Scientists may have found the first evidence of primordial black holes born during the Big Bang – 'if it's real, then it's enormous'

• READ MORE: What would happen if you walked into a primordial black hole?

By WILIAM HUNTER, SENIOR SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

Scientists may have found the first evidence of primordial black holes, born in the very first seconds of the Big Bang.

These tiny singularities can be smaller than a single atom but contain almost as much mass as our sun.

Until now, no one has been able to prove that these bizarre, ancient objects exist.

But by looking for ripples in the fabric of spacetime, known as gravitational waves, researchers think they could have found the 'smoking gun' to prove they are real.

On November 12, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational–Wave Observatory (LIGO) and its European counterpart, Virgo, detected an unusual signal from deep space.

The gravitational wave looked like it was coming from colliding black holes, but was much smaller than any known black hole could possibly be.

If it wasn't a glitch, the only remaining possibility is that the objects producing these faint ripples are the elusive primordial black holes.

Dr Djuna Croon, an astro–particle theorist at Durham University who was not involved in the observation, told Daily Mail: 'If it's real, then it's enormous.'

Scientists may have found the first evidence of primordial black holes, born in the very first seconds of the Big Bang. These tiny singularities can be smaller than a single atom but contain almost as much mass as our sun (artist's impression) 

This gravitational wave (pictured) appeared to have been made by objects as dense as a black hole but with less mass than that of the sun. No known object in the universe has these properties

When extremely dense objects like black holes merge, they spiral in on each other with such force that it whips up ripples in the fabric of spacetime.

These gravitational waves allow scientists on Earth to 'listen' for the shockwaves produced by these collisions, even when they occur billions of light–years away.

Using two obervatories – the American LIGO and the Italian VIRGO – scientists detected a signal on November 12 from an object smaller than the mass of our sun.

Dr Croon says: 'What is special about this alert is that the masses that we've identified are smaller than anything we know could have formed astrophysically and still be so compact.

'We've observed loads of black holes, and loads of neutron stars, and loads of white dwarfs, but this detection points to something very different.

'That's really, really significant because, if this is real, you need to explain how you ended up with such a compact remnant that is this light.'

Black holes usually form when stars many times larger than our sun run out of fuel and collapse, compressing their core into a dense point.

However, some scientists believe that primordial black holes could have formed directly out of overly dense regions of the boiling sea of matter that filled the cosmos right after the Big Bang.

Scientists believe that the signal might have been caused by the merger of two primordial black holes, which would explain why the gravitational wave comes from such small yet dense objects. Pictured: A NASA simulation of merging black holes

Scientists may have just spotted the first sign of ancient primordial black holes by capturing the faint ripples in spacetime produced by their collision (illustrated)

What are primordial black holes?

Primordial black holes are microscopic pieces of ultra-dense matter, just like normal black holes but smaller.

Scientists think they may have been formed at the very beginning of the universe rather than out of collapsing stars. 

Their initial masses could have range between 100,000 times less than a paperclip to 100,000 times greater than the sun. 

We haven't found proof that they exist, but they might form part of the 'dark matter' which makes up a large part of the mass of the universe. 

To form a black hole, all you need to do is concentrate a lot of energy in a really small volume,' Dr Croon explains.

'This could happen because a star collapses, or it could happen in the early universe just from a fluctuation in energy.'

On its own, a primordial black hole would go undetected. 

However, if two collided, they could produce a gravitational wave signal that looks a lot like the one VIRGO and LIGO found on November 12.

This prospect has scientists very excited, as it could be the first real proof of primordial black holes.

That is a big deal because primordial black holes are often put forward as one of the best candidates for the mysterious substance known as dark matter, which makes up around a quarter of the universe.

Since these black holes don't interact with light and contain a lot of mass, they are a perfect explanation for why the universe seems to have mass we can't see.

Dr Christopher Berry, a LIGO member at the University of Glasgow, wrote on BlueSky: 'If this merger is verified it could amount to smoking gun evidence of a population of primordial black holes.'

If true, this would be the first definitive evidence that primordial black holes (artist's impression) really exist 

However, scientists are still urging caution and say that we can't yet say for certain whether this really is a primordial black hole.

Researchers from the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations have assigned a 'false alarm rate' for this detection of about one in four years.

Read More

• Dark matter seen for the first time: Eerie image shows first direct evidence of elusive substance 

That wouldn't be terrible for a normal black hole merger, but for an extremely rare event like this, it's too high for researchers to be overly confident.

The best possible evidence that this is real would be for the detectors to find another signal in the future.

With big upgrades planned for the LIGO and VIRGO detectors, the hope is that this could soon become a reality.

Dr Croon says: 'If this is real, we'll just see many, many more of such events that we can study, so we'll learn more and more about it.'

What would happen if you fell into a black hole?

A black hole is a point of matter so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational pull.

If a human fell into one of these cosmic monsters, the forces of gravity would be so strong that they would undergo 'spagettification'.

Since a black hole's gravity is so strong, there is an extremely steep 'gravitational gradient'.

This means the forces affecting your feet nearer the black hole would be much more powerful than those affecting your head.

That means your body would be yanked into a long line like a piece of spaghetti being sucked up by a black hole.

At the same time, the intense radiation from orbiting material in the 'accretion disk' would blast you with incredibly powerful X–rays.

Strangely, as your elongated body approaches the black hole, your perception of time would start to radically diverge from anyone observing from outside.

Due to a process called time dilation, your passage through time would halt to a crawl. 

While you experience time passing normally, you would slow down from the perspective of anyone outside. 

Once you hit the event horizon, the point of no return, you would slip past the point where conventional physics can make sense of your situation.

From your view, all directions would lead towards the centre of the black hole as you are compressed to an infinitely dense point.

However, from the perspective of anyone watching from afar, you would essentially cease to exist.  

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02-12-2025 om 21:20 geschreven door peter  

In a promising update, scientists have revealed that the ozone hole is healing – and it could soon close up for good. 

The Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) found that the hole – which appears yearly over Antarctica – closed on Monday (December 1).

This is not only earlier than expected, but also marks the earliest closure since 2019.

What's more, the 2025 ozone hole at its maximum extent was the smallest in five years, at 8.13 million sq miles (21.08 million km2). 

It marks the second consecutive year of relatively small holes compared to the series of large and long-lasting ozone holes from 2020-2023.

And it fuels hopes for the ozone layer's complete recovery – potentially within the next couple of decades. 

Dr Laurence Rouil, director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), called the earlier closure and relatively small size 'a reassuring sign'. 

'It reflects the steady year-on-year progress we are now observing in the recovery of the ozone layer,' he said. 

 

Scientists confirm the 2025 ozone hole at its maximum extent was the smallest in five years, at 8.13 million sq miles (21.08 million km2)

The ozone hole is not technically a ‘hole’ where no ozone is present, but is actually a region of exceptionally depleted ozone over the Antarctic.

Generally, it opens every August, reaches its maximum size in September or October and closes in late November or early December.

In 2025, the ozone hole developed relatively early through mid-August, following a similar trajectory to the large ozone hole of 2023.

Towards the end of August 2025, its size reduced slightly before growing to a maximum area of 8.13 million sq miles/21.08 million km2 in early September. 

This size is 'fairly typical' at this point but well below the maximum of 10.07 million sq miles/26.1 million km2 observed in 2023.

During September, the size of the ozone hole started to gradually reduce but 'remained at a considerable size', experts found. 

Through September and October, it was between 5.7 million sq miles/15 million km2 (roughly the area of Antarctica) and 7.7 million sq miles/20 million km2. 

But the area of the ozone hole declined quickly during the first half of November, indicating the possibility of an early closure. 

The ozone hole is not technically a ‘hole’ where no ozone is present, but is actually a region of exceptionally depleted ozone in the stratosphere over the Antarctic. Pictured, November 1, 2025

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) confirms that the 2025 Antarctic ozone hole came to an end December 1, marking the earliest closure since 2019 

A persistent small area of low ozone persisted through the second half of the month, until it fully closed on December 1. 

It marks the the earliest closure since 2019 (November 12) and one of the earliest closures of the ozone hole in the past four decades. 

Located in the stratosphere (the second layer of Earth's atmosphere), the ozone layer absorbs almost all of the sun's harmful incoming ultraviolet radiation (UVB) – making it fundamental to protecting life on Earth's surface 

Without the ozone layer, there would be severe increases of solar UV radiation, which would damage our DNA and make skin cancer more common. 

Having a hole in the ozone layer therefore increases the amount of UV that reaches Earth's surface – and the bigger the hole is, the more we're exposed. 

It wasn't until the 1980s that the ozone hole was first discovered, by British meteorologist Jonathan Shanklin, making global headlines. 

As scientists explained, the hole was created by the release of human-made chemicals, particularly CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), into the atmosphere. 

It led to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to halt the production of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances (ODS), signed in December 1987. 

While the Montreal Agreement phased out 99 per cent of all ozone-depleting chemicals, the remaining one per cent still lingers in Earth's upper atmosphere. 

During the southern hemisphere's winter, a large pillar of extremely cold, rotating air forms above the Antarctic.

Maximum yearly extent of the ozone hole: The 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 ozone holes were particularly large and long lasting

This concentrates the remaining CFCs in an area where cold conditions and solar radiation enable them to deplete the layer of ozone gas.

Experts hope CFCs will eventually be eliminated from the atmosphere, although this process is slow due to their chemical stability. 

READ MORE

• The ozone layer is healing! Hole over Antarctica is recovering – and could soon close for good, promising study reveals

It is estimated that the ban will enable a recovery of the ozone layer by 2050 and 2066, according to experts at CAMS. 

'This progress should be celebrated as a timely reminder of what can be achieved when the international community works together to address global environmental challenges,' said Dr Rouil. 

Meanwhile, a UN report said the ozone hole could heal over by 2040. 

The Ozone layer sits in the stratosphere 25 miles above the Earth's surface and acts like a natural sunscreen

Ozone is a molecule comprised of three oxygen atoms that occurs naturally in small amounts. 

In the stratosphere, roughly seven to 25 miles above Earth's surface, the ozone layer acts like sunscreen, shielding the planet from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress immune systems and also damage plants. 

It is produced in tropical latitudes and distributed around the globe. 

Closer to the ground, ozone can also be created by photochemical reactions between the sun and pollution from vehicle emissions and other sources, forming harmful smog.

Although warmer-than-average stratospheric weather conditions have reduced ozone depletion during the past two years, the current ozone hole area is still large compared to the 1980s, when the depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica was first detected. 

In the stratosphere, roughly seven to 25 miles above Earth's surface, the ozone layer acts like sunscreen, shielding the planet from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation

This is because levels of ozone-depleting substances like chlorine and bromine remain high enough to produce significant ozone loss. 

In the 1970s, it was recognised that chemicals called CFCs, used for example in refrigeration and aerosols, were destroying ozone in the stratosphere.  

In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was agreed, which led to the phase-out of CFCs and, recently, the first signs of recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer. 

The upper stratosphere at lower latitudes is also showing clear signs of recovery, proving the Montreal Protocol is working well.

But the new study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, found it is likely not recovering at latitudes between 60°N and 60°S (London is at 51°N).

The cause is not certain but the researchers believe it is possible climate change is altering the pattern of atmospheric circulation - causing more ozone to be carried away from the tropics.

They say another possibility is that very short-lived substances (VSLSs), which contain chlorine and bromine, could be destroying ozone in the lower stratosphere.

VSLSs include chemicals used as solvents, paint strippers, and as degreasing agents.

One is even used in the production of an ozone-friendly replacement for CFCs.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

02-12-2025 om 20:45 geschreven door peter  

Story by Soniya

Image sourced via science.nasa.gov

​For the past few weeks, many people online have been talking about 3I/ATLAS, the fast-moving object seen in our solar system. Some were excited, some were confused, and a few even wondered if it might be something artificial.

But now NASA has given a clear answer after studying it closely with more than 20 telescopes and spacecraft.

NASA has confirmed that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, not alien technology and not anything man-made. It is simply a rare visitor from another star system.

A natural comet, not an artificial object

3I/ATLAS was first spotted on July 1, 2025, by NASA’s ATLAS telescope in Chile. It quickly drew attention because it was moving very fast and coming from deep space.

This makes it only the third confirmed interstellar object ever seen passing through our Solar System.

In a recent briefing, NASA officials explained that everything about the way the object moves and behaves matches a normal comet.

Amit Kshatriya from NASA said,

“This object is a comet … it looks and behaves like a comet.”

Nicky Fox, another NASA scientist, added that there are no signs of technology, no signals, and nothing that would suggest it was made by intelligent life.

She also reassured people that the comet is not dangerous.

Even during its closest approach, it will still be extremely far away from Earth — about 1.8 AU, which is almost twice the distance between Earth and the Sun.

A rare chance to study material from another star system

Even though it is natural, 3I/ATLAS is still something very special: scientists believe it formed around a completely different star far beyond our Solar System, which makes it an exciting object to study. 

By using powerful telescopes such as Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists discovered that the comet emits unusual gases.

They have found high levels of carbon dioxide and nickel vapour, not commonly seen from comets that originate from our own Solar System.

These rare chemicals give scientists an idea of what other star systems might be composed of.

NASA scientist Tom Statler commented that knowing this comet may contain material from before our Sun was even born “gives me goosebumps.”

​Rumors settle as the science becomes clear

With NASA’s final confirmation, the online theories can finally calm down. There is no sign that 3I/ATLAS is a spaceship or an artificial device. It is simply a natural comet from another part of the galaxy.

{ primetimer.com }

 

02-12-2025 om 20:08 geschreven door peter  

What would happen if the sun started to dim? 

Scientists have revealed the terrifying answer to this question, which is the subject of the upcoming science fiction blockbuster, Project Hail Mary.

The film, based on a novel of the same name by The Martian author, Andy Weir, follows a lone scientist on a mission to uncover why the sun is dimming.

In the movie, which is set to hit cinemas in March 2026, the sun's brightness is predicted to fall one per cent in a year and five per cent in 20 years.

These numbers might sound small.

But in reality, scientists say that these changes would be more than enough to wipe out humanity.

