Signs of Alien Life by 2025, Says NASA Chief Scientist

Some argue that Extraterrestrial/Extradimensional life is, and has already been, present on this Earth. Megalithic sites like the Pyramids and Puma Punku certainly suggest that some form of advanced technology was used to construct them. Or the countless traditions by indigenous cultures teaching about visitors from the stars. Also the extremely elaborate crop circle formations around the world that no human could construct with ropes and boards in a single night. 

But no matter the case, if "they" are already here or not, it seems disclosure may not come as a presidential announcement. It may come much slower than that, through the mainstream. Starting with the news that there are hundreds of billions of  habitable planets in our galaxy alone, then on to the discovery microbial life, eventually leading us to the "official" contact of intelligent species.

As much as I would like it to happen overnight, many people still need to be eased into this new reality. We have been asleep for millennia. As a collective consciousness, it takes time to shift into a completely different paradigm. The best thing to do is embrace the eternal now moment, find our peace within. That way we will be in a much better place mentally and spiritually to finally meet somebody from another world.

- Planet Awakening

Recent observations by planetary probes and telescopes on the ground and in space have shown that water is common throughout our solar system and the broader Milky Way galaxy. -NASA

APR 8, 2015 09:10 AM ET // BY MIKE WALL, SPACE.COM

Humanity is on the verge of discovering alien life, high-ranking NASA scientists say.

"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years," NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said Tuesday (April 7) during a panel discussion that focused on the space agency's efforts to search for habitable worlds and alien life.

"We know where to look. We know how to look," Stofan added during the event, which was webcast live. "In most cases we have the technology, and we're on a path to implementing it. And so I think we're definitely on the road." [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

How Aliens Can Find Us (and Vice Versa): Photos

Former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, shared Stofan's optimism, predicting that signs of life will be found relatively soon both in our own solar system and beyond.

"I think we're one generation away in our solar system, whether it's on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation on a planet around a nearby star," Grunsfeld said during Tuesday's event.

Recent discoveries suggest that the solar system and broader Milky Way galaxy teem with environments that could support life as we know it, Grunsfeld said.

For example, oceans of liquid water slosh beneath the icy shells of the Jupiter moons Europa and Ganymede, as well as that of the Saturn satellite Enceladus. Oceans covered much of Mars in the ancient past, and seasonal dark streaks observed on the Red Planet's surface today may be caused by salty flowing water.

Further, NASA's Curiosity rover has found carbon-containing organic molecules and "fixed" nitrogen, basic ingredients necessary for Earth-like life, on the Martian surface.

Farther afield, observations by NASA's Kepler space telescopesuggest that nearly every star in the sky hosts planets — and many of these worlds may be habitable. Indeed, Kepler's work has shown that rocky worlds like Earth and Mars are probably more common throughout the galaxy than gas giants such as Saturn and Jupiter.

And just as the solar system is awash in water, so is the greater galaxy, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division.

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Alien Life Could Exist Outside 'Habitable Zones'

New research suggests we might want to widen our search for Earth-like exoplanets.

DCI

The Milky Way is "a soggy place," Hertz said during Tuesday's event. "We can see water in the interstellar clouds from which planetary systems and stellar systems form. We can see water in the disks of debris that are going to become planetary systems around other stars, and we can even see comets being dissipated in other solar systems as star evaporates them." [6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System]

The Most Horrific Alien Planets In Our Galaxy: Photos

Hunting for evidence of alien life is a much trickier proposition than identifying potentially habitable environments. But researchers are working steadily toward that more involved and ambitious goal, Stofan and others said.

For example, the agency's next Mars rover, scheduled to launch in 2020, will search for signs of past life and cache samples for a possible return to Earth for analysis. NASA also aims to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s — a step Stofan regards as key to the search for Mars life.

"I'm a field geologist; I go out and break open rocks and look for fossils," Stofan said. "Those are hard to find. So I have a bias that it's eventually going to take humans on the surface of Mars — field geologists, astrobiologists, chemists — actually out there looking for that good evidence of life that we can bring back to Earth for all the scientists to argue about."

