Griffith Observatory, Hollywood

GriffithObservatory.org; Dhr. Seven, Ananda M., Wisdom Quarterly

Hi. I rule this area. Beware.

We recently visited the Griffith Observatory above Hollywood Land. Beware the mountain lion, the puma P-42. He's a man eater that prefers children and cats but might slink up on any unsuspecting source of blood and flesh. Venus was bright in the western sky. The old telescope dome opened, and we saw it with a halo of colors around it. Just under it was the Hollywood sign drenched in a smoggy vog-like marine layer. Could the volcano on the big island of Hawaii spew out anything that made it all the way over here? Probably not, but it sure looked like it. The observatory is open daily except Mondays.

Found: Planet X, Nibiru (video)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; JacobIsrael.com (YT); Gabe Hash

Renowned astronomers from Northern Arizona University have finally announced that Planet X, Planet 9, Nibiru [technically the 10th planet, as Zacharia Sitchin explains, because the ninth was slammed to smithereens to become the Kuiper Belt and other objects] is most likely out there.

This recent discovery verifies everything many of us have been saying. This as well as discoveries from SETI and Secchi tell us that THINGS ARE CHANGING [and NASA has been lying all along].

Support for all of these videos are available at the free website JacobIsrael.com, and check out the award-winning novel, The Calling: The Book of Thomas James.

Two suns in the sky

Another massive planet traversing our sky?

The Buddha spoke of a time when there will be as many as seven suns leading this planet of ours to wither away and burn. But that is a long way off. Nibiru comes around periodically on a predictable schedule and changes everything due to the inhabitants there and their interference in earthling affairs. It's nothing new, but the information has been kept from us by those in power. Attempts by astronomers blowing the whistle has led to their mysterious assassinations. Someone has a vested interest in keeping this information secret, not least the fossil fuel industry that profits so richly by keeping free energy a secret along with the true history of the planet which we have been led to call "myth."

(Info4change/WTF Files) Nibiru Planet X preparing for 2017 [disclosure files]

Meanwhile, back on earth, this privileged white rapist is back on the streets (AP).

Earth has finally made it to Pluto

Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; NASA.gov, July 15, 2015; Rob Quinn, Newser.com

(NASA.gov) After zooming into base of the heart-shaped feature on Pluto to highlight a new image captured by NASA's New Horizons, the image seen in black and white against a previously released color image of Pluto shows a mountain range with peaks jutting as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy dwarf planet.

This is one of the biggest days in the exploration of our solar system since Voyager 2 approached Neptune in 1989 -- and there may not be a day like it again. According to NASA's calculations, its New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto at 31,000 mph at 7:49 am EDT today; confirmation of that will come tonight, some 13 hours later, reports the AP.

 

The confirmation will mark the completion of NASA's tour of the "classical nine" planets, reports the AP, which notes that Pluto was considered a full-fledged planet instead of a dwarf one when the probe began its journey in 2006. Some things to know about the historic flyby, which comes 50 years to the day after the first successful flyby of Mars, are:

• New Horizons will have to capture a vast amount of data in a short time. The probe will be pushed to its limits as it pivots to capture photos and information on Pluto and its moons Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra during the flyby. "I can't wait to get into the data and really start making sense of it. Right now, we're just standing under the waterfall and enjoying it," principal New Horizons scientist Alan Stern tells the BBC.
• We don't know whether it was a success. The probe is far too busy to "phone home," the AP notes, but it's expected to send a confirmation signal at around 9:00 pm tonight [July 14, 2015]. The eagerly awaited first photos from the flyby should be released tomorrow night, The Guardian reports, though it will take 16 months to send all the data from the flyby back to Earth. More

Icy mountains of living Pluto

Tricia Talbert, NASA.gov, July 15, 2015

 

New close-up images of a region near Pluto’s equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.

 

The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system -- and may still be in the process of building, says Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team leader Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.. That suggests the close-up region, which covers less than one percent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.

 

Moore and his colleagues base the youthful age estimate on the lack of craters in this scene. Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered -- unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.

“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” says Moore.

