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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 17, 2018 11:17:07 GMT
Good morning lovely people!
Mystery blog
Pilot Who Chased An Alien Craft Warns Leaders To Pay Attention To UFO Sightings
Jay Jonson August 16, 2018
An American pilot made a shocking claim he pursued an alien spacecraft and then he warned all the world leaders to pay more attention to the UFO sightings.
Recently, the former US government officer Luis Elizondo, admitted the Pentagon ran a real UFO sightings research, named the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification program.
Furthermore, he said this program was funded with extraordinary $22 million from the Congress.
The retired US Navy Pilot, David Fravor, spoke out to back up the claims of Elizondo.
Elizondo made the discharge of some classified videos from the US Defense Department of UFO sightings. One of those sightings, namely, was the craft Fravor saw running at an unbelievable speed.
The 53-year-old US Navy pilot was leading one of the two fighter jets on his routine training mission.
He was around 100 miles into the Pacific Ocean when he was called to inspect an aircraft detected on radar from their navy cruiser the USS Princeton.
The operator said that until that moment, they have detected many aircrafts, but never had a jet disposed to go and check it at that moment.
The craft first showed up around 80,000 ft before rushing into the direction of the ocean. It finally stopped around 20,000 ft and flew around before disappearing.
When Commander Fravor arrived at the destination, he noticed a white craft, floating 50 feet over the ocean.
He said: “It was just moving randomly around – this 40-foot long white tic tac looking thing, with no wings.
“It was a clear day with a blue background and it was perfectly white. We didn’t see any windows, no form of propulsion, nothing, just a big white object.
“It was rounded on both ends and had a cylindrical body which rounded in, the same front to back.
“I couldn’t tell what it was made of, it was bright white but it wasn’t reflecting a bunch of light.”
Fravor said he literally chased the aircraft, trying to get closer to it. Instead, the craft quickly hastened its speed and vanished in a few seconds.
According to him, what he witnessed was very strange. Moreover, he reported that he hasn’t seen anything similar hovering and climbing with that speed rate during his whole career.
www.mysteryupdated.com/pilot-who-chased-an-alien-craft-warns-leaders-to-pay-attention-to-ufo-sightings/
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 17, 2018 11:24:43 GMT
Atlas Obscura
How a Heat Wave Revealed the Outlines of a Hidden Garden and Ghost Village
At an English estate, the ground still remembers its past.
by Sarah Laskow August 16, 2018
The outlines of the old parterre garden re-emerged in the heat. Oliver Jessop/Chatsworth House
Across the United Kingdom and Ireland this summer, heatwaves and wildfires have been revealing hidden signs of the past, from crop marks dating back thousands of years to giant signs meant to signal World War II pilots. At Chatsworth House, a Derbyshire estate perhaps most famous for its connection to Pride and Prejudice, the heat wave has exposed the outlines of a long-gone world—the gardens and village that existed here back in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Going back centuries now, this piece of land has been a large estate in a picturesque part of England. Many years ago, starting toward the end of the 1600s, the first Duke of Devonshire had parterre gardens, a style developed in France, put in, with curling paths and highly designed, elegant flower beds. By the mid-1700s, though, the fourth Duke was ready to make a change.
This duke was drawn to natural landscapes and replaced the garden with a less formal arrangement. The village on the estate, Edensor, also needed to change, he thought. He had parts torn down, in order to complete the more natural picture he’d envisioned.
more after the jump:
www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chatsworth-house-village-garden-heat-wave
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 18, 2018 10:05:23 GMT
Good morning!
4 Oct. 1962
~
Crystal
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Post by purr on Aug 18, 2018 13:14:12 GMT
Science Alert
Grisly Discovery Shows Egyptians Were Mummifying Their Dead Way Earlier Than We Thought
One for the textbooks!
MICHELLE STARR 15 AUG 2018
It's confirmed. The ancient Egyptians were deliberately mummifying their dead long before we thought they had started the practice, and long before the Pharaonic period.
The first extensive tests conducted on an intact prehistoric mummy show that the practice was taking place up to 5,600 years ago - around 1,500 years earlier than previously accepted.
This incredible work is based on one of the oldest intact mummies in the world. Dating back to around 3700 to 3500 BCE, Mummy S. 293 (RCGE 16550) is the oldest preserved human body in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy.
