The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
09-10-2018
Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees versus 2 has big benefits, the IPCC says
Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees versus 2 has big benefits, the IPCC says
Scientists hope a new climate report will jump-start policy decisions to reduce emissions
If Earth warms by just 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial times by 2100, rather than 2 degrees, we would see fewer life-threatening heat, drought and precipitation extremes, less sea level rise and fewer species lost.
Those findings are detailed in a report, a summary of which was released October 8, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, following its weeklong meeting in Incheon, South Korea. “This will be one of the most important meetings in the IPCC’s history,” Hoesung Lee, a climate economist at Korea University in South Korea and current IPCC chair, said in his opening address October 1.
To compile the report, the scientists sifted through more than 6,000 papers probing the impact of a global temperature hike of 1.5 degrees, sometimes working through the night, says Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University and one of the report’s coauthors. But the long hours were worth it: The report’s message is compelling and urgent, she says. “Such a small change in temperature will have big impacts on people.”
Three years ago, in 2015, 195 nations signed onto the Paris agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees by 2100 (SN: 1/9/16, p. 6). Getting all the delegates on the same 2-degree-warming page was a hard-won victory. But many scientists have warned that the 2-degree target isn’t stringent enough to prevent major environmental changes affecting everything from sea level rise to water scarcity to habitat loss. During the Paris talks, more than 100 nations — including many of those most vulnerable to climate change, such as the island nation of the Maldives and drought-stricken Angola — called for a lower warming target of 1.5 degrees.
At the time, Lee noted in his Oct. 1 address, scientists knew relatively little about how to compare the risks of a 1.5-degree-warmer world with a 2-degree-warmer world. So, as part of the decision to adopt the Paris agreement, the nations invited the IPCC to prepare a report assessing those impacts.
As it turns out, the differences are stark between the two warming targets, as outlined in the new report, titled “Global Warming of 1.5° C.” In addition to fewer heat, rain and drought extremes, the impact on future sea levels would be significant. A half a degree less warming means about 0.1 meters less sea level rise on average by the next century. As a result, at least 10 million fewer people would be exposed to such risks as flooding, infrastructure damage and saltwater intrusion into freshwater resources, the report found.
Somewhere between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, the planet’s great ice sheets may become increasingly unstable, further increasing the potential for sea level rise. And, in the 1.5-degree warming scenario, the Arctic Ocean is projected to be ice-free during the summer only once per century. That would happen once a decade under the 2-degree scenario.
As for the planet’s other denizens, a lower temperature increase would mean less risk of habitat loss for many insect, plant and animal species compared with a full 2 degrees of warming, the report notes (SN: 6/9/18, p. 6). And other climate-related risks to these species, including forest fires and the spread of invasive species, would be less under that lower warming threshold.
RANGE LOSS Many species, including the pika, are already suffering habitat loss due to climate change.
MOOSE HENDERSON/ISTOCK
Much of the data analyzed in the report has been published in scientific journals over the last two years, and wasn’t available when the Paris agreement was signed. The London-based website Carbon Brief published an interactive infographic on October 4 that summarizes the results of 70 such 1.5-degree studies that show the impacts of warming targets on everything from future sea level rise to heatwaves to hurricanes.
Despite building a case for a lower temperature target, the trick will be how to get there. In 2017, the Paris accords faced a major setback when President Donald Trump announced that the United States, a major contributor to the greenhouse gases that drive warming, would pull out of the agreement. Achieving an even more stringent target seems particularly daunting.
The IPCC report examines various possible paths that scientists have examined to limit the environmental impacts of warming. Among the variables considered in these paths are when emissions are projected to reach net zero, when the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere is balanced by the amount that is being removed. Another variable is how many more emissions will be allowable in the meantime — a concept known as the carbon budget.
But almost all of the projected pathways to 1.5 degrees have one thing in common, says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Carbon Brief: They overshoot that temperature threshold somewhere around 2050. “They all exceed it — and then back down,” he says.
To overshoot the mark by only a small amount, or not at all, requires reducing emissions by about 45 percent relative to 2010 levels by the year 2030, and reaching zero around 2050, the IPCC report notes. In comparison, to get to “below 2 degrees Celsius,” emissions must decline by about 20 percent by the year 2030 and reach zero by about 2075.
Barring such early, deep cuts, it will take “negative emissions” to bring the temperatures back down after overshooting the mark mid-century. Negative emissions are, essentially, a hoped-for reduction in emissions due to future technologies that will be able to remove enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reverse the greenhouse effect.
Those technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, are not yet commercially viable. And reversing the effects of the greenhouse warming is not so straightforward: “By and large, it’s generally true that there’s a linear relationship between warming and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as long as both are increasing,” Hausfather says. “But once you start sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, that linear relationship breaks. You need more negative emissions to reduce temperatures than positive emissions to increase them.”
It’s uncertain how — or if — policy makers will be able to use the findings to reshape the climate accords. During the 2015 Paris talks, a proposed 1.5-degree target was met with strong resistance from nations that would need to be on board, particularly China.
And President Trump’s administration gave a hint of its reaction when, in July, it released an environmental impact statement on the White House’s plan to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. With current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures are currently on track to rise by 4 degrees compared to preindustrial times by 2100 — and freezing the standards will further increase those emissions, the report acknowledged. But the study recommended the freeze anyway, stating that moving away from fossil fuels to make deep cuts in carbon emissions would require innovations that are “not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”
The challenges may seem insurmountable. But this special report — and the two years of intense research that led up to it — has also forced scientists to reassess some assumptions about what’s possible, says Kaisa Kosonen, a Helsinki-based climate policy adviser at Greenpeace International who traveled to South Korea for the meeting. Including certain factors, such as better energy efficiency in the future, can lead to “results you didn’t know even existed,” she says. “I’ve been inspired by how much optimism there still is among scientists.”
Indeed, one of the key messages from the report is that holding warming to 1.5 degrees “is not impossible,” Mahowald says. “But it will require really ambitious efforts, and the sooner the better. We have to start cutting emissions now. We have to be very ambitious on sustainable energy and sustainable agriculture,” she says. And, she notes, achieving the goal will require people to undergo behavioral changes as well, from energy conservation to changes in diet.
But people would also face huge adjustments in a world that’s 2 degrees warmer, or even higher, Mahowald warns. So despite the challenges, “it still might be easier to reach 1.5 than to adapt to those higher temperatures.”
Editor's note: This story was updated October 8, 2018, to include reaction to the report.
REPORT: UNLESS WE MAKE DRAMATIC CHANGES, WE’RE HEADED FOR CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
REPORT: UNLESS WE MAKE DRAMATIC CHANGES, WE’RE HEADED FOR CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
NASA
Worse Than Expected
What an alarming difference a few years can make.
According to a report released Sunday by the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change, the 2015 Paris Agreement won’t be enough to stop the most serious damage from climate change.
“There is nothing opaque about this new data,” former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres told The Guardian. “The illustrations of mounting impacts, the fast-approaching and irreversible tipping points are visceral versions of a future that no policy-maker could wish to usher in or be responsible for.”
Worth The Effort
Limiting global temperature increases to fewer than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement — would have been hard. Now, it looks like we need to shoot for an even tougher limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) if we want to avoid an increase in famine, drought, extreme weather events, and the many other devastating consequences of climate change.
Jim Skea, a co-author of the report, said in a press release that “[l]imiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes.”
The report suggests several ways we could ensure we don’t exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) limit, and as some experts feared before the report’s release, they might not be entirely realistic. Huge carbon taxes will be politically unpopular in many nations, and while systems to capture carbon might work, the technology to implement them on the necessary scale simply doesn’t exist yet.
Still, while the situation outlined in the report is daunting, we can’t close our eyes and ears to it. We need to view this report as what it is: a wake-up call to the world that we must take immediate and bold action if we don’t want to find ourselves trying to live on an unlivable planet.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see how the recent spate of mystery booms and the concurrent trend of mysterious debris falling from the sky could be completely unrelated. Several strange objects have washed ashore or on the eastern coast in recent months, only to be whisked away by unnamed ‘officials’ before anyone can take a good look at them. With so much talk of an oncoming war in space and so many tests of unidentified new space weapons, something tells me that all of these strange objects are the results of either weapons testing or something darker.
Who really knows what’s going on up there?
Of course, I could be connecting completely unrelated dots. Whatever the case in space may be, another recent example of a mysterious object crashing into a home is causing alarm and confusion and adding yet another case to the mystery-boom-and-debris pile. This week, a “large, heavy object” exploded through the walls of Arlene Silvestri’s home in Jersey City, New Jersey shortly after locals reported hearing a loud boom, and law enforcement agencies can’t yet explain what the object is or where it came from.
