'Mars rat' spied by NASA's Curiosity rover

Fox News

Is that a rat on Mars?
A photo from the mast camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover reveals the dusty orange, rock-strewn surface of the Red Planet -- and what starry-eyed enthusiasts claim is a dusty orange rodent hiding among the stones.
The photo, taken Sept. 28, 2012, depicts the “Rocknest” site, where NASA’s rover took a scoopful of sand, tasted it, and determined it was full of weathered basaltic materials -- not unlike Hawaii, the space agency’s scientists said last year.

'Note its lighter color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach.'

- ScottCWaring on the blog UFO Sightings Daily

No word on how the rodent tasted, however.
The “creature” was identified on the UFO Sightings Daily website, where its finder, ScottCWaring, held tight to his opinion: That’s one darn cute rodent on Mars.
“Note its lighter color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach. Looks similar to a squirrel camouflaged in the stones and sand by its colors," he wrote. "Hey, who doesn't love squirrels, right?”
Others pointed out that the similarity in coloring and position mean it was most likely just a rock, fingering the psychology phenomenon known as pareidolia, a propensity to pick out faces from everyday objects and structures.
To take advantage of this psychological phenomenon closer to home, designers at Berlin's Onformative studio developed an algorithm that scans the surface of the earth with Google Maps, picking out geographical structures that are likely to be construed as having face-like features, science blog iO9 recently pointed out.
Their algorithm found faces in fields, mustaches in mountains, hills with actual eyes.
Perhaps the algorithm should be turned loose on Mars?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/29/mars-rat-spied-by-nasa-curiosity-rover/#ixzz2Ui1njuYs

Wheel fails on NASA’s Kepler probe, halting its search for alien planets

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope suffered a second failure in its reaction-wheel control system, forcing a suspension of its search for alien planets while the space agency determines whether the four-year mission is truly finished.

"It's certainly not good news," Charles Sobeck, deputy project manager for the $600 million mission at NASA's Ames Research Center, told reporters Wednesday.

But Sobeck and other mission managers emphasized that there was still a chance that the probe could be revived. "I wouldn't call Kepler down and out just yet," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters.

The problem has to do with the reaction wheels that are part of Kepler's fine-pointing system. The space telescope identifies worlds in far-off solar systems by watching for the telltale dips in starlight when the planet's disk passes over its parent sun. But in order to make those observations, Kepler has to hold itself in a precise position with the aid of four gyroscopic reaction wheels. One of the wheels failed last July, but Kepler could still do the job with the other three.

On Sunday, however, the spacecraft put itself into safe mode when it couldn't stay in its proper orbit around the sun, 40 million miles (64 million kilometers) from Earth. When the mission team did its regular check-up with Kepler on Tuesday, they found that a second reaction wheel wasn't working. In a mission update, NASA said the problem was probably caused by "a structural failure of the wheel bearing."

That forced an end to Kepler's planet quest. "We need three wheels in service to give us the pointing precision to make this work," the mission's principal investigator, William Borucki of NASA Ames, told NBC News.

Sobeck said the spacecraft itself could remain stable as long as it had fuel for its thrusters, but the thrusters aren't capable of providing the precise pointing that Borucki and his colleagues need. Over the next several months, members of the Kepler team will assess their technical options, and gauge what kind of science could be accomplished using those options, said Paul Hertz, astrophysics director at NASA Headquarters.

There's still a chance that the reaction-wheel system could be restored — for example, by trying to spin the wheel backward and forward, just as you might spin the wheels of a car that's stuck in a snowdrift. Sobeck said it might even be possible to revive the wheel that was shut down last July. "When we turn it on, it just might start spinning, we don't know," he said.

But mission managers also acknowledged that Kepler's planet-hunting days may be over. Hertz pointed out that the spacecraft outlasted its 3.5-year primary mission, and was currently into an extended mission costing $20 million a year.

Even if the spacecraft's control system can't be revived, it will still take another couple of years to analyze the trillions of bits of data already collected, Borucki said. The mission has already identified 132 confirmed planets and 2,740 additional candidates yet to be confirmed. Some of those worlds are thought to lie within the habitable zones of their planetary systems.

"The prime reason for the existence of this mission is to determine whether Earths are common or rare in our galaxy," Borucki said. So far, the evidence suggests that there are billions of Earth-size planets in the Milky Way. Scientists have not yet identified an Earth-size planet in an Earthlike orbit around a sunlike star, but Borucki voiced confidence that the crucial evidence was tucked away somewhere in the readings that have already been beamed down from Kepler.

