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...
13-03-2020
Scientists Find The First-Ever Animal That Doesn't Need Oxygen to Survive
Scientists Find The First-Ever Animal That Doesn't Need Oxygen to Survive
MICHELLE STARR
Some truths about the Universe and our experience in it seem immutable. The sky is up. Gravity sucks. Nothing can travel faster than light. Multicellular life needs oxygen to live. Except we might need to rethink that last one.
Scientists have just discovered that a jellyfish-like parasite doesn't have a mitochondrial genome - the first multicellular organism known to have this absence. That means it doesn't breathe; in fact, it lives its life completely free of oxygen dependency.
This discovery isn't just changing our understanding of how life can work here on Earth - it could also have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.
Life started to develop the ability to metabolise oxygen - that is, respirate - sometime over 1.45 billion years ago. A larger archaeon engulfed a smaller bacterium, and somehow the bacterium's new home was beneficial to both parties, and the two stayed together.
That symbiotic relationship resulted in the two organisms evolving together, and eventually those bacteria ensconced within became organelles called mitochondria. Every cell in your body except red blood cells has large numbers of mitochondria, and these are essential for the respiration process.
They break down oxygen to produce a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, which multicellular organisms use to power cellular processes.
We know there are adaptations that allow some organisms to thrive in low-oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions. Some single-celled organisms have evolved mitochondria-related organelles for anaerobic metabolism; but the possibility of exclusively anaerobic multicellular organisms has been the subject of some scientific debate.
That is, until a team of researchers led by Dayana Yahalomi of Tel Aviv University in Israel decided to take another look at a common salmon parasite called Henneguya salminicola.
(Stephen Douglas Atkinson)
It's a cnidarian, belonging to the same phylum as corals, jellyfish and anemones. Although the cysts it creates in the fish's flesh are unsightly, the parasites are not harmful, and will live with the salmon for its entire life cycle.
Tucked away inside its host, the tiny cnidarian can survive quite hypoxic conditions. But exactly how it does so is difficult to know without looking at the creature's DNA - so that's what the researchers did.
They used deep sequencing and fluorescence microscopy to conduct a close study of H. salminicola, and found that it has lost its mitochondrial genome. In addition, it's also lost the capacity for aerobic respiration, and almost all of the nuclear genes involved in transcribing and replicating mitochondria.
Like the single-celled organisms, it had evolved mitochondria-related organelles, but these are unusual too - they have folds in the inner membrane not usually seen.
The same sequencing and microscopic methods in a closely related cnidarian fish parasite, Myxobolus squamalis, was used as a control, and clearly showed a mitochondrial genome.
These results show that here, at last, is a multicellular organism that doesn't need oxygen to survive.
Exactly how it survives is still something of a mystery. It could be leeching adenosine triphosphate from its host, but that's yet to be determined.
But the loss is pretty consistent with an overall trend in these creatures - one of genetic simplification. Over many, many years, they have basically devolved from a free-living jellyfish ancestor into the much more simple parasite we see today.
(Stephen Douglas Atkinson)
They've lost most of the original jellyfish genome, but retaining - oddly - a complex structure resembling jellyfish stinging cells. They don't use these to sting, but to cling to their hosts: an evolutionary adaptation from the free-living jellyfish's needs to the parasite's. You can see them in the image above - they're the things that look like eyes.
The discovery could help fisheries adapt their strategies for dealing with the parasite; although it's harmless to humans, no one wants to buy salmon riddled with tiny weird jellyfish.
But it's also a heck of a discovery for helping us to understand how life works.
"Our discovery confirms that adaptation to an anaerobic environment is not unique to single-celled eukaryotes, but has also evolved in a multicellular, parasitic animal," the researchers wrote in their paper.
"Hence, H. salminicola provides an opportunity for understanding the evolutionary transition from an aerobic to an exclusive anaerobic metabolism."
What you’re seeing, essentially, is part of a corona -- when a rainbow-like halo engulfs the sun or the moon -- and the bands and colors change as the cloud evolves.
Iridescence is most often seen close to the sun.
It's usually spotted when part of a cloud is forming because that's when all of the water droplets have a similar history and similar size.
Police car films something strange on the road in Rabun County, Georgia. What is it?
Police car films something strange on the road in Rabun County, Georgia. What is it?
In Rabun Conty, Georgia, residents have been thrown into a fright after a bizarre story emerged regarding cops being scared at a road location by what has been described as a “something strange”.
That and more strange events caught on tape. Real or fake?
A once-hidden island has been uncovered in Antarctica after melting glaciers caused by record high temperatures revealed its rocky shore to passing scientists.
A group of polar researchers from the Thwaites Offshore Research (THOR) project spotted the island as their ship passed through Pine Island Bay in Antarctica.
The island has been named Sif after the Norse goddess of fertility and family, who was also the wife of the warrior god Thor, by the THOR glacier research team.
Researchers on board the Nathaniel B. Palmer ship are studying the Thwaites glacier in Pine Island bay, one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica.
The team don't know how long the 634,400 sq ft island has been exposed, but say it was likely revealed by higher than usual temperatures caused by climate change.
Scroll down for video
The new island has been named Sif by researchers who say it was uncovered due to warming temperatures causing ice sheets to melt
'After being the first visitors, we can now confirm that Sif Island is made of granite and that it is covered by remnant ice shelf, and a few seals,' said Julia Smith Wellner from the THOR expedition team
It is big enough for satellites to spot from space but the never-before-seen island has previously been hidden under thick layers of ice, and was only revealed after parts of the glacier broke off and melted.
Cartographers for the British Antarctic Survey estimate the island, made of granite, is about 1,240ft across by 520ft wide - roughly 634,400 sq ft or about the same size as Windsor Castle.
Researchers hope to be able to reveal more about the composition of the island and how it came to be uncovered when their journey finishes at the end of March.
Ships rarely travel as far south as the Palmer so the crew are probably the first to discover the island and may be the first humans to step foot on its rocky shore.
'After being the first visitors, we can now confirm that Sif Island is made of granite and that it is covered by remnant ice shelf, and a few seals,' said Julia Smith Wellner from the THOR expedition team.
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Cartographers for the British Antarctic Survey estimate the island, made of granite, is about 1,240ft across by 520ft wide - roughly 634,400 sq ft or about the same size as Windsor Castle
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This satellite image shows Sif Island and a series of icebergs - Sif is the large white block in the bottom middle of the image
They took samples from the island in the hope of getting a clearer picture of how the frozen continent is shifting, but won't know for sure until they get to a lab in March.
'This one island could hold a lot of clues,' University of Virginia in Charlottesville glacial geologist Lauren Simkins told Nature News.
As glaciers retreat they release pressure on the continent allowing the ground underneath the ice to rise up - a process called rapid rebound.
This sometimes stabilises the ice by anchoring it in place but can also accelerate the break up of the glacier by creating more cracks.
'Rapid rebound could increase stress on the remaining ice sheet, causing it to break apart more quickly', she said.
'But a rising continental shelf could also anchor glaciers, increasing their stability and slowing their march to the sea.'
When they first spotted the new island, there was a commotion on board as everyone rushed to see the rocky land amongst miles of water and ice.
'I think I see rocks,' shouted an officer aboard the ship.
They looked at charts and maps of the area and realised it was a 'brand new island' likely 'never seen before'.
'There was a commotion as everyone on board rushed to see the rocky, ice-covered outcrop and suggest potential names.
'But the hubbub quickly gave way to excitement about the scientific implications of the find,' says Wellner, a marine geologist at the University of Houston in Texas.
Thwaites Glacier is in West Antarctica and is sometimes called the Doomsday Glacier due to its potential impact on global sea levels
Climate scientist Peter Neff examined the new images and satellite data to try and determine how long it has been uncovered for.
He said it looks like 'Sif Island' has been slowly revealed since about 2010.
The THOR project is an international mission tasked with studying the stability of the massive Thwaites glacier in Pine Island Bay, Western Antarctica.
Researchers say the melting ice on the new rock will help them better determine how quickly changes are happening and what this means for the glacier.
Ships rarely travel as far south as the Palmer so the crew are likely the first to discover the island and may be the first humans to step foot on its rocky shore
'New islands emerging as ice sheets retreat is not particularly surprising', Paul Cutler, a programme director in glaciology at the US National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia told Nature News.
'New islands have appeared over the past few years in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland' but this is 'an exciting opportunity to piece together the geological history of a vastly under-studied region of Earth'.
