Breakthrough BLINDNESS Treatment Will Cost $425,000 Per Eye, IF It Works

WASHINGTON (AP) — A first-of-its kind genetic treatment for blindness will cost $850,000, less than the $1 million price tag that had been expected, but it's still among the most expensive genetic therapies in the world.

Spark Therapeutics says it decided on the lower price tag for Luxturna (Lux-turn-a) after hearing concerns from health insurers about their ability to cover the injectable treatment.

Consternation over skyrocketing drug prices, especially in the U.S., has led to intense scrutiny from patients, Congress, insurers and hospitals.

"We wanted to balance the value and the affordability concerns with a responsible price that would ensure access to patients," said CEO Jeffrey Marrazzo, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Luxturna is still significantly more expensive than nearly every other drug on the global market, including two other gene therapies approved earlier last year in the U.S. Approved last month, Luxturna, is the nation's first gene therapy for an inherited disease. It can improve the vision of those with a rare form of blindness that is estimated to affect just a few thousand people in the U.S.

Luxturna is an injection — one for each eye — that replaces a defective gene in the retina, tissue at the back of the eye that converts light into electric signals that produce vision. The therapy will cost $425,000 per injection.

The treatment is part of an emerging field of medicine that could produce dozens of new gene-targeting medications in the next few years.

There are questions about the wisdom of devoting so much energy to specialty drugs, which are used to treat so few people, but still account for a growing slice of overall health care costs.

Drugmakers have historically offered little explanation for the prices they charge. However, some companies have begun to offer more detailed reasoning as the backlash against drug prices has grown more heated.

Spark Therapeutics, based in Philadelphia, has said that the cost for a lifetime of blindness — including lost earnings and caregiver wages — can easily exceed $1 million.

Not everyone agrees with that argument. A preliminary analysis by one group found the drug would have to be priced significantly lower "to be a cost-effective intervention."

The estimate by the non-profit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review assumes the drug would maintain patients' vision for 10 years. However, Spark expects the drug's effect to be long-lasting, if not lifelong, though it has only tracked patients for about four years.

At least one gene therapy sold oversees has already crossed the $1-million price threshold.

The treatment for a rare protein disorder launched in 2012 with a price of $1.2 million. Manufacturer uniQure stopped selling the drug earlier last year after seeing a lack of demand. The drug was never approved in the U.S.

Like most prescription medicines in the U.S., most of the immediate costs of Luxturna will be borne by insurers, including private plans and government programs. For patients, Spark said it would cover all out-of-pocket expenses needed to obtain the medication, including transportation to hospitals trained to administer the injections.

Spark will try to deflect some pricing concerns by offering unconventional payment plans to insurers. Under one arrangement with the non-profit insurer Harvard Pilgrim, Spark will repay some of Luxturna's costs if patients don't experience the expected improvements in vision. The company did not disclose how much money would be returned to the insurer, which covers more than a million people in New England.

Spark said it is also discussing a proposal in which insurers would pay for the drug in installments over several years. That idea would apply to government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which provide health coverage to the poor and elderly.

THIS is Why it has Been SO COLD in a Warmer World According to Science

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anchorage, Alaska, was warmer Tuesday than Jacksonville, Florida. The weather in the U.S. is that upside down.

That's because the Arctic's deeply frigid weather escaped its regular atmospheric jail that traps the worst cold. It then meandered south to the central and eastern United States.

And this has been happening more often in recent times, scientists say.

___

WHY IS IT SO COLD?

Super cold air is normally locked up in the Arctic in the polar vortex , which is a gigantic circular weather pattern around the North Pole. A strong polar vortex keeps that cold air hemmed in.

"Then when it weakens, it causes like a dam to burst," and the cold air heads south, said Judah Cohen, a winter storm expert for Atmospheric Environmental Research, a commercial firm outside Boston.

"This is not record-breaking for Canada or Alaska or northern Siberia, it's just misplaced," said Cohen, who had forecast a colder than normal winter for much of the U.S.

IS THIS UNUSUAL?

Yes, but more for how long — about 10 days — the cold has lasted, than how cold it has been. On Tuesday, Boston tied its seven-day record for the most consecutive days at or below 20 degrees that was set exactly 100 years ago.

