Shenzhou-9 Lands Safely in Mongolia

Shenzhou-9 China spacecraft landed safely, Friday, returning crew of three with only minor tumble on impact in Inner Mongolia. The mission included docking with Tiangong-1 lab module, a key step towards completion of a permanent space station by 2020. The video provides awesome view captured by trailing helicopter of Chinese module setting down in desert!


Flashback: Shenzhou-9 Spacecraft June 16 Launch Successful*

Another NRO Spy Sat Launched Friday From Cape Canaveral

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched yet another spy satellite. The NRO-15 lifted off on a Delta 4 Heavy rocket Friday morning at Cape Canaveral, Florida. It's the second spy satellite launch in just nine days and the third of four since April with the next one expected in August from Vandenberg AFB, California. The NRO holding true to its motto: "Vigilance From Above." Political analysts believe spy satellite launches represent fulfillment of Joint Vision 2020 - full spectrum dominance. A person can't help wonder if timetable connected to limited spy capabilities over Iran? The threat of losing drones, making missions too risky, filled with potential for embarrassment? You may drop below the fold to view Friday launch video.

SWAT Raids Wrong Home Due to Open Wi-Fi Network

from arstechnica.com: The long-standing, heavily documented militarization of even small-town American police forces was always going to create problems when it met anonymous Internet threats. And so it has, again — this time in Evansville, Indiana, where officers acted on some Topix postings threatening violence against local police. They then sent an entire SWAT unit to execute a search warrant on a local house, one in which the front door was open and an 18-year old woman sat inside watching TV.



The cops brought along TV cameras, inviting a local reporter to film the glorious operation. In the resulting video, you can watch the SWAT team, decked out in black bulletproof vests and helmets and carrying window and door smashers, creep slowly up to the house. At some point, they apparently "knock" and announce their presence — though not with the goal of getting anyone to come to the door. As the local police chief admitted later to the Evansville Courier & Press, the process is really just “designed to distract." (SWAT does not need to wait for a response.) Officers break the screen door and a window, tossing a flashbang into the house — which you can see explode in the video. A second flashbang gets tossed in for good measure a moment later. SWAT enters the house.

On the news that night, the reporter ends his piece by talking about how this is "an investigation that hits home for many of these brave officers." But the family in the home was released without any charges as police realized their mistake. Turns out the home had an open Wi-Fi router, and the threats had been made by someone outside the house.

Whoops.

So the cops did some more investigation and decided that the threats had come from a house on the same street. This time, apparently recognizing they had gone a little nuts on the first raid, the police department didn't send a SWAT team at all. Despite believing that they now had the right location and that a threat-making bomber lurked within, they just sent officers up to the door.

"We did surveillance on the house, we knew that there were little kids there, so we decided we weren't going to use the SWAT team," the police chief told the paper after the second raid. "We did have one officer with a ram to hit the door in case they refused to open the door. That didn't happen, so we didn't need to use it."

Their target appears to be a teenager who admits to the paper that he has a "smart mouth," dislikes the cops, and owns a smartphone — but who denies using it to make the threats. While the open Wi-Fi issue has caused many problems over the last five years — especially in child porn cases — the FBI is becoming more savvy about how it executes search warrants.

As we noted last December, a well-run FBI child porn investigation (also in Indiana) took rather obvious precautions before executing a warrant:

On April 30, two FBI special agents drove past the Carmel home and noted the existence of two WiFi networks reachable from the property. One used WEP encryption, the other had the more robust WPA2, but the key point from the FBI's perspective was that neither network was unsecured. A search thus seemed much more likely to find its proper target.

Because most people aren't stupid enough to make obvious threats from their own home Internet connection, the corollary principle also holds: if a home does have an open WiFi connection, investigators might want to ease away from the flashbangs-and-SWAT-team approach; the threat of getting it wrong is a real one.

But Evansville police aren't backing down from their initial SWAT raid (read more about their later justification for using such force). And the targets of that raid aren't pleased. As the owner of the first house told the paper, "The front door was open. It’s not like anyone was in there hiding. To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive." The city will be paying to repair the damage it caused.

Lake Made By 1908 Tunguska Blast Meteor, Claim Scientists

Luca Gasperini, leader of an Italian expedition, has researched 1908 Tunguska Blast in Siberia for over 20 years. Natallia Etorre and Vladimir Tikhominrov write an excellent article about the research and mixed response it's received in article, "Scientists uncover evidence in Siberia's century-old meteorite mystery." Gasperini shares his inspiration to undertake research in such a remote forbidding location, "'I have been fascinated by the Tunguska mystery since childhood and I have dreamed of discovering the meteorite all my life,' the Italian professor said. 'So, as soon as I had a chance, I put together a team of specialists and we went to Russia.'" The expedition from ISAR Institute for Marine Geology in Bologna, Italy has been coming to the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin since 1991.

The article reports on alternative theories examined until:

"Soviet scientists in the 1960s focused on Lake Cheko, a body of water some 5 miles from the assumed ground zero with an unusually round shape. What if the lake were the original crater, which was later filled with water from the Kimchu River? Gasperini said he has no doubt that this version is what really happened."

The Italian researchers drilled holes on the lake's shore and found a totally different sedimentary layer below the surface. Wood chips and pollen hardly older than 100 years were discovered and first clue that Lake Cheko was formed recently. The lake also differed from other shallow glacier-formed lakes in the region by reaching depths of 165 ft.

