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 ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
02-09-2019
Venus Has Wild Climate Shifts and the Secret May Be In Its Clouds
Venus Has Wild Climate Shifts and the Secret May Be In Its Clouds
Venus, long billed as Earth's much hotter twin, holds many mysteries within the thick envelope of clouds that surround it — which may also be responsible for the planet's dramatic climate changes.
A new study on a decade of ultraviolet observations of Venus from 2006 to 2017, showed that the planet's reflection of ultraviolet light decreased by half before shooting back up again, researchers said.This change resulted in large variations in the amount of solar energy absorbed by Venus' clouds and the circulation in its atmosphere, causing the changes in the planet's climate, they added.
"Current climate changes on Venus have not been considered before," Yeon Joo Lee, a researcher at the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Technical University of Berlin, and lead author of the study, told Space.com. "Moreover, the level of UV-albedo [ reflectivity] variations is significantly large, so sufficient to affect atmospheric dynamics."
Researchers combined observations from Europe's Venus Express mission, Japan's Akatsuki Venus orbiter, NASA's Messenger spacecraft (which flew by Venus on the way to Mercury) and the Hubble Space Telescope for the study.
The weather on Venus, like that of the Earth, is affected by solar radiation and the changes in the reflection of its surrounding clouds. But unlike Earth, Venus' clouds are made up of sulfuric acid and contain dark patches that scientists have referred to as "unknown absorbers" as they absorb most of the heat and ultraviolet light emitted by the sun.
The new study suggests that these absorbers may be what is causing these changes in Venus' climate, although the team of scientists believe that the only way to know for sure is through further observations.
"At least one more decade [[of] observation. That will cover one more solar-activity cycle, and we will be able to find out whether or not this change is cyclic," Lee said.
The weather on the planet is already quite extreme, with temperatures reaching 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsuis), and winds sweeping across Venus' surface at a speed of 450 m.p.h. (724 kilometers/h).
If further observations were to prove that solar activity is connected to this change in climate, then it could be applied to all other planets with aerosols, solid or liquid particles that reflect sunlight, such as Earth and Titan, according to Lee. However, the degree of change would be different in each one.
Lee said she is developing plans for more research on the unknown absorbers in Venus' clouds, adding that a future mission to Venus could help researchers gain a better understanding of the planet's changing climate.
China’s Lunar Rover Finds Strange “Gel-Like” Substance on the Far Side of the Moon
China’s Lunar Rover Finds Strange “Gel-Like” Substance on the Far Side of the Moon
China's Yutu-2 rover exploring the far side of the moon has discovered a mysterious, never-before-seen gel-like substance.
A composite image showing the shadow of the Yutu-2 rover, roving tracks, and the Chang’e 4 lander. The photograph was snapped during lunar day 7.
Image Credit: CNSA / CLEP.
China’s Chang’e 4 far-side lunar mission has revealed unprecedented details about the moon’s far side, beaming back to earth a plethora of images of the landscape of the far side along the way.
But the Chinese lander and rover were not sent to the far side of the moon just to take images of their surroundings, the robotic mission was sent to the moon to study, in a unique way, the details of the moon’s far side.
Chang’e 4 was launched on 7 December 2018 and entered lunar orbit on 12 December 2018, before landing on the Moon’s far side in a historic mission. Change’4 is the follow-up mission to Chang’e 3, the first Chinese successful moon landing.
The Chang’e 4 mission, like its predecessors, are named and the Chang’e, the Chinese goddess of the Moon.
China’s Yutu-2 rover stumbled on the mysterious substance during the eighth lunar days.
The unexpected discovery caused confusion in the scientific community promoting mission experts to postpone all other explorative driving schedules of the rover, to instead focus its scientific instruments in order to try and understand what the mysterious material really is.
After all, you don’t come across a weird, alien, gel-like material on the moon’s far side.
On July 25, the Chinese-built rover was carefully making its way across a landscape littered with smaller impact craters, guided by the planning of drivers on Earth, controlling the robotic explorer from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
An Image taken by the Chang’e 4 lander, showing the Yutu-2 rover exploring the far side of the moon. Image Credit: CNSA.
According to Yutu-2‘s “navigation diary,” on July 28, the researchers were preparing to put the rover into its usual midday sleep, to protect it from hazardous temperature and radiation from the sun.
The team of scientists was checking the images the rover had snapped using its main camera and noted a small crater that seemed to contain material with color and glow very different from that of the surrounding lunar surface.
It was an exciting find, so the researchers in charge of the rover called in lunar scientists. The team eventually decided to postpone Yutu-2’s plans to the west and decided to make the rover drive towards the crater in order to study the mysterious material.
Identifying the mysterious material
Using its state-of-the-art obstacle avoidance cameras, the miniature rover got to the crater and studied the mysteriously colored material and its surroundings with is Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometers (VNIS instrument) which identifies the light reflected by the materials to expose its nature.
Although we still have no idea what exactly the material is the Chinese rover spotted, the scientists have revealed its a gel-like substance and it has a very unusual color.
Even though a scientific explanation has still not been presented, some researchers argue that the mysterious material may be a king of belt-glass generated by the numerous meteorites impacting the far side of the moon.
The discovery is certainly a surprising one since we know very little about the far side of the moon. however, it isn’t the first surprising discovery made on the lunar surface. During NASA’s Apollo missions, specifically, Apollo 17, Astronaut and geologist Garrison Schmitt encountered strange, orange-colored soil near the Taurus-Littrow landing site. It was later concluded by scientists that the moon’s orange soil was created after a massive volcanic eruption on the moon, around 3.64 billion years ago.
“Natal Kicks” sounds like a great name for a band or a bad thing to happen during childbirth, but it’s actually an astrophysics term for the velocity at birth of a black hole. If you’re looking for something else to keep you awake at night besides the latest political news, the latest astrophysics news tells us that there may be millions of black holes with a very high natal kick velocity speeding around our galaxy and looking for stars and planets to consume. Sweet dreams.
“This work basically talks about the first observational evidence that you can actually see black holes moving with high velocities in the galaxy and associate it to the kick the black hole system received at birth.”
ScienceAlert brings us the news of a new study about natal kicks and more accepted by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Co-author Pikky Atri (a top contender for Best Name for an Astronomer) explains the good news that she and her colleagues at Curtin University in Western Australia have found a way to track black holes feeding off of their partner in a binary system and follow their history back to their origin. Feeding black holes are the only ones astronomers can track because, although they can’t be seen, they belch X-rays and radio waves that can be picked up by telescopes.
