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 ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 11 MONTHS.
ON 06/05/2024 MORE THAN 1.972.210
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
10-05-2016
UFO Orb Visits Wind Farm In Poland, Stops Propellers, April 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Orb Visits Wind Farm In Poland, Stops Propellers, April 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: April 17, 2016 Location of sighting: Majdanek, Lublin, Poland Here is an interesting catch from Poland. A UFO exlpores a wind farm and the propeller stops as the UFO comes closer to it. This kind of UFO is known well by NASA, because this metallic orb style UFO had a fleet of 3 or more following so close the the Shuttle Atlantis that they delayed landing for 24 hours. The orbs were similar to this. I will place the videos below to compare. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com Eyewitness states: Film recorded April 17, 2016 near the small village of Majdan in the upper region of Lublin. According to witnesses, the object came flying from the east and flew over the area for about an hour. After the recording object disappeared.
Moon Of Saturn Is An Artificial Alien Construct, May 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Moon Of Saturn Is An Artificial Alien Construct, May 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: May 2016 Location of discovery: Moons in Earths Solar System Here is an interesting video by Youtube user Securityteam10 which discusses a few of the many pieces of evidence that moons in our solar system are not naturally made, but made and controlled by intelligent aliens. The evidence is mourning and in the next ten years, the tech necessary to confirm these moons are artificial, will be in the hands of the public. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com
Advanced Aliens Were Around BEFORE US: Confirms Exoplanet Scientists
Advanced Aliens Were Around BEFORE US: Confirms Exoplanet Scientists
It is becoming very clear that us humans may not be not the universe’s first advanced civilization.
This is the conclusion of a recent revision of the famous 1961 Drake Equation, which actually estimates the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe.
Their new equation includes recent data from Nasa’s Kepler satellite on the number of exoplanets that could harbour life.
Researchers also adapted the equation from being about the number of civilizations that exist now, to being about the probability of civilization being the only one that has ever existed!
We are FAR from alone
This important recent study shows that unless the odds of advanced life evolving on a habitable planet are astonishingly low, then humankind is not the only advanced civilization to have lived and there are probably far more advanced Beings out there in the greater Universe!
In fact, the odds of an advanced civilization developing need to be less than one in 10 billion trillion for humans to be the only intelligent life in the universe.
But Kepler data places those odds much higher, which means technologically advanced aliens are likely to have existed at some point.
Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester and co-author of the paper, went on to say:
‘The question of whether advanced civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe has always been vexed with three large uncertainties in the Drake equation,’
‘We’ve known for a long time approximately how many stars exist.
‘We didn’t know how many of those stars had planets that could potentially harbour life, how often life might evolve and lead to intelligent beings, and how long any civilizations might last before becoming extinct.’
‘Thanks to Nasa’s Kepler satellite and other searches, we now know that roughly one-fifth of stars have planets in ‘habitable zones,’ where temperatures could support life as we know it.
‘So one of the three big uncertainties has now been constrained.’ He said.
Frank went on to say that the third big question is. how long civilizations might survive – something which is as of yet still completely unknown.
‘The fact that humans have had rudimentary technology for roughly ten thousand years doesn’t really tell us if other societies would last that long or perhaps much longer,’ he explained.
The Drake equation (top row) has proven to be a durable framework for research. But it is impossible to do anything more than guess at variables such as L, the probably longevity of other advanced civilizations. In new research, Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan offer a new equation (bottom row)
But Frank and his co-author, Woodruff Sullivan of the astronomy department at the University of Washington, found they could eliminate that term altogether by simply expanding the question.
‘Rather than asking how many civilizations may exist now, we ask ‘are we the only technological species that has ever arisen?’ said Sullivan.
‘This shifted focus eliminates the uncertainty of the civilization lifetime question and allows us to address what we call the ‘cosmic archaeological question’ – how often in the history of the universe has life evolved to an advanced state?
Rather than guessing at the odds of advanced life developing, they calculate the odds against it occurring in order for humanity to be the only advanced civilization.
With that, Frank and Sullivan then calculated the line between a universe where humanity has been the sole experiment in civilization and one where others have come before us.
‘Of course, we have no idea how likely it is that an intelligent technological species will evolve on a given habitable planet,’ says Frank.
‘But using our method we can tell exactly how low that probability would have to be for us to be the only civilization the universe has produced.
‘We call that the pessimism line. If the actual probability is greater than the pessimism line, then a technological species and civilization has likely happened before.’
Using this interesting approach, Frank and Sullivan can now calculate how unlikely advanced life must be if there has never been another example among the universe’s ten billion trillion stars, or even among our own Milky Way galaxy’s hundred billion.
‘One in 10 billion trillion is incredibly small,’ says Frank. ‘To me, this implies that other intelligent, technology producing species very likely have evolved before us.
‘Think of it this way. Before our result you’d be considered a pessimist if you imagined the probability of evolving a civilization on a habitable planet were, say, one in a trillion
‘But even that guess, one chance in a trillion, implies that what has happened here on Earth with humanity has in fact happened about a 10 billion other times over cosmic history.’
For smaller volumes the numbers are less extreme.
For example, another technological species likely has evolved on a habitable planet in our own Milky Way galaxy if the odds against it are better than one chance in 60 billion.
But if those numbers seem to give ammunition to the ‘optimists’ about the existence of alien civilizations,
Sullivan points out that the full Drake equation – which calculates the odds that other civilizations are around today – may give solace to the pessimists.
‘The universe is more than 13 billion years old,’ said Sullivan.
‘That means that even if there have been a thousand civilizations in our own galaxy, if they live only as long as we have been around – roughly ten thousand years – then all of them are likely already extinct.
‘And others won’t evolve until we are long gone. For us to have much chance of success in finding another ‘contemporary’ active technological civilization, on average they must last much longer than our present lifetime.’
‘Given the vast distances between stars and the fixed speed of light we might never really be able to have a conversation with another civilization anyway,’ said Frank.
‘If they were 20,000 light years away then every exchange would take 40,000 years to go back and forth.’
But, as Frank and Sullivan point out, even if there aren’t other civilizations in our galaxy to communicate with now, the new result still has a profound scientific and philosophical importance.
‘From a fundamental perspective the question is ‘has it ever happened anywhere before?” said Frank.
Our result is the first time anyone has been able to set any empirical answer for that question and it is astonishingly likely that we are not the only time and place that an advance civilization has evolved.’
Their new equation includes recent data from Nasa’s Kepler satellite on the number of exoplanets that could harbour life. Pictured is an artist’s impression of the probe
U.I.P SUMMARY
Once upon a time leading Scientists wanted us all to believe that we are alone in the Universe – this has now been proven to be pretty much impossible. The Universe is infested with life out there, and we the Human Race are probably far less developed than many older/wiser advanced Alien species.
You will notice that these Scientists nearly always play down their investigations into Alien life, but we mustn’t be too harsh on them for this as they are scared about disclosing too much after so many leading Scientists have recently been killed off (so it appears).
Please check out some previous articles on this subject matter:
Lets not forget that NASA have PROMISED To discover aliens by 2015……!?
