Article by Joshua Smith April 30, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• The ‘chupacabra’ is a legendary creature known from the folklore of parts of Central and South America, with its first purported sighting in Puerto Rico in 1995. Chupacabra translates as ‘goat-sucker’.
• Residents of the Monteagudo neighborhood in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, saw such a creature there recently. First they saw three lights hovering in the sky. Then an object appeared. “As the object entered the sky, there was a crash, like thunder…as if it were throwing fire,” ufologist Javier Aliaga told local media. The object then became a ‘halo’ of light in the sky. Then the creature appeared, walking through the street “frightening children and young people”.
• The alien is said to have resembled a chupacabra – approximately 12 inches tall with an oval head, large eyes and three fingers on each hand. Minutes after the alien’s disappearance, the light in the sky went out, leaving circles in the grass where the light had shone, according to reports of the incident.
• Santa Cruz, Bolivia is becoming something of an alien hot spot for UFO sightings. In 2016, residents of the El Dorado neighborhood in Santa Cruz described an encounter with a mysterious being that “fell” out of a UFO that had landed there. A child told reporters that he saw strange eyes staring at him while a woman said the alien was “small and gooey” in appearance. “It extended its arms and climbed a tree. That’s when all the neighbors came out, but nothing could be found,” the woman said. Then there was a loud bang and a flash of light. When curious residents rushed out of their homes, the extraterrestrial thing scrambled back onboard his UFO spacecraft and disappeared.
An alien which reportedly ‘got out of its UFO and walked down the street’ resembled a mythical creature according to the people who claim to have seen it, it has been reported.
The incredible incident is said to have taken place in the Monteagudo neighborhood of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, after three lights were seen hovering in the sky, Radio Mitre reports.
People living in the neighbourhood are also reported to have then seen a halo of light in the sky before the creature appeared, according to El Tribuno.
The alien is said to have resembled a chupacabra and was approximately 30 centimeters (12 inches) tall, with an oval head, large eyes and three fingers on its hands.
The chupacabra, which translates as ‘goat-sucker’, is a legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, with its first purported sightings reported in Puerto Rico in 1995.
The animal is said to have walked through the street “frightening children and young people”, according to local reports.
“As the object entered the sky, there was a crash, like thunder. Furthermore, the characteristic of this object is as if it were throwing fire,” ufologist Javier Aliaga told local media.
Minutes after the alien’s supposed disappearance, the light in the sky went out, leaving circles in the grass where it had shone, reports of the incident said.
Santa Cruz in Bolivia could be something of an alien hotspot as this is not the first reported sighting of beings from foreign planets in the area.
In 2016, residents of the neighborhood in El Dorado district described to baffled TV news crews their encounter with a mysterious being who they said fell out of a UFO, walked around the neighborhood, and even climbed up a tree.
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• Last month, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico would be permanently closed. An auxiliary cable snapped in August causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide dish (pictured above), damaging the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in mid-November.
• The huge radio telescope that played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century (and was used by SETI – the ‘Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’ as seen in the 1997 movie “Contact”) completely collapsed on December 1st. The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish more than 400 feet below. (see 1:38 minute video below) It had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of earthquakes in its 57 years of operation.
• “It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,” said Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory. “I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control…. I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, terrible feeling.” When Friedman reached the dish, a cloud of dust hung in the air where the structure once stood, dashing hopes held by some scientists that the telescope could somehow be repaired.
• Scientists worldwide had petitioned US officials to reverse the NSF’s decision to close the observatory. The NSF said at the time that it intended to eventually reopen the visitor center and restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data.
• “I am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired,” said Abel Méndez, a physics and astrobiology professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo. “The world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more.” Méndez last used the telescope on August 6th, just days before a socket holding the auxiliary cable snapped in what experts believe could be a manufacturing error.
• About 250 scientists worldwide had been using the observatory when it closed in August, including Méndez, who was studying stars to detect habitable planets. The NSF, which owns the observatory (managed by the University of Central Florida), said crews who evaluated the structure after the first incident determined that the remaining cables could handle the additional weight. But on November 6th, another cable broke.