“We tracked how these systems were moving in our galaxy – so, figured out their velocities today, moved back in time, and tried to understand what the velocity was of the system when it was born, individually for each of these 16 systems. Based on the velocities, you can actually find out if they were born with a supernova explosion, or if the stars just directly collapsed onto themselves without a supernova explosion.”
It’s been commonly accepted that black holes form when an elderly star implodes into itself. While it was known they could also form as the result of a sideways kick out of a particular type of supernova explosion that is lopsided, the number of these types of natal or Blaauw kicks births of black holes was a mystery. Atri found 16 binaries with feeding black holes and backtracked them to their births. She and her team then measured their velocities and trajectories and found that 12 of them showed the high speed and erratic movement which indicated that they were born by natal kick. Twelve. That’s not so bad, is it?
That’s 75 percent of the sample. If this scales up to the estimated 10 million black holes in the Milky Way, that might mean around 7.5 million high-speed black holes careening out there. And 10 million is a low estimate.
Thanks a lot, ScienceAlert. That’s a lot of hungry black holes in the Milky Way … and there’s probably more. Fortunately, Pikky Atri brings some astronomer logic to comfort us.
“The closest black hole, we think it’s two kiloparsecs away [6,523 light-years]. It’s very, very far away. So there’s no chance that we’re getting sucked up by any black hole any time soon.”
We would have felt better with “no chance” had she not added “we think” and “anytime soon.” Still, it’s big news that astronomers are getting better at tracking black holes as they travel around the universe. Perhaps by the time one gets close, we’ll have a better early warning system and deflection/destruction plan than our current asteroid watchers do.
For the first time in centuries, compasses in Greenwich are about to point directly at true north: an epic coincidence of time and magnetism that hasn’t taken place for some 360 years.
This serendipitous occurrence – which is set to occur within the next fortnight – serves as a startling reminder of how Earth’s magnetic north pole is constantly wandering, unlike the fixed ‘true north’ of Earth’s geographic north pole.
The angular difference between those two different points is called magnetic declination, and while the gap might not be something ordinary people spend a great deal of time thinking about, it’s a disparity that can last for centuries at a time.
For hundreds of years now in the UK, due to Earth’s shifting magnetic north pole, declination has been negative, meaning compass needles have been pointing west of true north.
But nothing lasts forever.
The agonic – an invisible line that connects Earth’s north and south magnetic poles (and which represents zero declination wherever it passes through) – has been moving westward at approximately 20 kilometres (about 12 miles) per year.
At that rate, it’s set to pass through Greenwich this month – the historic site of the Greenwich Royal Observatory – making history in the process.
“At some point in September, the agonic will meet zero longitude at Greenwich,” says geomagnetism researcher Ciaran Beggan from the British Geological Survey (BGS).
“This marks the first time since the Observatory’s creation that the geographic and geomagnetic coordinate systems have coincided at this location.”
As fate would have it, it was a coincidence that when the Royal Observatory was founded in the late 17th century – at the decree of King Charles II – compasses in Greenwich also pointed directly at true north, due to zero declination.
Ever since then, constant variations in the position of Earth’s magnetic north pole due to changes in the composition of Earth’s molten outer core have seen the agonic keep shifting.
It’s a phenomenon that’s expected to endure well past this September’s circumstantial synchronicity (from the perspective of compass users in Greenwich, at least).
“The agonic will continue to pass across the UK over the next 15 to 20 years,” Beggan says.
“By 2040, all compasses will probably point eastwards of true north.”
Siberian Puppy Frozen for 14,300 Years Is a Major RNA Breakthrough
Siberian Puppy Frozen for 14,300 Years Is a Major RNA Breakthrough
Siberian puppy frozen in permafrost for 14,300 years gives scientists major RNA breakthrough.
Source: Siberian Times
Never before has RNA – Ribonucleic acid – sequencing been carried out from so far back in time. Finding RNA on the puppy found preserved in permafrost in Tumat in 2015 is a major scientific discovery. It was either a wolf or a domesticated wolf-dog hybrid, scientists cannot be certain. In other words, this Pleistocene canid may have been an ancient pet.
Finding the Frozen Puppy RNA
Experts can be more definite about one thing: it has given up a secret amounting to a significant scientific advance. Unlike DNA, RNA has a relatively short lifespan. Yet it has been unlocked in this ancient creature from Tumat, in the Sakha Republic also known as Yakutia.
It has given up a secret amounting to a significant scientific advance.
(Siberian Times)
DNA encodes the hard copy of genes, and can survive thousands of years if conditions are right. But RNA is seen as short-lived: it is the working copy of a gene. DNA analysis shows what kind of genes a species had, while RNA explains which genes were working and which were silent.
Now Dr. Oliver Smith, of Copenhagen University, and his colleagues analyzed the RNA from the liver, cartilage, and muscle tissue of the ancient animal.
“The scientists showed that the RNA sequenced from liver tissue of the Tumat puppy was truly representative of the animal’s RNA, with many liver-specific transcripts that matched more modern samples from both wolves and dogs ,” reported sci-news.com
“The canid’s transcriptome is the oldest RNA sequenced by far, surpassing the next oldest transcriptome by at least 13,000 years.”
Joint team of Russian and Korean researchers makes an autopsy of the puppy in March 2016.
(Siberian Times)
Significance of the Discovery
Dr. Smith said:
“Ancient DNA researchers have previously been reluctant to attempt to sequence ancient RNA because it is generally more unstable than DNA, and more prone to enzymatic degradation. However, following our recent successes in sequencing ancient RNA from plant material, we speculated that a well-preserved animal specimen, frozen in the permafrost, just might retain enough material to sequence. To our delight, we found that not only did we find RNA from various tissues, but in some case the signal was so strong that we could distinguish between tissues in a way that makes biological sense.”
The devolution of UFO observations (or reports, to give Zoam Chomsky his due)
The devolution of UFO observations (or reports, to give Zoam Chomsky his due)
Copyright 2019, InterAmerica, Inc.
While giving cursory attention to the two MUFON books noted heavily here recently and perusing Albert Rosales’ Humanoid series often, and paying attention to my UFO feeds from various outlets, I notice that UFOs (or reports of them) have dwindled in bizarreness or vividity.
When entity sightings were rife in flying saucer reports – those 1950s accounts in France, Italy, and South America mostly – today’s reported sightings are of lights or geometrically configured “things” devoid of beings, inside or out.