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09-05-2016
Eerste complete topografische kaart van Mercurius is een feit!
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Eerste complete topografische kaart van Mercurius is een feit!
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Topografisch gezien kent Mercurius nu weinig geheimen meer: alle hoogte- en dieptepunten van de planeet zijn ons nu bekend!
De nieuwe topografische kaart is gebaseerd op gegevens die ruimtesonde MESSENGER heeft verzameld. Eerder brachten onderzoekers al een kaart uit waarop de topografie van het noordelijke deel en het gebied rond de evenaar van Mercurius pronkte. Hoe het zuiden topografisch gezien in elkaar stak, bleef een raadsel. Tot nu.
De complete topografische kaart van Mercurius. Lagergelegen gebieden zijn blauw en paars, hogergelegen gebieden zijn oranje, bruin en rood. Klik voor een vergroting.
Afbeelding: USGS.
Hoog en laag Onderzoekers hebben zo’n 100.000 foto’s gebruikt om een topografisch model van geheel Mercurius te maken. Het nieuwe model onthult tal van interessante topografische kenmerken, waaronder het hoogste en diepste punt van Mercurius. Het hoogste punt op de binnenste planeet van ons zonnestelsel ligt zo’n 4,48 kilometer boven de gemiddelde hoogte van het oppervlak. Het laagste punt ligt daar zo’n 5,38 kilometer onder. Het hoogstgelegen punt vinden we net ten zuiden van de evenaar in één van de oudste gebieden die Mercurius rijk is. Het laagste punt vinden we in het Rachmaninoff-basin.
Nabij de noordpool Ook geeft de nieuwe kaart een prachtig beeld van het gebied nabij de noordpool van Mercurius. “MESSENGER heeft eerder ontdekt dat vulkanische activiteit in het verleden dit deel van de planeet met lava heeft ontdekt, op sommige plekken is de laag lava meer dan 1,6 kilometer dik,” vertelt onderzoeker Nancy Chabot. Het is in het verleden lastig gebleken om dit deel van Mercurius goed in beeld te krijgen. De zon staat hier altijd laag aan de horizon, waardoor lange schaduwen over het gebied vallen. En toch is het MESSENGER gelukt om een paar goede foto’s te maken en die leiden tot een prachtig topografisch kaartje (zie hieronder). “Dit is één van mijn favoriete kaarten van Mercurius,” stelt Chabot. “Nu de kaart beschikbaar is, kijk ik ernaar uit dat deze gebruikt wordt om deze epische vulkaanuitbarstingen die het oppervlak van Mercurius vormgaf te onderzoeken.”
De vulkanische vlakten nabij de noordpool van Mercurius.
Afbeelding: NASA / JHUAPL / Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Het is alweer een jaar geleden dat de missie van ruimtesonde MESSENGER tot een einde kwam. De sonde boorde zich in het oppervlak van Mercurius. En zo kwam een einde aan een missie die eigenlijk één jaar had moeten duren, maar uiteindelijk vier jaar in beslag nam en een schat aan informatie over Mercurius heeft opgeleverd.
Veel waterijs te vinden op het oppervlak van Pluto's maan Hydra
Veel waterijs te vinden op het oppervlak van Pluto's maan Hydra
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Dat blijkt uit nieuwe gegevens van ruimtesonde New Horizons. Het kan verklaren waarom Hydra zoveel licht reflecteert.
We wisten dat Pluto vijf manen telde, maar tot voor kort hadden we – zeker van de kleinere exemplaren – geen flauw idee hoe ze er in detail uit zagen. Ruimtesonde New Horizons heeft daar verandering in gebracht. De sonde scheerde vorig jaar juli langs Pluto en zijn manen en dat heeft prachtige gedetailleerde foto’s opgeleverd. Op die foto’s was onder meer te zien dat maantje Hydra – de maan die het verst van Pluto verwijderd is – bijzonder veel licht reflecteert. En nu weten onderzoekers – wederom dankzij New Horizons – hoe dat komt.
Waterijs Het oppervlak van de maan is voor een groot deel bedekt met vrijwel zuiver waterijs, zo laat NASA weten. Dat blijkt uit gegevens die New Horizons al op 14 juli verzamelde, maar die nu pas op aarde zijn gearriveerd.
Schoon Net als Charon – de grootste maan van Pluto – wordt het oppervlak van Hydra gedomineerd door waterijs. Maar het ijs op Hydra lijkt veel ‘schoner’. Zo is het waterijs op Charon ‘verontreinigd’ door donker materiaal dat zich door de tijd heen op de maan heeft verzameld. Hoe weet Hydra het oppervlak zo schoontjes te houden? Dat is nog onduidelijk. “Misschien wordt het oppervlak van Hydra continu ‘ververst’ door inslagen van kleine meteorieten die verontreinigingen verwijderen,” vertelt onderzoeker Simon Porter. “Dit proces zou op het veel grotere Charon niet effectief zijn, omdat Charons sterke zwaartekracht al het puin dat bij deze inslagen ontstaat, naar zich toe trekt.”
Hoewel het alweer bijna een jaar geleden is dat New Horizons langs Pluto scheerde, zijn nog lang niet alle gegevens die de sonde tijdens en kort na de scheervlucht verzamelde, binnen. Pas dit najaar is de download compleet. Tussen de gegevens waar astronomen nu nog op wachten, bevinden zich onder meer gegevens over de samenstelling van de andere manen van Pluto.
New compositional data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveal a distinct water-ice signature on the surface of Pluto’s outermost moon, Hydra. Pluto’s largest moon Charon measures 752 miles (1,210 kilometers across), while Hydra is approximately 31 miles (50 kilometers) long.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Bronmateriaal:
"Pluto’s Icy Moon Hydra" - NASA De afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel is gemaakt door NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI.
Astronaut Tom Jones during one of his three spacewalks on Space Shuttle mission STS-98 in February 2001 which activated the U.S. Destiny Laboratory, the historic scientific centerpiece of the International Space Station.
Stories have been told for decades about American astronauts who supposedly have seen unexplained aerial phenomena (as Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton prefers to call UFOs).
But how many astronauts have really reported close encounters with objects that could be verified as actual unknowns? Vanishingly few, it turns out.
Veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones said he wondered about UFOs long before he joined the space agency.
“I used to be a big UFO fan when I was a teenager, thinking that this was the next great frontier of exploration,” Jones said in a recent interview with The Huffington Post. “I dropped that opinion later on, after not seeing the evidence that I was looking for.”
In his Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine column, “Ask the Astronaut,” Jones answered a recent question about whether he or other astronauts had ever seen UFOs from orbit. He wrote:
Astronauts have not seen any evidence of alien life. Reports of unidentified flying objects in images returned from the shuttle or [space] station have turned out to be ice crystals, drifting orbital debris, lightning flashes, or meteors streaking through the dark atmosphere below. So far, our search for extraterrestrial life — and other civilizations in space — has turned up no proof of alien civilizations.
