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A Website of Alternative Thinkers & Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

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THE MOUSE ROARS AGAIN…

Mr. S.D. spotted this story(for which a big "thank you"), and I have to warn you now, this story is deliberately following yesterday's story about the Chinese hacking, and the geopolitical consequences following therefrom. The hypothesis that I will be advancing is, of course, all high octane speculation.

That speculation concerns the Mouse that Roared (see https://gizadeathstar.com/2018/02/space-x-launches-military-satellite-grand-duchy-luxembourg/). That's right, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is in the space news again, having previously drawn our attention when Elon Musk's Space X launched a military satellite for the Grand Duchy. And that, I averred last February when I blogged about it, meant that Luxembourg intended to become a "space power" or "space player." The question is why is the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg emerging as a "space player"? One can understand France, Germany, China, Russia, India, Japan &c, but Luxembourg? Back in February, I wrote the following about Space X's launch of the satellite, a military surveillance satellite:

My high octane speculation and intuition is that this is a first practical step on the build-out of redundancy into the financial clearing system, but with a unique twist: a surveillance capacity-for-hire comes with it, and this capacity could thus signal that non-territorial actors are being deliberately courted as the "target market" for the capability. Hence, the relationship with Musk's Space X is significant, for it presages more such launches of similar payloads in the future. Indeed, if certain of the satellite's capabilities are "reserved for governments and institions", one wonders exactly what those institutions are: banks, foundations, corporations come to mind, as also more salacious organizations.

In effect, Wibberly's fictitious Cold War scenario of the Mouse that Roared and The Mouse on the Moon is, in a way, becoming reality: Luxembourg means to be a player in the emerging space-based financial, communications, surveillance system.

And that means, more significantly, that Luxembourg will have to develop the means to defend those assets, and that, to my mind, is where those unnamed "institutions" and organizations come in. It will, in short, have to learn how to roar, and to acquire the means to do so.

In that context, consider now the article offered by Mr. S.D.:

Three American space startups to establish offices in Luxembourg

Now consider these details:

Three U.S. companies will set up offices in Luxembourg, the latest sign of an ongoing effort by the small European country to diversify its space economy.

The government of Luxembourg announced Sept. 27 that CubeRover, Hydrosat and Made In Space will all establish facilities in the country, in many cases working with local universities and companies. The work those companies do in Luxembourg will range from development of robotic arms to small planetary rovers.

“The success of our development strategy for the space sector, including the recent launch of the Luxembourg Space Agency, is confirmed once more with the settlement in Luxembourg of three space companies that plan to employ up to 85 people in the Grand-Duchy by 2023,” said Étienne Schneider, deputy prime minister and minister of the economy of the Luxembourg government and the driving force for the country’s recent space initiatives.

The largest agreement, in terms of jobs created, goes to Made In Space. That company, best known for additive manufacturing work on the International Space Station, plans to work on a low-cost modular robotic arm for in-space applications, and will create up to 50 jobs in the country.

“While we believe this product will reduce satellite makers’ barriers to greater capability on orbit, we also see our robotic arms as being integral to constructing space gateways, building lunar habitats and assisting in the in-space construction of future space stations,” said Jason Dunn, the founder of Made In Space, in a statement.

The company said that doing that work in Luxembourg allows it to “effectively partner” with European aerospace companies, although the company did not identify any specific partners.

It's that last sentence, I suspect, that gives away Luxembourg's - and Europe's - game, and that, of course, brings us to today's trademark High Octane Speculation. Luring American companies to the Grand Duchy could, of course, be a way of tying Europe's space industry to the USA in "another tie that binds." But I think not. Consider the recent news: the German finance minister Heiko Maas floated a trial balloon for Europe to create a financial clearing system as an alternative to the American-dominated SWIFT system. This was expanded into a Special Purpose mechanism to continue trade with Iran and by-pass US sanctions. Additionally, lest we forget, the Grand Duchy is Europe's other great international banking center/tax haven, conveniently located between Belgium, France, and Germany. So we have a banking center/tax haven that wants to be a major player in space, via the corporations it lures to Europe and does business with.

Then there's the other story that emerged this week, in my opinion a story that will have massive long-term geopolitical implications, that story being the Chinese hacking of many systems in the West via small computer chips placed in systems sold around the world. That's not just a national security issue for the USA, it's a security issue for Europe and all its component powers and smaller nations with technological capacity and engineering infrastructure (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, &c). All that carefully built-up space technology infrastructure that the European Space Agency has constructed over the past decades is at risk if it is being built on chips from China. So is the military equipment, the railroads, you name it.

In short, Europe needs its own domestic "Silicon Valley," and I strongly suspect that what we're watching is the careful positioning of the Grand Duchy to become just that. I realize that this sounds insane and far-fetched. But again, consider its location, dead center between Europe's two largest economies and most technologically advanced nations.

What we may be watching, in other words, is the creation of a kind of "space version" of the old Republic of Venice: a banking center, fronting for transnational financial and corporate interests, collateralizing loans with trade it conducts all over the Mediterranean and Europe, and which had the money muscle to found a state arsenal and buy the technology to protect its interests with short, sudden, sharp applications of military force if need be; it was The Godfather, with cannons.

Luxembourg is already a banking center, and has now lured companies specializing in robots and space to its borders. Next, if my prediction proves to be correct, will be the computer tech industry itself. It may not happen soon, but given the Chinese hacking story, my bet is it will happen eventually.

See you on the flip side...

 

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A WARP DRIVE PAPER

I've occasionally blogged over the years about the USA's interest and desire to achieve some sort of warp drive capability within the next century. One of the advantages of a site such as this, where the subject of blogs is in part community-driven, is that people always send such interesting and important information, and that's the case today with this paper that Mr. A.K. found and sent along, for which we all, I think, are profoundly grateful. The paper purports to be an unclassified report on the subject of warp drives for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA):

https://info.publicintelligence.net/DIA-WarpDrives.pdf

Now, there are a number of very intriguing things about this paper, at least, to my mind, for it clarifies a number of details.

In my previous reviews of this whole project, I've pointed out two crucial pivots in the history of the interest in warp capabilities on the part of the American defense and aerospace establishment: (1) the original paper on space warping by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, and (2) the metric modification of that paper undertaken by NASA's Dr. Harold "Sonny" White. Basically, in Alcubierre's paper, the amount of energy needed to achieve a warp capability would be a mass-energy conversion factor of the size of the planet Jupiter, a capability, obviously, far beyond the reach of humans for any foreseeable future. In Dr. White's reworking of this, the mass-energy conversion factor was much smaller, and within the possible bonds of human capability. It was Dr. White's reworking that spurred the practical interest in the subject on the part of the aerospace and defense establishments.

