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...
26-09-2016
Mercuryquakes May Currently Shake Up the Tiny Planet
Mercuryquakes May Currently Shake Up the Tiny Planet
Mercury appears to experience quake-like activity as it shrinks, making it tectonically active just like Earth, scientists say.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/USGS/Arizona State University
Mercury may still rumble with earthquakes, or "Mercuryquakes," according to a new study of cliffs on the planet's surface.
The finding suggests that Earth is not the only tectonically active planet, the authors of the research say.
Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the solar system, and was a mysterious world until NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft became the first probe to orbit Mercury in 2011. The only other visits it received were the flybys made by NASA's Mariner 10 probe more than 40 years ago. [Photos of Mercury from NASA's Messenger Spacecraft]
Mariner 10 discovered a vast array of large fault scarps, or cliffs, on Mercury, and MESSENGER revealed that the largest of these scarps are more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) long and more than 1.8 miles (3 km) high.
Long, steep cliffs (scarps) on the surface of Mercury hint at the possibility that the planet experiences earthquakes, or "mercuryquakes."
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied PhysicsLaboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Fault scarps form when rocks are pushed together and thrust upward along faults — or fractures — in a planet's crust. The most widely accepted model of the origin of the large fault scarps on Mercury is that they are essentially wrinkles that formed on the planet's surface as that world's heart cooled over time, leading Mercury to shrink in size. Previous research suggested that Mercury may have contracted by about 1.8 to 8.7 miles (3 to 14 km) in diameter.
During the last 18 months or so of the MESSENGER mission, the spacecraft descended closer to Mercury, helping it to snap pictures of its surface in greater detail. Now scientists have discovered small fault scarps that are less than 6 miles (10 km) long and only up to dozens of feet high.
The new analysis shows that the pristine appearance of these small fault scarps suggests that they are less than 50 million years old. Previous research suggests that older features would get pockmarked with craters from meteoroid impacts.
The young nature of these small fault scarps suggests that Mercury is still experiencing quakes that are likely driven by the continued cooling and shrinking of the planet, said study lead author Thomas Watters, a planetary scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies in Washington.
"These faults on Mercury have got to be accompanied by seismic activity," Watters told Space.com.
Comparable scarps are seen on the moon, and four seismometers set up on the moon by the Apollo missions detected moonquakes reaching up to magnitude 5 on the Richter scale.
"We might expect shallow seismic events of a comparable level on Mercury," Watters said. "We might even see events significantly greater than magnitude 5 with the older, larger scarps."
The seismometers on the moon detected 28 shallow moonquakes ranging from about magnitude 1.5 to 5 on the Richter scale between 1969 and 1977.
"Mercury has the potential for many more earthquakes than the moon, since it's contracted a lot more than the moon has," Watters said.
It remains a mystery how a planet as small as Mercury has not already cooled down completely and lost all its heat. Instead, Mercury remains warm enough to keep shrinking and to have a molten outer core that has supported a magnetic field for billions of years.
"The way that terrestrial bodies like Mercury, Earth and even the moon have evolved thermally is emerging as one of the puzzles that researchers need to solve in planetary science," Watters said.
The scientists detailed their findings online today (Sept. 26) in the journal Nature Geoscience.
This map, produced using data collected by the Planck satellite, shows a map of the light left over from the big bang. If the universe were not isotropic, scientists think they would find evidence in maps like this one.
Credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration.
The universe, it turns out, looks the same in every direction.
Of course, this isn't true on a "small scale" — the stars, galaxies, dark matter and interstellar gas that fill the universe are strewn about and clumped together in unique ways. But on a much size scale encompassing the entire universe, new research shows the cosmic landscape doesn't have any preferred direction — there's no axis of spin like the Earth, no massive asymmetries that would orient a cosmic traveler.
The new study appears to be the most in-depth attempt to answer this question, which confirms a long-held assumption in physics. In addition, it touches on the idea that Earth does not occupy a special place in the universe by showing that not only is no preferred location in the universe, there is no preferred direction.
Baking the universe
Some things in the universe look different depending on where you're standing when you look at them, or from which direction you view them. For example, the Milky Way galaxy is a disk that rotates around a central axis like a record on a turntable. The galaxy looks different depending on where its viewed from, so observers in different places see different things. But a galaxy is also anisotropic — that is, an observer in one location can look in different directions and will see something different. The stars located far out in the disk move faster as they whip around the center, compared with stars close to the middle. (This is true for an observer inside the galaxy or outside it).
It's that latter kind of variation that's addressed in the new research paper. If the universe looks the same no matter what direction its viewed from, it's isotropic. If it does have a large-scale dependence on direction, it's anisotropic.
If the large-scale structure of the universe is anisotropic — different depending on the direction it is viewed from — that feature would have been present from the get-go.
A tiny fraction of a second after the universe sprang to life in the Big Bang, scientists think the cosmos underwent a period of rapid inflation, like a loaf of bread expanding in the oven. Very small, random "fluctuations" (like air bubbles in the dough) made it so the matter in the universe didn't spread out evenly, at least on small scales; It clumped together to form stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters, while leaving some areas mostly empty. (This clumping is also observed in dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about 80 percent of mass in the universe).
But what if the entire loaf of bread was warped, and not just on small scales? For example, what if space-time, the fabric of the universe, was spinning when inflation began? That would certainly affect how a loaf of bread looked when it finished baking, and it would certainly influence how the universe looks today.
For example, the universe is still expanding, albeit slower than it was during inflation. That means new space is being created between stars and galaxies, so these objects are all moving away from each other. If scientists measured the rate of expansion and found that things were moving a little faster in one direction and a little slower in another direction, that would indicate that something was lopsided in the universal fabric. That would be evidence of anisotropy.
If the universe were anisotropic (did not look the same regardless of direction), it would leave an imprint in the cosmic microwave background. This map shows what one such anisotropy might look like (minus the small-scale fluctuations in the light).
Credit: D. Saadeh, S. M. Feeney, A. Pontzen, H. V. Peiris, J. D. McEwen
The universe expanding at different rates in different directions is the simplest way that anisotropy might play out, according to Daniella Saadeh, a graduate student in physics and astronomy at University College London and the lead author of a new research paper that shows the large-scale universe is, in fact, isotropic.
A map of the cosmos
Saadeh and colleagues looked for signs of anisotropy in data from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, collected between 2009 and 2013, which maps of the oldest light in the universe — the cosmic microwave background, or the light left over from the Big Bang. If the universe were warped or twisted in some way, that light would likely bear some sign of it, according to the authors.
Mathematicians have already pointed out ways in which the universe could have been warped or twisted or formed in some way as to create a directional dependence. Those variations can be deduced from Einstein's theory of relativity. Saadeh and her colleagues used computer models to simulate all the ways the universe could be anisotropic, and what each of how each of those outcomes would leave an imprint on the light collected by the Planck satellite. In order to pull this off, Saadeh and colleagues needed both the high-quality data provided by Planck, as well as computer programs that could run through all the possible ways those tweaks could influence how the CMB looks over the span of the entire universe.
The left panel shows an anisotropic imprint on the cosmic microwave background; the middle panel shows the small-scale variations in the CMB; the right panel shows the combination of those two.
Credit: D. Saadeh, S. M. Feeney, A. Pontzen, H. V. Peiris, J. D. McEwen
"This is a serious challenge, as we found an enormous number of ways the universe can be anisotropic," said Stephen Feeney, a co-author on the paper, who at the time was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London. "It's extremely easy to become lost in this myriad of possible universes — we need to tune 32 dials to find the correct one."
Because the finding is based on statistical analysis, the conclusion is actually expressed as a likelihood: There is a 1 in 121,000 chance that the universe is not the same in all directions. Saadeh says if anyone wants to improve on that number, they'll likely have to wait for another CMB space observatory that is superior to Planck, and nothing of that nature is under construction.
