Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
21-08-2016
Astronomers Confirm Model Of How Stars Go Nova
Astronomers Confirm Model Of How Stars Go Nova
IN BRIEF
Polish astronomers have been able to document fully a white dwarf go from sleeping to erupting in a regular nova.
UNEXPECTED DISCOVERIES
Watching stars go nova or supernova is of particular interest to astronomers. Its an understandable interest that any astronomically large explosion would attract. So you may assume that the steps and the stages stars would go through during one would be well documented. Well, not so much.
What’s amazing was that the astronomers weren’t looking for novas—OGLE is a long-term surveying project that uses microlensing to search for dark matter.
Instead, in 2003, they stumbled on V1213 Cen, or Nova Centauri 2009, a white dwarf star in a cataclysmic variable star system.
DOCUMENTING EVOLUTION
These kinds of star systems are composed of a white dwarf and a low-mass star. Its a binary sort of system, with the distance between them no larger than the Earth-Moon distance. This closeness, coupled with the intense gravity of a white dwarf, means that said white dwarf is actively leeching material from the low-mass star into a disk around the dwarf.
V1213 Cen is an example of a slow version of this process, called “mass theft.” Since it is slow, the material becomes unstable and erupts in small “dwarf novas”. These dwarf novas push material, primarily hydrogen, into the surface of the white dwarf.
Thus, the white dwarf becomes larger until it reaches a certain mass, at which point it erupts into a classic nova. After this, there are several centuries of high-rate mass transfer, then a millennia-long hibernation period, until it ultimately awakes to start the cycle all over again.
Observation of V1213 Cen have yielded the first ever pictures of a single such system evolving from pre to post nova, confirming the model astronomers posited.
Tesla’s Anti-Gravity Research in Use in Dozens of Secretive Military Projects
Tesla’s Anti-Gravity Research in Use in Dozens of Secretive Military Projects
Doctor Richard Boylan, and numerous others have already let the cat out of the bag when it comes to anti-gravity space flight, so why do Boeing and Lockheed, two of America’s largest military industrial contractors, and the recipient of trillions in tax payer ‘black budget’ dollars still hide that they are operating at least 12 anti-gravity aerospace platforms?
It seems that Boeing hides this advanced aerospace technology because it would prove what many free energy enthusiasts have said about Nikola Tesla – that he discovered anti-gravity, and learned how to utilize it as an abundant, if not free, energy source.
Objects can even be levitated easily with anti-gravity, and its numerous applications are just beginning to be understood by the public at large.
The late genius and inventor even explained the fact prior to his death. William R. Lynewrites inOccult Ether Physics (Creatopia Productions), that a lecture Tesla prepared for the Institute of Immigrant Welfare (May. 12, 1938), dealt with his Dynamic Theory of Gravity.
Tesla said in his lecture that he had developed, “one of two far-reaching discoveries, which I worked out in all details in the years 1893 and 1894.”
Indeed, Tesla held a patent in 1928, for a flying machine which resembled both a helicopter and an airplane and is thought to have run with the benefit of anti-gravity.
Boeing has loosely revealed that they have already developed this technology in a veiled admittance that “it is working on experimental anti-gravity projects that could overturn a century of conventional aerospace propulsion technology.”
And Ben Rich, once the CEO of Lockheed Martin, admitted on his deathbed that “aliens were real,” and the “US military already travels to the stars,” explaining where this technology could have been sourced, aside from terrestrial beings like Tesla.
This means that for more than 130 years we have been kept in the dark about a known free energy source so that the powers-that-be can profit from our ignorance.
Every time you see a ‘rocket ship’ go up in space, it is essentially no different from the false flagattempts orchestrated by six media companies controlling the media to alter your perception of reality.
So Where Did All that Research Go?
Theodore C. Loder, PhD, posits in one paper that since the 1950’s (known to some as the brain drain era) almost all research into anti-gravity seems to have disappeared.
None other than Professor Hermann Oberth, considered by some to be one of the fathers of the space age (and who later worked in the US with Wernher von Braun, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and NASA), stated the following in 1954:[3]
“It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system.”
Perhaps of more interest to our present discussion on the secrets Boeing and Lockheed have kept, Oberth states:
“They are flying by the means of artificial fields of gravity... They produce high-tension electric charges in order to push the air out of their paths, so it does not start glowing, and strong magnetic fields to influence the ionized air at higher altitudes. First, this would explain their luminosity... Secondly, it would explain the noiselessness of UFO flight.”
Indeed, you can see the crumbs of government contractor’s special operatives at work when you look into the work of John Hutchison.
He discovered, “highly-anomalous electromagnetic effect which causes the jellification of metals, spontaneous levitation of common substances, and other effects,” which echo Tesla’s findings. These strange effects were later dubbed the Hutchison effect.
As is usually the case when silencing the curious, a Vancouver businessman, George Hathaway heard of the Hutchison effect around 1980, and hired an engineer from Boeing Aerospace to work with the Canadian government to form a company that would promote technology developed from the effect.
They called this company Pharos’ Technology. You likely haven’t heard of what they have created since then.
12 Special Aerospace Platforms Incorporating Anti-Gravity Technology
“At this time, I am aware of the existence of 12 kinds of special-technology advanced aerospace platforms [mil-speak for craft], all incorporating antigravity technology in some form. “These 12 are: the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, the F-22 Raptor advanced stealth fighter, and its successor, the F-35 Lightning II advanced stealth fighter; the Aurora, Lockheed-Martin’s X-33A, the Lockheed X-22A two-man antigravity disc fighter, Boeing and Airbus Industries’ Nautilus, the TR3-A Pumpkinseed, the TR3-B Triangle , Northrop’s “Great Pumpkin” disc, Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical’s XH-75D Shark antigravity helicopter, and the Northrop Quantum Teleportation Disc.”
Since at least 1956, the press has been trying to manage public awareness by staying hush-hush about anti-gravity research, or discounting those who attempted to show that it was real.
However, a trade press magazine, the Aviation Report, made numerous references to anti-gravity projects, and listed many of the companies pursuing research into anti-gravity technologies.
Quotes from the Aviation Report listed in the Aviation Studies (International) Ltd. report[8] are suggestive of what was truly going on at Boeing, Lockheed and other agencies despite what the public was being told.
What Anti-Gravity Means to the World at Large
Anti-gravity, first and foremost would make petrol-guzzling cars, crumbling electric grids, and other outdated and dirty fuels a total waste of time.
Anti-gravity, as Nikola Tesla made clear, would make space flight to other heavenly bodies as simple as driving your car to a nearby city, today.
It would also turn Einstein’s E=MC2 theory on its head, and it also suggests, as Tesla explained, that the ether is given to us to use responsibly by a life-giving creative force.
In short, everything we need is already out there, in abundant supply. We just need to tap into it and free these technologies from the grip of the military industrial complex.
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Kitezh: the Mythical Invisible City of Russia Could Have Been Real
Kitezh: the Mythical Invisible City of Russia Could Have Been Real
Kitezh is a mythical city of Russia which was once dubbed “the invisible city.” New evidence suggests it could have been more than just a myth.
In past months, the fans of the Tomb Raider franchise received a nice surprise in the form of the latest sequel of this action video game. In the plot of the game Lara Croft, the famous adventure character, ventures into the wilds of Siberia in search of immortality. The key to all her questions lies in the mythical city of Kitezh. Chased by numerous villains, she goes through the unimaginable trouble to reach the invisible city. Is there more to this story than the fiction of a video game plot?
According to rising body of evidence, Kitezh was once a mighty city on the shore of the lake Svetloyar, but it was flooded. For centuries, this city has survived as myth. In 2011, archaeologists found remains of everyday objects, and they believe that they belong to the people who lived in a mystical city of Kitezh.
Tale of Kitezh
The first written documents that mention the Russian Atlantis date back to 1780s and the Old Believers. In 1666, the Old Believers refused to accept the reforms the Orthodox Church adopted and therefore, they separated. In the early 13th century, the Grand Prince of Vladimir, Prince Georgy, founded the city of Little Kitzeh (Maly Kitezh) on the bank of the Volga River in the Voskresensky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in central Russia. Today, the city of Little Kitezh carries the name Krasny Kholm, and the settlement Prince Georgy had founded still survives despite all the destruction and wars that plagued it through the centuries. After a while, the Prince discovered a beautiful place on a lake Svetloyar which was further upstream and wanted to make another city on that spot.
Little Kitezh by Ivan Bilibin
This Bolshoy Kitezh or Big Kitezh was considered holy by all its inhabitants because of the large number of monasteries and churches the Prince had built. The origin of the city’s name is the cause of depute between researchers. Some think that the name came from the royal residence Kideksha while others think that it meant ‘obscure‘. The circle-shaped city has made the Russian people proud, and its location was kept secret. Some folk tales even say that the city was visible only to those who were pure of heart. As history has proved on so many occasions, times of peace and prosperity don’t last long.
Russian history is filled with difficulties caused by the Mongol invasions. One such invasion started in 1238 AD and was led by the mighty Batu Khan, the founder of the Golden Horde. The army Batu Khan brought with him was so powerful that they surrounded and besieged the city of Vladimir. After hearing a story about the mighty city of Kitezh, Khan became obsessed with it and determined to destroy it.
