Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
08-04-2016
Hitler and the ufo: the Gotha 229
Hitler and the ufo: the Gotha 229
That Adolf Hitler and other maximum Nazi exponents confided in esoteric practices is known, that they have adopted symbols and rituality is also known, less clear it is what relationship could exist between Nazi Germany and alien technologies which according to some would have been at the base of the technological acceleration happened,especially in aeronautical and missile field, in the last months of the Second World war.
ALL BEGAN IN SHAMBHALA
Even before the slope to the power of Adolf Hitler the followers of the Nazism tried to find Shambhala, an hidden land to whose center would be found the capital Kalepa, where would reside perfect men and women and the same “king of the world”. A place that according to some ufologis could be the legendary transfiguration of an alien base. The Nazis officially didn’t find ever Shambhalas, but for some they would have found during their expeditions finds of alien technologies.
THE TESTIMONIES OF THE ALLIES PILOTS
A series of testimonies it made from the Allies pilots during the conflict contributed in the following years to the conclusion of the Second World war to strengthen the hypothesis that the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler would have indeed reconstructed some ufos, or at least realized projects of experimental planes that exploited some technologies of it. American pilot Kenneth Arnold, for instance, reported for first of “supersonic flying saucers” and specified that “to shoot to these things doesn’t damage them at all”. Also other American and British pilots reported to have seen “great bright disks” or “strange spheres never sights before”. Were them the ufos of Hitler?
THE HORTEN BROTHERS
Even admitting that there were just errors of identification, the fact that Nazis had developed a series of unusual airplanes for the epoch to say few it is undeniable. One particularly, has always aroused a lot of curiosity,the flying wing Gotha 229, originally known as Horten IX. Initially developed by brothers Walter and Reimar Horten, this airplane, a model of which, the prototype V3, is still exposed at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, would have had to answer to the Luftwaffe’s specification “1,000x1,000x1,000”, i.e. to be an airplane able to transport 1.000 Kg of bombs to 1.000 Km/h to a distance of 1.000 Km from its base.
HITLER AND THE UFO: THE FIRST STEALTH OF HISTORY
The airplane was realized joining to a loom of steel pipes settled to wood surfaces, worked in a way that the most external layer absorbed the radar waves and spread them in different directions from those of origin, succeeding in this way to elude the more possible the hostile radars. If not an ufo, the Gotha 229 would certainly have been the first aerial stealth of the history. Unfortunately for brothers Horten the things didn’t go to the correct verse both for the difficulties of project and for the little time available. The second prototype (the V2) crashed December 18th 1944 (other sources speak of February 26th 1945), pilot died, the production stopped by the Horten to the Gothaero Waggonfabrik never overcame the phase of the prototypes. After some decades, nevertheless, some of the solutions of the Gotha 229 were used for developing the stealth fighter Lockheed F-117A NightHawk.
Planet 9 May Be Causing Periodic Extinction and is Once Again Coming Our Way
Planet 9 May Be Causing Periodic Extinction and is Once Again Coming Our Way
You’ve probably heard of the notorious “Planet 9” by now, also known as Nibiru or Planet X by the UFO community. This celestial body is hiding at the edges of our solar system and is too far out for our telescopes to see. However, every 10 or 15 thousand years it is said that Planet 9 enters our field of view as it’s elliptical orbit will reach its closest point to the Sun.
The rogue planet is expected to come with massive comet showers that would ultimately lead to a mass extinction here on Earth. In a paper by Daniel Whitmire, a retired astrophysicist professor, the possibility of Planet 9 causing periodic extinctions on earth is being discussed. The study is based on analysis performed on fossil remains of extinct species.
Some scientists have claimed for years that Planet 9 could be a reality, but the most significant progress towards identifying it has been made a couple of months back when two scientists claimed to have discovered imposing evidence of its existence, and only a few days ago one of the scientists brought further proof of the rogue planet.
According to the researchers, the fugitive celestial body should be 10 times the mass of Earth and 1,000 times further from the Sun than we are. They now interpret the bizarre extinction events partaking every 27 million years as being linked to Planet 9. They say the possibility of comet showers arriving on a constant and at the same time regular schedule could be more than just a coincidence. However, they do not exclude the idea of a Sun’s companion known as Nemsis, or the Sun’s evil twin.
Focusing on this new hypothesis, scientists suggest that all the periodic extinctions that had happened on Earth lead towards a common cause that’s kicking them off. They now blame the mysterious Planet 9, which from their perspective is passing through the Kuiper Belt – an area of the outer solar system shrouded in icy objects – every 27 million years or so, sending comets towards the Earth and inside the solar system as a result of the impact.
Dr. Michael Brown, the astronomer who proposed the existence of Planet 9, recently announced at a SETI colloquium that a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), which is something orbiting between 30 and 50 AUs (astronomical units), one AU being Earth’s distance from the Sun, “is exactly where Planet Nine says it should be.”
In other words, Planet 9 might make its presence noticed sooner than some would have expected, and the signs will apparently take the form of disturbed comets entering our solar system. As the Hopi Indians already predicted, the Red Kachina is on its way back, and the events to come are only the beginning of the massive shift the Earth will go through.
According to the Hopi prophecy, “The Blue Kachina would start to be seen at the dances, and would make his appearance known to the children of the plaza during the night dance. This event would tell us that the end times are very near. Then the Blue Star Kachina would physically appear in our heavens which would mean that we were in the end times.”
Could their prophecy be related to the recent comets seen wandering through our solar system? Are we going to witness the arrival of the notorious Planet 9, or will there be some rational scientific explanation for all the havoc that’s apparently slowly taking shape? (source) (source)
We Need Three Planets for the Human Race to Survive, NASA Scientist Determines
We Need Three Planets for the Human Race to Survive, NASA Scientist Determines
Hasty climate change, ever-growing pollution level and overpopulation are some of the main reasons why scientists believe that our planet’s limits will be exceeded within a short span of time, making it a challenge for the human race to benefit from only one planet while moving at the current pace.
The life on our planet is quickly downgrading because of human activities, that’s why a conspicuous NASA scientist believes we may need to terraform more than one planet in order to preserve our species.
“The entire ecosystem is crashing,” said Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “Essentially, there’s too many of us. We’ve been far too successful as the human animal. People allege we’re short 40-50 percent of a planet now. As the Asians and their billions come up to our living systems, we’re going to need three more planets.”
You’ve heard it well – we may need two other Earth-like planets to overcome the crisis we find ourselves into at the moment, and although Mars seems like the winning project, we may need to put more work into finding yet another celestial body to grow life on. More information on global challenges and how to overcome them have been put forward by Bushnell in The Millennium Project’s ‘State of the Future,” an annual report that’s comprising the ideas of more than 5,000 participants around the world.
“If NASA terraforms Mars, that’ll take about 120 years, and that’s only one planet,” he said. “We’d need more shortly.”
According to a 2012 study underwent by World Wildlife Fund, humans are using approximately 50 percent more resources than the Earth can bear, meaning that by 2050 we’ll be in need of other planets to harvest and exploit if we want to survive and maintain the current lifestyle. The study also referred to the need of colonizing two planets other than Earth, with the main threats this time being a cataclysmic event caused by an asteroid or the well-known nuclear war scenario.