The new discovery comes as NASA recorded a record high temperature for the continent - at 64 degrees Fahrenheit with melted ice spotted from space.
This is also not the first island in Antarctica to be effected by rising temperatures.
The island is big enough for satellites to spot from space but the never before seen island has previously been hidden under thick layers of ice
Satellite images last week revealed 20 per cent of snow on Eagle Island melted in just 10 days due to the extreme temperatures.
The warm spell began on February 5 and ran through to February 13, peaking on February 6, with temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula reaching 64.9°F (18.3°C).
'I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica,' said glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College in Massachusetts.
'You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica.'
Sometimes called the Doomsday Glacier due to the potential impact its collapse could have on sea levels, Thwaites is unusually broad and fast.
Already, Thwaites accounts for about four per cent of global sea-level rise as warming waters cause it to melt from the underside.
Researchers have long held concerns that a tipping point in the stability at its foundations could result in a run-away collapse of the glacier.
There are multiple teams studying the glacier at the moment to determine the risk it poses to global sea levels and the newly uncovered island will feed into that work.
HOW MUCH WILL SEA LEVELS RISE IN THE NEXT FEW CENTURIES?
Global sea levels could rise as much as 1.2 metres (4 feet) by 2300 even if we meet the 2015 Paris climate goals, scientists have warned.
The long-term change will be driven by a thaw of ice from Greenland to Antarctica that is set to re-draw global coastlines.
Sea level rise threatens cities from Shanghai to London, to low-lying swathes of Florida or Bangladesh, and to entire nations such as the Maldives.
It is vital that we curb emissions as soon as possible to avoid an even greater rise, a German-led team of researchers said in a new report.
By 2300, the report projected that sea levels would gain by 0.7-1.2 metres, even if almost 200 nations fully meet goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Targets set by the accords include cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of this century.
Ocean levels will rise inexorably because heat-trapping industrial gases already emitted will linger in the atmosphere, melting more ice, it said.
In addition, water naturally expands as it warms above four degrees Celsius (39.2°F).
Every five years of delay beyond 2020 in peaking global emissions would mean an extra 20 centimetres (8 inches) of sea level rise by 2300.
'Sea level is often communicated as a really slow process that you can't do much about ... but the next 30 years really matter,' lead author Dr Matthias Mengel, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Potsdam, Germany, told Reuters.
None of the nearly 200 governments to sign the Paris Accords are on track to meet its pledges.
KLIMAATVERANDERING ONTHULT GLOEDNIEUW EILAND VOOR DE KUST VAN ANTARCTICA
KLIMAATVERANDERING ONTHULT GLOEDNIEUW EILAND VOOR DE KUST VAN ANTARCTICA
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het ons tot voor kort onbekende eiland was altijd bedekt met een dikke laag ijs, die door de opwarming van het gebied nu grotendeels is verdwenen.
Het eiland bevindt zich in de Pine Island-baai, die weer onderdeel uitmaakt van de Amundsenzee, gelegen voor de kust van West-Antarctica. In deze baai komen onder meer de beruchte Pine Island- en Thwaites-gletsjer uit. Beide gletsjers zijn de laatste tijd vaak in het nieuws door de snelle veranderingen die ze ondergaan. Zo laat de Pine Island-gletsjer regelmatig grote brokken ijs los en is de grote, snel smeltende Thwaites-gletsjer momenteel reeds verantwoordelijk voor zo’n 4% van de wereldwijde zeespiegelstijging.
International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration Wetenschappers houden de laatstgenoemde gletsjer – niet in de laatste plaats omdat deze in zijn eentje een zeespiegelstijging van zo’n 65 centimeter kan veroorzaken – nauwlettend in de gaten. En er werd zelfs een expeditie opgezet die helemaal om deze gletsjer en zijn omgeving draait. De International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration doet momenteel ter plekke onderzoek naar de stabiliteit van de gletsjer en de bijdrage die deze gletsjer en omgeving kan leveren aan de wereldwijde zeespiegel. Zo werden er eind vorig en begin van dit jaar diepe gaten in de gletsjer geboord, wat leidde tot de ontdekking van warm water dat het ijs van onderaf aantast en zo waarschijnlijk bijdraagt aan de versnelde smelt van de gletsjer die zich qua oppervlakte grofweg kan meten met Groot-Brittannië.
Nieuw eiland Wetenschappers die aan deze belangrijke onderzoeksexpeditie deelnemen, hadden – afgaand op wat we van de Thwaites-gletsjer weten – ongetwijfeld wel verwacht getuige te zijn van grote en snelle veranderingen in het gebied. Maar dat ze er op een gloednieuw eiland zouden stuiten..dat had niemand zien aankomen.
Sif De onderzoekers hebben het eiland ‘Sif-eiland’ gedoopt. “Ons project (dat onder de vlag van de International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration valt, red.) draagt de naam THwaites Offshore Research, of kortweg Thor,” vertelt onderzoeker Julia Wellner, vanuit Antarctica aan Scientias.nl. “Thor is een Noorse God en zijn vrouw Sif is de godin van de aarde. Haar naam leek goed te passen bij een stukje land dat we tijdens ons project hebben ontdekt.” Wellner is voornemens om de naam – na terugkeer in de bewoonde wereld – officieel in te dienen en hoopt dat deze door instanties bevoegd om het eiland een naam te geven, wordt omarmd. “Ik hoop dat Sif blijft hangen.”
Op Sif Natuurlijk hebben de onderzoekers kort na de ontdekking van het eiland hun werk even neergelegd om het eilandje te bezoeken. Daarmee zijn ze niet alleen de ontdekkers van het eiland, maar waarschijnlijk ook de eerste mensen die het eiland hebben bezocht. “Het eiland was in het verleden bedekt door een ijsplaat: gletsjerijs dat richting de oceaan is gestroomd en op het water is gaan drijven,” zo vertelt Wellner. “Het eiland lag altijd al boven de zeespiegel, maar we hebben het nooit gezien, omdat het onder het ijs lag. De ijsplaat heeft zich in de laatste jaren echter teruggetrokken, waardoor het eiland bloot is komen te liggen.”
Opwarming Onderzoek ter plaatse wijst uit dat het eiland nu slechts nog wat restjes van die ijsplaat herbergt. Het is allemaal zeer waarschijnlijk te herleiden naar de opwarming van de aarde, aldus Wellner. “De Thwaites-gletsjer is de snelst veranderende ijsmassa op West-Antarctica en de reden dat we hier zijn. Dus we wisten al dat het ijs zich hier terugtrekt. Dat is dan ook geen verrassing. Maar het eiland is dat wel.”
Julia Smith Wellner@houston_wellner
After being the first visitors, we can now confirm that Sif Island is made of granite and that it is covered by remnant ice shelf, and a few seals. Photos by CD Hillenbrand (BAS) and Laura Taylor (UH). @glacierthwaites@glacieroffshore@GAViglione#nbp2002@BAS_News@UHEAS
Waardevol En de ontdekking van het eiland kan wel eens heel waardevol blijken te zijn voor de missie van Wellner en collega’s. Ze hebben namelijk goede hoop dat het eiland meer kan vertellen over hoe het gebied er in het verleden uitzag en door de tijd heen veranderd is. Daarom hebben ze op het eiland onder meer al enkele stenen verzameld die later uitgebreid geanalyseerd kunnen worden. “Eén van de belangrijkste dingen die we zullen gaan doen, is het dateren van de periode waarin de gesteenten blootlagen. We willen achterhalen of ze in de laatste 100 of 1000 of 10.000 jaren ook al eens ijsvrij zijn geweest en zo meer te weten komen over hoe het ijs zich in het verleden heeft gedragen.”
Het komt niet elke dag voor dat onderzoekers een nieuw eiland ontdekken. Maar Wellner sluit niet uit dat het in de toekomst nog wel vaker gebeurt. “Het is zeker mogelijk dat er doordat het ijs zich steeds sneller terugtrekt, meer nieuwe eilanden worden ontdekt.”
Bronmateriaal:
Interview met Julia Wellner Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: Gui Bortolotto
DIT LIJKT EEN ONDERGRONDSE TUNNEL OP MARS TE ZIJN - EN WIE WEET WAT ER BINNEN TE VINDEN IS
DIT LIJKT EEN ONDERGRONDSE TUNNEL OP MARS TE ZIJN - EN WIE WEET WAT ER BINNEN TE VINDEN IS
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het gaat mogelijk om een lavatunnel waarin het in een grijs verleden goed toeven was voor eventueel Martiaans leven.
