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.
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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!!!
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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.
21-02-2021
Why Do People Embrace Conspiracy Theories?
Why Do People Embrace Conspiracy Theories?
Authorities are still working to determine the identities of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, many of whom were apparently motivated by false conspiracy theories that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election but was cheated out of his victory due to widespread election fraud.
Conspiracy theories often rely on seeing things sharply in terms of right and wrong, and that can drive people to do things they might never have contemplated before, says Peter Ditto, a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine.
“Moralizing things mobilizes people to action,” he says. “If I believed that the American election had been stolen from the rightful winner, I’d probably storm the Capitol, too. It makes perfect sense if that really happened. The problem is, that didn’t happen.”
FILE – Trump supporter Douglas Austen Jensen, wearing a QAnon shirt, confronts police on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol after breaching security defenses, in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.
The people most likely to embrace conspiracy theories are less inquisitive and often exhibit narcissistic tendencies, such as an inflated sense of self-importance, a deep need for attention and admiration, troubled relationships, a lack of empathy for others and fragile self-esteem, according to Emory University research published in the Journal of Personality.
Nika Kabiri, an expert on human decision-making affiliated with the University of Washington in Seattle, says everyone is potentially drawn to conspiracy theories, although some far more than others.
“We’re all potentially drawn to them because we all hate uncertainty. We all don’t like the idea of not knowing why things happen. It makes us feel like we don’t have control in the world. We want closure,” she says. “It’s a natural tendency for the human brain to look for those explanations.”
FILE – A man wearing a cap that references the QAnon slogan attends a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Oct. 31, 2020.
A conspiracy theory is thinking that blames or explains an important event or set of circumstances on a secret plot that is usually masterminded by powerful people. Conspiracy thinking can also embrace the idea that a big secret is being kept from the public.
When a prominent person, be it a movie director or a president, transmits a conspiracy theory, Kabiri says, it is like a super spreader event, and the conspiracy theory gets a lot of exposure.
“People are adhering to these beliefs because they’re already dissatisfied,” she says. “They’re already unhappy. There’s something they want to, perhaps, explain something that doesn’t sit well with them, and the story gives them an answer.”
Times of uncertainty, such as a pandemic, can help fuel the spread of conspiracy theories.
“People, in particular, that are susceptible to conspiracy thinking, they’re susceptible to them when they feel threatened and anxious, like a lot of people do right now,” Ditto says. “When the world seems confusing and incomprehensible, which it does right now. When people are lonely and they’re seeking connection with others.”
FILE – The remaining tower of New York’s World Trade Center, Tower 2, collapses in a cloud of dust and debris Sept. 11, 2001. Some conspiracy theorists believe the towers were demolished by powerful, unknown people or forces.
People often latch onto conspiracy stories because they cannot accept simple explanations for life-altering events, according to Ditto.
A major conspiracy about the 9/11 terror attacks holds that the twin towers in New York fell in a controlled demolition, rather than because planes crashed into them.
Unproven speculation about the COVID-19 pandemic holds that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab and was possibly an engineered bioweapon.
Many Americans find it hard to believe that President John F. Kennedy, a larger-than-life political figure, was killed by a lone gunman, a regular guy, which is why they embrace the unproven idea that there must have been a larger conspiracy to murder the president.
FILE – Supporters wearing shirts with the QAnon logo are seen at a Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Aug. 2, 2018.
The Emory researchers found that the people most likely to embrace conspiracy thinking are often less agreeable and less conscientious, while being associated with a sense of entitlement, grandiosity, depression and anxiety.
“If you are in a close-knit community, either on social media or in real life, with people who are all adhering to the same belief, there’s a commitment to that belief that’s even more intense than if you just held that alone,” Kabiri says.
Ditto says a million years of evolution pushes people to break into groups with like-minded people.
“We’re very tribal. We’re very provably attached to people who are like us. It’s very, very unusual to have a place where you’re supposed to make friends with, and connect with, and cooperate with, people who don’t look like you and don’t have the same values. Maybe they have a different religion,” Ditto says.
“The American experiment, essentially, is an attempt to work against all those evolutionary forces and move people in this positive way where they cooperate. It’s way easier to break people up.”
'KANS OP UITBRAAK VAN EEN COMPLEET NIEUW CORONAVIRUS WORDT ZWAAR ONDERSCHAT'
'KANS OP UITBRAAK VAN EEN COMPLEET NIEUW CORONAVIRUS WORDT ZWAAR ONDERSCHAT'
Vivian Lammerse
Het aantal diersoorten waarin nieuwe coronavirussen kunnen ontstaan, blijkt veel groter dan gedacht.
De huidige coronacrisis heeft ons behoorlijk opgeschrikt. Want het noodlottige voorval in Wuhan heeft velen doen afvragen hoe groot de kans eigenlijk is dat er een coronavirus opduikt én overspringt naar de mens. In een nieuwe studie, gepubliceerd in het vakblad Nature Communications, hebben onderzoekers zich over die prangende vragen gebogen. En daaruit blijkt dat we de uitbraak van een compleet nieuw coronavirus zwaar hebben onderschat.
Nieuwe coronavirussen De eerste vraag is natuurlijk hoe nieuwe coronavirussen precies het levenslicht zien. “Nieuwe coronavirussen ontstaan wanneer twee verschillende stammen hetzelfde dier infecteren,” legt onderzoeksleider Maya Wardeh uit. “Hierdoor wordt het virale genetische materiaal gerecombineerd. Ons begrip van hoe vatbaar verschillende dieren zijn voor verschillende coronavirussen is beperkt. Maar dergelijke informatie zou inzicht kunnen verschaffen in waar virale recombinatie plaatsvindt.”
Kunstmatige Intelligentie De onderzoekers hebben gepoogd die kenniskloof te overbruggen door met behulp van ‘machine learning’ op zoek te gaan naar specifieke zoogdieren waarin nieuwe coronavirussen het makkelijkst kunnen ontstaan. En dat is heel belangrijk. Want door te voorspellen welke dieren mogelijk de bron zijn van een toekomstige uitbraak van een nieuw coronavirus, kunnen we het risico dat het coronavirus daadwerkelijk naar de mens overspringt, beperken. In de studie analyseerden de onderzoekers onder andere de soorten die al eerder bij uitbraken betrokken zijn, zoals de Kleine hoefijzerneus, loewak en schubdierachtigen.
Zoogdiersoorten De bevindingen zijn tamelijk verontrustend. Want de onderzoekers komen tot de conclusie dat het aantal diersoorten waarin nieuwe coronavirussen kunnen ontstaan, veel groter is dan gedacht. Zo schatten de onderzoekers dat er bijvoorbeeld 40 keer meer zoogdiersoorten bestaan die kunnen worden geïnfecteerd met een diverse reeks coronavirusstammen dan voorheen bekend was. De onderzoekers vermoeden dat de loewak en de Kleine hoefijzerneus bijvoorbeeld respectievelijk 32 en 68 verschillende coronavirussen herbergen. Het team ging nog een stap verder door de betreffende gastheren te identificeren waarin een recombinatie zou kunnen plaatsvinden. En daaruit blijkt dat er mogelijk 30 keer meer gastheersoorten zijn die nieuwe coronavirussen herbergen dan gedacht, waaronder katten, egels en konijnen. Opmerkelijke nieuwe gastheren zijn onder andere de kameel, de groene meerkat, en de vleermuis Scotophilus kuhlii.
Modelvoorspellingen over potentiële gastheren van SARS-Cov-2.
