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Aliens Are Listening to Us, But Won’t Say Hello

Article by Jerry Lawton                                   November 26, 2020                                    (dailystar.co.uk)

• Dr. Douglas Vakoch is president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). He believes it is important to send signals into the galaxy because aliens know we exist but are reluctant to communicate with us.

• In an interview in BBC Science Focus magazine, Vakoch said, “My big concern is that there are, in fact, a lot of other civilizations out there, but they’re doing exactly what we are (i.e.: not communicating). “[E]veryone is listening but no one is saying hello. And so this is our effort to join the galactic conversation.”

• “I think the point that people miss when they think it’s risky is that the aliens we’re worried about already know we’re here,” says Vakoch. [T]hey’ve had two billion years to know that there’s complex life on our planet by the changes in our atmosphere. “We don’t currently have the ability to detect the twin of Earth giving off our level of natural radiation or leakage radiation, TV and radio. We also don’t have warp drive. We don’t have a way of getting to another star. So we’re not a threat (to them).”

• The most famous message sent out to the galaxy was transmitted from a radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which included details on numbers, chemical elements, a description of life on Earth and our DNA. But Vakoch’s organization tries to send out “succinct and intelligible” transmissions targeted to alien scientists. And since his messages are to be heard, it is not dependent on an alien’s ability to see. “One of the things you’ll see in the Arecibo messages are a lot of pictures,” says Vakoch. “Well what happens if the alien is blind?” “When we sent our message to Luyten’s Star we designed it specifically for a blind alien.”

• Dr. Vakoch is still listening for a reply to the message sent to Luyten’s Star in 2017.

[Editor’s Note]  People like Douglas Vakoch at METI and Seth Shostak at SETI are happy to continue this ridiculous ruse. They pretend to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life because they can sit around and wait for a distant signal (that never comes) while collecting a nice paycheck. They are not working for the people, but for the Deep State. Their job isn’t to find ETs, but to NOT find ETs, while giving the public the illusion that they are doing everything they can to locate intelligent extraterrestrial life.

In reality, intelligent extraterrestrial life is everywhere. It permeates the galaxy and the universe. According to secret space program insiders, every star system in our 52 star cluster holds an advanced humanoid civilization. Extraterrestrial beings can even be found throughout our solar system and right here on Earth, working covertly within Deep State military and government programs. They simply don’t want people to know this. But we on this planet will soon “wake up” and experience a leap in consciousness that will allow us to rise to the fourth density. This spiritual ascension and the imminent defeat of the Deep State that has enslaved our planet, which is occurring right now, will open the door for Earth humans to join with our cosmic cousins to become members of a vast and wondrous Galactic Community.

 

Aliens exist across the galaxy but they are listening to us instead of saying hello, according to one of the world’s leading extra terrestrial hunters.

Dr Douglas Vakoch, 59, is worried humans are not connecting with alien life forms because no-one dare break the ice.

The astrobiologist has set up his own research organisation dedicated to transmitting signals to extraterrestrials.

                         Douglas Vakoch

Dr Vakoch, who is president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, believes it is important to send signals into the galaxy because aliens know with exist but are not communicating.

He also believes we should not be worried about being invaded by aliens because we’re not a threat’ as we have not mastered space travel.

In an interview in BBC Science Focus magazine he said: “My big concern is that there are, in fact, a lot of other civilisations out there, but they’re doing exactly what we are.

“They have these robust Searching for Extraterrestrial intelligence programmes and everyone is listening but no-one is saying hello.

“And so this is our effort to join the galactic conversation.”

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Do We Need a Special Language to Talk to Extraterrestrials?

Listen to “e166 Do We Need a Special Language to Talk to Extraterrestrials?” on Spreaker.

November 5, 2019           (wired.com)

• In May 2018, from a radar facility in Tromsø, Norway, ‘Sónar Calling’ trained its antennas on a potentially habitable exoplanet located 12 light years from Earth called GJ237b. Sónar Calling is an interstellar messaging project by the nonprofit METI International, or ‘Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ which began in 2017 (as the sister organization to SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).

