29 February, 2016

NASA Concealed Secret Alien Message Claims UFO Group

An audio recording has surfaced in the UFO conspiracy theory blogosphere claimed to be the authentic “leaked copy” of the recording of an alien voice obtained from a UFO probe discovered on Mars by NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.



A conspiracy theory website, The Sheivae Project, now claims that NASA secretly received an audio recording containing an alien reply to its 1977 VGR message in 2012, but has kept the information hidden from the public. However, a NASA whistleblower leaked a copy of the recording before he died.

According to the Sheivae Project, NASA temporarily lost Voyager signals in the 1990s. The brief interruption of signals was due to the probes being intercepted by aliens who obtained and analyzed the message contained in the VGR.

NASA was aware at the time that the message had been intercepted in space but maintained conspiratorial silence about it.
 But later, after NASA landed Opportunity rover to Mars in 2004, it detected artificial signals on the planet but was unable to locate the source of the signals.

Thus, NASA had to wait until 2012 when it deployed the Curiosity rover on the Red Planet. Curiosity rover picked up the signals and allegedly found an alien UFO probe on Mars containing a disc with a recording of an alien voice responding to NASA’s VGR message.

But, once again, NASA kept the discovery secret.
 However, a researcher who identified himself as Viktor, born in South Africa, reportedly claimed in an Abovetopsecret.com conspiracy theory forum thread that in 2011, he met a man who worked with a NASA-linked company. The man told him that NASA was aware that the VGR message had been intercepted in space but officials had no idea who intercepted the message.

After NASA’s Curiosity rover obtained the recording of an alien voice from a UFO probe found on Mars in 2012, the whistleblower leaked it to Viktor before he died of cancer in 2014, claiming it was an alien response to NASA’s message.

Victor claimed he worked quietly on the case since 2011 before going public. The recording of an alien voice, claimed to be an effort by aliens to reproduce human speech artificially, begins with bleeping noises followed by a synthetic human voice that says, “Hello. I am Sheivae. I receive your message. I come from world far ways from yours. You are not alone. I hope you receive mine. I hope you understand my message.”

Sheivae goes on to explain that she found the Voyager message while wandering in space after having lost her native planet.

The claim is so bizarre that even some members of the alien and UFO community, known for expansive credulity, have expressed doubt, saying it is a hoax.
Skeptics have pointed out that the timing of release of the recording was likely intended to exploit recent reports that NASA kept hidden for nearly five decades a recording of mysterious “space music” heard on the far side of the Moon by the crew of the Apollo 10 mission.
UFO blogger Scott Waring reports he was contacted on Twitter by an anonymous female person who narrated a story similar to Viktor’s. The person said that while she worked for a small communications company, she was contacted by a NASA whistleblower with top-secret information to divulge. The whistleblower passed away soon after he leaked the recording of an alien voice.
“It’s odd, for sure. No doubt about that. But NASA doesn’t like to tell the public about what they find. We always have to find out through the grape vine of old records, photos, eyewitness,” Waring commented on his blog.
The leaker defended himself against claims that his story, and the alleged recording of an alien voice, is a hoax by hinting future disclosures.
Disclosure pictures of the probe would be impossible to explain, but the files in the probe, they can make it look like a hoax, it’s easy for them (NASA). People say I am a liar, so you can imagine what NASA can do against me, but I think people are not stupid.
Source:  http://www.inquisitr.com/2818159/nasa-doesnt-want-you-to-hear-this-recording-of-an-alien-voice-found-in-ufo-probe-on-mars-according-to-conspiracy-theorists/

The Wow! Signal Might Have Been From Comets, Not Aliens

On 15 August 1977, radio astronomers using the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University picked up a powerful signal from space. Some believe it was our first interception of an alien broadcast. Now it seems something closer to home may have been the source: a pair of passing comets.
full page of the computer printout that contains the "Wow!" signal (Link)

The signal – known as the “Wow! signal” after a note scribbled by astronomer Jerry Ehman, who detected it – came through at 1420 megahertz, corresponding to a wavelength of 21 centimetres. Searchers for extraterrestrial transmissions have long considered it an auspicious place to look, as it is one of the main frequencies at which atoms of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, absorb and emit energy. What’s more, this frequency easily penetrates the atmosphere.

