NASA asteroid mission Lucy begins spacecraft assembly before 2021 launch

By Meghan Bartels 

An artist's depiction of the Lucy spacecraft studying asteroids.

(Image: © SwRI)

NASA's Lucy spacecraft is one step closer to getting up close and personal with a host of strange space rocks as assembly begins.

Lucy will make an ambitious journey across the asteroid belt out to Jupiter's neighborhood, studying a total of eight different space rocks over nearly a decade. But before the spacecraft can begin its trip at the launchpad, currently scheduled for October 2021, it needs to become, well, a spacecraft. And, thanks to a recent milestone permitting integration of the instruments and main vehicle, that's exactly what will happen next.

"Each phase of the mission is more exciting than the last," Hal Levison, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado and principal investigator for the Lucy mission, said in a statement. "While, of course, Lucy still has several years and a few billion miles to go before we reach our real goal — exploring the never-before-seen Trojan asteroids — seeing this spacecraft come together is just incredible."

• Related: Scientists identify tiny satellite around an asteroid NASA's Lucy spacecraft will visit

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While NASA has built plenty of asteroid missions before, the agency has never visited Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, which orbit the sun in two large clusters — one behind Jupiter and one ahead of it. (Lucy will also check out a main-belt asteroid it will pass along the way.)

Scientists hope that the mission will give them up-close looks at the main types of space rocks found in Jupiter's Trojan clusters, all of which likely hide water deep below their surface. And because Trojans formed around the same time as the solar system, they serve as individual fossils that could help scientists understand how our whole neighborhood formed.

But first, Lucy needs to finish up its agenda here on Earth. By passing a standard NASA milestone dubbed Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) recently, Lucy engineers got the greenlight to assemble and test the spacecraft and its instruments, NASA announced on Aug. 28.

Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the spacecraft is on track to receive its instruments beginning in October, which will also see another procedural milestone called the Mission Operation Review.

By July, NASA says, the spacecraft will be ready to head to Florida for last-minute launch preparations. Lucy's launch window opens on Oct. 16, 2021, and the spacecraft will make its first asteroid flyby in April 2025.

"This team has been truly incredible," Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy's project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "Building a spacecraft is never easy, but seeing the team persevere through all of the challenges that they have encountered is inspiring."

• Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels.
• Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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31-08-2020 om 20:54 geschreven door peter  

Wormholes – we love them in science fiction novels and movies, and we wish they existed more than just about anything else created by the fertile minds of the Bradburys and the Roddenberrys. Wormholes are especially enticing and frustrating because they offer such a nice clean way of traversing space and time while being impossible under the General Theory of Relativity. Or are they? Two physicists have proposed a loophole that would allow humans to safely pass through wormholes without destroying themselves, the universe, life and everything. Is it true or have they been in quarantine too long?

“Traversable wormholes are a staple of the science fiction literature. In classical general relativity, they are forbidden by the average null energy condition [1, 2, 3]. Interestingly, they are allowed in the quantum theory, but with one catch, the time it takes to go through the wormhole should be longer than the time it takes to travel between the two mouths on the outside.”

That opening paragraph is the last one understandable by non-theoretical physicists in the paper, “Humanly traversable wormholes,” written by Juan Maldacena, Princeton professor of theoretical physics, and Alexey Milekhin, Princeton graduate student of astrophysics. Fortunately, Universe Today breaks it down into terms this humble writer can understand. The key sentence is the one about the time it takes to travel between the two mouths on the outside – anything else would violate the General Theory of Relativity, which science fiction does all of the time. Even worse, wormholes are short-lived and volatile, so you might not make it to the other side before being crushed out of existence. Finally, this would only seem to work with matter at the particle level – no starships can fit nor shrink that small.

“The Randall-Sundrom II model was based on the realization that this five-dimensional spacetime could also be describing physics at lower energies than the ones we usually explore, but that it would have escaped detection because it couples with our matter only through gravity. In fact, its physics is similar to adding many strongly interacting massless fields to the known physics. And for this reason it can give rise to the required negative energy.”

Maldacena and Mikekhan propose using a quantum physics model with a fifth dimension (yes, we’ve entered a new Age of Aquarius) to provide the negative energy (the fifth dimension) required to keep the wormhole stable and maintain the tunnel until the body passes through the other end. They used charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass) which exist in black holes and travel in circles. That would make the wormholes look like black holes, but all of that negative energy would require the ship to exert a sudden boost of energy to pass the midpoint in the tunnel. Finally, this wormhole would allow speeds far greater that the speed of light, allowing a ship to cross the Milky Way in ten seconds.

Oh, and one more thing (maybe two) …

“[F]or astronauts going through the wormhole it would take only 1 second of their time to travel 10,000 light-year distance (approximately 5000 billion miles or 1/10 of Milky Way size). An observer who does not go through the wormhole and stays outside sees them taking more than 10,000 years. And all this with no use of fuel, since the gravity accelerates and decelerates the spaceship.”

No fuel and no violation of the General Theory of Relativity! That’s not exactly good news – the Enterprise arrives 100,000 years too late to stop the Romulan fleet from destroying Earth. But it keeps wormholes in the realm of the possible – at least the quantumly possible. Maldacena and Milekhin admit traveling them is well beyond current technology and protection against exposure to massive amounts of cosmic radiation. But it’s something to strive for.

Quite a challenge for a species that still can’t get flying cars flying at the speed of cars.

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31-08-2020 om 20:29 geschreven door peter  

UFO Caught Shooting Over Water Then Shoots Straight Up On Live Cam, Aug 22, 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Aug 22, 2020
Location of sighting: Hayle Beach, Cornwall, UK
Live Cam: 

• http://www.camsecure.co.uk/hayle_webcam.html
  

This video is just amazing. Youtube user LMX2001 was watching the Hayle Beach live cam when he noticed a glowing light in the distance. It shoots across the water, hovers in place, powers up glowing powerfully, then shoots straight up at incredible speed. This is proof that UFOs exist off the coast of the UK and even have an alien base off of Hayle Beach, but is it an alien underwater base or a human military underwater base?