NASA is also planning out a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022. The main goal of this $2.1 billion mission will be to shed light on the icy moon's potential habitability, but it could also search for signs of alien life: Agency officials are considering ways to sample and study the plumes of water vapor that apparently erupt from Europa's south polar region.

Could This Alien Cell Thrive on Titan?

In the exoplanet realm, the agency's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an $8.8 billion instrument scheduled to launch in 2018, will scope out the atmospheres of nearby "super-Earth" alien planets, looking for gases that may have been produced by life.

JWST will scan the starlight that passes through the air of super-Earths, which are more massive than our own planet but significantly less so than gaseous worlds such as Uranus and Neptune. This method, called transit spectroscopy, will likely not work for potentially habitable Earth-size worlds, Hertz said.

Searching for biosignature gases on small, rocky exoplanets will instead probably require direct imaging of these worlds, using a "coronagraph" to block out the overwhelming glare of their parent stars, Hertz added.

NASA's potential Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, which may launch in the mid-2020s if given the official go-ahead, would include a coronagraph for exoplanet observations.

NASA discovers 715 new planets, including four that could host life

AFP Photo / NASA / JPL-Caltech

Astronomers have announced that 715 new planets have been discovered outside the Earth’s solar system, including four planets that are more than double the size of our own. This discovery boosts the number of known planets in our galaxy to over 1,700.

The newly discovered planets were all found in multi-planet systems and most are relatively small. Scientists found planets - all of which orbit 305 stars, making up what are known as planetary systems - when they were analyzing the observational data obtained by NASA’s Kepler space telescope.

“We’ve almost doubled today the number of planets known to humanity,” Jack Lissauer, a NASA planetary scientist, said Tuesday during a press conference with reporters.

Kepler was first launched in 2009 and spent four years waiting to see what bodies would float by when the telescope was pointed at 160,000 target stars.

For Kepler to discover a new planet it must be perfectly aligned with a star in the telescope’s view, something that is made especially difficult by the fact that planets orbiting a greater distance from their parent star are far less likely to be found. When a planet and star do successfully align with the telescope it is known as a “transit.”

NASA’s announcement became even more exciting when the researchers said that at least four of the planets, the same ones that are roughly 4.5 times larger than Earth, exist in orbits that are within a star’s habitable zone, or the “Goldilocks zone.” At such a distance these planes could host liquid water and, potentially, life.

The announcement Tuesday covered only the first two years of Kepler’s study, an indication that the existence of many more planets could be announced in the future.

“We’ve been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as had ever been found and announced at once,” Lissauer said. “Although we’ve gotten the big numbers this time, when we have a full four years of Kepler data that will have more planets in the habitable zone. We need more transits.”

The jump in discoveries can be attributed to a new verification technique that NASA uses to examine potential planetary systems rather than individual planets. That method was developed when it occurred to scientists that the vast majority of planets share sibling worlds that orbit a single parent star.

NASA has said that 95-percent of the planets recently discovered by Kepler are smaller than Neptune, which is four-times the size of Earth. Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Reuters that planets of this size are becoming increasingly common throughout the galaxy, at least in terms of humans being aware of them.

“Literally, wherever (Kepler) can see them, it finds them,” she said. “That’s why we have confidence that there will be planets like Earth in other places.”

Source: http://rt.com/usa/nasa-discovers-715-planets-four-948/

Former Princeton Physics Professor and NASA Astronaut Blows Whistle on UFOs: Technological Implications

Dr Brian O’Leary was born on January 27th, 1940 and past away on July 28th, 2011 shortly after making a big statement. He was a member of the sixth group of astronauts selected by NASA in August of 1967. The members of this group were known as the scientist-astronauts. Dr O’Leary received a bachelor of arts degree in physics from Williams College in 1961, and a doctor of philosophy in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as secretary of the American Geophysical Union’s Planetology Section. Furthermore, he was the team leader of the Asteroidal Resources Group for NASA’s Ames Summer Study on Space Settlements. He was a founding board member of the International Association for New Science as well as founding president of the New Energy Movement. He was a fellow at the World Innovation Foundation and a physics professor at Princeton University.

