17-08-2020 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

Mars 2020: The hunt for life on the Red Planet is about to get serious

Illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The sudden flurry of activity is a result of planetary dynamics: every two or so years, the orbits of Earth and Mars align so that the two bodies are at their closest to each other. This results in a shorter interplanetary transit time, of just over six months. The next such launch window will not be until 2022 – when it is expected that the European Space Agency’s ExoMars 2022 will join the throng.

• Read more: Decades of attempts show how hard it is to land on Mars – here's how we plan to succeed in 2021

It is legitimate to question why we keep sending rockets to Mars. Surely we have acquired enough images of the surface and its landscapes to know that water used to be there, but has now vanished? True enough – but there are still mysteries to solve: when did the water go, and why? And, of course, the biggest question of all: is (or was) there life on Mars?

The three missions have different objectives: Hope will orbit the planet for at least two Earth years (one Martian year), acquiring data on Mars’ weather – just like the weather satellites orbiting Earth. Tianwen-1 will orbit Mars and is carrying a rover that will be parachuted down to the surface at Utopia Planitia, where it will analyse the soil and take images of the surface.

Perseverance will arrive almost at the same time – but a couple of thousand kilometres away in Jezero Crater. It will be deposited on the surface by sky-crane technology (see the video below), the same method that delivered Curiosity so successfully in 2012.

Perseverance carries a full complement of scientific instruments that will measure all the usual things that get measured on Mars: the chemistry and mineralogy of the rocks and soil, the amount and type or organic material present at and just below the surface, and so on. But there are two other features of the mission that make it unique.

The idea behind the flight is to test the concept of atmospheric flight on Mars. Eventually, it is anticipated, drones will be able to fly for much longer and for greater distances. This could help guide rovers, identifying features worth investigating and hazards to avoid.

The second unique feature is a drilling and caching system. Perseverance is the first rover to have the capability to drill a core, about ten centimetres long and one centimetre in diameter, and extract it intact from the drill hole. Perseverance will take samples from a range of different rock types as it traverses the crater floor. The drill cores will be left in a small pile - a cache – for collection, possibly in early 2027, and subsequent transport back to Earth (estimated arrival time is still not known, but maybe around spring 2032).

Sample return

Why is it so important to bring samples back from Mars? The instruments carried by Perseverance will be able to undertake fairly sophisticated chemical analyses of the rocks and soil. But even though the instruments and measurements are a tremendous achievement, they do not have the full range of equipment that we employ on Earth to squeeze every drop of information from a rock.

Tests to check for organic compounds – and whether they might have a biological origin – require a chain of different analyses that are far too elaborate and complex to be undertaken on Mars. Boiling acids, alcohol rinses, addition of chemicals, subtraction of solids, are steps in the chemistry needed to extract and separate organic molecules from their rocky hosts. This just cannot (as yet) be done on Mars.

The rocks will be weighed and measured practically on a grain-by-grain basis and analysed, in some cases down to the individual atoms from which the material is composed. This will be an international effort – there is already a multi-national panel (called MSPG-2) which will draft the requirements for the first sets of analyses and how the samples will be stored, curated and subsequently distributed to the wider scientific community.

There is another set of reasons to bring samples back from Mars – the future of human exploration of Mars. If we send humans to Mars, we have to know how to bring them back again. We have not returned anything directly from another planetary body since the Apollo 17 astronauts left the Moon in December 1972. Yes, we have captured bits from a comet and an asteroid and returned them to Earth – but those missions did not land, collect and come back.

We have been investigating Mars for a long time: for over 150 years by telescope, 50 years from orbit and 20 years by rovers. Only another 12 years, then, before we can analyse Mars in our own laboratories.

Perseverance to get things done is a gift of humanity. Here’s hoping that the rover will live up to its name.

• This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook and Twitter.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 23:17 geschreven door peter  

Here's how 2 Indian schoolgirls discovered a 'Mars-Crosser' asteroid

It's not every day that two Indian schoolgirls spot a space rock that scientists haven't yet, but that's exactly what happened this summer in a stroke of cosmic good luck.

Radhika Lakhani and Vaidehi Vekariya, two students in Surat, a city in Gujarat in western India, were taking part in a citizen-science project using astronomical data when they realized they were seeing something new. That something turned out to be an asteroid now dubbed 2020 OE6.

It was an exciting moment for the space-minded schoolgirls. "This was a dream. I want to become an astronaut," Vekariya told CNN.

"I don't even have a TV at home, so that I can concentrate on my studies," Lakhani told Reuters.

• Related: Photos: Asteroids in deep space

The 2020 OE6 designation is a standardized nomenclature that reflects the object's discovery date. But someday, Lakhani and Vekariya could propose a more accessible name to the International Astronomical Union, the body that oversees all names in the solar system, an opportunity they told Reuters they were excited about.

Lakhani and Vekariya made their find through a campaign with a citizen-science project called the International Astronomical Search Collaboration. The group connects people around the world with data from two key asteroid-hunting observatories, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii and the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. Both projects specialize in scanning huge swaths of the sky frequently, enabling newly seen moving objects to stand out against the steady background of the stars.

That said, it's unusual for human eyes to actually discover asteroids these days, and Lakhani and Vekariya got lucky to do so, Paul Chodas, who leads the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told Space.com in an email. Typically, algorithms do the hard work of spotting an unexpected object moving across the frame.

But for this particular asteroid, those algorithms didn't have enough information to spot the space rock. Lakhani and Vekariya found it in images taken by Pan-STARRS on June 23. The observatory's view is an arrangement of squares, with narrow seams between them that block out certain parts of the sky in each image. And the newly discovered object spent too much time in those seams for the observatory's algorithms to detect it in those images..

Although the asteroid slipped through the net that night, however, scientists would have detected it sooner or later, Robert Weryk, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, told Space.com in an email. And it turns out that the newly discovered asteroid has turned up before: Weryk was able to track it down in images from another asteroid-hunting observatory and in images taken in 2013 and 2017, as well as in July 2020, a month after the images the students had used.