I did notice that this craft does resemble the USAF TR3B craft when it glows powerfully. The TR3B would be harder to fly straight by a person...because it wobbles slightly as you see in the video. And I heard that the USAF had project Aurora testing a TR3B in the UK black in the 1990s...so...is this ours...or is this theirs? 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan 

Eyewitness states: 

Tuned in to Hayle Beach Live Webcam to watch a sunset and noticed a strange small light hovering above the sea so i used a desktop screen recorder to capture it. The light then suddenly darts to the left over a distance at high speed then stops sharply where it just hovers again. Then towards the end of the video it shoots straight up through the sky very fast and is gone. Watch full screen for better clarity!!

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

31-08-2020 om 17:35 geschreven door peter  

Glowing Orb Close Up In Australia Mountain, July 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: July 10, 2020 but released today
Location of sighting: Mount Buffalo, Victoria, Australia

Here is an interesting video of a bight glowing orb at night over Victoria, Australia recorded back in July but released today. The orb is moving slowly, but its evident that its moving to the left. Australia is well known for its glowing orbs and this is the closest one I have ever seen coming from Australia. It appears to be observing the person on the ground, watching the human recording them. It wants to be seen, it wants to be recorded and its watching and measuring the persons reactions. So...who's watching who?
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

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

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

Lots of Structures On Moon, Was About To Delete, but Maybe I Should Share Them, Sept 1 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: August 2020

Location of discovery: Earths moon

https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/?

extent=16.4611208,62.8514833,16.559484,62.8940466&proj=10&layers=NrBsFYBoAZIRnpE

oAsjYIHYFcA2vIBvAXwF1SizSg

Guys here are some structures and ships I found on earths moon and planet mercury this last week. These were on my work computer at school that I use during lunch breaks. Just thought that some of you would really like to see what alien structures actually look like. They look nothing like human structures and nothing like the movies depict them. Thought it would be a shame to delete them without posting them first. Almost did though. I would really like to confront NASA about these structures...mostly to watch them squirm and make lies on the spot for whats seen in them. 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

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

31-08-2020 om 17:28 geschreven door peter  

Crashed Alien Craft In Mexico Transported To Wright-paterson Air Force Base

AUGUST 25, 1974 …………..COYAME MEXICO

On 25 Aug 74, at 2207 hrs, US Air Defense radar detected an unknown object approaching US airspace from the Gulf of Mexico. Originally the object was tracked at 2,200 (2,530 mph) knots on a bearing of 325 degrees and at an altitude of 75,000 feet, a course that would intercept US territory about forty miles southwest of Corpus Christi, Texas.

After approximately sixty seconds of observation, at a position 155 miles southeast of Corpus Christi, the object decelerated to approximately 1700 (1,955 mph) knots, turned to a heading of 290 degrees, and began a slow descent.

It entered Mexican airspace approximately forty miles south of Brownsville, Texas. Radar tracked it approximately 500 miles to a point near the town of Coyame, in the state of Chihuahua, not far from the US border. There the object suddenly disappeared from the radar screens.

During the flight over Mexican airspace, the object leveled off at 45,000 feet, then descended to 20,000 feet. The descent was in level steps, not a smooth curve or straight line, and each level was maintained for approximately five minutes.

The object was tracked by two different military radar installations. It would have been within range of Brownsville civilian radar, but it is assumed that no civilian radar detected the object due to a lack of any such reports. The point of disappearance from the radar screens was over a barren and sparsely populated area of Northern Mexico. At first it was assumed that the object had descended below the radar’s horizon and a watch was kept for any re-emergence of the object. None occurred.

At first it was assumed that the object might be a meteor because of the high speed and descending flight path. But meteors normally travel at higher speeds, and descend in a smooth arc, not in “steps.” And meteors do not normally make a thirty-five degree change in course. Shortly after detection an air defense alert was called. However, before any form of interception could be scrambled, the object turned to a course that would not immediately take it over US territory. The alert was called off within twenty minutes after the object’s disappearance from the radar screen.

Fifty-two minutes after the disappearance, civilian radio traffic indicated that a civilian aircraft had gone down in that area. But it was clear that the missing aircraft had departed El Paso International with a destination of Mexico City, and could not, therefore, have been the object tracked over the Gulf of Mexico.

It was noted, however, that they both disappeared in the same area and at the same time.

With daylight the next day, Mexican authorities began a search for the missing plane. At Approximately 10:35 hours, there came a radio report that wreckage from the missing plane had been spotted from the air. Almost immediately came a report of a second plane on the ground a few miles from the first. A few minutes later an additional report stated that the second “plane” was circular shaped and apparently in one piece although damaged. A few minutes after that the Mexican military clamped a radio silence on all search efforts.

The radio interceptions were reported through channels to the CIA. Possibly as many as two additional government agencies also received reports, but such has not been confirmed as of this date. The CIA immediately began forming a recovery team. The speed with which this team and its equipment was assembled suggests that this was either a well-rehearsed exercise or one that had been performed prior to this event.

In the meantime, requests were initiated at the highest levels between the United States and Mexican governments that the US recovery team be allowed onto Mexican territory to “assist.” These requests were met with professed ignorance and a flat refusal of any cooperation.

By 21:00 hrs, 26 Aug 1974, the recovery team had assembled and been staged at Fort Bliss. Several helicopters were flown in from some unknown source and assembled in a secured area. These helicopters were painted a neutral sand color and bore no markings. Eye witness indicates that there were three smaller craft, very probably UHl Hueys from the description. There was also a larger helicopter, possibly a Sea Stallion. Personnel from this team remained with their craft and had no contact with other Ft. Bliss personnel.

Satellite and aircraft overflight that day indicated that both the crashed disk and the civilian aircraft had been removed from the crash sites and loaded on flat bed trucks. Later flights confirmed that the convoy had departed the area heading south.

At that point the CIA had to make a choice; either to allow this unknown aircraft to stay in the hands of the Mexican government, or to launch the recovery team, supplemented by any required military support, to take the craft. There occurred, however, an event that took the choice out of their hands. High altitude overflights indicated that the convoy had stopped before reaching any inhabited areas or major roads. Recon showed no activity, and radio contact between the Mexican recovery team and its headquarters had ceased. A low altitude, high speed overflight was ordered.