More than 1,600 daily records for cold were tied or broken in the last week of December, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For Greg Carbin of the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center, the most meaningful statistics are how last week's average temperature was the second coldest in more than a century of record-keeping for Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City, third coldest in Pittsburgh and fifth coldest in New York City.

IS IT JUST THE U.S.?

Pretty much. While the United States has been in the deep freeze, the rest of the globe has been toastier than normal. The globe as a whole was 0.9 degrees (0.5 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal Tuesday and the Arctic was more than 6 degrees warmer than normal (3.4 degrees Celsius), according to the University of Maine Climate Change Institute's analysis .

WHAT'S NEXT?

The cold will continue and could actually worsen for much of the East Coast this weekend because of a monster storm that's brewing in the Atlantic and Caribbean, what meteorologists are calling a "snow hurricane" or "bomb cyclone."

But forecasters don't think the storm will hit the East Coast, keeping most of the snow and worst winds over open ocean, although parts of the Northeast are still likely to get high winds, waves and some snow.

"For the Northeast, this weekend might be the coldest of the coldest with the storm," said Jason Furtado, a University of Oklahoma meteorology professor. "We could be ending (the cold snap) with a big hurrah."

WHAT MAKES THE POLAR VORTEX MOVE?

This is an area of hot debate and research among scientists and probably is a mix of human-caused climate change and natural variability, said Furtado. Climate change hasn't made the polar vortex more extreme, but it probably is making it move more, which makes the weather seem more extreme, he said.

A recent study by Potsdam Institute climate scientist Marlene Kretschmer found the polar vortex has weakened and meandered more often since 1990, but that study focused more on Europe. Ongoing research shows that there seems to be a similar connection for more frequent Arctic cold snaps like what the U.S. is now experiencing, Kretschmer said.

HOW CAN IT BE SO COLD WITH GLOBAL WARMING?

Don't confuse weather — which is a few days or weeks in one region — with climate, which is over years and decades and global. Weather is like a person's mood, which changes frequently, while climate is like someone's personality, which is more long-term, Furtado said.

"A few cold days doesn't disprove climate change," Furtado said. "That's just silly. Just like a couple down days on the stock market doesn't mean the economy is going into the trash."

This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

India's New 'DRIVERLESS' Metro Train Keeps Driver for now

 

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's capital launched a metro train with driverless technology Monday, though officials said it would operate with a driver for at least a year or two.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took an inaugural ride on a short section of the 12.6-kilometer (7.8-mile) Magenta Line, which connects the southern part of New Delhi with the satellite city of Noida, an IT hub across the Yamuna river.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corp. has said the highly automated train will run initially with a driver but could become driverless in the future. An official told the Indian Express newspaper that it would have human operators for "a year or two."

One of the new trains crashed through a wall at a depot last week, sparking concern about the automation technology. However, Delhi Metro said human error was the cause, with workers forgetting to re-engage the brakes after they had been disengaged for maintenance. The train rolled down a ramp and into the wall.

The Magenta Line is the latest addition to the Delhi Metro system, which opened 15 years ago and covers more than 200 kilometers (125 miles). It has made commuting to work and school much easier for many Delhi residents, though road congestion and air pollution remain serious problems.

'EXTINCT' Pig Spotted on Camera

While a lot of people wouldn't think of pigs as being 'good looking', there is an uncontested winner for the title of 'world's ugliest pig'. This porker was feared extinct but has recently been spotted on a trail camera.

The Javan Warty Pig won't be winning any beauty pageants, but scientists have snapped a picture showing that the species does have a chance at continued existence.

The warty pig has been on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) endangered species list since 1996.

Their numbers had dwindled to the point they were feared extinct due to a combination of excessive hunting and continued loss of suitable habitat. Dr Johanna Rode-Margono from Chester Zoo lead the survey, she told BBC News, “We were worried that all or most would have disappeared.”

"There is still hope," Dr Rode-Margono said, "If we can manage to design some effective conservation projects, maybe we can keep them.” A captive breeding program has been established to ensure these less than beautiful beasts survive.

"For me, they are not ugly they are beautiful. And everything in our ecosystem is connected, every tree, every plant, every animal. They depend on each other. If something breaks away, something else [could] breakaway, and that's a chain reaction where we can't foresee what will happen."

