.
The first humans emerged on Earth about 4 million years ago, but new evidence from the study of human evolution has revealed compelling evidence that a small group of these hominins was genetically modified by ancient alien visitors to create the first Homo sapiens.
Researcher and author Daniella Fenton has thoroughly analyzed humanity’s earliest origins and its sudden acceleration in brain development nearly 800,000 years ago, and this research has led to a major revelation.
“Homo sapiens is the creation of ancient astronauts who came through a wormhole in the Pleiades star cluster more than 780,000 years ago.”
The Australian researcher, an expert in equine lineages and gene expression, discovered numerous genetic changes that mark humans as abnormal when compared to modern primate species, some so extreme that they are best explained by advanced genetic engineering.
In her book, titled “Human Hybrids: Scientific Evidence for Our 800,000-Year-Old Alien Legacy,” Daniella Fenton highlights a series of profound changes in genes associated with brain size, neural structures, and information processing.
These changes include suddenly appearing genes made up of so-called ‘junk DNA’ and gene fragments that have been snipped, copied, and reinserted.
Fenton points to the mysterious fusion of chromosome 2 at the same time as these other changes, about 780,000 years ago, as further evidence of extraterrestrial experimentation.
This fusion is found in all large-brained human types, including Neanderthals and Denisovans, but not in any other primate species.
She explains that the chromosome 2 fusion should have been a one-time mistake that disappeared in the next generation or perhaps led to a small population of people with 46 chromosomes among a more substantial number of those carrying 48.
Instead, all humans after 780,000 years ago exhibited the ‘mutation’.
This strongly infers that there was an enormous benefit associated with the fusion and that it appeared suddenly in a considerable number of individuals, allowing chromosome 2 to become a permanent and dominant trait.
This does not match the known natural mutations in the human genome. Fenton explains:
“Someone created an entire generation of breeding pairs that carried the chromosome-2 fusion. The chromosomal modification is such that it would have an impact on the development of the brain, the immune system and the reproductive processes ”.
Humans also have unique changes in the FOXP2 gene that changed synaptic connectivity and improved our ability to transform new experiences into routine procedures, this had a huge influence on our ability to produce meaningful speech.
Fenton points out that this change is not observed in other primates and it seems that our creators wanted us to be able to quickly form new habitual behaviors in the use of particularity language.
“It is not only genetic changes 780,000 years ago that inform us that Homo sapiens is a species created by alien beings, we have also identified physical material left behind by these stars, materials dated to the same specific point in time.”
In addition, he offers a detailed explanation of why these visitors ended up abandoned here and the motivations that led them to modify the first hominids in his book “Human Hybrids: Scientific Evidence for Our 800,000-Year Alien Legacy.”
The story of Christa Tilton, a resident of the American state of New Mexico, is one of those rare cases where victims of alien abductionremember a lot of details of what happened to them and what they saw.
The Alien Abduction Of Christa Tilton
This happened in July 1987, when Christa Tilton suddenly “passed out” in the afternoon, and when she regained consciousness, she found that she had “disappeared” for three hours, during which she did not know where she was and what happened to her.
At first, she did not give it much concern, thinking that she had passed out from fatigue or something else. But soon she began to suffer from nightmares, in which she saw strange things but felt a strong fear. And somehow, Tilton decided that these nightmares were the result of her “lost” three hours.
This led Christa Tilton to look for similar cases that happened to other people, after which she realized that she could be a victim of alien abduction. And then Tilton, on the advice of one of the ufologists, decided on regressive hypnosis.
During the hypnosis sessions, a whole wave of lost memories, very vivid and detailed, washed over her. The first thing Christa Tilton remembered was that she had not just lost consciousness, but this happened after two small humanoid creatures approached her and grabbed her by the arms.
Her next memory was that she was inside the “ship” on the table and another humanoid approached her, whom she later gave the nickname “guide”.
Christa Tilton’s Drawing Of Aliens
He gave her a glass of some liquid and told her to drink, and when Tilton drank, she immediately felt incredibly cheerful and “charged with energy.” After that, the humanoid took her out of the “ship” and she found herself in a deserted area next to a small hill.
“It was dark, but I saw a faint light near what looked like a cave. We approached this place, and then I saw a man (or a very humanoid-like one) dressed in a red military-style jumpsuit, like the pilots. Mine the guide seemed to know the man because he greeted him as we got closer, and I noticed that he had some sort of patch on his uniform and that he was carrying an automatic weapon.
When we entered the cave, we found ourselves in a tunnel and I realized that we were going directly under a large hill or mountain. There we were met by another guard in red, and then I saw a computerized checkpoint with two cameras on each side. To my left there was a large groove where a small transit vehicle was parked. To my right, it looked like a long corridor with many offices.
We got into a transit car and, it seemed, took a very long time to drive to another protected area. Then I was told to stand on some kind of scale-like device facing the computer screen. I saw the lights flash and some calculations were done, and then a card was issued with holes punched in it. Later I realized that it was used for identification inside the computer.
I asked my guide where we were going and why. He replied sparingly that he should show me some things that I need to know for future use. Then he told me that we had just entered the first level of the “institution.” I asked what institution it was, but he did not answer. “
Christa Tilton
The guide then took her to a large elevator with no door and they went downstairs, while she noticed that they were going down to “Level 2”.
There were offices and seemingly ordinary people who walked back and forth, seemingly not paying any attention to the presence of Tilton and the guide, just going about their business, as if they were not there.
All this looked more like an ordinary office building if you do not pay attention to the armed guards in colored overalls, standing everywhere, and at some point, Christa Tilton and the conductor walked past what looked like some kind of huge factory, next to which there was a transport a medium similar to a small “flying saucer”.
When she looked at this factory and the strange ship, she saw the typical “Gray Aliens” handling the ship’s maintenance, who also ignored her as if she had every right to be there in this world.
After that, Christa Tilton was transferred to another elevator to Level 5, where she was asked to change. By this point, she began to experience intense fear, but her guide assured her that nothing bad would happen to her. She put on a hospital gown, was weighed, and scanned with some kind of electrical device, after which she was escorted past another security post and down another corridor.
Drawing Of The Facility By Christa Tilton
It was here that a wave of overwhelming stench suddenly hit her, similar, according to Tilton, to the strong smell of formaldehyde. She knew what formaldehyde smelled like because she worked as a nurse when she was young.
The guide assured her that everything was in order, but the smell was very depressing.
“We approached a large room and I stopped to look inside. I saw huge large tanks with computerized sensors attached to them and a huge hand-like device that extended from the top of some tube down into the tanks. The tanks were about 4 feet high, so from where I was, I could not see what was inside them.
I heard a humming sound, and it looked like something was moving inside the tanks. I began to approach the containers, and just then my guide grabbed my hand and dragged me roughly into the corridor. He told me that there was no need to see the contents of the containers and added that this would only complicate matters.
We walked down the hall, and then he led me into a large laboratory. I was amazed because I used to work in a laboratory and here I saw equipment that I had never seen before. At some point, I turned around and saw a small Gray creature standing with its back to me, who was doing something at the counter. I heard the clink of metal on metal. I heard a similar sound when I was preparing surgical instruments for my doctor in surgery. “
Christa Tilton
Then Tilton was ordered to sit on a table in the middle of the room, and now she again had a very strong feeling that something was wrong, fear began to grip her harder. While she sat and thought about what to do and what was happening, a human doctor entered the room, greeted the guide, and then looked at Tilton:
“My guide smiled at me and said that he would wait outside, and I would only be there for a few minutes. I cried. I cry when I’m scared. The gray alien looked at me and turned to continue what he was doing. The doctor called an additional help, and then another gray alien entered.
The next thing I remember, I was very sleepy. I knew that they were examining my body outside and inside, and when I looked up, I saw this terrible gray alien looking at me with big black eyes. It was then that I first felt stabbing pain. I screamed, and then a human doctor stood next to me and rubbed something on my stomach. It was cold. The pain subsided immediately.
I could not believe that this was happening to me and that it was happening over and over again. I begged them to let me go, but they continued to work methodically. When they finished, I was told to get up, go to the small room and change. I noticed blood between my legs, as if I had started my period, but I just continued to dress and when I left, I saw that my guide was talking to the doctor in the corner of the room.
I just stood there, completely helpless. Then I felt more lonely than ever in my life. I also felt like a guinea pig. When we left the laboratory, I was silent. I was angry with the guide for letting this happen to me. But he said it was necessary. Then he said that I would forget it.
I saw other aliens walking past us along the corridor. Again, I was like a ghost to them, they didn’t notice me. I asked my guide to explain to me what this place is. He said that this is a very important place and that I will be returning here in the next few years. “
Christa Tilton
Then Tilton got into the transit car with her guide again, and they drove to where Tilton saw the most frightening thing in all this time:
“I saw what seemed to me to be people of various types, they were standing against the wall inside a transparent chamber that looked like a pipe. I came closer and it seemed to me that they were wax figures. I cannot understand what I saw there.
I also saw animals in cages. They were alive. They looked like they were in suspended animation. I went to the transparent cells in which they were kept. I put my hands on the glass and leaned over to see if I could get some kind of answer. But no, I could not understand whether they were alive or dead at that moment.
They just didn’t move, and I couldn’t see if there was a liquid in the cells, like formaldehyde. I think there was no liquid in this particular case. “
Christa Tilton
Thereafter, her guide took her back to the waiting alien ship that had abducted her, and she was taken to where she was found and her memory erased.
The recollection of this experience under hypnosis marked the beginning of Tilton’s compulsive search for answers to the question of what happened to her. Although she was never told directly where she was taken, she concluded that she was most likely taken to that very secret underground base near Dulce, New Mexico.
The site has been the center of all sorts of conspiracy theories since at least the 1970s and is a hotbed of UFO activity, cattle mutilation, and talk of top-secret underground bases.
In addition to this, Tilton claims that after this initial experience, she was abducted several more times and taken to various underground facilities that she claims exist thanks to the government in various locations in the United States.
“I am aware of many, many, many underground structures or bases that are used for different purposes. Most of the underground bases are used for secret or other purposes involving the government, which conduct certain types of tests underground.
And then there are bases, one, in particular, north of Tucson, Arizona, where I am almost sure that I was taken, it passes under the code or real name “Evergreen Aviation”. They have all the flying objects there and in ten years of research I have found that this institution is founded or supported by the CIA.
Once I got very close to this object, I climbed over a wire fence and made my way there with my pilot friend, after which I took some great pictures of black helicopters. These black helicopters are unmarked. There were other types of aircraft there, and so we really believe that there are many secret bases in many states. I have heard of such bases in almost every state in the United States. “
Christa Tilton
Later, Christa Tilton wrote a book about her experience in Dulce, which is directly called “Underground Alien Biolaboratory in Dulce”, and talked a lot about these underground bases and aliens in general.
Over the years, her stories about it became more and more bizarre. In particular, Tilton assured that she was repeatedly used as a “birthing machine” to produce hybrid children. And that she is probably a hybrid herself.
She has written extensively about her encounters with various types of alien beings, including what she calls “light beings,” reptiles, Nordics, and many others. All of these creatures have repeatedly told Tilton about the mission of aliens on Earth – from supporters of strict laissez-faire to imperialist factions wishing to conquer Earth.
Tilton was especially frightened by the Gray humanoids.
“The Grays seem to have a massive collective consciousness. I noticed that they are constantly doing something together, but practically do not communicate with each other. / or people.
I can tell you right now that the main weakness of the Grays is that they have no soul, they are soulless. Don’t let them tell you otherwise. It is known that some of them are trying to impose some type of false religious philosophies on the people they have abducted, and the point is that you have to understand that these aliens have their own plans and are not at all good for humans.
The Grays can be described as empty, like an empty suitcase. They essentially have nothing but a higher-level brain in the cranial region. They are mainly used by other beings to transfer various technologies and provide us with information, but as far as trusting them, I do not trust them. “
Christa Tilton
It’s hard to figure out what to do with this rather impressive case, and with all the additional details and statements from the victims of alien abduction, sounding like science fiction. Over the years, Tilton has acquired many believers in her case, but almost as many skeptics and ill-wishers.
Brightly Lit UFO Sighted Cruising Over Orangeburg, South Carolina. January 6, 2022
The witness stated the following: "Went out for a smoke and took pictures of the front yard, as i see frequent UFO activity and like to record proof. i have seen many UFOs that were far off but this was the first time anything has come so close. the craft came from the tree line pulsing multicolored lights. after a few seconds, two orbs came out of it and began to pulse/blink red. it was like they were trying to memos a large aircraft; however, i worked on c-17s in the air force and know that this no aircraft.
These crafts were moving slow towards the neighbors and disappeared in the trees. i went to the backyard and observed them descend down into the back woods behind the house (swamp land). you can see the red orbs change from vertical to horizontal close to the end of the video.
When it comes to the matter of Area 51, the 1970s, and secret aircraft, there are two important issues that cannot be ignored. And they should not be ignored. One was the early development, out at Area 51, of what has become known as “Stealth” technology for aircraft. We’ll get right to the matters of the stealthy kind. It was in 1988 that both the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighterand the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit were unveiled for one and all to see. The completely black, triangular-shaped aircraft caught the world’s attention, primarily because of their strange, angular shapes. It’s intriguing to note that in 1982 a wave of encounters with what became known as “Flying Triangles” began over portions of New York State, specifically in Hudson Valley. In their 1988 book, Night Siege, authors Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno and Bob Pratt wrote: “Can 7,000 eyewitnesses be wrong? They were there to witness the huge, hovering object in the sky, three flashing lights, the eerie silence. They are ordinary people from all walks of life: stay-at-home moms, kids, business people, engineers. They tell their stories here, and they all agree on one thing: they saw the same massive object cruising over their backyards. And it was like nothing they had seen before…”
At the time when the Hudson Valley encounters were at their peak, it was reasonably assumed by UFO researchers just about here, there and everywhere that aliens had invaded and were scoping out the area to a massive degree. When, however, the Stealth planes were unleashed in 1988 – planes that looked eerily like the Hudson Valley “UFOs,” more than a few of those same ufologists came to wonder if what was seen over Hudson Valley was actually a top secret variation on the Stealth Fighter and the Stealth Bomber. Regardless of whether or not the Hudson Valley UFOs originated in the United States, or on a world far, far away, one of the most intriguing revelations that surfaced when the Stealth planes were revealed was the startling fact that they had been secretly flying not just for a few years, but since the 1970s – at Area 51. And, the secret (the top secret) had been skillfully contained for more than a decade.
If there is one thing that just about any and all military agencies want, it’s for their aircraft to be completely invulnerable. Well, while that’s a tall order, steps were taken in the early 1970s to create an aircraft that could not be detected on radar. It would, then, be the ultimate predator: quietly and carefully approaching its completely oblivious target. That is, until it was all too late. Lockheed Martin, the company which was secretly contracted to come up with a stealth-driven fighter, state that a pair of engineers, Dick Sherrer and Denys Overholser, “developed a computer program based on obscure German and Russian theories, which postulated that radar beams could be reflected by a series of carefully angled triangular panels,” which is precisely why both the B-2 and the F-117 look so odd. But, cool, too.
(Nick Redfern)
The late U.K. researcher, Omar Fowler, with a model of a “Flying Triangle”-type UFO
The most important development came in 1976. That was the year in which a program designated “Have Blue” was established as, to quote Lockheed Martin, “the stealth demonstrator that would lead to the F-117A Nighthawk.” Built out of aluminum and not much else, the aircraft was typified by the angular shape and futuristic-look. Although the Nighthawk remained unknown to virtually everyone until 1988, it was first test-flown on June 8, 1981, just one year before the Hudson Valley “UFOs” were first seen. Notably, the Nighthawk – while in test stage – was flown exclusively at night. And, while it seems unlikely that the F-117A was the culprit at Hudson Valley, perhaps a far more advanced stealth plane was. One of the most notable of all the missions that the Nighthawks took part in revolved around the invasion of Iraq in January of 1991. The radar-systems of the Iraqi military were woefully inadequate and, as a consequence, they flattened close to forty targets in no time at all; something which helped to bring the conflict to a close in a little more than forty days. Today, the Nighthawk is no more. It has been mothballed. But, how many other stealth aircraft – of highly advanced forms and technologies – remain hidden from prying eyes is anyone’s guess.
When China’s Yutu 2 rover spotted a mysterious cube-shaped “hut” on the moon, theories began spreading like wildfire, especially the thought of it possibly being an alien base. The rover began traveling towards the unexplained object in order to determine what exactly it was and the results are in.
The rover noticed the object on the horizon in December and the image was released by the China National Space Administration through the Weixin website. The rover then made its way towards the object. It seemed so much larger while looking at it from a distance, but as Yutu 2 got closer to it, it was actually a lot smaller than originally anticipated. Additionally, it wasn’t cube-shaped at all and had more of a rounded shape. When it finally reached its destination, the rover took images of the object and sent them back to Earth.
Lunar surface
That’s when the team realized that the mysterious object was just a rabbit-shaped rock that looked as though it was eating some “carrots” as there were smaller rocks located in front of it. What’s even funnier is that there were a few tiny round-shaped rocks behind it which looked like bunny poo. The Yutu 2 rover team even gave it the nickname of “jade rabbit”, which is interestingly what “Yutu” translates to.
While the bunny-shaped rock is certainly cute, many people are deeply disappointed that it is not an alien base as stated on Twitter by space journalist Andrew Jones, “The Moon’s surface is 38 million square kilometres of rocks, so it would have been astronomically exceptional for it to be anything else.” “But while small, the jade rabbit/玉兔 rock will also be a monumental disappointment to some.”
