Pre-Announcement Media Coverage

We are seeing so many remarkable pre-announcement pieces showing up, this is a place to post and discuss them. This one for example, is making discoveries sound 'ho hum' which a few months/years ago were heralded as amazing breakthroughs. Today for example: 

"Nearly Every Star Hosts at Least One Alien Planet"

http://news.yahoo.com/nearly-every-star-hosts-least-one-alien-planet-120845221.html

When a month or so ago they were making a BIG deal about finding one planet in the sweet zone which could possibly support life, son they they say 25% of them could support life! Including mention of red dwarfs, etc. The Zeta predicted evidence continues to build up!

Here is another blog that relates, describing a wobble:

NASA Scientists "Discover" a Wobbly Planet!?

http://poleshift.ning.com/forum/topics/nasa-scientists-discover-a-wobbly-planet

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  • Scott

    No, Planet Nine Won't Kill Us All (4/8/16)

    ...Nemesis is a small star or brown dwarf (a "failed star" that's considerably larger than a planet) hypothesized to zoom through space not far from the sun.

    http://www.space.com/32515-planet-nine-will-not-destroy-earth-nibir...

    ZetaTalk Explanation 1/23/2016 (in "Planet 9"):

    There is great confusion between the Sun’s binary twin and Nibiru, a planet that orbits both foci. Nibiru comes from the direction of the binary twin, and returns in that direction. In the early 1980’s, what is now being termed Planet 9 was being termed Nemesis, and is the reason that NASA/JPL went looking for the source of this perturbation in 1983 with an infrared balloon sent above the atmosphere. They found an object out in the direction of Orion. Nibiru, at that time, was approaching for its next passage around the Sun. A front page article in the Washington Post, published December 31, 1983 documented this search.

  • Kris H

  • casey a

    John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair leading on re: aliens

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    http://simplecapacity.com/2016/04/nasa-openly-admits-alien-life-exi...

    NASA Openly Admits Alien Life Exists: Get Ready for Disclosure!

    Most people ‘in the know’ realize that NASA is just part of the military industrial complex, but a recent open admission on mainstream news that “there are indications of alien life” is likely the beginning of a bid to get your undivided attention before full-forced disclosure ensues.

    Most people already believe what NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan states:

    “I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade . . .I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20-30 years.”

    It isn’t going to take that long if we open our eyes.

    Stofan goes on to say:

    “We’re on the verge of things that people have wondered about for millennia. Within all of our lifetimes we’re going to understand that there is life on other bodies in the solar system. We’re going to understand the implications of that for life here on Earth.”

    What we’re going to understand is that our ‘secret’ government has been hiding this fact for ages. In an effort to transition the US and other countries through its reach to a cabal-run oligarchy, our shadow government has been lying about off-planet corporate slavery ringsalien abductions, benevolent beings who can only do so much until our collective consciousness elevates, and much, much more.

    William Cooper, among others, tried to disclose the true purpose of NASA, but he was exterminated. His death, among thousands of others, will not be in vain.

    We will learn that aside from extraterrestrial beings visiting our planet and many different ET races tinkering with our DNA over millenia, there are ancient humanoid races that are more than 10 million years old.

    We will learn that a recent computer hacking retrieved millions of government and corporate per..., some say as part of documentation for Nuremburg-like trials, will begin soon against those who have mind-controlled, enslaved and tortured us. Undeniable photos of UFOs were also unearthed.

    We will also learn that chemtrails and GMOs were the LEAST of plans made for us ‘sheeple’ and ‘useless eaters’ by a Luciferian cabal, and that President Harry Truman signed a document with certain ETs that allowed the ‘elite’ to conduct highly technological experiments with intelligence gained from these ETs in exchange for looking the other way when certain humans were abducted for ET experiments.

    We will learn that we are not helpless, as we have been programmed to believe. We are, in fact, a rare humanoid race that has an incredible range of emotion and creative power. We will learn that our minds and emotions can either fuel chaos on this planet, or restore it to its rightful place of peace and cooperation, of care for others at least as much as ourselves.

    We will learn that our ascension into infinitely peaceful beings is indeed possible, and it has been described in countless books, many of which have been suppressed along with UFO information.

    NASA is telling us now that the likelihood of alien life is a ruse. Be sure to remember those who have been executed to try to prove this information to us decades ago, and to use discernment when the truth is finally revealed.

    Here’s the full disclosure by William Cooper:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a3IXw1nGCw

    http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ocs/stofan_bio.html

    Aug. 26, 2013

    Dr. Ellen Stofan

    20131114_jw_ellen_stofan.jpg

    Dr. Ellen Stofan was appointed NASA chief scientist on August 25, 2013, serving as principal advisor to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the agency's science programs and science-related strategic planning and investments.

    Prior to her appointment, Stofan was vice president of Proxemy Research in Laytonsville, Md., and honorary professor in the department of Earth sciences at University College London in England. Her research has focused on the geology of Venus, Mars, Saturn's moon Titan, and Earth. Stofan is an associate member of the Cassini Mission to Saturn Radar Team and a co-investigator on the Mars Express Mission's MARSIS sounder. She also was principal investigator on the Titan Mare Explorer, a proposed mission to send a floating lander to a sea on Titan.

    Her appointment as chief scientist marks a return to NASA for Dr. Stofan. From 1991 through 2000, she held a number of senior scientist positions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., including chief scientist for NASA's New Millennium Program, deputy project scientist for the Magellan Mission to Venus, and experiment scientist for SIR-C, an instrument that provided radar images of Earth on two shuttle flights in 1994.

    Stofan holds master and doctorate degrees in geological sciences from Brown University in Providence, R.I., and a bachelor's degree from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. She has received many awards and honors, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Stofan has authored and published numerous professional papers, books and book chapters, and has chaired committees including the National Research Council Inner Planets Panel for the recent Planetary Science Decadal Survey and the Venus Exploration Analysis Group.

    Last Updated: March 23, 2016
  • Scott

    Canadian survey reports increased UFO sightings in 2015 (4/12/16)

    A survey of UFO sightings in Canada found that the country saw a general increase in reported sightings in 2015 and the second highest totals in 30 years.

    The Canadian UFO survey was released on Monday, revealing statistics about various sightings that took place throughout the country in 2015.

    Sources

    http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2016/04/12/Canadian-survey-reports-incr...

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-sees-increase-in-nu...

    http://www.canadianuforeport.com/survey/essay/2015essay.pdf

  • Ryan X

    WISEA 1147 – Rogue Planet or a Brown Dwarf Star?

    http://steamregister.com/wisea-1147-rogue-planet-or-a-brown-dwarf-s...
  • Scott

    Weird Tailless Comet, First Ever Seen, Is a Building Block of Earth (4/29/16)

    [Caption:] This illustration shows the most likely orbit for Comet C/2014 S3 (Pan-STARRS), the first-ever object found to be on a long-period cometary orbit. The comet's current orbit takes 860 years to complete one trip around the sun.

    ..Follow-up observations of dust in this comet's stubby tail — conducted with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope — revealed that S3 more closely resembled stony asteroids from the asteroid belt than a typical comet.

    http://www.space.com/32748-weird-tailless-comet-oort-cloud-discover...

  • Moderating Staff

    Comment by Ecosikh 8 hours ago

    Are aliens living just 40 light-years away? Astronomers 'hit the jackpot' by finding THREE Earth-sized habitable worlds bathed in 'eerie red light' around a nearby star

    • Astronomers have spotted three Earth-sized planets orbiting a dwarf star
    • The miniature planetary system is just 40 light-years away from Earth
    • At least one of these worlds may be not too hot, not too cold, but 'just right'
    • Scientists said they may have 'hit the jackpot' in the search for life

    They're not too hot, not too cold, and may provide just the right conditions for life to form. 

    Astronomers have found three Earth-sized worlds within the so-called habitable 'Goldilocks' zone of a nearby star.

    The scientists believe at least one of these 'three bears' planets may be 'just right' for life to get going, giving the search for life elsewhere in the universe a significant boost.

    Astronomers have found three Earth-sized worlds (artist's illustration showing one of the planets and the star) within the so-called habitable 'Goldilocks' zone of a nearby star. The scientists believe at least one of these 'three bears' planets may be 'just right' for life to get going, giving the search for life in the universe a boost

    Astronomers have found three Earth-sized worlds (artist's illustration showing one of the planets and the star) within the so-called habitable 'Goldilocks' zone of a nearby star. The scientists believe at least one of these 'three bears' planets may be 'just right' for life to get going, giving the search for life in the universe a boost



    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3566047/Are-aliens-l... 