Wie zijn ogen vluchtig over de door HiRISE – een instrument aan boord van de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter – gemaakte foto laat glijden, ziet misschien enkel een zwarte vlek. Maar in werkelijkheid is het een diepe put, zo blijkt uit een vervolgopname, eveneens gemaakt door HiRISE. En mogelijk zelfs de ingang tot een tunnel die zich wellicht meters of zelfs kilometers onder het oppervlak van Mars uitstrekt.
Afbeelding: NASA / JPL / UArizona.
Ontstaan “We weten niet precies hoe de put is ontstaan,” vertelt onderzoeker Rosse Beyer, verbonden aan het NASA Ames Research Center. “Maar we denken dat deze op dezelfde manier ontstaan is als de putten die we in lavatunnels zien in vulkanische gebieden op aarde, zoals op Hawaii.” De tunnels waar Beyer naar verwijst, ontstaan tijdens erupties, waarbij lava zich ondergronds een weg baant en het oppervlak van de lavastroom afkoelt en als het ware een korst vormt, waaronder het warme, vloeibare lava kan blijven stromen. “Wanneer de vulkanische activiteit tot een einde komt, lopen deze grote tunnels leeg. Naarmate de tijd vordert, kan natuurlijke erosie ervoor zorgen dat een deel van de tunnel dat zich dicht bij het oppervlak bevindt, instort. Zo’n gat in het dak van de tunnel wordt ook wel een ‘skylight‘ genoemd. Van bovenaf gezien lijkt het een diepe put, tot je erin gaat en ziet dat een tunnel zich vanuit deze put in twee richtingen uitstrekt.”
Op de beelden die HiRISE heeft gemaakt, is niet goed te zien of we hier met zo’n ‘skylight‘ in een lavatunnel te maken hebben. In de wanden van de put die HiRISE in beeld heeft gebracht, zijn geen openingen te vinden. Maar wellicht bevinden die zich in de wanden die HIRISE niet kan zien. Beyer acht het in ieder geval heel aannemelijk dat we bij afdaling in deze put vertakkingen vinden die zich verder onder het oppervlak van Mars uitstrekken. “De put lijkt heel diep en afgaand op het feit dat deze zich bevindt in een gebied dat ooit vulkanisch actief was, denken we dat het wel om een ‘skylight‘ in een lavatunnel gaat.”
Afmetingen De put is ovaalvormig en zo’n 180 bij 114 meter groot. Van de diepte kan Beyer in dit stadium slechts een voorzichtige inschatting maken. “We weten waar de zon zich bevond (toen deze foto’s gemaakt werden, red.) en aangezien het zonlicht de bodem van de put niet raakt, moet deze zeker 100 meter diep zijn.”
Leven in een lavatunnel Voor onderzoekers zijn deze diepe putten en tunnels – waarvan er al meerdere op Mars, maar ook op de maan zijn aangetroffen – heel interessant. “Meer te weten komen over grotten op Mars en de maan is vanuit een geologisch standpunt heel nuttig, zeker als je beter wilt begrijpen hoe deze werelden door de tijd heen veranderd zijn.” Daarnaast worden de grotten ook wel gezien als een geschikte leefplek voor toekomstige Mars- en maankolonisten. “Waar aardse kolonisten op bijvoorbeeld Mars onder meer mee te maken krijgen, zijn extreem lage temperaturen en het feit dat Mars geen sterk magnetisch veld of een dikke atmosfeer heeft. De combinatie van de aardatmosfeer en het aardmagnetisch veld beschermt ons tegen zonnevlammen en kosmische straling, maar Mars heeft dat dus niet. Als je een leefgebied in een grot zou kunnen creëren, zou de temperatuur wat stabieler zijn; net zoals grotten op aarde een constante temperatuur hebben, zouden ook grotten op Mars dat hebben (ze zijn wel wat kouder dan op aarde, maar de temperatuur schommelt in ieder geval niet enorm). Verder zou ondergrondse huisvesting ook extra bescherming bieden tegen zonnevlammen en kosmische straling.”
Of we toekomstige Marskolonisten in de toekomst in deze lavatunnels aan gaan treffen, is – ondanks de ogenschijnlijke voordelen van een leven ondergronds – echter nog niet zeker. “Eén van de redenen dat we op aarde niet in grotten wonen, is het feit dat het wat onhandig is. En datzelfde zullen we op Mars zien; toegang krijgen tot deze lavatunnels kan wel eens lastig zijn en mogelijk bevinden ze zich ook niet in gebieden waar Marskolonisten willen zijn.”
Als het leven in deze lavatunnels – even afgezien van hun toegankelijkheid – voor ons vrij behaaglijk is, kan het dat natuurlijk ook zijn voor andere, buitenaardse levensvormen. En dat is nóg een reden om deze putten en tunnels eens van dichtbij te bekijken. “Het kunnen goede plekken zijn om te zoeken naar leven,” bevestigt Beyer. “We weten dat grotten op aarde vaak ook florerende ecosystemen kennen.” Maar hij wil daar wel een belangrijke kanttekening bij plaatsen. “Op aarde zien we vrijwel overal waar we kijken, leven en op Mars niet.” Met dat in het achterhoofd acht Beyer het niet zo heel waarschijnlijk dat we in deze grotten sporen van levende Martianen aan gaan treffen. “Misschien is het wel waarschijnlijker dat we er bewijs vinden van vergaan Martiaans leven, uit een tijdperk waarin de omstandigheden voor leven wat gunstiger waren.” Maar ook dat zou natuurlijk wereldnieuws zijn.
Bronmateriaal:
"Staring into a Pit" - HiRISE Interview met Ross Beyer Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: NASA / JPL / UArizona
Time Travel Technology is Real and We Can See The Future Now
Time Travel Technology is Real and We Can See The Future Now
Lurking deep within Einstein’s theories lie the secrets of time travel. We are all subject to the arrow of time as it perpetually pulls us forward into the future. Present moments crumble away into past memories and become times never to be seen or experienced again.
For some, this is simply not acceptable. Theoretical Physicist Ron Mallett explains the reality of time travel technology that we could see in the near future.
Researchers have found over 300 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), minor planets that are located in the far reaches of the solar system, including more than 100 new discoveries according to a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
The team of researchers, led by graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli and professors Gary Bernstein and Masao Sako, believe that the latest findings could aid future searches for the hypothetical Planet Nine and other undiscovered planets as the study describes a new approach to finding similar objects.
Pixabay
Usage of Dark Energy Survey
The researchers used the data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which completed six years of data collection in January, to discover the TNOs. However as DES was designed to study galaxies and supernovas, the researchers had to develop a new way to track the movement. The experts said that the dedicated TNO surveys take measurements as frequently as every hour or two, which allow researchers to more easily track their movements.
Pedro Bernardinelli said: "Dedicated TNO surveys have a way of seeing the object move, and it's easy to track them down. One of the key things we did in this paper was figure out a way to recover those movements."
Chances of finding 500 new TNOs
After several months of method-development and analysis, the researchers found 316 TNOs, including 245 discoveries made by DES and 139 new objects that were not previously published. Pluto, the best-known TNO, is 40 times farther away from the sun than the Earth is, and the TNOs found using the DES data range from 30 to 90 times the Earth's distance from the sun. Some of these objects are on extremely long-distance orbits that will carry them far beyond Pluto.
The researchers said that there are chances of finding new TNOs, possibly as many as 500, based on the data estimates, in the near future.
300 New Minor Planets Found Beyond Neptune in Our Solar System, Hunt for Planet X Continues
300 New Minor Planets Found Beyond Neptune in Our Solar System, Hunt for Planet X Continues
This updated catalog of trans-Neptunian objects and the methods used to find them could aid in future searches for undiscovered planets in the far reaches of the solar system.
Using data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), researchers have found more than 300 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), minor planets located in the far reaches of the solar system, including more than 100 new discoveries. Published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, the study also describes a new approach for finding similar types of objects and could aid future searches for the hypothetical Planet Nine and other undiscovered planets. The work was led by graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli and professors Gary Bernstein and Masao Sako.
The goal of DES, which completed six years of data collection in January, is to understand the nature of dark energy by collecting high-precision images of the southern sky. While DES wasn’t specifically designed with TNOs in mind, its breadth and depth of coverage made it particularly adept at finding new objects beyond Neptune. “The number of TNOs you can find depends on how much of the sky you look at and what’s the faintest thing you can find,” says Bernstein.
