UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

In 1974, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson discovered the partial fossilized skeleton of a female of the hominin species Australopithecus afarensis at a dig site in Ethopia. Named “Lucy” because of the Beatles’ song playing continuously on the camp’s loudspeaker system, the early australopithecine was dated to about 3.2 million years ago, making it at the time the oldest human ancestor remains ever found, and helped establish Ethiopia as the top candidate for the birthplace of humanity. That title was previously claimed by South Africa, where in 1947 a nearly complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus was found. Nicknamed Mrs. Ples, it was dated to 2.1 to 2.6 million years ago. That changed recently when new analysis of Mrs. Ples changed her date of birth by a million years – making her about 3.4 to 3.6 million years old, pushing Lucy and Ethiopia back down the list.

“Sterkfontein is the most prolific single source of Australopithecus fossils, the vast majority of which were recovered from Member 4, a cave breccia now exposed by erosion and weathering at the landscape surface.”

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), co-author Professor Dominic Stratford from South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand explains how Sterkfontein, a set of limestone caves about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Johannesburg, became known as the Cradle of Humankind – now a World Heritage Site. Limestone mining started there in the late 1890s and miners immediately began finding fossils which they turned over to paleontologists. In 1936, paleontology students from the University of the Witwatersrand found the first adult Australopithecine fossils – a child’s skull determined to be Australopithecus africanus was found earlier in Taung and became known as Taung Child. In 1947, British-South African doctor and palaeontologist Robert Broom uncovered a nearly complete skull of an adult female A. africanus (although there was some speculation it was an adolescent male) which Broom called Plesianthropus transvaalensis (near-man from Transvaal) – the name that was eventually shortened to Mrs. Ples.

We must never stop analyzing fossils

In 1997, a nearly complete skeleton of a second species of Australopithecus was discovered in the caves by paleontologist Ronald J. Clarke – named “Little Foot” after the first parts of the skeleton found, its age has been difficult to determine. However, Little Foot kicked off a flurry of paleo activity at Sterkfontein – to date, fossils of approximately 500 hominids have been excavated there, leading it to be called the Cradle of Humankind … despite the fact that most of the fossils have been resistant to accurate dating and those that have are younger than Ethiopia’s Lucy. Until now.

“Sterkfontein has more Australopithecus fossils than anywhere else in the world. But it’s hard to get a good date on them. People have looked at the animal fossils found near them and compared the ages of cave features like flowstones and gotten a range of different dates. What our data does is resolve these controversies. It shows that these fossils are old — much older than we originally thought.”

Co-author Darryl Granger, a professor at Purdue University, explains in Sci-News the new technique developed by the study team to get a more accurate date on Mrs. Ples and other Sterkfontein fossils. It started with the sediments surrounding the fossils in the limestone caves, particularly the cave known as Member 4 where the majority of the Australopithecus fossils have been found. They were looking for radioactive cosmogenic nuclides – which are extremely rare isotopes created by the cosmic rays which are constantly bombarding the Earth as high-energy particles. These cosmogenic nuclides cause nuclear reactions as they hit surface rocks, thus creating new radioactive isotopes within the mineral crystals. In particular, they looked for beryllium-10 and aluminum-26 – aluminum-26 is aluminum that is missing a neutron, causing it to slowly decay into magnesium over millions of years. According to the researchers, finding the two cosmogenic nuclides together was the key.

“Since aluminum-26 is formed when a rock is exposed at the surface, but not after it has been deeply buried in a cave, we can date cave sediments — and the fossils within them — by measuring levels of aluminum-26 in tandem with another cosmogenic nuclide, beryllium-10.”