Professor David Stevenson, a planetary scientist from the California Institute of Technology, told Daily Mail: 'Extinguishing life on Earth would take a long time even if you eliminated solar energy because we know of organisms that live underground.

'But extinguishing humans could happen fast, especially since humans are not rational creatures for the most part.'

In Project Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling (pictured) plays a lone scientist sent on a mission to find out why the sun is dimming. But what would really happen if the sun did start to fade?

What happens when the sun starts to dim?

At a distance of around 93 million miles (150 million kilometres) from Earth, the sun delivers about 1,365 Watts per square metre of energy, which scientists call the solar constant. 

About 30 per cent of that energy is reflected back into space, while the remainder is absorbed, warming the Earth's atmosphere and surface.

Currently, our planet is holding on to more energy than it loses – but it wouldn't take much to tip the balance.

If the sun's brightness were to drop or if something prevented our atmosphere from absorbing the energy, then Earth could start to rapidly cool.

Professor Lucie Green, an expert on the sun from University College London, told Daily Mail: 'The Sun does naturally vary in brightness, but not by very much!

'The technical term is total solar irradiance. This is slightly variable, with the variability being a result of changes during the Sun’s 11–year sunspot cycle.'

These fluctuations are barely noticeable on Earth, but there have been much more dramatic shifts in the past.

The sun's output does naturally dip on an 11–year cycle that coincides with the number of sunspots appearing on the surface. However, these changes aren't enough to cool Earth dramatically 

Between 1645 and 1715, the sun went through a 70–year quiet period known as the Maunder Minimum.

At the same time, the Earth entered a period known as the Little Ice Age, during which temperatures in Northern Europe fell by between 0.6°C (1.1 °F) and 2°C (3.6°F).

Although the sun was only delivering 0.22 per cent less energy, some researchers think that this change was partially responsible for the deadly chill.

If Project Hail Mary's predictions came true and the sun's radiation continued to fall by one per cent, the results would soon become catastrophic.

As Earth would be losing more energy into space than it gained from the sun, global temperatures would soon fall several degrees below average.

Worryingly, Earth's history shows that even relatively small changes in the planet's average temperature can have a massively outsized impact.

During the Little Ice Age, less than a degree Celsius of cooling led to mass famine throughout Northern Europe.

Cold winters and cool summers led to crop failures, while the sea became so cold that Norse colonies in Greenland were cut off by the ice and collapsed through starvation.

In Project Hail Mary, the teacher turned astronaut Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling (pictured), learns that the sun will cool by one per cent in a year

According to a recent study, global cooling of just 1.8°C (3.25°F) would cut production of maize, wheat, soybeans and rice to fall by as much as 11 per cent.

As crop production failed due to cold weather and a lack of sunlight, mass famine would grip the world, killing 5.3 billion people in just two years.

However, if Project Hail Mary came true and the sun cooled by one to five per cent in 20 years, the effects on the climate would be even more devastating.

In Project Hail Mary, the teacher turned astronaut Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling in the upcoming film, remarks: 'That would mean an ice age. Like... right away. Instant ice age.'

That might sound dramatic, but scientists agree that it might not take much cooling for ice to reclaim the world.

According to a recent study from the University of Arizona, the average temperature during the last Ice Age, 20,000 years ago, was just 6°C (10.8°F) colder than today.

During this time, glaciers covered about half of North America, Europe and South America and many parts of Asia.

Dr Becky Smethurst, astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, told Daily Mail: 'A drop in energy of one per cent from the Sun would trigger a new Ice Age on Earth, with the polar ice caps expanding further towards the equator.

Just like the 2004 movie 'The Day After Tomorrow' (pictured), these major changes to the Earth's climate would eventually culminate in a new Ice Age that could wipe out life on Earth

According to a recent study from the University of Arizona, the average temperature during the last Ice Age, 20,000 years ago, was just 6°C (10.8°F) colder than today. This means it might not take much cooling for icy conditions to return 

'Many ecosystems would collapse as the weather changed, farming would fail, and there would be severe food shortages. As a species, humans would likely survive this change thanks to modern technology, although we'd most likely be living underground.'

What would happen if the sun completely cooled?

Although humanity might be able to survive a global ice age, the situation would be very different if the sun completely vanished.

Within a week, the Earth's surface would fall below –18°C (0°F) and within a year it would dip below –73°C (–100°F).

Eventually, after cooling for millions of years, the planet would stabilise at a frigid –240°C (–400°F).

However, humanity would be long gone well before the planet ever got to that point.

Some humans might be able to cling on in the deepest parts of the ocean, using hydrothermal vents for warmth.

But once the oceans freeze over, there would be very little hope for anyone to survive.

In the original novel of Project Hail Mary, written by The Martian author Andy Weir, scientists make the terrifying prediction that the sun's brightness will fall one per cent in a year and five per cent in 20 years. If this were true, then humanity would very likely be destroyed 

Dr Alexander James, a solar scientist from University College London, told Daily Mail: 'From a fundamental viewpoint, if the Sun completely faded, there would be no more light, meaning all our green plant life would be unable to photosynthesise.

'That means plants would not be producing oxygen, which, of course, we need to live. Temperatures would also plummet, so I don’t see how the majority of life as we know it would be able to survive without our Sun.'

Could this ever really happen?

Thankfully, scientists say there's no way that the sun could cool as fast as in Project Hail Mary.

Although the sun's activity does fluctuate, even in the most extreme events and quiet periods, the effects are not dramatic.

For example, many scientists have questioned how much the Maunder Minimum really contributed to the Little Ice Age during the 17th Century.

While most experts agree that a decline in solar activity did contribute to the cooling, other factors, such as volcanic activity, likely played a bigger role.

Additionally, most of the sun's natural variations are on a much smaller scale.

Luckily for us, the sun is so large that it cannot physically cool as quickly as Project Hail Mary suggests. Experts say the sun would only cool by one per cent in a million years if the core completely stopped producing energy

The amount of energy arriving from the sun usually only drops by 0.1 per cent during the solar cycle.

While large sunspots, cool regions on the solar surface, might cause a temporary dip as low as 0.25 per cent below average, this is nowhere near the five per cent change of Project Hail Mary.

In fact, many scientists believe that the sun cannot physically cool this fast.

Professor Michael Lockwood, a space environment physicist from the University of Reading, told Daily Mail: 'About half of the Sun's mass is in the radiative and convection zones outside the core – that is about a thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion kilograms.'

This enormous mass acts like a heat sink, storing colossal amounts of energy that would take billions of years to dissipate.

Professor Lockwood says: 'Roughly speaking, if the core ceased producing any energy, the power emitted by the Sun would only have dropped by about one per cent a million years later.

'Scientifically, anything faster than that is nonsense.'

So, even if the sun does start giving out on us, we will have plenty of time to find a better solution than sending out Ryan Gosling on a spaceship.

WHAT IS THE SOLAR CYCLE?

The Sun is a huge ball of electrically-charged hot gas that moves, generating a powerful magnetic field.

This magnetic field goes through a cycle, called the solar cycle.

Every 11 years or so, the Sun's magnetic field completely flips, meaning the sun's north and south poles switch places. 

The solar cycle affects activity on the surface of the Sun, such as sunspots which are caused by the Sun's magnetic fields. 

Every 11 years the Sun's magnetic field flips, meaning the Sun's north and south poles switch places. The solar cycle affects activity on the surface of the Sun, increasing the number of sunspots during stronger (2001) phases than weaker (1996/2006) ones

One way to track the solar cycle is by counting the number of sunspots.

The beginning of a solar cycle is a solar minimum, or when the Sun has the least sunspots. Over time, solar activity - and the number of sunspots - increases.

The middle of the solar cycle is the solar maximum, or when the Sun has the most sunspots.

As the cycle ends, it fades back to the solar minimum and then a new cycle begins.

Giant eruptions on the Sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, also increase during the solar cycle.

These eruptions send powerful bursts of energy and material into space that can have effects on Earth.

For example, eruptions can cause lights in the sky, called aurora, or impact radio communications and electricity grids on Earth. 

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01-12-2025 om 23:52 geschreven door peter  

China introduceert helikopterdrone voor extreem landschap

Key takeaways

China heeft zijn nieuwste onbemande luchtvaartuig onthuld, de Meyu Arrow helikopterdrone. De geavanceerde drone, ontwikkeld door Tengden Technology uit Sichuan, onderging onlangs zijn eerste live raketafvuurtest op meer dan 4.000 meter hoogte.

Bestrijding van extreme omgevingen

Volgens China Central Television (CCTV) is de Meyu Arrow ontworpen voor extreme omgevingen en moeilijk terrein. Na een succesvolle eerste raketlancering gaat de helikopter nu een nieuwe fase van testvluchten in. Tengden Technology wil de mogelijkheden verder uitbreiden en plant tests voor besturing buiten de zichtlijn op hoogtes boven 6.000 meter.

De Meyu Arrow heeft een aantal indrukwekkende technische kenmerken. Hij is 7,87 meter lang en heeft een rotordiameter van 6,4 meter, kan tot acht uur in de lucht blijven en heeft een bereik van 900 kilometer. Het operationele plafond is een indrukwekkende 7.000 meter.

Demonstratie

Tengden Technology heeft eerder de prestaties van de drone gedemonstreerd door het bereiken van een snelheid van 135 km/u op 6.500 meter en een werkelijke snelheid van 178 km/u tijdens een afdaling naar 4.500 meter. Deze tests tonen het vermogen van de helikopterdrone om de controle te behouden in moeilijke windomstandigheden en in ijle lucht.

De Meyu Arrow is ontworpen voor verkennings- en aanvalsmissies, gewapende escorte en precisiedoelen. Hij blinkt uit in bergachtige gebieden waar traditionele UAV’s met vaste vleugels beperkt zijn. Dankzij de mogelijkheden voor verticaal opstijgen en landen kan het toestel opereren vanuit krappe ruimtes. Die zijn ontoegankelijk voor bemande vliegtuigen, zoals smalle valleien of hooggelegen posities.

Nieuw schakelpunt in China’s dronecapaciteit

Deze helikopter vult een cruciaal gat in China’s onbemande arsenaal door de wendbaarheid van roterende vleugels te combineren met een bewapende precisieslag over extreem terrein. De mogelijkheid om op 6.000 meter hoogte te opereren met behulp van satellietcommunicatie zou het operationele bereik vergroten tot buiten de gezichtslijn, een eigenschap die meestal geassocieerd wordt met grotere UAV’s met vaste vleugels.

Dergelijke drones op grote hoogte zijn bijzonder nuttig voor het beveiligen van betwiste grenszones, hoogvlakten en bergcorridors. Ze krijgen daardoor een strategische rol binnen China’s defensiebeleid, vooral langs de grens met India.

{ Business AM Dutch }

01-12-2025 om 23:25 geschreven door peter  

Over the past few decades, scientists have conducted numerous searches for extraterrestrial life and are now summarizing some of the results of this work. The conditions for the emergence of organic beings similar to those on Earth are more than favorable. However, no reliable traces of intelligent beings have been found.

New analysis of the search for extraterrestrial life

Since the 1950s, humanity has been searching for extraterrestrial life with increasingly sophisticated tools. But after decades of space probes, meteorite analysis, radio telescopes, and UFO investigations, what have we actually found?

A new piece of analysis by a team led by Seyed Sina Seyedpour Layalestani from the Islamic Azad University in Iran has looked at the most compelling evidence to date, from ancient space rocks that fell to Earth carrying the building blocks of life itself. The paper is published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

Organic molecules in ancient meteorites

The Murchison meteorite, which crashed into Australia in 1969, is older than our solar system at 7 billion years. Recent analysis revealed something extraordinary: that all five nucleobases that form DNA and RNA (adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine, and uracil) were present in this ancient stone. These molecules, confirmed as extraterrestrial in origin, fundamentally challenge the assumption that life’s ingredients formed exclusively on Earth.

The Orgueil meteorite that exploded over France in 1864 tells a similar story. This carbonaceous rock contains not just amino acids like glycine and alanine, but structures resembling microfossils, tiny forms that look similar to magnetotactic bacteria found in Earth’s oceans. While scientists initially dismissed these as contamination or mineral formations, recent studies have confirmed their extraterrestrial origin.

Conditions for the emergence of life beyond Earth

Space probes have expanded the search beyond meteorites. Rovers on Mars discovered liquid water streams and ice. The Cassini spacecraft found massive glaciers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The Phoenix lander confirmed water ice just three centimeters below the Martian surface. These discoveries reveal that the basic requirements for life, water, organic compounds, and energy sources, seem to exist throughout our solar system.

Radio telescopes have detected more than 100 organic molecules in interstellar dust clouds, including amino acids and nucleic acid components. These findings strengthen the panspermia hypothesis, the idea that life’s building blocks are distributed throughout space, potentially seeding planets across the galaxy.

But what about intelligent alien civilizations? Despite decades of UFO reports and SETI programs broadcasting messages into space, no confirmed evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence exists. Most UFO sightings have conventional explanations, from ball lightning in the atmosphere to plasma phenomena in the thermosphere. The supposed alien bodies presented to Mexico’s Congress in 2023 were quickly dismissed as artificial constructs.

The search for extraterrestrial life and the help of artificial intelligence

The challenge isn’t a lack of evidence for life’s ingredients; instead, it’s proving that these ingredients actually formed living organisms elsewhere. The presence of DNA building blocks in billion-year-old meteorites doesn’t confirm that alien bacteria existed, only that the chemistry for life occurs naturally in space.

Enter artificial intelligence. New AI algorithms can analyze meteorite chemistry to distinguish biological from non-biological origins of organic compounds. Machine learning helps filter noise from radio signals and identify atmospheric biosignatures on distant exoplanets. Where human analysis might overlook subtle patterns in vast datasets, AI excels.

We’ve found the pieces. The building blocks of life exist throughout space. Whether those pieces assembled into living organisms, microbial or intelligent, remains the universe’s most tantalizing unanswered question.

