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
Zoeken in blog
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.
22-11-2020
The Supervolcano That Can Wipe Out the U.S. and Kill Billions May be Overdue For an Eruption (video)
The Supervolcano That Can Wipe Out the U.S. and Kill Billions May be Overdue For an Eruption (video)
Yellowstone National Park is home to one of the biggest super volcanoes and it is going to erupt at any given moment! In today’s video, we are looking at Yellowstone and why it has scientists so panicked about it erupting.
Fermi’s New Paradox: If AI Analysts Are So Obvious, Where is Everybody?
Fermi’s New Paradox: If AI Analysts Are So Obvious, Where is Everybody?
UBS AM’s Bryan Cross says the goal of embedding AI in the investment process has failed because the aim has been misguided.
Bryan Cross
Over the lunch-hour din of the cafeteria, there was a shimmer in the air—a sense that something great was being discovered. This was different than a normal lunchtime in 1950 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the Cold War had mobilized the West’s brightest minds. Normally, one could expect breakthroughs in particle physics or in fusion power, but there was a buzz on this day that could not be attributed to the Chicken Kiev.
Four great minds were at work solving one of life’s great existential questions: Are we alone in the universe? This question led to more questions, as the Manhattan Project alums scribbled calculations on napkins: How many stars are in the universe? How many are like the Earth’s sun? How many have planets? How many have planets that are old enough to transmit information as far as the Earth?
It was a frenzy. A crowd began to gather, as many were aware of the recent reports of UFO sightings nearby. Finally, as the calculations poured forth and the empty Coca-Cola bottles piled up, the math became obvious: There must be intelligent extraterrestrial life somewhere in outer space; the vastness of the universe assured the outcome to be true.
The hand of Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist from the University of Chicago, slammed the table—BAM! The “architect of the nuclear age” was troubled, though, because the conclusion did not make sense. “But where is everybody?” he pondered.
The contradiction between the math and the lack of evidence—if the conclusion that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists is so obvious, then where is it?—has become known as the Fermi Paradox.
A Computerized Buffett on Every Team—An Investor’s
Dream Just as those scientists looked to the stars for signs of intelligent life, investing has for decades looked to computers and quantitative methods for signs of artificial intelligence that can help make smarter decisions. But after decades of experimentation and development, finance is now confronted with a similar paradox.
There is a persistent dream of putting an AI-driven version of Warren Buffet on every investment team—one with all the positive qualities but none of the negative biases and behavioral errors that come pre-installed in humans. The excitement of building such a revolutionary computer-based system to pick investments has driven billions of dollars of investment into developing systems and hiring big-brained PhDs. The share of job openings in finance that are computer or math driven has nearly quadrupled since the Great Financial Crisis.
But despite all the investments made, decades of academic papers produced, computer systems developed, and fortunes made in quant investing, the vast majority of actively managed assets are still non-quantitative in nature.
Traditional active managers will tell you that quantitative techniques are not long-term enough and they will question whether a diverse portfolio can really know anything about the “risk” of a company. Quantitative practitioners will fire back with a long-dated backtest or logic derived from (perhaps flawed) statistical techniques, and say, “Isn’t it obvious that quantitative techniques are superior to anecdotal and heuristic-driven investment?”
The two schools of thought are seemingly opposed and have spent the better part of decades without reconciliation. Sure, some quantitative techniques have permeated into risk management or screening for stocks, but there is no AI analyst working side by side with humans to make investment decisions better. Why not?
Combining human-driven investment research with assistance from a junior AI researcher would leverage the best of both worlds. A team like that would combine the long-term, complex thinking of a human with the unbiased, quantitative, evidence-based decision-making of AI.
Combining humans with AI to perform investment research seems such an obvious goal, and the resources being thrown at the problem are vast. But that being so, where are the AI investment analysts? In order to resolve this version of the Fermi Paradox, we need to rethink how finance approaches the use of AI.
The Goal of Embedding AI Has Failed Because the Aim is Misguided
In a classic scene from the movie Jurassic Park, the mathematician Ian Malcolm muses that scientists “were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.”
This is emblematic of the state of AI research, particularly in its application to quantitative finance. Everyone is so eager to demonstrate they are “state of the art” that there is no thinking aimed at applying AI in the right way.
The search trends in the graph below demonstrate the fashion for doing something “fancy”, rather than building something transformative in the right manner.
In quantitative finance, this trend has manifested itself in the overuse (and potentially misuse) of alternative data combined with machine learning. Rather than thinking about the longer-term solutions to the problem, participants in the field are rushing to outperform each other using niche data to perform task-specific solutions.
As a result, the alpha itself is fleeting and the applications don’t generalize across a broad spectrum of investment problems. Additionally, the industry is laden with tales of good intentions that fail to get adopted into the traditional investment workflow.
Aligning AI with How Investors Think is the Key to Progress
If one stops to think about what makes a great investor, it’s not typically a niche, task-specific process that differentiates the legends from the temporarily lucky.
Because markets are complex systems whose dancing landscapes are constantly changing, the best investors are generalists by nature; they take mental models and are able to apply them over and over again. They don’t merely learn facts; rather, they learn models and systems so as to build a toolkit in order to pick the best tool for the job at hand.
The computational complexity is low and the objective is to handicap all possible outcomes—to discount the implied market, not to forecast. They think about what investments present asymmetric payouts from a probabilistic perspective in a folksy back-of-the-envelope manner.
To build AI that can successfully be implemented in the investment process, we must align the design of the machine with the cognitive tasks of great investors.
Our team at UBS Asset Management, called Quantitative Evidence & Data Science, or QED, has taken the approach of focusing on investor workflows as a guiding principle. Essentially, we want to understand what are the things that investors do, so we can better help them make better decisions.
In the next several years, QED will be spending more and more time focusing on how to generalize these workflows and to combine them with heuristics to form investment conclusions. Our goal is to create a form of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that can apply reasoning to identify and apply mental models hidden in novel problems and then, ultimately, make an investment recommendation. In the next year, we will focus on aligning our machines with real investment workflows so that the AGI can make real investment recommendations.
This may seem an audacious goal. But the process of getting there is the best way for us to help drive the application of science to the fundamental investment process. As we solve problems in the path towards AGI, we can directly apply the solutions to investment workflows.
Finding AI: The Human Plus AGI Analyst Team of the Future
Does this mean that QED is trying to disintermediate human financial analysts? Not at all. In Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—which is the basis for the classic film Bladerunner—humans apply the Voigt-Kampff test to potential replicants (AIs) to determine whether they are human or AI.
The test presents disturbing images to the subject: If the subject shows empathy, he/she is human; if no empathy is witnessed, the test proves the subject is AI. Empathy is the secret weapon of human analysts, and because human goals—like saving for retirement, or investing in a climate-aware manner—are the raison d’etre for investing, we will always need real people in the loop.
While QED’s goal is to develop an AGI, it is doing so in the context of having an empathic human working alongside a machine agent to produce better client outcomes.