The cosmogenic nuclides put the date of the sediment and the Australopithecus fossils in it at 3.4 to 3.67 million years ago. That pushed Mrs. Ples ahead of Lucy on the age chart. More importantly, it pushed the australopiths into a more prominent position as a human ancestor. Professor Stratford points out that the previous 2.4 million-year-old age made the South African Australopithecus species too young to be the ancestors of the Homo genus, which appeared starting 2.8 million years ago. By pushing its appearance back one million years, it now overlaps in age with other early hominins in Africa, including Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus deyiremeda at Burtele in eastern Africa, Australopithecus bahrelgazali in Chad at the crossroads of North and Central Africa, Kenyanthropus platyops at Lake Turkana in the Kenyan Rift Valley, and Australopithecus anamensis at Woranso-Mille in Ethiopia. This now solidifies South Africa’s place in early hominin evolution, and Sterkfontein’s hold on the title of the Cradle of Humankind.

We must never stop searching for fossils

But wait … there’s more.

The caves of Sterkfontein were used for millions of years by hominins and animals, resulting in a confusing mix that has made it difficult for paleontologists to paint an accurate picture of the historical evolution of the caves and their occupants. This new age determination technique using cosmogenic nuclides helped the research team draw maps of the cave deposits, which clearly showed how the animal fossils of different ages dating back millions of years were mixed with those from excavations in the 1930s and 1940s. While it helped this research team positively date Mrs. Ples and her friends, Dr. Granger hopes it will aid paleontologists around the world facing similar challenges.

“What I hope is that this convinces people that this dating method gives reliable results. Using this method, we can more accurately place ancient humans and their relatives in the correct time periods, in Africa, and elsewhere across the world.”

This could be the key to finding more Denisova hominin fossils in the piles of bones and sediment in the Denisova Cave in Siberia.

We think we know so much … and yet we know so little.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

At first there was nothing out of the ordinary, but as Bonilla looked on he was shocked to see a group of large, dark unidentified objects crossing over the sun’s surface at a rapid pace, each of them ringed with what appeared to be some kind of mist and trailing a faint dark tail behind them. At first he thought they were perhaps artifacts of his telescope, perhaps something on the lens, but an inspection of his instruments found nothing to be wrong with them, nor anything to account for what he was seeing. As the mysterious objects passed out of view more appeared, seeming to be neverending, and it was all anomalous enough that he began taking photographs of the strange phenomena. Throughout that day and the next the objects continued to pass over the sun, until he had logged around 450 of them, a whole fleet of the things. They matched no known astronomical or sun phenomena he knew of, were not easily attributable to any Earth-based phenomena either, and Bonilla was at a complete loss as to what he had observed. All he knew was that it was something deeply strange and unprecedented.

On January 1st, 1886, the photos he had taken would be published in the French astronomy magazine L’Astronomie to mixed responses. The editor of the magazine was pretty fast to write them off as flecks of dust or bugs, and others explained it all away as migrating birds, but others held them up as something truly mysterious and beyond current knowledge. At the time they were just sort of an oddity that was soon forgotten about, but in more modern times the photos gained new life in the UFO community, where they were picked apart, studied, and hailed as some of the earliest UFO photos ever taken, but there was little to prove either way what was actually seen in those images, bringing about much discussion and debate that went nowhere.

It would not be until 2011 that a solid, plausible explanation was finally proposed by scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Mexican astronomers Hector Javier Durand Manterola, Maria de la Paz Ramos Lara, and Guadalupe Cordero took a good look at the Bonilla photos and came to the conclusion that the objects were fragments of a massive comet in the process of breaking up, which to them explained the fuzziness around the edges and the dark trails they left in their wakes. They also calculated that the comet had passed within between 373 to 4,970 miles of the Earth, an extremely close flyby missing us by just a hair’s breadth. Oddly, no other astronomers at the time had witnessed the event, but the researchers have explained that this could be because of what is called the “parallax effect," meaning that if the comet fragments were so close to Earth, only certain regions of the Earth would have lined up with both the sun and the comet fragments, which would have ensured that they would not have been in line with the Sun even for observers nearby.