  • Scott

    A sample of the headlines for this story.

    Are we the only intelligent life in cosmos? Probably not, say astronomers. (5/1/16)

    equation: https://www.rochester.edu/news/are-we-alone-in-the-universe/drank-e...

    article: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0501/Are-we-the-only-intellig...

    Are we alone in the universe? Not likely, according to the maths (5/3/16)

    http://www.cnet.com/news/are-we-alone-in-the-universe-not-likely-ac...

    A New Equation Counts How Many Alien Civilizations Have Ever Existed (5/3/16)

    http://mic.com/articles/142562/university-of-rochester-equation-ali...

    The Odds That We’re the Only Advanced Species in the Universe Are Extremely Low (5/3/16)

    http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/odds-were-only-technologica...

    Intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is almost DEFINITE, say scientists (5/3/16)

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/666623/alien-exist-confirmed-...

    Scientists Almost Certain Advanced Life On Other Planets Has Existed At Some Point (5/3/16)

    https://www.good.is/articles/advanced-alien-life

  • Scott

    Planet Nine: A world that shouldn't exist (5/3/16)

    Planet Nine: A world that shouldn't exist

    New research by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) examines a number of scenarios and finds that most of them have low probabilities. Therefore, the presence of Planet Nine remains a bit of a mystery.

    http://phys.org/news/2016-05-planet-world-shouldnt.html

    The Mystery Of Planet Nine: Why Is It So Far From Us? (5/3/16)

    A new study examines the most probable explanations for why Planet Nine exists at the outer edges of our solar system and reveals that even the most likely explanation is highly unlikely.

    http://www.hngn.com/articles/198731/20160503/mystery-planet-nine-wh...

    New Evidence of Undiscovered, Mysterious Planet Nine Befuddles Astronomers (5/4/16)

    For the second time this year, world-class astronomers claimed to have proven the existence of Planet Nine despite being baffled about the planet’s genesis and uncertainty of its present location.

    http://sputniknews.com/world/20160504/1039030303/planet-solar-syste...

    The most likely theories about where ‘Planet Nine’ came from are still pretty crazy (5/4/16)

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/05/...

    ZetaTalk Chat Q&A for April 23, 2016

    The Planet 9 prong also presented the cover story that astronomers do not always agree, nor are they always wise and knowledgeable.  They argue. They grope. And through all this ZetaTalk will stand like a beacon.

  • Moderating Staff

    Comment by Ecosikh 7 hours ago

    Did first humans to reach the Moon see an alien spaceship? Recently discovered Apollo 8 image appears to show mysterious object on lunar surface

    • A film clip from the famous NASA mission shows a large triangular object
    • Shape looks three-dimensional, prompting speculation it could be a UFO
    • Apollo 8 took off from Florida in 1968 and reached moon on Christmas Eve

    Apollo 8 is famous for being the first time humans travelled to the moon - but the astronauts might not have been alone in space, if this image is to be believed.

    Found at the end of a reel of film taken during the mission in December 1968, it appears to show a large triangular object sitting on, or above, the lunar surface.

    The shape is three-dimensional, and seems to be creating its own shadow, prompting speculation that it could be a UFO



    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3579576/Recently-discovered... 
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  • Nancy Lieder

    Astronomer Paul Cox at Slooh.com mentioned Nibiru at 51:27 and the Second Sun at 199:15 during the 8 hour video. Links to those periods in the video below.

    Nibiru
    https://youtu.be/rJwEIAN7UEQ?t=3089

    Second Sun
    https://youtu.be/rJwEIAN7UEQ?t=11947

  • M. Difato

    Planet X approach is ‘causing devastating climate and seismic activity’
    PUBLISHED: Wed, Jun 8, 2016
    THE mysterious Planet X is approaching and will cause widespread destruction across Earth, a conspiracy theorist has claimed.

    Although the planet has not even been confirmed by scientists, some believe that there is an elusive planet in our solar system which has a huge orbit and such a strong magnetic pull that it can effect life on Earth.

    A new video uploaded to YouTube by Skywatch Media News says that Planet X is bound for Earth after completing half of its 3,600-year elliptical orbit.

    It says that the magnetic force of Planet X is so strong that it can effect anything within 48.6 astronomical units (AU) of it – one AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun.

    With the planet having completed the first half of its elliptical orbit, it is heading back towards Earth and its strong magnetic pull is causing problems already.

    Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/678099/Planet-X-approach-is-c...

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    The NY Times

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/yes-there-have-bee...



    CreditGérard DuBois

    LAST month astronomers from the Kepler spacecraft team announced the discovery of 1,284 new planets, all orbiting stars outside our solar system. The total number of such “exoplanets” confirmed via Kepler and other methods now stands at more than 3,000.

    This represents a revolution in planetary knowledge. A decade or so ago the discovery of even a single new exoplanet was big news. Not anymore. Improvements in astronomical observation technology have moved us from retail to wholesale planet discovery. We now know, for example, that every star in the sky likely hosts at least one planet.

    But planets are only the beginning of the story. What everyone wants to know is whether any of these worlds has aliens living on it. Does our newfound knowledge of planets bring us any closer to answering that question?

    A little bit, actually, yes. In a paper published in the May issue of the journal Astrobiology, the astronomer Woodruff Sullivan and I show that while we do not know if any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations currently exist in our galaxy, we now have enough information to conclude that they almost certainly existed at some point in cosmic history.

    Among scientists, the probability of the existence of an alien society with which we might make contact is discussed in terms of something called the Drake equation. In 1961, the National Academy of Sciences asked the astronomer Frank Drake to host a scientific meeting on the possibilities of “interstellar communication.” Since the odds of contact with alien life depended on how many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations existed in the galaxy, Drake identified seven factors on which that number would depend, and incorporated them into an equation.

    The first factor was the number of stars born each year. The second was the fraction of stars that had planets. After that came the number of planets per star that traveled in orbits in the right locations for life to form (assuming life requires liquid water). The next factor was the fraction of such planets where life actually got started. Then came factors for the fraction of life-bearing planets on which intelligence and advanced civilizations (meaning radio signal-emitting) evolved. The final factor was the average lifetime of a technological civilization.

    Drake’s equation was not like Einstein’s E=mc2. It was not a statement of a universal law. It was a mechanism for fostering organized discussion, a way of understanding what we needed to know to answer the question about alien civilizations. In 1961, only the first factor — the number of stars born each year — was understood. And that level of ignorance remained until very recently.

    That’s why discussions of extraterrestrial civilizations, no matter how learned, have historically boiled down to mere expressions of hope or pessimism. What, for example, is the fraction of planets that form life? Optimists might marshal sophisticated molecular biological models to argue for a large fraction. Pessimists then cite their own scientific data to argue for a fraction closer to 0. But with only one example of a life-bearing planet (ours), it’s hard to know who is right.

    Or consider the average lifetime of a civilization. Humans have been using radio technology for only about 100 years. How much longer will our civilization last? A thousand more years? A hundred thousand more? Ten million more? If the average lifetime for a civilization is short, the galaxy is likely to be unpopulated most of the time. Once again, however, with only one example to draw from, it’s back to a battle between pessimists and optimists.

    But our new planetary knowledge has removed some of the uncertainty from this debate. Three of the seven terms in Drake’s equation are now known. We know the number of stars born each year. We know that the percentage of stars hosting planets is about 100. And we also know that about 20 to 25 percent of those planets are in the right place for life to form. This puts us in a position, for the first time, to say something definitive about extraterrestrial civilizations — if we ask the right question.

    In our recent paper, Professor Sullivan and I did this by shifting the focus of Drake’s equation. Instead of asking how many civilizations currently exist, we asked what the probability is that ours is the only technological civilization that has ever appeared. By asking this question, we could bypass the factor about the average lifetime of a civilization. This left us with only three unknown factors, which we combined into one “biotechnical” probability: the likelihood of the creation of life, intelligent life and technological capacity.

    You might assume this probability is low, and thus the chances remain small that another technological civilization arose. But what our calculation revealed is that even if this probability is assumed to be extremely low, the odds that we are not the first technological civilization are actually high. Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first.

    To give some context for that figure: In previous discussions of the Drake equation, a probability for civilizations to form of one in 10 billion per planet was considered highly pessimistic. According to our finding, even if you grant that level of pessimism, a trillion civilizations still would have appeared over the course of cosmic history.