Although scientists failed to identify the third planet to move to, since the Solar System looks pretty desolate when it comes to lifeforms and conditions to support them, they consider the initiative of terraforming Mars to be a good start. However, with the current shift in technology, we’ll be able to extract essential resources from celestial bodies such as comets and asteroids which seem to be found in abundance between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. So, is a permanent Martian base going to solve this deep crisis we find ourselves into, or should we look elsewhere if we are to overcome this challenge?
According to Jerome Glenn, CEO of the Millennium Project, we should identify Earth’s issues by looking (obviously) at the Earth itself, meaning that whatever challenges lie ahead of us we should be able to overcome them by transforming the planet we currently live on so that it suits the collective needs of our species.
“The point isn’t to be alarmist or cynical,” said Glenn. “We have to find out what’s intelligent to do to make this species survive. If you think the problems aren’t going to get better, then why try. And if you think there aren’t problems, then why change anything?”
An example of how to use our planet’s resources more efficiently comes from Bushnell who suggests that leaving the planet shouldn’t be the first priority, but instead become better resource managers and find other usages for the resources we have in abundance. His solution is based on salt water farming that would allow for Halophytes, a class of plant that does remarkably well in salty environments, to be ultimately transformed into biofuel. This system would allow for massive crops to be grown in the middle of the oceans. The irrigation will be based exclusively on saltwater and the finite product will be used as a bio-fuel for our many usages. Just picture a lot of underdeveloped countries producing cheap bio-fuel inevitably leading to a better economy and a radical increase in day-to-day living.
“With that, you could solve land, food, water, energy, and climate. All of that comes together,” he said.
If the ruling elite class will allow for a planetary state of well-being we are yet to find out, but if you don’t believe in miracles, maybe it’s time to pack your bags and move to Mars. After all, you’ll never know what the future holds. (source)
Elon Musk Intends to Send 1 Million Earthlings to Mars for $500,000 Each
Elon Musk Intends to Send 1 Million Earthlings to Mars for $500,000 Each
Now that we have the potential and technological means to travel into outer space, more and more organizations are paving the way for interplanetary travel, and I’m not talking about the usual discovery approach, but an entirely new perspective of commercial journeys that would take humans throughout the universe.
Although we still have many tests to surpass before venturing into such an adventurous journey, there are people already predicting that in due course, commercial voyages to Mars will become a reality. Among these figures is the revolutionary Elon Musk, the business magnate, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur of several innovative businesses such as PayPal, SolarCity, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX.
This visionary man has claimed for many years that humanity’s only chance to survive is by developing interplanetary travel before it is too late, and he doesn’t limit to just one planet, but the entire galaxy if not the universe. He also believes that the human race has the ability to evolve to an almost god-like level, and we’ll have to credit him for the tremendous involvement in trying to achieve that goal.
At our current rate of technological growth, humanity is on a path to be godlike in its capabilities, Musk told Aeon.co. You could bicycle to Alpha Centauri in a few hundred thousand years, and that’s nothing on an evolutionary scale. If an advanced civilization existed at any place in this galaxy, at any point in the past 13.8 billion years, why isn’t it everywhere? Even if it moved slowly, it would only need something like .01 per cent of the Universe’s lifespan to be everywhere. SO why isn’t it?
To answer these uncertainties, Musk went on to expose his point of view about why humanity hasn’t managed to come in contact with alien beings by now. His first hypothesis suggests that our universal loneliness might be due to us living in some sort of simulation. If this however, sounds too insane for you, his other perspective reveals a more plausible approach, suggesting that we could be in fact an experimental race surveilled by a highly advanced alien race interested in the evolutionary process and behavior of our species, similar to the way researchers study the behavior of animals in a safari, where the wrong idea of wilderness is spread among the unaware subjects.
The absence of any noticeable life may be an argument in favor of us being in a simulation. Like when you’re playing an adventure game, and you can see the stars in the background, but you can’t ever get there. If it’s not a simulation, then maybe we’re in a lab and there’s some advanced alien civilization that’s just watching how we develop, out of curiosity, like mold in a petri dish.
Musk considers to establish a Mars colony in the near future, achievement which he believes, will prolong the existence of the human species. However, for such a daring plan to take shape, around 1 million people need to be sent on the voyage to guarantee the mission’s success, and since the aspirational billionaire is not focusing on building a mothership for the moment, his plan will need another way around.
FUTURE MARS COLONISTS PLAYING WITH CHILDREN ON MARS, A PLACE THEY CALL HOME.
As a matter of fact, he intends to send several ships to Mars at once, but for the moment, the costs for such a fleet seem unaffordable, since “rockets are the only form of transportation on Earth where the vehicle is built anew for each journey.” As a problem fixer, Musk is now relying on the development of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a prototype intended to return to Earth after carrying humans and cargo into space. Achieving this will mean a drastic decrease in expenses, thus making a journey to Mars affordable even for the masses.
According to recent studies, there is an increasing desire among earthlings when it comes to a one-way trip to the Red Planet. Over 200,000 people applied for this breakthrough initiative, all of them willing to leave their lives on Earth behind for the chance to colonize another planet. Although Musk plans to charge as much as $500,000 for each individual, it doesn’t seem so much if you think that none of your earthly assets are needed when you are out there. So if you are willing to leave this life behind, selling everything that you own might buy you a one-way ticket to Mars in the future.
There needs to be an intersection of the set of people who wish to go, and the set of people who can afford to go, Musk said. And that intersection of sets has to be enough to establish a self-sustaining civilization. My rough guess is that for a half-million dollars, there are enough people that could afford to go and would want to go. But it’s not going to be a vacation jaunt. It’s going to be saving up all your money and selling all your stuff, like when people moved to the early American colonies.
If life on Mars is your thing, hurry up and raise the money, because as Elon Musk predicts, this is going to happen in the next eleven or twelve years. And don’t worry about the time spent on the way there, because according to NASA, “it takes nine months to get to Mars. It is possible to get to Mars in less time, but this would require you to burn your rocket engines longer, using more fuel. With current rocket technology, this isn’t really feasible, but some high-speed transfer orbits could make the trip in as little as 130 days.”
Now that you know how easy it’s going to be to reach the Red Planet, let’s enjoy life on our own while we still can. After all, Earth might become as desolate and inhospitable as its neighbor one day, or at least that’s what the most intelligent and resourceful people have predicted. So how is that for a free warning?
OFF THE RECORD Geneticist David Suzuki Stands Against The GMO Industry: “Humans Are Part Of A Massive Experiment!”
Geneticist David Suzuki Stands Against The GMO Industry: “Humans Are Part Of A Massive Experiment!”
We are doing our part to try and spread the word about GMOs, (genetically modified organisms) but we’re not the only ones.
Multiple public figures, scientists and researchers have been speaking out about GMOs for a number of years. For example, not long ago a former Canadian Government Scientist at Agriculture Canada, Dr. Thierry Vrain(one of many) spoke out against GMOs.
Another prominent public figure, Geneticist David Suzuki has been a long time advocate against GMOs, and has been speaking out about how they can be hazardous to human health as well as the environment.
Public figures with a wide audience can have a great impact on the consciousness of the masses, they are great ‘tools’ for waking more people up to the reality that GMOs can be harmful to human health as well as the environment.