But there may have been something entirely different percolating in the background of this interest, and the current paper hints at it on page vi:

Until гecently, the warp drive was а concept reseгved for science fiction. However, а 1994 рарег Ьу Miguel AlcuЬierre placed the idea on а more solid theoretical footing. Alcubierre (Reference 1) demonstrated that а specific Lorentzian manifold could Ье chosen that exhibited bubЬle-like featuгes reminiscent of the warp drive from the popular Star Trek television series, The ЬuЬЫе allowed for the surrounding spacetime to move at FTL speeds, and the inhaЬitants of the ЬuЬЫе would feel no acceleration effects because spacetime
itself would Ье in motion instead of the spacecraft and its inhabltants. А number of papers have emerged in recent years that buПd on this original idea. However, these papers do not typically address how one might actually create the necessary spacetime ЬuЬЫе. Our own research directly addresses this question from а new and unique perspective and introduces а novel  paradigm shift in the field of warp drive study (Reference 2). More importantly, our work approaches the physics of warp drive from the perspective of quantum f1eld theory; th1s diverges from the more trad1t1onal approach to wаrp dгives, which utilizes the physics of general relativity. One of the improvements the model introduces is а dramatic reduction in the overall energy required to create such а phenomenon. The roadmap to this new idea was the observation that spacetime is currently known to Ье in а state of accelerated expansion, as demonstrated Ьу the redshifting of galaxies, and the belief ,that if the mechanism for this expansion could Ье understood, then it might ultimately Ье controlled.
In other words, the focus is on dark matter, but then there was something that really grabbed me, and I hope it grabs the "physics-minded" reader out there as much as it did me; here is the summary of the paper:
Section 4 introduces the Casimir energy, which, under certain conditions, may Ье the phenomenon that physically generates the cosmological constant. Section 5 discusses higher dimensiqns in physics and their importance in the context of Casimir energy calculation. Section 6 introduces the formulas that demonstrate that the Casimir energies in higheг dimensions may in fact bе the dark energy that is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Section 7 relates all the previous concepts together and introduces the novel warp drive paгadigm. Section 8 performs original calculations of the energy required to сгеаtе а superluminal warp drive. Finally, the paper speculates about the technological progress that would Ье necessary to turn this model into а reality. (Emphasis added)
Now, for those who don't know what the Casimir Effect is, this is a famous experiment performed by Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir in 1948. Two neutrally charged, but conductive, plates were suspended in a vacuum. Regardless of the absence of charge or other forces, the plates moved toward each other, and eventually, touched. This phenomenon Casimir explained in terms of the zero point energy, and this explanation has been popular with some physicists, and indeed is the explanation favored by the authors of the DIA paper:
In its most basic form, the Casimir Effect it is realized through the interaction of а pair of neutral parallel conducting plates (with separation distance d). The presence of the
plates modifies the quantum vacuum, and this modification causes the plates to be pulled toward each other .... This is а profound result in the sense that the origin of this force cannot bе traced back to one of the four fuпdamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and the two nuclear forces), but is а force that is entirely due to а modification of the quantum vacuum. '
In other words, the plates themselves alter the local vacuum geometry, creating the result. Or to put it differently:
The quantum modes оп the iпterior region of the plates .are restricted, and there is а pressure difference when compared to the quantum vacuum on the exterior region of the plates.
It is this pressure difference that causes the plates to attract.
Or to put it differently, the plates cause a modification in the local structure of spacetime; they warp it. The authors conclude, that this Casimir effect may be the way to manipulate the scale of a higher dimension, and depending on the size of that dimension, it would require now more, now less, to achieve. In effect, they are arguing that the Casimir effect is "dark energy." The paper ends with this summary:
Although а practical warp drive could Ье many years away from realization, there are а number of technological developments that may, in fact, bе necessary in order to allow prototype experiments to begin. First; а more complete understanding of dark energy is of paramount importance. As mentioned earlier, dark energy contributes approximately 70 percent of the overall energy density of the universe, and is responsible for the expansion of space. As one acquires deeper understanding of this energy, attempts to generate dark energy in the !аЬ would п о doubt Ье а critical compoлent to а working warp drive. Other crucial developments include determining whether extra dimension are, in fact, real. Once it his has bееп determined with absolute certaiпty, the role of extra dimensions апd their relationship with the universe that we а ге more familiar with will become а more serious focus of scientific research and atteпtion. As has been discussed, the stabllization of the extra dimensions and the accelerated expansion of the remaiпing four dimensions сап bе realized via the Casimir energy. The acceleration of the 3-dimensioпal subspace is а naturally occurring phenomeпon which occurs when the extra dimensions are stabilized. (Emphasis added)
That mention of the quest to determine if extra spatial dimensions exist sort of puts the admissions of CERN in recent years that it is, in fact, looking for them, into a very unique context, and it tends to confirm my suspicions that there are hidden military aspects to the project.
In any case, this paper is unique, and its declassification suggests one of two things to my mind: (1) either preliminary studies of the authors' main thesis of a relationship between the Casimir Effect and Dark Matter were unfruitful, or disproved the hypothesis, or (2) preliminary studies tended to confirm the hypothesis, and perhaps so dramatically that the results may have far exceeded expectations, and hence, the paper is already "outmoded."
Either way, it is a very unique glimpse into the type of thinking going on in the black projects world, and for that alone, it's a gem.
See you on the flip side...

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JAPAN JUST TOOK THE NEXT STEP TO ASTEROID MINING

We've been hearing a lot in recent years about the possibility of mining the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. In fact, as I've pointed out on various occasions, the amount of derivatives on the books - various estimates give between  14 and 17 quadrillion dollars, an amount that's a multiple of the entire global domestic product. That's $14,000,000,000,000,000.00 folks. At the rate that Mr. Globaloney invents "financial instruments" to create paper profits, we'll soon have to start writing our checks with exponential notations just to accommodate all those zeros. Seriously though, it intrigues me how, after the 2008 financial crisis, the derivatives problem was mentioned, and then just dropped right off the radar. Have you noticed the various financial advisory sites don't even mention them?

There may be a reason for that. Back in 2014 at the San Mateo Secret Space Program conference I offered the hypothesis that there was a connection between all the "resources" that were "out there," and the possibility that they had already been collateralized in a "secret system of finance." A few years later, estimates about the monetary of certain asteroids began to be circulated in various articles about space mining, and low and behold, one asteroid's total value was estimated to be about - here it comes - sixteen quadrillion dollars. In other words, grabbing those asteroids was a nifty way to rebalance those books and wipe out all that bad paper.

The trouble is, of course, one has to go out and get it. One has to place actual machinery on an actual asteroid, dig it up, and bring it home.

Many people noticed this story and shared it, and it's in the context of space mining and those systems of finance that I believe it should be read:

Japan space robots start asteroid survey

A pair of robot rovers have landed on an asteroid and begun a survey, Japan's space agency said Saturday, as it conducts a mission aiming to shed light on the origins of the solar system.

The mission marks the world's first moving, robotic observation of an asteroid , according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The round, cookie tin-shaped robots successfully reached the Ryugu asteroid a day after they were released from the Hayabusa2 probe, the agency said.

"Each of the rovers is operating normally and has started surveying Ryugu's surface," JAXA said in a statement.

Taking advantage of the asteroid's low gravity, the rovers will jump around on the surface—soaring as high as 15 metres (49 feet) and staying there for as long as 15 minutes—to survey the asteroid's physical features.