Jones told HuffPost how, during his 1996 space shuttle mission, there were reports that his crew saw UFOs:
I was on the shuttle Columbia — STS-80 — and even made a blog entry, ‘Did UFOs Visit The Shuttle Columbia?’ Because when we came back from that mission in 1996, NASA got several queries from people who were watching the video — NASA TV back then — and said, ‘Hey, we saw spaceships on the shuttle video. What’s NASA got to say about that?’
Public affairs referred them to me because I was one of the crew members, and I looked at the video and I said, ‘Oh, I know what this is — this is just ice crystals floating along beside the ship for the first couple of days of the flight.’ What looked to some people like a spaceship streaking across the star field, was — to us, looking out the windows — a complete non-event. And yet, it was very significant to people who were watching.
Jones flew on four space shuttle missions over 11 years, culminating with STS-98, in February 2001, as seen in the below video. On that mission, he led three spacewalks to install the U.S. Destiny Laboratory — the historic scientific centerpiece for the International Space Station.
Jones said no contemporary astronaut has ever told him of seeing something unexplained or inexplicable. “Certainly, nothing in the way of spaceships,” he added.
“Now, I’m aware that there have been a couple of astronauts in the past who’ve spoken out and said they know from other people that there’s evidence of UFOs and spaceships that have visited the Earth and that the government might be withholding it.
“They all seem to be secondhand, or they seem to be sightings of things that they’ve seen in orbit that, perhaps, they couldn’t explain at the time. And that’s where the story seems to peter out.”
One of those mentioned by Jones was the late Gordon Cooper, an original Mercury astronaut — one of the famous “Right Stuff” space voyagers. In 1975, Cooper told this writer how, in 1951 (before he became an astronaut), he and several other officers at an Air Force base in Germany witnessed groups of circular objects passing over the base.
“A weatherman spotted some strange objects flying at fairly high altitude and before long, the entire fighter group was out peering through binoculars at these groups of objects coming over in very strange patterns. But unlike fighters, they would almost stop in their forward velocity and change 90 degrees in their flight path. We never could get close enough to pin them down, but they were round in shape and very metallic-looking.
“I’d like to point out that most astronauts are very reluctant to even discuss UFOs due to the great numbers of people who have indiscriminately sold fake stories and forged documents abusing their names and reputations without hesitation,” Cooper said.
Jones said it’s important to be cautious about unusual aerial objects.
“Even from people that I respect, like a couple of very early and famous astronauts, I haven’t seen the proof that would satisfy me that there’s really something there,” he said. “And I think it’s far more likely that people who see unexplained things in the sky, there’s no proof that they’re actually intelligently guided or alien spaceships of any kind.
“Until all these people running around with cellphones and video cameras now can really produce something that’s really grabbing, I don’t think that I should change my mind about it.”
What is it ? Natural phenomenon, HAARP?The Apparitions?
Something very strange is going on in recent years in the atmosphere on the planet
Whether it comes to aliens, changes in the earth’s core or CHEMTRAILS, HAARP?
People all around the world take photos of this strange phenomena. Why are they appear and what is the meaning of them? What is going on? Can it affect a human evolution? What do you think about that?
The Universe Has Probably Hosted Many Alien Civilizations: Study
The Universe Has Probably Hosted Many Alien Civilizations: Study
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
Artist's impression of intelligent aliens.
Credit: Albert Ziganshin / Shutterstock.com
Many other planets throughout the universe probably hosted intelligent life long before Earth did, a new study suggests.
The probability of a civilization developing on a potentially habitable alien planet would have to be less than one in 10 billion trillion — or one part in 10 to the 22nd power — for humanity to be the first technologically advanced species the cosmos has ever known, according to the study.
"To me, this implies that other intelligent, technology-producing species very likely have evolved before us," said lead author Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]
"Think of it this way: Before our result, you’d be considered a pessimist if you imagined the probability of evolving a civilization on a habitable planet was, say, one in a trillion," Frank said in a statement. "But even that guess — one chance in a trillion — implies that what has happened here on Earth with humanity has in fact happened about 10 billion other times over cosmic history."
Do you believe alien life exists elsewhere in the universe?
Yes - We may not have found them yet, but they're out there.65%(69614 votes)
No - Aliens are just part of science fiction.20%(20904 votes)
I'm not sure15%(15872 votes)
Total Votes: 106390
In 1961, astronomer Frank Drake devised a formula to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that may exist today in the Milky Way.
Adam Frank and co-author Woodruff Sullivan of the University of Washington were interested in the odds that intelligent aliens have ever existed anywhere in the universe. So they tweaked the famous Drake equation, coming up with an "archaeological version" that doesn't take into account how long alien civilizations may last.
Frank and Sullivan also incorporated observations from NASA's Kepler space telescope and other instruments, which suggest that about 20 percent of all stars host planets in the life-friendly, "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on a world's surface.
The Search for Intelligent Life Among the Stars: New Strategies
The researchers then calculated the probability that Earth was the universe's first-ever abode for intelligent life, after taking into account the number of stars in the observable universe (about 20 billion trillion, according to a recent estimate).
"From a fundamental perspective, the question is, 'Has it ever happened anywhere before?'" Frank said. "Our result is the first time anyone has been able to set any empirical answer+ for that question, and it is astonishingly likely that we are not the only time and place that an advanced civilization has evolved."
But this doesn't mean that there are lots of intelligent aliens out there, just waiting to be contacted, the researchers stressed.
"The universe is more than 13 billion years old," Sullivan said in the same statement. "That means that even if there have been 1,000 civilizations in our own galaxy, if they live only as long as we have been around — roughly 10,000 years — then all of them are likely already extinct. And others won’t evolve until we are long gone. For us to have much chance of success in finding another 'contemporary' active technological civilization, on average they must last much longer than our present lifetime."
(The 10,000-year figure cited by Sullivan refers to humanity's development of agriculture and other "rudimentary" technologies; mankind has been capable of sending radio waves and other electromagnetic signals out into the cosmos for just a century or so.)
If there’s a volcano, there’s bound to be UFO activity nearby and Mount Etna on the island of Sicily is no exception, with many UFO sightings reported there. Last week, a green cone-shaped UFO was spotted on thermal images entering an active vent of Mount Etna in the pre-dawn hours. Should locals pack their bags and head for the mainland?
Mount Etna is the tallest and most active volcano in Europe, with records and evidence of its eruptions dating back 500,000 years. Its latest period of heightened activity began in 2001.
On October 30th, an unnamed volcano watcher spotted a series of pictures on the Italian National Geology and Vulcanology (INGV) website showing thermal images of a green cone-shaped UFO descending into one of the volcano’s vents from 6:42 am to 6:54 am local time. By 7 am, the UFO was gone. Here’s the sequence (starting with the photo above):
This is only the latest of many UFO sightings at Mount Etna. This orb was seen over the volcano on April 27th, 2013.
This line of orbs appears to have been taken a few days later on May 1st, 2013.
This photo of a black triangle UFO over the volcano was taken on August 13th, 2014.
Those are just some of the more recent UFO sightings over Mount Etna. The one on October 30th is significant because it shows a UFO entering the active volcano. Is it trying to prevent an eruption?
