2020: A Year in Space

Despite the global pandemic that has brought much of the world to a grinding halt, space scientists have continued to push the boundaries of our knowledge throughout 2020.

 by Rob Lea

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

23-12-2020 om 21:05 geschreven door peter  

We Persevered This Year @NASA – December 21, 2020

2020 was historic for NASA. We launched humans to the International Space Station from America again, made progress on our plans to return humans to the Moon and explore Mars, had an unprecedented encounter with an asteroid, and displayed perseverance and resilience in space and on Earth … all, while helping the country deal with a global crisis. Here’s a look back at highlights from those and other things we did this year at NASA.

Download Link: https://images.nasa.gov/details-NASA%...

Producer: Andre Valentine
Editor: Sonnet Apple
Music: Universal Production Music

{ https://images.nasa.gov/ }

23-12-2020 om 20:43 geschreven door peter  

4 mysterious UFO sightings that are still unexplained

Some UFO sightings can be explained away – but we still don't know the truth behind these ones.

Many objects have been mistaken for UFOs, from natural phenomena such as lightning sprites and meteors, to experimental aircraft and weather balloons. The French UFO research group, GEIPAN, found that 3.5 per cent of sightings remained unidentified. Here are a few that, so far, have defied explanation.

In 1954, two local football clubs were playing in Florence, Italy, when the crowd stopped watching the game. Instead, around 10,000 fans were looking upwards at a strange craft.

It was described by witnesses as either cigar-or egg-shaped along with silvery-white threads falling from the sky. Samples mostly disintegrated on contact, but some were examined at the University of Florence and found to contain boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium.

While migrating spiders, which use webs as sails, were suggested as a rational answer to this aspect of the sighting, their silk is an organic compound and does not contain any of those elements.

Around 350 children and teachers at Westall High School in Melbourne, Australia, watched five planes surround a silvery flying-saucer-shaped UFO in 1966. The planes attempted to aerially herd the craft for about 20 minutes before it disappeared.

A UFO-themed play park commemorates the event and, to this day, witnesses meet once a year to discuss their experience.

In 1997, thousands of people reported lights across several hundred miles of night sky in Arizona and Nevada in the United States, and Sonora in Mexico. These lights were either stationary, or on a moving V-shaped craft in a triangular formation (artist’s impression above).

The United States Air Force stated that the lights over Phoenix were military flares but the V-shaped UFO remains a mystery.

In December 1980, US airmen stationed at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England were investigating reports of lights in Rendlesham Forest when they saw red and blue lights and a UFO land. It was described as around three metres high and three metres in diameter and appeared to be standing on fixed legs. The material of the craft was like ‘smooth, opaque black glass.’

The next day, indentations were seen on the ground and radiation levels recorded. On a separate night, another member of the US Air Force set out to disprove his colleagues with a tape recorder. He reported lights in the sky that looked ‘like an eye winking at you’ and observed ‘a beam coming down to the ground’. Three years later, the US government released a report that described the encounter, which has become known as Britain’s Roswell.

While there remain believers, psychologist Prof Chris French – who has also visited the site – is among many of those who are unconvinced. A local forester said the indentations were caused by rabbits, and the levels of radioactivity were not especially high. As for the lights? “I’ve heard the tape,” says French, “and the lights are in complete synchrony with Orfordness Lighthouse nearby.”

• This article first appeared in issue 357 of BBC Science Focus Magazine – find out how to subscribe here

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23-12-2020 om 20:32 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers with Breakthrough Listen have detected a mysterious radio signal coming from the direction of the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri. But is it really an alien signal or something more terrestrial?

The Parkes radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Astronomers using the telescope detected what appeared to be a radio signal coming from the direction of Proxima Centauri in April and May 2019.

Image via Daniel John Reardon/ Wikimedia Commons.

Earlier this month, we told you about a possible source for the famous Wow! signal, first detected in 1977. Since its detection, the Wow! signal has been, in the opinion of many scientists engaged with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the best candidate for an alien radio signal yet found. The 1977 Wow! signal was heard only once. It was never fully confirmed and remains unexplained to this day. But now, a new possible signal has been found, dubbed by some as Wow! signal 2020. And guess what? It appears to come from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun.

• EarthSky 2021 lunar calendars are available! Order now. Going fast!

The news comes from an apparent leak to The Guardian newspaper, which ran the story on December 17, 2020. What makes this detection unique and rather baffling is that the signal, narrowband and needle-sharp at 982.002 MHz, came from the direction of Proxima, which is so close to us, only about 4 light-years away. Astronomers with Breakthrough Listen first detected the signal on April 29, 2019, using the Parkes radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia, but it was not actually found in the data until late October of this year. Two papers detailing the discovery and the analysis are reportedly due to come out sometime in early 2021.

The astronomers were not named in The Guardian article, so it seemed that the news was leaked by someone to the paper, hence the anonymity. By the next day, December 18, the story had been pretty much verified, although tempered with an abundance of caution. As mentioned in The Guardian:

The latest ‘signal’ is likely to have a mundane explanation too, but the direction of the narrow beam, around 980 MHz, and an apparent shift in its frequency said to be consistent with the movement of a planet have added to the tantalizing nature of the finding. Scientists are now preparing a paper on the beam, named BLC1, for Breakthrough Listen, the project to search for evidence of life in space, The Guardian understands.

As tends to happen, the story spread quickly, with commentary from various astronomers and other scientists about what it might be.

Artist’s concept of Proxima Centauri b, which is about 1.3 times the mass of Earth and orbits within the star’s habitable zone where liquid water could exist. Could the signal actually be from this planet? Maybe, but some features of the signal don’t seem to fit that scenario.

Image via ESO/ M. Kornmesser/ Phys.org.

A follow-up article in Scientific American by Jonathan O’Callaghan and Lee Billings on December 18 has provided some additional details. Andrew Siemion at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, is quoted as saying:

It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it. We don’t know of any natural way to compress electromagnetic energy into a single bin in frequency. For the moment, the only source that we know of is technological.

There is also another good article at National Geographic by Nadia Drake.

The signal has the characteristics of being artificial, so then the question becomes “is it ours?” Many potential candidate signals are found, but the vast majority are soon found to be explained by terrestrial sources, satellites in space, errors, etc. As Jason Wright at Penn State University told Scientific American:

If you see such a signal and it’s not coming from the surface of Earth, you know you have detected extraterrestrial technology. Unfortunately, humans have launched a lot of extraterrestrial technology.

Sofia Sheikh at Penn State University, who headed the subsequent analysis for Breakthrough Listen and is the lead author on the upcoming paper, told National Geographic:

Only human technology seems to produce signals like that. Our WiFi, our cell towers, our GPS, our satellite radio, all of this looks exactly like the signals that we’re searching for, which makes it very hard to tell if something is from space or from human-generated technology.

A candidate signal must go through a series of screening filters before it can be seriously treated as a true potentially alien signal. This one has, so far, according to Sheikh:

It’s the most exciting signal that we’ve found in the Breakthrough Listen project, because we haven’t had a signal jump through this many of our filters before.

The famous “Wow! signal” detected by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University on August 15, 1977.

Image via Big Ear Radio Observatory/ North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)/ Wikipedia.

The candidate signal is now being referred to as Breakthrough Listen Candidate 1, or BLC1.

The detection was made as part of an overall study of Proxima Centauri by Breakthrough Listen. It was first noticed in the data by intern Shane Smith in late October this year as the data from 2019 was being re-analyzed, which is why no alert was sent out to other observatories back in 2019, as some people have questioned (that being normal SETI protocol). The signal was very narrow, 982.002 MHz to be exact. It was seen in five of the 30-minute long observations by the Parkes telescope, over a 30-hour period.

Given past history, it is most likely that a terrestrial human-made cause will be found, but the scientists involved are continuing to study it with much interest, and so far, they haven’t been able to identify the culprit.

Another point to note is that the signal apparently came from the direction of Proxima Centauri, but it’s not a slam-dunk that the star really is the source. It could also have been a source within the 16-arcminute (1/60 of a degree) beamwidth of the telescope that happened to be near Proxima Centauri in the sky from our vantage point. It also appears to a simple signal, with no modulation, just a single tone. As Siemion said:

BLC1 is, for all intents and purposes, just a tone, just one note. It has absolutely no additional features that we can discern at this point.