Entities accompanying flying saucers bespoke the possibility of alien pilots. Lights and rectangles or triangles don’t rile the imagination.
When persons talked about being abducted – post Barney/Betty Hill, Travis Walton — or being assaulted by odd entities – Higdon and Calvin Parker – there was an idea that we were under attack by visitors from outer space or elsewhere.
Nowadays, lights and triangles only suggest an amorphous phenomenon.
And the rather new Navy pilot encounters don’t help much. They insert geometrics – spheres and cubes, a tic-tac shaped something-or-another, and a fast traveling oddity.
No indication(s) of aliens [ETs] or metal spacecraft, like the cigar-shaped thing spotted by Chiles-Whitted in 1948:
From Project 1947
Yes, some cigar-shaped UFOs show up in the MUFON books, but no alien sightings or Forbidden Planet-like saucers.
UFOs, as exciting “objects,” are winding down among observers.
The Sahara Used To Be a Water Wonderland, Thousands of Rivers, Huge Lakes, 6000 Years Ago
The Sahara Used To Be a Water Wonderland, Thousands of Rivers, Huge Lakes, 6000 Years Ago
NUKE PRO: Exposing Truth Anti-Nuclear Information and Resources, and Disaster Preparation Planning: http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com/ stock here — this is very interesting stuff. My attention has been drawn to prior civilizations. Esp. for me, the Druids and the Megalith builders.
People’s who seem to have had great technology, at least in terms of the ability to carve and move huge rocks, and the motivation and wherewithal to do so.
The world’s largest non-polar desert (The Sahara), is actually the widespread burial grounds of countless, mysteriously unknown, ancient ruins & civilizations, that have long since been forgotten, having been consumed and hidden by the sands of time, thousands of years ago. And here’s the thing…when I say “thousands of years ago”…that’s the part where things start to get really strange…
How Putting Googly Eyes on Robots Makes Them Fundamentally Less Threatening (Video)
How Putting Googly Eyes on Robots Makes Them Fundamentally Less Threatening (Video)
At the beginning of 2019, the supermarket chain Giant Food Stores announced it would begin operating customer-assisting robots — collectively dubbed Marty — in 172 East Coast locations. These autonomous machines may navigate their respective store using a laser-based detection system, but they’re also outfitted with a pair of oversized googly eyes. This is to, “[make] it a bit more fun,” Giant President Nick Bertram told Adweek in January, and “celebrate the fact that there’s a robot.”
“As we approach the completion of the rollout, we continue to be pleased by the addition of Marty in our stores,” a Giant Food rep told Engadget via email. “Our associates are appreciative of the assistance Marty provides them, freeing them up to do other tasks and interact more with customers. Speaking of our customers, they, too, are big fans of Marty, with kids and adults alike looking for Marty in-store and taking selfies.”
But Marty’s googly eyes don’t just give customers something to chuckle at as they pass one another in the cereal aisle. Research shows that slapping peepers on inanimate objects puts the humans around them at ease and encourages them to be more generous and pro-social (as opposed to anti-social) than they normally would.
“People pay attention to the presence of eyes,” Dr. Amrisha Vaish, assistant professor at the University of Virginia’s department of psychology, told Engadget. “Humans are very sensitive to the presence of other people, and we behave more socially in the presence of other people.” It’s called the “watching-eye paradigm” and exploits the deep-seated human trait of needing to be valued within society: managing our reputations and being seen by those around us as team players.
“In the course of our evolution, it’s been really important for us to be to cooperate with others,” Vaish points out. Interpersonal cooperation has proved “so important to the evolution of the human species that we’ve become really sensitive to even sort of minimal cues of eyes,” she continued.
Dr. Pawan Sinha, professor of vision and computational neuroscience at MIT, concurs. “If one were to find an ecological reason why we are so attuned to see faces it’s because the ability to detect faces is crucial for our social well being and, when we are young, it’s crucial to our survival to be able to detect a specific human and be able to orient towards them,” he told Engadget. “It’s very important for us to be able to live our lives as social beings.”
Vaish’s own research in this field, specifically the 2018 study Eyes, More Than Other Facial Features, Enhance Real-World Donation Behavior, bears out this effect. Vaish and her team alternated photographs of a chair, a nose, a mouth and a pair of human eyes above the donation jar at a local children’s museum over 28 weeks.
The weeks during which the eyes were displayed saw an average total donation of $27 — around $12 more than when the other images were shown.
“What we found is that the eyes — compared to the chairs — did, in fact, increase people’s donations,” Vaish said.
“The numbers weren’t huge but there was a statistically significant increase.”
This effect extends beyond actions like donations, the watching-eye paradigm can also reduce antisocial behavior like littering and bike theft. It also affects people of all ages. “As young as 5 years of age, children become sensitive to being watched.” Vaish said. “When a peer is watching them, they show more prosocial behavior and less antisocial, less stealing behavior.”
The effect does not last forever, however. Vaish notes that in her previous research position, she found that putting a picture of eyes near the communal supply of milk drastically reduced the rate at which people would help themselves to it. At least to start.
“Initially, they’re very striking when you put them up, and then you sort of start to monitor your behavior more,” she said. However, over time, people became accustomed to the presence of these watching eyes before eventually sliding back into complacency with regard to their milk intake.
This intra-office phenomenon illustrates an unusual aspect of humanity’s evolution: We can see faces (and assign agency) to almost anything. “People look for certain specific cues, physical features or behaviors, to determine whether something is alive,” Dr. Erin Horowitz, a lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s department of psychological and brain science, told Engadget. “So something that appears to move on its own, people tend to process it as alive.”
This is an ancient prey response in humans, instilled over countless generations before we arrived at the top of the food chain. It’s better to see the leopard that isn’t there, Horowitz said, than to not see the leopard that is. As such, even highly abstracted and stylized depictions of eyes can trigger this response. “You could have two dots next to each other, and those would be considered eyes,” Horowitz said, “if there’s, say, a line underneath that looks like a mouth.”
And it’s “not just identifying predators,” she said, “but also identifying potential people that we can cooperate and interact with.” These hardwired evolutionary responses and visceral need for social bonds have led to the development of the “theory of mind.”
“You can think of it as a broad term for research on the human capacity for social engagement,” Dr. Tamsin German, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s department of psychological and brain science, told Engadget. “Specifically, those ones that talk about the concepts we have of people’s internal, hidden mental states.
“People believe things, people want things, people hope things. And those internal states predict the behaviors that they will engage in,” said. By piecing together a person’s behavior and explaining it in terms of those hidden states, one can glimpse at the motivations and underlying beliefs of that person. “it’s a critically important skill for humans being such a social species,” German said.