One of Bonilla's photos

The most sobering finding of all was that each of the fragments was estimated by the researchers as having been from 50 to 800 meters across (165 feet to 2.5 miles), coming from a parent comet that would possibly be a monstrous billion tons or more. This would have made the mother comet a size on par with Hailey’s Comet or Mars’ moon Deimos, which is generally thought to be similar in mass to the progenitor of the impact that killed the dinosaurs. In short, if it were to have hit us, it would have most likely been an extinction level event. Indeed, each one of the fragments alone was at least as big as the meteor thought to have exploded over Tunguska, Siberia on June 30, 1908 with the force of a 12 megaton bomb, about 1,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb, to flatten an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq. miles) of forest, easily enough to annihilate a large metropolitan area. According to these scientists there were likely far more of the fragments than Bonilla had actually been able to witness, with perhaps 131 objects per hour and a total of 3275 objects in the time between observations. To put it into perspective of how close we probably came to an apocalypse if these were comet fragments, Manterola has said of it, “So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3,275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event.”

The team is not completelty sure that their findings are accurate, but it seems to be about the best we can do to try and explain what Bonilla saw on that fateful day. What did he observe out there? Was it some mundane earthly phenomena such as dust, bugs, or birds? Was it an actual fleet of alien spacecraft? Or was it a comet that came very damn close to wiping us out? Whatever the case may be, it remains an intriguing and obscure bit of astronomy history and lore.

Door aanhoudende droogte viel de stad – die zich normaliter onder water schuilhoudt – eerder dit jaar heel even droog. Wat volgde, was een race tegen de klok. Mét resultaat.

Als klimaatverandering ergens tot uiting komt, dan is het – even afgezien van de polen – wel in Irak. Met name het zuiden van het land gaat regelmatig gebukt onder extreme droogte. Zo ook in januari en februari van dit jaar. Om de gewassen op de droge akkers in ieder geval nog een kans te geven, werd een beroep gedaan op het Mosoel-reservoir; het belangrijkste waterreservoir dat Irak sinds de jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw rijk is (zie kader). Het waterpeil in dit reservoir zakte rap. En terwijl het water zakte, dook in het reservoir een grote en daarmee vermoedelijk belangrijke stad uit de Bronstijd op.

Mosoel-reservoir
In 1981 werd in het noorden van Irak aangevangen met de bouw van de Mosoeldam (in die tijd aangeduid als de Saddamdam). Door de dam ontstond een stuwmeer dat men kort na de voltooiing van de dam – in 1985 – liet vollopen. Verschillende archeologische vindplaatsen verdwenen daarbij onder water, waaronder dus ook de stad die begin dit jaar tijdelijk uit het water verrees. Wat deze stad echter bijzonder maakt, is dat deze – ook voorafgaand aan de totstandkoming van het stuwmeer – nooit door archeologen onderzocht is.

Geen vrije tijd
Koerdische archeologen haastten zich – met enkele Duitse collega’s – naar het Mosoel-reservoir. En dat was het startsein van een race tegen de klok (en het water). De archeologen hadden daarbij een duidelijk doel voor ogen: een zo’n groot mogelijk deel van deze stad – voor het water deze weer zou verzwelgen – verkennen. “De tijdsdruk had geen effect op de opgravingen en onze documentatiemethoden,” benadrukt onderzoeker Ivana Puljiz, verbonden aan de universiteit van Freiburg. “Maar het betekende wel dat we bijna geen vrije tijd hadden.”

Zes weken was de archeologen uiteindelijk gegund. En in die periode werd er continu keihard gewerkt. “De grootste uitdaging tijdens de opgravingen was het weer. Door de tijdsdruk bleven we doorgraven in kou, sneeuw, hagel, regen en zelfs stormen. Want we wisten niet wanneer het waterpeil weer zou stijgen en hoeveel tijd we zouden hebben.”

Machtig rijk
Maar het harde werk heeft zijn vruchten afgeworpen. Want de archeologen zijn erin geslaagd om – in de korte tijd die hen daarvoor gegund was – een groot deel van de stad in kaart te brengen. Daarnaast zijn in de stad ook een aantal interessante vondsten gedaan die hopelijk meer inzicht kunnen geven in het nog altijd mysterieuze beschaving die tussen 1550 en 1350 voor Christus over grote delen van het noorden van Mesopotamië en Syrië heerste: de Mittani.

