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...
01-10-2016
If We Go To Mars, We Might End Up Killing Life That’s Already There
If We Go To Mars, We Might End Up Killing Life That’s Already There
Phillip Toledano/National Geographic
IN BRIEF
In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was signed, requiring all to avoid contaminating celestial bodies.
If Curiosity find water, it has to avoid contact for fear that Earthly microbes might contaminate it.
THE CASE FOR PLANETARY PROTECTION
Now that Elon Musk has revealed his bold plans to colonize Mars, many have voiced that a human presence may not be great for the red planet. Before you say to yourself “ugh, another climate control article,” we suggest you control yourself and read on.
Yes. Of course we are fearful that human beings could destroy Mars much like we are damaging the Earth. But, more importantly, this is about protecting whatever original Martian life might be there when we set foot on the red planet.
This is an actual issue that’s been recognized since the 1960s — the problem of planetary protection. How can we make sure that human presence on Mars will not contaminate whatever life forms might be on the red planet? That’s a question Catherine Conley, NASA’s senior planetary protector, has concerned herself with for 10 years now.
Keeping Mars Martian
As scientists find more Earth microbes that can survive extreme environmental conditions, NASA has identified regions of the red planet where exploration must be extremely cautious. Areas with shallow ice beneath the surface or slopes that seem to show periodic flows of water are potential havens for terrestrial life.
MATTHEW W. CHWASTYK, NG STAFF
SOURCES: NASA; MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM ANALYSIS GROUP; McEWEN ET AL., 2014; OJHA ET AL., 2014; STILLMAN ET AL., 2016; LINDSAY E. HAYS, NASA/JPL
KEEPING LIFE ON MARS INTACT
Fortunately, all spacefaring nations are obliged to protect the Earth and other planets from contaminating one another. In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was signed and ratified, requiring all to avoid contaminating the moon and other celestial bodies.
So, the problem is, how do we do this? Take the curious case of the Curiosity, for instance. NASA’s Mars rover has been tasked to look for potential life on the red planet. So far, it has found evidence that water might’ve existed. If it actually finds water, though, it has to avoid contact with it for fear that whatever microbe Curiosity brought with it from Earth might contaminate the water.
Keeping it clean. Credits: NASA
Fortunately, there are measures to make sure that the likelihood of contamination stays low. NASA undertakes the strictest procedures to keep all its interplanetary equipment from carrying microbes, as much as possible. With the little amount that can actually survive the procedure and a trip through space, for one reason or another, we still have to be careful.
If bacterial life in Mars works the same way, more or less, that it does on Earth, then the smallest samples can pollute any chance we have of finding original Martian life.
A giant 30-ton meteorite has been discovered in the Argentina town of Gancedo.
As per experts, it is one of the largest meteorites ever found on Earth. It originated from a meteor shower that hit the region more than 4,000 years ago.
Discovery of the meteor was made on the border of Chaco, about 670 miles to the northwest of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires.
The meteorite at Gancedo was extracted from the ground on September 10 using heavy machinery as it weighs more than 30 tons.
The largest meteorite ever uncovered is a 66-ton whopper called Hoba. It sits in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia, in southern Africa. Because of its huge size, it hasn’t been moved and is now a tourist site. Hoba’s age is between 190 million and 410 million years and is thought to have hit the Earth around 80,000 years ago.
Nidhi Goyal
Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. You can also find Nidhi on Google+.
Ons universum is rond, dijt aan alle kanten even snel uit en lijkt niet te roteren. Dit beweren astronomen in een paper in het wetenschappelijke vakblad Physical Review Letters.
Wetenschappers onderzochten de kosmische achtergrondstraling. Dit is de warmtestraling die is uitgezonden tijdens de oerknal. Stel dat het heelal niet in alle richtingen even snel uit zou dijen, dan zouden er bepaalde patronen te zien moeten zijn in de achtergrondstraling. “Denk hierbij aan koude of hete plekken die een bepaalde as volgen of zelfs spiraalstructuren”, vertelt astronoom Daniela Saadeh.
“We hebben deze verwachtingen vergeleken met de daadwerkelijke situatie”, zegt onderzoeker Dr Stephen Feeney van het Imperial College London. “Dit was nog lastig, omdat het universum op heel veel manieren anisotropisch kan zijn. Je kunt gemakkelijk verdwalen in het doolhof van mogelijke universums.”
Er zijn geen patronen gevonden in de kosmische achtergrondstraling.
1 op 121.000 De kans dat het heelal een voorkeursrichting heeft is erg klein. Feeney en Saadeh beweren dat de kans 1 op 121.000 is.
