Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
21-05-2021
Hardy water bears survive bullet impacts—up to a point
Above a speed limit, microscopic tardigrades shot from a gun turn to “mush.”
EYE OF SCIENCE/SCIENCE SOURCE
Hardy water bears survive bullet impacts—up to a point
They can survive temperatures close to absolute zero. They can withstand heat beyond the boiling point of water. They can shrug off the vacuum of space and doses of radiation that would be lethal to humans. Now, researchers have subjected tardigrades, microscopic creatures affectionately known as water bears, to impacts as fast as a flying bullet. And the animals survive them, too—but only up to a point. The test places new limits on their ability to survive impacts in space—and potentially seed life on other planets.
Meet a tardigrade, also known as a water bear. A few thousand of them (dehydrated) were sent to the moon on the Beresheet spacecraft, which crashed on April 22, 2019. They’re cute … right?
Image via Eye of Science/Science Source/ScienceNews.
The research was inspired by a 2019 Israeli mission called Beresheet, which attempted to land on the Moon. The probe infamously included tardigrades on board that mission managers had not disclosed to the public, and the lander crashed with its passengers in tow, raising concerns about contamination. “I was very curious,” says Alejandra Traspas, a Ph.D. student at Queen Mary University of London who led the study. “I wanted to know if they were alive.”
Traspas and her supervisor, Mark Burchell, a planetary scientist at the University of Kent, wanted to find out whether tardigrades could survive such an impact—and they wanted to conduct their experiment ethically. So after feeding about 20 tardigrades moss and mineral water, they put them into hibernation, a so-called “tun” state in which their metabolism decreases to 0.1% of their normal activity, by freezing them for 48 hours.
They then placed two to four at a time in a hollow nylon bullet and fired them at increasing speeds using a two-stage light gas gun, a tool in physics experiments that can achieve muzzle velocities far higher than any conventional gun. When shooting the bullets into a sand target several meters away, the researchers found the creatures could survive impacts up to about 900 meters per second (or about 3000 kilometers per hour), and momentary shock pressures up to a limit of 1.14 gigapascals (GPa), they report this month in Astrobiology. “Above [those speeds], they just mush,” Traspas says.
The results suggest the tardigrades on Beresheet were unlikely to survive. Although the lander is thought to have crashed at a few hundred meters per second, the shock pressure its metal frame generated hitting the surface would have been “well above” 1.14 GPa, Traspas says. “We can confirm they didn’t survive.”
The research also places new limits on a theory known as panspermia, which suggests some forms of life could move between worlds, as stowaways on meteorites kicked up after an asteroid strikes a planet or moon. Eventually, the meteorite could impact another planet—along with its living cargo.
The impact site of the Beresheet spacecraft in the Sea of Serenity region of the moon, as seen on April 22, 2019. The lunar library onboard contained various samples of DNA from Earth, including dehydrated tardigrades.
Image via NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/Wired.
Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study, says the research shows how unlikely panspermia is. “What this paper is showing is that complex multicellular animals cannot be easily transferred,” he says. “In other words, Earth is a biogeographical island with respect to animals. They’re trapped, like a flightless bird on an island.”
Traspas, however, says it shows panspermia “is hard,” but not impossible. Meteorite impacts on Earth typically arrive at speeds of more than 11 kilometers per second. On Mars, they collide at least at 8 kilometers per second. These speeds are well above the threshold for tardigrades to survive. However, some parts of a meteorite impacting Earth or Mars would experience lower shock pressures that a tardigrade could live through, Traspas says.
Objects strike the Moon at still lower speeds. When impacts on Earth send bits of rock and debris hurtling toward the Moon, about 40% of that material could travel at speeds low enough for any tardigrades to survive, Traspas and Burchell say, theoretically allowing them to jump from our planet to the Moon. A similar passage, they add, could take place from Mars to its moon, Phobos. And other life might have an even better chance of surviving; compared with water bears, some microbes can survive even faster impacts of up to 5000 meters per second, according to previous research.
The new experiment also has implications for our ability to detect life on icy moons in the outer Solar System. Saturn’s moon Enceladus, for example, ejects plumes of water into space from a subsurface ocean that could support life, as might Jupiter’s moon Europa. If the findings of the new study apply to potential life trapped in the plumes, a spacecraft orbiting Enceladus—at relatively low speeds of hundreds of meters per second—might sample and detect existing life without killing it.
No such orbiting mission is currently planned for Enceladus or Europa—upcoming NASA and European flyby missions will swoosh by the latter at high speeds of several kilometers per second. But perhaps one day far in the future an orbiter might be in the cards, with an ability to detect life at gentler speeds. “If you collect it and it died on impact, how do you know whether it’s been dead for millions of years?” asks Anna Butterworth, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied plume impacts on spacecraft. “If you collect microscopic life and it’s moving around, you can say it’s alive.”
MUFON CASE : 115540 Herndon, Virginia ( May 19, 2021 )
Mutual UFO Network : MUFON SUBMISSIONS :Saw multiple glowing objects Long Description of Sighting Report :
Saw multiple glowing objects, made no sound and moved slowly above/near my neighborhood then disappeared in Virginia
Date Submitted : 2021-05-19 Date of Event : 2021-04-02 / 8:15PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : Zvideo.mp4
VIDEO 2 : MUFON CASE : 115527 Kingston, Canada Possible UFO spotted descending & landing in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Long Description of Sighting Report
I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a bright star. It caught my eye because it was so bright& also it appeared to be blue/green. I thought it was perhaps a star being affected by gases in outer space, until it dramatically dropped from a spot directly above it, from in the middle where there’s a clearing in the clouds to where it’s positioned when the video starts. I grabbed my cell and started filming. As it landed, it also flashed a red and an organgey-red, along with white and the blue/green colour.