Lunar surface
Now that the “hut” mystery has been solved, the rover will continue studying the large Von Kármán crater. Even though we did get a good laugh at the alien-base-turned-bunny-rock mystery, the Yutu 2 rover’s mission has been going very well since landing on the moon in 2019 with approximately 1,000 meters of the lunar surface explored so far. In fact, it is the first rover to investigate the far side of the moon and it is still going strong.
There are no aliens living on the moon – at least none that we have found thus far. But an adorable bunny-shaped rock is just as exciting, right? Perhaps not. Nevertheless, pictures of the rabbit-shaped rock can be viewed here.
Here's the image that caught people's attention last month.
CNSA/CLEP/Red circle by Amanda Kooser/CNET
The "mystery hut" rock on the moon now has a more fitting name: "jade rabbit."
Even during the pandemic shutdown, no groups spend more time at high altitudes looking out windows than airline pilots and their passengers … yet UFO sightings by either group seem few and far between. Are they not seeing anything? That seems unlikely. Are they afraid of ridicule or, in the case of pilots, reprimanding? That seems more the case, especially if they have no proof or corroborating witnesses. This makes two UFO sightings this week especially significant – one is by two pilots, one is by two airline passengers and both have videos of the UFOs. Will they be believed?
“Was flying along at 39,000 feet in an airbus a320 somewhere over georgia. took out my phone to take photos of the beautiful milky way. using the new iphone 13 pro max. tried to take a video of another aircraft flying just above us opposite direction at 40,000 ft. as i was filming this aircraft fly over us, i noticed this v shaped object appear.”
An Airbus 380 with plenty of windows for UFO spotting.
That report comes from the UFO Stalker website (which appears to have reposted it from the MUFON site) and implies that the witness was in the cockpit of an Airbus A320 passenger plane flying over Georgia on 1/3/2022 when the sighting occurred. The video of the sighting can be seen here or here.
Unfortunately, there’s no indication that the crew attempted to contact the other aircraft in their view at the time to determine if they also saw the UFO. The witness merely says “both captain and i agreed we would like to remain anonymous” and “nothing was reported to faa or atc.” ATC is air traffic control and a call to it or the FAA would have required logging the sighting in the newly approved Pentagon database. Are pilots still afraid of reporting UFOs? The video is at night and poor quality, possibly due to the limitations of even the latest smartphone cameras. Other than the quick cut to the control panel, nothing else in the video can be used for perspective. One commenter suggested these are lights reflected from inside the cockpit on its window … but what pilots would make that mistake? At this point, there’s no way to positively identify these lights over Georgia.
“I was flying from Glasgow to London with my girlfriend. We left Glasgow Airport around 6am. Just before we prepared to land in Gatwick Airport I saw this strange object. I started to film it and took some pictures as well. It was far away from the plane that’s why you can’t see it very clear. It was roughly three to four miles away from our plane. It was hard to film it because you see it on video the plane was getting ready to land.”
Why don’t more passengers watch for UFOs?
Marjol Cela saw her UFO out a plane window on 1/4/2022 and managed to get a clear but far away video of it. She gave the video to Glasgow Live and claims her fellow passenger also saw and recorded it. Cela somehow determined the UFO was four miles away and not a plane but “a flying object in disguise” that was not moving but “hovering.” Watch the video here.
Do you think it’s hovering? At first (and second and third) glance, it looks like another plane (sorry Marjol), a rocket launch or a meteor. Glasgow Live did not appear to investigate the UFO event any further, so there’s no positive identification yet. However, kudos go to Marjol Cela for quickly getting a decent video and reporting it to the media using her real name. It’s only with reports like these and follow-up investigations by the media or the government that UFOs will be identified.
That is, if the government really wants them to be identified.
In the meantime, keep looking out the windows and up at the sky … and keep your phone charged and ready.
NASA's James Webb Telescope successfully deploys its 70-foot sunshield that will protect the $10 billion device's scientific instruments at temperatures under -380F
James Webb Space Telescope has fully deployed its massive 70-foot sunshield
The five-layered sunshield will protect the telescope from the light and heat of the sun, Earth and moon
It is designed with five plastic sheets about as thin as a human hair and coated with reflective metal
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has fully deployed its massive 70-foot sunshield while it hurls through space on a journey to what is known as the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), which is nearly a million miles from Earth.
'All five layers of the sunshield are fully tensioned,' said an announcer at 11:59am ET at the observatory's control center in Baltimore, where team members cheered.
It took just one and a half days to tighten the ultra-thin layers using motor-driven cables, half the expected time.
The sunshield – about the size of a tennis court at full size – was folded to fit inside the payload area of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket's nose cone prior to launch, which took place on Christmas Day.
The shield is designed with small plastic sheets, each of which are about as thin as a human hair and coated with reflective metal, providing protection on the order of more than SPF 1 million.
The five-layered sunshield will protect the telescope from the light and heat of the sun, Earth and moon, but keeping its scientific instruments below -380 degrees Fahrenheit.
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has fully deployed its massive 70-foot sunshield while it hurls through space on a journey to what is known as the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), which is nearly a million miles from Earth
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington, said in a statement: 'This is the first time anyone has ever attempted to put a telescope this large into space.
'Webb required not only careful assembly but also careful deployments. The success of its most challenging deployment – the sunshield – is an incredible testament to the human ingenuity and engineering skill that will enable Webb to accomplish its science goal.'
The tightening of the sunshield was set for January 2, but was delayed by NASA to ensure it was in 'prime condition' before it is tightened.
Webb launched on Christmas Day, following several days throughout its progress that had some fearing to would never leave Earth.
The shield is designed with small plastic sheets, each of which are about as thin as a human hair and coated with reflective metal, providing protection on the order of more than SPF 1 million
It is hoped that the observatory, a replacement for the 30-year-old Hubble telescope, will by travelling so far out be able to peer back in time 13.5 billion years – to a point within a mere 100 million years of the Big Bang
It is hoped that the observatory, a replacement for the 30-year-old Hubble telescope, will by travelling so far out be able to peer back in time 13.5 billion years – to a point within a mere 100 million years of the Big Bang.
At 7:20am ET the world's most powerful space telescope, equipped with an Ariane 5 rocket, took off from the European Spaceport facility in French Guiana in magnificent form before blasting skywards over the Atlantic Ocean.
Cheers were on pause for another nerve-wracking 27 minutes as the rocket ejected its boosters and soared to an altitude of 870 miles before finally detaching the telescope to begin its own journey.
The sunshield – about the size of a tennis court at full size – was folded to fit inside the payload area of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket's (pictured) nose cone prior to launch, which took place on Christmas Day
Tuesday's milestone was no simple feat it involved 139 of Webb's 178 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, roughly 400 pulleys, and 90 individual cables totaling roughly one quarter of a mile in length to pull off the unraveling of the shield
With its liftoff, a spokesperson for NASA said, 'Webb will usher in a new era of astronomy'.
And four days later, Webb began the unfolding its massive sunshield.
Now it is about halfway to the L2, an area of balanced gravity between the sun and the Earth, where it will spend more than a decade exploring the universe in infrared.
Tuesday's milestone was no simple feat it involved 139 of Webb's 178 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, roughly 400 pulleys, and 90 individual cables totaling roughly one quarter of a mile in length to pull off the unraveling of the shield.
Hillary Stock, a sunshield deployment specialist for Northrop Grumman, told reporters on a call: 'It was a wonderful moment. There was a lot of joy, a lot of relief.'
Jim Flynn, sunshield manager at Northrop Grumman, NASA's primary contractor for Webb, said in a statement: 'The sunshield is remarkable as it will protect the telescope on this historic mission.
'This milestone represents the pioneering spirit of thousands of engineers, scientists, and technicians who spent significant portions of their careers developing, designing, manufacturing, and testing this first-of-its-kind space technology.'
Webb still has another five months worth of setup before it is ready to explore the universe.
This includes deployment of the secondary mirror and primary mirror wings, alignment of the telescope optics, and calibration of the science instruments.
WHAT IS THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE?
The James Webb telescope has been described as a 'time machine' that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The vast telescope, which has already cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).
Officials say the cost may exceed the $8 billion (£5.6 billion) program cap set by Congress. The space agency has already poured $7 billion (£5 billion) into the telescope.
When it is launched in 2021, it will be the world's biggest and most powerful telescope, capable of peering back 200 million years after the Big Bang.
Moment van de waarheid geslaagd: nieuwe ruimtetelescoop klapt enorme spiegel uit
De nieuwe ruimtetelescoop James Webb heeft in de ruimte een metersgrote spiegel uitgeklapt die het licht uit het heelal moet opvangen. Het moment van de waarheid in de hele onderneming is dus geslaagd.
De James Webb is de opvolger van de beroemde ruimtetelescoop Hubble. Hij is ontwikkeld en gebouwd door de ruimtevaartorganisaties van Europa (ESA), de Verenigde Staten (NASA) en Canada (CSA).
Op eerste kerstdag werd de telescoop gelanceerd vanuit Frans-Guyana. De James Webb is ongeveer zo groot als een tennisbaan. Bij zijn vertrek was hij opgevouwen, zodat hij paste in de raket die hem naar de ruimte bracht. De kern van de ruimtetelescoop is een 6,5 meter grote spiegel, zes keer zo groot als die van de Hubble. Die spiegel vangt het licht uit de ruimte op en kaatst dat naar een tweede spiegel, die het licht bundelt en naar de meetinstrumenten aan boord stuurt.
Wetenschappers willen met de James Webb onder meer zoeken naar planeten waar misschien leven mogelijk is. Ook verre sterrenstelsels en sporen van de oerknal staan op de radar. De ruimtetelescoop kan een miljard jaar verder terug in de tijd kijken dan de Hubble.
De spiegel van de James Webb bestaat uit achttien zeshoeken die aan elkaar zitten, maar los van elkaar kunnen bewegen. De spiegel is gemaakt van beryllium, met daarbovenop een miniem laagje goud van 100 nanometer dik. Dat is duizend keer zo dun als een menselijke haar of een vel papier. Beryllium is licht, sterk en goed bestand tegen extreme kou. Goud zorgt ervoor dat de spiegel beter in staat is infrarood licht te zien.
Als de James Webb over een paar weken op zijn definitieve bestemming is, kan hij nog niet meteen aan de slag. Eerst moeten alle apparaten aan boord gekoeld worden tot 266 graden onder nul. Dat duurt ongeveer een maand. Daarna duurt het een paar maanden om te testen of alles goed werkt. In de zomer kan de James Webb de eerste metingen verrichten.
When China's lunar rover first discovered it, the rock appeared cube-shaped.
(Image credit: CNSA/Our Space)
A mysterious "moon hut" spotted by China's lunar Yutu 2 rover is actually … an adorable rabbit-shaped rock.
The rock has been nicknamed "jade rabbit" by the Yutu 2 team, which announced its rover's closer inspection of the object on Friday (Jan. 7). The nickname is apt, as the rover's name, Yutu, also translates to "jade rabbit."
The object first appeared in the field of view of Yutu 2's cameras in December, when it looked like a cube-shaped blur on the horizon. The rover is the first to explore the moon's far side, which always faces away from Earth and is more rugged and pitted by craters than the moon's near side. Because the object appeared irregularly symmetrical, with a strange flat top, researchers with the China National Space Administration outreach program Our Space joked that it might be the hut of alien pioneers, Live Science previously reported.
A closer look at a rock on the moon whose shape, seen from afar by China's Yuta-2 rover, had prompted curiosity and discussion.
(CNSA via The New York Times)
After a month-long traverse of the distance from the original spot where it snapped the "moon hut" image to the site of the object itself, the rover has now sent close-ups back to Earth. It turns out that the rock is much smaller than it appeared to be from afar. It's also much rounder and cuter. In fact, it looks a lot like a crouched bunny munching on a couple of carrots (which are actually smaller rocks). Some observers, likeCNET's Amanda Kooser, even see bunny poop in a couple of round pebbles near the rock's other end.
"The Moon's surface is 38 million square kilometres of rocks, so it would have been astronomically exceptional for it to be anything else," space journalist Andrew Joneswrote on Twitter. "But while small, the jade rabbit/玉兔 rock will also be a monumental disappointment to some."
Because of the lack of perspective in the original image, Jones wrote, many people were hoping for a large structure that looked more like the Arc de Triomphe or Beijing's towering CCTV headquarters building.
With the bunny rock cataloged, Yutu 2 will now continue its exploration of the 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) Von Kármán crater. The rover has been exploring the region since the spacecraft Chang'e 4 delivered it to the lunar surface in the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon in January 2019. The rover is the longest-lasting to ever explore the moon's surface. It has explored the porous soil that makes up at least the top 130 feet (40 m) of the moon's surface and investigated a strange-colored gel-like substance found in a crater. It turned out to be melted-together rock caused by a long-ago meteorite impact, a 2020 study found.
Mysterieuze “maanhut” blijkt konijnvormige rots te zijn
De mysterieuze “maanhut” die vorige maand werd gespot door de Chinese maanrover Yutu 2 op de achterzijde van de maan, blijkt eigenlijk een schattige rots in de vorm van een konijn te zijn. De rots heeft daarom de bijnaam “jade konijn” gekregen. Erg toepasselijk, aangezien de naam van de rover, Yutu, zich ook vertaalt naar “jade konijn”.
Het object verscheen voor het eerst in het gezichtsveld van Yutu 2 in december, toen het eruitzag als een kubusvormige waas aan de horizon. De rover is de eerste die de andere kant van de maan verkent, die altijd van de aarde weg is gericht. De achterzijde van de maan is ruiger en bevat meer kuilen dan de zichtbare kant van de maan. Omdat het object onregelmatig symmetrisch leek, met een vreemde platte bovenkant, grapten onderzoekers van het China National Space Administration-programma Our Space dat het misschien de hut van buitenaardse pioniers zou kunnen zijn.
Nu de rover een maand later close-ups naar de aarde heeft gestuurd, blijkt dat de rots veel kleiner is dan eerst van ver leek. De rots is ook veel ronder en “schattiger”, waardoor het de onderzoekers deed denken aan een gehurkt konijntje dat kauwt op een paar wortelen (die eigenlijk kleinere stenen zijn).
Von Kármán-krater
Nu de konijnenrots gecatalogiseerd is, gaat Yutu 2 verder met zijn verkenning van de 186 kilometer brede Von Kármán-krater. De rover verkent de regio sinds de maanlander Chang’e 4 het op het maanoppervlak afleverde tijdens de allereerste zachte landing aan de andere kant van de maan in januari 2019. Chang’e 4 is al de vierde Chinese missie naar de maan, de tweede met een rover. De eerste missie met zo’n robotjeep was Chang’e 3. Die verkende de voorkant van de maan, het stuk van de maan dat wij vanop aarde wel kunnen waarnemen.
White Light Over Manila, Philippines Dec 29, 2021,UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting:December 29, 2021
Location of sighting:Manila, Philippines Source: MUFON
Watch this amazing video as a bright white object moves across the sky over Manila, Philippines last week. The object had no wings, no sound and no trail coming from it. Similar white spheres have been seen worldwide from the mountains of Denver, Colorado to the Temple of Dome of Rock in Jerusalem in 2011. This is 100% proof that aliens exist. These UFOs are the most common type and are believe to be piloted by alien beings.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Sitting on my balcony I noticed small bright white object flying in a NE direction, maybe 1-2 kilometres from me. It was remarkable because it's appearance was different from the planes and helicopters I see in the area and the way it flew was definitely not like those.Flying NE it went into some clouds and I lost sight of it. That was the 12 second video I caught. Later when on re-examining the video close up I could see the object had actually turned right shortly after emitting some kind of pulse. Three minutes later I looked up and the object had re-appeared and was heading west. It seemed to emit another pulse, stopped and then hovered for a few seconds before continuing on west. The object almost went directly over my building so I could see it emitting a glowing, yellowish light from underneath. There seemed to be a slight haze around the object. I checked FlightAware and there were no commercial flights in that area at that time.
While going through a photo of Pluto moon Charon, I discovered a huge spacecraft that was landed in the center of a small crater. I believe that aliens land in craters because it's easy to locate and because the walls of the crater offer some protection from micrometeorites. Now I had to add contrast in order to see this object. NASA deliberately uploaded a photo after they had added too much light to it and after they had blurred 65% of the moon. That doesn't leave much for us to see does it. Thats what NASA counts on. NASA also hopes that the public believes that the photos came from the space craft blurred instead of NASA having blur them out deliberately. Did you ever in your lifetime hear NASA explain the blur areas? Anyways, this craft I found in the crater is close to 2km across, since the crater is about 4km in diameter. Such a craft could hold thousands of people.
Disk Over Orangeburg, South Carolina Jan 6, 2022, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Jan 6, 2022
Location of sighting: Orangeburg, South Carolina, USA
Wow, just wow! This raw footage was just reported today and its mind-blowing! The eyewitness is a former USAF vet that use to work on C-17 aircraft so he new right away this was no man made craft. I have to say such close up footage has not been seen in a very long time. I went over the footage many times, but could not find any indication of it being a fake. The footage looks 100% real, it checks out. The city of Orangeburg has a small population of only 12,000 people and with covid and the late night hours...its highly unlikely that anyone else saw this craft that night. I'm awestruck at this footage. Its so rare to get this kind of a shot of one. Absolute proof that alien craft do fly right over our homes when we are all sleeping.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
Went out for a smoke and took pictures of the front yard, as I see frequent UFO activity and like to record proof. I have seen many UFOs that were far off but this was the first time anything has come so close. The craft came from the tree line pulsing multicolored lights. After a few seconds, two orbs came out of it and began to pulse/blink red. It was like they were trying to memos a large aircraft; however, I worked on C-17s in the Air Force and know that this no aircraft.