Over de Mittani
“Het Mittani-rijk is één van de grootste staten die tijdens de late Bronstijd in het zuidwesten van Azië te vinden waren,” vertelt Puljiz. “Het bestond gelijktijdig met het Nieuwe Rijk in Egypte, de Kassieten die over Babylon heersten en het Hettitisch Koninkrijk (dat centraal Anatolië en noordwestelijke Syrië besloeg, red.). Het gebied waarin de Mittani heersten, was groot en reikte van de Mediterrane kust tot het noorden van Irak. Maar er is heel weinig bekend over de organisatie van het rijk, omdat de hoofdstad ervan tot op heden nog niet met zekerheid geïdentificeerd is en de archieven nog op ontdekking wachten.”

Waardevol
Het maakt de opgravingen die nu op de tijdelijke oevers van het Mosoel-reservoir hebben plaatsgevonden heel waardevol. “De opgravingen wijzen erop dat dit een belangrijk centrum in het Mittani-rijk was,” vertelt onderzoeker Hasan Qasim. En de stad kan ons dan ook meer vertellen over deze nog altijd vrij mysterieuze beschaving.

Grote gebouwen
Zo zijn de onderzoekers tijdens hun opgravingen op een paleis gestuit, maar ook op een soort fort met muren en wachttorens en een enorm, meerdere verdiepingen tellend pakhuis. “Wat het meest opwindend is, is dat we ons nu een voorstelling kunnen maken van hoe de stad eruitzag,” stelt Puljiz. “Hoe de stad functioneel en ruimtelijk georganiseerd was. Wat ons daarbij onder meer verbaasde was dat we op verschillende plaatsen in de stad op enorme gebouwen stuitten.”

In de stad zijn opmerkelijk goed bewaard gebleven muren ontdekt.

Afbeelding: Universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, KAO.

Metershoge muren
Veel van die gebouwen zagen er naar omstandigheden nog redelijk goed uit. Zo werden er op verschillende plaatsen in de oude stad goedbewaard gebleven muren teruggevonden die soms wel enkele meters hoog waren. Dat de muren – gemaakt van in de zon gedroogde kleisteen – zelfs na meer dan 40 jaar onder water te hebben gestaan, nog heel zijn, is volgens de onderzoekers te herleiden naar een aardbeving die de stad rond 1350 voor Christus verwoestte. Tijdens deze beving stortten de bovenste delen van gebouwen in, waardoor de onderste delen erdoor begraven – en later ook beschermd – werden.

Tabletten
Naast de muren stuitten de onderzoekers nog op een andere spectaculaire vondst; vijf keramische vazen die samen een meer dan 100 kleitabletten tellend archief herbergden. De kleitabletten dateren uit de periode kort nadat de aardbeving plaatsvond. En ook daarvoor geldt dat het bijna wonderbaarlijk te noemen is dat deze kleitabletten hun decennialange onderdompeling hebben doorstaan. De onderzoekers vermoeden dat de tabletten brieven zijn en hopen dat deze ons meer kunnen vertellen over de ondergang van de stad en misschien ook de opkomst van het Assyrische rijk in het gebied.

Hier zie je een met kleitabletten gevuld vat. Eén van de kleitabletten zit zelfs nog in zijn ‘envelop’.

Afbeelding: Universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, KAO.

Zakhiku
Ten slotte denken de onderzoekers dankzij de opgravingen ook te weten hoe de Mittani deze indrukwekkende stad noemden. “Tijdens onze opgravingen hebben we een administratieve tekst gevonden die de oude stad Zakhiku noemt. We nemen aan dat dit verwijst naar de plek waar we opgravingen hebben gedaan.”