Date Submitted : 2021-05-18 Date of Event :2021-05-17 / 9:30PM MUFON SUBMITTER FILE : trim.A876B65AB11A4246A22DE3D7A1318F47.MOV
Triangle UFO During Sunset Over Tennessee. Photos, May 18, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Triangle UFO During Sunset Over Tennessee. Photos, May 18, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 18, 2021
Location of sighting: Mursfreeburo, Tennessee, USA
Source: MUFON #115575
This report is just in today. A person saw a triangle shaped cloud over the Tennessee area and took this photo. Triangle shaped clouds should be impossible in nature, and yet, here it is in front of us. What I mean is the shape of the object is that of an equilateral triangle...having not just two, but all three sides and angles equal. This is an alien UFO disguised as a cloud so that it wont frighten the humans that notice it. Aliens are studying humans...and the study would be spoiled if the humans knew they were being watched. Absolute proof that triangle craft are visiting earth and flying low enough to be easily seen with the naked eye.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
My boyfriend saw this triangular shaped ‘cloud’ silently appear and hover over him, turned some, then it disappeared. I only included one photo as they’re not mine. But he has 6 others taken during the sighting. I’ve added his email to the report and he fully supports and is aware of this report and wouldn’t mind an email asking about it further. We just discussed it.
Wingless Object Over Auburn Hills, Michigan May 19, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Wingless Object Over Auburn Hills, Michigan May 19, 2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: May 19, 2021
Location of sighting: Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA
Source: MUFON
Watching this video just leaves me in awe at how close some UFOs come to the public. This tictac UFO had no wings, no sound and made no trail, but as we know from US gov videos of UFOs...UFOs do make trails when they want too. This UFO shows a UFO over Michigan and I believe it came from an under water alien base that sits in the depths of Lake Michigan itself. The lake is known for its massive depth and mysteries that surround it, military planes disappearing from radar never to be found. Lake Michigan...its home to an alien base.
Now that UFO sightings or officially referred to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) encounters have become too many and too tangible to dismiss as reflected light, swamp gas, or anything of the kind, the next step is for the Pentagon to bring out much more about what it already knows.
In the CBS “60 Minutes” segment recently aired, it revealed the growing declassified data and credible accounts from military personnel, government, and former government that has been thoroughly cataloged and competently explained.
In a conversation between CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker and Luis Elizondo, they turn to the military’s great current state of publicly available information.
Elizondo, who was in US military intelligence for two decades and was part of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Program (AATIP), said that they investigated a technology that did 6-to-700 g-forces and flew at 13,000 miles an hour. According to Elizondo, the technology can evade radar and fly through air and water, as well as possibly space.
Elizondo added that it has no apparent signs of propulsion, no control surfaces, no wings, and yet still can defy Earth’s gravity. “That’s precisely what we’re seeing,” Elizondo said. In some cases, Elizondo and his team found simple explanations for what people are seeing, but some are not after going through their due diligence.
The segment then interviewed David Fravor and Lieutenant Alex Dietrich, two of the four pilots who witnessed a UAP during a training mission with the USS Nimitz carrier strike group in 2004 at 100 miles southwest of San Diego, California. The interview described in great detail the real and yet impossible to grasp UAP behavior.
For a week, the radar on a nearby ship, the USS Princeton, had detected multiple anomalous aerial vehicles over the horizon that went down 80,000 feet in less than a second. Fravor and Dietrich were diverted to investigate the strange sighting on November 14, each with a weapons systems officer in the backseat. They spotted an area of roiling whitewater the size of a 737 in an otherwise calm sea.
Now that Pentagon has been reactivated the AATIP since last August under the new name, UAP task force, more details have likely been cataloged since service members now are encouraged to report any unusual encounters.
While still head of the intelligence committee, Senator Marco Rubio asked the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon in December 2020 to present Congress an unclassified report.
The report is expected to be the next major step in this building story. It will be released on June 1, 2021, to the Senate.
In a new Mars update (the first update can be read here), mysterious rocks have been found and there may have been a fairly recent volcanic eruption.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover discovered some unusual rocks in the Jezero Crater and has been studying them with two of its instruments – the rock-zapping SuperCam laser and the WATSON (“Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering”) camera.
It’s unclear whether these rocks are sedimentary or volcanic. If they are volcanic in origin, this would be a huge help for experts understanding the history of the crater that billions of years ago had a lake and a river delta. If the rocks turn out to be sedimentary, they may have been created over a long period of time from sand, silt, and clay which may hold clues to ancient Martian life (if there ever was any).
Surface of Mars
In order to know for sure, the rover may need to collect samples from inside of the rocks. “When you look inside a rock, that’s where you see the story,” Ken Farley, who is the Perseverance’s project scientist at Caltech, said in a statement.
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image of "Santa Cruz," a hill within Jezero Crater, on April 29, 2021.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
NASA's Perseverance rover viewed these rocks with its Mastcam-Z imager on April 27, 2021.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image of “Santa Cruz,” a hill within Jezero Crater, on April 29, 2021, the 68th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
NASA’s Perseverance rover viewed these rocks with its Mastcam-Z imager on April 27, 2021. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
In other Mars news, scientists have found evidence of what might be the most recent volcanic eruption, suggesting that the planet may still be volcanically active and life may have been present there not too long ago. While it’s not news that experts have floated around the possibility that the Red Planet may still be volcanically active, this new research sheds a whole new light on the theory.
While the majority of volcanic eruptions happened on Mars between 3 and 4 billion years ago, some experts have suggested that they could have occurred as recently as 2.5 million years ago. But that’s nothing compared to this most recent study as scientists have found evidence of an eruption that occurred just within the last 50,000 years.