"Our findings represent the literal embodiment of the forerunners of classic mummification, which would become one of the central and iconic pillars of ancient Egyptian culture," said archaeologist and chemist Stephen Buckley of the University of York in the UK.
Mummy S. 293 had been in Turin since around 1900, purchased by Ernesto Schiaparelli without any documentation as to its provenance, but no one had conducted a detailed study of it, nor had it been the subject of any conservation treatments.
Previously, it had been thought that, like the Gebelein mummies, Mummy S. 293 was mummified naturally - that the heat, salinity and dryness of the Egyptian desert preserved the body, with no human intervention beyond burial.
The research team had previously found evidence of early mummification on funerary textiles. In a paper published in 2014, they explained that substances on mummy wrappings from prehistory were consistent with embalming agents.
But to confirm, they needed to work on an actual mummy. And S. 293, devoid of conservation chemicals, was the perfect subject.
They conducted a number of tests, including a visual assessment, radiocarbon dating of the textiles wrapped around the mummy, chemical analysis of textile samples via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and thermal desorption/pyrolysis, and shotgun metagenomics to search for pathogens.
The chemical analysis revealed the presence of an embalming substance. This was made from a plant oil 'base', which was by far the dominant ingredient, mixed with a conifer resin imported from the Near East, an aromatic plant extract or 'balsam', and a plant gum.
These materials also included antibacterial agents, in similar proportions to those used by embalmers some 2,500 years later, when the mummifying practice was at its peak.
On top of that, an analysis of the textiles placed the burial site in southern Egypt, which suggests that the embalming recipe was more geographically widespread than previously thought, too.
"Having identified very similar embalming recipes in our previous research on prehistoric burials, this latest study provides both the first evidence for the wider geographical use of these balms and the first ever unequivocal scientific evidence for the use of embalming on an intact, prehistoric Egyptian mummy," Buckley said.
But it wasn't just the embalming substance the team found. They were also able to glean a few more pieces of information about the mummy - a more precise date for when he lived and died, how old he was, and whether he had any known diseases (the researchers couldn't find any, although the traces could have degraded over time).
"By combining chemical analysis with visual examination of the body, genetic investigations, radiocarbon dating and microscopic analysis of the linen wrappings, we confirmed that this ritual mummification process took place around 3600 BC on a male, aged between 20 and 30 years when he died," said Egyptologist Jana Jones from Macquarie University in Australia.
This precise timing places the mummy squarely in the early Naqada period.
"The examination of the Turin body makes a momentous contribution to our limited knowledge of the prehistoric period and the expansion of early mummification practices as well as providing vital, new information on this particular mummy," Jones said.
The team's research has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
www.sciencealert.com/an-ancient-corpse-shows-that-egyptians-were-practicing-mummification-long-before-the-pharaohs
Crystal
Hi Crystal & thanks for a most interesting read. But I think I must disagree with Mrs. Starr after checking out her article and scientific source! Imo the link between the discovery of 'early mummification' and the Pharaohs' mummification process is at most tenuous. First on the S. 293 mummy concerned (quoting Starr):
"the mummy had in fact undergone an embalming process, with a plant oil, heated conifer resin, an aromatic plant extract and a plant gum/sugar mixed together and used to impregnate the funerary textiles in which the body was wrapped.
This 'recipe' contained antibacterial agents, used in similar proportions to those employed by the Egyptian embalmers when their skill was at its peak some 2,500 years later." Basically researchers found that the body of S. 293 had been wrapped with textile materials impregnated with a mix of resin, perfume, gum and sugar (which strictly speaking is a form of embalming, limiting the worst aspects of the fast onset of decay when performing burials in hot climates), reminds me of how the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped for burial by the way, but a far cry from the mummification process used on the Pharaohs as preparation for their Afterlife. Like totally insane in complexity:
"The mummification process took seventy days. Special priests worked as embalmers, treating and wrapping the body. Beyond knowing the correct rituals and prayers to be performed at various stages, the priests also needed a detailed knowledge of human anatomy. The first step in the process was the removal of all internal parts that might decay rapidly. The brain was removed by carefully inserting special hooked instruments up through the nostrils in order to pull out bits of brain tissue. It was a delicate operation, one which could easily disfigure the face. The embalmers then removed the organs of the abdomen and chest through a cut usually made on the left side of the abdomen. They left only the heart in place, believing it to be the center of a person's being and intelligence. The other organs were preserved separately, with the stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines placed in special boxes or jars today called canopic jars. These were buried with the mummy. In later mummies, the organs were treated, wrapped, and replaced within the body. Even so, unused canopic jars continued to be part of the burial ritual.