"I am so proud that we have established a new method of space exploration for small celestial bodies," said JAXA project manager Yuichi Tsuda.

In other words, Japan has now taken the next necessary step in the technology and capability tree toward the practical use of space resources; in fact, it has taken two steps: (1) perfecting and demonstrating the capability to land a craft on a low-gravity celestial body, and (2) surveying it.

There is of course a wrinkle here: I've been saying all along that chemical rockets are simply not adequate to any sustained human presence in deep space, much less for mining. And the Japanese probes, of course, used rockets to get their probes to the asteroid. But this, in the final analysis, is not a problem: even more exotic methods of propulsion would still require a great deal of engineering finesse and capability to land on an asteroid.
Japan just took that step, and it's a major step with huge implications for the long term development of space.
And that means something else folks: Japan is a player.
See you on the flip side...

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AUTONOMOUS WARFARE

Science fiction - both literary and in film and television - is replete with explorations of the idea of fully automated warfare. And very little of it is reassuring. Imagine a world in which machines do all the fighting, and take all the decisions, leaving human input out of the equation, either completely, or completely enough that it makes little difference.  There was, for example, an episode of Star Trek (original series) where the intrepid crew of the Enterprise finds a world that has been fighting such an automated warfare for centuries with a neighboring planet. As the episode unfolds, they discover that the two planets signed an accord whereby computer simulations ran "attacks" on each other's cities, and "casualty lists" were drawn up, and if one had the unfortunate luck to be on one of those lists, one had to report to a killing station to be disintegrated. Thus, the war went on and on, and if one or the other side failed to have its casualties "report", then the fake war was off, and the real one - with thermonuclear bombs flying and cities reduced to real rubble and not imaginary rubble (with real casualties) was on again.

Well, according to this short article from Mr. V.T., it's much closer to reality than we think:

Has The Era Of Autonomous Warfare Finally Arrived?

Ponder these three paragraphs carefully:

The global arms race for the latest weapons of war is a naturally escalating cycle of countries pursuing ways to dominate the battlefield of the future. Increasingly, that battlefield is a matrix of soldiers with traditional weapons, robots, drones and cyberweapons. Until this point, command over this matrix has ultimately been in the hands of humans. Now, however, many of the trends in artificial intelligence-driven autonomy are enabling data collection, analysis and potentially combat to be done by algorithms.

Another key signpost has entered the roadmap toward a future of autonomous systems capable of engaging in combat without human oversight. The U.S. military announced the first ever successful unmanned aerial “kill” of another aircraft during a previously unreported training exercise.

...

However, previous research has indicated that robotics/A.I. is not yet up to even the most basic ethical tasks, yet its role in weapons systems continues. (Emphasis added)

When I read this, I could not help but indulge in some high octane speculation based on that episode from the original Star Trek series. Imagine, for example, that the two warring planets in question had allowed AI's to program their simulated wargame attacks and "casualty lists." At some point, why not conclude that the whole exercise was a bit futile, and simply draw up casualty lists that wiped out all the "biologicals" on both sides, and let the machines run everything? What would have happened?

I suspect, like in the original episode, that a strange kind of reason would have prevailed, and led the creators of the crazy system to revert to their old ways, of fighting real wars with real weapons creating real rubble and real casualties, because the alternative was far worse. The other alternative, of course, was to come to real agreement in the face of the threat of a real war, and learn to coexist.

Which brings me to the real lesson of that episode, and it's a timely one: in a culture where machines are taking the decisions in a war context, human responsibility both for the decisions and for the consequences of those decisions is abrogated. Like some of you out there, I've suspected that some nascent or incipient form of artificial intelligence is already among us, and particularly, very possibly already lurking in the bowels of the American military-industrial-intelligence complex. The insanity we see evident in American "foreign policy" and the dangerous adventurism it has evidenced since 9/11 might not be entirely of humanity's own making; it may be, very much, the result of faulty information, faultily analyzed and presented to humans to act upon, by over-grown computer modeling and projections. I've said many times that my problem with modern computer driven markets, be they equity or commodities markets, is that with the increased and all-pervasive role of algorithmic trading, the markets are no longer reflective of genuine human activity.

Now translate that to the military and geopolitical sphere, and you get the idea... Think of it as "algorithmic geopolitics."

See you on the flip side...

LIGHT SAILS: THE NEXT STEP IN SPACE?

The past few weeks have been absolutely crazy with all sorts of "weird space news." First came the story that the Soyuz space capsule, the workhorse used to shuttle cosmonauts and astronauts to the international space station, had been pierced by a micro-meteor and that the international space station was outgassing until the German astronaut aboard plugged the hole with his finger until "a more permanent temporary seal" could be put into place. The the chairman of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, Dmitri Rogozin, indicated that there were increasing suspicions in Russia either of on-the-ground incompetence, or that the hole had been deliberately drilled and that sabotage may be involved. Most recent updates to the story are now indicating that the may be more damage than was initially reported (more than one hole?) and that Mr. Rogozin has been in communication with NASA director Jim Bridenstine, and that Russia still has not ruled out sabotage.

For the most recent update on this story, Mr. ACM shared this article:

International Space Station leak mystery deepens as MORE ‘deliberate’ drill damage is discovered on spacecraft

While all this was going on, Mr. Elon Musk unveiled more of his plans for a "space liner" to take people on "cruises" around the Moon (where they can no doubt "phone home" using that 4G network a German firm wants to build up there for some unknown reason); this was shared by Mr. ACM once again:

Elon Musk is building a spaceship that's so ambitious, some experts call it 'science fiction.' Here's what SpaceX and its engineers are up against.

I won't bother to rehearse here what the article makes abundantly clear: Musk's rocket plans are big, really big, and, as the article itself states, Musk is very honest and candid about the risks of manned space flight to Mars.

And then there was the story about the shutdown of the Richard B. Dunn solar observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, which I blogged about yesterday, and about which I offered some high octane speculation on last Friday's Members' Vidchat, during the pre-chat session. There's more about that telescope than meets the eye (so to speak), and about the whole situation surrounding it, and its timing, that gives me pause.

All of this review brings me to the heart of my blog today, which is this story that was passed along by Mr. B.G., about NASA's and Caltech's upcoming tests of a "solar" or "light sail":

Interstellar travel BREAKTHROUGH: New material to ‘speed spacecraft to 134,000,000 mph'

While it's not as "glamorous" as NASA's and DARPA's "one hundred year WARP capability" goal, it is a lot more glamorous - and a lot more practical - than a giant rocket. The idea is not only simple, but within the feasible boundaries of current technology:

Before man can cross the vast distances of space, the designs of spacecraft's sails will be key – striking a delicate balance between mass, strength and reflectivity.Working with NASA, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists have created the new material out of silicon and its oxide, silica.The team has figured out that super-thin structures made of this composite can transform infrared light waves into a momentum that would accelerate a probe to 134,000,000 mph.