• Provided by: phys.org

• Posted in News, Science

{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

01-12-2025 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Mogelijke buitenaardse lucht of UAP's verschijnselen en de rol van overheid en de bekendmaking: Een wetenschappelijk en gestructureerd overzicht

Inleiding

De interesse in onbekende of onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen – recent hernoemd tot Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) – heeft binnen de laatste decennia een opmerkelijke stijging doorgemaakt. Wat begon als een marginale en vaak sceptisch ontvangen onderwerp in de populaire cultuur, heeft het zich ontwikkeld tot een serieuze kwestie voor zowel wetenschappelijke onderzoekers als overheidsinstanties. Deze thesis richt zich op een uitgebreid wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de fenomenen die onder de noemer UAP worden gecategoriseerd, de toename van meldingen, de rol van overheidsbekendmakingen, en de maatschappelijke en wetenschappelijke implicaties. Door middel van een gedegen analyse van bestaande data, officiële rapporten, en publieke opinie, zal deze thesis proberen inzicht te geven in de huidige situatie en de mogelijke paden voor toekomstig onderzoek en beleidsvorming.

Hoofdstuk 1: De ontwikkeling van meldingen van UAP’s

1.1 Statistische toename van meldingen

De afgelopen tien jaren vormen een periode van opmerkelijke verandering in de rapportage en perceptie van onverklaarbare vliegende objecten, oftewel UAP’s (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Een van de meest duidelijke indicaties van deze evolutie is de exponentiële stijging in het aantal officiële en onofficiële meldingen. Volgens data van het National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), een organisatie die al decennia meldingen verzamelt, is het aantal gerapporteerde UAP’s in de Verenigde Staten tussen 2010 en 2022 aanzienlijk toegenomen. In 2010 registreerden ze ongeveer 5.000 meldingen, terwijl dit aantal in 2022 was gestegen tot circa 25.000 meldingen per jaar. Deze drievoudige toename in het aantal meldingenbinnen een decennium wijst niet alleen op een toevallige statistische variatie, maar op een fundamentele verandering in zowel het aantal waarnemingen als de waargenomen ernst ervan.

Deze toename wordt door verschillende factoren beïnvloed.

• Ten eerste is er een grotere publieke alertheid en interesse in het fenomeen ontstaan, mede dankzij de opkomst van digitale media en sociale netwerken, waardoor mensen sneller en gemakkelijker hun waarnemingen kunnen delen.
• Ten tweede speelt technologische vooruitgang hierin een belangrijke rol. Smartphones met hoogwaardige camera’s en videofuncties maken het mogelijk voor gewone burgers om snel visuele en auditieve waarnemingen vast te leggen. Voorbeeld hiervan zijn de talloze video’s die op platforms zoals YouTube en TikTok worden gedeeld, waarin afwijkende lichten of objecten worden vastgelegd die vervolgens viraal gaan.

Een niet-geïdentificeerd luchtverschijnsel in een video van het Amerikaanse leger. Ministerie van Defensie via To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science

Daarnaast zijn militaire en overheidsorganisaties begonnen met het vrijgeven van meer gegevens over UAP’s, onder meer door middel van gerichte rapportages en video’s. Het wordt bijvoorbeeld vermeld dat het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie in de afgelopen jaren meerdere gedocumenteerde incidenten heeft gepubliceerd, waaronder de bekende “Gimbal” en “GoFast” filmpjes. Deze beelden laten snel bewegende lichten zien die niet voldoen aan de technische mogelijkheden van de meeste bekende vliegtuigen of drones en blijven daardoor onzeker en intrigerend. De technici die deze beelden analyseren, spreken vaak over objecten die ‘plotseling van snelheid wisselen’, ‘onmogelijk manoeuvreren’ en ‘onbegrijpelijke vormen’ aannemen.

Daarnaast heeft de ontwikkeling van nieuwe sensorsystemen in de luchtvaart en militaire radarinstallaties de detectie en tracking van UAP’s verbeterd. Radargegevens tonen vaak objecten die zó snel bewegen dat zij de limieten van onze huidige detectietechnologieën lijken te overschrijden. Bijvoorbeeld, verschillende rapporten beschrijven radarbeelden van objecten die gedurende minuten zichtbaar bleven op radarschermen, met snelheden die volgens de conventionele fysica niet mogelijk zijn voor menselijke-gestuurde technologieën.

Kortom, de statische data bevestigen dat het verschijnsel actueler en prominenter wordt dan ooit tevoren. Het aantal meldingen is niet langer louter een symptoom van toenemende nieuwsgierigheid, maar wijst op een mogelijke werkelijkheid waarin UAP’s een gewone opleving zijn van een fenomeen dat al decennia bestaat, maar eerder werd genegeerd of onderdrukt.

1.2 De culturele omslag en perceptie

Begin jaren 2000 werd het onderwerp van UAP’s nog vaak afgedaan als onzin, gekkigheid of speculatie die vooral tussen fantasie en wantrouwen zweefde. Media en wetenschappelijke gemeenschap toonden meestal weinig interesse vanwege het gebrek aan bewijzen en de associatie met spookverhalen. Toch begonnen er in de loop van de jaren een kentering zichtbaar te worden, mede onder invloed van publieke en politieke ontwikkelingen.

Een belangrijke keerpunt kwam door de publicatie van officiële video’s door het Amerikaanse leger. De “Gimbal”-video uit 2015 toont bijvoorbeeld een object dat snel beweegt en een ongewoon patroon van beweging vertoont, terwijl de “GoFast”-video uit 2015 beelden toont van een snel bewegend object dat radarbeelden genereert met een snelheid die verdergaat dan conventionele technologie. Wat deze beelden zo bijzonder maakt, is dat ze niet langer anonieme getuigenissen zijn, maar bevestigde en geverifieerde opnames door militaire eenheden.

Volgens Dr. Linda Bracken van het Center for Aerial Phenomena Studies is de perceptie aan het veranderen: “Wanneer betrouwbare militaire bronnen aangeven dat ze een object niet kunnen identificeren, verandert de perceptie van wantrouwen naar ware nieuwsgierigheid.” Dit citaat onderstreept de impact van officiële rapportages die de geloofwaardigheid van de waarnemingen vergroten. Wat eerst werd afgedaan als ‘onverklaarbare lichten’ of ‘natuurlijke fenomenen’, krijgt nu aandacht van beleidsmakers, wetenschappers en defensieorganisaties die serieus willen onderzoeken wat zich écht afspeelt.

De culturele omslag wordt verder versterkt door publieke discussies op online fora zoals Reddit, waar getuigen ervaringen delen en analisten samenwerken om patronen te vinden in de data. Podcasts en documentaires zoals “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation” op Netflix hebben de thema’s toegankelijker gemaakt voor een breed publiek, waardoor UAP’s een kernonderwerp zijn geworden in de maatschappelijke discussie over technologische ontwikkeling, veiligheid en de plaats van de mens in het universum.

Op technisch niveau maakt deze perceptieverandering dat organisaties en overheden meer middelen inzetten voor onderzoek. Het belang van trackingsoftware, radardata-analyse, en geavanceerde sensorontwikkeling wordt erkend. Bijvoorbeeld, nieuwe radarsystemen kunnen nu objecten detecteren die zich in de stratosfeer bevinden en met een snelheid van honderden kilometers per uur bewegen, terwijl oudere systemen daar niet toe in staat waren. De perceptie van UAP’s als een ‘kwaadaardig’ of ‘onbekend’ fenomeen evolueert naar een meer genuanceerde wetenschappelijke interesse, waarbij men de vraag stelt: “Wat zijn deze objecten en wat betekent hun aanwezigheid voor onze kennis van de luchtvaart, fysica en mogelijk buitenaards leven?”

Kort samengevat, de verandering in perceptie is niet alleen een gevolg van technische verbeteringen, maar ook van een paradigmaverschuiving in de manier waarop samenleving en overheid dit fenomeen begrijpen. Wat eerst werd gezien als onzinnig of paranoïde, wordt nu steeds meer geïnterpreteerd als een belangrijke vraag die wetenschappelijk, technologisch en maatschappelijk onderzocht moet worden. Door deze culturele omslag ontstaat er ruimte voor serieus onderzoek dat niet langer geblokkeerd wordt door stigma’s of militaire geheimhouding, maar open staat voor nieuwe verklaringen en ontdekkingen.

Hoofdstuk 2: Overheidsbekendmakingen en onderzoeksinitiatieven

2.1 Officiële rapporten en hun bevindingen

In de wereld van onverklaarbare luchtverschijnselen (UAP), oftewel phenomena die vroeger bekend stonden als UFO’s, vormen officiële rapporten de basis voor verdere wetenschappelijke en politieke discussies. Een van de meest urgente en invloedrijke documenten op dit vlak was het rapport gepubliceerd door het Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in juni 2021. Dit rapport was gebaseerd op een uitgebreide analyse van 144 waarnemingen die gedaan werden tussen 2004 en 2021 door verschillende Amerikaanse militaire en civiele overheidsinstanties.

Het rapport gaf aan dat ongeveer 30% van deze waarnemingen niet konden worden verklaard met de huidige technologische middelen en wetenschappelijke kennis. Dit betekent dat er bijna een derde van de fenomenen was die niet in de categorie ‘menselijke techniek’ of ‘natuurlijke verschijnselen’ kon worden ondergebracht. Een belangrijk aspect hierbij was dat veel van deze anomalieën werden waargenomen bij hypersonische snelheden, vaak boven de Mach 5, hoewel deze snelheden niet altijd met geoustestapparatuur konden worden bevestigd. Daarnaast kwam het rapport tot de conclusie dat diverse waarnemingen abrupte manoeuvres vertoonden die onmogelijk zouden zijn met bekende aerodynamische principes, en dat er in sommige gevallen geen detecteerbare voortstuwingssignaturen werden waargenomen, zoals geluid of warmteontwikkeling.

Volgens het rapport toonden sommige UAP’s kenmerken die zodanig afwijkend waren dat ze niet eenvoudig te verklaren waren binnen het kader van bekende militaire of civiele technologie. Bijvoorbeeld, er werden fenomenen gerapporteerd die op verschillende hoogten opereerden en die zich zeer plotseling konden verplaatsen, soms zelfs met snelheden die de huidige luchtvaarttechnologie overschreden. Dit zette de traditionele opvattingen over de beperkingen van luchtvaartuigen onder druk, en leidde tot speculaties over de mogelijkheid dat deze fenomenen geavanceerde technologieën mogelijk vertegenwoordigen van derden, of dat ze zelfs technologische innovaties binnen de militaire sector zelf zijn.

Het rapport benadrukte het belang van het verzamelen, codificeren en analyseren van dergelijke data op een gesystematiseerde manier. De bevindingen werden niet alleen door wetenschappers en militairen besproken, maar veroorzaakten ook een politieke storm. Beleidsmakers en veiligheidsadviseurs riepen op tot meer transparantie en meer funding voor gespecialiseerde onderzoeksprogramma’s, omdat de onbekende aard van deze verschijnselen grote risico’s met zich meebreeg voor de nationale veiligheid. De vraag was immers of deze fenomenen mogelijk vijandelijke of spontane technologische aanvallen konden inhouden, of dat ze onderdeel waren van een meer complexe en mogelijk gevaarlijke technologisch-superieure entiteit.

2.2 Politieke en militaire betrokkenheid

Door de jaren heen heeft de Amerikaanse overheid verschillende initiatieven genomen om inzicht te krijgen in UAP’s, maar de echte doorbraak kwam er pas in 2024 met de organisatie van de eerste openbare hoorzitting door het Congres over dit onderwerp. Voorheen was het onderzoek vaak behind closed doors, en waren rapporten en gegevens zelden publiek toegankelijk, vooral vanwege classificatieniveaus en nationale veiligheidsbelangen.

De hoorzitting van 2024 was een belangrijke mijlpaal omdat Amerikaanse politici, wetenschappers en defensiefunctionarissen zich openlijk konden uitspreken over de bevindingen en de stand van zaken. Een van de meest markante getuigenissen kwam van Lieutenant Commander James “Jim” Harlan, een ervaren piloot en militair die al meer dan tien jaar UAP-gegevens verzamelde en bestudeerde. Harlan onthulde interne memo's en rapporten die aantonen dat het leger al langere tijd betrokken was bij het volgen en analyseren van deze verschijnselen, maar dat verschillende factoren — zoals budgettaire beperkingen, bureaucratische processen en strikte classificatieprocedures — het onderzoek soms belemmerden.

Volgens Harlan werden de data verzameld via verschillende middelen, waaronder geavanceerde radarsystemen en infraroodcamera’s, maar de analyse ervan was niet altijd transparant. Hij verklaarde dat veel documenten intern werden gehouden om ‘technologische geheimen’ te beschermen, hoewel ze mogelijk ook het publieke vertrouwen en de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap in de weg stonden. Harlan benadrukte dat er binnen het militaire apparaat een toenemende bewustwording bestaat dat deze fenomenen mogelijk een gevaar vormen, niet alleen voor de luchtvaartveiligheid, maar ook voor nationale beveiliging en strategische belangen.

Het feit dat het Congres nu openlijk discussie voert over UAP’s en dat getuigen zoals Harlan hun bewijzen kunnen presenteren, onderstreept de verandering in het politiek klimaat ten opzichte van het onderwerp. Er wordt steeds meer erkend dat er sprake is van een complexe problematiek die niet afgedaan kan worden met simpele verklaringen. Daarnaast worden er vragen opgesteld over de behoefte aan een gecentraliseerd en transparant datamanagementsysteem, dat alle relevante informatie verzamelt, bewaart en onderzoekt, zonder dat deze door overheids- of militaire belangen wordt gedicteerd.

Tot slot illustreert deze ontwikkeling de ernst waarmee overheidsinstanties het onderwerp nemen. Er worden niet alleen meer middelen vrijgemaakt voor het onderzoek, maar ook wordt er een bredere maatschappelijke dialoog gevoerd over de aard, herkomst en mogelijke implicaties van de fenomenen die men zich eerder slechts in sci-fi films kon voorstellen. De betrokkenheid van het congres, de openheid van getuigenissen, en de publieke belangstelling benadrukken dat UAP-onderzoek een belangrijke rol begint te spelen in de nationale en internationale veiligheidsagenda.