By analyzing data collected from satellites that are orbiting the Red Planet, researchers focused on an 8-mile-wide smooth dark volcanic deposit located in a region called Elysium Planitia. While other volcanic eruptions on the planet resulted with lava flowing along the surface, this newly discovered one seemed to have a fairly recent amount of rock and ash sitting on top of a lava flow. (A picture can be seen here.)
A satellite image of a recent explosive volcanic deposit around a fissure of the Cerberus Fossae system on Mars.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/The Murray Lab)
Mars may still be volcanically active.
In a statement, David Horvath, who is a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and the lead author of the study, said in a statement, “This eruption could have spewed ash as high as 10 kilometers (6 miles) into the Martian atmosphere.” And according to prior research, there may still be magma moving deep underground the Cerberus Fossae area of Mars.
Jeff Andrews-Hanna, who is a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona at Tucson and another author of the study, weighed in by stating, “If lava was erupting to the surface only 50,000 years ago, and the area is still rumbling with seismicity today, that means that it could erupt again.”
And since this newly discovered eruption occurred near the most recent large impact crater, experts have suggested a possible connection between the two – perhaps the impact triggered the volcanic eruption (it’s just speculation at this point but it is an interesting hypothesis). Furthermore, the heat from the recent eruption may have helped potential microbial life to thrive on Mars although that hasn’t been proven either as no proof of life has been found yet.
In a new and very important discovery,scientists have found liquid water inside of a meteorite. Known as the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, it dates back around 4.6 billion years to the time when our Solar System was first forming. The meteorite fell to Earth in 2012 in the United States with several pieces being found close to the Sutter’s Mill gold rush site near Sacramento, California.
While we do know that water exists beyond Earth, it has never before been found in a type of meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites. But now, researchers have officially detected a tiny amount of water in the Sutter’s Mill meteorite. The fact that the carbon dioxide-rich liquid water was discovered in such an ancient meteorite may help with the theory that these types of space rocks could have contributed to our planet’s early water sources. While there are numerous theories regarding how Earth obtained its water, one of the most popular ideas is that a bunch of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites crashed down to Earth – all containing some water.
The researchers noted that “if the water in those minerals contributed to Earth’s water, then it can be considered the ‘parent’ of Earth’s water, and the meteorites hosting these minerals, therefore, the ‘grandparent material of Earth’s water’.”
They analyzed the meteorite by using microscopy techniques and were able to see a very small calcite crystal that contained a tiny amount of liquid water that was at least 15% carbon dioxide. The fact that liquid water and carbon dioxide were found in such an ancient space rock is a significant discovery.
In an email to Space.com, Akira Tsuchiyama, who is a visiting research professor at Ritsumeikan University in Japan and an author of the study, stated that their findings “gives the direct evidence of dynamic evolution of the solar system.”
(Not the Sutter’s Mill meteorite)
It is believed that the meteorite came from a much larger asteroid made up of frozen water and carbon dioxide. The asteroid probably formed past Jupiter’s orbit in the colder part of our Solar System.
Even though it was a very tiny amount of liquid that they found, Tsuchiyama reiterated that it still “gives the evidence for the presence of such liquid water.” Their study was published in the journal Science Advances where it can be read in full.
A picture of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite can be seen here.
Fragments of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, collected by NASA Ames and SETI Institute meteor astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens in the evening of Tuesday April 24, 2012 two days after the fall. In a 2021 study, researchers have detected liquid water in minerals in fragments of this meteorite.
(Image credit: NASA/Eric James)
In a new study, researchers have detected liquid water in fragments of the Sutter's Mill meteorite.
(Image credit: Tsuchiyama et al. (2021), Science Advances)
Stunning Simulation of Stars Being Born Is Most Realistic Ever
Stunning Simulation of Stars Being Born Is Most Realistic Ever
Snapshot from the first full STARFORGE simulation. Nicknamed the “Anvil of Creation,” a giant molecular cloud with individual star formation and comprehensive feedback, including protostellar jets, radiation, stellar winds, and core-collapse supernovae.
Credit: Northwestern University/UT Austin
First high-resolution model to simulate an entire gas cloud where stars are born.
A team including Northwestern University astrophysicists has developed the most realistic, highest-resolution 3D simulation of star formation to date. The result is a visually stunning, mathematically-driven marvel that allows viewers to float around a colorful gas cloud in 3D space while watching twinkling stars emerge.
Snapshot from a STARFORGE simulation. A rotating gas core collapses, forming a central star that launches bipolar jets along its poles as it feeds on gas from the surrounding disk. The jets entrain gas away from the core, limiting the amount that the star can ultimately accrete.
Credit: Northwestern University/UT Austin
Called STARFORGE (Star Formation in Gaseous Environments), the computational framework is the first to simulate an entire gas cloud — 100 times more massive than previously possible and full of vibrant colors — where stars are born.
It also is the first simulation to simultaneously model star formation, evolution and dynamics while accounting for stellar feedback, including jets, radiation, wind and nearby supernovae activity. While other simulations have incorporated individual types of stellar feedback, STARFORGE puts them altogether to simulate how these various processes interact to affect star formation.
Using this beautiful virtual laboratory, the researchers aim to explore longstanding questions, including why star formation is slow and inefficient, what determines a star’s mass and why stars tend to form in clusters.
The researchers have already used STARFORGE to discover that protostellar jets — high-speed streams of gas that accompany star formation — play a vital role in determining a star’s mass. By calculating a star’s exact mass, researchers can then determine its brightness and internal mechanisms as well as make better predictions about its death.
Snapshot from the first full STARFORGE simulation. Nicknamed the “Anvil of Creation,” a giant molecular cloud with individual star formation and comprehensive feedback, including protostellar jets, radiation, stellar winds and core-collapse supernovae.
Newly accepted by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an advanced copy of the manuscript, detailing the research behind the new model, appeared online today. An accompanying paper, describing how jets influence star formation, was published in the same journal in February 2021.