    In other words, given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets, the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational.

    In science an important step forward can be finding a question that can be answered with the data at hand. Our paper did just this. As for the big question — whether any other civilizations currently exist — we may have to wait a long while for relevant data. But we should not underestimate how far we have come in a short time.

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/what-happens-...

    What Happens If GPS Fails?

    Despite massive reliance on the system’s clocks, there’s still no longterm backup.

    In only took thirteen millionths of a second to cause a whole lot of problems.

    Last January, as the U.S. Air Force was taking one satellite in the country’s constellation of GPS satellites offline, an incorrect time was accidentally uploaded to several others, making them out of sync by less time than it takes for the sound of a gunshot to leave the chamber.

    The minute error disrupted GPS-dependent timing equipment around the world for more than 12 hours. While the problem went unnoticed by many people thanks to short-term backup systems, panicked engineers in Europe called equipment makers to help resolve things before global telecommunications networks began to fail. In parts of the U.S and Canada, police, fire, and EMS radio equipment stopped functioning. BBC digital radio was out for two days in many areas, and the anomaly was even detected in electrical power grids.

    Despite its name, the Global Positioning System is not about maps; it’s about time. Each satellite in the constellation (24 are needed, plus the U.S. has several spares) has multiple atomic clocks on board, synchronized with each other and to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)—the time standard used across the world—down to the nanosecond. The satellites continually broadcast their time and position information down to Earth, where GPS receivers in equipment from iPhones to automated tractors acquire signals and use the minuscule differences in their arrival time to determine an exact position.

    What if all these flying clock radios were wiped out, and everything on the ground started blinking 12:00?

    While GPS was initially conceived to aid navigation, globally synchronized time is now a much more critical function of the system. Telecom networks rely on GPS clocks to keep cell towers synchronized so calls can be passed between them. Many electrical power grids use the clocks in equipment that fine-tunes current flow in overloaded networks. The finance sector uses GPS-derived timing systems to timestamp ATM, credit card, and high-speed market transactions. Computer network synchronization, digital television and radio, Doppler radar weather reporting, seismic monitoring, even multi-camera sequencing for film production—GPS clocks have a hand in all.

    But last January’s system failure brings up an often-ignored question: What if all these flying clock radios were wiped out, and everything on the ground started blinking 12:00? According to Mike Lombardi, a metrologist at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, “Nobody knows exactly what would happen.” Since so many of these technologies were designed specifically with GPS in mind, the unsettling truth, he says, is “there’s no backup.”


    This isn’t a secret. Concern for the consequences of the country’s reliance on this invisible utility has been growing among industry and government workers for more than 15 years, after the Department of Transportation issued a report on the need for a backup navigation system, in 2001. But while the means to create one has existed since, a winding bureaucratic path has kept it from actually being implemented. And that leaves many of the everyday tools society depends on vulnerable until one is.

    * * *

    There are plenty of reasons GPS could fail.

    Intentional attack is one, as emphasized by a declassified 2012 risk estimate by the Department of Homeland Security. One of the system’s most basic problems is its signals are weak enough to be easily obstructed. Truckers with cheap jamming devices designed to elude employer tracking have unintentionally interfered with airport systems; criminals thwarting GPS tags on stolen goods in shipping containers have accidentally shut down port operations.  On a grander scale, North Korea has tormented South Korea with waves of jamming attacks. (Jamming devices are now illegal in the U.S., but not difficult to obtain illicitly.)

    A few steps up from jamming devices in both complexity and damage are spoofers: systems that get GPS receivers to lock on to mimicked signal. Spoofers don’t trigger equipment alarms, and deliver altered time and position information to unaware users. It's been suggested that Iran used this tactic tolead astray two U.S. Navy patrol boats captured in the Gulf last January.

    “It wouldn't take that large of an event to take out all GPS."

    A plausible worst-case attack scenario would look something like this: Spoofers feed erroneous data to electrical substation equipment in a metro area, which could overheat power lines and transformers, causing widespread outages. Meanwhile, multiple hidden jammers could cripple cellphone service, and also force fire, police, and emergency medicine departments to revert to old, single-frequency channels. Supplies in this scenario could only be bought in many places with cash, which would be limited without ATM service. According to the DHS report, it could take 30 days or more before the malicious devices are located and disabled. The longer it took, the more systems that would be compromised.



    As for unintentional threats to GPS, the DHS risk estimate lists space debris, space weather, defective software, and good old-fashioned human mistakes, among other things. Of these threats, space weather is the most potentially catastrophic, according to Norwegian geophysicist Pal Brekke, whose country was hardest hit by the January outage. Eruptions of high energy radiation from the sun (known as solar flares) and ejections of electrically charged gases have disabled satellites in the past.

    With satellites and the chips inside them getting smaller as technology progresses, "one particle from the sun that penetrates a satellite can ruin things,” Brekke says. “It wouldn't take that large of an event to take out all GPS."

    * * *

    So far, mitigating the loss of GPS signals has involved two approaches. One is interoperability with other global navigation satellite systems like Russia's GLONASS (which also failed due to a ground control error in 2014) or theEuropean and Chinese systems, both of which are expected to be up by 2020. The other is better clocks, says Lombardi, the NIST metrologist, who's published numerous articles on the topic. "The typical cell tower clock has an oscillator similar to that of a wristwatch," he says, "and can drift out of tolerance in minutes without a signal." How long a clock can maintain time on its own, called "holdover," also affects electrical grids, many of which rely on GPS-dependent devices called synchrophasors used to precisely regulate current flow, as well as help locate faults in the network. A lack of such timing technology was the reason it took some Canadian technicians three months to locate failures after theinfamous blackout of 2003.

    Chip-scale atomic clocks the size of a penny are a promising new technology that can hold time for about a day, but are currently too expensive to deploy widely. Moreover, hedging and holdover still aren't backups for when space-based signals are simply unavailable.

    The bulk of a more promising, comprehensive backup system already exists, right here on the ground. After the sextant but before GPS, navigators around the world used Long Range Aids to Navigation, or “LORAN,” a terrestrial system of transmitters and receiving equipment first developed during WWII. By the mid-1990s, Loran "tower chains" provided coverage for North America, Europe, and other regions in the Northern Hemisphere. Its use declined in favor of the much finer accuracy of GPS after it became available for civil use in 1995, but the U.S. Coast Guard continued working on an improved system using the existing infrastructure. If adopted, "Enhanced" LORAN, or eLoran, could provide positioning accuracy comparable to GPS. Broadcast at hundreds of thousands of watts, the signal is virtually un-jammable, and unlike GPS, can even be received indoors, underwater, and in urban or natural canyons. It also turns out that eLoran can provide a UTC time signal with sub-microsecond time resolution across a large geographical area.


    The technology is available—the Coast Guard demonstrated a working prototypelast year—so why isn’t America using it? John Garamendi, a California congressman, asked this question at a July 2015 congressional hearing on the Federal Radionavigation Plan, the nation's primary planning document for position, navigation, and timing (PNT). "There are two kinds of time," he opened, "real time … and then federal time, which seems to be the forever time. The e-Loran system was identified as a backup 15 years ago, and here we are, federal time, not yet done."

    Cost doesn’t seem to be a problem. A complete alternate PNT system is estimated at $350 million to $400 million; it costs $1 billion yearly to maintain GPS. And science and industry appears to share a consensus that eLoran is the solution. Even the Air Force Colonel and engineer who created GPS, Brad Parkinson, had been on record for years saying "eLoran is the only cost-effective backup for national needs."

    In a 2004, a presidential directive tasked DHS and DOT with creating a backup to the GPS system. In 2008, the DHS issued a press release that it was committing to the system and transferred control from the Coast Guard to its National Protection and Programs Directorate. But push and pull between DHS and the Coast Guard appears to have slowed progress.


    Space Katrina would be biblically catastrophic.

    After this year’s satellite error, many European officials who had previously followed America’s reluctance to adopt eLoran stepped up development. Meanwhile, pressure from Garamendi, who argued in his address that “without an eLoran system in place ASAP, this country is in serious, serious jeopardy,” prompted a letter to him from the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transpor... informing that the PNT Executive Committee has agreed that an eLoran-based timing network “could provide a near term solution” (if private entities bore some of the cost) while they “continue [their] efforts to prescribe a complete set of requirements necessary to support a full complementary PNT capability for the nation.” In other words, it seems: federal time.