The signal does drift, as might be expected for a signal from an orbiting planet, but it is in the opposite direction of what would normally be expected. Sheikh said:

We would expect the signal to be going down in frequency like a trombone. What we see instead is like a slide whistle, the frequency goes up.

What all of this means exactly isn’t clear yet. Wright has made some interesting observations on Twitter, however:

So far, the signal hasn’t been seen again, just like with the Wow! signal in 1977. Another detection would help scientists determine just where it actually came from. As noted by Wright above, it’s possible that the signal didn’t come from Proxima Centauri at all, but rather another source that happened to be close to the star in the sky at the time, within the beamwidth of the telescope. The fact that it “reappeared” five times during the 30-minute observation windows, over a period of three hours, is interesting. That means when the telescope was briefly pointed away from the star, the signal disappeared, but came back when the telescope was looking at the star again, five times in all. That’s a seemingly good indication the signal did come from space, but more work is needed to see if it could have been an earthly satellite.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the sun, only 4.2 light-years away, and is a red dwarf with at least two known planets. One of those planets, Proxima Centauri b, is just a bit larger than Earth, and orbits within the habitable zone of the star, the region where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist. The other planet, Proxima Centauri c, is about seven times more massive than our Earth.

But little else is known about these worlds so far, and the star itself is very volatile, emitting powerful flares of ionizing radiation. Proxima Centauri b in particular is subject to this radiation, even though it is in the habitable zone, so whether it is actually potentially habitable is far from certain at this point.

Sofia Sheikh at Penn State University, who headed the analysis for Breakthrough Listen and is the lead author on the upcoming paper.

Image via Penn State University.

Also, what are the odds that another technological civilization would be located at the very nearest star to us? With so many billions of stars in our galaxy? The odds seem very much against it, but all we can do is follow the data and evidence as we learn it. The signal seemingly must either be from Proxima Centauri, another unrelated source within the beamwidth of the telescope, or from terrestrial interference. Past experience suggests the third option, but there is still a lot more analysis to be done.

Stay tuned for updates on this intriguing discovery. If nothing else, BLC1 has given us a fascinating new mystery to try and solve!

• Bottom line: Astronomers with Breakthrough Listen have detected a mysterious radio signal coming from the direction of the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri. They’re calling it the Wow! signal 2020.
• Via The Guardian
• Via Scientific American
• Via National Geographic
  

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{ https://earthsky.org/ }

23-12-2020 om 18:42 geschreven door peter  

Video: World's Largest Wooden Bigfoot Sculpture Unveiled in South Dakota

By Tim Binnall

A talented chainsaw artist in South Dakota has created what is believed to be the world's tallest wooden Bigfoot sculpture. According a local media report, the monstrous piece was unveiled over the weekend at the community of Keystone's 'Bigfoot Bash' event. The man behind the enormous Sasquatch is Jarrett Dahl, who began fashioning the individual parts of the sculpture out of pieces of pine, cedar and cottonwood back in October. Alongside a crew of workers from Kentucky, he assembled the complete sculpture over the course of eight days.

At the 'Bigfoot Bash,' the Keystone Chamber of Commerce measured the artwork and determined that it is "exactly 22.8 feet from sitting on his butt to the top of his head." The epic size of the statue has the community feeling confident that can now boasting having the "world's largest wooden chainsaw sculpture of Bigfoot." While they very well may hold that specific record, it's worth noting last month's unveiling of 'Gasquatch' in Oklahoma, which measures a whopping 30 feet tall and, therefore, likely still holds the title for the world's tallest depiction of Bigfoot.

Whether or not you believe in Bigfoot or Sasquatch, there’s no denying that the existence of this half-man/half-beast has been the subject of conversation for the better part of 180 years when reports of this creature first surfaced in the Pacific Northwest back in the 1840s.

And while there’s never been any definitive proof of Bigfoot, except for a grainy photograph or shaky home movie, one thing is certain – all 50 states (except Hawaii) have reported sightings over the years – including South Dakota.

According to numbers compiled by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), the Mount Rushmore State is on the board with 19 reported Bigfoot encounters over the years.

And while that number may be disturbing to some, it’s among the fewest sightings in America, the ninth-lowest to be exact.

Just a reminder, experts estimate that for every reported sighting there are 2-3 sightings that go unreported. Some people don’t want the ridicule.

{ https://www.coasttocoastam.com/ }

{ https://markozen.com/ }

23-12-2020 om 17:54 geschreven door peter  

While other astronomers are scanning deep space for signs of the existence of the mythically theoretical Planet Nine, a group of researchers in Colorado has been looking down instead of up and found evidence in a meteorite of what may have been a small planet in the early days of our solar system. Is it still around? Can it help find Planet Nine? If it’s designated a planet, will Pluto be upset?

“Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites record the earliest stages of Solar System geological activities and provide insight into their parent bodies’ histories.”

According to a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are like a diary, history book or crystal ball into the celestial bodies they once were. Chondrites are stony, non-metallic chunks that have never been changed by heat, cold or other outside forces, so they are identical to the larger rock they came from. Only a small percentage of them (4.6%) are carbonaceous – containing high percentages (3% to 22%) of water, silicates, oxides, sulfides, and the minerals olivine and serpentine. The uniqueness of the combinations tells researcher like Dr. Vicky Hamilton, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Staff Scientist and first author of the study, the identity of the parent and much about its own characteristics.

Some carbonaceous chondrites. From left to right: Allende, Tagish Lake and Murchison.

While most of the asteroids that are remnants of the formation of the solar system are in orbit between Jupiter and Mars, a few break away and collide with Earth. Such an event happened in 2008 when a 9-ton, 13-foot diameter asteroid named Almahata Sitta (AhS) exploded into about 600 meteorites that crashed into Sudan – exactly where scientists had predicted, which allowed them to recover 23 pounds of pieces and fragments. Hamilton and her team were given a 50-milligram (.0017 ounce) shard to analyze. Believe it or not, according to the press release, that was enough.

“Spectral analysis identified a range of hydrated minerals, in particular amphibole, which points to intermediate temperatures and pressures and a prolonged period of aqueous alteration on a parent asteroid at least 400, and up to 1,100, miles in diameter.”

Amphibole, a silicate mineral that forms needlelike crystals, has only been found in one other meteorite – the Allende which exploded over Chihuahua in 1969 and is the largest carbonaceous chondrite ever located. Over 2 tons of material was recovered and it has become the most studied meteorite of all time. Almahata Sitta is not Allende, and its estimated maximum diameter shows it wasn’t Pluto either (Pluto’s diameter is 1,476.8 miles). However, it would have been twice as big as Ceres (587.8 miles), the largest object in the asteroid belt, so it was definitely a dwarf planet. Are they sure it no longer exists? Could it be out of sight in a Planet Nine-type orbit?

Pluto

“Hamilton explains that the body that the meteorite came from will no longer exist, at least not in large form, but the evidence the meteorite provides could change our understanding of the materials that asteroids contributed towards the formation of the Earth and other planets.”

Oh well. On the positive side, the samples from asteroids Ryugu and Bennu brought back by Japan’s Hayabusa2 and in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex will be compared to those that have crashed to Earth, giving the researchers more insight on what their parents looked like and how much, if any, change Almahata Sitta and Allende went through as they passed thought the Earth’s atmosphere.

It all adds up to a growing picture of the early days of our solar system coming from mere shards of what were once dwarf planets … and maybe larger ones. While we shouldn’t give up on Planet 9, Planet 8 ½ is real and here.

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{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

23-12-2020 om 17:25 geschreven door peter  

23-12-2020 om 16:31 geschreven door peter  

Threshold for dangerous climate warming will likely be crossed between 2027–2042

by McGill University

The threshold for dangerous global warming will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042—a much narrower window than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate of between now and 2052. In a study published in Climate Dynamics, researchers from McGill University introduce a new and more precise way to project the Earth's temperature. Based on historical data, it considerably reduces uncertainties compared to previous approaches.

Scientists have been making projections of future global warming using climate models for decades. These models play an important role in understanding the Earth's climate and how it will likely change. But how accurate are they?

