'No smoking gun': Calgary scientists studying Mars soil for signs it supported life

CALGARY — A University of Calgary scientist is hoping to determine whether Mars was ever capable of supporting life.


'No smoking gun': Calgary scientists studying Mars soil for signs it supported life

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Ben Tutolo, an associate professor in the Department of Geoscience and Faculty of Science, began his research earlier this year and is using data from the Curiosity rover that's been exploring the Red Planet for the past decade.

The Canadian Space Agency, as part of the NASA-led Mars Science Laboratory mission, is funding the three-year study.

"The mission is to follow the water and understand -- were ancient environments on other planets, like Mars, habitable?" said Tutolo, who is conducting the research alongside professor Steve Larter and associate professor Rachel Lauer.

"What we're doing with the Curiosity rover is exploring the rock record there (to) understand if these rocks at that time were ultimately habitable."

Tutolo said Curiosity has been providing a steady stream of data and has been collecting and analyzing samples as it slowly makes its way up Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater.

The rover, which had travelled almost 28 kilometres as of May 1, has multiple analyzers that can determine the chemistry and mineralogy of the rocks or soil surface on Mars. Its Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer has analyzed 1,211 samples and sent 2,659 results back to Earth.

"It's scooping up, drilling samples … it can utilize in situ like a roving geologist who would also have a geochemical laboratory in the field," Tutolo said.

The focus of the research is to study the geological transition from the oldest lake sediments where Curiosity began its exploration to younger layers of sediment farther up.

Tutolo said the geological evidence from the oldest rocks in the crater show they are from a river-fed lake that contained water.

The newer specimens have found magnesium sulphate salts, which were likely the result of the water evaporating as the planet became drier, he said.

"Obviously the transition has happened. There are no oceans or lakes on the planet today," Tutolo said.

He said the team is also conducting field research at the Basque Lakes near Cache Creek, B.C., which contain the same sulphate minerals found on Mount Sharp on Mars.

However, Tutolo said the fact that the Mars crater is 3.5 billion years old means there might not be a definite answer to whether life did exist there.

"They have all been degraded in some ways. They've all been transformed by the geological processes working overtime in the crater so … there will be no smoking gun," Tutolo said.

But he said if the rock record shows it was theoretically habitable, then it can still answer some questions.

"If it was habitable, then we could start putting together scenarios for how life could have originated in such an environment and if it did originate, how it could potentially thrive in such an environment," he said.

"I think what we can do as objective scientists is read the story that is written in the rocks and understand and lay the foundation and paint the picture of whether it was possible."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 1, 2022.

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

Surface microstructures of lunar soil returned by Chang’e-5 mission reveal an intermediate stage in space weathering process

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: FEO-NANOPARTICLE-EMBEDDED AMORPHOUS RIM OUTSIDE OF OLIVINE GRAIN RETURNED BY CHANG’E-5 MISSION view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is conducted by a joint team from Chinese Academy of Sciences. They use aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Electron-energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) to examine the microstructures and chemical compositions at nano/atomic scales of 25 soil grains (1-3 μm in size) from Sample CE5C0400YJFM00507 (1.5 g). The soil mainly includes minerals olivine, pyroxene, anorthite and glass bead. To avoid possible chemical contamination and ion-bombing-induced amorphization, we do not employ the focused ion beam (FIB) to cut the bulk samples except glass bead. Firstly, they unambiguously identify the wüstite FeO nanoparticles instead of npFe0 that are embedded in amorphous SixOy rims outside the olivine grains. This unique rim structure has not been reported for any other lunar, terrestrial, Martian, or meteorite samples so far. Given that the nano-phase Fe is the final product of decomposing olivine Fe2SiO4, we suggest that wüstite FeO may serve as an intermediate state of the thermal decomposition process, and then the FeO may further transform into nano-phase Fe with the aid of in the presence of cosmic radiation or solar flare. Secondly, for pyroxene and anorthite, the chemical compositions of surface areas are identical to interior parts, and there is no SixOy rim outside sample. Meanwhile, no foreign volatile elements deposition layer and solar flare tracks can be found on the surface or inside the olivine and other minerals. Such findings imply that the studied samples do not undergo severe space weathering, and the underlying mechanism deserves further investigation. It provides clues or constraints on the incipient formation mechanism of rim structure under space weathering.

