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!!!
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.
08-05-2020
What Was Einstein’s Most Mind-blowing Discovery?
What Was Einstein’s Most Mind-blowing Discovery?
“What Was Einstein’s Most Mind-blowing Discovery?”
by Big Think
“NASA astronomer and science communicator Michelle Thaller explains that the real brilliance of Albert Einstein is that he was able to bridge ideas that appeared to others to be in different realms. The thing Einstein is most famous for is the equation E=mc2. Thaller explains why that equation is so mind-blowing: Pure energy and matter are the same thing. That means, as humans, we are both made of matter and of pure energy, and as pure energy, we would not experience space or time. “I think that, once we really understand this, we’re going to be in for some very difficult truths to accept,” says Thaller. “It may be that there is no space or time as we know it, really.”
Dr. Michelle Thaller is an astronomer who studies binary stars and the life cycles of stars. She is Assistant Director of Science Communication at NASA. She went to college at Harvard University, completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. then started working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Spitzer Space Telescope. After a hugely successful mission, she moved on to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in the Washington D.C. area. In her off-hours often puts on about 30lbs of Elizabethan garb and performs intricate Renaissance dances. For more information, visit NASA.
If You See These Insects Now, You Will Run For Your Life
If You See These Insects Now, You Will Run For Your Life
The one thing that you don’t want, is to wake up and find a creepy slimy millipede in your bed. Look at the size of this thing, I guess now you’re grateful that the only things you see crawling around are roaches.
Let’s get into the world of giant Dragonflies and huge sea worms, these are the world’s most dangerous horrifying insects. Relax, all of them are long gone.
Guess what!? some of this giant insects have super large wings of 30 inches or 70 centimeters in size.Some of these insects in their day were able to take out animals that were almost the size of humans, luckily even with their predatory dominance they could not escape extinction.
"Someone or something is plunging humanity into darkness…Shout Studios has released an official trailer for a sci-fi action thriller titled The Blackout: Invasion Earth (2020). The movie is available, everywhere from June 2, 2020.
Thanks to Firstshowing.net who writes the following regarding to this new movie:
Contact between most towns on Earth has been severed. A small ring-like area in Eastern Europe still has electricity, and maybe even life is being reported from space.
What military forces find outside "the Ring" is shocking. There are dead everywhere: in stores, in cars, on roads, in hospitals and railway stations.
Who or what is destroying all life on Earth? How long will the last outpost of mankind survive? But I'm not really sure what the heck is going on. Aliens?
Is this movie another Hollywood pre-warning for an unprecedented event we may expect soon? Watch the trailer and listen carefully to the dialogue in the movie.
Fogbows are rainbows’ cousins – made by much the same process – but with the small water droplets inside a fog instead of larger raindrops.
View larger at EarthSky Community Photos. | Peter Lowenstein caught this fogbow in Mutare, Zimbabwe, on April 29, 2020. He wrote: “Half-an-hour after the Sun rose behind my house on Wednesday, a beautiful fogbow developed in the middle of a misty morning view from my front veranda. All the conditions were right – bright sunshine from the rear with the Sun less than twenty degrees above the horizon and clearing clouds of mist at the antisolar point. The scene was framed by a beautiful flowering Poinsettia to the left, a lush banana grove to the right, and clear blue sky beginning to appear on top!”
Fogbows – sometimes called white rainbows, cloudbows or ghost rainbows – are made much as rainbows are, from the same configuration of sunlight and moisture. Rainbows happen when the air is filled with raindrops, and you always see a rainbow in the direction opposite the sun. Fogbows are much the same, always opposite the sun, but fogbows are caused by the small droplets inside a fog or cloud rather than larger raindrops.
Look for fogbows in a thin fog when the sun is bright. You might see one when the sun breaks through a fog. Or watch for fogbows over the ocean.
Because the water droplets in fog are so small, fogbows have only weak colors or are colorless.
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Alan Nicolle in New South Wales, Australia, captured this image on July 16, 2019. He wrote: “I was out geocaching in the outskirts of Broken Hill, when I turned back to see this fogbow developing. I took quite a few photos with the iPhone, and rode back to the car on my bike, but by the time I got back to the car to use my SLR, it had faded.” Thank you, Alan!
Edith Smith in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, captured this fogbow on November 1, 2018. She wrote: “The camera spotted it before I did with eye, as I was too engrossed in foggy conditions.”
Tommy Johnson captured this early morning fogbow near Jonesport, Maine, in August 2016. He wrote: “Early in the morning and blueberry rakers are starting to fill their buckets with the fruit. I called out to them to look at the fogbow, it was the first time any of us had seen one.”
Wonderful fogbow caught by Robyn Smith in New Zealand on the morning of September 19, 2017 “… opposite the foggy sunrise.”
GregDiesel Landscape Photography wrote in October 2015: “Saw my first fogbow / white rainbow. Photo taken with cell phone. Moyock, North Carolina.”
Katherine Keyes Millet captured this fogbow in July 2014 at Winter Island Park in Salem, Massachusetts.
Venus and Jupiter above a fogbow in Blacklough, Dungannon, Ireland. Mars is up there, too, but tough to see. John Fagan captured them all in October 2015.
Eileen Claffey in Brookline, Massachusetts, captured this fogbow over a field in September 2014.
Look away from the sun and at an angle of 35-40 degrees from your shadow which marks the direction of the antisolar point. Some fogbows have very low contrast so look for small brightenings in the misty background. Once caught, they are unmistakable.
The sun must be less than 30-40 degrees high unless you are on a hill or high up on a ship where the mist and fogbow can be viewed from above.
Fogbows are huge, almost as large as a rainbow and much, much broader.
Thomas Kast in Finland captured this fogbow in 2013. He wrote: “In this rather cold August night (+8C [46F]) there was patchy fog, especially in open fields. This lake remained clear for a long time. At one point I saw this white bow with moon in waning gibbous phase behind me.”
Jim Grant caught this fogbow over Sunset Cliffs in San Diego. He wrote: “The skies were sunny and clear, and then the fog rolled in, and with it this beautiful fogbow.”
Lynton Brown of Australia captured this fogbow over a barren field in the autumn of 2012.
Bottom line: Fogbows are made by much the same process as rainbows, but with the small water droplets inside a fog instead of larger raindrops. Because the water droplets in fog are so small, fogbows have only weak colors or are colorless.
The first ever evidence of a dinosaur which swam, lived and hunted underwater has been discovered in the now-barren wilderness of the Saharan desert.
But 100 million years ago this region would have been a lush oasis interspersed with rivers and waterways teeming with life.
And lurking beneath the surface, sitting atop the entire food chain, was a fearsome aquatic dinosaur.
The river monster — called Spinosaurus aegyptiacus — powered through the water with a fin-like tail and captured slippery prey with six-inch long conical teeth.
A fossilised tail of a juvenile of the species, which belongs to the therepod group, the same as the T-rex, was found in modern-day Morocco.
