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-plane...
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!?
https://poleshift.ning.com/forum/topics/nasa-scientists-discover-a-...
Views: 180458
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Comment by Stanislav on January 8, 2018 at 10:00am
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Scaramucci: Trump’s view on climate change will ‘surprise’ you
31 December, 2017 "Short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Americans would be “surprised” by President Trump’s true view on climate change science, despite tweeting dismissive comments about global warming.
“I think you guys should ask him directly if he’s a climate change denier or not,” Scaramucci told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “I think you will find you will be surprised by that answer.”
Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, infuriated scientists by conflating cold weather with climate change in a tweet Thursday on the chilly New Year’s temps. <...>
“My prediction is, is that some time at the end of 2018, people will look back at him and say, wow, he had a lot of common sense by getting out of that climate accord,” Scaramucci said"
Reference: Diaz, D. (2017, December 31). Anthony Scaramucci: Trump's view on climate change might surprise you. Retrieved January 08, 2018, from http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/31/politics/anthony-scaramucci-donal...
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Comment by SongStar101 on January 3, 2018 at 9:39am
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Are UFOs real? If this was a court of law, we'd be at 'beyond reasonable doubt'
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/north-america/are-ufos-real-i...
Earth may well have been visited by UFOs, the former head of a secret US government programme has revealed.
Luis Elizondo said the existence of supremely advanced unidentified aircraft, using technology that did not belong to any nation, had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt".
Until two months ago, from his office on the fifth floor of the Pentagon, Mr Elizondo, a career intelligence officer, ran the innocuously named Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Programme (AATIP), which was funded with $22m (€18m) in "black ops money" from Congress. The existence of the real-life X-Files department, which began in 2007, was revealed last week and confirmed by the Pentagon.
In an interview, Mr Elizondo said much of what he could discuss was still classified. That included whether his team had examined UFO sightings in other countries.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss that," he said. "But we took a very comprehensive approach. Nothing was too small to investigate."
He added: "In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. I hate to use the term UFO but that's what were looking at.
"I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so one has to ask the question where they're from."
The exact number of UFO sightings investigated, and witnesses interviewed, is also classified but Mr Elizondo said there had been "lots".
Geographical "hotspots" emerged during the investigations, sometimes near nuclear facilities and power plants.
Common factors between the movements of separate unidentified objects had also been identified by the Pentagon team.
"It was enough where we began to see trends and similarities in incidents," he said.
"There were very distinct observeables. Extreme manoeuvrability, hypersonic velocity without a sonic boom, speeds of 7-8,000mph, no flight surfaces on the objects. A lot of this is backed with radar signal data, gun camera footage from aircraft, multiple witnesses.
"There was never any display of hostility but the way they manoeuvred, in ways no one else in the world had, you have to be conscious something could happen."
After the existence of the secret programme was revealed this week, attention focused on the release of footage of an unidentified object off San Diego in 2004.
Commander David Fravor, a US navy pilot flying an FA-18 near the object, described seeing a "white Tic Tac, about 40ft long with no wings" which was "something not from the Earth".
Hero
Mr Elizondo said Commander Fravor was a "national hero" for speaking out.
He said: "The social stigma about this is unbelievable, it's very challenging. There are many other Commander Fravors out there who have come forward [to us], but he's brave enough to discuss his experience publicly."
Mr Elizondo said he had no preconceived ideas when he took the helm of the Pentagon programme, but later became convinced by what he saw.
"We [career intelligence officers] tend to be sceptics by nature. For some of us working on it the time came as an 'Aha!' moment, for others it was a slow progress towards the realisation that these are probably not any type of aircraft in any national inventory.
"I don't want to pre-suppose where they're from. We were looking at two things: What is it? How does it work?
"As to who's behind the wheel, and why is it here, that will fall into place. I think it's pretty clear it's not us, and it's not anyone else.
"What we were trying to do was basically take the voodoo out of voodoo science."
He refused to confirm or deny whether any technology had been recovered from any of the objects investigated.
However, buildings were modified by a private contractor in Nevada as a place to store anything discovered linked to the UFO incidents.
Witnesses to UFO sightings were also examined to see if there had been any physical effects on them. Mr Elizondo said his team had developed theories about what was propelling the objects. "There are some tell-tale clues," he said.
