• Fragments of Planet Theia appear buried deep beneath Africa and the Pacific
• New evidence has emerged from deep within the moon via NASA's GRAIL craft
• READ MORE: Video spots 'space station' UFOs flying on dark side of the Moon

By MATTHEW PHELAN SENIOR SCIENCE REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

A new study of metal ore deep inside the moon is offering fresh evidence that Earth's natural satellite was formed by an ancient planet crashing into Earth long ago.

This long-theorized interplanetary collision — which scientists believe occurred some 4.5 billion years ago — saw a Mars-sized planet named 'Theia' slice itself into hot lava fragments upon impact with the Earth.

While some of Theia's planetary remains appear to be buried as dense and massive 'blobs' deep underneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean's tectonic plates, scientists said evidence for where the rest of Theia went after this crash had remained elusive.

But now, new data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has found large telltale deposits of titanium-iron ore deep beneath the moon's surface, suggesting Theia's other remains did, in fact, form Earth's moon.

A new study of the moon is offering fresh evidence that Earth's natural satellite was formed by an ancient planet crashing into Earth. This long-theorized collision, some 4.5 billion years ago, saw a Mars-sized planet named 'Theia' slice into hot lava fragments upon impact with Earth

Under the moon's crust, in the region between the crust and the core known as the mantle, NASA's GRAIL craft detected two dense regions (pictured above) that match the titanium and iron 'ilmenite' deposits that would exist if the 'planet Theia' impact theory proves to be correct

Planetary geophysicist, Adrien Broquet of the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, described NASA's GRAIL findings as nothing short of 'mesmerizing.'

His team's new paper, published this April in Nature Geoscience, focused on 'gravity anomalies' deep under the moon's surface: dense, heavy pockets of matter identified by the GRAIL spacecraft's sensors.

'Analyzing these variations in the moon's gravity field allowed us to peek under the moon's surface and see what lies beneath,' Broquet said.

READ MORE: 

• Earth may have lost 60 percent of its atmosphere in the massive collision that formed the Moon 4.5 billion years ago

New research led by Durham University involved more than 300 supercomputer simulations designed to show the consequence of a huge collision on the planet. 

Under the moon's crust, in the region between the crust and the core known as the mantle, the GRAIL craft detected two dense regions that match the titanium and iron 'ilmenite' deposits that would exist if the Theia impact theory was correct.

After Theia's likely collision with Earth, and after fragments of this lost planet became buried deep below Earth's crust, molten lava pools of heavy titanium and iron on the moon's surface began to sink deeper towards its core, pushing lighter rock up.

'Our moon literally turned itself inside out,' said Broquet's co-author, Jeff Andrews-Hanna, a geophysicist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Computer models by their colleague, Nan Zhang at Peking University in Beijing, offered the original framework for their theory that titanium-rich material would exist deep within the moon as a result of the moon's origins as chunks of planet Theia. 

'When we saw those model predictions,' Andrews-Hanna said, 'it was like a lightbulb went on.' 

'We see the exact same pattern when we look at subtle variations in the moon's gravity field,' he said, 'revealing a network of dense material lurking below the crust.' 

Back on Earth, two similarly dense and unusual regions at the base of our planet's mantle — known as Large Low Velocity Provinces (LLVPs) — have also lent credence to the theory that an interplanetary 'Theia' collision created our moon.

One LLVP is located beneath the African tectonic plate and the other under the Pacific tectonic plate, as measured by seismic equipment similar to that used to detect earthquakes.

Their existence was established when geologists found that seismic waves slowed dramatically at a depth of 1,800 miles (2,900 km) in the two regions, which differed to other parts of the Earth.

Scientists have found new evidence our that the moon was created during a giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia 4.5 billion years ago. This also buried relics of Theia deep within Earth's mantle (depicted following the collision)

After running a series of simulations, Professor Hongping Deng discovered that following the moon-forming impact a significant amount of Theian mantle material – around two percent of Earth's mass – entered the lower mantle (shown in orange in the artist's impression above)

Scientists believe the material in these LLVPs is between 2 and 3.5 percent denser than the Earth's surrounding mantle. 

Last year, Researchers led by the California Institute of Technology came up with the idea that these LLVPs could have evolved from a small amount of Theian material that entered the ancient Earth's lower mantle. 

To back this up, they asked Professor Hongping Deng, of the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, to explore this idea with the help of his pioneering methods in computational fluid dynamics.

After running a series of simulations, Professor Deng discovered that following the moon-forming impact a significant amount of 'Theian' material — around two percent of Earth's mass — would have entered the lower mantle of the ancient planet Earth. 

'Through precise analysis of a wider range of rock samples, combined with more refined giant impact models and Earth evolution models, we can infer the material composition and orbital dynamics of the primordial Earth, "Gaia," and "Theia,"' said Deng's co-author Qian Yuan, a CalTech geophysicist who also worked on this project.

Deng and Yuan's team published their study in the journal Nature late last year.

Broquet said he hopes future NASA missions to the moon, like those scheduled for the Artemis program, will be able to take similar seismic measurements: first-of-their-kind seismic data from the moon to better corroborate the Theia collision theory.

'Future missions, such as with a seismic network, would allow a better investigation of the geometry of these structures,' the researcher said. 

THEIA: AN ANCIENT PROTO-PLANET THAT MAY HAVE MERGED WITH THE YOUNG EARTH TO FORM THE MOOON

About 4.45 billion years ago, 150 million years after the solar system formed, Earth was hit by a Mars-size object called Theia.

The collision created the moon, but debate has raged exactly what happened during this event - and a mystery has persisted on why the moon and Earth are so similar in their composition.

The impact of Theia with Earth was so violent, the resulting debris cloud mixed thoroughly before settling down and forming the moon.

This cloud would have been composed of some Earth material, explaining the similarity between Earth and the moon, and other material.

The colliding body is sometimes called Theia, after the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon.

But one mystery has persisted, revealed by rocks the Apollo astronauts brought back from the moon - why are the moon and Earth so similar in their composition?

Several different theories have emerged over the years to explain the similar fingerprints of Earth and the moon.

Perhaps the impact created a huge cloud of debris that mixed thoroughly with the Earth and then later condensed to form the moon.

Or Theia could have, coincidentally, been isotopically similar to young Earth.

A third possibility is that the moon formed from Earthen materials, rather than from Theia, although this would have been a very unusual type of impact.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

08-05-2024 om 01:03 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE -The UFO Files: Nine never-before-seen videos of craft flying over California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona are revealed by researchers

• Enigma Labs received seven reports about a UFO appearing in different states
• The reports claimed it was a glowing hazy orb that disappeared into thing air 
• READ MORE:  Five UFO abduction cases that could FINALLY be solved

By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Americans in several southwest states have reported seeing a glowing, hazy UFO in the night sky around 9pm local on May 2.

The videos were uploaded to Enigma Labs, which shows observations in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada.

While shot in different locations, witnesses described the UFO as appearing out of nowhere without a sound and disappearing into thin air.

Enigma Lab's UAP advisor Alejandro Rojas said that all the images appeared to be the same, but suggested it could have been a rocket - 'but there were no rockets scheduled at that time.'

'We live by an airport. This was not an airplane, a planet, a star, a comet, or fireball, a drone, a satellite, or a rocket,' a witness in Oroville, California claimed (pictured)

Enigma Labs has built a massive catalog of incidents to weed out what is real or a hoax.

The batch received by DailyMail.com included seven videos and two non-video reports showing similar objects, but Engima said it collected more than 20 witnesses of the same observation.

'We live by an airport. This was not an airplane, a planet, a star, a comet, or fireball, a drone, a satellite, or a rocket,' a witness in Oroville, California claimed.

'We are familiar with them all as we are used to rocket launches and what they look like. This was something that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into thin air.'

Enigma confirmed that, in several videos, the object was seen disappearing.

'It appeared to have a spotlight on both sides of the object,' another witness wrote on the website.

One of the videos captured in Palm Springs clearly shows a bowtie-shaped object, with lights appearing to be directed in opposite directions.

'Some of the reports indicate the object could be coming from either Vandenburg, China Lake, or the Nellis Test Range,' Rojas said.

Enigma Labs has built a massive catalog of incidents to weed out what is real or a hoax. The image was taken in Palms, California

A family in Peoria, Arizona (pictured) said they have remained baffled by what they caught on video: 'We've watched this video a hundred times and can't explain it'

Another sighting issues to Enigma came from Las Vegas, Nevada (pictured)

'If this was military testing, it would explain why it is not listed on public sites such as Spaceflight Now.

'We will continue to look into it, but for now we don't have a clear explanation.'

A family in Peoria, Arizona said they have remained baffled by what they caught on video: 'We've watched this video a hundred times and can't explain it.'

The Arizona witness shot the footage in a neighborhood, showing houses lining the streets.

One star is visible in the clip, located northeast of the UFO.

The witness said they and their son were out walking when they saw a 'bright light that looked like it was glowing in the clouds.'

'There were no clouds, no moon and no planes at this time,' the report continued.

'We noticed the light and my son started filming with his iPhone.

'The light with a large glow around it was far away and completely silent. It wasn't falling from the sky but rather coming west to east towards us. It was glowing and steady.'

The person continued to explain that at the end, the object faded out and disappeared - no sounds were heard during the sighing.

Another sighting issues to Enigma came from Las Vegas, Nevada.

'I was in my backyard in Las Vegas. I am in the northwest part of the city. I was at my neighbor's house down the street,' the description reads.

'She has a great view of the sky. And I saw this really bright light in the distance and it looked so fuzzy like it was behind clouds, but it was a super clear night.

Enigma received five other reports from California (pictured is from Mariposa), all showing the same type of object and another from Utah

'You can see the stars in the video. We could tell it was getting closer because it was getting bigger and then the cloudy/foggy part, which kind of had a similar effect that a rocket would have but no trail, started to change. It looked like a bow tie or snow angel wing shape.

'After about a minute it started to fade until it looked like a star and then no more. It was going about the same speed as the ISS. Maybe a tad faster.'

And a similar sighting was reported more than 500 miles away in Oroville, California.

The same hazy orb appeared in the video, which flew in a circular motion before disappearing.

'We live by an airport. This was not an airplane, a planet, a star, a comet, or fireball, a drone, a satellite, or a rocket,' the person shared.