Because DES was designed to study galaxies and supernovas, the researchers had to develop a new way to track movement. Dedicated TNO surveys take measurements as frequently as every hour or two, which allows researchers to more easily track their movements. “Dedicated TNO surveys have a way of seeing the object move, and it’s easy to track them down,” says Bernardinelli. “One of the key things we did in this paper was figure out a way to recover those movements.”
Using the first four years of DES data, Bernardinelli started with a dataset of 7 billion “dots,” all of the possible objects detected by the software that were above the image’s background levels. He then removed any objects that were present on multiple nights—things like stars, galaxies, and supernova—to build a “transient” list of 22 million objects before commencing a massive game of “connect the dots,” looking for nearby pairs or triplets of detected objects to help determine where the object would appear on subsequent nights.
With the 7 billion dots whittled down to a list of around 400 candidates that were seen over at least six nights of observation, the researchers then had to verify their results. “We have this list of candidates, and then we have to make sure that our candidates are actually real things,” Bernardinelli says.
To filter their list of candidates down to actual TNOs, the researchers went back to the original dataset to see if they could find more images of the object in question. “Say we found something on six different nights,” Bernstein says. “For TNOs that are there, we actually pointed at them for 25 different nights. That means there’s images where that object should be, but it didn’t make it through the first step of being called a dot.”
Bernardinelli developed a way to stack multiple images to create a sharper view, which helped confirm whether a detected object was a real TNO. They also verified that their method was able to spot known TNOs in the areas of the sky being studied and that they were able to spot fake objects that were injected into the analysis. “The most difficult part was trying to make sure that we were finding what we were supposed to find,” says Bernardinelli.
After many months of method-development and analysis, the researchers found 316 TNOs, including 245 discoveries made by DES and 139 new objects that were not previously published. With only 3,000 objects currently known, this DES catalog represents 10% of all known TNOs. Pluto, the best-known TNO, is 40 times farther away from the sun than Earth is, and the TNOs found using the DES data range from 30 to 90 times Earth’s distance from the sun. Some of these objects are on extremely long-distance orbits that will carry them far beyond Pluto.
The location of the objects found in the first four years of DES data. The outline shows DES’s search range and the color of each dot shows how far away the object is in astronomical unit (with one AU the equivalent of 93 million miles). Two of the detections were more than 90 AU, or over 8 billion miles away.
(Image: Pedro Bernardinelli)
Now that DES is complete, the researchers are rerunning their analysis on the entire DES dataset, this time with a lower threshold for object detection at the first filtering stage. This means that there’s an even greater potential for finding new TNOs, possibly as many as 500, based on the researchers’ estimates, in the near future.
The method developed by Bernardinelli can also be used to search for TNOs in upcoming astronomy surveys, including the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory. This observatory will survey the entire southern sky and will be able to detect even fainter and more distant objects than DES. “Many of the programs we’ve developed can be easily applied to any other large datasets, such as what the Rubin Observatory will produce,” says Bernardinelli.
This catalog of TNOs will also be a useful scientific tool for research about the solar system. Because DES collects a wide spectrum of data on each detected object, researchers can attempt to figure out where the TNO originated from, since objects that form more closely to the Sun have are expected to have different colors than those that originated in more distant and colder locations. And, by studying the orbits of these objects, researchers might be one step closer to finding Planet Nine, a hypothesized Neptune-sized planet that’s thought to exist beyond Pluto.
“There are lots of ideas about giant planets that used to be in the solar system and aren’t there anymore, or planets that are far away and massive but too faint for us to have noticed yet,” says Bernstein. “Making the catalog is the fun discovery part. Then when you create this resource; you can compare what you did find to what somebody’s theory said you should find.”
The Dark Energy Survey is supported by funding from the United States Department of Energy Office of Science; the National Science Foundation; funding agencies in the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, Germany, and Switzerland; and the participating institutions. A complete list of funding organizations and collaborating institutions is at The Dark Energy Survey website.
Other Penn researchers and graduates involved in this study are Matthew Belyakov, Dillon Brout, Tongtian Liu, Jennifer Locke, William Saunders, Lakshay Sharma, and Aditya Inada Somasundaram. The preprint version of this research article is available on ArXiv.
This research was supported by National Science Foundation grants AST-1515804 and AST-1615555 and Department of Energy grant DE-SC0007901.
Contacts and sources:
Erica K. Brockmeier
University of Pennsylvania
Publication:
Trans-Neptunian Objects Found in the First Four Years of the Dark Energy Survey. Pedro H. Bernardinelli, Gary M. Bernstein, Masao Sako, Tongtian Liu, William R. Saunders, Tali Khain, Hsing Wen Lin, David W. Gerdes, Dillon Brout, Fred C. Adams, Matthew Belyakov, Aditya Inada Somasundaram, Lakshay Sharma, Jennifer Locke, Kyle Franson, Juliette C. Becker, Kevin Napier, Larissa Markwardt, James Annis, T. M. C. Abbott, S. Avila, D. Brooks, D. L. Burke, A. Carnero Rosell, M. Carrasco Kind, F. J. Castander, L. N. da Costa, J. De Vicente, S. Desai, H. T. Diehl, P. Doel, S. Everett, B. Flaugher, J. García-Bellido, D. Gruen, R. A. Gruendl, J. Gschwend, G. Gutierrez, D. L. Hollowood, D. J. James, M. W. G. Johnson, M. D. Johnson, E. Krause, N. Kuropatkin, M. A. G. Maia, M. March, R. Miquel, F. Paz-Chinchón, A. A. Plazas, A. K. Romer, E. S. Rykoff, C. Sánchez, E. Sanchez, V. Scarpine, S. Serrano, I. Sevilla-Noarbe, M. Smith, F. Sobreira, E. Suchyta, M. E. C. Swanson, G. Tarle, A. R. Walker, W. Wester, Y. Zhang. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 2020; 247 (1): 32 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab6bd8
Shape shifting Farallon Islands lighthouse, San Francisco turns into statue of Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
Shape shifting Farallon Islands lighthouse, San Francisco turns into statue of Christ the Redeemer, Brazil
This week, Mila Zinkova looked out over the ocean and saw a familiar sight: The statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Which is strange. Because she was standing almost 7000 miles away in San Francisco, California.
Credit image: Mila Zinkova.
"This is actually the Farallon Islands lighthouse west of San Francisco, it was shape-shifted by the Fata Morgana, it was a mirage, says Zinkova."
In this case, the mirage turned a California lighthouse into a Brazilian statue. "That's not all," says Zinkova. "Evidently Fata Morgana was not satisfied with this design because she kept changing it all the time, reports Spaceweather.
Then, a second sun exploded in the same atmospheric duct. At one point it was rectangular.
If you think the government has more information about UFOs than it’s letting on, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in the majority. A 2019 Gallup poll revealed 68 percent of people feel that way. Thirty-three percent of all respondents said that they believe UFOs were built by aliens from outer space.
The Venn diagram center of those two groups clings to one of the most enduring conspiracy theories: The Government (it’s always with a capital G for believers) is squirreling away information about alien spacecraft. This idea appears, and has for years, on internet forums, social media, TV shows, memes, movies, and, of course, fiction, like Max Barry’s “It Came From Cruden Farm.”
Almost as interesting as any government secret is why it’s kept secret. And for alien UFOs, the conspiratorial answers span a whole spectrum: They’d cause too much peace, make too much chaos, give too many people too much technology, or, maybe—as is the case in Barry’s story—just be a real disappointment. Because the why here has so many potential answers, believers can choose the one that makes most sense to them or tick off “all of the above.”
The public doesn’t know what goes on inside Area 51. To think that there must be something truly incredible inside—that has the mouthfeel oftruth.
Even powerful politicians, it turns out, think there may be more to the saucer story than meets the public eye. That’s why, when presidents become presidents, sometimes they, too, take an interest in the extraterrestrial. On Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2014, for instance, Bill Clinton revealed that during his time in office, he’d asked his people to look into both the Area 51 and Roswell files. “If you saw that there were aliens there, would you tell us?” Kimmel asked.
“Yeah,” said Clinton. (But if you’re inclined to believe in a cover-up, isn’t this affirmative just further evidence of disinformation?)