The technological implication of UFOs is one reason for the secrecy that surrounds them. The way they can stop on point and move any direction they choose brings up a big question; what type of propulsion systems and operating characteristics are involved? If we know UFOs are real, one of the questions to ask is how they operate and how they get to where they need to be.

Given all of the official documentation and credible witness testimonies, we are able to question further and make reasonable connections. With the amount of effort and time spent to cover up the reality of UFOs,  it is logical to assume that the ones responsible for the cover up have the same questions that we do. How do they operate? Maybe more exists beyond the secrecy, maybe some questions have been answered and seized by those who control the money supply. Anti-Gravity, clean energy, the list goes on and on. Even without UFOs, human beings have the scientific and technological capability to change our planet. It’s time to start asking more questions, if we have alternative and more efficient ways of operating on planet Earth that could benefit everybody, why are they not being implemented and who is responsible?

Everything you can imagine we already know how to do, but these technologies are so locked up in black projects it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity – Ben Rich, Former CEO of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works

Original source of the article: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/12/26/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/ - See more at: http://www.truthfeed.net/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/#sthash.J9RwFoYe.dpuf

Original source of the article: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/12/26/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/ - See more at: http://www.truthfeed.net/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/#sthash.J9RwFoYe.dpuf

Source: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/12/26/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/

Original source of the article: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/12/26/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/ - See more at: http://www.truthfeed.net/former-princeton-physics-professor-and-nasa-astronaut-blows-whistle-on-ufos-technological-implications/#sthash.J9RwFoYe.dpuf

New views of Sun's atmosphere reveal structures unknown to science

Launched late last month, NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (ISIS) is designed to observe little-explored lower layers of the Sun's multi-level atmosphere in unprecedented detail – and its first images are already turning up surprises.

 On the left is a section of the Sun as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. On the right, the same section as seen by IRIS. Notice the increased levels of detail.

IRIS is equipped with a suite of ultraviolet-sensing and spectrographic instruments that enables it to peer past the Sun's outer atmosphere into the chromosphere, the so-called "interface region" that serves as an energy conduit between the Sun's low-level photosphere and its outer corona. When it comes to solar dynamics, astrophysicists hypothesize the chromosphere is where the magic happens. 

Somewhere in this region, surface temperatures (which hover in the range of 5,000–6,000 Kelvin) skyrocket to the 1,000,000–3,000,000 Kelvin temperatures observed in the Sun's roiling outer sheath. It drives solar wind, and gives rise to the ultraviolet emissions that affect Earth.

Via NASA:

As IRIS's telescope door opened for the first time ever on July 17, the imaging spectrograph began to observe the sun. IRIS's first images show a multitude of thin, fiber-like structures that have never been seen before. The observations reveal enormous contrasts in density and temperature throughout this region, even between neighboring loops only a few hundred miles apart. The images also show spots that rapidly brighten and dim, which provide clues to how energy is transported and absorbed throughout the region.

"The quality of the images and spectra we are receiving from IRIS is amazing — this is just what we were hoping for," said Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, Calif. "There is much work ahead to understand what we're seeing, but the quality of the data will enable us to do that."
 

Read more about the IRIS mission and its first glimpse of this mysterious solar region here and here.

Source: http://www.io9.com

NASA finds three super-earths in stars’ habitable zones

http://rt.com/news/nasa-super-earths-habitable-151/

NASA’s Kepler space telescope has discovered three planets that may be able to support life, while one of them is the most earth-like world spotted to date, scientists say.

This artist's concept provided by NASA April 18, 2013, depicts NASA's Kepler misssion's smallest habitable zone planet
(AFP Photo / NASA)

Two exoplanets have been discovered in their stars’ habitable zones, what is known as just the right range of distance where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface.

Kepler-62f is a rocky world 1.4 times bigger than earth and circles a star smaller and dimmer than the sun. Its neighbor, Kepler-62e, is just 1.6 times larger than Earth. Both are the smallest exoplanets ever found in their stars’ habitable zones.

