Computer representation of Curiosity. Is it just me or does it kind of remind you of Johnny 5?

NASA has announced that the Mars rover Curiosity has made a discovery that is one “for the history books”. Curiosity was launched on November 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral. The car-sized robot has a variety of instruments and sensors on board to help in its mission to detect signs of life that may once have lived on Mars. One of those instruments, and also the largest, is Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars. SAM, as it is also called, analyzes organics and gases from both atmospheric and solid samples and it is this instrument which has made the amazing discovery.

Image taken by Curiosity after landing, wait, whats that in the distance? Pay no attention to the giant shadowy thing in the distance, “these are not the droids you’re looking for”.

The rover landed inside Gale Crater on August 5^th and began searching for signs of Methane which is produced by many life-forms here on Earth. The rover’s first few sniffs found “no definitive trace of the gas” but SAM has apparently found something quite interesting in a recently delivered scoop of Martian soil. The scientists behind the curtain, however, are staying mum about the find until the sample has been tested and retested to insure that the data is correct. Scientists though are excitable creatures and tend to get their suspenders in a bunch over things that leave us scratching our heads as to why so the find could be anything from more signs that water once flowed on Mars to a lollipop wrapper. The rover spent six weeks at the same site known as “Rocknest” testing its scooping gear. It began moving again on November 16^th.

The team has said that they will be ready to announce the discovery at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union taking place December 3-7 in San Francisco.

One thing we can count on them not announcing at the meeting? The discovery of either giant robots hanging out on Mars or little green men.

Artist’s rendering of planet CFBDSIR2149 (photo: ESO/L. Calçada/P. Delorme/Nick Risinger )

Astronomers have discovered an alien planet, CFBDSIR2149, that drifts idly through space. CFBDSIR2149, let’s call it “Bob” for short, is a newly discovered object 100 light-years from Earth and it is believed to be an orphaned planet. This poor little guy (he’s actually not so little being four to seven times larger than Jupiter) floats through space with no host star to keep it in one place. Hmm, orphan or bachelor?

It may have been kicked out of its native system and is now merely a drifter wandering here and there, wherever the cosmic winds take it. It is believed to be a gas giant like Jupiter and it is relatively close (in space terms) to Earth. It may be part of a group called AB Doradus group which formed between 50 million and 120 million years ago. They believe that within the gas giant there is a planet and that its temperature may be on average 806 degrees Fahrenheit. There is a chance that “Bob” is not a planet but instead a brown dwarf. A brown dwarf is an object that is too big to be a planet but not quite a star. “Bob” was found by Philippe Delorme, of the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics of Grenoble in France. Him and his team discovered “Bob” using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and then examined its properties using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Free-range alien planets are not as incredible as they sound. Astronomers have spotted several such planets in the last year or two and scientists now think that having a host star like Earth does is actually the oddball and free-range is the norm. However, gas giants such as “Bob” may be the minority in the group.   Our galaxy alone could possible contain billions of such planets. Because there is no host star nearby future telescopes should be able to learn quite a bit about CFBDSIR2149 since they won’t have to contend with the glare that comes with a host star.

Diagram of an ideal Dyson Sphere shell

For centuries civilization has looked to the skies in search of answers, in search of extraterrestrial life. It wasn’t until the sixties when Freeman Dyson, arguably one of the smartest men alive in the twentieth century, predicted that eventually all civilizations would outgrow their demand for energy and have to seek alternative energy sources. The Dyson Sphere was a theoretical concept for intercepting and collecting all of the energy that was creating by the sun. The ‘shells’ would orbit the planet and would be able to supply the planet with the energy it required. In theory, Dyson’s Spheres would work and make it possible for the planet to continue to evolve.

In September this year, Jason Wright, along with a team of astronomers, began their search for Dyson Spheres. The idea is, if you are looking for advanced forms of life within the galaxy, you should be looking for Dyson Sphere’s. The expedition has been funded by Templeton Foundation, who are particularly interested in the bigger answers.