As it turns out, slapping googly eyes on a roving robotic monolith like Marty can elicit the same response from humans even when we know the object is not actually alive. But there are limits to this effect, and surprisingly, the Uncanny Valley exists for robot eyes as well.
German notes that a wide variety of prey species have evolved agency-granting responses similar to humans’, “there is lots of work suggesting that they have a sensitivity to two eyes looking directly at them.”But in rhesus macaques, how those eyes are presented makes all the difference.
She points to a recent study from Princeton University, which placed various photographs and stylized, abstracted depictions of macaque faces in front of real macaques. “The rhesus macaque will look a lot at highly stylized, cartoony pictures of other faces of rhesus monkeys. And they look a lot at actual photographs of rhesus monkeys, But if you have very, very close, but not quite, images, they don’t like them at all.”As with humans, being almost there — but not quite — is interpreted as a negative signal.
A similar effect can be seen when humans observe the movements of robots, androids, and other people. German references a recent multinational study in which subjects were shown static images of clearly mechanical robots, natural humans and androids like you’d see at the Disney World Hall of Presidents.
“You put them in an fMRI scanner and just essentially allow the brain to acclimate to what it’s seeing,” she said. Then, “using a technique called predictive coding, you look at which parts of the brain are excited when [the object in the image] starts moving. Essentially, asking the brain to tell you what it didn’t expect.”
When the robot starts clunking around in a very mechanical fashion and the human moves smoothly, researchers noted only slight electrical responses from the brain.“But the Android looks like a human and moves like a robot in various areas of the brain kind of a more active compared to a baseline, suggesting that the brain didn’t see what it predicts,” German explained.
This is what elicits the uneasiness and trepidation in people when they interact with a machine in the Uncanny Valley. It’s 200,000 years of evolution going, “Hey, stupid, this thing is moving when it shouldn’t be (at least not moving or looking like it should be). You need to scram before you get eaten.”
But adding eyes, even the googly variety, appears to help mitigate this effect by exploiting our social nature to artificially instill a sense of agency toward these inanimate objects.
“It’s just a signal that this is an animate thing, it’s going to have mental states and — provided you’re not trying to you make it look so realistic, where the movement that it engages in looks wrong — you’re not going to get an Uncanny valley effect,” German concluded.
What I found here is water leaking out of some rocks on a hillside. This photo was taken back in Aug 2014 and I found it just a few months later. Yet NASA never declared finding this water at this location.
“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. And yet, they ignored this water flow and never told the news or the public about the rovers findings. They must have seen this, look how big and obvious the water flow is! Its impossible to miss it. So, the only other answer is that NASA decided to hide it from the public. The rover could have easily analyzed and tested this liquid to see if its water or some other liquid, but again, NASA has not said or posted any more about this photo. NASA is hiding its discoveries from the public. I wonder just how much they know and how much they found? I bet they have found a half dozen living species on Mars already. Remember how the first life in space was announced by Russian astronauts who found large plankton growing on the solar panels of the space station a few years ago? Yeah...NASA didnt do that...Russia did. Remember that gel found on the moon this week by the Chinese moon rover Jade Rabbit? Yeah...that wasn't NASA too. If we want discloser of the truth about alien species, we have to rely on other sources instead of NASA. Scott C. Waring
Entities in the Nag Hammadi called “Archons” appear to be identical to the ETs of modern UFOlogy.
The codices indicate both Gray and reptilian types: namely, a reptilian or “drakonic” types. The former are the overlords, the latter, servile, robotic drones who obey a hive-mentality.
The NHC do not contain graphic physical descriptions of these alien intruders, but present ample information to profile them comparatively with the two types of ETs most widely discussed today.
This short video, just over a minute long, takes you on a journey from 1991, when no exoplanets were known, to today’s 4,003+ known exoplanets. Why the plus? According to the NASA Exoplanet Archive, the number of known exoplanets has already jumped up to 4,031 and counting!
Astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars – so far, with a lot more waiting for confirmation. Now, NASA has published a cool new video “summary” of the findings, a time-lapse map if you will, of the locations of these distant worlds in our galaxy. The video was produced by SYSTEM Sounds (Matt Russo, Andrew Santaguida), using the NASA Exoplanet Archive. It was posted to YouTube on July 7, 2019, by NASA’s APOD Videos and it ran as an Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 10.
Even though the video is short, just over a minute long, it takes the viewer on a time-lapse, condensed journey from 1991, when no exoplanets were known, to today, with more than 4,003 known exoplanets. More than? Yes. According to the NASA Exoplanet Archive the number is now at 4,031, so the map is already outdated! The map not only shows the planets’ locations, but also color-codes them based on what method they were discovered with, whether by radial velocity, transit, imaging or microlensing. What starts as an empty background becomes a galaxy filled with planets. And those are only the ones we know about so far.
It’s hard to think back to before the early 1990s, when astronomers believed exoplanets existed, but had not found a single one in outer space. Now we know of thousands, and scientists estimate that there are billions in our galaxy alone. When you combine that with the fact that there are at least 100 billion known galaxies, the total numbers of likely exoplanets becomes mind-boggling to contemplate.
The Kepler Space Telescope alone has confirmed 2,345 exoplanets, with another 2,420 awaiting confirmation. The Kepler mission has ended, but there are still tons of data to be analyzed, and many more worlds to be confirmed. Kepler revolutionized our knowledge of exoplanets, revealing a wide variety of worlds. Many are rocky planets like Earth, while others are like mini-Neptunes, and others are gas giants like Jupiter, extremely hot because they’re orbiting so close to their stars. Smaller rocky planets and planets that are gaseous but smaller than Neptune actually appear to be the most common exoplanets, at least from what we know so far, which is encouraging for the search for life elsewhere.
TESS – Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite – is the newest space telescope dedicated to planet-hunting, and already has confirmed an additional 24 planets plus 993 additional candidates so far, as listed on the NASA Exoplanet Archive. One advantage that TESS has is that is observing stars that are closer to us than the ones that Kepler looked at. That means those planets will be easier targets for follow-up observations, including by upcoming space telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) , which can better analyze those planets’ atmospheres. By studying the atmospheres, scientists can search for evidence of biosignatures, gases in the atmosphere that may be produced by living organisms. On Earth, that would include oxygen and methane, although there are ways those gases can be created without life as well. Certain combinations of such gases, though, would more likely have a biological origin.