These crafts were moving slow towards the neighbors and disappeared in the trees. I went to the backyard and observed them descend down into the back woods behind the house (swamp land). You can see the red orbs change from vertical to horizontal close to the end of the video.
Gigantic Snake Like UFO over Bakersfield, California 4-Jan-2022
This huge snake-like UFO was caught on tape over Bakersfield, California on 4th January 2022.
What do you think about this sighting?
Witness report:
My father and I were getting ready to leave our shop and I spotted something odd. At first I thought it must be some plastic bags or something simular. I brought it to my father’s attention and we both stood there trying to figure put what the hell we were looking at. We watched this object climb from maybe 1000 feet to an altitude of at least 15000 feet. I am more than happy to speak with someone and describe this event in much more detail, as I am trying to type this on my phone and it is quite time consuming. I have multiple videos and pictures. I just want someone to explain what we saw.
AMAZING! Close UFO with Multi Colored Lights – Orangeburg, South Carolina – 6-Jan-2022
This really interesting footage of an unidentified flying object in the night sky above Orangeburg, South Carolina was filmed on 6th January 2022.
Witness report:
Went out for a smoke and took pictures of the front yard, as I see frequent UFO activity and like to record proof. I have seen many UFOs that were far off but this was the first time anything has come so close. The craft came from the tree line pulsing multicolored lights. After a few seconds, two orbs came out of it and began to pulse/blink red. It was like they were trying to memos a large aircraft; however, I worked on C-17s in the Air Force and know that this no aircraft.
These crafts were moving slow towards the neighbors and disappeared in the trees. I went to the backyard and observed them descend down into the back woods behind the house (swamp land). You can see the red orbs change from vertical to horizontal close to the end of the video.
New Denisovan Fossils From Siberian Cave Are The Oldest Ever Found
Researchers from the Max Planck Society and the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen have found new fossilized human-like remains mixed in an assortment of bone samples taken from Siberia’s famed Denisova Cave. This includes three fragments that belonged to actual Denisovans, the much-speculated-about species that gave the cave its name. These bones will be added to the growing collection of Denisovan fossils connected to the most intriguing of all the extinct human species, which lived on the Earth at the same time as Neanderthals and early modern humans yet left such a light footprint as to be virtually undetectable.
Remarkably, these Denisovan fossils were recovered from a deep excavation layer that dated to 200,000 years in the past. These are the earliest Denisovan remains ever found, and they prove that Denisova Cave was occupied by archaic humans more than 150,000 years before modern humans reached the Siberian region following their migrations out of Africa. The analysis results of the newly discovered Denisovan fossils have been published in a study in the Nature Ecology & Evolution journal.
The latest Denisovan fossils were found in a deep layer of Denisova Cave in Siberian Russia and proven to date back about 200,000 years, making them the oldest Denisovan remains ever found.
Evidence Found In a Haystack of Denisovan Fossil Fragments
Science first learned of the existence of the Denisovans in 2008. That’s when a small number of fossilized bones and teeth were recovered from an isolated cave in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia.
Unfortunately, the Denisovan fossil fragments found at the Denisova Cave were few. They revealed scarce details about this long-lost Homo sapiens cousin, which is believed to have died out approximately 50,000 years ago. In the years that have passed since, archaeologists and anthropologists have been frantically searching for more remains left behind by this elusive species. They’ve been searching primarily in northern, central, and eastern Asia, where traces of their DNA have been found in indigenous residents.
Archaeologists and anthropologists have been optimistic about eventually finding Denisovan fossils in these other locations (a fossilized Denisovan jawbone found in a cave in Tibet generated much excitement). But many scientists have continued to focus their search on Siberia’s Denisova Cave, where the ancient Denisovan presence has been most firmly established.
In this extraordinarily successful new study, scientists working under team leader Katerina Douka, an assistant professor in the University of Vienna’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, spent several years analyzing ancient DNA samples and assorted proteins extracted from approximately 3,800 bone fragments taken from the cave. As they explain in a new article in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution , these bones included a diverse mixture of animal and human fossils, and it would have been impossible to identify anything visually.
Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry or ZooMS was used to analyze the recently discovered Denisovan fossils, which are now the oldest ever!
For a Positive ID Researchers Relied on Peptide Analysis
To make a positive ID, the researchers only option was to use a technology known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectroscopy, or ZooMS. This high-tech tool can identify peptides (strings of amino acids) that are found specifically in the human body, and in the body of human ancestor species as well.
With this reliable technology at their disposal, the scientists concentrated on fossils excavated from the cave’s most ancient layer, which had been dated back 200,000 years. The bones collected from this layer were truly a fragmented and haphazard jumble, and that’s why little work had been done on them in the past. But with ZooMS, there was an opportunity to search for Denisovan fossils in a collection of bones that had not been fully examined before.
Team member Samantha Brown, a doctoral student at the University of Tubingen, was assigned the task of performing the actual analysis of the approximately 3,800 previously unidentified bone fragments. The vast majority of these fossil bones had belonged to animals, making the search for human remains the equivalent of looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
With enough time and diligence, even the smallest needle can be found eventually, and Brown’s research ultimately proved successful. Aided by the precise ZooMS technology, she found five bones with collagen profiles that matched those of humans.
But which types of humans? Certainly not modern humans ( Homo sapiens ), which would not arrive in Siberia until much later. That left Neanderthals and Denisovans as the two possible candidates.
To solve this mystery, the scientists turned to another high-tech innovation that has revolutionized archaeological and anthropological practice: DNA analysis. Out of the five human bones Brown identified, four contained significant enough traces of genetic material to allow for a mitochondrial DNA reconstruction. These tests showed that one of the bone fragments had belonged to a Neanderthal, while the other three were all Denisovan.
At an age of 200,000 years, this DNA typing officially established the three bone samples as the oldest remains of Denisovans ever found.
"Denisova is an amazing place for DNA preservation, and we have now reconstructed genomes from some of the oldest and best-preserved human fossils," Dr. Diyendo Massilani, a genetic researcher from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, explained in an Institute press release announcing this amazing discovery.
The Denisova 3 fifth distal finger phalanx of 13.5-year adolescent Denisovan female, the first bone fossil uncovered at Denisova Cave in 2008.
Finding New Denisovan Fossil Bones and Lithic Stone Tools
There is no underestimating the impact and importance of this discovery. "We were extremely excited to identify three new Denisovan bones amongst the oldest layers of Denisova Cave," Katerina Douka told Live Science . "We specifically targeted these layers where no other human fossils were found before, and our strategy worked."
"Finding one new human bone would have been cool, but five? This exceeded my wildest dreams," Samantha Brown added.
The discovery of the age of the 200,00-year-old Denisovan bones was exciting. But there is another part to the story that is perhaps even more significant.
Inside the deep layer of the cave where the fossils were found, archaeologists also unearthed a large number of lithic stone artifacts dating to the same time period. These included several scaping tools, which presumably were used to process animal skins.
Notably, none of these tools were similar to any that had been found in central or northern Asia before.
"This is the first time we can be sure that Denisovans were the makers of the archaeological remains [the stone tools] we found associated with their bone fragments," Douka confirmed.
Previously discovered Denisovan fossils had either been found separate from artifacts, or alongside artifacts that were suspected to have been left by Neanderthals. The two ancient species frequently occupied the same caves and territories and were known to have interbred .
There were also thousands of pieces of animal bones found in the oldest layer of Denisova Cave. They have now been identified as belonging to such species as deer, wild horses, bison, gazelles, and wooly rhinoceroses, all of which could have been hunted by Denisovans 200,000 years ago. Many of the bones contained marks consistent with butchering, while others had been damaged by fire (meaning the flesh of the animals had been cooked).
"The site's strategic point in front of a water source and the entrance of a valley would have served as a great spot for hunting," Douka noted.
If Denisova Cave contains more Denisovan bones or artifacts, the researchers intend to find them. Katerina Douka confirms that her team is continuing its search at the cave, while also carrying out excavations at several other Asian sites where they are hopeful Denisovan fossil remains might be found.
Top image: Denisovan fossils look a bit unremarkable, but these bone fragments, mostly from animals, were perfect for Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectroscopy and DNA analysis, which were used in the recent study .
Leonardo da Vinci is often considered one of the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind. He was a profound painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His creative genius and his inventive spirit and have left a mark in different fields of study and art.
Da Vinci was a man with extraordinary caliber at everything he tried his hand at, almost defying human limits as we know them, with imagination unprecedented in history. But what made him supernaturally talented? Is there an explanation for the large number of controversies surrounding him? Why were those controversies formed? Was he using some sort of a supernatural source for his intellect and skill? Perhaps Da Vinci was using something natural that is still unknown to us in the 21st century. Perhaps, he was in contact with extraterrestrials?
The Egyptians didn't build The Pyramids & I can prove it!
The Pyramids and Sphinx of the Giza plateau are possibly thousands of years older than mainstream researchers suggest. In fact, these ancient structures could well predate the ancient Egyptian civilization by thousands of years.
Many researchers indicate there is enough evidence to suggest the Giza plateau was heavily flooded in the past. Interestingly, given the evidence found at the Giza plateau, the Pyramids and Sphinx could be some of the megalithic structures that survived the Great Deluge. Researchers suggest that the Sphinx, the Temple of the Sphinx, and the first 20 fields of the Great Pyramid of Giza exhibit erosion due to deep water saturation.
Scenes from History Channel's Ancient Aliens were used under Fair Use for educational purposes
The Terrible Story of Nikola Tesla!
Why one of the greatest inventors of all time died penniless.
THE TRUE PURPOSE BEHIND THE PYRAMIDS: FINALLY DISCOVERED
Mainstream historians will tell you that the Great Pyramid of Giza was a glorified tomb for the Egyptian pharaohs. The only original monument left of the original Seven Wonders of the World, this structure was created with impeccable mathematical precision, and is a unique, mysterious feat of construction and engineering.
There’s only one problem: the Great Pyramid has none of the characteristics of tombs: including extravagant artifacts, ornate wall art, sealed entrances, elaborate coffins, or even mummies themselves. It was, however, built with unique – the same materials that are used for electrical conductivity today. These facts are leading more and more historians to believe the pyramids may have had a far more useful purpose. ..that pyramid of Giza was not at all a tomb, but a power plant: generating and transmitting electricity to the civilization surrounding them. Sound impossible? Join the Universe Inside you for a closer look!
Starlink: The Secret reason Behind Creating a Global Internet Service
The ambitions of the SpaceX satellite internet service extend far beyond Earth.
The Anunnaki: They Created the first Human on Earth
445 000 years ago, “creator gods” – as they call it – came to Earth. They were called the Anunnaki, which means “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came”. These beings inhabited a distant orbiting planet called Nibiru, which only entered our solar system every 3,600 years. They describe Nibiru as many times the diameter of Earth, and abundant with iron oxide, making its rivers and lakes appear red. A side note about Nibiru: according to the Sumerian tablets, Nibiru’s atmosphere began to deteriorate and became a hostile place for life, and in order to restore it, the Annunaki needed one important element for their atmosphere: gold.
Scenes from the following productions were used under Fair Use for educational purposes:
Everyone knows the story of Atlantis – the advanced civilization that disappeared in the ocean. But not everyone is aware of the similar legends other cultures tell of their own lost_cities – ones that were buried under the desert sand, or overgrown by dense vegetation in the jungle. While many of these stories were considered fiction, an increasing number of archeological discoveries have revealed these legends were more than mere myths- leaving us wondering how many more lost cities might just be awaiting discovery. We may never find the underwater grave of Atlantis, the golden streets of El Dorado, or the peaceful mountains of Shangri-La, but we have found the following 10 lost cities. Starting the countdown with number 10, here are the most spectacular lost cities archaeologists have uncovered.
Neuralink: Merging Humans with AI, Human 2.0!
How Elon Musk's company Neuralink could shape the future of humanity.
THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE’S ORBIT IS GONNA BE ABSOLUTELY DERANGED
THERE'S METHOD TO THE MADNESS.
NASA
Squiggle Orbit
NASA’s next generation James Webb Space Telescope is slowly making its way to its final orbit around the Sun, roughly 1 million miles from Earth. As seen in an official NASA animation, it’ll end up in a seemingly chaotic trip around the solar system that’ll involve a series of bona fide loop-the-loops — but of course, there’s plenty of method to the madness.
The telescope will be orbiting the Sun at a rarefied spot in our solar system: the second Lagrange point, known as L2. At this particular location, the telescope is capable of keeping the Earth between it and the Sun, as NASA explains.
If everything goes according to plan, the observatory will get to that point towards the end of this month.
Lagrange Loop
There are numerous reasons why NASA chose L2 to park its expensive space telescope. The point allows it to not get scorched by the Sun’s harmful rays, because it can keep its massive sunshield pointed at our star at all times.
Other satellites have already ventured to L2, including the European Space Agency’s Planck space observatory, which launched in 2009, and NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which launched in 2001.
The telescope has a hot and a cold side, with the former reaching a balmy 185 degrees Fahrenheit, while the cold side where its scientific instruments are stashed can plummet down to -388 Fahrenheit, according to NASA — a massive temperature differential.
Since the JSWT will be facing the same spot on Earth at all times, keeping in touch with the telescope will be relatively straightforward. It will be able to up and downlink twice a day, connecting to three large antennas across three different continents back on Earth.
The observatory still has a lot of ground to cover until it will get to its orbit, where it will spend at least the next ten years. But given that everything so far is more or less going according to plan, it should have no trouble getting the rest of the way there.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope separates from its Ariane 5 rocket with the bright blue Earth in the background in this view captured after its launch on Dec. 25, 2021.
Countless subjects of “alien” abductions have been regularly reported to organizations like the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) since their beginnings in 1969. However, according to the Pentagon’s Preliminary Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Assessment delivered to Congress in June 2021, “Limited data and inconsistency in reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP. No standardized reporting mechanism existed until the Navy established one in March 2019.”. So, what does this mean?
A Gallup poll followed the Pentagon report in July 2021. It recorded 41% of Americans have seen unidentifiable aircraft, 50% consider rational explanations like human activity, while 9% have no opinion whatsoever (Link 3). These purported military abductions (referred to as MILABs) came out in 1996 when Austrian MUFON rep. Dr. Helmut Lammer Ph.D., published, Preliminary Findings of Project MILAB: Evidence for Military Kidnappings of Alleged UFO Abductees. Elaborating further, here is a list of 10 alien abductions that could have been the military.
Leah Haley: from UFO alien abduction to gov mind control
In 1990, Leah Haley remembered an alien abduction. She recalls her experience as if it were a dream, later seeking hypnosis. Born in 1951 in Decatur, Alabama, Haley had a career as a certified business administrator and author, whose 1993 book Lost Was the Key put her on the map of the UFO community. Her original claims were that extraterrestrials were the culprits. However, it took years to even fathom the idea of military involvement.
Through select Freedom of Information Act, U.S. Patent Office documents, and interviews with abductees in subsequent years, Haley believed she was not chosen at random. She has endured an abduction with her sister and been offered jobs randomly by total strangers for positions at nearby military bases, even recognizing fellow abductees in her conscious life.[1]
9. Col. John Alexander, Ph.D.
“It is clear that MUFON has…become the champion of unsubstantiated, barely tangentially related nonsense” said Col. John Alexander in response to assertions made by an Austrian MUFON representative, Dr. Helmut Lammer, whose suspicions about military kidnappings of alien abductees was published in a series of 1996 MUFON journals. “The list of involved personnel goes on and on…since military personnel rotate on a frequent basis, there would have to be thousands… Where are they?” refutes Col. Alexander to whistleblower testimony on MILABs.
Not an abductee, Alexander is an author academically respected in the UFO community. He ascended through the ranks of the U.S. Army beginning in 1956 before retiring in 1988 after holding key positions in special operations intelligence. Purportedly, Alexander was a member of an elite group of high-ranking individuals using privileged knowledge to manipulate information related to UFOs across the globe. Collectively, they gave themselves aviary code names and infiltrated other occult government groups such as MJ-12. Code name: John “Penguin” Alexander. [2]
8. Dr. Karla Turner
Dr. Karla Turner was an academic and professional educator but gave it all up to focus on alien abduction research when she and her family regressed unsettling memories. Since her 1996 passing from an aggressive and rare form of breast cancer discovered only after her encounters were made public, Turner’s published works describe her family’s firsthand encounters. They also suggest that you, the abducted, are a targeted individual and not chosen at random.
Turner was convinced the military targeted abductees in response to the reports people had made. In Turner’s second book, Taken, she discusses the idea that some prominent abduction theorists state should be avoided—don’t think of aliens as good and evil. Turner claims, “this cannot be done, nor should it be.” She continues that those who have been abducted have the right to know how their “participation” will be used by their abductors. Under what circumstances and what reason will the abducted be “made a part of this agenda” since they have been “implanted, trained, and programmed to participate in some future scenario.” Don’t abductees have the right to know for what purpose “our minds, bodies, and souls will be used?”[3]
7. Melinda Leslie
A woman with psychic insight who does energy work and conducts vortex and UFO tours, Melinda Leslie has been very transparent about her own alien encounters. In the early 1990s, Leslie and two friends went independently under hypnotherapy after they discovered missing time during a road trip in California. Each remembered similar experiences, including being examined by aliens with someone dressed in what looked like a naval uniform working side by side with extraterrestrials. Leslie said the military personnel “wasn’t another abductee, he was just there, watching…”
Leslie’s testimony alleges black projects are only feasible if classified into above-top-secret special access programs. Is it possible that the Robertson Panel (1953)—a collaboration between Howard Percy Robertson, a mathematical physics professor, and the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence set the tone for intelligence protocols today? Melinda Leslie, like so many others, attempts to pull their experiences into the light, hoping that more testimony can pave the way toward full government disclosure.[4]
6. Myrna Hansen
1980. Cimarron, New Mexico. Myrna Hansen and her then six-year-old son Shawn approached a pasture on route home from Oklahoma. It was nighttime when they witnessed a beam drag cows up into the air (Link 1). Within seconds, Myrna claimed that a small craft had seemingly become aware of their presence, ultimately abducting Hansen and her young son.