---

JOURNAL

Science Bulletin

DOI

10.1016/j.scib.2022.06.019 

Scientists prepare to send a balloon to search for “messengers from outer space”

EUSO-SPB2 experiment, led by UChicago physicist Angela Olinto, planned to launch in 2023

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

 

IMAGE: NASA ASTROPHYSICIST TONIA VENTERS AND JEM-EUSO SPOKESPERSON ETIENNE PARIZOT REVIEW THE PARTIALLY ASSEMBLED FLUORESCENCE TELESCOPE, PART OF A MISSION TO FLY 110,000 FEET ABOVE THE EARTH TO SEARCH FOR INCOMING PARTICLES, AT THE COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY ANGELA OLINTO

Members of the EUSO SPB2 team (IMAGE)

 

Members of the EUSO SPB2 team in front of the Cherenkov telescope during tests in Utah. From left to right: Lawrence Wiencke, Tobias Heibges, Viktoria Kungel, Eliza Gazda, Mahdi Bagheri, George Filippatos, Oscar Romero Matamala, Evgeny Kuznetsov, and Nepomuk Otte.

CREDIT

Photo by Jihyun Kim

Humans want to mine the moon. Here's what space law experts say the rules are

Jaela Bernstien -CBC

Mining the moon might sound like a concept that belongs in a science fiction novel, but it's likely to be a part of reality in the not-so-distant future. That's made it a hot topic of discussion among space lawyers — yes, there are space lawyers — on Earth.

When Michelle Hanlon, co-director of the Air and Space Law Program at the University of Mississippi, tells people what she does for a living, she says most people are confused.

"Most people think I'm a real estate lawyer — what kind of space do you sell?" she said, laughing. But in fact, Hanlon is an expert in the law governing outer space.

There are several international agreements governing space, including The Outer Space Treaty, which was drafted during the Cold War and signed by more than 100 countries including the United States, China and Russia.

That treaty, which states "outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty," is what prevents countries from swooping in and declaring ownership over the moon.


An artistic rendering of the planned International Lunar Research Station, a collaboration in development by China and Russia.© China National Space Administration

"You cannot plant a flag anywhere in space and say this now belongs to the United States, this now belongs to Russia, this now belongs to China," Hanlon said.

But when it comes to mining the moon for resources, things get more complicated. Legal experts are working on teasing out exactly how that treaty applies when nations — or private companies working on behalf of nations — start harvesting resources from the moon or asteroids.

"By building a mining operation, some would argue ... you're actually claiming sovereignty by another means," Hanlon said. "We have to learn to do something in space that we haven't yet learned how to do on Earth. And that is: be mindful and respectful of each other."

That will be put to the test in the next few years, as major space-faring nations race to establish bases on the moon.

NASA's Artemis mission, which the Canadian Space Agency is contributing to, hopes to send humans to the moon by 2030.

This time around, the plan is not just to visit but to stay for good. That includes building a base camp at the lunar south pole, as well as a lunar gateway — a spaceship that would orbit the moon.

China and Russia have their own lunar base in development, a collaboration between the two countries called the International Lunar Research Station.

In order to avoid hauling resources from Earth to sustain those habitats, space programs are hoping to harvest resources from the moon's icy surface. That's includes water — essential for human life and a source for fuel when broken down into hydrogen and oxygen — as well as rare earth minerals and helium-3, a potential source of energy.

NASA has selected four companies to "collect space resources" on its behalf and launched a competition for the public to design, build and test prototypes to excavate icy moon dirt.

"The moon is pretty large and the moon itself isn't going to get crowded, but the areas where we know there is water are going to get crowded," Hanlon said.

Not the Wild West

Given the track record of mining on Earth, including the human toll and environmental damages, there are concerns the same mistakes will be repeated when humans become a truly space-faring species.

"I do worry at times," said Kuan-Wei Chen, a legal expert in space law and the executive director of McGill University's Centre for Research in Air and Space Law.

"We don't want to have again the repeat of history, when countries and commercial operators go to what they call a 'new world' to start fighting and engaging in conflict over resources."

That's why, he says, its up to academics and governments to emphasize that there are laws governing space.

