There's an idea - common, but not popular in scientific circles - that all life on Earth was seeded from comets, asteroids or meteors which struck the planet and contained the building blocks necessary to kickstart the evolutionary process.
It's called "panspermia" and it caused an all-in boffin barney some 15 years ago when several scientists backed claims there was evidence of life in a Martian meteorite found in the Allan Hills in Antarctica.
It's been proven that life can survive in space, just as it's been proven that the interior of the Mars meteorite never rose above 50C during its journey to Earth.
Unfortunately for alien-spotters, those cells can also be found on Earth, so the argument's never been settled.
Then in July 2001, the rain turned red in India.
And not just red - The Hindu claimed witness reports of yellow, green and black rain in the months that followed.
The first theory to emerge was that it was simply sand or dust picked up from a desert, but a local physicist, Godfrey Louis, found that under a microscope, the water contained cells that looked like bugs.
Five years later, he published a theory suggesting the bugs that turned the rain red in India may have come from a comet that exploded above the Earth and seeded clouds.
Today, after a further four years of studying the cells, joined by a leading panspermia theorist from the UK, Chandra Wickramasinghe, Professor Louis has published claims that they are unlike anything found on Earth.
He says the cells - inert at room temperature - begin to reproduce at 121C.
Within two hours of being exposed to the heat, "daughter cells appear within the original mother cells and the number of cells in the samples increases with length of exposure", they say in the new report.
While many spores on Earth can survive that kind of extreme heat, none have yet been discovered that can reproduce in those conditions, much less require it to begin reproducing.
The team also found an unusual pattern in the way the cells changed colour under UV light, known as "fluorescence behaviour".
They said it was "in remarkable correspondence" with red emissions from the Red Rectangle planetary nebula some 2300 light years away, "suggesting, though not proving, an extraterrestrial origin".
While the panspermia angle is already being rejected by the scientific community at large, there's plenty of interest in the final finding of Prof Louis's team - the cells contain no DNA.
"As a biologist, let me assure you that a cell-sized and shaped organism that reproduces, lives off LB and doesn't appear to have any nucleic acid template (DNA or RNA) is a revolutionary discovery in and of itself," one commenter wrote at TechnologyReview.
The only lifeforms that occur on Earth without DNA, according to another commenter, are proteins known as "prions", best known on Earth as the cause of Mad Cow Disease.
AMATEUR astronomers are enjoying a cat-and-mouse game with the US military in keeping track of its secret space plane, the X-37B.
The X-37B was launched in April amid much publicity, but scant detail about its true use.
Built by Boeing's Phantom Works division, the X-37B program was originally headed by NASA.
It was later turned over to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit.
Only a very select few in the US military know what it's for, but observers on Earth believe they're putting together the puzzle piece by piece.
Several sources claim quote arms control advocates who say it's clearly the beginning of the "weaponisation of space".
In May, avid skywatcher Ted Molczan studied the X-37B's orbit from his home in Toronto and said its behaviour suggested it was testing sensors for a range of new spy satellites.
Since then, the X-37B been arguably the least-secret secret project on the planet, as fellow backyard astronomers joined in the scrutiny, aided by how-to video guides and apps such as the Simple Satellite Tracker.
That is, they did until July 29, when the shuttle disappeared, causing all kinds of consternation and conspiracy theories about its fate.
It took amateur skywatcher Greg Roberts of Cape Town, South Africa, who noticed that it failed to appear as scheduled above his base on August 14, another five days to find it.
When he did, he noticed it was some 30km higher and on a different trajectory, according to calculations from other colleagues in Rome and Oklahoma.
The X-37B's new track means it takes six days to pass the same spot on Earth, as opposed to its original four-day track.
Mr Molczan believes this may be another small piece to the puzzle about what role the shuttle may play in US military operations.
"This small change of orbit may have been a test of OTV-1's manoeuvring system, or a requirement of whatever payload may be aboard, or both," he said in a release paper about Roberts' X-37B find.