MYSTERY WIRE (SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — A huge, already damaged radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century completely collapsed on Tuesday.
Jonathan Friedman
The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish more than 400 feet below.
The U.S. National Science Foundation had earlier announced that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed.
Abel Méndez
An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November.
The collapse stunned many scientists who had relied on what was until recently the largest radio telescope in the world.
“It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,” said Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it. “I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control…. I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, terrible feeling.”
Friedman ran up a small hill near his home and confirmed his suspicions: A cloud of dust hung in the air where the structure once stood, demolishing hopes held by some scientists that the telescope could somehow be repaired.
“It’s a huge loss,” said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at the University of Puerto Rico who used the telescope for her doctorate. “It was a chapter of my life.”
1:38 minute video of the Aricibo collapse on December 1st (‘ABC News’ YouTube)
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Article by the Associated Press November 20, 2020 (nypost.com)
• On November 19th, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it will close the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (pictured above), in a blow to astronomers worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life. The independent, federally funded agency said it’s too dangerous to keep operating the single dish radio telescope after the significant damage it sustained in August when an auxiliary cable broke and tore a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaged the dome above it. Then on November 6th, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse.
• Ralph Gaume, director of NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, said, “The telescope is currently at serious risk of unexpected, uncontrolled collapse. Even attempts at stabilization or testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure.” “This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our number one priority,” said Sean Jones, the agency’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. “We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico.” “[But] we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely.”
• The 1,000-foot-wide Arecibo Observatory telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It has endured hurricanes, humidity, and a string of strong earthquakes. The world’s largest radio telescope (until the Chinas’ FAST telescope went operational in 2016), it was featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” In recent years, the NSF-owned facility has been managed by the University of Central Florida.
• Officials suspect a manufacturing error is to blame for the auxiliary cable that snapped after a socket failed. But they were surprised when a main cable broke about three months later given that it was supporting only about 60 percent of its capacity. “It was identified as an issue that needed to be addressed, but it wasn’t seen as an immediate threat,” said Ashley Zauderer, program officer for Arecibo Observatory at NSF.
• Scientists worldwide have used the telescope to track asteroids on a path to Earth, and to conduct research into habitable planets that led to a Nobel Prize. Pennsylvania State University astronomer and professor Alex Wolszczan, who worked at the observatory in the ’80s and early ’90s, called this a “sadly emotional moment”.
• More than 250 scientists have used the telescope, but it is also considered one of Puerto Rico’s main tourist attractions, drawing some 90,000 visitors a year. The observatory has long served as a training ground for hundreds of graduate students. Universities Space Research Association scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, Edgard Rivera-Valentín described the Arecibo telescope as “beyond an icon.” Professor Wolszczan noted that many scientists are still working on projects based on observations and data taken from the observatory. “The process of saying goodbye to Arecibo will certainly take some years.”
Sean Jones
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it will close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life.
The independent, federally funded agency said it’s too dangerous to keep operating the single dish radio telescope — one of the world’s largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August and tore a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaged the dome above it. Then on Nov. 6, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse.
NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found that
Ashley Zauderer
the structure would still be unstable in the long term.
“This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our number one priority,” said Sean Jones, the agency’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. “We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico.”
He said the goal was to preserve the telescope without placing people at risk, but, “we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely.”
Alex Wolszczan
The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. In its 57 years of operation, it endured hurricanes, endless humidity and a recent string of strong earthquakes.
The telescope boasts a 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” Scientists worldwide have used the dish along with the 900-ton platform hanging 450 feet above it to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable.
In recent years, the NSF-owned facility has been managed by the University of Central Florida.
Alex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University who helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets, told The Associated Press that while the news wasn’t surprising, it was disappointing. He worked at the telescope in the 1980s and early 1990s.
“I was hoping against hope that they would come up with some kind of solution to keep it open,” he said. “For a person who has had a lot of his scientific life associated with that telescope, this is a rather interesting and sadly emotional moment.”