“People have been simulating star formation for a couple decades now, but STARFORGE is a quantum leap in technology,” said Northwestern’s Michael Grudić, who co-led the work. “Other models have only been able to simulate a tiny patch of the cloud where stars form — not the entire cloud in high resolution. Without seeing the big picture, we miss a lot of factors that might influence the star’s outcome.”
“How stars form is very much a central question in astrophysics,” said Northwestern’s Claude-André Faucher-Giguère, a senior author on the study. “It’s been a very challenging question to explore because of the range of physical processes involved. This new simulation will help us directly address fundamental questions we could not definitively answer before.”
Snapshot from a STARFORGE simulation. A rotating gas core collapses, forming a central star that launches bipolar jets along its poles as it feeds on gas from the surrounding disk. The jets entrain gas away from the core, limiting the amount that the star can ultimately accrete.
From start to finish, star formation takes tens of millions of years. So even as astronomers observe the night sky to catch a glimpse of the process, they can only view a brief snapshot.
“When we observe stars forming in any given region, all we see are star formation sites frozen in time,” Grudić said. “Stars also form in clouds of dust, so they are mostly hidden.”
Snapshot from a STARFORGE simulation. A rotating gas core collapses, forming a central star that launches bipolar jets along its poles as it feeds on gas from the surrounding disk. The jets entrain gas away from the core, limiting the amount that the star can ultimately accrete.
For astrophysicists to view the full, dynamic process of star formation, they must rely on simulations. To develop STARFORGE, the team incorporated computational code for multiple phenomena in physics, including gas dynamics, magnetic fields, gravity, heating and cooling and stellar feedback processes. Sometimes taking a full three months to run one simulation, the model requires one of the largest supercomputers in the world, a facility supported by the National Science Foundation and operated by the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
The resulting simulation shows a mass of gas — tens to millions of times the mass of the sun — floating in the galaxy. As the gas cloud evolves, it forms structures that collapse and break into pieces, which eventually form individual stars. Once the stars form, they launch jets of gas outward from both poles, piercing through the surrounding cloud. The process ends when there is no gas left to form anymore stars.
Pouring jet fuel onto modeling
Already, STARFORGE has helped the team discover a crucial new insight into star formation. When the researchers ran the simulation without accounting for jets, the stars ended up much too large — 10 times the mass of the sun. After adding jets to the simulation, the stars’ masses became much more realistic — less than half the mass of the sun.
“Jets disrupt the inflow of gas toward the star,” Grudić said. “They essentially blow away gas that would have ended up in the star and increased its mass. People have suspected this might be happening, but, by simulating the entire system, we have a robust understanding of how it works.”
Snapshot from the first full STARFORGE simulation. Nicknamed the “Anvil of Creation,” a giant molecular cloud with individual star formation and comprehensive feedback, including protostellar jets, radiation, stellar winds and core-collapse supernovae.
Credit: Northwestern University/UT Austin
Beyond understanding more about stars, Grudić and Faucher-Giguère believe STARFORGE can help us learn more about the universe and even ourselves.
“Understanding galaxy formation hinges on assumptions about star formation,” Grudić said. “If we can understand star formation, then we can understand galaxy formation. And by understanding galaxy formation, we can understand more about what the universe is made of. Understanding where we come from and how we’re situated in the universe ultimately hinges on understanding the origins of stars.”
“Knowing the mass of a star tells us its brightness as well as what kinds of nuclear reactions are happening inside it,” Faucher-Giguère said. “With that, we can learn more about the elements that are synthesized in stars, like carbon and oxygen — elements that we are also made of.”
The study, “STARFORGE: Toward a comprehensive numerical mode of star cluster formation and feedback,” was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.
The Moon Is Not What You Think - What They Saw Will Shock You
The Moon Is Not What You Think - What They Saw Will Shock You
Uncover the truth about ancient extraterrestrial civilizations, suppressed antigravity technology, off-planet bases & civilizations, humanity’s progenitor race, NASA operations & agenda, and the Secret Space Program!
Could the moon be a hollow-bodied construct that contains a hidden message encoding the deeper mysteries of our universe and life on Earth? Our team of researchers examines evidence that suggests that our moon is of artificial origin, intentionally placed in exact orbit by advanced civilizations in ancient times.
With recent discoveries from NASA and the European Space Agency, the lunar enigmas have only compounded.
Rising: Here’s Why UFO Disclosures Are Not A Pentagon Ploy For More Funding
Rising: Here’s Why UFO Disclosures Are Not A Pentagon Ploy For More Funding
UFOs are a divisive topic in the populist Right.
I’ve noticed that it falls along roughly the same lines as the previous debates over whether COVID was a real virus or an elaborate worldwide hoax or whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. There are some people who are certain that UFOs are real and being covered up by the government, some people who are just amused by the debate and
The Bulwark had an article yesterday which made the important point that UFOs were mainstream and most people believed that UFOs were real in the 1960s and 1970s. This changed in the late 1980s and 1990s and it had become a fringe topic by the early 2000s.
Evidence of DUMBs and Tunnels Between Argentina & Antarctica? Strange Patterns on the Ocean Floor?
Evidence of DUMBs and Tunnels Between Argentina & Antarctica? Strange Patterns on the Ocean Floor?
Evidence of DUMBs and Tunnels Between Argentina & Antarctica? Strange Patterns on the Ocean Floor?
Check out our discovery of what appear to be highways on or under the floor of the South Pacific Ocean. Whatever is going on, those right angles and loop junctions are not naturally occurring!