Dealing with uncertainty

Climate models are mathematical simulations of different factors that interact to affect Earth's climate, such as the atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface and the sun. While they are based on the best understanding of the Earth's systems available, when it comes to forecasting the future, uncertainties remain.

"Climate skeptics have argued that global warming projections are unreliable because they depend on faulty supercomputer models. While these criticisms are unwarranted, they underscore the need for independent and different approaches to predicting future warming," says co-author Bruno Tremblay, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at McGill University.

Until now, wide ranges in overall temperature projections have made it difficult to pinpoint outcomes in different mitigation scenarios. For instance, if atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are doubled, the General Circulation Models (GCMs) used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predict a very likely global average temperature increase between 1.9 and 4.5C—a vast range covering moderate climate changes on the lower end, and catastrophic ones on the other.

A new approach

"Our new approach to projecting the Earth's temperature is based on historical climate data, rather than the theoretical relationships that are imperfectly captured by the GCMs. Our approach allows climate sensitivity and its uncertainty to be estimated from direct observations with few assumptions," says co-author Raphael Hebert, a former graduate researcher at McGill University, now working at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut in Potsdam, Germany.

In a study for Climate Dynamics, the researchers introduced the new Scaling Climate Response Function (SCRF) model to project the Earth's temperature to 2100. Grounded on historical data, it reduces prediction uncertainties by about half, compared to the approach currently used by the IPCC. In analyzing the results, the researchers found that the threshold for dangerous warming (+1.5C) will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042. This is a much narrower window than GCMs estimates of between now and 2052. On average, the researchers also found that expected warming was a little lower, by about 10 to 15 percent. They also found, however, that the "very likely warming ranges" of the SCRF were within those of the GCMs, giving the latter support.

"Now that governments have finally decided to act on climate change, we must avoid situations where leaders can claim that even the weakest policies can avert dangerous consequences," says co-author Shaun Lovejoy, a professor in the Physics Department at McGill University. "With our new climate model and its next generation improvements, there's less wiggle room."

• New approach to global-warming projections could make regional estimates more precise

• Raphaël Hébert et al, An observation-based scaling model for climate sensitivity estimates and global projections to 2100, Climate Dynamics (2020). DOI: 10.1007/s00382-020-05521-x

{ https://phys.org/ }

23-12-2020 om 13:24 geschreven door peter  

Artificial Intelligence Classifies Supernova Explosions with Unprecedented Accuracy

Artificial intelligence is classifying real supernova explosions without the traditional use of spectra, thanks to a team of astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. The complete data sets and resulting classifications are publicly available for open use.

By training a machine learning model to categorize supernovae based on their visible characteristics, the astronomers were able to classify real data from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey for 2,315 supernovae with an accuracy rate of 82-percent without the use of spectra.

Cassiopeia A, or Cas A, is a supernova remnant located 10,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, and is the remnant of a once massive star that died in a violent explosion roughly 340 years ago. This image layers infrared, visible, and X-ray data to reveal filamentary structures of dust and gas. Cas A is amongst the 10-percent of supernovae that scientists are able to study closely. CfA’s new machine learning project will help to classify thousands, and eventually millions, of potentially interesting supernovae that may otherwise never be studied.

Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/CXC/SAO

The astronomers developed a software program that classifies different types of supernovae based on their light curves, or how their brightness changes over time. “We have approximately 2,500 supernovae with light curves from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey, and of those, 500 supernovae with spectra that can be used for classification,” said Griffin Hosseinzadeh, a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA and lead author on the first of two papers published in The Astrophysical Journal. “We trained the classifier using those 500 supernovae to classify the remaining supernovae where we were not able to observe the spectrum.”

Edo Berger, an astronomer at the CfA explained that by asking the artificial intelligence to answer specific questions, the results become increasingly more accurate. “The machine learning looks for a correlation with the original 500 spectroscopic labels. We ask it to compare the supernovae in different categories: color, rate of evolution, or brightness. By feeding it real existing knowledge, it leads to the highest accuracy, between 80- and 90-percent.”

Although this is not the first machine learning project for supernovae classification, it is the first time that astronomers have had access to a real data set large enough to train an artificial intelligence-based supernovae classifier, making it possible to create machine learning algorithms without the use of simulations.

“If you make a simulated light curve, it means you are making an assumption about what supernovae will look like, and your classifier will then learn those assumptions as well,” said Hosseinzadeh. “Nature will always throw some additional complications in that you did not account for, meaning that your classifier will not do as well on real data as it did on simulated data. Because we used real data to train our classifiers, it means our measured accuracy is probably more representative of how our classifiers will perform on other surveys.” As the classifier categorizes the supernovae, said Berger, “We will be able to study them both in retrospect and in real-time to pick out the most interesting events for detailed follow up. We will use the algorithm to help us pick out the needles and also to look at the haystack.”

The project has implications not only for archival data, but also for data that will be collected by future telescopes. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to go online in 2023, and will lead to the discovery of millions of new supernovae each year. This presents both opportunities and challenges for astrophysicists, where limited telescope time leads to limited spectral classifications.

“When the Rubin Observatory goes online it will increase our discovery rate of supernovae by 100-fold, but our spectroscopic resources will not increase,” said Ashley Villar, a Simons Junior Fellow at Columbia University and lead author on the second of the two papers, adding that while roughly 10,000 supernovae are currently discovered each year, scientists only take spectra of about 10-percent of those objects. “If this holds true, it means that only 0.1-percent of supernovae discovered by the Rubin Observatory each year will get a spectroscopic label. The remaining 99.9-percent of data will be unusable without methods like ours.”

Unlike past efforts, where data sets and classifications have been available to only a limited number of astronomers, the data sets from the new machine learning algorithm will be made publicly available. The astronomers have created easy-to-use, accessible software, and also released all of the data from Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey along with the new classifications for use in other projects. Hosseinzadeh said, “It was really important to us that these projects be useful for the entire supernova community, not just for our group. There are so many projects that can be done with these data that we could never do them all ourselves.” Berger added, “These projects are open data for open science.”

• This project was funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI).

Contacts and sources: 

• Amy Oliver
  Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Publication: 

•  SuperRAENN: A semi-supervised supernova photometric classification pipeline trained on Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey supernovae, A. Villar et al, The Astrophysical Journal, 2020 December 17

[doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc6fd, preprint: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04921.pdf]

• Photometric Classification of 2315 Pan-STARRS1 Supernovae with Superphot by G. Hosseinzadeh et al, The Astrophysical Journal, 2020 December 17,
  [doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc42b, preprint: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04912.pdf]

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23-12-2020 om 12:41 geschreven door peter  

Pole Shift Antarctica Cycle and the Sahara Winter Storm and the Procession

Pole Shift Antarctica Cycle and the Sahara Winter Storm and the Procession 

As we shift signs from Pisces to Aquarius in the procession of the equinox, a quickening of energies is expected which would explain the 30,000 earthquakes in Antarctica a 20X increase. Record snows are blanketing the N. Hemisphere leaving forecasters shocked at the depths and speed of accumulations.

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{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

23-12-2020 om 12:19 geschreven door peter  

Over the years NASA's Curiosity Rover has photographed many unexplainable artifacts including skulls on the planet Mars. One of those skulls has been discovered in image MSL 2620 MR uploaded by Neville Thompson on his Gigapan page. 

Although it is our tendency to see certain shapes and patterns in random objects, called pareidolia; I think that this object could be a real skull that apparently lies in a kind of coffin appeared to resemble the remains of an alien creature, which may be evidence of past intelligent life on Mars. 

Besides the images of the alleged alien skull there is much more for you to discover in Thompson's Gigapan Mars image.

Link: 

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/219140

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

23-12-2020 om 11:45 geschreven door peter  

UFO following a plane over George Town, Kentucky 21-Dec-2020

This daytime UFO video was filmed in the sky above George Town in Kentucky on 21st December 2020.

