It is already known that our moon was volcanically active billion of years ago, but new lunar samples that were brought to Earth from China’s Chang’e-5 mission have changed those estimates.

The moon is approximately 4.5 billion years old and during the first billion years, it was volcanically active. The activity was believed to have lasted for millions or even hundreds of millions of years. Based on the size of the moon, it was estimated that it began cooling down approximately 3 billion years ago, ultimately making the lunar surface rather quiet and uneventful. However, a lack of craters in certain areas of the lunar surface made scientists question whether there was something else going on that they didn’t know about. Lava flows would normally harden up into a smooth shape, meaning that volcanic activity may have lasted much longer than expected.

After conducting several different experiments, researchers came to the conclusion that the rocks of basalt that were collected from the moon (these are rocks that are created from volcanic activity) were indeed formed by lava flows that occurred 2 billion years ago.

But this raises more questions as chemical analysis didn’t provide the concentration of radioactive elements that should have been there if radioactive decay was the explanation for the volcanism. Perhaps there is another reason that kept the moon volcanically active for so long. One theory explores the possibility that Earth’s gravitational forces may have liquefied the interior of the moon, letting the magma flow for a much longer time as explained by Alexander Nemchin who is a planetary scientist at the Beijing SHRIMP Center and Curtin University in Bentley, Australia, “The moon was a lot closer 2 billion years ago.” When the moon started moving away from our planet, the forces would have become less powerful, therefore allowing the volcanic activity to decrease.

Another possibility is that constant bombardment of asteroids and comets may have kept the volcanic activity to continue; however, “at this point, any guess is a good guess,” said Jessica Barnes who is a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson but wasn’t involved in the study.

For now, what we do know is that based on the lunar rocks that have been brought back to Earth and analyzed, there was volcanic activity on our moon as recently as just 2 billion years ago – much later than previously thought and by far the youngest moon rocks that have ever been collected. Interestingly, the rocks formed around the same time that multicellular life was first beginning to evolve on our planet.

The study was published in Science where it can be read in full.

From both the “What could possibly go wrong?” and the “Science fiction becomes reality” files comes word that NASA has officially announced the launch date for a mission to attempt to deflect an asteroid from its path as a test of technology that may one day be needed to save Earth from a meteor or comet on a path to causing mass destruction and possible mass extinction. Movies depicting this scenario (Deep Impact, Armageddon) ended with generally happy conclusions. Will real life follow that script? Get your favorite movie quotes and clichés ready!

“Media accreditation is open for the upcoming launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, an evaluation of technologies for preventing a hazardous asteroid from striking Earth.

DART is targeted to launch at 10:20 p.m. PST, Nov. 23, 2021, (1:20 a.m. EST, Nov. 24), aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Live coverage of the launch will air on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an asteroid in space to change its motion. Its target is the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, which pose no threat to Earth.”

Official DART poster (all images courtesy of NASA)

DART has been talked about for decades, planned since 2018, and needed since science proved that space rock impacts caused many great extinctions. At the same time, astronomers began getting better at tracking Near Earth Objects, terrorizing Earthlings with predictions of “close but no cigar” meteors and having no answers for actual impacts and near hits they seem to miss on a regular basis. Seeing how popular the blast-an-asteroid movies were and having no other near-term options, NASA decided to try it out on a tiny hapless near-but-not-dangerous asteroid named Dimorphos (Didymos B) which is orbiting Didymos A in the 65803 Didymos binary asteroid system. Didymos A is about 780 m (2,560 ft) in diameter while Dimorphos is just 160 m (520 ft) in diameter As the NASA press release reports, “Didymos is not an Earth-crossing asteroid, and there is no possibility that the deflection experiment could create an impact hazard.” Famous last words? So … what is DART going to do?

“The DART spacecraft will achieve the kinetic impact deflection by deliberately crashing itself into the moonlet at a speed of approximately 6.6 km/s, with the aid of an onboard camera (named DRACO) and sophisticated autonomous navigation software. The collision will change the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of one percent, but this will change the orbital period of the moonlet by several minutes – enough to be observed and measured using telescopes on Earth.”

Solar-powered DART will perform more of a nudge than a knockout – pushing Dimorphos slightly out of its orbit 1 km away from Didymos A but far enough that it can be observed and measured by telescopes. That nudge will be caused by DART itself as it self-destructs into Dimorphos in true movie fashion right after it takes one more look back at its home.