“My tenant from upstairs called me and said ‘there was an explosion.’ So when I came here, the fire department was already here,” Silvestri told reporters. Police arrived on the scene shortly after but so far have been unable to identify a source for the object. Whatever the projectile is, it’s oblong with one rounded end and roughly 3 feet (1 meter) in length and was propelled with enough force to blow through a nearly perfectly circular hole in a cinder block wall.
With so much orbital debris in space, it’s only a matter of time these types of events are much more common.
Police believe a nearby scrapyard may somehow be involved but have yet to definitively identify the object or determine how it might have been propelled through the walls of the home. Jersey City released a statement stating the object is a “cylinder of compressed gas or compressed air” but many locals and investigators are skeptical of the claims.
Could this mystery object be related to the others that recently fell from the skies in the Carolinas? Do these cases have anything to do with the weird mystery booms and looming war in space?
THIS 3-MINUTE ANIMATION WILL CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION OF TIME FOREVER
THIS 3-MINUTE ANIMATION WILL CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION OF TIME FOREVER
We all know that Earth is old, but it’s hard to put into perspective just how old it is.
After all, what does 4.5 billion years really mean? How do you even comprehend that amount of time with our short-lived human brains?
Well, Business Insider has done a pretty incredible job of it in this 3-minute animation, by displaying the timeline of Earth if time was the distance from Los Angeles to New York. And, oh boy, our world-view will never be the same.
We start our journey in Los Angeles, back when Earth first formed 4.54 billion years ago. But we don’t get very far on our road trip through time and space before the Moon shows up after Earth is hit by a planetary body.
About halfway across the top of Arizona, the world’s largest rock forms 3.95 billion years ago, and then a few miles down the road – 3.8 billion years ago – the first evidence of life shows up, in the form of replicating molecules.
But it’s not until Kansas, 2.7 billion years ago, when oxygen-producing cyanobacteria first emerge, and then 200 million years later that significant amounts of oxygen build up in Earth’s atmosphere.
And then, believe it or not, it’s not until Pennsylvania – halfway across the country – that multicellular organisms evolve, just 600 million years ago.
A lot happens in Pennsylvania, like plants colonising the land and amphibians evolving. And by the time dinosaurs become extinct we’re already in New York State.
So where do humans fit in?
Well we’ll let you watch the video below to find that out, and let’s just say that it will blow your freaking mind. Especially when you see how much we’ve done in just 5.6 feet (1.7 metres) of time.
The Earth is really, really old. Over four and a half billion years old, in fact. How do we begin to comprehend a number that large? It helps to put it on a more fathomable scale. Watch to see where Earth’s major events would fall on a timeline stretching across the US.
The Pentagon Is Building An Army Of Insects To 'Protect Crops'
The Pentagon Is Building An Army Of Insects To 'Protect Crops'
The Pentagon has been researching for a program with the title of “Insect Allies”.
The program has the intention of creating insect armies that defend crops; however, they could also be used as a biological weapon with the Pentagon not denying they have the potential for dual use.
DARPA created Insect Allies to protect against threats to the food supply. An opinion piece in @sciencemagazine questions motives & value of the research. Here we reassert the need for Insect Allies and map the efforts we've taken to proceed responsibly.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institution for Evolutionary Biology along with researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany and the University of Montpellier in France have criticized the program. They believe that the knowledge that has been gained from the research along with the program is limited in the ability to be able to enhance agriculture in the US. They also don’t believe it could be used in response to any national emergency.
Researches believe that the program "may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery."
Program Was Developed to Protect Food Supplies
The insect armies are under development by DARPA with the intention of them being able to protect food supplies against any threats. However, the program along with the motives and values of it has been questioned by many researchers.
The program manager of Insect Allies, Dr. Blake Bextine tried to quell any fears by saying that DARPA was "not producing biological weapons, and we reject the hypothetical scenario," though they "accept and agree with concerns about the potential dual use of technology."
While Bextine had tried to persuade people that there were no intentions of using the insect army for bioweapons, a later response by him by way of a two-page document did not have any strong denials about the insect armies becoming bioweapons. He came up with the argument that the program was intended only as a "respond rapidly to threats to the food supply."
Nothing Can Go Wrong With Modified Virus Technology
Bextine was adamant that there was nothing that could go wrong with the program. He put emphasis on "every performer in the program is required to include at least three independent kill switches in their systems to shut down functionality of the technology." Essentially meaning that if the technology, the insects, went rogue they could be killed off.
The aim of the Insect Allies program is to use the modified insects to spread infectious viruses that have been genetically modified to edit the DNA of crops in the fields. Of course, there is nothing to say that they could not be sent out to kill off crops of other countries to bring about famine and death.
Bizarre ‘UFO Cloud’ Seen In The Skies Above Moscow
Bizarre ‘UFO Cloud’ Seen In The Skies Above Moscow
Strange goings-on in Russia… again.
A cloud has been spotted above a block of flats in the Russian capital city Moscow.
This isn’t just any cloud though, it’s like something out of Independence Day, but less Hollywood looking and more, well, just kinda grey looking.
Still, it’s pretty perturbing to see. A definite flying saucer shape, and definite movement up and away to get out of there, and who’s to blame them.
Check it out:
The unusual sight, which some sceptics are calling a mere weather phenomenon, was filmed by by an eyewitness who spotted the cloud over the city’s Adropov Avenue.
He can be heard in the background of the video asking:
What is that? Aliens? Is it a UFO?
If it is aliens, you’re a bit late guys, the World Cup was last month, but we forgive you for your tardiness after what must have been a long journey.
Now, some people might try to tell you this is just an unusually-shaped cumulus cloud – a particularly fluffy cloud at a particularly low level.
Others might try to tell you it’s a lenticular cloud, which form when air travels along the surface of the Earth and encounter an obstruction like, for example, hills, mountains, or even a tower block of flats.
But don’t let that put you off, young believers. If you think it’s a UFO, who’s to tell you otherwise? Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid in the form of creatures from outer space. Goethe said that.
Eastern Europe seems to be getting more than its fair share of UFO sightings lately.
Earlier this summer, back in the heady days when we were all lost in a football haze, two glowing orbs were reportedly seen lighting up the midnight sky over the west of Kazakhstan, just a few miles from where England were playing Sweden in the World Cup quarter final.
The collision then happened near the village of Bostandyk, around 1,000ft from the Zhalpakatal-Karasi highway, according to police.
The unidentified flying object apparently ‘exploded’ on landing, causing houses in the area to ‘tremble’ while it also ignited a blaze on the land, wiping out bushes and grass over a 100 hectare area.
According to locals, mobile communications were cut out due to the incident, and residents who rushed towards the site of the crash found a silver-coloured object partially buried in the ground, and another similar but smaller object nearby.
Check out the unexplained footage here:
The silver object had a sealed hatch with a protruding valve, which the locals were unable to open. While a law enforcement source said the strange object was like ‘a ball that had been welded shut’.
Residents also reported seeing the object spinning in the sky before it crashed, with bright lights pulsating around it, the Mirror reports.
I’ve no idea why, but once these aliens are seen they don’t seem to hang around long do they? Is Earth just way more disappointing than they were expecting?
Scientists Accidentally Blew Up Their Lab By Creating History's Strongest Indoor Magnetic Field
Scientists Accidentally Blew Up Their Lab By Creating History's Strongest Indoor Magnetic Field
Things did not exactly go as planned when researchers at the University of Tokyo set out to create test the properties of a new generator system. Instead, they managed to create the strongest magnetic field ever created indoors, which led to them blowing off the doors to their lab.
Strongest Magnetic Field in a Controlled Environment
A paper in the “Review of Scientific Instruments” revealed the researchers wanted to reach a peak magnetic field with an intensity of about 700 Teslas. However, in reality, they produced 1,200 Teslas. Bear in mind that the standard refrigerator magnet is only about 0.01 Tesla. While they did not mean to do it, they essentially made the strongest magnetic field in a controlled environment indoors.
However, they do have some way to go before they can claim to have generated the strongest ever field. Russian researchers did this in 2001 when they created more than twice the strength at 2,800 Teslas.
Researchers Did Not Use TNT But Still Blew the Door Off
To create the magnetic fields the researchers used “electromagnetic flux-compression”, a technique that researchers have used since the 1940s. A spike that is only brief is caused in the magnetic fields strength as it is squeezed rapidly into a smaller size. During the 1940s this technique relied on large amounts of TNT being used in order to generate an explosion that was powerful enough to cause the magnetic field to compress. The downside to this, of course, was that the technique could only be used once due to the fact the equipment was totally destroyed by the blast caused by the TNT.
