Latest Alien & UFO News: April 2017

Sunday, 30 April 2017

The Resistance Now: Star Wars, ‘aliens’ and Leonardo DiCaprio join the fight

Saturday, 29 April 2017

Bill Paxton, actor in ‘Twister’ and ‘Aliens,’ dies at 61

(CNN)Actor Bill Paxton, whose extensive career included films such as “Twister,” “Aliens” and “Titanic,” has died, a representative for his family said in a statement. He was 61.

“It is with heavy hearts we share the news that Bill Paxton has passed away due to complications from surgery,” the statement said.

“Bill began his career in Hollywood working on films in the art department and went on to have an illustrious career spanning four decades as a beloved and prolific actor and filmmaker. … We ask to please respect the family’s wish for privacy as they mourn the loss of their adored husband and father.”

Moments after news of Paxton’s death broke, social media lit up with tributes to the versatile actor.

Actor Rob Lowe called Paxton a dear friend and “Renaissance man.”

“Devastated by the sudden loss of my close friend and one of the finest actors in the business, Bill Paxton,” Lowe tweeted.

In addition to more than 90 acting credits, Paxton was also a director on films such as “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and “Frailty.”

Screenwriter Brian Lynch said Paxton was a talented director.

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“RIP Bill Paxton. great in everything, was the highlight of every movie he was in,” Lynch tweeted. “Underrated director too.”

Paxton’s death came in the middle of his first season as Detective Frank Rourke in his last TV series, “Training Day.”

But the entire season’s episodes were already completed in December, CBS said Sunday.

It was not immediately clear what will happen to the series.

“We are shocked and deeply saddened this morning by the news of Bill Paxton’s passing,” CBS and Warner Bros. Television said in a joint statement. “All of us here offer our deepest sympathy to his wife, Louise, and his two children.”

From Texas upbringing to Hollywood stardom

Paxton was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1955. He accidentally entered the national spotlight at age 8, when he went to see President John F. Kennedy visit Dallas on November 22, 1963.

A photo of Paxton hoisted above the crowd became a famous photo from the day of Kennedy’s assassination.

Texas Supreme Court Judge Don Willett shared the photo and called Paxton a “good guy, great actor and proud Texan.”

Growing up, Paxton became “a huge fan of Clint Eastwood’s,” he told CNN in 2005.

“I’ve never really gotten to know Clint. I’ve met him a couple of times, but he has no idea what a mentor he’s been to me.”

Paxton’s career took off in the 1980s, with roles in “The Terminator,” “Aliens” and “Near Dark.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who famously starred in “The Terminator,” said his costar’s best role wasn’t actually on camera.

“Bill Paxton could play any role, but he was best at being Bill — a great human being with a huge heart,” Schwarzenegger tweeted.

In the ’90s, Paxton played a police chief in “One False Move,” an astronaut in “Apollo 13” and a storm chaser in “Twister.”

Helen Hunt, who co-starred with Paxton in “Twister,” said Paxton “acted his heart out.”

But Paxton said he always wanted to make films, not just act in them.

“I’ve kind of modeled myself as a filmmaker/actor,” he told CNN after directing “The Greatest Game Ever Played” in 2005.

“That was always my dream, to make films.”

Bill Paxton, ‘Titanic’ And ‘Aliens’ Star, Dead At 61

Ridley Scott: aliens are out there and one day they’ll come for us

Director says it is ridiculous to think that we are alone in the universe and believes superior beings will one day visit Earth

Alien creator Ridley Scott has said that he is convinced that there are extra-terrestrials out there and one day they will come for us.

The veteran director said he believed in higher beings as he prepared to release the sixth episode of the sci-fi horror series, Alien: Covenant, next month.

I believe in superior beings. I think it is certainly likely. An expert I was talking to at Nasa said to me, Have you ever looked in the sky at night? You mean to tell me we are it? Thats ridiculous.

The experts have now put a number on it having assessed what is out there. They say that there are between 100 and 200 entities that could be having a similar evolution to us right now.

So when you see a big thing in the sky, run for it, he joked.

Because they are a lot smarter than we are, and if you are stupid enough to challenge them you will be taken out in three seconds.

Alien: Covenant the second of the prequel films, is set in 2104 on board a spaceship carrying 2,000 cryogenically frozen colonists to a distant planet when they chance upon an uncharted paradise.

But their voyage soon turns into a gory nightmare that makes Aliens original chestbuster scene seem tame in comparison.

The neomorph aliens in the new film are based on the goblin shark which has a jaw which hinges in two ways. Its scary, hideous beyond belief actually, Scott said.

The 79-year-old British-born director who was also the brains behind Blade Runner said he never tired of scaring people out of their skins.

When I did the first Alien I had to get a sense of responsibility because the reaction to the kitchen (chestbuser) scene with John Hurt was beyond anything I expected and it was not good, he said.

But the film was very successful because people are perverse.

He said he could not believe the terror he had created when he went to see people watching the film. Everybody was half underneath the seat watching by the time you get to the kitchen scene. There was a woman underneath the seat with her husband holding her. I said this is not healthy.