If there were a Dyson Sphere system out there in one of the galaxies, the hypothesis is that it would be detected by re-radiation of energy. Something that would be able to be detectable by the amount of infra-red radiation. The team won’t be looking for a solid structure, a large sphere, instead what they propose would be the most likely of scenarios, a ‘swarm of sphere’s’ surrounding a planet or star system.

While to the average person, the idea of searching for alien life forms on a theory might seem preposterous, in fact the search for alien life itself might seem so fantastical that many people would laugh it off. Search for alien life has always been speculative, and until there is tangible proof, it will always remain that way. There is a rich history of human life looking for life in the stars.

There was some success in the eighties when a team of scientists did a sweep of the galaxy in search of large re-radiation points by using an infra-red camera. There were many spots where the re-radiation was large enough to warrant further investigation.

Do aliens lurk underneath our oceans?

For many years the Russians have tracked UFOs and alien activity from the bases at the North and South Poles. The famous Arctic explorer Dr Rubens Villela claimes to have seen aliens launching a craft of some kind upwards from underneath the ice covered sea. On board a massive Russian icebreaker vessel they launched Deep Freeze, a naval exploration in the North Pole Region and Dr Villela and two of his colleagues say they were taken aback by an large object which appeared from underneath the ice. The object cracked the ice in an area around 3 metres wide and huge bubbles were visible in the water, with rising steam which indicated to them that there was potential energy under the water.

It is not just the Arctic that has been the subject of unexplained phenomenon. The Antarctic too may have an alien presence. In 1997 the Australian military captured on camera some oval shaped objects at a depth of six kilometers. The objects emitted a bright light. The film was shown to academics at the Royal Institute of Oceanology who concluded that the structures were not natural.

Russian navy  data on UFOS has found that half of all UFO encounters have a connection to the oceans and around 15 percent to lakes. This is a clear indication that UFOs can be linked to activity in the water, lending special significance to the data on UFOs collected by the Navy. One UFO was recorded at speeds of 150 knots underwater, which is much more than the modern submarine can achieve at only 45 knots.

There are certainly many mysteries yet to be uncovered within the depths of our oceans.

Mt. Popo

There reports coming out of Mexico that a UFO has fallen (or flown) into a volcano. On October 25 a witness captured a  large, cylindrical object dropping into the gapping mouth of the 730,000 year old volcano, Popocatépetl. The object, appearing to be white or silver, is estimated to be approximately 3,280ft by 656ft. It is very similar in appearance to UFOs which were spotted over the state Kentucky, USA earlier in the month. There were also reports that the object was seen over the states of Virginia and Tennessee, USA.

Popocatépetl, also known as Mt. Popo, has been the site of numerous UFO sightings over the years. One such report from 2001 reports of a cigar shaped object falling into Mt. Popo and is quite similar to this recent UFO sighting. The earliest documented report appears to be from 1999 and December of 2000 the volcano erupted, making its largest display in 1,2000 years.

Mt. Popo is not the only one. There are reports of UFO sightings across the globe. There have been images and video footage of UFOs over Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, Sakurajima Volcano in Japan and Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador. Are there secret underground bases beneath these volcanoes? Or perhaps the “little green men” discovered Earths hot core and have been using our planet as a “waste disposal unit”. Perhaps we are just the insects hovering around the trash heap or the germs crawling around on the garbage can.

Mt. Popo, one of the most active volcanos in Mexico and North America’s most active, is part of the Trans-Mexican volcanic belt. It is located 43 mi southeast of Mexico City where it can be seen  its elevation is 17,802 ft. and is 16 miles wide at its base.

This is the report from the Mexcian media with the video footage:

An artist's interpretation of Gliese 581g

A newly discovered planet, named Gliese 581g, holds the possibility of containing water and alien life.

The planet is positioned in the habitable or “Goldilocks” zone, where the temperature is not too hot and not too cold to support life as we know it.