It was then decided to follow tact of seeking references to Lake Cheko in old Russian archives. It was a long shot but they found records:

"'We thought: what if we could find a documentary record that there was no such lake before the event?' said Gasperini. 'Someone might think that impossible, but we pulled it off. We came across an 1883 map of the old Eniseisk province in one of the Krasnoyarsk archives, and there was no Lake Cheko on the map. There is no mention of the lake in letters, police reports or any other documents dating from the 19th century. Why? Possibly, they simply ignored it, but another possibility is that there was no lake in that spot at all.'"

A helicopter was brought in to take geomagnetic aerial photographs of Lake Cheko and found a magnetic disturbance in its center that researchers believe is their meteor. Russians remain skeptical until they see an actual meteor sample for themselves. A sample may be hard to obtain, since it would require an offshore drilling rig, to penetrate the lake bed that lies in a remote location. The present writer suspects Gasperini is on the right track and a tip of the hat goes to his amazing scientific passion!

#DataDump: Cops, Robots, Minerals and more

Uncle Sam Wants You! to Combat Online Piracy*
DefCon: 20 Years of Hackers, Hijinks and Snooping Feds*
How Anonymous Picks Targets, Launches Attacks, and Takes Powerful Organizations Down*
Military Judge Orders Obama Admin to Turn over Proof that WikiLeaks Documents Damaged National Security*
‘Big Brother’? No, It’s Parents:
Software Helps Parents Monitor Their Children Online*
Apple Stores in Atlanta Refuse to Sell iPads to U.S.-Born Iranian-Americans*
Kim Dotcom Taunts U.S. Law Enforcement via Twitter*
Judge Rules Megaupload Raids ‘Illegal’*
Mobile Carriers Gladly Give Your Data to the Cops, But Not to You*
In a Big Network of Computers, Evidence of Machine Learning*
Robot beats human at rock, paper, scissors. Every time.*
China May Be Suspicious of US Air Force’s X-37B Space Plane*
Panguite, New Mineral Discovered In Meteorite*
Video: '7 minutes of terror' for next Mars probe*

New Zealand Judge Rules Kim DotCom Warrants Invalid

from news.cnet.com: High Court judge finds search warrants were too general and rules the data in cloned drives should not have been released to the FBI.

The U.S. piracy case against MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom appears to have run aground, with a New Zealand court ruling that the search warrants issued in January were invalid.

New Zealand High Court Judge Helen Winkelmann ruled Thursday that the warrants did not adequately describe the offenses alleged, according to a report in the New Zealand Herald. "Indeed they fell well short of that," she said. "They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid."

She also ruled that it was unlawful for the data confiscated in the raid to have been sent offshore, saying "the release of the cloned hard drives to the FBI for shipping to the United States was contrary to the 16 February direction" [given by the court] "that the items seized were to remain in the custody and control of the Commissioner of Police."

MegaUpload is a cloud-storage locker that DotCom claims was completely legitimate and protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. U.S. officials, who are trying to extradite Dotcom and six associates to face piracy and wire fraud charges, say he encouraged users to store pirated videos, music, software, and other media and then share them with others. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

New Zealand Sex Offenders To Be Tracked By Satellite

from stuff.co.nz: Tracking high-risk sex offenders in "real time" using satellite technology will give "peace of mind" to the public, Corrections minister Anne Tolley says.

The 24-hour Global Positioning System (GPS) will be rolled out from August - in time to keep tabs on serial sex offender Stewart Murray Wilson, known as the Beast of Blenheim.

Real time monitoring, using ankle bracelets, will track the movements of offenders in the community, Tolley said.

Corrections staff would be alerted and could intervene if offenders strayed into "exclusion zones" such as parks, schools and other specific locations or if they break curfew.

From August 11 child sex offenders, currently on extended supervision orders or on parole with special conditions, would be tracked. This would rise to 90 by the end of the year and 200 by 2013.

Tolley said the tracking would cost $750,000 in the first year. A contract for the technology and monitoring would go out to tender next year.

"We need to stay one step ahead of these people and this proactive approach with more advanced technology allows us to reduce the risks to the public," she said.

"Existing electronic monitoring only works while an offender is in a set location, such as at home. GPS will now allow us to keep track of high-risk offenders at all times and intervene if they are in, or close to, exclusion zones."

The Government won't need to introduce new laws - existing legislation allows Corrections to use GPS to monitor an offender's whereabouts if the Parole Board, or sentencing judge, imposes a special condition on their extended supervision order, parole conditions, home detention or community detention sentence.

Wilson will be released in September, after 17 years behind bars. The Parole Board fears he will reoffend almost immediately. The Probation Service has applied to the High Court for an extended supervision order.

Baltic Anomaly Update: Electronics Stop Working In Vicinity

Mail Online article provides fascinating new info on anomalous object dubbed 'the Millenium Falcon' for its likeness to the Star Wars spacecraft. The object is 60 ft in diameter and lies under 285 feet of water on Baltic Sea floor in the Botnia Gulf between Sweden and Finland. Article adds some tantalizing tidbits, "Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and the team's satellite phone would refuse to work when directly above the object, and would only work once they had sailed away. He is quoted as saying: 'Anything electric out there - and the satellite phone as well - stopped working when we were above the object. And then we got away about 200 meters and it turned on again, and when we got back over the object it didn’t work.'" Another Ocean X team Dennis Åsberg declared: "'I am one hundred percent convinced and confident that we have found something that is very, very, very unique.'" Electrical properties of object imply something other than natural phenomenon, at the least, make it less likely. It also resonates with UFO-lore of electric devices failing when encountering UFOs. Ground Zero Live Host Clyde Lewis suspects Baltic Anomaly may be Nazi Saucer in recent article, "Spøkelseraketter – THE NAZI GHOST MACHINE." It's a possibility greater than the idea of an ancient alien spacecraft.