Adults are known to reach up to 50ft long and weigh up to 20 tonnes but this specimen had yet to reach its full size, measuring 35ft from snout to tail and weighing around four tonnes.
Fully-grown individuals had no natural predators, but researchers say juveniles may have been at risk from giant fish and enormous prehistoric crocodiles.
The researchers who led the project and discovered the fossil deemed this hostile marine world 'the river of death'.
A 3D rendering of Spinosaurus hunting a group of sawfish. Spinosaurus powered through the water with a fin-like tail and captured slippery prey with six-inch long conical teeth
Pictured, an artist's impression of two Spinosaurus hunting sawfish from National Geographic. Adults are known to reach up to 50ft long and weigh up to 20 tonnes but this specimen had yet to reach its full size, measuring 35ft from snout to tail and weighing around four tonnes
Pictured, part of the tail discovered in modern-day Morocco. The newly discovered tail of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus shows it was well adapted to an aquatic lifestyle
How the fearsome Spinosaurus hunted underwater
Spinosaurus could grow up to 50ft long and weigh up to 20 tonnes.
The beasts were so large and fearsome that the adults of the species had no natural predators.
It had several adaptations that allowed it to survive and hunt underwater.
Its nostrils were far back on its head, allowing it to breath with only a small portion of its head poking above the water level.
Its bones were extremely dense, similar to penguins, which allowed it to carefully control its position in the water, striking a careful balance between buoyancy and submersion.
Large, flat feet that were most probably webbed allowed it to lumber across the soft land around the river banks, while locomotion in water was similar to crocodiles.
Its flat tail moved laterally and propelled the dinosaur forward.
It was a therepod, the same group of dinosaurs that includes dinosaurs.
It is the only dinosaur that is known to have swum and had huge jaws packed with six inch long razor sharp teeth.
The teeth were conical and not blade-like, which were well adapted to hold on to the slippery prey it hunted.
Its snout is more similar to that of crocodiles than to other predatory dinosaurs. This housed sensory structures able to capture the waves produced by swimming prey.
This organ functioned like a sonar - allowing the animal to hunt even in murky waters.
Around the time of Spinosaurus, several other reptile groups had mastered the water, including ichthyosaurs, but no dinosaurs.
The newly discovered tail of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus shows it was well adapted to an aquatic lifestyle.
Two foot long struts on the main vertebrae broaden the tail into a paddle-like shape.
Dr David Unwin, Reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester, who was involved in the research, said: 'The Spinosaurus' fin-like tail is a game changing discovery for us that fundamentally alters our understanding of how this dinosaur lived and hunted – it was actually a "river-monster".
'As well as its tail, many other features of this dinosaur, such as the high position of the nostrils, heavy bones, short legs, and paddle-like feet point to a life spent in the water rather than on land.
'Not only did dinosaurs dominate the land and take to the air as birds, they even went back into the water and became the top predators there as well.'
The study, published today in the journal Nature, comes to the conclusion that this animal was a truly water-dwelling, tail-propelled dinosaur which likely spent most of its life underwater.
National Geographic explorer and University of Detroit Mercy paleontologist Dr Nizar Ibrahim led the research.
His team included Dr Unwin and Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth.
Academics began excavating a skeleton of Spinosaurus in southern Morocco in 2015 and made the historic discovery of its almost-complete and well preserved tail in 2018.
Tails of other therapods, which existed on solid land, had a a stiff tapering tail.
But analysis of the vertebrae found in Morocco revealed long spines that supported a large, highly flexible, fin-like tail comparable in shape to that of a crested newt.
Reconstruction of Spinosaurus in life: long narrow jaws with conical teeth, and a unique tail for aquatic locomotion
Top: reconstruction of the tail skeleton of Spinosaurus (missing bones shown in white). Center: cross sections through the tail showing changes in the vertebrae, tail volume, and arrangement of major muscles. Bottom: the new - and surprising - look of Spinosaurus (black, soft parts/body outline; red, bones collected in 2008 by a local fossil collector; green, bones from recent scientific excavations; yellow, bone fragments collected in the debris around the main excavation area)
The site in the Sahara where the fossil was found is a hotbed for fossil hunters, with other finds including sawfish, crocodiles, flying reptiles and land-dwelling dinosaurs.
Professor Martill said: 'This fossil site has been incredible. This is the first Spinosaurus skeleton to be found for over a hundred years. It is also one of the few associated dinosaurs skeletons ever to be found in the Kem Kem rocks.
'Scientists have always puzzled about Spinosaurus, because applying new scientific techniques on this animal have, until now, not been possible because the original material was destroyed in World War Two. Now we have a new baby to play with.
'Every time we look at this dinosaur we discover something fascinating about it. Discovering its tail was such an amazing gift. We had no idea that its tail was going to be so different from other dinosaur tails.
'One thing that still puzzles me though, is why only Spinosaurus became aquatic among the dinosaurs. Why are there no aquatic iguanodons, or stegosaurs.'
While it remains a mystery why only one dinosaurs conquered the water, the discovery does put to bed a long-standing belief that dinosaurs never swam.
Dr Ibrahim said: 'This discovery is the nail in the coffin for the idea that non-avian dinosaurs never invaded the aquatic realm.
'This dinosaur was actively pursuing prey in the water column, not just standing in shallow waters waiting for fish to swim by. It probably spent most of its life in the water.'
The September 2018 team that unearthed the tail of the only associated Spinosaurus skeleton in existence. Left to right, and top to bottom: Simone Maganuco, Ayoub Amane, M'Barek Fouadassi, Nizar Ibrahim, Samir Zouhri, Cristiano Dal Sasso, Gabriele Bindellini, Marco Auditore, Matteo Fabbri, Diego Mattarelli, Hamid Azroal, Mhamed Azroal
A view of the Kem Kem region, Sahara Desert (south-eastern Morocco), from the excavation site of Spinosaurus
The site in the Sahara where the fossil was found (pictured) is a hotbed for fossil hunters, with other finds including sawfish, crocodiles, flying reptiles and land-living dinosaurs
Experts discovered the remains of a 100-million-year-old “river monster” that proves dinosaurs once lived underwater. In fact, it’s the first time that they have found conclusive evidence that proves some dinosaurs lived, swam, and hunted beneath the water.
The remains were found in the now-barren wilderness of the Saharan desert but it was not always this way as 100 million years ago it contained waterways and rivers. Researchers began excavating the area in southern Morocco back in 2015 and by 2018 they had uncovered a nearly-complete well-preserved skeleton of the dinosaur’s tail. The species belongs to the theropod group which the Tyrannosaurus rex is a part of.
Skeleton of a Spinosaurus.
The dinosaur, which has been named Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, had razor-sharp six-inch long cone-shaped teeth that it used to capture and hold onto its prey. The nostrils were located on the back portion of the head and its snout was quite similar to a crocodile’s. It had very dense bones as well as large flat feet that were more than likely webbed.