"Space is not a legal vacuum. It's not the Wild West. It should not be the Wild West."


NASA's Artemis 1 rocket sits in place at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. A second launch attempt for the uncrewed spacecraft is planned for Saturday.

© John Raoux/The Associated Press

To help guide countries through those existing frameworks, Chen worked with a team at McGill University as well as a coalition of international experts to produce a manual on international law in outer space.

Given current geopolitical tensions, including Russia announcing it will leave the International Space Station and build its own, Chen says its better to work with the treaties that already exist rather than try to get countries agree to a new one.

But the outer space treaty is open to interpretation when it comes to mining.

"The law says very clearly it's not allowed to appropriate the moon. Now, does that mean you're not allowed to extract and use your resources that are found in the soil or the subsoil of the moon? That's not clear," Chen said.

Generally agreed: If you mine it, you own it

NASA introduced the Artemis Accords in 2020, as what it describes as establishing "a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy."

In a statement sent to CBC, a spokesperson said that "extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation."

But Russia and China have not signed the U.S.-led accords, and experts say they are unlikely to do so.

"Russia and China believe very strongly that the only place you can make space law is within the United Nations and they see the Artemis Accords as trying to circumvent that," Hanlon said.

"I think the US would say we're not circumventing, we're just jump starting."

Regardless, Hanlon said the Artemis Accords' interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty as it applies to mining are in line with what has been generally accepted. She says that takeway — which China and Russia have never disagreed with — can be summed up as "if you mine it, you own it."

As nations inch closer to establishing a presence on the moon and beyond, Hanlon and Chen agree there needs to be more awareness about how international law applies.

The hope is that nations will respect the current treaties and find a way to harvest resources equitably and sustainably.

If they don't, or if conflict arises, the international community will have to rely on diplomatic pressures — or there is the potential to turn to the International Court of Justice.

"We need to make sure that whatever we do in outer space and also on the moon will not have a detrimental impact on on us right now, but also the future generation," Chen said.

"These international laws ... were drafted with those guiding principles of ensuring that space is a peaceful domain, and ensuring that there is a sustainable future for the future of humankind in outer space, on the moon and on other planets."

NASA made enough oxygen on Mars to last an astronaut for 100 minutes


By Jacklin Kwan, New Scientist

The MOXIE experiment landed on Mars on NASA's Perseverance rover (artists's impression) NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s small experiment to produce oxygen on Mars managed to generate about 100 minutes’ worth of breathable oxygen in 2021. Now it is set to be scaled up to support future human exploration.

The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is a small oxygen-generating device that landed on the Red Planet atop the Perseverance rover in February 2021.
The science of supernovae Or Graur at New Scientist Live this October

Over the course of seven hour-long production runs during that year, MOXIE was able to reliably produce roughly 15 minutes of oxygen per hour in a variety of harsh planetary conditions. That added up to a total of 50 grams of oxygen in total – about 100 minutes’ worth of breathable oxygen for a single astronaut.

“At the highest level, this is just a brilliant success,” says Michael Hecht at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haystack Observatory, who co-leads the MOXIE experiment.

Read more: Mars astronauts would get unsafe radiation doses even with shielding

In day or night, at different extreme temperatures and in the wake of a dust storm, Hecht says that MOXIE continued producing high-purity oxygen.

The NASA team is now looking to create a bigger version of the device, which would produce not only enough life support for a crewed Mars mission, but also enough oxygen to propel a return rocket to Earth.

MOXIE requires pumps and compressors to suck in carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere as well as heaters that can raise the air’s temperature to 800°C (1470°F).

The device then pulls the oxygen atoms from the carbon dioxide to produce oxygen gas, which MOXIE has been measuring, before releasing it.

There will be some challenges in scaling up this technology, though, says Gerald Sanders at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

These include being able to insulate a larger version of MOXIE to manage its internal temperature and ensuring that the device heats up uniformly to prevent it from breaking.

Sanders also says that an oxygen device that can support a human mission would need to operate continuously for about 400 days, and so far, MOXIE’s runs have only lasted for an hour each.

“That’s a lot of hours to put on the hardware, irrespective of what the technology is,” he says.