Artist’s concept of Kepler-186f, the first Earth-sized exoplanet found orbiting in the habitable zone of its star. A growing number of such worlds have been found in recent years.
Artist’s concept of seven Earth-sized worlds in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. TRAPPIST-1e is one of the closest rocky planets orbiting a red dwarf star that may be able to support life.
Of course, beyond just finding out how many planets might be out there, people mostly want to know how many exoplanets might be habitable, or better yet, actually inhabited by some form of life. The search for biosignatures is one way to try to determine if a given planet has life. At the other end of the spectrum, a highly advanced alien civilization might make its presence known through megastructures such as Dyson spheres or other technosignatures.
We haven’t yet found any unambiguous evidence for alien life on any exoplanets, but we may be getting closer. Extrapolating from what has been discovered so far, rocky worlds like Earth are now thought to be some of the most common in our galaxy. That is an exciting development in itself. This includes some super-Earths, which are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Some of those planets have been found in the habitable zones of their stars, like Earth is, where temperatures could allow liquid water on their surfaces (depending on other variable factors). Other super-Earths are thought to be true water-worlds, completely covered by oceans.
What seems certain is that this map will continue to grow in the years ahead, with thousands more exoplanets expected to be discovered by TESS and other upcoming planet-hunting missions.
Here’s the new map of known exoplanets, or planets orbiting distant suns. It’s all 4,003 known exoplanets discovered as of 2019. This image was an Astronomy Picture of the Day for July 10, 2019.
Image via NASA/APOD.
Bottom line: This cool new time-lapse video map by SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) – using the NASA Exoplanet Archive – shows all of the exoplanets discovered so far, from 1991 to the present.
Researchers used to think that icy planets are too cold to support life, but researchers now suggest that these frozen worlds may have livable areas, where alien life could potentially thrive.
Snowball planets are Earth-like planets with oceans frozen to the equator. Scientists have long thought that these alien worlds are hostile to life because of the extreme cold.
In a new study, Adiv Paradise, an astronomer and physicist at the University of Toronto, and colleagues found that some snowball planets could be habitable. These frozen Earths may have areas of land near the equator that reach livable temperatures.
The researchers used a computer program to simulate different climate variables on theoretical snowball planets.
One particular variable they were interested in was carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas largely attributed toEarth’s climate change. It traps heat and keeps a planet in temperate climate range. Without carbon dioxide, planets cools and oceans freeze.
Pictured: An artist's concept of an icy planet.Photo: Pixabay
Planets become snowballs as a result of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dropping too low from erosion and rainfall. Water absorbs carbon dioxide and turns it into carbonic acid that reacts with the rocks on the ground during erosion.
The interaction causes the carbonic acid to break down more and binds with minerals that are transported to the oceans and eventually stored in the seafloor.
Researchers once thought that the removal of carbon dioxide from the planet’s atmosphere would stop during the snowball phases because the surface water was frozen.
Simulations, however, revealed that some snowball planets continue to lose carbon dioxide even after they have frozen.
This suggests that these planets would have some non-frozen ground and occasional rainfall for water to keep removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Some of the warmer snowball planets the researchers simulated had land areas warm enough to hold liquid and life even when the oceans were frozen to the equators.
Paradise and colleagues found land areas in the center of the continents far from the frozen ocean that could reach above 10 degrees Celsius, or 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature is warmer than the lowest temperature at which life can survive and reproduce.
“If there are inland areas of dark, bare ground, under enough sunlight those regions can be warm enough for liquid water and life without causing the sea ice to retreat,” the researchers wrote in their study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
“This suggests that snowball planets should not be excluded as inhospitable to life.”
About 35 million years ago, an asteroid traveling nearly 144,000 mph (231,000 km/h) smashed into the Atlantic Ocean near the modern-day town of Cape Charles, Virginia. The space rock vaporized instantly, but its impact triggered a gargantuan tsunami, cast up a monsoon of shattered rocks and molten glass that spanned hundreds of miles and carved out the single largest crater in the United States — the so-called Chesapeake Bay impact structure.
Today, that 25-mile-wide (40 kilometers) crater is buried half a mile below the rocky basement of Chesapeake Bay — the 200-mile-long (320 km) estuary linking Virginia and Maryland on the East Coast. That hasn't stopped scientists from trying to piece together the site's mysterious history since it was first discovered during a drilling project in 1990.
In a recent study of ocean sediment cores taken almost 250 miles (400 km) northeast of the impact site, researchers found traces of radioactive debris dating to the time of the strike, providing fresh evidence of the impact's age and destructive power.
When the Chesapeake Bay impactor smashed into the Atlantic, it showered the surrounding land and water with shards of molten glass (known as "tektites") for hundreds of miles in every direction. This rain of meteoric debris formed what scientists call the North American tektite strewn field, the study authors wrote, which stretches from Texas to Massachusetts to Barbados, covering about 4 million square miles (10 million square km) of terrain. By studying shards of meteoric rock buried deep within this sweeping field of impact wreckage, scientists can gather clues about the asteroid's key characteristics, including its age.
The Chesapeake Bay impactor threw molten debris over 4 million square miles (10 million square km) of land and water, from Massachusetts to Barbados.
(Image credit: GEBCO world map 2014)
In their recent study (published June 21 in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science), researchers from Arizona State University dated 21 microscopic shards of zircon — a durable gemstone that can survive underground for billions of years. These zircons were lodged in a sediment core taken from roughly 2,150 feet (655 meters) below the Atlantic Ocean. Not only is zircon commonly found in tektites, but it is also a choice mineral for radiometric dating, thanks to some of its radioactive elemental components.
In this case, the researchers used a dating technique called uranium–thorium–helium dating, which looks at how radioactive isotopes, or versions, of uranium and thorium decay into helium. By comparing the ratios of specific helium, thorium and uranium isotopes in each mineral sample, the researchers calculated approximately how long ago the zircon crystals solidified and started to decay.
The team found that the 21 crystals ranged widely in age, running the gamut from about 33 million to 300 million years old. The two youngest samples, which had an average age of about 35 million years old, fit in with previous studies' estimates for the time of the Chesapeake Bay impact. A closer examination showed that the zircons also bore a cloudy appearance and deformed surface, two signs the minerals were kicked through the air and water by a great impact.
The team concluded that these two young crystals were part of the Chesapeake impact's path of destruction, confirming that the impact occurred about 35 million years ago. Moreover, the researchers wrote, it showed that uranium–thorium–helium dating is a viable method for constraining the age of ancient impact events, giving scientists a fresh tool to reveal our planet's long and violent past.