After a fierce battle, the Mongol army captured the Little Kitezh and made the Prince Georgy retreat to Kitezh. Even after the defeat, the hopes of saving the Prince’s city were high because Batu Khan didn’t know the location of the city. All of the prisoners were tortured in an attempt to get the information about the secret path that led to the lake Svetloyar. One of the men revealed the information because he couldn’t take the torture anymore.
It is certain that the Golden Hord reached the city and that great Prince died in the battle while trying to protect the Bolshoy Kitezh. Accounts how the events unraveled are very different and most of them come from the folk stories that kept the memory of this holy city alive.
One popular story explains the events that took place once Batu Khan and his Golden Horde reached the lake Svetloyar. They surrounded the city, but to their amazement, they didn’t see the army defending the city. There were no walls or anything else that could protect the city from certain death.
The Invisible Town of Kitezh (1913) by Konstantin Gorbatov
The only thing the Mongol conquerors could see was thousands of city’s inhabitants praying to God. Encouraged by the lack of opposing army, they initiated the attack, but at that moment, fountains of water sprouted from the soil. This caused havoc among the Mongols who managed to retreat to the nearby forest. From there, they watched the city descend into the lake, disappearing from the face of the Earth forever. The mystical flooding of Kitezh became the source of many myths and folk tales that were passed from one generation to another.
In these stories, the city was called ‘The Invisible City‘ that would only reveal itself to those who were pure and had sincere faith in God. On some occasions, people have reported they heard voices from the lake that sang the hymns. Also, those with faith in God could see the lights of the processions that people who still live in the Russian Atlantis hold.
In the second decade of the 21st century, the archaeologists inspired by these legends started looking for evidence that would prove if the city of Bolshoy Kitezh ever existed.
In 2011, the team of researchers found the traces of ancient settlements in the area around the Svetloyar Lake. In addition, they unearthed fragments of traditional Russian pottery. One of the most important discoveries they’ve made so far was that the hill in which the remains of the settlement were found is prone to landslides. This could prove that the people who lived in Russian Atlantis met much less glorious destiny than the one depicted in the myths and folktales of the Russian people. The landslide could have submerged the city, but at this point, the scientific community awaits further findings from the team that is working on this site.
It is less important what actually happened with Prince Georgy’s city than the fact that his city gave the strength to many people that went through the difficult periods of their life. The power of a myth is not in the facts but in the reassurance that impossible things happen if you are righteous.
Venusachtige exoplaneet heeft mogelijk zuurstof in de atmosfeer
Venusachtige exoplaneet heeft mogelijk zuurstof in de atmosfeer
Tim Kraaijvanger
Het is geen pretje om op de exoplaneet GJ 1132b te wonen. Mogelijk is het er net zo warm als in je oven, namelijk zo’n 230 graden Celsius. Wel vermoeden astronomen dat er zuurstof in de atmosfeer aanwezig is.
Astronoom Laura Schaefer en haar collega’s van het Harvard-Smithsonian Center voor Astrofysica bogen zich over een pittige vraag: hoe heeft de atmosfeer van GJ 1132b zich in de loop ter tijd ontwikkeld?
Waarschijnlijk was de atmosfeer ooit rijk aan water. Omdat de afstand tussen de exoplaneet en de moederster slechts enkele miljoenen kilometers is, vangt GJ 1132b veel ultraviolet licht. Hierdoor vallen watermoleculen uit elkaar in waterstof en zuurstof. Deze elementen zijn licht, waardoor de exoplaneet ze ooit gaat verliezen. Toch is er een verschil. Waterstof is namelijk lichter dan zuurstof en zal dus sneller verdwijnen uit de atmosfeer. Dit betekent dat zuurstof blijft hangen.
Gesmolten magmazee Als er zuurstof wordt gevonden in de atmosfeer van deze hete wereld, dan is dat geen teken dat er leven aanwezig is of dat het er leefbaar is. “Het is juist het tegenovergestelde”, zegt Schaefer. Aangezien waterdamp een broeikasgas is, is er sprake van een op hol geslagen broeikaseffect op de exoplaneet. Het oppervlak van GJ 1132b kan miljoenen jaren een gesmolten magmazee blijven.
Deze grote magmazee absorbeert mogelijk een klein deel van de zuurstof in de atmosfeer, maar het gaat hier om slechts tien procent. De overige negentig procent verdwijnt ooit de ruimte in.
Even snuffelen Als er zuurstof in de atmosfeer van GJ 1132b aanwezig is, dan kan dit in de nabije toekomst ontdekt worden. Nieuwe supertelescopen – zoals de James Webb telescoop – zijn in staat om te snuffelen aan de atmosferen van verre werelden. “Wellicht ontdekken we hier voor het eerst zuurstof op een aardachtige exoplaneet buiten de zonnestelsel”, concludeert medeauteur Robin Wordsworth.
Ze zijn er in overvloed: complottheorieën. Het bekendste is misschien wel de theorie dat de maanlanding nep was, maar er zijn er nog veel meer. Zo is er een complottheorie die stelt dat de dood van John F. Kennedy geregisseerd werd door de Amerikaanse geheime diensten. En recenter werd beweerd dat Osama Bin Laden niet door de VS werd gedood, maar al jaren daarvoor een natuurlijke dood stierf (een alternatieve theorie stelt overigens dat hij nog in leven is). En ook omtrent de verdwijning van MH370 doen zich wilde theorieën de ronde.
Eigenlijk zou je wel kunnen stellen dat elke gebeurtenis van wereldbelang tegenwoordig vergezeld gaat door een complottheorie die de gebeurtenis heel anders verklaart. Maar hoe ontstaan zulke theorieën en waarom geloven mensen erin? Moraalwetenschapper Brecht Decoene vertelt er in het boekje ‘Achterdocht tussen feit en fictie‘ alles over.
Hij gunt ons een kijkje in het brein van de complotdenker en benadrukt dat we complottheorieën, hoe belachelijk ze ook klinken, zeker niet moeten onderschatten. Hun invloed kan namelijk verstrekkend zijn. Een schrijnend voorbeeld daarvan is Anders Breivik die in 2011 77 mensen ombracht in Oslo en op het eiland Utøya. Hij was sterk van overtuigd, zo stelt Decoene, van een samenzwering door moslims om Europa te veroveren. “Breivik wilde de Westerse beschaving redden en achtte het daartoe noodzakelijk om diegenen die dit complot zouden kunnen faciliteren met geweld af te stoppen.” Niet elke complotdenker zal naar de wapens grijpen, sterker nog: veel complotdenkers wijzen geweld resoluut af. Maar de geschiedenis leert ons dat complottheorieën aan de basis kunnen liggen van “geweld tegen onschuldigen, de vergoelijking en rationalisering daarvan”.
Dat complottheorieën tegenwoordig vrijelijk over het internet verspreid worden, lijkt dan ook zorgwekkend. Het vraagt van ons om feit en fictie van elkaar te scheiden en op een goeie manier met de rondzwervende theorieën om te gaan. Maar hoe doe je dat? Ook daarvoor biedt Decoene de nodige handvaten in zijn boek.
Complottheorieën zijn fascinerend. En dat is het boek ‘Achterdocht tussen feit en fictie‘ ook. Het boekje is kort en bondig, nuchter en bijzonder relevant in een tijd waar complottheorieën aan de lopende band worden gegenereerd.
Science fiction movies frequently make it seem as though hostile extraterrestrials might be able to sneak through Earth’s atmosphere, emerge from the clouds without warning, and start wrecking shit. But is it really possible that spaceships could suddenly appear out of the vast blackness of space unnoticed by the myriad instruments on the ground? Depending on the aliens’ level of technological sophistication, one can argue that almost anything is possible. Humans have pointed a lot of sensors skyward, but it’s not clear they would really give us a proper heads up before our extraterrestrial guests arrive.
It sort of depends on exactly what we’re looking for. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, better known as SETI, has been fruitless so far, but we keep investing and more and more money towards projects aimed at answering whether or not we’re alone in the universe. That investigation basically revolves around detecting various signals that point to the existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrials. And that also means the instruments we can use to observe space let us see farther into the universe than ever before. How far exactly? Douglas Vakoch tells Inverse that the answer has more to do with defining “see” than with arriving at a specific number.
A SETI researcher and the president of METI International, Vakoch divides the tools used to do SETI research into two groups: optical, and radio. Optical instruments, which look for lasers or other light patterns that suggest the presence of intelligent aliens, can make decent observations up to about 1,000 light-years away. “Beyond 1,000 light-years, however, it can get more difficult,” Vakoch says. Those instruments include the Boquete Optical SETI Observatory in Panama, and the Owl Observatory in Michigan.
Radio instruments, on the other hand, make a lot more sense for investigating signs of extraterrestrial life. For one, we can listen in on radio waves moving through space from about 10,000 light-years and beyond. Radio waves are also a pretty specific sign of a technologically advanced civilization while a star system may be expressing a strange laser-based signal in the distance, that might also just be an unexplained natural phenomenon (as we’re sort of learning when it comes to Tabbys Star.