"We are getting to how it works, that's a significant step."
Despite the Pentagon saying funding for AATIP ended in 2012, Mr Elizondo said his team's UFO work carried on for another five years.
"When you're given a mission, you guard your post until you're relieved of responsibility, and that never came for us," he said.
"There was an expectation that you continue to do what you're doing."
He eventually resigned in October, frustrated at excessive secrecy surrounding the programme.
In a resignation letter to Jim Mattis, the US defence secretary, he wrote: "Why aren't we spending more time and effort on this issue?
"There remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation."
Mr Elizondo said: "I'd say bolster the programme. We want Nasa to find life on different planets, but we have highly educated pilots here and they're seeing something they can't understand." (© Daily Telegraph, London)
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Main stream media and Youtube go into a frenzy with pilot interviews, discussions and questions about Pentagon UFO program!
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Top official reveals UFOs exist, and they’re “often being reported” over nuclear power plants… “We’d never seen anything like it” — Military: “Ominous correlation” between sightings and atomic sites — TV: “Mystery intruders over nuke facilities”
http://enenews.com/top-official-discloses-ufos-often-being-reported...
CNN, Dec 18, 2017 (emphasis added): A former Pentagon official who led a recently revealed government program to research potential UFOs said Monday evening that he believes there is evidence of alien life reaching Earth. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” Luis Elizondo said… “We found a lot,” Elizondo said. The former Pentagon official said they… were “seemingly defying the laws of aerodynamics… maneuvering in ways that include extreme maneuverability beyond, I would submit, the healthy G-forces of a human or anything biological”…
New York Times, Dec 16, 2017: By 2009, [Sen. Harry] Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security… A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered…
The Independent, Dec 19, 2017: US government recovered materials from unidentified flying object it ‘does not recognise’ … Materials, which are alleged to have “amazing properties”, are being stored in modified buildings in Las Vegas, the New York Times reports… “They have some material from these objects that is being studied, so that scientists can try to figure out what accounts for their amazing properties,” Ralf Blumenthal, one of the authors of the New York Times report, told MSNBC. Mr Blumenthal said the DoD “do not know” what the materials are made of. “It’s some sort of compound they do not recognise,” he added…
Politico, Dec 16, 2017: The sightings, [Luis Elizondo (official in charge of the Pentagon’s program)] told POLITICO, were often reported in the vicinity of nuclear facilities, either ships at sea or power plants. “We had never seen anything like it.”.
KLAS, Jul 7, 2016: A group of more than 150 military veterans, missile officers, and security personnel, including many who worked at the Nevada Test Site, say they’ve seen mystery intruders over nuclear facilities… The I-Team’s own Freedom of Information Act request filed in 1992 produced a thick stack of documents from the Department of Energy, indicating UFO incidents over every major atomic weapons facility…
Documentary – UFOs and Nukes (IMDb), 2016: (at 3:30 in) Declassified US government documents reveal that as early as December 1948 incursions by mysterious aerial objects later referred to as UFOs began to occur at American nuclear laboratories… (at 13:00 in) According to military intelligence officers, a worrisome pattern had begun to emerge. On July 1, 1952, Look Magazine featured an article “Hunt for the flying saucer” about the air force’s new UFO investigations group Project Blue Book and noted that its director first lieutenant Edward Ruppelt had plotted 63 unexplained sightings on a map of the United States. At that point it was discovered that a quote “ominous correlation” existed between some of the sightings and the location of various atomic weapons installations.
Look Magazine, Jul 1, 1952: Ruppelt keeps 63 sightings on the top of his file… These sightings were pinpointed on a map. Soon afterwards, it was seen by a Pentagon representative who noted that a number of concentrations duplicated exactly the area of atomic energy installations. The Pentagon man excitedly reported back to his headquarters. A conference was called immediately in Washington.