It’s time to pay attention, do your own research and to question what you’ve been told. We can no longer trust branches of the government that deal with food and health, we must not take their word for it, it’s better if you actually look into it yourself rather than blindly believing what your are told.
In gearing up for the 2010 release of its super-genetically modified corn called ‘SmartStax’, agricultural-biotechnology giant Monsanto is using an advertising slogan that asks, ‘Wouldn’t it be better?’ But can we do better than nature, which has taken millennia to develop the plants we use for food?
We don’t really know. And that in itself is a problem. The corn, developed by Monsanto with Dow AgroSciences, “stacks” eight genetically engineered traits, six that allow it to ward off insects and two to make it resistant to weed-killing chemicals, many of which are also trademarked by Monsanto. It’s the first time a genetically engineered (GE) product has been marketed with more than three traits.
Canada approved the corn without assessing it for human health or environmental risk, claiming that the eight traits have already been cleared in other crop seeds — even though international food-safety guidelines that Canada helped develop state that stacked traits should be subject to a full safety assessment as they can lead to unintended consequences.
One problem is that we don’t know the unintended consequences of genetically engineered or genetically modified (GM) foods. Scientists may share consensus about issues like human-caused global warming, but they don’t have the same level of certainty about the effects of genetically modified organisms on environmental and human health!
A review of the science conducted under the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development in 2008 concluded that “there are a limited number of properly designed and independently peer-reviewed studies on human health” and that this and other observations “create concern about the adequacy of testing methodologies for commercial GM plants.”
Some have argued that we’ve been eating GM foods for years with few observable negative consequences, but as we’ve seen with things like trans fats, if often takes a while for us to recognize the health impacts. With GM foods, concerns have been raised about possible effects on stomach bacteria and resistance to antibiotics, as well as their role in allergic reactions. We also need to understand more about their impact on other plants and animals.
Of course, these aren’t the only issues with GM crops. Allowing agro-chemical companies to create GM seeds with few restrictions means these companies could soon have a monopoly over agricultural production. And by introducing SmartStax, we are giving agro-chemical companies the green light not just to sell and expand the use of their “super crops” but also to sell and expand the use of the pesticides these crops are designed to resist.
A continued reliance on these crops could also reduce the variety of foods available, as well as the nutritive value of the foods themselves.
There’s also a reason nature produces a variety of any kind of plant species. It ensures that if disease or insects attack a plant, other plant varieties will survive and evolve in its place. This is called biodiversity.
Because we aren’t certain about the effects of GMOs, we must consider one of the guiding principles in science, the precautionary principle. Under this principle, if a policy or action could harm human health or the environment, we must not proceed until we know for sure what the impact will be. And it is up to those proposing the action or policy to prove that it is not harmful.
That’s not to say that research into altering the genes in plants that we use for food should be banned or that GM foods might not someday be part of the solution to our food needs. We live in an age when our technologies allow us to “bypass” the many steps taken by nature over millennia to create food crops to now produce “super crops” that are meant to keep up with an ever-changing human-centred environment.
A rapidly growing human population and deteriorating health of our planet because of climate change and a rising number of natural catastrophes, among other threats, are driving the way we target our efforts and funding in plant, agricultural, and food sciences, often resulting in new GM foods.
But we need more thorough scientific study on the impacts of such crops on our environment and our health, through proper peer-reviewing and unbiased processes. We must also demand that our governments become more transparent when it comes to monitoring new GM crops that will eventually find their ways in our bellies through the food chain.
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Strange UFO filmed by Norwegian expedition in Antarctica - January 2016 !!!
Strange UFO filmed by Norwegian expedition in Antarctica - January 2016 !!!
Strange UFO filmed by Norwegian expedition in Antarctica - January 2016 !!!
At the beginning of January 2016, a team of Norwegian scientists had the surprise to film a very special UFO sighting right in the Neumayer Area.
In 2013, proofs of alien base were found in Antarctica thanks to Google Earth. On these famous pictures, we could see two possible entrances to an alien base or at least an entrance to something, with a huge saucer shaped object buried in the ice... Few days later Google Earth mysteriously censored the location. Why ?
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Deze rondvliegende bol zuigt objecten op en bezorgt ze elders
Deze rondvliegende bol zuigt objecten op en bezorgt ze elders
Vivian Lammerse
De toekomstige assistent is geen mens, maar een drone! Wetenschappers ontwikkelden een rondvliegende bol die voorwerpen ophaalt en wegbrengt.
Maak kennis met een nieuw soort drone: een grote, rondvliegende bol die zich autonoom in elke richting kan verplaatsen. Vervolgens kan de drone geheel zelfstandig een flesje water, appel, of ander voorwerp oppakken en verplaatsen naar de plek die jij wilt.
Vliegende assistent De drone bestaat uit een lichte ring waar acht propellers aan hangen. In het midden van de ring zit een roteerbare, helium bol met een geïntegreerd grijpelement. Hierdoor kan het systeem voorwerpen opzuigen en verplaatsen. Dit nieuwe staaltje technologie kan hele nieuwe mogelijkheden bieden voor toekomstige werkplekken. Zo zou de drone dienst kunnen gaan doen als rondvliegende assistent in bijvoorbeeld hele hoge gebouwen of in moeilijk toegankelijke ruimtes.
Zonder piloot Er is geen piloot of controleur nodig die het vliegende object bestuurt. De bol is voorzien van een GPS-systeem. Bovendien heeft de drone twee camera’s aan boord die de omgeving scherp in de smiezen houdt. Bij het opzuigen van objecten worden de twee camera’s ook gebruikt voor coördinatie.
CONTACT MET DE BOL IS NIET GEVAARLIJK, ZELFS NIET ALS JE ER PER ONGELUK EEN KEER TEGENAAN BOTST
De drone kan allerlei voorwerpen met verschillende vormen meenemen. Hij is zelfs in staat om meerdere objecten tegelijkertijd mee te nemen. Daarnaast is – in tegenstelling tot andere drones – contact met de bol niet gevaarlijk. Ook niet als je er per ongeluk een keer tegenaan botst.
De drone zou in hoge gebouwen goed dienst kunnen doen als assistent. Credits: Festo
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Kijk! Een gigantische spin op Pluto!
Kijk! Een gigantische spin op Pluto!
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De dwergplaneet blijft ons verrassen. Nu hebben onderzoekers weer een breukensysteem ontdekt dat lijkt op een gigantische spin.
“Het patroon dat deze breuken vormen hebben we nog nooit in de buitenste regionen van het zonnestelsel gezien en laat maar weer eens zien: waar we ook op Pluto kijken, elke keer zien we wat anders,” stelt Oliver White, lid van het onderzoeksteam dat zich op de observaties van ruimtesonde New Horizons stort.
Rood We zien zeker zes flinke breuken (op de foto hieronder worden ze met witte pijlen aangewezen) die op een centraal punt samenkomen. De langste breuk is meer dan 580 kilometer lang. Wat verder opvalt, is dat de breuken die van noord naar zuid lopen het langst zijn en de breuken van oost naar west aanzienlijk korter. Als je goed kijkt, zie je bovendien dat de breuken rode afzettingen onder het oppervlak van Pluto blootleggen.
De ‘spin’ op Pluto. Afbeelding: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI.