Toch zijn er misschien wel andere heelallen die niet isotropisch zijn. “De algemene relativiteitstheorie van Albert Einstein laat de deuren open voor anistrope heelallen, die de ene kant sneller uitdijt dan de andere kant. Of die mogelijk roteren”, aldus Saadeh. “Het is goed nieuws dat het heelal aan alle kanten even snel uitdijt, omdat onze huidige kosmologische modellen hiervan uitgaan.”
Multiversum Andere heelallen? Ja, wetenschappers denken dat ons heelal niet uniek is. Wellicht zijn er veel meer universa in het zogenoemde multiversum. Sterker nog: in andere universa is er mogelijk een gunstiger klimaat voor leven, waardoor er meer (intelligent) leven voorkomt dan in ons eigen universum. De vraag is of we ooit naar een ander universum kunnen reizen. Misschien via een wormgat?
SpaceX onthult interplanetair ruimteschip om Mars te koloniseren
SpaceX onthult interplanetair ruimteschip om Mars te koloniseren
Tim Kraaijvanger
Elon Musk liet gisteren tijdens een uur durende presentatie zien hoe hij minimaal honderd mensen op Mars wil krijgen.
Tijdens een conferentie in Mexico onthulde Musk het Interplanetary Transport System, dat bestaat uit de meest krachtigste raket die ooit is gebouwd en een ruimtevaartuig dat mensen naar de rode planeet brengt.
Als alles volgens plan verloopt, zal het ITS de komende 50 tot 100 jaar een permanente, zelfvoorzienende kolonie stichten. “Ik wil (het koloniseren van, red.) Mars mogelijk maken”, zegt Musk. “Iets wat we kunnen we bereiken in ons leven en dat jij nog mee kan gaan.”
Musk beweert dat de reis naar Mars ongeveer tien miljard dollar per persoon kost met traditionele methoden. De oprichter van CEO wil deze kostprijs met een factor vijf miljoen (!!) verlagen. De reis naar Mars moet per persoon niet meer kosten dan de bouw van een woning.
Herbruikbare ruimtevaartuigen en raketten Daarvoor moet er het een en ander veranderen. Musk somt een aantal technieken op in zijn presentatie. Als er veel reizen naar Mars worden georganiseerd, dan moeten vrijwel alle elementen herbruikbaar zijn. Neem een Boeing 737. Dit luchtvaartuig kost negentig miljoen euro. Stel dat zo’n vliegtuig eenmalig wordt gebruikt door 180 mensen, dan kost een ticket 500.000 euro. Toch betaal je momenteel als consument niet meer dan enkele honderden euro’s voor een korte vlucht. Dit komt omdat het vliegtuig herbruikbaar is. SpaceX heeft al aangetoond goed op weg te zijn, want eind vorig jaar liet het bedrijf een raket op aarde landen.
Tanken in de ruimte Een ander belangrijk punt is dat er getankt moet worden in de ruimte. Een raket hoeft dan niet veel brandstof mee te nemen: alleen het beetje dat nodig is om de dampkring te verlaten. Minder brandstof betekent lagere kosten en dus een goedkopere lancering. Eenmaal boven het aardoppervlak kan de tank volgegooid worden.
Brandstof maken op Mars Daarnaast moet er op Mars getankt kunnen worden, want dan kunnen kolonisten ook weer enigszins makkelijk terug naar hun oorspronkelijke thuisplaneet. Dit vraagt om de juiste brandstofmix. De Raptor-raketmotor – die deze week werd getest – gebruikt een mix van methaan en zuurstof. SpaceX wil een fabriek op Mars bouwen waar koolstofdioxide en waterijs uit de lucht en de grond wordt gehaald. Middels zonne-energie worden deze stoffen omgezet in raketbrandstof: methaan en zuurstof.
Een reusachtige raket SpaceX’s raket is gemaakt van koolstofvezels, waardoor de raket licht en sterk is. In het rijtje van alle raketten torent de Mars-raket boven de Saturn V en de Falcon Heavy-raketten uit. Niet alleen qua lengte, maar ook als het gaat om ‘payload to LEO’. Dit betekent: hoeveel kilo kan de raket in een lage baan om de aarde (160 kilometer hoogte) krijgen. De Mars-raket kan 550.000 kilo tillen: tien keer meer dan de Falcon Heavy-raket en vier keer meer dan de Saturn V-raket (van de Apollo-missies).
42 Raptors Gisteren meldden we al dat de Raptor-raketmotor 300.000 kilo kan voortstuwen, terwijl een Merlin-raketmotor slechts 90.000 kilo kan optillen. We vroegen ons toen nog af: hoeveel van deze raketmotor gebruikt SpaceX voor de Mars-raket? Het antwoord gaf Musk tijdens de presentatie. Het gaat om 42 stuks: 21 Raptors in de buitenste ring, 14 in de binnenring en zeven raketmotoren in het centrum.