Afbeelding: Nature Communications
Het betekent dat de potentiële omvang en de kans op een uitbraak van een compleet nieuw coronavirus – afkomstig van wilde én gedomesticeerde dieren – zwaar onderschat wordt. “Gezien het feit dat coronavirussen vaak recombinaties ondergaan wanneer ze een gastheer tegelijkertijd infecteren én dat SARS-CoV-2 zeer besmettelijk is voor mensen, vormt dit de meest directe dreiging voor de volksgezondheid,” concludeert onderzoeker Marcus Blagrove. Als specifiek voorbeeld benadrukt het team het risicovolle scenario van recombinatie tussen het zeer besmettelijke SARS-CoV-2 en het meer dodelijke MERS-CoV. In de studie identificeerden de onderzoekers 102 potentiële gastheren van deze twee virussen en adviseren met klem om dit te blijven monitoren, om een vervelende afloop te voorkomen.
Nieuwe stammen Hoewel het onderzoek zorgvuldig is uitgevoerd, houden de onderzoekers een slag om de arm. Zo stellen ze dat deze bevindingen gebaseerd zijn op slechts beperkte gegevens over coronavirus-genomen en wisselwerkingen tussen virus en gastheer. Toch zetten de resultaten ons op scherp. “Het is belangrijk om op te merken dat virale recombinatie verschilt van mutaties,” onderstreept Blagrove. “Recombinatie vindt plaats over langere perioden en kan volledig nieuwe stammen of soorten genereren. Ons werk kan helpen bij het oprichten van surveillanceprogramma’s om toekomstige, alarmerende stammen te ontdekken voordat ze overspringen op de mens. Dit geeft ons een belangrijke voorsprong bij de bestrijding ervan.”
De onderzoekers zijn nu van plan om hun model uit te breiden en ook vogelsoorten onder de loep te nemen. Uiteindelijk is het doel om een volledig beeld te scheppen van de diersoorten die mogelijk belangrijke coronavirus-gastheren zijn. Want op die manier wordt de kans op een volgende desastreuse uitbraak van een nieuw coronavirus, flink ingedamd.
Russian state laboratory Vector has announced a new research project in which it will probe ancient animals frozen in the Siberian permafrost, looking for ancient. The aim of the project is to identify such viruses and conduct advanced research into virus evolution.
“We hope that interesting discoveries in the world of viruses await us, one researcher was quoted.”
The remains of many Paleolithic creatures are trapped in the icy grip of the Siberian permafrost. Aided by global warming that melted some of the ice, expeditions have uncovered the remains of numerous kinds of animals preserved by the freezing temperatures. The remains are interesting by themselves, but Russian researchers now want to probe even further, and look at what type of viruses these organisms may have hosted.
The study will be focused on remains discovered in 2009 in Yakutia, a vast region of north-eastern Siberia where remains of Paleolithic animals including mammoths, elk, dogs, partridges, rodents, hares, and many others have been discovered. The researchers will be probing these groups looking for ancient viruses, called paleoviruses.
“We are conducting studies on paleoviruses for the first time,” said Maxim Cheprasov, head of the Mammoth Museum laboratory at Yakutsk University, who added that they have already carried out several bacterial studies on the samples.
The research is a collaboration between Vector and the University of Yakutsk. The work began with analysis of tissues extracted from a prehistoric horse thought to be at least 4,500 years old. Researchers drill a tiny hole and take tissue samples, placing them in a test tube. They then carry out a series of analyses on this sample, from genome sequencing to isolation of total nucleic acids, to obtain data on the entire biodiversity of the microorganisms in the sample.
“If nucleic acids aren’t destroyed, we will be able to obtain data on their composition and establish how it changed, what was the evolutionary development of microorganisms. Vector researcher Olesya Okhlopkova explains in a press release. She adds that they will also “determine the epidemiological potential of currently existing infectious agents.”
Sergei Fedorov, one of the participating researchers, adds that the findings are kept in a special freezer at temperatures of -16 to -18 degrees Celsius (around 0-3 degrees Fahrenheit). Mammoths will be a point of particular interest for the project, but researchers will look at samples from various ancient animals. “We hope that interesting discoveries in the world of viruses await us,” says Fedorov
Vector is a secluded research institute that, in Soviet times, was weaponized and used in the Soviet biological warfare program. The laboratory made important progress in smallpox research, but also researched the production of various viruses and toxins. In post-Soviet times, the center focuses on vaccine research (for Hepatitis A or influenza, for instance), diagnosis systems, and other epidemiological research.
Vector also developed a COVID-19 vaccine (EpiVacCorona, not the Sputnik V) which was licensed in October in Russia and is scheduled to begin mass production in February.
Lucid dreaming happens when you’re aware that you’re dreaming, as opposed to being completely immersed in the experience and totally decoupled from reality. Some lucid dreamers are so good at it they can consistently enter this state of awareness in their sleep and can even control their dream’s storyline to their liking. If you find all of this fascinating, you’re not alone — and scientists have now published a new study in which they’ve tapped into the brains of lucid dreamers while they had real-time dialogues.
Despite the ubiquity of dreams, scientists still know surprisingly very little about them. Most people have trouble remembering their dreams, which are subject to distortion, fragmentation, and forgetting, making neuroscience studies of dreaming highly challenging. In typical dreams, people judge their experience But this is where lucid dreamers come in.
In a new study, researchers led by Karen Konkoly, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, attempted to communicate in real-time with 36 individuals who were in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. The participants hailed from the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and were assessed by four independent laboratories.
“Why do we have dreams? How are dream scenarios created? Does dreaming confer any benefit for brain function? These and other questions have remained open, in part, because of the limited options available for peering into dream experiences,” wrote the researchers in the journal Current Biology.
“In typical dreams, people judge their experience with a high degree of acceptance and a lack of critical evaluation; they fail to realize that their experience is merely a dream. On the other hand, a “lucid dream” differs in that the dreamer gains the elusive insight of being in a dream.”
The participants’ experience with lucid dreaming varied — which was exactly what the researchers were looking for. Some had minimal experience with lucid dreaming, while others were frequent lucid dreamers. One patient with narcolepsy claimed he almost always had lucid dreams.
IN (lower left) refers to methods whereby information was transmitted from experimenter to dreamer. OUT (lower right) refers to methods whereby information was transmitted from dreamer to experimenter. Credit: Current Biology.
To verify that the participants were indeed dreaming, the researchers placed electrodes close to their eyes, as well as on the scalp and chin. This device records brainwave activity and eyeball movement, which are closely linked to deep sleep.
During this stage, people are likely dreaming. But how do you know they are also aware they’re dreaming? In order to identify which participants were lucid dreaming, the researchers asked certain questions that some participants answered with pre-arranged eyeball movements.
Credit: Current Biology.
For instance, one participant was asked for the answer to eight minus six, to which he correctly answered “two” by making two eye movements from left to right. When asked to repeat the answer, the participant once again performed the correct eye movement.
After the participants woke up and the sessions were over, the researchers made a tally and found 18% of the trials involved clear and accurate communication as described above, 17% seemed to acknowledge they were being asked questions but made unintelligible answers, 3% gave wrong answers, and 60% had no reaction at all.
Mysterious lifeforms have been discovered in one of the most inhabitable places on our planet. Deep below the Antarctic ice shelf is very dark with subzero temperatures but some species are surprisingly thriving down there.
Located on a seafloor boulder were several species. In fact, this is the first time ever that stationary creatures attached to one specific location have been found underneath the ice of Antarctica.
Huw Griffiths, who is a biogeographer at the British Antarctic Survey and an author of the study, explained this further, “This discovery is one of those fortunate accidents that pushes ideas in a different direction and shows us that Antarctic marine life is incredibly special and amazingly adapted to a frozen world.”
Since it is so difficult to study what’s underneath Antarctica’s ice shelves, scientists are only able to make holes in the ice and lower equipment into the depths of the water. Based on evidence gathered from eight of their borehole surveys, they do know that there is some life beneath the ice, such as jellies, fish, crustaceans, and worms. But the fact that they found sponges was incredibly surprising.
Antarctica
They found the sponges underneath 890 meters of ice (2,920 feet) on the seafloor which was 1,233 meters down (4,045 feet). Located on the seafloor boulder was one sponge on a stalk while 15 others were without them. Furthermore, they discovered 22 organisms that have yet to be identified but could possibly be sponges, hydroids, ascidians, cnidaria, barnacles, or polychaetes. (Pictures can be seen here.)