Nonetheless, MOXIE’s first year of success has been a big step forward in showing the technology’s potential, says Sanders.

NASA is now testing the hardware needed at a scale that would be relevant to a human mission. The larger version is likely to be about a cubic metre in size, which shouldn’t present a problem for launches.

Human-Safe Wormholes Could Exist in the Real World, Studies Find

Jennifer Leman - Yesterday - POP MECH


Traversable wormholes may be more than science fiction, new research suggests.
Two separate studies published in Physical Review Letters D propose new theories for how to construct a traversable wormhole.
Wormholes, also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges, are commonly used in sci-fi stories as a way to quickly zip between distant parts of the universe.

Sci-fi writers have long leaned on the wormhole as an important plot device. It’s a quick way to get characters from Point A to Point B across vast distances in spacetime in a matter of seconds. But are wormholes real?

Theorists like Albert Einstein and Kip Thorne have been pondering the existence of these spacetime portals for decades, but so far, no one has been able to provide physical evidence of their existence until recently.

Two March 2021 studies, published in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D, propose wormholes safe enough for humans to travel through could exist in the real world after all. A third study published to the preprint server arXiv in September 2021 considers using a slightly different concept of gravity to allow safe passage through a wormhole.

One of the main arguments against the existence of wormholes suggests the portal’s narrowest part, or neck, would likely collapse under the weight of its own gravity. Some theorists say one way to sidestep this issue and prevent gravitational collapse would be to fill the wormhole with an exotic form of matter that has negative mass. But this solution isn’t a cosmological silver bullet—such a form of matter is purely theoretical.

In the first paper, an international trio of researchers led by Jose Blázquez-Salcedo of the Complutense University of Madrid has proposed an alternative way to prevent the collapse of a fragile wormhole’s neck—one that doesn’t need exotic matter to keep the wormhole propped open.

Instead, the researchers’ theoretical models, which ponder the possibility of microscopic wormholes, draw from three theories to harness the power of elementary particles: relativity theory, quantum theory, and electrodynamics.

These scientists suggest tweaking the mass and charge of fermions—fundamental building blocks of matter—could keep the cosmic thruway open. This would only work if the ratio of the total charge of the fermions to the total mass of everything inside the wormhole is greater than the practical limit set by black holes.

Now, there’s a catch: Blázquez-Salcedo and his team are talking about microscopic wormholes. They’re not exactly traversable by humans, but this is certainly one small step in a new theoretical direction.

The second paper, however, which comes from Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey and Alexey Milekhin from Princeton University, does explore the theoretical existence of wormholes large enough for spacetime-surfing humans to squeeze through.

In this case, Maldacena and Milekhin have devised a wormhole that forms in five-dimensional spacetime, also known as the Randall-Sundrum model. These wormholes would look like intermediate-mass black holes to the untrained observer, the authors say.

If you hopped in this kind of wormhole, you’d experience up to 20 Gs of acceleration—an uncomfortable, albeit survivable, amount. But the authors acknowledge some practical limitations with this theory. For example, the wormhole has to be extremely clean—i.e., free from errant particles:
If particles that fall into the wormhole scatter and lose energy then they would accumulate inside, contributing some positive energy that would eventually make the wormhole collapse back into a black hole.

If particles that fall into the wormhole scatter and lose energy then they would accumulate inside, contributing some positive energy that would eventually make the wormhole collapse back into a black hole.

The last place anyone traveling through space wants to end up is at the center of a black hole. The wormhole also has to be extremely cold, the researchers write. And then there’s the small problem of actually generating the wormhole in the first place. Maldacena and Milekhin are still working on figuring out how to form one.

Needing negative energy or negative mass (exotic matter, in other words) to construct your wormhole is too much trouble. Instead, you need to tweak your understanding of gravity, according to João Luís Rosa, a physicist at University of Tartu, in Estonia. His paper on the arXiv preprint server discusses the use of a model called “generalized hybrid metric-Palatini gravity.” This concept is based on general relativity, but matter and energy, and space and time, have slightly different relationships than those predicted by general relativity. So, you would be able to build a stable wormhole by layering the entrance with double thin shells of regular matter—no exotic matter needed.