The researchers in Japan wanted more control over the explosion to cause the magnetic field to compress so they refrained from using TNT, instead dumping huge amounts of energy by of 3.2 megajoules, into the generator. In order to do this, the researchers had to feed 4 million amps of current in the generator. To put this into perspective it is several thousand times that of a lightning bolt. When the coil is tightly compressed and will not go any further a shockwave is produced destroying the generator along with the coil.
In order to provide themselves with protection to keep them safe, the researchers constructed an iron cage, placing the generator inside it. While this was a good idea, the cage they constructed had only been made to be able to withstand up to 700 Teslas at the most. Of course, things went awry when they produced 1,200 Teslas by accident, which resulted in the door to the iron cage being blown off.
Researcher Admitted He Did Not Expect Magnetic Field to be so high
Shojiro Takeyama was among the researchers at the University of Tokyo taking part in the experiment. He said, "I didn’t expect it to be so high." "Next time, I’ll make [the enclosure] stronger."
A new iron cage was made and the researchers made some adjustments and are giving the experiment another attempt. They are planning to generate only 1,500 Teslas by pumping 5 megajoules of energy into the generator.
In conclusion, the researchers said:
"Only 40 years ago, magnetic fields of the order of 1000 Tesla were only reported in extremely complicated and sometimes unreliable explosively-driven systems, without any of the sophisticated levels of control. Therefore, one can say without any doubt, that the present results represent the beginning of a new era in the quest of producing and using ultrahigh magnetic fields for solid-state studies as well as for plasma fusion related experiments."
On both September 19 and 23, Arctic sea ice dropped to its minimum extent of 1.77 million square miles (4.59 million square km). The 2018 minimum ties for the 6th-lowest in the satellite record.
Arctic sea ice likely reached its minimum extent for the year on September 19 and again on September 23, 2018, according to researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
Scientists track sea ice in the Arctic as it grows to a maximum extent through the winter and shrinks back in the summer to its minimum extent in September each year. This year’s minimum sea ice extent – the smallest area of ice for the year – reached 1.77 million square miles (4.59 million square km). That tied with 2008 and 2010 as the sixth lowest sea ice minimum since consistent satellite records began 40 years ago.
Researchers at NSIDC noted that the estimate is preliminary, and it is still possible (but not likely) that changing winds could push the ice extent lower.
Arctic sea ice follows seasonal patterns of growth and decay. It thickens and spreads during the fall and winter and thins and shrinks during the spring and summer. But in recent decades, increasing temperatures have led to significant decreases in summer and winter sea ice extents. The decline in Arctic ice cover will ultimately affect the planet’s weather patterns and the circulation of the oceans.
The map above shows the extent of Arctic sea ice as measured by satellites on September 19, 2018. Extent is defined as the total area in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent. The yellow outline shows the median September sea ice extent from 1981–2010.
Claire Parkinson is a climate change senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She said in a statement:
This year’s minimum is relatively high compared to the record low extent we saw in 2012, but it is still low compared to what it used to be in the 1970s, 1980s and even the 1990s.
Bottom line: On September 19 and 23, 2018, Arctic sea ice extent dropped to 1.77 million square miles (4.59 million square km) – tied for the 6th lowest minimum in the satellite record.
Min Min lights are a mysterious phenomenon that have spooked many people in the outback of Australia.
But is there any scientific proof that Min Min lights exist? Or is it simply an Aboriginal folktale that has been passed down for generations?
The lights have been described by witnesses as floating, fast-moving balls of colour that glow in the night sky and stalk people, leaving some feeling confused and frightened.
Sometimes the lights are blue and other times they are white or yellow.
In Queensland, the Boulia Shire Council notifies visitors "in the interest of tourism" that they are in the land of the Min Min lights and that they may spot them as they drive for the next 120 kilometres.
In the Kimberley in Western Australia some Aboriginal people believe the Min Min lights are the spirits of elders.
"As a kid growing up the old people used to tell me, they [Min Min lights] were old people's spirits looking after country," Wyndham local James Birch said.
Mr Birch, a Balanggarra ranger, said everyone from his childhood grew up hearing the stories.
"If you've lived in the Kimberley you would have experienced spotting a Min Min light once in your life," he said.
Mr Birch has not seen the Min Min lights for two years but said the lights tend to distract people and take them off their chosen path.
"We were heading back into town after hunting. I was driving towards town when all of sudden a Min Min light appeared," he said.
"We all stared at the light and all of a sudden we were going in the opposite way, going back into the bush and following the light without even realising."
What does science say?
Curtis Roman, a senior lecturer at Charles Darwin University, is gathering stories from Indigenous Australians about Min Min lights as part of an ongoing research project.
Dr Roman said there were several scientific theories that could explain the phenomenon.
"One is that they're a mirage, [caused by] natural gases or warm air and cold coming together," Dr Roman said.
"Some of the other theories are that they are bioluminous insects, owls or birds."
Although he is only in the early stages of his research, Dr Roman said that all the Indigenous people he had interviewed so far had described how frightened they felt when they saw the lights.
Outback lights star in movie
From a young age, writer and director Jub Clerc heard the tales about the Min Min lights and how they would follow people and take them if they stopped to watch the lights.
In 2015, Ms Clerc directed a short film called Min Min Light based upon her own experiences of the lights when she was growing up in the Pilbara.
"When I was a young girl lying in my backyard, these lights came down," Ms Clerc said.
"Two of them came down in front of me and then suddenly shot off. I was in awe.
"It could be our spirits that look after country. Who knows what it is? I like to think there's more to life that what we think."
Earth Could Be Crushed to The Size of a Soccer Field by Particle Accelerator Experiments, Astronomer Warns
Earth Could Be Crushed to The Size of a Soccer Field by Particle Accelerator Experiments, Astronomer Warns
Martin Rees, a well-respected British cosmologist, has made a pretty bold statement when it comes to particle accelerators: there’s a small, but real possibility of disaster.
Particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider, shoot particles at incredibly high speeds, smash them together, and observe the fallout.
These high speed collisions have helped us discover lots of new particles, but according to Rees, this isn’t without its risks.
“Maybe a black hole could form, and then suck in everything around it,” he writes, as Sarah Knapton reports over at the Telegraph. “The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets.”
“That in itself would be harmless. However under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth in a hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across.”
That’s approximately 330 feet, or around the length of a soccer field.
And that’s not all. The third way that particle accelerators could destroy the Earth, according to Reese, is by a “catastrophe that engulfs space itself”.
“Empty space – what physicists call the vacuum – is more than just nothingness. It is the arena for everything that happens. It has, latent in it, all the forces and particles that govern the physical world. The present vacuum could be fragile and unstable.”
“Some have speculated that the concentrated energy created when particles crash together could trigger a ‘phase transition’ that would rip the fabric of space. This would be a cosmic calamity not just a terrestrial one.”
Sounds frankly terrifying. But should we really be worried? Surely the smart people at the LHC can clear this up.
“The LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) reaffirms and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report that LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern,” CERN writes on their website.
“Whatever the LHC will do, nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies.”
And this is an important point – cosmic rays are basically natural versions of what the LHC and other particle accelerators are doing. And these rays hit Earth constantly.
The team behind the LHC have an answer for strangelets as well.
“Could strangelets coalesce with ordinary matter and change it to strange matter? This question was first raised before the start up of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, RHIC, in 2000 in the United States,” they explain.
“A study at the time showed that there was no cause for concern, and RHIC has now run for eight years, searching for strangelets without detecting any.”
Even the late, great Stephen Hawking gave his blessing to the particle accelerator:
“The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on. The LHC is absolutely safe. … Collisions releasing greater energy occur millions of times a day in the earth’s atmosphere and nothing terrible happens,” said Hawking.
In a way, Rees is correct. We’re not 100 percent sure, and might never be. But as he explains, many scientific advances can have risks, but that’s not to say we need to stop entirely.
“Innovation is often hazardous, but if we don’t forgo risks we may forgo benefits,” he writes in On The Future.
“Nevertheless, physicists should be circumspect about carrying out experiments that generate conditions with no precedent, even in the cosmos,” Rees writes.
“Many of us are inclined to dismiss these risks as science fiction, but give the stakes they could not be ignored, even if deemed highly improbable.”
We’ll leave that gargantuan task to the particle physicists.
At this point, it seems obvious that it’s become a question of when a war in space will break out, not if. The U.S. Military has been preparing for Space War I for some time now, and the world’s other superpowers aren’t too far behind – or maybe they’re even a step ahead. Observers have noted that many Russian spacecraft and satellites have begun behaving in unknown and unprecedented ways lately, and China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force has been spotted testing unknown low-orbit hypersonic aircraft. Where’s the Space Force when you need it?