The benefits of an AI/human partnership to client outcomes are clear and should motivate us to pursue this opportunity. The effort to build a successful integration of AI into the investment process doesn’t need to yield inconclusive results like the Fermi Paradox. Finance must align the design of AI with how investors think, and as part of an empathic human partnership. Otherwise, the efforts are in danger of becoming just a fancy tool that operates at the periphery, and we’ll all be left to ponder that, if it was so obvious, then where are all the AI analysts?
Bryan Cross is the head of UBS Asset Management’s Quantitative Evidence and Data Science team (QED). To read more on how QED functions inside of UBS AM, click here. Bryan also joined the Waters Wavelength Podcast to talk about a range of topics in the field of quantitative finance.
This month, mysterious lights startled some people looking to the skies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Readers of this website will already know there is no mystery; the UFO lights at Maier Festival Park were just drones practicing for aChristmas Pageant light show.
But there’s a long history of alarming lights in the sky and earthlings assuming it just can’t be good.
Actor/ Director Orson Welles frightened many listeners in 1938 with his Halloween prank radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. It’s controversial just how many people actually feared Martian invasion. But a lot of listeners felt silly once the hoax was revealed, and CBS fought at least one lawsuit. For years after that, the skies remained more or less clear of extraterrestrial menace.
Orson Welles: Fake news before the term was coined
Until 1947. That’s when pilot Kenneth Arnold says he spotted flying objects skipping like saucers over the Cascade Range near Seattle. This time there was no Orson Welles to ‘fess up. UFOs were with us and became part of the cultural landscape.
Kenneth Arnold: 9,000 hours of flying time and never seen anything like this.
Most turn out to be sightings of the planet Venus, aircraft, oddball reflections or swamp gas. (Really? Who’s fooled by swamp gas?)
Still, there was always a tiny minority of reports that defied easy explanation.
UFO? It’s just a drone, dude
But now the skeptic has a likely and dismissive UFO explanation at hand: It’s just a drone ma’am.
“A significant amount of UFOs that we investigate are hobby drones,” Ken Jordan told the Victoria Advocate. He served as the Texas chief of investigations for Mutual UFO Network, an organization that investigates UFO sightings internationally. And this was last year. Since then, the factories of Shenzhen and Hong Kong have filled the skies with hundreds of thousands more identifiable flying objects. We reported on people reporting UFOs to New Jersey police — only to learn it was a police drone.
Drone Light Show : Perfectly terrestrial explanation
A high-flying aircraft moving at impossible speeds can be mistaken for a low-flying drone puttering along at 20 k/h. Acrobatics that seem to defy the laws of physics are now on routine display at drone airshows, no extraterrestrial technology needed.
“Keep watching the skies”
When the New York Times published U.S. navy videos of strange objects flying off the east coast of the U.S., even the pilots had a familiar explanation.
Us Navy vdeo of something….something.. that defies easy explanation
“That’s an [expletive] drone, bro,” says one.
They don’t especially look like drones, but really what else could they be?
Perhaps the mothership is parked ominously just behind the Moon and is sending its vile horde of drone-shaped legions toward our unsuspecting planet. Perhaps we should be vigilant like the character Ned Scott in The Thing from Another World: “Keep watching the skies”
End-Triassic Mass Extinction Occurred Slightly Later Than Previously Thought
End-Triassic Mass Extinction Occurred Slightly Later Than Previously Thought
An analysis of biomarkers and their stable isotopic compositions from the Bristol Channel Basin at St. Audrie’s Bay and Lilstock, United Kingdom, has shed new light on when one of the largest mass extinction events on Earth occurred.
Schematic diagram showing the factors driving global ecological change in the modern day and at the end of the Triassic period.
Image credit: Victor Lesh.
Most of the major mass extinctions of the last 300 million years, as well as some of the lesser biotic turnover events, are associated with reorganizations or perturbations of the Earth’s natural carbon cycle.
The end-Triassic mass extinction began after a volcanic eruption spewed carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, disrupting the carbon cycle and sparking a chain reaction of environmental events.
That carbon disruption led to acidic ocean waters which then affected delicate marine ecosystems, and led to other unfavorable planetary changes.
The extinction event resulted in the demise of some 76% of all marine and land species.
In a new study, a research team led by Curtin University scientists analyzed biomarkers (molecular fossils) extracted from rocks collected in the United Kingdom’s Bristol Channel and found evidence of ancient microbial mats, which are complex communities of microorganisms.
“Through our analysis of the chemical signature of these microbial mats, in addition to seeing sea-level change and water column freshening, we discovered the end-Triassic mass extinction occurred later than previously thought,” said first author Calum Peter Fox, a Ph.D. student in the Western Australia Organic & Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin University and the Department of Earth Sciences at Khalifa University of Science and Technology.
“Previous research suggests the extinction took place where we now know microbial mats flourished and the chemical signatures left by these ancient microbes complicated the rock record, leading others to believe this is where the extinction took place.”
“The microbial mats recorded in UK samples are comparable to extant microbial mats such as in Shark Bay of Western Australia,” he said.
“It’s amazing to consider that similar microbial communities that confounded the timing of one of Earth’s largest extinctions millions of years ago are on our shorelines and so easy to observe for ourselves.”
“The findings not only presented a new theory of what started the end-Triassic extinction, but also provided a type of warning for future potential mass extinction events on Earth,” said senior author Professor Kliti Grice, also from the Western Australia Organic & Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin University.
“Our recent research shows that microbial mats played important functions in several mass extinction events as well as a role in preserving remains of life including soft tissue of dead organisms under exceptional circumstances.”
“Knowing more about the carbon dioxide levels present during the end-Triassic mass extinction event provides us with important details that could help protect our environment and health of our ecosystems for future generations.”
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Calum P. Fox et al. Molecular and isotopic evidence reveals the end-Triassic carbon isotope excursion is not from massive exogenous light carbon. PNAS, published online November 16, 2020; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1917661117
Greenland’s relief is every bit as varied and spectacular as any place on Earth, but we can’t really see it because of all the ice. But if you could peer beneath this ice (say, with satellite radar data), you could see some of this ice-hidden relief. This is exactly how researchers discovered what they believe to be an ancient, ‘fossil’ lake. They think it’s as big as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, or about a third of Wales.
Depiction of the ancient lake bed (surrounded by a red line) and the river valleys (in yellow). Credits: Paxman et al.
Researchers routinely use satellite data to analyze Greenland. They’re not usually looking for submerged geography, but they’re looking to see how much the ice sheet is thinning. In order to do this, they use airborne geophysical instruments that send radar signals — signals which can penetrate ice but bounce off from the underlying solid surface.
So with this approach, they can catch a glimpse of the geological structure beneath the ice.
“This could be an important repository of information, in a landscape that right now is totally concealed and inaccessible,” said Guy Paxman, a postdocste at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the report. “We’re working to try and understand how the Greenland ice sheet has behaved in the past. It’s important if we want to understand how it will behave in future decades.”
A depiction of the ancient lake and its geologic surroundings.
Credits: Paxman et al.
The geomorphological mapping carried out by Paxman and his colleagues suggests more than just an isolated lake: they found evidence of a sprawling network of bedrock channels preserved in the subglacial landscape of northwest Greenland. The channels exhibit steep V-shaped valleys and a complex, branching pattern, all of which are diagnostic characteristics of fluvial valley networks. In other words, what is now covered under a layer of ice was once a thriving river-lake network which may harbor fossils from hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago, researchers believe.