After all this fact-or-fiction speculation, what’s the good news? Theoretically, your cross-galaxy trip would only take less than a second. But if your family and friends are tracking your journey from outside the wormhole, they’ll be waiting a long time for it to end. From their perspective, your trip would last tens of thousands of years.

Looks like you’ll have to find your own ride home.

Why one Harvard scientist believes alien technology may be sitting on the ocean floor

Matthew Rozsa - Yesterday - Salon

UFOs Getty Images/KTSDesign/SCIENCEPHOTOLIBRARY

In 2019, a cigar-shaped object known as 'Oumuamua was spotted zipping through the inner solar system and, peculiarly, speeding up while making its exit, seemingly in defiance of the physics of a quotidian asteroid. There are plenty of mundane hypotheses about why 'Oumuamua sped up — outgassing, or the expulsion of previously trapped gas, is among the most popular. Yet Harvard astronomy professor Dr. Avi Loeb has penned numerous papers and a book arguing that it could have been caused by a light sail spacecraft — one driven by a form of interstellar propulsion — created by an alien civilization.

Now, Loeb has a new provocative hypothesis, one that relates to a mysterious meteoroid that became known to Earth-dwellers several years before 'Oumuamua. Given a decisively less memorable name, CNEOS 2014-01-08, it is believed to have been only two feet long when it crashed into Earth at over 100,000 mph in 2014, after which it exploded into tiny fragments that landed in the South Pacific Ocean. Astronomers believe it may very well be the first human-observed interstellar object of its size to strike Earth — and, for that reason, CNEOS 2014-01-08 has piqued the attention of the astronomy community.

Loeb is also going the extra mile: he is leading a $1.5 million expedition to retrieve pieces of CNEOS 2014-01-08. As a scientist, Loeb is keeping an open mind to all possibilities — including that CNEOS 2014-01-08 could contain extraterrestrial technology.

Related

NASA is assembling a team to figure out what UFOs are

"The first interstellar meteor CNEOS 2014-01-08 is a rare outlier for two reasons," Loeb told Salon in writing when asked about the alien technology hypothesis. The first reason relates to its impressive speed: "By tracing its trajectory back in time, we know that [CNEOS 2014-01-08] was moving faster than 60 kilometers per second outside the solar system. This is faster than ninety-five percent of all stars in the vicinity of the Sun."

Loeb added that, in addition to this, "from the light curve of the fireball [CNEOS 2014-01-08] created in the lower atmosphere of the Earth, we calculated that it had material strength tougher than all other 272 objects" in the catalogue kept by NASA to keep tabs on near-earth objects. "Its material strength was twice tougher than an iron meteorite."


Related video: 

Did Scientists Just Discover Alien Tracks On The Ocean Floor? 

| Unveiled


Siegel argued that there are more credible hypotheses, such as that "this is an object that came from our solar system that, with a poorly measured impact velocity, simply came from our solar system like everything else that hits Earth from space."

These odd traits set CNEOS 2014-01-08 apart from its more quotidian meteoroid kin, which typically originate in our own solar system. Indeed, much debris still remains from the violent early days of our solar system, when it formed out of the gaseous remnant of the protoplanetary nebula that preceded our solar system. The asteroid belt contains a particular dense (by space standards) agglomeration of some of the "leftover" stuff that never formed into planets; or, which was sloughed off of our solar system's existing planets in violent collisions, and remained floating in the void. Random meteoroids of this nature strike Earth constantly: scientists estimate between 10 million and 1 billion kilograms of meteorites hit Earth every year, most of them tiny micrometeorites. An interstellar meteorite, particularly a large one with odd properties, would be a novel find.

Loeb's hypothesis is not without its critics. Dr. Ethan Siegel, an astrophysicist and science writer who has been critical of Loeb's work in the past, told Salon that he believes Loeb's hypothesis is a "travesty" that diminishes the work of other astronomers.

"The alien technology hypothesis is so far-fetched that there is no scientific reason to consider this as anything other than someone with no evidence crying wolf when there is no wolf that we have ever seen before," Siegel told Salon. "Saying that it is alien technology, to me, is an absolute travesty for the hundreds upon hundreds of legitimate solar system scientists who are doing excellent work studying what actually exists."