Griffiths noted that there are still many unanswered questions like how they got there; how long have they been there; what do they eat; how many boulders have this type of life attached to them; are they new species and what would happen to them if the ice shelves ended up collapsing?
Since the majority of life on our planet needs sun to survive, it’s amazing to think that these creatures reside in complete darkness and are still able to live. Chemosynthesis is when organisms use the energy from reactions created by inorganic chemicals when there isn’t any sunlight around. Thermal vents found in the ocean release volcanic chemicals and heat, and bacteria uses chemosynthesis to make sugar for their food chain.
Antarctica
Organisms that live beneath glaciers chemosynthesise hydrogen and some chemosynthetic ecosystems depend on methane. Interestingly, a methane leak has been discovered in the waters of Antarctica.
With that being said, the living creatures underneath Antarctica’s ice shelves probably depend on a chemosynthetic food chain but much more research needs to be conducted in order to know for sure. Nevertheless, it’s incredibly interesting to know that several different species can survive beneath the freezing cold ice shelves of Antarctica.
When researchers are drilling almost one kilometer of ice, they’re not expecting to find all that much life. But in a recent survey in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, they came across multiple life forms living in complete darkness, at temperatures of -2.2°C (28 °F)
“This discovery is one of those fortunate accidents that pushes ideas in a different direction and shows us that Antarctic marine life is incredibly special and amazingly adapted to a frozen world,” says biogeographer and lead author, Dr. Huw Griffiths of British Antarctic Survey.
Breaking all the rules
Antarctica is the world’s harshest continent, and yet life seems to find a way even in these conditions. Few creatures can survive in Antarctica in the first place, but to do it in such hellish conditions is truly stunning. This is the first study to find stationary animals attached to a boulder on the Antarctic seafloor, the authors say, and they’re “breaking all the rules.”
Researchers found several sponge-like species, including some species previously unknown to science. It’s very unlikely that they just got lucky and hit the needle in the Antarctic haystack — the one place where such animals happen to survive in these conditions. Instead, Griffiths says, there’s probably much more like this waiting to be discovered.
“There appear to be at least three species present in the images, possibly more. Given that this is the first record of a hard substrate community observed from a habitat that covers 1.6 million km2 then I would be very surprised if we had been lucky enough to find all the species on a single boulder, so I would expect that there are many more waiting to be found,” Griffiths told ZME Science.
We don’t yet know much about these species, and in a way, their discovery seems to pose more questions than it answers. They appear to be a group of unpretentious filter-feeders — creatures that feed by straining suspended matter (food) from the water. But where does their food even come from, and how common are these life forms? Since it’s so dark, there can’t be any talk of photosynthesis, and there doesn’t seem to be any hydrothermal vent, so Griffiths suspects the food comes from farther away.
“From looking at the video it appears to be a filter-feeding community, obviously this community must be able to cope with less food than others elsewhere. There are no obvious signs of chemosynthesis, these sponges are not the typical hydrothermal vent or methane seep fauna and the water temperatures are very cold. As far as we know the most likely source of food is what washed in from beyond the ice shelf by the currents, but this requires further investigation,” Griffiths added in an email.
British Antarctic Survey camera travelling down the 900-meter-long bore hole in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf. (Marine creature pictured is unrelated to the discovery).
Image credits: Dr Huw Griffiths/British Antarctic Survey.
Tantalizing information for life on Earth and beyond
The discovery of an established community on a boulder 260 km from the ice raises “significant questions,” the researchers note, forcing us to rethink what we think about how life survives under ice shelves. The findings have wide implications not just in regards to creatures inhabiting the Earth now, but also to creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, in a period called the “snowball earth” — and even for potential life on frozen bodies such as Jupiter’s satellite Europa.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that these creatures are filter-feeders. Filter-feeders depend on a supply of food from above, so they are among the first to disappear as you move away from open water and sunlight. Yet, here they are, probably covering large habitats, showing just how much we’ve still yet to learn about these extreme environments.
“Ice shelves cover roughly a third of the Antarctic’s 5 million km2 continental shelf and the Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf [where the creatures were found] covers around 420,000 km2, so these environments are surprisingly common but we know virtually nothing about them. Finding filter feeding animals so far from their food source shows us that life beneath ice shelves is more resilient and widespread than we expected.”
Now, researchers will continue to study these creatures and see what they can understand about these extremophilic communities. But they also leave a warning: we may end up destroying these communities before we even truly understand them. Despite being remarkably well adapted for the cold, they are vulnerable to the global heating that could wreck their entire ecosystem.
“If these communities turn out to be new species, only found under ice shelves then this would make them very vulnerable to climate change and ice shelf collapse, which could destroy their entire habitat in the future,” Griffiths concludes.
1177 BC: The year civilization collapsed by Eric Cline Princeton University Press // Buy on Amazon
“Modern scholars refer to them collectively as the “Sea Peoples,” but the Egyptians who recorded their attack on Egypt never used that term,” Eric Cline poignantly writes in the beginning of his book on what he calls “the most interesting year in history.
We’re over 3,000 years in the past, and the Eastern Mediterranean is riddled with thriving civilizations. The Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Minoans, and Mycenaeans are all vying for progress and power, establishing refined trade routes that build on intermingled and surprisingly advanced civilizations. We’re 3,000 years in the past, and yet the people of the time are surprisingly like us.
Nowadays, we often talk about Ancient Greece and Rome, but a millennium before that, several Mediterranean civilizations had established a Golden Age. They traded with each other, they gave gifts and called on each other for help, and of course, at times, they waged war with each other. Yes, at a time when the Roman Empire was centuries away, these civilizations (including the likes of the mythical Troy) ruled the land with stunning prowess.
They were, argues Cline, much like us. For starters, they had many of the same problems we have today: environmental issues (serious drought), pestilence (COVID-19), a struggle for resources. They were also intertwined in many of the ways that we are today, especially through trade. The Mediterranean Sea made for the perfect place to trade your goods, from gold and silver to more practical aspects like wood and tin. They built monumental architecture so impressive that centuries later, people would believe it was mythical. They had advanced writing systems and wrote their adventures, woes, and plans on pieces of papyrus or clay tablets.
Yet despite all this, they disappeared one after the other almost simultaneously, leaving archaeologists thousands of years later wondering what had happened.
The Sea Peoples
Picture this: in this mosaic of civilizations, a group of mysterious sea marauders enter the stage. We don’t know where they came from, what they did, or even who they were. We just know that they came, in great numbers, and they attacked — and even this, we only know because the Egyptians described it in great detail.
The Egyptians didn’t consider the Sea Peoples a unitary group, instead considering them a sort of marine confederation, but the proof is so scarce that we can’t really be sure who they were. The Egyptians claimed they defeated the Sea Peoples, but it must have been a Pyrrhic victory, because after one war, the Egyptian civilization collapsed into a dark age it took centuries to recover from.
It wasn’t just the Egyptians: one after the other, all civilizations in the area collapsed, for no clear reason. It was like the fall of Rome — an end of civilization and the beginning of a long Dark Age. It’s not clear that 1177 is the year when this happened, but sometime around that year, this transition took place — and it’s as good a placeholder as any.
Could it be that these Sea Peoples, who we don’t even know who they are, could have single-handedly collapsed Bronze Age civilization? For a long time, this is what many archaeologists thought — and some still do. But in Cline’s book, he presents a different hypothesis: it wasn’t just one factor, it was a “perfect storm” of different factors, and the Sea Peoples were just one of them.
For instance, other civilizations don’t really mention the Sea Peoples, but that doesn’t mean they never fought them — it’s possible that we just haven’t found their writings, or they got lost or destroyed. But they do mention other problems, like droughts, diseases, or earthquakes. In the period leading to 1177, they all seemed to suffer from some big problem that brought their demise.
