30 July, 2015

2000-year-old Skeleton with Cone Head dug up at Russian Stonehenge


Archeologists are puzzled over the ancient remains of a woman discovered on a site near Chelyabinsk, a Russian city to the east of the Ural Mountains. The approximately 2,000 year old skeleton boasts an oddly shaped skull.
The “conehead” skeleton of a woman from the Sarmati tribe, unearthed at the archaeological site of Arkaim, a 4000-year-old settlement, has totally thrilled UFO hunters who have taken it as solid proof that aliens have visited Earth. Photos and videos of the dig may indeed remind one of the aggressive, dangerous extraterrestrial creature from the 1979 sci-fi movie, Alien, directed by Ridley Scott.


However, archeologists say this idea is off the table, attributing the skull’s unusual shape to traditional head bonding.

In an interview with the Russian news agency TASS, Maria Makurova, head of the Arkaim Nature Reserve, said:
“Her skull was elongated because the tribe did so by tying up the heads of their children with rope. It was clearly a tradition in the tribe.”

Scientists are still lost in conjecture as to why such a tradition evolved.

The settlement, twice as old as the skeleton itself and, thus, having no historical connection to it, was discovered in 1987 and is believed to have been built in the 17th century BC.

Arkaim, situated in Russia’s Southern Urals, is often compared to England’s Stonehenge because it was also used for star observations. The Russian observatory, however, is said to have been more technologically advanced and have more favorable conditions for astronomical observation.

The settlement, occupying an area of around 20,439 square meters, consisted of two circles of dwellings separated by a street and a central square. The site was surrounded by high walls built to protect the 1,500 to 2,500 people who lived there.
Artist rendering of the Arkaim settlement
Since its discovery, Arkaim has become an important location for Bronze Age study, attracting a great deal of public and media attention in Russia, including a significant number of esoteric and pseudoscientific organizations.

Source:  http://www.eutimes.net/2015/07/2000-year-old-skeleton-with-cone-head-dug-up-at-russian-stonehenge/

Strange elongated head creates excitement among UFO enthusiasts


According to reports, a skeleton with a strangely shaped head was found in Russia's Stonehenge. The elongated skull created excitement among UFO enthusiasts. Many think that the remains could be evidence that aliens came to Earth many years ago.

Photos and videos of the dig have been released by archeologists to disclose their discovery. But, the experts are speaking in opposition to what people are assuming. Many are saying that it is a skeleton of an alien species. Experts said that the bones could belong to a woman from 2,000 years back. The woman's skull was strange due to some traditions of her tribe, said experts.

According to Maria Makurova, one of the researchers, "We have found a well-preserved skeleton. I would not exclude the possibility that the skeleton belongs to a woman from the Sarmati tribe that lived in the territories of what is now modern day Ukraine, Kazakhstan and southern Russia".

Makurova added that the skull became longer for the reason that the tribe tied up the heads of their children using rope and it was their tradition.

As per reports, the skeleton was discovered in a settlement in Akraim dating back to 4,000 years. According to Makurova's team, they will still continue additional studies in an attempt to know why the tribe had such traditions.

Russia's Stonehenge was constructed in 17th century BC and, it was also used as a place to study stars and constellations in the prehistoric years. According to Mirror, the site was found discovered in 1987 by another group of archaeologists.

Source:  http://wtexas.com/content/15074143-strange-elongated-head-creates-excitement-among-ufo-enthusiasts

29 July, 2015

The 2 Billion Year Old Nuclear Reactor - Gabon, Africa

Two billion years ago parts of an African uranium deposit spontaneously underwent nuclear fission.

Sometime a bit less than 2 billion years ago, and lasting for about 300,000 years, the Oklo reactors held a series of stable nuclear fission reactions.

Upon their discovery, the central question about these reactors was simply: How could they possibly work? One early hypothesis was that the fundamental physical constants that restrict nuclear reactions today may have been different 2 billion years ago. Analysis of the wastes at Oklo, running all the way up to this very month, suggest that the physical constants have indeed been constant all along. That means the reactor would have needed a fissionable isotope in the same concentrations we require today.

If we have such trouble making raw uranium usable in stable fission reactions, how could an inanimate planet possibly do it?

Well, it didn’t. Back when these Oklo reactors first fired themselves up, Earth was barely half as old as it is today. That means that less time had passed since its initial formation from bits of galactic dust and rock. As a result, fewer radioactive half-lives had played out, and unstable isotopes were found in much higher concentrations.

Scientists estimate the Oklo reactors would have had samples with roughly 3.6% uranium-235.