1:38 minute video of the Arecibo Telescope collapse (‘ABC News’ YouTube)
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Article by Vistor Tangermann November 9, 2020 (futurism.com)
• A second cable has fallen, crushing the intricate reflector dish at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. A first auxiliary cable failed on August 10th, crushing a portion of the dish and resulting in a significant setback for the observatory. The massive dish was mainly used by SETI to hunt for extraterrestrial life. But research had to be put on pause for several months following the August event.
• Now, a main cable connected to the same support tower as the auxiliary cable failed this week, causing additional damage to both the dish and other nearby cables, according to a statement by the University of Central Florida, which co-manages the facility.
• Officials suspect the break may have been caused by the extra load the cables had to carry since the first cable failure. “This is certainly not what we wanted to see, but the important thing is that no one got hurt,” said observatory director Francisco Cordova. “We have been thoughtful in our evaluation and prioritized safety in planning for repairs that were supposed to begin Tuesday. Now this.”
• Engineers are hoping to support the structure with steel reinforcements to alleviate some of the additional load. Two replacement cables are already on their way to the observatory. The aging Arecibo radio telescope dates back to the early 1960s and has been in operation for over half a century. The reflector dish alone is 1,000 feet in diameter and is composed of 38,778 perforated aluminum panels.
Francisco Cordova
More bad news for the alien-hunting Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. A second cable has fallen, crushing the intricate reflector dish below.
A first auxiliary cable failed over the massive dish on August 10, crushing a portion of the dish and representing a significant setback for the observatory.
The dish was mainly used to hunt for extraterrestrial life — but research had to be put on pause for several months following the event.
Compounding the problem, a main cable — which was connected to the same support tower as the auxiliary cable — failed this week, causing additional damage to both the dish and other nearby cables, according to a statement by the University of Central Florida, which co-manages the facility.
Luckily, nobody was hurt.
Extra Load
The cause of the break has yet to be identified. Officials suspect it may have been caused by the extra load the cables had to carry since the first cable failure.
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Article by Dan Satherley August 16, 2020 (newshub.co.nz)
• Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory is one of the world’s largest telescopes, and was featured in the 1997 Jodie Foster film ‘Contact’ and 1995’s Bond classic ‘Goldeneye’. As depicted in the movies, the observatory was often employed in the search for extraterrestrials.
• Earlier in August, the University of Central Florida – which operates the facility – says a metal cable snapped, tearing a 30m-long gash in the dish. (pictured above) The damage was so extensive, it smashed through several other cables and platforms that support the dish, causing debris to rain down on the ground below and making it harder for technicians to access the site.
• “We have a team of experts assessing the situation,” Arecibo director Francisco Cordova said. “Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world.”
• Arecibo has been a key part of the international SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program, used to not only look for signals from outer space, but send them as well. The telescope is also a key part of Earth’s defense against incoming asteroids and comets that could potentially threaten life on Earth.
One of the world’s largest telescopes, used to look for extraterrestrial life, has been badly damaged in a freak accident.
Arecibo Observatory in happier days
Francisco Cordova
Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory is about three rugby fields wide, and featured in the 1997 Jodie Foster film Contact and 1995’s Bond classic Goldeneye.
The University of Central Florida – which operates the facility – says a metal cable snapped last week, tearing a 30m-long gash in the dish.
“We have a team of experts assessing the situation,” Arecibo director Francisco Cordova said.
“Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world.”
LiveScience reports the damage was so extensive, it “smashed through several other cables and platforms that support the dish, causing debris to rain down on the ground below and making it harder for technicians to access the site”.
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• Recent public appearances by former U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, the pilot who first encountered the “Tic Tac” UFO off of the coast of San Diego in November 2004, has brought up the subject of ‘Unidentified Submerged Objects’ or ‘USOs’. Whether optical illusions, mechanical malfunctions, secret government craft, or extraterrestrials – there’s a long history of USO sightings.