Kortom, de combinatie van wetenschappelijke rapporten en politieke initiatieven zorgt voor een groeiend bewustzijn dat we binnen een nieuw paradigma opereren: niet langer is dit enkel een zaak van nieuwsgierige getuigen of geheime militairen, maar een onderwerp van nationale en mondiale samenleving dat aandacht en wetenschappelijke ernst verdient.

Hoofdstuk 3: Maatschappelijke impact en roep om transparantie

3.1 Publieke opinie en maatschappelijke druk

De maatschappelijke houding ten aanzien van onidentificeerde luchtverschijnselen (UAPs), voorheen bekend als UFO's, heeft in de afgelopen jaren een ingrijpende verandering ondergaan. Volgens onderzoek uitgevoerd door het Pew Research Center in 2025, independent en gerenommeerd als een betrouwbare bron voor gegevens over publieke opinies, blijkt dat maar liefst 68% van de Amerikanen vóórstander is van meer openheid van overheidsdata over UAPs. Dit percentage onderstreept een aanzienlijke beweging binnen de samenleving richting transparantie en openheid. Het valt op dat deze steun niet alleen vanuit nieuwsgierigheid ontstaat, maar ook uit een groeiend vertrouwen in overheidsinstanties en wetenschappelijke instituten.

Mensen geloven dat transparantie niet alleen de wetenschappelijke kennis versterkt, maar ook de nationale veiligheid kan verbeteren. Door openheid wordt de mogelijkheid geboden om UAP-verschijnselen door onafhankelijke experts te bestuderen, wat kan leiden tot een beter begrip van de fenomenen en mogelijke bedreigingen. Bijvoorbeeld, als UAPs inderdaad luchtvaartuigen of technologieën blijken te zijn van buitenlandse mogendheden of niet-geïdentificeerde bedreigingen, kan tijdige informatie-uitwisseling een essentieel onderdeel vormen van het defensiebeleid en preventieve maatregelen.

Daarnaast speelt maatschappelijke druk een belangrijke rol. Advocacy groepen zoals de UAP Transparency Initiative (UTI), opgericht in 2022, vormen een belangrijke stem in het publieke debat. Deze organisatie pleit voor volledige openbaarmaking van alle niet-sensitive informatie over UAPs en zet zich in voor het vergroten van de transparantie. Zij organiseren campagnes, brengen rapporten uit en lobbyen bij beleidsmakers om de openheid te stimuleren.

Een voorbeeld van hun invloed is de release van een reeks declassificeerde rapporten door het Amerikaanse ministerie van Defensie in 2024, deels gefaciliteerd door publieke druk. Deze rapporten bevatten in sommige gevallen gedetailleerde waarnemingen en radarbeelden, die voorheen achter gesloten deuren werden gehouden. De maatschappelijke druk wordt mede versterkt door verhalen en getuigenissen van piloten en militairen, die vaak jarenlang hebben gezwegen uit angst voor reprimandes of vooroordelen. De openheid van deze getuigenissen zorgt voor een breed maatschappelijke discussie, waarin niet alleen Pentagon en NSA, maar ook de wetenschap, media en het grote publiek betrokken zijn.

3.2 Argumenten voor transparantie

Het argument voor transparantie wordt vaak onderbouwd door technische, wetenschappelijke en veiligheidsgerelateerde overwegingen. Volgens voormalige Pentagon functionarissen zoals generaal Mark Evans, een expert op het gebied van defensie en nationale veiligheid, “versterkt transparantie de nationale veiligheid, omdat onafhankelijke experts de bevindingen kunnen valideren en beleid kunnen adviseren”. Hij benadrukt dat door het openstellen van gegevens, de kans op het herkennen en begrijpen van UAP-verschijnselen toeneemt, wat essentieel is voor het ontwikkelen van adequaat beleid en preventiestrategieën.

Het argument dat geheimhouding de wetenschap en veiligheid dient, wordt inmiddels algemeen weerlegd. Stilzwijiģheid en geheimhouding kunnen leiden tot een zogenaamde 'black box' situatie, waarbij informatie niet wordt gedeeld en daardoor de kans op misverstanden of misbruik toeneemt. Transparantie daarentegen maakt het mogelijk om fenomenen te bestuderen op een wetenschappelijk verantwoorde wijze, waarbij onderzoeksinstituten, universiteiten en onafhankelijk wetenschappers betrokken worden. Dit kan leiden tot nieuwe technologieën, zoals geavanceerde sensorsystemen, die buiten de militaire context verder ontwikkeld kunnen worden.

Een concreet voorbeeld hiervan is de succesvolle integratie van geavanceerde radarsystemen die detectie van UAPs mogelijk maken in civiele luchtvaart en wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Sinds 2023 is er bijvoorbeeld een toename te zien in het gebruik van LIDAR-technologieën en multispectrale sensoren, die zonder vooringenomenheid of geheime doeleinden externe fenomenen kunnen vastleggen. Hierdoor wordt de kans groter dat gegevens reproduceerbaar en controleerbaar zijn, wat de betrouwbaarheid van de bevindingen versterkt.

Daarnaast benadrukken voorstanders dat transparantie ook het publieke vertrouwen in overheidsinstellingen vergroot. In een tijd waarin desinformatie en complottheorieën prolifereren, fungeert open data als een rem op het ontstaan van ongefundeerde speculaties. Zoals James E. McDonnell, een bekende astrofysicus en wetenschapsadviseur, stelt: “Als we vooroordelen en onduidelijkheden vermijden door openheid te bieden, bouwen we aan een fundament van vertrouwen dat nodig is om gezamenlijk complexe mysteries zoals UAPs te doorgronden.”

Het is belangrijk te onderstrepen dat transparantie niet betekent dat alle informatie onmiddellijk openbaar wordt. Privacy- en veiligheidsgevoelige data, zoals exacte locaties van geheime bases of technologische specificaties die de nationale defensie in gevaar brengen, worden nog steeds afgeschermd. Echter, de kerngegevens en waarnemingen die wetenschappelijk en maatschappelijke waarde hebben, worden wel publiek gemaakt. Daarbij speelt ook internationalisering van uitwisseling een grote rol: enkele landen zoals Canada, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Australië hebben onderling afspraken gemaakt om gegevens te delen, wat de internationale samenwerking versterkt.

Tot slot wordt ook gewezen op de technologische ontwikkelingen die transparantie mogelijk maken. Cloud computing, blockchain-technologie en versleutelde communicatie zorgen ervoor dat gegevens op een veilige en transparante wijze gedeeld kunnen worden, zonder dreiging van manipulatie of diefstal. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het project OpenSky, gelanceerd door het European Space Agency in 2024, dat een gedeeld platform biedt waarop waarnemingen van UAPs wereldwijd real-time kunnen worden verzameld, geverifieerd en geanalyseerd door verschillende onderzoeksinstituten.

Kortom, de maatschappelijke impact van de roep om transparantie is groot en multidimensionaal. Het kan leiden tot een breder wetenschappelijk begrip, meer maatschappelijke betrokkenheid, verhoogde veiligheid en verbeterd vertrouwen in overheidsinstellingen. Belangrijk is dat transparantie strategisch wordt benaderd, met respect voor ethische en veiligheidsvoorschriften, en met de inzet om kennis en inzichten te delen ten behoeve van de samenleving als geheel.

Hoofdstuk 4: Toekomstperspectieven en beleid

Dit hoofdstuk richt zich op de toekomstige ontwikkelingen in UAP-onderzoek, met een uitgebreide blik op nieuwe wetgeving, onderzoeksinitiatieven, en de technologische kansen die deze verschijnselen bieden. De voortdurende publieke, politieke en wetenschappelijke druk vragen om een gestructureerde en transparante aanpak, waarbij samenwerking tussen verschillende disciplines centraal staat.

4.1 Nieuwe wetgeving en onderzoeksinitiatieven

In reactie op de toenemende publieke belangstelling en de politieke urgentie, is er gewerkt aan de vormgeving van de UAP Research and Transparency Act (hierna: URTA). Deze wet wordt gezien als een belangrijke doorbraak in het formaliseringsproces van UAP-onderzoek.

De voorgestelde wetsartikelen bevatten onder andere de volgende kernpunten:

• Verplichting tot jaarlijkse rapportages: Overheidsinstanties worden verplicht om jaarlijks gedetailleerde rapportages te verstrekken aan het Congres over alle verzamelde gegevens, bevindingen en onderzoeken met betrekking tot UAP’s. Dit zorgt voor een voortdurende transparantie en een gestructureerde monitoring van de ontwikkelingen.

• Financiering van een civiel-overheid samenwerkingscentrum: Er wordt geld vrijgemaakt voor de oprichting van een gespecialiseerd samenwerkingscentrum dat functioneert als brug tussen overheidsinstanties, universiteiten, en private onderzoeksinitiatieven. Dit centrum krijgt als taak het coördineren van multidisciplinaire onderzoeken, het delen van gegevens en het ontwikkelen van nieuwe onderzoeksinstrumenten.

• Declassificatie van beeldmateriaal: Een belangrijke bepaling is dat niet-gevoelige beelden en data binnen 90 dagen na ontvangst gedeclassificeerd moeten worden. Hiermee wordt de transparantie bevorderd en wordt voorkomen dat waardevolle gegevens onnodig verborgen blijven.

Indien deze wet wordt aangenomen, kan haar impact groot zijn. Het leggen van een wettelijke basis voor een multidisciplinair onderzoeksparadigma betekent dat ingenieurs, natuurkundigen, datawetenschappers en andere specialisten zullen samenwerken. Bijvoorbeeld, technici kunnen radarsystemen verbeteren, natuurkundigen kunnen theorieën ontwikkelen over onbekende verschijnselen, terwijl datawetenschappers grote datasets analyseren op patronen en anomalieën. Volgens wetenschapsfilosoof Karl Popper, moet wetenschap "float with falsifiability," en een gestructureerd beleid zoals URTA biedt de juiste basis voor het testen van hypotheses en het weerleggen ervan.

• Voorbeelden van de inhoud van de wet

Een concreet voorbeeld uit de wetsvoorstellen betreft de rapportage van nieuwe waarnemingen via publieke meldingen en militaire systemen, waarbij gegevens geverifieerd worden door meerdere onafhankelijke bronnen. Een ander voorbeeld betreft de oprichting van een databank waarin alle gedecodeerde radargegevens en beeldmateriaal wordt opgeslagen, toegankelijk voor onderzoekers binnen en buiten de overheid. Daarbij wordt veel aandacht besteed aan de beveiliging, waarbij geavanceerde encryptietechnieken en blockchain-technologie kunnen worden ingezet om de integriteit van de gegevens te waarborgen.

• Technische details en uitdagingen

Het opzetten van een dergelijk samenwerkingscentrum stuit op technologische en organisatorische uitdagingen. Zo vereist de classificatie en analyse van grote hoeveelheden beelden en radargegevens efficiënte data-infrastructuren en geavanceerde algoritmen voor beeld- en patroonherkenning. Hierbij speelt kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) een cruciale rol: deep learning modellen kunnen bijvoorbeeld getraind worden om onderscheid te maken tussen natuurlijke fenomenen zoals weerballonnen, en mogelijk niet-gedefinieerde objecten die afwijkingen vertonen.

Voorbeeld: Een AI-model dat getraind is op duizenden getelde UAP-beelden, kan patroonherkenning toepassen om afwijkingen in nieuwe data te identificeren. Onderzoekers kunnen bijvoorbeeld AI inzetten om te detecteren of bepaalde verschijnselen consistent voorkomen onder specifieke omstandigheden, zoals bij bepaalde weersomstandigheden of op bepaalde locaties.

• Interdisciplinaire samenwerking

Door de wet wordt een nieuw standaardprofiel gecreëerd waarbij ingenieurs, natuurkundigen en datawetenschappers niet langer in gescheiden silo's werken, maar samen vraagstukken aanpakken vanuit verschillende invalshoeken. Een voorbeeld hiervan is de integratie van atmosferische modellen met radar- en videogegevens om fenomenen beter te begrijpen. Bijvoorbeeld, signalen die door radars worden uitgezonden, kunnen worden vergeleken met atmosferische data om te bepalen of waargenomen objecten natuurlijke of andere oorzaken hebben.

4.2 Wetenschappelijke en technologische kansen

Naast de wetgeving biedt de technologische vooruitgang nieuwe wegen voor UAP-onderzoek. Een belangrijk onderdeel hierbij is de toepassing van geavanceerde radarsystemen en atmosferische modellen, gecombineerd met kunstmatige intelligentie (AI).

• Geavanceerde radarsystemen

De huidige radartechnologie maakt gebruik van pulse-Doppler radars die in staat zijn om objecten op grote afstand en met hoge precisie te detecteren. Niettemin blijft de beperking bestaan dat radarbeelden vaak moeilijk te interpreteren zijn omdat verstoringen door atmosferische omstandigheden voorkomen. Nieuwe radarsystemen, zoals die met phased array technologie en multistatic opstellingen, kunnen echter real-time en driedimensionale data verzamelen, waardoor het identificatieproces significant wordt verbeterd.

Bijvoorbeeld, het gebruik van MIMO-radarsystemen (Multiple Input Multiple Output) kan leiden tot een veel hogere gezichts- en detectiecapaciteit. Dankzij de enorme gegevensstroom die deze systemen genereren, kunnen datawetenschappers en ingenieurs machine learning-algoritmen ontwikkelen om afwijkingen en patronen te herkennen die eerder niet zichtbaar waren.

• Atmosferische modellen en computermodellering

Door gebruik te maken van uitgebreide atmosferische modellen kunnen verschijnselen zoals weerballonnen, pluimen, of bepaalde weersomstandigheden worden gesimuleerd en vooraf voorspeld. Dit helpt om waarnemingen beter te verklaren en te onderscheiden van mogelijke UAP’s. Bijvoorbeeld, het fenomeen van ball lightning wordt met theoretische modellen en geavanceerde simulaties bestudeerd. Als we begrijpen onder welke atmosferische condities de verschijnselen ontstaan, wordt het makkelijker om onderscheid te maken tussen natuurlijke en niet-natuurlijke objecten.