The lake sediments could also hold another piece of valuable evidence: they could show us how and when Greenland became covered in ice. This could help us make better sense of the climate change we’re seeing now and develop better models of how Greenland ice is melting. It’s doable. With the top of the sediments 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) below the current ice surface, drilling to them would be a challenging task, but not an impossible one.
Meanwhile, Greenland’s ice sheet continues to melt at an accelerated pace due to rising temperatures. If it were to melt completely, the sheet has enough ice to raise global sea levels by 7 meters (24 feet). While this won’t happen anytime soon, even a fraction of that would be enough to cause catastrophic damage, displacing billions of people in the process.
The study was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Scientists have discovered a large ancient lake bed that’s situated over a mile underneath ice in the northwestern part of Greenland. This is a huge news as it is the first ever discovery of its kind. While liquid water underneath ice has been previously found in Greenland and Antarctica, this is the first time that a fossilized lake bed with no current liquid water has been found that was formed when there wasn’t any ice in the area.
While the exact date of the lake bed is uncertain, it could be hundreds of thousands or even millions of years old. Fossils and chemical traces that should still remain in the lake bed would be exceptionally important in understanding the climate from ancient times in addition to experts predicting what may happen to the ice in the future.
Iceberg in Greenland.
But without being able to study the lake bed, it’s hard to know those exact details. “If we could get at those sediments, they could tell us when the ice was present or absent,” said Guy Paxman who is a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the lead author of the study.
Researchers were able to find the lake bed by studying data collected from airborne geophysical equipment that was able to get images of what was underneath the thick ice. This mission was part of a project called NASA’s Operation IceBridge which is the biggest ever airborne survey of the polar ice regions. It is able to capture three-dimensional views of the Antarctic and Arctic ice sheets, sea ice, and ice shelves. The flight surveys of Antarctica normally occur in October and November, while Greenland is usually surveyed between March and May. (Pictures can be seen here.)
The largely featureless surface of the Greenland ice sheet, as seen from the window of a P3 aircraft carrying geophysical instruments aimed at detecting geologic features underneath.
(Kirsty Tinto/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)
Using geophysical instruments, scientists have mapped a huge ancient lake basin (outlined here in red) below the Greenland ice, covering about 2,700 square miles). Redder colors signify higher elevations, green ones lower. A stream system incised into the bedrock that once fed the lake is shown in blue.
(Adapted from Paxman et al., EPSL, 2020)
A newly forming lake at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, exposing sediments released by the ice. Such lake beds are becoming common as the ice recedes.
(Kevin Krajick/Earth Institute)
As for the ancient lake bed underneath Greenland’s ice, the lake would have been approximately 2,740 square miles with a depth of between 50 and 250 meters (164 to 820 feet). The basin’s sediments are about three quarters of a mile in thickness, while there are a minimum of 18 stream beds that were carved into an adjoining bedrock.
Greenland
The lake may have been formed along a dormant fault line or perhaps a glacier carved out the spot and water slowly filled in as it melted. As for what types of sediments may be in the lake bed, it is currently unknown although previous discoveries of pollen along the edge of the ice sheet does indicate that plants (or possibly even forests) were once in that area and remains of those could be found hidden in the sediments.
The researchers wrote in part that the basin “may therefore be an important site for future sub-ice drilling and the recovery of sediment records that may yield valuable insights into the glacial, climatological and environmental history” although they would have to drill over a mile deep.
October 30, 1938: Orson Wells and "The War of the worlds" radio show.
October 30, 1938: Orson Wells and "The War of the worlds" radio show.
Years ago, Sunday night was radio prime time. Enter Orson Wells. On Sunday, October 30, 1038 at 8 p.m, a voice announced:
“The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.”
The broadcast was so good that people were in panic from coast to coast. In other words, many really believed that we were being invaded by aliens.
Let me recommend that you check out the whole show. It is one of the finest audio programs ever made.
I can understand why so many people bought into the Martian attack. Fantastic!
Bats get blamed for a variety of human problems from rabies to viruses (including the coronavirus) to vampirism, even though most of the transmissions are caused by humans themselves – eating them, touching injured bats, disturbing their caves, etc. It’s long past time we humans show bats a little more respect and a new discovery gives an excellent reason why – it turns out vampire bats in the wild prevent the spread of illnesses within their colony by practicing social distancing. Feeling a little ashamed right now?
“We tracked this unintentional “social distancing” effect hour-by-hour in a wild colony of vampire bats. Using bat-borne proximity sensors, we compared changes in the social network connectedness of immune-challenged “sick” bats versus “control” bats over time.”
Vampire bat
In a study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, Simon P Ripperger of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University and study lead author describes how his team captured 31 adult female vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) from a roost in Belize, injected 16 with the immune-challenging substance lipopolysaccharide to make them “sick,” and injected the other left 15 with saline as a control group. Next, they attached proximity sensors and released them back into the wild. Then it was time to sit back and watch the monitors.
“Compared to the control group, “sick” (LPS-injected) bats associated with fewer groupmates (lower degree centrality), spent less time with others (lower strength centrality), and were less socially connected to more well-connected groupmates when considering both direct and indirect connections (lower eigenvector centrality), and these effects declined after the treatment period. During the 6 h of the treatment period, a “sick” bat associated on average with four fewer associates than a control bat.”
The “sick” vampire bats were observed spending less time interacting with the other bat in the colony, including participating in grooming their available partners, while the control bats continued normal associations. In other words, the sick bats self-isolated or practiced social distancing. This was more than just the normal behavior seen in most animals where the others in a group avoided the sick one – this was a conscious decision by the sick to stay away from the well until they felt better. While the lipopolysaccharide was not contagious, this data allowed the researchers to predict that this behavior would help reduce the spread of a contagious disease among the bats.
“The sensors gave us an amazing new window into how the social behavior of these bats changed from hour to hour and even minute to minute during the course of the day and night, even while they are hidden in the darkness of a hollow tree.”
As Ripperger indicates in the press release, frequent testing/monitoring of the vampire bats gave the surgeons an unprecedented way of tracking the “disease.” So, social distancing and testing helped keep the healthy bats safe while allowing the team to closely monitor their progress.
Leave it to vampire bats to show up humans. If those pointy little teeth didn’t tear them, they’d probably wear masks too.
The U.S. may be worried about the election, coronavirus and murder hornets, but Belgium is already beyond all of those and is now dealing with a new threat … female mutant self-cloning crayfish in a cemetery! Too long for a movie title but plenty scary for a Halloween headline across Belgium, with many media sources adding “American” to the description because that makes it scarier … and it’s true.
Marbled crayfish are banned by the EU
CREDIT: CTK / Alamy Stock Photo
“The crayfish is similar to the slough crayfish found in Florida in the US, with one important difference: it is parthenogenetic, which means it is able to reproduce without mating, and all offspring are female and genetically identical. That characteristic makes it easy for a large population to spring up quickly, which is what appears to have happened in Antwerp.”