• In a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Fravor related a story that a fellow retired Navy helicopter pilot told him. This fellow was based at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. While recovering spent practice munitions from the water, the helicopter pilot twice spotted USOs. In the first incident, the pilot saw a “dark mass” underwater, described as big and “kinda circular”. He was certain it wasn’t a submarine. In the Navy helicopter pilot’s second incident, a practice torpedo that the pilot was sent to recover was “sucked down” into the depths of the ocean in the presence of a similar underwater object, never to be seen again.
• Fravor also says that a 79-year-old woman contacted him and told him that her father was a naval officer based at the naval station in San Francisco in the 1950s. When she was a child, her father showed her a telegram that stated unidentified objects had been seen going in and out of the water at a certain location. Her father told her, “We get these all the time, and it’s always in the same area.”
• This topic came up in the conversation because Fravor himself witnessed a USO on the day he was chasing the Tic Tac UFO off of San Diego. In fact, the only reason he noticed the Tic Tac UFO was because it was hovering over a large mysterious object sighted underwater. Fravor described the object as cross shaped and approximately the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner. He described the water above it as though it were “boiling” or “frothing,” and said the USO disappeared after it caught his attention.
• As covered in Ivan Sanderson’s 1970 book: Invisible Residents, devoted to USO sightings, on April 19, 1957, crew members aboard the Japanese fishing boat Kitsukawa Maru spotted two metallic silvery objects descending from the sky into the sea. The objects were estimated to be ten meters long, without wings of any kind, and violently hit the water.
• In 1963, during an anti-submarine warfare exercise off of Puerto Rico with the USS Wasp carrier group, a submarine broke off from the formation to pursue a USO. Sonar operators on one of the smaller vessels followed the chase. The operators wondered whether the USO may have been planted there by the Navy as part of the exercise, except that the object was traveling at over 150 knots (e.g.: about 175 miles per hour; modern Naval submarines can travel at 40 knots maximum) “[N]o less than [thirteen] craft,” including anti-submarine warfare patrol aircraft, tracked the high-speed [USO]” to depths of 27,000 feet. Technicians kept track of this object for four days.
• In 2007, a guest on a cruise ship off of California reported to the National UFO Reporting Center seeing three “nearly spherical objects” “evenly spaced” and “softly glowing” hovering just above the ocean surface as the ship passed by them. As she watched the objects, one of them “splashed down into the water and disappeared.”
• Another NUFORC report from April 2019 stated that an object resembling a “small white boat” flew up out of the ocean near Imperial Beach, California, and promptly “flew south at a very high rate of speed.”
This past weekend, former U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor was a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Fravor, who was the subject of a New York Times article about his 2004 UFO sighting, discussed a spooky new sighting a fellow pilot revealed to him after they were both out of the Navy.
Navy Commander David Fravor (Ret.)
According to Fravor, the eyewitness was a former pilot of the MH-53E Sea Dragon, the Navy version of the Marine Corps’ CH-53E Sea Stallion, based at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, on the island of Puerto Rico. Twice while recovering spent practice munitions out of the water, the pilot spotted a weird underwater object.
In the first incident, the pilot saw a “dark mass” underwater as he and his team retrieved a flying practice drone. The pilot described the object as a “big” mass, “kinda circular,” and he was certain it wasn’t a submarine. In the pilot’s second sighting, a practice torpedo that the pilot was sent to recover was “sucked down” into the depths of the ocean in the presence of a similar underwater object. The torpedo was never seen again.
Elsewhere in the interview, Fravor reveals that a 79-year-old woman contacted him after his sighting went public. The woman explained that her father, a naval officer, was at one time based at the naval station in San Francisco in the 1950s. When she was a child, her father showed her a telegram that stated unidentified objects had been sighted going in and out of the water at a now forgotten set of latitude and longitude coordinates. The woman’s father told her, “We get these all the time, and it’s always in the same area.”