Speeds like this can carry a small probe to our closest stellar neighbours, a huddle of stars called Proxima centauri, within decades rather than millennia.

And it will enable humans to search nearby solar systems for extra-terrestrial life.

...

The idea is to use a laser to coherently shoot a stream of photons at infrared wavelengths at a “light net”, or sail, attached to a spaceship.

What is to be noted here is that the idea of such sails goes back to the 1950s when they were first proposed, and that if the technology should prove viable after initial testing, it will still not be a technology for practical inter-stellar manned flight, since it would still take decades to reach the closest star systems.But for planets within the solar system itself, or asteroid for mining purposes, that's a different game altogether; voyages to Mars, for example, if such technology could be made viable, would not take months, but at worst weeks (depending on the maximum speed of the vessel), the minimum distance between Earth and Mars being about 35,ooo,ooo miles, and the maximum being about 249,000,000 miles. Using the article's benchmark figure of 134,000,000 miles per hour you can do the math: transit time is greatly reduced even factoring such items as payload, time to reach full velocity (and to decelerate) and so on. With reduction of transit time, there might be a correspondent reduction in risks, though as the article points out, damage from micro-meteor strikes would intensify dramatically unless some means could be found to shield the vessel, a problem also occurring for any interplanetary rockets on long voyages.In short, I suspect we're looking at one version of the "real intermediary step" in the technology tree between rockets and DARPA's longed-for "warp" capability. As I've said before, "rockets just aint gonna do the job," and it's telling to me that NASA and Caltech are seriously investigating such alternatives. When we start to see private space companies actively pursuing such concepts, that will to my mind pretty much seal the future of conventional rocketry, at least as an interplanetary propulsion system. More importantly, I suspect the technology will be used and tested on unmanned probes prior to any manned missions. Ion propulsion has, for example, already been tested and used  by NASA on the Dawn probe and other satellites (SeNASA - Ion Propulsion and Ion Propulsion).

See you on the flip side...

 

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THE NEWEST SPACE IDEA: LASERS, SOLAR SAILS, AND COSMIC WARS

This article was sent to me by Mr. P.G., and it's one of those thought-provoking things that sent my high octane speculation into high gear. The article is by artsophysicist Ethan Siegel, and it's well worth pondering, for reasons I'll get to in a moment:

Is Humanity About To Accidentally Declare Interstellar War On Alien Civilizations?

What first caught my eye about this article was the technology that Mr. Siegel focuses on, a technology somewhere between those chemical rockets we grew up with, and the DARPA/NASA 100 year goal to have the USA be "warp capable":

Here on Earth, our dreams of interstellar travel have traditionally fallen into two categories:

  1. We go slowly, with rocket-propulsion, on a journey taking many human lifetimes.
  2. We go quickly, assuming we make tremendous scientific advances to travel at relativistic (near-light) speeds.

Either we go as the Voyager spacecrafts go, taking many thousands of years to travel even a single light year, or we develop some new technology capable of accelerating a spacecraft to much, much higher speeds. The first option seems unacceptable; the second seems unrealistic.

But something happened during the 2010s that has the potential to change the game. We've actually gone and made a huge technological advance that could impart a large amount of energy to a spacecraft over a reasonably long amount of time, allowing us to (in principle) accelerate it to tremendous speeds.

The big advance? In the science of laser physics. Lasers, now, are both more powerful and more collimated than they've ever been, and that means that if we put an enormous array of these high-powered lasers in space, where they don't have to fight atmospheric dispersion, they could shine on a single target for a long time, imparting energy and momentum to it until it reached more than 10% the speed of light.

In 2015, a team of scientists wrote a white paper on how an advanced laser array could combine with the solar sail concept to create a "laser sail"-based spacecraft. In theory, we could use current technology and extraordinarily low-mass spaceships (i.e., "starchips") to reach the nearest stars in a single human lifetime.

The idea is simple: shoot this high-powered laser array at a highly reflective target, attach a very small and low-mass micro-satellite to the sail, and accelerate it to the maximum speed possible. The ideas of solar sails are old, and have been around since the time of Kepler. But to use a laser sail would be a real revolution.

As Mr. Siegel goes on to mention, advances in new technologies are fast bringing this method of interplanetary travel closer to reality, and if a means can be found to protect the craft itself from becoming irreparably damaged by particles in space - he mentions the long term effects as turning the craft into "Swiss cheese" - it becomes even more feasible.

There's a problem though, at least according to Siegel: how does one slow the ship down, much less steer it accurately:

But there are three huge problems with this plan, and combined, they could be tantamount to a declaration of interstellar war.

The first problem is that interstellar space is full of particles, most of which move relatively slowly (at a few hundred km/s) through the galaxy. When they strike this spacecraft, they'll blow holes into it, rendering it into cosmic swiss-cheese in short order.

The second is that there's no reasonable deceleration mechanism. When these spacecrafts arrive at their destination, they'll still be moving at roughly the speeds they took off at. There's no stopping to take data or a gentle orbital insertion. They move at the speeds they move at.

And the third is that aiming to the level-of-precision needed to pass close to (but not collide with) a target planet is virtually impossible. The "cone of uncertainty" for any trajectory will include the planet we're aiming for.

The last possibility, he maintains, could mean that our "laser-sail" probes could actually impact an inhabited planet, with the force of the explosion of the Chelyabinsk meteor (which he specifically mentions in the article), and that, as noted above, could be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Which brings me to my daily dose of high octane speculation. The problem of steering and deceleration to my mind is rather simply solved, if I am understanding the concept of the "laser sail" correctly, and that is, simply have the lasers mounted in such a fashion that they can rotate, and equip the craft with a variety of sails to control direction and vector the craft accordingly, including a sail on the opposite side to decelerate the craft as one approaches the destination. I would think such a simple expedient should be rather obvious, which makes me wonder what the real point is here.

And the real point, I suspect, is not that these technologies are coming closer and closer to reality, but rather, that serious thought is being given to the subject of how not to cause an interplanetary war. After all, there could be many causas belli, besides inadvertently crashing on another inhabited planet. Merely entering into a "claimed planetary space" could do the trick by crossing some "border" of which we're unaware. In fact, I wrestled with this possibility in my talks at the  2015 Secret Space Program conference in Bastrop, Texas, by pointing out there are ancient traditions here on Earth of "quarantine zones" around the planet, a residue, I speculated, of some possible ancient "cosmic Versailles" treaty. I even offered the idea that such processes of reasoning as Mr. Siegel is advancing may have been the basis for why unmanned interplanetary probes launched from this planet carried plaques or other notices to the effect that "we come in peace."

And then there is the disturbing implication that Mr. Siegel mentions: an impact, much like the Chelyabinsk Meteor incident. Which makes me wonder - since we're talking high octane speculation - if this is not a backhanded admission that there may have been more behind that incident than meets the eye, as I speculated at the time. Was it a "message"? And if so, who really sent it?

In any case, I suspect that the mere fact that such ideas are being entertained and considered in a major publication like Forbes magazine may be an indicator that the slow trickle of information to prepare us for "something" is continuing...