• The Sónar Calling messaging project has sent two transmissions to potential cosmic cousins. Both messages, each sent over the course of three days, have consisted of a selection of short songs and a primer on how to interpret the contents. The second broadcast was notable for sending an extraterrestrial language devised by physicists Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas in the late 1990s.

• Dutil and Dumas’ “language” is based on a communication system known as “Lincos”, a mathematical format developed by Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal in 1960. The ‘primer’ begins by introducing ET to numerals and basic arithmetic, and then progresses to more complex topics like human biology and the planets in our solar system. This mathematical language has been sent into space twice before in 1999 and 2003.

• Many mathematicians believe that math is a constant in the fabric of reality. Math isn’t something that humans created so much as it is something that the human mind discovered. Still, Lincos rests on the assumption that an ET is “human-like in its mental state”. If ET does in fact think like a human, does that alien also have some kind of human-like language? Early artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky argues that ET is likely to have language because language is an ideal solution to fundamental problems faced by any intelligent species including constraints on time, energy, and resources.

• A deeper question is whether ET’s language will be similar to our own. Noam Chomsky has argued that universal grammar is a structure common to all human languages on earth. Brain imaging studies have shown that the structure of human language manifests in our neural brain activity. So if extraterrestrials do have a language similar to earth languages, it might imply that they also have a functionally equivalent neurobiology.

• Astrobiologist Charles Cockell compares the likelihood of biological similarities between humans and extraterrestrial beings with the similarities between humans and other animals here in earth. Cellular life arises from the same four nucleotides to create the structure of an eye or a wing. Universal biological similarities puts constraints on the trajectory of evolution tempered with adaptations to conditions on their home world. It is therefore reasonable to assume that extraterrestrial evolution might arrive at similar solutions to common issues, such as evolving a brain capable of recursive languages.

• If that’s the case, then the best way to communicate may not be designing artificial languages, but sending ET a set of encyclopedias. If ET has developed its own artificial intelligence, it could potentially decipher the structure of a natural language message. Aliens will still need some kind of language to connect some language symbols to their meaning. But as on earth, the best way to start an interstellar conversation might simply be by saying “hello.”

[Editor’s Note]   A lot of assumptions were made to get to the theory that extraterrestrial beings may have similar language skills, and therefore similar neurobiology as humans on earth. This strikes me as a lot of scientific gibberish meant to assure the average mind-controlled human that smart scientists are working day and night to unlock the mystery of whether there may be other intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe. What other organization commonly uses this modality…. hmmm… oh yes! SETI. This sounds a lot like what SETI does to make people believe they are earnestly searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, when they and their Deep State handlers know for a fact that intelligent extraterrestrials exist all around us and regularly interact with our elite. According to these ‘deep thinkers’, a major obstacle is how we might communicate with these advanced beings. Have they ever heard of telepathy which requires no spoken language, and which virtually everyone who has had an encounter with an alien being has reported?

 

In May 2018, a radar facility in Tromsø, Norway, trained its antennas on GJ237b, a potentially habitable exoplanet located 12 light years from Earth. Over the course of three days, the radar broadcast a message toward the planet in the hopes that there might be something, or someone, there to receive it. Each message consisted of a selection of short songs and a primer on how to interpret the contents.

                Stephane Dumas
                  Yvan Dutil

This was the second iteration of Sónar Calling GJ273b, an interstellar messaging project by the nonprofit METI International that began in 2017. Although both transmissions were billed as a “music lesson for aliens,” the second broadcast was notable for rehabilitating an extraterrestrial language developed by the physicists Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumas in the late 1990s.

This custom symbolic system begins by introducing ET to numerals, and then progresses to more complex topics like human biology and the planets in our solar system. An earlier version of the language was first sent into space in 1999 and again in 2003 as part of the Cosmic Call messages—a crowd-sourced interstellar messaging project that marked the first serious attempt at interstellar communication since Carl Sagan and Frank Drake sent the Arecibo message into space 25 years earlier.