In the context of some media reports about the discovery, which have labeled the asteroid "Earth-bound," that delay might be worrying. But 2020 OE6 is 50 million miles (70 million kilometers) away from Earth right now and will stay at more or less that distance for at least centuries if not millennia, Chodas said. (For comparison, the moon is about 240,000 miles or 390,000 km away, making this particular asteroid about 200 times more distant.)

All the observations combined have allowed scientists to identify the object's orbit quite precisely, Weryk said. The asteroid takes a bit more than three Earth years to orbit the sun and is perhaps between 1.2 and 3 miles (2 to 5 kilometers) wide. And 2020 OE6 is what scientists call a Mars-Crosser, which means it orbits at around the same distance from the sun as Mars does, although despite the name, the two bodies' paths don't actually cross, according to Chodas.

That's not a particularly unusual type of asteroid — in fact, scientists have discovered more Mars-Crossers than near-Earth asteroids, although both tallies pale in comparison to main-belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, which represent the vast majority of asteroids scientists have discovered to date.

The coronavirus pandemic has put a damper on Lakhani and Vekariya's celebrations, according to news reports. But International Astronomical Search Collaboration Director Patrick Miller, a mathematician at Hardin-Simmons University in Texas, told Space.com that the group is preparing commemorative plaques and organizing a ceremony for the pair in New Delhi.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Related videos, selected and posted peter2011

{ https://www.space.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 22:57 geschreven door peter  

NASA powers up Ingenuity Mars helicopter in space for the 1st time

By Samantha Mathewson 

Ingenuity's electronics are in good shape.

An artist's impression of NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity flying on the Red Planet.

(Image: © NASA)

NASA's Mars helicopter, named Ingenuity, successfully powered up for the first time in space last week.

Ingenuity is the first helicopter designed to fly on another planet. It is currently travelling to the Red Planet aboard NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30. 

On Aug. 7, the helicopter's six lithium-ion batteries were powered up and charged for the first time in space. The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity, which is currently stowed beneath Perseverance's belly, receives its charge from the rover's power supply, according to a Thursday (Aug. 13) statement from NASA. 

• Related: In photos: NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission to the Red Planet

"This was a big milestone, as it was our first opportunity to turn on Ingenuity and give its electronics a 'test drive' since we launched on July 30," Tim Canham, the operations lead for Mars Helicopter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in the statement. "Since everything went by the book, we'll perform the same activity about every two weeks to maintain an acceptable state of charge.

Charging the batteries took eight hours, during which NASA tested and analyzed their performance. The batteries were charged only to 35% of their maximum level, in order to maintain optimal battery health, according to the statement.  

Perseverance is scheduled to land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. At some point after that, Ingenuity will detach from the rover, descend to the Red Planet surface and take a few pioneering test flights. (After deployment on Mars, the helicopter's batteries will be charged by its own solar panel.)

If the experimental test flights go according to plan, Ingenuity will prove that robotic flight is possible on Mars, opening the door for extensive aerial exploration on future missions. 

"This charge activity shows we have survived launch and that so far we can handle the harsh environment of interplanetary space," MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL, said in the statement. "We have a lot more firsts to go before we can attempt the first experimental flight test on another planet, but right now we are all feeling very good about the future."

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

All related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.space.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 22:33 geschreven door peter  

In a new paper, scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory show that time can be reversed in a quantum system to recover scrambled information without it spiraling into chaos. Wait, uh, what?

 

By Carly Minsky

IMAGE: PIXABAY

Of all the reasons for wanting to time-travel—saving someone from a fatal mistake, exploring ancient civilizations, gathering evidence about unsolved crimes—recovering lost information isn’t the most exciting. But even if a quest to recover the file that didn’t auto-save doesn't sound like a Hollywood movie plot, we’ve all had moments when we’ve longed to go back in time for exactly that reason.

Theories of time and time-travel have highlighted an apparent stumbling block: time travel requires changing the past, even simply by adding in the time traveller. The problem, according to chaos theory, is that the smallest of changes can cause radical consequences in the future. In this conception of time travel, it wouldn’t be advisable to recover your unsaved document since this act would have huge knock-on effects on everything else. 

New research in quantum physics from Los Alamos National Laboratory has shown that the so-called butterfly effect can be overcome in the quantum realm in order to “unscramble” lost information by essentially reversing time. 

In a paper published in July, researchers Bin Yan and Nikolai Sinitsyn write that a thought experiment in “unscrambling” information with time-reversing operations would be “expected to lead to the same butterfly effect as the one in the famous Ray Bradbury’s story ‘A Sound of Thunder’” In that short story, a time traveler steps on an insect in the deep past and returns to find the modern world completely altered, giving rise to the idea we refer to as the butterfly effect. 

• The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes, Scientists Say

CARLY MINSKY

10.24.19

“In contrast," they wrote, "our result shows that by the end of a similar protocol the local information is essentially restored.”

"The primary focus of this work is not 'time travel'—physicists do not have an answer yet to tell whether it is possible and how to do time travel in the real world,” Yan clarified.  

“[But] since our protocol involves a 'forward' and a 'backward' evolution of the qubits, achieved by changing the orders of quantum gates in the circuit, it has a nice interpretation in terms of Ray Bradbury's story for the butterfly effect. So, it is an accurate and useful way to understand our results."

What is the butterfly effect? 

The world does not behave in a neat, ordered way. If it did, identical events would always produce the same patterns of knock-on effects, and the future would be entirely predictable, or deterministic. Chaos theory claims that the opposite: total randomness is not our situation either. We exist somewhere in the middle, in a world that often appears random but in fact obeys rules and patterns. 

Patterns within chaos are hidden because they are highly sensitive to tiny changes, which means similar but not identical situations can produce wildly different outcomes. Another way of putting it is that in a chaotic world, effects can be totally out of proportion to their causes, like the metaphor of a flap of butterfly wings causing a tornado on the other side of the world. On the tornado side of the world, the storm would seem random, because the connection between the butterfly-flap and the tornado is too complex to be apparent. While this butterfly effect is the classic poetic metaphor illustrating chaos theory, chaotic dynamics also play out in real-world contexts, including population growth in the Canadian lynx species and the rotation of Pluto’s moons.