Of course, as Vakoch emphasizes, our abilities to listen in on the universe dwindles as the distance increases. Aliens broadcasting themselves 10,000 light-years away will likely avoid detection.
But then again, SETI is a two-way street. When asked whether we currently have a maximum limit from which we can detect alien life, Seth Shostak, the director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, says, “It depends on how much money the aliens have to invest in their own technology.” He’s referring to the fact that intelligent lifeforms might possess technologies that allow them to broadcast their existence to us from farther away and offset the limits of our own instruments.
“In theory, there’s no limit,” he adds.
It’s important to remember that SETI investigations don’t just watch the universe in all direction in hopes we’ll stumble on something. Scientists focus our instruments on certain regions of space that are most promising — i.e. the exoplanets or star systems that possess the best chances for developing habitable environments.
“We start close to home,” says Vakoch, “and look at sun-like stars. As we move the investigation farther out, we start to hone in on stars or star regions that might be useful. For example, a current trend in the SETI community is the study of red dwarf stars, which were historically ignored. The beauty of red dwarfs is that they last a long time,” says Vakoch, sustaining planetary systems that have a much longer chance of developing habitable traits. Red dwarfs make up about 80 to 90 percent of the stars in our own neighborhood within the Milky Way galaxy.”
There’s another big factor to consider. SETI research focuses on finding aliens thatwant to be found — or at the very least, are not actively trying to hide from human detection. If a hostile fleet of extraterrestrial warships were stationed somewhere in the galaxy or was en route to the solar system, they could very well possess a number of highly advanced technologies that could shroud their presence. Space itself is incredibly big anyways — humans don’t have eyes and ears scanning all parts of the universe around us.
Aliens might be able to slip into orbit, but if they were traveling in anything truly large it might be quite difficult for them to do so without severely disrupting our orbital equipment or even taking out a geosynchronous satellite. Still, that’s not an impossible feat.
“If they’re sufficiently intelligent,” says Vakoch, “there’s no reason to think they couldn’t be anywhere.”
It’s been twenty long years since the War of 1996 and the world is slowly rebuilding from the intergalactic pummeling it received from an alien mothership and its 36 City Destroyers. In that time, mankind has applied alien technology to not only weaponry and vehicles, but to appliances as well, creating bladeless fans and touchscreen smartphones. The man tasked with building it all: Jeff Goldblum.
This is the premise of Independence Day: Resurgence — well, part of it anyway — which comes out Friday. In the trailer, president Elizabeth Lanford announces that “we have found the technology to build a stronger and safer Earth” but after a few bwaahh bwaahhs the audience realizes that might not be totally true. What we’ve found is alien technology better than our own. And we’ve reverse engineered it.
The idea that humans would build their own technology from the leftovers of aliens isn’t just something that sprang from the minds of Resurgencescreenwriters Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin, and Carter Blanchard. Humans have longed assumed advanced technologies (a relative term if ever there was one) were the products of some sort of intergalactic intervention. These conspiracy theories break down into three basic types.
1. Aliens as the Source of All Technology
The Antikythera mechanism was discovered in 1901.
The 1984 conspiracy bestseller Chariot of the Gods popularized (with “hard scientific facts!”) the idea that ancient civilization landmarks like the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and the Nazca lines in Peru were actually alien-built structures and landing sites. This line of semi-reasoning proved popular because these spots are hard to understand products of ancient engineer. They are not the only ones. The Antikythera mechanism, a device believed to be an astronomical clock, was built by ancient Greeks. Naturally, people have theorized that it was actually created by an advanced (but apparently not too advanced) alien species.
Considered by scientists as the most technologically sophisticated artifact to exist from antiquity, accredited researchers believe the purpose of the device was to tell the user when lunar and solar eclipses would occur and to track the timing of the Olympic games. The authors behind theancientaliens.com don’t buy it:
“While many experts try to offer explanations for how this device could have been conceived, designed, and built, all of their concepts fail the tests of logic. There is only one possible explanation. Beings with advanced knowledge of astronomical bodies, mathematics, and precision engineering tools created the device or gave the knowledge for its creation to someone during the first century B.C.”
To which the researchers behind the Antikythera Mechanism Research Projectworking with the mechanism say: “No, by the same argument that it is not evidence of time travel. It fits within a long tradition of astronomical, mechanical, or general scientific development.”
2. Aliens as the Source of New Materials
Once you dive into the world of alien conspiracy theories, a name that comes up again and again is Philip Schneider. Known as a UFO whistleblower, Schneider claimed to be a geologist and structural engineer once employed by the United States government. Before his death under mysterious circumstances in 1996, Schneider embarked on a series of lectures around America to discuss what he claimed to be the longstanding relationship between the U.S. government and aliens. The point of the relationship? Exchanging new tech.
In this undated video, Schneider is giving one of these lectures. At about three minutes in, he says that he is going to explain “different alien metals that have been produced both in the confines of this planet and in outer-space and are now used in all stealth aircraft.”
Schnieder says that the metal is made of two elements: niobium, which is on theperiodic table, and marinite — an alien element. This metal, he says, comes from alien technology.
Robert Lazarus, who told the media in 1989 that he had been part of a secret military operation that worked on alien technology also claimed he had encountered an alien material: Element 115. Lazarus claimed that this substance allowed aliens to amplify gravity waves, allowing them to fly their spacecrafts. Related: No record of Lazarus’ employment has been found and CalTech and MIT, which he claims to have attended, do not have any record of his admission.
3. Aliens as the Source of Modern Inventions
This category is the broadest and the most frequently cited: The idea that we’re surrounded by technology that was manufactured from alien tech. Sometimes people say this is stuff that we’ve mistakenly interpreted as normal (like circuit boards and microchips and other times this refers to tech that has been kept from the public.
In 2002 British hacker Gary McKinnon was arrested by the United Kingdom’s national high-tech crime unit after allegedly conducting an extensive search into the computer networks of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense, and NASA. He told the BBC in 2006 that he was looking for evidence of suppressed alien technology— and found it. Here’s an excerpt of that conversation:
SK: Did you find what you were looking for?
GM: Yes.
SK: Tell us about it.
GM: There was a group called the Disclosure Project. They published a book which had 400 expert witnesses ranging from civilian air traffic controllers, through military radar operators, right up to the chaps who were responsible for whether or not to launch nuclear missiles.
They are some very credible, relied upon people, all saying yes, there is UFO technology, there’s anti-gravity, there’s free energy, and it’s extra-terrestrial in origin, and we’ve captured spacecraft and reverse-engineered it.
McKinnon also claimed that he came across NASA communication in which photographic experts said that they “regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs” from images taken from high-resolution satellites. McKinnon’s claims are in line with those of Lazarus who, before he decided to step away from the alien conspiracy game, said that the U.S. military relied upon alien technology to built their own crafts.
4. The Technologies Aliens Wouldn’t Give Us
In 2013 Canadian ex-Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer told Russia Today that not only is much of the technology we use alien-based, but that they would give usmore technology if we weren’t such assholes. If humankind “would go about it peacefully” they would share the splendor of their tech: Dropping the atom bomb, apparently, was a big sign to extraterrestrials that we’re too sketchy to handle any more gifts.
One piece of tech believers think aliens are holding back from us: Clean energy. Scientists have thrown out the idea that the star KIC 8462853 is surrounded by a Dyson sphere — a hypothetical megastructure that can capture a star’s power output.
The inverse of the aliens-holding-back-tech theory is that they haven’t visited us — but if they did, they would be such super-environmentalists that they would want to destroy us immediately. I’m not sure which idea is more comforting.
Pointing out intellectually redemptive attributes inside of a ham-handed, worn-out science fictions clichés can sort of seem like saying you’re really watching pornography to analyze the super-interesting dialogue. So, with common alien invasion stories – often replete with gratuitous scenes of destruction – it’s particularly difficult to find the deeper stuff. And because so many invasion stories are embedded with a somewhat xenophobic premise, what good can come out of alien invasion stories? Other than critiquing alien invasions inside of alien invasions (like in District 9), can an alien invasion actually be seen as a “good” thing? Can extraterrestrial invaders actually teach us a lesson?
The easiest example of aliens landing, and basically telling us what to do with our dumb Earthling lives, comes from Star Trek. While it’s not established immediately in the original 60’s show, by 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact, we learn that the peaceful, tolerant version of Earth was born out of the Vulcans landing on Earth, and saying hello. The Trek series Enterprise then depicted the ways in which the Vulcans more or less ran the Earth’s government, shared technology, and kind of bossed the military — Starfleet — around.
While all of this makes for some fun philosophical speeches on the show about how pushy and manipulative the Vulcans are, the larger positive and err …prosperous … impacts become obvious. Crime on Earth is gone, everyone is getting along, the economy is getting better, etc. All thanks to the Vulcans puppeteering our government!