Immediately following the Hansens’ experience, Myrna was referred to an Albuquerque MUFON researcher, Paul Bennewitz. Enlisting the help of hypnotherapist Leo Sprinkle, they would go on to regress Hansen. She and her son were taken to a deep underground military base. Her precise description of the location attracted the attention of members from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, who have allegedly monitored Myrna and Shawn since that time.[5]
5. Linda Napolitano (aka Linda Cortile)
The story describes Linda suddenly awake above her bed to see strange figures in the process of levitation. Once on board a craft, she was subject to medical analysis and alien experimentation by different beings, some human in appearance. As her account later gained attention, two men came forward as “witnesses” who ultimately went on to kidnap and interrogate her multiple times, leading Napolitano to believe it was a cover-up.
Linda’s recollection of events, like many before and after her, had deployed critics. In subsequent years since her experiences, medical professionals associated with the case have found that she is of sound mind. Walter H. Andrus, founder and then director of MUFON, considered Napolitano’s story as, “definitely authentic case of human abductions by aliens.”[6]
4. Betty & Barney Hill
Betty and Barney Hill were not an ordinary couple for the time—interracial, yet both respected in their community as rights activists. In September 1961, the Hills were driving home through remote New Hampshire when Barney became acutely aware that a light was trailing their every movement. When they finally arrived home, the couple felt there was some missing time. Their case is one of the first highly publicized alien abductions in modern history. To this day, a lengthy measure of evidence in this case exists and cannot easily be refuted. Just before events took place, the couple pulled the car over to determine what was stationary above them.
When Betty & Barney finally underwent hypnosis, the initial recorded sessions (which are widely available today for free) reveal when Barney first peered through binoculars, he “could almost feel this figure’s intense concentration to carry out a plan—to capture the witness.” Barney recalls “a red-headed Irishmen” and what “looks like a German Nazi” during regression (Link 3). Once on board the craft, the Hills were subjects of separate analysis. Consequently, Barney’s faith and humanity had been irreversibly shaken while Betty embraced her curiosities after a being displayed a distant star map of where they had come from.[7]
3. Katharina Wilson
A lifetime of abduction experiences stretching back to when she was just a child, Katharina Wilson believes black operations are more common than we think. “I have to admit that I do not understand why I am remembering these scenarios, or abductions or whatever we choose to call them. I have even wondered if someone may be ‘importing’ these events or memories into my consciousness through a mechanism.” Wilson thinks that as each new year passes, another whistleblower comes forward.
Untrained ears would assume her firsthand accounts are frightfully imaginative works of fiction. Deep-sea submersible experiences, surfacing and being transferred to U.S. Navy vessels, behavior modification trials like those of MK-ULTRA. Anyone caught by UFOlogy’s gravity has heard of the likeliness of alien abductions persisting throughout the generations of family members. Moreover, one thing is for certain, Wilson believes that what abductees are revealing only scratches the surface of remote viewing and “screen memories.”[8]
2. Niara Isley
Previously registered as an airman in the U.S. Air Force, Niara Isley’s efforts to shine a light on ETs have revealed yet another layer of what she calls “shadow government.” Isley has been on a spiritual journey for most of her life, but once she had discovered a missing three-month chunk of time in 1980, she sought hypnosis. “What I discovered was staggering and life-altering, turning life upside down for me for a good many years.”
While employed with the government, Isley worked with radar technology and provided research and development support near the Tonopah Test Range, 30 miles southeast of Tonopah, NV. Over time she has revealed being held against her will on the moon in a joint “Reptilian-Gray-Human secret base.” “I was scared. I knew I had to get back to my daughter, so I was pretty compliant. I just didn’t want to do anything that would get me killed.”[9]
1. Corey Goode
Recognized at a young age as possessing empathic abilities, Corey Goode was trained to fill support roles and several other militarized black operations (Intruder Intercept Interrogation Program, Auxiliary Specialized Space Research, etc.) starting in the mid-to-late-1980s when he was just six years old. It was a 20-year post in various secret space programs, after which he would undergo age regression and return to his original timeline. However, recalled on multiple occasions, Goode has persistently maintained that his experiences of direct physical contact with non-terrestrial beings are very real and that he was chosen as an acting liaison between multiple ET federations and councils.
Although on the flip side of every coin lies additional context. Particularly when you are considered a compromised individual by the UFO community at large. A society of like thinkers with open minds that do not typically earn money for their lectures and appearances, Goode was earning tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees. He first captured audiences around the world on David Wilcock’s Gaia program, Disclosure. Which must have opened old wounds because it was revealed that he actively doxed any and all opponents. What made a real stink of things, however, as when Gaia proposed in dueling lawsuits that Wilcock’s decision to leave the network was wholly fabricated by Goode love-bombing him with the promise to one day join the “alliance” and put to rest any Luciferian doubts.[10]
As you will have seen, in the last few days I’ve written a couple of articles that focus on the involvement of helicopters in UFO (and UFO related) events and phenomena. Now, it’s time to round things up with a connection between helicopters and alien abductees. Yes, there is intriguing data on hand that demonstrates at least one secret, helicopter-based organization has been keeping watch on alien abductees. And might still be watching them. With that said, let’s have a look at the available material relating to this admittedly strange situation. For years, numerous abductees have reported close encounter with not just UFOs and aliens, but with what have become infamously known as “black helicopters.” These usually unmarked craft are reported flying over the homes of abductees. On occasion, they will hover over the same homes for minutes at a time, and at precariously low levels. Typically, they turn up within a day or two of an alien abduction experience. All of the evidence suggests that the helicopters are piloted by “black-ops” teams who have three, primary agendas: (A) to try and determine the range and scope of alien abductions; (B) to frighten the abductees into staying quiet on their experiences; and (C) to figure out the true nature of the extraterrestrial agenda.
Betty Andreasson is a well-known alien abductee and someone whose incredible encounters with extraterrestrial creatures – which began in 1967 – have been chronicled in numerous books by UFO investigator Raymond Fowler. Those books include The Andreasson Affair, The Andreasson Affair – Phase Two, and The Andreasson Legacy. That Andreasson has been the subject of a number of books makes it not at all surprising that there should be a government file on her. This possibility is made all the more likely by the fact that she and her husband, Bob Luca, have had more than a few run-ins with the black helicopters. UFO researchers Barry Greenwood and Lawrence Fawcett took a particular interest in the helicopter encounters that Betty and Bob reported.
(Nick Redfern)
Helicopters and alien abductees: a sinister connection
They said that husband and wife “…reported that their home was over flown numerous times by black, unmarked helicopters of the Bell UH-1 Iroquois type and that these helicopters would fly over their homes at altitudes as low as 100 feet. The Luca’s described these helicopters as being black in color, with no identifiable marking on them. They noticed that the windows were tinted black also, so that no one could see inside. During many of the over flights, Bob was able to take close to 200 photos of the helicopters.” Moving on: Alien abductee Debbie Jordan has experienced very much the same. She says of the unmarked helicopters she has encountered: “These could be seen almost daily around our houses. They are so obvious about their flights it’s almost comical. On occasions too numerous to even remember, they have hovered around my house, above my house, and above me for several minutes at a time, not trying to hide themselves or the fact that they are watching us. While large questions remain regarding who is flying the helicopters and where they originate from, long-time Ufologist Tommy Blann has a few ideas. From a contact in the U.S. Army Blann was informed that all across the United States there are “underground installations, as well as isolated areas of military reservations [that] have squadrons of unmarked helicopters, which have sophisticated instrumentation on board, that are dispatched to areas of UFO activity to monitor these craft or airlift them out of the area if one has malfunctioned.”
In 1989, Ed Conroy, a San Antonio, Texas-based journalist, wrote a book titled Report on Communion. It was an independent study of Whitley Strieber and his incredible experiences described in Strieber’s 1987 book, Communion. In taking on the project, Conroy didn’t realize what he had got himself into. At least, not at first he didn’t. What began as an impartial investigation into Strieber’s claims, soon mutated into something very different: Conroy found himself under similar intimidation to that which would eventually hit the Strieber family. Weird phone calls, secret surveillance and – even – visits from our old friends, those mysterious black helicopters, whose crews keep more than a careful watch on alien abductees, abounded.
(Nick Redfern)
Keeping watch on the alien abduction phenomenon
It was one particular morning in March 1987 that Ed Conroy found himself a target of whoever it is that flies the mysterious helicopters. It appeared to be a Bell 47, said Conroy, and it lacked an identifying markings – which is very curious, but absolutely typical of the helicopters of the phantom type. Notably, said Conroy: “What was remarkable about this particular helicopter was the inordinate amount of attention it seemed to be paying to my building.” In no time, and shortly after the Bell 47 finally exited the area, a totally black helicopter was on the scene too. Follow-up visits occurred – something which prompted Conroy to contact the Federal Aviation Administration for answers. No luck there. Things got even more intense in 1988 when Conroy was practically seeing helicopters here, there and everywhere. And particularly, again, in the direct vicinity of his apartment, including the huge, double-rotor, military Chinooks. Conroy even saw some of the helicopters vanish – as in literally vanish. Some kind of stealthy, cloaking technology, perhaps?
What all of this has told us – across the last few days – is that the black helicopter phenomenon is a wide and varied one. They are involved in cattle mutilation incidents, alien abductions, and the monitoring of UFO activity. Many of them fly in complete silence. They have been around, to a significant degree, since at least the earliest part of the 1970s. And, they are still flying around. And still watching and monitoring.
Ring Shaped UFO Spotted During SpaceX Launch. January 6, 2022
This ring shaped UFO showed up during the Falcon 9 launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While the rocket was over our Earth this object appeared and then they change cameras.
Source:SpaceX
To view the original click the link and go to the 20:20 mark in this footage
Member of flight crew films UFO over Georgia | 3 Jan 2022
This strange UFO phenomenon was filmed from a plane flying at 40000 feet (around 12km) above Georgia in United States on 3rd January 2022.
Witness report:
Was flying as flight crew for an airline when noticed the object appear right after another aircraft flew over us at 40k feet. Short video uploaded. Was flying along at 39,000 feet in an Airbus A320 somewhere over Georgia. Took out my phone to take photos of the beautiful Milky Way. Using the new iphone 13 pro max. Tried to take a video of another aircraft flying just above us opposite direction at 40,000 ft. As I was filming this aircraft fly over us, I noticed this V shaped object appear. It appears to be between us and the other aircraft. Both Captain and I agreed we would like to remain Anonymous. I will share the video I took. At the end I zoom briefly to the instruments to give perspective. Nothing was reported to FAA or ATC.
The Alien Agenda: Myth, Underground Bases & Extraterrestrials
Deep in north central New Mexico is the sleepy little town of Dulce. Located on the Archuleta Mesa on the Colorado - New Mexico border, Dulce is home to about 3,000 residents and is the headquarters of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. For as small and insignificant as this remote location may sound, since the 1980s Dulce has been the center of a controversy regarding the so-called alien agenda, rumors of underground tunnels and related conspiracy theories.
Underground Bases and the Alien Agenda
At the time, the physicist and inventor Paul Bennewitz claimed he had discovered an underground base occupied by extraterrestrials near Dulce. His story quickly spread through the UFO community. Allegations that surround the base include human abductions ("alien abductions") by these extraterrestrial beings. He also asserted that the extraterrestrials were engaging in the development of advanced technology including genetic manipulation, all part of their purported alien agenda.
Their plan, according to conspiracy theorists, is to control the government and gain ultimate control of the Earth by means of a New World Order. There have even been stories of an untoward alliance between humans and the inhabitants of the Dulce base which include ties to shadow governments via secret societies such as the Illuminati, the Masons, the Bilderberg Group and the Skull and Bones.
Dulce is not the only place on earth where it is believed underground bases exist, but it is the one which has received the greatest notoriety in recent times. Subterranean bases, according to conspiracy theorists, can be found around the world with major active outposts all across the United States, Australia, Antarctica and South America.
These theories posit that the underground bases are connected to each other via a series of channels which ensure each base is connected to another. There are even assertions that one of these tunnels leads to an active base beneath the Vatican which has been exerting control over western civilization for centuries. A wealth of information regarding this subject has recently surfaced that makes sweeping claims. But, as strange as all of this may sound, could any of what they say be true? We turn to mythology in the search for answers.
Before we continue, it must be clarified that mythology, like many of the claims that come from the UFO community, is treated more like science fiction rather than fact. Traditional mythologists contend that the gods we find in myth represent the forces of nature or the creation of someone's vivid imagination. With that said, does mythology support these seemingly outlandish claims?
Jan Brueghel’s painting depicting the myth of Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld.
Using Mythology to Understand Beliefs in Underground Realms
Stories of underground realms occupied by the gods pervade mythology. Depending on the culture, it has been called Hades, Tartarus, Xibalba, Duat, Patala and Hell. These "homes of the gods" are not always found deep within the earth, but are sometimes described as being within a mountain or deep beneath the waters of the earth.
Access to their domain, regardless of locality, is often described as located through the mouth of a cave. The entrance may appear open at one time and then disappear from view completely and instantaneously. The inhabitants of these underground realms did not desire to be visited by unwanted or unexpected company, yet access was granted to select individuals.
Ancient texts described entrance into the underworld as being anything but easy. The Mayan Popul Vuh , for example, describes the route taken by the hero brothers Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Hunapu. It tells of a steep descent into the home of the Lords of Xibalba and the many challenges they had to face. Similarly, texts such as the Egyptian Book Of The Dead describe the path by which the deceased god-King must travel to enter Duat. Like the Popul Vuh , the path is fraught with challenges the individual must pass in order to enter the realm of the dead, the underworld.
The Vishnu Purana states that the deepest level of the underworld, Patala, can be found 70,000 yojanas beneath the surface of the earth. Gilgamesh, in the epic bearing his name, is described as traveling twelve leagues in the dense darkness until he arrived in the light-filled chamber of the underworld.
In these ancient texts, the underground domains of the gods are described as filled with houses or vast halls where thousands of individuals could assemble. Fountains, plants, tall grasses, trees and animals of all kinds filled this land. The divine ascetic, Narada, who is featured in the Vishnu Purana claims to have visited Patala, stating that "Patala was much more charming than heaven. He exclaimed "What can be compared with Patala where Nagas (serpents) are adorned with beautiful and brilliant and pleasure-diffusing gems? This region is embellished with the daughters of Daityas and Danavas."
Similar descriptions of the underground/underwater homes of the gods are scattered through mythology. The home of the Sumerian fertility god Enki, which is located in the watery deep, is described as having his house built of gold, silver and lapis lazuli. Even writers, such as Greek philosopher Plato, echo this notion. He believed that the earth was littered with a number of hollows that were full of water, air, trees, fruits and flowers.
Surprisingly, Plato confirms yet another claim made by modern UFOlogy. Plato goes on to state that these hollows were connected to one another by subterranean channels. But Plato isn't the only one who refers to tunnels that lie beneath the surface of the earth. Inca legends, for example, tell of vast networks of tunnels that crisscross the length and breadth of the planet, complete with underground cities.
When Pizarro and the Spanish conquistadors entered Peru, they kidnapped the Inca emperor Atahualpa and held him for ransom. They demanded enough gold to fill a room in return for Atahualpa's release. Pizarro's men heard rumors that the Inca gold was being held in a vast network of subterranean tunnels. According to legend, these tunnels were thousands of years old and ran for miles beneath the Inca capital.
In more recent years, adventurers who have hazarded into the caverns beneath Cusco entered but were never seen again. One man actually did make it out of the tunnels alive, bringing with him two bars of gold. According to officials he had gone mad. In response, the entrances to the tunnels were then walled up for safety's sake - at least that is the official story. Meanwhile, the Apache Indians report that their ancestors took refuge in ancient tunnels during a cataclysmic disaster on the earth. They wandered these immense passageways for years carrying the seeds for life in the new world.
UFOlogists believe in the concept of the alien agenda, whereby reptilian beings, or aliens, are conducting genetic experiments in underground realms.
(Author provided)
Underground Alien Reptilian Bases for Genetic Experiments in Mythology
But what about the other claim made by UFOlgists regarding these bases being used for genetic engineering? According to their assertions it is in the lowest level, the 7th level, of the Dulce base that the extraterrestrials are engaging in this kind of experimentation. Again, mythology supports this premise and Native American tribes across the country are the most vocal when it comes to this topic.
The Jicarilla Apache (whose headquarters is in Dulce), the Navaho and Hopi Indians have long-standing traditions of man's creation and emergence from beneath the surface of the earth. In fact, the Algonquians recount: "Thus did the lowermost world-cave become overfilled with living things, full of unfinished creatures, crawling like reptiles over one another in dark blackness.”