The embalmers next removed all moisture from the body. This they did by covering the body with natron, a type of salt which has great drying properties, and by placing additional natron packets inside the body. When the body had dried out completely, embalmers removed the internal packets and lightly washed the natron off the body. The result was a very dried-out but recognizable human form. To make the mummy seem even more life-like, sunken areas of the body were filled out with linen and other materials and false eyes were added.
Next the wrapping began. Each mummy needed hundreds of yards of linen. The priests carefully wound the long strips of linen around the body, sometimes even wrapping each finger and toe separately before wrapping the entire hand or foot. In order to protect the dead from mishap, amulets were placed among the wrappings and prayers and magical words written on some of the linen strips. Often the priests placed a mask of the person's face between the layers of head bandages. At several stages the form was coated with warm resin and the wrapping resumed once again. At last the priests wrapped the final cloth or shroud in place and secured it with linen strips. The mummy was complete. The priests preparing the mummy were not the only ones busy during this time. Although the tomb preparation usually had begun long before the person's actual death, now there was a deadline, and craftsmen, workers, and artists worked quickly. There was much to be placed in the tomb that a person would need in the Afterlife. Furniture and statuettes were readied; wall paintings of religious or daily scenes were prepared; and lists of food or prayers finished. Through a magical process, these models, pictures, and lists would become the real thing when needed in the Afterlife. Everything was now ready for the funeral.
As part of the funeral, priests performed special religious rites at the tomb's entrance. The most important part of the ceremony was called the "Opening of the Mouth". A priest touched various parts of the mummy with a special instrument to "open" those parts of the body to the senses enjoyed in life and needed in the Afterlife. By touching the instrument to the mouth, the dead person could now speak and eat. He was now ready for his journey to the Afterlife. The mummy was placed in his coffin, or coffins, in the burial chamber and the entrance sealed up."
Seems to me these guys an galls (doing same for favorite artisans, servants and 100,000s of beloved/spiritualised animals including cats, dogs, baboons what have you) went to a whole lot of trouble to live well forever... in a special dimension.... purr
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 19, 2018 1:10:42 GMT
Hey Purr🐈
Glad you liked the article.
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 19, 2018 10:06:57 GMT
Good morning,
America, The Jesuit Review
Close Encounters: A priest and a mysterious U.F.O. sighting Nick Ripatrazone
July 27, 2018
Americans were seeing things in the sky during the summer of 1947. A private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, was searching for a missing Marine Corps plane near Mount Rainier, Wash., when he saw nine “extremely shiny” objects “shaped like saucers” flying at 10,000 feet. Around that same time, a rancher in Roswell, N.M., found debris scattered across his land. Soon the Air Force’s 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Air Field agreed among themselves that the rancher had found a crashed flying saucer—before announcing that the discovery was really a weather balloon. (The Air Force later revealed it was part of a secret program to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.)
The public was confused, curious and a little afraid. At St. Joseph’s Church in Grafton, Wis., something crashed into the lightning rod on the church roof. The Rev. Joseph Brasky went outside and found a warm metal disc, 18 inches in diameter, with “gadgets and some wires.” The mysterious craft looked like a circular saw blade.
It was.
Father Brasky, like many other practical jokers that summer, wanted to have a little fun at the expense of the media. Hoodwinked reporters were subjected to his collection of trinkets, including “bass bottles”—beer bottles outfitted with the head of a fish—and Fish Tales, his self-published book of angling stories. But though many unexplained sightings were proved to be hoaxes, they continued beyond that summer. Something, it seemed, was in the sky.
"Around 8:15 on the first night of the carnival, among the aerialists and rides, his searchlight spotted a 'glowing disc.' And this was not a one-time occurrence."