To add more fuel to the apparent space war brewing, an unidentified new weapon was recently seen being tested by a MiG-31 aircraft at Zhukovsky Airport outside of Moscow, Russia’s base for testing new aircraft and weapons. In his analysis over at The War Zone, aviation sleuth Tyler Rogoway writes that the weapon appears to be either a hypersonic missile similar to the ones tested in China recently, or an air-to-space rocket designed to blow satellites to orbital smithereens.
The weapon, whatever it is, is labeled “81 Blue” and is nearly the size of the MiG carrying it. There are few details to go on yet, but the weapon appears to be similar to other anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. Such air-to-space ASAT rockets have been tested by the U.S. Air Force as early as the 1980s, and with so much recent attention paid to the oncoming satellite wars, there’s no telling for what the rocket could be intended.
World superpowers have been testing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons for decades.
If all of the attention paid to satellites and space supremacy hints at anything, it’s that war in space is coming. Soon. Could all of this recent development and testing of space weapons be related to the recent spate of mysterious booms heard round the world? At this point, I’d be amazed if it wasn’t. Just put those booms alongside other recent developments: increased sightings of fireballs in the sky; unexplained booms rattling the ground; “killer” satellites waking up and acting erratically; the United States creating a Space Force; China and Russia testing new space weapons.
It’s only a matter of time before fiery debris starts raining down around us.
THE LIFESPAN OF a typical Berndnaut Smilde sculpture is 10 seconds—just long enough to be photographed. And his sculptures are as unusual as they are ethereal: Smilde makes perfect miniature clouds in a diverse array of indoor locations, from coal mines to cathedrals.
He’s been at for several years now and calls the ever-expanding series Nimbus. Last month, he brought his weather wizardry to Frieze New York. There Smilde allowed onlookers to sit in on two days of his work inside NeueHouse, an upscale co-working space.
His materials are little more than smoke and water vapor, and the results vary with the size and temperature of the location. The space must be cold and damp, with no air circulation. Smilde creates a wall of water vapor with the type of spritzer you might use on houseplants. A smoke machine then sends a puff of faux fog on a collision course. He likes to keep the clouds no bigger than six feet so they don’t fall apart too quickly. "I really like my clouds concentrated, with a lot of texture," he says.
Nimbus Bonnefanten.
BERNDNAUT SMILDE
The artist tinkers with the formula for a few days until he’s created what he believes to be the ideal cloud. For one shoot, he might create 100 clouds to get the image.
The result is stunning, an ephemeral artwork caught just before it vanishes. The bare, often austere locations heighten the drama. While Smilde makes his clouds, he has a photographer right there to capture the moment. He prefers to work with photographers with experience shooting architecture, so the wood, metal and other elements are in sharp focus, a contrast to the soft, fluffy clouds. Smilde likes that his creations last but a moment.
"I see them as temporary sculptures of almost nothing—the edge of materiality," he says. "It looks like you can dive into them or grab them, but they just fall apart. There’s a duality that I really like where you’re trying to achieve this ideal thing that then collapses just moments later."
If he could figure out the technical aspects, Smilde would like to create clouds within the vast Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. Marketers from cloud computing companies in Silicon Valley have approached him to make sculptures at conventions, but he’s declined. For him, it’s more than a parlor trick.
"Clouds are quite universal," he says. "Everyone can relate to them, but by putting them indoors you kind of change the context. It can become strange or even threatening. They can stand in for the divine, but also for misfortune."
Why Scientists Searched 7,000 Meters Below Sea Level for a Winged Fish
Why Scientists Searched 7,000 Meters Below Sea Level for a Winged Fish
Ten years later, they finally knew where to find them.
Left to right: Purple, pink and blue. (Published in inverse.com)
By Thomas Linley and Alan Jamieson, The Conversation
From an unmanned submersible, protected by a casing of stainless steel almost an inch thick and a window made from super strong sapphire crystal, we can observe the life that thrives at our planet’s most extreme and darkest depths. Thanks to technology and sheer material strength, we can temporarily trespass into this high-pressure environment. But in stark contrast to the robust deep sea imaging equipment we rely on, the creatures our camera records look extremely fragile.
Four-and-a-half miles beneath our research vessel, which was floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, we captured footage of several previously undiscovered species of hadal snailfish. With delicate fins and transparent, gelatinous bodies, they are some of this environment’s most enigmatic inhabitants, fish that — at first glance — look like they should be incapable of surviving under such enormous pressures. And yet, it appears they are thriving in this strange world.
In spring, a team of 40 scientists from 17 different nations conducted an expedition to the Atacama Trench, which runs along the west coast of South America. We were there to find a particular snailfish.
The Atacama trench is the dark blue line off the coast of Chile and Peru.
On a previous expedition, our principal investigator (Alan Jamieson) had photographed a snailfish with long, wing-like fins at a depth of 7,000 meters. Only one species, Notoliparis antonbruuni was known to inhabit this area at such a depth. It had been described from a single specimen, so badly damaged that we are not able to use it to identify our images of living animals. We wanted to find this elusive winged snailfish again to learn more about it and observe it in its natural habitat.
These hadal snailfish tend to live at depths between 7,000 and 8,200 meters (“hadal” simply means anywhere below 6,000 meters), but their apparent rarity is perhaps misunderstood. Because of their extreme habitat (at least for humans), they are difficult to observe rather than actually “rare” as we know it. And with the right equipment and opportunity, we were confident, after 10 years of study, that we knew where and how to find them.
The Atacama Trench is part of the Peru-Chile subduction zone, a large 590,000 square kilometer area where one tectonic plate is being forced under another and the ocean floor quickly plunges to more than 8,000 meters. Its volume is almost the same as the neighboring Andes mountain range, which the tectonic subduction zone also creates, and exploring it is no easy feat.
Deep dive.
A Trio of Snailfish
We deployed our freefalling cameras 27 times — from the relative shallows at 2,500 meters to the trench’s deepest point, Richard’s Deep, at just over 8,000 meters. This enabled us to take more than 100 hours of video and 11,000 photographs at the seabed — and the results did not disappoint. The snailfish we were looking for made an appearance — and it wasn’t alone. Two other previously unknown hadal snailfish species were present in the footage. In fact, all three species appeared in the same shot on one occasion. Out of necessity, they were given quick, stand-in names: we called them the “purple”, the “pink,” and the “blue” Atacama snailfishes.
Left to right: purple, pink and blue.
The “blue” appeared to be the “winged” species Jamieson had recorded previously. Its long trailing fins and prominent snout resembled the Ethereal snailfish we had recorded on another expedition to the Mariana Trench, far away on the other side of the Pacific.
The “pink” species, meanwhile, was more robust and was closer in appearance to the Mariana snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei) that we described in 2017 and which also inhabits the Mariana Trench. To see these two species — with such different body plans — sharing a trench again got us thinking: they must be doing something different to one another down there to both carve themselves a niche.
The third species, a small purple fish, looked more like the snailfish we would expect to see on the shallower abyssal plains — at a depth of around 3,500 meters. But one of these purple snailfish, just 9cm long, followed its invertebrate prey into one of our traps. This small fragile fish is currently the only physical specimen of the new species and should eventually allow us to give it a formal scientific name. And while we much prefer our video of the living animal, only a physical specimen can be deposited in a museum and used to formally describe a new species.
Meet the specimen. It died due to warm temperatures and low pressure long before it reached the surface.
Preservation
Once on the surface, we photographed this specimen while it was suspended in chilled seawater — its body is simply too fragile to support itself in air, and we didn’t want it to suffer the same fate as the poor blobfish, which, for the record, really aren’t that sad-looking (their jelly-like bodies just collapse when exposed at the surface).
Blobfish aren’t sad at all in their natural habitat.
Over the following months, we then put the specimen through several stages of preservation to avoid shrinking its largely gelatinous body. So that scientists (and the interested public) don’t have to fight over access to a single, fragile specimen, it was also CT scanned at the Natural History Museum, London, creating a detailed 3D digital model of it, inside and out. Such digital back ups are gaining traction in science – take the Scan All Fishes project, for example. And disasters like the recent fire at Brazil’s National Museum, which will have wiped out many unique specimens, also show why they are so important.
See also: First Ever Footage of Angler Fish Mating
But what have we discovered about these mysterious creatures? First, as fish approach the absolute extremes of the environmental conditions that they can cope with, they do not simply eke out an existence but thrive. It is also emerging that some trenches support not only a single specialist species but multiple species with body plans that hint at different lifestyles within the trench.