In this matter they do not stand alone. Berosus, a Babylonian priest, tells of the hideous creatures that inhabit this underground realm. He described men who had one body but two heads, some with the legs and horns of a goat and even some with the hind quarters of a horse and the body of a man. "In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animal."
These genetic experiments are, according to reports from UFO advocates, being conducted by a group of reptilian beings in the lowest levels of the base. Thomas Castello, a former senior security officer at the base, testified that the base at Dulce is a seven level underground facility with the lower levels described as a series of natural caverns. It was believed by Castello that these caverns were used by different extraterrestrial races in our remote past.
In Hindu cosmology, the Naga (serpents) once lived on earth, but the great god Brahma sent them to live under the sea and in the seventh level of their underground realm called Patala. In the Sumerian Inana's Descent To The Nether World , Inana is required to pass through seven gates to finally reach the bowels of the underworld. Aztec legend says that Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, went to Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, and created mankind using his own blood and the bones of the previous race.
Throughout mythology the act of creating humanity is always associated with a specific group of gods, the fertility gods. Fertility gods around the world are traditionally depicted as reptilian or amphibious in nature and appear in art as a blend between a man and a fish or a man and a snake.
Some conspiracy theorists go so far as to claim that the Reptilian alien agenda is to control us and dominate the power, a plot orchestrated by an elite group which includes powerful and influential people.
Reptilians, their Alien Agenda and Related Mythology
A number of individuals also argue that the Reptilian's true agenda is to control us, with the objective to dominate the planet. They cite the development of a New World Order. Proponents of this alien agenda theory believe that the Reptilians, or the byproduct of their genetic manipulation experiments, intend to take control of the earth's surface.
This takeover is reportedly being orchestrated by an extremely powerful and influential group which includes many of the world's wealthiest people. Some claim members of this elite group are actually genetically related to each other. Their goal is to have every man, woman and child on the earth obedient to their covert agenda.
The Reptilians are also accused of wanting to reduce the population on the earth and are employing weapons such as chemtrails, GMO's, vaccinations and man-made viruses to reduce our numbers. It is contended that it is easier to control 500,000 or a million individuals than it is the 7 billion who currently live on the Earth.
A look into mythology relative to this claim does have a few pillars of support. The idea of culling the human population on Earth is not a modern concept. In the Sumerian Epic of Atrahasis , for example, we find a story where the gods do just that! In this myth, 1,200 years after the creation of mankind the number of people who inhabited the Earth grew. Their "noise" disturbed the Sky god Enlil's sleep, who then decided to send a plague in order reduce the population.
This worked for a while but when another 1,200 years passed the population had grown again and Enlil was once more bothered by the noise. This time, in order to decrease their numbers, he asked the thunder-rain god Adad to hold back the rains whereby the world suffered from a great drought where vast numbers died.
The population continued to grow, and by the time another 1,200 years had passed the noise became too much for Enlil to bear. Wanting to alleviate his problem he told the gods to hold back all of nature's gifts. This went on for six years and as the texts describe, the people of Earth were reduced to cannibalism in order to survive. The fertility god, Enki, tried to save the people from starvation, which angered Enlil even more.
Finally, in an act of vengeance, Enlil decided to destroy mankind once and for all. He planned to do this by flooding the world. Enki, once again stepped in and saved humanity from total annihilation. He warned Atrahasis of the impending flood and told him to build a boat to save himself and his family.
Torrents of theories have come forward as we seek the truth regarding our place in the universe. Mythology does lend itself to support a number of these claims. It is difficult to determine if the creators of these theories based their conjecture using myth as their foundation, first hand experiences, or, something else.
What does seem evident is that much of the information UFO researchers are bringing to light does parallel the myths and legends that have been passed to us from antiquity. Bringing this idea full circle; if the stories being unearthed in the UFO community, such as those about the Dulce base in New Mexico , were not based on mythological sources, yet mythology supports these claims, then the stories of our distant past may have a basis in fact. It implies that the gods were living breathing beings who walked the earth in our remote past, created man and played an essential role in the development of life and culture on the planet.
Top image: Controversially, theories persist that there is an underground base occupied by extraterrestrial aliens at Dulce in Colorado.
Located near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang province, China, lie the Longyou Caves - an extensive, magnificent and rare ancient underground world considered in China to be “the ninth wonder of the ancient world.” Thought to date back at least 2,000 years, the Longyou Caves, also known as the Xiaonanhai Stone Chambers, represent one of the largest underground excavations of ancient times and are an enduring mystery that have perplexed experts from every discipline that has examined them.
Scientists from around the world in the fields of archaeology, architecture, engineering, and geology have absolutely no idea how the Longyou Caves were built, by whom, and why. First discovered in 1992 by a local villager who set out to drain some ponds which locals believed to be bottomless, to date 24 hand-carved caves have been discovered covering a massive 30,000 square meters (322,917 ft sq).
Carved into solid siltstone, each grotto descends around 30 meters (98 ft) underground and contains stone rooms, bridges, gutters and pools. Within the Longyou Caves there are pillars evenly distributed throughout the caves which are supporting the ceiling, and the walls, ceiling and stone columns are uniformly decorated with chisel marks in a series of parallel lines.
Only one of the caves has been opened for tourism, chosen because of the stone carvings found inside which depict a horse, fish and bird. The Longyou Caves of Zhejiang province in China truly are an enigma and here we will explore ten enduring mysteries that remain unresolved, despite more than two decades of research.
A rough estimation of the workload involved in building the Longyou Caves is awe-inspiring. The quantity of rock that would have been removed in the overall excavation of the grottoes is estimated to be nearly 1,000,000 cubic meters (35,314,666 cu ft). Taking into account the average digging rate per day per person, scientists have calculated that it would take 1,000 people working day and night for six years to complete.
These calculations are based purely on hard labor, but what they haven’t taken into account is the incredible care and precision of the sculptors, meaning that the actual workload would far surpass the theoretical estimation. As for how they were constructed and what tools were used, it is still unknown. No tools have been found in the area, and, as we will explore later, scientists still don’t know how they achieved such symmetry, precision, and similarity between the different caves.
2. No Traces of Construction
Despite their size and the effort involved in creating them, so far no trace of their construction, or even their existence, has been located archival sources. Although the overall excavation involved almost a million cubic meters of stone, there is no archaeological evidence revealing where that quantity of stone went, and no evidence of the work. Moreover, there is not a single historic document that refers to them, which is highly unusual considering the sheer scale of the project. The origin of the Longyou Caves is a complete and utter mystery.
Experts wonder why the walls at the Longyou Caves in China are covered in chiseled parallel lines.
Every single one of the Longyou Caves is covered, from floor to ceiling, in parallel lines that have been chiseled into virtually every surface. The effect is a uniform pattern throughout the caves, which would have required immense manpower and endless hours to create. The question is why? Was such labor-intensive work purely for decoration? Are the lines or patterns symbolic in some way? All that is currently known is that the markings are similar to those found on pottery housed in a nearby museum, which is dated between 500 and 800 BC.
4. Lack of Fish in the Longyou Caves
When the caves were first discovered, they were filled with water, which presumably had been there for a long period of time. They had to be pumped out in order to realize that these were not just like the other “bottomless ponds” found within the area, but rather man-made structures. Most villages in southern China contain very deep ponds, which have been called "bottomless ponds" by generations of villagers. These ponds teem with fish, which are easily caught. However, after the first cave was pumped dry, not a single fish was to be seen, or any other sign of life.
5. How Did the Longyou Caves Remain So Well Preserved?
One of the most interesting and challenging questions is how the Longyou Caves have been able to keep their structural integrity for more than 2,000 years. There are no signs of collapse, no piles of rubble, and no damage despite the fact that in some areas the walls are only 50 centimeters (20 in) thick. Over the centuries, the area has gone through numerous floods, calamities and wars, the mountains have changed their appearance and exposed stones have been weathered, but inside the Longyou Caves, the form, patterns and markings are still clear and precise – it is as though they were built yesterday.
6. How Did the Builders Work in the Dark?
Due to the great depths of the caves, some areas at the bottom, which are not exposed to the opening above, are pitch-black. Yet even those dark areas are decorated with thousands of parallel lines on the walls, columns, and ceiling. So how did ancient people work in the dark?
According to Jia Gang, a Tongji University professor specializing in civil engineering: "There should be lamps, because the cave's mouth is very small, and the sunbeam could only shine in the cave at a certain angle during a certain period of time. As one goes deeper into the cave, the light becomes dimmer. At the cave's bottom, which is usually dozen of meters from the mouth, one could hardly see anything." However, this was at least two millennia ago and nothing that could have been used for lighting has been found.
7. Were the Longyou Caves Meant to be Connected?
All of the Longyou Caves are distributed across an area of only one square kilometer (0.38 sq mi). Considering such a high density, one cannot help asking whether some grottoes were meant to be connected. What would be the purpose of making so many separate caves in such a tight area without connecting them? In many areas, the walls between the caves are very thin, only 50 centimeters (20 in), but they were never linked so it appears they were intentionally kept apart. What’s more, many of the Longyou Caves are almost identical to each other.
Geological cross-section of cave 3 (left) and photo showing rock pillars in cave 3 (right).
Nobody has any idea who built the caves. Some scientists have claimed that it was not possible or logical for such as mammoth job to have been undertaken by regular village people. Only the emperor and the leaders could have organized such a huge project, like the construction of the Great Wall , which was built to defend against invasion from the outside world. But if it was commissioned by an Emperor, why are there no historical records of its construction?
9. How Did They Achieve Such Precision?
The scale of the Longyou Caves is magnificent and momentous, the design was delicate and scientific, the construction was sophisticated, and the precision is indicative of superior craftsmanship. The model, pattern and style of each cave is extremely similar. Every grotto is like a grand hall. One side is steep and another side is 45% inclined. The four walls are straight; the edges and corners are clearly demarcated. The chiseling marks within the Longyou Caves are uniform and precise.
"At the bottom of each cave, the ancient [builders] wouldn't be able to see what the others were doing in the next grotto,” explained Yang Hongxun, an expert at the Archaeological Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Nevertheless, “the inside of each cave had to be parallel with that of the other, or else the wall would be holed through. Thus the measure apparatus should have been very advanced. There must have been some layout about the sizes, locations, and the distances between the caves beforehand."
With the help of modern equipment and methods, the investigators measured the sizes of the walls, and surprisingly found that the overall construction is extremely accurate. The walls between the caves are of the same thickness in different sections. So how did they achieve this precision? What were their methods?
Stairs leading down into one of the once-submerged Longyou Caves.
Following extensive investigations and study, scientists and scholars have attempted to put forward explanations for the grottoes, but none so far provide a convincing explanation for why they were built and what they were used for.
Some archaeologists have suggested that the grottoes were the tombs of old emperors, emperor halls, or places for storage. But this interpretation is far-fetched. No funeral objects or tombs have been found and no artifacts left behind. If it were used like an emperor’s palace, the caves surely would have been designed differently, with separate rooms for different purposes like entertaining, meeting, and sleeping. But no evidence can be found of this and no traces of habitation have been found.
Another hypothesis is that the Longyou Caves were used for mining and extracting some type of mineral resource. However, mining operations would have required equipment and apparatus to extract the rocks and transport them. Again, no traces of this have been found, nor any evidence of where the rocks were taken. And of course, if the caves were just for mining, why create such intricate decorations on the walls, columns and ceilings?
Finally, some have suggested that these caves were the places for troops to be stationed and that an emperor of the past wanted to keep his soldiers out of view in order to keep his war preparations secret. However, these caves could not have been built in a short period of time. They would have taken many, many years to build so it is unlikely to have been done in preparation for war, which tends to come about much more quickly. Furthermore, there are no signs of people having stayed in the caves.
Despite decades of research, very few answers have emerged to explain the enigma of the Longyou Caves . Our ancient ancestors have achieved many wondrous things throughout history, but this discovery from China is truly an unsolved mystery which has yet to be cracked.
Top image: In China the Longyou Caves are known as the ninth wonder of the ancient world.
We need scientific analysis of satellite data on UAP
BY AVI LOEB, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
Earlier this year, the U.S. military and intelligence community issued a report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP, also called UFOs). Before the report’s release, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stated, “we are talking about objects that have been seen by navy or air force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery, that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain, movements that are hard to replicate, that we don’t have the technology for.”
The attention-grabbing part of this statement is the reference to "satellite imagery." I — and the hundreds of scientists engaged in studying UAP — have never seen any publicly released data on this. We would be extremely interested in analyzing any data on objects that enter the Earth's atmosphere and do not follow ballistic orbits like meteors. But no such data is currently available to open scientific analysis.
Of course, Ratcliffe’s quote is an insufficient basis for substantive scientific inquiry. But unclassified data, assembled by non-governmental satellites, could be made available to open scientific analysis.
Progress in our understanding of the related satellite imagery data may also stem from the new office established recently by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2022. The office, to be created by mid-2022, will have the authority to start a coordinated effort of reporting and responding to UAPs and significantly improve data-sharing between agencies on UAP sightings. This new office will be administered jointly between the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, and it will empower military and civilian personnel as well as the intelligence community to report incidents and information involving UAP.
If the new office will determine that the objects in the satellite imagery data are so unusual that they cannot be human-made and hence are not a matter of national security, then it would make sense to subject the data to scientific analysis. A natural or an extraterrestrial origin, will be of international interest and benefit humanity as a whole and enrich our shared scientific knowledge.
Protocols for a possible contact with extraterrestrial intelligence were mostly inspired in the past by the possibility of detecting radio signals from planets around distant stars. Given that the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.4 light-years away, such signals would require a decade or more for a round-trip conversation. As a result, they do not bear consequences to our immediate future.
But a different type of contact could deliver prompt implications. It concerns physical objects from another civilization that are already here, waiting to be noticed like a package in our mailbox. The arriving hardware need not be brainless but could possess artificial intelligence (AI), seeking information about the habitable planets around the sun.
An encounter of this type implies instant contact without a significant delay in communication time. The potential for an immediate engagement changes the response protocol relative a delayed radio signal.
Currently, there is no international agreement on how humanity should engage with a visiting object of extraterrestrial origin. It would be prudent to formulate guidelines before they are needed. Any engagement could have implications for the future of humanity and should not be left to the spontaneous whims of a small team of researchers.
We should weigh the risks and benefits that will result from different engagements. The decision tree on how to proceed will have branches that depend on the objects’ properties and behavior. Since it is difficult to forecast these unknowns in advance, decisions will have to be reached in real-time.
Deciphering the intent of an intelligent extraterrestrial equipment may resemble the challenge of breaking the code of an encryption device. We might need to rely on our AI systems in figuring out the intent of extraterrestrial AI systems.
A proper interpretation of prompt contact with extraterrestrial technologies could bring about the most significant advance in understanding of the reality around us in the entire history of humans.
Our historic migration out of Africa started about a hundred thousand years ago, but a future migration out of Earth may be triggered by a dialogue with a messenger from afar that does not resemble anything we had seen before.
AviLoeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, as well as the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial:The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021.
The Walls of Benin: Four Times Longer Than The Great Wall of China!
The Kingdom of Benin was an important African kingdom that flourished between the 13th and 19th centuries AD. Benin was located in the southwestern part of modern-day Nigeria, with Benin City as its capital. Benin City is perhaps best-known for a group of artefacts collectively known as the Benin Bronzes. These objects looted by British forces during their expedition against Benin in 1897. Whilst a large number of these artefacts ended up in the British Museum, others were dispersed amongst museums in the West. A lesser-known accomplishment of the Kingdom of Benin is the so-called Walls of Benin, which surrounded Benin City. The Walls of Benin were damaged by the British during their expedition and deteriorated further in the decades that followed. Parts of the walls are still visible today, though they are still facing the threat of destruction.
A closeup of one of the many Benin Bronzes that speak for the legendary Kingdom of Benin and its famous Walls of Benin earthworks.
The Kingdom of Benin is known also as the Benin Empire or the Edo Kingdom. According to one oral tradition, the Edo people, the original ethnic group of the Kingdom of Benin, were once ruled by a line of semi-mythical kings known as the Ogisos (meaning “Kings of the Sky”). There were about 36 Ogisos who ruled over the Edo people. During the reign of the last Ogiso, his son and heir, Ekaladerhan, was banished, as punishment for an offence committed by one of the queens. The queen had changed the message from the oracle to the Ogiso.
Following his banishment, the prince travelled to the land of the Yorubas, another ethnic group in the western part of modern-day Nigeria. The oracle of the Yorubas prophesied that a king would come out of the forest. Therefore, when Ekaladerhan arrived at the Yoruba city of Ife, he was welcomed, and appointed king. Ekaladerhan changed his name to Imadoduwa, meaning “I did not misplace my royalty”
After some time, Imadoduwa’s father died, and the throne of Benin was left vacant. A delegation of Edo chiefs came to Ife to ask Imadoduwa to return to their lands and take the place of his father as Ogiso. Whilst he had been a prince, Imadoduwa was well-loved by the Edo people.
Imadoduwa, however, would not abandon his new subjects. Instead, he told the Edo delegation that he had seven sons and was willing to send one of them to rule as king. The prince chosen to return with the delegation was Oranmiyan, who spent the next few years living amongst the Edo people. When Oranmiyan’s wife gave birth to a son, Eweka, Oranmiyan returned to Ife. Eweka became the first oba (roughly equivalent to king) of Benin.
According to another version of the oral tradition, the Edo people had become dissatisfied with the rule of the Ogisos during the 13th century. Therefore, they invited Oranmiyan from Ife to rule over them. In this version of the story, Oranmiyan is not related to the Ogisos of Benin. This version of the story also has Oranmiyan’s son, Eweka, becoming the first oba of Benin.