But in the 40 years since, we’ve never heard anything like it again. Analysis of the signal ruled out a satellite, and a reflected signal from the Earth’s surface is unlikely because regulations forbid transmission in that frequency range.

The signal’s intensity rose and fell over the course of 72 seconds, which is the length of time that the Big Ear could keep an object in its field of view due to the rotation of the Earth. That meant it was clearly coming from space. So what was it?

Antonio Paris, a professor of astronomy at St Petersburg College in Florida, thinks the signal might have come from one or more passing comets. He points the finger at two suspects, called 266P/Christensen and P/2008 Y2 (Gibbs). “I came across the idea when I was in my car driving and wondered if a planetary body, moving fast enough, could be the source,” he says.

Possibly Hydrogen Clouds?
Comets release a lot of hydrogen as they swing around the sun. This happens because ultraviolet light breaks up their frozen water, creating a cloud of the gas extending millions of kilometres out from the comet itself.

If the comets were passing in front of the Big Ear in 1977, they would have generated an apparently short-lived signal, as the telescope (now dismantled) had a fixed field of view. Searching that same area – as subsequent radio telescopes did – wouldn’t show anything. Tracing the comets’ positions back in time, Paris says that the possible origin for the Wow! signal falls right between where they would have been.

Neither comet was known in 1977; they were both discovered in the last decade, which would mean nobody would have thought to search for them. The odds of any telescope catching them in the region of the Wow! signal by chance were vanishingly small.

To test his idea, Paris proposes looking at the same region of space when the comets are back. Comet 266P/Christensen will transit the region first, on 25 January 2017, then P/2008 Y2 (Gibbs), on 7 January 2018. An analysis of the hydrogen signal of the comets should reveal if he is correct.

Some Are In Doubt
Some researchers are sceptical, saying it isn’t clear the comets would release enough hydrogen to generate something like the Wow! signal. James Bauer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, agrees that the hydrogen from comets can extend quite far, but still thinks the signal won’t be strong enough. “If comets were radio-bright at 21 centimetres, I would be puzzled as to why they aren’t observed more often at those wavelengths,” he says.

Paris says future observations will determine whether he is right. One crucial piece of evidence will be how fast the comets move across the sky. Too slow, and the Big Ear would have seen another signal 24 hours later as they rolled back into view, unlike the solo blast of the Wow! signal. “The hypothesis must be tested before it is ruled out,” he says. “Science 101.”

Source:  https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28747-famous-wow-signal-might-have-been-from-comets-not-aliens/

23 February, 2016

Space mining edges closer to reality but legal minefield remains

The stuff of science fiction could soon become reality as a growing number of companies and organisations look to space for a treasure chest of untapped resources.

Minerals including iron, nickel, titanium, platinum, water and helium-3 that are found on asteroids and the moon could be mined for use on Earth or used in space for future colonies.

"It's definitely not going to happen like in the movie Armageddon - I can guarantee it's not going be done by humans, it's going to be done by the robots," said associate professor of asteroid mining Serkan Saydam from the University of New South Wales.

NASA research has found that around 1,500 asteroids are within "easy reach" of Earth, and a house-sized asteroid could contain metals worth millions of dollars.

"Asteroid mining companies are (already) set to launch their first space craft in the near future," Mr Saydam said.

"We're still discussing what sort of methods we will use to break the asteroids, is it going to be blasting?"

That reality is drawing closer and closer as the cost of space missions has dropped on the back of cheaper nano-satellite technology, while deep sea mining robotics for extraction under extreme conditions can be adapted for use in space.

Earlier this year, Luxembourg announced plans to pioneer the potentially lucrative business of mining asteroids in space for gold, platinum, and tungsten.

Meanwhile, in November, US President Barack Obama signed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, allowing US companies property rights over space resources they retrieve.

One US commercial space company, Deep Space Industries, welcomed President Obama's move and said the harvest of space resources will be "the biggest industrial transformation in human history".
The company specialises in space mining, utilising nano-satellite technology to keep costs down.