These sightings are similar to Fravor’s own sighting. According to the retired Navy pilot, the only reason he had seen the now-infamous “Tic Tac” UFO was because it was hovering above a mysterious larger object that was sighted underwater. Fravor describes the object as cross shaped and approximately the size of a Boeing 737 jetliner. He has further described the water above it as though it were “boiling” or “frothing,” and said the object disappeared after it caught his attention.
In 1970, biologist Ivan Sanderson published the book Invisible Residents. Sanderson, a noted student of unusual phenomena, devoted the book to sightings of what were later called Unidentified Submerged Objects, or USOs. USOs are defined as unknown craft that are sighted in the water, sighted rising up out of the water, or diving into the water. Sanderson catalogued scores of reports of USOs:
On the 19th of April, 1957, crew members aboard the Kitsukawa Maru, a Japanese fishing boat, spotted two metallic silvery objects descending from the sky into the sea (original emphasis). The objects, estimated to be ten meters long, were without wings of any kind. As the hit the water, they created a violent turbulence. The exact location was reported as 31° 15’ N and 143° 30’ E.
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• The US Navy applied for three patents in 2016. One of them was for a “craft using an inertial mass reduction device”, and it was granted last year. US Navy scientist Salvatore Cezar Pais filed the patent. The theoretical craft would use an ‘inertial mass reduction device’ generating artificial gravity waves. With this reduction in mass, it thereby lessens the object’s resistance to motion, or ‘inertia’, and is able to travel at a much greater velocity in water, air or even space.
• ‘It is possible to reduce the inertial mass and hence the gravitational mass, of a system/object in motion, by an abrupt perturbation of the non-linear background of local space-time,’ the patent states. ‘This hybrid craft would move with great ease through the air/space/water mediums, by being enclosed in a vacuum plasma bubble/sheath.’
• The craft described in the patent features a cavity wall filled with gas, which is then made to vibrate using powerful electromagnetic waves. This then creates a vacuum around the craft, allowing it to propel itself at high speeds.
• Earlier this year, it was revealed that US government researchers investigated wormholes, antigravity, invisibility cloaking, warp drives and high energy laser weapons during an official but covert probe into ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ called the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program (AATIP). The program allegedly ended in 2012. Details of AATIP were first released in 2017.
• Nick Pope, former UFO investigator at the Ministry of Defence, noted that this patented design was “uncannily similar” to the ‘tic tac UFO’ that was reported by Navy jet pilots from the USS Nimitz off of the coast of San Diego in 2004. The pilots saw a huge patch of churning, turbulent water suggesting something was beneath the surface, and then a tic tac UFO that accelerated at an ‘impossibly’ high speed. Pope also said that a similar incident of a UFO flying underwater occurred in Puerto Rico in 2013. “It’s possible that the patent is inspired by the incident and is part of an attempt to work out the technology behind the objects that were chased by the Navy F-18s. This is known as ‘reverse-engineering’,” says Pope.
• The Navy patent also mentions Dr. Harold Puthoff, a key figure in AATIP who commissioned the 38 papers exploring exotic propulsion system technologies, which were used in Defense Intelligence Agency briefings filed with the US Congress. This is the type of “technology that we’d need for interstellar travel,” Pope added. “These patents might be the first steps in taking humankind to the stars.”
• Another Navy patent was for a “high-frequency gravitational wave generator”. “If they have built the technology described in the patents, I’m sure the program is highly classified,” said Pope. “The bottom line is that if any of this works, we’re in game-changing territory.”
• Although the US Navy applied for the patent in 2016 and it was granted last year, it doesn’t necessarily mean the craft has been built and tested. However, the technology is further evidence of the military’s interest in developing ‘exotic’ technologies.
Military inventors filed plans for a highly unusual flying machine which uses an ‘inertial mass reduction device’ to travel at ‘extreme speeds’. What that means is that the aircraft uses complex technology to reduce its mass and thereby lessen inertia (an object’s resistance to motion) so it can zoom along at high velocities. The patent is highly complex and describes methods of reducing the mass of an aircraft using various techniques including the generation of gravity waves, which were first detected in 2016 after being produced when two black holes collided.