The president in Max Barry’s story similarly uses his power to seek out ufological secrets—immediately after his inauguration. The Air Force chief of staff, to the president’s surprise but perhaps not the reader’s, confesses that, yes, there is a specimen from space. It is, just as last year’s would-be raiders suspected, tucked away inside Area 51, a notoriously secretive Air Force installation in Nevada, whose existence wasn’t officially acknowledged till 2013 (although, you know, we knew).
It makes a certain sense that in this story, and in popular consciousness, the government holds these celestial secrets. After all, it alone meets the classic criteria of guilt: Means. Motive. Opportunity. Those elements make the conspiratorial conviction feel juuuust plausible enough. And if a hypothetical narrative is juuuust plausible enough, adherents have juuuust enough ground to remain standing on it—which is part of why this conspiracy theory has long, sturdy legs.
First of all, the government has the means to pull off an alien cover-up. Unlike individual humans or companies attempting to enforce dubious nondisclosure agreements, the military and intelligence communities have the authority to classify information, making it an actual crime to spill the secrets. This confidential information, sequestered in a limited number of brains, can also be geographically sequestered: Military installations take up millions and millions of acres across the U.S. That’s a lot of land to hide behind.
Area 51 is the most famous home of aliens-on-Earth conspiracies. Together, this base and the “secret squirrel” spots it abuts span 2.9 million acres, which is nearly twice the size of Delaware. Guards can put a halt to curious civilians’ trespassing by using “deadly force,” also known as “killing them.” The public doesn’t know what goes on inside Area 51 today, and we probably won’t for decades to come. To think that there must be something truly incredible inside—that has the mouthfeel of truth.
The government is also generally better at cover-ups than your average Fortune 500 company or UFO-hunting individual. Take the real-world 1947 events in Roswell: After a rancher found crash debris on his land, the military first said it came from a flying saucer, then reversed course and called it a weather balloon. That wasn’t true, and officials knew it: The wreckage was from a classified project called Mogul, a high-altitude nuclear-test detector. The government wasn’t covering up aliens, but it did prove itself able to keep the truth hidden for decades.
Information stays shhh within government if it would damage national security. But some scientists have suggested that contact with ETs would actually increase the likelihood of peace on Earth: The existence of extraterrestrials could bring us all together as Earthlings—united not by nationality but by planetarity. We could connect with the cosmos, look at it with a new sort of wonder, and a gratitude that we are not—that none of us are—alone. Plus, whether they’re beaming blueprints through space or propelling their bodies through it, the others certainly have better tech than we do. They could teach us how they built warp drives, or developed self-contained life-support systems, or reined in their social media giants. And if they didn’t teach us, we could strip their spaceship to pieces, figure out how it worked, and reverse-engineer our own—kind of like pre-engineer children deconstruct the electronics in their houses for fun. It could be a renaissance, a high-tech respite from international conflict.
That’s a nice idea. But researchers don’t agree on how people would react to such a revelation. More importantly, no one really has any idea what would happen with the body politic, just as you can guess at how you’d behave if you met Bigfoot, but you don’t actually know. And besides, maybe it’s not in a government’s best interest to unite the people: After all, wars always balloon someone’s bank accounts, and a truly global society could topple country-level leaders. You could see a rationale behind keeping the cosmic visits quiet even if they’d ultimately be good for the little guy.
In the universe of Barry’s story, federal studies suggested that an alien visit wouldn’t swing positive or neutral but ultranegative. Researchers predict conflicts between the great powers, more spying, more assassinations, the dissolution of moderate religion, the blowup of radicalism, immigration issues, etc. These hypothetical woes have the same tenor as the government’s true fears about UFOs, at least in the past, according to a document called the Robertson Panel report. In 1953, the CIA sponsored a small group of scientists and military personnel to evaluate the national security risks UFOs did or did not pose and what to do about it. “The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States,” National Reconnaissance Office Historian Gerald Haines wrote of the report. Governments don’t, in general, want any sort of hysteria or panic within their borders. Ergo, maybe they’d hide, cover up, lie about the potential source of that potential panic. Especially if—as in movies like War of the Worlds, Independence Day, and The Day the Earth Stood Still—the extraterrestrial visitors put forth an apocalyptic threat, rather than a peaceful “How do you do, cosmic cousins?”
Some, though, believe the government is hiding the greatest discovery in human history because its people want to hang on to those spoils. Maybe military engineers are reverse-engineering the saucer (or whatever) in secret. That would keep the technology hidden from foreign nations, giving the U.S. an unbeatable advantage.
Defensive or offensive alien innovation isn’t the only stuff conspiracists think the government might keep from us. Go on the right forums, or WikiLeaks databases, and you can find the idea that ETs have shown us how to get virtually free energy—by harnessing “zero-point energy,” or basically pulling power out of the ether. A government might hide that so it can keep its people poor and dependent, keep big companies in business, and keep the ultimate source of power (literal and figurative) for itself.
In Barry’s story, the motivation for secrecy overturns these tropes, which position the alien as competent and powerful. Instead, Barry’s ET, which the president calls a “sentient sofa,” is the extraplanetary version of an alt-right troll that failed to launch from its parents’ basement. Upon learning this, the president decides to keep the talking couch locked in Area 51. Regardless of the motive, though, the outcome is the same: A high-level politician chooses, as Barry’s does, to keep keeping secrets. “Bury it,” he says.
But if the government says it doesn’t have aliens, believers can say that’s just a lie, further proof of a cover-up. And let’s say 2 million people do one day raid Area 51, and they fail to find anything. Maybe they just didn’t see the secret basement door whose seams are so tight they don’t show up at all. Maybe the Air Force moved the sentient sofa as soon as rumors of a raid spun up. And if a president, like the one in Barry’s story, doesn’t speak of the alien secrets, maybe he just found the truth—and decided it didn’t deserve to be out there.
Ex-government adviser claims UFO cover-up as RAF prepare to release secret files
Ex-government adviser claims UFO cover-up as RAF prepare to release secret files
The Royal Air Force is set to declassify a cache of UFO sighting files this spring into the public domain – as the government faces calls for greater transparency
The UK Government's UFO unit closed in 2009 after concluding that in more than 50 years they had never received any hard evidence of a potential extraterrestrial threat.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “It had been assessed that it would be better to publish these records, rather than continue sending documents to the National Archives, and so they are looking to put them onto a dedicated gov.uk web page.”
Ahead of the release, Nick Pope – who investigated UFOs for the MoD – has said the government should show greater transparency.
The UK Government's UFO unit closed in 2009 after concluding that they had not found any hard evidence of a potential extraterrestrial threat(Image: Getty Images)
He said: “I'm not surprised there's such a high level of belief in a government cover-up. I know from first-hand experience that the authorities haven't always been as forthcoming as they might have been about their level of interest in UFOs.
“This survey shows high levels of interest and belief in UFOs and extra-terrestrial life.
"I think it reflects a number of recent revelations, including the declassified videos of US Navy jets chasing UFOs, and the news that the UK government is about to release more of its UFO files.”
Pope is now calling on governments to take the matter seriously and enact contingency plans in the event of an alien invasion.
He added: “There needs to be a government plan for first contact with extraterrestrials - irrespective of whether they turn out to be hostile or friendly.
"Even if you think it's unlikely, it's common sense to have a plan for something when the consequences would be so impactful.”
It comes as a poll of 2,000 people found 50% believe in aliens and there is a real risk to world order from a War of the Worlds style extraterrestrial attack.
Those people also believe an attack within the next 50 years is possible.
The study also found nearly three quarters believe that worldwide governments are hiding information, fearing they know more about extraterrestrial life than they're letting on.
More than two-thirds reckon authorities should have a plan for first contact with other life forms.
Of the alien believers surveyed, 71 % think Earth has already been visited at some point by aliens, suspecting it happened thousands of years ago – but 29% imagine they’re yet to make their first landing.
The Filming of a UFO Shooting a Beam at an Airborne Missile As Recounted By Former Lt. Robert Jacobs | VIDEO
The Filming of a UFO Shooting a Beam at an Airborne Missile As Recounted By Former Lt. Robert Jacobs | VIDEO
... Jacobs’ account has been entirely corroborated by another officer, retired Major (later Dr.) Florenze J. Mansmann, who carefully studied the Top Secret film at Vandenberg AFB, California prior to its confiscation by CIA agents. Mansmann said that his frame-by-frame analysis of the footage, using a magnifier, revealed that the UFO—which appeared to the unaided eye as small, white dot—was actually a domed, disc-shaped craft that had pivoted on is vertical axis before emitting each beam of light.