Witness report: 

Looked up to see a plane with vapour trail and under it a white object hover directly underneath it. It was going at exactly the same speed as the plane, maintained the same distance apart from the plane and the same direction for as long as I could see it. There was no noise but the plane was very high

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

23-12-2020 om 11:30 geschreven door peter  

NASA's Juno spacecraft sheds new light on 25-year Jupiter 'hot spot' mystery

A generation after a NASA spacecraft's probe found an unexpectedly hot and dense atmosphere at Jupiter, a newer agency mission may have some answers to the puzzle.

NASA's Juno spacecraft discovered that these "hot spots" on the gas giant planet — which the Galileo spacecraft discovered in 1995 — are wider and deeper than previous models and observations suggest, according to results revealed Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall conference, held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Juno, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, makes periodic close-up swoops by Jupiter called "perijoves" to learn more about the planet's atmosphere, in a bid to better figure out the formation history of big gas giant worlds. Juno is now on its 29th pass of the planet, dipping in and out of the intense radiation environment to send data back to Earth. 

• Related: Fly over Jupiter in this stunning video from NASA's Juno spacecraft

Insights about Jupiter help us understand not only the giant gas planets in our solar system, but also large exoplanets beyond the solar system — of which we know of thousands.

"Giant planets have deep atmospheres without a solid or liquid base like Earth. To better understand what is happening deep into one of these worlds, you need to look below the cloud layer," Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, said in a NASA statement. 

The mystery results came from NASA's Galileo mission, after it hurled an atmospheric probe into Jupiter's atmosphere on Dec. 7, 1995. The probe spent about an hour transmitting data before it was crushed. (Galileo itself persisted until 2003, when scientists deliberately hurled the spacecraft into Jupiter to avoid possible contamination of potentially habitable icy moons.) 

Galileo's probe reported a dry and windy environment within Jupiter's atmosphere. At first, scientists thought the probe hit an unexpected "desert" within a more generally moist northern equatorial region. More recent results from Juno, however, show that the entire equatorial belt is dry.

"The implication is that the hot spots may not be isolated 'deserts,' but rather, windows into a vast region in Jupiter's atmosphere that may be hotter and drier than other areas," NASA said in the same statement. "Juno's high-resolution data show that these Jovian hot spots are associated with breaks in the planet's cloud deck, providing a glimpse into Jupiter's deep atmosphere. "

• Related: Scientists get their best-ever look at Jupiter's atmosphere and storms

The new findings also may explain recent studies of "shallow lightning" Juno observed on Jupiter, which are high-altitude electrical discharges that happen when ammonia mixes with water.

"High up in the atmosphere, where shallow lightning is seen, water and ammonia are combined and become invisible to Juno's microwave instrument. This is where a special kind of hailstone that we call 'mushballs' are forming," Tristan Guillot, Juno co-investigator at the University of Côte d'Azur in France, said in the same statement. 

"These mushballs get heavy and fall deep into the atmosphere, creating a large region that is depleted of both ammonia and water. Once the mushballs melt and evaporate, the ammonia and water change back to a gaseous state and are visible to Juno again."

It appears there is still much to understand about Jupiter's atmosphere, as Juno also produced puzzles as it followed up on observations of six cyclones at the planet's south pole that it performed last year. One storm disappeared while changing from a pentagon to a hexagon shape, and the other five remain. Scientists are still trying to figure out how the vortices form and why some are more stable while others appear to die quickly, the team said in its update.

The research was released during a virtual media briefing Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union's fall conference. 

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

{ https://www.space.com/ }

23-12-2020 om 01:37 geschreven door peter  

Two strange blobs of X-ray energy are swirling out of the galaxy's center

This false-color map shows the newfound X-ray bubbles (yellow and red) towering over the galactic center.

(Image: © MPE/IKI)

• Related: 15 Unforgettable images of stars

Visible only in X-ray emissions, these newfound bubbles are considerably less energetic (and less hot) than the Fermi blobs but are nearly as gargantuan, measuring about 45,000 light-years from end to end. Like the Fermi bubbles, these orbs of hot gas tower above and below the galactic plane in a distinct hourglass shape, pinned to the galactic center at the point where the two blobs meet.

Given their similar shape and common midpoint, it's likely that the Fermi and eROSITA bubbles share a physical connection, and probably emerged from the same eruption of galactic fireworks millions of years ago, the authors wrote in their study. What caused the bubbles to blow in the first place is still a mystery, but astronomers suspect it involves an explosive outburst of energy from our galaxy's central black hole, Sagittarius A*.

That explanation fits for the newfound X-ray bubbles, the study authors wrote, considering the amount of energy required to inflate them. The team calculated that an energy release equivalent to that of 100,000 supernovas (powerful stellar explosions) was needed to create these structures — a figure on a par with X-ray energy releases observed in other galaxies with active black holes at their centers. Even if this hypothetical explosion is millions of years old, its traces would still be visible.

"The scars left by such outbursts take a very long time to heal," study co-author Andrea Merloni, a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, said in a statement.

Merloni and his colleagues discovered the X-ray bubbles using the eROSITA X-ray telescope, which rides around the cosmos aboard the Russian-German Spektr-RG satellite. The telescope scans the entire sky every six months, constantly updating our view of the X-ray universe.

• Originally published on Live Science.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.space.com/ }

23-12-2020 om 01:27 geschreven door peter  

  By Becky Ferreira

THE SOUTH POLE AITKEN BASIN.

IMAGE: JAXA

For decades, a mystery on the Moon has puzzled scientists: anomalous “hotspots” of radioactive material strewn across its surface. 

Now, scientists finally have an answer, and it could have far-reaching implications for our understanding of planetary formation and even the origins of life. 

The Moon had a rocky infancy. First, it was blasted into existence when Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object some 4.5 billion years ago, so the theory goes, causing it to spend its early years as a molten ball of magma. About a half-billion years later, it was cataclysmically struck by another space rock that left behind a gigantic impact crater called the South Pole–Aitken basin (SPA), which stretches some 1,600 miles across the far side of the Moon. 

As the oldest, deepest, and largest impact basin on the Moon—and among the largest impact craters in the whole solar system—SPA has long fascinated scientists. In particular, the weird chemical composition of the giant ancient depression, which is unlike anything else on the far side, has defied clear explanation.

Now, a team of researchers has presented evidence that the ancient impact ejected radioactive material, in addition to other anomalous elements, from a long-lost layer that once existed between the molten mantle of the infant Moon and its crystallizing crust, and subsequently seems to have vanished from the lunar far side. 

The results “have important implications for understanding the formation and evolution of the Moon”—especially why its near and far sides are so drastically different—and suggest that samples from SPA “must be considered amongst the highest-priority targets for the advancement of planetary science,” according to a study published on Friday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

“This is the first time that there's been direct evidence for this kind of stratified upper mantle,” said Daniel Moriarty, a lunar scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center who led the study, in a call.

“That has implications for things like the origin of life,” he said. “Since the Moon is so inextricably linked to the Earth, through its giant impact formation, it tells us a lot about the Earth as well.”

For years, scientists have been puzzled by the asymmetric distribution of the so-called KREEP signature on the Moon, which is an acronym for the chemicals potassium (atomic symbol K), rare Earth-elements (R-E-E), and phosphorus (atomic symbol P). 

These elements are linked to lunar volcanism, which can partially explain why they are so heavily concentrated on the near side of the Moon, as this face was far more volcanically active in the past. But this raises the question: how did anomalous hotspots of KREEP end up in SPA, on the far side, where volcanism was rare?

One hypothesis suggests that early lunar evolution led to a sequestration of KREEP on the near side, before the Moon had begun to cool and crystallize into its current form. In this model, the weird SPA deposits are explained by some random process, such as an impact on the near side that flung some of the KREEP over to the far side.

“One of the things that people were really looking into was whether these hotspots were the result of relocated materials from the near side,”  Moriarty said. “I think people were duped into this a little bit, because these materials are so prevalent on the near side and they're so closely tied to volcanic processes.” 

“We show that that might not be the case,” he continued. “From the data that we look at and integrate, it looks like that [KREEP] material was excavated by a basin on the lunar far side, so it couldn't have just been sequestered in the near side. It had to be globally distributed.”

Moriarty and his colleagues were able to detect pristine remnants of this ancient radioactive ejecta, which they think is endemic to the far side, by combining data from two missions: NASA’s Lunar Prospector orbiter and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), an instrument that NASA contributed to India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe. 