    Why is the sense of urgency among decision-makers so out of sync? Could some of it be similar to why people delay backing up our computers even though they’ve been telling themselves to for weeks? How do we decide, when presented a risk with unknown odds, when it’s time to sacrifice time and resources to prevent it?  

    Now is a critically important time to answer that question, as the world actually been given odds on another, even more catastrophic risk than GPS failure: destruction of the electrical power infrastructure itself. On July 23, 2012, a billion-ton cloud of electrified gases blasted off the far side o... at over six million miles per hour. According to professor Daniel Baker at University of Colorado, this coronal mass ejection (CME) "was in all respects at least as strong as the 1859 Carrington Event," referring to the strongest solar storm ever recorded, which set fire to telegraph stations and caused auroras down to Cuba. As was widely reported two years ago, if the 2012 CME had occurred one week later, it would have hit Earth.

    Space Katrina would be biblically catastrophic. Power could be out for years while electrical transformers were repaired, if the resources are even available to do so. "Collateral effects of a longer-term outage would likely include disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration,” reads a 2008 National Academy of Sciences report.

    In 2014, physicist from San Diego calculated the likelihood of a Carrington-level event in the next decade. The odds he came up with were 12 percent.

    The predicament of events like this is not that they’re occurring more frequently, but that the rapid development of technology is opening the tools on which humanity depends to an increasingly wide variety of rare but potentially destructive cosmic threats. In the span of a century, we’ve transferred much of the weight of modern society to global infrastructures with wobbly legs. If they collapse, time will very quickly appear to move backward.

  • Howard

    Planet Discovered that Orbits 2 Suns (Jun 13)

    A team of astronomers announced the discovery of an unusual new transiting circumbinary planet (orbiting two suns).

    This planet, detected using the Kepler spacecraft, is unusual because it is both the largest such planet found to date and has the widest orbit.

    Kepler-1647b, the largest exoplanet to orbit two suns has been found with an orbital period of 3 years.

    "It's a bit curious that this biggest planet took so long to confirm, since it is easier to find big planets than small ones," said another coauthor on the study, SDSU astronomer Jerome Orosz in a press release. "It took so long to confirm because its orbital period is so long."

    Sources

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2016/06/13/tatooine-...

    http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2016/06/13/largest-widest-orbit-tatooine...

    http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/06/newly-discovered-tatooine-is-...

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/health/nasa-kepler-tatooine-planet-tw...

  • Stanislav

    Planet X approach is ‘causing devastating climate and seismic activity’

    8 January, 2016. THE mysterious Planet X is approaching and will cause widespread destruction across Earth, a conspiracy theorist has claimed.

    Although the planet has not even been confirmed by scientists, some believe that there is an elusive planet in our solar system which has a huge orbit and such a strong magnetic pull that it can effect life on Earth.

    A new video uploaded to YouTube by Skywatch Media News says that Planet X is bound for Earth after completing half of its 3,600-year elliptical orbit.

    It says that the magnetic force of Planet X is so strong that it can effect anything within 48.6 astronomical units (AU) of it – one AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun.

    With the planet having completed the first half of its elliptical orbit, it is heading back towards Earth and its strong magnetic pull is causing problems already.

    The video claims that the magnetic pull is tugging on the poles of Earth, causing it to wobble.

    This explains why Earth has undergone climate change in recent years as the Earth is moving slightly off its axis.

    The North pole is being dragged slightly southwards, meaning that the polar ice caps are facing more towards the sun, causing them to melt.

    The video states that: “We are now in the initial stage of the pole shift.”

    This in turn has led to extreme climate change: “Weather is becoming more extreme as Planet X’s strong magnetic pull effects that of Earth.”

    Additionally, the shifting of the poles has caused an increase in seismic and volcanic activity.

    Take a look through these stunning drone images, highlighting the effects of pollution on planet earth but also the opportunities to tackle this scary problem.
    The narrator of the video points to the spate of tremors around the globe in the last couple of months, with deadly quakes striking Ecuador and Japan.

    Additionally, he said that the “tremors are happening near to the surface”, which is making them more dangerous, and he claims that some volcanoes are approaching an unprecedented 40 eruptions a day.

    He states: “One can argue that there is certainly evidence of Planet X’s effects upon Earth, causing it to wobble, which in turn causes high seismic and volcanic activity, as well as extreme weather.

    “The Planet X effect is setting the Earth up for a coming pole shift.”

    Although no one knows what might happen when Planet X reaches its closes point to Earth in its orbit, it is feared that it could spark another ice age or catastrophic earthquakes. Source: express.co.uk

  • SongStar101

    Planet Nine is not alone: More planets predicted to be hiding at edge of Solar System

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/planet-nine-not-alone-more-planets-predict...

    The Solar System could be harbouring far more planets than we currently know about, astronomers have said. After carrying out calculations relating to the hypothetical Planet Nine, the scientists said the presence of even more planets could better explain the unusual orbits of objects at the far reaches of the Solar System.

    Artist's impression of Planet Nine, the planet speculated to exist in our Solar System by scientistsCaltech/R. Hurt IPAC

    Evidence for the existence of Planet Nine was presented by Caltech scientists earlier this year. Scientists found six trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs) with highly unusual orbital paths. However, they said these paths could be explained by the presence of a massive planet (about 10 times the mass of the Earth), the gravity of which was influencing the six objects.

    Since the announcement, scientists across the globe have been running computer simulations and carrying out research in a bid to learn more about this potential planet.

    Spanish astronomers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos along with Sverre J. Aarseth from the University of Cambridge have now looked more closely at the orbits of the ETNOs. By trying to work out their evolution over time, the team said the orbits of these objects are not as stable as scientists first thought.

    Published in the journal Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society, researchers found Planet Nine could keep three of the ETNOs confined to a specific orbit for hundreds of millions of years. However, the three others would become highly unstable in just a dozen million years or so, "eventually triggering their ejection from the Solar System," they wrote.

    Carlos de la Fuente Marcos said: "With the orbit indicated by the Caltech astronomers for Planet Nine, our calculations show that the six ETNOs, which they consider to be the Rosetta Stone in the solution to this mystery, would move in lengthy, unstable orbits.

    "These objects would escape from the Solar System in less than 1.5 billion years and [three of them would] abandon it in less than 300 million years; what is more important, their orbits would become really unstable in just 10 million years − a really short amount of time in astronomical terms." To account for this problem, the authors say Planet Nine's proposed orbit needs to be slightly modified.

    The unusual orbits of objects around Planet 9Caltech/R. Hurt IPAC

    Further to this, however, the researchers say the presence of additional planets would help explain Planet Nine and its ETNOs stable orbits. "We believe that, in addition to a Planet Nine, there could also be a Planet 10 and even more," said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.

    The study concludes: "Is Planet Nine alone or are there more? Planet Nine, if it exists, moves in an elongated orbit that may be vulnerable to long-term secular perturbations resulting from the Galactic tide or discrete events like close encounters with passing stars.

    "In this context, a lone Planet Nine may not be able to survive in its present orbit for the age of the Solar System, but a planet within a planetary group has better chances to be long-term stable. Therefore, if Planet Nine exists, it is probably not alone."

  • Howard

    Newly Discovered Planet Has 27,000 Year Orbit Near Orion's Belt (Jun 15) CVSO 30c, orbits its star at 600 times the distance between the Earth and the sun. and it takes 27,000 years for it to complete a roundtrip.

    The newly-discovered planet is orbiting a T-Tauri star named CVSO 30, which is 1,200 light-years away from Earth in the 25 Orionis group.  It was found by a group of astronomers led by Dr Tobias Schmidt, from the University of Hamburg.

    In 2012, astronomers found CVSO 30 was host to one exoplanet (CVSO 30b). This was found using a detection method known as the transit method, where the light from a star observably dips as a planet travels in front of it.

    But this method is extremely difficult. Because they are small and dim, planets are easily lost in the brilliant glare of the giant stars they orbit.

    Direct imaging is only effective for planets on wide orbits around young stars, because the light from the planet is not overwhelmed by light from the host star, which makes it easier to spot. 

    The new planet, CVSO 30c, was able to be seen through direct imaging because it orbits so unusually far from its host star - at 600 times the distance between the Earth and the sun.

    Because of this, it takes an incredible 27,000 years to complete a single orbit.

    Source

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3642656/The-lonely-p...