In Star Trek, there is also an innumerable selection of other alien species who could have dropped in on us first, all of which would have either been a super bad influence on humanity (the Klingons) or destroyed the Earth entirely (the Borg.) In Trek’s evil alternate dimension – “the mirror universe” – it’s also established that the reason a corrupt and ruthless Empire rises in place of the goody toe-shoes Federation is all down to the moment where humans murder the “invading” Vulcans instead of shaking their hands. True, in all timelines, the Vulcans come in peace, so perhaps they’re not technically invaders. Still, in the “good” version of Star Trek’s future, the reason everything is so peachy is because we essentially let extraterrestrials tell us how to run our society better. Might not be a lasers and saucers invasion, but an ideological one for sure.
Though not technically aliens, this idea of cold, ultra-rational, emotionless beings dictating the peaceful survival of the human race has a precedent in the final section of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. Here, in a section entitled “The Evitable Conflict,” humankind is being subtly controlled (and saved) by robot influence. Obviously, this fact is kept from the majority of the human population, for the same reason the Vulcans only later revealed they’d had spies living among the human race for like a century before they formally decided to “land” with their spaceships. In Star Trek, the far future humans adopt this same form of spying, which at several points, makes the human crews of Starfleet ships the “aliens,” walking among indigenous populations, subtly judging what they do and don’t like about these various cultures.
Arthur C. Clarke’s famous novel Childhood’s End also depicts parental alien invaders in the form of Overlords, who, unlike the Vulcans in Star Trek, aren’t subtle at all about telling us what they’re up to. I mean, the name “Overlords,” is a pretty dead giveaway as to what they’re up to.
At the risk of reducing a wonderful and multilayered novel to a few basic themes; one of the more predominant points here is that while a certain amount of peace and stability occurs on Earth thanks to the Overlords being in charge, there’s also cultural, artistic, and general creative stagnation among humankind. With a title like Childhood’s End you can probably see where this is going: eventually a new generation of human beings evolve with abilities (like telepathy) that kind of challenge what the Overlords want.
Still, Clarke weaves a more complicated idea of alien invaders here: the fear human beings have of alien invaders isn’t a reaction to being conquered, but a kind of precognitive awareness of what intellectual fallout results from beingtaken care of on a global scale. In this way, the positive aspects of the alien invasion aren’t so much “good” as a fact of life. At some point this kind of thing was always going to happen, and the evolutionary leap human beings make as a result of this invasion is inevitable.
A manipulated, and wholly staged alien invasion forms one of the various premises of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan. Here, we get a full-on invasion from Mars complete with flying saucers! But here’s the rub: though the saucers come from Mars, they are crewed by human beings, all brain-washed and remote-controlled.
Though it is entirely different in tone than Childhood’s End, Vonnegut’s ultimate aim with the Martian invasion in The Sirens of Titan is to demonstrate just how mercilessly human beings would slaughter “creatures from another planet.” This has the roundabout effect on humankind and allows William Niles Rumfoord to establish the Church of the God of the Utterly Indifferent. The ultimate goal here was to show humankind that an alien invasion actually brought out their worst tendencies and the people they killed, were in fact, people they brainwashed. Vonnegut’s fake Martian invasion then succeeds at being both a literal invasion and a critique of the idea of invasions simultaneously.
If more conventional pop-cultural invasions – like Independence Day – are a reflection of reality, then the evil aliens have sort of taken over a long time ago; otherwise these kinds of films wouldn’t keep coming out. But we haven’t learned anything from this variety of aliens, yet. The ultimate and wholly unlikely twist ofIndependence Day: Resurgence would offer the humans some kind of potential advancement from all this senseless obliteration. But, unless those tentacles can figure out how to form the “live long and prosper” hand sign, or telepathically chide us about our faults, any deeper lessons from the new Independence Day are about as likely as having a relationship epiphany while watching a porno movie.
The premise for the original Independence Day was fairly simple. Aliens in huge laser frisbees attack the largest cities on Earth, working their way down to smaller towns as they attempt to eliminate mankind. This is a simple, easy-to-understand premise for a film but it is a really fucking stupid strategy. Like any other battle, the battle for Earth would be determined by one side’s ability to outmaneuver the other. Given that, why the hell weren’t the aliens targeting communications equipment or the electrical grid?
This was apparently not a group of deep space traveling geniuses.
Clever aliens — and aliens capable of locating intelligent life in a very big universe would likely be pretty smart — wouldn’t target humanity in general. They’d focus on infrastructure. The best bet to bringing about humanity’s end destroying the large physical structures and networks necessary for ensuring the survival and safety of humans and delivering essential services. The perfect targets would be remote, vulnerable, and vitally important. Unfortunately for us humans, they would also be myriad.
Here’s what smart aliens would actually attack in America.
Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Arizona
PHOENIX - OCTOBER 19: The Palo Verde Nuclear generating plant, the nation's largest nuclear power plant, is seen October 19, 2005 in Phoenix, Arizona. The Arizona Public Service Co was forced to shut down Units 2 and 3 on October 11 when the company could not prove to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the cooling system in the units would operate correctly in case of an emergency. Units 2 and 3 of the plant are expected to be back online and at full capacity by the end of the week. Unit 1 had previously been shut down for maintenance. (Photo by Jeff Topping/Getty Images)
This power plant sits about 45 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona close to the town of Tonopah (population of a little less than 3,000). It’s the largest power plant in the United States, capable of an average electrical power production of over 29,000 gigawatts per hour. The 4,000-acre facility produces 35 percent of the electrical power that powers much of Arizona (hey Phoenix!) and Los Angeles and San Diego (as well as other communities in Southern California). In short, a lot of people rely on this power plant to power their homes and businesses. An alien force, however, could pretty easily launch a strike and take it offline without too much trouble. It’s in the middle of the wide-open desert, after all.
And, to boot, a nuclear meltdown would be a pretty gnarly side effect, especially if winds managed to blow the nuclear fallout towards population centers.
Satellites in Geosynchronous Orbit
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifts off with Thales Alenia Space's TurkmenÄlem52E/MonacoSat satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit
In this instance, actually, it would be wiser to not strike at the surface at all but to fire up at major communication satellites. In GEO, a satellite will appear stationary at the same point in the sky at all times — at least to observers on the ground — which means it would conceivably possible to take out some hardware with a laser gun. The thing that renders objects in GEO vulnerable is also the thing that makes them work: pseudo-static positioning is optimal for commotions instruments since an antenna on the ground does not need to move in order to retain communication. Most of our critical communications equipment is tied to these satellites.
Humans currently have no way of really protecting satellites in GEO. So if I were an alien bent on eliminating our species, I would make GEO a pretty great place for orbital target practice.
Houston’s Water Supply
A view of the Houston skyline at dusk,
Water is life. And making sure our major metropolitan areas have enough water to drink and use for other day-to-day activities is vital to our society. Different communities have different sources for getting water, but some are more vulnerable than others. In the fourth biggest city in the United States, Houston, residents get their water from a mix of underground wells and surface.
Unfortunately, that water infrastructure is crumbling fast. Basic structures like pipes and mains are prone to breaking naturally. All an alien force would have to do is apply a little bit more strain to the existing technology and watch the whole thing fall apart. Before you know it, over two million people are scrambling to find fresh water in one of the hottest and driest states in the nation.
Interstate 5 Through the Central Valley, California
Vehicles drive by a 134-foot-high electronic sign displaying a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit on July 23, 2014 in Baker, California.
California’s Central Valley farms grow a lot of food. And I mean, a lot of foods. The state is responsible for 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic — and so forth. And most of this farmland is, obviously, located in a sparsely populated section of the state.
If aliens wanted to decimate not just food yields for California, but for the rest of the country, they would need to look no further than the Central Valley and begin attacking and scorching the crops located in this region. The effects would devastate the United States’ food production and in all likelihood force us to resort to other means to keep populations well-fed.
Ships in the Florida Strait
A container ship moves past the United States Coast Guard Cutter William Flores.
Transportation by the high seas is still the most cost-effective way to ship goods back and forth between places. The Florida Strait remains one of these key locations that allows ships to pass from the Atlantic Ocean into the Gulf of Mexico and access the Caribbean and Central and South American countries.
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of oil that moves through this transportation hub. While the Florida Strait is not an isolated place, it’s certainly far and wide enough that a rag-tag group of extraterrestrials would just need to create a steady stream of attacks to significantly affect the transport of vital resources.
The Mississippi River Levee System
New Orleans is ringed by hundred of miles of levees to protect against flooding.
Humans aren’t the best at deciding on safe places to build communities. Coastlines are a great example. It used to be essential to be next to a waterway, no matter the disadvantages when it came to flooding and storms. These days, with increased water elevations and more frequent supercell storms, being next to the coast is a liability — yet we continue to stick around and just board things up with levees and dykes, imagining they’ll last forever.
A smart alien force would know this. Just take the 3,500-mile levee system around the Mississippi River that protects 4 million people from devastation via flood. If a hostile invasion wanted to wreak havoc, all it would need to do is impact the levees at key areas during a major storm event and watch the waters do the rest.