Regulatory minefield


However, with opportunity comes a regulatory minefield, as questions are raised as to who owns what and which legal framework would apply to government agencies and for-profit companies.
"International framework of space is based on primarily United Nations treaties that were put together in a different era," said Professor Steven Freeland from the University of Western Sydney, who is assisting the Australian Government in its current review of the regulatory framework for space activities.


"They were put together during the period of the Cold War where there were very few countries engaged in space, when the vast majority of space activities were state-oriented."
Space exploration remains highly political, but it has now become open for business as more and more companies seek their fortune in asteroid mining and the potential for space tourism.


"We are literally shaping space for future generations and we need to be careful about the decisions we make around that," said Dr Alice Gormanis, a senior lecturer at Flinders University who focuses on the emerging field of space archaeology.

"Everyone is a stakeholder in outer-space, particularly if you think of something like the moon, a huge role in human cultures across all times, and across the whole of the Earth."

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-22/space-mining-closer-to-reality-but-legal-minefield-remains/7189880

20 February, 2016

Mass Relocation For Chinese Villagers, For The World's Largest Telescope!

More than 9,000 Chinese villagers are leaving their homes to make way for aliens — or for the possible echoes of them, at least.

It is not a colonization plan from outer space. The Chinese government is relocating the villagers as it finishes building the world’s biggest radio telescope, one of whose purposes is to detect signs of extraterrestrial life.
The telescope will be 500 meters, or 1,640 feet, in diameter, making it by far the largest instrument of its kind in the world. It is called FAST, short for 500-meter aperture spherical telescope, and will cost an estimated 1.2 billion renminbi, or $184 million, to erect. The government hopes to complete it by September.

The mass relocation was announced on Tuesday in a report by Xinhua, the state news agency. The report said officials were moving 2,029 families, a total of 9,110 people, who live within about three miles of the telescope in the area of Pingtang and Luodian Counties in the southwestern province of Guizhou. Depopulating the area will create “a sound electromagnetic wave environment” for the telescope, Xinhua said.

Officials plan to give each person the equivalent of $1,800 for housing compensation, the report said. Guizhou is one of China’s poorest provinces.

Forced relocations for large projects are common across China, and so are complaints about them and about the amount of compensation offered. The Three Gorges Dam displaced more than one million people along the Yangtze River, for example, and the middle route of the gargantuan South-North Water Diversion Project has resulted in the relocation of 350,000 people to make way for a series of canals.

The Chinese government has announced ambitious plans for its space program, at a time when the American one’s direction is uncertain. China aims to put an astronaut on the moon and a space station in orbit. The FAST project is another important element in the larger plan.

Some official Chinese news reports about the project have emphasized the search for alien life, but the telescope’s main scientific work will be somewhat less romantic, gathering large amounts of new data on a wide range of physical phenomena in space including pulsars, galaxies, black holes and gas clouds.




The telescope is being built in a wide depression among karst hills. The site is far from any large city, and ideal for picking up radio transmissions from the sky, the Xinhua report said. Scientists began looking for a suitable site for the project in 1994.

If the truth is out there, some Chinese scientists are confident that the giant telescope will find it. For decades, professional and amateur scientists have combed the data gathered by the largest currently operational radio telescope in the world, the 53-year-old Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, hoping to find traces of intelligent life that, like mankind, may be advertising its existence to the universe through radio emissions. But they have yet to find any sign.




“With a larger signal receiving area and more flexibility, FAST will be able to scan two times more sky area than Arecibo, with three to five times higher sensitivity,” Li Di, a chief scientist with the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily last year.

The new telescope should be able to pick up all kinds of radio signals more clearly from sources much farther away than can the Arecibo dish, which is 300 meters (about 1,000 feet) in diameter.



In November, scientists successfully tested the new telescope’s “retina,” which weighs 33 tons and is suspended 460 to 525 feet above the reflector dish, which was half-finished at the time, China Daily reported.

The telescope is made up of 4,500 mostly triangular panels that measure about 36 feet on a side, the report said, which together create an immense parabolic dish. Scientists will be able to adjust the panels’ positions to alter the shape of the dish and reflect radio signals from distant parts of the universe to a single focal point for detection and study.

Mr. Li told China Daily that engineers were aiming to install all the panels by June and complete debugging the antenna by September.

“Ultimately, exploring the unknown is the nature of mankind,” he said, adding that it was “as visceral as feeding and clothing ourselves.”