Dat de onderzoekers in amper zes weken tijd zoveel gezien en gedocumenteerd hebben, is indrukwekkend. En er viel nog veel meer te ontdekken, maar de tijd ontbrak; de archeologen waren in februari gedwongen de stad weer terug te geven aan het water. Maar niet voordat ze deze voor zover mogelijk met plastic hadden bedekt. “Het is belangrijk om ons gedeelde culturele erfgoed voor toekomstige generaties te behouden,” stelt Puljiz. “En archeologische vindplaatsen in reservoirs eroderen door het stijgende en dalende water. Uiteindelijk zal zo’n vindplaats compleet eroderen en gaan alle ruïnes verloren.” Dat probleem speelt ook in het geval van Zakhiku. “Hoewel de gebouwen uit de Mittani-periode dankzij hun omvang goedbewaard zijn gebleven, zijn de bovenliggende lagen – zonder ooit archeologisch onderzocht te zijn – al bijna vrijwel geheel geërodeerd. We hopen verdere erosie te voorkomen door de vindplaats in te pakken met plastic dat door stenen en keien op zijn plaats wordt gehouden.”

Na de opgravingen werden de ruïnes met plastic bedekt om ze tegen erosie te beschermen.

Afbeelding: Universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, KAO.

Inmiddels is de stad weer volledig door water bedekt. Wanneer deze weer uit het water verrijst, is onmogelijk te voorspellen. “Maar ik hoop dat we ons onderzoek op deze opwindende plek weer eens voort kunnen gaan zetten,” stelt Puljiz. “Er zijn nog zoveel dingen te ontdekken!” En niet alleen in deze stad. Want naast Zakhiku zijn er in de jaren tachtig met de totstandkoming van het Mosoel-reservoir nog veel meer gebieden aan het water ten prooi gevallen. “Voorafgaand daaraan heeft de Irakese overheid een soort reddingsprogramma op poten gezet waarbij talloze van deze gebieden eerst door Irakese en buitenlandse onderzoekers zijn onderzocht.” Hoewel men ook van het bestaan van Zakhiku op de hoogte was, werden de resten van deze stad echter nooit onder de loep genomen. En mogelijk zijn er nog wel meer plaatsen die archeologen toen – bewust of onbewust – niet nader hebben onderzocht. “Er kunnen zomaar tientallen andere belangrijke plaatsen zijn waar we nog helemaal niets van weten,” denkt Puljiz.

Bronmateriaal:

"A 3400-year-old city emerges from the Tigris River" - Universität Tübingen
Interview met Ivana Puljiz
Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: Universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, KAO

{ https://www.scientias.nl/ }

Cooling Earth

According to new research, the core of the Earth is cooling much faster and sooner than originally anticipated — a new mystery that could throw a wrench in our understanding of the planet's evolution.

To get a better sense of how far along the Earth is in the process, scientists are studying the thermal conductivity of the minerals present in the layer between the planet's core and mantle. The faster that hot center passes heat to the planet's outer layers, the faster the Earth is losing the heat present in its core.

Heating Rocks

In a lab simulation, a team of researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the Carnegie Institution for Science applied immense amounts of pressure and heat to a mineral called bridgmanite — which is found in the transitional zone between the core and mantle — to simulate the conditions deep below the surface. They then measured its thermal conductivity to get a better sense of the cooling processes at play.

The results were surprising.

"This measurement system let us show that the thermal conductivity of bridgmanite is about 1.5 times higher than assumed," said ETH professor Motohiko Murakami, lead author of a paper about the findings published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, in a statement.

In other words, the heat from the core is being passed on at a much faster rate than previously thought, leading to the greater cooling of the Earth.

A New Perspective

The study could rewrite what we already know about the dynamic processes leading to the slowing down of convection currents.

"Our results could give us a new perspective on the evolution of the Earth’s dynamics," Murakami explained. "They suggest that Earth, like the other rocky planets Mercury and Mars, is cooling and becoming inactive much faster than expected."

The researcher did, however, note we didn't know enough to pinpoint how long it will take for convection currents to stop altogether.

READ MORE:

Earth’s interior is cooling faster than expected [ETH Zurich]

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