The shuttle has been in orbit now for 124 days. It uses a solar array once in space for power, which theoretically will allow it to stay airborne for up to 270 days.
But the additional presence of large fuel tanks and a rocket motor allows it to change orbit, as evidenced by the latest sudden change of course.
According to the The Register, this is a key component of its surveillance-related capabilities, along with the fact it can land in a much more versatile fashion than other shuttles.
Using its "cross-range" wings, it can duck off elsewhere once its entered the Earth's atmosphere rather than follow its oribital track to a pre-specified landing pad.
This means the X-37B can get up and down from space in one orbit, as its wings allow it to compensate for the slight turn in the Earth and bend it back to its original launch pad.
The Register says that capability would make it difficult to track, as it would only pass over a region once.
Theoretically, it could drop a spy satellite on one run, then pick it up on the next without the satellite having ever been detected.
Other observers claim the X-37B can carry a payload roughly the size of a medium-sized truck bed, or enough to hold a spy satellite.
According to the Pentagon, a second X-37B is under construction, so expect the guessing game to continue for some time about what the US military is really up to in space.
Until now, all that remains known about the X-37B is that is it has at least one trick - the ability to hide from skywatchers for two weeks.
Maybe I should have a 'duh!' category.... soon NASA will let on that life does actually exist out there, but only of the microbial kind, nothing comparable to the splendor of us earthlings, being the lonely creation of God which we are presumed to be...
Scientists celebrated Sunday after finding more than 700 suspected new planets -- including up to 140 similar in size to Earth -- in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory.
Early results from NASA’s Kepler Mission, a small satellite observing deep space, suggested planets like Earth were far more common than previously thought.
Past discoveries suggested most planets outside our solar system were gas giants
such as Jupiter and Saturn -- but the new evidence tipped the balance in favor of solid worlds.
Astronomers said the discovery meant the chances of eventually finding truly Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life rose sharply.
NASA so far formally announced only five new exoplanets -- those outside our solar system -- from the mission because its scientists were still analyzing Kepler’s finds to confirm they are actually planets.
“The figures suggest our galaxy, the Milky Way [which has more than 100 billion stars] will contain 100 million habitable planets, and soon we will be identifying the first of them,” said Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a scientist on the Kepler Mission. "There is a lot more work we need to do with this, but the statistical result is loud and clear, and it is that planets like our own Earth are out there."
The electronic neural/telepathic grid that is being constructed around us has long been seen as the final solution to the question of uncertainty in the science of perception management. The essence of this construct that combines its power through various applications and devices is to amass data streams that provide for the opportunity of instantaneous feedback, made actual with near instantaneous response capability.
Through the use of vital swarm information, bodies forming into mass can be dispersed strategically; populations can be herded and divided scientifically using frequency weapons which utilize electromagnetic modulation, inducing in its recipients visual/auditory hallucinations, fear, pain, confusion, depression and even organ failure and cancer. Television is already used to do much of this to great effect. Consider that during prime time programming, there are sometimes millions of people watching the exact same show, viewing the exact same commercials and being cajoled to feel the exact same emotions, implicating the exact same collective imprint. The relationship of the human to the television is a cultural phenomena that spans the globe; those who are so inclined often feel a void in their own home if the consoling hum of the television is not present. I would estimate that the vast majority of homes and vehicles are either saturated by the presence of a television experience or radio experience during most of the waking day.
The technology that is being fed into this neural 'defence shield' architecture is often times the spin-off of decades old black operation technologies. Much of what we see now being employed as regards military hardware, computing power, and modulation technology has trickled down from the long since established Technology Trust, which oversees and coordinates all transfers of black project material to the corporate sector. What we see discussed in the media is always as a matter taken from what is known to exist, obviously, though what lays concealed can sometimes be extracted from the clues embedded in what is revealed under the pretenses of a false context. The nano-dust so described in the video above by a silicon valley type is a good example of an out of context rendering. The reality of nano-dust and bio-engineering is already present, and already functions as it has been intended.