These unsightly swine play an important ecological role to the tropical forests they are native too. Not only do they till the soil by rooting for insects, but they spread seeds and clear brush to allow young saplings to take root.

http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/21174/0

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42433938

CREEPY SKULL Shaped Asteroid Set to Return in 2018

Hollywood has done a good job of filling our minds with the destruction that would be and has been unleashed upon the Earth through a collision with anyone of the millions of stellar bodies that share the solar system with us.

Many of us can vividly recall a multimillion-dollar CGI scene depicting a city being leveled by a direct impact, or the resulting thousand-foot- high tsunami wiping any and all traces of human civilization from its path.

If that wasn't bad enough, astronomers have discovered that one of these potential doomsday harbingers looks eerily like a skull. This isn't our first encounter with the 2,000 foot across TB145, it passed by us on Halloween 2015 at a distance of about 300,000 miles. 300,000 miles may sound like not that close, but that's about the average distance the moon orbits the Earth.

Its closest encounters with us are at 3-year intervals, according to space.com. Astronomers believe this creepy cosmic companion maybe a dead comet, meaning that it has exhausted all of the volatile chemicals that are blown away from the core by solar winds.

"We found that the object reflects about six percent of the light it receives from the sun,"; said Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona. That is similar to fresh asphalt, and while here on Earth we think that is pretty dark, it is brighter than a typical comet which reflects only 3 to 5 percent of the light.

"That suggests it could be cometary in origin –- but as there is no coma evident, the conclusion is it is a dead comet.” said Reddy. But rest easy as TB145 will stay a safe 24 million miles away this coming fall, which is about one quarter the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Sources:
https://www.space.com/39173-halloween- asteroid-2015- tb145-returns- 2018.html
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/halloween-skies- to-include- dead-comet- flyby
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/animation_2015_tb145-1041x1041.gif

The ANCIENT Underground Oceans on MARS

Our neighbor in space, the planet Mars, has been the subject of humanity’s fascination over many years. In our solar system, this red planet is the fourth one nearest to the sun and our planet’s second closest neighbor after the terrestrial planet Venus. But aside from its proximity to our own planet and its beautiful reddish appearance, our interest in unraveling the mysteries of Mars really stems from the similarities it shares with our own planet and the potential for its habitability. It is believed by many scientists that this terrestrial planet was once more habitable than it is today. Some have speculated that there may have been life on Mars billions of years ago while others are not ruling out the likelihood that life may still exist there right now.

In recent years, experts in astrobiology, equipped with their ever-increasing knowledge about the planet and the advanced technology to study it, have become more determined than ever to find proof of life on Mars or, at the very least, some form of verification that it was once habitable. Today, there are various environmental factors being considered to predict the habitability of our neighbor planet but scientists have placed a particularly heavy emphasis in finding evidence on one of them – that is, the presence of liquid water.  

THEORIZED PRESENCE OF UNDERGROUND WATER ON MARS

The surface of Mars currently has an extremely cold climate and is deemed to be too dry for any presence of life to be possible. However, experts believe that there is enough evidence to suggest that the Red Planet was once home to several bodies of water like oceans and lakes. As for how Mars virtually lost its liquid water billions of years ago, the exact answer remains a mystery but it is speculated by some that a cataclysmic event may have been the root cause of it all. The planet is assumed to have lost its magnetic field around 3.8 billion years ago and extreme solar radiation resulted to the evaporation of liquid water in the Marian atmosphere and the escape of water’s hydrogen molecules into space.

The theory that Mars may have been very similar to Earth due to the supposed presence of liquid water on the planet in its distant past gave rise to speculations that life might have also evolved on our neighbor planet during this ancient period. And though its surface may be completely devoid of liquid water today, this doesn’t mean that Mars doesn’t have any water at all. Aside from the abundant volume of water ice found in its two polar ice caps, scientists also believe that liquid water is still present on Mars albeit buried in subterranean aquifers. Aquifers are permeable rocks found underground that bear groundwater. On Earth, water stored underground manages to find its way to the surface through natural springs or by pumping. And so, in the case of Mars, scientists believe that should life still exist there today, the chance to unravel this mystery lies in finding where these hidden reservoirs are located now.

All this talk of searching for life and water on planet Mars has gone one for many, many years, but how are we actually faring in finding evidence that supports such theories? Have our unmanned space expeditions to the Red Planet yielded any promising results?  Have we detected compelling data to say that there was indeed an ancient ocean on Mars? Are we any closer to finding the underground water supply of Mars now more than we were a decade ago?