All of these formal messaging attempts have taken basically the same approach: Teach numerals and basic arithmetic first. But as some recent insights in neurolinguistics suggest, it might not be the best way to greet our alien neighbors.

        Charles Cockell

The world’s first interstellar communication system, the lingua cosmica, or Lincos, set the tone for all subsequent attempts by placing

Marvin Minsky

basic math at its core. Designed by the Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal in 1960, Lincos inspired several other mathematicians and scientists to try their hand at designing extraterrestrial languages. Each system is ultimately an attempt at solving a remarkably complex problem: How do you communicate with an intelligent entity you know nothing about?

The question gets at the nature of intelligence itself. Humans are the only species on Earth endowed with advanced mathematical ability and a fully fledged faculty of language, but are these hallmarks of intelligence or human idiosyncrasies? Is there an aspect of intelligence that is truly universal?

Scientists and mathematicians have grappled with these questions for centuries. As the Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner once observed, mathematics is “unreasonably effective” at describing the natural universe, which has led a significant contingent of mathematicians to conclude that math is baked into the fabric of reality. From this perspective, mathematics isn’t something produced by the human mind so much as something the human mind discovers.

Most interstellar communication systems were designed around this conclusion. The goal isn’t to teach ETs about addition and subtraction—presumably they know as much if they can build a telescope to receive the message. Instead, these systems teach ETs about the way we code numbers as symbols. Then they can build up to more complex ideas.

It’s an elegant solution to a difficult problem, but Lincos still rests on the assumption that an ET is “human-like in its mental state,” as Freudenthal once conceded. But if ET does in fact think like a human, does that alien also have some kind of human-like language?

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Belief in Aliens Not So Far Out for Some Catholics

Listen to “E95 9-14-19 Belief in Aliens Not So Far Out for Some Catholics” on Spreaker.
Article by Carol Glatz                     September 5, 2019                  (angelusnews.com)

• Jesuit philosopher and astronomer, Father Jose Funes, has been appointed to the advisory council of METI International. Father Funes will join over 80 experts that make up the advisory council. METI’s president and founder, Douglas Vakoch, said, “It’s natural for METI to be in dialogue with Jesuit astronomers because they understand the science behind our search, giving us common ground, while also having expertise in theology, providing a new perspective for our scientists.”

• METI, or “Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence”, is an offshoot of SETI, “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” which began its search for ET in 1959 by scanning the sky for unusual radio and laser signals from sources that may indicate signs of alien technology. METI looks at what and how to communicate in a vast and mysterious universe.

• The Vatican has also been active in discussions about extraterrestrial life, the ethics of space exploration and the religious significance of a universe that could be teeming with life. Father Funes is the former director of the Vatican Observatory and an expert in galaxies and extragalactic astronomy.

• Father Funes, who holds the chair in science, religion and education at the Catholic University of Cordoba, Argentina, and also chairs a think tank initiative called “OTHER”, says that these Catholic organizations help us to understand alien life “in order to understand better who human beings are”. This is instrumental in educating the general public, teachers and students about the dialogue between science and religion.

• Vakoch is an astrobiologist and psychologist who spent 16 years at the SETI Institute, where he was director of Interstellar Message Composition. Vakoch says that if METI/SETI does find life out there someday, “many people will look to their religious leaders to help understand what it means to all of us down here on planet Earth.” “One of the great misconceptions of the general public is that discovering life beyond Earth will threaten people’s religious beliefs,” Vakoch says. “But time and again, across the centuries, we have seen that religions adapt to scientific discoveries. The same will be true if someday we discover we’re not alone in the universe.”

• Father Funes has introduced “something new or at least original” for SETI research to consider: the search for spiritual signs or signatures in the universe. Is spirituality a part of our evolutionary process? Vakoch said that “Hollywood portrayals of marauding aliens, coming to Earth to annihilate us” serve to generate fear or negative reactions to potential alien life. But there are “hopeful depictions of first contact,” says Vakoch, such as Steven Spielberg’s ‘E.T. the Extraterrestrial’ where a visitor comes to Earth, transforming lives and overcoming death through love. The same for ‘Starman,’ starring Jeff Bridges in the title role that was a thinly veiled reference to Christ.”