'We are familiar with them all as we are used to rocket launches and what they look like. This was something that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into thin air.'

Enigma received five other reports from California, all showing the same type of object and another from Utah.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

08-05-2024 om 00:43 geschreven door peter  

The Sun is increasing its intensity on schedule, continuing its approach to solar maximum. In just over a 24-hour period on May 5 and May 6, 2024, the Sun released three X-class solar flares measuring at X1.3, X1.2, and X4.5. Solar flares can impact radio communications and electric power grids here on Earth, and they also pose a risk to spacecraft and astronauts in space.

NASA released an animation that shows the solar flares blasting off the surface of the rotating Sun, below.

Predicting when solar maximum will occur is not easy and the timing of it can only be confirmed after it happens. But NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) currently estimates that solar maximum will likely occur between May 2024 and early 2026. The Sun goes through a cycle of high and low activity approximately every 11 years, driven by the Sun’s magnetic field and indicated by the frequency and intensity of sunspots and other activity on the surface. The SWPC has been working hard to have a better handle on predicting solar cycles and activity. Find out more about that here.  

Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that release powerful bursts of energy and radiation coming from the magnetic energy associated with the sunspots. The more sunspots, the greater potential for flares.

Flares are classified based on a system similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, which divides solar flares according to their strength. X-class is the most intense category of flares, while the smallest ones are A-class, followed by B, C, M and then X. Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C. The number that follows the letter provides more information about its strength. The higher the number, the stronger the flare.

Flares are our solar system’s largest explosive events. They are seen as bright areas on the Sun and can last from minutes to hours. We typically see a solar flare by the photons (or light) it releases, occurring in various wavelengths.

Sometimes, but not always, solar flares can be accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), where giant clouds of particles from the Sun are hurled out into space.  If we’re lucky, these charged particles will provide a stunning show of auroras here on Earth while not impacting power grids or satellites.

Thankfully, missions like the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Solar Orbiter, the Parker Solar Probe are providing amazing views and new details about the Sun, helping astronomers to learn more about the dynamic ball of gas that powers our entire Solar System.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

07-05-2024 om 21:29 geschreven door peter  

The names Brown and Batygin, both Caltech astronomers, come up often in regard to P9. Now, they’ve published another paper along with colleagues Alessandro Morbidelli and David Nesvorny, presenting more evidence supporting P9.

It’s titled “Generation of Low-Inclination, Neptune-Crossing TNOs by Planet Nine.” It’s published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“The solar system’s distant reaches exhibit a wealth of anomalous dynamical structure, hinting at the presence of a yet-undetected, massive trans-Neptunian body—Planet Nine (P9),” the authors write. “Previous analyses have shown how orbital evolution induced by this object can explain the origins of a broad assortment of exotic orbits.”

To dig deeper into the issue, Batygin, Brown, Morbidelli, and Nesvorny examined Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) with more conventional orbits. They carried out N-body simulations of these objects that included everything from the tug of giant planets and the Galactic Tide to passing stars.

29 objects in the Minor Planet Database have well-characterized orbits with a > 100 au, inclinations < 40°, and q (perihelia) < 30 au. Of those 29, 17 have well-quantified orbits. The researchers focused their simulations on these 17.

The researchers’ goal was to analyze these objects’ origins and determine if they could be used as a probe for P9. To accomplish this, they conducted two separate sets of simulations. One set with P9 in the Solar System and one set without.

The simulations began at t=300 million years, meaning 300 million years into the Solar System’s existence. At that time, “intrinsic dynamical evolution in the outer solar system is still in its infancy,” the authors explain, while enough time has passed for the Solar System’s birth cluster of stars to disperse and for the giant planets to have largely concluded their migrations. They ended up with about 2000 objects, or particles, in the simulation with perihelia greater than 30 au and semimajor axes between 100 and 5000 au. This ruled out all Neptune-crossing objects from the simulation’s starting conditions. “Importantly, this choice of initial conditions is inherently linked with the assumed orbit of P9,” they point out.

The figure below shows the evolution of some of the 2,000 objects in the simulations.

These are interesting results, but the researchers point out that they in no way prove the existence of P9. These orbits could be generated by other things like the Galactic Tide. In their next step, they examined their perihelion distribution.

“Accounting for observational biases, our results reveal that the orbital architecture of this group of objects aligns closely with the predictions of the P9-inclusive model,” the authors write. “In stark contrast, the P9-free scenario is statistically rejected at a ~5? confidence level.”

The authors point out that something other than P9 could be causing the orbital unruliness. The star was born in a cluster, and cluster dynamics could’ve set these objects on their unusual orbits before the cluster dispersed. A number of Earth-mass rogue planets could also be responsible, influencing the outer Solar System’s architecture for a few hundred million years before being removed somehow.

However, the authors chose their 17 TNOs for a reason. “Due to their low inclinations and perihelia, these objects experience rapid orbital chaos and have short dynamical lifetimes,” the authors write. That means that whatever is driving these objects into these orbits is ongoing and not a relic from the past.

An important result of this work is that it results in falsifiable predictions. And we may not have to wait long for the results to be tested. “Excitingly, the dynamics described here, along with all other lines of evidence for P9, will soon face a rigorous test with the operational commencement of the VRO (Vera Rubin Observatory),” the authors write.

If P9 is real, what is it? It could be the core of a giant planet ejected during the Solar System’s early days. It could be a rogue planet that drifted through interstellar space until being caught up in our Solar System’s gravitational milieu. Or it could be a planet that formed on a distant orbit, and a passing star shepherded it into its eccentric orbit. If astronomers can confirm P9’s existence, the next question will be, ‘what is it?’

If you’re interested at all in how science operates, the case of P9 is very instructive. Eureka moments are few and far between in modern astronomy. Evidence mounts incrementally, accompanied by discussion and counterpoint. Objections are raised and inconsistencies pointed out, then methods are refined and thinking advances. What began as one over-arching question is broken down into smaller, more easily-answered ones.

But the big question dominates for now and likely will for a while longer: Is there a Planet Nine?

Stay tuned

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

07-05-2024 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

It’s that time again. NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) has announced six concepts that will receive funding and proceed to the second phase of development. This is always an interesting look at the technologies and missions that could come to fruition in the future.

The six chosen ones will each receive $600,000 in funding to pursue the ideas for the next two years. NASA expects each team to use the two years to address both technical and budgetary hurdles for their concepts. When this second phase comes to an end, some of the concepts could advance to the third stage.

“These diverse, science fiction-like concepts represent a fantastic class of Phase II studies,” said John Nelson, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Our NIAC fellows never cease to amaze and inspire, and this class definitely gives NASA a lot to think about in terms of what’s possible in the future.”

Here they are.

1. Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE): Enabling the Next Generation of Large Space Observatories

Telescopes are built around mirrors and lenses, whether they’re ground-based or space-based. The JWST’s large mirror is 6.5 meters in diameter but had to be folded up to fit inside the rocket that launched it and then unfolded in space. That’s a tricky engineering feat. Engineers are building larger and larger ground-based telescopes, too, and they’re equally tricky to design and build. Could FLUTE change this?

FLUTE envisions lenses made of fluid, and the FLUTE team’s concept describes a space telescope with a primary mirror 50 meters (164 ft.) in diameter. Creating glass lenses for a telescope this large isn’t realistic. “Using current technologies, scaling up space telescopes to apertures larger than approximately 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter does not appear economically viable,” the FLUTE website states.

But in the microgravity of space, fluids behave in an intriguing way. Surface tension holds liquids together at their surfaces. We can see this on Earth, where some insects use surface tension to glide along the surfaces of ponds and other bodies of water. Also, on Earth, surface tension holds small drops of water together. But in space, away from Earth’s dominating gravity, surface tension is much more effective. There, water maintains the most energy efficient shape there is: a sphere.

Another force governs water: adhesion. Adhesion causes liquids to cling to surfaces. In the microgravity of space, adhesion can bind liquid to a circular, ring-like frame. Then, due to surface tension, the liquid will naturally adopt a spherical shape. If the liquid can be made to bulge inward rather than outward, and if the liquid is reflective enough, it creates a telescope mirror.

The FLUTE team would like to make optical components in space. The liquid would stay in the liquid state and form an extremely smooth light-collecting surface. As a bonus, FLUTE would also self-repair after any micrometeorite strike.

The FLUTE study is led by Edward Balaban from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The FLUTE team has already done some tests on the ISS and on zero-g flights.

2. Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR): Shielded, Fast Transits for Humans to Mars

It takes too long to get to Mars. It’s a six-month journey each way, plus time spent on the surface. All that time in microgravity, exposure to radiation, and other challenges make the trip very difficult for astronauts. PPR aims to fix that.

PPR isn’t a launch vehicle for escaping Earth’s gravity well. It would be launched on a heavy lift vehicle like SLS and then sent on its way.

PPR was originally derived from the Pulsed Fission Fusion concept. But it’s more affordable, and also smaller and simpler. PPR might generate 100,000 N of thrust with a specific impulse (Isp) of 5,000 seconds. Those are good numbers. PPR could reduce the travel time to Mars to two months.

It has other benefits as well. It could propel larger spacecraft to Mars on trips longer than two months, carrying more cargo and also provide heavier shielding against cosmic rays. “The PPR enables a whole new era in space exploration,” the team writes.

PPR is basically a fusion system ignited by fission. It’s similar to a thermonuclear weapon. But rather than a run-away explosion, the combined energy is directed through a magnetic nozzle to produce thrust.

In phase two, the PPR team intends to optimize the engine design to produce more specific impulse, perform proof-of-concept experiments for major components, and design a shielded ship for human missions to Mars.

This study is led by Brianna Clements with Howe Industries in Scottsdale, Arizona.

3. The Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths (GO-LoW)

One of modern astronomy’s last frontiers is the low-frequency radio sky. Earth’s ionosphere blocks our ground-based telescopes from seeing it. And space-based telescopes can’t see it either. It’s because the wavelengths are so long, in the meter to the kilometre scale. Only extremely massive telescopes could see these waves clearly.