The photos returned by that aircraft showed all trucks and jeeps stopped, some with open doors, and two human bodies laying on the ground beside two vehicles. The decision was immediately made to launch the recovery team, but the actual launching was held up for the arrival of additional equipment and two additional personnel. It was not until 14:38 hrs that the helicopters departed Ft. Bliss.

The four helicopters followed the border down towards Presidio then turned and entered Mexican airspace north of Candelaria. They were over the convoy site at 16:53 hrs. All convoy personnel were dead, most within the trucks. Some recovery team members, dressed in bioprotection suits, reconfigured the straps holding the object on the flatbed truck, then attached them to a cargo cable from the Sea Stallion.

By 17:14 hrs the recovered object was on its way to US territory. Before leaving the convoy site, members of the recovery team gathered together the Mexican vehicles and bodies, then destroyed all with high explosives. This included the pieces of the civilian light plane which had been involved in the mid-air collision. At 17:46 hrs the Hueys departed.

The Hueys caught up with the Sea Stallion as it reentered US airspace. The recovery team then proceeded to a point in the Davis Mountains, approximately twenty-five miles northeast of Valentine. There they landed and waited until 02:25 hrs the next morning. At that time they resumed the flight and rendezvoused with a small convoy on a road between Van Horn and Kent. The recovered disk was transferred to a truck large enough to handle it and capable of being sealed totally. Some of the personnel from the Huey’s transferred to the convoy.

All helicopters then returned to their original bases for decontamination procedures. The convoy continued non-stop, using back roads and smaller highways, and staying away from cities. The destination of the convoy reportedly was Altanta, Georgia.

Here the hard evidence thins out. One unconfirmed report says the disk was eventually transferred to Wright-Patterson AF Base. Another says that the disk was either transferred after that to another unnamed base, or was taken directly to this unknown base directly from Atlanta.

The best description of the disk was that it was sixteen feet, five inches in diameter, convex on both upper and lower surfaces to the same degree, possessing no visible doors or windows. The thickness was slightly less than five feet. The color was silver, much like polished steel. There were no visible lights nor any propulsion means.

There were no markings. There were two areas of the rim that showed damage, one showing an irregular hole approximately twelve inches in diameter with indented material around it. The other damage was described as a “dent” about two feet wide. The weight of the object was estimated as approximately one thousand, five hundred pounds, based on the effect of the weight on the carrying helicopter and those who transferred it to the truck.

There was no indication in the documentation available as to whether anything was visible in the “hole.”

It seems likely that the damage with the hole was caused by the collision with the civilian aircraft. That collision occurred while the object was traveling approximately 1700 knots (1,955 mph). Even ignoring the speed of the civilian aircraft, the impact would have been considerable at that speed.

This is in agreement with the description of the civilian aircraft as being “almost totally destroyed.” What was being taken from the crash site was pieces of the civilian aircraft.

The second damage may have resulted when the object impacted with the ground. The speed in that case should have been considerably less than that of the first impact.

No mention is made of the occupants of the civilian aircraft. It is not known if any body or bodies were recovered. Considering the destruction of the civilian light aircraft in mid-air, bodies may well not have come down near the larger pieces.

Unfortunately what caused the deaths of the Mexican recovery team is not known. Speculation ranges from a chemical released from the disk as a result of the damage, to a microbiological agent. There are no indications of death or illness by any of the recovery team.

It would not have been illogical for the recovery team to have taken one of the bodies back with them for analysis. But there is no indication of that having happened. Perhaps they did not have adequate means of transporting what might have been a biologically contaminated body.

Inquires to the FAA reveal no documents concerning the civilian aircraft crash, probably because it did not involve a US aircraft. NOTE: The above image is CGI.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

HTTP://WWW.NEWDISCOVERIES51.YOLASITE.COM

THANKS TO ONE OF THE VERY TOP UFO ORGANIZATIONS IN THE WORLD HTTP://WWW.UFOCASEBOOK.COM

GOOGLE……KEN PFEIFER UFO

YOU TUBE……….KEN PFEIFER UFO

Source: 

• http://worldufophotosandnews.org/?p=27294

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31-08-2020 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

Aliens Abductions Are Related To Alien-Human Hybrid Beings, Survey Suggests

British online newspaper Express carried out a survey about alien abductions and hybrid beings, and its results were shocking.

According to Express, of the 9,300 people surveyed, 5487 (59%) responded that “they were ‘absolutely convinced’ they [abductions] are taking place and the evidence for them is ‘compelling’”, while 3,813 (41%) affirmed “they believed the claims from so called alien abductees were just the stuff of dreams and fantasy”.

This research was conducted alongside the publication of a series of reports about alien abductions and experimentations with alien-human hybrid beings.

The British news site mentioned the story of a pair of twins that affirmed “they were abducted by ‘bald aliens’ repeatedly from the age of five”. “They [the twins] told a sinister story of how they would tell their parents the ‘bald men are coming’ in the run up to another cosmic kidnap”, stated Express.

This story was released by UFO researcher Audrey Starborn Hewins at the 26th Annual International UFO Congress held in Fountain, Arizona.

Ms Hewins, a native from Maine, United States, said she attended the congress “to give ‘therapy’ to ‘alien abductees’”. She added that she have had “contact with aliens since the age of just five”.

Express also mentioned the case of a French-Canadian woman who believes she “was implanted as a so-called hybrid by aliens”.

“Lisa, whose surname is not revealed in a video, which broke the story, says her mother was supposedly pregnant with just a son in 1975, when she was born”, stated the article. “She is now convinced she was implanted into her mother by aliens after they ‘visited her while she was pregnant’”.

About this issue, a UK researcher called Miguel Mendonça expressed in an interview that “aliens have been secretly implanting extraterrestrial DNA into pregnant humans”. In his opinion, “the so-called alien-hybrid community is expanding on Earth and is vital to the future of the human race because of how they are helping us evolve into higher beings”.

Draw your own conclusions…

Aliens ARE abducting humans: ‘Evidence is compelling’ for cosmic kidnaps survey finds

NEARLY 60 percent of people surveyed said they are convinced aliens are regularly abducting humans for experiments and other research.