Z-Pinch Effect To Shorten Trip To Mars

Universe Today article reports a trip to Mars can be shortened from 30 weeks to just eight weeks time. University of Alabama at Huntsville researchers will team with Marshall Space Flight Center and Boeing to lay groundwork for a nuclear fusion propulsion system.  UAH researchers refer to principle as a slapshot of plasma energy to a two inch puck of lithium deuteride to supply greater propulsion than provided currently by more conventional rockets.  The nuclear fusion reaction is called the Z-pinch effect.  In the Universe Today article,  UAH researchers refer to new system as not that different from conventional rocket propulsion, "..a pulsed fusion engine is pretty much the same thing as a regular rocket engine: a 'flying tea kettle.' Cold material goes in, gets energized and hot gas pushes out. The difference is how much and what kind of cold material is used, and how forceful the push out is." 


Perhaps, of more interest, an observation made in article:

The key component to the UAH research is the Decade Module 2 — a massive device used by the Department of Defense for weapons testing in the 90s. Delivered last month to UAH (some assembly required) the DM2 will allow the team to test Z-pinch creation and confinement methods, and then utilize the data to hopefully get to the next step: fusion of lithium-deuterium pellets to create propulsion controlled via an electromagnetic field “nozzle”.

Twenty years later, Defense donates DM2 for general scientific research. It does cross the mind it reveals another secret program is far enough ahead - already utilizing the next generation of equipment - to provide a hand-me-down?  Zen Gardner provided a good example recently in "Secret Space Program Shows Its Hand "of two hand-me-down military Hubbles with far better resolution than NASA's current space telescope. News releases hint at a secret space program decades ahead of what we can read about in the mainstream media!

'Chasing UFOs' Documentary Airs On National Geographic

Chasing UFOs, a National Geographic show, airs this Friday at 9p. The stars are Ben McGee, physical scientist, Erin Ryder, tech and recon (adds T&A), and James Fox, Ufologist, Fox adds substance due to his films, best known, "I Know What I Saw," a successful UFO documentary. Show appears to be take-off on UFO Hunters. The episode will showcase Texas sightings. You may want to check it out on an idle Friday night.

Retro Sci-Fi Weekend: Science Fiction Theatre

Science Fiction Theatre was the father of all modern sci-fi tv shows. The series hosted by Truman Bradley, a 1940s film actor and war correspondent, ran 78 episodes from 1955-1957. "Time Is Just A Place" stars Don Defore, and Marie Windsor, who play a young couple who discover"... their neighbors, who possess a sonic broom and many other technologically advanced household items, are fugitives from the future who have fled to the past to escape an oppressive government," according to Wikipedia. The second episode appears in color as all episodes were filmed for the series' first season. Science Fiction Theatre is the forerunner to more familiar shows such as The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits. Please enjoy the episode, admission is free.

Cyber Espionage: New Worm Attacks AutoCad, Steals Blueprints

from venturebeat.com: Stuxnet showed us the potential for great damage with an attack on infrastructure. Now, a new piece of malware is taking the attack a step further: it’s stealing the plans for your infrastructure, maybe even before it’s built. “I think every public organization should be concerned about this,” said ESET security intelligence program manager Pierre-Marc Bureau in an interview with VentureBeat. “When you’re starting to see some serious attempts at stealing intellectual property from one country to another, that’s something to be concerned about.” Security firm ESET discovered the malware, now called ACAD/Medre.A, around February and noted it was “military-grade.” The worm attacks AutoCad, a popular piece of software used by architects and engineers to draw up blue prints and other infrastructure plans. It targets computers running the Windows operating system to steal and e-mail out AutoCad “drawings.” These drawings are then received by an e-mail that ESET found to be based in China.

Even Bigger Brother: Facebook Buys Face.com

Can you imagine a tagged photo (what is tagging?) of yourself spreading to other facebook pages and beyond?  It may be harder to keep up with a tagged photo than ever before? It's probably too late, once, a tagged photo appears on the net, because of web spiders and crawlers equipped with archiving features.  How Tagging Works?   Madison Ruppert warns recently on Activist Post, "If you continue to use Facebook in a state of ignorant bliss, hopefully this will help you wake up to the reality of what this internet giant is really up to." Ruppert only implies nefarious intent, when Facebook purchased facial recognition start-up Face.com.  The present writer will spell it out.  Your tagged photo is digitized, in other words, optimized for cyberspace.  Your face could easily find its way into a database, used to identify you at some later date.

How bad could that be?  Your picture could be used to target you in a fast-approaching Orwellian world.   Debra Donston-Miller shows blatant contempt for the obvious intelligence gathering operation conducted under the guise of social media in her recent article, "Facebook Buys Face.com:  At What Privacy Cost?"  It's no less than supplying your own mug shot without any reason!  Think about it!