... the "something" in this case being, new space propulsion technologies, and the very real possibility of interplanetary conflict.

See you on the flip side...

THAT STRANGE NEW RUSSIAN SATELLITE…

Now, this was was sent to me by so many people it would be impossible to thank you all by initials, so a "general thank you" will have to do. This is one of "those stories" that really gets my trademark high octane speculationTM going. The Russians, apparently (and we'll get back to that "apparently" part of the story in a moment), have put up a satellite, and it's doing strange things, like, (apparently, and again, we'll get back to that "apparently" in a moment) not staying in one orbit:

Mystery Russian satellite's behaviour raises alarm in US

US raises questions over 'abnormal' Russian satellite in row over space arms race

Remarks on Recent Russian Space Activities of Concern

I want to focus on the third of these articles, the remarks of Yleem D. S. Poblete on August 14, 2018, at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and specifically, on these passages:

Mr. President, in October of last year the Russian Ministry of Defense deployed a space object they claimed was a “space apparatus inspector.” But its behavior on-orbit was inconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational awareness capabilities, including other Russian inspection satellite activities. We are concerned with what appears to be very abnormal behavior by a declared “space apparatus inspector.” We don’t know for certain what it is and there is no way to verify it. But Russian intentions with respect to this satellite are unclear and are obviously a very troubling development – particularly, when considered in concert with statements by Russia’s Space Force Commander who highlighted that “assimilate[ing] new prototypes of weapons [into] Space Forces’ military units” is a “main task facing the Aerospace Forces Space Troops.”

Now I can tell you that our Russian colleagues will deny that its systems are meant to be hostile. The Russian Ministry of Defense has put out a press release stating these are simply inspector satellites.

So the question before this body is: how do we verify what countries say their spacecraft are doing? What would be enough information to prove what the purpose of an object is? We have pointed out Russian satellite behavior that is inconsistent with what Russia claims it is – a so-called inspector satellite not acting in a manner consistent with a satellite designed to conduct safe and responsible inspection operations.

But it is difficult to determine an object’s true purpose simply by observing it on orbit – unlike inspection for a traditional arms control agreement. Based on the drafting of the treaty language by Russia, there is nothing in the proposed PPWT that would prohibit this sort of activity or the developing, testing, or stockpiling of anti-satellite weapons capabilities, so long as it doesn’t damage another object in space.

The only certainty we have is that this system has been “placed in orbit.” The rest of its demonstrated behavior is unexpected and unclear to us. (Emphasis added)

There's so much uncertainty and ambiguity in these statements that it is difficult to parse these words and indulge in our daily high octane speculation. But there are a few general logical possibilities that immediately emerge:

1) The satellite is not Russian at all, and somebody wishes to make it appear that it is: I suspect we may discount this, since the context of Ms. Poblete's remarks seem to indicate that in this respect, at least, the U.S. government is fairly certain of its origins;

2) The object is Russian, but not necessarily a satellite in the conventional sense: Much of the context of Ms. Poblete's remarks, and the speculations entertained by the other two articles, focus on the possibility that the object is some sort of weapons platform, i.e., a conventional satellite launched into orbit, carrying weapons. But that it may not be a satellite in the conventional sense is evident from the statements that its "demonstrated behavior is unexpected and unclear to us," and this marvelous and glittering generality provokes all sorts of questions: exactly what demonstrated behavior is being referred to? My first guess would be that the object is maneuvering and changing orbits dramatically, from both shape, orbit type, and altitude, and that it has been doing so fairly consistently since its launch. It's that "consistency" factor which may have them worried, for there are satellites that have a limited ability to do this and they've been around for a while, but that capability is limited by the amount of fuel such maneuvering consumes; the more maneuvers, the more fuel is consumed, and the less room and ability to maneuver in the future there is. Consistent and prolonged maneuvering would indicate either a nuclear fuel, or some other more exotic means of propulsion. Nuclear propulsion would be relatively easy for the USA (or anyone else with "stuff" up there, the U.K., France, India, Germany, Japan... all the "usual suspects") to detect.

There is yet another possibility as well: what if this object is not a satellite, but a returnable orbital platform much like the US Air Force's unmanned "space shuttle-drone," which can be launched conventionally, obtain orbit, change orbits, and then land once again? If the USA can do it (and it has), then it's a sure bet that Russia can, and not only that it can, but that it would do so if for no other reason than to send the message "We've got it too."

But again, while that may elicit some concern from the US government, it's unlikely that it would have summoned the degree of concern that seems to be implied here. After all, if the last possibility were the case, then it simply means the Russians have achieved "parity."

Something about this new "Sputnik" has the spooks spooked, and my best guess at the present is precisely that it may be performing maneuvers of a complex, and "fuel consuming" nature, such that it may be indicative of a very different type of propulsion system and one that perhaps may not be nuclear.

If so, then as the expression has it, the defecation may have just hit the rotary oscillating motor with medium-driving blades, and may explain why there's been so much hype lately about "space forces" both from Washington and from Moscow.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

ANOTHER CHELYABINSK INCIDENT, THIS TIME OVER AN EARLY WARNING SITE

Do you remember the Philadelphia experiment lore? Do you remember how 1950s astronomer and Ufo investigator, Dr Morris Jessup's book was annotated by an alleged participant in the experiment, Carlos Allende a.k.a. Carl Allen?

Do you remember fake news? Do you remember Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's penetration of western news media? Do you remember the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion that happened in the same general time frame as the collision of an American and Russian satellite? Do you remember Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's talk on Russian television about a month before the Chelyabinsk meteor incident? Do you remember how he said that the world should cooperate to build an asteroid warning system, but that if it didn't, Russia should do so anyway, destroying asteroids with thermonuclear weapons, or by "other means" (which "other means" he did not specify)? Do you remember Dr. Carol Rosin's affidavit in Dr Steven Greer's collection called Disclosure, and how she maintained that Wernher von Braun told her that the "plan" to weaponize space was first Communists/Russians, then terrorists, then "nations of concerns", then asteroids, and then finally "ET"?

Do you remember the missile launch, to this day not explained, off the southern coast of Nuttyfornia? (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AMdHBgHtNE) Or how about the fake missile alerts in Hawaii and Japan (which I'm not buying for a moment)? Or how about this missile launch near Seattle-Tacoma-Vancouver (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-3s0es1LRM andhttp://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/12/mystery-object-spotted-over-washington-state-island-military-denies-missile-launch.html ).  I don't know about you, but the latter sure does not look like "lens flare" and some versions of this picture definitely show what is to my mind a missile.

With respect to the Washington missile launch, the US military is - perhaps predictably - denying it had anything to do with it, and is denying that local bases even have the capability to do so. Some have speculated that the launch was from a submarine. Some have speculated that it was the Chinese, others have entertained the idea that defective Chinese-made computer chips and hackers hacked into our military systems and launched the missile. Still others are entertaining the notion that it was a launch by the outraged party of Mr. Globaloney against the Trump administration in some sort of false-flag escalation event!