Express.co.uk has conducted a poll asking readers if they think “people are abducted by aliens” after a series of shocking claims from alleged victims.

Around 9,300 people have responded to the survey, with a whopping 59 percent (5,487)saying they were “absolutely convinced” they are taking place and the evidence for them is “compelling”.

The remaining 41 percent (3,813) said they believed the claims from so called alien abductees were just the stuff of dreams and fantasy.

Express.co.uk carried out the poll alongside a series of reports of claims being made on UFO conspiracy theory websites, where people had sworn to have been abducted, and even that they were the alien-human hybrid children of bizarre experiments involving their parents.

This month we told how a pair of twins claim they were abducted by “bald aliens” repeatedly from the age of five.

They told a sinister story of how they would tell their parents the “bald men are coming” in the run up to another cosmic kidnap.

The tale was revealed by Audrey Starborn Hewins at the 26th annual International UFO Congress in Fountain Arizona.

Ms Hewins, 43, from Oxford, Maine in the United States, attended the conference which aimed to give “therapy” to “alien abductees”.

She claims to have had contact with aliens since the age of just five.

She told how her identical twin, Debbie, was also visited by grey aliens as they grew up in Athens, Ohio.

Last month we told the story of a 6ft 3in, green-eyed blonde French Canadian woman, who was a SURPRISE second twin, and claims she was implanted as a so-called hybrid by aliens.

Striking Lisa claims her mother gave birth to twins after a bizarre encounter with two aliens.

Lisa, whose surname is not revealed in a video, which broke the story, says her mother was supposedly pregnant with just a son in 1975, when she was born.

She is now convinced she was implanted into her mother by aliens after they “visited her while she was pregnant”.

Her bizarre story was revealed for the first time by UFO researcher Luigi Vendittelli from Montreal, Canada, on the Earth Mystery News YouTube channel.

Express.co.uk has revealed a number of these bizarre stories over the past 18 months.

In May 2016, we exclusively revealed how green energy expert, Miguel Mendonça, 43, who helped shape UK renewable power policies, said he was convinced aliens have been secretly implanting extra terrestrial DNA into pregnant humans, in a book he wrote about it.

Mr Mendonça now claims the so-called alien-hybrid community is expanding on Earth and vital to the future of the human race because of how they are helping us “evolve into higher beings”.

Mr Mendonça, who suffers with MS, the illness that leaves suffers with neurological symptoms, muscle pain and severe physical and mental exhaustion, even feels better with increased energy levels for having regular contact with the hybrids, although he stressed it could not cure his condition.

He said: “It’s made no difference to my condition, but I do feel better on some levels.”

In his book, Meet The Hybrids: The Lives And Missions of ET Ambassadors On Earth published by Amazon and co-authored with Barbara Lamb, he spent time interviewing eight people who claim they have grown up with implanted alien DNA in their bodies and are part of a mission to improve mankind.

Take part in our survey and tell us if you are also convinced by these stories.

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31-08-2020 om 16:45 geschreven door peter  

Here Is Why David Hoffman Believes UFOs Are Real

About: 

I am not a documentary filmmaker who believes in conspiracy theories. And I am not a scientist or an astronomer. I made this video for my subscribers because I do believe that unidentified flying objects (UFO) and aliens are real because of what happened to me – the story that I tell in this video. My friends and colleagues think that I am crazy or in fantasyland when I bring up this issue. So I for the most part keep it to myself. Until now. Does it make me nervous or uncomfortable to think that aliens are around us? Yes. Is there anything I can do about it? No. And as I say in the video, I do believe that if they meant us harm, they would have done us in all long time ago. I do not expect this video to change your opinion one way or the other but hope that you find my presentation and the old documentary of interest. And as always, you are welcome to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Thank you.

Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for the latest UFO videos & photos.

Link: instagram.com/latestufos/

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31-08-2020 om 16:22 geschreven door peter  

Take a couple of minutes and have a little fun with this new video from NASA

Take a couple of minutes to check out this new video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, released August 14, 2020:

So you’ve somehow rigged up your spaceship to travel almost at the speed of light? … Before you fly off all willy-nilly, however, there are some important things you should probably know about approaching the speed of light.

Enjoy!

If you take a trip at near the speed of light, you won’t just feel younger when you get back. You’ll BE younger! (compared to friends who stayed behind.) See more postcards like this, from NASA.

• Bottom line: New animated video from NASA on traveling near the speed of light.
• Via NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

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{ https://earthsky.org/ }

30-08-2020 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

Alleged UFO Crashes in the U.S. other than Roswell: Aurora, Aztec, and Kecksburg

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas  

Aurora, Texas, 1897

In 1896 and 1897, news of mysterious airship sightings was sweeping the nation. Many of these reports were similar to modern UFO sightings and consisted of strange lights darting around the sky. Other stories, however, referred to giant dirigibles (lighter-than-air aircraft). Even though there were a few inventors building dirigibles at the time throughout the world, for the most part, this explanation has been dismissed. There were no known successfully built dirigibles in the United States. The descriptions were also often much larger and flew much faster than the experimental blimps of this era.

An abandoned windmill in Texas, similar to the one described n the UFO crash.

Credit: Steve Schowiak

Some witnesses reported seeing human-looking occupants in the airships. A few newspapers, including The Washington Times, went so far as to speculate that these were visitors from Mars. One of the last reports of mysterious airships was the curious report of S.E. Haydon in the Dallas Morning News on April 17, 1897. In his article, Haydon claimed that witnesses spotted an airship at 6 a.m. in the town of Aurora, Texas, on April 16. It flew low to the ground, descending until it finally collided with a windmill on the property of Judge J.S. Proctor. The collision resulted in a massive explosion, “scattering debris over several acres of the ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden.”

According to the article, the townspeople were surprised to find the pilot’s body among the debris. It appeared to “not [be] an inhabitant of this world.” The local signal service officer speculated that he was from Mars. They also allegedly found papers containing strange hieroglyphics, which they assumed comprised a journal of the pilot’s travels. They were unable to determine the craft’s method of propulsion, but they did recover metals that appeared to be a mixture of aluminum and silver.

Original newspaper article describing the incident, by S. E. Haydon, “A Windmill Demolishes It,” The Dallas Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5.