Swarms of Robots Could Dig Underground Cities on Mars
Swarms of Robots Could Dig Underground Cities on Mars
Underground habitats have recently become a focal point of off-planet colonization efforts. Protection from micrometeorites, radiation, and other potential hazards makes underground sites desirable compared to surface dwellings. Building such subterranean structures presents a plethora of challenges, not the least of which is how to actually construct them. A team of researchers at the Delft University of Technology (TUD) is working on a plan to excavate material and then use it to print habitats. All that would be done with a group of swarming robots.
The idea stems from a grant opportunity posted by the European Space Agency. Students at the Robotic Building lab (RB) at TU Delft, led by Dr. Henriette Bier, were enthusiastic to participate in the challenge that focuses on in-situ resource utilization for off-Earth construction. The RB team, together with experts in material science, robotics, and aerospace engineering submitted an idea that was granted €100k to develop a preliminary proof of concept.
The proposed approach focuses on the lab’s specialty – robotic building – and has four main components – digging out the regolith, printing a new habitat using an additive manufacturing process, coordinating the work between all the robots that would be needed to complete the tasks, and powering them as well as the habitat.
Excavating regolith with robots has been explored previously, but usually in the context of the moon. Different patterns of excavation are useful for building different structures, and the pattern the RB team focused on was a downwards sloping spiral. Such a structure could create a stable, safe structure within a relatively small footprint on the surface.
Example of some of the subtractive toolpaths that would be use to hollow out the habitat’s tunnels. Credit: Bier et al.
Modeling the stresses and strains on that structure is a key component of the current study project. The team developed a 1m x 1m scale prototype of a fragment with patterns that would allow them to create safe and stable areas effectively. Some of those areas were designed with habitation in mind, including detachable plant areas that could house hydroponically grown plants.
Tons upon tons of regolith would have to be removed from any real-life scale excavation site. That regolith is used as material to 3D print a stable habitat. Originally, the team was planning on combining regolith withliquid Sulphurto produce concrete. But after involving material scientists and an industrial partner specialized in robotic printing with cement they settled on using cement-based concrete by tapping into some of Mars’ water resources. Creating cement itself requires an infrastructure though, so any such plan to utilize regolith would have to wait until after that infrastructure was already in place on the planet.
Video discussing how swarm methodology can be implemented to aid in the exploration of Mars.
Structuring the habitat itself is also a key consideration when designing what shape should be 3D printed. The team focused on relatively porous structures, which allowed them to use less material in its construction. However, the structures still had remarkably high strength and durability and also provided good insulation from the radiation and micrometeorite impacts the subsurface colony is looking to avoid.
Some of the advantages of this approach are due to one of the biggest drivers of innovation – collaboration. The project is coordinated by the RB lab but involves partners both at TUD and external commercial partners. These collaborators bring civil, aerospace, and robotic engineering expertise, and additive manufacturing technologies for developing the robotic swarm construction approach .
An example of the “rhizome” habitat that would have a relatively small exposed area on the surface but provide a large habitable space underground. Credit: Bier et al.
Those collaborators will have to continue to work together for a long time in order to see this project eventually implemented on Mars. As a technology demonstrator, it still has a long way to go to even be accepted as a mission concept. Dr. Bier and her team hope to continue pushing the concept forward and are shooting for future funding opportunities as part of that development path.
With luck, swarming robots and 3D printed cement-based habitats will play a key role in the future development of what so far is only science fiction – an underground city on Mars.
UFO Sighted In Westminster, Massachusetts ( May 18, 2021 )
UFO Sighted In Westminster, Massachusetts, May 18, 2021 : George W Stanton Hwy STATEMENT : So they was deff transporting a UFO on the highway!!
credit :Shannon Archambault
UFO Sighted Over Popocatépetl, Volcano, Mexico ( May 2, 2021 )
Impressive sighting of an immense Cylindrical UFO coming out of the Mexican Popocatepetl volcano.
The surprising image comes from the volcanic monitor cameras installed nearby this fire colossus, which follow their activity 24 hours a day.
For decades, intense and incredible UFO activities have been recorded entering and leaving this active volcano, which leads to experts and researchers of the UFO phenomenon claiming that this volcano is a UFO base or a dimensional portal. Sighting made on the May 2, 2021.
UFO Sighted Over São Gonçalo, Brazil ( May 11, 2021 )
UFO Sighted Over São Gonçalo, Brazil on May 11, 2021
STATEMENT :São Gonçalo RJ - 11/05/2021
credit :Diogo HG
UFOs Sighted Over Sidcup, England ( May 17, 2021 )
UFOs Sighted Over Sidcup, Bexley, south-east London Borough, England on May 17, 2021
STATEMENT :Black Donut UFO over Sidcup
17/05/2021 18:42 Moving in a very strange fashion, slowly spinning at times then stopping and hovering defo looked to be under some form of control rather then just balloons blowing in the wind. They looked black, donut shaped with a hole or white light in the centre.
3 Spherical Shaped UFOs, 1st Spotted in Mexico then Nevada & then in California! Is it the same UFO?
Three Spherical shaped UFO sightings.
Starting in Iztapalapa Mexico on 05/12/21 then another in Minden Nevada on 05/14/21 and then the last reported sighting in Glendale California on 05/16/21. All on the west coast with 1800 miles and two days between Iztapalapa Mexico sighting and the possible next sighting in Minden Nevada then another two days later and 421 miles another sighting was seen in Glendale California! Is this the same Spherical shaped object or is it just coincidental?
SOMETHING'S ODD. Galaxy group Stephan’s Quintet has been at the focus of a major redshift controversy for years. However, astronomers are certain the galaxy at the lower left is some 10 times closer to us than the others.
NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team
Some autumn night, hold a dime at arm’s length and block a tiny piece of the constellation Pegasus the Winged Horse. Hidden behind that coin may be the most famous galaxy cluster in all the heavens.