1177 is their story — to the extent that we know it.
A story of times past and present
Cline does an excellent job at setting the stage for these events, not just in terms of integrating archaeological and historic evidence, but also in terms of storytelling. The story features different people (some familiar, like Nefertiti or Tutankhamun, and others unknown), different areas, and many intriguing episodes, and yet despite all this information, it flows effortlessly. It’s not just interesting, it’s enthralling. Reading the book, I found myself wanting to learn more about these people in this period. I was surprised by how much we know about them, and saddened to see how much there’s still to discover.
For instance, one such episode features a king that ruled some 3750 years ago and organized expeditions to bring ice from high in the mountains during the cold season. He also built a special ice house where the ice was kept in a solid state until summertime, where he would enjoy his cooled beverage. Another episode features a military strategy recreated with success by a World War I general, who said he learned it from an ancient Egyptian ruler.
Then, of course, there is the intertwining of myth and history. Troy, the legendary city over which gods and men fought, was a real place, and the boundary between myth and reality is not always clear. Then, there’s the biblical Exodus and how it ties (or doesn’t) with archaeological evidence. The Christian myth of the Flood, copied almost exactly from the Babylonians who had described it a thousand years prior.
It all makes for a gripping reading, where you learn while enjoying the story of one of history’s greatest mysteries. Was it the unknown invaders that shattered these bustling civilizations? Was it a sum of factors? Was it something else entirely? Some parts of the puzzle are still missing, but Cline does a great job of walking through the available evidence, presenting it in an easy-to-follow fashion, and drawing what conclusions can be drawn.
The book does at times feel vague or indeterminate, maybe because that’s just the nature of archaeological evidence. Cline also spends a lot of time building a beautiful picture of the world during the Late Bronze Age, looking at what may have caused this collapse, yet at one point he seems to dismiss it as an inevitable collapse of a complex system, leaving the reader wanting more. Still, it’s a thought-provoking read, and a timely second edition as well. With the ongoing pandemic, we’ve seen just how much our lives can change in a moment. Humans often like to think themselves as invincible. Just like these ancient people, we think our society can bend, but nothing can truly break it. The pandemic is just one aspect — researchers have warned for decades that climate change is looming and it could soon cause catastrophic damage.
1177 BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed, is a remarkable book that brings forth not just a piece of history, but also lessons from the past. It may very well be that drought or war brought an end to their society, and there is a warning there for us as well. Unlike these ancient people, however, we are generally aware of what’s going on in the world and what’s happening to us, though whether or not we’ll act on it is a different thing.
A triple-threat of climate change, biodiversity loss and overpopulation is bearing down on Earth.
Charred trees are seen along Pallet Creek Road during the Bobcat Fire in Valyermo, California, September 18, 2020. Climate change is poised to exacerbate the frequency and intensity of annual wildfires. (Image credit: Kyle Grillot/ Getty)
Humanity is barreling toward a "ghastly future" of mass extinctions, health crises and constant climate-induced disruptions to society — one that can only be prevented if world leaders start taking environmental threats seriously, scientists warn in a new paper published Jan. 13 in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science.
In the paper, a team of 17 researchers based in the United States, Mexico and Australia describes three major crises facing life on Earth: climate disruption, biodiversity decline and human overconsumption and overpopulation. Citing more than 150 studies, the team argues that these three crises — which are poised only to escalate in the coming decades — put Earth in a more precarious position than most people realize, and could even jeopardize the human race.
The point of the new paper isn't to scold average citizens or warn that all is lost, the authors wrote — but rather, to plainly describe the threats facing our planet so that people (and hopefully political leaders) start taking them seriously and planning mitigating actions, before it's too late.
"Ours is not a call to surrender," the authors wrote in their paper. "We aim to provide leaders with a realistic 'cold shower' of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future."
What will that future look like? For starters, the team writes, nature will be a lot lonelier. Since the start of agriculture 11,000 years ago, Earth has lost an estimated 50% of its terrestrial plants and roughly 20% of its animal biodiversity, the authors said, citing two studies, one from 2018 and the other from 2019. If current trends continue, as many as 1 million of Earth's 7 million to 10 million plant and animal species could face extinction in the near future, according to the new paper.
Such an enormous loss of biodiversity would also disrupt every major ecosystem on the planet, the team wrote, with fewer insects to pollinate plants, fewer plants to filter the air, water and soil, and fewer forests to protect human settlements from floods and other natural disasters, the team wrote.
Meanwhile, those same phenomena that cause natural disasters are all predicted to become stronger and more frequent due to global climate change. These disasters, coupled with climate-induced droughts and sea-level rise, could mean 1 billion people would become climate refugees by the year 2050, forcing mass migrations that further endanger human lives and disrupt society.
Overpopulation will not make anything easier.
"By 2050, the world population will likely grow to ~9.9 billion, with growth projected by many to continue until well into the next century," the study authors wrote.
This booming growth will exacerbate societal problems like food insecurity, housing insecurity, joblessness, overcrowding and inequality. Larger populations also increase the chances of pandemics, the team wrote; as humans encroach ever farther into wild spaces, the risk of uncovering deadly new zoonotic diseases — like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 — becomes ever greater, according to a study published in September 2020 in the journal World Development.
While we can see and feel the effects of global warming on a daily basis — like record-setting heat across the world and increasingly active hurricane seasons, for instance — the worst effects of these other crises could take decades to become apparent, the team wrote. That delay between cause and effect may be responsible for what the authors call an "utterly inadequate" effort to address these encroaching environmental threats.
"If most of the world's population truly understood and appreciated the magnitude of the crises we summarize here, and the inevitability of worsening conditions, one could logically expect positive changes in politics and policies to match the gravity of the existential threats," the team wrote. "But the opposite is unfolding."
Indeed, just last week a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change revealed that humans have already blown past the global warming targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, and we are currently on track to inhabit a world that is 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than average global temperatures in the pre-industrial era — slightly more than halfway to the United Nation's "worst-case scenario." Nations have similarly failed to meet basic biodiversity targets set by the U.N. in 2010, the authors note.
The dark future described in this paper is not guaranteed, the authors wrote, so long as world leaders and policymakers start immediately taking the problems before us seriously. Once leaders accept "the gravity of the situation," then the large-scale changes needed to conserve our planet can begin. Those changes must be sweeping, including "the abolition of perpetual economic growth … [and] a rapid exit from fossil-fuel use," the authors wrote.
But the first step is education.
"It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to … avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and 'tell it like it is,'" the team concluded. "Anything else is misleading at best … potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst."
Face In Clouds Watching! Texas, USA 1-26-2021, UFO Sighting News.
Face In Clouds Watching! Texas, USA 1-26-2021, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 26, 2021
Location of sighting: East Texas, USA
Here is a face caught by a young woman driving along East Texas last week. The face has an incredible detail to it and its facing downward toward the car on the road. As if it were deliberately looking at the eyewitness. The detail of the face really stands out...it has two eyes, a nose, a mustache, a beard. Strange one...It looks deliberate and meaningful, not a coincidence at all. It almost looks like the sacred Shroud of Turin with the Jesus face in it, but the hair on the face in the cloud is very different. I am left speechless.
Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Eyewitness states:
I took the video on Tuesday, January 26, 2021 around 6:15 P.M My fiance and I were driving to our friends house in East Texas, not far from our own home. I was of course doing something on my phone when my fiance said "Hey, look up".... & as soon as I did, I automatically seen it. There was a face clear as day in the clouds or cloud.... I was in total shock as to what I was seeing before me. It was shocking, creeping wow moment. It even seem to have eyes inside as if it was watching us. I seen videos of this anomaly but never experienced one. I've always been a believer of anything paranormal or unusual unexplained happenings but this set it in stone for me.
RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
Images, real or fake? Video with the possible solution?