In a statement from the University College London, Saadeh notes that "universes that spin and stretch are entirely possible, so it’s important that we've shown ours is fair to all its directions."
But in fact, the rule book that modern physics follows ― known as the standard model ― assumes that the universe is isotropic, and has no major variations on large scales.
The standard model describes everything scientists know about the world — all the particles that exist in it, the forces that influence those particles, the laws that govern it all. The model also makes predictions; the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 had been predicted by the standard model about four decades prior. If Saadeh and colleagues had found evidence that the universe was anisotropic, that would have thrown a wrench in the standard model.
In some ways, that would have been extremely exciting, but Saadeh said in the release:
"We’re very glad that our work vindicates what most cosmologists assume. For now, cosmology is safe."
On Jupiter's Moon Europa, More Tantalizing Signs of Giant Water Plumes
On Jupiter's Moon Europa, More Tantalizing Signs of Giant Water Plumes
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
A suspected water plume erupts from Jupiter's icy moon Europa (visible at the 7 o'clock position at lower left) in this composite image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on Jan. 26, 2014. NASA unveiled the image on Sept. 26, 2016.
Credit: NASA/ESA/W. Sparks (STScI)/USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Good news on the alien-life-hunting front: The towering plumes emanating from Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa appear to be real.
In late 2012, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted what seemed to be 125-mile-high (200 kilometers) geysers of water vapor erupting from Europa's south polar region. This news was exciting for astrobiologists and space geeks alike, for it suggested that a robotic probe may be able to sample Europa's huge global ocean — which lies beneath the moon's miles-thick icy shell — without even touching down.
The 2012 observation remained a tantalizing outlier for years, however; astronomers failed to find the plume again with Hubble despite repeated attempts. But that long-sought repeat detection has finally been made, scientists announced today (Sept. 26). [Possible Water Vapor Plumes On Europa Spotted by Hubble Again (Video)]
A team led by William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble to hunt for Europa plumes on 10 separate occasions over a 15-month span. They had success three times, spotting apparent plume activity in January, March and April of 2014.
"They appear to be real," Sparks said during a news conference today. "The statistical significance is pretty good, and I don’t know of any other natural alternative."
Still, Sparks stopped short of calling the repeat detection a definitive confirmation. The newly announced detections were made when Europapassed in front of Jupiter from Hubble's perspective, and plume material seemed to block ultraviolet light coming from the giant planet. The observations Hubble made are right on the edge of the iconic telescope's capabilities, Sparks said.
"We remain cautious," he said. "The problem is that there may be something we don't understand about the instrument, or about our model of the scene, or what Europa looks like in the ultraviolet light."
Analyzing the Hubble data is also a complex process, which explains why the team is revealing the detections now, more than two years after they were made, Sparks added.
Two images of Europa created in 2012 and 2014 by separate research teams using different observation methods reveal activity at a common location on Europa. The transit image on the left shows dark patches of light absorption in the same spot where researchers later found auroral emission from hydrogen and oxygen, the dissociation products of water.
Credit: NASA, ESA, W. Sparks (left image) L. Roth (right image)
The 2012 detection, which was actually announced in December 2013, was made by a different research group, one led by Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Roth and his colleagues used a different method to spot the apparent plume, but the two teams' observations dovetail nicely; both conclude that the plume is about 125 miles high and centered in Europa's southern reaches.
The plume's likely existence should influence the planning of NASA's Europa mission, which the agency aims to launch in the 2020s. This Jupiter-orbiting mission will make multiple flybys of the moon over the course of several years, in an attempt to learn more about Europa's ocean and its potential to support life as we know it.
"Today's results increase our confidence that water and other materials fromEuropa's ocean — Europa's hidden ocean, hidden under miles of ice — might be on the surface of Europa and available for us to study, without landing and digging through those unknown miles of ice,"said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
This illustration of ridges and fractures on Europa shows one possible way that water could reach Europa’s surface. Chloride salts in the underground ocean bubble up to the moon's frozen surface.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The combined Hubble observations also show that the Europa geysers, if they exist, are intermittent phenomena. If scientists learn more about when and why the geysers erupt, it might even be possible for the as-yet-unnamed NASA mission to fly through a Europan plume.
"One of the biggest unknowns we have with these putative plumes is understanding their timing," said Curt Niebur, the Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "And I think the more observations we can get with Hubble and with JWST [the James Webb Space Telescope, which NASA aims to launch in 2018] to better understand that, the better we can use that to construct a schedule for when we search for these plumes at close range from the Europa flyby mission."
Sparks and his team are publishing their results in the Sept. 29 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
A researcher, seen through a window, prepares DNA in a laboratory at the Bioaster Technology Research Institute in Lyon.
(Robert Pratta/Reuters)
IN BRIEF
Skepticism is a fundamental doctrine for any scientist that asserts nothing should be accepted nor rejected without considerable evidence. Science denial, on the other hand, abjectly refuses to accept established facts.
THROUGH SQUINTING EYES
The exercise of critical thinking has always been one of the core principles in the study of the various scientific fields. It is a skill that is hammered into every aspiring scientist through years of training, mountains of literature, and heaps of experimental data. To this end, each scientist is expected to maintain a certain level of skepticism in performing experiments, and indeed, in the practice of science in general. By being skeptical, one eliminates complacency or bias in research, ideally leading to results that model the real world as closely as possible.
This principle does not apply only in the sciences. In fact, considering how powerful an impact scientific news makes on our day-to-day lives, it makes sense for everyone to adopt a healthy level of skepticism. This entails not only questioning the significance of the results but aspects of the studies themselves. How was it set up? Who conducted it?
It’s important to remember that every study conducted is only an attempt to simulate the real world and replicate things as they are. Since these are only simulations, there are bound to be factors that exist in the real world that are not taken into consideration in the study, and vice-versa — unavoidable errors that exist purely because of simulation.
THROUGH CLOSED EYES
Taken to the extreme, however, skepticism transforms into denial.
Science denial, says Dennis W.C. Liu from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is the “systematic rejection of empirical evidence to avoid undesirable facts or conclusions.” Over the years, the list of contentious issues subject to science denial has grown to a vast list, which includes evolution, holes in the ozone layer, ill effects of genetically modified products, harm in cigarette smoking, etc.
Denialism in science obviously leads to more harm than good. Take Charlie as an example: Charlie doesn’t think that the universe is really 13.8 billion years old. He thinks it is just a few thousand years old. Even though it has been established through a plethora of evidence that the universe is far, far older thank Charlie thinks, Charlie denies this fact, and he reinforces his own beliefs by resorting to “evidence” that has not passed the peer review process. Charlie may even speak of collusions and say that people are covering up “real” evidence. Charlie cannot prove any collusion or coverups. Thus, Charlie rejects evidence provided by actual experts and supplements it with his own, private conclusions.
In short: Healthy skepticism demands evidence. Denialism rejects sound evidence when it is provided.
To this end, in general, we should favor the result with more evidence and choose the answer that has been intensively and repeatedly verified by many. At the same time, scientists and researchers should not favor provocative results over standard (and far more likely) ones.
A healthy level of skepticism in science is by no means easy to achieve, but it should be something towards which everyone strives.
Hubble ziet mogelijk waterpluimen op Jupiters maan Europa
Hubble ziet mogelijk waterpluimen op Jupiters maan Europa
Tim Kraaijvanger
De Hubble-ruimtetelescoop heeft foto’s gemaakt van de maan Europa van Jupiter. Op deze foto’s zijn mogelijk waterpluimen boven het oppervlak te zien. Dit is goed nieuws voor de zoektocht naar buitenaards leven.