115 dagen naar Mars Het interplanetaire ruimteschip is bijna vijftig meter lang en kan 450 ton lading naar Mars brengen. In de toekomst moet ieder schip meer dan honderd passagiers meenemen. De gemiddelde tijd van de aarde naar Mars is 115 dagen. Dit hangt natuurlijk af van de afstand tussen de rode planeet en de aarde en die schommelt. Zo kan een reis naar Mars tachtig dagen duren (in 2035), maar ook 150 dagen in beslag nemen (in 2027).
Vanuit de interplanetaire ruimte valt het ruimteschip in de atmosfeer van Mars. Dankzij de aerodynamica van het schip en het hitteschild wordt het ruimtevaartuig afgeremd.
De prijs per ticket Het kostenplaatje ziet er dan als volgt uit. De Mars-raket kost 230 miljoen dollar om te fabriceren, maar gaat gemiddeld duizend keer mee. Per keer kost het 200.000 dollar om de raket op te lappen voor een volgende lancering. De totale prijs per Mars-trip is elf miljoen dollar. De tanker – het ruimtevaartuig dat de raket van brandstof voorziet in de ruimte – kost 130 miljoen dollar om te bouwen. De tanker gaat honderd keer mee en kost 500.000 dollar extra per lancering. Totale kosten per Mars-reis: acht miljoen dollar. Dan tenslotte het interplanetaire schip. Dit schip kost 200 miljoen dollar om te maken, gaat twaalf keer mee en het kost gemiddeld tien miljoen dollar per keer om opnieuw in te zetten. Per reis hangt er een prijskaartje aan van 43 miljoen dollar.
Als we alles bij elkaar optellen, dan komen we op een totaalprijs van 62 miljoen dollar voor honderd mensen om een enkele reis naar Mars te ondernemen. Op basis van het bovenstaande rekensommetje gaat een ticket 600.000 dollar kosten. Musk noemde in zijn presentatie een ander bedrag. “We gaan voor een ticketprijs van 200.000 dollar of minder”, aldus Musk. “Uiteindelijk kunnen we de ticketprijs onder de ton krijgen.”
SpaceX hoopt in de toekomst verder te reizen dan Mars, bijvoorbeeld naar de maan Europa van Jupiter.
Wie zal dat betalen, wie heeft zoveel geld? Het minst concreet is nog wel de manier waarop Musk aan geld gaat komen. SpaceX hoopt de winst van huidige en toekomstige projecten – denk aan het lanceren van satellieten, astronauten en lading naar het ISS – in het Mars-plan te steken. Daarnaast gaat het bedrijf Kickstarter inzetten. De grote vraag is of dit op korte termijn een flinke cashflow creëert. Dat is misschien nog wel het grote probleem van SpaceX en ruimtevaartorganisaties: er ontstaan allerlei eilandjes. Iedereen wil naar Mars, maar iedere ruimtevaartorganisatie lijkt het succes ook zelf te willen claimen. NASA investeert liever in het Orion-project, terwijl het verstandiger is om de krachten te bundelen met SpaceX. Musk heeft overduidelijk de juiste visie, NASA het geld. Misschien dat er in de toekomst wel het een en ander gaat veranderen. De Amerikaanse Senaat wil graag zo snel mogelijk een mens op Mars zetten. Misschien dat er in een later stadium wel wordt beslist dat NASA een minder groot budget krijgt en dat er een paar miljard dollar wordt vrijgemaakt voor SpaceX. Het is niet onmogelijk.
Wanneer? Op dit moment werkt minder dan vijf procent van alle medewerkers van SpaceX aan het ITS. Ieder jaar worden er enkele tientallen miljoenen dollars geïnvesteerd. Musk zegt dat er uiteindelijk een investering van tien miljard dollar nodig is. De visionair verwacht dat er over twee jaar jaarlijks 300 miljoen dollar geïnvesteerd kan worden in het project en dan gaat het hard. Misschien dat het ITS over tien jaar wel gelanceerd gaat worden. We kijken er nu al naar uit, maar zetten ook nog wel vraagtekens bij het ambitieuze project. Onderschat Musk het hele traject niet? Mensen naar Mars brengen is één, maar hoe gaan we ze daar in leven houden? Momenteel kunnen we maar één ding doen: afwachten! Sowieso zijn dit hele spannende ontwikkelingen en het is fijn dat er een frisse wind waait die een hoop stof doet opwaaien.
De missie van Rosetta komt later deze week tot een einde. Een mooi moment voor een terugblik op een waanzinnige missie.
Ruimtesonde Rosetta werd in maart 2004 gelanceerd. De bestemming? Komeet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, wiens naam naarmate de missie vorderde om begrijpelijke redenen steeds verder werd afgekort (67P/C-G en op het eind zelfs kortweg: 67P). Hoe de komeet er precies uitzag? We hadden geen idee. Hoe de komeet precies in elkaar stak? We hadden hypotheses. Er viel dus nog genoeg te ontdekken voor Rosetta.