#DataDump: Infiltration, Asylum, Aircraft and more

Facebook‬ To Buy ‪Israeli‬ ‪Biometrics‬ Startup ‪Face‬.com For $100 Million*
Face.com App Allowed Facebook, Twitter Account Hijacking*
Researcher: CIA, NSA may have infiltrated Microsoft to write malware*
Apple fined more than $2m over 4G claim*
US Demands for Google User Data Grow, But Full Picture Remains Murky*
House Committee Approves Sweeping, Warrantless Electronic Spy Powers*
NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say If We Spied on You*
Open Letter to Internet Companies:
Tell Us How Much We are Being Surveilled*
Do You Know Where Your Database Is?*
Report: US and Israel Behind Flame Espionage Tool*
Assange Seeks Political Asylum from Ecuador*
Assange Breached Bail in Seeking Asylum, British Police Say*
Acting Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA):
Who Is Kaigham Gabriel?*
The Most Immediate Threats to Global Energy Security*
China‬ sends first female astronaut to space*
UFO Sighting In Maryland? No, a Military Aircraft*
Summer Solstice and 8 Modern Celebrations of the Sun*
Video: Summer Solstice - The Heat Is On*

NRO Launches US Spy Satellite On Secret Mission

from Space.com: A new U.S. spy satellite launched into orbit Wednesday (June 20), kicking off a clandestine national security mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. The NROL-38 reconnaissance spacecraft lifted off at 8:28 a.m. EDT (1228 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket. It marked a milestone flight for the rocket company, a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. "Congratulations to the NRO and to all the mission partners involved in this critical national security launch," Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president for Mission Operations, said in a statement. "This launch marks an important milestone as we celebrate the 50th successful Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) mission, with 31 Atlas 5 and 19 Delta 4 missions flown since August 2002."




The Chantilly, Va.-based NRO manages the design, construction and operation of the United States' network of intelligence-gathering spy satellites. ULA officials broadcast the initial liftoff of the Atlas 5 rocket and spy satellite live via satellite and webcast, but cut off the video stream several minutes after launch due to the classified nature of the mission. The NROL-38 mission will contribute toward the military's national defense program, though the details of how will be kept under wraps. Few specifics of the satellite's deign and purpose are publicly available, and the mission went into a media blackout shortly after liftoff. The launch comes just days after the end of another secret government mission, the second flight of the Air Force's classified X-37B space plane. The robotic vehicle, also known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2 (OTV-2), landed June 16 at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, ending a 15-month mission kept largely confidential.

Today's mission is the first of three NRO launches on ULA vehicles planned for the next two months. Next in line is the NROL-15 mission due to launch on a Delta 4 rocket June 28 from Space Launch Complex-37, also at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. "Twelve of the 50 EELV launches have been NRO missions and these have been vital to our overall mission of delivering on commitments critical to our national security," said Bruce Carlson, director of the National Reconnaissance Office. "I thank and congratulate ULA and the EELV program for the tremendous performance and achievement of this very impressive and noteworthy milestone." The Atlas 5 rocket that launched today stands 191.2 feet (58.3 meters) tall and includes one main booster powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine. Its Centaur upper stage was powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RL10A-4 engine.

Betelgeuse: Red Giant to Burst into Supernova?

Betelgeuse, a red giant, is in the constellation Orion, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.  A recent Daily Galaxy article reports the Red Super Giant, shrunk by 15 per cent over the last 15 years.  "Red giant stars are thought to have short, complicated and violent lifespans. Lasting at most a few million years, they quickly burn out their hydrogen fuel and then switch to helium, carbon and other elements in a series of partial collapses, refuelings and restarts.  Betelgeuse, which is thought to be reaching the end of its lifespan, may be experiencing one of those collapses as it switches from one element to another as nuclear-fusion fuel," explains article.  The above image was obtained by "...using different state-of-the-art techniques on ESO's Very Large Telescope, two independent teams of astronomers obtained the sharpest ever views of the supergiant star Betelgeuse. They show that the star has a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System and a gigantic bubble boiling on its surface. These discoveries provide important clues to help explain how these mammoths shed material at such a tremendous rate."

A core collapse is thought to precede a star burst into Supernova and according to article, "Betelgeuse... could burst into its supernova phase and become as bright as a full moon - and last for as long as a year." Betelgeuse is 600 light years from Earth. We'll just have to wait and see, but don't stay up too long, it may not happen for 100,000 years!

A List Of Top Ten Scrapped Spaceships

Discovery Space provides interesting Top 10 List of Scrapped Spaceships. Favorite designs are the Wernher Von Braun Ferry Rocket, Project Orion, an atomic spaceship, Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar and the Lockheed X-33 Venture Star. In "Almost Famous: The X-20 DynaSoar," The Living Moon article reveals: "The semi-winged DynaSoar evolved greatly. The basic idea was to lob the bird into low Earth orbit and skip across the upper atmosphere like a rock across a pond, a concept then known as "dynamic soaring." Then some wag decided to shorten the term to "DynaSoar"-perhaps forgetting the fate that awaited the craft's prehistoric namesakes!...Then a proposal was developed that would have seen three stages in development-DynaSoar I, II, III, and finally the operational DynaSoar Manned Orbital Weapons System." The X-planes seem certainly direct ancestors of present X-37 Orbital Test Vehcile, history implies a weapons program and reason for strong protests from Russia and India concerning X-37 mission.