I don't know, but in the wider context I've outlined above, it definitely seems like "something is up, and it may be big."  American and Russian satellites do not simply collide, meteors do not suddenly explode over a major Russian city which, incidentally, is a center for Russia's nuclear research and weapons, and do so, almost as if on cue, a mere month after the Russian prime minister talks about rogue asteroids on Russian TV and calls for a world asteroid defense system, but if the world is unwilling to do so then Russia should just go ahead with a national system.

Well, meteors have exploded again - supposedly - over an American "early warning site", with a force of about 2 Kt (two kilotons), equivalent to a "small" nuclear weapon. And so many people sent me versions of this story that it would be impossible to mention them all, but to all a big thank you. Here's one version of the lamestream corporate controlled media's version of the story:

Air Force remains silent after huge meteor hits near US military base

There are several ways to interpret and speculate on this story, none of them too pleasant. In an era of missile launches that aren't missile launches but "lens flare", and that we didn't launch anyway (then who did? and how? and why?), or false alarm missile alerts in Hawaii and Japan, and so on, and given Operation Mockingbird and the penetration of media (and yes folks, that includes the "alternative media" too), then one has to wonder if the story is real at all.  How does one "check out" a story involving a missile impact in Greenland, after all? And yes, I'm aware that seismic data and so on has been collected. But then again, that can be manipulated in this era of Mockingbird and computer hacking.

However, if that is the case, then what's the motivation for planting the story? I would have to argue that it's to accelerate and drive the meme into people's minds that "we need an asteroid defense system" or as President Trump put it (and to paraphrase his remarks) another space corps.

But there's another disturbing possibility for high octane speculation, and it takes me back to my book Secrets of the Unified Field and the so-called "Varo edition" of 1950s astronomer and Ufo investigator Dr Morris Jessup. One of Dr. Jessup's books on the UFO phenomenon was annotated by an alleged participant in the Philadelphia experiment, and sent to the US Navy. The Navy took the annotations - which included references to the alleged Philadelphia experiment - seriously, and had special editions of Jessup's book printed, complete with the marginal notes made by the mysterious Mr. Allende. The company which did the printing was the Varo company of Garland, Texas, and hence this version of the book became known as the Varo edition of Jessup's book. Copies were allegedly given to various members of the Navy and the nascent US Space program, including (as I argued in my book) Dr Wernher von Braun.

What's intriguing about those annotations is that in one place they refer to an ancient cosmic war, and to the "great bombardment" using - you guessed it - asteroids hurled at targets. It's the "Varo edition" version of the familiar sci-fi weapon, "Mass drivers." Throwing rocks at planets appears again in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and again in the second season of the scifi television series, Babylon Five. More recent versions of the idea are the "rods of God" kinetic weapons technologies that some assume may have been involved in the Chinese chemical plant explosions a few years ago, and that more recently were the subject of some intriguing questioning by a news reporter to General Mattis, prior to the summit with North Korean leader.

So taking the story as real changes the picture, and it begins to show the possibilities of a pattern: first came that collision of an American and Russian satellite some years ago. Then came Prime Minister Medvedev's strange talk on Russian tv a month before the Chelyabinsk meteor incident, and now after false alarm missile drills and what looks to be a missile launch in the Seattle-Tacoma-Vancouver area (and appropriate denials from the US military with the usual nonsensical explanations), another meteor impacts near a major American military base in Greenland, a base that, moreover, is still an early warning component of the American system of nuclear defense. So we have:

1) the collision of a Russian and American satellite;

2) an exploding meteor over a major Russian nuclear research city; and now,

3) a meteor impact near a major American military base (with no comment from the American military).

Now, real meteor attacks (or as Allende put it in his marginalia to Jessup's book, "great bombardments") can drive the "we-need-an-asteroid-defense" meme just as easily as can false news stories, and do so much more efficiently.  After all, it's hard to argue against that case if, for example, a city or town was erased by an asteroid, and since most people don't believe that the technology exists to throw big rocks at planets, it can all be written off to a "tragic act of nature" and the calls for "an effective asteroid warning and defense system" will skyrocket. Forget about the Russians. The real big money for the military industrial complex is in space wars. And the problem is the technology, for such incidents as the above three, if viewed from this perspective, imply that someone has a technology capable of manipulating gravity and/or magnetism in a specific way, a way that enables celestial bodies to be used as "rods of God." If this wild and bizarre high octane speculation is true, then the real question is, who is doing it, and why? If it's "us", then we're creating a false flag scenario to build out space weapons (and, oh yes, incidentally, hurl rocks at any disobedient regions on the Earth below, and perhaps anywhere else in nearby space). If it's not us, then "someone" is either really angry, or, conversely, "playing ball" with the mandarins "down here" to lock down the planet, or perhaps even getting us to build their weapons, using us as cats' paws against yet someone else. Who knows?

There are of course, other scenarios and speculations too.

My real problem is, I'm seeing the beginning outlines of a pattern here, and I'm not at all liking what I'm seeing.

See you on the flip side...

 

CHINA, PATAGONIA, SPACE, AND THE MOON

Mr. G.K. found this article, and given today's "space emphasis", I wanted to elaborate on my high octane speculations about this one:

Growing US unease with China's new deep space facility in Argentina

There's a key to what China is up to in this article:

China's space base in Argentina's Patagonia is making Washington feel unease amid Beijing's consistent expansion in Latin America, once considered the US' backyard.

"The isolated base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing's long push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come - often in ways that directly undermine the United States' political, economic and strategic power in the region," remarked Ernesto Londono, an editorial writer for The New York Times.

However, according to Gustavo Cardozo, an analyst at the Argentine Center for International Studies (CAEI), the Chinese endeavor is pursuing far more ambitious goal: Beijing is seeking to become a major space power.

"China has a very serious intention to go into space and compete strategically with the United States," Cardozo told Sputnik Mundo. "This military base allows not only to control outer space, because the Argentine Patagonia and southern Chile are very good regions in terms of visualizing the cosmos."

The construction of the Chinese base for deep space research in Argentina was negotiated between the government of the country's former President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007-2015) and the administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The 50-year contract was officially signed in April 2014 and was approved by the Argentinian parliament in February 2015.

The installation started operating in March 2018. According to The New York Times, the station plays a pivotal role in Beijing's bold endeavor to kick off "an expedition to the far side of the moon." (Emphasis added)

This is entirely correct, and adds some "spice" to what is transpiring vis-a-vis the Moon. China, as the italicized portion of the quotation notes, is planning a mission to land a probe on the far side of the Moon. There are any number of anomalous features on the side of the Moon and one primary candidate for such a mission might be Tsiolkovsky Crater, which demonstrates some highly anomalous features, even suggestive of structure and artificiality.  But whatever China's motivations, the landing of a probe on the far side of the Moon will require an elaborate communications relay system, including communications satellites in orbit around the Moon to be able to maintain communications with any such probes. This comes in the same time frame that German companies have announced plans to build out a 4G network on the Moon.