Second, the snailfish family (Liparidae) is not only the absolute winner of the deepest fish award (having been found in multiple other trenches), but species are living in trenches that at times are over 10,000km apart and entirely isolated from one another. Incredibly, snailfish exist at these extreme depths, wherever these extreme depths are, and in numbers never thought possible.
And the snailfish is just one story that emerged from our expedition. Over the coming months, we will continue to process the huge amount of data we collected, the most we have ever gathered on a single voyage. Our assessment of the large mobile animals we filmed will feed into the project’s larger goal to understand the biological and chemical processes within the trench as a whole.
Un phénomène inexpliqué s'est produit à Sarraltroff à la mi-juin 2018 : l'apparition d'un crop circle dans un champ de céréales. Depuis, les explications les plus variées se succèdent. Fin du suspens : le youtubeur AstronoGeek nous a révélé toute la vérité sur ce sympathique canular.
Par Sophie Gueffier
Mise à jour du 20/09/2018 Et notre équipe est retournée interroger Astronogeek pour boucler la boucle.
Un zeste de mystère, un soupçon de doute et une grosse dose d'inexpliqué.
Visible uniquement depuis le ciel, il suscite de nombreuses questions sur son origine. Le reportage que France 3 Lorraine a diffusé le 14 juin en témoigne:
La précision, la taille et le motif lui-même semblent si parfaits que le commun des mortels se met à douter de l'origine humaine de l'apparition. Car, comme chacun sait : "nul n'est parfait", "la perfection n'est pas de ce monde" et "à l'impossible nul n'est tenu"
C'est AstronoGeek qui a voulu démystifier tout cela.
Ce mosellan a créé sa chaîne Youtube sur ce concept simple : Répondre scientifiquement, aux questions fondamentales qui nous viennent chaque jour à l'esprit :
Avons-nous été visités par un vaisseau extra-terrestre ?
Pourquoi la Terre doit-elle être plate ?
La Sibérie dévastée par une comète.
Sommes-nous vraiment allés sur la Lune ?
Ou encore sommes-nous seuls dans l'univers ?
Mais aussi, plus prosaïquement nous aider à comprendre les basiques de l'astronomie. Le youtubeur compte plus de 300 000 abonnés. Un bon curseur pour juger de sa crédibilité.
Mais patatras !
La science versus les idées reçues
AstronoGeek fait voler toutes les hypothèses paranormales et ufologiques en éclats.
Il a posté vendredi 24 Août un premier volet d'une vidéo en trois parties intitulée : "les Preuves" Vidéo de 45 minutes, dans laquelle il révèle, au grand dam de tous les amateurs de petits-hommes-verts, qu'il est lui-même l'auteur, compositeur, de ce formidable cercle de culture. Ses amis youtubeurs, comme Defakator, qui navigue lui-aussi sur les vagues de la démystification et du démontage de "fake news", ont passé une nuit à reproduire à une échelle géante, un dessin géométrique, imaginé quelque temps avant. Avec l'autorisation du cultivateur du champ de blé.
Une à une, toutes les hypothèses émises pour mettre en doute le caractère humain de la chose, sont démontées scientifiquement.
Ce qui prouve que les extra-terrestres n'ont pas réalisé ces magnifiques dessins.
Heureusement, il n'a pas encore réussi à prouver la non-existence de ces extra-terrestres. Il nous reste bien des questions à nous poser...
A balloon mission flying over the North Pole captured 6 million images of these bright blue noctilucent clouds in their home in the upper atmosphere.
On the cusp of our atmosphere live a thin group of seasonal electric-blue clouds. Forming 50 miles (80 km) above the poles in summer, these clouds are known as noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs). This summer, a NASA balloon mission observed these clouds over the course of five days at their home high in Earth’s atmosphere. The resulting photos, which scientists have just begun to analyze, will help to better understand turbulence in the atmosphere, as well as in oceans and lakes and the atmospheres of other planets, and may even improve weather forecasting.
Atmospheric turbulence – small-scale, irregular air motions characterized by winds that vary in speed and direction – is important because it mixes and churns the atmosphere and causes water vapor, smoke, and other substances, as well as energy, to become distributed both vertically and horizontally.
Noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds observed by NASA balloons as they flew over the Arctic in July 2018.
On July 8, 2018, NASA’s PMC Turbo mission launched a giant balloon to study noctilucent clouds 50 miles (80 km) above the surface. For five days, the balloon floated through the stratosphere from its launch at Esrange, Sweden, across the Arctic to western Nunavut, Canada. During its flight, cameras aboard the balloon captured 6 million high-resolution images filling up 120 terabytes of data storage. The images include a variety of noctilucent cloud displays, revealing the processes leading to turbulence. Scientists are now beginning to go through the images and the first look has been promising.
Noctilucent (also called night-shining) clouds coalesce as ice crystals on tiny meteor remnants in the upper atmosphere. The results make brilliant blue rippling clouds that are visible just after the sun sets in polar regions during the summer. These clouds are affected by what’s known as atmospheric gravity waves — caused by the convecting and uplifting of air masses, such as when air is pushed up by mountain ranges. The waves play major roles in transferring energy from the lower atmosphere to the mesosphere.
Dave Fritts is principal investigator of the PMC Turbo mission at Global Atmospheric Technologies and Sciences in Boulder, Colorado. He said in a statement:
This is the first time we’ve been able to visualize the flow of energy from larger gravity waves to smaller flow instabilities and turbulence in the upper atmosphere. At these altitudes you can literally see the gravity waves breaking – like ocean waves on the beach – and cascading to turbulence.
The balloons were equipped with seven specially-designed imaging systems to observe the clouds. Each included a high-resolution camera, a computer control and communications system, and 32 terabytes of data storage. The seven imaging systems were arranged to create a mosaic of wide views extending 100 miles (160 km) across, with each narrow view able to image turbulence features as small as 20 yards (918 meters) wide. A lidar — or laser radar — measured the precise altitudes of the clouds as well as the temperature fluctuations of the gravity waves above and below the clouds.
Learning about the causes and effects of turbulence will help scientists understand not only the structure and variability of the upper atmosphere, but other areas as well. Turbulence happens in fluids across the universe and the results will help scientists better model it in all systems. Ultimately, the results will even help improve weather forecast models.
Bottom line: In July 2018, a NASA balloon mission floated over the Arctic to study noctilucent clouds 50 miles (80 km) above the surface.
Sightings of unidentified flying objects have declined worldwide. This news, reported last week by The Guardian newspaper, should alarm and sadden anyone who has ever gazed in wonder at the sky above.
Two major websites for UFO reports — the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network — have both registered a steep drop in global sightings. The decline began in 2014, a peak year for UFOs, and by last year the total number of sightings had reached just 55 per cent of the 2014 tally.
The Guardian quotes several academics as to why this is happening, with various theories advanced. But the author of the piece, Philip Jaekl, reports the shocking truth out there may be that “more people don’t care anymore” about UFOs.
“As we are accustomed to being inundated with wild claims churned out by politicians, media and advertisers, the next report of a UFO is no more believed than the long-range weather forecast,” he writes.
If UFOs really are going the way of the dodo bird, I blame the movies.
The rocket ships on sci-fi screens today are simply boring, whether they are piloted by earthlings or space aliens. These creations by model makers and special-effects wizards fail to excite the eye and mind, and hence the imagination that would lead us to see wonderful strange things in the sky.
Consider the interstellar vehicles of the bug-faced invaders in The Predator, currently in theatres. They resemble flying Xbox game controllers — hardly something to set the pulse racing, unless you’re a 12-year-old gamer.
The ungainly extraterrestrial craft in last year’s Alien: Covenant resembled a giant flying shrimp. It was built by a race called the Engineers, who certainly weren’t artists. The human spacecraft in the film weren’t any prettier, just flying boxes with protruding gizmos.
Don’t get me started on the spaceships of Solo: A Star Wars Story, this year’s underachieving instalment of the never-ending intergalactic soap opera. It’s heretical to say, I know, but I’m not a huge fan of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, which looks as if it was built out of Lego — and there actually is a Lego version of it. Any attachment I have to the Millennium Falcon is entirely nostalgic, not aesthetic.
Remember when humans and aliens used to take pride in the design of their spaceships?
I’m thinking about the flying saucer in The Day the Earth Stood Still, the 1951 classic. It had the archetypal UFO: a sleek silver machine of sculpted curves, built to inspire awe wherever it flew, and not just because it was from another planet.
The saucer was matched with a killer robot, a behemoth named Gort who was so beautifully crafted — there was nary a bolt or rivet to be seen — that you could almost forget that he came here to kill us all.