• Something in Deep Space Is Sending Signals to Earth in Steady 16-Day Cycles

BECKY FERREIRA

02.07.20

Another feature of chaos is that, even though the rules are deterministic, the future is not predictable in the long-term. Since chaos is so sensitive to small variations, there are near-infinite ways the rules could play out and we would need to know an impossible amount of detail about the present and past to map out exactly how the world will evolve. 

Similarly, you can’t reverse-engineer some piece of information about the past simply by knowing the current and even future situations; time-travel doesn’t help retrieve past information, because even moving backwards in time, the chaotic system is still in play and will produce unpredictable effects.

Information scrambling

Unscrambling information which has previously been scrambled is not straightforward in a chaotic system. Yan and Sinitsyn’s key discovery is that it is nonetheless possible in quantum computing to get enough information via time-reversal which will then enable information unscrambling. 

According to Yan, the fact that the butterfly effect does not occur in quantum realms is not a surprising result, but demonstrating information unscrambling is both novel and important.

In quantum information theory, scrambling occurs when the information encoded in each quantum particle is split up and redistributed across multiple quantum particles in the same quantum system. The scrambling is not random, since information redistribution relies on quantum entanglement, which means that the states of some quantum particles are dependent on each other. Although the scrambled result is seemingly chaotic, the information can be put back together, at least in principle, using the entangled relationships.

Importantly, information scrambling is not the same as information loss. To continue the earlier analogy: information loss occurs when a document is permanently deleted from your computer. For information scrambling, imagine cutting and pasting tiny bits of one computer file into every other file on your machine. Each file now contains a mess of information snippets. You could reconstruct the original files, if you remembered exactly which bits were cut and pasted, and did the entire process in reverse.

Physicists are interested in information scrambling for two main reasons. On the theoretical side, it’s been proposed as a way to explain what happens to information sucked into a black hole. On the more applied side, it could be an important mechanism for quantum computers to store and hide information, and could produce fast and efficient quantum simulators, which are used already to perform complex experiments including new drug discovery.

Yan and Sinitsyn fall into the second camp, and construct what they call a “practically accessible scenario” to test unscrambling by time-travel. This scenario is still hypothetical, but explores the mathematics of the actual quantum processor used by Google to demonstrate quantum supremacy in 2019.

Yan says: “Another potential application is to use this effect to protect information. A random evolution on a quantum circuit can make the qubit robust to perturbations. One may further exploit the discovered effect to design protocols in quantum cryptography.”

The set-up

In Yan and Sinitsyn's quantum thought experiment, Alice and Bob are the protagonists. Alice is using a simplified version of Google’s quantum processor to hide just one part of the information stored on the computer (called the “central qubit”) by scrambling this qubit’s state across all the other qubits (called the “qubit bath”). Bob is cast as the “intruder”, much like a malicious computer hacker. He wants the important information originally stored on the central qubit, now distributed across entangled quantum particles in the bath. 

Unfortunately, Bob’s hack, while successful in getting the information he wanted, leaves a trail of destruction.

“If her processor has already scrambled the information, Alice is sure that Bob cannot get anything useful,” the authors write. “However, Bob’s measurement changes the state of the central qubit and also destroys all quantum correlations between this qubit and the rest of the system.”

• What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like, According to a Theoretical Cosmologist

BECKY FERREIRA

08.04.20

Bob's method of information theft has altered the computer state so that Alice can also no longer access the hidden information. In this case, the damage occurs because quantum states contain all possible values they could have, with assigned probabilities of each value, but these possibilities (represented by the wave function) “collapse” down to just one value when a measurement is taken. Quantum computing relies on unmeasured quantum systems to store even more information in multiple possible states, and Bob’s intrusion has totally altered the computer system.

Reversing time

Theoretically, the behaviour of a quantum system moving backwards in time can be demonstrated mathematically using what’s called a time-reversed evolution operator, which is exactly what Alice uses to de-scramble the information. 

Her time-reversal is not actually time travel the way we understand it from science fiction, it is literally a reversal of time’s direction; the system evolves backwards following whatever dynamics are in play, rather than Alice herself revisiting an earlier time. If the butterfly effect held in the quantum world, then this backwards evolution would actually increase the damage Bob had caused, and Alice would only be able to retrieve the hidden information if she knew exactly what that damage was and could correct her calculations accordingly.

Luckily for Alice, quantum systems behave totally differently to non-quantum (classical or semiclassical) chaotic systems. What Yan and Sinitsyn found is that she can apply her time-reversal operation and end up at an "earlier" state which will not be identical with the initial system she set up, but it will also not have increased the damage which occurred later. Alice can then reconstruct her initial system using a method of quantum unscrambling called quantum state tomography. 

• OK, WTF Is Google's 'Quantum Supremacy'?

CARLY MINSKY

09.25.19

What this means is that a quantum system can effectively heal and even recover information that was scrambled in the past, without the chaos of the butterfly effect. 

“Classical chaotic evolution magnifies any state damage exponentially quickly, which is known as the butterfly effect,” explain Yan and Sinitsyn. “The quantum evolution, however, is

linear. This explains why, in our case, the uncontrolled damage to the state is not magnified by the subsequent complex evolution. Moreover, the fact that Bob’s measurement does not damage the useful information follows from the property of entanglement correlations in the scrambled state.”

Hypothetical though this scenario may be, the result already has a practical use: verifying whether a quantum system has achieved quantum supremacy. Quantum processors can simulate time-reversal in a way that classical computers cannot, which could provide the next important test for the quantum race between Google and IBM. 

So, while time travel is still not in the cards, the quantum world continues to mess with our classical conception of how the world evolves in time, and pushes the limits of computing information.