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http://www.zetatalk.com/ning/13ju2015.htm
Periodically a group of prestigious individuals comes forth for a press conference to declare that the alien presence is real, UFOs are real, and the Earth is being visited by intelligent life elsewhere. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell has asserted his personal knowledge of this for years. Country after country is opening their UFO files to the public - France, the UK, Canada, Sweden - and many allow their military to speak freely on the matter.
http://www.zetatalk.com/ning/13ju2015.htm
How would a relaxed Element of Doubt rule help the world avoid nuclear accidents? At the start of the ZetaTalk saga, in 1995, we stated that preventing nuclear accidents was firmly in the hands of humans giving the Call. This was not entirely true as the Council of Worlds had already negated most nukes in the hands of the world’s superpowers, but the Element of Doubt rule could and would still force a dirty bomb explosion. But Fukushima in 2011 was modulated, and the future could bring further assists if the strength of the Collective Call were such that the elite are negated.
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NY Times: Pentagon study of UFOs revealed
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/16/politics/pentagon-ufo-project/index.html
Former Sen. Harry Reid speaks at a rally in Nevada in 2016. The New York Times says it was his interest that spurred the creation of the UFO program.
(CNN)Beyond preparing for the next field of battle, or advancing a massive arsenal that includes nuclear weapons, the Pentagon has also researched the possible existence of UFOs.
The New York Times reported Saturday on the once completely classified project that began because of the intense interest in the subject by former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.According to the Times, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was launched in 2007 after the Nevada Democrat spoke to his longtime friend, Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of an aerospace company. Bigelow has spoken about his belief in UFOs visiting the United States as well as the existence of aliens.Among the anomalies the program studied, the paper said, were video and audio recordings of aerial encounters by military pilots and unknown objects, as well as interviews with people who said they had experienced physical encounters with such objects.The Pentagon says the program has since been shuttered."The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 timeframe," Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson told CNN. "It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change."But according to the Times, certain aspects of the program still exist with officials from the program continuing to investigate encounters brought to them by service members, while these officials still carry out their other duties within the Defense Department.The former director of the program told the paper that he worked with officials from the Navy and CIA from his office in the Pentagon until this past October, when he resigned in protest. He said a replacement had been named, but he declined to identify them.Reid, the Times says, was also supported in his efforts to fund the program by the late Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, and John Glenn of Ohio, the first American to orbit the Earth, who told Reid the federal government should take a serious look at UFOs.And working to keep a program that he was sure would draw scrutiny from others, Reid said he, Stevens and Inouye made sure there was never any public debate about the program on the Senate floor during budget debates."This was so-called black money," Reid told the Times regarding the Defense Department budget for classified programs.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo...
A video shows an encounter between a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unknown object. It was released by the Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
WASHINGTON — In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find.
Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.
For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.
The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.
The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.
On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.
ImageHarry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, has had a longtime interest in space phenomena.CreditAl Drago/The New York Times
Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.
Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.
Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”
Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending subcommittee — Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat — also supported the program. Mr. Stevens died in 2010, and Mr. Inouye in 2012.
While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy. “When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said. But, she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”
A video shows a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object. It was released by the Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.
James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”
Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be a pearl there,” he said.
In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.
“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an email, referring to the Department of Defense.
But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.
“Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr. Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
ImagePentagon officials say the program ended in 2012, five years after it was created, but the official who led it said that only the government funding had ended then.CreditCharles Dharapak/Associated Press
Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.
U.F.O.s have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially ended in 1969. The project, which included a study code-named Project Blue Book, started in 1952, concluded that most sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, although 701 remained unexplained.
Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”
Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.
Mr. Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.
“I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.
ImageLuis Elizondo, who led the Pentagon effort to investigate U.F.O.s until October. He resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition to the program.CreditJustin T. Gellerson for The New York Times
The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command, Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed at or stigmatized.
The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”
He added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot in the Army’s air force, flying transport missions over China during World War II.)
During the meeting, Mr. Reid said, Mr. Stevens recounted being tailed by a strange aircraft with no known origin, which he said had followed his plane for miles.
None of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. “This was so-called black money,” he said. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it.” Mr. Reid was referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.
ImageRobert Bigelow, a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid, received most of the money allocated for the Pentagon program. On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.CreditIsaac Brekken for The New York Times
Contracts obtained by The Times show a congressional appropriation of just under $22 million beginning in late 2008 through 2011. The money was used for management of the program, research and assessments of the threat posed by the objects.
The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program.
Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.
“We’re sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage-door opener,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program. “First of all, he’d try to figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn’t know anything about the electromagnetic signals involved or its function.”
The program collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O. incidents, including footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of the incident.
“Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”
By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.
A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request for the special designation was denied.
Mr. Elizondo, in his resignation letter of Oct. 4, said there was a need for more serious attention to “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” He expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program, telling Mr. Mattis that “there remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”
Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.
In the interview, Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country. “That fact is not something any government or institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he said.
For his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”
But, he said, “we have to start someplace.”
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2 Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-...
The following recounts an incident in 2004 that advocates of research into U.F.O.s have said is the kind of event worthy of more investigation, and that was studied by a Pentagon program that investigated U.F.O.s. Experts caution that earthly explanations often exist for such incidents, and that not knowing the explanation does not mean that the event has interstellar origins.
Cmdr. David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight were on a routine training mission 100 miles out into the Pacific when the radio in each of their F/A-18F Super Hornets crackled: An operations officer aboard the U.S.S. Princeton, a Navy cruiser, wanted to know if they were carrying weapons.
“Two CATM-9s,” Commander Fravor replied, referring to dummy missiles that could not be fired. He had not been expecting any hostile exchanges off the coast of San Diego that November afternoon in 2004.
Commander Fravor, in a recent interview with The New York Times, recalled what happened next. Some of it is captured in a video made public by officials with a Pentagon program that investigated U.F.O.s.
“Well, we’ve got a real-world vector for you,” the radio operator said, according to Commander Fravor. For two weeks, the operator said, the Princeton had been tracking mysterious aircraft. The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.
The radio operator instructed Commander Fravor and Commander Slaight, who has given a similar account, to investigate.
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Found: Another star system with eight planets, just like ours
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/12/...
An illustration of the Kepler spacecraft. (Wendy Stenzel/NASA/Ames Research Center)
Only a handful of star systems have more than a single planet. With eight worlds, our solar system has long taken the prize for the biggest lineup. But no longer.
Our corner of the galaxy now shares the record with another system, Kepler 90, NASA and Google researchers announced Thursday. A Google algorithm uncovered a scorcher of a planet, a rock 30 percent larger than Earth, orbiting a star a few thousand light-years away. This planet, Kepler 90i, brought the total number of planets circling its star to eight — just like our solar system's octuplets.
“For the first time, we’ve discovered an eighth planet in a distant planetary system,” Paul Hertz, head of NASA's astrophysics division, said during a media briefing. This discovery required an advanced technology to comb through the gargantuan amount of data obtained by the Kepler space observatory.
The Kepler telescope, which trails millions of miles behind Earth like a loyal pup, has gazed out into space since 2009. During that time it has brought in data from 150,000 stars. When an exoplanet crosses in front of one of them, Kepler registers a subtle dip in that star's sunlight.
Fishing for those dips within the massive database is a challenge. “The Kepler mission has so much data it is impossible to examine manually,” Christopher Shallue, a Google AI software engineer, explained during the briefing.
With help from Andrew Vanderburg, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin, Shallue developed a machine-learning program that detects light curves. (Google and NASA have been collaborating for years; in 2013, they unveiled the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, a machine-learning facility at the space agency's Ames Research Center.) The scientists did not give the program, called a neural network, explicit instructions to find the characteristic curves of an exoplanet. Instead, it had to learn by example.
“A neural network is loosely inspired by the structure of the human brain,” Shallue said. “You can think of the neurons as switches.” The U-shaped dip of Kepler 90i passing in front of its star was too weak a signal for human detection. But it was strong enough for the AI, churning through 14 billion data points, to detect.
Astronomers are confident that the exoplanet exists and that its surface temperature could exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit. It has a shorter orbit than Mercury's, completing a circle around its star once every two weeks. “This is almost certainly an exoplanet,” Vanderburg said, with the odds of a false positive being 1 in 10,000. Already, the results from this deep data dive have been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.
But the number of worlds is not the only similarity between our solar system and the Kepler 90 system. As in ours, Kepler's small, rocky planets are closest to the sun and its gas giants farthest away. Kepler 90 itself is larger than our sun, though not extremely so.
The planets in our system are far more spread out, however. Neptune is, at its closest, 2.8 billion miles from the sun. The most distant gas giant in the Kepler 90 system is 93 million miles from its star. “All the planets are found scrunched very close to their star,” Vanderburg said.