"I am really delighted, frankly, with what we've accomplished," he said.

Giant Mars crater shows evidence of ancient lake

By Charles Q. Choi

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

This false-color view of the floor of McLaughlin Crater shows sedimentary rocks that contain spectroscopic evidence for minerals formed through interaction with water. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded the image.

New photos of a huge crater on Mars suggest water may lurk in crevices under the planet's surface, hinting that life might have once lived there, and raising the possibility that it may live there still, researchers say. 

Future research looking into the chances of life on Mars could shed light on the origins of life on Earth, scientists added.

The discovery came from a study of images by NASA's powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that revealed new evidence of a wet underground environment on the Red Planet. The images focused on the giant McLaughlin Crater, which is about 57 miles (92 kilometers) wide and so deep that underground water appears to have flowed into the crater at some point in the distant past.

Today, the crater is bone-dry but harbors clay minerals and other evidence that liquid water filled the area in the ancient past.

"Taken together, the observations in McLaughlin Crater provide the best evidence for carbonate forming within a lake environment instead of being washed into a crater from outside," study lead author Joseph Michalski, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and London's Natural History Museum, said in a statement. 

Keep reading on  Space >>

Orbiter spots an alien Nile on Titan

NASA / JPL-Caltech /ASI

This radar image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, acquired on Sept. 26, shows a vast river system on Saturn's moon Titan. Check out the full-size version from NASA or the European Space Agency.

By Alan Boyle

NASA's Cassini orbiter has spotted a river system on the Saturnian moon Titan that's reminiscent of the River Nile — except that this river is presumably filled with liquid ethane and methane instead of water.

The Titanic Nile shows up on a grainy, black-and-white picture from Cassini's radar imager, which can look through Titan's thick, smoggy atmosphere to map the surface features beneath.

The picture was taken on Sept. 26 and released today by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the European Space Agency. It shows a branching river valley, running more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its headwaters to Titan's Kraken Mare, a hydrocarbon sea that's somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean in size.

Just as Earth has a water-based hydrological cycle, Titan has a weather cycle that moves ethane and methane around its surface and through the atmosphere. That's due to Titan's surface temperature (averaging minus-290 degrees Fahrenheit, or -179 degrees Celsius) and atmospheric pressure (one and a half times that of Earth's atmosphere).

"Titan is the only place we've found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface," Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, said in JPL's news release. "This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion. Rain falls, and rivers move that rain to lakes and seas, where evaporation starts the cycle all over again. On Earth, the liquid is water; on Titan, it's methane; but on both it affects most everything that happens."

During the eight and a half years that Cassini has been passing over Saturn and its moons, the bus-sized orbiter has mapped Titan's seas, lakes and rivers in amazing detail. The orbiter even dropped a mini-probe known as Huygens down to Titan's surface for an on-the-ground view of the terrain.

 

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Water on Mars? NASA finds evidence of once-flowing river

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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NASA: greenhouse gasses may encourage hostile alien invasion

You mean there may be alien forces more hostile than the Teabaggers? The Guardian:

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by scientists at Nasa and Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.

Read more >

#UFO - The Disclosure Project

From   Top Documentary Films

On that historic Wednesday – May 9, 2001 – over 20 military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms and the resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena.

Over 1 billion people heard of the press conference through webcast and subsequent media coverage on BBC, CNN, CNN Worldwide, Voice of America, Pravda, Chinese media, and media outlets throughout Latin America. The webcast has 250,000 people waiting online-the largest webcast in the history of the National Press Club.

The disclosure of the truth will have far-reaching implications for our society – new technologies to end pollution and global warming, long-term solutions to the energy crisis and the beginning of an era of peaceful relations with other civilizations in space. We have over 450 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology and the cover-up that keeps this information secret. (Excerpt from disclosureproject.org)

#Conspiracion - Hangar 18

Documental basado en la base Estado Unidense Wright Patterson y su famoso Hangar 18.

How Many Intelligent Aliens are Out There?

SOLARIS

By Mark Thompson

OK, I've had enough. I've been looking up at the night sky for 20 years and not once have I ever seen anything that has aroused my suspicion that an alien visitor has popped by Earth to take a look.