Nearly seventy-six years later, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), decided to take a closer look at this UFO legend. By then, rumors had circulated that Haydon had fabricated the entire story. When Haydon wrote the story, the town of Aurora was reeling from a string of bad luck. Several residents had died from typhoid that winter, cotton crops had failed, and a railroad planned for the city had gone broke. It was believed that Haydon, a local cotton buyer, created the story to try and breathe some new life into the town. MUFON investigators found surprising evidence; however, that supported the idea that something extraordinary may have taken place.

According to MUFON’s report, Texas state director, Bill Case, found two individuals who testified that their parents had witnessed the events described by Haydon in his article. The first was Mrs. Mary Evans, who says that she was fifteen-years-old when her parents went to the crash site and when they returned home, described to Mary the explosion and the small man who was killed in the crash. She recalled they had informed her the townsfolk buried what was left of the pilot in the local cemetery. The other witness was Charlie Stephens, whose father said he had seen the crash, which caused a massive fire that could be seen for three miles.

Using the witness testimony, MUFON investigators found what they believed to be the site of the crash. Radiation levels were checked and were typical for the area. The investigators found metal fragments with metal detectors that indicated something had crashed and spread debris over a two-or-three-acre area east of where the windmill was located. One-piece, in particular, caught their attention.

The mysterious piece of metal was found beneath four inches of soil and appeared to have been in a molten state when it penetrated the Earth and smashed against a limestone rock where it was found. Under analysis, the metal was determined to be a very pure form of aluminum alloy, oddly devoid of traces of copper, which is typically seen with this sort of manufactured aluminum. It had also gone through a heating-and-cooling stage consistent with that of an explosion.

The next part of MUFON’s investigation was to find the remains of the UFO pilot. They located a headstone with a triangle and some circles carved into it, possibly an etching of the craft. The metal detectors also alerted to metal below the surface at this location. Paperwork was submitted to exhume the body, but townsfolk vehemently denied the request and asked that researchers not enter the cemetery. Soon after MUFON’s investigation, the headstone disappeared altogether, leaving the location of the grave unknown.

In an article published in the Houston Chronicle in 2007, Aurora business owner Karen Tedrow said she understood the townspeople’s reluctance: “My parents are buried there, and I don’t want them digging around. Earthly body or not, they ought to let it rest in peace.”

In the end, MUFON investigators determined that there was more to the story than previously believed and that they had found “sufficient evidence to cast reasonable doubt on the hoax theory.”

Aztec, New Mexico, 1948

Another famous alleged UFO crash case occurred in March 1948 in the remote town of Aztec, New Mexico, in the northwest corner of the state. This story began with the publishing one of the first UFO books, Behind the Flying Saucers, written by Frank Scully in 1950.

Scully was a writer for the entertainment magazine Variety. He says some of his Hollywood friends recommended that he get in touch with Silas Newton, a successful oilman, who had some interesting UFO crash stories. Newton shared his stories with Scully and explained the electromagnetic nature of the propulsion of crashed UFOs. Newton, along with an anonymous scientist referred to as Dr. Gee, became the primary source for Scully’s book.

According to Newton and Dr. Gee, advanced radar stations in New Mexico caused the crash of a disc-shaped UFO near Aztec. The craft was mostly intact with just a puncture near one of the windows. Scientists, including Dr. Gee, who were first to arrive on the scene, saw bodies inside the craft. Without visible doors on the object, the scientists were eventually able to get into the craft by sticking a pole inside and pressing a button on a wall that opened a hidden door.

Inside, the scientists found sixteen charred bodies of beings that were humanoid in form but only three-to-four-feet tall. They appeared to have been killed by a fire inside the craft. The craft was made of a solid material that looked similar to aluminum and was very lightweight. Eventually, the aircraft was disassembled and taken to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which is often rumored to be the home base for recovered extraterrestrial objects.

Once Scully’s book was published, it quickly became a bestseller. However, doubts about the credibility of the main witnesses began to surface. J.P. Cahn, a freelance reporter, wrote an investigative piece for True magazine, claiming that the whole book was based on lies. Cahn claimed that he could prove that the metals Newton was purporting to be from an alien spacecraft were just a standard grade of aluminum used in pots and pans. He also said that he discovered the true identity of Dr. Gee.

According to Scully, Dr. Gee was a very accomplished scientist, with “more degrees than a thermometer.” However, Cahn discovered that Dr. Gee was a business associate of Newton’s by the name of Leo GeBauer. GeBauer owned a radio-and-television-parts company in Phoenix, Arizona. Although technologically inclined, GeBauer did not have the myriad of degrees claimed in Scully’s book. Scully’s response to this accusation was that GeBrauer was only one of many scientists represented by Dr. Gee in the book.

Cahn also uncovered that, although never formally charged, Newton had been accused of making false claims regarding stocks and oil prospects. Cahn believed that Newton and GeBrauer conned Scully into accepting their story to convince investors that they had access to secret alien technology capable of finding oil fields.

All of this has tarnished Scully’s book; however, there are UFO investigators who believe they have found evidence that supports the Aztec crash happened, including FBI documents. One such report can be found in Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret. In the book’s appendix, there is an FBI document from March 1950 that includes the report of an air force investigator on rumors of a crashed “flying saucer” discovered in New Mexico with three small bodies inside. It says the crash was the result of nearby “very high-powered radar.” Skeptics believe that Newton and GeBrauer had been peddling this story everywhere, and it eventually got back to the air force and the FBI.

Researchers Nick Redfern and Scott Ramsey obtained additional FBI documents regarding the Aztec crash. Ramsey says that these documents describe Newton as a very successful businessman and philanthropist. Although Newton told some tall tales to his investors, Ramsey says the investors seemed to be mostly happy with Newton’s results.

Ramsey has also been able to unearth alleged witnesses to the actual crash. Ken Farley claims he was driving from Durango, Colorado, to San Diego, California, on March 25, 1948, when he stopped outside Aztec to visit a friend. Having heard recent talk of emergency vehicles headed into the desert, Farley and his friend decided to check out what was going on. They arrived at a mesa with a large disc sitting next to it. There were several oilfield workers and a couple of police officers at the scene. They described an object much like the one Scully had written about, which appeared to be undamaged. Police eventually asked them to leave.