“It drives us to a greater future,” he said.

China Enters The Search For ET With The Largest Telescope Ever Built! | The Xenologist

Sources: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/world/asia/china-fast-telescope-guizhou-relocation.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/china-hunts-for-aliens-and-scientists/articleshow/51063628.cms

12 February, 2016

07 February, 2016

UFO researcher says Russian flying saucer footage is legitimate

 
A UFO sighting over Russia's capital last month was legitimate, according to the leader of a self-styled UFO research group.

News Corp reports Kosmopoisk founder and leader Vadim Chernobrov believes a video of four mysterious lights flying in formation over Moscow was not the result of digital trickery but a real, mysterious sighting.

The otherworldly orbs caused the usual speculative storm online after they recorded and uploaded.
Now Chernobrov, who reportedly once claimed to have built a time machine, has weighed in adding his gravitas the claims of a man called Timur who first spotted the strange spectacle.

“There were four balls of light. A red one to the left, two white ones in the middle and a less bright one to the right,” Timur told Russian media.

"Sometimes the one on the right would disappear and come back.

"All together, they made the geometric shape of a rhombus.”

According to News Corp, Chernobrov is convinced the footage is the genuine article.
“The lights cannot be explained as either an atmospheric or a cosmic image," he was quoted as saying.

“The chance of it being some sort of mirage is also impossible due to the precise geometric form the objects have formed.”

“Some have said they could look like Chinese lanterns but I would dismiss this possibility because of the movements and speed of the objects.”

It is not the first time Chernobrov and his team of UFOlogists and cryptozoologists have claimed to have discovered the truth behind Earth's fledgling inter-planetary relations.

In September last year his team claimed to have discovered ancient remnants of a crashed UFO in Russia.

He was among a group of researchers who believed stone discs found in the Medveditskaya ridge region of the Zhirnovsky district, Volgograd, were millions of years old signs of extraterrestrial visitors.

"We managed to find a dozen of these stone disks, but this is such a unique one" Chernobrov told a local news website.

"Other stones we found is not more more than 1 diameter in diameter.

Previously, we have been able to find such alien stones, but the biggest of them found was in the Kuzbass which was of two metre in diameters (sic)."

 Source:  https://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/a/30735102/ufo-researcher-says-russian-flying-saucer-footage-was-legitimate/

06 February, 2016

Gold: A Brief History

GOLD bears may names in multiple cultures, The Ancient Egyptians called Gold “The Breath of God”, For the Romans “The Muscles of War”, the Incas called it “The Sweat of The Sun”, and The Aztec's called gold the “Excrement of The Gods,”.

For The English, The word “Gold” comes from the Old English word “Geolu”, meaning yellow.

But Let me tell you the true cost of this valuable metal, and its darkest secret and the most astonishing facts about Gold.

In times of war and conquest gold plays a valuable part here are some interesting facts, during the culmination of Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar gave each of his soldiers two-hundred gold coins, and subsequently paid off all of Rome's debt.
Marcus L. Crassus
Known as the richest Roman in history with an accumulation of wealth of 7100 talents or 8.4 billion in todays numbers. Marcus Licinius Crassus owned seized property from Sulla's political enemies during Sulla's Purges, to the speculative nature of real estate property investments, including ownership of several silver mines, and the buying and selling of slaves for profit by upskilling them.

In Accordance with Pompey, Julius Caesar, and himself, Crassus agreed on the Governorship of Syria, due to its inexhaustible wealth, for Pompey the province of Spain and Caesar the Lands of Gaul, but destiny has other plans for Crassus and his ambitions.

Occurring in the Parthian-Roman War in 53 B.C., The Battle of Carrhae, turned to disaster for the Roman General, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Crassus just arriving in Syria just a few years ago declared war and was swiftly defeated by the Parthians, Crassus was forced to negotiate by his soldiers, and upon arrival the situation was tense and was set upon and died, as a monument of his greed for Gold, the Parthians, poured molten gold down his throat as a symbol of his thirst for wealth.
King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella of Spain with Christopher Columbus
In 1511, King Ferdinand of Spain coined the immortal phrase: “Get gold, humanely if possible—but at all hazards, get gold.” By the 1599, a Spanish governor in present day Ecuador taxed the Jivaro tribe so excessively that they attacked the 12,000 strong settlement of Logrono and executed him by pouring molten gold down his throat alive. The settlement of Logrono still exist to this day.
Blood
A flash forward to the present What's even more interesting is the fact that gold is currently circulating the human body right now, but it just a small amount of 0.2 milligrams so you'll need 40,000 people for a Gold coin of 8g.