Druk Er zijn al meer breuken op het oppervlak van Pluto gespot. De meeste lopen parallel aan elkaar en ontstaan waarschijnlijk door het uitzetten van Pluto’s waterijskorst. De ‘spin’ die nu op beelden van New Horizons is aangetroffen, is mogelijk ontstaan doordat er op een specifieke plek onder het oppervlak – de plek waar de breuken samenkomen – druk is uitgeoefend.
De spin doet een heel klein beetje denken aan novae op Venus (zie de afbeelding hieronder). En een beetje aan de troggen die op Mercurius die vanaf een centraal punt (de krater Apollodorus) naar alle kanten uitwaaieren.
Links zie je de nova op Venus en rechts zie je iets soortgelijks op Mercurius. Afbeeldingen: NASA / JPL / USGS (Venus) en NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Carnegie Institution of Washington (Mercurius).
Wetenschap onthult hoe planeet X er mogelijk uitziet
Wetenschap onthult hoe planeet X er mogelijk uitziet
Caroline Kraaijvanger
De planeet zou een straal hebben die ongeveer 3,7 keer groter is dan de straal van de aarde. Ook is het er koud: -226 graden Celsius.
Wetenschappers van de universiteit van Bern trekken die conclusie nadat ze hun modellen die ze normaal gebruiken om de evolutie van jonge exoplaneten in kaart te brengen, op planeet X loslieten. De onderzoekers gaan ervan uit dat planeet X een kleinere versie van Uranus of Neptunus is. Dat betekent dat we met een kleine ijsreus te maken hebben die omringd wordt door waterstof en helium. Met behulp van hun modellen gingen de onderzoekers na hoe onder meer de straal en helderheid van de planeet door de tijd heen geëvolueerd is.
Straal en temperatuur Volgens de onderzoekers die in januari het bestaan van planeet X suggereerden, heeft de planeet een massa die tien keer groter is dan de massa van de aarde. Een planeet met zo’n massa zou volgens de Zwitserse onderzoekers vandaag de dag een straal moeten hebben die 3,7 keer groter is dan de straal van de aarde. De temperatuur van de planeet is ongeveer -226 graden Celsius.
Infrarood De lage temperatuur is niet heel verrassend; de planeet bevindt zich op grote afstand van de zon. De onderzoekers merken echter op dat de planeet – als we puur kijken naar de hoeveelheid zonlicht en -warmte die deze ontvangt – nog warmer is dan ze hadden verwacht. Het suggereert dat de planeet niet alleen wordt opgewarmd door de zon. Waar komt de overige warmte dan vandaan? Uit de kern van de planeet, zo vermoeden de onderzoekers. Deze kan nog jaren na het ontstaan van een planeet warmte afgeven. En die warmte kunnen we met infrarode telescopen wellicht spotten.
“Door ons onderzoek is kandidaat-planeet 9 nu meer dan een simpele massa, de planeet krijgt vorm nu we er fysieke eigenschappen aan toeschrijven,” stelt onderzoeker Christoph Mordasini. Maar ook na dit onderzoek geldt: het bestaan van planeet X blijft onbewezen. Toch kan dit onderzoek helpen om daar verandering in te brengen. Als we een beeld hebben van hoe de planeet eruitziet, wordt het wellicht gemakkelijker om een telescoop te kiezen die de planeet kan spotten. Zo wijst het onderzoek erop dat toekomstige telescopen zoals de Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (die momenteel in Chili wordt gebouwd) in staat moet zijn om de negende planeet waar te nemen. “Dat is een opwindend perspectief,” vindt Mordasini. Onderzoeker Mike Brown stelde eerder te verwachten dat planeet X – als deze bestaat –binnen vijf jaar wordt gespot.
Luke Skywalker eat your heart out! Wetenschappers hebben een planeet – een hete Jupiter – ontdekt die maar liefst drie zonnen heeft.
Wereldnieuws was het in 2011: astronomen hadden voor het eerst een planeet met twee zonnen ontdekt. Star Wars-fans wisten: science-fiction werd werkelijkheid! Want in Star Wars wordt het bestaan van dergelijke planeten al jarenlang voorspeld: Luke Skywalker himself woont immers op een planeet – Tatooine – met twee sterren. En nu bleken die planeten ook echt te bestaan.
Drie zonnen Inmiddels is het 2016 en weten we dat er ook planeten met drie zonnen bestaan. Tot voor kort waren ons slechts enkele van zulke systemen bekend. Maar nu hebben onderzoekers er weer eentje ontdekt, zo meldt het blad The Astronomical Journal.
Nog eentje! In het blad kondigen astronomen de ontdekking van KELT-4Ab aan: een planeet die deel uitmaakt van een systeem met daarin een dubbelster en een ‘enkele’ ster. De planeet draait om KELT-A en heeft ongeveer drie dagen nodig om een rondje rond die ster te voltooien. Op flinke afstand van KELT A en KELT 4Ab bevindt zich de dubbelster: deze twee sterren hebben 30 jaar nodig om een rondje rond elkaar te voltooien.
Hoe ziet dat eruit? Eerder kwamen wetenschappers al met mooie artistieke impressies op de proppen die lieten zien hoe het leven op een planeet met twee zonnen er ongeveer uit moest zien. Maar stel dat je op KELT 4Ab zou kunnen staan – wat heel lastig wordt, omdat het een gasplaneet is – hoe zou de hemel er dan uit zien? Ook vrij spectaculair. KELT A staat vrij dichtbij en zie je vanaf het oppervlak dus als een enorme ster aan de hemel staan. De andere twee sterren zijn ver weg, maar hebben vanaf het oppervlak van KELT-4Ab toch een helderheid die vergelijkbaar is met die van de maan.
Het is om meerdere redenen een bijzondere ontdekking. Ten eerste natuurlijk, omdat ons nog maar weinig planeten met drie zonnen bekend zijn. Ten tweede omdat de ster waar de planeet omheen cirkelt in vergelijking met de andere twee sterren heel helder is en het geheel vrij dicht bij de aarde staat (en dus ook heel geschikt is voor vervolgonderzoek).
Carbon Nanotube optical rectenna converts green laser light to electricity (Image Courtesy www.phys.org)
When you listen to a radio, sometimes you have to adjust your antenna to improve the signal. An “Optical Rectenna” is an antenna that processes light energy from the sun, converting it to DC current. In a recent article in PHYS.ORG, “Rectenna Converts Light to DC Current,” researchers at Georgia Tech, studying for the past six years, have created nanoscale components that convert light to DC current.
Following is a video from Georgia Tech explaining and illustrating the “Optical Rectenna.”
Other Carbon Nanotube Applications
In a recent article published by MIT News, “Dispersion of carbon nanotubes in aluminum improves radiation resistance,” aluminum used in nuclear reactors and similarly harsh industrial environments, when infused uniformly throughout with carbon nanotubes, are stronger and more durable. Could carbon nanotubes make the nuclear energy industry safer?
Graphene, Fullerenes, nanodiamonds, and carbon nanotubes (CNT) are also being considered to modify certain materials and enhance their conductivity. According to the Materials Research Society (MRS), enhancing the capacity of charge storage devices can be carried out by the use of 2-D graphene or 1-D carbon nanotubes which increase the surface area exposed to electrolytes in these devices. According to researchers at MRS, just 1% graphene or CNTs is enough to significantly improve conductivity.
