The most common type of star in the Milky Way is called a red dwarf–these are smaller, cooler, and longer-lived than our sun. There are 160 BILLION of them in our galaxy and 40% of them have Earth-like planets orbiting them at the right distance for liquid water to exist on their surfaces, a condition that is necessary for life.
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The Pentagon is planning to build a spacecraft that can travel outside our solar system on a hundred-year trip, reporting on what it finds along the way. Why would a financially-strapped military pursue such a project–are they searching for hostile ETs?
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That’s how Anne Strieber thinks the beings we call "The Visitors" get here.
In New Scientist, Sandrine Ceurstemont explains how you would do it: "First, you free fall through the outer horizon of a black hole. Once you reach its inner horizon, you see an infinitely-energetic flash of light from the outside world containing an image of the entire history of the universe. In a real black hole you would be vaporized by the burst, but the visualization assumes you have superpowers to survive it.
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The military’s covert agency DARPA is working on a space-based spy telescope that can hover in orbit to "take real-time images or live video of any spot on Earth." They want to launch satellites that can zoom in on anyone at any time or place and stream real-time video.
The Network World website quotes a DARPA memo as saying, "Today, aircraft are used for some imagery requirements. Because of the huge quantity of aircraft needed, and because aircraft do not fly high enough to see into denied territories, spacecraft are also used for imagery requirements."
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