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

17-08-2020 om 22:01 geschreven door peter  

While the most frequently active volcano in Iceland – Grímsvötn – is overdue and making noises like the next eruption is coming, an unusual alleged cryptid sighting at a famous waterfall in that country has some wondering if underground rumbling may be causing hidden monsters to arise. Has anyone in Iceland checked on the Lagarfljót worm lately? How about the elves?

feverdreamofficial
Feel like this creepy video that I posted on my story needs an answer. Shot on the cliff of Dettifoss, Iceland. Close to the capital city of elves, Ásbyrgi. No people in front of us and only a cliff so steep it could not carry anyone. We even went too far in my taste. I then noticed much later this little creature in my video and then a head popping up in the end 😰 Looking like the girl from Ring 😂 No drones, no birds, no plastic bags, what is it?? I am not crazy right it looks hella wack?

Hella wack? That’s something beyond ‘wack’ (duh) or absurd and it seems to be a useful description for the video (watch it here) posted on Instagram by Icelandic feminist rapper and poet Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir (aka Fever Dream). She says she was at the Dettifoss waterfall (in the background) in the Vatnajökull National Park at the edge of a cliff when she spotted what looks like a small, dark figure. For the non-elf-aware, she points out that Ásbyrgi canyon is believed by many Icelanders to be the magical capital of elf world. Did she record one of the elves or the Huldufólk (Hidden people)? While she tells Fréttablaðið (The Newspaper) that she’s “not saying this is an elf,” she believes only “a black elf or even some kind of devil” could perch on such a precarious precipice, and that it resembles other videos she’s seen posted by people claiming to see an elf.

If it’s not an elf or a ‘devil’, what the devil is in the video? It could be a small or young person with incredible climbing ability and balance – Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir doesn’t say how long it was there or when it disappeared. Belief in elves is strong and deep in Iceland, but it has some other cryptids – most famously the Lagarfljót worm, an alleged monster in Lagarfljót lake. The legend of a giant serpent, worm or slug in Lagarfljót dates back to the 1300s but it’s limited to the lake, which is 170 km (105 miles) from Dettifoss. Another candidate could be a Merman, the more evil counterpart of mermaids, but Dettifoos is a long way from the coastal waters where they’re allegedly seen.

That leaves an elf or a huldufólk – the main difference between them is size (huldufólk are human-sized, elves are small) and coffee preference (huldufólk like it). Others may scoff at the idea, but there must be some reason why polls find about 54 percent of Iceland’s 300,000+ residents would not deny the existence of elves.

Being a feminist rapper means Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir is a controversial figure, but that may not stop true elf believers from siding with her on this one.

Take a look again. (See the video here.) What do you think? Is the volcano stirring things up?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-08-2020 om 21:21 geschreven door peter  

Prehistoric armored sea bugs called trilobites that lived nearly half a billion years ago had disco-ball-like-eyes that are remarkably similar to those of modern bees and dragonflies. Trilobites were a marine arthropod with many legs that lived at the bottom of the seafloor during the Cambrian time period (543 million to 490 million years ago) until becoming extinct around 250 million years ago.

Numerous fossils from the sea bug’s strong exoskeleton were discovered by paleontologists and surprisingly its eye was very well preserved. Actually, the remains of the eye were initially found in 1846 close to Loděnice in the Czech Republic but it’s only been recently studied in great detail.

Fossil of a trilobite.

The researchers analyzed the left eye of a type of trilobite called Aulacopleura koninckii from approximately 429 million years ago (pictures can be seen here), specifically the light-sensitive receptor cells in the lenses that suggested a very early evolution of compound eyes. As a matter of fact, trilobites from as far back as 522 million years also appeared to have had compound eyes which suggest that those types of eyes may have evolved a lot earlier than previously thought, maybe in shell-less creatures. Their protruding oval-shaped eyes are situated on the back part of its head.

They studied the eye using microscopy and found hundreds of optical units called ommatidia that make up the compound eyes that are found in today’s insects and crustaceans. According to the scientists, the ommatidia found in the trilobite’s left eye had eight cells that detected light “forming a kind of rosette”. The cells were gathered around a translucent cylinder that channeled light that’s called a rhabdom in addition to there being a thick lens that covered the top of the ommatidia. They also found that the dark-colored rings of pigmented cells created a “cellular basket” surrounding the optical units as well as a thin crystalline cone “although its shape is not very distinct”. You put all of that together and you have a compound eye that looks similar to a disco ball.

3D model of a trilobite.

Based on the fact that the Aulacopleura koninckii’s eye facets were just 0.0001 inches in diameter, the creature would have had a vision of around 200 “pixels” which would have helped it to glide around the waters and avoid predators. It “surely was day active and lived in shallow, light-flooded waters,” Brigitte Schoenemann, who is a paleontologist in the Institute of Biology Education at the University of Cologne in Germany and the lead author of the study, explained in an email to Live Science.

She finished off by stating that today’s insects and crustaceans have vision that is “an enormously old and effective system, quite unchanged since our trilobite”. Things change over the course of hundreds of millions of years but apparently the eyes of crustaceans and insects remained the same. That reminds me of the old saying, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-08-2020 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

3-2-1 …

“It’s pronounced YOUR-a-nus, not your-ANUS, you blankety-blank-blank!”

Get that frustration out of your system now and we’ll promise not to do any more Uranus probe double entendres. OK? Finished? Good.

“A new theoretical method paves the way to modelling the interior of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, thanks to computer simulations on the water contained within them.”

The Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA – International School of Advanced Studies) in Trieste, Italy, announced this week a new way of determining what is inside planets far too distant to land rovers or ground-penetrating landers. Until now, space scientists have had to settle for theories based on features and reflections of surface matter and magnetic field studies. To get a better X-ray of Uranus and Neptune, scientists at SISSA and the University of California at Los Angeles developed a new computer model using data about the water on and inside Uranus.

“In such exotic physical conditions, we cannot think of ice as we are used to. Even water is actually different, denser, with several molecules dissociated into positive and negative ions, thus carrying an electrical charge. Superionic water lies somewhere between the liquid and solid phases: the oxygen atoms of the H2O molecule are organised in a crystalline lattice, while hydrogen atoms diffuse freely like in a charged fluid.”