These small details led to further investigations which showed that least a part of the mine was well below the normal amount of uranium 235: some 200 kilograms appeared to have been extracted in the distant past, today, that amount is enough to make half a dozen nuclear bombs. Soon, researchers and scientists from all over the world gathered in Gabon to explore what was going on with the Uranium from Oklo. 

What was found in Oklo surprised everyone gathered there, the site where the uranium originated from is actually an advanced subterranean nuclear reactor that goes well beyond the capabilities of our present scientific knowledge. Researchers believe that this ancient nuclear reactor is around 1.8 billion years old and operated for at least 500,000 years in the distant past. Scientists performed several other investigation at the uranium mine and the results were made public at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to News agencies from Africa, researchers had found traces of fission products and fuel wastes at various locations within the mine area.

Incredibly, compared with this huge nuclear reactor, our modern-day nuclear reactors are really not comparable both in design and functionality. According to studies, this ancient nuclear reactor was several kilometers long. Interestingly, for a large nuclear reactor like this, thermal impact towards the environment was limited to just 40 meters on all sides. What researchers found even more astonishing, are the radioactive wastes that have still not moved outside the limits of the site as they are still held in place tanks to the geology of the area.

What is surprising is that a nuclear reaction had occurred in a way that the plutonium, the by-product, was created and the nuclear reaction itself had been moderated something considered as a “holy grail” for atomic science. The ability to moderate the reaction means that once the reaction was initiated, it was possible to leverage the output power in a controlled way, with the ability to prevent catastrophic explosions or the release of the energy at a single time.

Researchers have dubbed the Nuclear Reactor at Oklo as a “natural Nuclear Reactor”, but the truth about it goes far beyond our normal understanding.
Meanwhile, French nuclear scientists carried out a detailed survey of the Oklo site, discovering not just one reactor zone but up to 17 of them over an area of several tens of square kilometres. Some of these were close to the surface and so had been influenced by weathering processes, while others were at depths of up to 400 metres and were more or less pristine.

In addition to the depleted uranium-235, these zones contained numerous fission fragments such as isotopes of zirconium, yttrium, neodymium and cerium. The unusual ratios of these isotopes was an important indicator of what had gone on there almost 2 billion years earlier.

The presence of these fission by-products immediately piqued the interest of nuclear scientists

Source:
The Workings of an Ancient Nuclear Reactor - Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-nuclear-reactor/
2 billion-year-old African nuclear reactor proves that Mother Nature still has a few tricks up her sleeve | ExtremeTech
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/181620-2-billion-year-old-african-nuclear-reactor-proves-that-mother-nature-still-has-a-few-tricks-up-her-sleeve
2 billion year old nuclear reactor in Gabon | News24
http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/2-billion-year-old-nuclear-reactor-in-Gabon-20150605
In the 1970s, Scientists Discovered a 2 Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor in West Africa — The Physics arXiv Blog — Medium
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/in-the-1970s-scientists-discovered-a-2-billion-year-old-nuclear-reactor-in-west-africa-4472460b82c2

28 July, 2015

UFO Seen In Bismarck, North Dakota

Bismarck, ND (WDAY/WDAZ TV) - Tourists like to soak in the beauty of the region in the summer, but are we attracting visitors from another galaxy?


This photo was sent to wdaz.com by a viewer from Bismarck. She cannot identify the object. While it certainly looks like a flying saucer, there are several possible explanations.
 
For instance, the image could be a lens flare created by reflected light of car headlights from a nearby roadway. Or Is It A UFO?

Source: http://www.wdaz.com/news/north-dakota/3805597-viewer-sends-us-photo-ufo-bismarck

26 July, 2015

Why the $100m alien listening project may be a huge waste of time


The launch of the $100M Breakthrough Initiative project to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been supported by many leading scientists including Stephen Hawking and astronomer royal Martin Rees. But there is no evidence – and few convincing theories – to suggest that intelligent, communicative aliens actually exist. So are listening projects really the best way to search for extraterrestrial life?

The possibility of life outside our own planet has been the subject of debate for centuries, with the essence of the problem crystallised by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. His now famous “Fermi paradox” runs simply: if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Galaxy, then why do we see no evidence for it?

Colonising the galaxy – hard but possible

We now know that planets around other stars are very common. Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi in 1995, around 2000 exoplanets have now been found. Most of these are close by – within a few hundred light years.

Statistical analysis of the results from the Kepler spacecraft suggest that as many as one-fifth of all sun-like stars has an Earth-like planet in its habitable zone, where conditions are such that liquid water could exist.

So if planets are so plentiful, then what about life? The Drake equation, formulated by Frank Drake in 1961, attempts to answer this question by suggesting there could be many civilisations in the Milky Way that we should be able to communicate with.