Photos via Getty Images / Jeff Topping, Getty Images / NASA, Getty Images / Scott Halleran, Getty Images / Ethan Miller, Getty Images / Joe Raedle, Getty Images / Mario Tama
Are Black Holes Truly Black? Lab Test Supports Stephen Hawking's Theory
Are Black Holes Truly Black? Lab Test Supports Stephen Hawking's Theory
By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor
Are black holes truly black? A new laboratory experiment points toward "no."
Using a simulated black hole made from soundwaves, scientists have observed a phenomenon known as Hawking radiation: a faint energy emission that, in theory, is created right at the edge of a black hole's event horizon, or the point beyond which even light cannot escape.
If Hawking radiation comes from astrophysical black holes (not just those created in a lab), it would mean these objects are not entirely dark. It could also help scientists solve a paradox posed by black holes, and perhaps shed light on one of the most significant problems facing modern physics. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]
Jeff Steinhauer, an experimental physicist at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, and lead author on the new study, told Space.com.
According to Steinhauer, earlier calculations bycosmologist Stephen Hawking (who came up with the theory that bears his name) combined the theories of quantum physics and gravity. The current experiment tests those calculations, providing the first strong evidence that they are correct, Steinhauer said.
"A black hole is a testing ground for the laws of physics," Steinhauer said.
Swimming against the current
There's a tricky concept in physics that says that pairs of particles constantly blink into existence throughout space. One is a particle of normal matter and the other is its exact opposite, or antiparticle, so the two annihilate one another, and there's no change to the universe's energy balance sheet. These are called virtual particles. When this happens near the edge, orevent horizon, of a black hole, the particles can avoid complete destruction; one can fall inside while the other escapes.
But observing such interactions in nature has remained difficult, the Hawking radiation around a black hole (if it exists) is so faint that it can't be seen from Earth around known black holes (most of which are very far away). In addition to the distance, the Hawking radiation is likely overwhelmed by radiation from other sources, Steinhauer said.
"It makes it seemingly almost impossible to see this very slight radiation coming from the black hole," he said.
The same problem applies in a laboratory, where any heat can create background radiation that overwhelms the lab-produced Hawking radiation. To eliminate that problem, Steinhauer's experiment ran at less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
In the analogue black hole, a line of cold rubidium atoms stream from a laser to create a form of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. The cold gas flows faster than the speed of sound in one direction, so that a sound wave trying to go against the flow can't manage to move forward. In this respect, the slower moving sound wave is like a particle trying to escape from a black hole.
"It's like trying to swim against the river," Steinhauer said. "If the river is going faster than you can swim, you go backwards, even though you feel like you're going forward."
The upstream attempt is analogous to light in a black hole trying to escape, he said. Sound waves trying to move forward instead fall backward. If two virtual particles were created near the edge of the event horizon, one particle could be consumed by the black hole (the fast-moving stream), while the other escapes, avoiding destruction. The escaping particles are called Hawking radiation.
A method of creating a black hole using sound waves was proposed in 1981, and since then scientists have struggled to simulate Hawking radiation in the lab. Two years ago, Steinhauer performed an experiment that measured Hawking radiation after something was deliberately crashed into the event horizon of the analogue black hole. This new experiment took more of a wait-and-see stance, waiting for the particle-antiparticle pair to appear without external stimulation, more like what happens in the depths of space.
Just as Hawking theorized, the simulated black hole spit out the predicted particles, a sign of Hawking radiation.
"What I saw suggests that a real black hole might emit something," Steinhauer said.
The new finding also has larger implications for the field of physics, he said. One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why Einstein's theory of gravity (which describes large-scale interactions in the universe) doesn't seem to be compatible with quantum mechanics (which describes very small-scale interactions).
"Combining gravity with quantum physics is one of the main goals of physics today," Steinhauer said. "Hawking made the first steps toward that."
The simulated black hole tested Hawking's equations.
"His calculations predicted there should be light from a black hole," Steinhauer said. "It turns out his calculations were correct."
Solving a paradox?
One intriguing result of the artificial black hole involved insight into theinformation paradox. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, everything that crosses the event horizon of a black hole is consumed, including information. As the escaping particle steals energy from a black hole, the massive object can shrink over time, eventually evaporating into nothing. Of course, this assumes it has stopped consuming nearby materialand thus isn't putting on new weight. Theoretically, a black hole can shrink into nothing, taking with it the information carried by or about the particles it consumed.
"Information has vanished," he said. "It's like it goes into the black hole and disappears."
Since quantum mechanics suggests that information can't be lost, that raises a paradox.
According to Hawking's calculations, the surviving particles contain no useful information about how the black hole formed and what it consumed, suggesting that information vanished with the black hole itself.
Steinhauer's black hole revealed that the higher energy particle pairs remained entangled, even after one was swallowed by the event horizon. Entangled particles are able to share information instantaneously, even when they are separated by great distances, a phenomenon sometimes described as "spooky action at a distance."
"Some of the solutions to this [paradox] probably rely on entanglement," Steinhauer said.
Scientists not associated with the research who were interviewed by Nature News and Physics World both said that while the experiment appears to have measured Hawking radiation, it does not necessarily prove that Hawking radiation exists around black holes in space.
The research was published online in the journal Nature Physics.
This Martian Landscape Looks Like the American Desert
This Martian Landscape Looks Like the American Desert
By Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer
A panoramic view from the surface of Mars shows brown and copper-colored plateaus and buttes, reminiscent of desert regions in the southwest United States.
NASA's Curiosity Rover took this panorama on Aug. 5, the fourth anniversary of its nail-biting landing on the Red Planet. The view is comprised of more than 130 images taken by the rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam), according to a statement from NASA.
The flat region in the foreground of the image is known as the Murray formation, while the collection of buttes a little further ahead is informally known as Murray Buttes. The region was named after planetary scientist Bruce Murray, a former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who passed away in 2013. (The Curiosity mission is managed by JPL).
The buttes are eroded sandstone formations that sit on top of lower Mount Sharp (the distant bump on the left-side of the image is upper Mount Sharp). The formations are now covered in a layer of rock that keeps them fairly well preserved, the statement said. Curiosity studied the softer layer of sandstone, called the Stimson formation, earlier this year. The flat Murray formation, formed from "lakebed mud deposits," according to the statement.
NASA's Curiosity rover — the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission — landed on Mars Aug. 5. How much do you know about Curiosity and its mission?
For a sense of scale, the wide plateau to the left of Curiosity's robotic arm is about 300 feet (90 meters) from the rover. The mesa is about 50 feet (15 meters) tall, while the horizontal ridge that runs horizontal across the top is about 200 feet (60 meters) long. To see the rover's location when this image was taken, check out this aerial map of its route.
Curiosity's primary mission goal was to study the surface of Mars and look for signs that it may have once been hospitable to life. In its extended mission, the rover is looking for clues as to how this portion of lower Mount Sharp evolved from a (possibly) hospitable water environment to its current, inhospitable condition.
In 1981, the Voyager 2 space probe took intriguing images of Saturn’s rings as it passed by the giant planet on its way to Uranus.
The images showed what looked like ghostly “spokes” moving on the rings, much like the spokes of a bicycle wheel as it turns. After some head-scratching, scientists realized that the Saturnian spokes most likely were tiny specks of dust moving around the rings due to electric and magnetic forces. These forces result from electrically charged gases known as plasma.
Even though you might not realize it based on our daily experiences, researchers think that 99 percent of the matter in our universe is in a plasma state. Many processes that occur in the universe are due in part to the presence of plasma.
Here on Earth, industry uses techniques that involve manipulating these ionized gases for microchip production, as well as for welding materials such as aluminum. Research facilities study plasma in hope of hitting on an efficient nuclear fusion process for energy production. In all these instances micron-size dust is present – which can be a good or a bad thing, depending.
The presence of dust in plasma makes it tricky to study them in a laboratory setting. Here at Baylor University’s Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics and Engineering Research (CASPER), we’ve built a sophisticated experimental facility to investigate these dusty plasma systems. We hope to answer fundamental questions related to dust-plasma interactions both on Earth and in space, in the process advancing our understanding of physics and astrophysics. Our investigations will allow us to untangle issues like the role of dust buildup in super-high-speed crashes in space, the formation of planets, and even areas belonging to life sciences, such as double-helix molecular interaction.
Solid swimmers in an electrical sea
Dusty plasma, also called complex plasma, contains small, solid particles distributed throughout the ionized gas. These particles can have the shape of a sphere, a rod or an irregular “pancake.” The reason dusty plasma are very interesting, and even technologically valuable, comes down to the fact that the dust particles themselves can become electrically charged.
We can think of dust particles as swimmers in a sea of electrons and ions – negative and positive charges, respectively. Electrons are so tiny compared to the dust that they easily stick to the particles' surfaces. When that happens, a dust particle will become negatively charged.
Because like charges repel each other, that bit of dust will now feel a push from other negatively charged dust particles. Likewise, that same negatively charged dust particle will feel a pull by the positive ions in the plasma, because charges of opposite signs attract each other. The net result is that dust particles will be pushed and pulled in many different directions, making them move in complex and fascinating ways.