The Brussels Times reports that marbled self-cloning crayfish (Procambarus virginalis) have taken over pools in the historic Schoonselhof cemetery in Antwerp where the bodies of 1577 British commonwealth soldiers killed in World War II are buried. They were investigated by Kevin Scheers from the Flemish Institute for Nature and Woodland Research, who immediately let everyone know he wasn’t there with a net and bucket to get rid of them.
Crayfish fishing
“It’s impossible to round up all of them. It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble.”
These freshwater mutants were discovered somewhere around 1995, possibly in the Everglades, when people who kept crayfish as pets (have they tasted etouffee?) noticed that some female slough crayfish (Procambarus fallax) were reproducing with no male in the aquarium. Researchers confirmed that these were indeed an unexplained mutation – crayfish are not known to be parthenogenetic (reproduce without a mate and all offspring are genetically identical females) – and dubbed them the marbled crayfish (Procambarus virginalis).
Unfortunately, unscrupulous pet vendors seized upon this and made them popular. That was inevitably followed by unscrupulous pet owners tired of an overflowing aquarium (and not fans of etouffee) dumping them into local ponds. Marbled crayfish can live outside of the water, so the 10 cm (4 inch) crawled and ate their way across Europe after being introduced there in 1995. In 2014, the European Union instituted “a total ban on the possession, trade, transport, production and release” of marbled crayfish, but it was too late for the continent. They’ve also taken over Madagascar, which noticed them in 2018. They’re also banned in Idaho, Missouri, Tennessee, Michigan and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
Marbled crayfish (Procambarus fallax)
“In Spain they tried some experiments with poison, but that is not permitted in Belgium.”
If poison isn’t an option and they’re reproducing too fast to capture, what can worried Belgium cemetery owners do? While all crayfish look alike, the Louisiana farmers who supply 95% of the crayfish consumed in the U.S. stick to Procambarus clarkii (red swamp crawfish – the most popular) and Procambarus zonangulus (white river crawfish). Could Belgian be persuaded to try marbled crawfish soups, bisques, boils and étouffées? They also are used for fishing bait (bass like them). It’s possible that nature could take care of them (with assistance from humans) with the deadly crayfish plague caused by the North American water mold Aphanomyces astaci. The plague doesn’t affect all species of crayfish, so it may have to be genetically modified for marbled crayfish – and that opens a whole new can of “What could possibly go wrong?” worms.
Can they learn to love the crawfish boil?
Should Belgians learn to live with the mutant self-cloning marble crayfish and hope they stay contentedly in cemetery ponds? Or should they be prepared for the scary movie “Cloning Crayfish Consume a Cemetery!” to go from fiction to documentary?
RH Negative Bombshell: The Boy of Extraterrestrial Origin... The Real Indigo Child Documentary
RH Negative Bombshell: The Boy of Extraterrestrial Origin... The Real Indigo Child Documentary
Ann Andrews is a mother living in England with a unique experience to share about her life and her son, Jason. What sets Jason apart from the many other young children who are now being born with exceptional multi-dimensional abilities, is that Jason is not only an abductee, but is himself of extraterrestrial origin.
After years of uncertainty, Jason progressed from an initial standpoint of fear and to a point in his teens when he began accepting “their” teachings and to acknowledge who he is and what he is here to do All content on this channel is licensed, and or produced by Zohar Entertainment Group/Awakening Expo/Phenomena Magazine.
HET MEEST ONVERWOESTBARE DIERTJE OP AARDE IS ZOJUIST NOG ONVERWOESTBAARDER GEWORDEN
HET MEEST ONVERWOESTBARE DIERTJE OP AARDE IS ZOJUIST NOG ONVERWOESTBAARDER GEWORDEN
Vivian Lammerse
Een nieuw soort beerdiertje blijkt een voor menig organisme dodelijke dosis ultraviolet licht prima te kunnen verdragen.
Beerdiertjes zijn niet kapot te krijgen. Je kunt ze blootstellen aan extreme hitte, invriezen, in een vacuüm stoppen of compleet uit laten drogen: het doet het beerdiertje weinig. Dit maakt hen dan ook een van de meest onverwoestbare diertjes op onze planeet. Maar het kan nog extremer. Onderzoekers hebben namelijk op een universitaire campus een voorheen onbekende soort aangetroffen. En dit beerdiertje weet zelfs raad met de meest dodelijke dosis ultraviolet licht.
Meer over beerdiertjes
Beerdiertjes zijn microscopisch kleine organismen die onder meer te vinden zijn in de grond en op planten. Ze bereiken een lichaamslengte van ongeveer een halve millimeter en een breedte van ongeveer 1/5 millimeter, waardoor ze met het blote oog bijna niet te zien zijn. Beerdiertjes komen wijdverspreid in de natuur voor. Een pluk mos kan bijvoorbeeld al zeker duizenden exemplaren herbergen. Daarnaast zijn het taaie rakkers. Je kunt ze bijvoorbeeld meer dan dertig jaar invriezen: na ontdooiingpakken ze hun leven gewoon weer op.
De onderzoekers baseren zich op tamelijk gruwelijke experimenten. In de nieuwe studie speurden onderzoekers van het Indian Institute of Science hun campus af op zoek naar beerdiertjes die ze vervolgens blootstelden aan extreme omstandigheden. “Het belangrijkste doel van ons project was om verschillende mechanismen voor de waargenomen stresstolerantie bij beerdiertjes te gaan begrijpen,” vertelt Sandeep Eswarappa in een interview aan Scientias.nl. De onderzoekers hadden toevallig een kiemdodende ultraviolette lamp in hun laboratorium staan. En dus besloten ze de onfortuinlijke beerdiertjes onder deze wrede lamp – die regelmatig gebruikt wordt om korte metten te maken met moeilijk te doden virussen en bacteriën – te leggen.
Dosis De meeste soorten beerdiertjes bleken nog aardig taai. Een dosis van 1 kilojoule per vierkante meter – een dosis die voor bacteriën en rondwormen al na vijf minuutjes fataal is – bleek pas na ongeveer een kwartiertje dodelijk voor de Hypsibius exemplaris. De meeste beerdiertjes stierven echter na 24 uur. Een vreemde, roodbruine soort wist zich verrassend genoeg staande te houden. De onderzoekers besloten daarom de dosis ultraviolet licht vier keer te verhogen. En ook deze keer gaven de mysterieuze beerdiertjes zich niet zomaar gewonnen. Ongeveer zestig procent van deze kranige beerdiertjes leefde na toetakeling nog zeker een maand door.
Nieuwe soort De onderzoekers realiseerden zich dat ze een nieuw soort beerdiertje hadden ontdekt, onderdeel van het geslacht Paramacrobiotus. En die zat gewoon in wat mos op een betonnen muur. “Het zijn vleesetende beerdiertjes,” karakteriseert Eswarappa. “We gaven ze rondwormen als voedsel en ze bleken over een enorme eetlust te beschikken. Onder laboratoriumomstandigheden planten ze zich voor door middel van parthenogenese (maagdelijke voortplanting, red.).” Overigens is het ontdekken van nieuwe soorten beerdiertjes niet heel gemakkelijk. “Soms kan een bepaald monster heel veel beerdiertjes bevatten en soms geen één,” legt Eswarappa uit. “Zodra we een gebied hebben gevonden waar we weten dat ze zitten, is het gemakkelijker om ze te isoleren. Maar tot op heden is dit een spel met vallen en opstaan.”