To answer these questions, let’s talk about some of the Mars-related studies published in recent years.

2012 FINDINGS OF EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY’S MARS EXPRESS

In 2012, the European Space Agency revealed that their spacecraft which orbited Mars called Mars Express detected sedimentary deposits on the planets northern plains. To the European researchers, the fact that the Mars Express’s radar detected low-density materials and ice in this region is indicative that this area may have once been an ocean. The agency’s findings using subsurface radar are not surprising but they have added to the existing data gathered from images, atmospheric measurements and mineralogical study of the planet which already previously pinpointed the northern plains to be the site of ancient Martian shorelines.

2012 STUDY ON MARTIAN METEORITES BY MCCUBBIN ET AL.

Within that same year, planetary scientist Francis McCubbin of the University Of New Mexico in Albuquerque and his colleagues published a study on Martian meteorites containing hydrated minerals which allowed them to estimate how much water exists today in the Martian mantle. The authors of the study determined that Mars has enough water in its mantle to submerge the planet for as deep as 200 to 1000 meters. This means the planet is currently shrouding around 70 to 300 parts per million of liquid water somewhere beneath its surface.

2014 ICARUS STUDY ON ARAM CHAOS

Then there’s also the study published by the international journal Icarus in 2014 which revealed that a team of geologists found evidence of a vast ancient underground ocean located beneath the surface of Aram Chaos, one of the impact craters on Mars. Around 2.5 billion years ago, about 93,000 cubic kilometers of water supposedly broke through and flooded the surface after the lake ice – which was concealed underground – melted and its ceiling suddenly collapsed.

Here’s an idea how much water reached the Martian surface at the time: they say it is equivalent to around 80% of the free-flowing fresh water that exists on our own planet today.

2015 ATMOSPHERIC MAPS OF MARS BY NASA

In 2015, researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, led by planetary scientist Geronimo Villanueva, developed infrared maps of water isotopes on Mars which showed the distribution of atmospheric water on the planet - H2O and its deuterated form, HDO. In doing so, they were able to estimate how much liquid water Mars used to have. According to their findings, Mars may have once had enough water to cover up to 20 percent or about a fifth of the planet more than 4 billion years ago. They also suggested that the planet could still contain some subterranean water reservoirs and that the key to finding them lies in refining the infrared maps they had developed.

2015 DISCOVERY OF LIQUID BRINE ON MARS

That same year, another study revealed that NASA’s Curiosity rover – which landed on Mars’s Gale Crater back in 2012 – managed to measure estimates of the concentration of subterranean water on the planet. The new measurements suggested that the soil in Mars is moist with liquid brine. The presence of this liquid brine is supposedly caused by the perchlorate salts found in the soil as it is known to reduce the freezing point of water. The salt is the one responsible for absorbing the water vapor from the atmosphere which then precipitated under the surface. The researchers considered this find as an indirect evidence of transient liquid water on the planet though they insist that the presence of liquid brine is not enough to deem Mars equipped to support terrestrial organisms.

A similar finding was reached that same year by examining the data and images gathered from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or MRO. At the time, the researchers believed that the dark streaks found on Martian craters is actually Martian soil being dampened by briny water, which may have been enough to allow microbial life to thrive on the planet. However, authors of a later study argued against the hypothesis that there is liquid water on the Martina surface, suggesting instead that the dark streaks captured by the MRO’s powerful camera were just grains of sand and dust that occasionally slipped downhill.

2016 DISCOVERY OF MASSIVE UNDERGROUND ICE DEPOSIT ON MARS

An underground layer of water ice was also detected within the planet’s Utopia Planitia region. Researchers used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter again, particularly its ground-penetrating Shallow Radar instrument, which is also referred to as SHARAD. After they analyzed the data provided by the high-powered radar, they discovered a massive deposit of water ice in the area that is much bigger than the State of Mexico. This subterranean ice deposit runs deep – between an estimated thickness of 260 feet to around 560 feet. Fifty to eight-five percent of the deposit is made of ice while the rest is made up of dust and rock particles.

The water ice deposit in Utopia Planitia managed to elude the danger of being vaporized by the planet’s hostile atmosphere because of the thick soil that successfully separated the two. Estimates of the soil’s thickness in this region range between 3 to 33 feet.  