George Dyson, science historian, reviews Project Orion in a TED talk below. Freeman Dyson, George's father, worked on project to build 4,000 ton nuclear powered spaceship to travel to Saturn.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus

from brasschecktv.com: Developed under George W. Bush. Unleashed upon the world by Barack H. Obama. Re-engineered by America's adversaries. The next can of worms is already open...

Voyager 1: Break On Through To The Other Side

Voyager 1 is poised to break on through to the other side - into interstellar space.  An amazing achieve- ment, Voyager 1 has traveled 11 billion miles in nearly 35 years to exit solar system. Ed Stone, a Cal Tech Voyager project scientist, said, "'the latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system’s frontier...From January 2009 to January 2012, there had been a gradual increase of about 25 percent in the amount of galactic cosmic rays Voyager was encountering... Beginning on May 7, the cosmic ray hits have increased five percent in a week and nine percent in a month,'" reported via Universe Today. Data transmitted by the satellite traveling at 35,000 mph, takes presently about 16.5 hours to reach Earth. "The second important measure from the spacecraft’s two telescopes is the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. While there has been a slow decline in the measurements of these energetic particles, they have not dropped off precipitously, which could be expected when Voyager breaks through the solar boundary," adds article. The present writer suspects they don't make them like Voyager, anymore--hats off!

X-37B Lands June 16 At Vandenberg After 15 Months In Space

What goes up must come down, but X-37B OTV demonstrates none too quickly, considering March 5, 2011 launch. The remotely flown mini-Space Shuttle landed at Vandenberg AFB today in wee hours after more than one year in orbit. It does stand to reason, whether US military wanted to be on the ground, if something untoward were to happen to China's recently launched Shenzhou-9 spacecraft?

Shenzhou-9 Spacecraft June 16 Launch Successful

Shenzhou-9 spacecraft taking aloft two men and China's first woman astronaut, blasted off June 16 from Gobi Desert for a two week mission to dock with Tiangong-1 Space Lab. It's an impressive feat with Chinese Long March 2F rocket bearing resemblance to Russian Proton rocket! You wonder how much leaked American tech also aided China in getting to where they are today?

Robert Goddard: American Rocket Pioneer

Dr Robert H. Goddard, professor and inventor, built first liquid fuel rocket launched March 16, 1926 from his aunt's farm in Auburn, MA. Goddard authored research monograph in 1919, "A Method Of Reaching Extreme Atlitudes," still "considered one of the classic texts of 20th-century rocket science," according to Wikipedia. Goddard was generally criticized in the United States for his rockets, but enjoyed more respect abroad. In 1920, the New York Times rebuffed Goddard for failing to recognize rocket propulsion could not work in the vacuum of space. The three years following 1926 launch, saw little progress and noise complaints, forced Goddard to move his testing grounds. In 1929, Goddard gained the attention of Charles Lindburgh, the famous aviator, who helped secure funding for his continued work.


An excellent biography, "An historical essay on the life and work of Robert Hutchings Goddard," provides details of his life. Goddard experienced a vision after climbing a cherry tree as a youth that led to his life's work. What seems curious about Goddard is how he ended up for an extended period three miles outside of Roswell, NM? It's also curious that Goddard would die from throat cancer on August 10, 1945 and Wernher Von Braun would arrive shortly after with other Operation Paperclip scientists in September, 1945. Many experts attribute the V-2 design to the work of Dr Goddard and similarities are noteworthy. Would Goddard have presented a problem if he raised objections about design of V-2 with the many patents held by him? You can only wonder? You are, of course, directed to move along - nothing to see here!

Michael Neufeld, curator of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum, provides a nice survey of Goddard below - good stuff!

#DataDump: Megagovernment, Microbes and more

Wyden Protects Privacy, Blocks FISA Surveillance Law*
Sen. Detours Obama Drive to Retain Controversial Wiretap Powers*
Assange to Be Extradited to Sweden, Court Refuses Final Appeal*
Feds Tell Megaupload Users to Forget About Their Data*
Ret. Judge Against Outrageous Seizures in Megaupload Case*
Microbes Capable Of Surviving On Mars Found*

'The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us'

Is there a superior race who lives among us? Are they a fragile and sickly lot with high cheekbones and large eyes? Have they interbred with us in an attempt to reinvigorate their kind? Do they deceive us into serving them, in other words, enslaved us? Mac Tonnies, a young writer, looks for them in a posthumously published book, "The Cryptoterrestrials." Cryptoterrestrials (CTs) are viewed similarly to and get categorized in with the Ultraterrestrials of authors Jacques Vallee and John Keel. Ken Korczak summarizes the details in "Ultraterrestrials: Do They Walk Among Us?" CTs engage in deception, it's suggested, as a series of ruses to cover true vulnerabilities. A review of Tonnies' book suggests our co-inhabitants are challenged on a couple of fronts: "(A) the appearance of a "debilitating genetic syndrome" that ravaged their society; and (B) the rising infestation of a violent species that threatened to eclipse - in number - their own society." Filmmaker Jay Weidner and author Anthony Sanchez offer their views on "the Cryptos" in a recent Project Camelot interview (at 1:00 hour mark). Weidner believes aliens are only concerned with keeping their existence hidden and profiting off of humankind - that's it. Weidner and Sanchez believe Cryptos are capable of capricious acts of violence in pursuit of their goals. Sanchez believes he's been recently poisoned by a Crypto and Weidner suggests Sanchez may be getting too close? Mac Tonnies passed away in 2009 from cardiac arrhythmia at the age of 34, you wonder if he was getting too close? You can view Tonnies' thoughts on CTs in a  brief 2006 interview below.