GO-LoW is a potential solution. It’s a space-based array of thousands of identical Small-Sats arranged as an interferometer. It would sit at an Earth-Sun Lagrange point and observe exoplanet and stellar magnetic fields. Exoplanet magnetic fields emit radio waves between 100 kHz and 15 MHz. The GO-LoW team says their interferometer could perform the first survey of exoplanetary magnetic fields within 5 parsecs (16 light years.) Magnetic fields tell scientists a lot about an exoplanet, its evolution, and its processes.

While there’s no doubt that large telescopes like the JWST are powerful and effective, they’re extremely complex and expensive. And if something goes wrong with a critical component, the mission could end.

GO-LoW takes a different approach. By using thousands of individual satellites, the system is more resilient. GO-LoW would have a hybrid constellation. Some of the satellites would be smaller and simpler satellites called “listener nodes” (LN,) while a smaller number of them would be “communication and computation” nodes (CCNs). They would collect data from the LNs, process it, and beam it back to Earth.

The GO-LoW says it would only take a few heavy launches to place an entire 100,000 satellite constellation in space.

The technology for the SmallSats already exists. The challenge the GO-LoW team will address with their phase two funding is developing a system that will harness everything together effectively. “The coordination of all these physical elements, data products, and communications systems is novel and challenging, especially at scale,” they write.

GO-LoW is led by Mary Knapp with MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

4. Radioisotope Thermoradiative Cell Power Generator

It’s sort of like solar power in reverse.

The RTCPG is a power source for spacecraft visiting the outer planets. They promise smaller, more efficient power generation for smaller science and exploration missions that can’t carry a solar power system or nuclear power system. Both those systems are bulky, and solar power is limited the further away from the sun a spacecraft goes.

The thermoradiative cell (TRC) uses radioisotopes to create heat as an MMRTG does. But the TRC uses the heat to generate infrared light which generates electricity. In initial testing, the system generated 4.5 times more power from the same amount of PU-238.

Much of phase two’s work will involve materials. “Metal-semiconductor contacts capable of surviving the required elevated temperatures will be investigated,” the team explains. The team developed a special cryostat testing apparatus in phase one.

“Building on our results from Phase I, we believe there is much more potential to unlock here,” the team writes.

This power generation concept study is from Stephen Polly at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

5. FLOAT: Flexible Levitation on a Track

What if Artemis is enormously successful? How will astronauts move their equipment around the lunar surface efficiently?

FLOAT would provide autonomous transportation for payloads on the Moon. “A durable, long-life robotic transport system will be critical to the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030’s,” the FLOAT team writes.

The heart of FLOAT is a three-layer flexible track that’s unrolled into position without major construction. It consists of three layers: a graphite layer, a flex-circuit layer, and a solar panel layer.

The graphite layer allows robots to use diamagnetic levitation to float over the track. The flex-circuit layer supplies the thrust that moves them, and the thin-film solar panel layer generates electricity for a lunar base when it’s in sunlight.

The system can be used to move regolith around for in-situ resource utilization and to transport payloads around a lunar base, for example, from landing zones to habitats.

“Individual FLOAT robots will be able to transport payloads of varying shape/size (>30 kg/m^2) at useful speeds (>0.5m/s), and a large-scale FLOAT system will be capable of moving up to 100,000s kg of regolith/payload multiple kilometres per day,” the FLOAT team explains.

With their phase two funding, the FLOAT team intends to design, build, and test scaled-down versions of FLOAT robots and track. Then, they’ll test their system in a lunar analog testbed. They’ll also test environmental effects on the system and how they alter the system’s performance and longevity.

Ethan Schaler leads FLOAT at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

6. SCOPE: ScienceCraft for Outer Planet Exploration

Some of the most intriguing planets and moons in the Solar System are well beyond Jupiter. But exploring them is challenging. Extremely long travel times, restrictive mission windows, and large expenses limit our exploration. But SCOPE aims to address these limitations.

Typically, a spacecraft carries a propulsion and power system along with its instruments and communication systems. NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter, for example, carries a chemical rocket engine for propulsion, 50 square meters of solar panels, and 10 science instruments. The solar panels alone weigh 340 kg (750 lbs.) Juno is powerful, produces a wide variety of quality science data, and is expensive.

ScienceCraft takes a different approach. It combines a single science instrument and spacecraft into one monolithic structure. It’s basically a solar sail with a built-in spectrometer. They’re aiming their design at the Neptune-Triton system.

“By printing an ultra-lightweight quantum dot-based spectrometer, developed by the PI Sultana, directly on the solar sail, we create a breakthrough spacecraft architecture allowing an unprecedented parallelism and throughput of data collection and rapid travel across the solar system,” the ScienceCraft team writes.

Instead of merely providing the propulsion, the sail doubles as the spacecraft’s science instrument. The small mass means that ScienceCraft could be carried into orbit as a secondary payload. The team says they’ll use phase two to identify and develop key technologies for the spacecraft and to further mature the mission concept. They say that because of the low cost and simplicity, they could be ready by 2045.

“By leveraging these benefits, we propose a mission concept to Triton, a unique planetary body in our solar system, within the short window that closes around 2045 to answer compelling science questions about Triton’s atmosphere, ionosphere, plumes and internal structure,” the ScienceCraft team explains.

ScienceCraft is led by NASA’s Mahmooda Sultana at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

07-05-2024 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

Our Alien Overlords: How Humanity Secretly Serves the Tall Whites

In the annals of extraterrestrial lore, few accounts captivate the imagination quite like the saga of Charles Hall and the enigmatic Tall Whites. Hall’s narrative, chronicled in his series of books titled “Millennial Hospitality,” offers a tantalizing glimpse into a clandestine relationship between humans and an otherworldly species known as the Tall Whites. From covert agreements to clandestine operations, the story unveils a complex tapestry of interactions that raise profound questions about the nature of our reality and our place within the cosmos.

The Tall Whites: Alien Enigmas Among Us

According to Hall, the Tall Whites first made contact with the United States government in the early 1950s, purportedly striking a deal that allowed them to establish facilities on Earth in exchange for advanced technology. Described as tall, fair-skinned beings with elongated features, the Tall Whites possess a sophisticated understanding of science and technology far beyond our own. Their presence on Earth, shrouded in secrecy, has fueled speculation and intrigue for decades.

Covert Collaborations: The Shadowy Alliance

Central to Hall’s account is the clandestine collaboration between the United States government and the Tall Whites. Allegedly, the US government agreed to allow the Tall Whites to conduct their operations on Earth with minimal interference in exchange for access to their advanced technology. This covert alliance, hidden from public view, raises profound questions about the extent of our government’s involvement with extraterrestrial entities and the implications for humanity at large.

Unveiling Secret Facilities: Evidence Underground

One of the most compelling aspects of Hall’s narrative is his description of secret facilities where the Tall Whites conduct their operations. Through meticulous research and analysis, investigators have uncovered evidence of underground bases and covert installations that align with Hall’s accounts. Satellite imagery and historical records suggest the existence of hidden facilities linked to the Tall Whites, providing tantalizing clues about the scope of their presence on Earth.

The Human Experiment: Studying Humanity

Beyond their technological prowess, the Tall Whites are said to possess a profound interest in humanity itself. According to Hall, he became the subject of their study during his tenure at Nellis Air Force Base, where he interacted closely with members of the extraterrestrial species. Through these interactions, the Tall Whites sought to understand human behavior and psychology, offering insights into their own enigmatic culture and society.

The Veil of Secrecy: Unraveling the Truth

While Hall’s accounts offer a compelling narrative of human-alien interaction, skepticism abounds regarding the veracity of his claims. Critics point to the lack of concrete evidence to substantiate his story, raising doubts about the existence of the Tall Whites and their alleged collaboration with the US government. Despite these challenges, the enduring mystery surrounding the Tall Whites continues to captivate the imagination of UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike.

VIDEO:

• The Why Files – Our Alien Overlords | How We Secretly Serve The Tall Whites

• https://youtu.be/EieUJvKrjo4

The saga of Charles Hall and the Tall Whites offers a fascinating glimpse into the shadowy world of extraterrestrial contact and covert collaboration. As humanity grapples with the mysteries of the cosmos, the story serves as a reminder of the profound questions that lie beyond the confines of our understanding. Whether fact or fiction, the tale of our alien overlords invites us to contemplate our place in the universe and the enigmatic beings that may share it with us.

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

07-05-2024 om 20:34 geschreven door peter  

In May 1950, two down-to-Earth Oregon farmers took a couple of photos that were out-of-this world. They have never been successfully debunked.

 Bryce Zabel

After becoming a public sensation in June 1947 with the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting, flying saucers were the talk of America. There were numerous reports being made, many witnesses, and unconfirmed photos. However, there were no clearly unstaged photos of actual craft that made the grade with their uncontested quality.

In 1950, When the Nation Wanted Proof, It Flew Over a Farm in Oregon

On May 11, 1950, Paul and Evelyn Trent saw history gliding over their farm in the form of a single 100-foot flying saucer, and snapped two famous pictures of it from different angles, thirty seconds apart. The story blew wide open a month and a half later.

On June 26, 1950, Life magazine printed what everyone then agreed were two of the best flying saucer photos ever taken. They were not images of blurry lights in the sky or birds or weather balloons. They were real, structural, and metallic. The only valid question was whether they were authentic mysteries or just hoaxes.

Flying Saucer Moment of Zen

Do these photos look like the side mirror to a 1947 pick-up truck suspended by a thread, or a garbage can lid tossed into the air, two theories floated by skeptics?

The best place to start in an article about photo analysis of something potentially extraordinary is to take a moment to look at the full size scan of the photos. Take a good look at them on the best screen you have. The full story’s on the other side…

Trent Farm | Sheridan, Oregon | May 11, 1950 | Public Domain

In the intervening years, these two photos the Trents exposed in half-a-minute flurry have been studied by the Air Force, the CIA’s Condon Report, and multiple researchers. They’ve appeared in articles thousands of times. The Trents, by the way, never made any money for any of those uses.

People are still split on the real-versus-hoax divide, but the edge over time goes to acceptance that they were taken unstaged.

They Weren’t Looking for a Flying Saucer

Located just off the Salmon River Highway, Paul and Evelyn Trent worked their small farm in Sheridan, Oregon in the years just after the Second World War. It was a timber and farming community just a short drive from Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley. It was a hard life, but they were hard-working people.