Both Kepler-62e and f, “look very good as possibilities for looking for life,” said Bill Borucki, the Kepler science principal investigator, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California.
The third potential earth-like planet identified by the scientists is Kepler-69c, standing at 1.7 times bigger than Earth and orbits a star similar to our own sun. Boruchi said it represents a big step towards finding the first ever “alien earth”.

“We’re moving very rapidly towards finding an Earth analogue around a star like the sun,”
Borucki told SPACE.com.

The Kelper-62 discovery paper, which is being led by Borucki, was published Thursday in the journal Science.

The three potentially habitable worlds are part of a larger find.  Scientists unveiled a total of seven new exoplanets, five in the Kepler-62 system and two in Kepler-69.


The Kepler-62e system is located about 1,200 light years away from earth in the Lyra constellation. While Kepler-69c lies 2,700 light-years away in the Cyngus constellation.

The five newfound planets range from 0.54 to1.95 times the size of earth, but only Kepler-62e and f are potentially habitable.

This artist's concept provided by NASA April 18, 2013, depicts Kepler-69c, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and is the smallest yet found to orbit in the habitable zone of a sun-like star (AFP Photo / NASA)

Kepler-62e and f take 122 and 267 days respectively to complete an orbit around their star, which is reported to be only 20% as bright as our Sun. A separate modeling study of the two planets suggests they’re both water worlds totally covered by global oceans.

“There may be life there, but could it be technology-based like ours? Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy,” 

the lead author of the study, Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, said in a statement.

Researchers said that Kepler-62e should be warmer than its more distantly orbiting neighbor and may require a greenhouse effect to stop its ocean’s from freezing over.

“Kepler-62e probably has a very cloudy sky and is warm and humid all the way to the polar regions. Kepler-62f would be cooler, but still potentially life-friendly,” co-author Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard said in statement.

The $600 million Kepler observatory was launched in March 2009 to hunt for earth sized exoplanets. Kepler searches for planets by detecting tiny brightness dips when they cross the face of their stars.
Kepler has spotted 2,700 planets since its March 2009 launch, while about 120 of these candidates have been confirmed to date.

Borucki pointed out that Kepler is getting closer and closer to discovering earth’s twin, with Kepler-69c an example of how close.

“I think we’re making excellent progress in that direction. We have a number of candidates that look good,” he said.

While the Kepler cannot actually search for signs of life on the planets like 62e and 62f, the telescope is paving the way for future missions to do just that, he said.

A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below the mass of the Solar System's smaller gas giants Uranus and Neptune, which are both more or less 15 Earth masses.

The term super-Earth refers only to the mass of the planet, and does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability.

A French-led team found out that 40 per cent of red dwarves are orbited by super-Earths. Red Dwarfs are by far the most common type of star in the Milky Way galaxy, but due to their low luminosity they’re invisible from earth to the naked eye.

Mars: Over 100 NASA Scientists Quit Or Retire Early Over ‘Security Obsession’ With Mars Rover – What Are ‘They’ So ‘Obsessed’ About?

Is something HUGE going on with Mars that NASA and the Department of Homeland Security DO NOT want the public to know about? Due to NASA’s new found ‘security obsession’ with the Mars Rover, over 100 NASA scientists and engineers have recently either quit their jobs or retired early. What in the world are NASA and the Department of Homeland Security so obsessed about with Mars and the Mars Rover? According to this story at "This Can’t Be Happening":

“Thanks to the zealous wackos at the Department of Homeland Security, back in 2007 during the latter part of the Bush administration an order went out that all workers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena–an organization that is run under contract to NASA by the California Institute of Technology, had to be vetted for high security clearance in order to continue doing their jobs. Never mind that not one of them was or is engaged in secret activities (NASA is a rigorously non-military, scientific agency which not only publishes all its findings, but which invites the active participation of scientists from around the world). In order to continue working at JPL, even scientists who had been with NASA for decades were told they would need a high-level security badge just to enter the premises. To be issued that badge, they were told they would need to agree undergo an intensive FBI check that would look into their prior life history, right back to college.”