March 7 Solar Flare Emitted Highest Energy Light Ever Detected

The Sun is approaching Solar Maximum, expected to occur in 2013. Was March 7th X5.4 solar flare an indication of things to come? "During a powerful solar blast in March, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun," states the video summary. "The powerful March 7 flare... is the strongest eruption so far observed by Fermi's LAT [Large Area Telescope]. The flare produced such an outpouring of gamma rays - a form of light with even greater energy than X-rays... At the flare's peak, the LAT detected gamma rays with two billion times the energy of visible light, or about 4 billion electron volts (GeV), easily setting a record for the highest-energy light ever detected during or just after a solar flare. The flux of high-energy gamma rays, defined as those with energies beyond 100 million electron volts (MeV), was 1,000 times greater than the sun's steady output... The March 7 flare also is notable for the persistence of its gamma-ray emission. Fermi's LAT detected high-energy gamma rays for about 20 hours, two and a half times longer than any event on record... Solar eruptions are now on the rise as the sun progresses toward the peak of its roughly 11-year-long activity cycle, now expected in mid-2013." Is this just the beginning of an unimaginable increase in solar activity?

US Ignites Cyber Warfare Through Stuxnet, Flame Malware

from brasschecktv.com: "Do as I say, not as I do," is the very definition of authoritarianism. In instigating cyber attacks while simultaneously declaring state sponsored cyber attacks to be "acts of war" it is more than just hypocritical, it could lead to a real military war. It also demonstrates that the administration is not truly interested in "negotiations", that's just a public relations front, while behind the scenes it's all about moving forward with the war. Abby Martin discusses the 'Stuxnet' computer virus and cyber warfare policy with Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation...

Related Updates:
Part of 'Flame' code found in Iranian computers same as Stuxnet*
Researchers Connect Flame to U.S.-Israel Stuxnet Attack*

More Evidence Phoenix Lights Holographic Projection

Writer Randall Fitzgerald supports his holograph hypothesis of 1997 Phoenix Lights in article "More evidence for 'Arizona Lights' as a holographic projection?" with details of two active military projects developing holographic projectors at that time. The article is a follow up of his two part series, "Were the 1997 Arizona Lights a psycho- logical warfare experiment?" part one and part two, Fitzgerald briefly summarizes two military projects, he uncovered, already at work on holographic projection in mid-nineties:

"The first holographic project originated at the Army Research Lab at Adelphi, Maryland. Coincidence or not, it was the Maryland Air National Guard which dropped the flares around 10 p.m. on March 13, seen widely in the Phoenix area, that served to confuse the situation about whether the UFOs were planes, flares, or a single huge object...

Titled 'A 3-D Holographic Display,' this November 1996 progress report for the Army Research Lab discussed research and development of "an innovative technique for generating a three dimensional holographic display...the resultant image is a hologram that can be viewed in real time over a wide perspective or field of view." As with most military intelligence studies that leak into the public domain, this one gives no significant clues about the extent to which this technology is really operational...

A second project, or proposal, from May 1996, titled "A Research Paper Presented to Air Force 2025," makes a case for the development of an airborne holographic projector to display a three-dimensional hologram for optical deception and psychological warfare. This report was authored by three military officers, including Lt. Col. Jack A. Jackson, PhD., AFIT. The extent to which this proposal was based on developments already underway, or just a flight of futuristic fantasy by the authors, is unknown."

Dr. Bruce Maccabee, in a 1999 Mufon Journal article, summarizes previous work of Bill Hamilton, who found four identifiable separate events on evening of March 13, 1997 in Phoenix. 1) 8-9 pm, a moving silent V-shaped array of lights, 2) 8-9 pm, a large black, silent, moving triangular object, 3) 10pm, numerous very bright glowing orange orbs that formed arc in sky south of Phoenix and 4) 8-10 pm, two orange lights in sky near Luke AFB west of Phoenix. Maccabee demonstrates using triangulation, 10 pm sightings were likely due to high altitude military flares. The fact there was more than a single source in the skies of Phoenix that resulted in reports, is the important point here. Was the military testing if witnesses could be convinced they were dealing with same object, whether people could readily tell difference between a real craft such as the TR 3-B Astra and a holographic version? It seems a distinctly possible test objective.

There is another aspect hinting at a military black operation. Fitzgerald reported on tragic aftermath of the Phoenix Lights in part two:

"Less than three weeks after the Arizona Lights phenomenon, Captain Craig Button, 32 years old, flying out of Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on a training mission over the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range, the base where the flare dropping A-10 planes had come from, flew his A-10 Thunderbolt fighter 800 miles off course and apparently then intentionally crashed it into a Colorado mountain... A month after Captain Button's suicide, Captain Amy Svoboda, 29-years-old, also flying an A-10 out of Davis-Monthan, crashed her fighter into the desert of southwestern Arizona."

Davis-Mothan is the air base reported, originally, to have dropped the flares. Did they know too much and whatever happened to bombs on the A-10 Button crashed? There is definitely more here than meets the eye! Check out Bill Warwick, investigative journalist, who presents his view on disturbing Craig Button incident at a 2007 conference on You Tube below.