• Father Funes said the Catholic Church is optimistic in its faith because “we trust in God” when it comes to space exploration and messaging potential intelligent life. Vakoch says, “Some worry that learning about the existence of extraterrestrials will make humanity less unique. I suspect just the opposite will happen.” “[T]here will never be a duplicate of Homo Sapiens. There may be beings out there who are more wise or powerful than we are, but they will never be more human.”

[Editor’s Note]    It is no surprise that METI/SETI would team up with the Vatican in trying to dominate the limited soft disclosure dialog of the massive extraterrestrial presence, and the government’s long standing cover-up. They are both dedicated to doing the Deep State’s bidding. They see that the public’s revelation about the true existence of extraterrestrials is imminent, so who better than the combination of scientific and religious “experts” to guide the public through this transition. But the primary agenda of these institutions is to maintain control over the populace once the extraterrestrial presence is finally revealed. They want to position the Catholic religion as the savior of the people, thereby assuring its continuance after the extraterrestrial disclosure. While at the same time, METI/SETI will continue to deny any extraterrestrial presence until the very last minute.

 

More than 2 million people RSVP’d to a recent social media invitation to “storm” Area 51 in Nevada, in the hope of discovering whether alien life or spacecraft may be secretly stored at this U.S. Air Force base.

Though the proposed raid was a spoof, it has morphed into a real, more peaceful encounter. Now dubbed, “Alienstock,” the Sept. 20-22 festival aims to be a place “where believers gather” to discuss and celebrate confidence in the existence of alien life and the wonders of the unknown, according to its website, alienstockfestival.com.

           Father Jose Funes

But another brand of believers — a “Men in Black” of a spiritual kind — are the pope’s own Jesuit astronomers; they have long been active in discussions about extraterrestrial life, the ethics of space exploration and the religious significance of a universe that could be teeming with life.

The huge amount of interest the general public has shown in life existing elsewhere in the universe is part of the age-old question, “Are we alone?” said Jesuit Father Jose Funes, former director of the Vatican Observatory and an expert in galaxies and extragalactic astronomy.

The fascination with seeking extraterrestrial life or intelligence “reflects very deep human issues that are important for us” and makes people think about “who we are,” he told Catholic News Service in late August.

         Douglas Vakoch

“We have to become alien somehow” and step outside oneself “in order to understand better who human beings are,” said the priest, who holds the chair in science, religion and education at the Catholic University of Cordoba, Argentina. The chair and the think tank initiative, “OTHER,” he directs are instrumental for educating the general public, teachers and students about the dialogue between science and religion, he said.

Father Funes’ multidisciplinary expertise in astronomy, philosophy and theology has now earned him a unique place in ET research — serving on the advisory council of METI International.

METI, or Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, takes the next step in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.

The SETI project, which started in 1959, represents a major coordinated effort in scanning the sky for unusual radio and laser signals from sources that may indicate signs of alien technology. METI looks at what and how to communicate in a vast mysterious universe.

Part of the METI mission, according to its website, METI.org, is to conduct high-level scientific and multidisciplinary research, discuss the importance of searching for life beyond Earth and study the impact searching for, detecting or messaging ETI would have on the world.

More than 80 experts from a huge array of fields — including ethics, linguistics and theology — make up METI’s advisory council, and it was just last year that the group’s president and founder, Douglas Vakoch, asked Father Funes to join the team.

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Efforts To Search For, Send Messages To Extraterrestrial Life Advance In Digital Age

by Molly McCrea and Juliette Goodrich                 April 25, 2019                   (sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com)

• In 1977, NASA scientists installed a golden record on two space probes that were part of the Voyager Mission. On each copy were dozens of images, sounds from nature, and multiple greetings in 55 different languages. The record also contained music from around the world, and included classical as well as a recording of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode.” “This was a way of telling another civilization about us,” explained the legendary astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake.