Sheridan is about ten miles away from the Yamhill County seat of McMinnville that’s always listed as the location where the photographs were taken. These days, McMinnville throws an annual UFO Festival with a parade to keep that fiction alive.

To put the timeframe into perspective: WWII ends in 1945, Kenneth Arnold sees flying saucers up in Washington State in June 1947, a few weeks later there’s the Roswell, New Mexico crash, and three years later, the Trents take their pictures. Things were hopping, ufologically speaking.

{ https://medium.com/ }

07-05-2024 om 14:53 geschreven door peter  

There’s also the Swedish Negative Ions on Lunar Surface (NILS), an instrument that will detect and measure negative ions reflected by the lunar surface. Lastly, there’s the Pakistani ICUBE-Q CubeSat developed by the Institute of Space Technology (IST) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), which will take images of the lunar surface using two optical cameras and measure the Moon’s magnetic field. The data these instruments provide will reveal new information about the lunar environment that will inform plans for long-duration missions on the surface.

By 2026, the Chang’e-6 mission will be joined by Chang’e-7, including an orbiter, lander, rover, and a mini-hopping probe. The data provided by the program will assist China’s plans to land taikonauts around the lunar south pole by 2030, followed by the completion of the ILRS by 2035.

Further Reading: 

• CGTN

{ https://www.universetoday.com }

06-05-2024 om 22:24 geschreven door peter  

De LaGuardia-cilinder en de gelijkenis ervan met het Cecconi-incident in 1979 boven Italië

Door Bob Spearing, MUFON-directeur internationale onderzoeken

Op 25 maart 2024 verscheen er een verhaal in de New York Post over een vliegtuigpassagier genaamd Michelle Reyes die per ongeluk een zwart cilindervormig object met een mogelijke witte koepel boven New York City filmde terwijl ze haar vliegtuig in de tegenovergestelde richting passeerde. Uiteraard meldde ze het incident onmiddellijk aan de FAA. Ze was bang dat het een gevaar voor de veiligheid was. Ze ontving op dit moment geen antwoord van de FAA. Dit is niet verrassend!

Tom Wertman, directeur van de staat Ohio bij MUFON en lid van het fotoanalyseteam van het MUTUAL UFO Network, die zelden met stomheid geslagen is, kon het cilindervormige voertuig niet identificeren. Vogel is uitgesloten, wat vaak het geval is bij een snel wazige flybay op de voorgrond van een cameralens. Bovendien bevond het vliegtuig zich op een vrij grote hoogte voor vogels, waardoor de soort vogel die het zou kunnen zijn ernstig werd beperkt.

CNN en verschillende nieuwsorganisaties hadden hun vaste opmerkingen, zoals Ben Hansen, die suggereerden dat het abnormaal was. In dit geval zou MUFON het ermee eens zijn dat dit zeker geen vogel is, maar een technologisch object. Ballon is uitgesloten. De snelheid van het object kan niet worden bepaald, aangezien het vliegtuig enkele honderden kilometers per uur vloog en het object zich in slechts één of twee frames in de tegenovergestelde richting bevond.

MUFON pakte de waarneming echter anders aan. We hebben gezocht naar mogelijk correlerende gevallen en we hebben één zeer significant geval gevonden dat neigt naar een afwijkend object! Wij bij MUFON blinken uit in deze manier van correlaties met andere historische casussen.

Er is een tweede rapport van een soortgelijke zwarte cilinder met een melkwitte koepel die in 1979 in Italië plaatsvond. Het volledige rapport staat hieronder, maar ter vergelijking voor de lezer: we hebben ook een tekening uit de Cecconi-zaak uit 1979 en die is duidelijk te zien parallel met de La Guardia-foto van 25 maart 2024. Het bijgevoegde artikel hieronder toont een foto van het object uit 1979 gefotografeerd door piloot Cecconi! Ironisch genoeg zijn er door de piloot 80 foto's gemaakt, maar slechts één is openbaar. Waarom?

Als je naar de foto van Michele Reyes kijkt en deze vergelijkt met de opvatting van de kunstenaar over het Cecconi oObject uit 1979, valt niet te ontkennen dat we 45 jaar later naar hetzelfde object of een object met een vergelijkbare constructie kijken.

Van website:

• https://www.xaluannews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3179667#google_vignette

Op 18 juni 1979 keerde de toenmalige pilootmaarschalk Giancarlo Cecconi (geboren in 1933, in Florence) terug van een fotografisch onderzoek uitgevoerd op de Ligurische Apennijnen.

The UFO with the airfield below

Toont deze foto een echte UFO

Hij vloog over het gebied tussen Rovigo en de Colli di Abano Terme, toen hij via de radio vanuit de verkeerstoren van de militaire luchthaven van S. Angelo di Treviso, waar hij gestationeerd was, de uitnodiging ontving om verbinding te maken met de vliegbasis van Istrië ( TV), waarvan de radar een ongeïdentificeerd vliegend object had gesignaleerd, ongeveer op de verticale lijn van Quinto di Treviso en dus in de directe omgeving van de bovengenoemde luchthaven.

De heer Cecconi, die behoorde tot de 14 'Group of the 2' Fighter Bomber Reconnaissance Wing van de Italiaanse luchtmacht, bevond zich aan boord van een G 91/R, uitgerust met vier VINTEN-camera's, zo geplaatst: twee aan de zijkanten van de voorkant van de cockpit, één in de voorste positie en de vierde in de buikpositie. Hiermee had hij in feite de fotografische onderzoeken uitgevoerd waarvoor hij de leiding had gehad. Vervolgens sprak hij met het personeel van het grondcontroleorgaan af om het door de radar gedetecteerde object te gaan identificeren.

Op het moment van de waarneming kwam het bij hem op dat het een zonne-UFO zou kunnen zijn; Toen besefte hij dat het iets anders was. Het was een prachtige dag en hij besefte al snel dat die “zwarte vlek” heel andere kenmerken had.

Het leek hem in de vorm van een matzwarte ‘brandstoftank’ en op het enigszins afgeplatte bovenste gedeelte zag hij een stroomlijnkap met twee ‘snorren’; dit lag ten grondslag aan iets helders en wits dat, naar zijn mening, een soort melkwitte “koepel” was. De kenmerken van het oppervlak lieten de breking van licht niet toe. Het object bleek een lengte te hebben van ongeveer 6-8 meter en een breedte van ongeveer 3 meter.

Ten tijde van de ontmoeting met het ongewone ‘vliegtuig’ bevond dit zich verticaal op de militaire luchthaven van Treviso op een hoogte van ongeveer 1300 meter.

Nadat hij contact had gemaakt met de UFO, maakte hij een eerste serie foto’s met de camera aan de voorkant en nadat hij in zeer korte tijd de “strop” had gemaakt (manoeuvre die bestaat uit het omkeren van de koers), merkte hij op dat het object bevond zich nog steeds in dezelfde positie, zodat hij deze keer nog een serie foto's kon maken met de camera's aan de zijkant.

Hij begreep dat het iets was met een zekere stijfheid en leidde dit af uit het feit dat, toen het vliegtuig hem naderde met een snelheid van ongeveer 300 knopen (450-500 km / u), het object “… geen last had van enige turbulentie… ”. De piloot had bij andere gelegenheden de gelegenheid gehad om UFO Solar te zien. Ze voelden echter de turbulentie veroorzaakt door de nabijgelegen passage van het vliegtuig en hun beweging kon zelfs een kwartier duren; dit object daarentegen leek statisch te blijven en trilde niet, ook al was de heer Cecconi het op een afstand van ongeveer honderd meter gepasseerd.

Tijdens de waarneming, die ongeveer vijf minuten duurde, kon de heer Cecconi meer dan tachtig foto's maken waarop het object altijd in dezelfde frontale positie, of in een lichte hoek, te zien was; in feite was dit vanaf de zijkant nooit helemaal zichtbaar, het was alsof het ‘ding’ het vliegtuig wilde ‘richten’.
Volgens de getuige leek hij zich defensief op te stellen. De zijkant werd nooit volledig belicht en het was hem nooit gelukt hem volledig vanaf de zijkant te fotograferen; hiervoor was hij onder de indruk.

Terwijl de piloot een bocht aan het voltooien was, zei het radarcentrum van Istrana tegen hem: “we zijn het kwijt! Het staat niet meer op het scherm!”. Het was plotseling verdwenen tussen de treffers op de radar door.

Ook vanuit de verkeerstoren van de luchthaven S. Angelo meldden ze dat het object binnen enkele ogenblikken op onverklaarbare wijze uit het zicht was verdwenen. Hij keek waar de UFO had moeten zijn, maar kon hem niet meer zien.

Nadat het vliegtuig was teruggekeerd naar de basis in Treviso, hebben de specialisten, zoals gebruikelijk, de filmcontainers verwijderd, in ontvangst genomen en naar het laboratorium van de afdeling Ontwikkeling en Drukken gebracht.

Zodra de foto's ontwikkeld waren, controleerde hij ze en vroeg een vriend (fotolabmedewerker) om een ​​kopie.

Jaren gingen voorbij en nadat de heer Cecconi met pensioen ging, vroegen ufologen het Ministerie van Defensie om de documentatie over deze zaak vrij te geven, en hen werd verteld dat: “het object in kwestie, onmiddellijk geïdentificeerd, met scherp werd gefotografeerd en ondubbelzinnig werd geïdentificeerd door de persoonlijke fototolk in een cilindrische ballon, gemaakt met zwarte plastic zakken.”.

Het antwoord liet de ufologen verbijsterd achter, vooral gezien de ervaring en voorbereiding van de heer Cecconi, die prat ging op een curriculum als weinig anderen en een van de bekendste en meest gewaardeerde piloten was op het gebied van ernst en competentie.

{ https://mufon.com/ }

06-05-2024 om 18:53 geschreven door peter  

Authorities Raid UFO Museum, Seize Supposed Alien Mummy’s Foot And Other Artifacts

A mysterious “mummy’s foot” supposedly belonging to an alien was recently discovered and seized by authorities during a raid on a UFO museum.

The raid of the UFO museum in Argentina coincides with journalist and UFOlogist Jaime Maussan’s ongoing claims that he discovered two three-fingered “non-human alien corpses” in the city of Cusco, Peru.