Even though it was only a juvenile when it died, it still measured 35 feet long and weighed approximately 4 tonnes. Fully grown adults could have measured as long as 50 feet and weighed up to 20 tonnes. While the adults had no known predators, the juveniles could have been attacked by giant prehistoric crocodiles and fish. In fact, the location in which the skeleton was found has been nicknamed the “river of death” by the researchers. Numerous groups of reptiles inhabited the waters (such as the ichthyosaurs), but this is the first ever evidence of a dinosaur living underwater.
And based on the evidence the researchers found, the Spinosaurus aegyptiacus thrived in the ancient Saharan waters. As for its unique tail, the species had two-foot long struts located on the main vertebrae which made its tail into the shape of a paddle that moved from side to side. This is quite interesting as other therapods that lived on land had a stiff tail that tapered off at the end.
Dr. David Unwin, who is a Reader in Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester and was also involved with the research (their study can be read here), explained this further, “The Spinosaurus’ fin-like tail is a game changing discovery for us that fundamentally alters our understanding of how this dinosaur lived and hunted – it was actually a ‘river-monster’”. “As well as its tail, many other features of this dinosaur, such as the high position of the nostrils, heavy bones, short legs, and paddle-like feet point to a life spent in the water rather than on land,” he said, adding, “Not only did dinosaurs dominate the land and take to the air as birds, they even went back into the water and became the top predators there as well.” A picture of the excavation site can be seen here.
'The Most Dangerous Place in the History of Planet Earth' Revealed
'The Most Dangerous Place in the History of Planet Earth' Revealed
Predator paradise – The giant predatory dinosaur Carcharodontosaurus eyes a group of Elosuchus – crocodile-like hunters – near a carcass.
Artwork by Davide Bonadonna
100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth.
This is according to an international team of scientists, who have published the biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from an area of Cretaceous rock formations in south-eastern Morocco, known as the Kem Kem Group.
The review, published in the journal ZooKeys, “provides a window into Africa’s Age of Dinosaurs” according to lead author Dr Nizar Ibrahim, an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Detroit Mercy and Visiting Researcher from the University of Portsmouth.
About 100 million years ago, the area was home to a vast river system, filled with many different species of aquatic and terrestrial animals. Fossils from the Kem Kem Group include three of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever known, including the sabre-toothed Carcharodontosaurus (over 8m in length with enormous jaws and long, serrated teeth up to eight inches long) and Deltadromeus (around 8m in length, a member of the raptor family with long, unusually slender hind limbs for its size), as well as several predatory flying reptiles (pterosaurs) and crocodile-like hunters. Dr Ibrahim said: “This was arguably the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth, a place where a human time-traveller would not last very long.”
Many of the predators were relying on an abundant supply of fish, according to co-author Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth. He said: “This place was filled with absolutely enormous fish, including giant coelacanths and lungfish. The coelacanth, for example, is probably four or even five times large than today’s coelacanth. There is an enormous freshwater saw shark called Onchopristis with the most fearsome of rostral teeth, they are like barbed daggers, but beautifully shiny.”
Researchers from the Universities of Detroit, Chicago, Montana, Portsmouth (UK), Leicester (UK, David Unwin), Casablanca (Morocco), and McGill (Canada), as well as the Paris Museum of Natural History, have produced the first detailed and fully illustrated account of the fossil-rich escarpment, previously known as the “Kem Kem beds”. The researchers now define this sedimentary package as the Kem Kem Group, which consists of two distinct formations, the Gara Sbaa Formation and the Douira Formation.
To assemble the huge datasets and fossil images, which were originally included in his PhD thesis, Dr Ibrahim visited Kem Kem collections on several continents.
Shedding light on Africa’s ancient past is important says Professor Martill, “This is the most comprehensive piece of work on fossil vertebrates from the Sahara in almost a century, since the famous German palaeontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach published his last major work in 1936.”
Contacts and sources:
Kate Daniell University of Portsmouth
Publication:
Geology and paleontology of the Upper Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of eastern Morocco Nizar Ibrahim, Paul C. Sereno, David J. Varricchio, David M. Martill, Didier B. Dutheil, David M. Unwin, Lahssen Baidder, Hans C. E. Larsson, Samir Zouhri, Abdelhadi Kaoukaya http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.928.47517
“…expeditionary, deployable, reversible offensive space control (OCS) effects applicable across the full spectrum of conflict. It prevents adversary Satellite Communications (SATCOM) in Area of Responsibility (AOR) including Command & Control (C2), Early Warning and Propaganda, and hosts Rapid Reaction Capabilities in response to Urgent Needs.”
As reported in Popular Mechanics, that’s US Space Force-speak for its first weapon, the Counter Communications Systems (CCS) Block 10.2 – a jammer that effectively cuts the electronic cord between ground troops and the satellites they use to communicate with their generals, allies and each other. This is much more effective than trying to know out the transmitter on the ground or the satellite in space, and the latest generation of these jammers covers a greater frequency spectrum than ever before. Needless, to say, Russia is not pleased.
“We also have a lot of questions. We asked them quite a long time ago and want to have an answer after all. A full-fledged meaningful Russian-US dialogue on a wide spectrum of issues of space activities security Russian and US senior diplomats agreed on on January 16 will help resolve mutual concerns.”
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS that her government is not pleased with what it perceives to be a first step towards an arms race in space. She’s right about a “race” because Russia’s military already has a similar satellite jammer that’s believed to be not as robust as the Space Force’s. Of course, this is also a war of words, as Zakharova was responding to criticism by Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations for the Space Force, about Russia’s alleged testing of an anti-satellite missile.
“Previously, such claims were voiced by US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ford. We have commented on each and every such anti-Russian attack which are all nothing but the United States’ attempt to divert public attention from real threats in space and to justify its moves to deploy weapons in outer space and obtain extra financing for such causes.”
That’s a diplomatic in-your-face response from Zakharova. This may seem like much ado about nothing since the satellite jammer is ground-based, but anything that’s launched must communicate with satellites to get to space. In fact, it’s becoming clear that nearly everything on Earth depends on satellites. The Space Force is part of the Air Force, so using jets to rapidly deploy the jammers around the world seems like a good idea. Meanwhile, NASA and Elon Musk (the distinction between these two is slowly beginning to blur) are covering space with satellites – perhaps in an attempt to overwhelm Russia’s anti-satellite missiles or its own jammers.
“It is obvious that serious concerns, if any, cannot be resolved by means of such statements, by means of fakes. It is necessary to use the existing channels for expert and political dialogue for that. We do have such channels and it is necessary simply to use them. Unwillingness to do so is rather an evidence of insufficiently grounded position of our American colleagues.”
Sigh. Even space cannot escape from ‘fake news’ and ‘insufficiently grounded positions’. Are we doomed to resume the Cold War’s massive arms race in space? Strategic space command. Lt. Col. Steve Brogan gives Interesting Engineering an answer.
“CCS is the only offensive system in the United States Space Force arsenal. This upgrade puts the ‘force’ in Space Force and is critical for Space as a warfighting domain.”