First seen by French astronomer Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan in 1877, the five galaxies famously known as Stephan’s Quintet constitute the first compact group ever found. Back in the 19th century, however, no one knew that these smudgy patches were far more than mere clouds of gas in our Milky Way Galaxy. With the advent of better telescopes and spectroscopy, astronomers eventually saw each as a city of billions of stars. But there was mystery here, stupendous mystery, and it arose not slowly but all at once.
The puzzle involved redshift, the most important evidence of a galaxy’s distance. Redshift — a change in the wavelength of light an object emits as it moves away from us — indicates how fast a galaxy recedes in our expanding universe. Imagine a balloon covered with polka dots. As the entire cosmos (the balloon) expands, the galaxies (dots) logically get farther apart. A dot close to the one you live on will move slowly away from you; more distant dots will move away faster.
The galaxies in Stephan’s Quintet all seem physically connected, so they should display similar redshifts as the space between our Milky Way and them grows continuously larger. Indeed, more than merely appearing physically near each other, tendrils of dusty gas appear to connect them loosely. It seems as if each galaxy’s gravity pulls off strings of material from the others, like pizza cheese. They appear interlocked.
There was just one problem. Four of the galaxies show a large redshift, corresponding to a recessional speed of 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) a second. This means they lie about 300 million light-years away. But galaxy NGC 7320, at lower left in the photograph, shows a redshift indicating a slower speed of just 491 miles (790 km) per second. This would mean it’s only 30 million light-years away.
This discrepancy was not some mere technicality; it was huge. If one galaxy at the same distance as others has a very different redshift, then redshift cannot be a reliable indicator of distance. Some astronomers, led by the iconoclast Halton Arp (see object 38 on our list), concluded that redshift can’t be trusted. The size of the universe was suddenly in doubt, as were many of the tenets of cosmology, such as how quickly everything is expanding. Thus, Stephan’s Quintet became the paradigm for the mysterious, and for cosmological insecurity.
Many astronomers insisted the streams of material between NGC 7320 and the other galaxies proved they were physically bound together in space. Moreover, all five galaxies have approximately the same apparent size, further evidence they sit at the same distance. After all, if the low-redshift galaxy was really much closer to us, shouldn't it appear far larger than the others?
The Hubble Space Telescope finally solved this issue in 2000. Its razor-sharp imaging resolved individual stars in the low-redshift galaxy, while the other four remained starless. This proved NGC 7320 is much closer to us than the others.
At last, mystery laid to rest. It’s a line-of-sight situation. One galaxy sits in front of the other four — 10 times closer, in fact. The seeming strings of matter do not really extend from NGC 7320 to the others. And NGC 7320 appears the same size as the other four because it happens to be a smaller galaxy.
Cosmologists let out a collective sigh of relief. Redshift is reliable after all. The universe is safe. Astronomers now prefer to label the four galaxies that are actually a physically bound unit as Hickson Compact Group 92. This actually includes a separate galaxy that was not a part of the original quintet, so that even though NGC 7320 has been expelled from the club, Compact Group 92 remains a fivesome.
But relief did not last long. Amazingly enough, a different puzzle suddenly arose. Near the nucleus of the quintet’s uppermost galaxy is a benign-looking star that spectroscopy now shows is a quasar with an enormous redshift. Meaning, it must lie billions of light-years beyond the galaxy. Yet there it is, clearly in front of it, and seemingly interacting with the galaxy’s gas.
This resurrects the same cosmic puzzle — with a vengeance. How could a galaxy envelop a quasar whose redshift indicates it’s several billion light-years farther away?
It’s déjà vu all over again. It’s another doozy of a discordant distance issue in the very same rabbit patch. Indeed, this time the visual evidence is even more ironclad. Might redshift be unreliable after all? Or does the distant quasar just happen to align with a weird empty hole that tunnels all the way through this galaxy?
Stephan’s Quintet just won’t quit the Strangeness Society.
China is only the 2nd nation to successfully soft-land on Mars.
China has released the first photographs taken by its Zhurong rover, which touched down on Mars late on Friday (May 14) as part of the country's Tianwen-1 mission.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA), which runs the mission, has released two Mars photographs taken by the rover: one in color and one in black and white. Both images show parts of the rover and its lander against a backdrop of Utopia Planitia, the expansive northern plain that Zhurong will explore during its mission.
This photo is the first color view of Mars from China's Zhurong rover, looking toward its rear, from its landing spot on a plain in Utopia Planitia following a May 14, 2021 landing. This image was released May 19. (Image credit: China National Space Administration)
The color image shows a view looking to the rear of Zhurong from a navigation camera above the rover's main deck. Solar arrays are visible, as are some surface rocks and features. The black and white image is from an obstacle avoidance camera at the front of the rover. It was captured with a wide-angle lens that also revealed a view of the Mars horizon in the distance, as well as two subsurface radar instruments on the rover itself.
In addition to the photos from the surface, CNSA also released two short videos of the orbiter and Zhurong rover's landing capsule separating during Friday's maneuver. Both videos come from cameras on the orbiter and show the capsule pulling away.
This black and white view of Mars is a photo from a navigation camera on China's Mars rover Zhurong released on May 19, 2021 about 4 days after landing. The ramp to the Martian surface from Zhurong's lander is visible, as are two subsurface radar instruments on the rover and the Martian horizon in the wide-angle view. (Image credit: China National Space Administration)
China's successful Mars landing made the country only the second nation to successfully soft-land on Mars, joining the United States. The Soviet Union and the European Space Agency have also sent missions to the Red Planet's surface, but those landings have not been successful. Zhurong's arrival brings the active Mars rover tally to three, joining NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.
The landing comes as part of China's Tianwen-1 mission, which was also the nation's first successful Mars orbiter; China was the sixth entity to notch that accomplishment in February. Tianwen-1 translates to "Heavenly Questions"; the name Zhurong honors an ancient Chinese fire god.