An unexpected new source of gold is trees? Yes you heard right eucalyptus trees to be precise, Australian researchers in the CSIRO, Australia's Science Institute, have found that Gold does indeed grow on trees, just microscopically on its leaves, but its less than 0.000005 percent of each leaf by weight, mainly due to the fact that Gold is probably toxic and is moved to its extremities (the leaves) to reduce deleterious biochemical reaction, the researchers wrote.

174,100 is the total number of tonnes of gold mined since civilisation

100 million people worldwide depend on gold mining for their livelihood

Australia has 79.85 tonnes of gold a value of 2.8 billion USD or 4 billion AUD
Fort Knox
The United States Bullion Depository, or Fort Knox Holds 4,600 tonnes of Gold with a value of 6.2 billion US dollars

The US Federal Reserve Holds 6,200 tonnes of Gold, the Gold is partly owned by the US Federal Reserve but most of it belongs to foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organisations. The Federal Reserve acts as the guardian and custodian of these gold holdings on behalf of its account holders, which also include the U.S. Government. It has an estimated value of half a trillion dollars.

And I'll leave you with this nearly half the gold ever mined comes from one place Witwatersrand, in South Africa. More gold has come from this area than from any continent, about 50,000 tonnes over 120 years, nearly half of all the gold ever mined. 

References:
http://www.sharpspixley.com/history-of-gold/
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/gold/eureka/gold-fun-facts
http://www.investinganswers.com/investment-ideas/commodities-precious-metals/50-surprising-facts-you-never-knew-about-gold-1370
http://www.usfunds.com/interactive/gold-through-the-ages/#.VrW-c1KMX7x
https://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/the-battle-of-carrhae/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus
http://www.carbgold.com.au/about.html?catid=12&id=12:facts-about-gold-13
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115CH8.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1769869/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/qi/8667421/QI-Quite-interesting-facts-about-gold.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131022-gold-eucalyptus-leaves-mining-geology-science/
http://www.byondmarket.com/web/gold_facts.html
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/gold-reserves
https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/goldvault.html
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/goldRpt/current_report.htm
http://www.factslides.com/s-Gold (FACT #17) 

-auslatino89/thexenologist 

03 February, 2016

Argentina Created UFO Investigative Unit Shrouded in Secrecy

In Four Years, Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena Identified Soccer Balls, Birds, Moon

Since he took office in December, Argentinean President Mauricio Macri has uncovered several boondoggles left behind by his predecessor, Cristina Kirchner. Examples of the Kirchners’ excesses include a derelict presidential palace and a party room for the vice president at a state bank.

CEFAE Insignia - Argentina

The latest discovery is a commission that Kirchner created in 2011 to investigate Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s). You read that right.

After four years of allegedly looking into the matter, the Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena (Cefae) produced a flimsy 12-page report in December — when Kirchner left office — analyzing a grand total of 10 sightings. If you were wondering, none of them were alien spaceships.
Argentinean journalist Sebastián Tortora summed up the findings after years of trying to figure out what Cefae actually did:
1. One sighting compatible with the Rigel star (β Orionis).
2. Three standard aeronautical night lights.
3. The combination of the satellite Envisat, the International Space Station ISS Zarya, and “star β Grulla.”
4. A small soccer ball thrown at short distance from the camera
5. The planet Jupiter, its quadrant coordinates coinciding perfectly with the time, hour, and location reported by the witness.
6. A bird crossing in front of the camera.
7. A pair of lights from an antenna
8. The Moon, its quadrant coordinates coinciding perfectly with the time, hour, and location reported by the witness [photo taken in daylight, it should be pointed out]
9. [Believe it or not] a case without a single photo or video
10. A helicopter
With such results, it’s no surprise that the document, uploaded to an obscure army website, bears no signatures. Furthermore, it covers UFO’s reported by the population between 2014 and 2015, leaving what they did during the previous years covered in mystery.