2017 DISCOVERY OF WATER ICE NEAR MARTIAN EQUATOR

Another compelling evidence that supports the theory that an ancient underground ocean is hidden beneath the Red Planet’s surface comes from the reanalyzed data from NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft which has been orbiting the planet since 2001. Researchers found patches of water ice in regions at surprisingly lower latitudes. Should this equatorial ice eventually melt and reach the surface, it is presumed that it would very likely result to the formation of a more accommodating environment that could be perfect for the survival and growth of microbial life.

Despite the vast amount of research that has gone into finding water and life on Mars, many of the missing pieces needed to complete the entire picture of what happened to this unique Red Planet and what remains there now have yet to be found. However, it is safe to say that we know more about our neighbor planet now more than we did before, and most of the information we have learned about Mars has only strengthened our scientific community’s conviction that liquid water once filled a sizeable portion of the planet’s surface and may still be lurking beneath its porous subterranean rocks.

SOURCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Habitability_and_search_for_life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars

https://www.space.com/14483-mars-ancient-ocean-evidence-european-probe.html

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120626-mars-water-mantle-oceans-meteorites-space-science/

https://www.space.com/16335-mars-underground-water-impact-craters.html

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/04/the-ancient-underground-oceans-of-mars/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103514001493

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/early-mars-lost-an-ocean-s-worth-of-water/

https://www.space.com/28742-ancient-mars-ocean-water-lost.html

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6231/218

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/13/nasas-curiosity-rover-finds-water-below-surface-of-mars

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2412

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/watch-incredible-nasa-mars-announcement-6530649

https://news.stanford.edu/2015/09/29/mars-water-hubbard-092915/

https://www.space.com/34811-mars-ice-more-water-than-lake-superior.html

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6680

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/water-ice-found-near-mars-s-equator-could-entice-colonists-and-life-seekers

MYSTERIOUS Flashes are Coming From The MOON & We Don't Know What They Are

Since the first Apollo mission in 1969, astronauts have since reported strange flashes of light on the surface of the moon that seems to come out of nowhere.

Many scientists have made speculations about the cause and possible origins of the flashing lights but none of them have ever come close to being a definitive explanation.

However, there are some theories that may hold a little weight in explaining the occurrence of these strange flashes. So, in today’s video we are exploring some of the theories as we try to figure out these mysterious flashes of light on the surface of the moon.

THE COSMIC RAY CONUNDRUM

As mentioned earlier, astronauts since the first moon landing by Apollo 11 have reported sighting s of flashing lights on the moon’s surface. What’s strange about it is that they have reported these flashes even when their eyes are closed.

In one documentary, the lights were allegedly seen by several of the Apollo astronauts as they approached the moon.

An astronaut named Charles Duke shares his experience and narrates, “I’m having these light flashes. I’m seeing this, like, light flashing in my eyeballs.”

Astronauts who have encountered the lights would describe it as white flashes but there are others that have reported back after encountering lights in different colours such as blue and yellow; and in almost all instances, after they have come back home to earth, astronauts who have come across these lights would still see these flashes under various lighting conditions.

A theory explains why these astronauts are seeing what they were seeing and it all points towards cosmic rays.

Defined as a “highly energetic atomic nucleus or particle that travels through space at a speed close to that of light”, these rays – and how they interacted with the human optic nerve – are responsible for the eyes seeing strange lights in varying degrees of colours depending on how much radiation from cosmic rays the optic nerve has absorbed.

To test this theory, engineers put together an experiment involving a black box that can be worn as a helmet. The box would then have sensors that would detect the presence of cosmic rays.

Astronaut Charles Duke wore the helmet on his next mission and reported back seeing clusters of lights and white streaks the same time the box detected the presence of cosmic rays in his immediate environment.

THE LUNAR FROST FACTOR

Another theory explaining the flashes of lights is the existence of cold spots on the moon’s surface. These cold spots have been discovered to have layers of thin ice and frost that, when lights from the sun reflects on it, creates flashing or blinking that may trick the eye into believing that the lights are coming from the moon itself.

Revealed from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO, the data brought back helped researches identify certain areas on the moon’s south pole that are cold enough to have frost formations. These formations are suspected to be located in craters where temperatures can drop to negative 163 degrees Celsius.

According to Elizabeth Fisher, the lead author of the research, “We found that the coldest place near the moon’s south pole are also the brightest places – brighter than we would expect from soil alone – and that might indicate the presence of surface frost.”