In a statement on their study published in Nature Communications, SISSA professors and study co-authors Federico Grasselli and Stefano Baroni describe how they used their model to simulate the three stages of water on Uranus – ice, liquid and superionic (a part-liquid-part-ice condition caused by extremely high temperatures and pressures.) the charges show these states have different positive and negative ions than Earth water and they’re more dense than what comes out of our taps. These simulations told them a lot about the evolution of the planets and what may be deep inside of them.

Different in many ways

“In particular, the heat conduction properties that emerge from our study allow us to hypothesise that the existence of a frozen core may explain the anomalously low luminosity of Uranus as due to an extremely low heat flux from its interior towards the surface.”

They show that the planetary layers below the fluid layer that generates a planet’s magnetic field are predominantly superionic water, which may help explain the behavior of these fields on these distant planets. This will aid future research in determining how these so-called gas giants formed and how they cooled into space bodies made up of a water that is not liquid or solid – where hydrogen atoms are free but oxygen atoms are locked in a lattice formation. A planetary slushie?

If you’ve been keeping score, we’ve made it through the article without another double entendre about scientists using a computer model to peek inside YOUR-a-nus.

You’re welcome.

NOTE:

• all related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

17-08-2020 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

“We willen geen paniek zaaien, maar dit is verontrustend”: deeltjes microplastic gevonden in menselijke organen - HLN.be

Bron: De Morgen

De vervuilende impact van plastic is wereldwijd voelbaar. Straten, stranden en oceanen: overal zijn de gevolgen van onze wegwerpcultuur te zien. Amerikaanse onderzoekers hebben nu zelfs kleine plastic deeltjes gevonden in het menselijk lichaam.

Lees ook

Ook microplastics van het wegverkeer belanden in onze oceanen

De wetenschappers vonden deeltjes van microplastic (met een diameter kleiner dan 5 mm) en nanoplastic (met een diameter kleiner dan 0,001 mm) in alle onderzochte organen van deze studie. De deeltjes in de concreet 47 onderzochte longen, levers, milten en nieren werden vermoedelijk ingenomen via voedsel en water.

In totaal konden ze tientallen soorten plastiek ontdekken in de organen. Het gaat onder meer om polyethyleentereftalaat (PET), waarvan plastic drankflessen worden gemaakt, en polyethyleen, dat voor plastic zakjes wordt gebruikt.

Ongerust

Hoewel de impact op onze gezondheid nog niet bewezen is, maken de onderzoekers zich zorgen. Zo is de schade van microplastic al eerder gebleken bij onderzoek naar zeedieren. Toen konden wetenschappers een verband vaststellen tussen de blootstelling aan de kleine deeltjes en onvruchtbaarheid, ontsteking en kanker.

“We willen geen paniek zaaien, maar het is verontrustend dat deze niet-biologisch afbreekbare materialen in het menselijk weefsel terechtkomen en zich daar kunnen ophopen zonder dat we de impact ervan kennen”, zei mede-auteur Varun Kelkar aan The Guardian.

De onderzoekers hopen nu dat deze resultaten leiden tot diepgaander onderzoek naar het effect van vervuiling op ons lichaam. “Als we beter zicht hebben op hoeveel stoffen er in onze weefsels zitten, kunnen we epidemiologische studies uitvoeren om het effect op de menselijke gezondheid te bestuderen. Op die manier kunnen we de potentiële gezondheidsrisico’s in kaart brengen.”

Kunststof

Naast de deeltjes microplastic werd in alle proefmonsters ook de chemische stof Bisfenol A aangetroffen. Die schadelijke stof wordt voornamelijk gebruikt bij de productie van kunststoffen. Het Amerikaanse Beschermingsinstituut maakt zich zorgen om de aanwezigheid van de stof wegens de impact op het menselijke lichaam. Zo kan het onder meer de ontwikkeling en voortplanting aantasten.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

17-08-2020 om 20:20 geschreven door peter  

Vorig jaar november ontvingen wij via een lezer een aantal afbeeldingen van Buienradar waarop tijdens onweersbuien een soort vreemde cirkel waar te nemen was.


Voor zover ons bekend heeft niemand daar ooit een verklaring voor kunnen vinden.

De afgelopen dagen deed zich weer een vreemd verschijnsel voor op Buienradar. Weer een cirkel en weer in combinatie met onweer, alleen ziet die cirkel er nu als volgt uit.


Hierna volgt een video met talloze voorbeelden van het vreemde verschijnsel op Buienradar.


Dan wordt er natuurlijk al heel snel gespeculeerd over wat dit zou kunnen veroorzaken en dan komt ook al snel het woord HAARP om de hoek kijken.

Volgens Martin Vrijland kunnen we daar kort en duidelijk over zijn, het is niet een effect dat door HAARP wordt veroorzaakt.

Waar we eerder iets dergelijks op een weerradar hebben gezien is op 28 oktober 2012 in Mexico. Die cirkel/vortex zag er als volgt uit:




Ook hier is nooit een verklaring voor gevonden, maar er was hier wel degelijk iets bijzonders aan de hand. De dag ervoor werd de wereld opgeschrikt door beelden van een enorme cilindervormige ufo die met grote snelheid in de krater van Popocatepetl vulkaan verdween. 

Dit fenomeen is bij ons niet echt in het mainstream nieuws geweest, maar in landen als Mexico des te meer, waar er uitgebreid over werd gesproken op de televisie.


Dat was in Mexico, wij hebben geen vulkanen met grote kraters waar ufo's met grote snelheid in kunnen verdwijnen, dus de cirkels op Buienradar zullen een andere oorzaak hebben.

We gaan nog even terug naar Vrijland die zegt dat volgens hem HAARP dan wel niet die cirkel veroorzaakt op de Buienradar, maar wel voor een ander heel actueel effect kan zorgen en dat zijn exosomen.