• Kunstmatige intelligentie (AI)

De inzet van AI opent nieuwe perspectieven in het empirisch onderzoek naar UAP’s. Deep learning netwerken, zoals convolutionele neurale netwerken (CNN’s), kunnen worden getraind op enorme datasets van beelden, radargegevens en videomateriaal. Bijvoorbeeld, een studie uit 2019 liet zien dat CNN’s in staat waren om 90% van de verschillende natuurlijke en kunstmatige objecten correct te classificeren, waaronder ook anomalieën die op "hidden" of onzichtbare objecten lijken.

Daarnaast kan AI worden ingezet voor real-time monitoring en automatische waarnemingsdetectie. Bijvoorbeeld, tijdens vliegreizen of militaire oefeningen kan AI automatisch afwijkingen signaleren en instant alert geven aan onderzoekers.

• Van beschrijvende naar verklarende wetenschap

Een belangrijke ambitie voor de toekomst is de overgang van louter beschrijvende karakterisering naar een empirisch en verklarend niveau. Dit betekent dat niet alleen het "wat" en "wanneer" wordt vastgelegd, maar dat men probeert te begrijpen "hoe" en "waarom" bepaalde fenomenen optreden. Dit vereist het ontwikkelen van theoretische modellen die kunnen verklaren waarom UAP’s zich op bepaalde manieren gedragen en onder welke specifieke omstandigheden zij worden waargenomen.

Voorbeeld: Een theoretisch model dat suggereert dat sommige UAP’s gerelateerd kunnen zijn aan natuurlijke plasmafenomenen in de atmosfeer, gebaseerd op elektromagnetische theoretische principes, kan een stap zijn in de richting van een verklaring.

• Conclusie

De technologische en wetenschappelijke kansen in UAP-onderzoek bieden veelbelovende perspectieven om de mysteries achter deze verschijnselen stap voor stap te ontrafelen. Door nauwe samenwerking tussen technici, natuurkundigen en datawetenschappers, ondersteund door een solide beleidskader en grote investeringen in R&D, kunnen we de komende jaren belangrijke doorbraken verwachten. Het doel is niet alleen het registreren van waarnemingen, maar het ontwikkelen van een fundamenteel begrip dat kan leiden tot technologische innovaties en mogelijk zelfs nieuwe fysische inzichten.

Hoofdstuk 5: Conclusie en discussie

De recente toename in meldingen van UAP’s (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) en de groeiende openheid van overheids- en militaire instanties onderstrepen het belang van een gestructureerde en wetenschappelijke aanpak van dit fenomeen. Deze ontwikkelingen vragen om een kritische analyse, niet alleen om de aard en oorsprong van UAP’s te begrijpen, maar ook om de bredere implicaties voor onze wetenschap, veiligheid en maatschappij. In dit hoofdstuk worden de kernpunten van de thesis samengevat, gevolgd door een diepgaandere discussie over de technische, maatschappelijke en politieke aspecten die hierbij komen kijken.

• De Waarnemingen en Data

Sinds de publicatie van het Pentagon’s rapport in 2021 en soortgelijke initiatieven in andere landen, is duidelijk geworden dat er een enorme hoeveelheid waarnemingen bestaat die niet eenvoudig te verklaren zijn. Voorbeelden hiervan zijn de opvallende vlekken op radarbeelden, onbeweeglijke objecten die met supersonische snelheid manoeuvreren, en objecten die onbekende vluchtpatronen vertonen. Hoewel veel van deze waarnemingen nog altijd niet volledig verklaard kunnen worden, bieden ze waardevolle data voor systematische analyse.

Het is essentieel te erkennen dat de huidige waarnemingen vaak vooral uit anekdotisch bewijs en operationele rapporten bestaan, wat de behoefte onderstreept voor meer gestructureerde en technisch onderbouwde data-verzameling. Moderne technologieën zoals multispectrale sensoren, lidar, radar en geavanceerde elektronisch-optische systemen kunnen helpen om meer betrouwbare informatie te produceren. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het gebruik van de detectie- en trackingsoftware ontwikkeld door bijvoorbeeld het Amerikaanse Naval Air Systems Command, dat in staat is om objecten te traceren met een precisie die niet eerder mogelijk was.

• De rol van overheids- en militaire openheid

De openheid van overheids- en militaire instanties vormt een cruciaal onderdeel in het verdere onderzoek. Historisch waren veel waarnemingen geheim gehouden, wat bijdroeg aan het ontstaan van allerlei theorieën en speculaties. Nu blijkt dat transparantie niet alleen het vertrouwen in de overheid herstelt, maar ook de basis legt voor ernstiger en wetenschappelijker onderzoek.

De publicatie van videobeelden door de Pentagon, waarin objecten worden weergegeven die zich bewegen buiten de bekende fysica, is een belangrijk signaal. Zoals astronoom en filosoof Carl Sagan stelde: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Het openstellen van dit bewijs aan de wetenschappelijke gemeenschap stelt onderzoekers in staat om met meetbare en reproduceerbare methoden te werken.

• De noodzaak van een multidisciplinair wetenschappelijk programma

Het aanpakken van UAP’s vereist niet alleen technologische expertise, maar ook input van diverse disciplines zoals natuurkunde, astrofysica, atmosferische wetenschappen, materiaalkunde en zelfs psychologie. Door de integratie van verschillende vakgebieden ontstaat een holistisch beeld van de verschijnselen.

Technologisch gezien beschikken we tegenwoordig over geavanceerde detectie- en analyseinstrumenten. Bijvoorbeeld, high-bandwidth radars kunnen snelheid en trajecten nauwkeurig meten, terwijl analytische software met machine learning-algoritmes patronen kan ontdekken die voor het menselijk oog niet zichtbaar zijn. Een voorbeeld hiervan is het gebruik van neurale netwerken om secundaire gegevens te classificeren en anomalieën te identificeren.

Vanuit een fysisch perspectief kunnen we proberen om de energetische karakteristieken van deze objecten te bepalen. Als objecten zich bewegen met snelheden die de geluidssnelheid overschrijden en over electromagnetische eigenschappen beschikken die niet in onze huidige technologische context voorkomen, opent dat nieuwe vragen over fysica en materiaalwetenschappen.

• De toekomst van UAP-onderzoek

De verdere ontwikkeling van een solide wetenschappelijke basis hangt grotendeels af van twee kernfactoren. Ten eerste de bereidwilligheid van overheden om data te delen en de barrières voor informatieverschaffing te verminderen. Zoals voormalig NASA-astronoom Dr. Jill Tarter heeft opgemerkt: “De grootste barrier voor het begrijpen van UAP’s is niet de technologie, maar de politieke wil.” Dit impliceert dat het belang ligt in internationale samenwerking en transparantie, bijvoorbeeld via internationale verdragen of wetenschappelijke consortia.

Ten tweede vereist het succes van onderzoek een sterke applicatie van methodologische kracht. Dit betekent dat wetenschappers rigoureuze experimenten moeten opzetten, hypothesen moeten testen en foutenbronnen moeten elimineren. Bijvoorbeeld, het replicateerbaar maken van waarnemingen en het toepassen van geavanceerde statistische technieken is essentieel om betrouwbare conclusies te trekken.

Door het samengaan van technologische innovatie, interdisciplinair samenwerken en politieke openheid, kunnen we mogelijk belangrijke doorbraken behalen. Hiermee kunnen we niet alleen de aard en oorsprong van UAP’s verduidelijken, maar ook fundamentele vragen beantwoorden over de fysica, onze plaats in het universum, en de mogelijke intelligentie die achter deze verschijnselen schuilgaat.

Samenvatting

Deze thesis toont aan dat UAP’s een fenomeen zijn dat niet langer kan worden afgedaan als louter lokalisaties van mythes of folklore. Het toenemende aantal betrouwbare rapportages, de groeiende politieke aandacht en de technologische middelen die beschikbaar komen, vormen een solide basis voor systematisch, wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Transparantie en interdisciplinariteit zijn hierbij cruciale pijlers om de mysteries rondom UAP’s te ontrafelen.

Als we deze kansen benutten, kunnen we niet alleen antwoorden vinden op de vragen over aard en oorsprong, maar mogelijk ook vooruitgang boeken op gebieden zoals natuurkunde, materiaalkunde en astronautiek. De ultieme doelstelling is een dynamisch onderzoeksparadigma creëren waarin alle gegevens worden verzameld, geanalyseerd en geïnterpreteerd met dezelfde rigueur als bij andere natuurwetenschappelijke disciplines. Alleen door deze gestructureerde aanpak kunnen we de grenzen van onze kennis verder verleggen en wellicht antwoorden vinden op existentiële vragen: Zijn wij alleen in het universum? Zijn er buitenaardse beschavingen die contact proberen te maken? De toekomst van UAP-onderzoek hangt af van onze bereidwilligheid om open en kritisch te blijven kijken naar deze fascinerende verschijnselen.

 { peter2011 }

30-11-2025 om 23:35 geschreven door peter  

Miranda is Uranus’ icy moon, scarred by deep ravines that give it a very unusual appearance, even from a distance. For many years, scientists have been racking their brains trying to figure out what it went through in the past to acquire such a strange shape.

A ball made of crushed ice

There are plenty of strange natural objects in the Solar System. But when people see a photo of Uranus’ moon Miranda, few can contain their surprise. At first glance, it looks like a scoop of ice cream with uneven lines revealing the filling.

However, closer examination may reveal even stranger things. These structures turn out to be crevices several kilometers deep, which seems quite unusual considering that the diameter of the satellite itself is only 470 km. How can all this be explained? The story behind it is long and complicated.

Firstly, until 1948, no one had heard of Miranda. It was discovered by Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, the same man who postulated the existence of an outer asteroid belt in the Solar System, which is now named after him.

As for the name Miranda itself, the satellite was traditionally named after one of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays – Miranda, the daughter of the sorcerer Prospero from The Tempest. At the time of its discovery, it was already clear that this celestial body was quite unusual.

First, Miranda was about 500 km in size, which is transitional between small icy bodies, whose gravitational force is usually insufficient to give them a perfect spherical shape, and large ones, which resemble icy spheres.

Secondly, Miranda orbited Uranus closer than the four previously known satellites. Its distance from its nominal surface is only 129,900 km, which is only one-third of the distance from Earth to the Moon. At the same time, unlike Titania, Oberon, Ariel, and Umbriel, Miranda’s orbit is almost circular.

Mysterious cliffs

However, until 1986, no one paid much attention to these features. That is, until the Voyager-2 spacecraft approached Uranus. Miranda turned out to be the closest of the planet’s large moons to its flight path. It is not surprising that it was able to see it best. It is one of the few moons that automatic probes have photographed from almost all sides, so that we can more or less talk about a map of the planet.

And it was this map that caused scientists to argue for many years. The fact is that on it, Miranda looked as if it had been assembled from different pieces that were poorly glued together. Huge cliffs stretch across the surface of the satellite. The largest of these is the Verona escarpment, named after the city where the events of Romeo and Juliet took place. According to various estimates, its height ranges from 5 to 20 km.

Some cliffs form an enormous graben. This is the name given to narrow valleys where the earth seems to have collapsed.

Miranda also has plains covered with hills, but the most impressive features are the unique landforms known as crowns. These giant areas of the surface appear to have been raised above the surrounding terrain by unknown forces, with the same cliffs located along their edges. In total, there are three crowns on Miranda: Inverness, Arden, and Elsinore. Again, they got their names from places mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

The ridges and other relief features are impressive not only for their shape but also for their scale, especially considering that Miranda’s diameter is only 470 km.

Complex geological history

The situation is made even more mysterious by the fact that a count of craters on Miranda’s surface showed that there are significantly fewer of them than on other Uranus moons. What is worse, some areas are much younger than others. For example, the Inverness ring has a surface age of only 500 million years, the Elsinore ring is between 400 million and 3.1 billion years old, and most of the moon’s surface is 3.5 billion years old.

All this leads some researchers to suggest that Miranda’s surface has been renewed at least several times. What processes led to this remain a mystery. For several decades, a popular hypothesis was that at some point, Miranda was split into pieces by a powerful impact, and then the fragments came back together again. However, a 2011 study refuted this possibility.

Currently, most researchers are focusing on two factors: Miranda’s proximity to the surface of the gas giant and its interaction with other satellites. The first factor is indeed capable of creating amazing landforms, because bodies orbiting gas giants are mainly composed of water ice, which can temporarily turn into liquid in the presence of heat and form a smooth surface in place of old craters.

And there is such a source of heat – tidal heating, which the satellite could have experienced in the past. The gravitational gradient deforms satellites close to giant planets, and mechanical energy is converted into heat. Thus, Jupiter’s satellite Io also has canyons and table mountains. And on Enceladus, which is very similar in size to Miranda, there are giant cracks from which geysers shoot into space.

Therefore, surface renewal because the ice inside Miranda heated up, melted, cracked on the surface, and then everything froze is more than likely. As for the influence of other satellites, scientists are paying attention to Miranda’s orbit. It is quite possible that it previously rotated in a slightly more elongated orbit, was in resonance with other icy bodies, and they also contributed to its deformation, so it is quite possible that its surface was molten for some time. Then something happened, and Miranda moved into its current orbit, and its surface froze in its present state.

Unique conditions

Be that as it may, the combination of small size and huge vertical cliffs creates truly unique conditions on Miranda. It is the best place in the Solar System for rock climbing. The acceleration of free fall here is only 7.9 cm/s2. That is 140 times less than on Earth. In such conditions, you can climb vertical cliff walls for hours.

Or fall from them. Miranda is the only place in the Solar System where you can fall from cliffs for several minutes. However, you will still need to stop your fall somehow, for example, with a jetpack, because parachutes do not work on Miranda due to the lack of atmosphere.

However, overall, we still know very little about this moon. Voyager 2’s flyby remains the only one to date. So we do not really know if Miranda’s icy cliffs are truly dead, or if we were just unlucky not to see any local geysers. If liquid water still exists beneath the surface, that could explain a lot, and this tiny world would not seem so mysterious.