Needless to say, the conjunction of these two things have my mind entertaining all sorts of high octane speculation, namely that these two things - the Chinese base in Patagonia, and the German 4G lunar plan - might be connected in some fashion as yet to be revealed. Those who have read my books, particularly The Nazi International, will recall that I have argued that Patagonia is a region fairly well infested with post-war Nazis and research projects of a bizarre and exotic nature.  Additionally, the Estancia, a large post-war region virtually a "Nazi state within a state" existed in that area for some time, and according to some, still exists. The presence of the Chinese base in this region suggests to my mind that it would not have been allowed without "permission," and that this permission may have come with some covert strings attached.

There's another factor at work in my high octane speculation here as well. In various books, beginning with The SS Brotherhood of the Bell, I've been arguing that the Apollo lunar missions may not have occurred without a covert deal between those "Patagonian veterans" and their fellow countrymen in NASA. Specifically, I've speculated that the "deal" which was worked out may have been the exchange of access to some sort of exotic Nazi technology - a development of the Bell perhaps - to allow us to get to and from the Moon, in return to access to data of whatever we found there. In that respect, I've concentrated upon the presence of Kurt Debus as senior flight director of Project Apollo at Cape Canaveral, and that Debus, far from being a rocket scientist was a plasma physicist, and one moreover with clear connections to the Bell project. And over the years, there certainly has been some suggestive data, implying that "something" anomalous was known about the Moon prior to those missions, and that anomalies may have been documented by Project Apollo. The problem for the "Patagonian veterans" - if my "secret deal" scenario is correct - is that the USA, after Apollo 17, did not go back, and has not been back for decades. If one is wanting access to "anomalous data" this is tantamount to letting a contract lapse, or go into default. Hence, one will look for a new "partner" that intends to go to the Moon, and cut a deal.

China, for example.

Ok... it's wild and woolly speculation to be sure, and with only two dots to connect here, I'm fully confident that I've stepped off the end of the twig. But here as always, time will tell, and perhaps add more confirming information, or information contraindicating my speculation.

See you on the flip side...

 

THE COMING AI WARS

Mr. J.B. sent this article along, and as one might imagine, it sparked some high octane speculation that I want to end this week's blogs with. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been much in focus in recent years, with a number of prominent figures, like Mr. Musk, raising the alarm about its potentialities. More recently, just last week I blogged about Henry Kissinger's own alarm about AI. In that blog, I pointed out that Musk's version of the scenario is that it might actually transduce some entity or being of evil nature into its artificial neurons and circuits, what I called "The Devil Scenario." I also speculated in that blog that perhaps the "elites" like Mr. Kissinger are afraid of the opposite scenario to Musk's, one that does not get discussed very much, and that it the so-called "Angel" scenario, where an AI might "transduce" some entity that determines that the current globaloney crop of misfits, cultural Marxists, Darth Soroses and crony crapitalists are a threat to humanity, and... well, you know. Perhaps, I thought in that blog, the "elites" are seeing certain signs of that or a similar scenario, and they don't like what they see. Either way, I'm still of the opinion some developed form of AI is already here.

So what has this to do with Mr. J.B.'s article? Well, here's the article, and you tell me:

Elon Musk, DeepMind founders, and others sign pledge to not develop lethal AI weapon systems

The open three paragraphs say it all:

Tech leaders, including Elon Musk and the three co-founders of Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind, have signed a pledge promising to not develop “lethal autonomous weapons.”

It’s the latest move from an unofficial and global coalition of researchers and executives that’s opposed to the propagation of such technology. The pledge warns that weapon systems that use AI to “[select] and [engage] targets without human intervention” pose moral and pragmatic threats. Morally, the signatories argue, the decision to take a human life “should never be delegated to a machine.” On the pragmatic front, they say that the spread of such weaponry would be “dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual.”

The pledge was published today at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Stockholm, and it was organized by the Future of Life Institute, a research institute that aims to “mitigate existential risk” to humanity. The institute has previously helped issue letters from some of the same individuals, calling on the United Nations to consider new regulations for what are known as lethal autonomous weapons, or LAWS. This, however, is the first time those involved have pledged individually to not develop such technology.

Now, most of you probably know where I stand: do I think a machine should determine when or under what circumstances a human life should be taken? Well, as you might have gathered from yesterday's blog, I have a big problem with "panels of ethics experts" deciding on baby-tinkering, must less juries or judges deciding capital punishment cases. As for the latter, in today's corrupt court system, who would want to make that decision? I wouldn't. As for a machine doing so?

Never!

But the article continues, and this is where it gets interesting, and lays the foundation for my high octane speculation of the day:

Paul Scharre, a military analyst who has written a book on the future of warfare and AI, told The Verge that the pledge was unlikely to have an effect on international policy, and that such documents did not do a good enough job of teasing out the intricacies of this debate. “What seems to be lacking is sustained engagement from AI researchers in explaining to policymakers why they are concerned about autonomous weapons,” said Scharre.

He also added that most governments were in agreement with the pledge’s main promise — that individuals should not develop AI systems that target individuals — and that the “cat is already out of the bag” on military AI used for defensive. “At least 30 nations have supervised autonomous weapons used to defend against rocket and missile attack,” said Scharre. “The real debate is in the middle space, which the press release is somewhat ambiguous on.” (Emphases added)

Now, with all respect to Mr. Scharre, one would have to be a dunce not to know what the concern is about "autonomous weapons." This is just more boilerplate and academic-sounding avoidance. But then comes that very revealing line "that individuals should not develop AI systems that target individuals."

That just put the whole AI debate on a very different playing field and confirms a suspicion I've had about  what is lurking behind all this "concern" about AI from "the elites". Indeed, I have also blogged about this possibility before, namely, when we think of AI development, we tend to think just one all-powerful, globe-encompassing malevolent (or beneficent) machine running it all.  But there is nothing to prevent several AIs being developed, including AI's to defend against other AIs, or to take out Don Corleone's opposition, in some updated version of The Godfather. This line is revealing because it is really suggesting that what the "elite" fears is not even my "Don Corleone" scenario, but rather, that individuals or groups people will defend against AI by developing AI defenders, not one, but many AIs contending for domination.

Or to put it in the starkest and most naked terms: What if this concern about artificial intelligence is really designed to prevent people from developing defenses against it, or developing a "benign" AI that is a threat, not to the bulk of humanity, but to them? And if that is the case, if they are afraid of AIs that defend against AIs, you can bet that their "concern" is crocodile tears, and that they're already at work to protect themselves behind a much more aggressive AI. Funny thing, too, that this whole scenario I'm increasingly sensing may be lurking behind all the "concern" about AI, was actually the basic story line for the series Person of Interest.

The AI wars may be getting very close to reality...

See you on the flip side...

 

RT: EARTH NEEDS STRICTER DEFENSES AGAINST EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL BACTERIA

Mr. G. sent along this recent article from RT, and given the timing, I have to wonder just what the heck is going on. But we'll get back to the high octane speculation - including Mr. G.'s own - in a moment. First, the article itself:

Earth must strengthen its defenses against mutant space bacteria – Russian scientists

The article notes an odd series of experiments performed in Russia with "space bacteria":

A Russian experiment called 'Biorisk' has revealed that various microorganisms from Earth were able to survive in the harsh conditions of space on the surface of the International Space Station (ISS). It was carried out starting in January 2005 at the Russian segment of the ISS and saw 68 different organisms, including bacteria, insects, vertebrate animal and higher plants, used as test subjects.