Dusty plasma ‘in the wild’
One place to find dusty plasma is in Earth’s atmosphere, where they’re generated when meteoroids enter the atmosphere’s upper layers at speeds of several kilometers per second. Researchers study them with specialized radars that can detect the ball of plasma that forms around the meteroids as they heat up due to friction with the air.
At high geographic latitudes (between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator) an intriguing phenomenon occurs. Clouds made of tiny ice crystals and dust appear at an altitude of about 80 kilometers during the summer months. Known as noctilucent clouds, they are too thin to be visible in daylight, but they glow before sunrise or after sunset when the sun is below the horizon.
The clouds' icy dust particles are thought to play a role in the chemical composition of the atmosphere at those altitudes. In particular, their presence may be related to depletion of sodium and potassium. And since noctilucent clouds reside in an ionized region of the atmosphere (specifically, the lower ionosphere), their icy dust particles become electrically charged by electrons. These conditions give rise to a variety of electromagnetic phenomenaresearchers are actively investigating.
Farther from home, but still within our planetary neighborhood, comets can put on an amazing showthanks to dusty plasma effects. As a comet approaches the sun, the sun’s heat transforms part of the comet’s ice into vapor. This vapor, which contains many tiny dust grains, engulfs the comet nucleus to form a “coma.” The solar wind, which is a plasma made mostly of electrons and protons, pushes the cometary coma away from the sun and forms the spectacular tail with which we are familiar.
Even farther from us still, at distances of hundreds of light-years, dust particles embedded in huge, donut-shaped gas clouds move in orbits around young stars. These disks, known as protoplanetary disks, arewhere planets are formed. Portions of protoplanetary disks may be electrically charged and perhaps threaded by magnetic fields. The dust grains that have been detected in many of these disks are small enough to soak up plasma electrons, and it’s likely that grain charging affects how easily grains can grow to form planet precursors.
Astronomers detect these dusty plasma in space by capturing the light dust particles re-emit after being illuminated by stars. It requires extremely sophisticated instruments, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. From these observations, one can infer things like the dust size and chemical composition.
Dusty plasma in the lab
From a long distance, we can obtain only a limited amount of information about natural dusty plasma. By carrying out controlled experiments in laboratories, we can learn more about dusty plasma properties. For example, by directly manipulating the amount of ionization, we can control the arrangement of the dust particles. In contrast, at this time it is generally not possible to infer the precise arrangement of dust particles in space from telescopic observations.
To experimentally study dusty plasma, a lab must be capable of producing, confining and manipulating an ionized gas – that is, one that contains electrically charged particles. This is possible here at Baylor’s CASPER, where we use advanced instrumentation to investigate the behavior of dusty plasma. For example, we use an instrument called an inductively driven plasma generator – basically a wind tunnel containing electrically charged gases – to study a plasma’s interaction with lunar dust.
We’re also interested in what happens in the plasma when very fast dust particles collide with different targets. Understanding more about these collisions could help with designing better protection for spacecraft from micrometeorite impacts.
CASPER is one of a very few experimental facilities in the world that has three operating complex plasma cells – the chambers into which different gases can be injected to be ionized. Two are Gaseous Electronics Conference radio-frequency reference cells, a standardized plasma-producing chamber. The third is a custom-built device designed here that allows for the formation of much larger complex plasma systems than normally possible. The laboratory within which these cells reside was built from the ground up specifically for them. It’s a highly stable environment with regard to temperature and vibration, making it possible to produce extremely low-noise systems.
A typical experiment looks like this: a glass box can be placed between two electrodes to create an electric potential that will confine the dust-plasma system. The dust particles, which are made of melamine formaldehyde and have a diameter of less than 9 micrometers (about a thousandth of a centimeter in size), are introduced into the box through a dust shaker. Once the system power is turned on, the electric forces will change the arrangement of the dust particles, which will form linear or helical chains, depending on the amount of power used. Images of the dust structures can be captured by telescopic cameras.
These experiments open a window into the way the universe works, whether we are looking for improved efficiency of industrial processes or trying to understand how our solar system formed.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.
Een opname die nu ongeveer viraal lijkt te gaan, laat een vreemd wezen zien van ongeveer drie meter hoog in een woestijn in Portugal.
Op een gegeven moment verdwijnt het achter een bosje en komt niet meer tevoorschijn.
Natuurlijk zijn er regelmatig allerlei grappenmakers die de meest waanzinnige dingen verzinnen om maar aandacht te krijgen en dus is voorzichtigheid altijd geboden.
Wanneer er dan een video-opname publiek wordt van een alien ergens in een Portugese woestijn, is er een gerede kans dat je te maken hebt met een nepopname en zijn commentaren te verwachten zoals de volgende:
“Het is Donald Trump” en “dit is net zo betrouwbaar als de pornosite die mij verzekert dat er talloze vrouwen in de buurt smachtend op mij zitten te wachten”.
Scott Waring echter, van Ufo Sightings Daily, is ervan overtuigd dat we hier wel degelijk met een buitenaards iemand te maken hebben.
Het ziet er in ieder geval zo uit.
Scott zegt dat de buitenaardsen zo ver gevorderd zijn met alles dat ze zelfs in staat zijn om onze gedachten te lezen. Zo zegt hij dat de buitenaardse in dit geval weet dat hij wordt gadegeslagen en dat hij daarom achter het bosje kroop. Niet om zich als zodanig te verbergen, maar wel om zichzelf naar een andere plek te “beamen”.
Volgens Waring is het heel goed mogelijk dat deze buitenaardsen een basis hebben op vier tot vijf kilometer onder de grond.
Dat ook hier sprake zou zijn van een lift die onder de grond gaat zoals destijds het geval in Italië in een zaak die bekendstaat als de Friendship zaak, waarover dadelijk meer.
Nu eerst de opname in de Portugese woestijn:
In een eerder artikel schreven wij over die Friendship zaak in Italië onder andere het volgende:
In Italië vond in de vijftiger en zeventiger jaren contact plaats tussen mensen en buitenaardsen.
Het contact begon in 1960 nadat Gaspare de Lama in het blad Settimana afbeeldingen had gezien van drie vliegende objecten die boven de kust van Pescara in Italië waren verschenen. Hij schreef de redactie een brief waarin hij zijn hoop uitsprak dat de wezens naar de Aarde waren gekomen om de mens te helpen. Enige dagen later werd hij gebeld om een afspraak te maken.
Teleportatie
De eerste ontmoeting vond plaats door middel van teleportatie. Filmrolletjes materialiseerden in de lucht en vielen op de grond. Deze videoboodschappen bevatten meestal een groet of een aanwijzing.
Bruno Ghibaudi van Settimana vroeg Gaspare een kleine radio aan te schaffen. Hij plaatste het apparaat op de tafel waarna er een blauwe vlam van een halve meter uit kwam. Soms spraken Sigir of andere leden van de buitenaardse groep door de radio.
Op een dag liet Bruno weten dat ‘ze een cadeau voor hem hadden’ en Gaspare mocht een locatie uitkiezen. Hij koos voor een plaats bij Milaan alwaar ze een video en foto’s maakten van een vliegende schotel.
De buitenaardsen spraken niet alleen via de radio maar konden ook zien wie in de kamer aanwezig waren en waar de betrokkenen aan dachten. Ze wisten het dialect van de aanwezige personen exact te imiteren. Soms zei afgezant Dimpietro tegen Gaspare dat hij aan iets anders moest denken omdat zijn gedachten negatief waren.
Sigir, Dimpietro, Gallarate en anderen van de buitenaardse groep, die door de getuigen W56 werd genoemd, brachten veel wijsheid over. In het begin twijfelen mensen, want anders zouden ze te naïef zijn. Op de lange termijn vertrouw je op jezelf omdat je vibraties leert onderscheiden.
Vertrouwen
Wanneer je twijfelt kun je eindeloos vragen blijven stellen, maar vertrouwen komt spontaan. De buitenaardsen brachten dit gevoel over. Je kunt geloof achterwege laten, maar vertrouwen is belangrijk. Je kunt niet in God geloven, je kunt enkel ‘liefde’ zijn.
De afgezanten van W56, ongeveer drie meter lang, hadden een bepaalde hoeveelheid liefdesenergie nodig om te overleven. Ze kregen dit echter niet van de groep omdat de leden niet met elkaar in harmonie waren. Gaspare zegt dat ze nog steeds op Aarde zijn.
De spirituele boodschap van de buitenaardse afgezanten was dat een betere wereld geen utopie is, maar reeds bestaat. De afgezanten waren hier het levende bewijs van.
Gaspare heeft het gevoel dat zijn groep gefaald heeft omdat de leden er niet in slaagden liefdesenergie over te brengen aan de buitenaardsen. Een liefde die ze onderling gedeeld zouden moeten hebben om deze vervolgens uit te stralen naar de afgezanten toe.
Wanneer je zegt dat de maan hol is en een kunstmatig gemaakt object, dan zullen velen je meewarig aankijken en Minister Schippers bellen om je op te laten pakken als verward persoon.
Zelfs wanneer ESA (European Space Agency) verklaart dat één van de manen die om Mars draait hol is, gaat er bij niemand een belletje rinkelen.