  • Mark

    The Daily Mail 'speculates' today what would happen if all 1,500 of the world's active volcanoes erupted all at once; and classifies 'active' as any volcano that has erupted in the last 10,000 years - exactly mirroring the Zeta's prediction that these would be the volcanoes that will erupt during the pole shift.

    And just for good measure, says that the resulting ash fall out would somehow sink buildings!

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    What would happen if Earth's 1,500 volcanoes erupted at once? Experts outline terrifying doomsday scenario

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3642494/What-happen-...

    The Earth currently has 1,500 'active volcanoes' - meaning they have had at least one eruption during the past 10,000 years.

    This is aside from the continuous belt of volcanoes on the ocean floor, about 500 of which have erupted in historical time.

    However, not all eruptions are the same.

    Dr Matthew Watson, a volcano specialist from the University of Bristol told MailOnline: 'You can broadly categorise eruptions into two different types.

    'The first, effusive, produces lava flows and lots of gas. The second, explosive, produces ash and gas.

    'The difference in activity is controlled mostly by the viscosity of the magma.

    'The more viscous the magma, the more difficult it is to get gas out of the system and the more likely you are to have an explosion.'

    Despite the type of eruptions differing massively, if all the world's volcanoes erupted at the same time, the results would be catastrophic in a number of ways.

    Firstly, the people in the firing line of the eruption would be affected, not only by the flow of magma from the volcano, but also from the huge ash clouds expelled.

    Pyroclastic flows are fast-moving clouds of rock, ash and gas that are very hot, with temperatures rising up to 1000°C.

    These would be impossible to outrun or even drive, as they can travel up to 450 miles per hour.

    As well as affecting people near the volcano itself, pyroclastic flows can cause destruction for up to 100 miles from the site.

    The number of people living near volcanoes that this would affect is massive.

    For example, around three million people live near Mount Vesuvius, while 130 million people live on the island of Java which alone has 45 active volcanoes.

    The far-reaching damage

    But the destruction close to the volcanoes would just be the beginning.

    The eruptions would send plumes of volcanic ash into the sky that could travel for thousands of miles.

    Dr Watson said: 'Ash is pretty unpleasant stuff. Its comprised of tiny fragments of glass, crystals and rock.'

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/42433/20160618/nasa-astr...

    NASA Astronomers Discover Earth’s New Asteroid Companion

    First Posted: Jun 18, 2016 04:59 AM EDT

    NASA Astronomers Discover Earth’s New Asteroid Companion

    NASA astronomers have discovered a tiny asteroid which is constantly orbiting the Earth around the sun. By NASA/JPL-Caltech, via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0

    NASA astronomers have discovered a tiny asteroid which is constantly orbiting the Earth around the sun.

    The newly found asteroid, 2016 HO3, was spotted first on April 27 by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii. While, the size of the "quasi-satellite" has not been confirmed yet, it's expected to be between 130 feet and 330 feet wide (40 to 100 meters). Astronomers claim that the asteroid has been out there for about 50 years and will probably stay for centuries to come.

    The new asteroid orbits the sun and constantly circles around Earth as well. Does this mean that Earth has a new moon? Well, the answer is no. It is too far to be considered natural moon or a true satellite of the Earth. Instead, it can be called as a "quasi-satellite."

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    A full list of government FEMA preparations for catastrophe in place by Sept 29 2016. All systems GO by October 1st. The preparation announcements start @ 4:30  @ 6:15 the preps for a catastrophic EMP are listed GridX II a North American wide excercise.

    http://www.nerc.com/pa/CI/CIPOutreach/Pages/GridEX.aspx

    Due to resource constraints the Air Force to discontinue airforce space surveillance system as of October 1st.

    FEMA district 3 alert for Wash. DC,  DE, MD, PA, VA, WV

    FEMA purchase orders for 14.2 million MRE's  and 2 million water pouches to be delivered to District 3 by Oct 1st

    FEMA purchase orders delivered to Austin 13.6 million dollars for MRE's and heater meals by Oct. 1st

    9 week training course for UN Peacekeepers (Foreign Soldiers) to learn urban warfare, English and US Weapons systems ongoing since 4th week of July 2015 Estimated 386,000 troops completed training by Oct 1st 2016

    11 million dollars in antibiotics ordered by CDC and delivered to FEMA region 3 by Oct 1st 2016

    WHO had its 2nd meeting in its history to discuss MERS corona virus. Vaccine must be in place by Oct 1st 2016

    2800 MRAP's (Mine resistant, ambush protected)  must be delivered to DHS by Oct 1st 2016

    No leave will be allowed for US military from Sept 28th to November 5th.............

    NORCON yearly training for civil unrest, suspended until Sept 27th and to be performed in NE Coastal areas

    All DHS agents must qualify with sidearm, shotgun and AR-15 by Sept 28th 2016

    Testing of GPS and communication satellites coordinated for the very 1st time EVER with testing date of Sept 29th 2016

    POTUS mandates to FEMA and DHS dealing with Extreme Climate Change must be completed by Oct 1st 2016

    Over 300 school systems in the US have in place their 3 day kits for each school and 3 day kits for each student to take with them ....deliveries scheduled for month of Sept 2016

    All National Guard untits will complete riot control and disaster assistance training during their annual 2 week training. All training must be completed by Sept 30th 2016

    Daily testing of EBS from Sept 25th through Oct 2nd 2016

    Eastern based Coast Guard units to perform massive group training usually performed in the Gulf, in the VA and DE areas. It's a 10 day training mission beginning Sept 26th 2016

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Emergency_Situations_(Russia) (EMERCOM)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnC0Ct4G3mY

  • Scott

    Small Moon Discovered Orbiting Dwarf Planet Makemake (June 28, 2016)

    makemake moon

    Scientists have discovered a small moon orbiting Makemake, a dwarf planet found at the edge of our solar system in the Kuiper Belt region.

    “Makemake’s moon proves that there are still wild things waiting to be discovered, even in places people have already looked,” said Alex Parker, lead author of the paper detailing the findings, in a statement.

    http://time.com/4385809/moon-orbiting-makemake-solar-system/

    ZetaTalk Chat Q&A for June 25, 2016

    Prong 2 sought to answer why “Planet 9” evaded discovery for so long by suggesting that Hubble and Kepler and WISE looked afar, at bright objects, so that anything close in or somewhat dim would be missed. As evidence of this, the ESO’s observatory in Chile had discovered several exoplanets overlooked by the other sky mapping enterprises. Prong2’s agenda is to place into the public mind that an object such as Nibiru, shrouded by dust, could sneak into the Solar System unnoticed. To this end we have the newly announced second moon of Earth, an orbiting asteroid, just recently “discovered” by NASA.

  • Ryan X

    And another one "found" ...

    New 'large and bright' dwarf planet discovered in our solar system

    "The new dwarf planet, dubbed 2015 RR245, has such a huge, highly elliptical orbit that it takes an astonishing 700 Earth years to complete one trip around the sun, and it ventures over 120 times further away from the sun than our planet does."

  • Craig

  • Kris H

    NASA study shows warming from core to surface.

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/696717/CLIMATE-CHANGE-SHOCK-I...
  • Ovidiu Pricopi

    Planet Nine is mention in the article : Scientists noticed that rebel Niku seems to be hanging around a gang of other strangely aligned objects. At first glance, the scientists thought that this might suggest that Planet Nine, a hypothetical planet that would be about as much as 10 times as massive as Earth, might be pulling on the objects.

    But it turns out that the rebellious object would be out of Planet Nine's reach, too free-living to succumb to the undiscovered planet's gravitational attraction.

    So exactly what's going on is still a mystery. https://amp.businessinsider.com/niku-mysterious-object-orbiting-bey...

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/What-Will-You-Do-when-the...

    What Will You Do When The Lights Go Out? The Inevitable Failure Of The US Grid

  • SongStar101

    Home from home: Scientists may have discovered an Earth-like planet with water

    https://www.rt.com/viral/356189-earth-like-planet-water/

    The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is reportedly set to announce the discovery of a new “Earth-like” planet at the end of August. The unnamed planet is thought to have liquid water on its surface.

    The as of yet unnamed planet orbits the small Proxima Centauri star, which, other than the sun, is the closest star to Earth, located only 4.25 lightyears away.

    According to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, the exoplanet is located in the so called “Goldilocks zone” or “habitable zone,” meaning it orbits the star at a distance which would be favorable to having liquid water on the surface, which is vital for supporting life.