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Minerals suggest large blocks of Earth’s crust moved around as early as 3.2 billion years ago
As early as 3.2 billion years ago, a portion of Earth's crust (seen this artist’s interpretation) moved relatively quickly across the planet's surface, a hallmark of modern plate tectonics.
Modern plate tectonics may have gotten under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago, about 400 million years earlier than scientists thought. That, in turn, suggests that the movement of large pieces of Earth’s crust could have played a role in making the planet more hospitable to life.
Geologist Alec Brenner of Harvard University and his colleagues measured the magnetic orientations of iron-bearing minerals in the Honeyeater Basalt, a layer of rock that formed between 3.19 billion and 3.18 billion years ago. The basalt is part of the East Pilbara Craton, an ancient bit of continent in Western Australia that includes rocks as old as 3.5 billion years.
This craton, the researchers found, was on the move between 3.35 billion and 3.18 billion years ago, drifting around the planet at a rate of at least 2.5 centimeters per year. That’s a speed comparable to modern plate motions, the team reports April 22 in Science Advances.
The basalt layer, which burbled up as lava and hardened during the journey, contains iron-bearing minerals that can act as tiny signposts pointing the way toward Earth’s magnetic poles. While the lava was still molten, the minerals rotated, orienting themselves to align with either the north or south magnetic pole. By tracking the changes in orientation within the lava as more basalt formed during the journey, the researchers were able to determine how quickly the craton was moving.
Scientists have long used such preserved magnetic signposts to reconstruct plate motions, retracing the steps of drifting bits of continent. But the constant grinding and shifting of Earth’s tectonic plates over the last few billion years have reworked Earth’s surface many times over, leaving few outcrops that are older than 3 billion years.
The Honeyeater Basalt, however, is a rare site, both ancient and relatively unworked by metamorphism, the heat and pressure from which could have altered the minerals and reset their magnetic orientation. The team examined 235 samples of the basalt using an instrument called a quantum diamond microscope that can detect traces of magnetism at the micrometer scale. From these analyses, the researchers created a high-resolution map of magnetic orientations within the rock.
Based on the map, the team estimates that about 3.2 billion years ago, the East Pilbara Craton was at a latitude of about 45°, but whether north or south isn’t certain, Brenner said April 21 in a video news conference. That’s because researchers aren’t sure whether Earth’s magnetic poles at the time were in their current orientation or reversed. Either way, this bit of ancient crust moved in a gradual, steady motion — a hallmark of modern plate tectonics, the researchers say. Today, the craton is located at about 21° S, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Plate tectonics is generally thought to have become a well-established global process on Earth no earlier than around 2.8 billion years ago. Before that, Earth’s interior was considered to be too hot for cold, rigid plates to form at the surface, or for deep subduction to occur, in which one crustal plate dives beneath another.
An earlier start to plate tectonics would have implications for the evolution of life on Earth, Brenner told reporters. Whether the process was in operation when the first single-celled organisms emerged, currently thought to be at least 3.45 billion years ago, isn’t clear, he said (SN: 10/17/18).
But it is clear that plate tectonics is currently closely tied to the biosphere, he added. It promotes chemical reactions between once-buried rocks and the atmosphere that can modulate the planet’s climate over millions to billions of years. “So if [plate tectonics] happened on the early Earth, these processes were likely playing a part in the evolution of life,” Brenner said.
Active, modern-style plate tectonics is the most likely explanation for the data, the researchers say. But they acknowledge other possible explanations can’t yet be ruled out, including an early, episodic, fit-and-start style of plate tectonics.
Some researchers have proposed that, during the Archean Eon that lasted from about 4 billion to about 2.5 billion years ago, there was a proto-plate tectonics process in which bits of crust moved in fits and starts as the planet began to cool after its formation (SN: 4/9/12). Sediment eroded from Earth’s earliest continents may also have helped grease the wheels, setting the stage for modern plate tectonics (SN: 6/5/19).
The researchers’ data could support episodic rather than gradual plate motion, perhaps as a precursor to modern plate tectonics, says Michael Brown, a geologist at the University of Maryland in College Park. Those data suggest that after its initial burst of speed, the Honeyeater Basalt’s progress slowed considerably, from 2.5 centimeters per year to 0.37 centimeters per year, he says.
It’s still unclear how similar proto-plate tectonics may have been to the modern process. “We know too little to answer this question with confidence,” says geophysicist Stephan Sobolev of the University of Potsdam in Germany. Sobolev has suggested previously that, for about a billion years during the Archean, plate tectonics occurred regionally: Plates could have been broken apart by large meteorite impacts or powerful plumes rising from the mantle, generating regional cells in which ancient continents formed and small blocks of crust subducted.
Such a regional cell may have formed the East Pilbara Craton in Australia, Sobolev suggests. But for that bit of ancient continent to have traveled so far so quickly, he says, “large-scale subduction must have been involved” — a surprising possibility for early Earth’s history.
If you’ve ever been caught in a heavy downpour without an umbrella, hood or awning to duck under, you know that the force of heavy, sometimes wind-driven drops can be painful … especially when the showers last for a long time. But can they carry enough power to trigger a volcano? That’s the premise of a new study which proposes that an extreme and extended heavy rain period triggered the 2018 extreme eruption of Kīlauea in Hawaii, burying a portion of the Big Island with a four-month-long flow of lava. Is it time for weather reporters to start giving “chance of volcano” forecasts?
“The May 2018 rift intrusion and eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i, represented one of its most extraordinary eruptive sequences in at least 200 years, yet the trigger mechanism remains elusive.”
Kīlauea
Kīlauea is one of Hawaii’s most active volcanoes and has actually been in a period the eruption on , entered an extraordinary new phase on May 3, 2018, throwing incandescent lava nearly two hundred feet in the air and spewing lava over 13 square miles across the well-populated east coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. The unprecedented eruption, which destroyed hundreds of homes, involved the collapse of the summit caldera before it ceased four months later in September 2018. Kīlauea is heavily monitored and has been under especially close scrutiny since 1983 when the latest activities began.
“An eruption happens when the pressure in the magma chamber is high enough to break the surrounding rock and the magma travels to the surface. This pressurization causes inflation of the ground by tens of centimeters. As we did not see any significant inflation in the year prior to the eruption we started to think about alternative explanations.”
In their new study, published in the journal Nature, UM Rosenstiel School scientists Jamie Farquharson and Falk Amelung describe how they were surprised by the extreme May 2018 eruption which launched lava two hundred feet in the air, covering over 13 square miles and destroying hundreds of homes, before the summit caldera collapsed and it quit erupting in September 2018. With the usual warning signs missing, Farquharson and Amelung went looking for others and noticed a sustained period of rain right before it. Could the rain have penetrated the volcano’s edifice and changed the pressure, causing the ground to crack enough to allow an eruption?
“Here we show that immediately before and during the eruption, infiltration of rainfall into Kīlauea Volcano’s subsurface increased pore pressure at depths of 1 to 3 kilometres by 0.1 to 1 kilopascals, to its highest pressure in almost 50 years. We propose that weakening and mechanical failure of the edifice was driven by changes in pore pressure within the rift zone, prompting opportunistic dyke intrusion and ultimately facilitating the eruption.”