Two different views of the DART spacecraft. The DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance & Asteroid Camera for OpNav) imaging instrument is based on the LORRI high-resolution imager from New Horizons. The left view also shows the Radial Line Slot Array (RLSA) antenna with the ROSAs (Roll-Out Solar Arrays) rolled up. The view on the right shows a clearer view of the NEXT-C ion engine. (credit: NASA)

The DART spacecraft launch window begins November 24, 2021. DART will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. After separation from the launch vehicle and over a year of cruise it will intercept Didymos’ moonlet in late September 2022, when the Didymos system is within 11 million kilometers of Earth, enabling observations by ground-based telescopes and planetary radar to measure the change in momentum imparted to the moonlet. (Pause a moment to wipe a romantic tear.)

DART is targeted to launch at 10:20 p.m. PST, Nov. 23, 2021, (1:20 a.m. EST, Nov. 24), aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. NASA is obviously excited about this mission as it is promoting this launch more than usual.

Tom Cruise lost his race to shoot the first movie on the ISS. Maybe he still has time to cut a deal for “Armageddon II – This Time It’s Personal.”

Approximately 30 million years ago, there was a mass extinction that nobody knew about until recently. As a matter of fact, a whopping 63% of mammals vanished from different parts of the Earth.

The extinction event occurred just after the changes of the geological periods of Eocene and Oligocene. This was also around the time when our planet experienced a drastic climate change from being swampy to icy. The Earth got colder, there were more ice sheets, sea levels dropped, forests turned into grasslands, and there was less carbon dioxide.

As for the mammals living in Africa, they were believed to have survived unharmed because of the continent’s mild temperatures and the proximity to where it was to the equator would have helped in preventing the cooler climates. Unfortunately, based on new research, the African mammals did not survive.

Climate change brought more ice.

A team of international researchers from the United States, England, and Egypt, analyzed a large amount of fossils that are located at the Duke Lemur Center Division of Fossil Primates (DLCDFP) and they found that even though Africa did have warmer weather, the mammals living there were just as tragically affected as those living in Europe and Asia.

The team studied fossils belonging to different groups of mammals – extinct carnivores called hyaenodonts; two rodent groups; anomalures (scaly-tail squirrels) and the hystricognaths (this group includes porcupines and naked mole rats); two primate groups, the strepsirrhines (lemurs and lorises), and the anthropoids (apes and monkeys). By creating a family tree for each of these groups, the team was able to determine that all of them suffered massive losses during the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. On a positive note, millions of years later, they did start appearing again but with different characteristics, specifically the changes in their teeth which indicated a change in their diet and habitat – like a “recovery period”.

Matt Borths, who is a curator of Duke University’s DLCDFP, noted, “Extinction is interesting in that way,” adding, “It kills things, but it also opens up new ecological opportunities for the lineages that survive into this new world.”

The dramatic climate change wasn’t the only factor that these animals had to deal with as East Africa suffered volcanic super eruptions and flood basalts when the temperatures dropped. “We lost a lot of diversity at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary,” Borths explained, “But the species that survived apparently had enough of a toolkit to persist through this fluctuating climate.”

Hesham Sallam, who is the founder of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center in Egypt, weighed in by stating, “Climate changes through geological time have shaped the evolutionary tree of life.” “Collecting evidence from the past is the easiest way to learn about how climate change will affect ecological systems.” A picture of some of the fossils the team analyzed during their research can be seen here.

The study was published in the journal Communications Biology where it can be read in full.

Although NASA was formed in 1958, Project Horizon – a plan to construct a base on the Moon –  fell under the auspices of the military, specifically the U.S. Army. The plan was to create what would ultimately become a vast base on the surface of the Moon – a base that would be armed with nuclear weapons and which could be used to attack the Soviets if the United States was hit by a sneak attack and the infrastructure of the nation was significantly destroyed. It was in late March 1959 that the ambitious program was put into place. Overseeing many of the plans to create the secret base was Lieutenant General Arthur G. Trudeau. At the time, Trudeau was the Army’s Chief of Research and Development. Now-declassified files on Project Horizon demonstrate that Trudeau and his team estimated it would cost approximately $6 Billion to design, build and fully equip a base on the Moon. In a document titled “Project Horizon: A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Military Post,” Trudeau penned the following words: “There is a requirement for a manned military outpost on the Moon. The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the Moon; to develop techniques in Moon-based surveillance of the Earth and space, in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the Moon, for further exploration into space and for military operations on the Moon if required; and to support scientific investigations on the Moon.”