• Posted in Articles, News

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{ https://universemagazine.com/en/articles-en/ }

30-11-2025 om 18:43 geschreven door peter  

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the three so-called “godfathers” of AI, never misses an opportunity to issue foreboding proclamations about the tech he helped create.

During an hour-long public conversation with Senator Bernie Sanders at Georgetown University last week, the British computer science laid out all the alarming ways that he forecasts AI will completely upend society for the worst, seemingly leaving little room for human contrivances like optimism. One of the reasons why is that AI’s rapid deployment will be completely unlike technological revolutions in the past, which created new classes of jobs, he said.

“The people who lose their jobs won’t have other jobs to go to,” Hinton said, as quoted by Business Insider. “If AI gets as smart as people — or smarter — any job they might do can be done by AI.”

“These guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers,” Hinton added.

Hinton pioneered the deep learning techniques that are foundational to the generative AI models fueling the AI boom today. His work on neural networks earned him a Turing Award in 2018, alongside University of Montreal researcher Yoshua Bengio and the former chief AI scientist at Meta Yann LeCun. The trio are considered to be the “godfathers” of AI.

All three scientists have been outspoken about the tech’s risks, to varying degrees. But it was Hinton who first began to turn the most heads when he said he regretted his life’s work after stepping down from his role at Google in 2023.

He hasn’t changed his tune since then. He has consistently warned that AI will destroy jobs and create massive unemployment. This month, Hinton then injected more fatalism into this prediction by opining that the AI industry couldn’t turn a profit without replacing human labor.

In his discussion with Sanders, Hinton reiterated these risks, adding that the multibillionaires spearheading AI, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison haven’t really “thought through” the fact that “if the workers don’t get paid, there’s nobody to buy their products,” he said, per BI.

Previously, Hinton has said it wouldn’t be “inconceivable” that humankind gets wiped out by AI. He also believes we’re not that far away from achieving an artificial general intelligence, or AGI,  a hypothetical AI system with human or superhuman levels of intelligence that is able to perform a vast array of tasks, which the AI industry is obsessed with building.

“Until quite recently, I thought it was going to be like 20 to 50 years before we have general purpose AI,” Hinton said in 2023. “And now I think it may be 20 years or less.”

Strikingly, Hinton now claims that the latest models like OpenAI’s GPT-5 “know thousands of times more than us already.”

While leading large language models are trained on a corpus of data vastly exceeding what a human could ever learn, many experts would disagree that this means that the AI actually “knows” what it’s talking about. Moreover, many efforts to replace workers with semi-autonomous models called AI agents have often failed embarrassingly, including in customer support roles that many predicted were the most vulnerable to being outmoded. In other words, it’s not quite set in stone that the tech will be to so easily replace even low-paying jobs.

Nonetheless, never put it past your overlords to find a way how to screw you over anyway. AI machines could be a great tool for carrying out imperial actions abroad; deploying AI robots to fight overseas would be great for the US military industrial complex, Hinton argued, since there wouldn’t be dead soldiers to cause “political blowback.”

“I think it will remove one of the main barriers to rich powerful countries just invading little countries like Granada,” Hinton told Sanders.

More on AI: 

• Mark Zuckerberg Accused of Doing Unforgivable Things to Teens on Meta

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{https://futurism.com/category/science-energy}

30-11-2025 om 18:24 geschreven door peter  

It’s one small step for man — and one giant, badass layup for robot kind.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have programmed a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to play basketball, almost perfectly mimicking the skills of a human athlete.

A video shared by HKUST PhD student Yinhuai Wang shows the robot dribbling, taking jump shots, and even pivoting on one of its feet to evade the student’s attempts to block it from taking a shot.

Wang called it the “first-ever real-world basketball demo by a humanoid robot,” boasting that he “became the first person to record a block against a humanoid.”

It’s an impressive demo, showcasing how far humanoid robotics has come in a matter of years. Unitree, in particular, has stood out in an increasingly crowded field, with its G1 rapidly picking up new skills.

We’ve seen the four-foot-four-inch humanoid perform impressive kung fu moves and easily shrug off a direct flying dropkick from an adult human. We’ve even seen two of them take each other on in a head-to-head kickboxing contest.

Wang and his colleagues are teaching robots how to play basketball through a system they’ve dubbed “SkillMimic,” which is described on his website as a “data-driven approach that mimics both human and ball motions to learn a wide variety of basketball skills.”

“SkillMimic employs a unified configuration to learn diverse skills from human-ball motion datasets, with skill diversity and generalization improving as the dataset grows,” the writeup continues. “This approach allows training a single policy to learn multiple skills, enabling smooth skill switching even if these switches are not present in the reference dataset.”

While netizens were generally impressed by the robot’s basketball skills, others were a little more skeptical.

“Love that the programmer focused on showboating rather than fundamentals,” one wrote.

“Robots will do everything but fill the dishwasher,” another joked.

Others imagined a future in which bipedal robots dominate sports.

“Man, I hope I get to see proper robotics basketball leagues,” another Reddit user mused.

More on the Unitree G1: 

• Unstoppable Martial Arts Robot Can Take a Direct Dropkick Without Falling Down

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{ https://futurism.com/category/science-energy }

30-11-2025 om 18:10 geschreven door peter  

Subsurface Oceans

“Not all of these satellites are known to have oceans, but we know that some do,” said lead author Max Rudolph, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis. “We’re interested in the processes that shape their evolution over millions of years, and this allows us to think about what the surface expression of an ocean world would be.”

Despite their liquid water and potential for habitability, these moons are very different environments from Earth. On Earth, the surface geology stems from underground rock activity: the hot core melts rock into lava, and tectonic plates shift. Icy moons, however, are shaped by the actions of ice and water rather than hot rocks.

The tidal forces from the planets they orbit provide the moons with subsurface heat, which keeps their oceans liquid. Since a planet like Saturn has many moons, those bodies can interact as they orbit, increasing or decreasing heating for a period. As the heat increases, the thick layer of ice covering the moon may begin to melt and thin, then thicken again as the heating subsides.

The Geology of Icy Moons

The researchers investigated the effects of this activity over time. Typically, the ice shell would thin or thicken from underneath. Since ice has a greater volume than liquid water, more water would be squeezed into a smaller space as the ice thickened. This means that the shell would be under increased pressure to contain the water beneath it, which may be a potential explanation for the “tiger stripes” seen on Enceladus.

However, the researchers also considered the opposite scenario, when the shell begins to melt. Surprisingly, this could cause the ocean to boil, the team says. With an increase in relatively low-density liquid water, the pressure beneath the shell would drop. On some smaller moons of Uranus’s Miranda and Saturn’s Mimas and Enceladus, that pressure drop could reach such an extreme that ice, liquid water, and water vapor could all co-exist at the same time.

The ridges and cliffs on Miranda, observed by the Voyager 2 space probe, may be the result of such ocean boiling, the researchers suggest. At a mere 250 miles wide, Mimas is a tiny moon nicknamed “Death Star” for a large, prominent crater that makes it reminiscent of the space station from the Star Wars films. Although observations suggest that Mimas is geologically dead, a wobble in the moon’s orbit is indicative of a subsurface ocean. The strange contradiction of a liquid ocean and geologically frozen surface is reconciled by the fact that its ice shell is estimated to be strong enough that tanning would not crack it.

Cracking the Shell

Larger moons fare far differently. The icy covering of Uranus’s moon Titania would likely experience cracks well before ice melt would allow water to reach the triple point, according to the team’s calculations. Therefore, the team believes that the surface geology on Titania is likely driven by the thickening and thinning of its ice shell.

The new paper shows how even within a relatively small category of objects within our local solar system, such as icy moons, very different conditions may be present. Geology explains the surface features of planets like our own as they develop over tremendous periods of time. In the new research, it is revealed that geology influenced by factors very different from our own can also explain an object’s surface evolution.

The paper, “Boiling Oceans and Compressional Tectonics on Emerging Ocean Worlds,” appeared in Nature Astronomy on November 24, 2025.

• Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/space/ }

30-11-2025 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

A secretive US military unit has released a new recruitment video packed with cryptic messages and unsettling imagery.

The 4th Psychological Operations-Airborne (4th PSYOP), based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, specializes in influence campaigns aimed at shaping how enemies think, react and communicate.

The clip opens on a burning 1980s CRT television that flickers to life with the dancing ghost from Fleischer Studios' 1930 cartoon 'Swing You Sinners!'

Within seconds, the screen jumps to a dark forest where leaflets fall through the trees, followed by shots of soldiers standing among civilians as the words 'We are everywhere' flash across the frame.

The video then appears to rewind to a WWII-era bombing run, showing a plane dropping pamphlets over a crowd below.

A narrator says: 'There's another force applied in combat that we generally don't think of as a weapon of war. That weapon is words.'

His gravel-voiced warning repeats: 'We are everywhere. Words are our weapon.' 

The reel ends on the unit's lightning-bolt patch and a pulsing QR code directing viewers to goarmy.com/PSYOP.

The 4th Psychological Operations-Airborne has released a new recruitment video, with the opening scene featuring a clip from a 1930s cartoon

The chilling tagline of the video is 'We are everywhere'

The video is being hailed as the Army's strongest pitch yet for its influence-warfare unit, designed to attract recruits who can craft viral memes as confidently as they can jump out of aircraft.

It opens with a grainy shot of an old Zenith TV in a dark void, VHS lines rolling as a ghostlike version of Koko the Clown flickers on the screen. 

The cabinet edges glow with animated flames, and faint 1930s jazz plays under a modern beat

The pacing ramps up immediately. Arabic-script leaflets fall from an aircraft. A soldier rides in a tank strapped with a massive loudspeaker blasting distorted messages.

And there is a brief animated segment that appears to show a quill turning into a dagger.

Inside a dim command tent, PSYOP specialists type across multi-lingual dashboards that track sentiment and morale.

The video is packed with unexpected Easter eggs: nods to conspiracy theories, the WWII 'Ghost Army' that tricked Nazi generals, and even a Pepe the Frog GIF decked out in a clown suit. Pepe is a hate symbol by the alt-right movement.

The WWII 'Ghost Army' was a secret US Army unit officially called the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. 

The video shows what appears to be WWII, with bombers dropping leaflets from the skies 

The 4th Psychological Operations-Airborne, based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, specializes in influence campaigns aimed at shaping how enemies think, react and communicate.

Another part of the video conveys the idea of blasting messages to the public as soldiers move through worn-torn towns

Their mission was to deceive German forces about the location, size, and movements of Allied troops. 

They used inflatable tanks, trucks, and artillery to create the illusion of large forces where there were none. 

Soldiers also played pre-recorded sounds of troops and vehicles over loudspeakers to simulate army movements. 

They sent fake radio traffic to trick German intelligence into thinking units were present. Live actors and props were sometimes used to stage fake headquarters.

Their deception efforts saved thousands of lives by diverting German troops from real operations. 

The unit's work remained classified for decades and is only recently widely recognized. 

The 4th PSYOP is known to conduct 'influence activities to target psychological vulnerabilities and create or intensify fissures, confusion, and doubt in adversary organizations.'

'We use all available means of dissemination – from sensitive and high tech to low-tech, to no-tech, and methods from overt, to clandestine, to deception,' the organization's official website reads.

Soldiers looking to join the PSYOP must endure a physically and mentally demanding training pipeline, which starts with a grueling assessment and selection that lasts for 10 days. 

And there is a brief animated segment that appears to show a quill turning into a dagger

Master Sgt. Mathews, the Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) in Charge of the PSYOP Assessment and Selection course, told Task and Purpose: 'We're looking at soldiers who are adept at conducting research to understand target audiences.

'And use critical thinking to determine the best methods and arguments to influence and effectively communicate verbally and in writing using multimedia.'

The first 10 days of PYSOP focus on a candidate's physical fitness, mental resilience, critical thinking, communication skills and sustainability.

Candidates are not just doing physical challenges, but are writing reports, crafting narratives, or presenting arguments, simulating real-world PSYOP tasks.

These individuals also undergo psychological evaluations to determine their suitability for the demanding nature of the operation's roles.

A narrator says: 'There's another force applied in combat that we generally don't think of as a weapon of war. That weapon is words'

Candidates who meet the standards are invited to continue with the Psychological Operations Qualification Course.

This includes studying human psychology, sociology and cultural dynamics to design effective influence strategies, identifying and analyzing groups for tailored messaging and crafting messages that align with mission objectives and resonate with target audiences.

During this time, soldiers will test their abilities in dynamic environments, using tactics to confuse and find vulnerabilities within each other.

They also train on the ethical considerations of PSYOP missions, including avoiding manipulation that violates international law or military ethics. 

After the 10-day assessment, soldiers are put through 41 weeks of physically and mentally demanding training, called the PSYOP Qualification Course.

The last few months have seen soldiers learn how to use propaganda and other methods to influence the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of a target audience, often in an enemy territory.

{  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

30-11-2025 om 17:35 geschreven door peter  

A team of archaeologists led by researchers from Binghamton University has combined over 22,000 images of the primary quarry on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to create the first-ever interactive 3D model of the remote site, allowing users to explore its archaeological marvels in unprecedented detail.

Unlike the more famous coastal platform that contains over a dozen Moai statues facing the ocean, the 3D model’s creators chose the Rano Raraku quarry because it contains over 1,000 statues in various forms of completion. The study also found evidence that the quarry was used by several different “tribes” working alongside each other.

“As an archeologist, the quarry is like the archeological Disneyland,” explained Binghamton University Professor of Anthropology Carl Lipo, lead author of the paper detailing the team’s work and member of a previous research team that proved the statues were ‘walked’ into place.

The team hopes their new 3D model will allow researchers to conduct studies in an extremely difficult-to-access area and to attract the attention of curious amateurs who may visit the island in person.

Building the Easter Island Moai Quarry 3D Model from Thousands of Images

According to a statement detailing the effort, the project began in October 2023 after a wildfire swept through the area, prompting locals to implore the scientific community to document the location. The Binghamton-led team, which also included Thomas Pingel and Kevin Heard from Binghamton’s Geography Department, responded by conducting the first-ever in-depth digital documentation of the quarry in January 2024.