Kīlauea
Going back through meteorological records in the Kilauea area, they found that “magmatic intrusions and recorded eruptions are almost twice as likely to occur during the wettest parts of the year. Based on that, the team plans to investigate other volcanoes and their rainfall patterns, giving people living in the area another thing to worry about during heavy downpours – something an umbrella won’t help. And it gets worse, as Farquharson describes in a press release.
“It has been shown that the melting of ice caps in Iceland led to changes of volcanic productivity. As ongoing climate change is predicted to bring about changes in rainfall patterns, we expect that this may similarly influence patterns of volcanic activity.”
Climate change contributing to volcanic activity? Is it time to do something about it or move farther away from Yellowstone?
Linda Moulton Howe: Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe?
Linda Moulton Howe: Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe?
Could We Really Be Living in a Computer Simulated Universe? Presented by Linda Moulton Howe Filmed by Conscious Life Expo, LA
Most of us would have likely remembered a strange or weird incident in their lives, be it incredibly rare coincidences we occasionally experience or the moment we notice a ‘jump in the Matrix’. Could the world we know really be run by some kind of computer?
Neo is a cubicle worker sidelining as a computer hacker when he learns he’s nothing more than a data point in the Matrix, a malevolent cyber-force controlling all life on Earth. Soon Neo is recruited by a covert rebel organization to take back his life and all of humanity.
Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health
Is Bill Gates Responsible For The Coronavirus Being Spread? UFO Sighting News. #Health
Hey everyone, let me take a break from UFO and aliens today and talk about something that in plaguing the world...coronavirus. I first became concerned that something was not right on March 13th, 2020 when Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft...his baby. This was the very week that American news began to panic as the coronavirus began infecting large numbers of Americans. Nothing but an apocalypse could pull this man away from his child...Microsoft. I didn't understand at the time...but I began to link the patterns between Bill and coronavirus. I feel the evidence points to Bill Gates stepping down because he feel responsible for this virus. I did some investigating and Bill Gates owns a laboratory, controlled and owned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Back in 2000 his foundation became the worlds biggest foundation in the world holding over 46.8 billion dollars in assets...including some laboratories. His laboratory has a patent on coronavirus...the very virus circulating around the world population at this very moment. I believe that the virus came out of this laboratory and into the hands of the Chinese. How? One of three possibilities:
It was stolen by an Chinese scientist working for Gates and taken to or shipped to China.
It was sent by Gates to China to have others work on it to help create a map and possible cures for future epidemics.
The virus was created by China in Wuhan...and they followed Bill Gates exact steps and process he lays out in his highly detailed lectures in 2015 at John Hopkins. Bill says how dangerous of a weapon that coronavirus could be...and maybe China wanted to harness its power.
So...you see, Bill Gates himself is responsible for this coronavirus that is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Although he stepped up back in 2015 to warn the world...in one way or another...he instead caused it to take place. And I leave with a quote by Bill Gates; "To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks." Watch his lectures below...and decide for yourself. Scott C. Waring - Taiwan
Bill Gates Talks Coronavirus on TED April 2015.
Bill Gates Tells You His Worst Fear...Says 50% Chance of Epidemic In His Lifetime.
Millions Could Die From Bio-Terrorism, Gates Feb 2017
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Southern Africa may have hosted a hominid transition 2 million years ago
Cave excavation yields braincases from both Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus
Two hominid fossils unearthed in a South African cave, including this Homo erectus braincase, point to a major evolutionary shift that occurred around 2 million years ago.
Members of three different hominid lines clustered at the bottom of Africa around 2 million years ago, signaling an evolutionary swing propelled by the spread of a highly successful, humanlike species, new fossil discoveries suggest. It’s unclear, though, if the three ancient populations inhabited the region at precisely the same time.
Excavations at Drimolen, a set of caves in South Africa, uncovered two fossil braincases, one from Homo erectus and the other from Paranthropus robustus, say paleoanthropologist Andy Herries of La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues. Both finds date to between 2.04 million and 1.95 million years ago, the scientists report in the April 3 Science.
The H. erectus fossil comes from a child who displayed a long, low braincase typical of adults from that species. The P. robustus braincase is that of an adult.
Researchers previously determined that two Australopithecus species, A. africanus and A. sediba (SN: 7/25/13), inhabited nearby parts of South Africa approximately 2 million years ago.
Taken together, these discoveries indicate that a major transition in hominid evolution occurred in southern Africa between around 2.1 million and 1.9 million years ago, Herries’ team says. During that stretch, climate and habitat fluctuations drove Australopithecus species to extinction. H. erectus and P. robustus weathered those ecological challenges, possibly outcompeting Australopithecus for limited resources, the researchers speculate.
It’s unclear whether members of the three hominid lines ever encountered each other during that transition period.
Excavators at South Africa’s Drimolen site, shown with some of the animal bones they have found, have recovered roughly 2-million-year-old fossils of two hominid species, Homo erectus and Paranthropus robustus.A. HERRIES
“These spectacular discoveries confirm what some of us have expected for some time, that three genera of [hominids] coexisted in southern Africa,” says paleoanthropologist Darryl de Ruiter of Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the research.
Earlier work at several other South African cave sites had suggested that H. erectus, P. robustus and A. sediba all dated to nearly 2 million years ago. But many fossils from the first two species are fragmentary, and precise dating of cave sediments that held those finds has proven difficult.
Herries’ team dated the fossil braincases at Drimolen using two techniques for calculating the time since sediments formed just below and above where the specimens were found. Evidence of previously dated reversals of Earth’s magnetic field in Drimolen sediment helped to confirm age estimates for the fossils.
The South African H. erectus fossils may be slightly older than those of A. sediba, but a controversial proposal that A. sediba was an ancestor of the Homo genus remains in play, de Ruiter says. Researchers don’t know how much earlier than 2 million years ago A. sediba originated or how far it ranged beyond its one known fossil site in South Africa. Even so, some other researchers consider A. sediba a dead-end species and regard East Africa as the best bet for where Homo originated.
Unearthing an H. erectus fossil dating to around 2 million years ago in South Africa considerably expands that species’ range at an early stage of its evolution, says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. H. erectus fossils in western Asia date to about 1.8 million years ago (SN: 10/17/13). And H. erectus may have made 2.1-million-year-old stone tools in China (SN: 7/11/18).
“It’s possible that this child from Drimolen is the earliest-known representative of the first global [hominid] species,” says Hawks, who did not participate in the new study.
H. erectus’ last known appearance was as late as 108,000 years ago on an Indonesian island, meaning it survived about 2 million years (SN: 12/18/19).
The H. erectus fossil found at Drimolen “marks the beginning of the most successful species of Homo ever known — present company included,” writes paleoanthropologist Susan Antón of New York University in a commentary published with the new Science report.