The Walls of Benin in a drawing from the 19th century.
Benin City is Rebuilt and the Walls of Benin Begin
In the late 13th century, royal power was firmly established in the Kingdom of Benin. This contributed towards the kingdom’s rise as a regional power in the 15th century. Oba Ewuare, who reigned between 1440 and 1480, was arguably the most famous ruler of the Kingdom of Benin. Ewuare is said to have been a powerful warrior and magician . During his reign, the hereditary succession to the throne was established.
Additionally, Ewuare conducted numerous military campaigns that served to enlarge his kingdom. At its maximum extent, the Kingdom of Benin stretched from Onitsha (in present-day Nigeria) in the east, through the forest region of southwestern Nigeria, and into modern-day Ghana in the west.
Ewuare is also credited with the rebuilding of Benin City, known also as Edo. According to tradition, Benin City, was founded in 1180, and was known originally as Ibinu. Benin City is situated on a plain on a branch of the Benin River and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Benin. It is believed that the Walls of Benin were constructed during Ewuare’s reign.
These walls consist of two parts, a moat and a rampart. A ditch was dug to form the inner moat, and the excavated earth was used to form the outer rampart. The Walls of Benin no doubt contributed towards the defense of the city. Additionally, the walls may be viewed symbolically as a representation of the kingdom’s power.
According to the 1974 edition of the Guinness Book of Records , the Walls of Benin were the “world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era.” Elsewhere, it is claimed that they were “four times longer than the Great Wall of China and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.” Furthermore, it is asserted that the walls “extended for some 16,000 km [9,942 miles] in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries,” and that it covered an area of 6,500 square kilometers (2,510 square miles). This grand project is thought to have been carried out completely by the Edo people, and it took an estimated total of 150 million hours to complete.
Before the earthwork and stone walls of Benin the ancient city was still walled off using wood and brush.
Trade Begins with Portugal and the Stories of Benin Begin
Although the Walls of Benin are certainly monumental achievements, much more can be said about the urban nature of Benin City as well. Around 1485, shortly after the end of Ewuare’s reign, the Kingdom of Benin had its first contact with Europe. It was the Portuguese, who were sailing along the coast of Africa, who first encountered the Kingdom of Benin. Consequently, trade between the Portuguese and the Edo people developed. In exchange for tropical goods and slaves later on, the Portuguese provided their African counterparts with European products and guns.
It is also from these Portuguese explorers and merchants that descriptions of Benin City were brought back to Europe. For instance, the Portuguese were surprised to find a great kingdom in the middle of the African jungle and called the kingdom’s capital the Great City of Benin. Additionally, the Portuguese considered Benin City as one of the best-planned and most beautiful cities in the world.
To put this into perspective, at that time, the Portuguese, and other Europeans, by extension, regarded few settlements in Africa as cities. A more detailed description of the city is provided by a Portuguese ship captain by the name of Lourenco Pinto in 1691, and is as follows:
“Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”
Another 17th century account, this time by a Dutch visitor named Olfert Dapper, describes the houses at Benin City like this:
“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other,… Adorned with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”
Dapper goes on to note that the wealthy inhabitants of the city would keep these walls “as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh water”.
Apart from these accounts by early European travelers, the planning and design of Benin City has also been a subject of investigation by modern scholars. It has been argued by Ron Eglash, an ethno-mathematician, that Benin City was planned according to fractal design. This means that the planning of the city involved “careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition.” Eglash pointed out that “the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.”
At the very center of Benin City was the court of the oba king, from which the city’s main streets radiated. There were 30 of these streets, each being about 37 meters (120 feet) wide. The streets ran at right angles to each other and were equipped with an underground drainage system that served to channel storm water away from the city. Many side streets extended from these 30 main streets.
Benin City was divided into 11 divisions. Since the city was planned according to fractal design, each of these divisions was a small replication of the oba’s court at the center of Benin City. These divisions consisted of several compounds containing houses, workshops, and public buildings. Indeed, during its heyday, Benin City was a highly sophisticated urban center.
One of the earliest photographs of the Wall of Benin earthworks in present-day Nigeria.
The Kingdom of Benin continued to flourish in the centuries after its first contact with the Europeans. In particular, the slave trade with Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries brought immense wealth to the kingdom. During the 19th century, however, the Kingdom of Benin began to decline. The kingdom’s fortunes were revived in the following century. In addition to slaves, palm oil and textiles became the kingdom’s main trade products.
During the 1880s and 1890s, the British were trying to turn the Kingdom of Benin into a protectorate. They were, however, unsuccessful, as the kingdom managed to resist these attempts, thereby maintaining its independence.
In January 1897, a British force was ambushed whilst on the road to Benin City, resulting in the deaths of eight Britons. Consequently, the British sent a punitive expedition in the following month. The expedition was led by Sir Harry Rawson, and involved 1,200 British soldiers, several hundred locally recruited African troops, and thousands of African porters from the British military base at Sierra Leone.
A three-pronged attack was launched by Rawson on Benin City. On each front, the people of the city offered fierce resistance. But the British persisted and Benin City fell on 18 February 1897. Having captured Benin City, the British began looting, and set fire to the city. This resulted in the destruction of much of the city. Particularly lamentable is the destruction of the city’s beautiful carved woodwork. A group of artefacts known as the Benin Bronzes, however, were seized by the British, and therefore was spared from this destruction.
Despite its name, not all the Benin Bronzes are made of bronze. Some of them, for instance, are made of brass, whilst others are not metal at all. The Benin Bronzes number in the thousands (estimated to be over 3000), though the exact total is unknown. This group of artefacts include plaques, figurines, and sculptures of the obas. After Rawson’s punitive expedition, 900 of the Benin Bronzes found their way into the British Museum. Others were sold to different European museums, supposedly to defray the cost of the expedition.
The Benin Bronzes have become a hot topic in recent times, due to growing calls for their repatriation. The British Museum, which houses the largest collection of the Benin Bronzes, however, is still resisting these calls for repatriation. Nevertheless, some of the artefacts are being returned.
All the returned Benin Bronzes will be housed in Nigeria’s Edo Museum of West African Art. This proposed museum is to be designed by David Adjaye, a famous British-Ghanaian architect, and its construction is estimated to take five years to complete.
Whilst the Benin Bronzes have garnered a lot of attention, other aspects of Benin City have not had so much coverage. This is noticeable, for instance in the Walls of Benin City. Although the walls were damaged by the British, they were not completely destroyed.
Though, the influences of modernization have caused portions of the walls to disappear over time some significant stretches of the walls have remained. The Walls of Benin have been protected by law since 1961. Nevertheless, a management plan and public awareness campaign was only put in place in 2002, after the walls were included in the World Monuments Watch. According to the World Monuments Fund, “Emergency conservation work is still desperately needed.”
Top image: This is what the Walls of Benin once would have looked like in Benin, Nigeria, the capital city of the Kingdom of Benin.
Titanoboa: The Monster Snake that Ruled Prehistoric Colombia
You may not want to read about this frightening creature if you suffer to any degree from ophidiophobia, or even if you are about to embark on a camping trip. Titanoboa fossils show it was the largest snake in the world. It lived during the Paleocene epoch, about 60 million years ago, so you are safe from its bone crushing grip now, but the image of the huge prehistoric snake slithering around South America is still a terrifying one.
So far, the South American country of Colombia has the only known fossils of the huge serpent. It is through these few fossils that paleontologists were able to estimate the size of this prehistoric creature. This estimation was then used to create a life-size model of Titanoboa, which was exhibited in 2012 in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal as a promotion for the Smithsonian Channel documentary entitled Titanoboa: Monster Snake.
The "Titanoboa: Monster Snake" exhibit from the Smithsonian at the Natural History Museum.
Titanoboa simply means ‘titanic boa’ and is an apt name for this prehistoric snake. According to estimates made by paleontologists, it could have grown to a length of between 42 feet and 49 feet (between 12.8 meters and 14.9 meters) and weighed up to a massive 2500 pounds (1134 kg). In addition, the thickest part of the snake’s body is reckoned to have had a diameter of 3 feet (0.9 meters).
As a comparison, the anaconda, one of the largest snakes today, is known to reach lengths of over 20 feet (6.1 meters) and weigh more than 500 pounds (227 kg). Titanoboa was obviously a giant compared to the largest snakes we have today.
The discovery of Titanoboa was made during the first decade of the 21st century in Cerrejón, a coal mine in the northern part of Colombia. The campaign that led to the discovery began in 1994, when the Colombian geologist Henry Garcia found an unfamiliar fossil which he labelled as ‘Petrified Branch’ and placed it in a display case of the coal company.
In 2003, a Colombian undergraduate geology student by the name of Fabiany Herrera was at Cerrejón for a field trip when he discovered fossilized plant remains . As the area had not been explored previously by paleontologists, an expedition was soon organized. One of the researchers invited to join the expedition was Scott Wing, the curator of fossil plants at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
A Titanoboa vertebra dwarfs that of a modern 17-foot anaconda
It was Wing who realized that Garcia’s fossil was not from a plant. He sent photos of it to another expert, Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist at the University of Florida. Bloch identified the fossil as part of a jawbone of a land animal.
This was exciting news, as fossils of terrestrial vertebrates from the Paleocene epoch had not been found in that part of South America before then. It was believed that more fossils of such animals were to be found at the site, and this proved to be true.
Identifying the Monster Snake
It was not until 2007, however, that the vertebra of a Titanoboa was identified, when a shipment of fossils labelled ‘crocodile’ was being inspected. When this discovery was made, fresh expeditions were conducted in the hopes of finding more vertebrae of this animal. Eventually, a total of 100 snake vertebrae from 28 animals were collected. With the vertebrae, the paleontologists were able to make estimations as to the size of the prehistoric snake.
In 2012, another important discovery about the Titanoboa was made. This time, a snake skull was found. Such a find is extremely rare, as snake skulls are very fragile and usually fall apart after the animal dies.
One of the peculiarities of this skull is that it has closely packed teeth, even more than modern day boas. This has led experts to speculate that Titanoboa was a specialized fish-eater. Still, considering its size, Titanoboa could have easily preyed on prehistoric turtles and crocodiles, which lived in the same habitat as this snake.
These later discoveries prompted the 2012 creation of a life-size model of Titanoboa exhibited in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal to promote the Smithsonian Titanoboa documentary. Some people also believe that Titanoboas still live deep in the Amazon.
CHINA’S “ARTIFICIAL SUN” FUSION REACTOR JUST SMASHED ITS OLD RECORD
THE REACTOR WAS 10 TIMES HOTTER THAN THE CORE OF THE SUN FOR MORE THAN 17 MINUTES.
COSTFOTO/BARCROFT MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES
Another One
A Chinese fusion reactor just completely demolished its own record.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor was able to sustain a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 1,056 seconds, according to a release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This smashed its previous record of 101 seconds, set last spring, by a full 1,000 percent.
The team behind the reactor is a part of the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AISPP), and achieved the record in late December.
“ASIPP has a perfect team,” Professor Yuntao Song, director-general of ASIPP, said in the release. “We will face up to difficulties no matter how hard it is!”
Store-Bought Sun
This marks another massive milestone for the EAST reactor. Dubbed the “artificial Sun,” the reactor is able to partly replicate the natural nuclear fusion process of stars. Researchers hope that it could eventually lead to sustainable, clean energy production.
The length that the EAST reactor can hold the high plasma temperatures is key. Fusion reactions need to be self-sustaining, and superheated plasma could be used to eventually create a self-sustaining reaction.
So we’re still likely a while off from commercial fusion power, even if some experts believe it’s just around the corner. Regardless, it’s cool to see China break record after record in the international race to create sustainable fusion power.
Long before sending off NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on its long journey into deep space last month, engineers took the opportunity to take an epic group selfie back in 2017 — using their reflection in the telescope’s 21-foot mirror.
It’s an awe-inspiring look at the sheer scale of the operation that went viral on Reddit after the launch, not to mention a fitting homage to the thousands of scientists who made last week’s launch happen.
The Great Unfurling
The massive structure took off on top of an Ariane 5 rocket from a spaceport in French Guiana on December 25, the culmination of tens of billions of dollars spent and decades of research and development.
Fortunately, everything is still going according plan — which is significant, given the hundreds of maneuvers the telescope has to complete to fully unfurl itself before becoming operational in a distant orbit around the Sun.
“Everything is hunky-dory and doing well now,” Amy Lo, a lead engineer for the telescope’s prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, during a Monday press conference, as quoted by the Associated Press.
Big Stretch
Over the weekend, the telescope successfully extended its sunshield, a protective cover designed to keep its scientific instruments safe and protected from harmful solar rays.
Chances are we won’t be hearing much from the JSWT team over the next coming days — and that’s a good thing.
“The best thing for operations is boring, and that’s what we anticipate over the next three days, is to be boring,” project manager Bill Ochs said during the conference.
In 1970, Allen Funt, the creator of the original and still most famous hidden camera, practical joke reality show, Candid Camera, released an X-rated movie calledWhat Do You Say to a Naked Lady? with an obvious premise that warranted the famous “adults only” X-rating. In late 2021, atrailerwas released for “Redgate” which was touted as a “True story film, with real footage of UFOs and Aliens” … including trail cam footage of what was described as a “naked alien.” What do you say to a naked alien? Until the movie is released (no date yet), let’s focus on what do you say ABOUT a naked alien … particularly one recorded in a known UFO hotspot location in Montana.
Was it a full alien Monty?
“The first one to think it was a person, but then the more I look at it was just odd, it was out of place and everything just matches the alien persona the bigger bulbous head, you can tell he has no clothes, it’s kind of a transparent being.”
The Sun this week featured the story of Donald Bromley, who claims to be a hunter in the Redgate area near the city of Deer Lodge in western Montana. (More on Redgate later.) Bromley says he had a large number of hidden cameras in Redgate in 2019 to track deer, wolves and other animals. When he saw he one particular recording (watch it here), he suspected it was an “alien persona” because the Redgate area has a history of UFOs and strange paranormal activity, as he described to KXLF.
“It’s just very rich in the paranormal field, like the UFOs, lights in the sky unexplainable things.”
It’s also very difficult to get to, which convince Bromley what he recorded was not a human – especially since no other trail cam sensors were tripped. Word of the video then reached Patrick W. Cutler, a Montana independent filmmaker and host of the Prison City Podcast – Deer Lodge is the home of the Montana State Prison. Cutler knows the history of the Redgate area – he told KXLF the name goes back 50 or more years to a bloody murder.
“Basically, there was a guy who had a farm or homestead and he came home one day from work and basically murdered his entire family and painted their gate red with their blood.”
From there, strange things began happening near Deer Lodge.
“There have been several people they’re driving around and they see something really bizarre just fly across the sky out of nowhere. I’ve heard stories of people just happen to be up here and out of nowhere their car just stalls out for no reason.”
A 2004 documentary titled “The Secret of Redgate” interviewed locals on their experiences with extraterrestrial beings, which many believe to be “Reticulians” or small grey aliens. Enough has happened since then to inspire Cutler to produce his own “Redgate” documentary with Bromley’s ‘naked alien’ as one of the new stories.
I had a grey jumpsuit on!
What do you say to a naked alien? Bromley and Cutler don’t say, but it appears they both believe the Redgate area is a Montana paranormal and UFO hotspot and Bromley’s recorded being was not a human. We’ll just have to wait for the file to be released to find out.
There are countless tales of the strange lurking about all about the Internet, many of them in the dark corners where many do not think to even look for them. Occasionally one will come across an incredible story that is at once completely outlandish and eyebrow raising, seeming to be surely the stuff of tall tales, and this is certainly one of those. The somewhat dubious tale we are looking at here begins with a man named John Smith, who was supposedly born in 1941 into a military family, going on in his young adult years to enroll in the military college of the US Air Force in 1960, from where he allegedly graduated with flying colors. He would go on to fight as a pilot in the Vietnam War, earning a “Medal for Service in Vietnam” and quite the reputation as a respected ace pilot, after which he set his sights on becoming an astronaut. In this endeavor he apparently succeeded, and he was assigned as what is referred to as a “cleaner,” part of a space mission to clear Earth’s orbit of various space junk including pieces of rockets, out of service satellites, and other random detritus and trash to make the void safe for space travel. This is where his life would apparently get weird, and become a very strange tale of a man lost in space, only to reappear alive decades later under some very mysterious circumstances.
In the 1970s, the U.S. government was fully engaged in an anti-satellite program in order to monitor and possibly engage enemy spy satellites. This had been going on since the early 1960s, with the creation of Program 505 in 1962, based at the Kwajalein Missile Range, about halfway between Hawaii and the Philippine islands, and using the Nike Zeus anti-ballistic missile to intercept satellites. This went on to form the foundation of Program 437, which was the second anti-satellite weapons program of the U.S. military, this time using PGM-17 Thor ballistic missiles to intercept low Earth orbiting satellites, and which had its facilities on Johnston Island, an isolated island in the north central Pacific Ocean. Both programs carried out a series of tests of high-altitude nuclear explosions and both were very real, but the program that Smith would supposedly become involved in was a bit different. Even when official anti-satellite programs and development were ended in 1975, anti-satellite technology continued, and Smith would become involved in one such plan, using astronauts to supposedly act as a security patrol in space against enemy satellites.