Voor hen die niet weten of vergeten zijn waar HAARP precies voor staat, hier een uitleg uit een eerder artikel:

{ https://www.niburu.co/ }

17-08-2020 om 18:33 geschreven door peter  

Several days ago, Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir posted a weid video on Instagram showing a small dark creature that suddenly appears and climbs over the edge of a cliff at Dettifoss waterfall in Iceland.

                                       

  Credit image: Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir.

Vigdis states:Shot on the cliff of Dettifoss, Iceland. Close to the capital city of elves, Ásbyrgi. No people in front of us and only a cliff so steep it could not carry anyone. 

We even went too far in my taste. I then noticed much later this little creature in my video and then a head popping up in the end. No drones, no birds, no plastic bags, what is it? I Feel like this creepy video that I posted needs an answer.

Indeed very strange, I have no explanation for the strange appearance, but some people say that the creature looks like a human figure with something covering its head while others talking about a cryptid, a creature whose existence is unsubstantiated.

Credit image: Vigdís Howser Harðardóttir.

Vigdís did indeed captured something extraordinary or there is an explanation for the strange appearance?

You can watch the video below or directly on feverdreamofficial Instagram.

{  http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 18:16 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Spaceship Found On Mercury In Crater Center, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 15 2020
Location of discovery: Planet Mercury
Source coordinates: 

https://messenger.quickmap.io/extent=-177.2852434,-36.6591395,-176.3365755,-36.13901

59&proj=5&layers=NrCMBYCYBoAZtA6JIE5YGYn0QOwK4A2h0A3gL4C6lZVy4GWOSIGoArONkg

cbdf0pA

I have found a structure within a crater on planet Mercury today. The structure has three long segments to it. Each part is along side the next. NASA map says this is 2.5km across by 2.5km high. Thats a huge structure. The way its laying down and the way the three segments are side by side make me think this is a ship and can move from place to place. It may have been docked in this location in the crater to make it easier to find and accessible. But...I wonder...where did the captain and crew go? Their must be an underground base near this location or why park the ship there?
One answer...brings many more questions. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 18:03 geschreven door peter  

Really fast UFO filmed over Atlantic ocean (Florida beach) 16-Aug-2020

This really fast unidentified flying object was spotted in the sky above Atlantic ocean. It was filmed from Volusia county, Florda on 11th August 2020.

Witness report:

 Object seem to be hovering with no sound miles and miles from the hotel I was at. It made no nosie it looked dark grey. On vacation went out on the balcony and noticed a black disk shaped object from a far distance on the beach just hovering in one spot for about minute or two that’s what caught my attention. It then started to move and I lost it. I grabbed my phone to record hovering and then I thought I lost because the sun was shining so bright I could barely see or sit on the balcony. Then I noticed I found the object again it seemed to be scanning the same spot and then it took off so fast I could barely see because of the sun in my eyes I had to put the phone down to see where it went. But it kept hovering that area of the water drop real low go back up and shoot cross the water and then disappear from my eye view.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

17-08-2020 om 17:31 geschreven door peter  

This mosaic of Ceres’ Occator Crater is composed of images NASA’s Dawn mission captured on its second extended mission, in 2018. Bright pits and mounds (foreground) were formed by salty liquid released as Occator’s water-rich floor froze after the crater-forming impact about 20 million years ago.

Image credits: NASA/JPL

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 01:17 geschreven door peter  

Million-year-old dormant microbes beneath ocean floor push life to its absolute limits

Zombified cells found in sediments deep beneath the ocean floor use slightly more than a zeptowatt of power to survive.

 by Tibi Puiu

 

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

17-08-2020 om 00:54 geschreven door peter  

Pentagon launches task force to investigate UFOs

The Pentagon has created a task force to investigate UFOs following several unexplained incidents that have been observed by the U.S. military.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force was launched earlier this month by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist, boosting an effort by the Office of Naval Intelligence, officials said.

The Defense Department said Friday that it hopes to "improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security."

"The safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report," the department said.

"This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing."

The plans for the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days, were first reported by CNN on Thursday.

The move marks an extension of previous efforts to look into UFOs -- but stops well short of trying to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Since 2018, a Navy task force has been informally investigating such incidents and has coordinated information with U.S. intelligence agencies.

In April, the Defense Department released and declassified three videos of Navy pilots encountering UFOs in 2004 and 2015.

In 2017, The New York Times reported on the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which had previously been disbanded, according to the Pentagon.

While the new task force’s work will remain classified, that status could change if the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s proposal for an unclassified report on UFOs is adopted by the full Senate and House.

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.fox13news.com/ }

16-08-2020 om 23:54 geschreven door peter  

16-08-2020 om 23:19 geschreven door peter  

This 3-paneled artist’s concept illustrates new research, explaining why the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse suddenly became fainter for several months during late 2019 and early 2020. In panel 1, a bright, hot blob of plasma is ejected from the star. In panel 2, outflowing expelled gas rapidly expands outward and cools to form an enormous cloud of obscuring dust. In panel 3, the huge dust cloud partially blocks Betelgeuse’s light.

Image via NASA/ ESA/ E. Wheatley (STScI)/ CfA.

For us skywatchers, it was lots of fun – and entirely shocking – when the well-known bright star Betelgeuse unexpectedly dimmed in late 2019 and early 2020. Betelgeuse has been such a steadfast sight in the night sky throughout our lives (and some of us have been around awhile), shining with a red light at the shoulder of the easy-to-see constellation Orion the Hunter. The dimming of Betelgeuse was even more exciting because it’s a well-known fact that this star will someday explode. Was the sudden dimming of Betelgeuse a sign that it would explode soon? Speculation raged for weeks, as we gazed toward a fainter Betelgeuse than we’d ever seen before. The star did not explode. In fact, by February, it was starting to brighten again. Then last week – on August 13, 2020 – scientists released a new study suggesting that the sudden dimming of Betelgeuse was most likely caused by the ejection and cooling of dense hot gases. In the meantime, as I write this, it appears Betelgeuse is dimming once more, about a year earlier than expected.