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database
When you think of religion, you probably think of a god who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But the idea of morally concerned gods is by no means universal. Social scientists have long known that small-scale traditional societies – the kind missionaries used to dismiss as “pagan” – envisaged a spirit world that cared little about the morality of human behaviour. Their concern was less about whether humans behaved nicely towards one another and more about whether they carried out their obligations to the spirits and displayed suitable deference to them.
What came first – all-seeing Gods or complex societies? God the Father and Angel, Guercino Giovan Francesco Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons
Nevertheless, the world religions we know today, and their myriad variants, either demand belief in all-seeing punitive deities or at least postulate some kind of broader mechanism – such as karma – for rewarding the virtuous and punishing the wicked. In recent years, researchers have debated how and why these moralising religions came into being.
Now, thanks to our massive new database of world history, known as Seshat (named after the Egyptian goddess of record keeping), we’re starting to get some answers.
Eye in the sky
One popular theory has argued that moralising gods were necessary for the rise of large-scale societies. Small societies, so the argument goes, were like fish bowls. It was almost impossible to engage in antisocial behaviour without being caught and punished – whether by acts of collective violence, retaliation or long-term reputational damage and risk of ostracism. But as societies grew larger and interactions between relative strangers became more commonplace, would-be transgressors could hope to evade detection under the cloak of anonymity. For cooperation to be possible under such conditions, some system of surveillance was required.
What better than to come up with a supernatural “eye in the sky” – a god who can see inside people’s minds and issue punishments and rewards accordingly. Believing in such a god might make people think twice about stealing or reneging on deals, even in relatively anonymous interactions. Maybe it would also increase trust among traders. If you believe that I believe in an omniscient moralising deity, you might be more likely to do business with me, than somebody whose religiosity is unknown to you. Simply wearing insignia such as body markings or jewellery alluding to belief in such a god might have helped ambitious people prosper and garner popularity as society grew larger and more complex.
Nevertheless, early efforts to investigate the link between religion and morality provided mixed results. And while supernatural punishment appears to have preceded the rise of chiefdoms among Pacific Island peoples, in Eurasia studies suggested that social complexity emerged first and moralising gods followed. These regional studies, however, were limited in scope and used quite crude measures of both moralising religion and of social complexity.
Sifting through history
Seshat is changing all that. Efforts to build the database began nearly a decade ago, attracting contributions from more than 100 scholars at a cost of millions of pounds. The database uses a sample of the world’s historical societies, going back in a continuous time series up to 10,000 years before the present, to analyse hundreds of variables relating to social complexity, religion, warfare, agriculture and other features of human culture and society that vary over time and space. Now that the database is finally ready for analysis, we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history.
One of the earliest questions we’re testing is whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies. We analysed data on 414 societies from 30 world regions, using 51 measures of social complexity and four measures of supernatural enforcement of moral norms to get to the bottom of the matter. New research we’ve just published in the journal Nature reveals that moralising gods come later than many people thought, well after the sharpest rises in social complexity in world history. In other words, gods who care about whether we are good or bad did not drive the initial rise of civilisations – but came later.
As part of our research we created a map of where big gods appeared around the world. In the map below, the size of the circle represents the size of the society: bigger circles represent larger and more complex societies. The numbers in the circle represent the number of thousand years ago we find the first evidence of belief in moralising gods. For example, Emperor Ashoka adopted Buddhism 2,300 years ago after he had already established a large and complex South Asian empire known as the Mauryan Empire.
The global distribution and timing of beliefs in moralising gods shows that big gods appear in big societies.Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided
Our statistical analysis showed that beliefs in supernatural punishment tend to appear only when societies make the transition from simple to complex, around the time when the overall population exceed about a million individuals.
Social complexity tends to increase more rapidly before the appearance of moralising gods, not after.Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided
We are now looking to other factors that may have driven the rise of the first large civilisation. For example, Seshat data suggests that daily or weekly collective rituals – the equivalent of today’s Sunday services or Friday prayers – appear early in the rise of social complexity and we’re looking further at their impact.
If the original function of moralising gods in world history was to hold together fragile, ethnically diverse coalitions, what might declining belief in such deities mean for the future of societies today? Could modern secularisation, for example, contribute to the unravelling of efforts to cooperate regionally – such as the European Union? If beliefs in big gods decline, what will that mean for cooperation across ethnic groups in the face of migration, warfare, or the spread of xenophobia? Can the functions of moralising gods simply be replaced by other forms of surveillance?
Even if Seshat cannot provide easy answers to all these questions, it could provide a more reliable way of estimating the probabilities of different futures.
Tom Horn exposes the untold news of the Biblical Wormwood
Tom Horn exposes the untold news of the Biblical Wormwood
Arriving in 2029. Tom Horn exposes the untold news of Biblical Wormwood! Is the Wormwood star from Revelation 8 already headed toward Earth?
Are NASA and high-level government officials aware of an asteroid that is on a collision course with our planet?
Traditional interpretation claims that Wormwood will be an asteroid. In 2029 the large asteroid called Apophis is projected to visit Earth.
Now respected author Tom Horn blazes a trail through the many questions NASA is reluctant to even talk about.
He believes Wormwood is the asteroid Apophis - How the threat of Wormwood could create world-wide revival - Why NASA funded a Deep Space Armageddon Asteroid telescope?
Tom Horn doesn’t answer the question of what Biblical Wormwood will actually be. But we do know exactly when this large asteroid Apophis is coming.
The year 2029 is coming soon enough, and Horn’s research will give you plenty to think about!
Scientists in Myanmar have discovered six new types of coronavirus in bats. While the viruses are part of the same family as the SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the six new types are not closely genetically related to SARS-Cov-2, SARS, or MERS.
The new types of coronavirus were identified when researchers were studying bats in Myanmar for a government-funded program that’s called PREDICT. The program is used to find infectious diseases that could possibly be transferred from animals to humans. They analyzed hundreds of samples of saliva and feces (also called guano which is used to make fertilizer) from 464 bats and at least 11 different species between the years 2016 and 2018. The samples came from bats living in three different locations around Myanmar where humans often get into close contact with them.
Map of bat capture sites in Myanmar between 2016 and 2018.
In their study (which can be read in full here), the researchers wrote in part, “Two of these sites also featured popular cave systems where people were routinely exposed to bats through guano harvesting, religious practices and ecotourism.”
The genetic sequences of the hundreds of samples were compared with the genomes of coronaviruses that have already been identified. The new types of the virus were identified in three species of bats: the Greater Asiatic yellow house bat (Scotophilus heathii) which PREDICT-CoV-90 was identified; the wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bat (Chaerephon plicatus) which was host to PREDICT-CoV-47 and -82; and Horsfield’s leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros larvatus) which contained PREDICT-CoV-92, -93 and -96.
Bats have been named as the most likely source of the COVID-19 transmission to humans and it’s been predicted that thousands more types of coronavirus that have yet to be discovered could be living in them.