That may not be a good thing, since some eruptions of Mount Etna had favorable consequences for the locals. In 396 BC, an Etna eruption may have stopped the Carthaginians from attacking Syracuse during the Second Sicilian War. In 122 BC, an eruption caused such heavy damage to Catania, the Roman government exempted the city from paying taxes for ten years.
Why did the green UFO enter Mount Etna this time? Is someone planning an invasion of Sicily? Should the locals plan for a tax break? If so, it won’t be long before American politicians copy it and start offering “lava tax breaks” … it’s the ultimate trickle down.
Scientists at Spain’s Valencian Infertility Institute, Spain’s first facility devoted to assisted reproduction, have created human sperm from skin cells. This medical breakthrough may one day lead to the treatment of fertility. About 15% of couples in the world have fertility issues. So far, their only options are donated eggs and sperm, surrogacy or adoption.
Medical Breakthroughs in the Lab
Carlos Simon, scientific director at Valencian along with researchers from Stanford University conducted and published this recent study. Simon says,
What to do when someone who wants to have a child lacks gametes (egg or sperm)? This is the problem we want to address: to be able to create gametes in people who do not have them.
The team was inspired by Nobel prize-winning scientists, Japan’s Shinya Yamanaka and Great Britain’s John Gordon. In 2012, they shared the Nobel for their discovery that adult cells can be transformed back into embryo-like stem cells. Now they wanted to take this research a step further.
The team added a “cocktail of genes” to skin cells, turning them into germ cells in about a month. The germ cells could eventually be developed into sperm or eggs. That was the desired outcome. However, the cells wouldn’t replicate themselves and died off.
Results of the recent scientific study turning skin cells into sperm.
The study states,
The reason for this is intriguing and we hypothesize that it may be due to the fact that cells within the clumps spontaneously enter into a metiotic cell cycle that results in the formation of hysploid cells that cannot be further maintained in vitro.
One reason why the cells failed to mature enough into full-fledged sperm cells may be that they cannot do this in a laboratory but may require that the germ cells be implanted into a living organism in order to develop into sperm. This may be what Chinese researchers announced this year when they had created mice from artificial sperm.
Simon explains,
This is a sperm but it needs a further maturation phase to become a gamete. This is just the beginning.
Other issues to be addressed include the legal constraints put upon such research. Some countries prohibit the creation of artificial embryos.
Simon says,
With the human species we must do much more testing because we are talking about the birth of a child. We are talking about a long process.
The study adds,
The knowledge obtained from this work can be used to create in vitro models to study gamete-related diseases in humans.
Knowledge about aliens might be as dangerous as the aliens themselves.
BY CALEB SCHARF - ILLUSTRATION BY RACHELL SUMPTER
Imagine that you’ve lived your entire life in a small village deep within a continental wilderness. For centuries this community has been isolated from the rest of the world. One day you go out exploring, skirting the edges of known territory. Suddenly, and against all expectations, you stumble across a signpost embedded in the ground. The script is highly unusual, foreign, but the text is clear enough. It says, simply, “We Are Here.”
The question is: What happens next?
There might be happiness and celebration to mark the end of isolation, or the news might be met with a shrug. But human nature suggests it’s more probable that this discovery triggers a chain of events that lead to utter disaster.
Suddenly your safe haven is threatened by an unknown “them.” Your time-tested principles of governance and social order are put under pressure. Gossip, rumor, and conjecture will gnaw away at your stable home. Barricades and armed forces will be raised at enormous cost, crops and repairs will be forgotten. A community will lurch toward its own collapse. Yet there is little more than a half-realized idea represented by this impersonal signpost, a whispered implication that infects the world with its ambiguity.
This tale is not the opening sequence of a B-grade movie, but an allegorical version of what might, just possibly, happen after we solve one of the oldest scientific and philosophical puzzles—whether or not we have neighbors “out there” in the wilderness of the cosmos.
This September, a team of astronomers noticed that the light from a distant star is flickering in a highly irregular pattern.1 They considered the possibility that comets, debris, and impacts could account for their observations, but each of these explanations...READ MORE
Today, the prospects for finding evidence of life beyond the Earth fall into three well-known categories. First is our exploration of the solar system. Mars is arguably the prime target because it offers a planetary template that, while alien, best parallels certain terrestrial environments—and it is directly accessible. At this very moment we have robotic wheels on Martian regolith and sharp eyes in orbit. More Mars missions are lining up: NASA’s MAVEN should be entering orbit as you read this, as should India’s Mangalyaan craft. And plans are afoot for the InSight seismological probe, Europe’s ExoMars, a Mars 2020 rover, a sample return, as well as the ever-present speculations for sending a human contingent.
But Mars is not the only fruit. The icy moons Enceladus and Europa both exhibit hallmarks of subsurface liquid water. In the case of Europa, a dark ocean with twice the volume of all Earth’s surface oceans conceivably exists in contact with a rocky core—with potential for a deep hydrothermal oasis. Recently discovered geyser-like eruptions into space from both offer hope of a sampling mission to look for signs of life.
In the second category, vastly farther beyond, lie the exoplanets. We now know this population to be enormous—tens of billions of terrestrial-scaled planets ranging from geophysical youth to old age. Some of these worlds could be passable Earth-analogs. The chase is on to measure the atmospheric chemical composition of at least a few of the nearest such worlds, looking for the fingerprints of a biosphere. NASA’s 2018 James Webb Space Telescope and the next-generation of 30-meter diameter Earth-bound astronomical observatories possess the capabilities to make crude measurements of such components.
Third, there is the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. Scouring the celestial radio and optical spectrum for structured, artificial signals—this is the highest-risk, highest-reward effort of all. Success would not only mean that life exists somewhere else, but that there is recognizable technological intelligence other than ours in the universe.
As an information-obsessed, intensely social species, we’re particularly vulnerable to memes. And not all memes are innocuous.
But the knowledge being sought from all these efforts could change far more than just our scientific understanding. Like a sign in the wilderness, the potential exists for new information to infect our collective consciousness before we’ve realized what’s happening. It is capable of seeding our minds with ideas that take on their own form of life as competitive agents that question the status quo, seeping into our thoughts and behaviors. In fact we already have a label for these types of self-propagating, evolving packets of information—we call them memes.
In 1976, writing in his book The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins proposed the term meme to describe something that spreads within a culture; whether it’s a catchy phrase, chairs with four legs, a style of clothing, or an entire belief system. In this sense a meme is a mutating, replicating piece of human cultural evolution—a viral entity.
As an information-obsessed, intensely social species, we’re particularly vulnerable to memes. And not all memes are innocuous—some become toxic when they meet other established memes. Witness the clash between Western mores and conservative Islam.
What if we discovered that we are surrounded by chemically incompatible aliens, and learned that all that we thought was inevitable and optimal about our biology and evolution is merely a fluke? Such a discovery runs counter to our Copernican ideals and upends any tidy rationalization of the deep connections between life and the fundamental constituents of the cosmos.
Or what if we detected an extraterrestrial signal along the lines of “You Are All Going To Die?” Even if this was a translation error, or a misinterpretation of an alien effort at existential camaraderie, our species could be quickly sent into a tailspin, potentially wrecking our civilization as effectively as any physical weapon.