A statement from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) explained:

Between October and November 2019, Hubble Space Telescope observed dense, heated material moving outward through the star’s extended atmosphere at 200,000 miles per hour. The following month, several ground-based telescopes observed a decrease in brightness in Betelgeuse’s southern hemisphere, as if something was blocking light in this region of the star. By February 2020, the star had lost more than two-thirds of its brilliance, a dimming visible even to the unaided eye, creating buzz that the star might be going supernova. Continued ultraviolet light spectroscopic observations with Hubble provided a timeline for researchers to follow, like breadcrumbs leading back through time to pinpoint the source of the mysterious dimming.

Andrea Dupree is associate director of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the study, which was published on August 13 in the peer-reviewed The Astrophysical Journal. She said in the scientists’ statement:

With Hubble, we had previously observed hot convection cells on the surface of Betelgeuse and in the fall of 2019 we discovered a large amount of dense hot gas moving outwards through Betelgeuse’s extended atmosphere. We think this gas cooled down millions of miles outside the star to form the dust that blocked the southern part of the star imaged in January and February.

The material was two to four times more luminous than the star’s normal brightness. And then, about a month later the south part of Betelgeuse dimmed conspicuously as the star grew fainter. We think it possible that a dark cloud resulted from the outflow that Hubble detected. Only Hubble gives us this evidence that led up to the dimming.

• Read more: Will the star Betelgeuse explode someday?

This spectral plot is based on Hubble Space Telescope observations from March 2019 to February 2020. Hubble recorded a surprising outburst in the atmosphere of the nearby red supergiant star Betelgeuse. Measurements of emission from magnesium II were used to trace motion in the star’s pulsating atmosphere. Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph captured a dramatic increase in the brightness of magnesium emission in October 2019, in the southeast region of the star, as outlined by the white circle. (Betelgeuse is close enough and big enough for Hubble to resolve the star’s enormous disk.) This traumatic event was different from what is normally seen in the star’s 420-day pulsation period. At the same time in October, the star abruptly began dimming. This fading continued until February 2020, at which time the Hubble ultraviolet spectral data had returned to normal. The outburst is suspected to have ejected a cloud of hot plasma that cooled to form dust that blocked out a significant portion of the star’s light for a few months. Hubble’s long baseline of monitoring the star helped put the puzzle pieces together.

Image via NASA/ ESA/ A. Dupree (CfA)/ E. Wheatley (STScI)/ CfA.

Scientists’ models had suggested that – in this situation – the plasma should be ejected from the star’s rotational poles. The Hubble observations showed it was not, however. Dupree said:

Hubble observations suggest that material can be driven off from any part of the stellar surface.

Dupree added that recent activity on Betelgeuse was not normal for this star. Dupree noted that Betelgeuse is losing mass at a rate 30 million times higher than the sun, but that recent activity resulted in a loss of roughly two times the normal amount of material from the star’s southern hemisphere alone. She said:

All stars are losing material to the interstellar medium, and we don’t know how this material is lost. Is it a smooth wind blowing all the time? Or does it come in fits and starts? Perhaps with an event such as we discovered on Betelgeuse? We know that other hotter, luminous stars lose material and it quickly turns to dust making the star appear much fainter.

But, in over a century and a half, this has not happened to Betelgeuse. It’s very unique.

An image from NASA’s STEREO spacecraft shows the star Betelgeuse, circled. For several weeks in 2020, STEREO was the only observatory making measurements of Betelgeuse because of the spacecraft’s unique position in space. Between late June and early August 2020, STEREO observed Betelgeuse on five separate days, measuring the star’s relative brightness in comparison to other stars.

Image via NASA/ STEREO.

The star Betelgeuse, and its constellation Orion, are behind the sun as seen from Earth in early Northern Hemisphere summer. They always return to our early morning sky around late July and early August. While Betelgeuse was hidden behind the sun for earthly observers, scientists turned to NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory – STEREO – to monitor the star’s brightness. Those observations revealed another surprise, the scientists said: more unexpected dimming.

Between late June and early August 2020, STEREO observed Betelgeuse on five separate days, measuring the star’s relative brightness in comparison to other stars. Dupree said:

Our observations of Betelgeuse with STEREO confirm that the star is dimming again.

Betelgeuse is a variable star, though its rising and falling in brightness isn’t noticeable to casual observers. It typically goes through brightness cycles lasting around 420 days.

Since the previous minimum happened in February 2020, this new dimming is over a year early, the scientists commented.

Dupree said she plans to observe Betelgeuse with STEREO again next year, during the star’s maximum, to monitor for unexpected outbursts.

People always want to know if Betelgeuse will explode. It is an old star and a supergiant star, and so the answer to that question is surely yes. When Betelgeuse dimmed so noticeably in late 2019 and early 2020, some scientists agreed it might be a sign that the star was about to go supernova. These scientists commented in their statement:

Betelgeuse is a bright star in our galaxy, near the end of its life, that is likely to become a supernova. When the star became very faint in February 2020, this was the faintest that it had ever been since measurements began over 150 years ago. The dimming was obvious to everyone when looking at the constellation Orion; it was very weird, Betelgeuse was almost missing.

At 725 light-years away, light – and dimming – seen from Betelgeuse today on Earth left the star in the year 1300. Dupree said:

No one knows how a star behaves in the weeks before it explodes, and there were some ominous predictions that Betelgeuse was ready to become a supernova.

Chances are, however, that it will not explode during our lifetime, but who knows?

• Bottom line: An explanation for the mysterious dimming of Betelgeuse in late 2019 and early 2020.
• Source: Spatially Resolved Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse
• Via Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

16-08-2020 om 22:53 geschreven door peter  

The Day Aliens Invaded Jafr, Jordan

Readers of the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad were startled to read the reports of an alien encounter close to the town of Jafr. According to the news reports, the desert community witnessed the landing of UFOs, piloted by creatures 3 meters (10 feet) in height.

The reports went on to describe the bizarre alien language from these gigantic humanoid creatures. Their voices, which the newspaper referred to as “squawking” were indecipherable to the terrified earthlings who witnessed the first contact.