 

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape. More

California's great Buddhist Garden (audio)

KPCC (scpr.org); Ashley Wells, Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The Huntington's Japanese garden bridge (Randysonofrobert/Flickr.com)

The bridge a century ago (Ken Brown/HuntingtonBlogs.org); below: Huntington Library and Gardens (insidesocal.com)

THE HUNTINGTON ESTATE (Open to the public) - After a year-long, nearly $7 million renovation, the famed Japanese Garden at the Huntington Library is once again open. This is the centennial anniversary of the Japanese garden, which is one of the most popular areas of the picturesque Huntington property that sits along the border of Pasadena and San Marino.

The seed of the Huntington’s Japanese Garden is a love story. Jim Folsom is like the "bard of the botanical." He is director of the gardens and has there for nearly three decades. He explains how Henry Huntington built the Japanese Garden in part as a courtship offering: "That would be one nice summary of it. And it was so quaint and iconic, so exotic and picturesque," he says.

• Historic Pasadena for the VirtualTourist.com
• Japanese gardens at the Huntington (activerain.com)
  

In the early 1900s, Japanese tea gardens had become quite fashionable and a fascination of the very wealthy. To impress the woman he wanted to marry, railroad magnate Henry Huntington literally pulled an entire Japanese garden from a nearby emporium and transplanted it to his San Marino estate.

The meditation deck, tea house, bridge, and idyllic grounds at the Huntington's Japanese garden (insidesocal.com)

“They built it through a simple expedient," Folsom explains. "There was an import business on the corner of California and Fair Oaks across from where Boston Market is today. It was a tea garden. And it was an emporium to sell Asian antiquities. Mr. Huntington bought the entire business and moved all the ornaments and the plants here."

So the Japanese Garden at the Huntington started blooming in 1912. And one year later, Henry married Arabella Yarrington. To this day, the garden view is like a romantic painting, dotted with ponds and purple wisteria dangling over trellises. There’s the moon bridge nestled in, and it’s all draped with a majestic view of the San Gabriel Mountains. LISTEN + PHOTOS

The Buddhist conception of the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, particularly in Japanese Buddhist iconography, shows barren and desolate scenes of deprivation coexisting with the Human Realm (blog.dwbuk org).

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Space: distant "water world" discovered

This Buddhist view of other worlds is not speculative nor is it dogmatic; it is personally verifiable for anyone who develops the meditative absorptions (jhanas). It is all "empty" (shunyata) not because it is nonexistent but because it is impersonal and without identity.

Distant water world is confirmed

(BBC) The exoplanet GJ 1214b, just 40 light-years away, is a so-called "Super Earth" -- bigger than our planet but smaller than gas giants such as Jupiter. Observations using the Hubble telescope now seem to confirm that a large fraction of its mass is water. The planet's high temperatures suggest exotic materials might exist there. "GJ 1214b is like no planet we know of," said lead author Zachory Berta, from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The planet was discovered in 2009 by ground-based telescopes, orbiting its comparatively cool red-dwarf star... More

(TN) A planet orbiting a nearby red dwarf is the first known water world, while its newly discovered neighbor is the lightest. The planetary system around Gliese 581 boasts four planets. The newly discovered planet "e" (left, foreground) weighs about 1.9 Earths; "b" (nearest the star) weighs 16 Earths; "c" (center) weighs 5 Earths; and "d" (bluish planet farthest from the star) weighs 7 Earths. "D" orbits its star in 66.8 days, while "e" completes an orbit in just 3.2. A planet 20 light years away [was confirmed to] be the first known water world, entirely covered by a deep ocean. The planet, named Gliese 581d, is not a new discovery, but astronomers have now revised its orbit putting it within the "habitable zone" where liquid water could exist on the surface. "It is the only low-mass planet known inside the habitable zone," says Michel Mayor of Geneva Observatory. Mayor and his team used the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile to observe the low-mass star Gliese 581 and a precise spectrometer called HARPS to analyze its light. The results were first announced at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science meeting in Hatfield, UK, and confirmed in Feb. 2012.