Blauw Om erachter te komen hoe dit weerbarstige beerdiertje in staat was om de dodelijke dosis ultraviolette straling te overleven, voerden de onderzoekers nog een aantal aanvullende experimenten uit. Door middel van fluorescentiemicroscopie namen ze de beestjes wederom onder de loep. Tot grote verbazing van het team werden de roodachtige beerdiertjes onder het UV-licht blauw. “Het meest verrassende aan de studie was toen we ontdekten dat de beerdiertjes onder het UV-licht oplichtten,” zegt Eswarappa. “Dit was bovendien cruciaal. Want het bracht ons tot de theorie dat de beerdiertjes fluorescentie gebruiken om zich te beschermen tegen UV-straling.” Fluorescerende pigmenten die zich waarschijnlijk onder de huid van de beerdiertjes bevinden, transformeren het UV-licht in onschadelijk blauw licht, zo schrijven de onderzoekers. En dus biedt dit een hoge mate van bescherming. Paramacrobiotus met minder pigment stierven daarentegen ongeveer 20 dagen na blootstelling.
Een blauw gekleurd beerdiertje.
Afbeelding: Suma et al., Biology Letters (2020)
Het lijkt er dus op dat de nieuw ontdekte soort beerdiertjes een zogezegd fluorescerend ‘schild’ gebruiken om dodelijke UV-straling te kunnen overleven. En hoewel dit indrukwekkend klinkt, blijft Eswarappa koel. “Eigenlijk is het niet heel verwonderlijk,” zegt hij ontnuchterend. “We weten dat beerdiertjes bestand zijn tegen heel wat stressvolle omstandigheden.” Om de doeltreffendheid van het fluorescerende schild nader te onderzoeken, ontdeden de onderzoekers verschillende exemplaren van de nieuw ontdekte soort van hun fluorescerende pigmenten en hevelden deze over naar de bekendere H. exemplaris en verschillende rondwormen. De diertjes met deze opgetuigde schilden leefden vervolgens bijna twee keer zo lang als de exemplaren zonder schild.
Waarom? De grote vraag is natuurlijk waarom het nieuw ontdekte beerdiertje over dit wonderlijke maar doeltreffende schild beschikt. “De beerdiertjes leven in het zuiden van India,” legt Eswarappa desgevraagd uit. “In de zomer worden ze daarom gebombardeerd met hoge dosissen UV-straling. Mogelijk gebruiken de beerdiertjes dus het fluorescerende molecuul als een schild om schadelijke UV-straling te absorberen en onschadelijk licht uit te zenden, waardoor ze zichzelf beschermen.” Kortom, de beerdiertjes hebben mogelijk een manier gevonden om hoge dosissen UV-straling te verdragen die kenmerkend zijn voor de hete zomerse dagen in Zuid-India.
Hoewel beerdiertjes al bijna 245 jaar bestudeerd worden en ons inmiddels meer dan 1200 soorten bekend zijn, blijven we nieuwe exemplaren en verrassend kranige kenmerken ontdekken. Dat het taaie diertjes zijn, moge duidelijk zijn. Maar wist je dat ze mogelijk toch een achilleshiel hebben? Want hoewel beerdiertjes één van de meest veerkrachtige en weerbarstige organismen zijn die op onze aarde voorkomen, blijkt dat ze ook een zwakke kant hebben.
WIST JE DAT…
…er mogelijk ook beerdiertjes op de maan te vinden zijn? Ze liftten mee met de Israëlische maanlander die in april 2019 op de maan crashte. En mogelijk hebben ze die crash overleefd…
A park worker took a video of what some people are describing as the Loch Ness Monster of China. The man, whose name is Xiao Yu, works at the Changbai Mountain scenic park in Jilin Province and that’s where he noticed something strange in the waters of Tianchi Lake (or “Heaven Lake”).
He videotaped the strange black round object that was floating on the lake’s surface. It appeared to be about seven feet in width and remained still in the water for numerous minutes. His footage has some people claiming that what he captured was the mysterious creature that is said to live in the lake. In fact, reports of the Heaven Lake monster date back to 1962 when a person claimed to have seen two of the monsters chasing each other in the water. Interestingly, there have been other alleged sightings of the monster in Kanas Lake that’s located in a valley in the Altai Mountains in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Changbai Mountain and Heaven Lake
Yu films footage on a daily basis in order to document the weather that he shares to his Douyin account (China’s version of TikTok). However, on the morning of October 20th he noticed something out of the ordinary. “…I went to the Heaven Lake to film footage as usual,” he told MailOnline, “I didn’t notice it at first, but I suddenly saw a black dot.”
Since he took the video at an elevation of 500 meters (1,640 feet) above the lake, the object appeared rather small but according to Yu it was actually quite big. The mysterious object remained still in the water for numerous minutes before Yu decided to leave the location and go back to work.
He went on to say, “I had similar sightings before but they were clearly fishing boats,” adding, “But this time, I could not tell what it was. It definitely wasn’t a boat.”
Another picture of Changbai Mountain and Heaven Lake.
The lake measures 1.9 square miles and is situated on the border between China and North Korea. While the military from North Korea would sometimes fish on the lake, visitors aren’t allowed to go down to it which raises the question of what exactly was in the water. “The area by the lake is completely closed to the public. There would be absolutely no one there,” Yu explained.
Did he actually videotape the elusive Heaven Lake monster? You can decide for yourself as the footage as well as a still photo can be seen here as well as on his Douyin account.
A worker at a national park has filmed what he believed to be the famous lake monster in north-eastern China.
Eerie footage captured by the man shows a black round object floating on the surface of the Tian Chi, or 'Heaven Lake', at the Changbai Mountain in Jilin Province.
The alpine lake is renowned for having a mysterious beast - the Chinese equivalent to the Loch Ness Monster - said to be first sighted nearly six decades ago.
The mountain caretaker, Xiao Yu, told MailOnline that he spotted the seven-foot-wide creature while patrolling the scenic spot yesterday morning.
Eerie footage captured by the employee, Xiao Yu, shows a black round object floating on the surface of the Tian Chi, or 'Heaven Lake', at the Changbai Mountain in northeast China
Since the first reported sighting in 1962, dozens of people claimed to have witnessed what is said to be the Heaven Lake monster.
Xiao Yu, who has worked at the Changbai Mountain National Park as a souvenir shop assistant for the past decade, said he saw the unusual object in the middle of the lake on Tuesday morning.
He has also been documenting the area's weather with videos which he shares daily on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok.
'Yesterday, I went to the Heaven Lake to film footage as usual,' Xiao Yu, 28, told MailOnline. 'I didn't notice it at first, but I suddenly saw a black dot.'
The footage, filmed from a viewing platform 500 metres (1,640 feet) above the lake, shows the black circular object remaining still on the water surface.
Xiao Yu, who has worked at the Changbai Mountain National Park as a souvenir shop assistant for the past decade, said he saw the foreign object in the middle of the lake on Tuesday
The park worker can be heard saying: 'An unknown object appeared at the Heaven Lake. The black spot looks small [on the video] but it is actually fairly big.'