Because the telescope has only observed the system's center, it may contain still other worlds. “It’s very possible that Kepler 90 has even more planets that we don’t know about,” Vanderburg added. Any planet with a longer orbit — a world as far from Kepler 90 as Jupiter is from our sun — would pass by the observatory undetected.
(On the other hand, some astronomers argue it's possible that our solar system has unknown planets, such as Planet Nine, lurking on the fringe. Perhaps we could reclaim our galactic exceptionalism once again.)
The Kepler telescope is in its twilight years. In 2013, two of four reaction wheels that had kept it on target failed. Without a fix, the mission was doomed.
Desperate to salvage the $550 million craft, researchers turned to the only available support: the sun. They harnessed the pressure of solar radiation to stabilize Kepler, as The Post reported in 2014. With two functional wheels and the force of the sun acting like a crutch, the craft could once again focus on distant stars. The reborn project was given the name K2.
During the Kepler and K2 missions, astronomers have confirmed the location of 2,500 exoplanets. Kepler has detected another 5,000 exoplanet candidates, which await confirmation.
The K2 mission was funded for an additional three years of life in 2016. The spacecraft's fuel is expected to run dry at some point in 2018.
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Trump to send astronauts back to the moon -- and eventually Mars
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/11/politics/trump-astronauts-moon/index....
Trump tells NASA to send astronauts to Mars
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump wants to send astronauts where no man has gone before.
Trump authorized the acting NASA administrator Robert M. Lightfoot Jr. to "lead an innovative space exploration program to send American astronauts back to the moon, and eventually Mars" during a White House signing ceremony.Standing with retired astronauts and Vice President Mike Pence, Trump touted the initiative as the first step in establishing a foundation on the moon for "an eventual mission to Mars and perhaps someday to many worlds beyond.""The directive I am signing today will refocus America's space program on human exploration and discovery," Trump said. "It marks an important step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 for long-term exploration and use. This time we will not only plan on flag and leave our footprint."Deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said Monday that Trump's directive came after the National Space Council sent recommendations to the President."He will change our nation's human spaceflight policy to help America become the driving force for the space industry, gain new knowledge from the cosmos, and spur incredible technology," Gidley said Monday.The directive, Gidley said, will push NASA to "refocus ... on its core mission of space exploration."Trump's pick for NASA administrator -- Jim Bridenstine, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma -- has yet to be confirmed. He has come under withering criticism from Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, who wields considerable power over the space program.Both Trump and Pence have made it clear since the 2016 campaign that they would like to send astronauts back to the moon.During a 2016 campaign event near NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Trump pledged to "free NASA from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistical agency for low Earth-orbit activities" and "instead refocus on space exploration.""Under a Trump administration, Florida and America will lead the way into the stars," he said.Pence, during the first meeting of the National Space Council in October, said the Trump administration "will return American astronauts to the moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond.""The moon will be a stepping-stone, a training ground, a venue to strengthen our commercial and international partnerships as we refocus America's space program toward human space exploration," Pence said.Other Republicans, namely former former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have expressed interest in going back to the moon.During his 2012 presidential bid, Gingrich advocated for forming colonies on the moon.photo source
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Scientists find living bacteria from outer space on ISS satellite’s surface
http://tass.com/science/977591
MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Scientists have found living bacteria from outer space on the surface of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS). They are being studied on Earth but most likely they don’t pose any sort of danger, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov told TASS on Monday.
According to him, during spacewalks from the International Space Station under the Russian program, the cosmonauts took samples with cotton swabs from the station’s external surface. In particular, they took probes from places where the accumulation of fuel wastes were discharged during the engines’ operation or at places where the station’s surface is more obscure. After that, the samples were sent back to Earth.
Some terrestrial bacteria also survived on the space station’s external surface, though they had remained within a space vacuum for three years. In addition to that, they underwent sharp swings in temperature from minus 150 to plus 150 degrees Celsius, he noted.
The bacteria were brought to the space station accidentally on tablet PCs together with various materials that are placed aboard the ISS for long periods to study the materials’ behavior in outer space.
Shkaplerov will be the head of the space station’s new crew, which is set to take off to the world’s sole orbiter on December 17.