In plaats van president van Amerika zou het een hele goede zet zijn om Hillary Clinton baas van NASA te maken. Van iedere drie woorden die ze zegt, zijn er minstens twee gelogen, dus de perfecte kandidaat om een organisatie als NASA te leiden.
NASA, Never A Straight Answer, is optimistisch uitgedrukt als je bedenkt hoe ze keer op keer het publiek bedonderen.
Zoals je ziet heeft Phobos een soort metallic glinsterend oppervlak. De foto is net ontdekt, maar al op 28 maart 2016 gemaakt.
Scott Waring zegt er het volgende over:
“Ik vond deze foto van de Mars maan Phobos en is het een hele ongewone foto. Ik heb de natuurlijke kleuren iets verbeterd en ontdekte dat het links paars is, zilverkleurig in het midden en groen aan de rechterkant. Het is een metallic oppervlak.
Deze foto is genomen met een soort telescoop volgens Scott en laat ons de werkelijke vorm en natuurlijke kleuren zien van Phobos.
Het is duidelijk, zegt Scott, dat NASA ook nu weer liegt, want normaal gesproken laten ze ons Phobos zien als een soort aardkleurige eivorm zoals in de hiernavolgende afbeelding van ESA toen deze in 2013 verklaarde dat Phobos hol was.
Dat Mars een hol en kunstmatig object heeft dat rond de planeet draait, moet toch wel her en der wat belletjes doen rinkelen. Maar niet dus, want de wereld draait gewoon door en iedereen heeft het veel te druk met het feit dat Albert van der Linde na 15 jaar stopt bij RT Boulevard, dat is pas echt nieuws.
Het prestigieuze Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA heeft verklaard dat Phobos, de geheimzinnige maan van Mars, kunstmatig is gemaakt. Hij is minimaal voor eenderde hol en de oorsprong is niet natuurlijk.
De astrofysicus Dr. Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky was de eerste die de bewegingen van de omloopbaan van deze Mars satelliet berekende. Hij kwam tot de conclusie dat deze kunstmatig en hol is en dat het in feite niets anders is dan een gigantisch ruimteschip is.
De Russen hebben altijd al veel belangstelling gehad voor de kunstmatige maan Phobos en hebben daar ook de nodige avonturen meegemaakt zoals wij schreven in een artikel van mei dit jaar:
In juli 1988 stuurden de Russen twee onbemande ruimteschepen richting Mars, de Phobos 1 en de Phobos 2. Het doel van de missie was om onderzoek te doen naar de geheimzinnige maan van Mars, Phobos.
Na twee maanden verloor men alle contact met Phobos 1 en verdween deze voor altijd uit beeld. Ook Phobos 2 ging uiteindelijk verloren, maar niet nadat er een aantal vreemde zaken waren voorgevallen.
In januari 1989 arriveerde Phobos 2 veilig bij Mars en begon haar omloopbaan om de planeet. De volgende stap was om het ruimteschip in een zodanige baan te brengen waardoor hij in feite in tandem zou vliegen met de maan Phobos. Hierdoor zou men dan de mogelijkheid creëren om deze maan met geavanceerde apparatuur te onderzoeken.
In eerste instantie ging alles goed, totdat men probeerde Phobos 2 uit te lijnen met de maan Phobos. Op 28 maart kwam het Russische controlecentrum met het bericht dat er communicatieproblemen met het ruimteschip waren. Verder dat Phobos 2 niet langer communiceerde nadat hij een dag daarvoor een rondje had gemaakt rond de maan Phobos. Ook werd het contact later niet hersteld waardoor ook de Phobos 2 als verloren werd beschouwd.
Echter, net voordat het contact volledig werd verbroken stuurde de Phobos 2 een aantal vreemde beelden naar de aarde. De volgende foto laat een ongewone schaduw zien op het maanoppervlak.
Wat het ook was dat deze schaduw veroorzaakte, de experts waren het erover eens dat het niet om iets natuurlijks ging. De grootte van de schaduw op het oppervlak van Mars geeft aan dat het object ergens tussen de 20 en 25 kilometer lang moet zijn.
Dan blijft het een lange tijd stil. Totdat de vroegere Russische kosmonaute Marina Popovich een persconferentie geeft in 1991 waar ze met de volgende geheime foto komt. Het is de allerlaatste infraroodfoto die Phobos 2 naar de aarde heeft gestuurd.
Als je bedenkt dat de totale lengte van de maan Phobos ongeveer 22 kilometer is dan zie je dat dit vreemde object eveneens een lengte heeft van ergens tussen de 20 en 25 kilometer, even groot als de schaduw van het object op het oppervlak van Mars.
Volgens Don Eckerwrote in een artikel in UFO Mag op 25 maart 1989 is de Phobos 2 door deze UFO uit de lucht geschoten omdat de Russen voorbereidingen aan het treffen waren om een krachtige laserstraal richting de maan Phobos af te vuren.
In een eerder artikel schreven wij reeds dat nu ook het Europese Ruimtevaarbureau (ESA) toegeeft dat de maan Phobos kunstmatig is gemaakt en voor een deel hol is. Dan is het wellicht ook heel logisch dat dit een soort buitenaards station is en dat toen het erop leek dat de Russen met hun laserstraal daar misschien grote schade zouden toebrengen, men via een groot moederschip heeft ingegrepen.
De Russen hebben verder nooit iets losgelaten, maar dat het wemelt van leven op en rondom Mars, zoveel lijkt zo langzamerhand wel duidelijk.
.Cloaked UFO Orb Moves Around House Security Cam In Peru, Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News
Cloaked UFO Orb Moves Around House Security Cam In Peru, Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News
Date of sighting: August 2016 Location of sighting: Peru UFOs come in all shapes and sizes. Baseball size UFOs have been seen, reported and even photographed...I witnessed one 4 meters away once on a roof. This one is cloaked. The security cam is equipped with an infrared LED lights that allow it to see at night, but also can see anything thats normally invisible to the naked eye, like this cloaked orb. Awesome catch. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com
Secret UFO Police Spotted In Florida? Alien Fleet Over The Bronx & More! 8/18/16, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Secret UFO Police Spotted In Florida? Alien Fleet Over The Bronx & More! 8/18/16, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: August 2016 Location of sighting: Florida & Bronx, NY This video was made by SecureTeam10 of Youtube and its really cool. Some Police spot some glowing UFOs in an area of Florida thats just mind-blowing. There are hundreds of reports every year from police officers around the world that have visual confirmation of UFOs. Here is a great sighting in Florida that is just one of the many around the globe. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com
David Wilcock & Corey Goode on the Secret Space Program's 'Alliance for Disclosure', Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
David Wilcock & Corey Goode on the Secret Space Program's 'Alliance for Disclosure', Aug 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Here is an interesting talk about a lot of things that makes me wonder...how the heck does he know this stuff he is saying is true? Well, you got me on that one, but he has some interesting things to say, and it does sound legit. Some of it is from Star Trek...no doubt, but he states he gets death threats about this? I doubt it. One thing I would like to know is...how the heck does he know all this? If its true, then they could easily tell us, but they don't discuss the source of the info. Thats what we need to confirm its real...so till then, stay vigilant on this. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com EMN News states: Amongst the most controversial presenters at Contact In The Desert 2016 in Joshua Tree California this year has to be the combination of David Wilcock and Corey Goode. In this public presentation Wilcock and Goode reveal stories related to an alleged Secret Space Program or SSP and an ‘Alliance for Disclosure.’ Sitting in the audience behind the camera, a small group of attendees are trying to grasp some of the themes discussed by Wilcock and Goode. One person raises the question to the friend beside her loud enough for the people around to hear: “Would a secret space program actually refer to themselves as the ‘Secret Space Program’?'” While healthy scepticism is abundant concerning anything ET, UAP, or anything about clandestine government programs, there is no doubt thousands of people embrace the message brought to light by Wilcock and Goode. If this information is true, this may be a fascinating resource that only genuine whistleblowers bring to public awareness. But if their message is not the real deal, it damages the credibility for all the other genuine researchers and whistleblowers coming out to unveil the hidden mysteries going on around us. A number of people have recently come out publicly to share experiences similar to Corey Goode’s. Collectively, these accounts would be foolish to ignore. Individually, while some stories are highly insightful, others would be more credible if there was better evidential proof. That said, whistleblowers in general offer perspectives that may be hard to embrace initially, but with time, almost always reveal their revelations as truth. EMN is presently negotiating to have exclusive interview access with a never-before-seen whistleblower who is now willing to share his story publicly. The more people “come out” to share their direct Contact experiences, the more pieces to the truth embargo puzzle will be revealed. To learn more about whistleblower Corey Goode and the Secret Space Program, his accounts can be seen on GAIA and across the web.
Constellation-Like UFOs Flying Very Low Above Pennsylvania
Constellation-Like UFOs Flying Very Low Above Pennsylvania
A man from Pennsylvania reportedly spotted a fleet of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) when he was heading out to his vehicle and happened to look up. He recorded the bright UFOs using his phone camera as they traveled the night sky.
The witness reported the strange event he encountered to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which posted the witness’ account along with the video to their database on August 11 and filed the report as case 78125. Based on the witness’ reaction on the video, he was awestruck of his sighting.