Maussan’s “1,000-year-old aliens” were allegedly found in Peruvian diatom (algae) mines and, according to Maussan, who has on multiple occasions over the past few months presented sets of “alien corpses” to Congress in Mexico and claiming that 30% of the corpses’ DNA is “not from any known species.”

Because of his presentations in Mexico, Maussan became the subject of a criminal investigation by Peruvian officials.

In a similar investigation, Interpol agents and the Department of the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of the Federal Police to raid the Museo del Ovni (“UFO Museum” in English) in the locale of Victoria in Argentina.

Around 60 exhibits were seized in the raid, including the supposed foot of an alien mummy.

According to a local radio station, “After fieldwork, the feds detected a post on a YouTube channel, which documented that there was a piece similar to the one reported in the museum in question, which would be protected by the National Law on the Protection of the Archaeological and Paleontological Heritage.”

Silvia Perez Simondini, who runs the museum, has claimed that, while the alien mummy’s foot was in fact discovered in Lima, Peru, after several failed attempts to donate the artifact to various institutions, including the embassy and museums of natural science, he decided to exhibit it in his UFO museum where it has been on display for many years.

Prior to the raid on Simondini’s UFO museum, officials from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture interrupted a press conference hosted by ufologist Jaime Maussan where the subject was a supposed three-fingered alien mummy with a “new type of DNA.” Officials in that case, however, were unable to confiscate the alien mummy as it was not brought to the event.

{ https://brobible.com/ }

06-05-2024 om 18:27 geschreven door peter  

Here are the 7 best places to search for life in the solar system

by Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today

If humanity is ever going to find life on another planet in the solar system, it's probably best to know where to look. Plenty of scientists have spent many, many hours pondering precisely that question, and plenty have come up with justifications for backing a particular place in the solar system as the most likely to hold the potential for harboring life as we know it. Thanks to a team led by Dimitra Atri of NYU Abu Dhabi, we now have a methodology by which to rank them.

The methodology, published in a recent preprint paper on arXiv, is focused on a new variable—the Microbial Habitability Index (MHI). MHI is intended to measure how habitable a specific environment is for the various types of extremophiles found in extreme places here on Earth.

As with many great engineering challenges, the authors broke down the process of developing an effective MHI into a series of steps. First, they defined a series of six environmental variables that can affect the habitability of a particular environment for life. They then defined six types of environments that are generally thought to exist on many potentially habitable worlds. They then picked seven of those habitable worlds and collected all the data they could on the environmental factors for each type of environment on each potentially habitable world.

With that data, they compared the values found in those environments to the values that extremophiles can live in. The results aren't particularly surprising to anyone interested in solar system astrobiology, but quantifiable data back them up. It seems Europa, Mars, and Enceladus are the most likely candidates to find bacterial life.

To get to this conclusion required a lot of data collection and quantification, though. First, the team had to define what environmental factors were the most important for the potential habitability of life. They settled on six: temperature, pressure, UV radiation, Ionizing radiation, pH, and salinity. Life can only survive in a narrow band of these values, and they serve as a reasonable basis for starting to think about what environmental features are necessary to support life.

Luckily, scientists have also collected data on life forms that thrive in the extremes of each of those six factors. From Serpentinomonas sp. B1 that can survive in pHs as high as 12.5 to Thermococcus piezophilus CDGS that can withstand pressures of up to 125 MPa, Earth's extremophiles give a good indication of what life might be able to contend with on other planets. Utilizing the highs and lows of the factors they selected, the scientists were able to determine the bounds an environment would have to conform to support life as we know it.

Those environments were the next things the scientists turned their attention to. They came up with a list of six potentially biologically interesting environments that were found to harbor life on Earth and then defined the ranges of the six environmental factors in each of those environments on Earth. Included in the list were: Icy Poles, Surface Continent, Subsurface Continent, Subsurface Ices, Ambient Ocean, Deep Ocean Floor, and Hydrothermal Vents. Each of those environments on Earth harbors life in some form, so the authors posit they could do so on some other world as well.

To find the most habitable places in the solar system, the researchers went down the list of worlds in the solar system. They eliminated most based on an outlier in one or more of the environmental factors they had defined as essential to biological life. At the end of their eliminations, though, they were left with seven potentially habitable worlds: Mars, Europa, Enceladus, Titan, Ganymede, Callisto, and (somewhat surprisingly) Pluto.

After getting all the selections out of the way, the authors got to the data collection phase. They collected data as much data as they could find about every time of environment that had been found on each of the worlds. Not every world is blessed with each of those environments, though. For example, Mars has no hydrothermal vents that we know of. However, that doesn't mean that other environments on the Red Planet wouldn't make a good candidate for astrobiology.

After collecting what data they could, they compared that data to the range defined by whether a microbe could withstand the ranges of environmental factors they would be subjected to at a given environment and, in so doing, came up with the MHI. The best way to summarize the outcome of their calculations is through a table showing the number of environmental factors that fall within the habitable range of extremophiles for each of the six environments selected as part of the study. The table is reproduced below.

The denominator in each of the entries signifies how many of the environmental factors the researchers could find data on. If the number is less than six, the researchers could not find data on one or more of the factors. The numerator in each fraction is the number of those environmental factors that lie within the bounds of environmental habitability for each. So, for example, the 1/4 value in the Subsurface Ice row of the Titan column means that there were data points available for four of the six environmental factors and that one of those environmental factors laid within the bounds set by the minimum and maximum of the livable conditions of extremophiles.

The chart clearly indicates that the most likely place that life could exist in the solar system is Enceladeus' hydrothermal vent system, which scores a five out of five on potential environmental factors—it is missing data on ionizing radioactivity. But the icy moon isn't alone at the top of the potentially habitable list. Mars and Europa both harbor environments that could be habitable to life, though the other candidates on the list seem less hospitable.

Ultimately there are a series of missions that will be focused on finding any microbial life that might exist at many of these locations, including Europa Clipper and the Mars Sample Return mission. This paper provides yet another reason why Enceladus should have its own mission in the works. But for now, having the framework that lets researchers and engineers focus their efforts on the most likely places to find one of the most sought-after discoveries in human history will help focus their efforts. Maybe something will come of it in the long run.

More information: 

• Dimitra Atri et al, Assessment of Microbial Habitability Across Solar System Targets. arXiv:2203.03171v2 [astro-ph.EP], doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2203.03171

{ https://phys.org/space-news/ }

06-05-2024 om 18:12 geschreven door peter  

Why Venus May Be Our Best Bet For Finding Life In the Solar System

Venus and Earth once looked a lot alike. Could our planet’s forgotten early twin also contain life?

BY KIONA SMITH

 

One of the weirdest places in our Solar System may actually be a great place to search for alien life: the skies of Venus.

We don’t have evidence of life — or even indisputable evidence that life could survive — in any world but the one we currently live in. However, recent years have raised the tantalizing prospect that our Solar System, in which we thought we were alone, may be dotted with diverse, and deeply weird, homes for life: In dark water beneath the ice of Europa and Enceladus, in briny underground refugia on Mars, and even drifting in the acidic clouds of Venus.

“If it had liquid water in the past, and if we can really confirm that, then yes – Venus would likely be the planet I would place my bet on,” University of Wisconsin-Madison planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye tells Inverse.

Limaye and his colleagues, along with several other teams of researchers, presented their work in a recent collection of papers in the journal Astrobiology.

BETTING ON VENUS

In a series of recent papers, several teams of planetary scientists and astrobiologists argue that although the surface of Venus is undeniably an uninhabitable hellscape — you can’t do organic chemistry in a place that’s hot enough to melt lead — the sulfuric acid clouds might actually contain just enough water and other key chemicals for microbes to make a living.

What we know about Venus suggests that there’s something going on in our evil twin planet’s atmosphere that we don’t understand yet, whether it’s alien life or unusual chemical reactions that we’ve never seen anywhere else is still hotly debated.

A few years ago, a team of scientists detected a chemical called phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere. Here on Earth, the chemical reactions that create phosphine only ever happen inside living things, so some astrobiologists immediately got very excited about its presence on Venus. But in a recent paper, chemist Klaudia Mráziková of the Czech Academy of Sciences and her colleagues proposed a way that chemical reactions in the atmosphere could make phosphine without any help from life — and they’re not the first, although co-author Paul Rimmer of Cambridge University tells Inverse that he thinks their scenario is the “best hypothetical abiotic source for phosphine” so far.

Meanwhile, high in Venus’s atmosphere, something is absorbing huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Over the last century, planetary scientists have suggested several chemical compounds, in different combinations, that could be absorbing the UV light, but no explanation quite fits, at least so far. And in a weirdly compelling coincidence, the shape of whatever’s absorbing the light, and the way it changes with the Venusian seasons, bears a striking resemblance to algal blooms in Earth’s oceans. Like the phosphine, it could be alien microbes busily doing photosynthesis, or it could be fascinating undiscovered chemistry.

And then there are the Mode 3 particles. These weirdly shaped particles in the lower cloud layers of Venus are less than a ten-thousandth of an inch wide, but that’s surprisingly large for particles floating in clouds. The Pioneer Venus mission discovered them in early 1971, when one of its instruments measured the tiny shadows of particles passing by. They’re not tiny spheres, but amorphous blobs, and some scientists wonder whether they might be cells living in the droplets of liquid that make up the clouds.

As incredible a discovery as that would be, the Mode 3 particles could also be an optical illusion; the result of overlapping shadows of round droplets, or a problem with the Pioneer Venus instrument’s calibration. They could also be grains of dust blown aloft from the dead surface of Venus, or something else entirely.

All of these mysteries could be clues pointing to alien life in the Venusian clouds – or they could be a stack of coincidences, which future astrobiologists will one day use as a cautionary tale. We just don’t know yet.

“There are far more unanswered questions about Venus than any other planet,” says Limaye.

A TALE OF TWO PLANETS

Venus is both the most and the least Earth-like planet we know of. It’s about the same size as our home world, and it’s also a rocky world, shrouded by an atmosphere, in the habitable zone of our Sun. But Venus is also a hellworld that rotates backwards, where temperatures on the ground could melt lead and the clouds rain sulfuric acid. But some scientists argue high above the deadly heat and crushing pressure of the surface, the acidic clouds actually aren’t so bad, that is if you’re a microbe evolved to like that sort of thing.