MIT-Durable-Steel (Image Courtesy www.mit.edu)
In the field of biotechnology, carbon nanotubes have been wrapped in more than 20 different polymers such as DNA, RNA, and polyethylene glycol (PEG) to increase the longevity of drugs introduced into the bloodstream. These new nanotube biosensors will be used for such things as gas sensing. In a recent pre-clinical study of mice, carbon nanotubes had a positive effect on behavioral and neurochemical addiction, decreasing cravings and relapses.
In another development, integrated circuit designers are now taking advantage of the exceptional electrical properties, thermal conductivity, high mechanical integrity, and large surface area of graphite and carbon nanotubes to create materials needed to make electromechanical and electrochemical sensors that respond faster, as well as tiny transistors for processors.
In the following video, Michio Kaku discusses “The Strongest Material Known to Man.”
David Russell Schilling
David enjoys research and writing about cutting edge technologies that hold the promise of improving conditions for all life on planet earth.
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08-04-2016 om 19:23
geschreven door peter
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The “Gremlins” Are Coming!—Meet DARPA’s New Air-Launched Drones
The “Gremlins” Are Coming!—Meet DARPA’s New Air-Launched Drones
Several companies will attempt to make the "Gremlins" program a reality. They now have the challenge of creating a system of reusable unmanned vehicles that can launch from bigger aircraft such as bombers or jets.
PHASE 1 IS A GO
While drone technology has crept up to the civilian market, with multiple modifications made for the tech-savvy consumer, large scale drone research is still firmly in the hands of the military. DARPA is at the forefront of this, with multiple research programs into the military use of drones.
Now it’s at it again, developing another milestone for the boys in green.
DARPA has awarded Phase 1 contracts to several companies who will attempt to make the “Gremlins” program a reality. They now have the challenge of creating a system of reusable unmanned vehicles that can launch from bigger aircraft like bombers or jets.
In particular, four companies have been selected: Lockheed Martin, Dynetics of Alabama, Composite Engineering, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of California. The companies are tasked with using their technical genius to conjure up launch and retrieval techniques, low-cost airframe designs and develop the drones’ navigation system and digital flight controls.
Learn more about DARPA in the video below:
PACKING HEAT
The Gremlins program, revealed last year, seeks to show the feasibility of conducting safe, reliable operations involving multiple air-launched, air-recoverable unmanned systems.
The goal of the program is to have bombers or transport aircraft launch groups or swarms of reusable unmanned vehicles called gremlins for intelligence and reconnaissance purposes. When the gremlins complete their mission, a C-130 transport aircraft would retrieve them in the air, and then return to base where ground crews would prepare them for their next use within 24 hours.
Gremlins are expected to last 20 uses, and may also launch from fighters and other small, fixed-wing platforms when bombers are out of range.
Such air-launched drones are primarily a cost-reducing program, bridging the gap between missiles that are one-use only, and reusable systems that are costly to maintain. The program aims to prove that such systems could provide significant cost advantages over expendable systems, spreading out payload and airframe costs over multiple uses instead of just one.
The Gremlins program is named for the imaginary, mischievous imps whom World War II airmen blamed for the frequent mechanical woes that beset their planes.
No word yet as to what happens if you feed them after midnight.
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‘Revolutie aanstaande': Hoogleraar gaat kosmologie overhoop gooien met alternatieve zwaartekrachttheorie
‘Revolutie aanstaande': Hoogleraar gaat kosmologie overhoop gooien met alternatieve zwaartekrachttheorie
In tegenstelling tot de overige fundamentele natuurkrachten, is de zwaartekracht nooit echt verklaard. Er zijn geen elementaire deeltjes gevonden die drager kunnen zijn van deze kracht. Hoogleraar Erik Verlinde van de Universiteit van Amsterdam zorgde enkele jaren geleden voor een doorbraak in het denken over de zwaartekracht.
Verlinde gaat één dezer dagen een alternatieve zwaartekrachttheorie publiceren. Hij werkt al jaren aan een echte verklaring voor zwaartekracht, die volgens hem geen fundamentele kracht is, maar samengesteld uit andere krachten. Astronomen en fysici volgen zijn werk met argusogen.
Zijn theorie beschrijft het heelal als een soort hologram, waarbij alle informatie over massa’s op de denkbeeldige rand van het universum is geschreven. Het veranderen van die informatie geeft een weerstand als twee massa’s uit elkaar worden gehaald.
Mogelijkheden
Volgens Verlinde is de speurtocht naar donkere materie kansloos, omdat donkere materie, die geen licht maar wel zwaartekracht geeft, niet zou bestaan. Donkere materie is geen deeltje, maar extra energie die tevoorschijn komt bij het ontstaan van materie, aldus de fysicus.
Erik Verlinde (Commons)
De algemene relativiteitstheorie van Einstein, de theorie die kosmologen nog altijd gebruiken om het heelal op grote schaal te beschrijven, is volgens hem achterhaald. “De vergelijkingen van Einstein houden niet goed bij hoeveel informatie waar aanwezig is,” zegt hij.
Hij kijkt op een andere manier naar het universum en legt daarbij de nadruk op ‘mogelijkheden’. Elke mogelijkheid is een bepaalde manier om de hoeveelheid informatie in het universum te verdelen. “Al die mogelijkheden moeten in het universum behouden blijven,” zegt hij.
Aanstaande revolutie
“Ruimtetijd bestaat uit kwantummechanische mogelijkheden, uit kwantuminformatie,” stelt Verlinde. En die kwantuminformatie heeft van nature de neiging te verstrengelen, waarna het onmogelijk is om stukjes informatie nog los van elkaar te zien.
De Zuid-Afrikaanse natuurkundige Neil Turok ziet in het idee van Verlinde een voorloper van een aanstaande revolutie in de natuurkunde. Hij meent dat de deeltjesfysica inmiddels zo complex is geworden dat die op het punt staat onder haar eigen gewicht in te storten.
“Ik gooi een hoop dingen omver, dus ik wil dit goed kunnen onderbouwen,” zegt Verlinde, die in 2011 de Spinazopremie, de meest prestigieuze wetenschapsprijs van Nederland, won.
Oerknal verwerpen
Eerder trok hij de oerknaltheorie al in twijfel. “Als mijn theorie klopt, moeten we op een hele andere manier gaan kijken naar het ontstaan van het heelal,” zei Verlinde. “Misschien kunnen we dan wel zo ver gaan dat we de oerknal verwerpen.”
“Er zitten nog veel onzekere elementen in de wetten waarmee wij verklaren hoe sterren en sterrenstelsels bewegen,” ging hij verder. “We gebruiken mysterieuze termen als donkere materie en donkere energie. Dat is eigenlijk een manier om te zeggen dat we het allemaal nog niet zo goed begrijpen.”
Volgens Verlinde begrijpen we nog maar 4 procent van de energie in het heelal. Met zijn theorie hoopt hij meer duidelijkheid te scheppen over die nog onbegrepen energie en zo ook over het ontstaan van het heelal.