‘It is possible to reduce the inertial mass and hence the gravitational mass, of a system/object in motion, by an abrupt perturbation of the non-linear background of local spacetime,’ the patent says. The craft described in the patent features a cavity wall filled with gas, which is then made to vibrate using powerful electromagnetic waves. This then creates a vacuum around the craft, allowing it to propel itself at high speeds. The UFO-style ship can be used in water, air or even space. ‘It is possible to envision a hybrid aerospace/undersea craft (HAUC), which due to the physical mechanisms enabled with the inertial mass reduction device, can function as a submersible craft capable of extreme underwater speeds… and enhanced stealth capabilities,’ the patent continues. ‘This hybrid craft would move with great ease through the air/space/water mediums, by being enclosed in a vacuum plasma bubble/sheath.’ Although the US Navy applied for the patent in 2016 and it was granted last year, it doesn’t necessarily mean the craft has been built and tested. However, the technology is further evidence of the military’s interest in developing ‘exotic’ technologies.
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• In 1974, scientists at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used the 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope to send a carefully crafted radio broadcast into outer space – a message of zeros and ones meant to alert aliens to our existence for the first time. In honor of the 45th anniversary of that transmission, researchers at the observatory are pondering how to design a follow-up dispatch. Rather than asking their fellow experts, they’ve launched a global contest inviting youth, from kindergarteners to 16-year-olds, to create the New Arecibo Message.
• Says Abe Pacini, a researcher at Arecibo, “Sometimes the scientists are so focused on their topics and they can see stuff very deep but they cannot see very broad… Students know a little bit about everything, so they can see the big picture better. For sure they can design a message that is actually much more important.” Teams composed of up to ten students plus one mentor must register by March 20th. The more diverse the team is, the more points it gets. The contest guidelines recommend using social media to find possible teammates in other countries or regions. The Arecibo scientists will determine which, if any, message will be selected to represent Earth.
• The 1974 Arecibo message was authored by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan and provided basic information about us, like the position of Earth in our solar system, the size of the human population, the shape of the human body, and the double helix structure of DNA. (The information about the nucleotides in DNA has since been shown to be false.) The message was beamed at M13, a globular star cluster 25,000 light years away. (But these primitive radio waves would take 25,000 years for the message to get there.)
• Another determination that the scientists will make is the “risks of exposure” inherent in messaging alien civilizations. Scientists like the late Stephen Hawking and technologists like Elon Musk have warned that communicating with extraterrestrials could pose an existential threat to the Earth if the message is received by hostile aliens. In 2015, SETI researchers, Elon Musk, and others released a statement saying, “We strongly encourage vigorous international debate by a broadly representative body prior to engaging further in this activity.”
• Astronomer and science fiction author David Brin, one of the most vocal critics of an Arecibo Message, says that, “[M]ost of us are much more concerned about the arrogance these zealots are displaying by presuming to speak for a civilization of 8 billion people without ever exposing their assumptions to normal debate and risk assessment.” Brin also noted, “Their instrument (the Arecibo Telescope) is funded by the taxpayers.”
• Douglas Vakoch, an astrobiologist who worked at SETI before splitting off to found his own international organization, Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), points out that “[A]ny civilization that could do us harm would already know we’re here from our accidental TV and radio leakage.” Vakoch says that the most important aspect of this communication may be our announcing to the galaxy that we are ready to make contact. Known as the ‘Zoo Hypothesis’, this is the idea that extraterrestrials may be keeping an eye on our planet but are waiting for us to indicate that we want to be in contact and that we’re sophisticated enough to merit attention.
• Neither a 1967 Outer Space Treaty ratified by dozens of countries and adopted by the United Nations which laid out an anti-weaponization framework for space, nor a SETI post-ET-detection protocol drafted in the 1980’s, addresses any protocol for actively sending out messages to other civilizations.
• For Brin, all this anxiety over interstellar communication seems like a reflection of our anxieties about communicating with one another. Underneath the question of how to talk to alien minds is a question that’s much closer to home: how to make ourselves understood to other minds right here on Earth.