(NASA)

That’s our Moon

The program was indeed a grand one, a far-reaching operation designed to ensure that the control of outer space would fall into the hands of the United States. Plans were quickly initiated, in the wake of the publication of Trudeau’s report. One of those who was brought into the program was Wernher Von Braun – a Nazi scientist, who, at the end of the Second World War, was secretly brought to the United States under cover of a classified program called Operation Paperclip. Von Braun (who should have been 100 percent kicked out of the operation because of his Second World War activities) chose to assign an engineer named Heinz-Hermann Koelle to oversee Project Horizon. Koelle, too, fought for the Nazis during the Second World War. The initial plans were for the Moon base to be relatively small, which made a great deal of sense. After all, we’re talking about entirely new territory and technology. So, the plan was to slowly and bit by bit make the base bigger and bigger as time went on. But, initially, it would be something akin to a North Pole outpost, with a staff of around one to two dozen.

 cosmonauts, invading the base and armed to the teeth with high-tech weaponry. On the scientific side of things, a great deal of research was focused on ensuring that the base would have a plentiful supply of water and oxygen – which, of course, none could live without. Plans were initiated to hUsing the base as a strategic military facility, as well as a place in which the mysteries of the Moon and the Solar-System could be carefully and secretly studied, ensured that America would have a significant lead over the Soviets – who were clearly a major threat at the time. In fact, on this issue of a Soviet threat, the Project Horizon team gave serious consideration to the possibility that Russians might very well try and destroy the base – possibly with Russianave vast shuttle craft sending endless supplies of water and food to the base – that is, until the base and its staff became completely self-sufficient.

As for how and where, exactly, the base would be constructed, Project Horizon’s scientists were of the opinion that the best option would be to build it in a natural crater or cavern. Such was the enthusiasm for the program, an estimation was made that the initial construction of the base could begin in 1965 – four years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon. Project workers suggested that it might be wise to construct significant parts of the base underground, chiefly to protect it from not just the Soviets, but from natural space debris too, such a fragments of meteorites and / or comets – and also from potentially lethal radiation. Although Project Horizon was deemed a feasible, major program of the military, it was ultimately deemed to be too far ahead of itself. The military concluded that the plans for Horizon to begin in 1965 were overly ambitious in the extreme and the program was cancelled. Or, at least, we are told it was canceled. There are indications that this may not have been the case, and that the plans to control outer space went ahead in deep secrecy.

On this particular issue, it’s most intriguing to note that there is yet another story that suggests the United States has a secret space program – and, rather notably, it dates back to 1965; the very year in which the U.S. Army had said that it could begin constructing a base on the Moon. The story comes from a man named Karl Wolfe. At the time in question, Wolfe was in the Air Force, working on a program based at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia that was supporting NASA’s lunar-orbiter programs. It was while he was stationed at Langley learned of highly classified photographs held at the base that showed what were clearly buildings and facilities on the far side of the Moon – which, notably, and due to its specific orbit, never shows itself to the Earth. So, constructing a secret base on the side of the Moon that we never get to see would make perfect sense.

Of course, some people might suggest – and, indeed, have suggested – that the photos Karl Wolfe came to know of showed not a facility of the U.S. Army, but of visiting aliens. Not an impossible scenario, but, when we take into consideration the possibility that Project Horizon was not canceled, then it’s not at all improbable that some kind of installation does indeed exist on the Moon – whether on it or below its surface – and served a major role in the development of a secret space program. It may very well still serve that same program to this  day. Except, we just don’t know about it.

Astronomers were left surprised when they found a rare comet/asteroid hybrid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Named 2005 QN173, it has traits of both a comet and an asteroid.

2005 QN173 orbits in the same way as any other asteroid – it travels around the sun in the outer part of the asteroid belt, making a full circle about every 5 years. However, based on data collected on July 7th by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey in Hawaii, astronomers realized that it had a long thin tail. This indicates that it is full of icy material that is vaporizing in space during its journey. Interestingly, when they searched through data from the Dark Energy Camera when 2005 QN173 orbited the sun in 2016, they noticed that it also had a tail at that time.

In a statement, Henry Hsieh, who is a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, explained these unusual differences in further detail, “It fits the physical definitions of a comet, in that it is likely icy and is ejecting dust into space, even though it also has the orbit of an asteroid.” “This duality and blurring of the boundary between what were previously thought to be two completely separate types of objects — asteroids and comets — is a key part of what makes these objects so interesting”

Asteroid Belt

Scientists have already studied about half a million space objects in the asteroid belt and incredibly, 2005 QN173 is only the eighth of its kind to have been active on multiple occasions. Furthermore, it is only one of 20 objects that have been categorized as being “main-belt comets.”

Some other interesting facts about 2005 QN173 was that when it was analyzed between 2004 and 2020, there were several times that it wasn’t active so the researchers had a better opportunity to study it and they found that its nucleus (or head) was approximately 2 miles wide (3.2 kilometers). New observations conducted this summer revealed more details regarding its exceptionally long tail that measures 450,000 miles (724,000 kilometers). For comparison, it is almost twice the distance of Earth to our moon.