The six-wheeled, 530-lb. (240 kilogram) Zhurong rover carries six instruments that the rover will use to study geology and climate in the Utopia Planitia region. The rover is meant to operate for about three months.
This brief time-lapse captures the moment of separation as China's Zhurong rover and lander cast off from the Tianwen 1 orbiter to descend to Mars. (Image credit: China National Space Administration)
Another view of China's Zhurong rover descent capsule separating from the Tianwen 1 orbiter for a landing on the Red Planet in May 2021.
(Image credit: China National Space Administration)
This brief time-lapse captures the moment of separation as China's Zhurong rover and lander cast off from the Tianwen 1 orbiter to descend to Mars.
(Image credit: China National Space Administration)
Another view of China's Zhurong rover descent capsule separating from the Tianwen 1 orbiter for a landing on the Red Planet in May 2021.
(Image credit: China National Space Administration)
Zhurong's next milestone is expected to occur on Friday or Saturday (May 21 or May 22), when the rover will make its way down the pair of ramps seen in the new greyscale image to reach the Martian surface proper.
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow uson Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
US Navy Pilot: “My Colleagues And I Saw UFOs Hundreds Of Times”
US Navy Pilot: “My Colleagues And I Saw UFOs Hundreds Of Times”
Last Sunday, the American program “60 Minutes” aired an interview with former US Navy pilot Lieutenant Ryan Graves.
He said that he and his colleagues saw strange flying objects ( he calls them the term “unidentified aerial phenomena – UAP) several hundred times, almost every day, between 2015 and 2017.
Most of these sightings came from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia.
Ryan Graves
Graves stated that they have seen these ultra-fast objects so often that they are already used to their presence, but they are very worried about them. In particular, he called them a threat to national security.
“To be honest, I’m worried. You know, if there were tactical aircraft from another country, that would be a major problem,” Graves said.
Senator Mark Rubio , who also appeared on 60 Minutes, agreed with Graves . He warned that UFOs do pose a serious threat to national security and that senators “can no longer laugh at them.”
“Some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic, and they almost giggle when you bring it up. But I don’t think we can let the stigma [of the UFO topic] prevent us from getting an answer to a fundamental question.”
Rubio argued that the possibility that these UFOs are actually drones or aircraft from a rival military power – or another civilization – invade US airspace without permission should attract more attention and resources.
“I want us to take this seriously and develop a process for how to deal with it. I want us to have a process for analyzing the data every time it comes up. To have a place where these events are cataloged and constantly analyzed. until we get the answers. Maybe it has a very simple answer. Maybe not, “Rubio said.
Last December, when Marc Rubio served as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he urged the Pentagon to declassify reports of UAPs, unidentified aerial events. As a result of his investigation, it was stated that the Pentagon’s Task Force on Unidentified Air Events must report its findings to Congress by June 2021.
According to informant Luis Elizondo , who also spoke in 60 Minutes, the soon-to-be-released report on unidentified aerial phenomena could reveal the biggest failures in US intelligence since 9/11.
Luis Elizondo led the $ 22 million Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program from 2007 to 2012, created by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Like Rubio, Elizondo had access to some classified material that has not yet been released to the public, and he also states that the UFO threat is very real.
“Imagine a technology that can undergo an overload of 6 to 700 g, that can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, that can evade radar, and that can fly through air, water and possibly space,” he said in interview “60 Minutes”.
(RNS) — I first met Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, head of the Vatican Observatory and sometimes called “the pope’s astronomer,” after an event on science fiction and theology we did at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture.
We ended up talking a lot about aliens. He agreed with me that the Catholic intellectual tradition would have absolutely zero problem with the idea of intelligent life — that is, substances of a rational nature (the classic definition of a “person” in my field) — on other planets.
But when asked in a later, more in-depth interview on these topics if he would be willing to baptize an alien, he said, “Only if she asked.”
At one point in our history, the discussion of nonhuman persons would have been limited to Wookies like Chewbacca in “Star Wars” or Vulcans like Spock in “Star Trek.” But with the stunning “60 Minutes” segment on UFOs this week, it is now fair to say not only that we have something close to strong evidence that we are not alone in the universe but that the idea has gone mainstream.
According to the CBS News flagship show, a report due to Congress next month from the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon is poised to offer firm video evidence of incredible encounters with UFOs — including from Navy pilots who claim to encounter them “every day.”
There is some chance that these vehicles could be supersecret spy technology from, say, China or Russia that we previously didn’t know about. But in light of documented movements that no other known aircraft can pull off — even when flying into a massive headwind and without having any kind of exhaust plume — the UFO explanation is, remarkably, more likely at this point.
Sen. Marco Rubio told “60 Minutes” that his colleagues are very interested in getting the report and that the stigma surrounding this issue is starting to fade.
“I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously. I want us to have a process to analyze the data every time it comes in,” he said. “That there be a place where this is cataloged and constantly analyzed, until we get some answers. Maybe it has a very simple answer. Maybe it doesn’t.”
I’ve heard lots of folks over the years speculate on what the reality of nonhuman persons on other plants would mean for religious belief — implying that it would be some kind of challenge or problem. But I agree with Ezra Klein, who argued in a recent New York Times column that the challenge is actually more profound for his own secular worldview, which positions humanity as a kind of cosmic accident in an empty cosmos.
On the contrary, Klein notes, religious traditions have always believed that we share both Earth and the larger universe with other intelligent beings: angels, demons, demigods, jinn and other kinds of nonhuman intelligences.
We’ve lost that mindset in the developed West as Klein’s worldview has become dominant, but in a course I teach for theology majors titled “Animals, Angels and Aliens: Beyond the Human in Christian Thought,” I try to help my students understand and appreciate a wider, more open-minded view of the universe, and how recognizing the existence of other powers and principalities might break down their largely myopic worldviews.