Now, who would blame the many scientists and engineers at JPL who took this as an extreme invasion of their privacy? To get their clearance, TPTB were going to contact their neighbors and old colleagues to be interrogated about their drug-use, drinking habits, arrest records as kids, all the countless things that are looked into when doing a high-security background check. Why would NASA scientists be subject to the same prying invasion of their privacy that they would get if they were applying for jobs in the CIA or the Secret Service?

More from "This Can’t Be Happening":

“Everyone who wanted to continue doing space science at JPL was told they had to submit to a security investigation.

The cost of this idiocy, which was aggressively pursued to a final pyrrhic victory in the High Court by the Obama Department of Justice (sic), has been grievous, as some 100 veteran scientists at JPL have quit or taken early retirement, rather than open their lives to the FBI.”

 

What in the world are NASA and the Department of Homeland Security HIDING up on Mars? Every day lately, we are learning more and more via NASA’s own photos, something BIG is going on up there! The security obsession being displayed by NASA and the DHS is just more proof that something HUGE is up. Americans deserve answers! Once again we are playing the whipping boy for a government out of control that does not have our best interests in mind. We pay their salaries, why shouldn’t we DEMAND answers from them or withhold their funding? These out of control, zealous wacko’s need to be broken!

To close this story, I’ll leave you with a comment from a former NASA employee and a closing statement from "This Can’t Be Happening":

Not everyone who quit over this issue was a scientist. Susan Foster, a senior science writer at JPL, began her career there working as a secretary in 1968, even before the first Apollo moon landing. She says she quit solely because of the NASA requirement that she submit to a “waiving of my Fourth Amendment rights or be denied access to the facility” where she had worked for 44 years. She is currently unemployed and looking for work.


What upset her most, she says, was NASA’s plan to use the information it obtained on its scientists’ and employees’ lives to create a “suitability matrix,” which would be used to see if they merited continued employment. In questioning JPL management, Foster says people learned that this “suitability matrix” would be considering things like “whether JPL scientists had participated in political demonstrations that could qualify in NASA’s scheme of things as disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, unlawful assembly” — all activities that she says many of JPL’s scientists had engaged in over the years. Says Foster, “Criteria such as ‘attitude’ are pretty frightening in their subjectivity, and ‘striking against the government’ is chilling to anyone who has supported, say, a legitimate teachers’ action.”

This disaster at JPL is a classic case of the US security state run amok, and provides yet another example of how the Obama administration, which came into office in 2009 promising to return the country to some kind of sanity and respect for the Constitution, has instead driven 100 invaluable scientists out of JPL, weakening the nation’s already struggling space program, and has put hundreds of scientists’ lives, and the lives of their families, at risk.

Sources:

http://beforeitsnews.com/space/2012/12/mars-over-100-nasa-scientists-quit-or-retire-early-over-security-obsession-with-mars-rover-what-are-they-so-obsessed-about-2450346.html

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1452

Life on Mercury? Scientists claim discovery of water on 'the Swift Planet'

A mosaic of MESSENGER images of Mercury's north polar region is pictured
in this handout image from NASA. Instruments aboard NASA's MErcury Surface,
Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft
studying the planet Mercury have provided compelling support for the long-held
hypothesis the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials
within its permanently shadowed polar craters. (Reuters/NASA/Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National
Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory)

Scientists have confirmed for the first time that the planet Mercury holds “at least 100 billion tons of water ice” and also has “organic material” in the permanently-shadowed craters at its north pole. The alleged findings came from NASA’s Messenger Spacecraft, which has been in orbit around Mercury since 2011.

Theories that Mercury – also known as the Swift Planet – could potentially contain forms of water were already being discussed back in 1992. Back then, Earth-based telescopes had picked up “bright areas” in and around the planet’s polar regions.

Alternative explanations were put forward to account for the bright areas, but Messenger provided enough evidence for water ice to exist on the planet closest to our sun.