And if that’s not confusing enough, its tail isn’t very wide as detailed by Hsieh, “This extremely narrow tail tells us that dust particles are barely floating off of the nucleus at extremely slow speeds and that the flow of gas escaping from the comet that normally lifts dust off into space from a comet is extremely weak.” “Such slow speeds would normally make it difficult for dust to escape from the gravity of the nucleus itself, so this suggests that something else might be helping the dust to escape.” Perhaps the nucleus may be spinning so fast that it is spewing out extra dust, but that’s just a theory for now.

(Not 2005 QN173)

Whatever this crazy mysterious space object is, scientists will be waiting for February 2026 when they will hopefully get a better understanding of it when its location to the sun may possibly reactive it. A composite image that shows 2005 QN173’s nucleus and its long tail can be seen here.

A composite image shows the passage of 2005 QN173, a rare active asteroid. The nucleus is in the upper left corner of the image; the tail streaks diagonally across the frame. 

(Image credit: Henry H. Hsieh (PSI), Jana Pittichová (NASA/JPL-Caltech))

Their research can be read in full here.

Are worldwide government agencies controlling our access to what is known about outer space and the possibilities of alien life? A study of the available data strongly suggests the answer is a definitive ““Yes!” Taking things even further, there are good, solid indications that some secret element of the government is clandestinely running a secret space program. When, on July 20, 1969, NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the surface of the Moon, it began a new era in the United States’ space program. Further manned missions continued until 1972. Plans were formulated to establish a permanent, manned base on the surface of the Moon. Then, in 1973, NASA launched its first space station, Skylab. Eight years later, the Space Shuttle was unveiled. Today, however, things are very different. NASA no longer has a manned space program. The only way for U.S. astronauts to head into Earth orbit, and spend time at the International Space Station, is to hitch a ride with the Russians. What went wrong? Some say that nothing went wrong.

Rather, the theory is that although  manned space programs have largely dropped off, there exists – deep within the heart of military agencies – a secret group that is running a clandestine space program. We might even be talking about highly classified return missions to the Moon, and possibly even secret flights to Mars. Is a powerful group controlling what we know – or don’t know – about the secrets of outer space? Yes. UFO authority Richard Dolan says: “Over the years I have encountered no shortage of quiet, serious-minded people who tell me of their knowledge that there is such a covert program. Are there bases on the far side of the Moon? I do not know for sure, but I cannot rule it out.” One person who is convinced that there is a secret space group is Gary McKinnon, a British man who had a ufological Sword of Damocles hanging over his head for the best part of a decade, after very unwisely deciding to hack the US Government for secrets of the UFO kind in 2001. According to McKinnon, while illegally surfing around classified systems of both NASA and the U.S. military, he came across a list titled “Non-Terrestrial Officers.”

(NASA)

Our Moon

McKinnon said of this discovery: “It doesn’t mean little green men. What I think it means is not Earth-based. I found a list of fleet-to-fleet transfers, and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren’t U.S. Navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet.” McKinnon was not the first to hint at the idea of a secret space group, however. As an experienced hacker of numerous computer systems, including those of NASA and the United States’ Department of Defense, a young Welshman named Matthew Bevan took the decision back in 1994 to uncover the long-rumored “crashed UFO” secrets of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. Stressing that Wright-Patterson was “a very, very easy computer system to get into,” Bevan was utterly amazed to uncover astonishing information relating to a top secret project to design and build a truly extraordinary flying machine of UFO like proportions. “The files,” Bevan said, “very clearly referred to a working prototype of an anti-gravity vehicle that utilized a heavy element to power it. This wasn’t a normal aircraft; it was very small, split level, with a reactor at the bottom and room for the crew at the top.”

Having accessed and carefully digested the fantastic information, Bevan duly exited the Wright-Patterson computer banks and began to doggedly search just about here, there and everywhere for the alien answers that he sought, including the less than secure computer systems of NASA itself. Bevan had got into the systems, he had carefully read the files, and he had then made good his escape, all without any form of detection whatsoever. Or, so Bevan had assumed was the case. History, however, has shown that Bevan’s initial assumptions were very wide of the mark. For approximately two years there was nothing but overwhelming silence. Then, on a particular morning in 1996, everything suddenly changed drastically in the life of Matthew Bevan. At the time when things began to go distinctly awry, he was working for an insurance company in Cardiff, Wales, and on the day in question he was summoned down to the managing director’s office. On entering the room, Bevan was confronted by a group of men in suits who seemed to practically ooze intimidation. Bevan recalled what happened next: “One of the men outstretched his hand and I shook it.” “Matthew Bevan?”” the man asked. “Yes,” replied Bevan.