Air Force’s secret space drone broke another record, say new reports – but no one knows why
Air Force’s secret space drone broke another record, say new reports – but no one knows why
In a testing procedure, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle taxis on the flightline March 30, 2010, at the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Fla.
(U.S. Air Force/Released)
An Air Force X-37B space plane is continuing to set a new record for spaceflight-duration, at over 719 days of orbital spaceflight during its mystery mission that no one knows about.
The Air Force’s Orbital Test Vehicle 5 (OTV-5) mission passed the record for spaceflight time of 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes previously held by the previous Orbital Test Vehicle 4 (OTV-4) mission on Monday, and surpassed 719 days according to reporting from Space.com
The X-37B space plane, a pilotless drone, was initially launched with the assistance of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
“The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold; reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth,” an Air Force press release said last year.
The press release further stated the X-37B is the Air Force’s first vehicle since NASA’s shuttle orbiter that can return test equipment to Earth for closer inspection.
Personnel attend to the unmanned U.S. Air Force X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle 4.
U.S. AIR FORCE
Particularly, the X-37B has tested equipment including advanced guidance, navigation and control systems, thermal protection systems, avionics, high-temperature structures and seals, lightweight electromechanical flight systems, and advanced propulsion systems.
The X-37B was developed primarily by Boeing and the concept for the program originated with NASA in 1999 as the X-37 program before it was transferred to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, in 2004.
The X-37B is powered with Gallium Arsenide Solar Cells with lithium-Ion batteries. The Air Force space plane is 29 feet, 3 inches (8.9 meters) in length, 9 feet, 6 inches (2.9 meters) in height and has a wingspan of 14 feet, 11 inches (4.5 meters).
The space plane has an 11,000 pound launch weight which can be carried and launched by either the Space X Falcon 9 rocket or a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. It is designed for take-off aboard a rocket, and horizontal landing on an airplane runway.
Each of the OTV missions starting with OTV-1’s launch on April 22, 2010 has taken off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The first three OTV missions landed at Vandenburg, Air Force Bace in California and the fourth mission landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first four Orbital Test Vehicle missions clocked a total of 2,085 days of orbit, facilitating the testing of space planes reusable flight features, re-entry and landing technologies and other experiments intended to the national space community. The current OTV-5 mission began on September 7, 2018.
The Orbital Test Vehicle 5 mission is still at only a fraction of overall spaceflight duration records. Communications satellites typically remain in orbit for around five years. The NASA Voyager probes have been in flight for over four decades now.
Previous studies showed that methane in Mars’ atmosphere varies across the Martian seasons. New research shows daily fluctuations. It’s fascinating because, on Earth, methane gas is tied to microbial life.
The mystery of Mars’ methane has been in the news again lately, starting with a study announced earlier this month saying it’s likely not caused by wind erosion of rocks. Now, another new study has refined estimates of methane gas in Mars’ atmosphere, showing how concentrations change over the course of a single Martian day.
The peer-reviewed study, led by John Moores at York University in Canada, was published in Geophysical Research Letters on August 20, 2019. According to Moores:
This new study redefines our understanding of how the concentration of methane in the atmosphere of Mars changes over time, and this helps us to solve the bigger mystery of what the source might be.
The source of Mars methane is the true mystery. Where does the methane come from? On Earth, methane gas can be associated with microbial life. The idea of living microbes on Mars has long intrigued astronomers. Various spacecraft sent to Mars have searched for signs of life, but so far no sign of life has been revealed. In 2018, scientists announced that seasonal variations of Mars methane could be related to microorganisms. Or the variations in methane could be produced by geological means. It’s an interesting puzzle!
The new research involves data from the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Curiosity rover. Curiosity, in Gale Crater, has detected bursts of methane at different times in recent years, and analysis indicates it peaks in summer and disappears in winter.
Now, the new study shows that the methane levels change over the course of a Martian day, as well. Moores noted:
This most recent work suggests that the methane concentration changes over the course of each day. We were able – for the first time – to calculate a single number for the rate of seepage of methane at Gale Crater on Mars that is equivalent to an average of 2.8 kg [.7 gallons] per Martian day.
Diagram showing the seasonal cycle of methane as detected by the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater. The new study indicates that the methane varies in concentration on a daily basis as well.
The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and the Curiosity Rover have recorded different amounts of methane in the atmosphere on Mars. The Trace Gas Orbiter measured very little methane (<50 parts per trillion by volume) above 5 km [3 miles] in the sunlit atmosphere, while Curiosity measured substantially more (410 parts per trillion by volume) near the surface at night. In this paper we describe a framework which explains both measurements by suggesting that a small amount of methane seeps out of the ground constantly. During the day, this small amount of methane is rapidly mixed and diluted by vigorous convection, leading to low overall levels within the atmosphere. During the night, convection lessens, allowing methane to build up near the surface. At dawn, convection intensifies and the near-surface methane is mixed and diluted with much more atmosphere. Using this model and methane concentrations from both approaches, we are able – for the first time – to place a single number on the rate of seepage of methane at Gale Crater which we find equivalent to 2.8 kg per Martian day. Future spacecraft measuring methane near the surface of Mars could determine how much methane seeps out of the ground in different locations, providing insight into what processes create that methane in the subsurface.
Telescopic observations of Mars have also shown methane concentrations peaking in the summer months.
The findings should provide more clues as to the source of the methane, which could be either biological or non-biological, at least for the methane detected around Gale Crater. The team was able to reconcile the data between TGO and Curiosity, which had presented a puzzle. While Curiosity detected the spikes in methane levels, TGO had not. As Moores explained:
We were able to resolve these differences by showing how concentrations of methane were much lower in the atmosphere during the day and significantly higher near the planet’s surface at night, as heat transfer lessens.
TGO has focused on analyzing the upper levels of the atmosphere, which may explain why it missed the methane bursts close to the ground, or perhaps because the methane spikes are seasonal.
The seasonal and daily variations could be consistent with biology – as in microbes – as the source of the methane, but there are still other plausible geological explanations as well. According to Penny King at Australia National University (ANU):
Some microbes on Earth can survive without oxygen, deep underground, and release methane as part of their waste. The methane on Mars has other possible sources, such as water-rock reactions or decomposing materials containing methane.
Illustration depicting what processes could create and destroy methane on Mars. The methane most likely originates from below the surface and is released into the atmosphere through subsurface cracks.