In this case, the idea was apparently to use a top-secret network of manned space vehicles designed to detect, hunt down, and destroy enemy ballistic missiles as well as satellites. The story goes that in October of 1973, Smith was launched up into space on a mission aboard a vessel disguised as a satellite in order to remain undetected as he went about his mysterious, top-secret work. Three days apparently went by without incident, but then his ship entered an area of anomalous heightened radiation and his maneuvering and orientation systems inexplicably went haywire. At the time there were also purportedly several unexplained bursts of unexplained radio noise that could not be tracked. NASA apparently tried to save the stricken astronaut, but were unable to do so, and his communications equipment then shut down entirely to leave him lost to space.
Soon after the strange incident, NASA purportedly went about covering it all up, noting the failed mission as simply the result of an accident during a training flight, making no mention of the radiation or the radio interference, and highly classifying the whole thing. There it would remain, in the files of tragedies in space, Smith relegated to the files of lost astronauts and space mysteries, but then in 2000, the lost spaceship that had been carrying Smith was allegedly discovered quite by accident when an amateur astronomer in the Fiji Islands observed an anomalous orbiting object at an altitude of 470 kilometers and reported it to the proper authorities, who became convinced that it was Smith’s spacecraft based on its trajectory and appearance. They then went about trying to retrieve the craft, and as it had fallen into a stable and low orbit it was able to be collected during the next flight of the shuttle Endeavor in 2001. This is where things get really weird.
When the spacecraft was brought to earth, it was apparently opened and much to the utter shock of all present, Smith was not only found inside, but he was still alive even after decades of being lost in space. He was unconscious and seemed to be in some sort of state of suspended animation, but no one could figure out how this could be. Efforts were made to revive him, and a medical examination would soon turn up some strange anomalies. For one, although Smith’s heart was in the right location, the thing was that before the flight he had been one of those rare people whose heart lies to the right rather than the more common left, yet now it was where it should be. There was also the fact that there were no signs of the fracture of the ribs he had sustained as a young boy and several large moles that he had had were gone, as well as some scars that he was known to have had. It was as if his body had been somehow “fixed.” This would only be the beginning of the strangeness, as his personal notebook was found with him in the compartment, which happened to be missing 50 pages and supposedly had 24 pages full of cryptic symbols that resembled hieroglyphics and which no one could decipher.
When Smith was lucid enough to talk, he would turn out to have no memory of what had happened to him and no awareness that he had been lost in space for nearly three decades, no sense that any time had passed at all, and he was quite the conundrum. As authorities tried to figure out what was going on, Smith would allegedly pull off one last mystery, when he one day just suddenly vanished from the facility where he was being kept without a trace. There was no sign as to how he could have escaped the secured area undetected, no trace of him on CCTV footage, nothing. It was as if he had just evaporated into thin air.
That is where this bizarre tale apparently ends. The government came in and had the whole thing classified and buried, and that was that. Seeing as the case only seems to be talked about on a few conspiracy sites and Reddit, with no sources really given and the whole “government top-secret cover-up” angle played to the hilt, there is a very likely chance that this is nothing but the stuff of Internet legends and creepypasta stories, the result of some people getting a little creative and starting up “unsolved mysteries” that have never really existed outside of the imagination. Take it all with a grain of salt, but the story has made the rounds, and true or not, tall tale or otherwise, it is all pretty bonkers and eye-brow raising all the same.
An unusual object was found on the Mars surface. Something that looks similar to something that may have fallen off a rocket, but it's clearly not part of the rover lander, because there are no rover tread marks coming from it. Instead the sand around it has ripples of bending and turning with the wind, but no tracks at all. Also there is no sign of other landing equipment. I have seen the landing craft of the rover and this is nothing like that. There have been many missions to Mars and this could be part of one of those craft, but the photo has no labels, no explanation and no notes at all. This very possibly could be alien technology found by the Mars Rover.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Below you see the rover looking at the debris but there is no tracks coming from the debris.
I found some alien structures on earths moon today. The structures are in a crater called Grotrian. One building is hexagon shaped, with a rectangle in its center. The other is like a military hanger. I also pointed out a few other possible structures and at 10:26 into the video below, I discovered another structure half buried. There is proof all around us of intelligent life in the universe, but this life which created it...was not across the universe, but on our own moon! And really, was it a living biological species or was it a species of AI robots? Whatever created these structures...one thing is obvious...it was very intelligent to create such things on the moon.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Please help me out. I need more subscribers and hope you can subscribe to my channel. Thanks. SCW
New UFO video off the coast of Alaska 20 miles east of Mt. Redoubt. The event took place on 4th January 20222 at approximately 7:17pm Alaskan standard and lasted around three minutes time, according to witnesses it was extremely bright.
The aliens who wrecked my life: When PC Alan Godfrey had a close encounter, he was branded crazy and the fallout cost his job, his health and his marriage - with Hollywood set to tell his story do you believe his tale?
The year was 1980. Margaret Thatcher was in No. 10 and Jimmy Carter was in theWhite House. The Cold War was bracing and the Iron Curtain frozen shut. The Empire Strikes Back was packing out cinemas.
On a wet road in West Yorkshire, early in the morning of November 28, a policeman, coming to the end of his night shift, received a report from Todmorden, a small market town in the Calder valley, where people were complaining that a herd of cows had escaped from a field and were wandering around their gardens.
The officer in question was PC Alan Godfrey, then a 33-year-old married father of two, based at ‘Tod nick’. He set off to take a look. As he turned his Ford Escort panda car into Burnley Road at about 5.15am, he saw what he thought was a broken-down bus, blocking the road. Only, it wasn’t a bus. ‘As I inched closer, driving at a crawl, I saw a diamond-shaped object, about 20ft wide and 14ft high, literally hanging in the air about 5ft off the road.
‘It was spinning slowly, and the leaves on the road underneath were spinning in the opposite direction. It looked very real; real enough that if I’d got out of my car and thrown a brick at it, it would have made a clang,’ Alan recalls now.
On a wet road in West Yorkshire, early in the morning of November 28, a policeman, coming to the end of his night shift, received a report from Todmorden
Instead of getting out of the car, Alan turned on his blue light and tried to call in the incident. Yet curiously, neither his car radio, nor his personal set, was working.
‘Then my policeman’s instincts kicked in and I decided to make a sketch, just as I would if I’d come across a road traffic accident, to show the positions of the vehicles involved.’ There was then a ‘brilliant, white, blinding flash — a bit like having your photograph taken with the flash gun in your face’, and the next thing he remembers he was driving, stunned, in the opposite direction, back towards the police station, having lost several minutes of time.
The object had vanished but the patch of road surface was bone dry.
Far-fetched claims indeed. Could Alan simply have been overtired? Might he be a fantasist?
When you meet Alan Godfrey, a plain-speaking, affable Yorkshireman with two police commendations, he’s not the swivel-eyed oddball one normally associates with kooky UFO stories. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool beat bobby who has ‘no time for daft buggers’.
‘It was a factual event. It was real,’ he says today, as we revisit the spot — a non-descript, busy main road, with a stream and a park on one side — on a comparable cold, blustery day, 41 years later.
‘Was it an alien craft I saw, or was it of this earth? I don’t know. To be honest, it’s such a long time ago that it doesn’t matter to me whether people believe me or not. It happened.’
The officer in question was PC Alan Godfrey, then a 33-year-old married father of two, based at ‘Tod nick’. He set off to take a look
Whatever ‘it’ was nearly ruined Alan’s life. Ridiculed and hounded out of the job he loved, he slumped into alcoholism and his marriage broke up.
It was the love of his second wife, Kathryn, whom he married in 1995, that made him pick himself up and hold his head high again.
Alan is now something of a local celebrity, having been on the after-dinner speaking circuit for years. He has sat on TV sofas with Selina Scott and Frank Bough and had his story told by TV networks all over the world. His book, Who Or What Were They?, was published in 2017.
And, whatever your take on it, this is a fascinating tale. Which is why it is set to be turned into a Hollywood movie.
Alan has signed a deal with producer and screenwriter Michael Grais, best known as the co-writer of the 1982 film Poltergeist.
Michael is a huge Alan fan. ‘I met Alan and I totally believed him, 110 per cent. I did not feel there was a dishonest word coming out of his mouth,’ he says, speaking from California. ‘I’m not a UFO guy who sees conspiracies everywhere — I’m not part of that crew.
‘I’ll start writing the script in the summer and approach film companies. UFO stuff is very popular in the U.S. because, for the first time, the government has just admitted that they exist.’
What Michael is referring to here is the long-awaited, U.S. government report into UFOs published in June. Although the report did not admit to the existence of little green men, it did reveal that there were objects appearing in the sky that the Pentagon — which controls the U.S. military — could not explain, and the existence of extraterrestrials couldn’t be ruled out.
As he turned his Ford Escort panda car into Burnley Road at about 5.15am, he saw what he thought was a broken-down bus, blocking the road. Only, it wasn’t a bus
Todmorden has its own unique history concerning other-worldly matters. The Pennine region between Yorkshire and Lancashire has been dubbed ‘UFO valley’, as its unique geology and geography have led to thousands of what investigators term UAPs, or ‘Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena’.
For example, just a week before Alan’s ‘encounter’, three Halifax policemen looking for a stolen motorbike saw bright lights moving around in the sky, something Alan learned about only years later.
But there was another, truly horrific, incident five months before Alan’s UFO sighting — again in Todmorden — that captured the world’s attention. Curiously, PC Alan Godfrey was one of the two officers who investigated that case.
Zigmund ‘Ziggy’ Adamski, a 56-year-old miner of Polish descent, had gone missing from his home near Wakefield in June 1980 after he’d nipped out to the local shop to buy some potatoes.
Five days later, his body was discovered 20 miles away at a coal yard in Todmorden. He was found lying on top of a 15ft coal pile, wearing a suit but no shirt. There were burn marks on the crown of his roughly shorn head and another wound at the back of his neck.
‘The oddest thing was that there was no coal dust or dirt on his body — he looked as though he’d simply lain down and died, on top of that pile of coal, having left no sign of how he got up there,’ says Alan.
‘His clothes, to me, suggested he’d been hastily redressed after death. But it was the look on his face that shocked me the most — I’ll never forget it. He looked like he’d been scared to death.’
Instead of getting out of the car, Alan turned on his blue light and tried to call in the incident. Yet curiously, neither his car radio, nor his personal set, was working
James Turnbull, the coroner who dealt with Zigmund’s death, commented later that it was the biggest mystery of his career. Why, for example, had he been missing for five days and yet had only one day’s growth of beard? And a corrosive liquid, found around the site of the neck wound couldn’t be identified.
A post-mortem examination concluded that Zigmund had died of heart failure due to ‘ischaemic heart disease’ and emphysema. The coroner recorded an open verdict.
No one was ever arrested or charged over his death. And while few doubt that he was killed, the strange circumstances led many to speculate about who, or what, that killer or killers might have been.
But back to that November incident which, predictably, made Alan the butt of his hard-bitten colleagues’ jokes. ‘When I walked into the station later that evening to begin my next shift, I was greeted with “ey up, it’s Captain Kirk”.’ But things were soon to turn very nasty. This was 1980, three months before the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, was caught.
West Yorkshire Police were under enormous scrutiny for failing to halt his five-year killing spree, and the last thing their public image needed was a local policeman in the news talking about seeing aliens. But, inevitably, the story leaked to the local newspaper, under the jokey headline ‘May The Force Be With You’.
But soon it wasn’t so funny. After the story went national, Alan was stunned to receive a letter from a professor at Moscow University, asking for more information about his ‘encounter’. In the middle of the Cold War, the USSR would have been very interested in unexplained aircraft, looking for military secrets. Alan dutifully handed everything to his superiors.
‘Then one day I was called into the inspector’s office and sitting there was a man in civilian clothing, who simply introduced himself as “the Man from the Ministry”.
‘He had a file on his lap which, when it flipped open, I could see contained my drawing from the night and my sudden-death report on Zigmund Adamski.
When you meet Alan Godfrey, a plain-speaking, affable Yorkshireman with two police commendations, he’s not the swivel-eyed oddball one normally associates with kooky UFO stories
‘They cited the Official Secrets Act and ordered me, in no uncertain terms, not to speak of it to the Press. After that, I felt they were out to get me. I left the job four years later.’
Alan talks about being persecuted, of seeing the ‘Man from the Ministry’ everywhere. He suspects his phone was tapped.
In 1984, he was offered a way out because of an old injury. He left the force with an unblemished, exemplary record.
He worked as a butcher, then for a security agency, but had started drinking heavily — a bottle of whisky a day. His marriage broke up in 1988. Fiercely protective of his ex-wife and family, he refuses to drag them into his story further.
By the early 1990s, he was at rock bottom. ‘I ended up living in a friend’s bedroom; I’d lost everything. I had no money, I’d parted from my first wife. It was Christmas and I couldn’t buy the kids anything. I remember lying face down on the floor, thinking there was no point in carrying on.
‘Then, suddenly, I thought: “Right, enough is enough. Get a grip, you daft bugger!” And that’s what I did. I got myself a flat, met Kath and she sorted me out.’
‘Sorted’ is exactly how you’d describe Alan today. Happily married, with three grandchildren and now retired, he clearly revels in his celebrity status around town. He drives a car with ‘UFO’ on the number plate.
But still the cynics pour scorn on his claims. The key sceptic is Dr David Clarke, associate professor at Sheffield Hallam University, where he is a co-founder of the Contemporary Legend research group and author of the book The UFO files.
He’s been following Alan’s story — and that of Zigmund Adamski — since he worked as a reporter on The Yorkshire Post.
Whatever ‘it’ was nearly ruined Alan’s life. Ridiculed and hounded out of the job he loved, he slumped into alcoholism and his marriage broke up
His take on what happened in June and November of 1980 is very different from the former police officer’s.
‘I don’t dispute Alan saw something that night, but what it was I wouldn’t want to say,’ he says.
‘When people speak of hallucinations, there are bad connotations as they are associated with mental illness, but completely sane people have hallucinations all the time.’
Dr Clarke cites the work of the late groundbreaking neurological anthropologist Oliver Sacks, who described a hallucination as ‘seeing with the brain — something that isn’t under our control, that seems to come from the outside and to mimic perception’, and for which there is always a physical, medical explanation.
‘Alan describes sitting, looking at this thing and then a blast of white light, after which he couldn’t remember anything, until he found himself driving along the road. That sounds exactly like someone describing an epileptic fit.
‘As for Adamski, he was most certainly abducted, tortured and killed — but not by aliens. His death was caused by human beings. And what better way to wipe away traces of evidence from a body than to dump it on top of a coal pile in the pouring rain, to have everything washed away?
‘The case should have been investigated properly, and it wasn’t because of this alien connection.’
When the Ministry of Defence released all its files on UFO sightings to the National Archives back in 2014, Alan’s report was not in there.
Alan has signed a deal with producer and screenwriter Michael Grais, best known as the co-writer of the 1982 film Poltergeist
‘Alan sees this as a cover-up by the MoD, but I think it wasn’t there because West Yorkshire Police didn’t send it to them,’ says Dr Clarke. ‘They never received it; they were embarrassed.
‘As for the “Man from the Ministry” . . . that was clearly a man from Yorkshire Police, trying to get him to shut up.
‘What Alan does make clear is that it was real to him. But what if you’d been driving along the same road, at the same time. Would you have seen what Alan saw, or would you have seen some copper sitting in his car, staring straight ahead?’
Alan bats Dr Clarke’s comments away with affable good humour. No, he isn’t epileptic, and no he hasn’t had any ‘hallucinations’ before or since that episode.
‘But I do often think about that night, and what would have happened if I’d turned right up into the estate, and not carried along Burnley Road. My life would have been very different.
‘Would I have reported the incident, if I’d known what would happen? Probably not.’
Na een jaar vol coronagolven, overstromingen en confronterende klimaatrapporten trakteert Hetty Helsmoortel je op wat luchtiger nieuws. Hier volgt voor elke maand van het jaar een al dan niet wetenschappelijk fait divers!
Januari
In januari lossen Zwitserse en Russische professoren een meer dan zestig jaar oude verdwijningszaak op met dank aan de Disney-film Frozen. Het computeralgoritme dat in de film gebruikt wordt om digitale sneeuw en ijs realistisch te laten overkomen, kan namelijk het ultieme bewijs leveren dat een groep avonturiers in 1959 door een sneeuwramp om het leven kwam. Het maakt meteen een einde aan vele complottheorieën, zoals dat ze ontvoerd zouden zijn door aliens, aangevallen door een yeti, of dat hun verdwijning een experiment was van de Russische overheid. Boodschap aan de samenzweerders: laat het los.
Februari
In februari maakt de nieuwe Mars-rover Perseverance een geslaagde landing. De parachute bestaat uit een chaotische aaneenschakeling van rode en witte vlakken. Maar NASA zou NASA niet zijn als in dat patroon geen code verstopt zit. Na een paar uur rekenen vinden puzzelaars het antwoord: ‘Dare mighty things’: durf machtige dingen doen.
Maart
In maart vindt een Amerikaanse podcaster een nieuwe pastavorm uit. Alle bestaande pastasoorten voldeden volgens hem nooit aan drie belangrijke criteria tegelijk: sausbaarheid (of ze precies de juiste hoeveelheid saus kan op- nemen), vorkbaarheid (of je ze makkelijk op je vork kunt prikken) en tandzinkbaarheid (of ze voldoening geeft om er je tanden in te laten zinken). Zijn gloednieuwe Cascatelli – Italiaans voor waterval – voldoen aan alle criteria. De eerste zevenhonderd dozen zijn binnen de twee uur uitverkocht. Zijn ‘mission impastable’ is geslaagd.