Another witness was nineteen-year-old Doug Noland, a gas company employee. He says that on that day, he had picked up his boss, Bill Ferguson, and drove to the desert to put out a brush fire. When Noland and Ferguson arrived at the scene, oilfield workers that were already on the scene told them that the fire was under control and showed them a mysterious large disc-shaped object.

Ramsey says he started as a skeptic, but twenty years later is still finding evidence that convinces him there may be something more to the crash at Aztec, New Mexico.

On December 10, 1965, newspapers across the country reported events that took place the prior evening. Witnesses from Pennsylvania to Illinois, and even as far north as Canada, reported seeing a fireball race across the sky. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, debris was reported falling from the fiery object. Outside of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, witnesses reported a flash of light and a fire in the nearby woods.

On the evening of December 9, Robert Gatty, writer for the Tribune-Review out of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was asked to report on an alleged UFO crash site in a forest outside Kecksburg. When he arrived, Gatty found the area was roped off by police expecting the arrival of “Army engineers and, possibly, civilian scientists.” Gatty claims that police threatened to arrest him if he proceeded into the forest. He reported that the roads were jammed with curious spectators and news reporters.

One of the other newsmen on location was John Murphy, the news director for one of the local radio stations, WHJB. According to his wife, Murphy arrived before the authorities, took pictures, and recorded some witnesses’ audio interviews. He would later put this all together in a radio documentary called Object in the Woods. Murphy later told listeners that he left out some conversations because the witnesses feared reprisal by the police or the army. Murphy’s wife and a coworker both have since said Murphy was visited by men claiming to be with the government. They confiscated some of his recordings and photographs.

To this day, the military maintains that it did not find anything in the forest that night. Nonetheless, Stan Gordon, a local UFO researcher, has gathered several witnesses who attest to the event and the object. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing an acorn-shaped object in the forest that was the size of a “Volkswagen.” Some witnesses later reported seeing the army hauling the tarp-covered object away, revealing only the lower lip of the object. Others reported a band of strange hieroglyphs around the base of the object.

Some scientists have speculated that the object was just a meteorite seen in Lake Erie’s vicinity that night. Russia’s Cosmos 96 space probe re-entered the atmosphere over Canada that day, and some have speculated that this is what landed in the woods. Witnesses claimed that the object changed direction several times before slowly falling in a downward trajectory towards the forest. Neither a Russian space probe nor a meteorite would change directions.

In 2002, inspired by Gordon’s work, the Syfy channel decided to investigate the Kecksburg case and, to do so, enlisted the help of journalist Leslie Kean. Together, they formed the Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFI). According to Kean’s report on the CFI website, the team set out to obtain official documents from NASA using the procedures allowed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In doing so, the CFI team was determined to “not accept the usual ‘no records’ responses” that are usually given for such requests.

Their initiative caught the attention and support of President Bill Clinton’s then Chief of Staff, John Podesta. He joined a press conference held by the Syfy channel on October 22, 2002, in which the CFI announced the efforts to obtain NASA files on the Kecksburg incident. Podesta stated before the press,

I think it’s time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark on the question of government investigations of UFOs… It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it because it’s right; we ought to do it because the American people quite frankly can handle the truth; and we ought to do it because it’s the law.

The CFI focused on obtaining records from NASA instead of the air force or army because Gordon had previously received files from NASA, indicating that there were more files yet to be uncovered. In particular, CFI pursued the “Fragology Files,” which were described as “reports of space objects’ recovery, [and] analysis of fragments to determine national ownership and vehicle origin.” NASA responded that the files were destroyed, and, in a separate letter, NASA claimed that the records had been missing since 1987.

NASA continued to stall and claim that it had no relevant files, even files that had already been retrieved by Gordon. The CFI appealed the NASA responses and won, but NASA continued to stall. The CFI was then forced to sue and announced its intentions at a press conference on October 21, 2003. NASA finally agreed to send specific files, but only sent unhelpful pieces of information. CFI continued to pursue the lawsuit.

During this time, the chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Nicholas Johnson, reviewed whether the Kecksburg incident could have been a human-made object that simply re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. In an interview on October 10, 2003, he told Kean, “I can tell you categorically, that there is no way that any debris from Cosmos 96 could have landed in Pennsylvania anywhere around 4:45 p.m.” Kean’s report demonstrates that “Johnson’s data shows that no man-made object from any country entered our atmosphere and landed in Pennsylvania on the afternoon of December 9.”

Although Johnson made strong statements to the contrary, in 2005, NASA spokesman David Steitz told the Associated Press that “the ‘UFO’ [Kecksburg object] was a Russian satellite, but government records documenting it have been lost.” This response was particularly strange in part because NASA had said that it did not even investigate the Kecksburg case. So, where did Steitz get this information? Kean tried to follow up with Steitz to clear up these discrepancies but could not obtain any particularly useful explanation.

Finally, after being tied up in court for two years, the final hearing on the CFI’s case against NASA occurred on March 20, 2007. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, clearly dissatisfied with NASA’s conduct in the case, reprimanded NASA’s attorney and, at one point, stated, “heads should roll” at NASA, and “I can sense the plaintiff’s frustration because I’m frustrated. It’s totally frustrating.” Judge Sullivan ruled in favor of the CFI and required NASA to pay for all legal fees for the case, to reexamine the files, and declassify relevant documents if necessary, explaining any redactions.

NASA sent more files to Kean, but none of them pertained to the Kecksburg incident. NASA searched hundreds of boxes. Kean feels that NASA made a genuine effort in the end, but that the filing systems were so weak that it was difficult to find anything. She concluded, “In summary, we’ll never know whether any documents in the missing or destroyed boxes might have shed light on the Kecksburg incident, even if only by providing a small lead that could open doors for researchers. It only takes one page to change everything.”

• A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #8 (June/July 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.

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30-08-2020 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

The disappearance of the UK’s “most spectacular” UFO photo

Posted by: Alejandro Rojas  

“I first came across this story in 1991, when I joined the UFO project,” writes Pope on his website. “A poster-sized enlargement of the best  photo was prominently displayed on the office wall.”