The thing is, I am contacted far too often by people saying they have seen an unidentified flying object, or UFO. Being terribly literal, they probably have seen something "unidentified," and it may look like it's flying; whatever it is, it certainly is an "object," but it doesn't mean it's aliens.

The Drake Equation offers an educated stab at the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which we might actually be able to communicate right now. Read More

Broma de III tipo

Russian Dead #Alien Video Surfaces

By Benjamin Radford

Video of what appears to be an alien body recently found in Russia following reports of UFOs last month has set off a furor among UFO communities and in the blogosphere.

The Daily Mail reported that "In the frozen wastes of Siberia two walkers claim to have found the body of an alien. On its side with its mouth slightly agape, the slender, badly-damage body lies half-buried in snow close to Irkutsk, Russia. Video of the alien's corpse has become a massive worldwide hit with hundreds of thousands of followers after being posted on the internet. The corpse of the badly-damaged creature which resembles ET is two feet high. Part of the right leg is missing and there are deep holes for eyes and a mouth in a skull-like head."

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Massive Inhabited Planets Could Exist in Weird Space

From The Daily Galaxy

"Advanced civilizations may live safely inside the supermassive black holes in the galactic nuclei without being visible from the outside."

Vyacheslav Dokuchaev at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
We love Russian astrophysicists at The Daily Galaxy: The discovery of stable orbits inside certain kinds of black hole implies that planets and perhaps even life could survive inside these weird objects, says Vyacheslav Dokuchaev at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

FULL STORY

#Asteroid Forensics May Point to #Alien Space Miners

Rather than looking for aliens who use interstellar radio signals to say “hi," an alternative search strategy is simply to spy on any mega-engineering projects that an advanced civilization might be undertaking. Veteran SETI astronomer Jill Tarter calls this strategy "SETT" -- the Search for Extraterrestrial Technology.
A new science paper by Duncan Forgan at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Martin Elvis at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., suggests we look for evidence of a very ambitious macro-engineering project: the wholesale mining of an asteroid belt. The asteroid material may be mined to build space colonies, solar power satellites or maybe even an entire "ringworld," as imagined by sci-fi writer Larry Niven.
What's more, precious metals are in high demand for technologies such as computers, high-speed networks and mobile phones. So-called "green technologies" of the future, such as hydrogen fuel cells, will also place a demand on rare resources.
The unconsolidated debris from the birth of planets, asteroids provide a smorgasbord of elements and minerals for harvesting. Meteorite samples suggest that large quantities of gold, platinum, iron, nickel, magnesium and silicon, among other elements, are abundant on asteroids.

Full story 

Interview with Rainbow Eagle: Space People, Abductions, ...

Our next, very fortunate, interview from the 2011 UFO Conference in Arizona is with a man for whom I personally have a great deal of respect, Mr. Rainbow Eagle. He is an Okla-Choctaw American Indian and a "Wisdom Keeper," honored with the solemn responsibility of the Ancient Native American Peace Shield. Part of his responsibilities are the teaching of Native American truths which include fascinating information about the long-held belief in "space people" by many Native American cultures. We had an all-too-brief opportunity to sit with Rainbow Eagle and learn of the native American Indian beliefs regarding the space people, abductions, and some unique insight into what he believes will be a significant time of change, 2012.

Alien Speech? Found in NASA's Saturn Radio Signal

NASA confirms: Aliens are among us

NASA held a press conference Thursday afternoon in which they revealed the discovery of arsenic-based life forms on Earth. Many believe that this proves there is the possibility life was or is on other planets already. Space Entrepreneur Jeff Manber says this is a huge discovery because it changes the way scientists view how life can be sustained.

Aliens exist, and we have proof

Aliens exist, and we have proof.
That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Top 5 Cases For Martian Life/ Video

SETI Search for Aliens Zeroes in on New Planets

By Irene Klotz 
It's been a busy time in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, an endeavor nicknamed SETI that began 50 years ago with a scan for alien radio waves from Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope is returning a rich harvest of potential targets. So far, scientists have found 1,253 stars that likely have planets in tow, including 55 with worlds that appear to be in life-friendly zones.
"It's a new game. We can start pointing our telescopes where we know there are planets, rather than pointing at stars where we thought there might be habitable planets. It's exciting," Jill Tarter, director of SETI research for the California-based SETI Institute, told Discovery News.

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SETI Search for Aliens Zeroes in on New Planets