Shooting memes back and forth across the void is asking for trouble.
A message with a more straightforward intent could have equally ruinous effects. It could be a new scientific insight or technological blueprint sent as an item of interstellar trade or détente, but have a destabilizing effect on Earth’s economy. Or a message could contain a philosophical statement interpreted to have religious meaning, triggering conflict and disorder. Even “Is Anyone Out There?” would be problematic—the decision to answer or not could provoke more than just verbal conflict within our species.
We may also agree to reach out, to our own detriment. If we identify the chemical signatures of a biosphere on a nearby exoplanet there will be temptation to send a focused message—a long-shot effort at communication. In our impatience we have already made such attempts. In 1974, for example, the Arecibo radio observatory beamed a meme-laden message of 1,679 binary digits towards a distant globular star cluster. Its contents included a simple string of numbers, a basic blueprint describing DNA, a cartoon human figure, and the layout of our solar system. We’ve also spent decades blaring out our wideband analog radio and TV transmissions before downsizing to digital. With a real target we might even consider sending a probe, especially if we ever develop the means to traverse interstellar space at a substantial fraction of the speed of light.
But these behaviors are terribly dangerous for us if they prompt a response from our cosmic neighbors, as well as for any intelligent natives of these other worlds. Shooting memes back and forth across the void is asking for trouble.
What are we to do? We still want to know whether we’re alone or not. Scientific curiosity and logic surely demands this for any rational entity. It’s a central piece of the puzzle for trying to understand our own origins and nature, our place in the universe.
The answer may lie in building a planetary firewall, a kind of “meme armor” to shield us from damaging knowledge of extraterrestrial life, while still allowing us to learn about the cosmos. It would be an artificial and autonomous construct that would take over the job of SETI, and even the task of exoplanet-hunting astronomers. By providing an algorithmic or physical barrier to the rest of the universe, it would help sift and control the flow of information—rather like an Internet firewall that defends against viruses by scrutinizing the origin and intent of packets of data.
The armor might involve a unilateral ban of private telescopes or radio antenna with enough sensitivity to chance upon extraterrestrial signposts. It could be equipped with its own automated listening posts and telescopes—spoon-feeding sanitized results to its masters. Careful (and hopefully unhackable) firewall programming would sift and sanitize its sightings. The riskiest data could be stored in case of true existential disaster—when an extraterrestrial meme can do no worse damage than is already in progress—a library of last resort for a species, the ultimate example of “In Case Of Fire, Break Glass.”
We’d build a vast Dyson sphere and live on the inside facing our star, sealed away from the infectious cosmos.
Such armor could also present a camouflaged state to onlookers; blocking attempts to discern the presence or nature of life on Earth, much like the hidden host addresses used behind today’s computer firewalls. Or—in a far more sinister version—it could seek to actively infect other worlds with destructive memes in order to reduce potential threats to Earth.
Just as our highest security computer systems are physically isolated from the net, a more ambitious hardware-based armor could veil the Earth’s view of the universe. A giant high-tech Faraday cage made with pixel-like optical elements to control precisely what electromagnetic radiation gets through—an informational version of the air-filtration and containment of a biohazard lab. More drastic still would be to abandon our meme-vulnerable planet altogether. We’d build a vast Dyson sphere—that staple of futurology and sci-fi—and live on the inside facing our star, sealed away from the infectious cosmos.
These are obviously hugely speculative, if not fanciful ideas. Perhaps our form of intelligence actually has a degree of natural immunity to extraterrestrial meme infection. After all, since grasping the concept that we inhabit one microscopic piece of an immense universe with no physical center, our species has not actually self-destructed—at least not yet. Most importantly, I don’t think we should be dissuaded from seeking out the most fecund places in the cosmos, and we’re unlikely to want to ever shield ourselves from the glory of the celestial skies.
But, as the adage goes, we should be careful what we wish for.
Caleb Scharf is an astrophysicist and the Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University in New York. His latest book is The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities.
Swansea, Wales’ second largest city, is quite a UFO hotspot, with hundreds of sightings and alien encounters reported over the past 160 years, says Swansea UFO Network, an organization set up last year by two local UFO seekers.
Alleged sightings in and around the city, which is on the southern coast of Wales, range from a man in 1856 who claimed he was abducted by aliens, a jellyfish-like object floating over Langland Bay, a cigar-shaped object floating above a hospital, to a real alien seen in St Thomas.
These are just a few of the many UFO and alien experiences listed by the Swansea UFO Network, which was founded in February 2015 by Emlyn Williams and Steve Drewson.
In January 1978, Jeremy Davies and William Rees said they saw a bright light in the sky, which was pulsating with an incredibly powerful beam of light pointing towards a chemical plant across the bay. (Image: Swansea UFO Network Facebook)
“To educate, stimulate interest and debate, the subject of U.F.O.s and its many offshoots. To this end we hold regular public meetings, at which a varied programme of lectures and debates are presented.”
“Everyone is welcome to attend these meetings which are currently held at the Welcome Inn, Mynyddbach, Swansea at 8pm on the last Tuesday of every month. Weather permitting, we hold regular night Sky-Watches at various venues around the South Wales area.”
The Network has a team of specialists who investigate UFOs and related sightings in the Swansea area, both recent and historic.
In 1856, Ronald Rhys went missing for a week. On his way home from work he said he saw an eerie light that ‘made a whooshing sound’ in a nearby field. He went to have a look, and soon found he was floating. He recalled being physically examined by small, intelligent beings who took blood samples from him. (Image: Swansea UFO Network)
Members of the public are invited to inform its reporting centre of any local UFO sightings or alien contacts and abductions. It says reports can be made in the strictest confidence, if so requested.
“Our first monthly meeting was held in April 2015 at the Welcome Inn in Llangyfelach, Swansea, and was very well attended. Since then we have held monthly meetings and have had guests speakers from the Ufologycommuntity.”
“Many people who attend our meetings have had sightings and experiences to relate, sometimes for the first time, as their fear of ridicule in the past has kept them silent. Many witnesses have contacted us by telephone, email, or Facebook to report sightings.”
Over 350 UFO sightings or alien encounters
The Network’s database, which it says is rapidly growing, currently contains more than 350 cases – they have been sourced from Ministry of Defence reports, books, newspapers and first-hand witness testimony.
When the Network receives a report, either current or historical, its members first determine whether it can be explained by conventional means, including planets, meteors, aircraft, satellites, military activity, the International Space Station, balloons, etc.
In March 1977, Welsh artist John Petts of Llanstephan saw a luminous UFO over Ferryside. He drew a sketch of what he saw. Mr. Petts said: “I was amazed to see that the outline shape was clear and sharp … a clean-cut shape of a weaver’s shuttle, sharply pointed at each end.” (Image: Swansea UFO Network)
Mr. Williams explained:
“The behaviour and physical attributes of the object/s in each case usually tells us quickly what these could be. The cases where a ‘normal’ explanation cannot be applied are of most interest to us, and it seems that our initial geographical area of study has been filled with many ‘unexplained in conventional terms’ sightings.”