• Drake and fellow astrophysicist, the late Carl Sagan, also wrote what’s known as the Arecibo Message in 1974, the first interstellar radio message sent from earth to a globular star cluster known as M13 in hopes that extraterrestrial intelligence could receive and decipher it.

• Drake and Sagan also designed what is known as the Pioneer plaques. These plaques were another kind of message from earth that scientists hoped would be intercepted by extraterrestrial beings from the 1972 Pioneer 10 and the 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft missions.

• In 2015, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner unveiled a project called the “Breakthrough Initiatives” to search for extraterrestrial intelligence over the span of at least 10 years. Part of the Initiatives program includes a $1M Breakthrough Message competition, where the task is to design a digital message to send to advanced civilizations. But no message has yet been sent. And some, such as Doug Vakoch who heads up: Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), want to send the messages now and hear back from other civilizations. He explained that the messages would be sent by radio or in the near future, by lasers using very brief laser pulses.

• Not everyone agrees we should be rapidly concocting and sending messages. Stargazer Alicia Adams says, “I’ve seen Mars Attacks and that ended horribly!” Retired Professor of Astronomy Andrew Fraknoi says it’s a question over which space scientists are now grappling. “If we’re going to be deciding to advertise our presence to the universe, we should have a discussion with the rest of the world,” said Fraknoi. “Are we ready to signal out there that we on earth exist? We are barely getting along with each other. Are we ready to get along with aliens?”

• Drake thinks intelligent beings already know we’re here due to television and radio signals traveling in space. “It’s too late, folks. We’ve made our presence known big-time,” said Drake.

• A recent survey by Glocalities involving 24 countries found nearly half of all humans believe in extraterrestrials.

 

An ambitious new effort is underway to make direct contact with intelligent life beyond earth, improving upon 70s-era space missions which included attempts to bring messages from Earth to extraterrestrials.

For centuries, we’ve gazed up at the stars, and wondered are we alone? Some say it is time to move more aggressively and find out.

In early April, NASA’s newest planet hunter called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) discovered its first Earth-sized alien planet. A recent survey by Glocalities involving 24 countries found nearly half of all humans believe in extraterrestrials.

                Frank Drake

ETs are on our mind. At the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, an entire evening’s event was all about extraterrestrials. A special dance troupe performed to an eclectic mix of sounds. The sounds were excerpts taken from a famous golden record, intended for intelligent life in the universe. The 12-inch copper gold plated disk is known as the Pioneer Golden Record.

Artist Katerina Wong choreographed the performance and was thrilled to know its history.

“They were hoping if there was an opportunity to meet an ET, that they would get a little bit of understanding about what life on earth was like.” remarked Wong.

In 1977, NASA scientists installed a golden record on two space probes that were part of the Voyager Mission.

On each copy were dozens of images, sounds from nature, and multiple greetings in 55 different languages. The record also contained music from around the world, and included classical as well as a recording of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode.”

According to NASA, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. Their primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn in our own solar system but now, both probes are billions of miles away from earth – carrying a message from earth on these golden records. The hope was that somewhere beyond our solar system, intelligent life or advanced civilizations will find them and be able to decipher their contents.
“This was a way of telling another civilization about us,” explained the legendary astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake.

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Could Nearby Asteroids Be Hideouts for Alien Spies?

by Eric Mack                   March 26, 2019                   (cnet.com)

• The vast majority of asteroids orbit the sun in a wide belt between Jupiter and Mars. Some wander farther into the inner solar system near Earth’s orbit. There’s a rarer type of object called a “quasi-satellite” that may spend centuries or longer making oddly shaped orbits around our planet. One example is asteroid 2016 HO3, also known as “Earth’s Constant Companion” (pictured above). These ‘co-orbital objects’ have only come to our attention in the past decade, for the most part. (watch 1:14 minute video on asteroid 2016 HO3 below)

• James Benford, a SETI enthusiast (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has authored a paper that postulates that these “co-orbital objects [are] an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence to locate a probe to observe Earth while not being easily seen.” Benford refers to alien spies the sky as “lurkers.” We may not have noticed anything because any sort of ancient automated alien spy system could be dead or lie dormant for long periods of time.