WIST JE DAT…
…Rosetta eigenlijk komeet 46P/Wirtanen had moeten bezoeken? Vanwege problemen met de draagraket werd de lancering van Rosetta uitgesteld en moest een andere bestemming worden gekozen.
Komeet 67P: een kosmisch badeendje. Afbeelding: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.
Gearriveerd Begin augustus 2014 was het dan zover. Rosetta nestelde zich – na meer dan zes miljard kilometer te hebben afgelegd – in een baan rond 67P. Een historisch moment. Voor het eerst in de geschiedenis had een ruimtevaartuig zich bij een komeet gevoegd. En vanuit een baan rond 67P leverde Rosetta de ene na de andere prachtige foto af. Maar hoe mooi de foto’s ook waren, stiekem keken we natuurlijk allemaal uit naar het volgende historische moment. En dat zou zich enkele maanden later – in november – aandienen. Dan zou Rosetta komeetlander Philae naar het oppervlak van 67P bonjouren. De lander moest de missie een extra dimensie geven en op het oppervlak van de komeet informatie verzamelen en zelfs in de komeet gaan boren.
Philae Zenuwslopend was het: de tweede woensdag in november. De dag waarop lander Philae voet op komeet 67P moest zetten. De opluchting was groot toen Philae erin slaagde op de komeet te landen. Maar die opluchting sloeg al snel om in teleurstelling toen bleek dat de landing allesbehalve vlekkeloos was verlopen. Philae was in eerste instantie netjes op de gewenste plek op de komeet geland, maar stuiterde daarna nog even door, waardoor de lander uiteindelijk op een zeer ongewenste plek terechtkwam: in de schaduw van een klif. Het is een plek waar je een lander die draait op zonne-energie absoluut niet wilt hebben, maar er viel niks meer aan te veranderen. Na enkele dagen onderzoek viel Philae in slaap. In de zomer van 2015 werd er enkele malen met succes contact gezocht met de lander, maar na 9 juli 2015 werd er niet meer van Philae vernomen. Lang legde Rosetta nog het oor te luister in de hoop een signaal van de lander op te vangen, maar op 28 juli 2016 werd ook dat initiatief gestaakt. We zouden nooit meer iets van Philae vernemen.
De beelden laten duidelijk zien dat Philae ongelukkig is neergekomen op 67P. Afbeelding: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.” width=”1024″ height=”1018″ class=”size-full wp-image-130901″ /> Totale radiostilte sinds 9 juli 2015. En toch was Philae begin deze maand weer even wereldnieuws. Rosetta had de lander gefotografeerd! De beelden laten duidelijk zien dat Philae ongelukkig is neergekomen op 67P.
Afbeelding: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.
Perihelium Natuurlijk was het verlies van Philae een aderlating, maar de missie ging verder. Rosetta cirkelde immers nog altijd in goede gezondheid rond komeet 67P heen. We moesten vooruit kijken. En wel naar augustus 2015: perihelium. Het moment waarop de afstand tussen de zon en komeet 67P het kleinst was en de komeet ongetwijfeld zou gaan transformeren. Komeet 67P is namelijk een samenklontering van ijs en stof. En wanneer de komeet dicht bij de zon in de buurt komt, gaat dat ijs sublimeren (verdampen). Stromen gas ontsnappen van het oppervlak van de komeet en voeren stof mee. Astronomen wilden maar wat graag weten hoe een komeet zo’n perihelium doormaakt en zaten dankzij Rosetta op de eerste rij. We zagen krachtige straalstromen aan het oppervlak ontsnappen die soms zelfs de inkomende zonnewind wegduwden. En straalstromen die objecten van wel één meter groot de ruimte in slingerden (voor perihelium waren de grootste brokstukken die het oppervlak van 67P verlieten hooguit1 centimeter groot).
Een actieve komeet. Gas ontsnapt in straalstromen aan de komeet.
Afbeelding: ESA / Rosetta / MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / SSO / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA.
De oorsprong van 67P Gaandeweg verkregen we zo dankzij Rosetta steeds meer informatie over 67P. Zo ontdekte de sonde hoe kometen zoals 67P ontstaan. Rosetta ontdekte dat de ‘kop’ van de komeet zeer poreus is. Die porositeit wijst erop dat de komeet ontstond doordat vele kleine ‘kometesimalen’ met snelheden kleiner dan 1 meter per seconde tegen elkaar botsten. Die kometesimalen smolten daarop niet samen, maar ‘leunden tegen elkaar aan’. Inmiddels is in diepe putten op de komeet ‘kippenvel’ aangetroffen en de ‘bultjes’ waaruit het ‘kippenvel’ bestaat zijn ongeveer drie meter breed. Daarmee zijn ze qua grootte vergelijkbaar met de kometesimalen waaruit komeet 67P waarschijnlijk is opgebouwd. Wellicht zien we in deze putten dan ook de originele bouwblokken waaruit de komeet zo’n 4,6 miljard jaar geleden verrees.