In April 1949, the Rev. Gregory Miller, the pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Church in Norwood, Ohio, wrote to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati with two requests. The parish school needed an expansion. Also, the nuns who taught at the school had been living at nearby Regina High School, but their quarters were “becoming crowded,” and they needed a new residence at the parish. Father Miller had a plan to deal with both challenges: He would hold a festival that August to raise money for the building fund.
The Saints Peter and Paul Jitney Carnival was approved for Aug. 19 through 21. The Sensational Kays and The Three Milos, two famous high-wire acts, were booked. There would be free entertainment—but also “fun for a nickel.” An Army surplus searchlight, owned by the parish, was used to attract crowds. The light was operated by Sgt. Donald R. Berger of the University of Cincinnati’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
Manning a military searchlight in late August was no comfortable task, but Sergeant Berger’s job would become more difficult than he ever imagined. Around 8:15 on the first night of the carnival, among the aerialists and rides, his searchlight spotted a “glowing disc.” And this was not a one-time occurrence. Nine times in the following months, the parish searchlight would illuminate the impossible: a flying saucer. Unlike Father Brasky’s saw blade, the case at Saints Peter and Paul remains unsolved.
Making Sense of Mystery
The early days of flying saucer reports were full of practical jokes—along with serious, confounding sightings from military officers and pilots. Readers, and most reporters in the media, were not sure how to juggle such a contrast. From the start, the problem with flying saucers has been, among other things, a semantic one: If U.F.O. stands for unidentified flying object, then any attempt to categorize a sighting makes it an identified flying object—something else entirely.
Even today, whenever we talk about U.F.O.s, we are engaging in endless conjecture. We are always trying to imagine what they might be. With our eyes to the heavens, squinting at fast-moving discs and sporadic lights, the mind wanders. Yet in the mid-20th century, enough people reported strange objects in the sky that the government took notice. Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s official study of U.F.O.s, compiled over 15,000 sightings between 1947 and 1969. Nearly 700 were labeled unexplained, but another 1,000 were categorized as unknown. While the difference remains debatable, and is likely a result of poor terminology, the conclusion is clear: Although most U.F.O. reports were easily and eventually explained, a small number were scientifically curious and enigmatic.
"U.F.O.s and faith both occupy a surreal space: the porous border region between the prosaic and the profound."
Scientifically curious and enigmatic, though, does not make for great entertainment. Aliens do. The rest is cultural history. From the rise of the contactee movement (people who claim to have had contact with extraterrestrials) to popular films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and TV series like “The X-Files,” U.F.O.s have become interchangeable with aliens. If an object courses through the sky, we reason, someone, or something, must be flying it.
These sightings are certainly interesting to U.F.O. buffs, but what do they have to do with the Catholic Church—beyond a few priests who saw strange objects in 1949? U.F.O.s and faith both occupy a surreal space: the porous border region between the prosaic and the profound. Imagine a woman sees a glinting disc in the night sky. She first thinks it is a star, but then watches it bounce and bobble and speed into the distance. She might scratch her head and move on, but if she keeps thinking about that light, she must make a decision based on conjecture. Either she saw something entirely reasonable and typical—a plane, the planet Venus, a spotlight aimed at the sky—or she accepts that she has an unknown experience. And once she accepts the fragility of her perception, she opens the door to even more possibilities.
Thinking about U.F.O.s can be an exercise in theological speculation, a way to consider what might happen if the prosaic instantly became profound. Such speculation is healthy for Catholics, particularly because it can reveal how we might seek to neuter our faith of its mystery. In the same way that we might rush to explain a strange light in the sky, we might seek to explain God in purely rational and realistic terms—a theology of convenience. Because the church has hesitated to offer firm teachings on the existence of aliens, theologians and philosophers have filled that space with wonder. As early as the 14th century, the French priest John Buridan, in a response to Aristotle’s De Caelo (“On the Heavens”), wrote, “It must be realized that while another world than this is not possible naturally, this is possible simply speaking, since we hold from faith that just as God made this world, so he could make another or several worlds.” Father Buridan’s suggestion here is that all things earthly—and cosmically—are possible through God.