Wetenschappers vermoeden al langer dat onder het bevroren oppervlak van Europa een flinke oceaan schuilt. “Mogelijk is er zelfs sprake van leven in deze oceaan”, beweert wetenschapper Geoff Yoder van NASA. Er zijn ideeën geopperd om een missie naar deze maan te lanceren, maar op dit moment zijn er geen concrete plannen (met uitzondering van de algemenere JUICE-missie, daarover meer in de laatste alinea). Een uitdaging is het feit dat de oceaan onder het oppervlak van Europa lastig te bereiken is. Stel dat er leven voorkomt, dan moet er eerst door het keiharde ijs geboord worden. Dit maakt een eventuele missie vrij kostbaar. Astronomen weten immers niet hoe hard en hoe dik deze ijskorst is.
Dat Hubble nu mogelijke waterpluimen ziet, verandert de situatie. Een ruimtevaartuig zou zo’n waterpluim vanuit de ruimte kunnen onderzoeken om te kijken of er leven is op Europa.
Flinke geisers De pluimen bereiken een hoogte van 200 kilometer. Daarna regent het materiaal op het oppervlak van Europa. “Deze pluimen maken het mogelijk om de grote oceaan onder het oppervlak van Europa op een andere manier te onderzoeken”, aldus Yoder. Astronomen vermoeden dat de oceaan onder het oppervlak van de Joviaanse maan twee keer zoveel water bevat als alle aardse oceanen bij elkaar.
Astronomen hebben de afgelopen vijftien maanden tien keer Europa zien passeren voor Jupiter. Drie keer zijn er mogelijke geisers gespot.
Missies naar Europa De onderzoekers grijpen de resultaten aan om een statement te maken voor een missie naar Europa. In 2014 maakte NASA wat geld vrij voor onderzoek naar een missie naar Europa en ook dit jaar is er geld gereserveerd voor meer onderzoek naar een missie naar Jupiters maan. Er zijn al enkele details bekend over de missie, zoals welke instrumenten er mee gaan en hoeveel scheervluchten er gemaakt gaan worden, maar mogelijk moet het hele plan herzien worden op basis van Hubble’s foto’s.
Overigens gaat ook ‘onze’ ruimtevaartorganisatie ESA naar Europa en de andere manen van Jupiter. De Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) vertrekt in 2022 en komt in 2030 bij Jupiter aan. Daar zal het ruimtevaartuig onderzoek doen naar de ijzige manen van Jupiter: Ganymedes, Europa en Callisto. Helaas gaat JUICE zich uiteindelijk in een baan om Ganymedes nestelen en niet om Europa.
Komende maandag houdt de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA een persconferentie om ‘iets’ aan te kondigen. Het heeft in ieder geval te maken met de maan Europa. Wat zou het kunnen zijn?
NASA laat weten dat de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop foto’s heeft gemaakt van Europa en dat daar iets bijzonders op te zien is. Waarschijnlijk is er doorslaggevend bewijs gevonden voor een oceaan onder het bevroren oppervlak van Europa. Wetenschappers vermoeden al langer dat de maan een ondergrondse oceaan heeft. Deze oceaan wordt gekneed door de getijdenkrachten van de planeet Jupiter.
Astronomen speculeren dat er wellicht buitenaards leven te vinden is onder het oppervlak van Europa. Waarschijnlijk wordt dit maandag niet door NASA aangekondigd, omdat er geen astrobioloog aan het woord wordt gelaten tijdens de persconferentie. Daarnaast is een ruimtemissie naar Europa nodig om het buitenaardse leven te spotten. Er zijn plannen voor een missie naar Europa, dus wellicht wordt deze maan ooit door een ruimtevaartuig bezocht.
Het is goed nieuws dat er nu iets is gevonden wat wetenschappers van de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie prikkelt, want dan kan een missie naar Europa zomaar in stroomversnelling komen. Benieuwd wat het is? De persconferentie vindt maandag om 20:00 uur Nederlandse tijd plaats en wordt live uitgezonden via NASA TV.
Espace: la Nasa a détecté de possibles geysers de vapeur d'eau à la surface gelée d'une des lunes de Jupiter, sous laquelle se trouve un océan
Des astronomes de la Nasa ont annoncé lundi avoir détecté ce qui paraît être des geysers de vapeur d'eau à la surface gelée d'Europe, une des lunes de Jupiter, sous laquelle se trouve un océan.
Ces observations, effectuées à l'aide des émissions de rayons ultraviolets du télescope spatial Hubble, accroissent la possibilité de recueillir des échantillons de cette eau et glace sans avoir à poser un robot sur la surface d'Europe et à faire des forages.
"L'océan d'Europe est considéré comme l'un des endroits les plus prometteurs dans le système solaire, où la vie pourrait potentiellement exister", a souligné Geoff Yoder, directeur par intérim de la Nasa pour la science.
"Ces geysers, si leur existence est confirmée, pourraient offrir un autre moyen d'obtenir des échantillons de l'eau se trouvant sous la glace", a-t-il ajouté.
Ces jets atteignaient environ 200 kilomètres d'altitude, faisant retomber apparemment des matériaux sur la surface de la lune.
Au cours de dix observations du passage d'Europe devant Jupiter, effectuées sur une période de quinze mois, ces scientifiques ont pu apercevoir à trois reprises ce qui paraît être des geysers, ont précisé les scientifiques, dont William Sparks, un astronome du Space Telescope Science Institute à Baltimore.
Sans pouvoir affirmer avec certitude qu'il s'agit bien de jets de vapeur d'eau, ces astronomes jugent ces probabilités "substantielles".
En 2012, une autre équipe scientifique dirigée par Lorenz Roth, du Southwest Research Institute à San Antonio, avait déjà détecté de la vapeur d'eau jaillissant de la surface d'Europe dans la région du pôle sud, atteignant 160 km dans l'espace.
Les deux équipes ont utilisé le même instrument d'Hubble pour leurs observations, un spectographe, mais des méthodes totalement différentes, et sont arrivés à la même conclusion.
Si ces observations de geyser sont confirmées, Europe serait la deuxième lune dans le système solaire connue pour avoir de tels phénomènes.
En 2005, la sonde Cassini de la Nasa avait détecté des jets de vapeur d'eau sortant de la surface d'Encelade, une des lunes de Saturne.
Europe contient un vaste océan contenant deux fois plus d'eau que tous les océans terrestres réunis, mais il se trouve sous une croute de glace extrêmement froide et très dure, dont l'épaisseur est à ce stade inconnue.
Cette dernière observation sera publiée dans la prochaine édition de la revue américaine Astrophysical Journal.
Espace: la Nasa dévoilera de nouvelles "indications surprenantes d'activité" sur une lune de Jupiter pouvant confirmer la présence d'un océan
L'agence spatiale américaine doit dévoiler lundi de nouvelles "indications surprenantes d'activité" sur Europe, une lune de Jupiter, pouvant confirmer la présence d'un océan sous son épaisse couche de glace qui offrirait des conditions propices à l'existence de la vie.
Ces résultats d'une campagne d'observations avec le télescope spatial Hubble devaient être présentés lors d'une conférence de presse à partir de 18H00 GMT.
La Nasa n'a fourni aucun détail supplémentaire sur cette présentation très attendue à laquelle doivent notamment participer Paul Hertz, directeur de la division astrophysique de la Nasa, et William Sparks, un astronome au Space Telescope Science Institute de Baltimore.
Selon les scientifiques, Europe --l'une des 67 lunes de Jupiter-- est "l'endroit de notre système solaire où il est actuellement le plus probable de trouver de la vie" en dehors de la Terre.