“Venus is often overlooked as a target for astrobiology,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrobiologist Janusz Petkowski tells Inverse. “This is an unfair assessment.” Petkowski and his colleagues recently published a paper in the journal Astrobiology presenting a case for a habitable niche in Venus’s clouds.

Once upon a time (almost 4 billion years ago, that is), the young planets Venus and Earth probably looked a lot alike. The fledgling Venus may even have had seas of liquid water, much like the environments where life probably emerged from chemistry on Earth. Researchers like Petkowski and Limaye argue that if Venus and Earth were similar during their youth, there’s no reason life couldn’t have emerged on Venus just like it did on Earth (it’s also plausible that the same thing was happening on Mars at around the same time).

But, as siblings sometimes do, the two planets took very different paths in their adolescent years. For various reasons, Venus’s atmosphere acted like a greenhouse, holding in heat until the seas boiled away and the clouds turned noxious and acidic. But that process took at least a hundred million years, and Petkowski, Limaye, and others are betting that some Venusian life may have evolved quickly enough to survive as the seas evaporated and the clouds got more and more acidic. If they’re right, then colonies of microbes could still be drifting in the upper layers of Venus’s atmosphere, where temperatures are more hospitable, clinging to droplets of fluid or tiny grains of dust that make up the clouds.

LIFE, UH, FINDS A WAY

“No life on Earth could actually survive in Venus’s clouds,” says Petkowski.” “But if we define habitability as an environment that allows any kind of organic chemistry to survive – maybe even life with different chemical composition and different biochemical solutions – then Venus’s clouds could be potentially habitable.”

The cloud layers of Venus’s upper atmosphere stay between freezing and boiling — exactly the right temperature range for life — but they’re made mostly of droplets of sulfuric acid, mingled with a few microscopically tiny droplets of water. No environment on Earth is remotely similar. But seeing how the scrappiest, stubbornest Earth life has adapted to milder versions of these challenges, astrobiologists can learn how life might adapt to the harsh conditions of Venus.

Here on Earth, for example, some microbes that live in acidic hot springs have found ways to neutralize the acid around them. Venus’s clouds are much more acidic than even the most caustic hot springs here on Earth, but given millions of years to adapt, it’s possible that microbes could keep pace with their changing environment. Petkowski and his colleagues suggest that multi-layered cell walls or acid-resistant membranes could also help microbes keep the acid out and the water in.

For now, that’s all speculation, but in recent lab experiments, Worcester Polytechnic Institute chemist Maxwell Seager and his colleagues found that some amino acids (chemical compounds that form the building blocks for proteins) are completely fine hanging out in a mixture of 98 percent sulfuric acid and 2 percent water. In previous experiments, the same team learned that nucleic acids (the molecules that store the genetic code) are also undaunted by super-acidic conditions.

That could be good news for life, but surviving the acid clouds is just one part of the challenge. Life — at least life as we know it — needs water to survive, and if there’s water in Venus’s clouds, it exists in the form of microscopic droplets, and even those are probably few and far between. In the driest places on Earth — carefully climate-controlled libraries — some resourceful microbes use nearby salt to pull just a few molecules of water out of the air. It’s not hard to imagine microbes on Venus doing something similar while clinging to a droplet of liquid in a cloud.

But could microbes spend their whole lives in the air? Some microbes here on Earth spend part of their life cycle in the clouds, but on Venus, sinking too deep into the haze below means a boiling death. Petkowski and colleagues say that resourceful microbes could lock themselves into armored balls called spores when their environments get too hot; inside the spore, a dormant microbe could wait until wind currents lift them back up to where things are cooler.

In other words, life finds a way. Or at least, it theoretically could. We need a lot more information to know for sure, or even to say how likely this scenario could be.

WILL WE EVER FIND A SMOKING GUN?

Upcoming missions to Venus may help answer some questions about what’s really going on in the sulfuric acid clouds: How much water is there? Are there organic molecules? Did Venus ever have liquid water on its surface? All of these are pieces of a much larger question: Could the clouds of Venus be habitable, even for a kind of life that we’ve never seen on Earth?

A commercial spaceflight company called Rocket Lab plans to launch its Venus Life Finder mission in December 2024. Venus Life Finder will look for organic molecules in the upper cloud layers. Finding these molecules won’t prove there’s life on Venus (despite the mission’s ambitious name), but it would show that the acidic clouds are home to the kind of chemistry that makes life work. This would be an encouraging sign.

NASA’s DAVINCI mission, which is planned for a 2029 launch, will study Venus’s atmosphere from orbit — and drop a probe into it. A couple of years later, in 2031, NASA’s VERITAS mission will study the planet’s surface and it’s interior. At around the same time, the European Space Agency’s EnVision mission will also use radar to study the interior of Venus from space.

All of these missions could help scientists understand whether Venus ever had liquid water on its surface, and how the planet’s atmosphere evolved over time (ratios of different chemical isotopes in a planet’s atmosphere can contain clues about its history). They may also help find explanations for the phosphine and even the mysterious UV absorber.

However, all of these missions are still years away even if everything goes according to plan. As JWST and Artemis have both shown us, it seldom does; they call it rocket science for a reason. And none of them will be capable of actually detecting life among the clouds of Venus , only clues about whether it could survive there. The only way to find real proof of life on Venus, according to researchers like Petkowski and Limaye, will be to scoop up a sample of the Venusian clouds and bring it home.

And that possibility is still decades away.

“It will take at least a couple of decades or longer, given the rate at which the previously selected missions are taking to actually be implemented,” says Limaye. “It will be a long time before we actually detect life elsewhere. It's not going to be a single experiment. It's going to take a lot of effort and different experiments and investigations and missions to determine.”

In the meantime, we can speculate, and scientists can find new ways to analyze the data they have. And we can all enjoy the possibility that our Solar System may be a lot wilder and a lot livelier than we thought.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

06-05-2024 om 17:36 geschreven door peter  

Multiple space agencies are looking to send crewed missions to the Moon’s southern polar region in this decade and the next. Moreover, they intend to create the infrastructure that will allow for a sustained human presence, exploration, and economic development. This requires that the local geography, resources, and potential hazards be scouted in advance and navigation strategies that do not rely on a Global Positioning System (GPS) developed. On Sunday, April 21st, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) released the first complete high-definition geologic atlas of the Moon.

This 1:2.5 million scale geological set of maps provides basic geographical data for future lunar research and exploration. According to the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the volume includes data on 12,341 craters, 81 impact basins, 17 types of lithologies, 14 types of structures, and other geological information about the lunar surface. This data will be foundational to China’s efforts in selecting a site for their International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) and could also prove useful for NASA planners as they select a location for the Artemis Base Camp.

Ouyang Ziyuan and Liu Jianzhong, a research professor and senior researcher from the Institute of Geochemistry of the CAS (respectively), oversaw these efforts. Since 2012, they have led a team of over 100 scientists and cartographers from relevant research institutions. The team spent more than a decade compiling scientific exploration data obtained by the many orbiters, landers, and rovers that are part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (Chang’e), and other research about the origin and evolution of the Moon.

ccording to the CAS, the atlas includes an “upgraded lunar geological time scale” for “objectively” depicting the geological evolution of the Moon, including the lunar tectonics and volcanic activity that once took place. As a result, the volume could not only be significant in terms of lunar exploration and site selection. Still, it could also improve our understanding of the formation and evolution of Earth and the other terrestrial planets of the Solar System – Mercury, Venus, and Mars. As Jianzhong indicated in a CAS press release,

“The world has witnessed significant progress in the field of lunar exploration and scientific research over the past decades, which have greatly improved our understanding of the moon. However, the lunar geologic maps published during the Apollo era have not been changed for about half a century and are still being used for lunar geological research. With the improvements of lunar geologic studies, those old maps can no longer meet the needs of future scientific research and lunar exploration.”

Jianzhong also claims that the atlas could help inform future sample collection on the Moon. This includes the Chang’e-6 mission (consisting of an orbiter and lander), which launched this past Friday (May 3rd). The orbiter element will reach the Moon in a few days, and the lander element is expected to touch down the far side of the Moon by early June. By 2026, it will be joined by the Chang’e-7 mission, consisting of an orbiter, lander, rover, and a mini-hopping probe. While Chang’e-6 will obtain lunar soil and rock samples, Chang’e-7 will investigate resources and obtain samples of water ice and volatiles.

According to Gregory Michael, a senior scientist from the Free University of Berlin, the release of this atlas represents the culmination of decades of work, and not just by Chinese scientists:

“This map, in particular, is the first on a global scale to utilize all of the post-Apollo era data. It builds on the achievements of the international community over the last decades, as well as on China’s own highly successful Chang’e program. It will be a starting point for every new question of lunar geology and become a primary resource for researchers studying lunar processes of all kinds.”

Aside from updating data on lunar features and geology, the new maps reportedly double the resolution of the Apollo-era maps. These maps were compiled by the US Geological Survey in the 1960s and 70s using data from the Apollo missions. Among them was a global map at the scale of 1:5,000,000, though other regional maps and those that showed the terrain near the Apollo landing sites were of higher resolution. Geological and geographical information on the Moon has advanced considerably since then, requiring updated maps that reflect the objective of returning to the Moon with the intent to stay.

In addition to the Geologic Atlas of the Lunar Globe, the CAS also released a book called Map Quadrangles of the Geologic Atlas of the Moon. This document includes 30 sector diagrams that collectively form a visualization of the entire lunar surface. Both are available in Chinese and English, have been integrated into a digital platform called Digital Moon, and will eventually become available to the international research community.

Further Reading: 

• CAS

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

06-05-2024 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious Object Spotted Over LaGuardia Airport Raises Eyebrows: Possible UFO Sighting

In a bizarre turn of events, a mysterious cylindrical object was reportedly sighted hovering near New York’s LaGuardia Airport, prompting speculation and intrigue among witnesses and experts alike. The incident, captured on camera by Michelle Reyes from her airplane window, has sparked discussions about the possibility of extraterrestrial activity in our skies.

Michelle Reyes, accompanied by her daughter, was aboard a flight over New York City when she inadvertently stumbled upon the enigmatic sight. Initially intending to capture the scenic view of the city skyline, Reyes was taken aback when she noticed an unusual object darting across her line of sight. Describing it as a “flying cylinder,” Reyes was quick to rule out conventional explanations, as the object appeared to be moving autonomously at a remarkable speed.