Half of us believe that aliens exist and that Earth will face an Independence Day-style attack in the next 50 years.
More than two thirds of believers say the Government must put a plan in place to deal with a sudden ET spaceship invasion, a poll reveals.
And worringly, 71% of them say this planet is already secretly hosting aliens, who may have first touched down on Earth thousands of years ago.
UFO expert Nick Pope said: “These fascinating findings say as much about distrust of government denials on UFOs as they do about people’s belief in extra-terrestrial visitation.
“This new survey supports my view that there needs to be a Government plan for first contact with extra-terrestrials, irrespective of whether they turn out to be hostile or friendly.
“Even if you think it’s unlikely, it’s common sense to have a plan for something when the consequences would be so impactful.”
Londoners, the Welsh and those in the South West of England were the biggest believers in extra-terrestrial life.
New sci-fi series War of the Worlds, that inspired the new study, airs on FOX at 9pm on Thursdays.
UFO investigator Nick added: “This intriguing new survey shows high levels of interest and belief in UFOs and extra-terrestrial life.
“I think it reflects a number of recent revelations, including the declassified videos of US Navy jets chasing UFOs, and the news that the UK government is about to release more of its UFO files.
“I’m not surprised there’s such a high level of belief in a government cover-up."
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Coronavirus is Messing With the Hunt for Life on Mars
Coronavirus is Messing With the Hunt for Life on Mars
The ExoMars 2020 rover mission has been delayed until 2022 due to the need for more testing, and because the coronavirus epidemic has left "practically no possibility" for travel for European scientists.
The launch of the ExoMars 2020 rover mission has been postponed to 2022 primarily because the spacecraft requires more tests, troubles that have been amplified by the coronavirus epidemic that has left "practically no possibility" for travel, according to mission leads.
Developed jointly by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the ExoMars 2020 mission, which was scheduled to launch in July, aims to put a European-built rover called Rosalind Franklin on Mars, which will be carried by a Russian-built lander called Kazachok.
The surface mission is tasked with hunting for signs of life on Mars in the Oxia region at the Martian equator. The mission was originally scheduled to launch in 2018, but was pushed back to 2020 because multiple components were not ready for that deadline. The new delay will push the arrival of the lander and rover on Mars back to 2023, at the earliest, because the best opportunities to travel from Earth to Mars occur roughly every two years.
ESA director general Jan Wörner announced the postponement in a press conference in Moscow on Thursday, after consultation with Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin. The main reason for the holdup is that Kazachok’s software and parachute systems require more tests to ensure they will be ready for the critical entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence on Mars.
In addition to the need for more tests, Wörner and Rogozin both confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified uncertainties about the ExoMars launch. One of this mission’s touted strengths is its collaborative spirit, but its international framework is now vulnerable to travel restrictions and potential quarantines to contain the outbreak
For instance, one of the rover’s control centers is located in Italy, where the population is currently quarantined, and several European Union nations have announced measures to curb travel and ban large public gatherings.
"We have made a difficult but well-weighed decision to postpone the launch to 2022,” Rogozin said in a statement. “It is driven primarily by the need to maximise the robustness of all ExoMars systems as well as force majeure circumstances related to exacerbation of the epidemiological situation in Europe which left our experts practically no possibility to proceed with travels to partner industries.”
While the pandemic remains an organizational wild card for mission leads, ESA spokesperson Ninja Menning confirmed in an email that “the delay is not primarily due to concerns over COVID-19.”
At the press conference, Wörner said that most of the spacecraft’s components are ready to launch, but he stressed that more “verification activities will ensure a safe trip” and that “we cannot allow ourselves any margin of error.” This high degree of caution about the EDL sequence is especially understandable considering that the first lander in the ExoMars program, called Schiaparelli, crashed during its attempt to touch down on Mars in 2016.
The pandemic has disrupted many other space agencies and industries. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California has told the majority of its staff to stay home after an employee tested positive for COVID-19, and industry conferences, such as Satellite 2020, have cancelled events as a precaution.
NASA’s Perseverance rover and China’s first Martian rover are both still scheduled to launch to Mars this summer at this time, with landings set for 2021.
WASP-76 b may be the most extreme exoplanet we know of.
This illustration shows a nightside view of the exoplanet WASP-76b. The ultrahot giant exoplanet has a dayside where temperatures climb above 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius), high enough to vaporize metals. Strong winds carry iron vapor to the cooler nightside where it condenses into iron droplets. To the left of the image, we see the evening border of the exoplanet, where it transitions from day to night.
There's a new contender for the "most exotic exoplanet" title.
The crown may have rested for a while now on the head of HD 189733 b, a cobalt-blue alien world where molten-glass rain whips sideways through the air at up to 5,400 mph (8,790 km/h). But a new study reports that iron rain likely falls through the thick, turbulent air of WASP-76 b, a bizarre "ultrahot Jupiter" that lies about 640 light-years from the sun, in the constellation Pisces.
WASP-76 b zips around its host star once every 1.8 Earth days, an orbit so tight that the gaseous planet is "tidally locked," always showing the star the same face. Temperatures on this dayside climb above 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit (2,400 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to vaporize metals — whereas the nightside is a much cooler (but still ridiculous) 2,730 F (1,500 C), researchers said.
"These are likely the most extreme climates we could ever find on a planet," said study lead author David Ehrenreich, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
"We have to stretch our understanding of what is a climate, what is a planetary atmosphere, to understand this object," Ehrenreich told Space.com.
WASP-76 b was discovered in 2013. The alien planet is about as massive as Jupiter but nearly twice as wide, likely because the massive radiation loads the exoplanet receives from its host star puff up its atmosphere considerably. (And one quick note about the object's distance: Some sources say that WASP-76 b is about 390 light-years away, but that number is inaccurate, Ehrenreich said. He and his colleagues calculated WASP-76 b's distance using data from Europe's ultraprecise star-mapping spacecraft Gaia.)
For the new study, the researchers studied WASP-76 b using the Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO), an instrument installed on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.
ESPRESSO detected a strong signature of iron vapor at the "evening" border that separates WASP-76 b's dayside from its nightside. But no such signature was spotted at the "morning" border on the other side of the planet, where the nightside melds into day.
"Something must be happening on the nightside that makes iron disappear," Ehrenreich said.
The best explanation, he added, is that winds and WASP-76 b's rotation carry vaporized iron from the dayside to the nightside. The nightside is cool enough for the iron vapor to condense into clouds, which then dump rain into the air over there. That rain could consist of compounds such as iron sulfide or iron hydride.
But, "given the conditions, the most likely [scenario] is that iron condenses into liquid droplets of pure iron," Ehrenreich said. (This iron rain probably eventually makes its way back to the dayside again via atmospheric circulation, perpetuating the cycle, he added.)
And that rain probably isn't sprinkling down in a gentle mist, because the big temperature disparity between WASP-76 b's two halves generates winds of startling ferocity. The iron in the planet's dayside air, for example, is hurtling toward the nightside at about 11,000 mph (18,000 km/h), Ehrenreich said.
The dayside of the tidally locked "ultrahot Jupiter" exoplanet WASP-76 b may be much puffier than the nightside because of higher heat loads. The borders between these two hemispheres might thus feature towering cloudfalls that would rain iron droplets down onto any tourist (fool)hardy enough to visit this exotic world. (Image credit: Frederik Peeters)
WASP-76 b's exoticism doesn't end there. The dayside atmosphere may be much more puffed up than that of the nightside because of the higher heat loads, the researchers said. So the "evening" and "morning" borders between the two hemispheres might be marked by towering clouds that fall from the light toward darkness.
"And the drizzle of this fall would not be water droplets but iron droplets," Ehrenreich said.
The craziness of WASP-76 b has more than just gee-whiz appeal. The new information about this odd exoplanet should help scientists refine and test climate and global circulation models, leading to a better understanding of exoplanetary atmospheres in general, Ehrenreich said. And WASP-76 b also serves as a compelling reminder for researchers to keep an open mind, because nature churns out a dizzying diversity of worlds.
"Exoplanets are a real treasure trove full of surprises," Ehrenreich said. "The more you look, the more you find."
He and his colleagues aim to dig up more such surprises. The new results, which were published online today (March 11) in the journal Nature, come from the very first science observations ever made with ESPRESSO, back in September 2018. The researchers are now conducting a broad survey of exoplanet atmospheres using ESPRESSO, which could reveal if WASP-76 b is an outlier or a member of a very weird class of worlds.