De précédentes observations de la Nasa avaient déjà détecté sur cette lune jovienne des indices de la présence d'un océan d'eau liquide de près de cent kilomètres de profondeur sous une épaisse couche de glace, ouvrant la possibilité à l'existence d'une vie microbienne.
"Le cycle de l'oxygène et de l'hydrogène constitue un moteur important de la chimie de l'océan d'Europe et donc de la vie qui pourrait y exister, exactement comme sur la Terre", concluait Steve Vance du Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) de la Nasa, dans une étude publiée en mai par la revue américaine Geophysical Research Letters.
Ses recherches avaient permis de constater que les proportions de ces deux éléments clé pour l'apparition de la vie étaient comparables dans les océans terrestres et sur Europe. A savoir que la production d'oxygène est environ dix fois supérieure à celle d'hydrogène.
Les observations avec Hubble des rayonnements ultraviolets pourraient conforter ces conclusions, ainsi que des mesures effectuées pour évaluer la quantité de carbone, d'azote, de phosphore et de soufre sur Europe.
La Nasa avait annoncé en 2015 une mission robotique vers Europe d'ici 2020, et précisé en mai dernier la sélection de neuf instruments à bord du vaisseau spatial.
- Océan sub-glaciaire sur Ganymède -
Des scientifiques avaient aussi annoncé en 2015 avoir détecté, également grâce à Hubble, un vaste océan d'eau salée sous l'épaisse croûte glacée de Ganymède, la plus grosse des lunes de Jupiter.
La sonde américaine Galileo, qui avait exploré Jupiter et ses lunes de 1995 à 2003, avait détecté pour la première fois des indices de la présence de vastes océans sur Europe et sur Ganymède.
Cette découverte d'eau liquide multiplie les pistes de recherche de l'existence de vie extraterrestre dans le système solaire, soulignait alors la Nasa.
Selon les scientifiques, l'océan sub-glaciaire de Ganymède est profond d'une centaine de kilomètres, dix fois plus que ceux de la Terre, et est enterré sous une croûte de 150 kilomètres d'épaisseur formée pour l'essentiel de glace.
Dès les années 1970, les planétologues soupçonnaient que Ganymède, découverte en 1610 par Galilée, pourrait posséder un océan.
C'est en observant le mouvement des aurores boréales sur Ganymède et sur Jupiter que les scientifiques ont pu déterminer l'existence d'un vaste océan d'eau salé qui affecte le champ magnétique de cette lune.
Etant donné que l'eau salée est meilleure conductrice d'électricité que l'eau plate, le mouvement de l'océan influence le champ magnétique, expliquait la Nasa.
De son côté, l'Agence spatiale européenne (ESA) doit envoyer sa première sonde, baptisée Juice, en 2022 pour étudier Jupiter et ses lunes.
Juice (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) devrait être lancée par une fusée Ariane 5 depuis Kourou en Guyane française.
De Fin Mark Sawalha heeft op het maanoppervlak een ongewoon object gespot dat volgens hem zou kunnen wijzen op het bestaan van buitenaards leven. Op een foto, die is gemaakt door NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, lijkt een smalle structuur te staan.
“Dit zou de antenne van een ondergrondse buitenaardse basis kunnen zijn, omdat zich onder deze naald een plateau bevindt,” vertelde hij aan de Sun Online. “Ik denk dat er ook mijnbouw wordt gepleegd op de maan. Buitenaardsen gebruiken maanmineralen en hebben daar ook bases. Veel andere vondsten ondersteunen deze theorie.”
“De NASA is hiervan op de hoogte, maar kiest ervoor om dit soort dingen niet te publiceren,” vervolgde hij. “Dat is misschien ook de reden waarom ze sinds het Apolloprogramma geen nieuwe missies naar de maan hebben georganiseerd.”
Eerder dit jaar werd een soortgelijk object ontdekt op de maan, maar volgens een wetenschapper van de Lunar Orbiter-missie was dat een optische illusie.
De Britse oud-sportverslaggever David Icke suggereerde onlangs nog dat de maan in werkelijkheid een reusachtig ruimteschip is dat is achtergelaten door een oude beschaving. Hij zei dat de maan fungeert als een soort Ark van Noach en ooit misschien een hele beschaving huisvestte.
UFO Shows UP To Catch UK Air Show And Surprises Spectators, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shows UP To Catch UK Air Show And Surprises Spectators, Photos, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: 2013 but reported Sept 25, 2016 Location of sighting: Scarborough, UK Source: MUFON #79384 This UFO was reported today at MUFON, but it occurred back in 2013. It shows a dark disk flying past a jet stream in the air, which seems to be analysing the pollutants from the jets. UFOs are often attracted to aircraft, because they have the newest in flight technology and seeing the jets show off their capabilities is of high interest to some aliens. This way they can accurately predict when we will have public space craft carrying us from planet to planet. Algorithms predicting the future...they rely on this too much, and one day, we may too. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states: My father in law was watching an display team flying in formation over the north bay in Scarborough, UK. He took a few shots with his iPhone and when he reviewed them later that day he noticed the object in the picture. He did not notice it at the time and it did not show up in any other frames. I imported the picture into iPhoto on my Mac and was able to enlarge the image to show the approx size and shape in more detail. There was many other people watching the display and it is highly likely that this object was caught by another person with a camera.
UFO Giving Off Heat Signature Seen Flying Against Wind By Wales Police Helicopter, Sept 2016, Official Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Giving Off Heat Signature Seen Flying Against Wind By Wales Police Helicopter, Sept 2016, Official Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 16, 2016 Location of sighting: Bristol, Wales, UK News source:NPAS Twitter account
I just got this over Twitter a few minutes ago. The police helicopter over Brisitol, Wales recorded a dark round UFO with infrared heat vision this week. It was confusing to them because it was moving against the wind and did have a heat signature. They even tried to switch to day time color camera, but it was not visible and could only be seen with the infrared camera. As I have said many times before, many UFOs have a cloak that can only be seen with an IR converted camera, the same ones that are seen on Ebay (click here to view). The UFO was seen over the Bristol Channel and probably came from below the water. I am confident if the police continued to follow it, they would see it disappear under the water to return to the alien base it came from. Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
Any suggestion?? Nothing seen by local ATC... 👽?? Our clock is out by 1hr so it was pitch black. tried on day camera, nothing seen. this clip is just a small part of the vid. It was on Saturday night about 21:30 and was spotted over the Bristol channel at approx 1000ft Really difficult to judge the size but we filmed it for just over 7 minutes as we were coming back into land. Only slight problem is the amount of heat and it was travelling into wind? We really don't know but doubt it was a lantern as it was going into the wind..
Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets
By Denise Chow, Staff Writer
Credit: U.S. Air Force
INTRO: A secret history
Government and military secrets can range from terrifying to amusing to downright absurd, but most are nothing short of intriguing. From a secret U.S. Air Force project to build a supersonic flying saucer to a now-famous World War II-era research program that produced the first atomic bombs, here are seven declassified military or CIA secrets.
Credit: National Archives
1. Project 1794
In late 2012, the U.S. Air Force declassified a trove of documents, including records of a secret program to build a flying saucer-type aircraft designed to shoot down Soviet bombers. The ambitious program, called Project 1794, was initiated in the 1950s, and a team of engineers was tasked with building a disc-shape vehicle capable of traveling at supersonic speeds at high altitudes.
The declassified documents reveal plans for the plane to reach a top speed of Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound), and reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,480 meters). The project's estimated cost was more than $3 million, which in today's dollars would be more than $26 million.
Project 1794 was canceled in December 1961 after tests suggested the flying saucer design was aerodynamically unstable and would likely be uncontrollable at high speeds (let alone supersonic speeds).
In the 1960s, the U.S. Army embarked on a secret mission to build a series of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. The objective was to house medium-range missiles close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union.