Scott, however, claimed that he was unshockable.

Nothing scares me. I have a 9mm (pistol), he said.

If there is a problem I tend to close down into calm. When you walk in in the morning on a film and 600 people turn and all look at you, that is scary, he said.

Scott, who was knighted in 2003, is about to make a film about the Battle of Britain during the second world war, when the Royal Air Force fought off the German Luftwaffe.

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Friday, 28 April 2017

ICE rips pranksters jamming hotline to report space aliens

The Trump administration is blasting pranksters who are jamming a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement hotline meant for victims of illegal alien crime in order to report encounters with space aliens.

The Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), launched Wednesday by ICE, maintains the hotline for crime victims to call for assistance and support. However, critics mocked the initiative on social media with the hashtag #AlienDay, encouraging others to dial the VOICE number to report alien takeovers and encounters with space creatures.

An ICE official familiar with the situation told Fox News that, as a result of the fake reports, the VOICE hotline has experienced significant delays. The official further said the campaign to generate hoax calls is disrespectful to victims of real crime and their families — and a waste of government resources, as personnel in the call center are required to listen to the majority of callers reports.

Secretary Kelly made clear in his announcement Wednesday that this phone line is to be dedicated for the use of victims seeking information and resources, the ICE official told Fox News. There are certainly more constructive ways to make ones opinions heard than to prevent legitimate victims of crime from receiving the information and resources they seek because the lines are tied up by hoax callers.

The official told Fox News that ICE will adjust resources, if necessary, to ensure legitimate victims get the information and attention they need.

VOICE was created in response to President Trumps Executive Order titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States on Jan. 25.

All crime is terrible, but these victims are uniqueand too often ignored, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Wednesday as he unveiled the new office. They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken placebecause the people who victimized them often times should not have been in the country in the first place.

Brooke Singman is a Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews.

1 In 3 Americans Would Move To An Alien Planet To Escape U.S. Politics

Monday, 24 April 2017

Broad Haven UFO sightings marked 40 years on – BBC News

Friday, 21 April 2017

No encounters: most ambitious alien search to date draws a blank

Only intelligent signals Breakthrough Listen project detected in first year are from mobile phones and other Earthly devices

Astronomers who have been listening for signals from alien civilisations in the most intensive hunt for extraterrestrials yet have found no evidence of life in its first year in operation.

The Breakthrough Listen project began to eavesdrop on the universe with the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia in January last year, but the most intelligent transmissions the telescope has picked up so far appear to be from satellites or mobile phones and other earthly devices.

Data released by the project on Thursday revealed eleven of the most promising signals detected, but after close inspection scientists concluded that the radiowaves probably came from humans rather than other intelligent lifeforms.

These are the signals that look most like what wed expect to see from a distant technology, but when we looked at them closely were were able to determine that its most likely theyre interference, said Andrew Siemion, the director of the Berkeley Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence centre.

The Green Bank telescope listened for signals in the range from one to two GHz coming from 692 of the nearest stars to Earth. Our results mean that fewer than 1% of the stars within 150 light years are constantly transmitting in this range, but it doesnt mean they are not transmitting at all, Siemion said.

Studies in the 1960s and 1970s identified the one to two GHz frequency band as the most promising hunting ground for alien transmissions. Having found it to be silent, the astronomers now intend to scour higher frequencies in the hope that alien transmissions lurk there.

A really important part of the Breakthrough programme is to explore as much of the electromagnetic spectrum, both radiowave and optical signals, as we possibly can, Siemion said.

The astronomers look for high energy signals at a steady frequency and position in the sky. The problem is if you take a radio telescope and look for signals like that you find lots and lots, and of course most are coming from our own technology. The big challenge is to discriminate between distant technology and our own technology on Earth.

Funded by the Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, the $100m project was launched in 2015 as the most ambitious search for alien life to date. The operation began at Green Bank, the largest steerable telescope in the world, but others including the Parkes observatory in New South Wales, Australia, are also involved.

Parkes allows the astronomers to listen for transmissions from stars in the southern skies, including Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri. Last year, they discovered what might be a habitable planet in orbit around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth.

Another observation last year, involving the peculiar behaviour of a distant sun, prompted a flurry of speculation that aliens might have built a megastructure around their home star. Follow-up observations seemed to kibosh the theory, however, when scientists found no evidence of transmissions coming from the region.

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Thursday, 20 April 2017

New contender in hunt for alien life discovered by astronomers

Exoplanet LHS 1140b is believed to be about 40% larger than Earth and lies 39 light years away in the constellation of Cetus, orbiting a red dwarf star

A rocky planet that orbits a red dwarf star has been revealed as the latest contender for the best place to hunt for life beyond the solar system.

The newfound world was spotted as it crossed the face of its parent star and cast an almost imperceptible shadow that was detected by the MEarth-South observatory in the Chilean desert.

The planet lies 39 light years away and is believed to lurk in the habitable zone where liquid water could support life as we know it around a star named LHS 1140 in the constellation of Cetus, the sea monster.