What does Buddhism teach about Space?
Seven Dharmachari and Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly
The Buddha said there were countless worlds. He classified all of them into 31 "planes" of existence. The first detailed reference to cosmography appears in the Buddha's first sermon (the Turning the Wheel of Dharma sutra), most likely inserted there after the fact:

When the Buddha set in motion the Wheel of Dharma, the Earth devas proclaimed... The Realm of the Four Sky King devas having heard them proclaimed... This utterance was echoed and re-echoed in the upper realms to the Realm of the Thirty-Three, Yama, Contented, Delighting in Others' Creations (Nimmanarati), and Delighting in Creating (Paranimmitavasavatti). The Brahmakayika devas (the "supremely-embodied shining ones"), having heard also repeated:

“The incomparable Wheel of Dharma is turned by the Blessed One at Isipatana, the Deer Sanctuary near Benares, and no recluse [shamana], priest [brahmin], shining one [deva], corrupter [mara], brahma [supremo], or other being in the world can stop it.”

So in a moment, an instant, a flash word of the Turning of the Wheel of Dharma went forth up to the World of Brahma [at the top of the Sensual Sphere]. And the ten-thousandfold world system trembled and quaked and shook. A boundless, sublime radiance, surpassing the glory of devas, appeared on Earth. This happened because the very first student entered the first stage of enlightenment: “Truly Kondañña has understood,” the Buddha announced, “Kondañña has understood.” - Translation based on Ven. Soma Thera

These Sensual Sphere worlds (lokas) might be called realms, spheres, planets, or dimensions. But the overall pattern is simple. As humans we most often concern ourselves with the Human Plane (Manussa Loka) without realizing that it is neither limited to Earth nor to our "generation" (this creation, this evolving genetically manipulated experiment by extraterrestrials, this iteration).

Gaia (the planet Earth) is only one of uncountable habitable planets. Suitable planets are easy to find for space traveling races and terraform. Those beings then worship their "creators" and are helped along to evolve and continue the spatial imperalism off planet spreading genes across the galaxy and universe. Time travel and other manipulations make it easy but mind boggling.

Astronomers have claimed the existence of a new class of planet: a "water-world" with a thick, steamy atmosphere.

Buddhist cosmology is more complex than it first appears. It is taught that there are countless world systems. What is a "world system"? A solar system, a ten-thousandfold planetary system (a galaxy), a cosmos, universe, multiverse?

What is a plane? Many mistakenly believe the answer is straightforward. Life at any time on Earth is stacked and complex; it is almost unrecognizable from one location to the next, one time period to the next, one socioeconomic status to the next.

Human life on Earth now would have to be dark skinned, female, malnourished, uneducated, and desperate clinging to the views of various subcultures. Few of us would recognize that as a description of our human world, but it does statistically describe Earth in 2012. Human life elsewhere in the solar system (yes, the visible nearby planets) and the galaxy is generally much more advanced. But there are ruined worlds (ala Easter Island).

The Great Wastes
The Buddha described unspeakably miserable hells (purgatories, perdition). These worlds are varied and overpopulated. The worst of them is perhaps in hyperspace, an interstitial hell between worlds. (Each "world" is conceived of as a globe or galaxy separated from others with crevices like the ones between the edges of transparent beach balls). There is no light there, and beings feel alone. Ostracized and doomed to isolation, beings suffer greatly there, much as if they were lost in space in a cold dead universe.

Officially the worst world is at the bottom of the Sensual Sphere. It is called Avici., a world (naraka) of unrelenting torment. Other "hells" are incredibly cold or perversely ironic, like Siberia or Alaska, wastelands. All of these general types of places are regarded as a single plane.

Unfortunate Realms
There are less miserable, albeit still quite unfortunate, planes -- manifold ghost realms, super-diversified animal worlds, realms of monsters [shape shifting reptilians (nagas), demons (yakkhas), and titans (asuras)]. All of these co-occupy the Human Plane. Spirits or transparent beings -- of the dead, ghosts, elemental fairies (lesser earthbound devas), dwarfs (kumbandhas), avian hybrids (garudas), and chimeras.