Astronomers have had to parry questions about aliens for years. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., the director of the Vatican Observatory, has tried to be firm with U.F.O. enthusiasts, writing on his personal website in 2013, “I do not know of any credible evidence at all that there has ever been contact of any form between extraterrestrial aliens and Earth. Period. I cannot imagine a circumstance where such contact could be kept secret for very long. And I say this, not only as an active astronomer for 40 years, but also as someone who knows lots of people in the SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] community (who would love to have such evidence), and as someone who’s been an officer in the American Astronomical Society and in the International Astronomical Union. If there was something like this going on, we’d all be talking about it. There isn’t, and we aren’t.”
Michael Burke-Gaffney, S.J., a Canadian priest who is an astronomer and professor at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had an extensive personal interest in U.F.O.s—even covertly investigating them for Canada’s National Research Council and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In 1966, after the noted astronomer and ufologist J. Allen Hynek penned an infamous letter to Science magazine offering seven reasons why U.F.O.s merited scientific study, Father Burke-Gaffney responded with his own letter. He takes a more cautionary tone. Until we identify mysterious “atmospheric phenomena,” he asks, should not scientists strive “(i) to exhort people to have patience, and (ii) to remind them that, up to the present, U.F.O.s have furnished no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, and (iii) to point out that the existence of extraterrestrial little green men is no more firmly established than that of leprechauns?”
There is no official Vatican position on U.F.O.s and aliens, although in 2014 the Vatican Observatory co-hosted a conference on the subject with the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, called “The Search for Life Beyond the Solar System: Exoplanets, Biosignature and Instruments.” The next year, Pope Francis gave an interesting response to a question about extraterrestrial life: “In every case I think that we should stick to what the scientists tell us, still aware that the Creator is infinitely greater than our knowledge.”
Of Skeptics and Sightings
George Coyne, S.J., was director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, when he retired to focus on teaching. He is known for examining the intersections between faith and science, earning him the respect of religion skeptics like Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Hawking. Father Coyne told me he is “very skeptical of all U.F.O. sightings of which I am aware.” I asked him if extraterrestrials are worthy of serious theological or scientific inquiry, and he pointed me toward a paper he had written for the anthology Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications.
Father Coyne’s essay, “The Evolution of Intelligent Life on Earth and Possibly Elsewhere: Reflections From a Religious Tradition,” offers a route forward. Father Coyne warns we should not study U.F.O.s in the hopes of somehow understanding the mysteries of God.
When we view God as “explanation” for the world, Father Coyne writes, using the “rational processes of science” in a manner not appropriate to their purpose—we ignore Scripture and tradition, which shows “God revealed himself as one who pours out himself in love and not as one who explains things.” Though science and faith intersect, we should not expect science to reveal a proof for faith. Perhaps, Father Coyne writes, we should look to the limitations of science and consider the “very nature of our emergence in an evolving universe and our inability to comprehend it, even with all that we know from cosmology, may be an indication that in the universe God may be communicating much more than information to us.”
more after the jump:
www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/07/27/close-encounters-priest-and-mysterious-ufo-sighting
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 20, 2018 11:07:07 GMT
Good morning lovely UFOCasebookers
What is GMT?
The Giant Magellan Telescope will be one member of the next class of giant ground-based telescopes that promises to revolutionize our view and understanding of the universe. It will be constructed in the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Commissioning of the telescope is scheduled to begin in 2024.
The GMT has a unique design that offers several advantages. It is a segmented mirror telescope that employs seven of today’s largest stiff monolith mirrors as segments. Six off-axis 8.4 meter or 27-foot segments surround a central on-axis segment, forming a single optical surface 24.5 meters, or 80 feet, in diameter with a total collecting area of 368 square meters. The GMT will have a resolving power 10 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. The GMT project is the work of a distinguished international consortium of leading universities and science institutions.
How will it work?
Light from the edge of the universe will first reflect off of the seven primary mirrors, then reflect again off of the seven smaller secondary mirrors, and finally, down through the center primary mirror to the advanced CCD (charge coupled device) imaging cameras. There, the concentrated light will be measured to determine how far away objects are and what they are made of.