The discovery is even more spectacular, taking into account that Mercury’s surface temperatures can sometimes reach 427 degrees Celsius (800 F).

Although the finding of almost 22 cubic miles pales when compared with our planet’s water capacity (an estimated 332,500,000 cubic miles!), Mercury is our solar system’s smallest planet, roughly one tenth the size of Earth.

Image credit: NASA

Even so, as much as 1.1 trillion tons of ice could lie on or just beneath Mercury's surface in the nooks and crannies of craters that never see sunlight, according to scientists working on the Messenger mission. Much of that ice may be protected by a dark layer of carbon-rich organic material several inches thick, they said.

The new research "doesn't mean we have life on Mercury, but it is relevant for the question of life in the solar system in general," UCLA planetary scientist David Paige, lead author of one of three papers published Thursday by the journal Science, said.

The water and organic material probably aren't native to Mercury; one theory suggests they could have been delivered by icy comets as they smashed into the surface.

It's widely believed that this is how organic molecules made their way to Earth as well, meaning Mercury, then, could offer a glimpse of a possible early stage before the development of life as we know it.

Image from www.wired.com

This image of the planet Mercury was taken by NASA's unmanned Messenger spacecraft during its October 6, 2008, fly-by of the planet closest to the sun. (Reuters/NASA-Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/Handout)

An image of the planet Mercury, made during the January 2008 flyby of the planet by the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft is seen in this image released by NASA July 3, 2008. (Reuters/NASA/JHUAP/Arizona State University/Handout)

Has NASA discovered life on Mars? Space agency hints at ‘historic’ discovery

By Daniel Carrington, The Space Reporter

It could be one of the most important discoveries in the history of NASA.

U.S. space agency officials reportedly are planning to announce a “major” discovery in December, leading to speculation that some form of life may have been discovered on Mars. 

“This data is gonna be one for the history books,” NASA’s Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told NPR on Tuesday, sparking speculation among the astronomy community. “It’s looking really good.”

It remains unclear what exactly NASA officials have discovered on the Red Planet. The discovery is reportedly the result of recent research conducted on Mars by Curiosity. The rover has spent the last several weeks roaming the planet in an effort to collect samples of soil and study the martian atmosphere. Speaking earlier this week NASA officials said the data collected during one of these missions led to the discovery.

“We’re getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,” Mr. Grotzinger notes. “The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down.”

Over the coming weeks, NASA scientists will reportedly study the data in an effort to pin down the exact finding, according to various reports. The announcement comes just weeks after NASA said they have yet to find evidence that the planet most like Earth in the solar system has methane, a gas tied to biological processes.

That said, it has been noted that the discovery could relate to an earlier mission aimed at measuring radiation levels on the planet. Researchers announced earlier this month that data collected during a mission yielded surprising results, including the potential detection of methane. Using the car-sized mobile laboratory, NASA researchers said at the time that they had identified transient whirlwinds, mapped winds in relation to slopes, tracked daily and seasonal changes in air pressure, and linked rhythmic changes in radiation to daily atmospheric changes. The knowledge gained about these processes could have provided scientists with evidence about environmental changes on Mars that might have led to conditions favorable for life.

In between now and then, the rover is expected to continue its mission. During a Thanksgiving break, the team will use Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) from Point Lake to examine possible routes and targets to the east. A priority is to choose a rock for the first use of the rover’s hammering drill, which will collect samples of powder from rock interiors, according to researchers.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars’ Gale Crater in early August. During a two-year prime mission, researchers will use Curiosity’s ten instruments to assess whether the study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. The mission is seen as a key test for studying whether a manned mission to the planet is possible.

Shadow Operations: The Mars Project

Show Pilot

The investigative work of Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy who have devoted their lives delving into secretive and undercover phenomenon that the government, scientists, and officials refuse to acknowledge or talk about.

http://projectcamelotportal.com/

British hacker's suicide fears may beat extradition to the US

Gary McKinnon (AFP Photo / John D Mchugh)

http://rt.com/news/hacker-extradition-mental-health-371/ 


Hopes were raised that British computer hacker Gary McKinnon may win his ten-year legal battle against extradition to the US after a Home Office medical report warns he may commit suicide if tried stateside.