The 'mysterious beast' remained visible for several minutes while the mountain caretaker was filming the video. He eventually left and headed back to work.
'I had similar sightings before but they were clearly fishing boats,' Xiao Yu added. 'But this time, I could not tell what it was. It definitely wasn't a boat.'
The protected lake, covering 4.9 square kilometres (1.9 square miles), lies on the border between China and North Korea.
The North Korean military would fish on the lake occasionally, the Chinese worker said, but visitors to the national park are strictly forbidden from entering the area.
'The area by the lake is completely closed to the public. There would be absolutely no one there,' Xiao Yu added.
Rumour of the monster in Heaven Lake started in 1962 when an observer reportedly saw two of the monsters chasing each other in the water using a telescope.
Another China's legendary lake monster is said to have been spotted in Kanas Lake, a freshwater lake situated in a valley of Altai mountain in Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in north-west China.
What Happens in a Zeptosecond? A Trillionth of a Billionth of a Second: Shortest Time Ever Measured
What Happens in a Zeptosecond? A Trillionth of a Billionth of a Second: Shortest Time Ever Measured
In the global race to measure ever shorter time spans, physicists from Goethe University Frankfurt have now taken the lead: together with colleagues at the accelerator facility DESY in Hamburg and the Fritz-Haber-Institute in Berlin, they have measured a process that lies within the realm of zeptoseconds for the first time: the propagation of light within a molecule. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second (10-21 seconds).
chematic representation of zeptosecond measurement. The photon (yellow, coming from the left) produces electron waves out of the electron cloud (grey) of the hydrogen molecule (red: nucleus), which interfere with each other (interference pattern: violet-white). The interference pattern is slightly skewed to the right, allowing the calculation of how long the photon required to get from one atom to the next.
SPhoto: Sven Grundmann, Goethe University Frankfurt
In 1999, the Egyptian chemist Ahmed Zewail received the Nobel Prize for measuring the speed at which molecules change their shape. He founded femtochemistry using ultrashort laser flashes: the formation and breakup of chemical bonds occurs in the realm of femtoseconds. A femtosecond equals 0.000000000000001 seconds, or 10-15 seconds.
Now atomic physicists at Goethe University in Professor Reinhard Dörner’s team have for the first time studied a process that is shorter than femtoseconds by magnitudes. They measured how long it takes for a photon to cross a hydrogen molecule: about 247 zeptoseconds for the average bond length of the molecule. This is the shortest timespan that has been successfully measured to date.
The scientists carried out the time measurement on a hydrogen molecule (H2) which they irradiated with X-rays from the synchrotron lightsource PETRA III at the Hamburg accelerator centre DESY. The researchers set the energy of the X-rays so that one photon was sufficient to eject both electrons out of the hydrogen molecule.
Electrons behave like particles and waves simultaneously, and therefore the ejection of the first electron resulted in electron waves launched first in the one, and then in the second hydrogen molecule atom in quick succession, with the waves merging.
The photon behaved here much like a flat pebble that is skimmed twice across the water: when a wave trough meets a wave crest, the waves of the first and second water contact cancel each other, resulting in what is called an interference pattern.
The scientists measured the interference pattern of the first ejected electron using the COLTRIMS reaction microscope, an apparatus that Dörner helped develop and which makes ultrafast reaction processes in atoms and molecules visible. Simultaneously with the interference pattern, the COLTRIMS reactions microscope also allowed the determination of the orientation of the hydrogen molecule. The researchers here took advantage of the fact that the second electron also left the hydrogen molecule, so that the remaining hydrogen nuclei flew apart and were detected.
“Since we knew the spatial orientation of the hydrogen molecule, we used the interference of the two electron waves to precisely calculate when the photon reached the first and when it reached the second hydrogen atom,” explains Sven Grundmann whose doctoral dissertation forms the basis of the scientific article in Science. “And this is up to 247 zeptoseconds, depending on how far apart in the molecule the two atoms were from the perspective of light.”
Professor Reinhard Dörner adds: “We observed for the first time that the electron shell in a molecule does not react to light everywhere at the same time. The time delay occurs because information within the molecule only spreads at the speed of light. With this finding we have extended our COLTRIMS technology to another application.”
Contacts and sources:
Goethe University Frankfurt
Publication:
Zeptosecond Birth Time Delay in Molecular Photoionization. Sven Grundmann, Daniel Trabert, Kilian Fehre, Nico Strenger, Andreas Pier, Leon Kaiser, Max Kircher, Miriam Weller, Sebastian Eckart, Lothar Ph. H. Schmidt, Florian Trinter, Till Jahnke, Markus S. Schöffler, Reinhard Dörner.Science, 2020 DOI: 10.1126/science.abb9318
Alien Tech On USAF B-1 Bomber! Google Earth, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Alien Tech On USAF B-1 Bomber! Google Earth, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Oct 17, 2020
Location of discovery: Dyess AFB, Texas, USA
Hey everyone. I was looking for UFOs and alien bases using Google Earth today and came across something that just blew me away. I found something at Dyess AFB in Texas. Its a B1 bomber base. I use to work on B1 bombers back in Ellsworth AFB a Stratigic Air Command high security base. I found something at Dyess that I had never seen before...a single cloaked B1 bomber. If you rotate the map in a 360 degree angle, you will easily see the second B1 that is cloaked. It makes sense, you see the black paint already on the B1 is clocking technology that absorbs radar so it wont reflect a signal back and be seen, thus its nearly invisible. It really makes sense to use alien technology on a B1 and create the most perfect aircraft ever. This B1 has alien tech making it capable of becoming invisible.
Creating art is an intensive and time-consuming process. It’s not just envisioning and designing the piece that’s challenging — the labor of painting also takes a lot of time. But what if robots could help with this, and maybe even expand an artist’s repertoire?
It may seem far-fetched, but in a new study, researchers paved the way for exactly this: they trained a swarm of robots to be used in producing art.
Image courtesy of María Santos.
María Santos was always fascinated by the intersection of engineering and arts. A musician herself, she loves to explore this overlap of seemingly different worlds, she tells ZME Science.
“During my PhD at the School of Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech, I was given the opportunity of combining my research on control theory and multi-robot systems with different forms of art,” she says.
It all started in a previous study with her doctoral advisor, Professor Magnus Egersted. The two first studied the expressive capabilities of robot swarms to convey basic emotions and then moved on to look at the individual trajectories executed by the swarm of robots.
Is there some artistic merit to this, or could this approach be applied in an artistic setting as a tool? Santos believes so.
“In this study we explore how the integration of such trajectories over time can lead to artistic paintings by making the robots leave physical trails as they move,” Santos explains in an email.
“We envisioned the multi-robot system as an extension of an artist’s creative palette. The presented painting swarm along with all its control knobs embody new means of interaction between artists and the piece of art, whereby artists can explore new creative directions, intuitively interacting with a robotic system while not having to concern themselves with aspects such as individual robot control or available paints to each robot.”
At first glance, using robots for art seems like a weird idea, but it makes sense once you look at it. Painting is typically labor-intensive, and despite the world around us becoming more and more automated, painting has remained exclusively a manual endeavor. The idea is not to have the robots create art, but rather for artists to use the robots as a tool to ease their workload or explore new artistic directions.