But don’t panic just yet, as more research needs to be done in order to understand fully how – or if – these new types of coronavirus could be transferred to other species and how/if they could affect the health of humans. Suzan Murray, who is the director of the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program as well as the co-author of the study, said, “Many coronaviruses may not pose a risk to people, but when we identify these diseases early on in animals, at the source, we have a valuable opportunity to investigate the potential threat,” adding, “Vigilant surveillance, research and education are the best tools we have to prevent pandemics before they occur.”
Marc Valitutto, who is a former wildlife veterinarian with the Smithsonian’s Global Health Program and the lead author of the study, weighed in by stating, “Worldwide, humans are interacting with wildlife with increasing frequency, so the more we understand about these viruses in animals — what allows them to mutate and how they spread to other species –– the better we can reduce their pandemic potential.”
In other bat news, the United States has recommended that all testing of bats be suspended in order to prevent coronavirus from spreading to North American species and ultimately causing another wave of the virus to hit the public.
In a statement, a Fish and Wildlife spokesperson told the Washington Post, “We know that many mammals are susceptible to infection by a diversity of coronaviruses,” adding, “What is not known is whether the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect, or cause illness in, North American wildlife, including bats.”
There have already been several reports of humans passing the virus on to animals, specifically cats and dogs, as well as a Malayan tiger that was more than likely infected by an asymptomatic worker at the Bronx Zoo. And since bats in the United States have been suffering through white-nose syndrome since 2006 – which has killed over 5.5 million bats – researchers have to be careful not to infect them with coronavirus as they may be more susceptible to catching it.
2020 – When Worlds Collide: could a global pandemic and a comet share a similar fate?
2020 – When Worlds Collide: could a global pandemic and a comet share a similar fate?
The new Comet ATLAS may disintegrate more quickly than expected. Could the new coronavirus do the same? Trying to following the various projections of paths the coronavirus pandemic may take may seem as complicated as suddenly trying to become a NASA-worthy astrophysicist during your down time while sheltering at home. And the universe being the mysterious wonder it is, it turns out tracking astronomy and COVID-19 may share a deeper connection than you knew before. As of Sunday, April 5, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts that 81,766 people will die of COVID-19 in the U.S. between now and August 4, 2020. This is a welcome decrease from the prediction of 93,531 deaths they’d estimated during the previous week, a sign, they say, that social distancing measures seem to be working to flatten the curve.
If this trend in coronavirus cases, deaths, and recoveries continues, the worst of COVID-19 is expected to rock the U.S. in mid-April, peaking on April 16, then tapering off throughout the month of May. Somewhat mystically, the trajectory of this pandemic aligns with the path currently being traveled by Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), more commonly known as Comet ATLAS, Comet ATLAS was first discovered by astronomers using the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) in Hawaii on December 28, 2019.
While it’s not yet visible to the naked eye, and no one can say for sure it ever will be, astronomy enthusiasts have been able to spot it and capture some (literally) stellar images using medium-sized telescopes under dark skies. Initial predictions showed the comet coming closest to the Earth on May 23 and closest to the sun on May 31. Should it continue on this path, it might be bright enough to be visible to the unaided human eye on or around May 1, right as COVID-19 should be (pleasepleaseplease) fading into oblivion.
One redditor shared a 7-year-old article titled “Sun-Grazing Comets as Triggers For Electromagnetic Armageddon” in the subreddit named r/conspiracytheories. Everything is intensifying rapidly,” one user commented. “California is having earthquakes. Utah had one. Now there’s a comet that is going to be as bright as the moon. Earlier this year we had the massive wildfires. Locust plague is sweeping Africa and the Middle East. Of course, can’t forget to mention the pandemic (which we don’t know the true numbers/severity of), and war looming on the horizon. “One of the big red flags for me is celebrities suddenly being diagnosed, politicians faking getting tested, and a couple hundred CEOs resigning just this year alone. They must know that something devastating is coming.”
But just as we hope will be the case with the coronavirus pandemic, scientists observing the comet say it may be disintegrating and could disappear more quickly than previously expected.
MEDICIJN GEVONDEN DAT HET NIEUWE CORONAVIRUS BINNEN 48 UUR UITSCHAKELT
MEDICIJN GEVONDEN DAT HET NIEUWE CORONAVIRUS BINNEN 48 UUR UITSCHAKELT
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het medicijn – dat nu gebruikt wordt om parasieten te bestrijden – lijkt in ieder geval in het laboratorium veelbelovend.
Tot die conclusie komen onderzoekers van Monash University nadat ze het middel in het laboratorium loslieten op cellen die met het virus geïnfecteerd waren. De experimenten wijzen uit dat het middel het virus binnen 48 uur kan doden. “We ontdekten dat een enkele dosis in 48 uur tijd in feite al het virale RNA verwijderde en dat er zelfs na 24 uur al sprake was van een significante afname van het virus,” aldus onderzoeker Kylie Wagstaff.
Meer onderzoek Of dit dan de behandeling is waar talloze patiënten wereldwijd naar smachten? Die conclusie zul je Wagstaff nog niet zo snel horen trekken. Het is namelijk belangrijk om je te realiseren dat deze resultaten enkel in het laboratorium geboekt zijn. Of het middel in vivo – oftewel in het menselijk lichaam – hetzelfde resultaat heeft, is nog onduidelijk. “We moeten nu uitzoeken of de dosis waarin je het aan mensen kunt toedienen, effectief is. Dat is de volgende stap.”
Over ivermectine Wagstaff en collega’s bogen zich al snel nadat het nieuwe coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 tot een pandemie uitgroeide, over het betreffende geneesmiddel: ivermectine. Het medicijn wordt nu ingezet om parasieten te bestrijden. Zo krijgen mensen het bijvoorbeeld voorgeschreven bij worminfecties. Maar eerdere studies hebben al uitgewezen dat het in vitro – oftewel buiten het lichaam, in kweekculturen in het lab – ook wel raad weet met een breed scala aan virussen, waaronder zika en het influenzavirus. En dat bracht Wagstaff en collega’s op het idee om het middel ook los te laten op het nieuwe coronavirus.
Hoe werkt het? Het levert in ieder geval in het laboratorium veelbelovende resultaten op. Hoe het middel in de petrischaaltjes van Wagstaff en collega’s precies afrekent met het virus is niet onderzocht. Maar de wetenschappers hebben daar – afgaand op wat ze het middel eerder met andere virussen hebben zien doen – wel ideeën over. Ons immuunsysteem maakt normaliter korte metten met lichaamsvreemde stoffen, zoals virussen. Om toch cellen te kunnen infecteren, onderdrukt het nieuwe coronavirus die immuunrespons, waardoor onze cellen er minder goed in slagen om het virus op te ruimen. En ivermectine lijkt er kort gezegd voor te zorgen dat het virus er niet meer in slaagt om onze cellen ervan te weerhouden het virus op te ruimen.