Siegel argued that there are more credible hypotheses, such as that "this is an object that came from our solar system that, with a poorly measured impact velocity, simply came from our solar system like everything else that hits Earth from space"; or, that "this is one of many, many, many interstellar objects that we know need to be out there that pass through our solar system, and this one happened to strike Earth and it, again, would be a naturally occurring small object."

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Dr. Steve Desch, an astrophysics professor at Arizona State University, suggested to Salon by email that regardless of what CNEOS 2014-01-08 is made of, very little material would survive the collision with Earth's atmosphere — perhaps mere "grams" of matter. Desch cited the work of Marc Fries, a NASA scientist, in determining this. Desch also argued that "all evidence points to this being an iron meteorite, part of a population of natural objects ejected by stellar systems."


"The ideal scenario is that in addition to tiny fragments, we would find a piece of an advanced technological device, like the hundredth version of the iPhone," Loeb told Salon.

Still, no one has definitively cracked the mystery of CNEOS 2014-01-08, and if nothing else, this is one mystery that Loeb seems determined to solve. The Harvard scientist explained to Salon that the upcoming expedition "will have a sled equipped with a magnet that will scoop the ocean floor in search of the fragments from the meteor explosions, about a hundred miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea." Loeb says that it will use machinery which has already been designed, and that he already has received donations of half a million dollars toward the project, with another million being necessary for the expedition to start.

"The ideal scenario is that in addition to tiny fragments, we would find a piece of an advanced technological device, like the hundredth version of the iPhone," Loeb told Salon. "I would love to press a button on such an object."


Read more

about UFOs
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The Pentagon should release dozens of UFO videos

Marik von Rennenkampff, Opinion Contributor -The Hill -  Yesterday 

The Pentagon has at least two dozen, and likely far more, UFO videos in its possession. Despite public commitments to transparency, officials refuse to release any of the footage. But the government’s rationale – that disclosure would jeopardize sensitive “sources and methods” – likely holds no water with many of the videos.


The Pentagon should release dozens of UFO videos© Provided by The Hill

In March 2019, amid increasing military encounters with objects appearing to exhibit highly advanced flight characteristics, the Navy instituted a standardized UFO reporting mechanism. Despite heavy redactions, these reports show that fighter pilots are frequently left stunned by such incidents.

Importantly, the Navy’s new reporting procedures allow aviators and intelligence officers to submit video footage and other sensor data. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Navy confirmed that 24 videos are associated with 19 UFO reports, spanning June through December 2019.

If the Pentagon continued receiving 20 UFO videos every six months, it would have well over 100 videos in its possession by now. Of course, increased awareness of the new reporting mechanism and reduced stigma likely resulted in aviators submitting far more UFO footage. Moreover, with 24 videos accompanying 19 reports, it appears that aircrews are unlikely to submit a UFO report without including corroborating data.

As noted by a former director of national intelligence, the government also possesses UFO data – such as “images and videos” – recorded by satellites.

Of course, the public release of satellite data and radar displays could jeopardize sensitive platforms and capabilities. But many, if not most, of the UFO videos in the government’s possession were likely recorded by infrared targeting pods.

Infrared video technology is not inherently sensitive. At the same time, footage from targeting pods is widely available. Most importantly, three famous UFO videos – all recorded with the Navy’s primary infrared targeting pod – are unclassified (and were never classified in the first place).

These facts make it impossible for the government to claim that the release of UFO footage recorded by such platforms (not to mention cell phones) would compromise sensitive technology or intelligence collection capabilities.

Importantly, since targeting pods are fighter pilots’ technological “eyes” in the sky, such videos likely account for a significant proportion of the UFO data held by the Pentagon.

At the same time, the government has no evidence “to indicate any [UFOs] are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary.” Therefore, the Pentagon cannot plausibly claim that its UFO videos can be classified as sensitive “foreign government information.”

For its part, Congress does not appear concerned that UFOs are part of a foreign intelligence effort. According to draft legislation approved unanimously by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a muscular new UFO office must immediately stop investigating any object determined to be “man-made” and turn its analytic attention to another case. If lawmakers are truly concerned that some UFOs are adversarial surveillance platforms, they would not direct a powerful new office to stop investigating as soon as an object is determined to be of human origin.