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Scientists discover bacteria from Arctic permafrost can withstand Mars-like environment
http://tass.com/science/976616
The study allows the scientists to approach the understanding of the survival limits of microorganisms placed in natural substrates under extreme conditions
YEKATERINBURG, November 21. /TASS/. Russian researchers have discovered that some bacteria from ancient Arctic permafrost can survive even up to 20 million years in an inactive state under conditions similar to those on Mars. The study of microorganisms was carried out during a joint project dubbed "Noah's Ark", the press office of Ural Federal University (UrFU) reported.
"This study is of extremely great value for science, since it allows us to approach the understanding of the survival limits of microorganisms placed in natural substrates under extreme conditions. The scientists from UrFU took part in the molecular-biological analysis of samples to find out the structure of microbial communities," commented Sergey Bulat, senior laboratory research assistant at the Extra Terra Consortium from the Physics and Technology Institute of UrFU.
According to the scientists, the study produced new insights into the ancient permafrost, which has not thawed for about two million years.
The researchers modeled conditions of amplified radiation background accompanied by low temperatures resembling those on the surface of Mars and studied the durability of microorganisms in these conditions. Up to now, it has not been clarified what the limits of microorganisms’ durability towards the impact of such extreme factors are. It turned out that some bacteria inhabiting the ancient Arctic permafrost could also exist up to 20 million years in an inactive state under conditions close to those found on Mars.
The results obtained are essential for planning astrobiological space expeditions where objects and regions under investigation, as well as methods of discovering traces of life, should be carefully picked. Data like this, in general, will broaden our knowledge of the durability of earthly life forms.
Noah's Ark project
Noah's Ark is a large-scale project to create the first ever mega-storage of biological materials, and by studying it can provide a clue to understanding the mechanisms of rare diseases and unlock the secrets of evolution.
The research was conducted by the scientists from Moscow State University in close collaboration with colleagues from the Ural Federal University, the Russian Space Research Institute, the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, the B.P. Konstantinov St. Petersburg Institute for Nuclear Physics, and the Kurchatov Institute. The results of the study were published in the journal Extremophiles.
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http://zetatalk.com/newsletr/issue583.htm
Rather than a blind march toward the abyss, Patriarch Kirill is suggesting that the politicians and the citizenry of Russia, “who love the Motherland”, take responsibility for plotting a different path. Of course Putin has placed Russia on that path already, by providing free land to those who move to Russia’s Far East and by moving the State Offices from Moscow to the Far East. Is Patriarch Kirill’s speech the start of an official announcement regarding Nibiru?
We have implied that Russia will lead in these admissions about Nibiru, and yes, this is the start.
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Russian Patriarch Kirill warned of the approach of the end of the world. Machine translate
20 November, 2017. "According to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, all people who love their homeland should be together, because humanity is entering a "critical period of development," and this can be seen with the naked eye.
"One must be blind not to see the approach of the terrible moments of history, about which the apostle and evangelist John the Theologian spoke in his Revelation," he said after the Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
The Patriarch added that, according to Christian doctrine, the end of the world depends on the people themselves. He urged everyone to realize responsibility for Russia and the entire human race, and also to stop "slipping into the abyss of the end of history.""
Патриарх Кирилл заявил, что приближение конца света "видно невооруженным глазом". (2017, November 20). Retrieved November 20, 2017, from https://ria.ru/religion/20171120/1509166583.html
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Comment by casey a on November 2, 2017 at 5:58am
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Monster planet found orbiting dwarf star: 'surprised' astronomers
http://www.france24.com/en/20171031-monster-planet-found-orbiting-d...
A "monster" planet, which should in theory not exist, has been discovered orbiting a faint dwarf star far, far away, surprised astronomers said Tuesday.
The existence of the gassy giant challenges long-standing theories that such a big planet -- about the size of Jupiter -- cannot be formed around a star so small.
The planet was discovered by the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS), based in Chile's Atacama Desert.
Once they found it, astronomers measured how much the planet's gravitational impact caused its parent star to "wobble", so as to determine its size, position and mass.
The planet's parent star is described as an M-dwarf -- the most common type in the universe, which means there may be many more unpredicted giant gas planets to be found, the team said.
"I'm looking forward to seeing what other kinds of exciting new planets we can turn up," Wheatley said.
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