    "Never before have scientists discovered a second Earth that is so close by," the report said, citing an unnamed source at the ESO, who themselves have neither confirmed or denied their rumored announcement.

    "We were surprised to see the article in Der Spiegel and do not know the source," ESO spokesman Richard Hook told Space.com. "ESO has no further comment to make at present."

    If true, the planet’s discovery will come just over a year after NASA found two other exoplanets outside the solar system - Kepler-452b and HD 219134b.

  • SongStar101

    'Strong signal' stirs interest in hunt for alien life

    http://phys.org/news/2016-08-strong-alien-life.html

    A "strong signal" detected by a radio telescope in Russia that is scanning the heavens for signs of extraterrestrial life has stirred interest among the scientific community.

    "No one is claiming that this is the work of an extraterrestrial civilization, but it is certainly worth further study," said Paul Gilster, author of the Centauri Dreams website which covers peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration.

    The signal is from the direction of a HD164595, a star about 95 light-years from Earth.

    The star is known to have at least one planet, and may have more.

    The observation is being made public now, but was actually detected last year by the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya, Russia, he said.

    Experts say it is far too early to know what the signal means or where, precisely,it came from.

    "But the signal is provocative enough that the RATAN-600 researchers are calling for permanent monitoring of this target," wrote Gilster.

    The discovery is expected to feature in discussions at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, on September 27.

    "Working out the strength of the signal, the researchers say that if it came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a Kardashev Type II civilization," Gilster wrote, referring to a scale-system that indicates a civilization far more advanced than our own.

    "If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System, it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization," indicating one closer to Earth's capabilities.

    Gilster, who broke the story on August 27, said he had seen a presentation on the matter from Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone.

    "Permanent monitoring of this target is needed," said the presentation.

    Nick Suntzeff, a Texas A&M University astronomer told the online magazine Ars Technica that the 11 gigahertz signal was observed in part of the radio spectrum used by the military.

    "If this were a real astronomical source, it would be rather strange," Suntzeff was quoted as saying.

    "God knows who or what broadcasts at 11Ghz, and it would not be out of the question that some sort of bursting communication is done between ground stations and satellites," Suntzeff said.

    "I would follow it if I were the astronomers, but I would also not hype the fact that it may be at SETI signal given the significant chance it could be something military."

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    This from MSN News

    http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/barack-obama-will-reveal-alien-...

    Barack Obama 'will reveal alien and UFO details held by the US before he leaves office'

  • casey a

    Astronomers just discovered two of the closest-orbiting twin stars ever

    http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-just-discovered-two-of-the-...

    And this isn't just any old binary star system – these stars, called HD 133131A and HD 133131B, are the the closest-orbiting twin stars that scientists have ever found in a binary system where both the stars host planets.

    That might not sound close to you and me, but for a binary star, it's pretty intimate, all things considered, with the next comparable closest binary system having a separation of around 1,000 AU between its two stars.

  • casey a

    Brown dwarfs hiding in plain sight in our solar neighborhood

    http://phys.org/news/2016-09-brown-dwarfs-plain-sight-solar.html

    "Everyone will benefit from the study of brown dwarfs, because they can often be found in isolation, which means that we can more easily gather precise data on their properties without a bright star blinding our instruments," Gagné said, who is also a collaborator of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at Université de Montréal.

    (the implication being that the sun would be blinding our instruments, if a supposed brown dwarf was near it)

    To that end, the team, led by Jasmin Robert of Université de Montréal, believed that although hundreds of ultracool brown dwarfs have already been discovered, the techniques used to identify them were overlooking those with more-unusual compositions, which would not show up in the color-based surveys generally used.

    So they surveyed 28 percent of the sky and discovered 165 ultracool brown dwarfs, about a third of which have unusual compositions or other peculiarities...  

    "The search for ultracool brown dwarfs in the neighborhood of our own Solar System is far from over," said Gagné. "Our findings indicate that many more are hiding in existing surveys."

    (Zetas right again!! Didnt the zetas say that the scientific community will look like they missed Nibiru & "happen to find it" by going through previous surveys??)

  • SongStar101

    Pluto Probe Spots Distant Dwarf Planet Quaoar (Photos)

    http://www.space.com/33921-dwarf-planet-quaoar-new-horizons-photos....


    NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this image of the dwarf planet Quaoar in July 2016, from a distance of 1.3 billion miles (2.1 billion kilometers).
    Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

    NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has photographed a distant dwarf planet cruising through the dark depths of the outer solar system.

    New Horizons captured images of the mysterious, 690-mile-wide (1,110 kilometers) Quaoar at four different times on July 13 and July 14 — exactly one year after the probe's historic July 14, 2015, flyby of Pluto.

    New Horizons was 1.3 billion miles (2.1 billion km) from Quaoar when it took the photos with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera, so the dwarf planet is not sharply resolved. But even such fuzzy views have scientific value, NASA officials said. [Destination Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

    "With the oblique view available from New Horizons, LORRI sees only a portion of Quaoar's illuminated surface, which is very different from the nearly fully illuminated view of the dwarf planet from Earth," NASA officials wrote in an image description today (Aug. 31). "Comparing Quaoar from the two very different perspectives gives mission scientists a valuable opportunity to study the light-scattering properties of Quaoar's surface."

    Quaoar (pronounced kwa-whar) was discovered in 2002 and has not officially been designated a dwarf planet, but it almost certainly qualifies, researchers have said. Dwarf planets need to be massive enough to be shaped into a sphere by their own gravity; with a diameter of 690 miles, Quaoar is larger than the officially recognized dwarf planet Ceres.

    Quaoar lies an average of 43 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and completes one lap around the star every 286 Earth years. (One AU is the average distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million km.) The object has one known moon.



    NASA's New Horizons probe captured these images of the dwarf planet Quaoar on July 13-14, 2016, from a distance of 1.3 billion miles (2.1 billion kilometers).
    Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

    The newly released images also show a number of background stars and two galaxies, known as IC 1048 and UGC 09485, both of which are about 370 billion times farther from New Horizons than Quaoar is, agency officials added.

    As the Quaoar observations show, New Horizons' work did not end with the Pluto encounter. On Jan. 1, 2019, the probe will fly by an object called 2014 MU69, which lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto.

    The 2014 MU69 flyby, which is the centerpiece of a mission extension approved by NASA last month, should help researchers better understand the diversity of objects in the Kuiper Belt, the large, frigid realm beyond Neptune's orbit. (At an estimated 13 to 25 miles, or 21 to 40 km, wide, 2014 MU69 is very different from Pluto, which measures 1,473 miles, or 2,370 km, across.)

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Our Interstellar Neighbors: 5 Potentially Earth-Like Planets Nearby

    http://www.space.com/33952-five-nearest-earth-like-alien-planets.html

    A possibly Earth-like planet has been found within the habitable zone of humanity's closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, and astronomers think the world could potentially support life. 

    While there is still a lot to learn about this newfound world, called Proxima Centauri b or just Proxima b, astronomers are sure of a few things: The Earth-like rocky exoplanet is 4.2 light-years away; its minimum mass is 1.3 times that of the Earth, and it orbits Proxima Centauri every 11.2 days.

    Astronomers also said that Proxima b lies within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, which means the planet orbits a safe distance from the star, making it neither too hot or too cold. Because of this, astronomers said that Proxima b may have suitable surface temperature that would allow for the presence of liquid water, meaning the exoplanet could support some sort of life. [Proxima b: Closest Earth-Like Planet Discovery in Pictures]

    "We know very little about these [types of] planets," Thomas Barclay, senior research scientist and director of the Kepler and K2 missions, told Space.com. NASA's orbiting Kepler Space Telescope has identified more than 2,000 confirmed planets around other stars based on changes in the stars' brightness. "For some of them, we know an approximate mass or an approximate radius, and we know roughly how far they are from their star — but that's really all we know." 

    With the discovery of Proxima b, here are five other potentially Earth-like planets that astronomers have previously found in Earth's interstellar neighborhood:

    This exoplanet is located about 13.8 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, making it the second-closest known potentially habitable planet to Earth, after Proxima b.

    Wolf 1061c lies within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star called Wolf 1061, according to a 2015 study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The exoplanet takes about 17.9 days to complete one orbit around its parent star. Its estimated mass is about 4.3 times that of Earth. Wolf 1061c is thought to be a rocky planet, which means it may be able to support life as we know it. 

    This alien world is slightly farther from Earth, but it exhibits many similar traits that suggest it may be able to support life, too. 