Bron: Wikipedia Commons
April
In april krijgt een Poolse dierenhulporganisatie een oproep binnen over een vreemd beest dat in een boom op de loer zou liggen. ‘Mensen openen hun ramen niet meer, omdat ze bang zijn dat het hun huis zal binnensluipen’, klinkt het. Nog maar een voorbeeld van diersoorten die oprukken naar het noorden op zoek naar een koelere habitat? Nee hoor, het blijkt uiteindelijk om een croissant te gaan.
Mei
In mei komt een onderzoeksbureau met het nieuws dat gummibeertjes en muntjes de grootste economische slachtoffers van de coronapandemie zouden zijn. De beertjes omdat mensen amper impulsaankopen doen bij online shoppen, de muntjes omdat mensen bij minder contact met vreemde ook minder nood hebben aan een frisse adem.
Jebulon op Wikipedia Commons.
Juni
In juni stellen Britse en Nieuw-Zeelandse onderzoekers een naar eigen zeggen revolutionair apparaat voor gewichtsverlies voor. Met de DentalSlim worden de boven- en ondertanden met magneten aan elkaar vastgemaakt, zodat patiënten hun mond niet verder dan 2 millimeter kunnen opendoen.
Juli
In juli, bij de start van de Olympische Spelen, leer ik dat al het metaal voor de bijna vijfduizend gouden, zilveren en bronzen medailles uit afgedankte elektronische apparaten gehaald werd, die in heel Japan werden ingezameld.
Turnster Nina Derwael won dit jaar een gouden turnmedaille op de brug met ongelijke leggers.
Augustus
Voor augustus vond ik – net als vorig jaar – niets. Het was dan ook alweer komkommertijd. De langste komkommer ter wereld dateert trouwens nog steeds van 2011 en is 107 centimeter lang.
September
Over komkommers gesproken: in september horen we dat het Gentse Universiteitsmuseum GUM een nieuwe expo voorbereidt over de fallus. Klein probleem wel: alle e-mails van medewerkers blijven vastzitten in de firewall. Aan de ICT-collega’s moet worden gevraagd of de spamfilter van de universiteit voor een paar maanden wél alle piemels kon doorlaten.
Oktober
In oktober lees ik dat twee Franse monniken twee 5G-masten in brand staken (zie ook ‘Monniken met illusies’, Eos nr. 11, 2021). Ze wilden naar eigen zeggen aandacht vragen voor gezondheidsrisico’s van 5G. Voor alle duidelijkheid: wetenschappelijk bewijs is daar niet voor. De kloosterorde staat achter de overtuiging van de monniken en ziet de brandstichting als ‘een losstaande actie en een fout van de jeugd’. De monniken zijn 39 en 40 jaar oud.
November
In november gaat mijn wetenschappelijk jaaroverzicht Missie 2021in première, waarin ik terugkijk op de verhalen die mij als wetenschapper én als mens het afgelopen jaar het meest geraakt hebben.
December
En vorige week werd de James Webb Space Telescope gelanceerd. De opvolger van de Hubbletelescoop zal ons de komende jaren moeten verbluffen met nieuwe beelden én kennis van ons machtige universum.
HET ONTVOUWEN VAN DE MACHTIGE JAMES WEBB-TELESCOOP IS IN VOLLE GANG
Vivian Lammerse
Het duimendraaien is begonnen. Want terwijl de ruimtetelescoop door het uitgestrekte heelal vliegt, moeten duizenden onderdelen correct en in de goede volgorde worden uitgeklapt.
Afgelopen zaterdag, op eerste kerstdag, was het dan zo ver: de lancering van de langverwachte James Webb-telescoop. En met succes. Want ondanks de vele tegenslagen die de telescoop de afgelopen jaren te verduren heeft gekregen, verliep de lancering op rolletjes. Nu is het duimendraaien begonnen. Want de komende periode is een ongelofelijk spannende, waarin duizenden onderdelen correct, in de goede volgorde, uitgeklapt moeten worden.
Onderdelen De James Webb-telescoop bestaat uit talloze onderdelen. Bij de lancering zaten al die onderdelen netjes in elkaar gevouwen. Maar terwijl de telescoop op zijn eindbestemming afstevent, zullen steeds meer elementen uitgeklapt worden. Dat is zeker geen gelopen race. Volgens NASA kan het na lancering nog op zo’n 300 punten zodanig misgaan, dat de telescoop niet optimaal kan functioneren.
In volle gang Op dit moment is het ontvouwen van de machtige ruimtetelescoop – en dus het duimendraaien – in volle gang. Zo’n dertig minuten na de lancering werden de zonnepanelen al uitgevouwen. Deze zijn nu volledig ingezet en werken naar behoren. Gisteren volgden de antennes. Met de antennes zal de ruimtetelescoop in staat zijn om tweemaal daags tenminste 28,6 gigabyte aan wetenschappelijke gegevens naar de aarde te verzenden. Daarnaast zijn ook de temperatuursensoren op de telescoop geactiveerd, waarmee technici de thermische systemen van de telescoop in de gaten kunnen houden.
Zonneschild De komende periode zullen er steeds meer onderdelen volgen. Met name het uitklappen van het immense zonneschild, dat ongeveer net zo lang is als een tennisveld, gaat spannend worden. Het zonneschild is namelijk van cruciaal belang voor het functioneren van de telescoop. Dit schild wordt als een soort paraplu om de spiegels en instrumenten van de telescoop gevouwen en beschermt onder meer de zeer gevoelige infrarood-instrumenten – die heel koud moeten blijven om te functioneren – tegen de warmte van de zon. De eerste stappen voor het uitklappen van het zonneschild zullen vandaag worden gezet.
Spiegels Een ander zenuwslopend moment zal het uitvouwen van de spiegels zijn. De James Webb is uitgerust met zowel een hoofdspiegel (die uit achttien afzonderlijke spiegels bestaat die zich samen als één grote spiegel moeten gedragen) en een secundaire spiegel. Op dag tien van de missie zal de secundaire spiegel in gereedheid worden gebracht. Deze spiegel is één van de belangrijkste onderdelen op de telescoop en essentieel voor het succes van de missie. En dus mag er tijdens het uitklappen niets misgaan. De spiegel bevindt zich op drie stangen die vanaf de hoofdspiegel naar de secundaire spiegel lopen. Deze kleinere, ronde spiegel speelt vervolgens een hele belangrijke rol bij het verzamelen van het licht van de hoofdspiegel. Het idee is dat de hoofdspiegel het zwakke licht van onder meer de eerste en meest afgelegen sterrenstelsels verzamelt. De secundaire spiegel reflecteert vervolgens het door de hoofdspiegel verzamelde licht in de wetenschappelijke instrumenten aan boord van James Webb. Het is belangrijk dat de spiegels goed worden geïnstalleerd, want een afwijking van meer dan 38 nanometer – één duizendste van de dikte van het haar van een mens – kan al problemen op leveren. Het uitvouwen van de hoofdspiegel begint op dag twaalf.
Bekijk in deze video wanneer alle specifieke onderdelen uitgevouwen zullen worden.
In totaal zal James Webb er 29 dagen over doen om al zijn onderdelen in gereedheid te brengen. En dat terwijl de telescoop ook nog eens in rap tempo op zijn eindbestemming afstevent: een plek op een slordige 1,6 miljoen kilometer van de aarde. Het belooft dan ook een zenuwslopende periode te worden, waarin er nog van alles mis kan gaan. Maar als de telescoop erin slaagt zijn reis succesvol te voltooien, sluit hij daarmee formeel de moeilijkste en meest complexe implementatiereeks af die ooit in de ruimte is uitgevoerd.
After shedding its fairing and booster rocket, the first two deployments are 'automatic,' meaning they happen without the ground giving commands. Once the solar panel is deployed, the telescope will go off of battery power and start generating its own power.
Traditiegetrouw sluiten we het jaar af met een lijst van de mooiste ruimtefoto’s. Wat waren de allermooiste ruimtefoto’s van dit jaar? Ruim 900 bezoekers kozen de volgende tien foto’s.
We tellen in dit artikel terug van de nummer 10 naar de nummer 1. De hoger geplaatste foto’s hebben betere beoordelingen gekregen van de bezoekers en staan daarom hoger in de lijst.
Net buiten de lijst: Spiraalstelsel NGC 1317
NGC 1317 is een klein spiraalstelsel op een afstand van 55 miljoen lichtjaar van de aarde. Dit sterrenstelsel ligt vlak naast “grotere broer” NGC 1316. NGC 1316 heeft drie miljard jaar geleden een spiraalstelsel opgeslokt. NGC 1316 en NGC 1317 zijn lid van een clubje genaamd “De Lokale Groep”, waar ook de Melkweg deel van uitmaakt. De foto is gemaakt door de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop. NGC 1317 eindigde net buiten de top 10.
#10 Bolvormige sterrenhoop NGC 6397
De Hubble-ruimtetelescoop maakte begin dit jaar een schitterende foto van deze kosmische juwelen. We zien hier het bolvormige sterrenhoop NGC 6397 op een afstand van 7.800 lichtjaar van de aarde. De blauwe sterren naderen het einde van hun leven. Zij hebben alle waterstof opgestookt en verbranden nu hun heliumvoorraad. Helium fuseert bij hogere temperaturen, waardoor de sterren er blauw uitzien. De rode sterren zijn superreuzen, terwijl de kleine witte sterren zonachtige sterren zijn.
#9 Zonsverduistering in Nederland
Dit jaar was er een zonsverduistering te zien in de Benelux. Op 10 juni schoof de maan deels voor de zon, waardoor een deel van de zon verduisterd werd. Nederlanders en Belgen met een eclipsbrilletje zagen een hapje uit de zon genomen worden. René Bremer legde deze unieke gebeurtenis vast en fotografeerde tegelijkertijd een vliegtuig, namelijk een Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner. Het gaat hier om vlucht UA90 van New York naar Tel Aviv. Een schitterende foto, die door jullie op plek 9 in de eindlijst is gezet. Bekijk meer foto’s van de zonsverduistering op Scientias.nl.
#8 NGC 4254
Het spiraalstelsel NGC 4254 werd eerder dit jaar gefotografeerd door de Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) van ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Dit sterrenstelsel ligt op 45 miljoen lichtjaar afstand van de aarde. De spiraalarmen geven een gouden gloed af, wat komt door de wolken van geïoniseerde waterstof-, zuurstof- en zwavelgas. Hier worden jonge sterren geboren.
#7 Supernovarestant 1E 0102.2-7219
Ruim duizend jaar geleden explodeerde er een zware ster in de Kleine Magelhaense Wolk. De Kleine Magelhaense Wolk is een naburig sterrenstelsel. De restant van de ster is dit jaar gefotografeerd door de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop en staat op een mooie zevende plek in de eindlijst van 2021. Supernovarestant 1E 0102.2-7219 is 202.000 lichtjaar van de aarde verwijderd en werd pas in 1981 ontdekt.
#6 NGC 1300
NGC 1300 bevindt zich op 61 miljoen lichtjaar afstand. Hierboven zijn opnamen van MUSE en ALMA gecombineerd. De ALMA-waarnemingen komen vooral tot uiting in bruinachtig oranje tinten die de aanwezigheid van koud gas onthullen. MUSE is verantwoordelijk voor gouden en blauwe tinten, waarbij de goeden gloed op pasgeboren sterren wijst en de blauwe tinten wat oudere sterren vertegenwoordigen. Bekijk ook andere foto’s van sterrenstelsels.
#5 Centrum van onze Melkweg
De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie heeft dit jaar een bijzondere panorama uitgebracht van ons galactische centrum. Het centrum van de Melkweg bevindt zich op 26.000 lichtjaar van de aarde. Het kosmische meesterwerk is gemaakt door data te combineren van de Zuid-Afrikaanse MeerKAT radiotelescoop en NASA’s Chandra-röntgenobservatorium. Het mozaïek is het resultaat van 370 Chandra-waarnemingen van 1999 tot 2019. In totaal gaat het om 1.555 uur en 26 minuten aan observaties, wat neerkomt op ruim 64 dagen.Het centrum van ons Melkwegstelsel is een kosmisch web van heet gas en magnetische velden met in het midden: een supermassief zwart gat.
#4 Jupiter in drie golflengtes
Wetenschappers hebben verbluffende nieuwe beelden vrijgegeven van planeet Jupiter. Op de foto’s schittert de gasreus op drie verschillende golflengtes van licht, wat ons een uniek inkijkje geeft in de onstuimige atmosfeer van de grootste planeet uit ons zonnestelsel. De beelden in zichtbaar licht en ultraviolet licht werden vastgelegd door Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, terwijl het Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI)-instrument van Gemini North zich ontfermde over de infraroodbeelden. Alle foto’s werden precies op hetzelfde moment gemaakt.
#3 NGC 2276
De Hubble-ruimtetelescoop heeft dit jaareen scherpe foto gemaakt van NGC 2276. Op het eerste gezicht lijkt NGC 2276 een fraai spiraalstelsel, maar wie goed kijkt ziet uitgerekte spiraalarmen en gigantische stervormingsgebieden. Dit sterrenstelsel is 120 miljoen lichtjaar van de aarde verwijderd. In de spiraalarmen van het spiraalstelsel worden veel sterren geboren.
#2 Ster AG Carinae
Hubble vierde zijn 31e verjaardag met deze prachtige foto van AG Carinae. Dit is één van de helderste sterren in ons sterrenstelsel. Om de ster zijn flarden van gas en stof zichtbaar, die onlangs zijn uitgestoten door de ster. AG Carinae is slechts een paar miljoen jaar oud, maar zal binnenkort sterven. In vergelijking: onze zon gaat veel efficiënter om met zijn brandstof en heeft daarom een levensduur van ongeveer tien miljard jaar (waarvan er inmiddels 4,5 miljard jaar zijn verstreken).
De ster is momenteel een zogenoemde Lichtsterke Blauwe Variabele. Zo’n hyperreus zendt meer dan 100.000 keer zoveel licht uit per tijdseenheid als de zon. Wetenschappers denken dat AG Carinae in de nabije toekomst een Wolf-Rayetster wordt. Wolf-Rayetsterren verliezen hun massa door krachtige sterrenwinden. Ze leven heel kort en exploderen in een supernova of hypernova. Uiteindelijk blijft er waarschijnlijk een zwart gat achter.
#1 Stellaire kraamkamer AFGL 5180
Op deze Hubble-foto zien we nieuwe sterren geboren worden. Deze stellaire kraamkamer heet AFGL 5180 en is te vinden in het sterrenbeeld Tweelingen. Sterren ontstaan door het samentrekken van gaswolken (nevels) die wel enkele lichtjaren – de afstand die licht aflegt in een jaar tijd – breed kunnen zijn. De ineenstorting ontstaat onder de invloed van zijn eigen gewicht en de zwaartekracht. Dit proces kan enkele honderdduizenden jaren duren. Lees hier hoe het leven van een ster (van wieg tot graf) eruit ziet.
Met een gemiddeld cijfer van een 8,4 is AFGL 5180 verkozen tot ruimtefoto van het jaar 2021. Een prachtige prestatie!
NASA announce telescope breakthrough for alien-hunting mission
Following the Christmas day launch of the Hubble telescope successor - the James Webb Space Telescope - surprise early progress has been made giving the project a boost that could see it remain in space longer than expected
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched last week by NASAalong with help from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The launch was completed smoothly leaving the telescope to begin the lengthy process of setting up so that it can begin its important work.
It is believed to have cost around £7.9 billion and is regarded as the successor to the Hubble Telescope, taking over as NASA's flagship mission in astrophysics. The new model is set to provide clearer space images, helping us explore far away galaxies and alien life.
The telescope gets its name from the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968, James E. Webb.
The investigations of the telescope will be broad, looking to improve humanity's understanding of astronomy and cosmology.
What breakthrough has the James Webb Space Telescope made?
Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket with NASAs James Webb Space Telescope onboard, is seen at the launch pad on December 23(Image: NASA/AFP via Getty Images)
The launch of the telescope was monumentally successful, which has meant that the project has more fuel to burn than originally expected.
This means the operation can last for longer.
NASA said the telescope would have enough fuel to: "Allow support of science operations for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime”
The minimum timeline for the mission had been set at five years.
The research part of the project gets its energy for research from solar power - the solar panel array for which is believed to have been properly deployed already and ahead of schedule.
The telescope as a whole, however, will use traditional propellant methods to position itself in space correctly to conduct its research.
The telescope aims to get to a position being called L2, which is where it is planned to conduct its research from. However, it is thought to not only have enough rocket propellant to get to this point but also to conduct all of the telescope's requirements for an extended period of time.
These include "station keeping" burns that will keep it the right way up and in the correct position in orbit to conduct its work.
The extra propellant has been saved due to the accuracy of the Ariane 5 launch, which took the telescope into space on Christmas day.
an artist's impression of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), folded in the Ariane 5 rocket during launch(Image: ESA/D DUCROS HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Subsequent correction manoeuvres have also been so accurate that overall fuel has been saved and more is now left in its tanks than was expected.
The solar array was meant to deploy either after the correct angle with the sun was found or after 33 minutes from launch. In a huge moment of success, the array was deployed after 29 minutes after launch.
The next stage is to deploy other parts of the telescope, including mirrors that will help researchers gaze deep into space. It is hoped this stage will be reached a month after the launch.
Once this has been completed the following deployment stages will be human-controlled and so the timing of these steps could vary.
Once everything is deployed correctly months of alignments and calibrations will be needed to ensure the telescope is set up perfectly.
When this stage is reached the James Webb will set about helping humanity learn more and more about the cosmos and expand our knowledge of the great beyond.
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