“We are currently expanding our study area to cover all of South and West Wales as many sightings of objects travelling across the area could be corroborated by witnesses further east or west.”
Cigar-shaped UFO – Swansea Bay
One night in 2010, at 1am, Paul, who lived in Evans Terrace in a flat, went to see his toddler son who had woken up crying.
He was intrigued by a strange object in the sky. Looking out south-east across the city centre past Kilvey Hill, he saw what looked like a large metallic grey, cigar-shaped object. One end of it was flat while the other was pointed.
The object was moving slowly across the sky on a level course. He tried to measure its distance and estimated that it was floating above Swansea Docks.
A view of the large office block taken from Paul’s flat, who claims he saw a cigar-shaped UFO at 1am in 2010. There is no UFO in this image – it is here to give you an idea of where he saw it.(Image: Swansea UFO Network Facebook)
It was a clear night, and a full Moon helped illuminate the UFO.
According to the Network:
“He [Paul] said it was big, displayed no lights and there were no windows or other features apparent. As it moved slowly from left to right it passed behind Alexandra House (from his perspective), the large office block at the top of High Street, so wasn’t high in the sky, but perhaps 100 to 200 feet above the sea, and because of Paul’s elevated position due to his flat being on the side of a hill, he was more or less looking across at it rather than upwards.”
The UFO was completely silent during his 5-minute view of it. He waited over five years to report it because he was worried about being ridiculed.
Semi-transparent UFO over Clase, Morriston – April 2016
On 20th April, a man and woman were walking their pet dog in Longview Road, Clase. They took pictures of dark chem trails in the sky when they saw an object fly past, heading southwards.
It was not until later, when they looked at the images, that they realised they had managed to capture the UFO.
This semi-transparent UFO was photographed by a couple while they walked their dog in Clase, Morriston. (Image: Swansea UFO Network Facebook)
They said the mysterious floating object made no sound.
As you can see in the photograph, the object appears to be transparent. Some UFO seekers wonder whether it may have partly materialized, i.e. it was coming into our dimension from another one, or its cloaking device was not fully switched on.
Swansea UFO Network has not yet interviewed the couple, but intend to do so soon.
The Ghost Rockets documentary is a personal portrait of the members of UFO-Sweden and their ongoing attempts to solve one of Scandinavia's biggest UFO Mysteries.
Every year, the organization UFO-Sweden receives numerous reports about inexplicable occurrences - usually dismissed as having to do with the moon,airplanes, satellites or mental instability on the part of the witness.
Sometimes, though, they get a report that they are unable to explain, one of them being the story of the ghost rockets of 1946.
Under the leadership of journalist Clas Svahn, the organisation starts a costly expedition trying to find the strange craft.
It’s thrilling premise notwithstanding, Ghost rockets is not primarily a film about UFOs. It is a film about enthusiasts with a fervent interest, about an organisation struggling with their finances and shrinking membership numbers, about annual meetings over coffee and pastry, about existential issues debated in the summer night and about our need to believe that the world is bigger than we think.
Stock Photo
Ipad
Medical Question
Video
Craft
Photos
Profile
Images
Android Phone
Company awards categories
The Directors
Kerstin Übelacker has worked as head of the documentary screening network Doc Lounge with venues across 14 cities in 4 different countries.
Kerstin has freelanced as a transmedia producer and has aMasters in Film at Gothenburg University. She is currently working as a producer at Momento Film in Stockholm.
Michael Cavanagh has studied film and television at QSFTand RMIT in Australia.
Michael and Kerstin have previously completed the documentary The Leftovers (38 min), screened on film festivals and broadcasted on SVT and YLE. As well as making films, Michael works as a colorist, currently at Way Creative in Malmö, Sweden.
In 1946, Sweden's skies were haunted by the Ghost Rockets, puzzling both the military and the Swedish public alike.
Recently the Swedish National Archives released the documents surrounding the investigation and made them available to the public for the first time. As part of theGhost Rockets project, we have scanned all these documents and built an online investigation platform so that a potentially global UFO research team can access them.
With today's technology, UFO enthusiasts from all over the world can help out by searching through these documents and, perhaps, find something inside these Ghost Rocket UFO reports, a clue, a pattern, something that the Swedish military may have missed way back in the 1940s & 50s.
Access to film A private link of the finished film can be provided ahead of intended release for review purposes upon request.
Interviews Clas Svahn, head of UFO-Sweden and the main character of the documentary along with the filmmakers Michael Cavanagh and Kerstin Übelacker are available for interviews on all medias, Podcast, Web TV and Press.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:UFO DIGEST / a Weekly Newsletter - thanks that I may publish this on my blog (ENG)
Mercury Transit the Sun Right Now, May 9, 2016, UFO Sightings Daily.
Mercury Transit the Sun Right Now, May 9, 2016, UFO Sightings Daily.
Lower screenshot has light added to see Mercury better.
Date of sighting: May 9, 2016 Location of sighting: Earths Sun Method used: http://helioviewer.org/?movieId=2wgX5 I recorded Mercury moving between Earth and our sun today. It was an accident. I was looking for UFOs and there it was, a big black dot. Kinda amazing how its so close to the sun and still remains so dark. I thought it would light up its surface more along its edges, but it gave us nothing. Still, its a beautiful sight. Scott C. Waring www.ufosightingsdaily.com
Cambridge Makes World's Smallest Engine, And It's Tiny Enough to Enter Cells
Cambridge Makes World's Smallest Engine, And It's Tiny Enough to Enter Cells
Expanding polymer-coated gold nanoparticles.
Credit: Yi Ju/University of Cambridge NanoPhotonics
IN BRIEF
Researchers have designed a minuscule engine out of gold nanoparticles; it uses “Van der Waals energy” to power a tiny motor that may be the answer to building functional machines at the nanoscale.
TINY ENGINES
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have just devised a tiny engine—a really tiny engine—that will likely play a key role in realizing the long-awaited dream of truly functional nanotechnology.
Such technology has long been in the offing, and has been much touted for its enormous potential—imagine tiny machines or cellular analogues roaming the bloodstream (à laFantastic Voyage) and zapping cancerous cells, coming to grips with foreign bacteria and viruses, correcting prion diseases, and rejiggering the genomes of patients suffering from genetic disorders.
Imagine, too, what effects such technology could have on materials science, computing, optics…well, the possibilities are virtually endless, so you can pretty well guess that it has the capacity to change the world.
But scientists have had to start with baby steps, because manipulating matter on the nanoscale is notoriously difficult. One major hurdle has been how to supply power to such fantastically minute devices—and the newly discovered engine may be the solution to this problem.
THE GOLD-SEEKERS
The prototype engine does not resemble a classic one: It consists of a jumble of charged gold nanoparticles, clustered together in a “smart” gel of temperature-sensitive polymers. The actual power principle behind the engine is quite simple—no more complicated than the principles powering a slingshot. When the polymerous bundle is heated by a laser, the polymer gel expels water from the mass, which collapses, storing significant quantities of elastic energy.
When the bundle shrinks, the gold nanoparticles are bunched together very tightly, but once the polymers cool, they suck up the expelled water and rapidly expand, causing the gold particles to quickly spring apart and releasing the elastic energy.