• On a bulletin board at the Arecibo visitor center where kids were invited to post messages, one child’s misspelled missive was especially poignant: “Earth is destroying it self. Help us! Please help! Send better knowledg.”
• [Editor’s Note] Sending radio waves into space is like traveling across the American continent in horse-drawn covered wagons. This is just another example of mainstream scientists pretending to be on the cutting edge of space exploration when, in fact, our secret space programs are hundreds of years more advanced in space technology. Also, this speculation as to what kinds of extraterrestrials are out there, and the hand-wringing at what hostile ETs might do to our planet if we are “found”, is just more disinformation. We already know that many, many types of ET beings have already been here throughout our human development on Earth, and have been actively interacting with Earth humans since WWII. All of this drama about searching for intelligent life in the cosmos is simply theater to placate a mind-controlled Earth populace.
The scientists at Arecibo Observatory, a gigantic radio telescope in Puerto Rico, are some of the smartest astronomers and physicists in the world. But they need help with their next big project — and for that, they’re turning to kids.
In 1974, scientists used the 1,000-foot-wide telescope to send a carefully crafted radio broadcast into outer space, a message of zeros and ones meant to alert aliens to our existence.
It was humanity’s first interstellar message intended to be picked up by aliens. We haven’t heard back from E.T. yet. But in honor of the 45th anniversary of that transmission, the researchers at the observatory are pondering how to design a follow-up dispatch. Rather than asking their fellow experts, they’ve launched a global contest inviting youth — from kindergarteners to 16-year-olds — to create the New Arecibo Message.
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
The grand prize? A chance to have your message broadcast into the stars, and to potentially become the first human being ever to communicate with aliens.
I asked Alessandra Abe Pacini, a researcher at Arecibo who helped generate the idea for the contest, why kids are the best people for the job. “Sometimes the scientists are so focused on their topics and they can see stuff very deep but they cannot see very broad,” she said. “Students know a little bit about everything, so they can see the big picture better. For sure they can design a message that is actually much more important.”
But designing messages to aliens is a tricky business, on multiple levels. How do you write a missive that an alien intelligence will be able to understand? Should you avoid including sensitive information about humanity, in case that emboldens aliens to come to our planet and annihilate our species? Should you avoid transmitting messages into outer space altogether, because even just alerting aliens to our existence is too risky?
These questions are at the heart of a long-running, and sometimes very heated, debate among scientists. There’s no consensus about any of them, or even about the meta-question of who gets to decide on the answers.
One thing is clear, though: The stakes are extremely high. As scientists like the late Stephen Hawking and technologists like Elon Musk have warned, communicating with extraterrestrials could pose a catastrophic risk to humanity. In fact, if we send out a message and it’s received by less-than-friendly aliens, that could pose an existential threat not only to the human species but to every species on Earth.
The Original Arecibo Message
When space scientists wanted to celebrate a huge upgrade that had been made to the Arecibo Observatory in 1974, two of their greatest minds stepped up to draft a memo to aliens. It would be broadcast from the telescope during a public ceremony. Frank Drake, who came up with the famous “Drake Equation” for estimating the odds that intelligent life exists in our galaxy, crafted the message with help from Carl Sagan, the astronomer and popular science writer who penned Contact and popularized the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) organization.
Written in binary code — a series of ones and zeros — the message was designed with the hope of being intelligible to any aliens who might be listening. It sought to give them some basic information about us, like the position of Earth in our solar system, the size of the human population, the shape of the human body, and the double helix structure of DNA. When you look at the message in pictogram form, you can see all these components and more.
But this interstellar postcard was directed at M13, a globular star cluster 25,000 light years away, which may help explain why we haven’t heard back yet — it’ll take 25,000 years for the message to get there and the same amount of time for any reply to get back to us. The scientists chose that destination partly because the star cluster was big and relatively close, and partly just because it was within the telescope’s declination range (the part of the sky it can target) at the time of the ceremony.