Evidence '97 Phoenix Lights Were Psy War Test

Norio Hayakawa, former ufologist and Dulce base researcher, concluded years ago UFOs are likely part of government deception towards goal of New World Order (NWO). Hayakawa published his thesis, "UFOs, The Grand Deception And The Coming New World Order," by the mid-nineties. It's not surprising then, Hayakawa likes Examiner stories written by former Reader's Digest roving editor, Randall Fitzgerald, who reported on the 1997 Phoenix Lights. Fitzgerald saved his notes and searching for answers wrote in 2010 a two part series, "Were the 1997 Arizona Lights a psychological warfare experiment?" part one and part two.

Fitzgerald couldn't overlook remarks made about mass sightings over Phoenix:

"The comments made to me not long after the event happened went like this: 'the mass behind the lights was more like a gray and wavy distortion of the night sky,' said witnesses Dana Valentine and his father.

'In the space between the arms, I pointed out to my wife how strangely the stars looked, almost as if looking through a very thick glass with the slight distortion of the light as it passed through,' remarked witness Tim Ley. 'It seemed that I was seeing the light through a kind of transparent waviness, like a mirage,' Ley further observed.

'There was a bright bottom quarter moon setting in the west, and as the front of the v-shaped craft entered the light of the moon, this black chevron object became translucent,' said witness Mike Fortson. 'We could still see the bottom quarter moon through the object, but the moon turned a dingy yellow.'

An obvious question arises. Was this single object image a projection?"

Fitzgerald concludes the March 13, 1997 incident over Phoenix represents a psychological warfare test and suggests originated south of Tucson at Fort Huachuca "...home to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center, which trains military intelligence personnel for all four branches of the U.S. military. The Thunderbirds performance air team trains here. It has an Electronic Proving Ground and a training center that specializes in imagery, deception, counterintelligence and electronic intelligence." Psychological warfare tactical training occurs at Fort Huachuca."

A tip of the hat goes to Fitzgerald for his astute writing, his observations strongly support, at least some sightings, are due to holographic projections. Were there more phenomena mixed together that night? Would you expect less from the military who also dropped flares to add to the confusion? There will be a follow up to examine what else was in the air?

A nice companion to this article, in parts on YouTube below, is UFO Hunters episode on Phoenix Lights. The 2008 coverage reveals some black ops projects created V-shaped dirigibles with hard exteriors that fit description, according to source with a Mesa, AZ museum. What to believe?

Cars Avoid Crashes By Talking To Each Other

from ap: As a safety demonstration, it was a heart-stopper: A Ford Taurus was seconds away from cruising through an intersection when suddenly a row of red lights pulsed on the lower windshield and a warning blared that another car was approaching fast on the cross street. Braking quickly, the driver stopped just as the second car, previously unseen behind a large parked truck, barreled through a red light and across the Ford's path. The display at a recent transportation conference was a peek into the future of automotive safety: cars that to talk to each other and warn drivers of impending collisions. Later this summer, the government is launching a yearlong, real-world test involving nearly 3,000 cars, trucks and buses using volunteer drivers in Ann Arbor, Mich.

#DataDump: #HackedIn, Track Default, Radio and more

Hacker Claims He Stole 4.5M LinkedIn Password Hashes*
Malware hunter Kaspersky warns of cyber war dangers*
IE10′s ‘Do-Not-Track’ Default Dies Quick Death*
IPv6 switch to prevent the net from running out of addresses*
Lawyers Fleeing Would-be Facebook Co-Owner*
FBI Illegally Pirated Kim Dotcom’s Data Out of New Zealand, File-Sharing King Charges*
Ex-Spy Telescope May Become a Space Investigator*
Presidential advisory panel to endorse technology that frees radio spectrum*
Video: ACLU Phone App Lets You Shoot the Cops*

Legendary Writer Ray Bradbury Dies At Age 91

Science Fiction Legend Ray Bradbury dies at age 91 in Los Angeles after lengthy illness during a rare Transit of Venus on June 5th. A YouTube video (at left) is a relatively early biography in 1963 of Bradbury and it provides nostalgic insight into a still vigorous writer. The half-hour bio includes frames of key punch cards for younger audience who've never seen them. Bradbury is admired for being his own man, who shared feelings about technology in a late 2011 BBC News article: "'We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.'" You may also enjoy as a bonus, "Dial Double Zero", a short story about intelligence within a telephone system, included in above video - please RIP Ray Bradbury.

Related Update: Digital Copy of "Martian Chronicles" on Mars

Century's Last Transit of Venus On June 5th

The last Transit of Venus for this century will occur June 5th. A video of most recent transit in 2004 provides idea what viewers can expect. A local transit calculator is available here. There are also tips for safe viewing at the Transit of Venus website.

Highly Anticipated Movie 'Prometheus' Opens June 8 In US

3D film Prometheus will open in US theaters this Friday, June 8th, as director Ridley Scott returns to the Alien franchise universe, three decades later. "In 2089, archaeologist couple Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway discover a star map among the remnants of several otherwise unconnected ancient cultures. They interpret this as an invitation from humanity's forerunners. Peter Weyland, the elderly founder of the Weyland Corporation, funds the creation of the scientific vessel Prometheus to follow the map to the distant moon LV-223," begins plot summary provided by Wikipedia. Where does this lead the crew of the Prometheus, apparently, to the heavy ontological question "whether God exists"?