Sadly for the Argentinean taxpayer, Cefae, which allegedly employs geologists, engineers, pilots, radar technicians, computer experts, and meteorologists, did not reveal its operating costs.

Local outlet Hoy argues that, while the commission “organized, coordinated, and methodically carried out investigations into the possible causes of unidentified objects in the national airspace,” the Kirchner administration proceeded to “dismantle” the Argentinean Armed Forces.

It also notes that Cefae became an appendix “of the San Martín National University (UNSM), which government officials — as former Planning Minister Julio de Vido and the indicted former Vice President Amado Boudou, for instance — used as a personal cash register.”

Under the Kirchner administration, UNSM inaugurated a degree in aerospace engineering, but Hoy claims that the AR$200 million (US$15 million) devoted to its funding was actually a screen to pay ruling party activists and to secure contracts for cronies.

In April 2012, one year after Cefae began its operations, officials claimed that “23 possible UFO sightings were under investigation.” They also said that they had received 102 complaints, 79 of which were discarded.

Tip of the Iceberg

Cefae is just one instance of the questionable use of public funds during the Kirchner administrations.
Last week, the Macri administration laid off 140 personnel at Military Industries, a state-owned firm under the Defense Ministry, after incoming officials discovered the army agency had a small news conglomerate: it ran a TV channel, a FM radio station, a newspaper, three magazines, and had 30 people allegedly proselytizing on Twitter.

Since 2011, Military Industries increased its payroll to 1,000 people. In Buenos Aires alone, it went from having 100 employees to 500.

The Macri administration suspects that Kirchner ran a “propaganda center” inside the facility, employing non-military personnel in social media, graphic design, journalism, and audiovisual production.

Source: https://panampost.com/pedro-garcia/2016/02/02/argentina-created-ufo-investigative-unit-shrouded-in-secrecy/

02 February, 2016

Chang'e-3 Landing Site Named "Guang Han Gong"

The landing site of China's first moon lander Chang'e-3 has been named "Guang Han Gong" or "Moon Palace", more than two years after the spacecraft made a successful soft-landing on the moon in December 2013.

Together with three nearby impact craters, the name was approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) announced on Tuesday.

In Chinese mythology, Chang'e is the goddess of the moon while "Guang Han Gong" is the palace that houses Chang'e and her pet Yutu (Jade Rabbit).

The three craters were given the names Zi Wei, Tian Shi and Tai Wei, three constellations in traditional Chinese astrology, according to Liu Jizhong, director of the lunar exploration project of the SASTIND.

The lunar rover Yutu recently found a new type of basaltic rock that could shed light on lunar volcanism, according to an article published by Chinese scientists in the Nature Communications science journal last month.

A total of 22 lunar features have been given Chinese names. The first crater was named Zu Chongzhi after a famous Chinese mathematician in 1961.

Li Chunlai, a member of the naming committee for lunar features, said the coordinates of "Guang Han Gong", with a diameter of 154 meters, are 44.12 degrees north latitude and 19.51 degrees west longitude. The crater, along with other features, is included in the area covered by lunar rover Yutu.
Rita Schulz, chair of the IAU Division F WG Planetary System Nomenclature, said landing sites on the moon can only be officially named when they are the first landing sites for the country's spacecraft.


Source:  http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/china_research/201601/t20160106_158480.shtml

China Releases Spectacular Moon Images In TRUE HD

On Sunday, the China National Space Administration released hundreds of high-resolution, color images of the moon, offering an unprecedented look at our satellite.

Yutu, The Chinese Moon Rover

Yutu, which means Jade Rabbit, first arrived on the moon in December 2013 aboard China’s Chang’e 3 lander. The spacecraft was the first to land there since the Soviets’ Luna 24 mission on Aug. 22, 1976.

Chang'e 3 Lander

Unfortunately, two weeks after it was deployed, Yutu suffered technical difficulties. It’s been unable to move since then, but it has continued to transmit information, including these stunning images.

What made China’s mission especially remarkable was that it was the first soft-landing on the moon in 37 years, since the Russians landed their Luna 24 probe back in 1976.