Furthermore, the research suggests that the icy deposits on the moon appear to be thin and in patches and may be mixed in with the moon’s soil and dust. Also, the evidence of frost suggests that the moon may either have water deposits for millions of years or may have been brought by colliding asteroids which may also explain how water was delivered on the surface of the earth.

Although, another hypothesis points out that hydrogen may have been present in a different form on the surface of the moon – but the idea that the moon could store water ice is still difficult to confirm and is being looked into for over 50 years now and since 2009 understanding the main composition of these icy deposits are still being studied and remains one of the main goals of the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter.

THE TRANSIENT LUNAR PHENOMENON

This is a controversial area of study that mainly involves looking into bright sparks on the moon’s surface, discolourations, or misty patches of lunar fog.

Transient Lunar Phenomenon was a term created by Sir Patrick Moore in 1968 in order to give the sightings credence in the scientific community. However, these sightings have existed for more than a millennium according to studies on the subject.

One of the early records of this phenomenon was traced back to a mistake made in the 16th Century when early astronomers spotted a “daytime star” near the moon but was later on discovered to be the planet Venus.

Fast forward to 1969 to a time when astronomy has made larger strides since the 16th Century; during the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong remarked that there was “an area that is considerably more illuminated than the surrounding area” of the moon.

After several studies conducted by NASA after the Apollo 11 mission, various photographs and images have been taken and produced in order to find the root cause of the strange lights.

Unfortunately, unlike the sudden flashes caused by asteroids on impact, the illumination on the surface of the moon appears to be much more subtle and harder to trace.

In a study conducted by the British Astronomical Association led by Jill Scrambler, the amount of data used between 1700 and 2010 were impressive and the studies conducted on each of them were extremely thorough as each data from different observers – from amateur to seasoned astronomers – were weighed for reliability.

The result was that at least 2% of the TLP sightings were considered “definitive” and unambiguous”. To put it simply: there really is something happening on the surface of the moon, we just aren’t sure what it is. To this very day, researchers are not clear as to what the real cause of TLPs is.

And, according to Jill Scrambler, when asked about the influence of solar cycles possibly influencing the illumination on the moon, “Although there are theories that might infer that TLP would be more frequent during high solar activity, from the sunspot cycle perspective there is no evidence to support this.”

Fortunately for scientists and astronomers continuing to conduct their research on the phenomenon, a new spacecraft called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer was launched in the summer of 2013 to better explore the surface of the moon and provide clearer explanations about these mysterious illuminations and flashing lights.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/15/transient-lunar-phenomena_n_3083359.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4564076/The-mystery-blinking-spots-moon.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/every-astronaut-1969-landings-seen-9308958

The Pentagon’s MYSTERIOUS $22 Million U.F.O. Program Revealed

For years, the United States government has always tried to maintain a safe and somewhat skeptical position when it concerns the possibility of alien life and likelihood that extraterrestrial beings may try to visit our planet or have already succeeded in doing so. Whenever footage or information on unexpected sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs are released and made known to the public, government institutions are quick to refute the possibility that the origins of these aerial objects are not of this world. Instead, they offer explanations that they deem more plausible, completely veering the public’s attention and curiosity from topics they feel are best left undiscussed. Perhaps this is to prevent the public from descending into chaos because of their misguided fears. Or, perhaps it is to spare the rest of us from having to deal with difficult truths while those in the government covertly act with our best interests supposedly always in mind.

Usually, it’s the former. Most of the time, our excessively creative imaginations and our tendency to get ahead of ourselves are our own worst enemies. Rarely do we get to learn some of the things our government has been secretly doing on our behalf to deal with difficult truths, including exploring anomalous phenomena like UFOs. But every now and then, earth-shaking revelations are made by top-ranking officials of the government about the secrets the institutions they serve are keeping from the tax-paying public. And among such revelations is the recent acknowledgment by the Pentagon that it formed and funded a top-secret and long-running UFO investigation program.

ADVANCED AEROSPACE THREAT IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM

On Saturday, December 16th, the New York Times and Politico published articles which revealed that the U.S. government – more specifically, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency – had been funding a secret investigatory program that studied unexplained aerial phenomena or UAPs. It supposedly operated from the year 2007 until 2012 and taxpayers supposedly shelled out around $22 million during its entire five-year run.