Following the sighting, Reyes took proactive measures by reaching out to relevant authorities, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), to report the potential safety hazard. Despite her efforts, she received limited acknowledgment, highlighting the challenges faced by individuals attempting to report such incidents.

The perplexing nature of the sighting garnered attention from UFO investigator Ben Hansen, known for his work on Discovery’s “UEFA Witness.” After an extensive analysis of the footage, Hansen expressed his belief in the authenticity of the video, debunking claims of fabrication or hoax. His assessment adds weight to the possibility that the object spotted near LaGuardia Airport may indeed be of extraterrestrial origin.

One intriguing aspect of the sighting is the corroborating testimony from another passenger on the same flight, confirming the presence of a similar object. This additional witness account strengthens the credibility of Reyes’ report, indicating that multiple individuals observed the anomaly, further validating its significance.

• https://youtu.be/8wVw5ByNb9c

Despite efforts to rationalize the sighting, experts have struggled to provide a definitive explanation. While some speculate that the object could be a drone, its exceptional speed and unconventional behavior cast doubt on such assertions. Moreover, the absence of a coherent response from aviation authorities only serves to deepen the mystery surrounding the incident.

In light of this compelling evidence, it is imperative that such sightings be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. The potential implications of encountering unidentified aerial phenomena cannot be understated, warranting a concerted effort to discern the truth behind these enigmatic encounters.

As we continue to grapple with the unexplained, incidents like the one witnessed over LaGuardia Airport serve as a reminder of the vastness of the unknown and the limitless possibilities that lie beyond our comprehension. Whether it be a fleeting glimpse of extraterrestrial visitors or a trick of the light, the quest for answers persists, fueling our curiosity and expanding our understanding of the universe.

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

06-05-2024 om 17:07 geschreven door peter  

UFO With Entities Did Land In Rendlesham Forest & Filmed On Cine Camera, Revealed In New USAF Airman Testimony

The Rendlesham Forest UAP incident is one of the legendary UFO encounter cases in the history of UFOlogy. In 1980, Lt. Col. Charles Halt, a deputy commander of the US Air Force Base, received the news of strange sightings near twin NATO airbases of RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, England. In the early morning of December 26, Airman First Class John Burroughs reported the sighting that included vague descriptions, ranging from unusual supernatural light, glittering triangular spaceships, and scorched footprints on the ground.

It is always argued whether the Suffolk UFO landing actually happened or it was just a hoax. On the official note, there is no physical evidence to prove this claim, only testimonies provided by credible witnesses. As the years passed, a piece of new information indulged which opened many untold stories of this case.

Gary Heseltine, a former police detective and UFO investigator recounts the complex story of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incidents, which is considered the second most famous UFO case after Roswell in 1947. Heseltine researched the case for over five years, analyzing various published materials and uncovering lesser-known information.

In his book, “NON-HUMAN: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incidents: 42 Years of Denial“, he presented amazing new military testimony from a previously unknown witness. The book discusses the political aspects of the incident, suggesting that the narrative may have been controlled by a few individuals for years. Heseltine argues that the UK and US governments have downplayed the true significance of the case.

This series of events occurred between December 26 and December 28, 1980. A mysterious flying object flew at such an incredible speed that violated the laws of physics. Moreover, despite the very high speed, the alien spacecraft did not make any noise.

The incident involves a young airman’s claim of witnessing a translucent UFO about 30 ft in diameter landing in a farmer’s field. This claim has been debated for many years. Later, round-shaped prints were found on the ground clearly from a heavy object, which were at a distance of about 3 meters from each other. Burns were also seen near these grooves on the ground.

On December 28, when soldiers were sent for a more thorough study of the area, they noted the excess of radiation. And at this time, a UFO reappeared, it flew by with incredible speed, illuminating everything around with bright red lights. The light emanating from the ship was so strong that the sensors of the night sights burned out, and the lights continued to hover and shine over the forest and field for some time.

Heseltine discovered a new witness account that sheds new light on the landing of a triangular-shaped UFO in the forest, an event previously recounted publicly only by Staff Sgt Jim Penniston and Airman John Burroughs. Heseltine reveals that after extensive research, he has obtained corroboration from a military witness, Sergeant Adrian Bustinza, confirming the occurrence of a UFO landing.

In a four and half hour transatlantic telephone interview (which was audio recorded) he admitted that he had been involved in a second UFO related event, a landing of a translucent craft approximately 30 feet in diameter which was surrounded by a ring of US Air Force Security police officers, writes Heseltine. (Source)

The landing was filmed on video and cine cameras, marking it as the second UFO landing event. Heseltine emphasizes that Bustinza’s involvement was significant because he was part of the security perimeter around the craft, as was Larry Warren, an honorably discharged military eyewitness, and was the first to go public about the Bentwaters UFO cover-up.

Sergeant Bustinza’s account corroborates Warren’s version of events, confirming that the entire incident was being filmed. Additionally, Bustinza states that Colonel Gordon Williams, the Base Commander of the twin US bases of RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge, was present at the second landing. Despite Colonel Williams’ denial of involvement, both Bustinza and Warren assert that he was present during the event.

“When I arrived [at the scene], it was going in and out through the trees and at one stage it was hovering,” Sgt. Adrian Bustinza said. (Source)

Interestingly, Heseltine mentioned that both Bustinza and Warren state that entities or lifeforms were seen near the craft, engaging in what seemed like a silent confrontation with Colonel Williams. This detail adds a mysterious and intriguing element to the story.

Read also:

• This Footage of Airplane Teleporting With UFOs Appeared After Malaysia Airlines MH370 Disappeared
• US Congresswoman Claims She Saw Photo Evidence Of UFO Technolgy Not Made By Humans
• U.S. Congressman Says UFOs May Be Machines of a Hidden ‘Ancient Earth Civilization’
• Ex-CIA Pilot Said US Buried Huge UFO That Was Too Big To Move, Corroborating Coulthart Claim

Heseltine highlights the significance of Sergeant Adrian Bustinza’s corroboration, as it confirms the existence of the second UFO landing. He asserts that the US Air Force has attempted to cover up this event, but now, with the corroboration from a first-person witness, the truth is emerging.

Moreover, while examining old documentation of the case, Heseltine found a direct admission made by Lt. Col. Charles Halt, the deputy base commander at the time, to an American researcher named Ray Boeche in April 1985. Halt admitted that the second UFO landing did occur, and the craft was surrounded by USAF Security police officers, with Col. Williams present. This admission from Lt. Col. Halt adds further weight to the claims made by Bustinza and Warren.

Alien Abduction

Interestingly, video footage was published in 2018 by the British tabloid newspaper, The Sun, where Retired Lt. Colonel Charles Halt can be heard saying that John Burroughs “may have been abducted” and that the men were “unaccounted” for hours. The video was reportedly captured in 2010 when Halt and retired British police detective Gary Heseltine revisited Rendlesham Forest for a documentary that was never made. The footage was recorded by Heseltine’s wife when the two were talking about the UFO incident during a break.

Halt said: “He [Burroughs] may have been abducted, who knows… You know, there is LOST TIME, we know that? They were not on the radio… You’ve got men out in the forest that you can’t… unaccounted for hours.”

Even though the USAF had always denied any UFO landing in the Rendelsem forest, Burroughs shared the shocking news about his health. He said that he had been subjected to a high amount of radiation during the investigations of the mysterious craft on three consecutive nights in December 1980.

The US military classified Burrough’s medical records, so neither he nor his lawyer were able to get it. Even the USAF denied that he had been working with them during the time of the incident as claimed by Burrough. Somehow, they got a document from the British Ministry of Defence in which it was written that the site had a high level of radiation during the UFO incident.

Finally, after decades, the US Veterans Association and the Department of Defence agreed to pay for his treatment. Besides, in the radiation document, the US military acknowledged the unexplained aerial phenomenon that occurred at the site and caused a physical injury to Burrough.

{ https://www.howandwhys.com/ }

06-05-2024 om 00:59 geschreven door peter  

China Just Launched its Chang'e-6 Mission To Grab Samples From the Elusive Far Side of the Moon

Liftoff for the Moon’s newest robotic visitor.

BY DORIS ELÍN URRUTIA

 

Hector Retamal / AFP / Getty Images

China has launched the Chang’e-6 rover to the Moon.

Chang’e-6 is the latest of the Chang’e fleet, named after the Chinese goddess of the Moon. On Friday, the rover launched atop a Chinese Long March-5 rocket from Wenchang Space Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province. Chang’e-6 has successfully deployed into space, and it’s now heading for the enigmatic far side of the Moon.

Its predecessor, Chang’e-5, collected about 2 kilograms of lunar material from the near side of the Moon in late 2020. This was the first time since the 1970s that humanity had brought samples from the Moon to Earth. In early 2019, Chang’e-4 was the first mission ever to land on the far side of the Moon. Chang’e-6 builds upon all that work.

WHY GO TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON?

Chang’e-6 will be a blend of both those earlier missions: It will retrieve samples from the far side of the Moon. Chang’e-6 will land in the largest and oldest known impact basin on the Moon. Known as the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, it “stretches across nearly a quarter of the Moon,” according to the team that operates NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

It’s a fascinating place. The terrain is quite dramatic. The craters are also thought to have formed 3.9 billion years ago when life was just beginning to form on Earth. If the craters owe their existence to a chaotic episode of rocky bombardment, that same rocky rainfall likely struck Earth and the other terrestrial planets.

According to Chinese state media Xinhua, Chang’e-6 will deploy its robotic arm about 48 hours after landing. It will scoop up rocks and lunar dirt, called regolith. It will also excavate samples with a drill. The 53-day mission will culminate in samples, sealed away and ferried into an orbiter, flying to Earth. They’re expected to land in Inner Mongolia at the end of June.

Chang’e-6 is also carrying scientific instruments from other countries. “The Chang'e-6 mission is carrying four payloads developed through international cooperation. Scientific instruments from France, Italy, and the European Space Agency/Sweden are aboard the Chang'e-6 lander, and a small satellite from Pakistan is aboard the orbiter,” according to Xinhua.