“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick continues. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”

The photo showed a picture of a large diamond shaped craft with a jet in the background. When he asked about the photo, Pope was told that they had officially determined the image was real. They estimated the craft to have been 25 meters (over 80 feet) in diameter.

However, if asked, they were instructed to answer, “no definite conclusion had been reached regarding the large diamond-shaped object.”

Pope learned that the object had been photographed on August 4, 1990. Two people had been walking near the town of Calvine in Scotland when they spotted the large diamond-shaped object. They described the object as looking metallic. It sat in one position, hovering silently for several minutes before taking off vertically at, as Pope writes, “a massive speed.”

During the sighting, the witnesses also saw a military aircraft that they thought might be a harrier jet, but they were unsure whether the jet was escorting the craft, chasing it, or whether the jet pilot was even aware of the diamond-shaped UFO.

The witnesses had taken several photographs and sent them to the Scottish Daily Record newspaper. The paper contacted the MoD, and the MoD was somehow able to convince the paper to hand over the photographs along with the negatives.

” The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Pope explains.

“We implied and sometimes stated that we didn’t ‘investigate’ UFOs, but merely ‘examined sightings to see if anything reported was of any defence interest’ – as if the two were somehow different!”

Pope say the MoD was actually very interested in these cases, but often less interested in where the craft came from than what they could learn from it. They had hoped to identify some sort of technology they would be able to appropriate.

Nick Pope, former MOD UFO investigator, at the International UFO Congress.

(Credit: Peter Beste/Open Minds)

Either way, the Calvine UFO photos impressed the UFO desk investigators enough that they hung the poster in the office.

“At one particularly surreal briefing on the UFO phenomenon my DIS opposite number indicated the photo and pointed his finger to the right: ‘It’s not the Americans’, he said, before pointing to the left and saying ‘and it’s not the Russians.’ There was a pause, before he concluded ‘and that only leaves …’ – his voice trailed off and he didn’t complete the sentence, but his finger was pointing directly upwards,” recalls Pope.

The office where the UFO desk was located also housed other non-UFO related projects.

Pope says the reaction of some colleagues who came to visit unaware of the UFO program had amusing reactions to the poster.

Pope writes, “You’d have this surreal moment when they’d stop mid-sentence, stare at it, point and say ‘what the hell’s that?’ – this wasn’t the archetypal distant, blurred UFO photo. This was up close and personal, reach out and you can touch it stuff. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s not one of ours’ was our stock answer to the inevitable question.”

Eventually, around 1994, Pope says his superior determined the craft was a secret American aircraft or drone. Pope says they had already asked the U.S. if the craft or something similar of theirs was being tested over the UK, and were told they were not. Pope believes his boss had decided to support a potential cover-up by the Americans and the MoD and removed the poster. It was never to be seen again.

Although Pope has discussed these photographs in the media and has posted an article on his website, no one has come forward to claim they took the photos. Nor has anyone at the Scottish Daily Record come forth to discuss any involvement. The case remains a mystery.

• You can read more about this sighting and Pope’s work at www.NickPope.net. He can also be heard on several episode of Open Minds UFO Radio.

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• FAA releases audio and radar data of UFO encounter with multiple pilots over California and Oregon, jets were scrambled
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30-08-2020 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

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30-08-2020 om 22:47 geschreven door peter  

Underground Base Found At Area 51, Possible Tall White Aliens Hive, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 29, 2020
Location of discovery: Area 51, Groom Lake, Nevada, USA
Coordinates: 37°10'22.29"N 116°11'34.37"W

I was using Google earth map at Area 51, when I came across an underground base. This base has three entrances, one large 18 meters by 9 meters. And Two other smaller ones. There are air ventilation pipes coming out of the largest one and two pipes coming out of the top of the hill.

All this was just a few kilometers from where I had discovered a 30 meter UFO parked on a runway and having a hanger built around it.

I really am thinking about those tall white aliens that Charles Hall said he worked with behind Nellis AFB. Because this is behind Nellis...same military land, and it is behind a firing rage of sorts...where hundreds of bombs were tested underground leaving only crater reminders. This could be...the tall whites military entrance to their base.
Scott C. Waring

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30-08-2020 om 21:22 geschreven door peter  

Two KM Tall Blade Structure Found In Crater On Mercury! Aug 29, 2020, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 29, 2020
Location of discovery: Mercury
Source map:

http://134.158.75.177/viewer/Apps/PlanetaryCesiumViewer/index.html?view=-27.115171367856075%2C56.64918764215053%2C224441.07930252535%2C359.9999999999994%2C-90%2C0

Update:

• Seems URL fails to take us there. Click on Mercury map at that location...lots of fun stuff there. SCW

Now these maps at Planetary Cesium Viewer are great, huge, parts edited, but half of the parts are original. The map is laggy on my computer but on a new computer its probably not noticeable. It took a whole 3 minutes to find this blade structure. I'm surprised more people don't search for them. 

The structure is very tall, coming above the crater rim all the way from the crater floor. Thats got to be at least 2 miles tall. The structure is even throwing a 5 mile long shadow. Only aliens could make a structure this thin and this tall...no way it could be made in nature. This is 100% proof that aliens exist on Mercury. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

 

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30-08-2020 om 20:57 geschreven door peter  

Huge Structures On Venus, 100% Proof Of Life, Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Aug 29, 2020
Location of discovery: Venus
Source coordinates: 

http://134.158.75.177/viewer/Apps/PlanetaryCesiumViewer/index.html?

view=1.0748068821017576%2C7.765328116471603%2C119946.52737682144%2C360%2C

-90%2C0

I was looking at a new planetary map and found these structures on Venus. The structure above is over 5 miles across. Many human-like alien contact cases constantly reveal Venus as their home world. A world shared by many species in underground cities. Here we see even the surface of Venus has structures. 

One structure even has a human-like face on it. A chubby little guy with curly hair and a cigar in his mouth. How can I be sure these are structures you may ask? I have been doing this since 1976 when I was first to discovery the face at Cydonia, Mars. Experience over decades builds up. 
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan

Both the above structure and below screenshot are the same face, one close up one far. 