However, while many of the terms in the equation are now known fairly well, others are highly uncertain. But let’s assume for a moment that such civilisations do exist. If they do, then might we notice them? A straightforward way for an alien civilisation to make itself known is simply to colonise the galaxy. Let’s consider how long this might take, assuming technology that is not too far away.

It would be possible now to build probes that could be sent out into space to search for other planets, land on them, and build replicas of the probe that could in turn be sent out to other planets and so on.
At the sort of speeds we can now imagine, such as that achieved by the New Horizons spacecraft (60,000 km/h), it would take a mere 18,000 years to travel a distance of one light-year. Let’s assume such a probe were sent to a planet ten light-years away, arriving after 180,000 years. It then builds ten copies of itself, and sends them off to other planets, each a further ten light years-away. In this way it would take only 5,000 probe generations to fill the entire galaxy – an accomplishment that would be achieved in less than a billion years.

But it’s not hard to imagine that an advanced civilisation might produce space probes that could travel significantly faster than ours currently do, so colonising the galaxy in just a few hundred million years is not unlikely.

But here’s the thing: the Milky Way has existed for around ten billion years, and we know that some planets exist around stars that are almost this old. So if intelligent life really is common, the likelihood is that it evolved elsewhere to our stage of intelligence several billion years ago, giving it plenty of time to colonise the galaxy. So where is everybody?

Are we all alone …?

A Soviet Soyuz spacecraft window from The Apollo spacecraft Credit: Pond5
Entire books have been written exploring the various solutions to the Fermi paradox, but they fall into the following general categories.

Rare Earth: It may be that there are no civilisations in the galaxy any more advanced than we are. Perhaps the combination of astronomical, geological, chemical and biological factors needed to allow the emergence of complex, multicellular life is just so unlikely that it’s only happened once.

Doomsday: Perhaps life and civilisations emerge often, but it is the nature of “intelligent” life to destroy itself within a few hundred years?. The human race certainly has no shortage of ways of accomplishing this, whether it’s via physical, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction, or as a result of climate change, or even a nanotechnology catastrophe. If life doesn’t persist very long on any planet, we shouldn’t expect to see much evidence of it around the galaxy.

Extinction: Even if we don’t wipe ourselves out, perhaps the universe conspires to eliminate civilisations on a regular basis? It’s clear on Earth that there have been at least five mass extinctions. Some of these may have been triggered by the impact of massive asteroids, but other possible extinction causing events might include nearby supernovae or gamma-ray bursts.

…or are the aliens just hiding?

There is another class of possible solutions to the Fermi paradox that boil down to the fact that alien civilisations do exist, but we simply see no evidence of them.

Distance scales: Perhaps civilisations are spread too thinly throughout the Galaxy to effectively communicate with each other? Civilisations may be separated in space, and also in time, so two civilisations just don’t overlap during the time that they’re each active.

Technical problems: Maybe we’re not looking in the right place, or in the right way? Or maybe we just haven’t been looking for long enough? Perhaps we’ve not recognised a signal that’s out there, because the alien civilisation is using technology that we simply cannot comprehend.

Isolationist: Perhaps the aliens are out there, but they’re choosing to hide themselves from us? Perhaps everyone is listening, but nobody is transmitting? It may be that other civilisations know we’re here, but the Earth is purposely isolated, as if we’re some kind of exhibit in a zoo.

Finally, there are of course the more extreme possibilities such as that the Galaxy that we observe to be empty of life is a simulation, constructed by aliens. Or perhaps the aliens are already here among us. Such speculation is great for science fiction, but without evidence, it’s not worth pursuing further.
My own hunch is that life is indeed common in the galaxy, but intelligent life is rare – either because it doesn’t evolve very often, or it doesn’t last very long once it does. For that reason I think that SETI programmes are probably doomed to fail – although I would love to be proved wrong.

Instead I think the best chance of finding life elsewhere in the galaxy is through spectroscopy of the atmospheres of transiting terrestrial planets. That will be carried out by missions such as such as the European Space Agency’s PLATO spacecraft, due for launch in 2024. Such life may just be a green slime that we can scrape off a rock with our finger, but its detection would truly transform our view of the universe, and ourselves.

 Source: http://theconversation.com/why-the-100m-alien-listening-project-may-be-a-huge-waste-of-time-45054

23 July, 2015

Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner take out ad in FT to promote alien quest

Russian billionaire and renowned physicist promote private venture to find E.T.