Multiple unidentified flying objects over Mesa, Arizona 6-Apr-2016
Multiple unidentified flying objects over Mesa, Arizona 6-Apr-2016
Check out this amazing video of a multiple UFOs hovering in the night sky above Mesa in Arizona. This happened on 6th April 2016.
Witness report:I walked into my bedroom to open my windows and saw a strange group of lights hovering low in the western sky. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I went into the kitchen and got my cellphone and went outside to try and film the event. I could see the lights out in the distance, but I have a block wall and the lights were low and close to the horizon. I climbed onto a chair to get a better view. My security lights were on and disturbed the darkness, but the lights were still clearly visible. I tried to hold my phone over my head to record the event. I watched the lights in a formation of sorts, but not really a rigid formation, there was some drifting. The lights seemed to be slowly headed away from me, towards the west. I observed an object cross the path of the lights and can’t tell if it was one of the lights or an airplane or helicopter. One light seemed to fade then came back to original brightness. I heard no sound, probably because of distance from me and I cannot estimate how far away they were. I called my daughter because the lights seemed to be in the direction of her house. She was driving at the time and did not see anything. The lights slowly faded in the distance and then were gone. I called the local FOX news station and asked if anyone else reported lights and was told no.
Ancient Advanced Technology, Self Activating Machines, Planetary Terraforming, and Anonymously Leaked Top Secret Documents, all this and more set the stage for a UFO mystery that began over 12,000 thousand years ago. Linda Moulton Howe traveled to Turkey to see first hand, dozens of 19 foot tall elegantly carved limestone pillars, erected in a series of circles, covering 30 acres, in a place called “Gobekli Tepe,” a few miles from the northern Syrian border. Carbon dating places the age of these finally crafted pillars at 12,000 years. Beginning in 1994, German Archaeologist Dr. Klaus Schmidt from the University of Heidelberg and the German Archaeological Institute, began slowly and carefully excavating the site which is dated at more than twice the age of Egypt, Sumeria and Stonehenge. Researchers are now speculating that “Gobekli Tepe,” Stonehenge and other erected stone circles, and pyramids, located around the world, could be self-activating machines left behind by non-human intelligence that have terraformed Earth for a millennia. In this program, Emmy Award-winning TV Producer, Investigative Journalist, and Author, Linda Moulton Howe, presents the latest research on “Gabekli Tepe” along with anonymously leaked document from an unknown American Scientist about commercial applications of research from extraterrestrial technology. This is one presentation you don’t want to miss.
This Friday (April 8), SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Dragon cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station, carrying the first expandable habitat that will be occupied by humans in orbit.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will be folded up into the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft like a parachute that is ready to be unfurled. The station's robotic arm will remove BEAM from the trunk, attach it to the Tranquility Node, and it will expand to more than five times its total compressed size in about 45 minutes.
It doesn't take a spaceflight industry expert to start dreaming about what expandable habitats could mean for future space exploration. Why not put up a dozen space stations orbiting the Earth? Humans could use them to set up colonies on the moon or Mars. What's to stop an eccentric billionaire from starting a space hotel? Robert Bigelow, founder and head of the company that made BEAM, talked to Space.com about the company's goals for the next 20 years, and the issues that stand in the way of the company's efforts to achieve them. [Bigelow's Inflatable Space Station Idea in Photos]
William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, and Jason Crusan, director of the agency's advanced exploration systems division, view the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) in its compressed form at Bigelow’s facility in Las Vegas on March 12, 2015. BEAM will expand to just over 13 feet (4.01 meters) long and 10.5 feet (3.23 m) wide once it is attached to the International Space Station.
A central limiting factor to the possible size of space-based habitats or structures is the size of the payload bay on the spacecraft that carries it up to space. Many of the American pieces of the space station were sent up in the space shuttle's bay, which was roughly large enough to fit a school bus. (Russia also took the approach of building a new spacecraft that could withstand the trip to space, and then used the spacecraft itself as a module for the station).
"Bigelow habitats are lighter and take up substantially less rocket fairing space, and are far more affordable than traditional, rigid modules," according to Bigelow press release. And for anyone worried about the safety of something that expands like a balloon in an environment that is fairly hostile to life, the company says its habitats provide "enhanced protection against radiation and physical debris" compared to metallic structures.
BEAM is built out of a proprietary "soft-goods, expandable material." The load-bearing structure is made from something similar to Vectran, a manufactured fiber made from a liquid-crystal polymer that is used in some space suits, company representatives said in last week's telecom. BEAM is covered by a Micrometeoroid and Orbital Debris protection layer, which is also proprietary to Bigelow Aerospace. Company representatives speaking during a NASA teleconference in April said their structures are up to the standards set for all ISS structures.
BEAM will only have one-fifth the livable space of the station's Harmony Module — but it also only has one-tenth of Harmony's mass. When packed, BEAM can be reduced to about half of its normal width and about three-quarters of its normal length. Thus, an expandable habitat that, when compressed, was the size of the Harmony module, could expand to be even larger, thus making it possible to get bigger space habitats into orbit without having to build bigger cargo carriers.
That's what Bigelow Aerospace is currently driving at. In March 2015, NASA announced that as part of its Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) project, the agency has a contract with Bigelow to develop "ambitious human spaceflight missions that leverage its innovative B330 space habitat." The B330 is an expandable habitat with 330 cubic meters of livable space — 20 times more than BEAM and 4.5 times more than Harmony. Bigelow said that by 2021, the company will be prepared to launch up to two of the B330s. Whether or not they launch will depend on whether or not the company has a customer who wants to use the habitat, and whether or not there is an affordable way to send people there. [Inflatable Space Station by Bigelow Aerospace (Infographic)]
This early concept art shows a lunar base as envisioned by Bigelow Aerospace, which builds expandable space habitats.
Credit: Bigelow Aerospace
A ticket to space
If inflatable space habitats are such a good idea, then why is Bigelow Aerospace the only company or agency that has made any significant progress toward making them?
"[Why is Bigelow the only company] that's foolish enough to do it?" Bigelow asked, finishing my question for me. He laughed, but then said, "In all seriousness, it is a leap of faith in a sense, because we have been so far out in front of everything."
Bigelow owns the hotel chain Budget Suites of America, and it was from that enterprise that he made enough money to start a company that would build expandable habitats. It was an idea that NASA had started investigating in the 1950s, according to Bigelow Aerospace's website, and it was work on expandables that led to the invention of Mylar. Ultimately, a lack of sufficiently strong, yet flexible materials stopped that line of research within the agency. Work on expandable habitats was briefly revived in the 1980s and again in the 1990s, but NASA wasn't able to keep the project alive.
Expandable space habitats are being discussed by people in both the public and the private spaceflight industry sectors — animations and artists' renditions like this one show expandable habitats playing a role in future space exploration endeavors. But, perhaps the reason no one has invested as heavily in actually building them is because a space destination is no good without a way to get there.
"Transportation has been our Achilles' heel in terms of getting into a business mode, ever since we started the company," Bigelow said.
The company struggled for years without success to get its first two in-space test habitats, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, into orbit using U.S.-based launch options, and then spent years working to get past regulations that made it difficult to launch them via a Russian-based space travel provider. There are an increasing number of U.S.-based companies that will fly cargo into space, but Bigelow said his major concern is how humans will reach these space habitats.