The mutated bacteria showed high aggressiveness and resistance to antibiotics on their return to Earth, the Russian report, prepared for the meeting of the International Committee on Space Research in the US later in July, said.

And it ends with a call for stricter quarantine regimes for objects returning to Earth (think Japan's Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe, for example):

"In addition, the danger is posed by terrestrial microorganisms that returned from space after visiting another planet and transforming in an unknown manner in its atmosphere," it added.

According to the paper, the Russian scientists are going to use the result of their research to develop measures aimed at protecting Earth form this threat.

Note that the Russian experiment is implying the possibility of these organisms mutating, or perhaps even combining with terrestrial bacteria to form new strains. This led Mr. G. to speculate that perhaps this has already been observed, or that perhaps it is already being engineered.

In either case, what is par for the course here is that the Russians have been calling for beefed-up defenses from asteroids ever since Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's strange remarks about a month prior to the Chelyabinsk meteor incident, about which I've spoken much on this site. Asteroids certainly could be a vehicle for the "seeding" of such bacteria on Earth, unintentionally or perhaps even intentionally. This latest call appears to be part of that pattern.

But it's the timing of this that also intrigues me, for it occurs just a few days before the Putin-Trump summit is supposedly to occur. I cannot help but think that space matters, and planetary defense will be high on the agenda, but perhaps not openly talked about. However, there's another deeper possibility here. Let's recall the famous affidavit of Dr. Carol Rosin once again. Dr. Rosin, as most readers here are aware, was a one-time associate and assistant to Dr. Werner von Braun at Fairchild Industries. She has alleged in her now famous Rosin Affidavit, given to Dr. Steven Greer (MD) for inclusion in his book Disclosure, that von Braun told her that the plan for weaponizing space would proceed along a predetermined pattern of "justifications": first the Communists would be the target, and hence we needed weapons in space to defend against them. Then it would be terrorists, then "nations of concern" (think North Korea or Iran), then it would be asteroids (think Prime Minister Medvedev's pre-Chelyabinsk remarks), and then finally, it would be extra-terrestrials.

Given the accuracy of her prediction, made years before 9/11, and what has happened since, I cannot help but wonder, with this new focus on "extra-terrestrial organisms" (in this case, bacteria), if perhaps we are not witnessing the first slow indicators of a coming "change in the narrative" to get people accustomed to the idea of the need for space weaponization against asteroids that could be carrying more than just helium-3 or quadrillions of dollars of titanium, but also carrying, first "something" else, and then, finally, "someone" else.

See you on the flip side...

OUMUAMUA UPDATE: IT’S A COMET, NO, AN ASTEROID, NO, A COMET, NO, ...

A few days ago I mentioned the comet, or rather, asteroid, Oumuamua in one of my blogs about space matters. (See NASA’S NEW ASTEROID DEFENSE PLAN). Why the hesitation over what the strange object is? Well, in my blog, I referred to it as a comet. Almost as soon as the blog was posted, I began to get articles from well-intentioned readers, stating that it was - no, not a comet - but an asteroid. I was just about to post a "Tidbit" correcting the error, when more articles began to arrive: no, it was not an asteroid, it was a comet all along.

Well, so much for posting a note about the error.

Then, amid the growing pile of emails in my inbox folder about Oumuamua, I found this, shared by Mr. J.T, which "clarified" the issue:

Scientists just changed their mind about that ‘Alien Probe’ asteroid again

So, that's why I was confused; I was confused, because scientists themselves are confused:

The bizarre interstellar visitor that whizzed through our Solar System late last year stunned scientists the world over. The object, named Oumuamua snuck up out of nowhere, cruising around the Sun and then slingshotting back out into space before most astronomers even knew what to make of it. Its strange shape and odd coloring were so strange that some researchers thought it might have been an alien probe checking us out.

Once that was put to rest, one of the more humorous twists to the story was the repeated flip-flopping of scientists who couldn’t decide whether it was a comet or an asteroid. It was initially thought to be a comet, but its lack of an iconic tail suggested otherwise. So, it was an asteroid, at least for a little while, but subsequent rounds of research suggested it was a comet again… then an asteroid, again. Now, yet another study has been published in Nature and, well, it’s definitely a comet. Again.

The new paper, which was led by an astronomer with the European Space Agency (ESA), takes a close look at the strange visitor as it speeds away from our Solar System. The data reveals that the object is speeding up as it exits our neighborhood, which shouldn’t be possible if it were just a rocky asteroid being flung by gravity.

Instead, the researchers say, the object being a comet would explain its acceleration. The idea being that gasses heated during Oumuamua’s close brush with our Sun are actually pushing it faster and faster, matching what we know about comets.

So, because it lacked the typical tail of comets jetting into the solar system, it was a mere asteroid. But because it has gasses jetting out of it as if flies away from the Sun, it's a comet again.

I get it! I understand! Yea, sure! It's a comet! I'm so relieved!

Except, wait a minute... shouldn't those same gasses have been jetting out of the object as it approached the Sun and heated up? And shouldn't the trees grow taller too, in a natural selection response to the giraffes growing longer necks in natural selection to reach the leaves?  Wait a minute, isn't that kind of a circular argument? (Remember that one?)

Well, yes, the lack of a comet tail coming into the solar system, meant it was an asteroid. But the evidence of out-gassing on the way out of the solar system means it's a comet, notwithstanding that the gas was apparently not turned on during the inbound flight of the comet...er... asteroid. Maybe it's an astercometoid.

Now, as you can tell, I'm having a bit of fun with this one, because the article itself mentions the problem that is posed, and where most scientists "don't want to go." In fact, it even mentions the fact that some scientists were trying to communicate with the object, given its other bizarre behavior. They were willing to entertain the "impossible," that it was an interstellar probe of some sort:

Strange tumbling motion of cigar-shaped interstellar 'comet' Oumuamua suggests it’s an alien probe with BROKEN engines, says leading astronomer

Ahhh!  So there we go... they tried listening for signals, but there was nothing. No signals, no out-gassing, just a long cylindrical rocky object tumbling end over end... until it seems to have started out-gassing again... one wonders which of the ends that out-gassing is coming out of, perhaps both?(That would be very un-cometlike, and for that matter, very un-asteroidish. In fact, it's very un-comet-like and un-asteroidish to have no tail coming in, but one going out.).

In fact, that tumbling action, for such a shaped object, might indicate some prior impact that set it tumbling...

So, yea, I'll say it...

...maybe someone turned on the engines again...

(Oh, just in case, they've got a theory for that unusual out-gassing too, and you'll love it too: its dust is simply "bigger":

Interstellar Comet ‘Oumuamua Has a Built-In 'Propulsion' System)

... See you on the flip side...