Called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, this clandestine effort to study UAPs was initiated by former U.S. Senator and Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who at the time was the Senate majority leader. Reid’s proposed UFO investigation program was backed by the late Senators Ted Stevens of Alaska and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Most of the budget allotted for the program went to an aerospace research company run by Nevada businessman and governmental contractor Robert Bigelow. Not only is he allegedly a close friend of Reid, he is also a passionate believer in the existence of aliens and is said to be the one who sparked the senator’s interest in UFOs and all things extraterrestrial in the first place. Reports also noted that Bigelow provided financial support to Reid’s campaign for Senate reelection in 2004 as well as in 2010.

The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was led by a U.S. military intelligence official named Luis Elizondo. As for what members of the program actually accomplished during its five-year existence, it was revealed that the secret UFO program mainly investigated the accounts of military and commercial pilots who claimed to have witnessed or encountered unexplained aircraft phenomena. Their reported sightings qualified as such if the aircraft they saw appeared to show no obvious or typical signs of propulsion or its flight pattern seemingly defied the fundamental laws of physics. This was not just to find proof of extraterrestrial presence on Earth but also to ascertain if some of the mysterious flying objects were actually secretly deployed by other powerful countries like Russia or China.

The officials in the program also interviewed and evaluated individuals who claimed to have felt or experienced some physical effects from their UFO encounters. But aside from interviewing people, the program supposedly recovered metal alloys and other physical evidence from discovered UAPs and stored them somewhere in Las Vegas.

Out of the program’s efforts, they managed to write a 490-page report about alleged UFO sightings all over the world for the past several decades. This report has yet to be disclosed to the public, and though the program did not manage to yield irrefutable proof of aliens visiting Earth, those who are part of the program, particularly Elizondo, believe that their findings warranted serious attention.

TERMINATION OF FUNDING OF THE UFO PROGRAM & ALLEGATIONS OF ITS CONTINUED COVERT OPERATIONS

Funding of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was terminated by the United States Department of Defense back in 2012. As for why it had to end, Politico’s article mentioned a former congressional staffer who revealed that while the effort was a worthy endeavor in the beginning, the program failed to find anything of substance. And because they could no longer justify spending taxpayer money to investigate UFO sightings, the program was given a slow death.

However, some of those who supported the program believe that Pentagon is still allowing it to operate in some form and that officials even today are still investigating UAP or UFO sightings reported by service members while also attending to their other duties in the Defense Department.

Luis Elizondo, in particular, resigned from his position last October 2017, and he expressed his frustration regarding Pentagon’s indifference over the merits of the UFO investigatory program and the government organization’s refusal to fund its operations further. Elizondo also decried the government’s excessive secrecy over the subject matter and the internal opposition the program constantly faced. He also revealed that after his resignation, a new official had already been appointed to continue the covert UFO investigations of the U.S. government.

PENTAGON’S RESPONSE REGARDING THE UFO PROGRAM

As for what Pentagon has to say about these revelations, the Defense Department, in response to an inquiry by Reuters, confirmed the existence and subsequent termination of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. According to the Pentagon’s spokeswoman Laura Ochoa, the UFO investigatory program ended in 2012 because the department found that there were more pressing, high-priority issues that deserved the funding the UFO program received. As such, the Department of Defense thought it was in the government and the public’s interest to make a change by terminating the program.

But on whether the Pentagon really ceased investigating UFO and UAP sightings, the U.S. defense department’s response is pretty much a non-answer. The organization neither confirmed nor denied that some of its officials are still handling UFO-related issues. Instead, it stressed that it takes “all threats and potential threats” very seriously and that the department promises to take action when they find “credible information” about such threats.  

This is not the first time that it was revealed to the public that their government has been secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes. In fact, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program is not the only UFO-related project initiated by the U.S. government. Some of this program’s known predecessors include Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book, and they all shared similar objectives of gathering data about UFOs and determining whether they posed potential threats to national security and public safety.

Needless to say, this recently revealed UFO investigatory program is not the first of its kind and we can surely expect it won’t be the last. But of course, one can’t help but wonder what other shocking things the government is secretly doing without our knowledge.