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

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30-08-2020 om 20:50 geschreven door peter  

Aplasma burst from the surface of the Sun? No, it is more likely a enormous alien spaceship that appears to leave the Sun.

Images taken from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - (SDO AIA 171) and uploaded to Helioviewer (Solar and heliospheric image visualization tool) this week, show a cigar-shaped UFO of truly staggering proportions emerging from the sun.

In reality there many different types of alien spaceships and many of them are active around the sun. For example,several years ago, a huge alien craft has been photographed by NASA's Lasco C2 satellite on May 29, 2016 and shows the spacecraft at the moment it shoots a beam of light into the sun.

Since they access our solar system by using the sun as a stargate, these giant UFOs are no stranger to the earths atmosphere or space itself. 

It is quite possible that this kind of alien craft, often depicted on very old drawings, have been seen since ancient times.

  

Related videos, selected and posted by peter2011

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30-08-2020 om 20:29 geschreven door peter  

Bright UFOs over Las Vegas, Nevada 6-Aug-2020

These bright lights were hovering and flying in the night sky above Las Vegas in Nevada on 6th August 2020.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for the latest UFO videos & photos.

Link: twitter.com/LatestUFOs

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30-08-2020 om 18:58 geschreven door peter  

UFOs making maneuvers over Okaloosa Island, Florida

These bright UFOs were seen and recorded in the sky above Okaloosa Island in Florida. This happened back in July 2020.

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30-08-2020 om 18:48 geschreven door peter  

Artist’s concept of rogue planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. Researchers now think there could be more such nomadic planets than stars in our galaxy.

Image via ESO/ L. Calçada/ P. Delorme/ Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/ R. Saito/ VVV Consortium.

There are some 100 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists now say there may be as many, or more, exoplanets or planets orbiting those distant stars. That’s incredible to ponder, but now consider this. Researchers at Ohio State University just announced a new study suggesting there may be more free-floating rogue planets – planets not orbiting any star – than stars in the Milky Way. Wow!

The theoretical, but fascinating, peer-reviewed conclusions were published in The Astronomical Journal on August 21, 2020.

What’s more, these scientists say, an upcoming NASA mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, should be able to find hundreds or more of these rogue planets. Astronomer Samson Johnson at Ohio State – lead author of the study – commented:

This gives us a window into these worlds that we would otherwise not have. Imagine our little rocky planet just floating freely in space; that’s what this mission will help us find.

As our view of the universe has expanded, we’ve realized that our solar system may be unusual. Roman will help us learn more about how we fit in the cosmic scheme of things by studying rogue planets.

Illustration of a rogue planet floating through space between the stars.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC).

These rogue worlds are called free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs) and have masses similar to planets that orbit stars. Scientists don’t yet know how they came to be cosmic wanderers, untethered to any stars, but it’s possible that they were once part of regular solar systems, and somehow broke free of their stars’ gravity. Roman should be able to provide more clues, and provide a better idea of how many are out there. According to Scott Gaudi at Ohio State, a co-author of the paper:

The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldn’t even know it. We would never find out without undertaking a thorough, space-based microlensing survey like Roman is going to do.

If scientists can start to build a census of the numbers of FFPs, that itself would help them figure out how they formed. Do they form around stars just like other planets and then get ejected from those planetary systems? Or do they form from gas and dust independently of stars? It’s also thought that the ejection of planets from their home planetary systems might be more common in denser star clusters, since more frequent encounters between stars in dense clusters will make the planetary systems unstable.

Animation depicting how gravitational microlensing can reveal rogue planets. When an unseen rogue planet passes in front of a more distant star from our vantage point, light from the star bends as it passes through the warped space-time around the planet. The planet acts as a cosmic magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background star.

Image via NASA.

Roman will test various theories and models to see which ones come closest to explain these enigmatic worlds.

It is expected that Roman will be 10 times more sensitive in detecting these objects than previous searches. Roman will focus on searching for FFPs between our sun and the center of the galaxy. That search will span about 24,000 light-years in total. Johnson said:

There have been several rogue planets discovered, but to actually get a complete picture, our best bet is something like Roman. This is a totally new frontier.

According to the new paper, it is expected that Roman should find at least 250 FFPs, even ones as small as Mars.

Artist’s rendering of NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Image via NASA/ Ohio State News.

Last year, another study estimated that there could be 50 billion such nomad planets in our galaxy. About a dozen or so confirmed rogue planets have been found so far, and two of those were announced last year, called OGLE-2012-BLG-1323 and OGLE-2017-BLG-0560. The first is estimated to have a mass between Earth and Neptune, while the other has a mass between Jupiter and a brown dwarf star.

Exoplanets orbiting stars can be difficult to detect, and rogue exoplanets even more so. How will Roman find them? It will use a technique called gravitational lensing, which relies on the gravity of stars and planets to bend and magnify the light coming from stars that pass behind them, from the telescope’s viewpoint. This technique can find exoplanets thousands of light-years from Earth, and is based on Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. According to co-author Matthew Penny at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge:

The microlensing signal from a rogue planet only lasts between a few hours and a couple of days and then is gone forever. This makes them difficult to observe from Earth, even with multiple telescopes. Roman is a game-changer for rogue planet searches.

Of course, another question is whether any rogue planets could support life. Johnson said it is probably unlikely since they have no stars for heat and energy:

They would probably be extremely cold, because they have no star.

Samson Johnson at The Ohio State University, lead author of the new study.

Image via Ohio State News.

Discovering how rogue planets came to be will help astronomers figure out what makes them so unique and also better understand how regular planetary systems form. Johnson said:

If we find a lot of low-mass rogue planets, we’ll know that as stars form planets, they’re probably ejecting a bunch of other stuff out into the galaxy. This helps us get a handle on the formation pathway of planets in general.

Rogue planets are enigmatic objects, essentially planets as we know them but with no stars to call home. And there may be many more of them than ever thought possible.

• Bottom line: New research shows that there could be more rogue, free-floating planets than stars in our galaxy. An upcoming NASA mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, should be able to find hundreds or more of them.
• Source: Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. II. Free-floating Planet Detection Rates*
• Via Ohio State News

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

29-08-2020 om 23:56 geschreven door peter  

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29-08-2020 om 23:39 geschreven door peter