Even more frightening than the appearance or sound of the creatures was the effect of their technology. All electronics in the region were knocked out, even as the intense heat from the UFOs scorched the nearby ground.

Al-Ghad recounted how many terrified residents of Jafr fled into the desert to escape the alien invasion.  Much to everyone’s relief, after one hour and forty minutes, the mysterious alien visitors reboarded their spaceships and departed, without ever making their intentions known. All that remains of this close encounter are the scorch marks on the desert floor and horrifying memories to haunt the nightmares of the befuddled community.

All of this was reported as news. The only clue that it might not have really happened was in the date at the top of the paper: April 1, 2010. For those who noted the date, it might not have generated the skepticism it would have caused English readers. Al Ghad‘s readers were unaccustomed to seeing April Fool’s Day hoaxes in its pages, and many found the experience less than hilarious.

With their own version of the panic from the 1938 radio show “The War of the Worlds,” Jafr had to deal with the fallout from those who believed the story. Many residents, believing the story, huddled behind locked doors, fearing the worst. School absences skyrocketed as parents kept their children home from classes. The mayor of Jafr even considered the mandatory evacuation of the 13,000 residents but elected against it, fearing that people would be injured in the chaos.

Al Ghad‘s managing editor later apologized for the article, saying “We meant to entertain, not scare people.”

• Read about more hoaxes and pranks.
• Read more stories involving alien life forms.

{ https://commonplacefacts.wordpress.com/ }

16-08-2020 om 21:59 geschreven door peter  

Out in the rural desert town of Jafr, in eastern Jordan, about 190 miles east of Amman, nothing much ever really happens. This is a simple, forgotten place in the unforgiving desert terrain well away from the rest of the world, a place that not even people in Jordan have ever really heard of, but this would change in 2010, when this rugged town of 13,000 suddenly got major national news coverage when Jafr was supposedly invaded by menacing, malevolent aliens from another world. And so would begin a panic unlike the region had ever seen before, which in the people’s minds at least involved towering aliens and their death machines out to kill them all.

On April 1, 2010, a major story ran on the front page of the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad. According to the report, UFOs had descended from the sky to land out in the desert boondocks surrounding the dusty town, piloted by massive, marauding aliens that were described as being a full 10 feet tall which spoke in a squawking language. During the night, the UFOs, which could supposedly shoot beams of intense heat, had reportedly flown about over town, lighting up buildings and city streets as if it were daylight, leaving scorch marks in the ground, and it was also said that some force they were generating had knocked out communications in the area. Panicked residents had reportedly run out into the streets in fear of their lives, and by the time the article made the rounds the populace was in a frenzied panic thinking the world was ending.

Jafr, Jordan

Through all of this, parents refused to send their children to school, many stores closed, and the mayor of the city, Mohammed Mleihan, was making preparations to evacuate the entire populace. He would say of this, “Students didn’t go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town’s 13,000 residents. People were scared that aliens would attack them.” When other news outlets picked up the story it seemed to take on a life of its own, with some saying that military personnel were being mobilized and that an alien invasion force was preparing to launch an attack from the desert. In the meantime, the mayor did have security forces patrol the outskirts of town, but they were unable to locate any UFOs or giant aliens.

As soon as the newspaper Al-Ghad realized what was happening, and became aware of the gravity of the uproar their article had caused, Moussa Barhoumeh, Al Ghad’s managing editor, came forward to say that the whole thing had been nothing but an April Fool’s joke, something many astute readers here might have already surmised by reading the date of the publication. According to the editor, it had just been a silly, good-natured prank “meant to entertain, not scare people.” The newspaper issued a formal apology for the inconvenience it had caused, but many of the people of Jafr, who had had their whole life momentarily upended, were furious, not the least of all Mayor Mleihan. He was so livid, in fact, that he threatened to sue the newspaper for their tasteless “big lie,” especially since he had allocated valuable resources to prepare for an alien invasion that had never come.

It does seem odd that Al-Ghad would decide to try and pull such a stunt. After all, whereas someone from the West might be accustomed to seeing fake April Fool’s Day news stories printed on April 1^st and cast a skeptical eye at such spectacular headlines on this day, In Jordan it is different. They have no such custom, especially not in a rural, superstitious backwater like Jafr, where most people would not even know what an April Fool’s day prank was. Considering this, it does seem pretty odd that the Jordian newspaper would not only pull a front-page prank article, but also base it in Jafr. In America or Britain it probably would not have been a big deal, but in Jordan it had led to a mass panic and minor regional emergency amongst a populace not versed in such things.

It is in some aspects quite reminiscent of the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast of October 30, 1938, in which future filmmaker Orson Welles adapted the HG Wells classic of the same name as a Halloween radio show over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network, made up to sound like it was taking place as the alien invasion of the novel happened. It was clearly announced as a dramatization, but presented in a very realistic style of another program being interrupted by news of the invaders from Mars, so some people who caught the show midway through were said to have bought it all as real and flown into a panic due to this realistic “breaking news” style of storytelling used. The extent of this panic has been disputed in recent years, as it turns out that the show wasn’t listened to by all that many people and most of them met it with curiosity rather than fear, but there were no doubt a few who took it to be real and were not too happy about having been fooled. Even though the panic caused by the broadcast was nowhere near as bad as it has traditionally been portrayed, it still did gain quite a bit of backlash from people who did not appreciate its use of its deceptive news bulletin format, leading to stricter regulation of such programs by the Federal Communications Commission.

The Jafr alien invasion scare is the worst case scenario for fake news and questionable journalistic ethics, mixed with pranksters who perhaps went a little too far. This one story threw this little town into an absolute whirlwind of fear and apprehension, and it is a cautionary tale as to how skittish and gullible people can be, especially in an out of the way, undeveloped area where the populace is especially susceptible. It is certainly an intriguing little tale, and shows that the mainstream news is probably not the best place to play out practical jokes.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

16-08-2020 om 21:54 geschreven door peter