­British Home Secretary Theresa May is expected to announce her decision to Parliament on Tuesday.

McKinnon’s family has been shown the new medical report, and is delighted by the news.



“Although it’s saying bad things about Gary’s health, its very good news. For them to come out and say Gary not even might or could but will take his own life if it proceeds, and they can give no reassurances, I would have thought it would be very difficult for the government to go ahead,” Janis Sharp, McKinnon’s mother, told The Guardian.

The study by professors Declan Murphy and Tom Fahy spells out the risks the British government would face if it went ahead with the extradition.

The same experts in July concluded that McKinnon’s risk of suicide was “moderate.” Since then they have studied reports from three experts on Aspergers and suicide, who examined McKinnon earlier in the year.

The new report, dated September 24, reads: “It is clear that there is a significant risk of suicidal behavior and that Mr. McKinnon ‘will do’ what he has threatened for the last three to four years if the extradition proceeds. On this specific point, we cannot offer reassurance to the authorities who are dealing with the case.”

McKinnon was arrested in March 2002 for allegedly hacking into dozens of NASA and Pentagon computers over a 13-month period from his bedroom in North London. He has admitted the security breaches but said they were unintentional and that he was looking for evidence of UFOs. American officials insist that he caused thousands of dollars in damage and want to prosecute him on charges that could bring a jail sentence of up to 60 years.

The subsequent extradition fight, which has seen unsuccessful appeals at the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights, has centered on his mental health issues and the risk that he will kill himself if extradited.

His mother, who has campaigned tirelessly against the extradition, secured guarantees from the Liberal Democrats when they were in opposition, and David Cameron has raised the issue twice with US President Barack Obama.

But there has been a delay since Britain's new government took power in May 2010.

“Before the coalition got in, Nick Clegg stood by my side outside the Home Office to support me, and David Cameron spoke up for Gary and said he should be tried here. When they won the election we wept as thought Gary was home and dry. Then nothing happened,” Sharp explained.

A Home Office spokesman said “This is a complex case, in a complex area of the law, and a large amount of material has been submitted, some of it relatively recently. The Home Secretary needs to consider all the material carefully before making a decision.”

May’s decision was due to be announced in July but was delayed until October because of the Olympics.

The effect of the ten-year wait has taken a heavy toll on McKinnon and his family.

“I’ve gone through all our money. Gary hasn’t got an outlet. He can’t go online. He’s a really good musician but he hasn’t touched an instrument for years because he can’t deal with what I would bring up. So he sits in the dark with his cats. He’s lost 10 years of his life,” Sharp said.

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Project Camelot Interviews Gary McKinnon

 

http://projectcamelot.org/gary_mckinnon.html

"I [Kerry Cassidy] caught up with Gary McKinnon in North London on my way back from safari in Kenya. The interview was shot using a hand-held camcorder and uploaded at 4 am UK time, making use of a wireless connection outside of an office building in downtown Birmingham. This is what is known as guerilla filmmaking...

We sat in the back of his local pub, in a garden in the late afternoon. Gary is lucid, eloquent and extremely intelligent. He made it clear that the real reason the Americans want to extradite him is not for any damage he has done, for in fact there wasn't any. They are pursuing him is because of what he might have seen. Specifically, documents revealing a list of "Non-terrestrial officers" and off-world cargo operations somewhere out in space, hinting at the real possibility of military activities taking place in relation to other planets.

Such a possibility has got to be mind-blowing to the average person who barely grasps that there might actually be aliens from other worlds interacting with earth and governments in the vicinity of our solar system. Key to the whole extradition matter is the issue that there were NO passwords required in order to access this material... and that a relatively unprofessional hacker, self-taught albeit brilliant, would be able, using a dial-up modem, to gain top secret access to NASA files and places as sacrosanct as the Pentagon."