In other words, the scientists weren’t really aiming to communicate with an alien civilization in their lifetimes so much as they were trying to publicly showcase the fact that their telescope could now do something incredible: For nearly three minutes, it sent a cosmic hello from humanity into the sky, as the audience assembled on site was moved to tears.
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• In 1974, the first Arecibo Message transmitted from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was designed by SETI astronomers including Frank Drake and Carl Sagen and was beamed by radio transmission from the Arecibo telescope in the direction of the M13 star cluster in the constellation Hercules. It was meant as an intergalactic greeting from planet Earth. (see image of message below)
• The shapes shown on the Arecibo Message grid represent a variety of concepts ranging from the numbers 1 through 10 to the chemical constituents of DNA, our solar system’s planets and the telescope itself, plus a stick figure that stands for humanity. Other types of messages have been sent out periodically since then as well.
• Since the first transmission was sent in 1974, the three minutes’ worth of radio waves have rippled out to a distance of 44 light-years, or less than 0.2 percent of the way to M13 star cluster. Experts acknowledge that it’s extremely unlikely the message will ever be detected and decoded by an alien civilization.
• Now the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo Observatory wants to transmit a second Arecibo Message from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope. They’ve announced a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials. In order to qualify and ultimately register, student competitors will first need to solve a series of brain-teasing puzzles posted on Arecibo’s website. The contest is open to teams from around the world, in classes ranging from kindergarten to college. Each team should consist of five students plus an adult mentor – for example, a teacher, professor or professional scientist. The first challenge will be posted on December 16th. Clues and follow-up activities will be rolled out periodically over the next year, and the winning team is due to be revealed next fall during a celebration of the Arecibo Message’s 45th anniversary. (see 1:08 minute video below)
• Experts continue to debate the wisdom of broadcasting our existence to the rest of the universe. Most famously, the late physicist Stephen Hawking said letting extraterrestrials know where we are could turn out as badly for us as Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World turned out for Native Americans.
The Arecibo Observatory today kicked off a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials, 44 years to the day since the first deliberate message was sent out from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope.
“Our society and our technology have changed a lot since 1974,” Francisco Cordova, the observatory’s director, said in a news release. “So if we were assembling our message today, what would it say? What would it look like? What one would need to learn to be able to design the right updated message from the earthlings? Those are the questions we are posing to young people around the world through the New Arecibo Message – the global challenge.”
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
It’s not just about the message, however: Competitors will have to solve brain-teasing puzzles posted on Arecibo’s website in order to qualify, get instructions, register and submit their designs. Along the way, they’ll learn about space science, the scientific method and Arecibo’s story.
“We have quite a few surprises in store for participants, and we will be sharing more details as the competition progresses,” Cordova said.
The contest is open to teams from around the world, in classes ranging from kindergarten to college. Each team should consist of five students plus an adult mentor – for example, a teacher, professor or professional scientist. The first challenge will be posted on Dec. 16.
The 1st Arecibo Message
“Teams should wait until the release of the first challenge on December 16, since they will need to solve that challenge to be able to register,” Abel Méndez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, told me in an email. “Meanwhile, team leaders should subscribe to the Arecibo newsletter for updates and start forming their own teams.”
Clues and follow-up activities will be rolled out periodically over the next year, and the winning team is due to be revealed next fall during a celebration of the Arecibo Message’s 45th anniversary.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.
An alien which reportedly ‘got out of its UFO and walked down the street’ resembled a mythical
creature according to the people who claim to have seen it, it has been reported.
inches) tall, with an oval head, large eyes and three fingers on its hands.
The chupacabra, which translates as ‘goat-sucker’, is a legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, with its first purported sightings reported in Puerto Rico in 1995.
characteristic of this object is as if it were throwing fire,” ufologist Javier Aliaga told local media.
Minutes after the alien’s supposed disappearance, the light in the sky went out, leaving circles in the grass where it had shone, reports of the incident said.
Thursday that it will close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life.
the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse.