Right now, the only way for humans to get to orbital space is on a Russian Soyuz capsule. NASA currently pays nearly $82 million per astronaut for space on the Soyuz.
"We would never attempt a business case based on the kind of pricing per seat that NASA is willing to pay," Bigelow said. "It wouldn't work."
"At this juncture, we are assuming that SpaceX is going to perfect its ability first, before other companies, to affordably move people to and from low-Earth orbit," Bigelow said. Affordability is "a key word," he said.
The commercial spaceflight industry is still at a tentative stage, said Jeff Greason, a co-founder of the spaceflight company XCOR, who spoke with Space.com at the SpaceCom Expo in Houston, in November 2015. He said the success and progress of transportation providers is moving forward, but "we have not yet reached the point where I think it's irreversible."
"The enterprise is much bigger than just the transportation segment. But it's all enabled by the transportation segment," Greason told Space.com. "So, if the transportation's not there, then all of the other great things we can do, which make up much more of the business, can't happen. So transportation is key."
For its habitats to succeed, Bigelow's company needs transportation, but that need is a two-way street: Transportation providers need a place to take people and cargo. The topic of space destinations was also a discussion point among experts at the 2015 SpaceCom Expo. The spaceflight community is understandably concerned about NASA's plans for supporting the International Space Station after 2024, when the agency's current commitment to maintain its side of the station ends. Having an operating laboratory in low Earth orbit provides commercial space companies with a regular customer for sending cargo and (soon) humans. It also provides a platform for space-based science, and will provide a place where explorers can prepare for more trips to other space destinations.
If Bigelow's plans stay on track, and it attracts the right customers, his company could relieve that threat by providing new laboratories in low Earth orbit. Countries without space programs or without a stake in the ISS could send astronauts to space without having to build the infrastructure that NASA and other space agencies currently have.
Bigelow said the company has "had discussions with foreign countries who have their own space agencies … for a number of years," as well as with countries who do not have their own space agencies. Already, he said, there are countries interested in using BEAM to pursue commercial activities.
Bigelow said he envisions that between 2021 and 2031, the Bigelow B330s would be added on and expanded, creating "a large conglomerate of habitats" that could be owned by different customers, or jointly owned by multiple partners. If money can be generated from those LEO destinations, Bigelow said he'd like to see that put toward lunar settlements.
"We would transition some of the client menu that we would have in LEO to folks who would want to be involved in some kind of business activity on the moon. And I think that by 2031, that's practical," Bigelow said. "We would also like to be part of a conglomerate of folks. … I see our role as perfecting our art and being able to provide habitats for deployment in different environments in conjunction with other space or nonspace folks putting companies together to promote these kinds of activities. So I don't look at it as [if] we intend to do this alone." [Inflatable Habitats: From the Space Station to the Moon and Mars?]
An artist's illustration of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), built by Bigelow aerospace, attached to the International Space Station. BEAM is scheduled to launch toward the station aboard a Dragon cargo spacecraft on April 8.
Credit: Bigelow Aerospace
Working with NASA
Eric Stallmer is president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), the "industry association of leading businesses and organizations working to make commercial human spaceflight a reality," according to the CSF website. Stallmer said he's an optimist about BEAM and Bigelow Aerospace's future plans for its expandable habitats. He's also a realist, and recognizes that there are still significant challenges facing the company.
"There's a lot of elements to this, and just because the BEAM is going up, doesn't mean, you know, we're going to have a lunar base next week," Stallmer said. "I think [Bigelow is] paving the way, I think they're pioneers. … They did something that traditionally only a government could do or only a sovereign nation could do. And they did it at a fraction of the cost. And if it succeeds, it will once again prove that space doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive."
BEAM will be on the space station for a minimum of two years, where Bigelow will monitor it in order to earn NASA's approval for further human use.
"NASA is essentially the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for habitats, at this point in time," Bigelow said. "It is the prime customer that you want to satisfy. … It has a very high standard."
Stallmer said that it may also look, from the outside, as if what Bigelow Aerospace has already accomplished were simple, or that creating the habitat technology was the company's greatest challenge. But Bigelow said the number one challenge facing the company is politics.
"You have to have political permission first. You have to have the money second. If you have those two, you can create whatever technology you need," Bigelow said, perhaps referencing the company's struggles to get its Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 habitats launched.
He said that refers to politics within NASA as well as the U.S. government, and "whether or not NASA is going to be an agent for this kind of change. Or is it going to be managed by an administration whose philosophy is to thwart commercialization?
"If NASA resists, and the philosophy of our politics, of our administration, is to continue to pursue NASA as an owner instead of a consumer, instead of a tenant, if you will, then a lot of delay will occur and it won't proceed like it could have," he said. "But if NASA's philosophy is to expand commercialization, to promote it and really facilitate it — then, oh my gosh, it'll be night and day."
Editor's Note: BEAM is flying to the space station on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, not a Cygnus spacecraft as this article previously stated.
Is Mysterious 'Planet Nine' Tugging on NASA Saturn Probe?
Is Mysterious 'Planet Nine' Tugging on NASA Saturn Probe?
by Shannon Hall, ScientificAmerican
Artist's illustration of "Planet Nine," a hypothesized world about 10 times more massive than Earth that may orbit far beyond Pluto. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
The hunt is on to find "Planet Nine" — a large undiscovered world, perhaps 10 times as massive as Earth and four times its size — that scientists think could be lurking in the outer solar system. After Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, two planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, presented evidence for its existence this January, other teams have searched for further proof by analyzing archived images and proposing new observations to find it with the world's largest telescopes.
Just this month, evidence from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn helped close in on the missing planet. Many experts suspect that within as little as a year someone will spot the unseen world, which would be a monumental discovery that changes the way we view our solar system and our place in the cosmos. "Evidence is mounting that something unusual is out there — there's a story that's hard to explain with just the standard picture," says David Gerdes, a cosmologist at the University of Michigan who never expected to find himself working on Planet Nine. He is just one of many scientists who leapt at the chance to prove — or disprove — the team's careful calculations.
Batygin and Brown made the case for Planet Nine's existence based on its gravitational effect on several Kuiper Belt objects — icy bodies that circle the sun beyond Neptune's orbit. Theoretically, though, its gravity should also tug slightly on the planets, moons and even any orbiting spacecraft. With this in mind, Agnès Fienga at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France and her colleagues checked whether a theoretical model (one that they have been perfecting for over a decade) with the new addition of Planet Nine could better explain slight perturbations seen in Cassini's orbit. Without it, the eight planets in the solar system, 200 asteroids and five of the most massive Kuiper Belt objects cannot perfectly account for it. The missing puzzle piece might just be a ninth planet.
So Fienga and her colleagues compared the updated model, which placed Planet Nine at various points in its hypothetical orbit, with the data. They found a sweet spot—with Planet Nine 600 astronomical units (about 90 billion kilometers) away toward the constellation Cetus — that can explain Cassini's orbit quite well. Although Fienga is not yet convinced that she has found the culprit for the probe's odd movements, most outside experts are blown away. "It's a brilliant analysis," says Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at Lick Observatory, who was not involved in the study. "It's completely amazing that they were able to do that so quickly." Gerdes agrees: "That's a beautiful paper."