The blanket of particulate matter that accosts all of us in the industrialized world and beyond, in the form of plane spread nano-materials, is indeed the pixie dust of the technocracy which is used to embed the environment with a feedback capability. Using electromagnetic 'sonar' emitted from ELF/ULF/Radar towers a feedback system of biorhythm and emotional states can be used to modulate and entrain the human mind field by varying the frequency and amplitude emitted from the transmitters. People can be induced into lethargy, anxiety, giddiness, foolishness, anger, and even made to lose motor control of their bodies, all very easily. In fact this is a science that has long since been perfected. That this technology is so little known and even less discussed lies at the heart of a matter that goes much deeper than the social/physical Panopticon but extends beyond what we accept as the boundaries of perception.
Regarding the physical containment of humanity, a curious fact that is now relatively well known in certain circles comes to mind - namely, that the moon is basically hollow; it consists of largely empty cavities and a surrounding metal, radioactive shell. When NASA determined to crash some objects into the moon they found that it rang like a bell. In fact the moon is apparently constructed convincingly like an interstellar ship would be.
Here are a couple of links that contain strange facts about the moon:
The moon in reality has been our cyclops in the sky for some time, brought into orbit thousands of years ago, influencing our electromagnetic composition, defining our reality. The current development of the Panopticon is an inner circle development and represents the final layer of control, brought about to redirect human destiny during a period of an intensifying human evolutionary impulse. This generation and this lifetime is the final act of an old and long winded chapter, this chapter has been called 'The Last War for Freedom'. During the next 50 years the human experiential trajectory is decided for the next 1000.
While the Top End and Central Australia have been battered by torrential rains, a Territory town has had fish falling from the sky.
The freak phenomena happened not once, but twice, on Thursday and Friday afternoon about 6pm at Lajamanu, about 550km southwest of Katherine.
Newsbreaker Christine Balmer, who took these photos of the fish on the ground and in a bucket, had to pinch herself when she was told ``hundreds and hundreds" of small white fish had fallen from the sky.
"It rained fish in Lajamanu on Thursday and Friday night," she said, "They fell from the sky everywhere.
"Locals were picking them up off the footy oval and on the ground everywhere.
"These fish were alive when they hit the ground."
Mrs Balmer, the aged care co-ordinator at the Lajamanu Aged Care Centre, said her family interstate thought she had lost the plot when she told them about the event.
"I haven’t lost my marbles," she said, reassuring herself. "Thank god it didn’t rain crocodiles."
Lajamanu sits on the edge of the Tanami Desert, hundreds of kilometres from Lake Argyle and Lake Elliott and even further from the coast. But it’s not the first time the remote community has been bombarded by fins from above.
In 2004, locals reported fish falling from the sky, and in 1974, a similar incident captured international headlines.
The small white fish are believed to be spangled perch, which are very common through much of northern Australia.
Weather bureau senior forecaster Ashley Patterson said the geological conditions were perfect on Friday for a tornado in the Douglas Daly region.
He said it would have been an ideal weather situation to allow the phenomena to occur - but no tornados have been reported to the authority.
"It’s a very unusual event," he said. "With an updraft, (fish and water picked up) could get up high - up to 60,000 or 70,000 feet.
"Or possibly from a tornado over a large water body - but we haven’t had any reports," he said.
I have the higher quality footage of the video below in my media archive, I can't remember which documentary it came from at the moment, but the video itself was never released by NASA. The reason it's now in the public domain, if I remember even somewhat correctly, is because the real time feed from the STS to the NASA down-link was intercepted by a Vancouver area satellite/radio technician who had the equipment to capture it. He found the band in question one day while scanning the skies and left the stream on record. Hundreds of hours of footage such as that below currently exists, all thanks to that single intercept, which alone constitutes the most compelling series of video disclosures the world has seen to date (publically).