Lunar Prospector, which spent the late 1990s in a polar orbit around the Moon, was equipped with gamma ray and neutron spectrometers that enabled it to pick up radioactive signals on the surface. The instruments detected abundant deposits of thorium, an element that is weakly radioactive and a key tracer for KREEP, in SPA.

THE IMPACT THAT FORMED THE VAST SOUTH POLE – AITKEN BASIN ON THE LUNAR FARSIDE EXCAVATED THORIUM-BEARING MATERIALS FROM THE LUNAR MANTLE. THIS MAP SHOWS THE THORIUM CONCENTRATION ACROSS THE BASIN AS MEASURED BY LUNAR PROSPECTOR, ILLUSTRATING HOW THIS MANTLE EJECTA IS CURRENTLY DISTRIBUTED ACROSS THE LUNAR SURFACE.

IMAGE: MORIARTY ET AL

The M3 instrument, which was carried into lunar orbit by Chandrayaan-1 in 2008, was a near-infrared spectrometer that focused on mapping out the broader mineralogical properties of the lunar surface. By combining these two datasets, both from missions that died more than a decade ago, Moriarty and his colleagues were able to reveal new insights about SPA’s mysterious hotspots.

“It's the gift that keeps on giving,” Moriarty said of past Moon exploration. “Stuff from the 90s and 2000s, we're still finding out random things from.”

“The power of this study, and the power of this approach, is integrating different questions,” he added. “You couldn’t have done this with just one dataset. You need to integrate the thorium abundance from the Lunar Prospector with the distribution of mineralogy from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper because otherwise, you'd only have an incomplete piece of the picture.”  

The study suggests that the KREEP layer, with its radioactive elements, existed all around the infant Moon, sandwiched between the lunar mantle and the crust, when the impact that created SPA occurred. The sheer force of that crash may have actually been the catalyst that bumped the KREEP over to the near side, but it will take more observations, research, modeling, and ideally, sample returns, to understand if, and how, that may have happened.  

“Some people think that this asymmetric distribution of radioactive elements is kind of baked into the beginning,” Moriarty said. “Our paper’s showing that that's not the case. They were globally distributed, so you need something else to explain why the near side and far side are so different.”

The dimensions of this mystery extend far beyond the Moon. As humans explore the many worlds of our solar system—as well as exoplanets we have detected beyond it—our closest celestial companion, hewn from our own planet eons ago, continues to be a vital source of insights about planetary evolution writ large.

“The reason we care so much about the Moon is because it really does serve as a fundamental proxy for understanding other rocky bodies,” Moriarty said. “The variety of rocky bodies that we've observed and detected is growing by the day, so having a better fundamental understanding of how those bodies operate will help us understand the kind of the solar systems they're in and the conditions, through time, on those planets that may have been experienced.”

Fortunately, there is a pretty good chance that scientists will be able to analyze some of these highly sought-after samples soon. 

“Scientifically, some of this material is available at the South Pole for the Artemis missions,” he said, referencing NASA’s plan to return humans to the Moon this decade. “That becomes a sampling priority in terms of returning this material back to Earth, because it would tell us a ton about exactly how the Moon's mantle formed and evolved.”

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://www.vice.com/en }

23-12-2020 om 00:58 geschreven door peter  

Ethan Siegel - Senior Contributor

Starts With A Bang

Contributor Group

Science

The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

A depiction of the planets orbiting the Sun as they move through space is correct, but they don't 'trail behind' as certain non-scientific videos show.

DJ SADHU / YOUTUBE

There are a lot of moving parts to the Universe, as nothing exists in isolation. There are literally trillions of large masses in our Solar System, all orbiting around the galactic center on timescales of hundreds of millions of years. But there's a viral video, parts 1 and 2, that claims that as the Solar System moves through the galaxy, it makes a vortex shape, pulling the planets behind it as it does.

But our true cosmic address, and our real cosmic motion, is far more complex and interesting than a mere model such as this. Which is fascinating, because it's all governed by one simple law: General Relativity. On the largest scales, it's only gravity that determines the motion of everything, including us, as we move through the Universe.

Qualitatively, the "vortex video" has a few things right. It shows the following true facts:

• The planets orbit the Sun, roughly in the same plane.
• The Solar System moves through the galaxy with about a 60° angle between the galactic plane and the planetary orbital plane.
• The Sun appears to move up-and-down and in-and-out with respect to the rest of the galaxy as it revolves around the Milky Way.

And those things are true. But none of them are true the way they’re shown in the video. And that’s the important difference between qualitative and quantitative.

On the largest scales, it isn't just the Earth and the Sun that move, but the entire galaxy and... [+]

NASA, ESA; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: MING SUN (UAH), AND SERGE MEUNIER

And quantitatively, we not only predict, but can measure, exactly how our motion works. It isn't a vortex, but what it is, exactly, is fascinating.

Here we are, on planet Earth, which spins on its axis and revolves around the Sun, which orbits in an ellipse around the center of the Milky Way, which is being pulled towards Andromeda within our local group, which is being pushed around inside our cosmic supercluster, Laniakea, by galactic groups, clusters, and cosmic voids, which itself lies in the KBC void amidst the large-scale structure of the Universe. After decades of research, science has finally put together the complete picture, and can quantify exactly how fast we're moving through space, on every scale.

Within the Solar System, Earth's rotation plays an important role in causing the equator to bulge,... [+]

STEELE HILL / NASA

The planets both rotate on their axis and revolve around the Sun. Even though you perceive yourself as stationary, we know — at a cosmic level — that simply isn't true. As the Earth rotates on its axis, it hurtles us through space at nearly 1700 km/hr for someone on the equator. That might sound like a big number, but relative to the other contributions to our motion through the Universe, it's barely a blip on the cosmic radar.

That’s not really all that fast, if we switch to thinking about it in terms of kilometers per second instead. The Earth spinning on its axis gives us a speed of just 0.5 km/s, or less than 0.001% the speed of light. But there are other motions that matter more.

The speed at which planets revolve around the Sun far exceeds the rotation speeds of any of them,... [+]

NASA / JPL

Much like all the planets in our Solar System, Earth orbits the Sun at a much speedier clip than its rotational speed. In order to keep us in our stable orbit where we are, we need to move at right around 30 km/s. The inner planets — Mercury and Venus — move faster, while the outer worlds like Mars (and beyond) move slower than this. The difference is severe: Mercury makes about 4 orbits for every 1 of Earth's, and it takes Neptune over 160 Earth orbits before it's completed even one revolution.

Moreover, as the planets orbit in the plane of the solar system, they change their direction-of-motion continuously, with Earth returning to its starting point after 365 days.  Well, almost to its same exact starting point.

An accurate model of how the planets orbit the Sun, which then moves through the galaxy in a... [+]

RHYS TAYLOR

Because even the Sun itself isn’t stationary. Our Milky Way galaxy is huge, massive, and most importantly, is in motion. All the stars, planets, gas clouds, dust grains, black holes, dark matter and more move around inside of it, contributing to and affected by its net gravity. From our vantage point, some 25,000 light years from the galactic center, the Sun speeds around in an ellipse, making a complete revolution once every 220–250 million years or so.

It’s estimated that our Sun’s speed is around 200–220 km/s along this journey, which is quite a large number compared both Earth's rotation speed and its speed-of-revolution around the Sun, which are both inclined at an angle to the Sun's plane-of-motion around the galaxy. Throughout it, though, the planets remain in the same plane, with no "dragging" or vortex patterns emerging.

Although the Sun orbits within the plane of the Milky Way some 25,000-27,000 light years from the... [+]

SCIENCE MINUS DETAILS / HTTP://WWW.SCIENCEMINUSDETAILS.COM/

But the galaxy itself isn't stationary, but rather moves due to the gravitational attraction of all the overdense matter clumps and, equally, due to the lack of gravitational attraction from all of the underdense regions. Within our local group, we can measure our speed towards the largest, massive galaxy in our cosmic backyard: Andromeda. It appears to be moving towards our Sun at a speed of 301 km/s, which means —when we factor in the motion of the Sun through the Milky Way — that the local group's two most massive galaxies, Andromeda and the Milky Way, are headed towards each other at a speed of around 109 km/s.