In a year packed with lunar visits from other robots, like Odysseus of Houston-based Intuitive Machines, and Japan’s SLIM lander, Chang’e-6 is set to keep the momentum of 2024 Moon exploration building.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

06-05-2024 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

Details are only now emerging of a major incident centred on Langley Air Force Base, where assets from NASA were called in to help identify a 'swarm' of unidentified flying objects

READ MORE: 

• Whistleblower tells Congress he knows 'exact' locations Government is housing UFOs

Chris pointed out that the object’s apparent target – Langley Air Force Base – regularly uses an area of sea off the coast of Virgina where former Navy fighter pilot Ryan Graves claimed to have detected multiple "unknown objects" in US airspace.

He added: “Graves said one of the objects was visually reported as ‘a cube within a transparent sphere.’ I'm a retired F-16 pilot I flew for 18 years and I've never heard of anything of that description – particularly if it's flying in high winds.”

Chris said the area around Langley Air Force Base, including the US Navy shipyards at Norfolk, are home to some of America’s most advanced warships.

He explains: “The incidents got so bad that additional assets were called in including the Whiskey Bravo 57F high-flying research plane that NASA owns.

"According to The War Zone this spate of bizarre drone incursions deeply underscores the still growing threats that uncrewed aerial systems [UAS] present on and off traditional battlefields.”

Plane spotters tracked two combat air patrols over the area in mid-December, as well as the advanced NASA plane displaying its ability to fly in absolutely perfect circles around Langley even in the face of high winds.

It’s only now that the purpose of these air patrols has emerged. A USAF spokesperson said: "To protect operational security, we do not discuss impacts to operations.

"We don’t discuss our specific force protection measures but retain the right to protect the installation. Langley continues to monitor our air space and work with local law enforcement and other federal agencies to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities, and assets."

Chris noted that the exact reason for all this activity, in what is a militarily sensitive location, has not been revealed. He continued: “There's tons of important assets here; nuclear assets as well just an amazing amount of military hardware is it actually China on the east coast of the United States? because that would be quite interesting. Or is it people operating drones just in the general area? Is that what sparked all this activity?

“Or, is it UAPs? Could it actually be UAP incursions are picking up or now they're actually taking them seriously?”

Either way, Chris claimed this is an embarrassing incident for the USAF. “Its airspace getting penetrated for weeks on end is clearly not the best look – especially after major lapses in domain awareness and air defence capabilities were recently spotlighted by the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ saga,” he continued.

Langley is home to some of the USAF’s super-advanced F-22 fighters and one of their particular responsibilities is guarding the airspace around Washington DC.

Chris pointed out that there is a wealth of high-value military hardware located in the area. He explained: "Naval Station Norfolk the largest naval base on the east coast.

"It's home to roughly half of America's carrier Fleet and it's located just to the southeast a host of other military installations are also dotted throughout the broader area including Naval Air Station Oceana – that's where Ryan Graves operated out of and that's the Navy's Master tactical jet base on the East Coast also has Navy special warfare's East Coast headquarters."

The War Zone noted that unexplained drone incursions have been logged at military bases across the US. They wrote: “Military aircraft are also routinely encountering drones in various test and training ranges and other restricted military operating areas. America's nuclear power plants have had very troubling encounters with drone swarms.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

05-05-2024 om 23:50 geschreven door peter  

We could be in contact with aliens within the next few years as our technology continues to improve – and they could be looking for us in the same ways we look for them

By Adam Aiken

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project has been looking for aliens since the 1980s, and one of the top geeks working there is as confident as he’s ever been that they’ll soon strike gold.

Seth Shostak, who has been the senior astronomer at SETI for nearly a quarter of a century, seems to be pretty confident that we’ll come across intelligent aliens by 2036.

READ MORE: 

• Aliens 'signed treaty with government' as 'we've each got something the other wants'
  

He apparently bases this prediction on our rapidly improving technology, with massive strides being taken in terms of our telescopes and computers, reports Mail Online.

On Reddit recently, Seth said: “The trend of improving hardware - mostly computers -- has proceeded unabated. I'm still betting on a signal by 2036.”

And he reckons that once we’ve broken the seal, we could be blown away by how many other places could sustain life as we know it. In fact, he reckons there could be billions of Earth-like worlds out there.

“That may be the strongest argument for life in space,” he said. “If there isn't any, there's something really exceptional about what's happened here on Earth.

“While that's not ruled out by the data, it does seem a little self-centred.

Seth has also revealed the team at SETI have a firm protocol to follow if (or when) they finally confirm the existence of alien life – and it’s all remarkably matter-of-fact.

“There is a document,” said Seth. “Briefly, it says, check the signal to make sure it is truly extraterrestrial. Then announce it to the world, and consult internationally before transmitting a reply.”

We won’t know until it happens what contact from aliens looks like, but some geeks think they’ll be looking for us in the same ways we look for them. For instance, they could spot Earth’s shadow as we pass between them and the Sun.

There are 1,715 star systems which could have spotted Earth within the past 5,000 years, and more than 300 others that will be able to spot us in that way during the next 5,000 years.

Jackie Faherty, an Astrophysicist based at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said any aliens living on those worlds would have a “front-row seat to finding Earth”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

05-05-2024 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

We could be in contact with aliens within the next few years as our technology continues to improve – and they could be looking for us in the same ways we look for them

By Adam Aiken

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project has been looking for aliens since the 1980s, and one of the top geeks working there is as confident as he’s ever been that they’ll soon strike gold.

Seth Shostak, who has been the senior astronomer at SETI for nearly a quarter of a century, seems to be pretty confident that we’ll come across intelligent aliens by 2036.

READ MORE: 

• Aliens 'signed treaty with government' as 'we've each got something the other wants'
  

He apparently bases this prediction on our rapidly improving technology, with massive strides being taken in terms of our telescopes and computers, reports Mail Online.

On Reddit recently, Seth said: “The trend of improving hardware - mostly computers -- has proceeded unabated. I'm still betting on a signal by 2036.”

And he reckons that once we’ve broken the seal, we could be blown away by how many other places could sustain life as we know it. In fact, he reckons there could be billions of Earth-like worlds out there.

“That may be the strongest argument for life in space,” he said. “If there isn't any, there's something really exceptional about what's happened here on Earth.

“While that's not ruled out by the data, it does seem a little self-centred.

Seth has also revealed the team at SETI have a firm protocol to follow if (or when) they finally confirm the existence of alien life – and it’s all remarkably matter-of-fact.

“There is a document,” said Seth. “Briefly, it says, check the signal to make sure it is truly extraterrestrial. Then announce it to the world, and consult internationally before transmitting a reply.”

We won’t know until it happens what contact from aliens looks like, but some geeks think they’ll be looking for us in the same ways we look for them. For instance, they could spot Earth’s shadow as we pass between them and the Sun.

There are 1,715 star systems which could have spotted Earth within the past 5,000 years, and more than 300 others that will be able to spot us in that way during the next 5,000 years.

Jackie Faherty, an Astrophysicist based at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said any aliens living on those worlds would have a “front-row seat to finding Earth”.

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

05-05-2024 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Researcher Mark Christopher Lee claims the 'Tic Tac' UFO exposed by US whistle blowers 'hovered above a USO emerging from the ocean' 

(Image: Youtube/Nub TV)

The infamous 'Tic-Tac' UFO exposed by US whistle blowers was "hovering above an unidentified submerged object (USO) emerging from the ocean".

This is the claim by UFO researcher and filmmaker Mark Christopher Lee who said the US Military and Navy have been inundated with UFO and USO confrontations since the 1950s, with the navy dubbing USOs their "biggest threat" yet.

The infamous interaction with the Tic-Tac UFO captured by crew members from the USS Nimitz in 2004 marked a significant turning point in human history – with two former Navy pilots having come forward to share their discomforting encounters with the alien craft.

READ MORE: 

• Aliens may not have visited Earth due to one 'morbid' reason, space scientist suggests

But now expert Lee has thrown more questions into the mix as he boldly claimed the Tic-Tac UFO was seen hovering above a USO, something not previously addressed.

"USOs have been seen coming from the oceans for hundreds of years," Lee told the Daily Star. "Even Christopher Columbus saw a USO on his voyage to the new world and the US Navy has had plenty of confrontations with USOs since the 50s and have identified them as the biggest threat.

"Note that the Tic-Tac UFO reported by the recent US whistle blowers was seen hovering above a USO emerging from the ocean. [This makes me think UFOs and USOs] are linked and the tic tac and other UFOs are all able to enter the oceans at will.

"So, in my opinion, all UFOs are also USOs."

While training with a strike group off San Diego's coast back in November 2004, F/A-18 Squadron Lieutenant Alex Dietrich and ex-Navy pilot Dave Fravor spotted an unusual Tic-Tac shaped object via their infra-red cameras.

Nick Pope, a UFO expert who spent 21 years working at the Ministry of Defence and three running its UFO desk, previously told the Daily Star the pilots' claims put humankind in "disturbing territory".

He explained: "To have the Pentagon say 'these are authentic US Navy films' and they are on their own website... along with a note saying these sightings are still unexplained... takes us into new and frankly quite disturbing territory because these Top Guns don't spook easily. They are clearly encountering something outside of their knowledge base and their experience.

"Frankly there is only a couple of possibilities with this sort of thing. Either an adversary has made some sort of quantum leap breakthrough or this really could be some sort of first contact which is exactly how I imagined first contact would be, a sort of war of nerves – pushing at the boundaries, just testing, seeing how good our radar systems are.

"Are they going to pick us up, are they going to scramble jets, what are they going to do? Frankly, I'd rather this was extraterrestrial because if it is an adversary like China or Russia and they've got stuff... we're in big trouble.

"Usually with technological advances they come in steps and here it's like there are 10 steps missing. That just doesn't normally happen. It's as if you went from the Wright Brothers to a stealth fighter with nothing in between.''

READ NEXT:

• Mystery UFO-like trio of objects spotted in sky are 'not human-made or mechanical'
• 'I reached out to aliens telepathically – they arrived in UFO and made chilling move'
• Amanda Holden, 53, goes braless as she displays ageless figure in thigh-split dress
• Simple masturbation trick gives amazing orgasms – but only 3% of people do it
• Aliens 'signed treaty with government' as 'we've each got something the other wants'

{ https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/ }

05-05-2024 om 21:19 geschreven door peter