Image courtesy of María Santos.
The robots in the project move about a canvas leaving color trails, and the artist can select the areas of the canvas to be painted in a certain color — the robots will oblige in real time. It’s a bit like applying digital techniques into the real-life analog world and can serve as an interesting tool for artists.
The way Santos envisions the approach, the artist would control the swarm behavior, but not necessarily every individual robot.
“In this approach, the robotic swarm can be thought of as an “active” brush for the human artist to paint with, where the individual robots (active bristles) move over the canvas according to the color specifications given by the human at each point in time. Thus, the artist can control the collective behavior of the swarm and potentially some other general parameters (how much paint to release, how sharp the trajectories of the robots may be), but not the individual movements of each robot.”
This leaves a wide array of parameters the artist can influence to produce the desired effect, and explore different variations. It’s akin to how a composer writes variations on a theme, Santos tells me.
A video highlighting the technique, courtesy of María Santos.
In the experiments, the researchers used a projector to simulate the colored paint trail with a digital input, although they will soon replace this with a robot that handles actual paint. They found that even when the robot doesn’t have access to the desired color, it is capable to collaborate with other robots and approximate the color. This means the artist doesn’t need to worry whether the robots have access to all the possible colors.
Now, the researchers hope to collaborate with artists to see how this approach could be best tweaked to make it work in real life. The current pandemic, however, has proven to be quite a hurdle.
“We would love to get feedback from artists! In fact, when we started this project, our idea was to get artists to come to the lab and interact with the robotic swarm. This way we could see what they could come up with creatively in terms of generated paints, but also to get their input about which features would be most interesting to develop as the project progresses further.”
“However, due to COVID19, this part was infeasible during the last months, so we focus on studying the characteristics of the paintings as a function of different parameters in the swarm.”
Ultimately, the team hopes to develop this into a full-scale artistic project and allow artists and the public to experiment with it
“As of now, the artworks were created to evaluate the operation of the system, but we would love to exhibit them! Once we can get people back in the lab to try the system, we would love to see what people would come up with.”
Journal Reference:
Interactive Multi-Robot Painting Through Colored Motion Trails, Frontiers in Robotics and AI(2020). DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2020.580415
US Big Panic: China tests swarm of ‘suicide drones’ launched from a truck and helicopters
China tests swarm of ‘suicide drones’ launched from a truck and helicopters
China has developed a new low-cost “suicide drone” that is despatched in a swarm to attack a target, according to mainland media reports.
It was commissioned as part of the government’s military-civilian fusion strategy, a People’s Liberation Army insider who requested anonymity told the South China Morning Post. The policy seeks to boost military development with civilian and private sector support.
A swarm of the fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles was tested last month by the developer, a research institute under state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, according to a video released by the company.
Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China.
It shows kamikaze drones being launched from a light tactical vehicle and from helicopters.
The drones were fired from a launcher mounted on a modified version of the PLA’s Dongfeng Mengshi light tactical vehicle.
Photo: Weibo
The company has carried out similar tests before. In November 2017 its research institute, the China Academy of Electronics and Information Technology, carried out what is believed to be the biggest such experiment, involving 200 of the small fixed-wing aircraft.
In the video, multiple drones are seen being fired from a launcher mounted on the back of a modified version of the PLA’s Dongfeng Mengshi light tactical vehicle, as well as at least two from helicopters.
The suicide drones seen in the footage appear to be similar to China’s first tactical attack drone, the CH-901.
Photo: Weibo
The unmanned aircraft appear to be similar to the CH-901, China’s first tactical attack drone and part of a series developed by state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
The CH-901 is small – just 1.2 metres (3.9 feet) long and weighing 9kg (20lbs) – but it can spend up to 120 minutes in the air and head towards a target at a speed of 150km/h (93 miles per hour) before detonating.
While the military insider would not give any details on which type of drones were put to the test last month, he said China had improved drone technologies developed in 2012 and was now trying to integrate them with other new hardware.
The short video clip shows how a swarm of suicide drones could be rapidly deployed to a war zone, launched from both land and air, to attack a target. They are seen flying in formation, with their movement directed remotely from a tablet-like device.
Both Chinese and US media reports have suggested the PLA may already be using suicide drones, but the military insider said that it was still grappling with technical issues.
“They’re still in the early development stage and the technical problems are yet to be resolved,” he said. “One of the key concerns is the communications system and how to stop it from getting jammed. The military has found that the artificial intelligence it uses is too slow to react.”
Drone warfare is becoming more important, and China is one of many countries racing to develop the technology. The US has deployed drones for decapitation strikes in the Middle East, including to kill top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in January.
Struck by menacing ultraviolet radiation? Water bear don’t care. According to an intriguing new study, water bears, also known as tardigrades or moss piglets, have a newly discovered ability that allows them to survive in some of the most extreme environments in the universe — even in outer space. When they’re hit by UV light, these microscopic creatures absorb the radiation with a fluorescent substance, which emits back blue light.
This striking display of extreme survival was discovered in a new tardigrade species, dubbed Paramacrobiotus BLR, by researchers from the Indian Institute of Science. As a stroke of luck, the tardigrades were first discovered in moss growing on the walls of the campus.
The most extreme organisms on Earth
Tardigrades are the most indestructible known complex organism on Earth, and perhaps the cutest of all microorganisms.
To pull off these death-defying feats, tardigrades employ a couple of tricks. When faced with the prospect of annihilation, either due to lack of food or due to exposure to absolute zero temperatures, the water bear essentially dries out and retracts its head and its eight legs. It then enters a deep state of suspended animation that closely resembles death. Its metabolism slows to 0.01% of the normal rate and the body becomes almost devoid of water.
Additionally, the reddish-brown Paramacrobiotus tardigrades have another ace up their sleeve. When the Indian researchers exposed these tardigrades to 1 kilojoule per square meter of UV light — enough to kill bacteria and roundworm after just 5 minutes — they all survived. Even after the radiation dose was upped four times, about 60% of the reddish-brown bears still lived for more than 30 days.
In order to learn more about this strain of Paramacrobiotus, the researchers examined tardigrade samples with an inverted fluorescence microscope. Much to their surprise, under UV Light, the reddish tardigrades appeared blue due to fluorescent pigments located under the animals’ skin.
Not all tardigrades seem to have this ability. When Hypsibius exemplaris tardigrades were exposed to UV light for 15 minutes, all died within 24 hours.
The researchers also extracted some of these fluorescent pigments and sprayed them on Hypsibius exemplaris tardigrades and several earthworms to see if the UV-protection rubs off them. The creatures that were coated with the pigments survived almost two times better than those without the shielding. Bearing in mind the very hot summer days in southern India, the Paramacrobiotus tardigrades likely evolved the UV-shielding as a local adaptation.
Today, most life on Earth is supported by oxygen. But ancient microbial mats existed for a billion years before oxygen was present in the atmosphere. So what did life use instead?
Purple microbial mats offer clues to how ancient life functioned.