Gliese 581g has a mass of 3 to 4 times that of Earth and a year on the planet lasts only 37 days. One side of the planet is always facing its star, receiving perpetual daylight, while the other is forever covered in darkness.

Scientists say the best place to find life on the planet would be the line between the darkness and light, known as the ‘terminator’.

She says she snapped these photos before two men from the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences came to her home to confiscate the body:

Is it real, or a hoax?

It’s likely a hoax. Look at the stiff, twig-looking arm. The creature wouldn’t have been able to pick anything up when it was alive.

The face, well that looks fake too. It could have been carved from styrofoam with pieces of watermelon rinds glued on top.

The refrigerator would not have been cold enough to preserve the alien’s flesh for two years. Anyone who has left meat in the fridge for a couple weeks knows how quickly tissue breaks down and grows bacteria.

We want to believe

Although some alien crash incidents are very believable, this one can be easily excused as a hoax. The Russian woman may have came up with the idea after hearing about the alleged alien mummy that was discovered recently in Peru.

“It has a non-human appearance because the head is triangular and big, almost the same size as the body. At first we believed it to be a child’s body until Spanish and Russian doctors came and confirmed that, yes, it’s an extraterrestrial being.”

What are the natural causes that could explain the skull?

Besides extraterrestrial origins, the strange skull could be a result of the extremely rare genetic condition known as Progeria. Progeria accelerates aging, causing young people to look much older than they really are.

The deceased person could also have suffered from hydrocephalus, or ‘water on the brain’. People with this disorder develop deformed skulls due to pressure from buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the head.

A third reason could be cultural. As ritual to the ‘gods’, ancient central and South American civilizations used to bind infants’ heads to elongate the skulls and file the teeth to sharpen them. This, however, does not explain for the mummy’s super large eye cavities.

You can see more of the claimed ‘alien mummy’ here.

Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth. The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye. However, that doesn’t mean the subject of life outside our planet isn’t being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth.

The handling of this petition seems to be typical government procedure of all alien proof and sightings: denial of evidence. Even though hundreds of people witness UFOs in the sky everyday.

Public Opinion of Alien Existence Remains High

UFOs around the Capitol, July 1952

Opinion polls show over 50% of American people believe in alien existence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about it.

These consistent denials by the government, after countless eye witness accounts and testimonials by government officials, only add fuel to the fire on the side fighting for disclosure.

Check out the White House’s full response with the petition that started it.

A portion of the Mare Acidalium quadrangle on Mars.

Why is Mars red? The question has baffled scientists for decades, but a new theory by Dr. John Brandenburg is beginning to shed light on the complex mystery.

According to Brandenburg, there was an atomic nuclear explosion, equivalent to a 1 million mega-ton bomb, that took place in the northern Mare Acidalium region of the planet. It left the face of Mars scarred from pole to pole, leaving the regions nearest the explosion with high levels of radiation.

The chemical composition and atmosphere changed. The release from the explosion charged the atmosphere, producing unusually violent thunder strikes and lighting formations. The end result of these atmospheric changes lead to the red planet we see today.

Aliens push the big red button

Scientists say the blast was natural, but some are skeptic. How could such a powerful blast have been caused by natural reasons? An alternate theory is that an advanced alien race produced the mega-ton nuclear explosion that wiped off all life on the planet.

The theory relates to what we as humans face in the challenge of surviving in the nuclear age. The United States and its allies fear rogue nations and organizations gaining access to nuclear weapons and wiping out millions of people. The same situation could have taken place on Mars, with a much more advanced society that was able to produce a much bigger bomb.

Alien outlaws or cosmic greed?

Were the aliens intergalactic terrorists, or was it an accidental explosion of a planetary nuclear reactor? Mars may have only been used by the aliens as a mining resource, extracting minerals and geothermal heat from inside the planet. When the reactor went up in flames, the aliens wrote the planet off as a loss on their budget sheet and moved on, much like how the same happened with Halliburton and the explosion of the oil rig.

If people continue to hurt others on this planet for power and monetary gain, Mars may be a mirror into Earth’s distant future.