The program was codenamed Project Iceworm, but to test its feasibility, the Army launched a cover research project called "Camp Century" in 1960. Under this guise, engineers built a network of underground buildings and tunnels, including living quarters, a kitchen, a recreation hall, infirmary, laboratories, supply rooms, a communications center and a nuclear power plant.
The base, which was kept secret from the Danish government, operated for seven years. The program was canceled in 1966 after shifting ice created unstable conditions. Today, the crushed remains of Project Iceworm are buried beneath Arctic snow.
During the Cold War, the CIA initiated Project MK-ULTRA, a secret and illegal human research program to investigate potential mind-control systems. The program's operators examined the effects of hypnosis, biological agents and drugs, such as LSD and barbiturates, on human subjects. Some historians suggest the program was designed to develop a mind-control system that could be used to "program" the brains of potential assassins. [The 10 Craziest Military Experiments]
In 1973, then-CIA director Richard Helms ordered that all documents from Project MK-ULTRA be destroyed, but a formal investigation into the program was launched several years later. The project became the basis for several movies, such as "The Manchurian Candidate" and "The Men Who Stare at Goats."
Credit: Public domain
4. Area 51
Almost no other site has garnered as much attention from conspiracy theorists and UFO-enthusiasts as Area 51, a remote desert tract near Groom Lake in Nevada, roughly 83 miles (134 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. The intense secrecy surrounding the base sparked peoples' imaginations, and Area 51 was commonly linked to paranormal activities, including pervasive theories that suggested Area 51 hid aliens and UFOs.
In July 2013, declassified documents from the CIA acknowledged the existence of Area 51 for the first time, and confirmed that the top-secret site was used to test a variety of spy planes, including the well-known U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.
While Area 51, which operates as a detachment of Edwards Air Force Base in neighboring California, has never been declared a covert base, the research and activities conducted there were some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets.
While Area 51 was not a top-secret base designed to study extraterrestrials, the U.S. Air Force did study the existence of UFOs. Project Grudge was a short-lived program launched in 1949 to study unidentified flying objects. The mission followed an earlier program, known as Project Sign, which published a report in early 1949 stating that while some UFOs seemed to be actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origins. [Top 10 States for UFO Sightings]
Critics of Project Grudge said the program solely set out to debunk UFO reports, and very little actual research was conducted. In his book on the topic, Edward J. Ruppelt, Air Force Captain and director of Project Grudge, wrote: "[I]t doesn't take a great deal of study of the old UFO files to see that standard intelligence procedures were not being followed by Project Grudge. Everything was being evaluated on the premise that UFOs couldn't exist. No matter what you see or hear, don't believe it."
Credit: NASA
6. Operation Paperclip
In September 1946, President Harry Truman authorized a program called Operation Paperclip, which aimed to lure scientists from Nazi Germany to the United States following World War II. Officials at the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor to the CIA) recruited German scientists to America to aid the country's postwar efforts, which would also ensure that valuable scientific knowledge would not end up in the hands of the Soviet Union or the divided East and West Germany.
One of the most well-known secret research programs is the Manhattan Project, which eventually produced the world's first atomic bombs. The project began in 1939, and was cloaked in secrecy as physicists investigated the potential power of atomic weapons. From 1942 to 1946, Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers led the Manhattan Project.
The first nuclear bomb was detonated at 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, during the so-called Trinity test at the Alamogordo Air Base, 120 miles (193 km) south of Albuquerque, N.M. The explosion created a mushroom cloud that stretched 40,000 feet (12,200 m), and the bomb's explosive power was equivalent to more than 15,000 tons of TNT.
A month after the Trinity test, two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the waning stages of World War II. To date, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only uses of nuclear weapons in war.
WETENSCHAPHoe komt het dat sommige kleine aardbevingen uitgroeien tot grote en andere niet? Dat is een kwestie waar wetenschappers weer een iets beter beeld van hebben gekregen na een studie over de invloed van de maan en de getijden. Het onderzoek staat in het vakbladNature Geosciences.
De wetenschappers namen de periodes onder de loep waarin sprake is van 'hoge getijdenstress', een fenomeen dat twee keer per maand plaatsvindt tijdens volle maan en nieuwe maan. De zee komt dan het verst bij vloed en trekt zich ook het verst terug bij eb. Die bewegingen van die enorme hoeveelheid zeewater zet meer druk op breuklijnen.
Die druk kan een van de oorzaken zijn dat kleine aardbevingen heel groot worden. Kàn, want er spelen nog veel andere factoren mee. Maar de druk van de getijden kan een kleine breuk net dat kleine duwtje geven om uit groeien tot een enorme scheur, luidt de theorie.
De aardbevingen die enorme tsunami's veroorzaakten in 2004 in Zuidoost-Azië en in 2010 in Chili hadden een kracht van respectievelijk 9,1 en 8,8. Ze vonden allebei plaats nabij een volle maan, dichtbij de piek van de getijdenstress.
Eerdere studies suggereerden ook een invloed van de getijden op massief gesteente. Een onderzoek van eerder deze zomer wees op een mogelijk verband met kleine bevingen diep onder de grond langs de San Andreas-breuklijn in het Californische Monterey County.
Uiteraard zijn de getijdenkrachten niet de belangrijkste oorzaak van het ontstaan van aardbevingen. Die ontstaan voornamelijk doordat de tektonische platen van de Aarde tegen elkaar duwen en schuren. Daardoor neemt de druk toe op de breuklijnen, tot die zo hoog wordt dat hij plots vrijkomt in de vorm van een aardbeving.
Zo ontstaan ook veel aardbevingen wanneer er weinig druk is van de getijden, zegt Satoshi Ide, hoofdonderzoeker van de studie en professor seismologie aan Universiteit van Tokio. "Aardbevingen zijn bijna een willekeurig proces", aldus Ide. "Getijdenkrachten zijn slechts een element in een ingewikkeld proces. Er zijn nog veel andere factoren."
Een theorie gaat ervan uit dat alle aardbevingen klein starten op dezelfde manier. Of ze blijven groeien, hangt dan af van andere factoren die ze tegenkomen, zoals getijdenstress. Een andere theorie stelt daarentegen dat er een wezenlijk verschil is tussen het ontstaan van grote en kleine aardbevingen.
Het onderzoek kan niét helpen bij betere voorspellingen van het tijdstip en de plaats waar aardbevingen zullen toeslaan. Maar dergelijke studies kunnen wetenschappers wel helpen begrijpen hoe en waarom grote bevingen voorkomen.
En zo kunnen ze de snelheid en precisie van waarschuwingssystemen verbeteren die alarm slaan meteen na het ontstaan van een beving. De huidige systemen kunnen namelijk wel goed de impact van gematigde aardbevingen inschatten, maar schieten tekort voor de grote.
Het Japanse waarschuwingssysteem had de intensiteit van de aardbeving van 2011 in hoofdstad Tokio bijvoorbeeld onderschat. Een beter begrip van wat een aardbeving groot maakt, zou dus vooral meteen na het ontstaan ervan een grote vooruitgang zijn.
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U-2 Spy Plane Crash: Why 'Cold War' Aircraft Are Still Relevant Today
U-2 Spy Plane Crash: Why 'Cold War' Aircraft Are Still Relevant Today
By Jesse Emspak, Live Science Contributor
One of the U.S. Air Force's Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady.
Credit: U.S. Air Force
A U-2 spy plane that crashed in northern California earlier this week, killing one of the two pilots, focused attention on a normally clandestine aspect of the U.S. military. The U-2 plane has a long and storied history that stretches back to the late 1950s, but how is the reconnaissance aircraft used today?
U-2 planes have been flown by the United States and other nations for more than 60 years, as both a spy plane and an instrument of science. They key to the aircraft's longevity is its robust and efficient design, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Teal Group Corp., which conducts research and analysis on the aerospace and defense industry. He added that Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, the man who designed the U-2, "got it right."