The GMT primary mirrors are made at the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona in Tucson. They are a marvel of modern engineering and glassmaking; each segment is curved to a very precise shape and polished to within a wavelength of light—approximately one-millionth of an inch. Although the GMT mirrors will represent a much larger array than any telescope, the total weight of the glass is far less than one might expect. This is accomplished by using a honeycomb mold, whereby the finished glass is mostly hollow. The glass mold is placed inside a giant rotating oven where it is “spin cast,” giving the glass a natural parabolic shape. This greatly reduces the amount of grinding required to shape the glass and also reduces weight. Finally, since the giant mirrors are essentially hollow, they can be cooled with fans to help equalize them to the night air temperature, thus minimizing distortion from heat.
One of the most sophisticated engineering aspects of the telescope is what is known as “adaptive optics.” The telescope’s secondary mirrors are actually flexible. Under each secondary mirror surface, there are hundreds of actuators that will constantly adjust the mirrors to counteract atmospheric turbulence. These actuators, controlled by advanced computers, will transform twinkling stars into clear steady points of light. It is in this way that the GMT will offer images that are 10 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.
more after the jump:
www.gmto.org/overview/
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 20, 2018 11:13:58 GMT
Noe Torres
Published on Aug 19, 2018
Author / Researcher Noe Torres speaks about UFO sightings in South Texas at a gathering of the McAllen North Rotary Club on Jan. 7, 2016 at Don Pepe's Restaurant.
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Crystal
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Post by swamprat on Aug 20, 2018 20:33:19 GMT
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 20, 2018 23:15:07 GMT
Ferris had the secret. Slow down and take a look around once in awhile.
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 20, 2018 23:22:37 GMT
South China Morning Post Published on Aug 20, 2018
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Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 21, 2018 10:48:22 GMT
Good morning lovely people!
Just because it made me smile
Marines in Okinawa goofing on the song below -
~
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 21, 2018 20:46:33 GMT
Atlas Obscura
Scientists Have Found a New Way to Keep Shipwrecks in Shape
Step one: acquire magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles.
by Matthew Taub August 21, 2018
Nearly 500 years after sinking, the celebrated Mary Rose warship has wind in its sails once more. Scientists from the University of Glasgow, the University of Warwick, and the Mary Rose Trust have devised a method for removing agents of rot from the ship’s body, offering shipwrecks everywhere a brighter future. Their research was presented today at an American Chemical Society conference in Boston.
Mary Rose served Henry VIII in three wars against France over a period of more than 30 years. The precise reason for its sinking in the Solent strait is disputed, but the sole eyewitness account maintains that a strong wind blew while the ship was mid-turn. On July 19, 1545, hundreds of men drowned aboard this oaken icon of Tudor naval culture, while approximately 34 survived. In the following weeks, a hired crew of Venetian salvagers endeavored to recover the ship, but to no avail. The best that divers could do, a few years later, was to scoop up some of the anchors and weapons on board. (The guns on the ship were valued at over £1 million in modern money, and the kingdom couldn’t let that kind of cash go to waste.)
The wreck then lay submerged and undiscovered until 1836, when a group of fishermen caught their nets on bits and pieces. To much fanfare, divers brought up artifacts such as guns, jugs, and even the mast until 1843, when the loot was thought to be exhausted and Mary Rose was scheduled for demolition. Though that demolition never took place, concurrent demolitions of other wrecks led many to believe the ship had been destroyed, and Mary Rose faded once more from divers’ eyes. It wasn’t until 1971 that the ship was rediscovered and proper excavations were undertaken.
As it turns out, four centuries of submersion isn’t so great for wood. During that time, bacteria lodged in the ship and produced hydrogen sulfide, which then reacted with iron ions—from cannons, for example—to produce iron sulfide. When the ship was pulled from the depths, these sulfides reacted with oxygen to form destructive acids.
Arduous conservation efforts have been ongoing since the ship was lifted out of the water in 1982. For years, preservationists countered the harmful sulfides by applying a supplement known as polyethylene glycol (PEG) to the hull, which prevented the wood from shrinking and cracking. But while PEG proved effective enough to keep Mary Rose on display, it was just a band-aid—it failed to do away with the catalyst driving the ship’s deterioration.