HET BELANG VAN DE MISSIE
Een missie naar een stokoude komeet stond al lang bij wetenschappers op het verlanglijstje. Kometen zijn een soort tijdcapsules uit de vroege stadia van de vorming van ons zonnestelsel en kunnen dus meer vertellen over die tijd. Daarnaast kan komeetonderzoek meer inzicht geven in de oorsprong van het leven. Men neemt namelijk aan dat kometen verantwoordelijk zijn voor het leveren van water – een belangrijk ingrediënt voor leven – op aarde.
Rosetta heeft eigenlijk alle verwachtingen overtroffen. Maar helaas, ook deze ruimtesonde heeft het eeuwige leven niet. Komeet 67P haast zich weg van de zon en Rosetta zal steeds meer moeite krijgen om voldoende energie op te wekken. Bovendien moeten we natuurlijk ook niet vergeten dat de sonde – ondanks dat dezen nog maar een paar jaar onderzoek achter de rug heeft – al tien jaar door de ruimte heeft gedoold en al meer dan twaalf jaar oud is. ESA heeft dan ook besloten dat het tijd is om afscheid te gaan nemen van de sonde. En Rosetta krijgt een bijzondere laatste rustplaats: Ma’at, een regio op de kop van komeet 67P. Het is de bedoeling dat de sonde op 30 september zachtjes op de komeet landt. Aangenomen wordt dat Rosetta na de landing niet meer in staat is om met de aarde te communiceren. En daarmee komt een einde aan een prachtige missie.
Rosetta maakt een ‘selfie’. Op de achtergrond zie je komeet 67P.
'IF YOU KNEW WHAT WE DO, YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN' - NASA DIRECTOR (video)
'IF YOU KNEW WHAT WE DO, YOU WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN' - NASA DIRECTOR (video)
Paul Hertz, Director of the Astrophysics Division of the NASA, shared at IMGUR this amazing statement about aliens.
We are never going to discover aliens, aliens are going to discover us and when they do it won´t be pretty. You can take that to the bank.
There certainly wont be enought time for press conferences about it. You probaly wont have the time to blink.
"Be carefull what you wish for. if you guys knew even a fraction of the shit we do, you will never sleep again. I promise you that"
Paul Hertz Director of the astrophysics divison at nasa.
Paul Hertz was named Director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA in March 2012. He is responsible for the Agency’s research programs and missions necessary to discover how the universe works, explore how the universe began and developed into its present form, and search for Earth-like planets.
VIDEOVanmiddag, om twintig na één, is de missie van de Europese komeetsonde Rosetta tot een einde gekomen. Het ruimtetuig van het Europees Ruimteagentschap ESA werd twaalf jaar geleden gelanceerd om kometen te bestuderen. Vandaag, op 718 miljoen kilometer van de aarde, stortte Rosetta gecontroleerd neer op komeet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, waar ze al twee jaar rond cirkelde.
De snelheid van de impact was 19 centimeter per seconde, zowat de helft van een wandeltempo. Maar omdat Rosetta niet ontworpen was om te kunnen landen, was dat fataal voor heel wat instrumenten.
Vooraf werd de landingsplaats minutieus bepaald. De komeet is ongeveer 4 kilometer groot en ziet er een beetje uit als een zandloper. Hij zou ontstaan zijn door het botsen van twee kometen. Het oppervlakte is erg poreus en de temperatuur bedraagt er tot honderd graden onder nul.
Schat De missie van Rosetta kwam daarmee tot een einde en kostte 1 miljard euro. De beslissing om de missie af te breken werd genomen omdat de komeet bijna zo ver van de zon is, dat de zonnepanelen van Rosetta niet meer genoeg energie kregen om te blijven functioneren. Ook de bandbreedte voor het downloaden van wetenschappelijke data verminderde. Het ruimtetuig bleef wel tot het allerlaatste moment foto's in hoge resolutie maken en gegevens verzamelen over onder meer gassen, stof en plasma ronde steenbrok en die doorsturen naar de aarde. Dat moet nog een schat aan info opleveren. Het laatste contact was er 51 meter boven de komeet.
Succes "Het is gebeurd. Ik kan bevestigen dat de afdaling van Rosetta een volledig succes is", zei missieverantwoordelijke Patrick Martin, een paar minuten nadat om 13.19 uur Belgische tijd het signaal was weggevallen. "Adieu Rosetta, je hebt je werk goed gedaan", zei Martin in het vluchtleidingscentrum ESOC in Darmstadt. Daar was het tijdens de laatste minuten van de vlucht muisstil, totdat een wervelend applaus na de bevestiging van de landing uitbrak.