SOURCES

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pentagon-ufos/does-pentagon-still-have-a-ufo-program-the-answer-is-a-bit-mysterious-idUSKBN1EA0QP

https://nypost.com/2017/12/16/pentagons-search-for-ufos-revealed/

http://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-acknowledges-program-investigating-ufos-2017-12

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/17/pentagon-admits-running-secret-ufo-investigation-for-five-years

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/head-of-pentagons-secret-ufo-office-sought-to-make-evidence-public/2017/12/16/90bcb7cc-e2b2-11e7-8679-a9728984779c_story.html?utm_term=.3ca17fbe95c7

NASA ANNOUNCEMENT: First Solar System Like Ours With EIGHT PLANETS Discovered

NASA’s huge announcement has been made and no, we did not pick up a call from ET nor did we find any clear signs of advanced alien life. We did, however, find a solar system that has as many planets our own,  which means the potential existence of extraterrestrial life forms like us.

But the big news isn’t just about the discovery itself, it’s about how it was discovered...

You see, we already knew about the Kepler-90 star which is located about 2,500 light years away and has a planetary system similar to ours. We know that it has at least seven planets orbiting it, and now with the help of Google’s artificial intelligence technology, a new planet, Kepler-90 i has been discovered. This means that the Kepler-90 system has just as many planets as our own solar system. And it marks the first time a star system with as many planets as our own has been found way out in deep space.

Now the thing is, we already knew about the new planet because it was detected by the Kepler space telescope - but it was buried within a huge amount of data. So, a computer was instructed to comb through data from Kepler and look for possible planets. This is where Google comes in because these are the same tools used by Google to do things like identify cats or dogs. The computer found something that was interesting, and it turned out to be the new planet.

According to Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington.

“Just as we expected, there are exciting discoveries lurking in our archived Kepler data, waiting for the right tool or technology to unearth them,”

“This finding shows that our data will be a treasure trove available to innovative researchers for years to come.”

Basically, because Kepler has four-years worth of data consisting of 35,000 possible planetary signals. It’s just impossible for people to look through. Especially when many of the signals are fairly weak. But that’s where Google’s technology comes in.

According to NASA, first they trained the neural network to identify transiting exoplanets using a set of 15,000 previously-vetted signals from the Kepler exoplanet catalog. In the test set, the neural network correctly identified true planets and false positives 96 percent of the time. Then, with the neural network having "learned" to detect the pattern of a transiting exoplanet, the researchers directed their model to search for weaker signals in 670 star systems that already had multiple known planets.

Their assumption was that multiple-planet systems would be the best places to look for more exoplanets.

According to Andrew Vanderburg who was part of the team that trained the computer,

“We got lots of false positives of planets, but also potentially more real planets,”

“It’s like sifting through rocks to find jewels. If you have a finer sieve then you will catch more rocks but you might catch more jewels, as well.”

There is still a lot of data to be processed which means that new worlds and new solar systems could be hiding inside the data that we have already collected. Who knows what we will find?

Kepler has produced an unprecedented data set for exoplanet hunting. After gazing at one patch of space for four years, the spacecraft is now operating on an extended mission and switches its field of view every 80 days.

“These results demonstrate the enduring value of Kepler’s mission,” said Jessie Dotson, Kepler’s project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. “New ways of looking at the data – such as this early-stage research to apply machine learning algorithms – promises to continue to yield significant advances in our understanding of planetary systems around other stars. I’m sure there are more firsts in the data waiting for people to find them.”

NASA Will Make MAJOR Alien-hunting Announcement WITH Google in The Search for Habitable Planets

Whenever NASA makes a huge announcement, it’s something worth paying attention to and this time NASA is making a major announcement WITH Google surrounding something they discovered from their Kepler telescope which is used to locate exoplanets. The reason Google is involved is because the discovery also utilized Google’s machine learning software.

So...not saying this announcement is about aliens, but, this announcement will be about aliens.

The mystery will be unveiled at 1 p.m. EST on Dec. 14, where it will be streamed live on NASA’s website.

According to NASA’s press release:

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14, to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.

Experts who are part of the press briefing include:

• Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington

• Christopher Shallue, senior software engineer at Google AI in Mountain View, California

• Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin

• Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley

Kepler was launched in 2009 and since then has spotted thousands of exoplanets. The briefing will likely talk about the work NASA and Google have done together to build an algorithm used to find more exoplanets inside Kepler’s data.

Thursday will most likely be the initial report from this joint effort and it could include announcing a major exoplanet discovery and a possible breakthrough in the search for alien life.