Over 30 drone flights, the researchers collected high-resolution images from a wide range of perspectives, including angles unavailable to a ground observer.

“You can see things that you couldn’t actually see on the ground,” Professor Lipo said. “You can see tops and sides and all kinds of areas that just would never be able to walk to.”

Production technique revealed through 3D modeling. Unfinished moai attached to bedrock by “keels” along their backs demonstrate how carvers worked underneath from both sides until figures were separated from the source material. This production stage, difficult to document through traditional methods, is visible in the 3D model.

Image credit: Carl Lipo.

By the completion of the aerial sorties, the team had successfully captured around 22,000 images of the Rapa Nui quarry at 30-meter increments. Pingel said it was amazing how far the technology that allowed the team to collect the data used to create an interactive 3D VR model of the quarry has come in such a short time.

“The quality of this model is far above what could be done even just a couple of years ago, and the ability to share such a detailed model in a way that is accessible from anyone’s desktop computer is remarkable,” the researcher explained.

“The project was of a scale of complexity that had never been attempted before,” Professor Lipo added.

Users who want to explore the model will find a variety of built-in controls and functions, including the ability to zoom in and pan across individual statues and quarry features from numerous angles. Because the Rano Raraku quarry is located within a rugged, steep volcanic crater, the team said that traversing it on foot is too dangerous, making the 3D VR model of this remote location a priceless research tool.

“It has everything you can possibly imagine about moai construction, because that’s where they did most of the construction,” Professor Lipo said when describing the remote Easter Island quarry. “It’s always been this treasure of information and cultural heritage, but it’s remarkably underdocumented.”

Model Could Aid Researchers and Entice Visitors

When discussing the potential uses of their new interactive 3D VR map of the Easter Island Moai statue quarry, Lipo said their model could “open the door” for researchers by providing a three-dimensional replica and allowing everyday people the unusual opportunity to ‘visit’ the island without leaving home.

“We can say, ‘Here, go look at it.’ If you want to see the different kinds of carving, fly around and see stuff there,” the professor explained. “So, it’s really exciting to bring these two things together. We’re documenting something that really has needed to be documented, but in a way that’s really comprehensive and shareable.”

The researchers acknowledge that some locals have expressed concern that such a high-quality map may reduce tourism and eliminate the desire to see the site in person. However, Professor Lipo believes the detail and interactivity with the nearly 1,000 moai in a way previously unavailable will inspire people to go there in person and explore all of the wonders associated with the Island and its awe-inspiring sites, “because otherwise, you’re just seeing sort of snapshots of stuff.”

“What we would really like to do is be able to say, ‘Go visit it yourself. Learn from it,’ the researcher concluded. “This is an incredible landscape of stuff that you could really go visit, that you’ll want to see.”

The Binghamton University team’s 3D model of the Rapa Nui quarry is available to view online.

The paper “Megalithic statue (moai) production on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)” was published in PLOS One.

•  Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

29-11-2025 om 18:45 geschreven door peter  

Triangular UFO Over New Bern, North Carolina – November 13, 2025

A striking UFO sighting occurred in Derby Park, New Bern, North Carolina, on the evening of November 13, 2025, leaving three witnesses stunned. Around 9:29 p.m. local time, a triangular formation of bright white lights appeared silently in the night sky, hovering for only a few seconds before shooting upward at an incredible speed and disappearing from view.Eyewitness AccountAccording to the witnesses, the object had three distinct lights, one at each corner of a perfectly symmetrical triangle. The lights remained stationary for roughly three seconds before the object accelerated vertically, vanishing into the upper atmosphere in what they described as a smooth but extremely rapid motion. There was no audible sound, no visible trail, and no blinking navigation lights typically seen on airplanes or drones.

“We saw a triangle in the sky, and it took off in two to three seconds and disappeared,” one of the witnesses reported. “It was completely silent.”

Visual Evidence

Photos captured during the event show three luminous points arranged in a precise triangular pattern against a dark sky. The lights appear evenly spaced and of similar brightness, suggesting they were part of a single structured object rather than separate sources. No structure is clearly visible between the lights, though the dark contrast hints at the possibility of a solid body blocking the starlight behind it.

This sighting closely resembles other “black triangle” UFO reports that have been documented worldwide for decades — often described as large, silent craft with bright lights at each corner.

Possible Explanations

Skeptics often attribute such sightings to:

• Military aircraft, such as stealth bombers or advanced drones flying under low visibility.
• Civilian drones flying in formation or viewed from unusual angles.
• Optical illusions caused by navigation lights on planes appearing as a triangle against a dark sky.

However, what makes this particular sighting stand out is the rapid vertical acceleration and the absence of any sound or flashing lights, features inconsistent with known human-made aircraft.

Significance

Triangular UFOs have become one of the most consistently reported shapes in modern UAP observations, often associated with silent flight, hovering capability, and sudden acceleration. Whether the object seen over New Bern was an advanced experimental craft or something beyond our current understanding remains unknown.

As UAP reporting continues to increase across the United States, this North Carolina encounter adds another intriguing case to the growing list of triangular UFO sightings that defy easy explanation.

Reported by: Local witnesses at Derby Park, New Bern, NC
Date: November 13, 2025
Duration: Approximately 3 seconds
Number of witnesses: 3
Shape: Triangle
Characteristics: Three lights, silent movement, rapid vertical ascent

RELATED VIDEO

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

29-11-2025 om 18:31 geschreven door peter  

Story by Sophie Parker - Wiltshir

The pits were found with geophysics, then boreholes were made to test the sediment.

© Internet Archaeology journal

The discovery of a series of huge Neolithic pits have been confirmed at the Stonehenge World Heritage Site after initial research a few years ago.

The massive pits at Durrington Walls in Wiltshire are set at regular intervals, ten metres in diameter and more than five metres deep.

Professor Vince Gaffney said that as a "cohesive structure" they could be "one of the largest prehistoric structures in Britain, if not the largest prehistoric structure".

The new research has been published in the Internet Archaeology Journal and concludes pits are almost certainly man-made and more than 4,000 years old.

Durrington Walls sits next to Woodhenge in the Stonehenge landscape

© Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images

Prof Gaffney, from the University of Bradford, explained it would have taken a lot of effort to dig the holes - around two storeys deep - from the chalk landscape.

The horseshoe-shaped pits also link to another monument near Larkhill.

"The circle is pretty accurate. It suggests that people were pacing the distances out to make sure that the pits were aligned at the same distance all the way around as the distance from the henge to the earlier enclosure" he said.

Prof Gaffney said it added to previous evidence that people were counting and applying it.

"They're inscribing something about their cosmology, their belief systems, into the earth itself in a very dramatic way."

Researchers had surveyed 12 sq km (7.4 sq m) of the landscape when they spotted the giant holes.

No longer visible to the naked eye and too big to realistically excavate very quickly, they made narrow boreholes to take samples of the material from the features.

Experts analysed sediment from the pits to date them

© Internet Archaeology journal

DNA extracted from the samples revealed remains of animals, including sheep and cattle.

The samples also helped experts date the excavations.

Dr Tim Kinnaird from the University of St Andrews called it a "super henge" and used a method called luminescence dating: "So just before that sediment falls into the pit, it's exposed to daylight, so we can date the time of construction."

It also revealed they were kept open for 1,000 years: "So that spans changing cultures," he explained.

• Follow BBC Wiltshire on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.

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{ BBC Wiltshire }

29-11-2025 om 18:18 geschreven door peter  

By Ashley Strickland

The latest images of an interstellar comet shared by NASA have captured how an array of spacecraft witnessed a flyby that was truly out of this world, revealing clues to the object’s composition.

Astronomers first detected the rare comet, known as 3I/ATLAS, on July 1. It’s only the third observed interstellar object, or ISO, to originate outside of our solar system and pass through it.

When the interstellar comet flew by the red planet in October, multiple NASA missions pivoted from their explorations to capture tantalizing images of the object that originated outside of our solar system.

Stacked images of 3I/ATLAS, taken by the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft, show it speeding at 130,000 miles per hour in September. 

NASA/Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang

The US space agency released the new observations on Wednesday since it had been unable to share them during the government shutdown.

While none of the spacecraft have cameras perfectly designed to spot comets zipping by at speeds up to about 153,000 miles per hour (246,000 kilometers per hour), astronomers didn’t want to miss what might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“It’s a little bit as if our NASA spacecraft were at a baseball game, watching the game from different places in the stadium,” said Tom Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA. “Everybody has got a camera and they’re trying to get a picture of the ball and nobody has a perfect view, and everybody has a different camera.”

The Lucy spacecraft captured a faint halo of gas and dust around the comet on September 16. 

NASA/Goddard/SwRI/JHU-APL

Missions capture images of a rare interstellar comet

Nearly 20 mission teams collaborated to capture images of the comet, said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“Everything we’re learning about the comet is possible because of the distribution of all of the different instruments on our spacecraft with different capabilities,” Fox said. “We’ve even pushed our scientific instruments beyond the things that they were designed to achieve, to allow us to capture this amazing glimpse at this interstellar traveler.”

Ahead of the Martian flyby in September, the Lucy and Psyche spacecraft, en route to study asteroids, and solar-focused missions, like the Parker Solar Probe, SOHO and PUNCH, caught glimpses of the comet in action.

Combining the data from Lucy and Psyche with Earth-based telescopes can reveal more about the three-dimensional structure of the comet and the nature of the dust coming off of it due to the heat of the sun, Statler said.

“It’s a rare opportunity to compare ancient dust from a distant solar system to that from our own,” he said.

3I/ATLAS appears as a faint smudge against a background of stars from the Perseverance rover's perspective on October 4. 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Perseverance rover also tracked the comet as it zoomed past the red planet in October. The orbiter was the spacecraft physically closest to the comet, Fox said.

The comet arrived at its closest point to the sun when Earth was on the wrong side for ground-based telescopes to conveniently observe, but Mars had optimal viewing conditions, according to Statler. “Our Mars assets were able to observe the comet, and also several of our other spacecraft were on the correct side of the sun,” he said. “We could not get this view from the vantage point of the Earth.”

Two spacecraft that will study Jupiter and its moons, Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, and Europa Clipper, will also aim to capture the comet’s movements as it nears the orbit of Jupiter in the spring.

The comet came within about 18 million miles (29 million kilometers) of Mars on October 3. The ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which has been circling the red planet since 2016, was about 10 times closer to the comet than telescopes on Earth — and it captured images from an angle that Earth-based telescopes couldn’t see. The fresh perspective on 3I/ATLAS enabled scientists to predict the comet’s future path with a tenfold jump in accuracy.

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Solar storms can trigger auroras on Earth. This star’s explosion could destroy a planet’s atmosphere

A multitude of other spacecraft, including the Hubble and James Webb Space telescopes, have also observed the object.

While scientists have been using telescopes around the world to study 3I/ATLAS, spacecraft missions provide some key observational advantages, said Dr. Theodore Kareta, planetary astronomer and assistant professor in the department of astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

Cameras and instruments on different spacecraft are geared toward various goals and measurements, and they can provide distinct vantage points that might be otherwise impossible to capture, he said.

“Comets are three-dimensional objects, and looking at them from different angles will give us a much clearer picture of not just where they are and the trajectory they’re on, but also how large the nucleus of the comet is and the nature of any structures or patterns we can see in its atmosphere,” Kareta said.

Scientists currently think the comet is anywhere from a couple of thousand feet to a couple of miles in diameter, but they are still refining their measurements, Statler said.

Psyche tracked 3I/ATLAS over the course of eight hours on September 8 and 9 when the comet was about 33 million miles from the spacecraft. 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

A comet’s behavior

NASA officials were also quick to address rumors that have swirled around the comet’s interstellar nature, including the idea that it’s an alien spacecraft.

“It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting and scientifically very important.”

Fox said that NASA’s close monitoring of the comet since its discovery has not yielded any evidence that would lead them to believe it was anything other than a natural celestial object, like technosignatures — a signal that could be created by extraterrestrial life.

“But the super cool thing is not that it’s exactly like all the comets that we see in our solar system,” Fox said. “It’s the differences that are so tantalizing for us.”

Kshatriya said he was actually excited to see much of the world speculating about the comet while NASA was unable to share comment about it due to the constraints of the recent shutdown.

“It expanded people’s brains to think about how magical the universe could be,” he said. “In fact, we want very much to find signs of life in the universe. But 3I/ Atlas is a comet.”

Comparing 3I/ATLAS with more common comets

The comet made its closest approach of the sun on October 30, coming within 130 million miles (210 million kilometers) according to NASA.

A comet that originates within our solar system is like a dirty snowball. Its nucleus, or solid core, is a frozen mashup of rock, gas, dust and ice leftover from the formation of the stars, planets and other celestial bodies. As comets approach stars like our sun, they heat up, forming tails of sublimating material that streak behind them.

The MAVEN orbiter captured the comet in ultraviolet light, spying its hydrogen atoms on September 28. 

NASA/Goddard/LASP/CU Boulder

Because 3I/ATLAS is from another solar system, astronomers are eager to see how different or similar its composition is to the comets they are used to witnessing.

3I/ATLAS has been releasing more carbon dioxide than water, and more nickel than iron, compared with comets that originated in our solar system — something that is still being investigated, Statler said.

The comet has also shown increased activity, which has caused some observers to question whether the object broke apart during its close pass of the sun.

The “jets” observed releasing from the comet can mean there are particularly active areas on the surface of the comet where more material is evaporating than elsewhere, Statler said.

“Comets frequently show ‘jets’ or ’spiral’ features in their inner atmospheres related to which parts of their surfaces are active and releasing gas and dust, so taking a picture of them from one angle only can be challenging to interpret,” Kareta added.

Related article

• 

Astronomers discover two populations of unusual dark comets in our solar system

Now, the object is starting to reappear on the other side of our star for Earth-based telescopes. The object will swing within 168 million miles (270 million kilometers) of Earth on December 19 before beginning to make its way out of our solar system.

The SOHO mission spied the comet between October 15 and 16. 

Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang

“The fact that so many NASA missions have tried observing this interstellar visitor should tell you how seriously we all take this opportunity,” Kareta said. “Interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS are fundamentally rare, and ISOs as bright as 3I should be rarer still — this object might very well be the ISO we learn the most about for many years to come.”

While the exact age of the comet is unknown, the object’s speed suggests it is much older than anything in our solar system, Statler said.

“3I/ATLAS is not just a window into another solar system, it’s a window into the deep past — and so deep in the past that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our sun,” Statler said.

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{ https://edition.cnn.com/science }

29-11-2025 om 17:08 geschreven door peter  

Since the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was discovered this past July — just the third confirmed object to arrive from another star — astronomers have been closely following its passage through our solar system.

As the icy visitor brightened on its coast toward the sun, the public narrative brightened too, with online rumors casting it as a possible alien spacecraft during the recent 43-day-long government shutdown when NASA could not comment on the object or release new images. Last week, with the shutdown over, NASA held a long-awaited briefing in which it shared observations and early analysis from more than 20 missions across the solar system, assembling the most complete picture yet of this rare visitor — and made one point immediately clear: 3I/ATLAS is of natural origin, not an example of alien technology.

"We very much want to find signs of life in the universe," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said during the briefing. "But 3I/ATLAS is a comet."

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, imaged by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

3) A rare window into distant, older star systems

Scientists say that 3I/ATLAS has likely been traveling through interstellar space for a long time. Based on how fast it was moving upon entering the solar system, Statler said the circumstantial evidence points to the comet originating in a very old planetary system, possibly one older than our own.

That "gives me goosebumps to think about, frankly," he said, noting that 3I/ATLAS may reveal insights into cosmic history that predates the formation of both Earth and the sun.

"It is a new window into the makeups and histories of other solar systems," he said.

4) Intriguing chemical clues

So far, 3I/ATLAS has behaved exactly as a comet should as it warms near the sun, shedding water and carbon dioxide, but with some intriguing twists. Scientists have detected a higher-than-usual ratio of carbon dioxide to water compared with typical solar system comets, as well as gas unusually rich in nickel relative to iron. Both findings are scientifically compelling and worth further investigation, researchers said.

The dust around the comet also shows slightly atypical properties, suggesting its grain sizes differ from those of local comets. One especially curious behavior was the dust was initially blown toward the sunward side before solar radiation gradually pushed it back, a longer and less common sequence than scientists usually observe in homegrown comets.

"We're still learning even about what questions we still need to ask," said Statler. "And this, of course, is the scientific process in action."

Like this article? For more stories like this, follow us on MSN by clicking the +Follow button at the top of this page

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29-11-2025 om 16:47 geschreven door peter  

Navy's 'Doomsday plane' vanishes over the Atlantic during mysterious mission

By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

A US Navy 'Doomsday plane' has vanished after embarking on a mysterious transatlantic mission.

The Boeing E-6B Mercury was last seen crossing the Atlantic east of Virginia Beach on public flight-tracking systems around 8.30am ET on Friday.

One of just 16 specialized 'Doomsday planes,' Mercury serves as a command-and-control hub for US Strategic Command, the Secretary of War and the President. 

It can also transmit orders to carry out nuclear strikes if necessary.

Flight data showed the aircraft departed Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, and followed a routine southeast path over the Chesapeake Bay, skirting the Norfolk naval complex before heading offshore.

About 60 miles east of the Virginia Capes, its public transponder went dark, a normal practice during sensitive operations.

Once over the ocean, Mercury typically enters classified warning zones, lowers a multi-mile trailing wire antenna, and flies racetrack patterns for four to eight hours while sending secure test messages to submarines and ground stations. 

Turning off its transponder during these operations has long led trackers to report the aircraft as 'gone dark.'

Flight tracking data spotted the plane taking off around 8.30am and soaring over the Atlantic before vanishing from radar

The aircraft, operating under the callsign AFD FE2, followed a familiar route used for TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) missions that keep US strategic forces, including ballistic-missile submarines, connected to national command authorities even during nuclear conflict. 

It came just one day after Thanksgiving, a period when US strategic forces traditionally scale back operations before quickly returning to full readiness.

The 'Doomsday plane' fleet makes up part of Operation Looking Glass, officially known as the Airborne Command Post, which helps communicate with American nuclear forces if ground-based command centers are destroyed.

According to the squadron, its mission is to allow the President and the Secretary of War to directly liaise with US submarines, bombers, and missile silos in the event of a nuclear war.

Boeing built the Navy's fleet between 1989 and 1992.

'The TACAMO airplanes support the Navy's ballistic missile submarine force, providing a vital link to the force from national command authorities,' Boeing's description reads.

'The TACAMO E-6B airplanes are equipped with dual trailing wires that serve as transmitter and antenna, transmitting in the very low frequency spectrum.'

Mercury was built to withstand any large electromagnetic pulse generated by a nuclear disaster. 

One of just 16 specialized 'Doomsday planes,' Mercury serves as a command-and-control hub for US Strategic Command, the Secretary of War and the President

The US Navy's 'Doomsday plane' conducted five mysterious flights in March. All missions saw the plane leave Oklahoma and circle Omaha, Nebraska

It relies on older analogue technology rather than digital technology, which would be fried by the pulse.

A previous sighting was in March, when flight radar tracked a Mercury leaving Tinker Air Force Base around 9am ET and soaring around Omaha, where Offutt Air Base is located. 

Offutt Air Force Base is a nuclear command, control and communications base that supports national leadership and warfighters.

AirNav Radar, a flight tracker, captured the plane’s path as it circled and weaved in the skies over Nebraska.

The flight tracker spotted three other Mercury planes in the skies on Monday as well.

One of the planes did a shorter trip, circling outside Tulsa and returning to base one hour later.

Another flew south toward Dallas, and the last Mercury was spotted leaving from Maryland.

That flight also lasted no more than one hour. The purposes of the five Mercury flights are unknown.

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{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/index.html }

29-11-2025 om 15:58 geschreven door peter  

Kan AI ooit echt bewustzijn bereiken?

Key takeaways

De vraag of artificiële intelligentie (AI) bewustzijn kan bereiken, is al lange tijd onderwerp van intens debat tussen wetenschappers, filosofen en technologen. Een recente studie, Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence? A Framework for Classifying Objections and Constraints, probeert die complexe discussie te verduidelijken door een gestructureerd model te ontwikkelen voor het categoriseren van de verschillende bezwaren rondom digitaal bewustzijn.

Soorten bezwaren

Het onderzoek erkent dat argumenten tegen AI-bewustzijn vaak overlappen of verkeerd zijn gericht. Sommige bezwaren komen voort uit de overtuiging dat bewustzijn niet verklaard kan worden door louter computationele processen, terwijl andere het principe van computationeel bewustzijn wel accepteren, maar stellen dat huidige digitale systemen niet beschikken over de noodzakelijke architectuur. Weer andere argumenten verwerpen de mogelijkheid van digitaal bewustzijn juist op basis van inzichten uit de fysica of biologie, in plaats van uit de computatietheorie.

Analytische structuur op drie niveaus

Om die complexiteit te adresseren, stellen de auteurs een analytisch kader met drie niveaus voor, geïnspireerd op het cognitieve wetenschappelijke model van David Marr. Het eerste niveau richt zich op bewustzijn als een input-outputcorrespondentie, gestuurd door berekenbare functies. Het tweede niveau behandelt de specifieke algoritmen, architecturen en representatiestructuren die nodig zijn om bewustzijn te realiseren. Het derde niveau richt zich op de bezwaren dat het fysieke substraat zelf essentieel is voor bewuste ervaring.

Dit kader stelt onderzoekers, beleidsmakers en filosofen in staat om overeenkomsten en verschillen te identificeren, met een duidelijk onderscheid tussen argumenten tegen computationeel functionalisme en argumenten tegen digitaal bewustzijn.

Niet-berekenbare functies

Sommige critici beweren dat bewustzijn niet-computeerbare processen omvat die buiten het bereik van Turing-machines liggen, terwijl anderen stellen dat elk computationeel model van bewustzijn te complex zou zijn om op grote schaal te implementeren. De studie benadrukt tevens het belang van dynamische koppeling en suggereert dat bewustzijn mogelijk real-time interactie met omgevingen vereist—iets wat digitale systemen moeilijk kunnen nabootsen.

Algoritmische organisatie

Op algoritmisch niveau draait het debat om de organisatie van algoritmen. Theorieën onderzoeken of symbolische architecturen, neurale netwerken of hybride systemen in staat zijn bewuste toestanden te genereren. Sommigen benadrukken de noodzaak van analoge processen met continue waarden, die digitale systemen niet volledig kunnen emuleren. Anderen leggen de nadruk op synchronisatie en representatievormen die essentieel zijn voor subjectieve ervaring, maar die in de huidige digitale architecturen ontbreken.

Dit niveau omvat ook discussies over belichaming en enactivisme, waarin wordt gesteld dat bewustzijn uitsluitend voortkomt uit lichamen die handelen binnen een omgeving. Volgens die zienswijze kunnen grote taalmodellen, ondanks hun ogenschijnlijke intelligentie, de interactieve eigenschappen missen die essentieel zijn voor bewuste toestanden.

Fysieke substraat

Bezwaren met betrekking tot het fysieke substraat leggen de strengste beperkingen op. Die argumenten richten zich op de unieke eigenschappen van biologische hersenen die digitale hardware niet kan repliceren. Theorieën in deze categorie beweren dat bewustzijn afhankelijk is van informatie die in biologische netwerken is ingebed, de dynamica van elektromagnetische velden in de hersenen, of zelfs kwantumprocessen.

Volgens deze bezwaren zijn digitale AI-systemen fundamenteel niet in staat bewustzijn te bereiken door de cruciale rol van het fysieke substraat. Het onderzoek benadrukt dat deze beweringen eerder op het niveau van natuurkunde en biologie liggen dan op dat van de computerwetenschap, waarvoor nog empirisch bewijs nodig is over hoe bewustzijn in natuurlijke systemen ontstaat.

Evaluatiesysteem met drie niveaus

Om de kracht van elk bezwaar beter te verduidelijken, hanteert de studie een evaluatiesysteem op drie niveaus. Sommige bezwaren suggereren dat machinebewustzijn mogelijk is, mits bepaalde mogelijkheden of architecturen worden toegepast. Andere wijzen op praktische obstakels die bewuste AI onwaarschijnlijk maken met de huidige technologie. De sterkste bezwaren stellen dat digitale systemen, ongeacht technologische vooruitgang, nooit bewust kunnen worden.

Dit classificatiesysteem maakt onderscheid tussen conceptuele, technologische en metafysische bezwaren. Het benadrukt bovendien de gebieden waar empirisch onderzoek de meningsverschillen zou kunnen oplossen, evenals de domeinen die verder filosofisch onderzoek vereisen.

Kader voor bestuur, ethiek en AI-ontwikkeling

De studie sluit af met een bespreking van de praktische implicaties van het kader voor bestuur, ethiek en AI-ontwikkeling. Nu AI-modellen steeds vaker cruciale beslissingen beïnvloeden en op geavanceerde manieren met mensen interageren, is het essentieel het volledige spectrum van argumenten rondom digitaal bewustzijn te begrijpen. De voorgestelde classificatie kan beleidsmakers helpen bij het ontwikkelen van weloverwogen regelgeving, het opstellen van ethische richtlijnen en het ondersteunen van AI-ontwikkelaars bij verantwoorde uitspraken over de mogelijkheden van hun systemen. (fc)

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29-11-2025 om 15:36 geschreven door peter  

8 Reasons Aliens Exist and Have Visited Earth, According to ‘The Age of Disclosure’ Documentary

Now available on Amazon Prime, the film interviews dozens of officials with 'direct knowledge' of UAP

By Addie Morfoot

The film also includes clips from congressional hearings about UAPs and makes clear that there is major bipartisan support for the proposed UAP Disclosure Act. In fact, Trump or a subsequent president could make a massive impact, Farah says, by disclosing what he says is the truth.

“I think it’s only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, ‘We’re not alone in the universe,'” the director told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s the most significant moment a leader could possibly have.”

One of the key voices in the film is Jay Stratton, former Defense Intelligence Agency official and director of the government’s UAP Task Force. “I have seen, with my own eyes, non-human craft and non-human beings,” he says in the doc.

Below are eight key extraterrestrial facts put forth in “The Age of Disclosure”:

• Otherworldly vehicles

Transmedium crafts — vehicles that have the capability to operate in space, air, and water — defy all that humanity knows about physics, and have been operating with complete impunity around the world since at least the 1940s, according to the documentary.

• Multi-national race

Since the 1940s, an ongoing arms race between China, Russia and the U.S. was set off by the discovery of crashed UAPs. Each nation, according to the doc, wants to be the first to crack into extraterrestrial technology to reverse-engineer it for human use. But as defense official Stratton explains in the film, “You can’t tell your friends without telling your enemies.”

• FAA involvement

Aviation safety is in jeopardy if the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t track UAPs, the film concludes. (As of Oct. 22, the FAA requires air traffic control to notify the National Tactical Security Operations and the Air Traffic Security Coordinator team of any pilot reports or air traffic personnel observations of UAP activity.)

• Deep, watery cover?

If any intelligence from outside our universe did want to arrive on earth and remain undetected, they would most likely hide out in the deep zone of the ocean, which hasn’t been explored by humans, posits interviews in the doc.

• Giant crafts

UAPs the size of football fields that can travel over 30,000 mph are just a few of the types of UAPs — some can travel 40,000 miles per hour, sometimes faster, and go from zero to thousands of miles per hour in less than a second, according to the doc.

• Humanoid! Aliens!

According to Dr. Eric Davis in 1989 the Soviet Union recovered four bodies of humanoid aliens — extraterrestrials — from a UAP crash site where they discovered an advanced directed energy weapon.

• Uses for good or evil

Similar to artificial intelligence, the film asserts that UAP technology can revolutionize the way we do things – such as provide a clean energy source – or completely destroy everything that we know.

• Does he or doesn’t he?

Information about UAPs is on a need-to-know basis. The President of The United States and the head of the CIA might know nothing about UAP intelligence.

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28-11-2025 om 22:55 geschreven door peter