"What we have now is a whole new way to trace the climate of the most extreme exoplanets," Ehrenreich said in a statement.
APEen illustratie van hoe de planeet en de ijzerwolken er mogelijk kunnen uitzien.
WETENSCHAP Wetenschappers hebben ontdekt dat op exoplaneet WASP-76b wel heel buitengewone weersomstandigheden voorkomen. Het kan er tot 2.400 graden Celsius worden, waaien tot snelheden van meer dan 16.000 kilometer per uur en bovendien valt er geregeld vloeibaar ijzer uit de lucht.
WASP-76b bevindt zich op 640 lichtjaren van ons vandaan. De planeet staat zo dicht bij zijn ster in het Pisces-sterrenstelsel dat het er enorm heet is op het planeetoppervlak. De planeet draait niet rond zijn eigen as, waardoor het langs één kant van WASP-76b altijd dag is, en langs de andere kant altijd nacht.
IJzerwolken
Aan de kant waar het altijd dag is, lopen de temperaturen hoog op waardoor ijzer verdampt tot wolken. Door de felle wind tussen de dag- en nachtkant blazen de ijzerwolken naar de kant waar het altijd nacht is en regent het ijzer daar uit. Aan de koude kant van de planeet is het ‘maar’ 1.500 graden Celsius.
De ontdekking is een van de eerste resultaten die astrologen konden vaststellen met een nieuwe telescoop, genaamd de Very Large Telescope in het Zuid-Amerikaanse Chili. Volgens de astrologen moet het onderzoeksapparaat ons meer inzicht geven in verre werelden buiten ons sterrenstelsel.
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The Buache Map: A Controversial Map Which Shows Antarctica Without Ice
The Buache Map: A Controversial Map Which Shows Antarctica Without Ice
Buache map titled “Map of the southern lands between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, where one sees the New discoveries made in 1739 south of Cape of Good Hope by orders of the (French) East-India Company. Based on the journals and the original map of Mr de Lozier Bouvet, leader of this expedition. Extended with various Physical observations etc., 1754.”
The Buache Map is an 18th century map commonly claimed to accurately depict the continent of Antarctica before it was buried by ice. By extension, it has been claimed that this map is evidence that an ancient civilization had mapped Antarctica without ice, and the Buache Map was drawn based on this ancient source.
However, there are also arguments against this interpretation of the Buache Map and the claim that the continent of Antarctica was known to a highly advanced ancient civilization long before it was ‘re-discovered’ by modern man in the early part of the 19th century.
Philippe Buache, Creator of a Controversial Map
The Buache Map was drawn by a French geographer by the name of Philippe Buache de la Neuville, hence its name. The full title of this map (in French), however, is “Carte des Terres Australes comprises entre le Tropique du Capricorne et le Pôle Antarctique où se voyent les nouvelles découvertes faites en 1739 au Sud du Cap de Bonne Esperance,” which translates into English as “Map of the Southern Lands contained between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Antarctic Pole, where the new discoveries made in 1739 to the south of the Cape of Good Hope may be seen.” Although the Buache Map is often said to have been published in 1737, the date of publication on the map itself is given as September 3, 1739.
“Carte des Terres Australes Comprises entre le Tropique du Capricorne et le Pôle Antarctique” by Buache and published in 1739.
The man behind the map, Philippe Buache de la Neuville, was a cartographer and map publisher, as well as the “foremost theoretical geographer of his generation.” Buache began his career as a workshop assistant and apprentice of Guillaume de L’Isle, who was also an important and prolific cartographer.
When de L’Isle died in 1726, his publishing firm was taken over by Buache, who had also married his mentor’s daughter so that he was part of the family. In 1729, Buache was appointed as the Premier Geographe du Roi , roughly translated as the ‘first / principal geographer of the king.’ In the following year, Buache entered the Académie des sciences as the successor of Guillaume de L’Isle.
Buache was a pioneer of a new form of theoretical geography. Although Buache’s new system was arguably “defective in many instances,” it nevertheless “contributed greatly toward the progress of that science, and popularized it.”
To produce his maps, Buache is said to have employed “geographic knowledge, scholarly research, the journals of contemporary explorers and missionaries, and direct astronomical observation.” From these, he made a number of deductions. One of the deductions made by Buache which turned out to be true, for instance, was the existence of Alaska and the Bering Strait. Nevertheless, not all of Buache’s speculations were true. One example of this is the supposed existence of a central Antarctic sea.
Legends of the Buache Map – Antarctica Without Ice
Returning to the Buache Map, it has been suggested that it “accurately depicts the subglacial topography” of Antarctica, a claim said to have its origins in Charles Hapgood’s 1966 book, ‘ Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings .’ It has also been suggested that Buache used a map / maps that was / were either made by some highly developed ancient civilization or even by “alien cartographers.”
One argument against this interpretation is the fact that nobody knows for sure what the topography of subglacial Antarctica actually looks like. At present, there is no way to judge the veracity of the claim that the Buache Map provides an accurate representation of the subglacial Antarctic coastline. Additionally, there are numerous differences between the Buache Map and the Piri Re’is Map , another map purported to illustrate the topography of an ice-free Antarctica.
The French legends that cover the Buache Map also provide a clue as to the way the map may be read and understood. For example, the words conjecturée (conjectured) and soupçonnée (suspected) can be found on parts of the southern continent , indicating that this landmass was not copied from some ancient map, but was a hypothesis by Buache.
Additionally, the writings on the side of the map indicate that the French explorer Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier reported seeing many icebergs during his journey to the south. Therefore, Buache speculated that the icebergs were from somewhere in the south.
1753 world map by the French cartographer Philippe Buache.
Finally, there are two versions of the Buache Map, the first is shown without this speculated landmass, while the second depicts the hypothesized Antarctica . The former is said to be more common, and may have been an earlier version of Buache’s hypothesis, while the latter is thought to incorporate Buache’s later thoughts on the matter.
Alternatively, it has been suggested that the Buache Map with Antarctica may have been issued by another cartographer fraudulently, or may even be an outright modern forgery.
“The Bubble Boy” is a classic episode of the sitcom “Seinfeld” which centered on a boy living in a bubble that protected him from germs but not George Costanza. The sci-fi show “Under the Dome” put an entire city in a bubble, while Freeman Dyson’s Dyson Sphere theoretically enclosed a star inside a round container. While those ‘bubbles’ exist or are conceivable, a Swiss physicist has proposed that the Milky Way galaxy and a thousand or so galaxies around it are in a giant bubble that is protecting us from supernovae and miscalculations in the rate of the expansion of the universe. Is there really a multi-galactic bubble or is this Swiss scientist missing a few blades in his mental Army knife?
“A significant tension has become manifest between the current expansion rate of our Universe measured from the cosmic microwave background by the Planck satellite and from local distance probes, which has prompted for interpretations of that as evidence of new physics.”
Lucas Lombriser, a professor in the Theoretical Physics Department at the University of Geneva, is the author of “Consistency of the local Hubble constant with the cosmic microwave background,” a paper published in the journal Physics Letters B (and summarized in a press release), where he brings to light “tension” in the theoretical physics world caused by conflicting measurements of the expansion of the universe since the Big Bang. Specifically, the so-called “Hubble constant” — which is used to determine distances in a universe where galaxies move faster the farther away the get from a point in space – isn’t so ‘constant’ anymore.
Hubble telescope – named for Edwin Hubble, astronomer and inventor of the Hubble constant
Why is this a problem? Determining the history of the expansion of the Universe since the Big Bang is necessary to learn more about its energy composition, the validity of General Relativity and the cosmological principle which says that the distribution of matter in the universe is homogeneous and uniform on a large scale and there are no observable irregularities. However, the Hubble constant (50,400 mph per million light-years or 73.4 km/s/Mpc) is strangely different when using data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, which comes from measuring the cosmic microwave background that is an echo of the Big Bang. That data puts the Hubble constant at 46,200 mph per million light-years or 67.4 km/s/Mpc. In 2019, researchers used the light of red giant stars to put the Hubble constant at 47,300 mph per million light-years or 69.8 km/s/Mpc. All three are valid … so which one is it?
“If we were in a kind of gigantic ‘bubble,’ where the density of matter was significantly lower than the known density for the entire universe, it would have consequences on the distances of supernovae and, ultimately, on determining H0.”