• James Benford’s twin brother Gregory, an astrophysicist, also weighs in saying, “Lurkers from the far past may have done their duty and slowly failed … the ruins of Lurker installations, including mining for resources on nearby orbiting sites, may be visible, even though their animating intelligences are long gone.” “This means we should consider searches over decades-long time scales.”

• SETI focuses on looking beyond our solar system and essentially listening to distant stars for signs of life. James Benford argues that it’s much easier to prove or disprove some alien construction is in a near-Earth orbit. “We can observe them, ping them with radar, transmit messages to them, send robotic probes to them and visit them with human spacecraft missions,” writes Benford.

• Douglas Vakoch, formerly of the SETI Institute and currently president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), which is funded in part by NASA, says, “The notion of searching for lurkers by transmitting to likely locations in our solar system provides an intriguing possibility for finding common ground in Active SETI.” “Some of the same individuals who have been cautious about Active SETI transmissions to other stars are advocates of pinging nearby aliens — on the grounds that the extraterrestrials would already know we are here.”

• The idea that an extraterrestrial spy satellite might be hidden near our planet isn’t new. The late Stanford professor Ronald Bracewell proposed in a 1960 paper that advanced alien civilizations might place artificial intelligence near inhabited planets to monitor the progress of less advanced worlds and perhaps make contact at some point.

• “What have we to lose by checking out these objects?” Benford writes. “Nobody has really looked at these co-orbitals, other than orbital calculations and faint images. We know almost nothing about them.” Benford plans to submit his paper to the Astrophysical Journal.

 

Plans are in the works to send a tiny spacecraft to another star system in search of alien life. But what if another civilization has already launched a similar mission to observe Earth without our knowledge?

James Benford, who authored the definitive book on high-power microwaves and has written about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, says in a draft paper that a “recently discovered group of nearby co-orbital objects is an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate a probe to observe Earth while not being easily seen.”

              James Benford

In the paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, Benford refers to alien eyes in (or above) the sky as “lurkers.” He goes on to give several examples of co-orbital objects (all of which are probably asteroids) that could be worth checking for them.

Benford runs a company called Microwave Sciences that designs and consults on high-power microwave systems. He often collaborates on his SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) work with his twin brother Gregory Benford, a noted science-fiction author, and his son Dominic Benford, a scientist at NASA.

While the vast majority of asteroids orbit the sun in a wide belt between Jupiter and Mars, some wander farther into the inner solar system near Earth’s orbit.

There’s an even rarer type of object called a “quasi-satellite” that may spend centuries or longer making often oddly shaped orbits around our planet. One example is asteroid 2016 HO3, also known as “Earth’s Constant Companion,” which is detailed in the below video from NASA.

The idea that an extraterrestrial spy satellite might be hidden near our planet isn’t new. The late Stanford electrical engineering professor Ronald Bracewell proposed in an oft-referenced 1960 paper that advanced alien civilizations might place artificial intelligence near inhabited planets to monitor the progress of less advanced worlds and perhaps make contact at some point.

Of course, we have observatories keeping watch on the thousands of known near-Earth objects and discovering new ones almost daily. A handful of asteroids has been visited by spacecraft, including NASA’s Osiris-Rex and Japan’s Hayabusa-2 that are currently orbiting space rocks. So far, such observations have yielded no evidence of anything alien or artificial.

But the co-orbital objects that Benford said deserve more attention are relatively new discoveries, having come to our attention in the past decade for the most part. And we may not have noticed anything because any sort of automated alien spy system placed long ago could be dead or lie dormant for long periods of time, making it difficult to detect.

1:14 minute NASA video on Asteroid 2016 Ho3 – Earth’s Constant Companion

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