The Daily Galaxy offers, in recent article, the big question movie asks and ponders implications: "Did aliens create the human race? If so, does that negate the existence of God? Or, did God create the aliens?" Prometheus planned as a prequel to Alien, originally, premiered in the UK on June 1st, but some found emphasis on the metaphysical left them wanting. The movie labeled, in turns, grandiose or just leaving a desire for more fighting and less philosophical musing! Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian makes a quip with comparison taken from his review: "The original [movie Alien] took place in space, where no-one can hear you scream...in this film no-one can hear you scream above the deafening, kettle-drum bothering orchestral score.'"

There are, indeed, reservations about movie's plot but virtually unanimous agreement about impressive production and onscreen visual feast.  The recommendation is to view Prometheus on largest screen possible. A promotional trailer below will give you a taste of eye candy that makes Prometheus irresistible to most science fiction aficionados!

Obama Lights the 'Flame': From 'Virtual War' To Military Conflict

#Video: Obama Ordered Cyber Attacks Against Iran
from brasschecktv.com: Over a year ago the Pentagon announced that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war and could lead to military conflict. Now it has been 'leaked' that Obama ordered and even escalated cyber attacks against Iran. So what comes next?

Video: Cyber-Battles Raise Fears of Cyber-Blowback*
Obama Ordered Stuxnet to Continue After Bug Caused it to Spread Wildly*
Sen. Feinstein Calls for Hearing on Stuxnet Leaks as FBI Begins Probe*
Flame Hijacks Microsoft Update to Spread Malware Disguised As Legit Code*
A Massive Web of Fake Identities and Websites Controlled Flame Malware*
Flame Gets Suicide Command*

Sci-Fi Weekend Matinee: Earth vs. the Flyer Saucers

It's the weekend and time to escape with the 1956 science fiction classic, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. The film directed by Fred F. Sears, but overshadowed by the special effects wizardry of legendary Ray Harryhausen still entertains over fifty years later. The stars of the film are Hugh Marlowe and Joan Taylor. Marlowe as Scientist Russell Marvin, head of project Skyhook, gets buzzed by a saucer early in film only to discover later it was an attempt to communicate. Marvin soon learns his project's rocket launches are shot down shortly after launch into space. Marvin reports his alien suspicions to superiors and presents accidentally recorded tape message for them but is met with skepticism. The scientist feels he must act and communicates successfully with the aliens. "Impatient, Marvin contacts the aliens and steals away to meet them, but Carol[Taylor] and Major Huglin follow him. They and a motorcycle cop are taken aboard a spaceship resting on Malibu Beach. They discover that the aliens have extracted knowledge from Gen. Hanley's brain, and now have him under their control, although they reassure [daughter] Carol that they can restore him. They also claim to be the last of their species and that they shot down the satellites because they thought they were weapons. As proof of their power, the aliens give Marvin the coordinates of where they sank a destroyer that had fired on them. the humans are released with the message that the aliens want to meet the world's leaders in 56 days in Washington, D.C. to negotiate an occupation," adds Wikipedia.


The exchange with the aliens leaves little doubt as to their ambitions to take over, one way or another. "The flying saucers are invulnerable to conventional weapons, but from his observations Marvin develops an ultra-sonic weapon, which is later upgraded to an effective anti-magnetic weapon..." continues the Wikipedia entry, a weapon which allows Earth to overcome the saucers. The Washington DC scenes are perhaps more gratifying today as the aliens arrive for the appointed summit date to be shot down by Marvin's truck-mounted weapons, "one saucer clips and topples the Washington Monument, while another crashes into the Capitol Building and a third into Union Station." You may take in a matinee showing below at your leisure and admission is free.

After the movie, you may click for a 90th birthday presentation to Ray Harryhausen in 2010, a special effects film history treat in one sitting! A nice biography of Ray Harryhausen is available here.

Positive Lightning Strikes Intensify As Cosmic Rays Increase

Cosmic Convergence 2012 website ponders need in recent article, "perhaps it’s time for the scientific community to verify these [electron chain] theories with data they can easily acquire," in response to a perceived increase in Positive Lighting Strikes (PLS). PLS "..are typically six to ten times more powerful than negative bolts, last around ten times longer, and can strike several kilometers or miles distant from the clouds. During a positive lightning strike, huge quantities of ELF and VLF radio waves are generated...," according to an article on lightning at electricalfun.com.

A 2008 Scientific American article, "Do Cosmic Rays Cause Lightning?" covers theory proposed by Physicist Alex V. Gurevich, who “...suggests that the movement of large showers of energetic particles produced by high-energy cosmic rays—which originate from exploding stars halfway across the galaxy—might provide a conductive path that initiates lightning."

The article contends there's "...no denying that Positive Lightning Strikes have been increasing in frequency and intensity for many years now. Since cosmic ray activity has been likewise increasing, we ask the physics research establishment to reveal whatever data that has been accumulated in this regard. In order for the residents of Planet Earth to make more informed decisions about how to better respond during these times of greater atmospheric electrical activity and positive lightning strikes."

Is it HAARP? The article asks, "is HAARP and the continuous and artificial charging of the ionosphere creating a much more conducive environment for Positive Lightning Strikes to occur everywhere across the planet?" HAARP shouldn't be overlooked as a possible contributing factor!

Cosmic rays would probably not be your first consideration for what initiates a lightning strike? It makes a lot of sense, however, a runaway breakdown of electrons gets started by highly energized interactions between cosmic rays and our upper atmosphere. Who would've thought?