Gort was almost as cool as the Maschinenmensch, the female robot in Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi epic Metropolis that, not so incidentally, inspired the design of C-3PO in the Star Warsfranchise.
Lang also had great taste in spacecraft design. Check out his beautiful rocket to the moon in Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon), his 1929 sci-fi melodrama. This silent film offered a remarkably prescient view of how a real lunar mission would work, including the idea of multiple rocket stages.
A big part of the blame for the slump in good rocket design is that reality caught up with fantasy for sci-fi writers and filmmakers. There’s no atmosphere in deep space, so you don’t have to worry about friction. You can make spacecraft as lumpy and misshapen as you wish, and many science fiction designers have taken that science fact to heart.
The Lunar Module (LM) used for the Apollo missions was a real ugly duckling. In mechanical terms, it was crafted like a Swarovski crystal; in physical terms, it was as unprepossessing as a tin garden shed.
The Volkswagen company made note of this fact in a 1969 advertisement that ran after that year’s Apollo 11 lunar landing: “It’s ugly, but it gets you there,” ran the adline, equating the LM to Volkswagen’s utilitarian Beetle, which actually is a beautifully designed vehicle.
But Stanley Kubrick didn’t let reality get in the way of great design when he depicted a lunar visit in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out a year before Apollo 11. The Aries moon lander in the film is similar to Apollo’s LM, except it’s a gorgeous orb that refuses to put utility ahead of beauty.
Kubrick believed in UFOs. When he looked to the sky, as might we all, he expected to see wonderful machines, not flying scrap heaps. Otherwise, what’s the point of even looking up?
Peter Howell is the Star’s movie critic based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm
China successfully tests its hypersonic Starry Sky-2 aircraft that will fire nuclear missiles capable of travelling at 4,563 miles-per-hour to evade existing anti-missile defence systems
China successfully tests its hypersonic Starry Sky-2 aircraft that will fire nuclear missiles capable of travelling at 4,563 miles-per-hour to evade existing anti-missile defence systems
The hypersonic weapon rides on the shockwaves it generates, reports suggest
It can travel at six times the speed of sound – around 7,344km/h (4,563mph)
The flight test was deemed a 'huge success' by scientists involved in the project
Experts say it could signal China is now neck-and-neck with Russia and the US
China has successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons that evade existing anti-missile defence systems, according reports.
The next-generation weapon, known as Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2, will ride the shockwave generated by the initial launch, which is handled by a rocket, to travel at six times the speed of sound, or Mach 6 – around 4,563mph (7,344kmph).
Starry Sky-2 will purportedly be able to switch direction during its flight, making it harder to track and intercept.
When the aircraft fires its missiles, these will also travel at top speeds of 4,563mph (7,344kmph) and will easily defeat conventional anti-missile defence systems.
Scientists involved in the latest test flight have heralded it as a 'huge success', with experts saying the aircraft signals China is now neck-and-neck with Russia and the United States in the race to create hypersonic warheads.
China has long been suspected of building an arsenal of hypersonic weapons, but this new test flight is the first proof the technology is actively being developed.
Scroll down for video
China has tested a hypersonic aircraft called Starry Sky-2 (pictured) that could carry nuclear weapons and evade anti-missile defence systems, reports suggest
The China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA) said in a statement the latest test flight – carried out at an undisclosed location in northwest of the country – was a 'huge success', writes South China Morning Post.
The Starry Sky-2 aircraft was carried into space before separating from the launcher rocket and flying on its own power.
Known as a 'waverider', these hypersonic aircrafts uses the shockwaves from its own flight as a lifting surface to travel through the air at fast speeds.
In the latest tests, the aircraft was able to maintain speeds greater than five-and-a-half times the speed of sound for 400 seconds at an altitude of 30km (19 miles).
Local reports suggest it also achieved a top speed of Mach 6.
'The test … has laid a solid technological foundation for engineering applications of the waverider design,' the CAAA statement claimed.
Hypersonic weapons can defeat existing anti-missile defences as they are designed to switch direction during their flight.
These missiles do not follow a predictable ballistic arc like conventional projectiles, making them much harder to track and intercept.
According to the CAAA, the aircraft landed 'whole' in the designated target zone.
However, this technology is not ready to be rolled-out yet.
The next-generation weapon, known as Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2, will ride the shockwave generated by the initial launch, which is handled by a rocket, to travel at six times the speed of sound, or Mach 6 – around 4,563mph (7,344kmph)
Starry Sky-2 (pictured) will purportedly be able to switch direction during its flight, making it harder to track and intercept
'I think there are still three to five years before this technology can be weaponised,' said Beijing-based military analyst, Zhou Chenming.
'As well as being fitted to missiles, it may also have other military applications, which are still being explored.'
Russia is widely-tipped to be developing a hypersonic weapon known as 'Zircon'.
The Zircon cruise missile purportedly travels between 3,800mph (6,115kph) and 4,600mph (7,400kph) – five to six times the speed of sound – putting Russia 'half a decade ahead of the US'.
According to Russian news agency Tass, it is set to go into production this year.
When the aircraft fires its missiles, these will also travel at top speeds of 4,563mph (7,344kmph) and will easily defeat conventional anti-missile defence systems
Known as a 'waverider', these hypersonic aircrafts uses the shockwaves from its own flight as a lifting surface to travel through the air at fast speeds
In the latest tests, the aircraft was able to maintain speeds greater than five-and-a-half times the speed of sound for 400 seconds at an altitude of 30km (19 miles)
In June, it was also revealed a US hypersonic missile had taken a step closer to reality.
Defence firm Lockheed Martin revealed details of a $928 million (£661 million) contract to make a radical new weapon that will travel more than five times the speed of sound.
The aerospace firm is working on an air-launched weapon system, dubbed the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW), under a new deal with the US Air Force.
In the first phase, the team will finalise the system requirements before moving on to design, flight tests, and initial production and deployment.
Work on the ultra-fast missile is taking place in Huntsville, Alabama, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and Orlando, Florida, according to Lockheed Martin.
Russia is believed to be developing a hypersonic weapon called the Zircon. The missile is capable of travelling twice as fast as the Royal Navy's Sea Ceptor missile (pictured), which would be responsible for shooting it down were it to attack British troops or mainland UK
WHAT ARE HYPERSONIC AIRCRAFT AND WHO IS DEVELOPING THEM?
Hypersonic aircraft are those capable of a hitting speeds five times the speed of sound or more.
The vehicles could be used to deliver missiles, including nuclear weapons, to targets around the world in a fraction of the time achieved by current craft.
Hypersonic vehicles travel so rapidly and unpredictably they could provide an almost-immediate threat to nations across the globe.
Once developed, the gap between identifying a military threat and launching an attack on it will drop from hours to minutes, even at long distances.
Since 2013, China has conducted seven successful test flights of its hypersonic glider DF-ZF.
The vehicle will be capable of speeds of between Mach 5 and Mach 10, or five to 10 times the speed of sound.
US officials tested tested HTV-2 in 2011, an unmanned aircraft capable of Mach 20, but the hypersonic flight lasted just a few minutes before the vehicle crashed.Additional expertise in Denver, Colorado, and Sunnyvale, California will also be involved in the project.
The US Air Force will grant Lockheed Martin up to $928 million for development of the weapon through early operational capability.
'Our goal is rapid development and fielding of the HCSW system, and this contract is the first step in achieving that goal,' said John Snyder, vice president of Air Force Strategic Programs at Lockheed Martin.
'Design, development, production, integration and test experts from across Lockheed Martin will partner with the Air Force to achieve early operational capability and deliver the system to our warfighters.
'We are incredibly proud to be leading this effort.'
It was first revealed back in April that the Pentagon pushed through development of the highly maneuverable weapons, which are designed to outpace detection and defensive capabilities.
The move follows repeated warnings from senior officials about rapid advances by China and Russia, who have unveiled their own versions in recent months.
Defence firm Lockheed Martin revealed details of a $928 million (£661 million) contract to make a radical new weapon that will travel more than five times the speed of sound. This 2010 file photo shows rival Boeing's X-51A WaveRider hypersonic vehicle under a B-52 bomber
Hypersonic weapons can beat regular anti-missile defences. This artist's impression, courtesy of the US Air Force, shows Boeing's hypersonic X-51A Waverider cruise missile currently under development
Arsenals of the ultra-fast intercontinental weapons could also be equipped with nuclear warheads with the capability of delivering devastating strikes across the planet.
In a statement, the Pentagon said Lockheed will receive up to $928 million to build a new, non-nuclear missile it is calling the 'hypersonic conventional strike weapon.'
'This contract provides for the design, development, engineering, systems integration, test, logistics planning, and aircraft integration support of all the elements of a hypersonic, conventional, air-launched, stand-off weapon,' the statement read.
Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's new defense undersecretary for research and engineering, said China had built 'a pretty mature system' for a hypersonic missile to strike from thousands of kilometres (miles) away.
'We will, with today's defensive systems, not see these things coming,' Mr Griffin said.
WHAT DOES RUSSIA CLAIM TO HAVE IN ITS MILITARY ARSENAL?
The Russian Ministry of Defence has been keen to promote a range of new super weapons currently believed to be in development.
President Putin unveiled a catalogue of doomsday weaponry as part of his annual 'State of the Nation' speech in March 2018.
However, questions remain about the true nature of their capabilities, how far into development the weapons truly are, and when they will be combat-ready.
RS-28 Sarmat ICBM
The RS-28 Sarmat is intended to replace the Soviet-designed SS-18 Voyevoda, the world's heaviest ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile).
It is known as 'Satan' in the West and carries 10 nuclear warheads.
Sarmat can unleash ten large thermonuclear warheads, 16 smaller ones, or a combination of both, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.
Each warhead is purportedly capable of taking aim at a different target.
The hypersonic glide vehicle, dubbed Avangard, launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile (IBM) before sailing on top of the atmosphere toward its target. Russia tested its latest IBM, the Sarmat missile, for the first time last year (pictured)
The (ICBM) weapons can strike targets via both the North and South poles.
TV broadcaster Zvezda, which is run by the Russian Ministry of Defence, has previously claimed the missile will be capable of wiping out areas the size of Texas or France.
It is also capable of carrying up to 24 of Russia's new Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, designed to sit atop of an ICBM.
Putin says both weapons will be combat-ready in 2020.
Avangard Hypersonic Glide Vehicle
Russia is also believed to be developing a hypersonic weapon that can breach even the world's most advanced missile defence systems.
The Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle purportedly travels at 20 times the speed of sound and can hit targets anywhere in the world within half an hour.
The vehicle launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, before gliding on top of the atmosphere toward its target.
It is loaded with advanced countermeasure systems that allow it to skirt around the latest-generation of missile defence systems, Russia claims.
The vehicles are equipped with onboard countermeasure systems capable of dodging even the most advanced missile defence systems. This artist's impression shows how the glider could manoeuvre at high speed to bypass missile defences
The gliders are also highly unpredictable thanks to their manoeuvrability, making them almost impossible to track using conventional systems.
Each weapon could be loaded with a nuclear warhead, however military experts say the sheer speed of the vehicles means they could do damage even without an explosive payload attached.
Putin described his hypersonic arsenal as 'invincible' during a state-of-the-nation address in March 2018.
He claimed Avangard strikes 'like a meteorite, like a fireball' and was capable of reaching targets at 20 times the speed of sound.
At this speed the weapon could circle the Earth in just over half an hour.
Speaking to MailOnline, Neil Gibson, senior weapons analyst for Jane's by IHS Markit, said: 'I think the ability of hypersonic systems to defeat air-defence system is highly exaggerated.
'They have advantages and disadvantages as per any other weapon system.
'The fact is, the vast majority of ballistic missiles are already hypersonic anyway, it's the controlled flight when still hypersonic that we are talking about here.
'If nuclear armed, they just come under 'mutually assured destruction' style posturing. Using them is always possible of course.
'Conventionally-armed versions are more likely to be used, though any confusion with what they carry - nuclear or conventional warhead - could start an exchange of nuclear weapons if it is mistaken for a nuclear attack.'
Kinzhal Hypersonic Air Launched Missile
Another new missile, the hypersonic Kinzhal, travels at ten times the speed of sound, Putin says.
It is currently undergoing tests in southern Russia.
The hypersonic Kinzhal missile is launched from a high-altitude MiG-31 fighter jet and can be fitted with either nuclear, or conventional weapons.
This still shows the hypersonic Kinzhal, which travels at ten times the speed of sound and is currently undergoing tests in southern Russia
It has an effective range of 1,250 miles (2,000 km), although Putin claims its total range is actually 'unlimited'.
Russia has already conducted some 350 training missions with the military unit tasked with testing the Kinzhal.
Putin claims the new missile would be capable of striking 'anywhere in the world', and that its high speed and manoeuvrability allowed it to pierce any missile defence.
However, despite Putin's major promises, the missile has still not been able to stay airborne for more than a few minutes, according to US intelligence sources.
The new missile has purportedly been tested four times between November and February and crashed every time.
Burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile
The burevestnik, or thunderbird, nuclear propulsion system for Russian cruise missiles aims to give them 'unlimited range and unlimited ability to manoeuvre', according to Sergey Pertsev, a developer.
Ministry of Defence officials said in July, 2018, that work on the unlimited-range missile is going according to plan.
Footage purported to show the missile in action, although it is unclear whether it was being powered by nuclear or conventional fuel.
The 'Burevestnik' nuclear propulsion system for Russian cruise missiles, pictured, is said to have 'unlimited range and unlimited ability to manoeuvre'
'Launching systems are also being designed, while technological processes to manufacture, assemble and test the missile are being improved,' an official said at the time.
However, experts have criticised the missile, including Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
He told Vice's Motherboard: 'The nuclear-powered cruise missile is new—and bats**t crazy.'
Poseidon Drone Submarine
The Poseidon drone submarine is a sister project to burevestnik.
It is essentially a giant, nuclear-capable torpedo capable of carrying a two megaton nuclear warhead capable of obliterating military ports.
The Kremlin's Poseidon torpedo sub is designed to destroy 'enemy navy bases' and will be able to travel up to 70 knots (80 miles per hour), it claims.
Russian state news agency TASS says it has not been able to confirm details of the weapon.
The Poseidon drone submarine - with a miniature nuclear propulsion system - is shown undergoing a static test
However, it quoted a military source as saying: 'It will be possible to mount various nuclear charges on the 'torpedo' of the Poseidon multipurpose seaborne system, with the thermonuclear single warhead similar to the Avangard charge to have the maximum capacity of up to two megatonnes in TNT equivalent.'
With its nuke, the weapon 'is primarily designed to destroy reinforced naval bases of a potential enemy,' the report added.
Peresvet Combat Laser System
Named after a medieval warrior monk, very little is known about this system.
Many believe Peresvet is a jamming system carried on the back of military lorries, which can be used to 'blind' optical electronic equipment inside enemy vehicles using a laser beam.
According to ex-Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov the 'combat laser systems' that Putin addressed in his State of the Nation speech back in March had already been delivered to the nation's armed forces last year.
Many believe Peresvet is a jamming system carried on the back of military lorries (pictured), which can be used to 'blind' optical electronic equipment inside enemy vehicles using a laser beam
Once found only in works of fiction, Mr Borisov said such devices were now a very real and necessary tool of modern warfare.
'We can talk a lot about laser weapons and movies were made about them a long time ago and fantastic books have been written, and everyone knows about this,' Mr Borisov said in comments translated by the state-run Tass Russian News Agency.
But the fact that these systems have started entering service is indeed today's reality.'
A New Mexico solar observatory reopened Monday after an 11-day FBI investigation of a janitor who was suspected of using the facility’s internet to download child pornography, federal court documents revealed Wednesday.
The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, abruptly closed Sept. 6 over an undisclosed security issue. The lack of explanation fueled conspiracy theories, given the facility’s close proximity to Roswell – the location of a supposed UFO sighting in 1947.
An FBI officer said she was “investigating the activities of an individual who was utilizing the wireless internet service of the National Solar Observatory … to download and distribute child pornography.”
Officials on Monday said the observatory did not communicate with the public during the investigation because they didn’t want the suspect to be tipped off.
“[O]ur desire to provide additional information had to be balanced against the risk that, if spread at the time, the news would alert the suspect and impede the law enforcement investigation. That was a risk we could not take,” officials said.
Investigators determined the observatory’s janitor had used his laptop to connect to the facility’s wireless internet system, an FBI affidavit said. Federal authorities obtained a warrant to the search the suspect’s residence, Reuters reported, citing FBI records.
On Sept. 14, FBI agents removed three cell phones, five laptops, one iPad, an external hard drive, and other electronic devices, from the suspect’s home, FBI records showed.
An FBI spokesman said the case is still under investigation. According to the FBI, the suspect has not been arrested or charged.
Sunspot is located in South Central New Mexico, about a four-hour drive from Albuquerque.
When the California two-spot octopus isn’t attempting to bring more eight-legged cephalopods into this world, it prefers to be alone. Known to scientists as Octopus bimaculoides, the alien-like invertebrate spends most of its time hiding or searching for food, asocial males avoiding asocial females until their biological clocks say it’s time to partner up. That is, until they are on MDMA. In a groundbreaking study released Thursday, researchers describe how octopuses on the drug act similarly to a socially anxious human on MDMA: They open up.