A team of researchers has developed a new treatment for the wood, one that removes those pesky iron ions without even damaging the wood. It goes like this: Magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles are laid down on the wood, protected by an adhesive polymer that can then be peeled safely off the surface with the dislodged iron ions clinging to it. Though this doesn’t reverse the damage of over four sunken centuries, it does strip the wood of the iron’s rusty, oxidized reddish hue—making it look more like it did when it sailed the high seas.
The researchers have begun applying the treatment to wood from Mary Rose, explained lead researcher Serena Corr from the University of Glasgow, but they first tried it out on the next best thing: oak soaked in iron solution. The team, Corr added, is currently developing versions of this treatment that can be safely applied to other materials found in the wreck, such as leather and rope. Until then, you can still see the ship and its artifacts in all their oxidized glory at the Mary Rose Museum on the Portsmouth Dockyards.
www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-preserve-a-shipwreck
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 22, 2018 11:31:02 GMT
Good morning lovely UFOCasebookers
History.com August 21, 2018
This Scoutmaster Had a Run-in with a UFO. The Kids Saw it Too.
by Colin Bertram
An illustration depicting Scoutmaster D.S. 'Sonny' DesVergers' encounter with a flying saucer that burned him. (Credit: The Project Blue Book Archive)
On a humid, August night in 1952, scoutmaster D.S. “Sonny” DesVergers emerged burned and barely coherent from a dense palmetto grove in the South Florida Everglades. He claimed he had encountered an unidentified flying object that discharged a fireball, which left him singed and barely able to see.
Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, chief UFO investigator for the U.S. Air Force, would later label the event “the best hoax in UFO history.” But the DesVergers incident remains one of the most intriguing cases from Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s now-declassified investigations into UFOs—because it wasn’t just a sighting incident, but one involving a purported attack. To this day, it’s still unsolved.
Cue appropriately spooky “X-Files” music.
A series of investigations conducted by the U.S. Air Force between 1952 and 1969, Project Blue Book was tasked with scientifically analyzing UFO-related incidents to determine whether they were a threat to national security. Some say the project was commissioned to find rational explanations for these mysterious phenomena, to help quell a growing Cold War-era public hysteria over unidentified objects in the sky. UFO fever reached such intensity that in April 1952, four months before the DesVergers incident, LIFE magazine published a story called “Have We Visitors from Space?”
Pulling over to inspect a bright flash of light
As Ruppelt would later chronicle in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, on the evening of August 19, 1952, hardware-store clerk and Scoutmaster DesVergers, 30, was driving a group of Boy Scouts home when he saw a bright light flash over Military Trail near West Palm Beach, Florida. Thinking it may be a downed plane or car accident, DesVergers pulled onto the shoulder of the highway so he could take a closer look. Armed with a machete and flashlights, he entered the palmetto grove near where he saw the lights, leaving the three boys in the vehicle with instructions to alert the residents of a nearby farmhouse if he did not return in 15 minutes.
According to the declassified documents, after about four minutes of hacking through the bush DesVergers entered a clearing in the grove. The first thing he described was an acute, nauseating smell and then the feeling of somebody or something watching him. He next experienced a sensation of oven-like heat coming from above. Looking up, DesVergers said, he could not see any stars as he was standing beneath a hovering object.
The object was circular, DesVergers recounted, dull black, with no seams, about 30 feet in diameter with a height of 10 feet, a convex dome atop it and the bottom edge lit with a phosphorescent glow.
Enveloped by a red mist
What happened next is what separates DesVergers’ encounter from thousands of other UFO sightings: As he slowly moved backward, he recalled, he heard a noise like metal against metal, “like a hatch opening,” after which a red, flare-like light came from the side of the object and slowly moved toward him. (DesVergers constantly referred to it as a “ship” when recounting the tale to the authorities) As he placed his hands over his face—fists closed, hand over each eye—the red ball of light grew into a red mist, engulfing him. It was then, he recounted, that he lost consciousness.
When he awoke, DesVergers said, he was leaning against a tree, but could not see properly as his eyes burned. Scrambling back through the palmettos, his eyesight slowly returning to normal, he burst, incoherent, out onto the highway, where he was met by the boys and local authorities.
more after the jump:
www.history.com/news/ufo-encounter-florida-desvergers-scoutmaster-burned
Crystal
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Post by WingsofCrystal on Aug 22, 2018 11:36:12 GMT
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