The good news does not end there. If Planet Nine is located toward the constellation Cetus, then it could be picked up by the Dark Energy Survey, a Southern Hemisphere observation project designed to probe the acceleration of the universe. "It turns out fortuitously that the favored region from Cassini is smack dab in the middle of our survey footprint," says Gerdes, who is working on the cosmology survey. "We could not have designed our survey any better." Although the survey was not planned to search for solar system objects, Gerdes has discovered some (including one of the icy objects that led Batygin and Brown to conclude Planet Nine exists in the first place).
Laughlin thinks this survey has the best immediate chance of success. He is also excited by the fact that Planet Nine could be so close. Although 600 AUs—roughly 15 times the average distance to Pluto—does sound far, Planet Nine could theoretically hide as far away as 1,200 AUs. "That makes it twice as easy to get to, twice as soon," Laughlin says. "And not just twice as bright but 16 times as bright."
And the Dark Energy Survey is not the only chance to catch the faint world. It should be possible to look for the millimeter-wavelength light the planet radiates from its own internal heat. Such a search wasproposed by Nicolas Cowan, an exoplanet astronomer at McGill University in Montreal, who thinks that Planet Nine might show up in surveys of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the pervasive afterglow of the big bang. "CMB experiments have historically used solar system giant planets to calibrate their instruments, so we know that current and planned CMB experiments are sensitive enough to measure the flux from Planet Nine if it is as bright as we think it is," Cowan says.
Already, cosmologists have started to comb through data from existing experiments, and astronomers with many different specialties have also joined in on the search. "I love that we can take this four-meter telescope and find a rock 100 kilometers in diameter that is a billion kilometers past Neptune with the same instrument that we are using to do extragalactic stuff and understand the acceleration of the universe," Gerdes says.
In the meantime Batygin and Brown are proposing a dedicated survey of their own. In a recent study they searched through various sky maps to determine where Planet Nine cannot be. "We dumpster-dived into the existing observational data to search for Planet Nine, and because we didn't find it we were able to rule out parts of the orbit," Batygin says. The zone where the planet makes its farthest swing from the sun as well as the small slice of sky where Fienga thinks the planet could be now, for example, have not been canvassed by previous observations. To search the unmapped zones, Batygin and Brown have asked for roughly 20 observing nights on the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. "It's a pretty big request compared to what other people generally get on the telescope," Brown says. "We'll see if they bite." If they do, Brown is convinced he will have his planet within a year.
"I really want to see what it looks like," says Batygin, who adds that his aspiration drives him to search for the unseen world. But Laughlin takes it a step further: "I think [the discovery] would provide amazing inspiration for the next stage of planetary exploration," he says. We now have another opportunity to see one of the worlds of our own solar system for the first time. "If Planet Nine isn't out there, we won't have that experience again."
The option to see and study the patient’s skull through 3D printing before risky surgeries allows the team to properly prepare for complicated and delicate procedures.
PARKER’S SKULL
Sometimes, a stuffy nose and a cold can’t be cured by taking your usual decongestant. In the case of Parker Turchan, these typical symptoms were the precursor to a more serious diagnosis—a rare tumor in his nose and sinuses that went through his skull and near his brain.
This type of tumor is uncommon—and in its late stage, combined with its location and size, physicians were challenged with the feasibility of removing the tumor using a minimally invasive approach. The procedure was risky and could lead to complications such as massive blood loss or damaged facial nerves.
In an attempt to find combat these challenges, the team decided to create a 3D replica of Parker’s skull made of polylactic acid. This would essentially allow the option to see and study the patient’s skull before such a risky surgery.
A POWERFUL TOOL
Dr. David Zopf. Credit: University of Michigan Health System
The model allowed the surgical team to properly prepare for the delicate procedure. It became a way for surgeons to touch the tumor with their hands, allowing them to learn the best approach to achieve their goal.
This method also allowed doctors to take the patient and family members through the procedure in detail, giving them a more in-depth look at what was going to happen during the surgery.
Now, according to his mother, 15-year-old Parker is “back to his old self again.”
This isn’t the first time the physicians at Mott have saved lives with the help of 3D printing. Groundbreaking 3-D printed splints made at U-M have helped save the lives of babies with severe tracheobronchomalacia, which causes the windpipe to periodically collapse and prevents normal breathing. Mott has also used 3-D printing on a fetus to plan for a potentially complicated birth.
“We are finding more and more uses for 3-D printing in medicine. It is proving to be a powerful tool that will allow for enhanced patient care,” says Mott pediatric head and neck surgeonDavid Zopf, M.D.
Doctors may soon be able to create a custom-made skin from your own stem cells. This could help tremendously with recuperating from injuries.
CUSTOM-MADE JOINTS
3D printing stem cells isn’t necessarily new—but being able to use the technology to custom-create cartilage in real time is particularly impressive.
The exact shape of a patient’s cartilage is unknown up until the moment that they are on the operating table and are cut open. Which means being able to print cartilage right then and there would be essential to creating custom-made joints using your own stem cells—which is exactly what the biopen can do.
BIOPEN
It functions as a 3D printer that can create surgical scaffolds, which can then be permanently hardened using ultraviolet light. You can check out the process in this video below of the biopen’s early prototype—but note that the current version has been significantly improved, as discussed in the paper published in Biofabrication.
The device (made of medical grade plastic and titanium) was the result of a collaborative effort between scientists and clinicians—the latter to identify the problem and the former addressing it by proposing a solution.
There is no word yet on when the technology will be made available for consumer use, but once it does, it also has the potential to be used in other surgeries that require custom tissue regeneration.
On the scale of the "uncanny valley," the humanoid robot registers a positive response with humans just before the dip into repulsion. Its resemblance hovers between C-3PO and Wall-E, a familiar but distinctly non-human robot.
ROBOTS GETTING FRIENDLY
There’s a point on the Uncanny Valley when a humanoid robot turns from something “friendly” into something terrifying. An example of a robot that would naturally register as non-threatening would be Star Wars‘ C-3PO. We can still differentiate between computer and human at that level. It’s familiar to us, but we know for a fact that it’s non-human.
Even though we see these robots in such a way, is it possible that we could associate them with a deeper emotional response?
Jamy Li, Wendy Ju, and Byron Reeves from Stanford University took that to the test. They took an NAO robot and programmed it for their specific experiment. What they found was that touching a robot intimately created physiological arousal in participants.
All in all, the experiment consisted of instructions that were spoken by the robot to participants. This was followed by 26 trials. There were three steps that made up each trial. First, the robot asks the participant to touch it in a certain area of its body. Next, the participant touches that body part. Lastly, the robot teaches the participant about that particular body part in medical terms.
During the trials, participants were monitored via sensors for skin conductance, levels of physiological arousal, and reaction time between command and touch.
They were able to come to this conclusion due to the participants’ hesitance in touching certain body parts. When informed to touch a common part such as the hand or neck, there was little refrain. But when told to touch a part that’s not commonly touched, such as the eyes or buttocks, their response times were greater.
PRIMITIVE BEHAVIOR
The field of communication shows that touch is a primitive behavior. It’s used as a “social glue” that binds people and communities together by building and influencing trust. “Our work shows that robots are a new form of media that is particularly powerful. It shows that people respond to robots in a primitive and social way,” stated Jamy Li.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