What sets the U-2 apart is its ability to fly higher than any other aircraft for long periods, which is what makes it a good spy plane, he said.
And spy planes are still relevant today, even in the age of satellites. "Satellites are an additional layer," Aboulafia said. "But they can't be retargeted quickly. They are in whatever orbit and they can't be moved, and they are easily blocked by bad weather." Spy planes, on the other hand, have a lot more flexibility. "They can be easily moved from one part of the Earth to another, at any time," Aboulafia said.
Spy in the sky
By the time the first U-2 flew in 1955, the problem of gathering intelligence was becoming more acute. Spy planes were in operation as far back as World War I, when aircraft were used to take photos of enemy positions. But during the Cold War, the U.S. government wanted a way to fly over what was then the Soviet Union without being detected or shot down.
In fact, the U.S. had been flying spy planes into the USSR as early as the 1940s, according to Gregory Pedlow and Donald Walzenbach, authors of "The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974" (Military Bookshop, 2013).
Pedlow and Walzenbach said the USSR didn't have complete radar coverage of its borders or interior at that time, and modified B-47 bombers would fly in to take photos of sensitive targets, and then fly out. Moscow protested these flights but didn't shoot any down (though they fired warning shots). That changed in 1950, when the USSR shot down a U.S. plane over the Baltic Sea. Later that year, with the outbreak of the Korean War, Moscow adopted a policy of shooting down aircraft that violated its airspace. [Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets]
The U.S. Air Force asked aircraft companies to submit designs for a plane that could reach altitudes of 65,000 to 70,000 feet (20,000 to 21,300 meters), and just as important, be able to stay there for long periods. One of the changes to previous designs was that the plane didn't have to be equipped with the heavy armor or weaponry that were the hallmarks ofmilitary planes before, Pedlow and Walzenbach wrote. — Such specifications added weight, and made it more difficult to design a plane that could fly high enough.
It was Johnson's design that won out. To make the plane efficient at high altitudes, he adopted long and straight wings rather than a swept-back design, to improve lift at relatively low speeds (for a jet). The airframe also wasn't as strong or as heavy as the usual military-grade models, allowing for higher flight with less fuel. Johnson's design also dispensed with conventional landing gear and a pressurized cabin.
In operation
The U-2 was introduced into military service in 1957. Even after the USSR shot down one of the planes in 1960, the aircraft was still used in a number of conflicts such as the Vietnam War, providing intelligence to the U.S. and its allies. (The Christian Scence Monitor reported that a U-2 was even stationed in Cyprus in 2011, to monitor the no-fly zone established in Libya). In 1971, NASA started using U-2s as part of the agency's Earth Resources Aircraft program, flying the plane over the United States to gather scientific data. While NASA no longer uses the original U-2 model, a modified U-2, called the ER-2, still flies for the agency.
The first U-2s carried large-format cameras, but the sensors on board have grown much more sophisticated over the years, as have the controls. The engines, avionics and surveillance equipment have all been updated as technology has improved.
According to the U.S. Air Force, the U-2 carries an "electro-optical infrared camera, optical bar camera, advanced synthetic aperture radar, signals intelligence and network-centric communication" for reconnaissance flights.
But the U-2 is still a notoriously difficult aircraft to fly, Aboulafia said, even though the only remaining part from the 1950s version of the plane is the airframe.
The U-2 still conducts reconnaissance missions; there are two flying in the Middle East on any given day to monitor the Islamic State, reported the Los Angeles Times. The plane flies high enough to "peer in" to airspaces where they might not be allowed, as it's no longer a good assumption that radar can't detect the planes or that a surface-to-air missile can't hit them. (Although, the kind of missile that could reach a U-2 is more likely to be in the repertoire of a major military power than a small group of militants in a remote area, Aboulafia noted.)
In September 2015, 60 years after the U-2 was introduced, Lockheed Martin said it would unveil a replacement for the venerable spy plane, called the TR-X. According to a report from Defense News, the Air Force hasn't formally committed to it, though there is a plan to retire the U-2 in 2019. That may not happen, though, as the U-2 has already outlasted some of the planes that were supposedly more advanced, including theLockheed SR-71, which could reach similar altitudes and travel at 3.5 times the speed of sound. The SR-71 was retired in 1998 because it was too expensive to fly regularly.
Ancient Cult Site in Rugged Mountains Revealed with Drones
Ancient Cult Site in Rugged Mountains Revealed with Drones
By Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor
Interpretation of where an ancient sites might be in an aerial drone photo taken in the Le Pianelle area.
Credit: A. Hamel.
Ancient Roman ruins that lie hidden below the surface at the Apennine Mountains of Italy have largely escaped discovery because the rugged terrain makes them difficult to spot by foot and dangerous to find by airplane.
Now, using small airborne drones, archaeologists have found that an ancient settlement in the Apennines was much more dense and organized than previously thought, a new study reveals. The study offered evidence that dronescould help uncover more unknown sites in mountains worldwide.
Scientists investigated the area of Le Pianelle in the Tappino Valley in the mountainous southern Italian region of Molise. This area was known as Samnium in antiquity. [7 Bizarre Ancient Cultures That History Forgot]
"The way this mountain society was organized remains poorly understood," said study author Tesse Stek, a Mediterranean archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Aerial drone photo of the Le Pianelle area in the Apennine Mountains of Italy. A grid of features is visible in the middle of the picture.
Credit: T.D. Stek.
Previously, construction accidentally unearthed two ancient temples in the area. However, "there was no good knowledge about other sites, such as villages, farms, villas, graveyards and so on, that could tell us more about the ancient inhabitants in the area that visited the cult sites," Stek told Live Science. "They seemed to be cathedrals in the desert, so to say." [5 Surprising Ways Drones Could Be Used in the Future]
One theory is that these temples served as road stations and places of commerce along routes where sheep, cattle, goods and information traveled. Another theory suggests that these temples marked the frontier of a large state, such as the territory of the ancient Samnites.
Looking for hidden ruins
Archaeologists might want to conduct aerial surveys to help discover anyruins hidden beneath the surface. These require slow, low-altitude flights where researchers can take pictures of sites from the right angles and with the right lighting reveal ancient complexes.
For instance, on farmland, ancient walls may present themselves "as stripes where the grain is lower," Stek said. "Sometimes this is hard to see from a distance, but it becomes especially visible when the sun is low, and shadow effects enhance the differences in corn height."
However, in rugged terrain, "flying low is very difficult, dangerous, and time-costly," Stek said. "In the mountainous, fragmented area where we work, previously normal aerial archaeology had not had success.
In 2013, 2014 and 2015, the researchers investigated Le Pianelle using small commercial DJI Phantom quadcopter drones with cameras capable of taking photos both downward and from the side. The scientists remotely programmed the drones with flight plans to examine areas where researchers had discovered artifacts on foot.
The main advantage of using drones "is that you can choose very precisely which angle to take photos at the time you want," Stek said. "You can wait for the exact right moment in a specific field, make a flight of, say, 10 to 20 minutes' length, and take photos from all directions. With a normal airplane, you would need to be very lucky to catch the right moment, or you'll fly too high for good visibility or resolution, or the moment may not be right."
Revealing Le Pianelle
The elements made drone-flying difficult at times. "We actually lost one drone during a long, automated flight due to strong winds in a narrow valley," Stek said.
Despite such challenges, the drones helped reveal what appear to be the remains of several likely related archaeological complexes. "I could not believe it at first, but as they showed up on the computer screen at our base camp, the whole team started to yell, 'Wow!'" Stek said. [Incredible Drone Photos: Contest-Winning Images from Above]
Artifacts previously found in the area suggest these ruins date from the Classical to Late Roman period spanning from about the fifth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. The researchers found that settlements at Le Pianelle were "much more dense, organized and articulated than previously thought," Stek said.