While what is creating the methane is still unknown, most scientists now think it originates from underground, periodically released through cracks. This again could be consistent with either biology or geology. The geological sources could include the water-rock interactions or icy methane clathrates that contain methane and release it during warmer temperatures. If it was rocks and water, that would still be an exciting finding, indicating there is still liquid water below ground and at least some residual active geological processes. That alone could provide a nice habitat for microbes, even if they didn’t produce the methane themselves.
Whatever the explanation for the methane turns out to be, it will provide a fascinating insight into current geological or biological processes on the red planet.
Bottom line: A new study shows how methane in Mars’ atmosphere varies in concentration on a daily basis, not just seasonally.
China's Chang'e-4 lunar rover has discovered an unusually colored, 'gel-like' substance during its exploration activities on the far side of the moon.
The mission's rover, Yutu-2, stumbled on that surprise during lunar day 8. The discovery prompted scientists on the mission to postpone other driving plans for the rover, and instead focus its instruments on trying to figure out what the strange material is.
Day 8 started on July 25; Yutu-2 began navigating a path through an area littered with various small impact craters, with the help and planning of drivers at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, according to a Yutu-2 'drive diary' published on Aug. 17 by the government-sanctioned Chinese-language publication Our Space, which focuses on space and science communication.
On July 28, the Chang'e-4 team was preparing to power Yutu-2 down for its usual midday 'nap' to protect the rover from high temperatures and radiation from the sun high in the sky. A team member checking images from the rover's main camera spotted a small crater that seemed to contain material with a color and luster unlike that of the surrounding lunar surface.
The drive team, excited by the discovery, called in their lunar scientists. Together, the teams decided to postpone Yutu-2's plans to continue west and instead ordered the rover to check out the strange material.
Yutu-2 found a strangely-colored substance in a crater on the far side of the moon.
(Image credit: China Lunar Exploration Project)
With the help of obstacle-avoidance cameras, Yutu-2 carefully approached the crater and then targeted the unusually colored material and its surroundings. The rover examined both areas with its Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS), which detects light that is scattered or reflected off materials to reveal their makeup.
VNIS is the same instrument that detected tantalizing evidence of material originating from the lunar mantle in the regolith of Von Kármán crater, a discovery Chinese scientists announced in May.
Tracks showing Yutu-2's approach to the crater for analysis of the gel-like substance.
(Image credit: China Lunar Exploration Project)
So far, mission scientists haven't offered any indication as to the nature of the colored substance and have said only that it is "gel-like" and has an "unusual color." One possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon.
Yutu-2's discovery isn't scientists' first lunar surprise, however. Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt discovered orange-colored soil near the mission's Taurus-Littrow landing site in 1972, prompting excitement from both Schmitt and his moonwalk colleague, Gene Cernan. Lunar geologists eventually concluded that the orange soil was created during an explosive volcanic eruption 3.64 billion years ago.
Strange orange soil was discovered on the moon by the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
(Image credit: Apollo 17 Crew/NASA)
Chang'e-4 launched in early December 2018, and made the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3. The Yutu-2 rover had covered a total of 890 feet (271 meters) by the end of lunar day 8.
A stitched image from Yutu-2 looking back toward the Chang'e-4 lander during lunar day 7, in late June and early July 2019.
(Image credit: China Lunar Exploration Project)
The Chang'e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover powered down for the end of lunar day 8 on Aug. 7, and began their ninth lunar day over the weekend. The Yutu-2 rover woke up at 8:42 p.m. EDT on Aug. 23 (00:42 GMT Aug. 24), and the lander followed the next day, at 8:10 p.m. (00:10 GMT).
During lunar day 9, Yutu-2 will continue its journey west, take a precautionary six-day nap around local noontime, and power down for a ninth lunar night around Sept. 5, about 24 hours hours ahead of local sunset.
Chinese maanrover heeft iets vreemds ontdekt op de achterkant van de maan
Chinese maanrover heeft iets vreemds ontdekt op de achterkant van de maan
De Chinese maanrover Yutu-2 heeft een ongewone gelachtige substantie ontdekt op de achterkant van de maan, schrijft de website Space.com.
Wetenschappers besloten vervolgens de instrumenten op het materiaal te richten, in een poging te achterhalen wat het precies is.
Op 25 juli begaf Yutu-2 zich in een gebied met allerlei kleine inslagkraters. Drie dagen later ontdekte één van de teamleden op een foto die door de rover was gemaakt een kleine krater die kleurrijk en glanzend materiaal leek te bevatten.
Ongewone kleur
Het team van Yutu-2 besloot om niet verder te rijden, maar eerst het vreemde materiaal te bestuderen.
De rover benaderde de krater en richtte zijn instrumenten op de vreemd gekleurde substantie.
Wetenschappers hebben alleen laten weten dat het ‘gelachtig’ is en een ‘ongewone kleur’ heeft.
Soortgelijke ontdekking
Apollo 17-astronaut Harrison Schmitt deed in 1972 een soortgelijke ontdekking op de maan. Hij stuitte op bodemmateriaal met een oranje kleur.
Geologen concludeerden uiteindelijk dat de oranje kleur het gevolg was van een vulkaanuitbarsting zo’n 3,64 miljard jaar geleden.
271 meter
Toen de vondst werd gedaan had Yutu-2 in totaal 271 meter afgelegd op het maanoppervlak.
Hij werd op 3 januari dit jaar door ruimtesonde Chang’e-4 afgezet op de maan.
High Speed Object Appears to Enter a "Vortex/Portal" in the Sky Over Long Valley
High Speed Object Appears to Enter a "Vortex/Portal" in the Sky Over Long Valley
There was an incredible amount of lightning in the Long Valley on August 28, 2019, 9.45 pm, when a strange vortex/portal appeared on the weather radar map just above Long Valley.
Next, an anomaly came out of nowhere, entered and flew through the vortex/portal at a very high rate of speed on which then the vortex/portal disappeared.
According to MrMB333 the anomaly covered a distance of 60 miles in 20 minutes which is about 180 mph.
So, it looks like a portal opened up and something went through it, but what could it have been?
As fans of Pink Floyd know, finding something strange where it shouldn’t be happens in an equally strange place.
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon
Good news for Roger Waters and the band – China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit No. 2) lived up to their famous “Brain Damage” lyrics when it woke up after a lunar-night-long nap on the dark side (a.k.a. the far side) of the Moon and discovered a strange gel-like substance never seen before by any lunar rovers, satellites or landers. Did the Jade Rabbit find some lunar jade?