The largest galaxy in the Local Group, Andromeda, appears small and insignificant next to the Milky... [+]

SCIENCETV ON YOUTUBE / SCREENSHOT

The Local Group, as massive as it is, isn't completely isolated. The other galaxies and clusters of galaxies in our vicinity all pull on us, and even the more distant clumps of matter exert a gravitational force. Based on what we can see, measure, and calculate, these structures appear to cause an additional motion of approximately 300 km/s, but in a somewhat different direction than all the other motions, put together. And that explains part, but not all, of the large-scale motion through the Universe. There's also one more important effect at play, one that was quantified only recently: the gravitational repulsion of cosmic voids.

The various galaxies of the Virgo Supercluster, grouped and clustered together. On the largest... [+]

ANDREW Z. COLVIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

For every atom or particle of matter in the Universe that clusters together in an overdense region, there's a region of once-average density that's lost the equivalent amount of mass. Just as a region that's more dense than average will preferentially attract you, a region that's less dense than average will attract you with a below-average amount of force. If you get a large region of space with less matter than average in it, that lack-of-attraction effectively behaves as a repellent force, just as extra attraction behaves as an attractive one. In our Universe, opposite to the location of our greatest nearby overdensities, is a great underdense void. Since we're in between these two regions, the attractive and repulsive forces add up, with each one contributing approximately 300 km/s and the total approaching 600 km/s.

The gravitational attraction (blue) of overdense regions and the relative repulsion (red) of the... [+]

µYEHUDA HOFFMAN, DANIEL POMARÈDE, R. BRENT TULLY, AND HÉLÈNE COURTOIS, NATURE ASTRONOMY 1, 0036 (2017)

When you add all of these motions together: the Earth spinning, the Earth revolving around the Sun, the Sun moving around the galaxy, the Milky Way headed towards Andromeda, and the local group being attracted to the overdense regions and repulsed by the underdense ones, we can get a number for how fast we're actually moving through the Universe at any given instant. We find that the total motion comes out to 368 km/s in a particular direction, plus or minus about 30 km/s, depending on what time of year it is and which direction the Earth is moving. This is confirmed by measurements of the cosmic microwave background, which appears preferentially hotter in the direction we're moving, and preferentially colder in the direction opposite to our motion.

The leftover glow from the Big Bang is 3.36 millikelvin hotter in one (the red) direction than... [+]

DELABROUILLE, J. ET AL.ASTRON.ASTROPHYS. 553 (2013) A96

If we ignore the Earth's rotation and revolution around the Sun, we find that our Solar System is moving relative to the CMB at 368 ± 2 km/s. When you throw in the motion of the local group, you get that all of it — the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Triangulum galaxy and all the others — are moving at 627 ± 22 km/s relative to the CMB. That larger uncertainty, by the way, is mostly due to uncertainty in the Sun's motion around the galactic center, which is the most difficult component to measure.

The relative attractive and repulsive effects of overdense and underdense regions on the Milky Way.... [+]

YEHUDA HOFFMAN, DANIEL POMARÈDE, R. BRENT TULLY, AND HÉLÈNE COURTOIS, NATURE ASTRONOMY 1, 0036 (2017)

We know exactly how the Earth moves through the Universe, and it's both beautiful and simple. Our planet and all the planets orbit the Sun in a plane, and the entire plane moves in an elliptical orbit through the galaxy. Since every star in the galaxy also moves in an ellipse, we see ourselves appear to pass in-and-out of the galactic plane periodically, on timescales of tens of millions of years, while it takes around 200-250 million years to complete one orbit around the Milky Way. The other cosmic motions all contribute, too: the Milky Way within the Local Group, the Local Group in our Supercluster, and all of it with respect to the rest-frame of the Universe.

The Solar System isn't a vortex, but rather the sum of all our great cosmic motions. Thanks to the incredible science of astronomy and astrophysics, we at last understand, to tremendous precision, exactly what that is.

{ https://www.forbes.com/ }

22-12-2020 om 22:14 geschreven door peter  

Ethan Siegel - Senior Contributor

Starts With A Bang

Contributor Group

Science

The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.

A depiction of the planets orbiting the Sun as they move through space is correct, but they don't 'trail behind' as certain non-scientific videos show.

DJ SADHU / YOUTUBE

There are a lot of moving parts to the Universe, as nothing exists in isolation. There are literally trillions of large masses in our Solar System, all orbiting around the galactic center on timescales of hundreds of millions of years. But there's a viral video, parts 1 and 2, that claims that as the Solar System moves through the galaxy, it makes a vortex shape, pulling the planets behind it as it does.

But our true cosmic address, and our real cosmic motion, is far more complex and interesting than a mere model such as this. Which is fascinating, because it's all governed by one simple law: General Relativity. On the largest scales, it's only gravity that determines the motion of everything, including us, as we move through the Universe.

Qualitatively, the "vortex video" has a few things right. It shows the following true facts:

• The planets orbit the Sun, roughly in the same plane.
• The Solar System moves through the galaxy with about a 60° angle between the galactic plane and the planetary orbital plane.
• The Sun appears to move up-and-down and in-and-out with respect to the rest of the galaxy as it revolves around the Milky Way.

And those things are true. But none of them are true the way they’re shown in the video. And that’s the important difference between qualitative and quantitative.

On the largest scales, it isn't just the Earth and the Sun that move, but the entire galaxy and... [+]

NASA, ESA; ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: MING SUN (UAH), AND SERGE MEUNIER

And quantitatively, we not only predict, but can measure, exactly how our motion works. It isn't a vortex, but what it is, exactly, is fascinating.

Here we are, on planet Earth, which spins on its axis and revolves around the Sun, which orbits in an ellipse around the center of the Milky Way, which is being pulled towards Andromeda within our local group, which is being pushed around inside our cosmic supercluster, Laniakea, by galactic groups, clusters, and cosmic voids, which itself lies in the KBC void amidst the large-scale structure of the Universe. After decades of research, science has finally put together the complete picture, and can quantify exactly how fast we're moving through space, on every scale.

Within the Solar System, Earth's rotation plays an important role in causing the equator to bulge,... [+]

STEELE HILL / NASA

The planets both rotate on their axis and revolve around the Sun. Even though you perceive yourself as stationary, we know — at a cosmic level — that simply isn't true. As the Earth rotates on its axis, it hurtles us through space at nearly 1700 km/hr for someone on the equator. That might sound like a big number, but relative to the other contributions to our motion through the Universe, it's barely a blip on the cosmic radar.

That’s not really all that fast, if we switch to thinking about it in terms of kilometers per second instead. The Earth spinning on its axis gives us a speed of just 0.5 km/s, or less than 0.001% the speed of light. But there are other motions that matter more.

The speed at which planets revolve around the Sun far exceeds the rotation speeds of any of them,... [+]

NASA / JPL

Much like all the planets in our Solar System, Earth orbits the Sun at a much speedier clip than its rotational speed. In order to keep us in our stable orbit where we are, we need to move at right around 30 km/s. The inner planets — Mercury and Venus — move faster, while the outer worlds like Mars (and beyond) move slower than this. The difference is severe: Mercury makes about 4 orbits for every 1 of Earth's, and it takes Neptune over 160 Earth orbits before it's completed even one revolution.

Moreover, as the planets orbit in the plane of the solar system, they change their direction-of-motion continuously, with Earth returning to its starting point after 365 days.  Well, almost to its same exact starting point.

An accurate model of how the planets orbit the Sun, which then moves through the galaxy in a... [+]

RHYS TAYLOR

Because even the Sun itself isn’t stationary. Our Milky Way galaxy is huge, massive, and most importantly, is in motion. All the stars, planets, gas clouds, dust grains, black holes, dark matter and more move around inside of it, contributing to and affected by its net gravity. From our vantage point, some 25,000 light years from the galactic center, the Sun speeds around in an ellipse, making a complete revolution once every 220–250 million years or so.

It’s estimated that our Sun’s speed is around 200–220 km/s along this journey, which is quite a large number compared both Earth's rotation speed and its speed-of-revolution around the Sun, which are both inclined at an angle to the Sun's plane-of-motion around the galaxy. Throughout it, though, the planets remain in the same plane, with no "dragging" or vortex patterns emerging.