Drawing With Drones Over the Salt Flats of Bolivia
Drawing With Drones Over the Salt Flats of Bolivia
Reuben Wu uses LED-equipped drones to illuminate mysterious shapes in one of the world’s strangest landscapes.
PHOTOGRAPH: REUBEN WU
In July, Reuben Wu and two companions took a week-long road trip through Bolivia, capturing some of the country's most stunning landscapes.
REUBEN WU HAS photographed some of the world’s most remote and extreme places: Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Bisti Badlands of New Mexico, the Arctic tundra of Norway, Peru’s Pastoruri glacier. But few locations compare to the site of his latest project, Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. Stretching across more than 4,000 square miles of South America’s Altiplano (high plain), Salar de Uyuni (literally, the salts of Uyuni, the nearest town) is the world’s largest salt flat, a nearly featureless white landscape left behind by the evaporation of prehistoric lakes.
Shooting the salt flats was the culmination of a week-long Bolivian road trip Wu and two companions took last July. Between the freezing nighttime temperatures, high altitudes (the Altiplano averages 12,000 feet above sea level), and long drives, the team got little sleep. “We were cold, we were light-headed, and doing anything physical was very hard,” Wu recalls. “There were times when I really struggled.”
But the hardships paid off when the crew finally reached the salt flats. Because it was the dry season, most of the Salar de Uyuni looked like a geometrically patterned moonscape. Still, Wu was lucky enough to find a standing puddle large enough to capture the rainy-season mirror effect, too. In addition to more traditional landscape photography, Wu created several of his signature aeroglyphs—glowing geometric shapes that float mysteriously in the sky. Wu draws the aeroglyphs by piloting LED-equipped drones in precise patterns while keeping his shutter open to create a long exposure.
Over the course of the road trip Wu documented a variety of Bolivian landscapes ranging from sandy deserts to rocky palisades, but the Salar de Uyuni emerged as the highlight. “If it were in the US, it would be swarming with tourists,” he says. “Instead, we had the whole thing to ourselves except for the occasional farmer and a cow.” The salt flats are rich in deposits of lithium, a key element in smartphone and electric car batteries, but lithium mining operations are still in their infancy thanks to the region’s inaccessibility and the reluctance of recently ousted president Evo Morales to greenlight foreign investment.
Throughout the trip, Wu used a Phase One XT, a compact medium-format digital camera that allowed him to take ultrahigh-resolution images on the go. Back in his studio, he used software to tinker with the images until arriving at the final product. Wu thinks of photography as “painting with light” and doesn’t fetishize authenticity. “For me, everything’s a tool,” he says. “The camera’s a tool, the computer’s a tool. Just so long as the technology and the tools don’t overwhelm the vision.”
Magnetic Pole Shift Update, Life, Nova, Quake Watch | S0 News Jan.30.2021
Magnetic Pole Shift Update, Life, Nova, Quake Watch | S0 News Jan.30.2021
Magnetic Pole Shift Update, Life, Nova, Quake Watch | S0 News Jan.30.2021
Pole Shift (magnetic): A shift in “magnetic” poles is one of the more common and accepted theories across the world, however, this is not to be confused with those that speak of a “geographic” pole shift. Even though these events can occur at the same time, they actually have quite different affects on Earth.
Alan Tudyk took clowning classes to prepare for the extraterrestrial role.
A new TV series follows the off-beat journey of a wayfaring alien (played by beloved "Firefly" actor Alan Tudyk) who's crash-landed on Earth and must complete an ominous mission before returning home.
"Resident Alien," a new comedic drama, premieres on Syfy Wednesday (Jan. 27) at 10 p.m. EST (Jan. 28 at 0300 GMT). The series, which is based on the popular Dark Horse Comics series by co-creators Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse. The show stars Tudyk ("Rogue One," "Doom Patrol") as an alien stranded in Colorado who takes on the identity of Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle. First, however, Vanderspeigle has to learn how to act like a human.
"Everything was from square one with him," Tudyk told Space.com in an exclusive interview. "Walking, sitting, dressing … he's a child in that way."
To prepare for the role of an alien masquerading as a human, Tudyk "took clowning class," he said, "which helped because clowns are supposed to be mainly like children that were never told no. They are very curious … but they're bumbling and they make mistakes."
Throughout the show, which falls somewhere between murder mystery, slapstick comedy and heartfelt drama, Vanderspeigle grapples with "the moral dilemma of his secret mission on Earth — ultimately asking the question, "Are human beings worth saving?'" a press release states.
The outrageous and sincere new series also features actors Sara Tomko ("Once Upon A Time") as nurse Asta Twelvetrees, Corey Reynolds ("The Closer") as the bold Sheriff Mike Thompson, Alice Wetterlund ("People of Earth") as local bartender D'arcy Bloom and Levi Fiehler ("Mars") as Mayor Ben Hawthorne.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
EXPERTS: WE SHOULD HIDE FROM THE APOCALYPSE IN UNDERGROUND CITIES
EXPERTS: WE SHOULD HIDE FROM THE APOCALYPSE IN UNDERGROUND CITIES
JULIAN HERZOG
DAN ROBITZSKI
Planning Ahead
Even if we band together as a planet and prevent some of the worst impacts of climate change, some parts of the world could gradually become so hot that people can no longer live there.
That means that millions could find themselves in search of a new home. But instead of migrating as climate refugees, a growing number of researchers and design experts suspect they could stay put, according to OneZero — by digging into the Earth and building subterranean cities beneath the ones we live in today.
Digging In
In some places, people are already doing this. OneZero lists places like Coober Pedy, Australia, where the entire town exists in 30-foot-deep trenches and caves so people can escape the unbearable desert heat.
There are underground regions of cities in Japan, Mexico, China, and Finland. More are being constructed in places like Singapore and the United States. But architect Esteban Suárez has a grander vision: massive, underground cities that resemble upside-down skyscrapers.
“We thought it would be very interesting,” Suárez told OneZero, “instead of going up with a skyscraper, what would happen if we dug down through these layers of cities?”
Not Ready
Suárez originally wanted to build his so-called Earthscraper in the heart of Mexico City to mitigate low-income workers’ unsustainably-long commutes. But the city blocked it because he would have had to dig through culturally and historically-important sites.
“We need to go vertical in this city because urban sprawl cannot continue growing,” Suárez told OneZero.
A record-breaking 28 trillion tonnes of ice — enough to cover the whole of the UK in a sheet over 300 feet thick — melted from the face of the Earth between 1994–2017.
Researchers from the University of Leeds carried out the first ever global survey of ice loss using data collected from satellites orbiting our planet.
The team found that the annual rate of ice loss increased by 65 per cent over the 23-year period — going from 0.8 trillion tons in the nineties up to 1.3 trillion tons.
The accelerating melt — which continues to get worse — has been driven largely by steep increases in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
Ice melt serves to raise sea levels across the globe, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities and endangers natural habitats that wildlife depend upon.
Scroll down for video
A record-breaking 28 trillion tonnes of ice — enough to cover the whole of the UK in a sheet over 300 feet thick — melted from the face of the Earth between 1994–2017. Pictured, a stream of meltwater cuts through the ice sheet in Greenland, one of the areas examined in the study
Researchers from the University of Leeds carried out the first ever global survey of ice loss using data collected from satellites orbiting our planet, the results of which are pictured
'Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most,' said paper author and earth scientist Thomas Slater, of the University of Leeds.
The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.'
'Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.'
'Over the past three decades there's been a huge international effort to understand what's happening to individual components in Earth's ice system,' he added.
This endeavour, he explained, has been 'revolutionised by satellites which allow us to routinely monitor the vast and inhospitable regions where ice can be found.'
'Our study is the first to combine these efforts and look at all the ice that is being lost from the entire planet.'
According to Dr Slater and colleagues, the rising ice loss is due to the warming of Earth's atmosphere and oceans — which have, respectively, seen temperature increases of 0.5°F (0.26°C) and 0.2°F (0.12°C) each decade since the 1980s.