"We have a very complete overview of the internal organization of the settlement, including its disposition along the road, storage spaces, domestic areas and so on."
These new findings suggest the temples that were previously discovered in this area were not located away from civilization, but were rather "actually located at the center of dense, rural communities," Stek said.
Drones will not replace traditional archaeology, Stek emphasized. "If you do not see anything on drone footage, it does not mean that there is nothing underneath," he said. "There are many different factors influencing the detectability of sites by drones, so other types of research, such as field surveys, geophysics and excavations, remain fundamental, too."
The scientists are talking with local authorities to excavate these sites. "Protecting the site from damage from agricultural use and robbing is the first priority now," Stek said.
Stek added that in the spring, "I plan an aerial campaign in which we aim to investigate a large swath of territory in two weeks." In addition, the scientists are experimenting with near-infrared cameras to detect even more hidden details, "with very good results," Stek said.
Stekdetailed his findings online July 4 in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Big Bang
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Big Bang
By Paul Sutter, Astrophysicist
This map of the cosmic microwave background, the light released just 380,000 years after the Big Bang, was created using observations by NASA's WMAP spacecraft.
Unfortunately, the Big Bang theory can be a pretty contentious topic. You mention it in casual conversation (well, maybe you don't, but I drop it into as many inappropriate places as possible), and some folks get all up in arms and defensive.
When this happens, I take a long breath and recite my Big Bang Mantra: The Big Bang is not a theory of the creation of the universe, but a model of the history of the universe. Look, I'll even show you a baby picture!
And at this point I pull out my wallet. Instead of smiling kids or cozy family group shots, I've got the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It's about the right age: it's a photograph of the universe when it was only 380,000 years old, which is equivalent to a picture taken of a baby at the end of its first day. [Cosmic Microwave Background: Big Bang Relic Explained (Infographic)]
That image is solid evidence, a smoking microwave gun, in favor of the Big Bang theory. Scientists are some of the most critical people you'll ever meet, forever reluctant to accept a new idea. It took decades of developing theories and accumulating evidence before the Big Bang was even warmly thought of, but the detection of the cosmic microwave background forced even the most truculent astronomers to grudgingly accept it.
Free the light
The early universe was a hot and sweaty place, a seething mosh pit of electrons, protons and high-energy photons. The CMB was released when the universe cooled off juuuust enough that stable atoms could form, turning the entire universe transparent and letting that high-energy light go free. Over the eons that radiation has traveled the cosmos, stretching along with the expansion of the universe, shifting down from white-hot intensity to a feeble few Kelvin above absolute zero.
That leftover light is in the form of microwaves, and is incredibly, fantastically … boring. To one part in 10,000, it's exactly the same, from one end of the sky to the other.
But if you examine those minute differences, strange features appear. Some parts of the CMB sky are 0.0001 Kelvin hotter or cooler than others. There are big patches twice the width of the full moon, and many small bumps and wiggles overlying them. What's going on?
Seeing what the universe is saying
Those larger patches in the CMB are the early universe rocking out. In that hot dense plasma of the infant cosmos, gravitational pressures pulled gases in, and radiation pressure pushed those gases back out. This constant seesaw reverberated throughout the volume of the universe, echoing from one end to the other.
What we see in the CMB is a frozen moment in time, the drums in mid-beat, the cymbals in mid-crash, the guitar in mid-note. Once the radiation disconnected from the protons and electrons, the music couldn't go on, but an image of it remained. Caught in the act, some parts of the universe were slightly denser and hotter than others, and these patterns imprinted themselves on the radiation left behind.
So when we examine those 1-in-10,000 differences, we're really mapping out the state of the universe as it was just 380,000 years into the cosmic concert.
The beautiful technical term for this process is "baryon acoustic oscillations." Baryon = stuff. You and me are made of baryons. Acoustic: something to do with sound. Oscillations: something to do with waves. It's really a fancy way of saying "sound waves," but hey, what's the point of getting a Ph.D. if you can't say fancy things every once in a while?
Those bumps and wiggles in the CMB — those echoes of the crashing chaotic cosmic symphony — are a treasure trove of information. By studying the CMB, we are looking directly at the early universe, and we can use those glorious photons to deduce all sorts of juicy cosmological information.
For example, the global shape of the universe. The big patches in the CMB give us a very handy ruler for measuring shapes. It turns out it's really, really easy (well, OK, only sort-of easy) to figure out how big the patches ought to be. Sure, the universe back then was a crazy-hot plasma, but we're pretty good at figuring out how crazy-hot plasmas operate, especially when the universe was still young and hadn't developed complex structures yet.
We can compare how big those patches ought to be to how they look. If the universe was curved on a global scale (like, say, the surface of a sphere), light from the CMB would bend on its way to Earth, either converging or diverging — making the patches look bigger or smaller than they should.
The result: the scale of the largest patches is precisely what we would expect for a perfectly flat universe. Parallel light rays in our cosmos stay parallel. No hints of exotic geometry to report.
That's not all. The CMB teaches us about the composition of the early universe. Neutrinos zooming around? Dark matter lurking mysteriously? Exotic relics of even earlier epochs wreaking havoc? All those things affect the statistics of the bumps and wiggles in the CMB: how large the largest patches are, how many large versus small patches, the maximum or minimum temperatures, etc. We can toss in any ingredient we want and see how it affects the detailed structure in that ancient light pattern.
The result from decades of analysis of the CMB: We live in a flat universe, dominated by dark energy, with a healthy dose of dark matter, and a few floating bits of normal everyday matter to lighten things up.
We're still not exactly sure what dark matter and dark energy are, but no matter what, the overall picture of the Big Bang remains unchanged: At one time, the universe was small, hot, and dense, and it left us a postcard.
Pluto's heart holds clues about an underwater ocean on the dwarf planet.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
A new simulation of how Pluto got its "heart" suggests that the dwarf planet most likely has a deep ocean beneath its surface.
Scientists have long suspected that Pluto has liquid water hidden underground. When NASA's New Horizons mission first set sail to the outskirts of the solar system, scientists were already planning to investigatewhether the dwarf planet harbors water.
When New Horizons flew past Pluto in July 2015 and beamed its observations back to Earth, scientists found evidence suggesting that Pluto had water at some point. However, they weren't sure whether Pluto's had an existing ocean, or if it had frozen solid over time.
In a new study, scientists have determined that Pluto's subsurface ocean probably does exist, and that liquid water beneath the dwarf planet's icy shell is at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) deep and about as salty as the Dead Sea on Earth. For perspective, the deepest part of Earth's ocean is about 7 miles (11 km) deep, and Earth is about 150 times the size of Pluto.
However, many details about this possible ocean remain elusive.
"Thermal models of Pluto's interior and tectonic evidence found on the surface suggest that an ocean may exist, but it's not easy to infer its size or anything else about it," Brandon Johnson, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at Brown University's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, said in a statement. "We've been able to put some constraints on its thickness and get some clues about [its] composition."
Johnson and his team discovered this information about Pluto's ocean by simulating the huge asteroid impact that left the flat, icy patch called Sputnik Planum on Pluto's surface, the western half of Pluto's famous heart-shaped feature. But first, they had to look at Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Charon and Pluto are both tidally locked, so they always face each other with the same sides. Sputnik Planum is found on the side of Pluto that constantly faces Charon, and that positioning implies that the area is what scientists call a "positive mass anomaly," meaning it contains more mass than the rest of Pluto's surface, on average.