Yuri Milner, the Russian tech investor, and scientists including Stephen Hawking have taken out an ad in the Financial Times to promote their $100 million quest to find out whether there is any other life in the universe.

Milner, who is an investor in Facebook and Alibaba, has partnered with Hawking for Breakthrough Initiative, a new push to look for intelligent life beyond Earth.

The ad in the FT says, "Are we alone? Now is the time to find out."

Scientists supporting the initiative and listed on page five of the FT include: Lord Martin Rees, the astronomer, fellow of Trinity College and emeritus professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge; James Watson, the chancellor emeritus, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a Nobel Prize laureate, and the cosmonaut Alexey Leonov.

The Ad on The "Financial Time"
Other people who have put their name to the ad include: Sarah Brightman, the soprano; Magnus Charlsen, the world chess champion, and Seth Macfarlane, the actor, writer and director.
Milner has personally put up the $100 million to find the search.

The two-part Breakthrough Initiative includes Breakthrough Listen, which is being billed as the "most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search" for intelligent life, and Breakthrough Message, a competition to find messages representing humanity and Earth that could be sent to other civilizations.

Milner already operates the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, which gives out $3 million to the scientists who win its prize.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, and Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, are among the Silicon Valley investors to fund Breakthrough Prize Foundation.

16 July, 2015

German Court Orders Government to Unseal UFO Files - Germany

The German government has lost the legal battle to keep classified documents about intelligent extraterrestrial life is within its reach. From now, the ‘UFOs Bundestag Act’ will be available to all citizens.

The hypothetical existence of classified ‘Bundestag Act’ was revealed by amateur UFO researcher Robert Fleischer, of Exopolitic.org in 2010.

It is one of the most exciting things to happen in a while for ufologists and paranormal researchers. With this, Germany becomes another country which declassified its secret UFO documents. The ruling is a major achievement from the point of view of ufology and the transparency of information.

The Federal Administrative Court of Germany ended last June 25, a dispute that lasted for several years. According to the statement, anyone can now access the 20-page report on UFO’s and alien life.
The document is a summary prepared by the scientific service of the Bundestag from generally accessible data on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe and Earth-like planets in space.

This documents demonstrates that German authorities do have an interest in UFO’s and extraterrestrial life, even though up until now, it was something deeply rejected by the government.
In June 2008, Peter Altmaier, the parliamentary secretary of state then (and now head of the Federal Chancellery of Germany), announced at the request of a deputy that “the Bundestag has no knowledge of UFO sightings in Germany”. He insisted, moreover, that there was no file available on the issue.

It seemed that Germans did not have the same rights as other citizens from countries such as the US, France, England, etc..

Even in 2009, Secretary of State Jochen Homann repeated the same words: “The Federal Government does not have evidence which would allow a reliable assessment of probabilities of intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the cosmos.”

A blogger by the name of Frank Reitemeyer, took the situation very seriously and took the Bundestag to trial, accusing them of lack of transparency of information. And now, four years after, the battle has been won and these classified documents have become available for everyone to see.

But how much will this change the UFO phenomena and how we look at extraterrestrial life, or better said, the possibility of it?

Many people believe in the existence of otherworldly beings and UFO’s without the need of seeing “Declassified” documents from the government, and most of them argue that the documents made available to the public, are only partially declassified and that the real intel on life in the cosmos is still kept hidden away from the public.

This case however, proves that citizens from around the globe have the right to know if their governments are looking into the UFO phenomena and life in the universe. If such life does exist elsewhere in the universe, then people of the world have the right to know.

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Welsh Government Responds to UFO Questions in Klingon

If people want to know about UFO sightings in Wales, they better speak Klingon. 
National Assembly for Wales: Debating Chamber
When Shadow Health Minister Darren Millar submitted questions about UFO sightings at Cardiff Airport, a Welsh government spokesperson responded in Klingon, the fictional language from "Star Trek," according to the BBC.
 
In the British parliamentary system, the shadow cabinet is a team of opposition party leaders mirroring the real cabinet. 

Millar also asked if any research was being funded to look into the reported sightings, the BBC reported. 

"Jang vIDa je due luq," the spokesperson replied, according to BBC. "'Ach ghotvam'e' QI'yaH devolve qaS.” 

Translated back into an earthly language, the statement reads, “The minister will reply in due course. However this is a non-devolved matter.” 

The Welsh Flag - The Flag of Wales
Millar's three questions about UFOs were directed to the economy, science and transport minister Edwina Hart, the BBC reported. 

"I've always suspected that Labor ministers came from another planet. This response confirms it," Millar told the BBC. 

Millar is expected to receive terrestrial answers from Hart on Wednesday, according to the BBC.