Although the Sun orbits within the plane of the Milky Way some 25,000-27,000 light years from the... [+]

SCIENCE MINUS DETAILS / HTTP://WWW.SCIENCEMINUSDETAILS.COM/

But the galaxy itself isn't stationary, but rather moves due to the gravitational attraction of all the overdense matter clumps and, equally, due to the lack of gravitational attraction from all of the underdense regions. Within our local group, we can measure our speed towards the largest, massive galaxy in our cosmic backyard: Andromeda. It appears to be moving towards our Sun at a speed of 301 km/s, which means —when we factor in the motion of the Sun through the Milky Way — that the local group's two most massive galaxies, Andromeda and the Milky Way, are headed towards each other at a speed of around 109 km/s.

The largest galaxy in the Local Group, Andromeda, appears small and insignificant next to the Milky... [+]

SCIENCETV ON YOUTUBE / SCREENSHOT

The Local Group, as massive as it is, isn't completely isolated. The other galaxies and clusters of galaxies in our vicinity all pull on us, and even the more distant clumps of matter exert a gravitational force. Based on what we can see, measure, and calculate, these structures appear to cause an additional motion of approximately 300 km/s, but in a somewhat different direction than all the other motions, put together. And that explains part, but not all, of the large-scale motion through the Universe. There's also one more important effect at play, one that was quantified only recently: the gravitational repulsion of cosmic voids.

The various galaxies of the Virgo Supercluster, grouped and clustered together. On the largest... [+]

ANDREW Z. COLVIN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

For every atom or particle of matter in the Universe that clusters together in an overdense region, there's a region of once-average density that's lost the equivalent amount of mass. Just as a region that's more dense than average will preferentially attract you, a region that's less dense than average will attract you with a below-average amount of force. If you get a large region of space with less matter than average in it, that lack-of-attraction effectively behaves as a repellent force, just as extra attraction behaves as an attractive one. In our Universe, opposite to the location of our greatest nearby overdensities, is a great underdense void. Since we're in between these two regions, the attractive and repulsive forces add up, with each one contributing approximately 300 km/s and the total approaching 600 km/s.

The gravitational attraction (blue) of overdense regions and the relative repulsion (red) of the... [+]

µYEHUDA HOFFMAN, DANIEL POMARÈDE, R. BRENT TULLY, AND HÉLÈNE COURTOIS, NATURE ASTRONOMY 1, 0036 (2017)

When you add all of these motions together: the Earth spinning, the Earth revolving around the Sun, the Sun moving around the galaxy, the Milky Way headed towards Andromeda, and the local group being attracted to the overdense regions and repulsed by the underdense ones, we can get a number for how fast we're actually moving through the Universe at any given instant. We find that the total motion comes out to 368 km/s in a particular direction, plus or minus about 30 km/s, depending on what time of year it is and which direction the Earth is moving. This is confirmed by measurements of the cosmic microwave background, which appears preferentially hotter in the direction we're moving, and preferentially colder in the direction opposite to our motion.

The leftover glow from the Big Bang is 3.36 millikelvin hotter in one (the red) direction than... [+]

DELABROUILLE, J. ET AL.ASTRON.ASTROPHYS. 553 (2013) A96

If we ignore the Earth's rotation and revolution around the Sun, we find that our Solar System is moving relative to the CMB at 368 ± 2 km/s. When you throw in the motion of the local group, you get that all of it — the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Triangulum galaxy and all the others — are moving at 627 ± 22 km/s relative to the CMB. That larger uncertainty, by the way, is mostly due to uncertainty in the Sun's motion around the galactic center, which is the most difficult component to measure.

The relative attractive and repulsive effects of overdense and underdense regions on the Milky Way.... [+]

YEHUDA HOFFMAN, DANIEL POMARÈDE, R. BRENT TULLY, AND HÉLÈNE COURTOIS, NATURE ASTRONOMY 1, 0036 (2017)

We know exactly how the Earth moves through the Universe, and it's both beautiful and simple. Our planet and all the planets orbit the Sun in a plane, and the entire plane moves in an elliptical orbit through the galaxy. Since every star in the galaxy also moves in an ellipse, we see ourselves appear to pass in-and-out of the galactic plane periodically, on timescales of tens of millions of years, while it takes around 200-250 million years to complete one orbit around the Milky Way. The other cosmic motions all contribute, too: the Milky Way within the Local Group, the Local Group in our Supercluster, and all of it with respect to the rest-frame of the Universe.

The Solar System isn't a vortex, but rather the sum of all our great cosmic motions. Thanks to the incredible science of astronomy and astrophysics, we at last understand, to tremendous precision, exactly what that is.

{ https://www.forbes.com/ }

22-12-2020 om 22:14 geschreven door peter  

FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: “UFOS COULD BE MANNED BY LIFE FORMS BEYOND THE PHYSICAL WORLD”

Every week we are surprised by a new revelation referring to the UFO and extraterrestrial phenomenon . On this occasion, a former CIA director has reported that UFOs would be manned by “other forms of life.”

In a new interview, former CIA Director John Brennan , who served under former US President Barack Obama for four years, grappled with Pentagon UFO videos that appeared publicly in an investigative report from The New York Times in 2017.

Brennan said during the interview conducted by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University :

“I have seen some of those videos of the Navy pilots, and I must tell you that they are quite amazing when you look at them.”

The 2017 NYT report shed light on a secret Pentagon operation created to investigate the mysteries surrounding the sightings of “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Several videos, recently declassified by the Pentagon, showed what appear to be unidentified objects flying in unusual patterns. A video, originally captured in 2004 by Navy pilots, showed a “tick tock” shaped object rapidly ascending as pilots approached it about 100 miles off the Pacific coast.

Revelations

Brennan said:

“You try to make sure you have as much data as possible in terms of images and also different types of sensor collection, maybe technical, that you have at the time. You really have to approach it with an open mind, but get as much data as possible and get as much applied experience as possible. “

When asked about his views on theories surrounding extraterrestrial life, Brennan avoided being too literal.

Brennan said:

“Life is defined in many different ways. I think it is a bit presumptuous and arrogant of us to believe that there is no other form of life anywhere in the universe. “

When asked what he thinks about whether unknown objects are manned by aliens, Brennan suggested the notion that they could be very different life forms than what we know, even beyond the physical world.

Brennan added:

“But I think that some of the phenomena that we will see remain unexplained and could, in fact, be the result of something that we do not yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some could say constitutes a different way of life.

In response to Brennan’s response, the interviewer asked, “As an agnostic, don’t you think it’s supernatural?”

To which Brennan replied: Well, the supernatural is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s not something I would rule out. That is why I am an agnostic instead of an atheist. I just want to leave my mind open about what something could be. Who knows what these things could be?

Brennan also indicated that all the revelations given to this day are a matter to be approached with an open mind, but always obtaining the greatest amount of data and experiences.

Everything seems to indicate that the disclosures will continue, in a process that could be the prelude to a big announcement in the coming years. The question that arises is: are we ready for an extraterrestrial revelation ?

{ https://mysteriousthing.com/ }

22-12-2020 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

Those interested in proving the existence of alien species are no doubt familiar with Frank Drake’s Equation which estimated the number of possible alien civilizations in the Milky Way in the millions, and with Enrico Fermi’s paradox, asking “But where is everybody?”. Now we have a new calculation which, in a strange way, combines the Drake Equation and Fermi’s Paradox into a new astrobiological posit which agrees with Drake on the possibility of alien civilizations in the Milky Way and answers Fermi’s question with, ‘They’re all dead.’ What do we call this formula – the Cemetery Calculation? The Dead Didactic? The Morbid Musing?

“In the field of Astrobiology, the precise location, prevalence and age of potential extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) have not been explicitly explored. Here, we address these inquiries using an empirical galactic simulation model to analyze the spatial-temporal variations and the prevalence of potential ETI within the Galaxy. This model estimates the occurrence of ETI, providing guidance on where to look for intelligent life in the Search for ETI (SETI) with a set of criteria, including well-established astrophysical properties of the Milky Way.”