At first, this doesn't make any sense. The side of Pluto that faces Charon has a gigantic crater, which is "basically a hole in the ground," Johnson said. "You're taking a bunch of material and blasting it out, so you expect it to have negative mass anomaly. But that's not what we see with Sputnik Planum. That got people thinking about how you could get this positive mass anomaly."
That's where the asteroid simulation comes in. Brown and his team ran several simulations of a 200-km (125 miles) asteroid — the appropriate size for Sputnik Planum's 900-km (560 miles) basin — striking Pluto's icy surface with varying depths of liquid water underneath. During this major impact, the asteroid created a huge dent on Pluto. As the asteroid's remains bounced off of the surface, Pluto's interior bounced back, too.
During this rebound, Pluto's interior was pulled toward the surface at the impact site. If the moving material is dense enough, the weight could make up for the missing mass at the impact site and even out Pluto's weight distribution. So the side of the dwarf planet that appears as though it should be lighter actually weighs about the same as the other side. This process is called "isostatic compensation," and it appears to be the reason why Pluto's dented side is so heavy, the researchers said in the new study; after the asteroid took away Pluto's icy crust, denser water from Pluto's interior evened out the missing mass.
But what really tipped the scale for Pluto was the subsequent sea of nitrogen ice that filled Pluto's heart after the impact: The amount of nitrogen ice in Sputnik Planum doesn't weigh enough to explain the tidal locking alone, Johnson said.
"This scenario requires a liquid ocean," Johnson said. "What this tells us is that, if Sputnik Planum is indeed a positive mass anomaly — and it appears as though it is — this ocean layer of at least 100 kilometers has to be there. It's pretty amazing to me that you have this body so far out in the solar system that still may have liquid water."
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking views a CGI alien civilization on the exoplanet Gliese 832c in this still from the new documentary "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places."
Humanity should be wary of seeking out contact with alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking has warned once again.
In 2010, the famed astrophysicist said that intelligent aliens may be rapacious marauders, roaming the cosmos in search of resources to plunder andplanets to conquer and colonize. He reiterates that basic concern in "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places," a new documentary streaming now on the CuriosityStream video service.
"One day, we might receive a signal from a planet like this," Hawking says in the documentary, referring to a potentially habitable alien world known as Gliese 832c. "But we should be wary of answering back. Meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn't turn out so well."
For what it's worth, some other astronomers believe Hawking's caution is unwarranted. Any alien civilization advanced enough to come to Earth would surely already know of humans' existence via the radio and TV signals that humanity has been sending out into space since 1900 or so, this line of thinking goes.
The alien musings are just a small part of "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places." The 26-minute documentary shows the scientist zooming through the cosmos on a souped-up CGI spaceship called the "S.S. Hawking," making five separate stops.
Hawking observes the Big Bangthat created the universe, visits the monster black hole at the center of the Milky Way, journeys to Gliese 832c and tours Saturn in Earth's own solar system. Then, he makes a final stop in Santa Barbara, California, which Hawking calls "my home away from home."
"In 1974, Caltech [the California Institute of Technology] offered me a job in California," the Englishman Hawking says in the documentary. "I jumped at the opportunity. In the sun with my young family, it was a world away from the gray skies of Cambridge, [England]. I've traveled the globe, but I've never found anywhere quite like this."
You can watch a preview of "Stephen Hawking's Favorite Places," and learn how to subscribe to CuriosityStream, at the video service's website:www.curiositystream.com.
'Impossible' Cloud On Saturn's Moon Titan May Resemble Earth's Ozone Killers
'Impossible' Cloud On Saturn's Moon Titan May Resemble Earth's Ozone Killers
By Jesse Emspak, Space.com Contributor
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is visible in front of the planet and its rings in this photo taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shown in true color.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
A strange cloud on Titan that seems to appear out of nowhere may form through process similar to one that depletes the ozone layer at Earth's poles. This process involves reactions with solid crystals rather than vapor.
The weird cloud, which NASA officials described as "impossible" in a statement, is made of dicyanoacetylene (C4N2), which is one of several hydrocarbons that give Titan's atmosphere it's orange-brown hue. One cloud just like it was first seen by Voyager 1, which passed by Saturn in 1980. Strangely, though, there didn't seem to be enough dicyanoacetylene in Titan's atmosphere to make such a cloud — only 1 percent of the amount needed.
Observations of this newer cloud, taken by the Cassini orbiter currently exploring Saturn's system, yielded similar results: The spacecraft saw a high-altitude cloud, but there was not enough raw material to make one. At first, the scientists thought the problem was that the Voyager instrument wasn't sensitive enough to pick up the dicyanoacetylene. But when Cassini got the same result, that explanation was scrapped, researchers said in the NASA statement.
Clouds are usually formed via condensation; a gas will rise to a certain height before cooling enough to turn to liquid vapor. This is what water does on Earth, forming clouds, and what methane does on Titan.
In the upper atmosphere, the process differs slightly; in that case, warm air is pushed to the poles and then sinks, where it condenses into clouds.
Carrie Anderson, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, led a team at Goddard and the California Institute of Technology that proposed a different model for those clouds' formation: reactions among solid ice particles.
Researchers think "solid state" chemistry similar to that on Earth's poles might help form the clouds on Saturn's moon Titan.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC
Under this process, crystals of another hydrocarbon, cyanoacetylene (HC3N), would condense as the gas moves downward through Titan's upper atmosphere. On the way, the crystals get coated by hydrogen cyanide (HCN). The little coated particles get hit with ultraviolet light from the sun, and the result is a reaction that forms dicyanoacetylene ice and hydrogen.
This process is similar to one on Earth involving clouds that sometimes form in the stratosphere and chlorine-bearing chemical pollutants. The chlorine chemicals stick to the ice crystals, react when hit with UV light and create ozone-destroying chemicals.
The study appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Cosmic 'Echoes' Reveal Stars Devoured by Black Holes
Cosmic 'Echoes' Reveal Stars Devoured by Black Holes
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com Contributor
As a star is devoured by a supermassive black hole, it emits a bright stream of material called a tidal disruption flare.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A doomed star falling into a black hole may produce a flare of light that "echoes" through nearby dust clouds, according to two new studies.
Monster black holes can be millions of times more massive than the sun. If a star happens to wander too close, the black hole's extreme gravitational forces can tear the star into shreds, in an event called "stellar tidal disruption."
This kind of stellar destruction may also spit out a bright flare of energy in the form of ultraviolet and X-ray light. The two new studies examine how surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits the light from those flares, like a cosmic echo, according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). [Millions of Black Holes Seen by WISE Telescope (Photos)]
"This is the first time we have clearly seen the infrared-light echoes from multiple tidal disruption events," Sjoert van Velzen, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of one study, said in the statement.
The new studies use data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The NASA study led by van Velzen used these "echoes" to identify three black holes in the act of devouring stars. The second study, led by Ning Jiang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China, identified a potential fourth light echo.
Flares emitted from stellar tidal disruptions are extremely energetic and "destroy any dust" that is within the immediate neighborhood, according to NASA. However, a patchy, spherical web of dust that resides a few trillion miles (half a light-year) from the black hole can survive the flare and absorb light released from the star being gobbled up.
"The black hole has destroyed everything between itself and this dust shell," van Velzen said in the statement. "It's as though the black hole has cleaned its room by throwing flames."
The absorbed light heats the more distant dust, which in turn gives off infrared radiation that the WISE instrument can measure. These emissions can be detected for up to a year after the flare is at its brightest, the statement said. Scientists are able to characterize and locate the dust by measuring the delay between the original light flare and the subsequent echoes, according to the NASA study, which will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
"Our study confirms that the dust is there, and that we can use it to determine how much energy was generated in the destruction of the star," Varoujan Gorjian, an astronomer at JPL and co-author of the paper led by van Velzen, said in the statement.
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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.
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