First Fortunate Realm: Human World
Life on Earth is diverse, crowded, miserable, and a rare experience to rejoice over. Given all of the lives one leads and will lead, all of the worlds one will be reborn in (hells and heavens of tremendous duration), all of the planes to be reborn on, human life is extraordinary unusual, in demand and, usually, completely wasted.

For it is only from this world (along with some lower akasha deva planes) that one has the opportunity to reach enlightenment and reach liberation from the otherwise endless round of rebirth called samsara (the "continued wandering on" in search of pleasure and meaning, away from suffering and despair). This is the only plane on which buddhas arise, and the heavens can only look down in amazement.

As part of a simplified description, world systems are all imagined as possessing 31 Planes of Existence, with a Maha Brahma (highest and first born being of the Sensual Sphere, which imagines Itself to be the creator of all), a Sakka (Indra, a Lord of Lords, King of Kings who rules over the first two space planes above the Human Plane), and only rarely a single fully enlightened buddha. These three are not actually beings in the conventional sense but rather stations or positions occupied by different individuals.

• This extraordinary kind of buddha (a samma-sam-buddha) should not be confused with being the only worthy, extraordinary, or spiritual personality in the world. There are many worthy ones (arhats), noble ones (arya, a reference to partially enlightened beings in the human world and in some celestial worlds), non-teaching buddhas (pacceka-buddhas), brahmins (beings ennobled by their actions not by their birth), bodhisattvas (beings striving for enlightenment), good beings enjoying or suffering the results of their karma, and wretched beings suffering or enjoying the results of their karma). No being is all good and no being all bad. It is tempting to say that a buddha or arhat is ALL good, but that denies such a person's past. Indeed, a fully enlightened being has overcome all defilements, overcome rebirth on any kind plane
  

Elsewhere in the universe -- in other clusters, galaxies, zones, or dimensions (whatever a "world system" is) there is a Buddha teaching on a planet, visiting other planets in that world system, aware of buddhas elsewhere. Over time, there are buddhas that arise, but this is usually understood to be measured in geological time in epochs, eras, ages, and aeons on a grand Indian (Vedic) timescale.



The Heavens
The Buddha called all of the planes of existence above the Human Plane akasha deva lokas ("space worlds inhabited by light beings"). Even the miserable planes of warlike titans (asuras) and reptoids (nagas, dragons, feathered serpents) are lumped with planes superior to humans.

The many heavens begin with the lowest world of messengers (gandhabbas, gandharvas), "angels" or space fairies, incredibly beautiful humanoids in space crafts (vimanas, mounts, platforms, UFOs) who visit Earth often on behalf of higher order and more powerful devas ("arch angels"). These long-lived "lords" -- such as those in Tavatimsa or the "World of the Thirty-Three" -- protect this planet from other space beings and value the importance of morality, for they know it to be the path to rebirth among them.

Many of the worlds humans call "heavens" refer to life on advanced planets, but our language is confounded with mythology and hyperbole. Compared to human society, such worlds are paradises. But parts of this terraformed planet are also paradisiacal, made in the image of those biotic celestial worlds.

If we cling to a view of "heaven" as a single, cloudy gated community, we have gone astray. And going astray, it is very easy to stop believing in any such "nonsense."

Today, most humans believe in a transdimensional "heaven" but scoff at the notion that there is life in space on other planets: "UFOs and aliens," we scoff, "hah!" Religion has convinced most of us that "immaterial" worlds of blissful "souls" exist not seeing the danger in careless labeling.

The space worlds of the Sensual Sphere are tangible, material worlds like this one, which is also home to many unseen beings.

• Buddhism's 31 "PLANES" OF EXISTENCE are divided into three "spheres" (lokas) -- the Sensual (13 planes), Fine-Material (14 planes), and Immaterial (four planes).
• Most religions are Sun worship without realizing it

While such beings are normally invisible, they can be made visible by developing the "third eye" or "divine eye" (dibba cakkhu), which seems to refer to the physical base of the pineal gland. Many are born with this ability. But because most of us are not, or lose it after childhood, we are taught to laugh at the possibility of seeing beyond the "visible" light spectrum with the unaided eye.