One of the texts I use in the course is Thomas F. O’Meara’s wonderful book “Vast Universe,” which gives newbies a nice survey of thought about extraterrestrials and Christian revelation. From Origen in the third century to Thomas Aquinas in the 13th to the Renaissance thinkers of the 15th and 16th centuries, there is already a robust set of theological reflections on a host of questions that nonhuman persons on other planets produce.
Did Jesus die for them too? Or would they need their own Incarnation and savior? Or maybe they didn’t have a primeval original sin that disordered their nature and environment and therefore wouldn’t have the “happy fault” that produced our particular history of salvation? Are they governed by our sense of right and wrong or would it be quite different? Or would they be capable of sinning at all?
Far from being a kind of backbreaker for religious faith, our becoming aware of the existence of other rational creatures in the cosmos would likely reinvigorate theological inquiry quite dramatically, and the church’s intellectual tradition on these questions would be brought to bear in exciting and important ways.
So bring it on, director of national intelligence and Pentagon. Let’s see what you got. The Catholic intellectual tradition stands ready to help humanity interpret and process the fact that we are not alone in the universe.
China’s Mars rover Zhurong has yet to drive off its lander and start exploring.
Credit: Xinhua/Alamy
Now that they know the general landing location of China’s Zhurong Mars rover, scientists are rushing to analyse satellite images and geological maps to pinpoint intriguing features. Of particular significance is a possible mud volcano — a type of landform that no Mars rover has visited before.
“We want to propose the plan for the rover,” says Xiao Long, a planetary geologist at the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, who says scientists across China will now have the tantalizing opportunity to influence Zhurong’s journey.
“A number of teams will be trying to plan out the traverse — where you would go in what time frame, to accomplish as many goals as you can in a 90-day mission,” adds Joseph Michalski, a planetary scientist at the University of Hong Kong.
China has landed its first rover on Mars — here’s what happens next
Encased in a lander, the rover touched down shortly after 7 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday, 10 months after China’s Tianwen-1 mission left Earth. Until the touchdown, the potential landing zone — in a vast impact crater called Utopia Planitia — was thousands of kilometres across, meaning that scientists could only loosely finger sites of possible interest.
Images yet to come
No images from the rover have so far been released — and they might not come for weeks, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
But radio signals sent after the rover unfurled its solar panels suggest that it has arrived at the western edge of Utopia Planitia, about 1,800 kilometres northeast of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed in February. More precise coordinates will soon come from aerial observations of the site, scientists say.
The lander has probably settled on a fairly smooth, sandy plain dotted with small craters, add researchers. They are now studying existing images of the region taken by spacecraft such as NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The site is close to the boundary between Mars’s northern lowlands and southern highlands. NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers also landed close to this region, which might have been the shoreline for an ancient ocean that once covered the planet’s north. “Many missions want to detect if there is a real shoreline or not,” says Long.
Yuyan Zhao, a planetary geochemist at the Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Guiyang, says that her priority is to study the composition of sediments for evidence they have been altered by interaction with water, which would suggest that the area had once been immersed. But Michalski argues that more recent geological processes in the area are likely to have obscured evidence of this ancient water body.
A false-colour image of Zhurong’s landing site; the image is a composite of ones taken by NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Warmer features, such as rocky surfaces that retain heat at night, appear redder; dusty surfaces, which are cooler, appear blue-green. A conical feature in the top left could be a mud volcano.
Credit: NASA/ASU
Of great interest to scientists is a pitted, cone-shaped feature seen in aerial images, which is about three kilometres northwest of Zhurong’s position: this could be a volcano formed from lava or slurries of mud.
On Earth, mud volcanoes are associated with the production of methane by bacteria. Their presence on Mars might help to explain puzzlingly large quantities of methane that had been previously detected in the Martian atmosphere, says Michalski, but “it is a long shot”.
To find out what the feature is, Long says he’d like to see the use of a laser-based system tied to Zhurong’s spectrometer, to zap the rocks and analyse their composition, as well as ground-penetrating radar to study structures below the surface.
Alfred McEwen, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and principal investigator for the HiRISE imaging instrument on the MRO, says that the pitted cone would also be “number one” on his list of objects to investigate. But Zhao says that the cone could be beyond Zhurong’s reach. The mission’s goal is to cover a distance of several hundred metres over the next three months, she says — although the rover could stay active for longer.
Sand dunes and subsurface ice
The area where Zhurong has landed also features large sand dunes that reveal that winds flowed in a southeasterly or northwesterly direction, says Michalski. The site is also likely to contain rocks that were ejected from nearby impact craters, so “there will be a few different rock types to explore”, he says.
Researchers also hope to find ice below the surface. The shallow cliffs and troughs that appear in the aerial images are reminiscent of features seen in permafrost-layered regions of Canada and Siberia, says Michalski — which suggests that features on Mars might also have been formed by ice-driven processes.
An image, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from a region slightly to the southeast of Zhurong’s landing site, featuring ‘yardangs’ — linear ridges made of wind-blown dust. Higher-resolution images of the landing site are required to establish whether such ridges are present there, too.
Credit: NASA/UA
In coming days, the CNSA team will check that Zhurong’s instruments are functioning, before driving it down a ramp off the lander.
To explore all these features on Mars’s surface, Zhurong can move at speeds of 200 metres per hour. But it is likely that the 240-kilogram rover will move much more slowly, says David Flannery, an astrobiologist at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, who is part of the team working on Perseverance.
The key challenge will be navigating the complex, rocky landscape autonomously, he says. Even Perseverance — an SUV-sized rover weighing more than a tonne — will probably cover only 100 metres in a day, making it much faster than any other rover before it.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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