According to the report, the UFO sighting occurred on July 31, outside the home of the man in the small city of Bristol in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. A low-flying airplane first caught the attention of the witness in the sky.
When he looked north, he noticed five objects flying straight, but not maneuvering. The report continues that the mysterious objects were moving away from each other. The witness said that these UFOs were flying very slowly underneath the clouds. He also noted that planes were flying around them and across from them, and he found it weird to see a lot of planes flying around at that time.
He went on saying that the objects were brilliant and very close to him. He describes the five UFOs as looking like a constellation in the sky, but just way lower. The witness was able to see the fleet of UFOs for around five minutes before they became out of sight behind some clouds.
The video of the sighting was also posted to YouTube.
In 2023, a bit of the primordial solar system will return to Earth. That's when NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission will return a sample of the asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich rock hosting traces of the early solar system. While there, the mission will conduct an in-depth study of the rocky body, learning more about how sunlight can shift its position, before gathering a small sample to return to Earth.
Visiting an asteroid
After its September 8, 2016, launch, the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-Rex, will spend two years traveling through space to arrive at Bennu in 2018. The second mission in the world to bring back a bit of an asteroid, OSIRIS-Rex will follow in the footsteps of Japan's Hayabusa, which in 2010 became the first spacecraft to bring a bit of an asteroid back to Earth. It will be the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission.
The bits and pieces left over from the formation of the planets, asteroids carry the blueprints of the early solar system. Studying them allows scientists to see what the early solar system was like, and get a handle on how planets formed.
NASA's Dawn mission visited the asteroid Vesta before moving on to the dwarf planet Ceres. In contrast, OSIRIS-Rex will bring home a piece of Bennu for in-depth laboratory studies not possible while orbiting in space. The team hopes to collect at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of material to achieve their scientific goals.
Understanding how asteroids form will not only provide insight about the early solar system, but also help scientists better understand their makeup today. That could be helpful should any space rocks threaten to collide with Earth. It could also assist in future efforts to mine asteroids.
"The mission will develop important technologies for space exploration that will benefit anyone interested in exploring or mining asteroids, whether it's NASA or a private company," Dante Lauretta said in a statement. Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator for OSIRIS-Rex.
OSIRIS-Rex will also help astronomers study the Yarkovsky effect on asteroids. Heat from the sun provides a tiny push that can affect the movement of an asteroid. Although the push is minimal, it can build over time, helping to change the path a space rock travels. But the effect can be a challenge to study, as it varies based on the shape of each asteroid.
"The knowledge from the mission will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids," Jim Green, director of NASA 's Planetary Science Division, said in a statement.
Sampling an asteroid
Once OSIRIS-Rex reaches Bennu, five instruments on board the spacecraft will study, map and analyze the asteroid in unprecedented detail.
OSIRIS-Rex Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) — By measuring visible and near-infrared light, OVIRS will hunt for organics and other minerals.
OSIRIS-Rex Thermal Emission Spectrometer (OTES) — Using the thermal infrared, OTES take Bennu's temperature and map mineral and chemical abundances. Together, OVIRS and OTES will map Bennu over a wave of interesting wavelengths to help select the best site to sample the asteroid.
OSIRIS-Rex Camera Suite (OCAMS) — A three-camera suite will help map Bennu. PolyCam, the largest, will acquire the first images of Bennu from 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) and capture high resolution images of the sample site. MapCam will hunt for satellites and dust plumes around the asteroid, map it in color, and take the photographs to create topographic maps. SamCam will document the collection of the sample and its capture.
OSIRIS-Rex Laser Altimeter (OLA) — By scanning the entire surface of Bennu, OLA will create highly accurate 3-D shape models of the asteroid.
Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) — Studying X-ray emissions of Bennu will help provide an elemental abundance map of its surface. Unlike other imaging instruments, REXIS will examine the composition of the asteroid at the level of individual atomic elements.
Once the asteroid has been studied in significant detail, scientists will identify a region to sample. That's where the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) will come into play. As OSIRIS-Rex draws closer to the asteroid, TAGSAM will blast a sample of pure nitrogen gas at the surface. Regolith (dust and broken rock) blasted from the surface will be pushed into the chamber of the sampler.
To complete all of the planned science, OSIRIS-Rex needs to collect at least 2 ounces (60 grams). The goal is to collect 5 ounces (150 g) to account for any errors in measurement. Three bottles of nitrogen gas allow for multiple collection attempts, and TAGSAM can carry as much as 70 ounces (2,000 g). To weigh the sample in the low-gravity environment, scientists will measure the angular acceleration of the spacecraft before and after the sample is collected.
Although OSIRIS-Rex will sample Bennu, it will never actually land on the surface. Contact during the collection process will be brief, lasting only a few seconds.
"We kiss the surface," OSIRIS-Rex principal investigator Mike Drake, of the University of Arizona, told reporters.
After scooping up the sample OSIRIS-Rex will return to Earth, arriving home in 2023.
Meet Bennu
Originally known as 1999 RQ36, the rock OSIRIS-Rex will visit was renamed Bennu by 9-year-old Mike Puzio in a 2013 contest. Bennu is an Egyptian god usually depicted as a gray heron. Puzio chose the name because he thought TAGSAM and the solar panels resembled the bird god's neck and wings.
Bennu is one of several thousand Near-Earth Objects orbiting within 120 million miles (190 million kilometers) of Earth. Among those, Bennu was one of less than 200 whose orbit was well known and sufficiently Earth-like. It orbits the sun every 436 days, and comes very close to Earth every six years.
It's also relatively large, about 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide. Rocks smaller than 650 feet (200 m) spin too rapidly to allow a spacecraft to safely land on them. Only a handful of the asteroids in appropriate orbits were large enough to allow a visit.
Among those deemed appropriate, the asteroid has just the right composition. Bennu is relatively rich in carbon-based material. The asteroids that may have brought water and organic material to Earth that helped kick off life would look like Bennu.
"We're going for something rich in organics, which might have had something to do with life getting started," Drake said.
"That's the idea — time capsule, containing probably the building blocks of life."
Bennu's close orbit also makes it a potentially hazardous object, but unlike some media reports, it isn't a definite threat. NASA scientists calculated that there is an 0.037 percent (or 1-in-2,700) chance that it will strike Earth in the last quarter of the 22nd century. For that to happen, the asteroid would need to have its orbit altered in its 2135 flyby of Earth. Studying Bennu today will help them further calculate the orbit, potentially ruling it out.
If the asteroid does collide with Earth, it won't destroy the planet, though it will wreak havoc wherever it touches down. Experts say that the size of the asteroid would likely devastate the local area, but won't cause mass extinctions. In order to cause a global catastrophe, a space rock must be at least twice as large, at 0.6 miles (1 km) wide. Still, the advanced warning provided by OSIRIS-Rex could help scientists take preventative measures long before the potential impact.
No, That Ancient Mausoleum Is Not the 'World's 1st Pyramid'
No, That Ancient Mausoleum Is Not the 'World's 1st Pyramid'
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor
The discovery of a 3,000-year-old pyramid-shaped mausoleum in Kazakhstan has gone viral over the past 24 hours, with several media outlets proclaiming the structure to be the world's first pyramid. But archaeologists say the structure, which contains a series of five walls that gradually get higher toward the center, is not nearly as old as these news reports claim.
The mausoleum is 6.6 feet (2 meters) high and about 49 by 46 feet (15 by 14 m) long, said Viktor Novozhenov, an archaeologist with the Saryarka Archaeological Institute at Karaganda State University in Kazakhstan who helped excavate the mausoleum. "It's made from stone, earth and fortified by slabs in the outer side," Novozhenov told Live Science. A number of media outlets that reported the discovery did not include the size of the structure, which, compared to Egypt's royal pyramids, is very small.
While the exact age of the structure is uncertain, it likely was built during the late Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago, Novozhenov said. This is more than 1,000 years after the Egyptians built the step pyramid of Djoser, Novozhenov said, so it is not the "world's first pyramid." [In Photos: Egyptian Pyramid Predates Giza Landmark]
The mausoleum's burial chamber had been robbed, although graves found near the mausoleum yielded the remains of pottery, a knife and bronze objects, Novozhenov said. Before the mausoleum was robbed, it would have held the burial of a clan leader, and not a pharaoh as has been stated in some online accounts of the discovery, Novozhenov said.
The design of the mausoleum, with its five walls that gradually get higher, is similar in some ways to the step pyramid of Djoser, built about 4,700 years ago at the site of Saqqara in Egypt, Novozhenov explained. The Djoser pyramid, which is far larger than the recently discovered Kazakhstan mausoleum, has six layers piled on top of one another to form a flat-topped pyramid.
While the mausoleum isn't the world's first pyramid it is nevertheless an interesting find said Novozhenov who notes that a lot more work needs to be done. "We need a lot of additional analyses and hard work for interpretation."
Novozhenov said that excavation of the mausoleum is being led by Igor Kukushkin, who is also from the Saryarka Archaeological Institute at Karaganda State University in Kazakhstan.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.