Of equal importance, officials are confident that none of the 143 unexplained encounters described in a landmark UFO report involve secret American technology. Therefore, the Pentagon cannot withhold UFO videos under the pretext that aviators may have inadvertently captured footage of sensitive U.S. “weapons systems.”

With Congress demanding answers and government officials admitting their own impatience with the slow pace of progress, the public release of non-sensitive UFO videos could quickly resolve several cases. For instance, it took the government “several years” to determine that two UFO videos showed a common camera artifact. Mick West, a prominent UFO skeptic, identified the artifact in a matter of days.

At the same time, verifiable, repeatable geometrical analyses of one of the most well-known UFO videos showed that the object’s flight path matches eyewitness descriptions. This implies that the UFO demonstrated highly anomalous flight characteristics, including controlled flight without any apparent wings, control surfaces or means of propulsion. Perhaps most intriguingly, the analyses indicate that the object thwarted a Navy fighter jet’s attempt to sneak up behind it.

Ultimately, the parameters (approved by a senior intelligence official) under which the government classifies UFO data are at stark odds with that same official’s public promise to declassify information that does not reveal sensitive “sources and methods.”

With infrared targeting pod footage – including three well-known, unclassified UFO videos – widely available in the public domain, the government’s “sources and methods” claim does not hold water. The Pentagon must abide by its emphatic commitments to transparency and release all such UFO footage.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.

Utah Woman Says Family Got a UFO Fly By While Camping

At first the other campers didn't believe them...

• DIANA LOGAN
• AUG 31, 2022

The current willingness of the U.S. Government to report on and explore the UFO phenomenon has brought a lot of people out of the woodwork. Once upon a time, it was the policy of the U.S. Government to “discredit” any reports of UFO sightings, no matter how credible. This was a Cold War psy-op, and led to respectable people denying their own experiences because they’d been told it was impossible. Now that folks aren't afraid of being labeled "kooks", it is clear that lots of people having been seeing these objects for a long, long time.

It must be a great relief for families like this one to come and say, “Yeah, this happened and we have no idea what it was.”

WATCH VIDEO HERE

This family was camping near Boulder Mountain, Utah many years ago. The woman was returning to her campsite with her father and a few friends when they saw a giant, orange-red ball appear in the sky. In a flash, it went from one side of the horizon to another, far faster than any shooting star might travel

Their father, an engineer and very “logical” man, said at once that he thought it was a UFO. When they got back to camp, they told their companions and the rest of their family what they saw, but no one believed them.

However, that was not the end of the story! Later that night, the entire camp saw the exact same UFO coming back across the sky with the same behavior, only in the opposite direction. After that, everyone in the family believed the story, for they had seen it with their own eyes. 

Alberta's Lt.-Gov. says she's willing to toss Smith's sovereignty act if unconstitutional

Lisa Johnson -  Edmonton Journal

Alberta’s lieutenant-governor says she’s willing to refuse to sign into law UCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith’s promised sovereignty act if it’s deemed unconstitutional.


Alberta Lt.-Gov. Salma Lakhani, left, and Premier Jason Kenney gathered with Indigenous leaders in the Reconciliation Garden on the Alberta legislature grounds on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022, to mark the first official Alberta Day

At an inaugural Alberta Day event on the provincial legislature grounds Thursday, Lt.-Gov. Salma Lakhani told reporters she would wait to weigh in until independent legal experts could examine the bill, but as the Queen’s vice-regal representative in Alberta she considers her constitutional role the most important part of her job.

“We are a constitutional monarchy, and this is where we do checks and balances. I’m what I would call a ‘constitutional fire extinguisher.’ We don’t have to use it a lot, but sometimes we do have to use it,” Lakhani said.

Smith has promised, if elected premier, to pass an Alberta sovereignty act that would allow Alberta to opt out of federal legislation, regulatory decisions and court rulings that legislators believe go against Alberta’s interests. Critics have warned it would create a potential constitutional crisis, undermine the rule of law, and scare off investors.

Lakhani said it will depend on the bill and the advice she receives on its legality.

“I think we will try and cross that bridge when we get to it, if we get to it,” she said.

She referenced Lt.-Gov. John Bowen, who in 1937 refused to give royal assent to three bills that had been passed by the legislature. In retaliation, Social Credit premier William Aberhart closed the vice-regal residence. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Canada declared the laws were beyond Alberta’s power to be enacted.