Rather than solve the problem, Lombriser fixes the numbers by introducing a giant bubble or ‘Hubble bubble’ with a diameter of 250 million light years that holds 1,000 galaxies, including our own, and has a lower density of matter than the rest of the universe. If the density of matter inside the Hubble bubble was 50% lower than for the rest of the universe, a new value would be obtained for the Hubble constant which would agree with the one obtained using the cosmic microwave background.
Is the Hubble bubble a physical boundary? Is it really round?
So, it seems Lombriser’s Hubble bubble isn’t really a physical structure as much as it’s just a defined area with a lower density than the surrounding rest of the universe. It conveniently fixes the existence of two or more Hubble constants by using two sets of numbers to avoid conflicting answers. This still sounds like he’s massaging the numbers to make them fit the answer rather than finding the cause of the differences in universe expansion speeds, but that could be due to the fact that understanding and explaining life, the universe and everything is a bit beyond this writer’s pay grade.
Did Lombriser fix a problem using a theoretical tool that’s one corkscrew shy of a Swiss Army knife?
“The probability that there is such a fluctuation on this scale is 1 in 20 to 1 in 5, which means that it is not a theoretician’s fantasy. There are a lot of regions like ours in the vast universe.”
Are there? If the universe suddenly stops expanding, we know who to blame.
On October 21, 1952, a Flight Lieutenant Michael Swiney of the Royal Air Force took off in his Meteor trainer jet on a training flight with a flight student. At the time he was a flight instructor at the RAF’s Central Flying School, at Little Rissington, Gloucestershire, England, and today his student was a Royal Navy Lieutenant, David Crofts. The two were engaged in a cross country flight that would take them on a route along the south coast of the country, after which they would turn around and head back. It was meant to be a routine flight and with the calm weather on a fairly calm afternoon there were no anticipated problems. Yet this was to be a flight into strangeness that neither one of the men would ever forget, and which would propel itself into the realm of some of the great UFO mysteries.
The flight went according to plan at first, with a perfect take off and climb up through the cloud cover. It was as they punched through the clouds at an altitude of approximately 12,000 feet that Swiney allegedly spotted three white spherical objects at an estimated altitude of 35,000 feet, directly ahead of them. It was the pilot’s first impression that these were parachutes, but as they drew closer it became very obvious that these were something far stranger. He would say of the objects:
It was something supernatural. I immediately thought of course, of saucers, because that’s actually what they looked like. They were not leaving a condensation trail as I knew we were. They were circular and appeared to be stationary. We continued to climb to twice that height [to 30,000 feet] and as we did so they did in fact change position. They took on a slightly different perspective. For example the higher we got they lost their circular shape and took on more of a ‘flat plate’ appearance – like when you hold a tea-saucer above your head and look at it, and then bring it down to your eye-level, it loses the circular shape and becomes a flat plate. At one time the objects, which were still very much in view, appeared to go from one side of us to the other, and to make quite sure it was not an illusion caused by us in our aeroplane moving to one side, I checked that we were absolutely still on a very steady heading, and sure enough they had moved across to the starboard side of the aircraft.
Swiney’s plane managed to climb to 35,000 feet, and they approached close enough to the anomalous objects to see that they were devoid of any wings, vents, portholes, fins, or anything else that would have been expected of a conventional aircraft, and it was all so outlandish that Swiney began to suspect he was perhaps suffering from a lack of oxygen and that he was possibly hallucinating. However, this was put to rest when his passenger, Crofts, saw them as well. Crofts would describe the strange objects thusly:
I looked straight through the D-window and there were three dots ahead…[initially] they wouldn’t have been bigger than my thumb-nail at arm’s length and there were certainly three of them. I looked up from time to time and saw they were approaching and getting further and further apart. What I saw looked like the bottom of a stemmed glass. They were lens shaped, like an ellipse and the sun was behind them, and there was no cloud at that height. It was impossible to tell the size of them or how far away they were.
This was all unsettling enough that the shaken Swiney decided to call off the training exercise and head back towards base, despite Crofts’ suggestion that they move to intercept. As they made their way back to base, Swiney radioed ground Air Traffic Control, and although Swiney wanted to get as far away from the objects as possible, ground control ordered them to turn around and approach the anomalies. Swiney dutifully banked around and reportedly blasted towards them at full speed, actually managing to gain on them before suddenly the objects turned at a sharp angle and sped away at a rate of acceleration that was far beyond anything known before vanishing, leaving both Swiney and Crofts completely puzzled.
In the meantime, it turns out that a Ground Control Interception radar in southern England designated Sopley had picked up the objects, which were moving at around 3,000 miles an hour over the countryside of the southwest of England. This was causing quite a bit of panic, as all aircraft in the area were meticulously tracked and accounted for, and these particular objects were nothing that was supposed to be there. Considering this was right in the middle of the Cold War and with tensions high, this meant that these unidentified, out-of-place aircraft were potentially a threat to national security. The response was to scramble any available fighter jets immediately in order to assess the potential threat and possibly engage, and two Meteors from RAF base Tangmere, in Sussex, were launched to join up with Swiney’s plane and offer support, however, they were unable to make visual confirmation, the objects vanished from radar somewhere off the coast of Kent, and the fighters returned to base.
After this incident the whole thing was kept remarkably quiet, even though it was also picked up on a private listening station and there has been evidence that GCHQ, the government’s own secret listening station at Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, had also aware of the events as they unfolded. It seems that the RAF and the Air Ministry were keen to explain it all away and distance themselves from it all, despite the multiple radar confirmations at the same time as visual contact was made by Swiney and company. Indeed, at some point the entire file on the incident reportedly has since just sort of gone away, as if nothing ever happened on that fateful day at all. Yet those who were there insist that it indeed did happen, and speak of the thick layer of secrecy overlaying the incident. Indeed, not long after this supposedly happened, the Air Ministry issued a warning that restricted RAF personnel from discussing encounters with unexplainable phenomenon with anyone other than official superiors.
As a matter of fact, the practice of the British Ministry of Defense with regards to UFOs at the time was to typically regularly destroy and dispose of any files pertaining to such UFO incidents, as they were seen as largely explainable with mundane explanations and were not worthy of funneling resources into. Since this practice was only stopped in 1967, all official reports from before that year no longer exist in any form. However, Swiney claims that in 1974, after decades of the event weighing on his mind, he requested to see the file on the incident witnessed by he and his co-pilot, and much to his surprise it was actually shown to him. He explains of this:
I was then in a position to say that I wanted to see the report I had written in 1952. I simply said ‘I want to see it’ and the next thing was one of my staff (a RAF Group Captain) plonked it on my desk,” Swiney explained. The file was obtained from an Air Intelligence branch that had inherited D.D.I. (Tech)’s records, and the officer who recovered the file said it had been located “in the Blue Book. So I had a look at it. It was all there, and if I remember rightly I also saw David Croft’s report which was attached to it. I had a look at it and when I was satisfied I put it in the out-tray. I should have taken a copy there and then.
After this the report seems to have just vanished, and an attempt to take a look at it again in 2000 with the help of researcher Dr. David Clarke resulted in them being given the runaround through several agencies, all of who said they were unable to locate the requested file. They were also told that no files on UFOs from before 1967 were available in general because of the past policy of destroying them all, making his 1974 experience all the stranger. When confronted about this discrepancy they received no answer or further explanation from the government, and the file seems to have just disappeared into thin air. As far as the Ministry of Defense is concerned, it never happened. Yet Swiney has always remained adamant that this file did exist, that he saw something truly beyond explainable, and that it was no normal balloon, aerial phenomena, or other mundane cause, and he has said of this:
I had then been flying for about nine years and I had seen many funny reflections, refractions through windscreens and lots of other things, but this was nothing of the sort. We tried very hard to explain away what we were looking at but there was no way we could do that. There was something there, there is absolutely no doubt about it. It was NOT a reflection. I am completely open-minded. I don’t think there are little green men who are going to suddenly land and get out of peculiar-looking craft. But what I do know is that both David Crofts and I saw something, the like of which we had never seen before, and I have never seen since. I cannot explain it. But all I do know is that I did see, as did he, something which was most unusual.
In the meantime, what has gone on to be mostly known as the “Rissington Incident” has been much discussed in the UFO community and has appeared on such well-known TV programs as UFO Files the BBC’s Timewatch. What happened here with these pilots? Was this phenomenon, which was also clearly observed by ground radar, all caused by mundane causes, or was it something more? What happened to that file, and did it ever exist at all? The answers remain unclear, and the Rissington Inceident has gone on to become a regularly discussed unsolved UFO case that will likely invite debate for years to come.
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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.
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