The majority — 68 per cent — of global ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting, while the remaining 32 per cent of losses have been driven by oceanic melting.
The team's survey covered 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
'Sea ice loss doesn't contribute directly to sea level rise but it does have an indirect influence,' said paper author and earth scientist Isobel Lawrence, also of Leeds.
'One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool.'
'As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.
'Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it's also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise.'
The accelerating melt — which continues to get worse — has been driven largely by steep increases in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. Pictured: an artist's impression of a 1 trillion tonne cube of ice — each face 10 km wide — looming over New York City. The Earth's glaciers and ice sheets have lost 28 times this amount since the early nineties
Experts have estimated that for every centimetre of sea level rise, approximately a million people are placed at risk of being displaced from their low-lying homelands.
Despite storing only one per cent of the Earth's total ice volume, glaciers were found to have contributed to almost a quarter of the global ice losses over the study period — with all glacier regions around the world losing ice.
'As well as contributing to global mean sea level rise, mountain glaciers are also critical as a freshwater resource for local communities,' said paper author and climate scientist Inès Otosaka, also of the University of Leeds.
'The retreat of glaciers around the world is therefore of crucial importance at both local and global scales.'
The full findings of the study were published in the journal The Cryosphere.
WIND-BLOWN MINERAL DUST FUELS MICROBES ACCELERATING MELT OF GREENLAND ICE SHEET
Pictured: algal blooms on Greenland's ice
Phosphorus dust blowing across the Greenland ice sheet may be fuelling ever-larger blooms of microscopic algae that lower the reflectiveness — or 'albedo' — of the ice, resulting in faster melting, a study has found.
Researchers led from the University of Leeds took samples from the southwestern margin of the Greenland ice sheet over a two-year period.
The team found that phosphorus in surface dust — contained within a mineral known as 'hydroxylapatite' is a vital nutrient for the algal growth and is responsible for a low-albedo band of ice dubbed 'the Dark Zone'.
The melt season in the Dark Zone, the team explained, has been occurring earlier and lasting longer each year since the turn of the millennium.
The hydroxylapatite is being blown out onto the ice from local rock outcrops, the researchers explained — a trend which will increase with climate change as dryland areas in the northern latitudes become drier still.
'The photosynthesis rate of the ice algae improved significantly when we provided them with a source of phosphorus,' said paper author and geomicrobiologist Jenine McCutcheon.
'Our mineralogy results revealed that the phosphorus used by ice algae may be coming from the hydroxylapatite we identified in the mineral dust.'
'It's important to understand the controls on algal growth because of their role in ice sheet darkening.'
'Although algal blooms can cover up to 78 per cent of the bare ice surfaces in the Dark Zone, their abundance and size can vary greatly over time.'
'From one season to the next, algal blooms may change and vary in intensity, making them difficult to model year-to-year.'
'The findings of this study will improve how we predict where algal blooms will happen in the future, and help us gain a better understanding of their role in ice sheet albedo reduction and enhanced melting.'
Ice Is Disappearing Across the Planet at Record Rate
Ice Is Disappearing Across the Planet at Record Rate
ByUNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Meltstream cuts through Greenland ice sheet.
Credit: Ian Joughin
The rate of global ice loss is speeding up, according to new research.
And the findings also reveal that the Earth lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017 – equivalent to a sheet of ice 100 meters thick covering the whole of the UK.
The figures have been published today (Monday, January 25, 2021) by a research team which is the first to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite data.
The team, led by the University of Leeds, found that the rate of ice loss from the Earth has increased markedly within the past three decades, from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year by 2017.
Ice melt across the globe raises sea levels, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities, and threatens to wipe out natural habitats which wildlife depend on.
The findings of the research team, which includes the University of Edinburgh, University College London and data science specialists Earthwave, are published in European Geosciences Union’s journal The Cryosphere.
The research, funded by UK Natural Environment Research Council, shows that overall, there has been a 65 % increase in the rate of ice loss over the 23-year survey. This has been mainly driven by steep rises in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
Lead author Dr. Thomas Slater, a Research Fellow at Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling , said: “Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.
“The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.”
Dr. Slater said the study was the first of its kind to examine all the ice that is disappearing on Earth, using satellite observations .
He added: “Over the past three decades there’s been a huge international effort to understand what’s happening to individual components in Earth’s ice system, revolutionized by satellites which allow us to routinely monitor the vast and inhospitable regions where ice can be found.
“Our study is the first to combine these efforts and look at all the ice that is being lost from the entire planet.”
The increase in ice loss has been triggered by warming of the atmosphere and oceans, which have warmed by 0.26°C and 0.12°C per decade since the 1980, respectively. The majority of all ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting (68 %), with the remaining losses (32%) being driven by oceanic melting.
The survey covers 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
Rising atmospheric temperatures have been the main driver of the decline in Arctic sea ice and mountain glaciers across the globe, while rising ocean temperatures have increased the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. For the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic ice shelves, ice losses have been triggered by a combination of rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures.
During the survey period, every category lost ice, but the biggest losses were from Arctic Sea ice (7.6 trillion tons) and Antarctic ice shelves (6.5 trillion tons), both of which float on the polar oceans.
Dr. Isobel Lawrence, a Research Fellow at Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said: “Sea ice loss doesn’t contribute directly to sea level rise but it does have an indirect influence. One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool.
“As the sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet.
“Not only is this speeding up sea ice melt, it’s also exacerbating the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea levels to rise.”
Half of all losses were from ice on land – including 6.1 trillion tons from mountain glaciers, 3.8 trillion tons from the Greenland ice sheet, and 2.5 trillion tons from the Antarctic ice sheet. These losses have raised global sea levels by 35 millimeters.
It is estimated that for every centimeter of sea level rise, approximately a million people are in danger of being displaced from low-lying homelands.
Despite storing only 1 % of the Earth’s total ice volume, glaciers have contributed to almost a quarter of the global ice losses over the study period, with all glacier regions around the world losing ice.
Report co-author and PhD researcher Inès Otosaka, also from Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said: “As well as contributing to global mean sea level rise, mountain glaciers are also critical as a freshwater resource for local communities.
“The retreat of glaciers around the world is therefore of crucial importance at both local and global scales.”
Just over half (58 %) of the ice loss was from the northern hemisphere, and the remainder (42 %) was from the southern hemisphere.
Reference: “Earth’s ice imbalance” by Thomas Slater, Isobel R. Lawrence, Inès N. Otosaka, Andrew Shepherd, Noel Gourmelen, Livia Jakob, Paul Tepes, Lin Gilbert and Peter Nienow, 25 January 2021, The Cryosphere. DOI: 10.5194/tc-15-233-2021
VIDEO: ONE OF NATURE'S MOST DECEPTIVE INSECTS IS HELPING BUILD A BETTER ROBOT
VIDEO: ONE OF NATURE'S MOST DECEPTIVE INSECTS IS HELPING BUILD A BETTER ROBOT
A CLICK BEETLEROLLING AROUND on its back may look pitiful — but do not be deceived. Beyond the hard exterior of their bodies lies a jack-in-the-box-like mechanism that, once snapped, springs them high into the air with a signature click!
Scientists have known of this click-trick, but what they've struggled to understand is precisely how and whythese beetles spring into the air. However, using high-speed x-ray technology and fundamental equations of motion, a team of mechanical engineers recently examined how this action takes place and what its limits are.
A better understanding of this elegant, biological mechanism not only reveals insight into a natural phenomenon — it may help roboticists super-charge the strength of future machines without increasing their "muscular" strength.
The findings were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
They might look helpless, but these beetles are poised to pop at any moment.
HERE'S THE BACKGROUND
We typically imagine springs and latches are something human-designed — doodads used to close doors or accelerate pinballs into obstacle courses. But in fact, click beetles are far from outliers when it comes to natural examples of these mechanisms.