Vervolgonderzoek Als uit vervolgonderzoek blijkt dat het middel ook in het menselijk lichaam wel raad weet met SARS-CoV-2 dan kan het in theorie snel gaan. Omdat ivermectine al een bestaand en dus goedgekeurd en veilig bevonden medicijn is, kan het in principe snel worden ingezet om geïnfecteerde patiënten te behandelen. Zover is het echter nog niet, zo blijven Wagstaff en collega’s benadrukken. Eerst moet er in het laboratorium nog meer onderzoek worden gedaan en dan pas kan er na worden gedacht over klinisch onderzoek, waarbij het middel op mensen wordt getest. En om dat alles mogelijk te maken, is heel dringend geld nodig.
Malariamedicijn Op dit moment is er geen effectieve behandeling voor mensen die met SARS-CoV-2 besmet zijn geraakt. Artsen behandelen momenteel dan ook noodgedwongen de symptomen. Onderzoekers wereldwijd werken hard om daar verandering in te brengen. Zij kijken daarbij – vanwege de urgente vraag naar een behandeling – het liefst naar bestaande medicijnen. Zo werd eerder al geopperd dat een bestaand malariamedicijn kon helpen in de behandeling tegen COVID-19. Maar wetenschappelijke studies naar de effectiviteit van het middel leveren tot op heden uiteenlopende resultaten op. Er is tot op heden dus geen hard bewijs dat dit geneesmiddel het verschil kan maken.
Dat een effectieve behandeling tegen COVID-19 hard nodig is, staat buiten kijf. Wereldwijd is het virus inmiddels bij meer dan 1,2 miljoen mensen officieel vastgesteld. En bijna 70.000 mensen zijn aan de gevolgen van het virus overleden. Lang leek China – het land waarin het virus voor het eerst opdook – het hardst te zijn getroffen, maar inmiddels tellen de VS, Spanje, Italië, Duitsland en Frankrijk meer officiële besmettingen dan China. In Nederland zijn meer dan 17.000 besmettingen bevestigd en 1766 mensen zijn aan de gevolgen van het virus overleden. Maatregelen bedoeld om de verspreiding van het virus af te remmen, lijken ondertussen hun vruchten af te werpen. Onduidelijk is nog hoelang die maatregelen – of in ieder geval een deel ervan – in stand moeten worden gehouden om het virus echt onder controle te houden. Deskundigen sluiten niet uit dat onze samenleving er zeker nog 12 tot 18 maanden anders uit zal zien dan in pre-COVID-19-tijden.
Cryptic Snake-Like Structure in Peru Spotted by Google Earth User
Cryptic Snake-Like Structure in Peru Spotted by Google Earth User
Southern Peru is famous for UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site the Nazca Lines, which represent a group of giant and ancient geoglyphs. However, something even more mysterious and unexplainable have now been spotted close to the site by one curious Google Earth user.
Some cryptic shapes and patterns were spotted by Google Earth enthusiast 30-40 kilometres North East from the famous Nazca Lines in Peru. The user published a video of his mysterious discovery on YouTube, and the image immediately attracted thousands of views in just several days, with observers rushing to express their astonishment with the finding.
The patterns spotted by the Google Earth admirer included strange “football pitch”-sized circles in a deserted mountain ridge nearby Uchumarca, as well as a cryptic snake-like structure, which he described as a “serpent”. He also noted in the video that it was difficult to understand whether the pattern was occurring naturally or was a human-designed structure.
“The ‘serpent’ just really jumped right out at me”, the Google Earth user wrote on YouTube after his video was published. “It's either a very large natural formation or a manmade artificial site like the serpent mound in Ohio. Other than that - I got nothin'. Very interesting”.
“Very cool find my friend. Definitely looks like a petrified serpant to me”, one of the video viewers commented on the finding.
“Yo that snake was so eye popping, it def looks man made but the scale of it, im amazed by it”, another YouTuber added.
Despite a flow of comments and speculations about what could have caused such exotic shapes in one of the highest elevations in the area, the truth behind the origin of giant patterns still remains a mystery.
The Nazca Lines, which lie close to the analysed site, are a group of geoglyphs which are believed to be created around 2000 years ago. They are located in southern Peru and are designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
What The Heck Is This Long, Hypnotic Stringy Thing Floating in The Ocean?
What The Heck Is This Long, Hypnotic Stringy Thing Floating in The Ocean?
TESSA KOUMOUNDOUROS
New footage has revealed a trailing ribbon of conjoined tentacled clones sweeping the ocean off the coast of Australia. Known in some regions as the "long stringy stingy thingy", siphonophores blur the line between organ and organism. They somehow manage to be both at once.
"The whole thing looks like one animal, but it's many thousands of individuals which form an entity on a higher level," marine biologist Stefan Siebert of Brown University told Wired.
The Ningaloo Canyons Expedition, a team of international researchers from institutes including Western Australia Museum, Schmidt Ocean Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, recently came across one of these spectacular deep sea aliens.
They were exploring a little-studied but biologically rich part of the ocean off the coast of Western Australia, using ROVs and sonar. The creature was spied on the way back up:
"Everyone was blown away when it came into view," biologists Nerida Wilson and Lisa Kirkendale from the Western Australian Museum told ScienceAlert. "There was a lot of excitement. People came pouring into the control room from all over the ship. Siphonophores are commonly seen but this one was both large and unusual-looking.
"Although the ROV pilots made an estimate of its length, it has yet to be formally measured. However, it does appear to be longer than any other animal on the planet," they added.
The outer ring was estimated to be around 47 metres long (154 feet). The whole giant thing is composed of tiny individuals called zooids. They clone themselves thousands of times into one of several flavours - some with stinging tentacles and even red lures to attract food, others specialised for reproduction or movement. Each individual acts like an organ in the larger siphonophore body.
Biologist Rebecca Helm from the University of North Carolina Asheville describes the feeding clones on Twitter:
Some of the clones specialize in catching prey. Their slender bodies hang with a single long tentacle dangling like a hook-studded fishing line. Like the frilled tentacles of another siphonophore pictured below... (pic: @SchmidtOceanhttps://bit.ly/2JLKWmS)
The siphonophore in the video "appears to have assumed a planar feeding posture, which makes it look a bit like a spiral UFO," Wilson and Kirkendale explain.
In a colony this massive, there would have to be at least millions of these conjoined organ-individuals working together, to sift the pelagial depths for food. They share their spoils with each other by passing nutrients along a stem they're all connected to - a vertical branch which also serves as a passageway for nerve signals.
Helm believes there are many millions of these siphonophores floating out there in the ocean, along with other strange creatures they interact with - such as this sea slug (Cephalopyge trematoides) that finds them tasty:
The sea slugs, called Cephalopyge, grab onto siphonophore clones using their tiny snail food and slowly eat them while hanging off the colony like an ornament! Pic by: https://lindaiphotography.com/black-water-mollusks/ …
Another memeber of the entourage is this bizarre barreleye fish (Macropinna microstoma). It has a fluid-filled head shield thought to allow them to sneak into stinging tentacled zooids and steal their food.
It's a soothing glimpse of the strange ocean depths that siphonophores call home. And you can check out even more amazing weirdos from the Ningaloo Canyons in the video below.
With so much incredible life hidden away in our planet's oceans, who even needs aliens?
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Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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