U.S. Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs

The service says it has also 'provided a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety.'

AS SEEN @https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/23/us-navy-guidelines-reporting-ufos-1375290

The U.S. Navy is drafting new guidelines for pilots and other personnel to report encounters with "unidentified aircraft," a significant new step in creating a formal process to collect and analyze the unexplained sightings — and destigmatize them.

The previously unreported move is in response to a series of sightings of unknown, highly advanced aircraft intruding on Navy strike groups and other sensitive military formations and facilities, the service says.

"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. "

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That office spent some $25 million conducting a series of technical studies and evaluating numerous unexplained incursions, including one that lasted several days involving the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in 2004. In that case, Navy fighter jets were outmaneuvered by unidentified aircraft that flew in ways that appeared to defy the laws of known physics.

Raytheon, a leading defense contractor, used the reports and official Defense Department video of the sightings off the coast of California to hail one of its radar systems for capturing the phenomena.

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"If you are in a busy airport and see something you are supposed to say something," Elizondo said. "With our own military members it is kind of the opposite: 'If you do see something, don't say something.'"

He added that because these mysterious aircraft "don't have a tail number or a flag — in some cases not even a tail — it's crickets. What happens in five years if it turns out these are extremely advanced Russian aircraft?"

NASA's Curiosity rover finds potential building blocks of life on Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover finds potential building blocks of life on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, slowly making its way up the side of a towering mountain of sedimentary rock at the center of its Gale Crater landing site, has found fresh evidence for the red planet's past -- and possibly present -- habitability, scientists reported Thursday. NASA announced Thursday the nuclear-powered rover has detected a variety of organic compounds

These organic compounds, a requirement for life as it's known on Earth, were found in 3-billion-year-old rocks deposited on the floor of Gale Crater. While organics were discovered by the rover earlier, the age and variety of the newly analyzed samples strengthen the case for a habitable environment in the past.

"We found organic molecules in rocks from an ancient lakebed," said Jen Eigenbrode, a research scientist and astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Those organic molecules could have come from life."

In a second, potentially more significant finding announced Thursday, scientists reported detection of a seasonal variation in methane levels in the martian atmosphere. Background levels climb by a factor of three from winter to summer, indicating a repeating release of the gas.
Space Mars Rover Selfies


"Today, we're announcing the discovery of a repeatable, identifiable, seasonal pattern in the methane measurements," said Chris Webster, a senior research fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"Not only have we got this wonderful repeatability, but the seasonal cycle changes by a factor of three. That's a huge change, completely unexpected. And what it does, it gives us a key to unlocking the mysteries associated with Mars methane because now we have something to test our models and our understanding against."

A seasonal change in methane levels is exciting, he said, because 95 percent of the methane observed on Earth is the result of biology. In addition, methane only lasts a few centuries before it is broken down or escapes the atmosphere "so if we see methane in the martian atmosphere, that means something is happening today, it's being released or it's being created."

Methane in the martian atmosphere has been detected before, but only in isolated patches or plumes of higher concentrations, not in any repeatable pattern. Rising levels in the summer months, when Mars is warmer, could be an indication of on-going biology or it could simply be the result of purely geological processes.
marsmethaneseasonal.png


In any case, Webster said the methane apparently works its way into the atmosphere from sub-surface reservoirs of some sort, places where non-biological geochemistry is going on or where microbial life might somehow flourish.

"The idea that best fits our data is the idea of sub-surface storage," he said. "So way under the ground this methane is trapped. ... We don't know if that methane is ancient, we don't know if it's modern. It could be either. We also don't know if that methane was created from rock chemistry or it was created by microbes."

But NASA managers say the new discoveries show the agency's Mars exploration plans are on the right track.

NASA currently operates three orbiters and two surface rovers at Mars with a new lander -- InSight -- on the way. The European Space Agency plans to launch its own rover in a few years and NASA is building a powerful follow-on to Curiosity, the Mars 2020 rover, that will be equipped with even more powerful instruments to advance the search for life.

"With these new findings, Mars is telling us to stay the course and keep searching for evidence of life," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA science director at agency headquarters, said in a statement. "I'm confident that our ongoing and planned missions will unlock even more breathtaking discoveries."


as seen @ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mars-announcement-organic-matter-curiosity-rover-building-blocks-possible-life/

ALIEN LIFE FOUND ON ENCELADUS OR EUROPA: SCIENTIST PREDICTS EXTRATERRESTRIALS DISCOVERED IN 2017

DATE:01/01/2017
SOURCE: INQUISITR
VIA: GOOGLE

The search for living organisms on other worlds — alien life — is ever ongoing, and it came up empty again in the calendar year of 2016, but a physicist in the United Kingdom believes that everything will change in 2017 and extraterrestrial life will finally be discovered. He suggests that it won’t come from SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) or from the various devices gathering data on Mars. It won’t come from UFO disclosures that reveal that certain governments have known about alien beings and extraterrestrials for decades. No, proof of alien life will come from Jupiter or Saturn, or more precisely, one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn.

The Daily Express reported this past week that physicist Simon Foster, a physicist from Imperial College London, is of the opinion that, even though there could be signals of life from faraway stars or biosignatures detected on exoplanets, the most likely candidates to reveal signs of alien life are the moons Enceladus (Saturn) and Europa (Jupiter). Foster says that the spacecraft Cassini is about to end its mission in the coming year and a scientific breakthrough “is just around the corner.”


READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE @

http://www.inquisitr.com/3842699/alien-life-found-on-enceladus-or-europa-scientist-predicts-extraterrestrials-discovered-in-2017/

What If Aliens Are AI, Not Extraterrestrial? Experts Share Thoughts, Potential Risks

DATE: 20/12/2016
AUTHOR: RHEN ANTONY TAQUIAM
SOURCE: NATURE WORLD NEWS



What if man isn't the greatest intelligence in the universe? This is a question we have all been pondering upon for decades, but it may appear "aliens in space" may not hold the answer.

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However, Schneider said what we're experiencing today may be experienced by others in the universe. The transition from biological to synthetic intelligence may be a "general" pattern instantiated over and over throughout the cosmos.

She added the better term to be used may be "postbiological" than just "artificial" because the difference between biological and snythetic isn't very clear. The point is, there is no reason to expect humans to be the "highest form" of intelligence when we are in fact making things smarter than ourselves.

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However, it's helpful to realize that this means alien AI may be more hostile than we think. Biological aliens may not have good intentions, but an extraterrestrial AI could be an even greater threat, as it may have goals that conflict with the preservation of human life. 

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE @ http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/34373/20161220/what-aliens-ai-extraterrestrial-experts-share-thoughts-potential-risks.htm