Gül Dölen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and the co-author of the new Current Biologypaper. She tells Inversethat when octopuses are on MDMA, it’s like watching “an eight-armed hug.”
“They were very loose,” Dölen says. “They just embraced with multiple arms.”
While MDMA is known to trigger prosocial behavior in mice and humans, it has never been witnessed in invertebrates, animals that have no backbone. Vertebrates and invertebrates have wildly divergent bodies and brain structures, and for a long time scientists didn’t think the latter had the capacity to be social. They only recently realized invertebrates deserved a second look.
Because of improvements in molecular genetic analysis, Dölen explains, we’re beginning to understand the ways in which both groups evolved from a common ancestor. The findings of the new study add evidence to the idea that social behaviors have a long evolutionary history — going back much farther than we ever believed. The electrifying results could significantly impact what we know about the evolution of brains and why MDMA-assisted therapy seems to be such a useful tool in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety.
“After the MDMA, it was like an eight-armed hug.”
An octopus differs from a human in ways far beyond the obvious. A heap of no bones and 33,000 genes, octopuses are belived to be Earth’s first intelligent beings. They are utterly different from all other animals, with a central brain that surrounds the esophagus and two-thirds of their neurons in their arms. They’re separated from humans by more than 500 million years of evolution. But despite the differences between octopuses and humans, Dölen and her colleague Eric Edsinger, Ph.D., a research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory, choose to focus on a single crucial similarity. The brain of the California two-spot octopus contains a serotonin transporter that enables the binding of MDMA — much like human brains.
This means that serotonin — believed to help regulate mood, social behavior, sleep, and sexual desire — is an ancient neurotransmitter that’s shared across vertebrate and invertebrate species. Dölen and Edsinger hypothesized this before the octopuses were ever bathed in MDMA.
“We needed to check the genome to make sure that the genes that encode the serotonin transporter, which is the protein that MDMA binds to, was still a binding site in octopuses even despite the fact that so much evolutionary time had passed,” Dölen explains.
“We performed phylogenetic tree mapping and found that, even though their whole serotonin transporter gene is only 50 to 60 percent similar to humans, the gene was still conserved. That told us that MDMA would have a place to go in the octopus brain and suggested it could encode sociality as it does in a human brain.”
That’s a revolutionary suggestion because scientists only very recently began to accept that invertebrates are even capable of being social. After all, without MDMA, California two-spot octopuses prefer to be loners. In a 2017 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology, researchers from Queen Mary University London wrote that the possibility that invertebrates could have emotions has “traditionally been dismissed by many as emotions are frequently defined with reference to human subjective experience, and invertebrates are often not considered to have the neural requirements for such sophisticated abilities.”
But recent studies, illustrating a shift in thinking, have shown that invertebrates like sea slugs, bees, and crabs all display various cognitive, behavioral, and phsyiological phenomena that suggest internal states reminiscent of emotions.
This is why the fact that octopuses can bind serotonin is so important. Serotonin is a key mitigator of the emotional aspectsof human behavior and sociality. That octopuses, one of the most advanced invertebrates, have a similar pathway geared toward social behavior despite the fact that their brains are organized very differently suggests that sociality is spread across the animal kingdom.
“There have been studies showing that serotonin is important for social behaviors for both invertebrates and vertebrates, and this really confirms to me that it’s true that serotonin is conserved across hundreds of millions of years of evolution,” says Dölen.
This became clear when she observed how octopuses acted after they were bathed in MDMA. Individual octopuses were put into the middle zone of a glass aquarium that was divided into three. From the middle zone, the subject octopus had the option to move into the zone on either side of it. On one side, there was another octopus in a cage, and on the other, there was a “novel toy object” (a Stormtrooper figurine). Sociality was measured by the number of seconds the subject octopus spent on the side with the caged octopus compared to the Stormtrooper side. Five octopuses were used in the control experiment, and four were used during the MDMA trial.
The study design.
Watching the individual control octopuses — those that hadn’t been bathed in MDMA — during 30-minute test sessions, the researchers found that all of the octopuses spent more time with the Stormtrooper when the social chamber contained a male. When the social chamber contained a female, both male and female octopuses tentatively explored that area.
They would “push against the wall and sort of delicately touch the container that had the octopus in it,” says Dölen.
But when these octopuses were on MDMA, they were notdelicate with their movements toward the caged individuals. After being placed in a bath with MDMA for 10 minutes then washed with saline for 20 minutes, they re-entered the three-zone aquarium. This time around, they spent significantly more time with the other octopus, whether it was male or female, and the eight-armed hugging commenced.
“This paper is welcomed, as the behavioral neuroscience of cephalopods is very understudied,” Dalhousie University invertebrate behavioral physiologist Shelley Adamo, Ph.D., who was not involved with the current paper, tells Inverse. Adamo also studies the interactions between behavior and physiology in invertebrate model systems. “We know little about how their brains work. This paper breaks new ground by examining the underlying molecular basis of at least one neurotransmitter system.”
But she also cautions that it’s too early to jump to conclusions because the paper’s evidence that “the octopus were engaging in ‘social’ behaviors is not especially strong.” There could be alternative explanations for all that friendliness: Maybe the drug altered their foraging behavior and the target octopus “smelled” like food (cephalopods are occasionally cannibalistic). Maybe the MDMA changed their typical hunting behavior, and being hungry could explain why both male and female octopuses were interested in the target.
“As with most interesting papers, it raises a number of questions: What would two octopus do if they were both on MDMA and they could contact one another?” Adamo asks. “The small sample size — a necessary evil for most studies on cephalopods — means that the data is not as robust as it could be.”
Dölen has two hypotheses to explain what happened. Qualitatively, it looks like octopuses on MDMA, much like humans, could just like touching in general and the octopus in the cage “is the most interesting object that an octopus would want to touch.” Or it could be that the drug really does make them social. The latter, she believes, is the most robust hypothesis: MDMA affects human interest in social touch as well, and that seems to be preserved in octopuses as well.
“What this says to me is that in the brain of an octopus, the neural circuits and transmitters that are required for social behavior must exist and they are just suppressed most of the time,” says Dölen. “Octopuses appear to suspend their asociality during important mating periods through a suppression mechanism in their brain.”
The MDMA used in the study was provided by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the nonprofit organization that funds the FDA-approved Phase 3 clinical trials of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in patients with severe PTSD. This research, Dölen says, has intrigued MAPS founder Rick Doblin, and with good reason. It suggests that perhaps the best way to gain insight into MDMA’s mechanisms and therapeutic importance isn’t by taking an fMRI picture of the brain and examining the regions it activates, which has been standard practice in MDMA research. From Dölen’s point of view, the fact that octopuses don’t have same brain regions as humans but still carry the genes that enable MDMA binding means that molecular and cellular information is going to be more useful than anatomical data.
“Octopuses don’t have the same parts of the brain that we think are important for social behavior, a region called the nucleus accumbens,” says Dölen.
“What we’re arguing is that the brain regions don’t matter. What matters is that they have the molecules, the neurotransmitters, and some configuration of neurons. They have the serotonin transporter and that’s enough.”
Mysterious solar observatory evacuation caused by a child porn investigation, FBI docs say
Mysterious solar observatory evacuation caused by a child porn investigation, FBI docs say
Joel Shannon USA TODAY
The Sunspot Solar Observatory telescope sits next door to the Apache Point Observatory. On Sept. 6, the observatory was closed and evacuated due to an undisclosed security issue.
File photo/Daily News
The sudden and previously unexplained evacuation of a New Mexico solar observatory on Sept. 6 was prompted by a child pornography investigation, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation documents.
An individual is suspected of "utilizing the wireless internet service of the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, to download and distribute child pornography,” Reuters reported Wednesday, citing newly unsealed FBI records.
A laptop at the facility was seized without the knowledge of the suspect — a janitor, the Albuquerque Journal reported. The evacuation came after that person became increasingly agitated, prompting concerns about the safety of staff at the observatory, the publication reports.
In the wake of the evacuation and closure, officials provided little information, leading to widespread speculation and conspiracy theories. The observatory's proximity to Roswell — the site of an alleged UFO crash — helped fuel speculation, Reuters says.
The observatory reopened this week.
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the organization that oversees the observatory, reported Sunday that the site had been evacuated due to "law enforcement investigation of criminal activity" at Sacramento Peak, the mountaintop on which the observatory is located.
Authorities determined there was no risk to staff and that regular work could commence on Monday, the release stated.
The person being investigated has not been arrested or charged, Reuters reports.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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