Venus flytraps, for example, use a similar biological spring to close their leafy lips around their prey. Meanwhile, mantis shrimp can snap their claws so quickly they create tiny sonic booms in the ocean.
When it comes to click beetles (which encompass a family of beetle called Elateridae discovered by an English zoologist in 1815), scientists have studied its kinematics (the beetles' resultant acceleration) as well as the geometry of the beetles' biological latch. However, the researchers behind this new study argue the question of how this motion arises from the beetles' biology is still largely unexplored.
"Previous studies have focused on the [click beetle] jump, in this paper, we are focused on the bending maneuver referred to as the click because of the audible click it produces," Aimy Wissa, assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, tells Inverse.
"The bending movement happens in a hinge in the thorax and only takes a few milliseconds. In the paper, we identify and characterize the different phases of the click and we identify the forces governing the energy release phase of the click."
With four beetles on loan for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's permanent research sites, the team began the process of learning exactly what makes these beetles tick (or click).
The beetles' strong elastic energy through the latch mechanism as they twist their body and then release it all at once to spring upward.Wissa et al. / PNAS
WHAT THEY DID
Because only a number of milliseconds separate a still click beetle from a click beetle pirouetting through the air, the researchers used a high-speed x-ray imager to slow down the process for analysis.
The team zeroed in on a small cavity in the beetle's thorax that transforms into a latch when they begin to twist back and forth.
With this visual data, the team had three big questions they wanted to answer:
1) What are the phases of the clicking motion?
2) What are the elastic energy storage and release mechanisms in click beetles?
3) Can the energy release mechanism be inferred from the latch dynamics during the energy release phase?
WHAT THEY DISCOVERED
Examining the motion of these four beetles, the researchers identified three distinct phases of behavior that predicate the clicking spring: latching, loading, and energy release.
Based on this behavior, the researchers were able to classify this mechanical movement as "elastic recoil," which is a fast release of stored elastic energy. Essentially, as the beetle twists its body, its latch creates more and more elastic energy. This energy is eventually released when the latch breaks free, creating the springing movement.
Studying this motion, the researchers observed that the loading phase (where a peg tip was wedged into the cavity) took up to 235 milliseconds while the energy release took only 17.4 milliseconds at most.
This means that after a relatively slow build-up of elastic energy, the beetle expells it all at once for maximum recoil.
Because the beetle's writhing dance appears to be the main determinant of when how and this movement takes place, the researchers were able to closely model the oscillatory movement of the beetle post-jump as a one-degree-of-freedom system.
Being able to match the biological motion to an existing model will make it easier to replicate this motion in non-living systems as well.
"Learning about how small organisms can generate extreme acceleration will lead to breakthroughs in the field of insect-scale robotics and other small devices," Wissa tells Inverse. "Microrobots currently suffer from severe actuation limitations and cannot move nearly as fast as even the slowest [spring-equipped] biological organism"
Using a mechanism similar to that of the click beetles could enable robotics to have more "strength" without requiring stronger biological muscles.Shutterstock
WHAT'S NEXT
While the researchers were able to answer a number of important questions about this mechanism, there are still outstanding questions yet to be explored.
For example, the external latch that they identified is likely only part of an interior spring mechanism. What exactly that mechanism is and how it works is something they hope to explore in future studies.
In the future, the researchers write that they hope this understanding can help build a symbiotic relationship between advancing robotics and advancing the study of biological life as well. Eventually, this understanding could "enable the creation of a new generation of insect-inspired robots capable of generating and sustaining high-acceleration movements," the study team writes.
"Such robots will also serve as research platforms to answer critical questions about their biological counterparts."
Abstract:
Many small animals use springs and latches to overcome the mechanical power output limitations of their muscles. Click beetles use springs and latches to bend their bodies at the thoracic hinge and then unbend extremely quickly, resulting in a clicking motion. When unconstrained, this quick clicking motion results in a jump. While the jumping motion has been studied in depth, the physical mechanisms enabling fast unbending have not. Here, we first identify and quantify the phases of the clicking motion: latching, loading, and energy release. We detail the motion kinematics and investigate the governing dynamics (forces) of the energy release. We use high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging to observe and analyze the motion of the hinge’s internal structures of four Elater abruptus specimens. We show evidence that soft cuticle in the hinge contributes to the spring mechanism through rapid recoil. Using spectral analysis and nonlinear system identification, we determine the equation of motion and model the beetle as a nonlinear single-degree-of-freedom oscillator. Quadratic damping and snap-through buckling are identified to be the dominant damping and elastic forces, respectively, driving the angular position during the energy release phase. The methods used in this study provide experimental and analytical guidelines for the analysis of extreme motion, starting from motion observation to identifying the forces causing the movement. The tools demonstrated here can be applied to other organisms to enhance our understanding of the energy storage and release strategies small animals use to achieve extreme accelerations repeatedly.
High above the North Pole, the polar vortex, a fast-spinning whirl of frigid air, is doing a weird shimmy that may soon bring cold and snowy weather to the Eastern U.S., Northern Europe and East Asia for weeks on end, meteorologists say.
While it's not unusual for the polar vortex to act up, this particular reconfiguration — wandering around and possibly splitting in two — may be tied to climate change in the rapidly warming Arctic, said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Massachusetts, part of Verisk Analytics, a risk-assessment company.
"Expect a more wintery back-half of winter here in the Eastern U.S. than what we had in the first half," Cohen told Live Science.
The warmer-than-usual temperatures in the Arctic are likely throwing the polar vortex out of whack, Cohen said. The polar vortex is a vast area of low pressure that sits high above the Arctic in the stratosphere — the layer above the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere where most weather conditions happen. This low-pressure system is usually filled with cold, swirling air. During the winter, a jet stream of air that keeps the polar vortex in place sometimes weakens, allowing the vortex's chilly air to extend southward.
Here's an animated video Cohen made illustrating the process.
Cohen and colleagues have suggested that less Arctic sea-ice cover means there's more moisture from the sea migrating inland over normally dry Siberia. This moisture then turns into snow, which reflects heat back into space and is making Siberia colder than normal; that in turn disrupts a thermal band in the troposphere extending over Eurasia. This discombobulated band can then destabilize the polar vortex, causing colder winters east of the Rockies in the U.S. and in Northern Europe and East Asia, Cohen and his colleagues wrote in a 2019 review in the journal Nature Climate Change.
"Think of the polar vortex like a quiet, fast spinning top that spins in place," Cohen said. "Then, you have this energy [from the troposphere] that starts banging" on the spinning polar vortex, making it wobble and wander.
He added that this season, "snowfall across Siberia has been above normal so far. Therefore, I do believe it has contributed to the weak polar vortex."
(Image credit: NOAA)
Not everyone agrees with this increased-Siberian-snow-and-wobbly-polar-vortex connection, but it is clear that a weakened polar vortex leads to colder winters in certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It's also accepted that so-called sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events can weaken the polar vortex and make it teeter around. SSWs happen when large-scale atmospheric waves associated with weather systems reach into the stratosphere and disrupt the polar vortex, causing it to slow down and heat up as much as 90 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) within a few days.
Cohen noted that SSWs can be triggered by weather conditions associated with the Arctic's disappearing sea ice. SSWs happen an average of six times every 10 years, and right now we're experiencing a big SSW, The Washington Post reported.
It's possible the SSW was caused by a high-pressure, low-pressure system, said Amy Butler, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.
"Over the last few weeks, there was a persistent high-pressure system over much of the North Atlantic and northern Europe/Asia, and a low-pressure system over the North Pacific," Butler told Live Science in an email. This high-pressure, low-pressure duo is known to disrupt the stratosphere, where the polar vortex lives.
It's also possible that the extreme bomb cyclone (a rapidly-forming winter storm with hurricane-strength winds) in the North Pacific a few days ago, contributed to the SSW, "but that will have to be investigated further," she said.