Lakhani said she hopes she would be prepared for potential backlash from those who see her role as ceremonial.

“This is why I live in my own house,” Lakhani said.

Born and raised in Uganda, where the country’s entire Asian minority population was expelled in 1972, Lakhani said her experience has led her to feel very strongly that the rule of law and democracy must be guarded and respected.

“Those are very, very important things for a prosperous nation,” she said.

Smith, in a debate in July, defended her plan, suggesting it was about “putting Ottawa on notice.”

On Thursday, Smith campaign spokesman Matthew Altheim said that Smith has said repeatedly that she will work with caucus to ensure the sovereignty act “is drafted in accordance with sound constitutional language and principles.”

Fellow UCP leadership candidate Brian Jean reacted on Twitter to Lakhani’s comments, saying he is “extremely uncomfortable with the lieutenant-governor getting political,” and calling on Smith to produce the text of the proposed legislation before UCP members vote on a new leader.


The UCP is set to choose its new leader Oct. 6, but the legislature is not scheduled to be in session until Oct. 31. Normally, the government does not publicly release the wording of a bill until it’s tabled in the house.
‘Happy birthday Alberta’

Lakhani, Premier Jason Kenney, Culture Minister Ron Orr and Cree elder Bert Auger marked Sept. 1 as the day Alberta officially became a province in 1905 with a ceremony Thursday.

Kenney said it’s worth celebrating the province as “a unique place with a unique culture, history and geography, (that) is also proudly part of the great Canadian federation.”

Orr also took the opportunity to air grievances with Ottawa, noting the government wanted to mark the day in part because the Fair Deal panel suggested it “affirm Alberta’s cultural, economic and political uniqueness.”

“A family compact of the Laurentian elites have always skewed the deal in their favour,” said Orr, before adding “happy birthday Alberta — that’s what today is all about.”

On Saturday, the government is hosting events and concerts in Calgary and at the legislature in Edmonton.

lijohnson@postmedia.com

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AN INTERNATIONAL BID PLANNED TO MAKE OIL FIELDS UNESCO SITES


A Polish academic says Fairbank Oil Fields and the Oil Museum of Canada are “monuments of history” and should be part of an international bid for UNESCO World Heritage designation.

Dr. Boguslaw Szmygin from Lublin University of Technology in Bobkra, Poland, encouraged Canada to join with Poland and other countries around the world to put forward a serial designation of early oil sites for world heritage.

Szmygin was in Lambton County for an international oil heritage conference Thursday and Friday. He visited Oil Springs Saturday to see the national historic site first hand. The International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH) organized the conference drawing delegates from Poland, Scotland, Spain, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Canada. TICCIH advises on UNESCO world heritage designations. The Oil Museum of Canada, operated by the Lambton County, and the Fairbanks Oil Fields unsuccessfully applied to Canada’s Tentative List to be considered for a world heritage designation in 2017. They will be applying again, but Szmygin hopes it can be a joint application of all those countries involved with the early development of the oil industry.

He called the Oil Museum of Canada and the Fairbanks Oil Fields “a living package from the past.”

Szmygin’s country is no stranger to oil development. Bobkra had its first extraction of oil in 1854, four years before the first commercial oil strike in Oil Springs in 1858. There is a museum in Bobkra to commemorate the oil and gas industry, as well as 60 oil wells, some of which are still in use in Poland, near the Ukrainian border.

Szmygin feels there is support for the world heritage designation at the local level in Lambton County, but the problem might be at the federal government level. “Oil was so important,” he said but now has a negative connotation due to global warming.

He called the Fairbanks Oil Fields and the Oil Museum of Canada “monuments of history.” The discovery of oil in Oil Springs led to the development of Lambton County with the construction of roads, rail and farm drainage.

Pat McGee of Fairbanks Oil who is the chair of the steering committee for TICCIH, said there are many who never heard of Oil Springs and its contribution to the oil industry. She called the conference a huge boon to raise the international profile of the community and the effort to get world heritage designation.

McGee said the next step is to determine what is the best course of action moving forward. The summary report will be prepared about the conference and it will be shared internationally.

Blake Ellis, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Independent