The man identified himself as being with Scotland Yard’s Computer Crimes Unit: “I’m placing you under arrest for hacking NASA and Wright Patterson Air Force Base.” Bevan was in deep trouble. On being taken to Cardiff Central Police Station, the line of questioning became decidedly curious and worthy of an episode of The X-Files: “What does the term Hangar 18 mean to you?” Bevan was immediately asked, in stern and intimidating tones. “That’s a hoarding place for alien technology,” he replied, in a quite matter of fact fashion. Bevan’s recollections of that exchange were more than eye-opening. Throughout the interview, they kept coming back to Hangar 18: Did I see anything on the Wright Patterson and the NASA computers? Did I download anything? Well, when they asked me if I saw anything, I said: ‘Yes, I saw emails talking about an anti-gravity propulsion system.”” Needless to say, this did not go down too well, at all, with Scotland Yard’s Computer Crimes Unit. Bevan correctly realized that he was in very hot water with the authorities, and a date was subsequently set for a hearing at London’s Bow Street magistrate’s court. But: it was not just Bevan, his defense, and the prosecution who were present at the trial. There was also a man present representing the interests of the U.S. Government and NASA.

(NASA)

The surface of Mars

A curious exchange occurred when the man took the stand – as Bevan remembered only too well. “As the hearing continued, the prosecution asked him what the American Government thought about my motives regarding my hacking at NASA and at Wright Patterson.” The man replied: “We now believe that Mr. Bevan had no malicious intentions and that his primary purpose was to uncover information on UFOs and Hangar 18.'” Bevan said: “Well, everyone had a bit of a laugh at that point, even the judge; however, when the prosecution asked: ‘Can you confirm if Hangar 18 exists or if it’s a myth?’ the man said: ‘I can neither confirm nor deny as I’m not in possession of that information.'”   The final outcome of the affair was that the case against Bevan completely collapsed. The magistrate overseeing the matter stated in no uncertain terms that a jail sentence was utterly out of the question, and that any financial punishment he might be able to impose upon Bevan would be meager in the extreme. The saga was over.

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Astronomers have already detected several rogue planets wandering around space with no host star. While not many have been found thus far, astronomers do believe that there are much more common than previously estimated and that future upgraded techniques on space equipment will hopefully be able to detect more of them.

One example of a rogue world is a Jupiter-like planet that researchers found by combing through data collected during a planet survey named the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) that analyzed the central bulge in our Milky Way Galaxy between the years 2006 and 2007. A 5.9-foot (1.8-meter) telescope located at Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand was used in addition to a technique named gravitational microlensing. (An artist’s impression of the Jupiter-like world wandering along through space can be seen here.)

This artist's conception illustrates a Jupiter-like planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star.  

While we do know that there are some rogue planets wandering around space without a star, odds are that there is no way they could sustain life, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, a new study has suggested that rogue planets may actually be some of the best places to find alien life.

The new research was conducted Dr. Manasvi Lingam from the Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, and Avi Loeb from Harvard University. Together, they focused their studies on how life could possibly survive on free-floating (rogue) planets that do not have a host star.

Perhaps subsurface oceans beneath thick layers of ice may provide those answers. If there was life in deep underground oceans, the thick ice layers above them would protect them from the cold in addition to the planet’s core heating them up from the inside.

Dr. Lingam went into further details, “For every solar system discovered, each of which contains a handful of terrestrial planets, there are approximately 30-40 rogue planets traveling in the cold expanses of interstellar space.” “We normally think of planets bound to stars, such as Mars, that could support life, but in reality, these types of life-supporting planets could just be floating out there in the vast void of space with rich biospheres.”

As for what’s next, the ultimate opportunity would be to actually get to one of these rogue planets when and if they enter our Solar System. Dr. Lingam mentioned this by noting, “Technology would have to advance by only a modest amount to make traveling to these planets — if they are in our Solar System — easier.” “You might be able to get to a rogue planet in a few decades, and, rather than looking for other planets around other stars, this might be the best chance to study these planets.”

He went on to explain the process in further detail, “Through a combination of gravity assists and suitable propulsion systems, you could reach the rogue planet in 20 years or so,” adding, “Once you have a probe on the surface, you can beam the data back and it would probably take a few months to learn what it looks like on the surface.”

If this ever happens, I will be very curious to see what they find. Their research was published in the International Journal of Astrobiology where it can be read in full.