On Jan. 5, the polar vortex's counter-clockwise winds reversed direction (a clue that a sudden atmospheric warming event had happened) and the vortex wandered from its usual location centered over the North Pole, toward Europe and the North Atlantic, Butler said. During that time, it began to (but didn't completely) split, Cohen said.
The polar vortex might split further in about 10 days, "but it's unclear if this will happen," Butler said. "Forecast models struggle with predicting a splitting of the vortex more than a week in advance."
Disruptions to the polar vortex are key for forecasts, as about two weeks after they happen, the troposphere gets a wallop of weird weather, which can last for weeks. Because of this week's polar vortex disruption, "there's indications we'll see some colder weather within two weeks … in the Eastern U.S., Northern Europe and East Asia," Cohen said.
For now, it's up in the air whether that means snowstorms or a rash of cold air, he said.
Meanwhile, "warmer-than-normal conditions can also occur over the Canadian Arctic and subtropical Asia and Africa," Butler said. "These effects could potentially persist for 4-6 weeks after the sudden stratospheric warming."
Megalodons – the extinct giant sharks that lived in most of Earth’s oceans about 3 million years ago – gave birth to babies that were larger than adult humans, scientists say.
Megalodons are the biggest predatory sharks ever discovered.
Made famous by the 2018 blockbuster “The Meg,” the largest predatory shark ever discovered, the megalodon, is a bit of a mystery. We know it lived between 15 and 3.6 million years ago and it reached at least 45 feet (14 meters) in length, more than double the size of an adult great white. But learning any more about the giant shark requires a bit of detective work.
Because of its soft cartilaginous skeleton, only a few parts of the shark’s body are mineralized and preserved, including its teeth, skull and spine. This means the fossil record is very poor for this animal. Unsurprisingly, the predator’s 7-inch (17-cm) teeth have received a lot of attention from researchers. But in a newly published study, Professor Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University and colleagues sought clues elsewhere.
By examining the spine of the now extinct megalodon, the team found it gave live birth to babies 6.5 feet (2 meters) long, larger than an average adult human. Exactly how the babies got so big was likely due to cannibalism, eating their unhatched siblings in the womb.
Secrets in the spine
Like humans, sharks have a spine made up of lots components called vertebrae, which grow as the animal gets older. The researchers measured the vertebra of a megalodon from the Miocene epoch, which lasted from 5 to 23 million years ago.
By comparing it to modern great white sharks, the team estimated that the megalodon it came from was around 30 feet (9 meters) long when it was alive, but they didn’t stop there. Sharks deposit rings of hard tissue on their vertebra each year, and like the trunk of a tree these can be used to estimate age.
To count these rings inside the scientists would have had to cut through the fossil, damaging it forever. The solution was to use detailed X-ray scanning to study the internal structures, without causing any harm to the priceless specimen, revealing this shark died when it was 46 years old.
Megalodon babies grew bigger than adult humans by eating their siblings in the womb.
Looking down through the layers, the team could see how large this vertebra was when the shark was born. Astonishingly, the size estimate at the first growth ring imply the shark was two meters (over 6 feet) when born, meaning it was larger than an average adult human at birth.
Some sharks lay eggs, while others give birth to live young. In most sharks, however, the eggs hatch inside the mother, where the young feed on the egg yolk and fluids that she secretes until they are born fully formed.
The enormous birth size estimate for this particular megalodon provides strong evidence that this species had the same reproductive mode, with a great deal of investment in a smaller number of huge offspring. The dark secret of the megalodon is that to achieve this size in the uterus, the developing young must have been eating a lot.
Eating their siblings
It is very likely, this new study argues, that the babies’ growth was fueled by cannibalism of their unhatched siblings, a sinister conveyor belt of high protein snacks for hungry pups.
It is unknown exactly how many megalodon embryos were produced. In basking sharks today, millions of eggs are created and sent to be fertilized. The hatched embryos begin to eat the surrounding eggs and in some cases, like the sand tiger shark, they eat other embryos too. Sharks can hold one or more pups in each of their two uteri, so it is likely at least two megalodons were born at a time.
This grim survival mechanism is not unique. All living sharks of the lamniform order, a group which includes great white, mako, and thresher sharks, use this strategy, which has existed for at least 70 million years.
This study also conservatively estimates the life expectancy of the species at 88-100 years old, using their spine data and well-established growth patterns of the teeth. This is in line with estimated ages for great white and whale sharks, only falling short of the record breaking 500-year-old Greenland sharks, known to live life in the slow lane of cold northern seas.
It seems the start of a megalodon’s life was a tale of two halves. They were protected by a wonderful mother sacrificing time and energy to her pups, while they wrought havoc in the womb.
The idea of artificial intelligence overthrowing humankind has been talked about for many decades, and scientists have just delivered their verdict on whether we'd be able to control a high-level computer super-intelligence. The answer? Almost definitely not.
The catch is that controlling a super-intelligence far beyond human comprehension would require a simulation of that super-intelligence which we can analyse. But if we're unable to comprehend it, it's impossible to create such a simulation.
Rules such as 'cause no harm to humans' can't be set if we don't understand the kind of scenarios that an AI is going to come up with, suggest the authors of the new paper. Once a computer system is working on a level above the scope of our programmers, we can no longer set limits.
"A super-intelligence poses a fundamentally different problem than those typically studied under the banner of 'robot ethics'," write the researchers.
"This is because a superintelligence is multi-faceted, and therefore potentially capable of mobilising a diversity of resources in order to achieve objectives that are potentially incomprehensible to humans, let alone controllable."
Part of the team's reasoning comes from the halting problem put forward by Alan Turing in 1936. The problem centres on knowing whether or not a computer program will reach a conclusion and answer (so it halts), or simply loop forever trying to find one.
As Turing proved through some smart math, while we can know that for some specific programs, it's logically impossible to find a way that will allow us to know that for every potential program that could ever be written. That brings us back to AI, which in a super-intelligent state could feasibly hold every possible computer program in its memory at once.
Any program written to stop AI harming humans and destroying the world, for example, may reach a conclusion (and halt) or not – it's mathematically impossible for us to be absolutely sure either way, which means it's not containable.
"In effect, this makes the containment algorithm unusable," says computer scientist Iyad Rahwan, from the Max-Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany.
The alternative to teaching AI some ethics and telling it not to destroy the world – something which no algorithm can be absolutely certain of doing, the researchers say – is to limit the capabilities of the super-intelligence. It could be cut off from parts of the internet or from certain networks, for example.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES
image captionElon Musk, chief executive of rocket-maker Space X, also fears artificial intelligence
The new study rejects this idea too, suggesting that it would limit the reach of the artificial intelligence – the argument goes that if we're not going to use it to solve problems beyond the scope of humans, then why create it at all?
If we are going to push ahead with artificial intelligence, we might not even know when a super-intelligence beyond our control arrives, such is its incomprehensibility. That means we need to start asking some serious questions about the directions we're going in.
"A super-intelligent machine that controls the world sounds like science fiction," says computer scientist Manuel Cebrian, from the Max-Planck Institute for Human Development. "But there are already machines that perform certain important tasks independently without programmers fully understanding how they learned it."
"The question therefore arises whether this could at some point become uncontrollable and dangerous for humanity."
I was looking at Helioviewer for the most recent sun photos and found something that really intrigued me. A glitch of two suns uniting to become one. Sure this is a glitch, but the real question is...a glitch from the satellite, or a glitch from a simulated universe? Yes, I do believe it has a high chance of being evidence that we live in a simulated universe. Even Scientific American states, "Do we live in a simulation? Chances are about 50–50." And then Scientific America makes one final statement deciding on a conclusion about us living in a simulation, "Maybe we are living in base reality after all—The Matrix, Musk and weird quantum physics notwithstanding."
All I am saying here is please consider the possibilities that what we see and what we are told exist might be something totally different. If 50% of the worlds scientists are on the edge about this...then there is defiantly something to the theory.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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