Reis
De sonde heeft bijna acht miljard kilometer afgelegd, is op haar reis in 2005 en 2009 drie keer rond de aarde gescheerd en één keer rond Mars (2007), terwijl ze twee keer een ontmoeting met een asteroïde had, Steins (2008) en Lutetia (2010). Het tuig vertoefde 31 maanden in gecontroleerde winterslaap.
Onderzoekers van de Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België (KSB) hebben, op grond van nieuwe gegevens van de ruimtesonde Cassini, aangetoond dat de Saturnusmaan Dione een oceaan van vloeibaar water onder haar ijsoppervlak heeft. De Belgische studie verschijnt deze week in "Geophysical Research Letters".
Bij twee andere manen van Saturnus, Titan en Enceladus, en ook Europa, een maan van Jupiter, was men al vrij zeker dat er onder hun ijskorst grote oceanen waren, maar nu is er dus nog een "oceaanwereld".
De oceaan is enkele tientallen kilometers diep en omsluit een grote harde kern. Zo lijkt Dione erg op buur Enceladus, die ook bekend is omwille van de reusachtige stralen van waterdamp ("jets") die bij de zuidpool worden uitgestoten. Dione lijkt nu wel rustig, maar de littekens op haar oppervlak, in de vorm van grote ijskliffen, wijzen op een tumultueus verleden.
Leven De oceaan van Dione was er waarschijnlijk al van bij het ontstaan van de maan en dus mogelijk een goede omgeving voor microscopisch leven. "De contactzone van de oceaan met de harde kern komt het meest in aanmerking. Daar kunnen de voedingsstoffen en de energie aanwezig zijn, die nodig zijn voor leven", zegt co-auteur Attilio Rivoldini.
Het aantal "oceaanwerelden", de ijsmanen en planeten met een ondergrondse oceaan, wordt groter bij elke nieuwe missie naar de buitengebieden van ons zonnestelsel. Met drie "oceaanwerelden" bij Jupiter, drie bij Saturnus, en mogelijk één bij Pluto, is het geen exclusieve club meer.
Isostatische benadering Dankzij de nieuwe "isostatische" benadering kunnen deze werelden nu beter bestudeerd worden, zodra we hun vorm en gravitatieveld kennen. "Toekomstige missies zullen de manen van Jupiter bestuderen, maar ook de satellieten van Uranus en Neptunus zouden moeten onderzocht worden", vindt één van de auteurs, Mikael Beuthe.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
SpaceX onthult ruimteschip en raket voor kolonisatie van Mars - HLN.be
SpaceX onthult ruimteschip en raket voor kolonisatie van Mars - HLN.be
UPDATETijdens een livestream deed Elon Musk vanavond uit de doeken hoe hij met zijn ruimtevaartbedrijf SpaceX een missie naar Mars wil realiseren. Hij lichtte toe hoe SpaceX werkt aan een interplanetaire raket en capsule om grote aantallen mensen naar Mars te brengen met het ultieme doel de planeet te koloniseren. De gigantische SpaceX-raket moet per reis 100 passagiers plus vracht kunnen vervoeren.
De raket en het ruimteschip zijn veel groter dan de huidige Falcon 9 van SpaceX, die in totaal 122 meter hoog zullen zijn. De Falcon 9 is momenteel 70 meter groot.
De raket zal het ruimteschip op koers brengen en vervolgens terugkeren naar de aarde, waar ze weer moet landen op het lanceerplatform. Het is de bedoeling dat de raket daar een brandstoftank ophaalt om weer naar het ruimteschip te brengen.
De SpaceX-CEO ziet een toekomst waarin mensen een grote kolonie vestigen op Mars, maar voegde eraan toe dat de grootste moeilijkheid het aantrekken van voldoende vrijwilligers zal zijn. "Je kan geen zelfvoorzienende beschaving creëren als het prijskaartje per persoon 10 miljard dollar per persoon is," voegde hij eraan toe. "Ons doel is om het naar beneden te krijgen tot ongeveer het equivalent van een middelgroot huis in de Verenigde Staten, ongeveer 200.000 dollar". "Het kan 40 tot 100 jaren duren tot er een volledig zelfvoorzienende beschaving is op Mars," aldus Musk.
SpaceX, dat door Musk specifiek werd opgericht met het doel om Mars te koloniseren, is een van de verschillende initiatieven die door privaat en overheidsgeld gesponsord worden, om mensen en vracht naar de rode planeet en andere bestemmingen buiten de atmosfeer van de aarde te brengen.
Mars ligt op ongeveer 225 miljoen kilometer van de aarde. Het is een heel ambitieuze onderneming om mensen, na een reis van zes tot negen maanden, er te laten landen.