Self-Portait, of Yutu Chinese Academy of Sciences / China National Space Administration / The Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration

Today, anyone can create a user account on China’s Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration website to download the pictures themselves. The process is a bit cumbersome and the connection to the website is spotty if you’re accessing it outside of China.

Luckily, Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society spent the last week navigating the Chinese database and is currently hosting a suite of China’s lunar images on the Planetary Society Website.

Panoramic View of the Yutu, Taken by Chang'e 3 

Sources:
http://time.com/4202591/moon-photos-true-color/
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/30/china-just-released-true-color-hd-photos-of-the-moon/#.y0fhdvb:rjzY

Here's What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like, Pretty Amazing

Ancient Greeks Learning Music
Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks composed songs meant to be accompanied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and various percussion instruments. More than 2,000 years later, modern scholars have finally figured out how to reconstruct and perform these songs with (it’s claimed) 100% accuracy.



Writing on the BBC web site, Armand D’Angour,  a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University, notes:
[Ancient Greek] instruments are known from descriptions, paintings and archaeological remains, which allow us to establish the timbres and range of pitches they produced.
And now, new revelations about ancient Greek music have emerged from a few dozen ancient documents inscribed with a vocal notation devised around 450 BC, consisting of alphabetic letters and signs placed above the vowels of the Greek words.
The Greeks had worked out the mathematical ratios of musical intervals – an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, a fourth 4:3, and so on.
The notation gives an accurate indication of relative pitch.
So what did Greek music sound like? Below you can listen to David Creese, a classicist from the University of Newcastle, playing “an ancient Greek song taken from stone inscriptions constructed on an eight-string ‘canon’ (a zither-like instrument) with movable bridges. “The tune is credited to Seikilos,” says Archaeology Magazine.

UFO truthers want to make Roswell an issue for 2016; meet their lobbyist

One day nearly 20 years ago, Stephen Bassett realized UFO abductees needed a lobbyist.

He had spent four months working for the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research out of a modest townhouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he had the epiphany: He could continue his research with John Mack, the leading authority on the alien abductions, for the rest of his life - but it would never make a difference.

"It occurred to me that it wasn't a scientific problem, but a political one," he said. They could pile evidence of extraterrestrial encounters from the White House lawn to the moon, and no one would pay it any mind. What the issue needed was someone who could get the powers-that-be to listen.

 The alien issue was really heating up in 1996, what with the summer blockbuster "Independence Day," and Bassett worried someone else would get the same idea. So he quit his volunteer gig, piled his belongings atop his beat-up Mazda RX-7 and drove off to Washington.

"I get down there, and I file" the lobbyist papers, he recalled. "I'm the first one. Nineteen years later, I'm still the only one. I coulda taken my time."

 Bassett, a balding man with expressive eyes that seem to go from blue to green, has long had one goal: Get the government to admit it has been covering up proof of alien visits. It has been a lonely battle, but he is convinced the stars have finally aligned for his convoluted theory, which involves the Clintons, their longtime adviser John Podesta and a now-deceased billionaire.

"I want to see disclosure by the New Hampshire primary," he said brushing crumbs off his black dress shirt and purple tie during lunch at the National Press Club this month. "And I can make the case that it's going to happen."

Bassett was born in 1946 to a military family that moved all over the country. He read science fiction, built model planes, enjoyed the cheap bowling and milkshakes on the bases. His father rarely spoke to him and fought constantly with his mother. And Bassett struggled with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

He entered Georgia Tech just as the United States was going to war in Vietnam. While he was able to avoid the draft, the conflict darkened his worldview. There were too many secrets being kept, he felt; his country seemed on a path to disaster.

After college, he spent a couple of aimless decades freelancing as a tennis pro and business consultant, subsidized by an inheritance from his father. Then, a book changed his life.

 It was called "Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens," and unlike other literature on the subject, it was written by an acclaimed scholar: Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist with a Pulitzer Prize for Biography under his belt. Mack, who died in 2004, began his research as a skeptic, interviewing dozens of subjects that he at first assumed suffered from mental illness. In the end, he wasn't so sure.

Source:  http://www.sooeveningnews.com/article/ZZ/20160129/SHAREABLE/160129835