In a new study published in the arXiv database, Jonathan H. Jiang, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, two other Caltech physicists and one high school student, explain their quest to update calculations like Drake’s Equation with new data learned through the use of the Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler Space Telescope. That information – new numbers on stars with Earth-like planets and habitable zones, frequency of deadly radiation, etc. – along with further psychological studies on the propensity of the one so-called intelligent species we know of to destroy itself, was fed into a new model of the evolution of the Milky Way galaxy. Live Science reports on the results:

“They found that the probability of life emerging based on known factors peaked about 13,000 light-years from the galactic center and 8 billion years after the galaxy formed. Earth, by comparison, is about 25,000 light-years from the galactic center, and human civilization arose on the planet’s surface about 13.5 billion years after the Milky Way formed (though simple life emerged soon after the planet formed.)”

This means a lot of intelligent civilizations should have formed in the Milky Way before ours. And, for all of the Fermi-wannabes out there:

“Even if the galaxy reached its civilizational peak more than 5 billion years ago, most of the civilizations that were around then have likely self-annihilated.”

You may have noticed that they concluded “most” civilizations. That means a few should still be around, right?

“Even an extraordinarily low chance of a given civilization wiping itself out in any given century — say, via nuclear holocaust or runaway climate change — would mean that the overwhelming majority of peak Milky Way civilizations are already gone.”

For SETI optimists, the study concludes that the glass is microscopically full – not even enough in it to toast with in the event that another lonely intelligent civilization somehow finds us in the vastness of the Milky Way. Is that enough incentive to keep listening anyway?

Do you find yourself turning the cup over to drink the last drop of coffee? There’s your answer.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

22-12-2020 om 20:36 geschreven door peter  

My good friend, cryptozoologist, and former zoo-keeper, Richard Freeman, has very generously let me use the following. It’s Rich’s very own words on Bryan Sykes, who sadly died just a few days ago, and who Rich knew well.  With that said, over to Rich, who wrote this before Sykes passed away: “Many books have been written on mystery hominids and hominins over the years including a number of classic titles. Ivan T Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: A Legend Come to Life, Ralph Izzard’s Abominable Snowman Adventure and Janet and Colin Board’s Bigfoot Casebook spring to mind. The Nature of The Beast is something quite different to anything that has come before. Not only is it the best book ever written on the subject, it is the most important. The book is authored by Professor Bryan Sykes one of the world’s leading geneticists. Sykes is Professor of Human Genetics of Oxford University. For a scientist of such standing, to put his head over the parapet in such a contentious subject takes a lot of guts but the end result is worth it.

“Together with Michel Sartori the Director of the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland Professor Sykes instigated The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project. The idea was to bring hard science into the search for man-like monsters. Sykes and Satori invited people to send them supposed hair samples from unknown primates such as the yeti, sasquatch, almasty and orang pendek.

Sykes has researched human origins for over twenty-five years via the study of mitochondrial DNA. This is inherited from the maternal line and is generally the best preserved DNA. Mitochondria are found between the call wall and nucleus of each cell and release energy, ergo they are relatively abundant. Simply put the Professor has perfected a technique that examines a DNA segment called 12S RNA, part of a gene that helps mitochondria assemble the enzymes required for aerobic metabolism. This sequence is known for all known species of mammal. Hence there could be no confusion in any sample sent to the Project, they would be from one of the known species or from something new. A hypothetical new species could have its place on the genetic tree revealed by its closeness to other species. This meant that human contamination could be avoided. Even Neanderthal 12S RNA differs from modern man.

“The book is the result of the analysis of thirty samples sent to the project and the Professor’s own travels and personal researches. Sykes finds himself in the wilds of the American North West listening to what may or may not be an unseen sasquatch banging the walls of tunnel beneath a tree. He ventures to Russia, home of the Snowman Commission, an official government backed project to hunt hominins in the former Soviet Union. Set up in the 1950s it only lasted three years but has recently been re-formed. The Russian scientists he meets are all confirmed believers and oddly seem to think it important that Bryan only published positive results from his work and not negative. At the museum in Lausanne he examines the massive wealth of information, clippings, letters and writing bequeathed by Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, the man widely excepted to have created the discipline of cryptozoology in its modern form. There is a highly interesting chapter on the Minnesota Iceman debacle were Heuvelmans and his friend the Scottish zoologist Ivan T Sanderson seem to have been duped by a clever fake, a faux ape-man in a block of ice. Correspondence between the two does not show the ‘father of cryptozoology’ in the best of lights.

The Professor meets modern explorers and cryptozoologists such as Jon Downes and myself at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, Loren Coleman, Dr Jeff Meldrum and the mountaineer Reinhold Messner. The hair samples were collected from all across the world and sent in to the Project. Each and every one turned out to be from known species. Bears, horses, humans and goats were among the creatures found to be the former owners of the hairs.

Richard Freeman (picture taken by Nick Redfern)

“The book is completely honest and open in its treatment of the subject. The Professor is clear in pointing out that just because these samples turned out to be from known species this does not mean that anomalous primates do not exist. Sykes criticizes some cryptozoologists for not being rigorous enough and going through the right channels in the analysis of samples. He equally lambasts some scientists for rejecting the notion of large unknown creatures out of hand. Despite the negative results of the hair analysis the Professors personal view is more positive.

“Funnily enough, even though there were no anomalous primates in among the hairs I tested, I think my view has altered more to ‘something out there’ than the reverse. The change of heart comes from speaking to several people, some not even mentioned in The Nature of the Beast, who have nothing to gain but who have seen things in good light while in the company of other witnesses, that are hard to explain otherwise. To automatically reject these accounts is just as blinkered as accepting that every broken branch has been snapped or twisted by a sasquatch.

“In the books stunning postscript, the Professor’s optimism may just have been proven well founded. This section of the book astounded me so much I had to re-read it in order to make sure I had not been mistaken. The Professor may now be on the edge of a jaw dropping discovery. Whilst in Russia he was able to secure a tooth from a remarkable skull once owned by the Darwin Museum in Moscow but subsequently sold to a private collector. The skull was from a man named Khwit. Khwit who died in the early 1950s was said to be one of several hybrid children born from an almasty mother and a human farther. The almasty are said to be large, powerfully built, hair covered wild people reported from the mountains of Russia and the former USSR. They are more man-like than the yeti but clearly not modern humans.

“In the 1850s a female almasty was captured in a forested region of what is now Abkhazia in the Caucasus. Tall, muscular with an ape-like face and covered in reddish black hair she was named Zana. Zana was taken to the farm of a local nobleman in the village of T’khina. She finally became tame and could do menial tasks around the farm with her immense strength. She never learned speech but made inarticulate noises. Zana became the mother of a number of hybrid children via a village man Edgi Genaba. The first two children died after their mother tried to wash them in a cold river. Subsequent children were taken from her and raised by villagers. The two boys, Dzhanda and Khwit Genaba (born 1878 and 1884), and the two girls, Kodzhanar and Gamasa Genaba (born 1880 and 1882), were assimilated into normal society, married, and had families of their own. Zana herself died in 1890. Russian researchers located the grave of Khwit and recovered his skull.

“Extracting mitochondrial DNA from the tooth Professor Sykes found that it was 100% sub-Saharan African. This was confusing as Zana was clearly no kind of modern human. Her behaviour and appearance seemed to be far more primitive than a Neanderthal. Further work showed the DNA was from an exceptionally ancient lineage from Western Africa and furthermore it may have been pre Homo sapien. Sykes thinks that this lineage may have left Africa over 150,000 years ago, before modern man. If he is correct than Zana may have been an unknown species of pre-human hominin, a species still lurking in the Caucasus and other areas today. I was in recent e-mail contact with Professor Sykes. Like all good scientists he is proceeding with caution. He and another geneticist are still working on the sample. He has likened Zana’s DNA to old fragments of old photographs that have filtered down through time. I await the results with baited breath. The Nature of the Beast could easily have been a dry tome but it is written in a highly entertaining and accessible manner yet without losing its scientific credibility, a very impressive feat. It is a must read for any cryptozoologist or fortean.” There’s no doubt about that at all; a superb book from a man who will be greatly missed.

RELATED  VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

22-12-2020 om 20:22 geschreven door peter