Steun van NASA
Musk zei niet hoeveel het hele project zou kosten. SpaceX is van plan om elke 26 maanden naar Mars te vliegen, wanneer de aarde en Mars in een gunstige positie tegenover elkaar staan. Musk hoopt om in 2024 de eerste mensen naar Mars te brengen.
De eerste Marsmissie van SpaceX moet plaatsvinden in 2018: daarvoor wil het bedrijf de onbemande capsule 'Red Dragon' naar het oppervlak van Mars brengen om de daling en landing van het tuig te testen.
De eerste bemande Marsmissie van NASA moet plaatsvinden rond 2034. NASA steunt het project van SpaceX en zal het bedrijf bijstaan met advies en relais-stations die communicatie in de ruimte en Mars mogelijk maken, in ruil voor data.
Op nieuwe foto's van Jupiters maan Europa, genomen met de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop, zijn mogelijk pluimen van waterdamp te zien. Eerdere waarnemingen deden al vermoeden dat de ijsmaan waterdamp uitbraakt. Dat zou eventuele toekomstige missies behoorlijk kunnen vergemakkelijken.
Astronomen vermoeden dat onder het ijzige oppervlak van Europa een enorme oceaan schuilgaat, die tweemaal zoveel water bevat als de zeeën op aarde. "De oceaan van Europa wordt gezien als een van de meest veelbelovende plaatsen in ons zonnestelsel die mogelijk leven kunnen bevatten", zegt Geoff Yoder van het Science Mission Directorate van NASA in een persbericht.
Maar die oceaan wordt afgedekt door een laag extreem koud en hard ijs. Hoe dik de ijslaag is, is niet geweten. Om het water op de maan te kunnen onderzoeken, zou er dus mogelijk door een kilometers dikke laag geboord moeten worden. "Maar als er inderdaad pluimen van waterdamp zijn, bieden die een andere mogelijkheid om de ondergrond van Europa te onderzoeken", klinkt het. Zo zouden er stalen verzameld kunnen worden zonder te moeten landen op of boren door het ijs.
Het onderzoeksteam, onder leiding van William Sparks van het Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, zag Europa tien keer voor Jupiter passeren. Driemaal werden er mogelijke waterpluimen waargenomen. Ze stegen naar schatting 200 kilometer boven het oppervlak, alvorens het materiaal weer naar beneden regende. Het onderzoek verschijnt eind deze maand in The Astrophysical Journal.
In 2012 waren er ook al vermoedens van waterpluimen op Europa. Een team van het Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio zag toen 160 kilometer hoge pluimen uitbarsten vanaf de zuidpool van de maan. Tot nu toe doen de observaties vermoeden dat de pluimen hoogst variabel zijn. Dat zou betekenen dat ze een tijdlang sporadisch uitbarsten, om dan weer stil te vallen.
Indien het nieuws bevestigd wordt, zou Europa de tweede maan in ons zonnestelsel zijn met waterpluimen. In 2005 ontdekte NASA's ruimtetuig Cassini wolken van waterdamp en stof boven het oppervlak van Saturnus' maan Eceladus.
SET in an eerily quiet suburb of Sydney, under the glow of a full moon, the scene resembles an ominous opening of a Hollywood sci-fi film.
But members and guests of the UFO & Paranormal Research Society of Australia (UFO-PRSA) don’t meet in the dark of the night simply for dramatic effect.
The western Sydney arm of the organisation comes together at this time, from 7-10pm, because most of them are professionals who have work commitments by day.
Among them are lawyers, scientists, public servants, retirees and students who claim to have had alien, UFO and paranormal encounters.
They say it’s the only place they can speak freely about the likes of alien abductions, UFO sightings, telepathy and other phenomena — including the ability to see internal human organs — without ridicule.
Some travel from Wollongong, which doesn’t have its own support group of the same nature, to be there.
The group is hosted by guest speakers including ufologists, authors and scientists in public meetings at the Campbelltown Arts Centre once a month.
At the September meeting, UFO-PRSA posters with pictures of aliens, ghosts and UFOs point attendees to the conference room on level one. Inside are rows of chairs, a snack table with biscuits, tea and coffee, and an overhead projector for presentations. About 16 people show up and pay three uniformed staffers the $15 entry fee
One of several posters at the September UFO society of Australia meeting in Campbelltown.:news.com.au
UFO Society of Australia members told news.com.au that aliens are typically grey, not green like those often shown on television and in books.
Source:Supplied
Their experiences and backgrounds vary greatly but they all share one common belief: the truth is out there.
The members mingle before the presentations start. They’re unimpressed by the way, they feel, the mass media has portrayed abductees and believers.
For starters, the cliche “little green men” often parodied on television are actually grey, according to several attendees.
The UFO & Paranormal Research Society of Australia holds months meetings at night in the Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Source:news.com.au
One member tells news.com.au that proof aliens have already come to Earth is publicly available and that “all you have to do is look”.