    Gliese 832c is located just 16 light-years from Earth and lies within the habitable zone of a red dwarf star called Gliese 832. This exoplanet completes one orbit around its star in 36 days. 



    This is an artistic representation of the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c compared to Earth. Gliese 832 c is represented here as a larger, temperate world covered in clouds.
    Credit: PHL @UPR Arecibo

    Gliese 832c is what astronomers call a "super-Earth," because it is at least five times as massive as Earth. It was actually the second planet found around the star Gliese 832. However, the other one, Gliese 832b, is a gas giant that is likely unable to support life. 

    This exoplanet is also considered a "super-Earth," because it is at least 3.9 times more massive than Earth. It orbits the red dwarf Gliese 667C, which is part of a three-star system that lies 22 light-years away, in the constellation Scorpius.

    Gliese 667Cc also lies within the habitable zone of its parent star and takes about 28 days to complete one orbit. Astronomers announced the discovery of this alien world in 2011. It was found using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) 3.6-meter telescope in Chile. 

    This exoplanet orbits around an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, which lies approximately 40 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius. TRAPPIST-1d also resides within the habitable zone around its star.

    Astronomers announced the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system on May 2, 2016. This alien solar system has three potentially Earth-like planets that orbit the dwarf star. 



    A star system known as TRAPPIST-1 has three potentially Earth-like planets in its orbit. This is an artist's impression of the TRAPPIST-1 star system as seen from one of the three alien planets.
    Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

    Scientists found the TRAPPIST-1 star system and planets using the TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) instrument at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, which is operated by the ESO. 

    This exoplanet also appears potentially habitable and is located 49 light-years from Earth, in the Dorado constellation. Gliese 163c isapproximately seven times the mass of Earth, earning it the title of a "super-Earth." 

    It lies within the habitable zone around a red dwarf star known as Gliese 163 and takes 26 days to complete one orbit. Gliese 163c is one of two alien planets found orbiting the star Gliese 163. Astronomers found this planet using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), which is mounted on the ESO telescope located at the La Silla Observatory. 

    Since Proxima b is so close to Proxima Centauri, the exoplanet likely has one side that constantly faces the star, similar to how the moon always shows the same face to Earth. Astronomers suggest that Proxima Centauri's gravitational pull likely forced Proxima b to become "tidally locked" to the star in this way, so the world has one illuminated side and one dark side

    If that is the case, any life on the Proxima b would be very restricted due to extreme temperature variations between the dark and light side, Barclay explained. 

    "There would likely be enormous winds on these planets," Barclay said. "When you have hot areas [on the sunlit side] and cold areas [on the dark side] on a planet, the hot part of the atmosphere moves the cold part, which would produce very strong and fast winds."

    As a result, life on an exoplanet like Proxima b would be very different from what humans experience on Earth. 

    "The light also isn't the bright white-yellow light we get from the sun. It would be much more red. So, you would expect biology to evolve differently," Barclay said, adding that solar flares from red dwarfs could also have a large impact on exoplanets orbiting them. 

    "We see solar flares [from the sun] occasionally, but they don't really impact life on Earth all that much," Barclay said. On the other hand, "Proxima Centauri is thought to have a flare every 20 minutes." 

    However, astronomers are still unsure what damage solar flares could cause.  

    "What we have learned when we look at biology on Earth is that life seems to find a way. Life adapts," Barclay said. "We might find life to be extremely different on these planets, just because it has had to adapt to a very different environment."

  • casey a

    Evidence of Planet 9 --"May Already Exist"
    http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/09/proof-of-planet-9-may-...

    “Actually, it’s quite possible that the planet has already been in some way imaged,” says Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institute. “That happened with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — they were observed but not understood before they were actually detected. Who knows, proof of Planet X {or Planet 9} may already exist in some observatory archive.”

    Scott Shepard’s team has been se arching for proof of Planet 9 using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tollolo Inter-American Observatory in the southern Atacama region of Chile (below) . They have also collected data on distant solar system objects with the Japanese Hyper Surpime Camera on the 8-meter Subaru telescope in Hawaii. (National Optical Astronomical Observatory)

    Shepard is considering an alternative theory that involves a Planet 9 exoplanet that had been been kicked out of another nearby solar system that formed in the general vicinity of ours. Such things are known to happen.

    The other team most deeply involved with the Planet 9 hunt is led by Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology. They are the ones who made a big splash earlier this year with their predictions of a Planet 9, again based on the orbits of smaller objects.

    Sheppard’s team is conducting the deepest survey so far for objects beyond Neptune and the Kuiper Belt, a circumstellar disk that lies some 30 to 50 times as far as the Earth is from the sun.
  • casey a

    What are the odds there is life in outer space - Richard Dawkins asks Neil Degrasse tyson

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk0pRPIQBY4
  • casey a

    A New Generation of Astronomers Is on the Hunt for the Next Earth 

    https://www.wired.com/2016/10/meet-next-generation-exoplanet-hunters/


    About a month ago, astronomers announced they had found a new exoplanet—this one, orbiting in the habitable zone of the nearest star to Earth. Proxima b is exciting because it’s nearby, and someday someone might send a spaceprobe to it. Plus, it has a mass close to Earth’s—making it more likely to be livable.

    Proxima b popped out of a different technique, one that, for the most part, hasn’t been sensitive enough to see planets like Earth. And advances in that technique—including a new instrument called EXPRES—could improve detection enough for scientists to find and weigh lots of other Earth-mass planets.



  • Kris H

    Obama issues executive order on space weather:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/10/13/obama-signs-...
  • casey a

    Astronomers have discovered two moons located behind Uranus after re-examining old data collected by NASA’s space probe Voyager 2. 

    https://www.rt.com/viral/362875-voyager-2-uranus-moons/

  • Ryan X

  • Derrick Johnson

    Is everything we know about the solar system WRONG? Bizarre new star formation leaves scientists baffled

    • Astronomers have found a new kind of star system called a binary-binary 
    • This has two stars orbiting each other, which is orbiting another star itself 
    • The new system is also orbited unusually closely by two giant planets
    • Finding could change our understanding of how the solar system formed

    Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3856324/Is-know-sola... 

  • Matt B

    'Planet Nine' Can't Hide Much Longer, Scientists Say

    http://www.space.com/34455-planet-nine-discovery-coming-soon.html

    Planet Nine's days of lurking unseen in the dark depths of the outer solar system may be numbered.

    The hypothetical giant planet, which is thought to be about 10 times more massive than Earth, will be discovered within 16 months or so, astronomer Mike Brown predicted.

    "I'm pretty sure, I think, that by the end of next winter — not this winter, next winter — I think that there'll be enough people looking for it that … somebody's actually going to track this down," Brown said during a news conference Wednesday (Oct. 19) at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) and the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) in Pasadena, California. Brown said that eight to 10 groups are currently looking for the planet.

    ...

    The researchers suggested that this putative planet is perhaps two to 15 times more massive than Earth and lies hundreds of astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One AU is the Earth-sun distance, about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

    This interpretation was bolstered in January of this year by Brown and fellow Caltech astronomer Konstantin Batygin, who found evidence of a perturber's influence in the orbits of a handful of additional distant objects. This "Planet Nine," as Batygin and Brown dubbed the putative world, likely contains about 10 Earth masses and orbits on a highly elliptical path whose aphelion (farthest distance from the sun) is about 1,000 AU, the researchers said. (For perspective, Pluto gets just 49.3 AU from the sun at aphelion.)

    ...

    The ongoing Planet Nine research also includes efforts to pin down where the world might be in the sky these days. This is a key part of the discovery effort, since a blind search for an object so far away, and with such a huge and elliptical orbit, has little chance of success in the near term, Brown has said.

    ...

    Astronomers have said Planet Nine is perhaps four times wider than Earth, and such an object would be easily visible with professional-grade equipment if it were relatively close to Earth, Brown explained. In addition, planets on highly elliptical orbits spend most of their time near aphelion, since they're traveling most slowly on this part of their path, he said.

    An object four times bigger than Earth that's located at 1,000 AU would have a magnitude of about +25 on astronomers' brightness scale, Brown added.

    "This is well within reach of the giant telescopes," he said. "The Subaru telescope, I think, on Mauna Kea, [in Hawaii] — the Japanese national telescope — is the prime instrument for doing the search. But there are a lot of other people who have clever ideas on how to find it, too, that are trying with their own telescopes."

    ...