And there you have it: A simple, but very effective, nanoscale engine. It’s an ingenious use of fundamental forces operating at this tiny scale, and its practical application would probably involve something like a light-powered piston engine.
Lead researcher professor Jeremy Baumberg, of the Cavendish Laboratory, says, “The whole process is like a nano-spring. The smart part here is we make use of Van der Waals attractionof heavy metal particles to set the springs (polymers) and water molecules to release them, which is very reversible and reproducible.”
These littlest motors also produce forces several orders of magnitude greater than previous devices, besting the force per unit weight of other motors and muscles by nearly a hundredfold. The team has christened the devices “ANTs”— “actuating nano-transducers,” which is very apt, considering that tiny insect’s notorious propensity to do heavy lifting all out of proportion to its size.
The team asserts that the little machines will be cheap to manufacture, are very energy efficient, and could be inserted in biological systems with no threat. The next phase is to collaborate with several companies to commercialize the technology.
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Tripje naar Mars duurt dankzij nieuwe aandrijving nog maar 30 minuten
Tripje naar Mars duurt dankzij nieuwe aandrijving nog maar 30 minuten
Caroline Kraaijvanger
In dertig minuten naar Mars. Het klinkt te mooi om waar te zijn. Maar wetenschappers achten het mogelijk. En wel met een nieuwe aandrijving waar momenteel hard aan wordt gewerkt.
Als mensheid hebben we de afgelopen decennia – want zolang doen we nog niet aan ruimtevaart tenslotte – best wat gepresteerd. Er rijden robots rond op Mars, mensen bezochten de maan, er draait een ruimtesonde rond komeet 67P/C-G en zo kunnen we nog wel een tijdje doorgaan. Maar als we puur kijken naar de afstanden die de mensheid heeft afgelegd, hebben we het helemaal niet zo ver geschopt. Volgens de laatste berichten zijn we er nog niet eens in geslaagd om ons eigen zonnestelsel te verlaten: hoewel ruimtesonde Voyager 1 al meer dan 45 jaar onderweg is, zou deze zich nog altijd niet in de interstellaire ruimte bevinden.
Grote afstanden Het verlangen om veel grotere afstanden af te leggen en veel verder gelegen bestemmingen te verkennen, is er. Maar de technologie om daar snel te komen, ontbreekt. Het heelal is groot en uitgestrekt. Om daar een goed beeld van te krijgen: een enkele reis naar Mars duurt met de huidige technologie al snel zo’n 250 dagen. En een reis naar de dichtstbijzijnde ster – die zo’n 4,2 lichtjaar van ons verwijderd is – zou met de huidige technologie duizenden jaren duren.
“TIEN JAAR GELEDEN WAS WAT WIJ VOORSTELLEN NOG PURE FANTASIE”
Bijna net zo snel als het licht Het moge duidelijk zijn: als we ooit werkelijk het heelal willen gaan verkennen, zullen we met een nieuwe aandrijving moeten komen die ons in staat stelt om in korte tijd heel grote afstanden af te leggen. Bij voorkeur een aandrijving die het mogelijk maakt om te reizen met een snelheid die enigszins in de buurt komt van de snelheid van het licht (sneller reizen dan het licht is volgens de speciale relativiteitstheorie sowieso onmogelijk). Het klinkt als sciencefiction. Maar dat is het dankzij een aantal nieuwe ontwikkelingen niet langer. De technologie om te reizen met een snelheid die ongeveer drie keer kleiner is dan de snelheid van het licht is reeds aanwezig en kan de ruimtevaart op z’n kop gaan zetten, zo stellen wetenschappers. “Tien jaar geleden was wat wij voorstellen nog pure fantasie,” zo schrijft Philip Lubin, verbonden aan de University of California, Santa Barbara in dit paper. “Het is niet langer fantasie.”
Een artistieke impressie van een door lasers aangedreven ruimtevaartuig. Afbeelding: Philip Lubin / A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight.
Zeilen en lasers Waar heeft hij het over? Over een aandrijving die mede mogelijk gemaakt wordt door licht, afkomstig van lasers. Hij duidt de aanpak aan als ‘photonic propulsion‘. Een ruimtevaartuig dat op deze manier wordt aangedreven, zal uitgerust worden met grote zeilen. Lasers vuren vervolgens – vanuit een baan rond de aarde – fotonen (lichtdeeltjes) op deze zeilen af. Deze lichtdeeltjes hebben geen massa, maar wel energie en impuls. Wanneer de lichtdeeltjes door het zeil gereflecteerd worden, staan ze een kleine hoeveelheid kinetische energie af. Het mooie aan de ruimte is dat het ruimtevaartuig helemaal geen weerstand ondervindt en als lichtdeeltjes het blijven trakteren op kinetische energie, kan het ruimtevaartuig heel geleidelijk uiteindelijk een snelheid bereiken die ongeveer net zo groot is als een derde van de snelheid van het licht.
Dertig minuten In theorie zou een klein ruimtevaartuig (dat ongeveer 100 kilo weegt) met behulp van deze aandrijving in drie dagen op Mars kunnen arriveren. In theorie kan elk ruimtevaartuig – ongeacht de massa – op deze manier worden aangedreven. Maar hoe groter (en zwaarder) een ruimtevaartuig is, hoe langer de reis duurt. In eerste instantie ziet Lubin – met het oog op interstellaire missies – dan ook het meest in wat kleinere ruimtevaartuigjes. Als het systeem helemaal doorontwikkeld is en de lasers maximaal kunnen worden benut, kunnen piepkleine ruimtevaartuigjes het absurd ver schoppen. “Een wafeldun ruimtevaartuig met een 1 meter groot zeil kan in 10 minuten tijd 26 procent van de snelheid van het licht bereiken, Mars in 30 minuten bereiken, Voyager 1 in minder dan drie dagen passeren (…) en Alpha Centauri in zo’n twintig jaar bereiken.”
Waar zit de rem? Overigens is deze aandrijving niet zo geschikt om een ruimtevaartuig in een baan rond bijvoorbeeld de dichtstbijzijnde ster te brengen. Er is namelijk één probleem: het ruimtevaartuig kan heel moeilijk tot stilstand worden gebracht. In eerste instantie zullen ruimtevaartuigen die op deze manier worden aangedreven dan ook enkel langs objecten in de ruimte kunnen scheren. Maar goed, dat mag de pret niet drukken. New Horizons scheerde ook alleen maar langs Pluto en kijk wat dat opgeleverd heeft!
Hoewel de technologie volgens Lubin voorhanden is, moet er nog wel wat werk verzet worden alvorens de eerste ruimtevaartuigen met behulp van lichtdeeltjes de interstellaire ruimte gaan verkennen. Maar Lubin lijkt vastberaden deze vorm van aandrijving werkelijkheid te laten worden. En ook NASA ziet wel iets in het idee. De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie gaf Lubin vorig jaar een beurs om nader onderzoek te doen. Zou het dan zomaar het begin zijn van een nieuw tijdperk in de ruimtevaart? Een tijdperk waarin we kleine ruimtevaartuigjes naar de hoeken van ons zonnestelsel en misschien zelfs wel naar plekken daarbuiten sturen? Als het aan Lubin ligt wel. “Het is tijd om te beginnen aan deze onvermijdelijke reis ver van huis.”