Jason Ditton at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said the new exoplanet, known as LHS 1140b, was the most exciting he had seen in 10 years. We could hardly hope for a better target to perform one of the biggest quests in science: searching for evidence of life beyond Earth, he said.

Astronomers now discover new planets with such frequency that what is considered to be the most promising home for extraterrestrials changes from month to month. In February, scientists spotted seven planets around another star at a similar distance to LHS 1140, a discovery that meant the search for life elsewhere could begin sooner than many thought. Last year, astronomers raised the prospect of life on Proxima b, a planet circling our nearest star a mere four light years away.

What makes LHS 1140b notable is that it is not bombarded with as much high-energy radiation that batters other planets around similar stars. Intense blasts of radiation can strip away tenuous atmospheres and harm any life beneath. In the more hospitable environment on LHS 1140b, a vast magma ocean could have fed steam into the atmosphere, replenishing the planet with water, the scientists said.

Further measurements of the planet by the European Southern Observatory in Chile found the planet to be about 40% larger than Earth, but with seven times the mass, which astronomers believe could be explained by it being rocky with a dense, iron core. Details of the discovery are reported in the journal Nature.

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Tuesday, 18 April 2017

‘Arrival’ Author Thinks Film’s Written Alien Language ‘Ought To Be Possible’

Churchill essay on the possibility of alien life discovered in US college

Winston Churchills essay Are We Alone in the Universe? was penned the year before he became prime minister, and reveals his keen interest in science

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Sunday, 16 April 2017

Spacecraft discovers possibility of alien life, then runs out of fuel

Scientists say discovery of ingredients for life on Saturns moon Enceladus is bittersweet as spacecraft prepares to end 20-year mission

Could there be life in our own solar system?

This is the question posed by the discovery of hydrogen gas erupting in plumes from Saturns moon Enceladus, indicating the likely existence of an energy supply for microbial life.

The presence of hydrogen, detected by the Cassini spacecraft and announced by Nasa on Thursday, is seen as tantalising evidence that in the ocean beneath the moons icy surface chemical reactions are taking place that are strikingly similar to those that occur at hydrothermal vents on the Earths ocean floors.

In the fissures of the Earths oceans, a process called serpentinisation produces hydrogen when salty water reacts with hot rocks. This is what allows microbes, which use hydrogen as a source of chemical energy, to thrive in the ocean depths, raising the question of whether equivalent biology might have emerged on Enceladus.

Although we cant detect life, weve found that theres a food source there for it. It would be like a candy store for microbes, said Hunter Waite, programme director for the space science and engineering division at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and lead author of the Cassini study.

Based on the observed concentration of the hydrogen in the plumes, scientists calculate that the hydrothermal activity on Enceladus produces more than enough energy to sustain a hypothetical colony of alien microbes.

Enceladus is a mysterious enigmatic object that now shows it has all of the ingredients for life, which is why scientists are so jazzed about the discovery, said Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT. Hydrogen gas sets up a way for life to extract energy from chemistry a main way microbes exploit energy to live here on Earth.

However, the discovery of an available food source poses a new puzzle: why, if something is alive on Enceladus, is it not consuming all the available fuel? The surplus of hydrogen could be an indication of the absence of life, or of a very inactive microbe lurking in the oceans depths.

Until 11 years ago, Saturns tiny moon, with a diameter about the length of England, was regarded as an unremarkable object. But then Cassini discovered plumes coming from its south pole, indicating the presence of liquid water, often the first item on the checklist when seeking out the places in the universe that might host life.

Since then, scientists have ticked off some of the other chemical elements thought to be required carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and now hydrogen (the other two, phosphorus and sulphur, have yet to be detected but are almost certainly present).

Prof Andrew Coates, a Cassini scientist based at University College Londons Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said: There are four things you need for life: liquid water, the right chemistry, a source of energy, and enough time for life to develop. This gives that chemical imbalance, that gives you a source of energy.

As Saturn moves in its orbit, the plumes have been observed to vary in intensity and it is not known whether conditions would have been stable enough for a chain of reactions leading to the emergence of life to occur uninterrupted. On Earth, it took millions of years after favourable conditions appeared for life to spark into existence. We dont know if there has been enough time or not on Enceladus, said Coates.

With the first three of the four prerequisites ticked off, Coates now considers Enceladus, along with Jupiters moon Europa, to be the most likely place in the solar system to discover microbial life today.

Coates describes this as a bittersweet realisation. The results, frustratingly, come just as Cassini is running out of fuel after 20 years in space. In September, Cassini will pass through the inner edge of the ring system and plunge into Saturns atmosphere where the probe will be vaporised in what Nasa describes as the missions grand finale. With no Saturn missions scheduled, it will be at least a decade before another Enceladus flyby, let alone a landing.

The great mystery of whether humans are alone in the universe and what other lifeforms might look like from basic microbes to advanced civilisations remains out of reach for now. But Cassinis findings add to scientists growing confidence that there are places beyond Earth where life might find a viable home and that some of them are probably within reach of a spacecraft.

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