  • casey a

    Scientists say data from NASA's 1976 Mars landing need to be reconsidered for signs of life 

    http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-say-their-1976-mars-landing-...

    (Not the first time these dots have been connected.. But a good read for anyone who doesnt know about the Viking findings)

  • Ecosikh

    Interesting piece in that remarkable world renown astronomy peer reviewed journal - also known as the Daily Mail  - includes another interesting piece on plant 9.

    The interesting thing is that the piece alludes to naming debates as to whether it's Planet X or  Planet 9.... and lastly Monica Grady is as renowned Astronomer in the UK

  • J Ph

    Look at the headline showing on the screen at the Apple Special Event announcing the MacBook Pro today 

  • Kris H

    Article talking about large planet found within Earth's orbital distance from its star.
    http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-11/05/c_135807901.htm
  • Howard

    Trump To Announce Nibiru During Victory Speech (Nov 7)

    An inside source with close ties to the Trump campaign provided shocking information as to Donald Trump’s plans for election night. If he wins the election, Trump will reveal the existence of Nibiru—said to be a brown dwarf star and seven planets on a near-collision course with Earth—during his victory speech. The information stems from a source with unimpeachable credentials, a friend and associate of the Republican nominee. For this to happen, however, Trump must diminish Hillary Clinton’s four-point lead in the polls, or prove the pollsters wrong and win the election in a landslide.
    Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, belongs to a cabal devoted to concealing the truth about Nibiru until the last possible moment, in hopes that she and her elitist friends can weather the storm in underground bunkers and rise to build the world anew once the dust settles.

    “President Trump will not permit this charade to continue,” our source said. “He knows Hillary’s plans, and, sadly, she knows his—that is why Clinton is desperate to stop him. But Trump will prevail, and once and for all demolish the Nibiru cover-up, allowing Americans to take whatever actions they deem necessary to prepare for the worst possible scenario. You know, a lot of people have wondered why Trump has not devoted more than just one-hundred million dollars of his own money toward the campaign. Well, he’s been putting that money to a much more important issue.”

    Unsealed records, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, indicate that Trump has spent over thirty million dollars on Nibiru research. He enlisted the aid of prominent, ostracized NASA scientists, people like astronomers Paul Cox and Dr. Stephen Greenbaum, to study Nibiru’s expected impact on Earth. Trump’s scientific advisers admit that Nibiru will ravage the earth, but have posited that Nibiru will not arrive until the winter of 2019, a significant deviation from previously established forecasts.

    “Future President Trump has high confidence in his scientific team,” our source said. “He will use the added time to warn and help prepare Americans to survive the Nibiru cataclysm. He will fulfill his promise to President Putin. Unless they get to Trump first. But he’s well protected. You saw what happened in Reno.”

    Saturday afternoon, a protester disrupted a Trump rally in Reno, Nevada. Austyn Crites, a Democrat posing as a disgruntled Republican, attempted to incite a mass riot during Trump’s second really of the day. The United States Secret Service rushed into action, whisking Trump off the stage before Crites neared the podium. Against the advice his protective entourage, Trump triumphantly returned to the stage to finish delivering his message to the American people. We later learned that Crites has a criminal arrest record and is a known agent provocateur employed by the Democratic National Committee. The secret service discovered a pair of silencer-equipped .45 caliber handguns, a miniature flame-thrower, and a pocketknife on his person.

    “Hillary Clinton has demonstrated her willingness to stop at nothing to stop Trump,” our source said. “This potential assassination attempt shows her resolve to eliminate Trump before election night. Regardless, Trump will prevail and tell the world about Nibiru, hopefully on election night.”

    Following Hillary’s concession announcement, President-elect Trump and special guest astronomer Paul Cox will take center stage and warn the world about the forthcoming Nibiru cataclysm.

    “This will be the most Earth shattering announcement ever made,” our source said. “Donald Trump is a caring man. A man of principle and character. He is a family man who loves his wife and children. He wants people be aware of the threat while he and his team try to find a means to stop that threat.”

    Source

    http://www.someonesbones.com/blog/trump-to-announce-nibiru-during-v...

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    http://www.disclose.tv/news/nasa_prepares_to_take_first_pictures_of...

    NASA PREPARES TO TAKE FIRST PICTURES OF PLANET X NIBIRU

    Even before Pluto was demoted as a planet, there was often the joke that there was a tenth planet known as Planet X, but in reality, people laughed it off and would obviously not take such a comment seriously. Since Pluto was no longer deemed a planet, a planet known as Planet X has come to existence and is now in fact perceived as the ninth planet to replace what Pluto formally was. 

    The planet has often been referred to as Planet Nine and Nibiru. The planet has been a relative mystery, for the most part. However, one scientist believes that a sighting of the planet is expected to be seen within the next two years. NASA GETTING INVOLVED IN MYSTERY PLANET Astronomer, Mike Brown also stated that he expects that someone in the organization of NASA will, in fact, capture this hiding planet and learn much more about its existence and content. Brown has also indicated that 8-10 groups are already on the task of looking for the planet, which hints at a strong possibility that the sighting of Nibiru will be much sooner rather than later. Reports indicate that Planet Nibiru is currently at or near aphelion, which is approximately 1,000 AU and measures in the sky of about 400 square degrees. In a simpler term, the moon covers about.5 of the sky, so this means that Nibiru is believed to be about four times bigger than the Earth, which also creates the likelihood to find this planet to be even stronger, given its unique and sheer mass for a planet. Scientists agree with this sentiment and say with their state-of-the-art telescopes the planet should be spotted in no time; it is just a matter of who spots the planet first. This is also a big deal because a contest of who has better equipment to deal with space-related context is present again much like the United States and Russia decades back. China has apparently obtained an extremely powerful telescope that no one has even fathomed to exist, which leaves NASA reeling and trying to catch up to create something just as powerful if not stronger. NASA finding the planet first would also increase the possibility of receiving more funding towards better technology and projects overall. This race is not as well-documented as the Sputnik satellite. However, there is some angst within NASA to try and get better. There is nothing wrong with taking pride in always trying to be number one. 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl5BwrSpp1s

  • Starr DiGiacomo

    EARTH MUST BE WARNED.......Most likely Nibiru, not aliens

    http://nypost.com/2016/11/17/did-this-astronaut-warn-of-aliens-befo...

    Did this astronaut warn of aliens before attempting suicide?

    A shocking video claims France’s first female astronaut screamed “Earth must be warned!” before she attempted suicide.

    Claudie Haigneré, 59, reportedly had to “be restrained” after yelling the eerie caution prior to falling into a coma from an overdose of sleeping pills.

    A six-minute YouTube conspiracy film by UFOmania has resurfaced this week examining her story. It has been viewed nearly a million times.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqIjPQb8U1I

    In 1993, esteemed scientist Claudie was a backup crew member for the 1993 Mir Altaïr mission, which included her future husband, Jean-Pierre Haigneré.

    She made it to the Mir space station in 1996 as part of the Russian-French Cassiopée mission, and in 2001 became the first European woman to visit the International Space Station.

    The asteroid 135268 Haigneré is named after Claudie and her husband.

    After retiring from space work, Claudie entered French politics and worked as minister delegate for research and new technologies from 2002 to 2004 and minister delegate for European affairs from 2004 to 2005.

    But, despite her efforts, budgets for scientific research were cut.

    After leaving politics, she worked in a biology lab at the Pasteur Institute.

    Haignere poses on Oct. 27, 1992, after being chosen by the CNES (National Centre for Space Studies) to take part in the Franco-Soviet mission aboard the Mir space station.Photo: Getty Images

    That’s where the story gets strange.

    In December 2008, it was widely reported that Claudie had to be rushed to a hospital after allegedly taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

    It was reported that she was found conscious but had to be restrained while screaming, “Earth must be warned!” before lapsing into a coma.

    Claudie blamed the incident on “burnout syndrome” and is now the director of the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie — the largest science museum in Europe.

    However, alien enthusiasts believe she was trying to warn the Earth about life in outer space.

    The YouTube video, which is narrated by a robot voice, is a conspiracy that blends fact and fiction.

  • Ecosikh

    Daily Mail again....

    Mystery as UFO hunter posts images of huge spherical object in front of the Sun that was captured by NASA cameras

    • A huge blue sphere was picked up by cameras on the STEREO HI1 satellite 
    • UFO hunter Pamela Johnson claims the Sun started reacting to the object
    • There are frames missing from the next two days but it's now disappeared 



    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3953058/NASA-cameras-captur...