Billions of years ago, life on Earth was mostly just large slimy mats of microbes living in shallow water. Sometimes, these microbial communities made carbonate minerals that over many years cemented together to become layered limestone rocks called stromatolites. They are the oldest evidence of life on Earth. But the fossils don’t tell researchers the details of how they formed.
Our team of geologists, physicists and biologists had found hints in fossilized stromatolites that arsenic was the chemical of choice for ancient photosynthesis and respiration. But modern-day versions of these microbial communities still live on Earth today. Perhaps one of these used arsenic and could offer proof for our theory?
So we joined a surveying expedition of Chilean and Argentinian scientists to look for living stromatolites in the extreme conditions of the High Andes. In a small stream deep in the Atacama Desert, we found a big surprise. The bottom of the channel was bright purple and made of stromatolite-building microbial mats that thrive in the complete absence of oxygen. Just as the clues we’d found in ancient fossils suggested, these mats use two different forms of arsenic to perform photosynthesis and respiration. Our discovery offers the strongest evidence yet for how the oldest life on Earth survived in a pre-oxygen world.
Modern organisms make oxygen during photosynthesis and use it in respiration, but other elements, like arsenic, shown here as As, can work too.
For the last 2.4 billion years, photosynthetic organisms like plants and blue-green cyanobacteria have used sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make oxygen and organic matter. In doing this, they turn energy from the Sun into energy to be used by life. Other organisms breathe in oxygen as they digest organic carbon, gaining energy for their respiration in the process.
Microbes in the ancient world also captured energy from sunlight, but their primitive machinery could not make oxygen from water or use oxygen for respiration. They needed another chemical to do this.
From a biochemical perspective, there are only a few possible candidates: iron, sulfur, hydrogen or arsenic. A lack of evidence in the fossil record and minuscule amounts of some of these chemicals in the primordial soup suggests neither iron, sulfur nor hydrogen would be likely candidates for the earliest form of photosynthesis. That leaves arsenic.
In 2014, our team found the first clue that stromatolites were produced by arsenic-assisted photosynthesis and respiration. We collected pieces of 2.72-billion-year-old stromatolites from the pre-oxygen world by drilling into an ancient reef in the Outback of Australia. We then took these samples to France and cut them into thin slivers. By measuring the X-rays that came off these samples when we bombarded them with photons, we made a map of the chemical elements in the sample. If two kinds of arsenic are present in the map, then it is a sign that life was using arsenic for photosynthesis and respiration. In these relics of ancient life we found lots of both forms of arsenic, but not iron or sulfur.
This was tantalizing, but we wanted more proof: a modern analog to help prove our arsenic theory. No researchers had ever found a microbial mat community living in a place completely free of oxygen, but if we found one, it could help explain how the first stromatolites formed when our planet’s oceans and atmosphere were lacking oxygen.
Samples taken from the microbial mats had high levels of arsenic and lithium, but no oxygen.
The Atacama Desert in Chile is the driest place on Earth, flanked by volcanoes and exposed to extremely high UV radiation. It’s not too different from how the Earth looked 3 billion years ago and not exactly supportive of life as we know it. Here – with the help of a team that spanned four continents and seven countries – we found what we were looking for.
Or destination was Laguna La Brava, a very salty shallow lake deep into the harsh desert. A shallow stream, fed by a volcanic groundwater spring, led into the lake. The streambed was a unique, deep purple color. The color came from a microbial mat, thriving quite happily in waters that contained unusually high amounts of arsenic, sulfur and lithium, but missing one important element: oxygen.
A piece of the microbial mats living at the bottom of the oxygen-free stream.
Could these slimy purple blobs offer answers to an ancient question?
We cut a piece of the mat and looked for evidence of minerals. A drop of acid made the minerals fizz – carbonates! – this microbe community was forming stromatolites. So our team went to work, camping out at the site for days at a time.
We measured the chemistry of the water and the mat with our field equipment during day and night, summer and winter. Not once did we find oxygen, and back in the laboratory we confirmed that sulfur and arsenic were abundant. Looking through the microscope, we saw purple photosynthetic bacteria, but oxygen-producing cyanobacteria were eerily absent. We had also collected DNA samples from the mat and found genes for arsenic metabolism.
In the lab, we mixed up microbes from the mat, added arsenic and exposed the mix to sunlight. Photosynthesis was happening. The microbes used both arsenic and sulfur, but preferred the arsenic. When we added a minuscule amount of organic matter, a different arsenic compound was used for respiration and preferred over sulfur.
All that was left was to show that the two types of arsenic could be detected in the modern stromatolites. We went back to France, and using an X-ray emission technique made chemical maps from the Chilean samples. Every experiment we performed supported the presence of a vigorous arsenic cycle in the absence of oxygen in this unique modern stromatolite. This validates, beyond doubt, the idea that the fossil Australian samples that we studied in 2014 held evidence of an active arsenic cycle in deep time on our young planet.
Laguna La Brava is closer to the Martian environment than most places on Earth.
The harsh conditions of the Atacama are so similar to Martian and early Earth environments that NASA scientists and astrobiologists turn to the Atacama to answer questions about how life began on our planet, and how it might start elsewhere. The arsenic-cycling mats we discovered at Laguna La Brava offer strong clues to some of the most fundamental questions about life.
On board the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover that is currently hurtling through space is an instrument that can observe elements using the exact same process we used to make our element maps. Perhaps it will discover that arsenic is abundant in layered rocks on Mars, suggesting that life on Mars also used arsenic. For over a billion years, it did so on Earth. Under the harshest conditions life finds a way, and it is that way we are trying to understand.
Bottom line: Microbial mats existed for a billion years before oxygen was present in the atmosphere. New research suggests that arsenic was the chemical of choice for ancient photosynthesis and respiration.
Video: Microbes survive under seafloor for over 100 million years
Video: Deep sea microbes that laid dormant for 100 MILLION years are 'revived' in a lab after being fed certain minerals
This video shows interviews with Steven D'Hondt, Professor of Oceanology and Yuki Morono, Senior Scientist, at JAMSTEC, on their study that found 100 million-year-old sea microbes are alive and thriving, even with...
Possible Directed Energy Weapon caught beaming at Tyndall Air Force Base Space Wing, Florida
Possible Directed Energy Weapon caught beaming at Tyndall Air Force Base Space Wing, Florida
If its us beaming out to ourselves, testing some sort of laser.. creating a hot spot for some reason at ground level.. then we can move on and let them deal with moving to different frequencies to prevent civilians seeing it.
If its not us beaming down causing a hot spot on ourselves, then we've got problems.
October 9, 2020 350am Central time - This video from Dutschsinse documents (real time) a directed energy weapon beam which has been caught on Weather Satellite beaming down directly at Tyndall Air Force Base (space force communications base), along the coast of Florida, creating a hot spot at the location receiving the beam as well.
A beam of energy shooting down next to our Space Communications Wing base resulting in a physical hot spot being detected.
A second beam was captured beaming down to the SW Louisiana Lake Charles Nexrad Radar station.
It would appear both beams reside in the shortwave Infrared spectrum, and are targeting in on our United States radar systems along the coast of the Gulf. Targeting first at the Nexrad along the coast of Louisiana, then a 2nd beam down at Tyndall AFB (the beam location showing an actual hot spot on thermal return via GOES 16.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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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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