"Seventh Heaven" is either the highest Sensual Sphere plane (paranimmitavasavatti deva loka) or the lowest Fine-Material Sphere plane (brahma-parisajja deva). It is not an immaterial one, of which four are very real and correspond, as karmic resultants of, the four immaterial absorptions.

DMT visions of the normally unseen world (centraxis.blogspot.com)

• A detailed accounting: Buddhist cosmology
• The 31 Planes of Existence in Buddhism

For more on Buddhist cosmology directly from the oldest sutras, see the Pali Canon's

• Saleyyaka Sutta: The Brahmins of Sala (MN 41);
• Janussonin Sutta: Offerings to the Dead (AN 10-177);
  
• Cula-suññata Sutta: Lesser Discourse on Emptiness (MN 121)

Planet X is in our Solar System (TIME.com)

Michael D. Lemonick (TIME.com, Feb. 16, 2011)

Our origin is space by alien visitation in history and mythology (Tim Kiusalaas/Corbis).

(TIME) The quest for Planet X always starts out with celestial objects behaving badly.

Astronomers notice that a known planet, or a bunch of comets, begin moving in ways Newton's laws of motion can't explain.

They propose that it's caused by the gravity of something massive and still undiscovered lurking out in the Solar System, and they head to their telescopes to search for it.

Most often it's all a big mistake; the unexplained motion turns out to be just an incorrect measurement. (The great exception concerned Neptune, spotted in 1846 after observers noticed Uranus wandering from its predicted path).

So when a pair of University of Louisiana astronomers, writing in the journal Icarus, advanced their recent theory about a new mystery planet in our solar system -- and a very, very big one -- their colleagues mostly just listened politely, then went back to work. More>>

• Zecharia Sitchin's 12 Planet, Nirbiru (sitchin.com)
• TIME's photoessay "Amazing photos of the Sun"
• Earth "dodges" geomagnetic storm: scientist
• Massive Valentine's Day solar flare (video)
• The Sun in 3D - VIDEO (Reuters.com)

What is the origin of life as evolved by genetic manipulation on Earth? (sitchin.com)

Hawking: Aliens should stay away from Earth

LONDON (AFP) – Space aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking warned Sunday.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.

The programs depict an imagined universe featuring alien life forms in huge spaceships on the hunt for resources after draining their own planet dry. "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," warned Hawking. More>>

How did the Earth get its name?
When was our planet given its formal title, and what are the origins of the word? The name Earth originates from the 8th century Anglo-Saxon word erda, which means ground or soil. In Old English the word became eorthe, then erthe in Middle English. Earth was first used as the name of the sphere of the Earth around 1400. It is the only planet whose name in English is not derived from Greco-Roman mythology. Source

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• Video: Burning Beauty: A New Look at the Sun

Search for Other Earths

The Kepler mission and its scope. NASA is preparing to launch the Kepler space telescope to help answer a question that has boggled the minds of astronomers for centuries: Is Earth the only habitable planet in the galaxy? (AFP/Graphic).

Spectators watch the launch of NASA's planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler Friday, 3/6/09, from Cocoa Beach, Fla. Kepler, named after the German 17th century astrophysicist, set off on its unprecedented mission at 10:49 p.m., thundering into a clear sky embellished by a waxing moon (AP/Florida Today, Malcolm Denemark).

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA's planet-hunting telescope, Kepler, rocketed into space Friday night on a historic voyage to track down other Earths in a faraway patch of the Milky Way galaxy. It's the first mission capable of answering the age-old question: Are other worlds like ours out there?

• SLIDESHOW: Kepler Spacecraft
• VIDEO: Are We Alone in the Universe? (ABC News)
• VIDEO: Is anybody out there ? (Reuters)

Kepler, named after the German 17th century astrophysicist, set off on its unprecedented mission at 10:49 p.m., thundering into a clear sky embellished by a waxing moon.

"It was just magnificent. It looked like a star was being formed in the sky..." More>>