“With the help of obstacle-avoidance cameras, Yutu-2 carefully approached the crater and then targeted the unusually colored material and its surroundings. The rover examined both areas with its Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS), which detects light that is scattered or reflected off materials to reveal their makeup.”
Some things just stand out
Kudos to Space.com for keeping a close eye on the Yutu-2 ‘drive diary’ published by the government-sanctioned Chinese-language publication Our Space (you can see it here along with many photos of Chinese rocket scientists at work) and clep.ro, the website of China’s Lunar and Space exploration group. A full lunar day lasts 29 days, 12 hours and 44 minutes, and the Yutu-2 rover shuts down in the middle of the 14-day period of sunlight to protect it against the intense direct solar radiation. Yutu-2 awoke from its latest “nap” on July 25th and traveled a few hundred feet around craters and obstacles. According to the diary, just as Yutu-2 was getting ready to shut down on July 28th, Yutu Mission Control spotted something “gel-like” with an “unusual color” not seen before on the generally drab lunar surface.
As David Letterman liked to ask … is this anything?
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear You shout and no one seems to hear
Dark side of the moon resident?
Yutu-2 is shouting in its best Roger Waters style, but no one can hear you in space. Or at least that’s as much as the Chinese government space program wants you to believe. Space.com says that they have said nothing, but “one possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon.”
Melted glass? Or Or did the Jade Rabbit find some lunar jade?
History is far from completely chronicled. For as much as we know there is much that still remains in the shadows, and popping up from time to time to remind us of this fact are the various anomalous objects that we dig up that jolt out preconceptions and show us that ancient peoples were much more complex and stranger than we had ever thought before. One of these objects was found in the country of Germany in the 1990s, and it has proven to be a conundrum that defies our knowledge of the people of the time, and has gone on to become an intriguing historical anomaly that remains unsolved.
The artifact could have very well remained hidden away from the eyes of humankind forever if it hadn’t been for some illegal treasure hunters snooping around. In 1999, Henry Westphal and Mario Renner were hunting for treasure with metal detectors in Ziegelroda Forest, of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, near a town called Nebra, when they stumbled across two bronze swords, two hatchets, a chisel, some fragments of what appeared to be bracelets, jewelry, and most interesting of all, an anomalous bronze, disc-like object measuring 30 cm across, weighing about 5 pounds, and covered with strange inscriptions and cryptic diagrams and writing, some of which was inlaid with gold leaf, as well as gold circles, crescents, and bands upon it, the significance of it all unknown.
Now, none of this was legal at all. Not only were Westphal and Renner operating without a license, but they were using metal detectors, which was not allowed, and also any treasure found in the area is automatically the property of of the state of Saxony-Anhaltof, but they had no intention of handing their hoard over. The two illegal treasure hunters had no idea what the disc was, only that it was old, had gold in it, and was therefore potentially valuable. The very next day after making their find, the two sold the whole lot on the black market, and the mysterious disk would sort of disappear into the world of illegal treasure trading for the next few years. The disk and its mysteries might have disappeared forever, just as elusive as it had been when buried under the earth, if it wasn’t for a black market police sting operation carried out in February of 2002, during which it was confiscated and found its way into the hands of the German archeologist Harald Meller. Only then would it become clear just how bizarre the discovery actually was.
The two original treasure hunters were tracked down and arrested, and under a plea deal they agreed to disclose where they had found the disc. It turned out to be some sort of ancient burial mound thought to date back to the 2nd millennium BC, within which were found various other bronze artifacts and which was found to be situated on the hill in just such a way as for the sun to set behind a high peak called the Brocken during every solstice. However, even more exciting than the site where it was found was the disk itself, which had golden arcs that aligned with these solstices, and this was only the beginning of its mysteries. The symbols inscribed upon it were found to be depictions of the sun, moon, and a constellation of stars thought to be Pleiades Constellation, and when aligned correctly it was found that the disk could be used to calibrate the solstices and provide accurate representations of the night sky over the course of the year. Using two arcs on the edges of the disk, it was found that they span an angle of 82°, which accurately indicates the angle between the positions of sunset at summer and winter solstice at the latitude of the Mittelberg.
The disk was also able to correctly calculate moon phases and the location of stars in the sky, and all in all it was an amazingly accurate tool for its apparent age, perhaps the oldest known depiction of the universe. Of course, considering its accuracy, age, and the fact that its artistic style was not consistent with what was known from the era it supposedly belongs to, it was thought that what has come to be known as the Nebra Sky Disk was nothing more than a hoax or forgery, and prehistory professor at the University of Bristol, Richard Harrison, would say of it:
When I first heard about the Nebra Disc I thought it was a joke, indeed I thought it was a forgery. Because it’s such an extraordinary piece that it wouldn’t surprise any of us that a clever forger had cooked this up in a backroom and sold it for a lot of money.
The Nebra Sky Disk
However, analysis showed that it indeed seemed to be authentic, dating back to at least 1600 BC, quite likely much older, and likely a creation of the Bronze Age Unetice culture, and it was also found that it had been modified and tweaked over the centuries, adding new holes, crescents, arcs, and bands, perhaps as the creators attempted to calibrate it more precisely. If the calculated age is correct, then this would make it the oldest known and most accurate portable astronomical tool in the world for its era, and demonstrates that the people who made it had a shockingly sophisticated understanding of the cosmos and cycles of the night sky.
One of the biggest mysteries of the Sky Disk is not only how these ancient people knew so much about the night sky, but also what exactly it was used for. Ideas include that it was an item of religious significance, that is was used to anticipate seasonal phases for planning harvests and other agricultural purposes, or that it was used for shamanic rituals, but no one really knows for sure, and there is absolutely no written record of the disk having been made or where it came from. We are still not sure how these ancient people had this knowledge all the way back in the Bronze Age or even exactly who mad it in the first place, and the Nebra Sky Disk has gone on to be a much discussed historical anomaly. How did they have all of this information in a violent era when most of the artifacts found are weapons? Was it aliens? It was aliens, wasn’t it?
Whatever the answers may be, it is often considered as being one of the most important archeological finds of the century, and in 2013 was in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. Nowadays the Nebra Sky Disk has remained on permanent exhibition at the Halle State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte), in Halle, Germany, and it is considered a priceless artifact of German archeology. For now the Nebra Sky Disk keeps its mysteries close, but it provides a rare glimpse into ancient peoples and their understanding of the cosmos, which has proven to be much more complex than ever thought before.
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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 73 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.