Artist's illustration of Planet Nine, a hypothesized world in the outer solar system thought to be about 10 times more massive than Earth.
Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
It's unclear whether Planet Nine exists, but astronomers are already digging into the mystery of the hypothetical world's birth.
In January, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena announced that they had inferred the existence of Planet Nine based on the strange orbits of a half dozen small bodies in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune.
Planet Nine, Batygin and Brown suggested, is perhaps 10 times more massive than Earth and orbits the sun at an average distance of about 700 astronomical units (AU). (One AU is the Earth-sun distance — 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.) [The Evidence for Planet Nine in Pictures]
Some astronomers are now scanning the sky in an attempt to find the putative planet, while others are tackling another mystery: How did Planet Nine come to be?
There are a number of possible origin stories, researchers say. For example, Planet Nine may be a former exoplanet that was captured by our solar system's gravity.
This scenario appears to be far-fetched, however. Gongjie Li and Fred Adams, both of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, performed computer simulations to estimate the odds that Planet Nine was plucked from a passing star system or nabbed as a formerly free-floating "rogue planet." In both cases, the odds are less than 2 percent, the researchers report in a new study.
NASA Officially Cautious About 'Planet Nine' | Video
So it's likely that Planet Nine is native to our solar system. But did it form in its present location, or begin life much closer to the sun and then get booted into the outer solar system by a gravitational interaction of some kind?
Both scenarios are possible, Scott Kenyon, of the CfA, and Benjamin Bromley, of the University of Utah, report in two new studies of their own, which are also based on computer modeling work.
Given the right initial conditions, Planet Nine could have coalesced near where it's now thought to lie within 1 billion to 2 billion years of the solar system's birth, Kenyon and Bromley found. But their simulations also give credence to the idea that interactions with Jupiter and Saturn kicked Planet Nine out from a formerly tighter orbit.
"Think of it like pushing a kid on a swing: If you give them a shove at the right time, over and over, they'll go higher and higher," Kenyon said in a statement, adding that this scenario is "the simplest solution."
The gravitational boot, if it occurred, didn't have to come from a fellow planet. In their paper, Li and Adams also considered the possibility that Planet Nine was tugged outward by one of the sun's stellar neighbors. But their simulations pegged the probability of this scenario at 10 percent at best, suggesting that, in most cases, a passing star would have kicked Planet Nine out of our solar system completely.
So the fog of mystery surrounding Planet Nine remains thick. But that fog could clear someday, provided that this mysterious world actually exists — and astronomers are able to get a decent look at it.
"The nice thing about these scenarios is that they're observationally testable," Kenyon said. "A scattered gas giant will look like a cold Neptune, while a planet that formed in place will resemble a giant Pluto with no gas."
The study by Li and Adams has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Kenyon and Bromley have submitted their two papers to The Astrophysical Journal.
In a rare event that only happens about 13 times a century, Mercury will be crossing in front of the sun this morning, leaving a tiny black spot in front of the sun. The last time this happened was in 2006. Because of Mercury’s small size, you’ll need a special telescope or very high-powered binoculars with solar filters to see the event. You never want to look directly into the sun without special eyewear, so any telescope or binoculars you use will need special-coated glass or Mylar to protect against the sun. But with all the livestreams of the event available, you won’t even need to leave your computer if you don’t want to.
Here’s what you need to know.
When the Mercury Transit Will Occur
Mercury’s transit across the sun will begin just after 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday morning. The tiny planet will reach about midway across the sun around 10:47 a.m. Eastern and it will finish its transit around 2:47 p.m. Eastern, according to Space.com. The Eastern United States will be able to see Mercury for the entire 7+ hours. The western U.S. will be able to see the transit after sunrise, although it will already be underway at that time.
The livestream embedded at the top of this story is from Slooh.com and starts at 7 a.m. Eastern.Slooh is partnering with observatories around the world, including Dubai and the Canary Islands, to provide the best views on its livestream.
Here’s a look at where Mercury will be and at what time:
Mercury in Transit (NASA)
NASA Livestreams of the Mercury Transit
NASA is also providing several livestreams of its own. According to its NASA TV Schedule, the Education channel below will be showing live, raw feed from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of Mercury’s transit from 6 a.m. Eastern to 2 p.m. (On another schedule online, NASA lists the live feed as starting at 7 a.m. Eastern, so if you don’t see it at 6 a.m., check back in an hour.)
You can watch that feed below:
Meanwhile, NASA’s Media channel will host live interviews with NASA scientists as they talk about Mercury’s transit, from 5 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. below. (On NASA’s website in another location, it lists the time of the interview as 6 a.m.):
At 10:30 a.m. Eastern, NASA will host a live panel discussion about the Mercury Transit on its Public station below:
If any of these feeds don’t work, you can access NASA’s TV channels directly on its website here. NASA will also host an informal roundtable on its Facebook page starting at 10:30 a.m. Easternhere.
Want to learn more about the Mercury transit? Check out NASA’s video below:
Other Mercury Transit Livestreams
If you’re interested in watching coverage of the livestream from a different country’s space agency, you can watch the European Space Agency’s coverage at this link. It starts around 12:30 p.m. Eastern.
In addition, Kirkwood Observatory at Indiana University will be hosting its own livestream starting at 11 a.m. local time, until 3 p.m. The livestream will begin at this link. If that link doesn’t work, check for a new link at this location.
MIT’s Wallace Observatory is also livestreaming its own Mercury Transit feeds at this link and below:
Sky and Telescope is hosting a livestream at this link.
Are we alone in the universe? This is a question that every enthusiast scientific poses himself and fails to respond. The reply to this question have taken great minds, and his answer (as well as the history of the Universe) have occupied philosophers since ancient times.
However, in response to the famous “Where is everybody?” Question Enrico Fermi still do not have. We have only guesses, calculations of odds and assumptions. Around them engaged and scientists Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan, from the University of Rochester, who using and Exchanging the famous Drejkova equation came to the realization that life to our present level of civilization progress probably already existed somewhere in space and probably disappeared or is so far we will never be able to communicate the.
They calculated the odds on what were / are the chances of people with this unique civilization, and it turns out that they are quite conservative: less than one in 10 billion trilliards. According to them it means life to our level of development occurred at least 10 billion times throughout cosmic history (according to the estimated number of stars and planets in the universe)!
Ten billion civilizations ?! Well, where are they? It still we can not answer this, but given the size of the universe and duration (14 billion years) is not unusual to have hundreds of advanced civilizations that are so far away that no longer able to send a communication to us and billions of others to have occurred ever in the history and in the meantime disappeared.
It would be a great lesson for humanity. Namely, if we allow to perish because of the inability to keep in life and not to kill each other, human induced disasters, it would be really big tragedy of life in the universe generally.
UNTIL THIS TEXT, WHAT DO YOU THINK, ARE WE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE?
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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 73 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...
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