“Through the military, the aircraft, the navy,” she says.
“We ought to know what’s going on instead of having the wool pulled over our eyes by the government.
“Astronauts and pilots are now coming out of the woodworks.”
She refers to late US astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who said he had never seen a UFO, but was outspoken in his belief that aliens had probably visited Earth and that the government covered up the evidence.
“He’s created freedom,” she says.
While the group condemns doubters, non-believers and detractors who label them “delusional” and “crazy”, they are often the first to poke fun at themselves. Some of them have “X Files” and extraterrestrial theme ringtones which prompt chuckles from the audience when they sporadically ring throughout the meeting.
‘IF ONE OF THESE REPORTS IS TRUE IT WILL CHANGE MANKIND FOREVER’
Nick Karma says he's captured evidence of UFOs in these photos taken at an undisclosed location in the Top End of Australia.
Source:Supplied
UFO researcher and author Moira McGhee, one of two guest speakers on the night, tells news.com.au “there is humour in ufology”.
“If you don’t have humour it’s all going to get too much,” she says.
But according to her, there’s lots of “serious stuff” to cover too.
McGhee is there to talk about her latest book Contact Down Under: A century of UFO sightings in Australasia and the Western Pacific. She promises the audience they will be especially interested when she gets to the chapter about “alien sex”.
“We have reports of men being taken on aircraft and women having their way with them,” McGhee says.
“Usually they have a smile ear to ear those blokes.
“But there are a lot of cases of women having their eggs taken. They are suffering trauma. There are encounters and abductions that are made of absolute horror stuff.”
McGhee says none of it can be explained.
“I don’t know the answers,” she says.
“Any ufologist who tells you they know the answers is kidding themselves.”
UFO researcher and author Moira McGhee at the UFO society of Australia’s September 2016 meeting.
Source:news.com.au
McGhee says she’s received countless reports of alien encounters from people all over the world during her career. But that hasn’t made it any easier to determine the validity of each claim, according to her.
“A UFO is a flying object we cannot identify by conventional means,” she says.
“There is an interest in ufology right throughout the world so a lot of what reported is technology and not necessarily alien.
“It can be hoaxes, flares, aircraft, satellites, space junk, foreign spies and optical illusions.
“You start looking at every other explanation before you start looking at the improbable, the impossible, the mind boggling.
“You’ve got to wonder, is this person disturbed? Have they been exposed to too much UFO information that could colour what they’re saying? Is that person telling the truth?
“There are a lot of people who are very, very disturbed by what’s happened to them. And one has to be careful. Different researchers have different methods. You can do a lot of damage if you’re bringing these memories forward.”
A UFO filmed by Alan Ferguson over Acacia Hills in the Northern Territory. Picture: Alan Ferguson
Source:Supplied
McGhee, who studied law before dedicating the best part of her life to UFO research, says she has found that most alien abductees are “chosen for their psychic abilities”.
“Poltergeist activity seems to go on around abductees,” she says.
“They might notice the microwave oven just exploded or the lights go on and off.”
According to McGhee, “blue beams” are one of several common descriptions in witness reports.
“We’ve got lots of reports from people about men in black and aliens with an oriental appearance,” she says.
“We get reports of disappearing people, missing time.
“I don’t agree with everything people say. There’s a lot of conspiracy stuff. You don’t know what’s true and what’s not. Maybe none of us have the right answer.
“But the worst thing a researcher can do is to close their mind.
“They need to believe anything is possible but have a big dose of scepticism too.
“If even one of these reports is true it will change mankind forever.”
‘I’VE BEEN VISITED BY ALIENS SINCE I WAS NINE YEARS OLD’
Sydney public servant *Jessie, 43, claims to have been visited by aliens since she was nine years old.
She doesn’t want to be identified publicly because of possible financial repercussions.
“I have a government job,” she says.
“I don’t want to lose that.”
She says she was first visited by an extraterrestrial being when she was a child living in Uzbekistan.
“I was at home in a room by myself and a grey humanoid about the same height as me appeared from behind the wardrobe,” she says.
“I wasn’t scared of it, it was my friend. He just wanted to be with me.
“I told my brother and sister and they went and checked and said there was nothing there. He was there with me all the time and then he left. He told me telepathically that he had to go but that he’d come back soon.”
Jessie says the alien delivered on its promise and returned to her when she was 14 years old.
“I woke up from a very loud noise when it was quite dark,” she says.
“I could see out the window what appeared to me like a huge helicopter with strange lights around it.
“(The UFO) was about 150m above. I could see every single little stone on the buildings. That light magnified everything. Then it disappeared. After the last surge of light everything just went black. There was no anything. And I went back to sleep.”
*Jessie described seeing ‘bright lights’ from a UFO, like this mock up illustration, shine down on buildings.
Source:Supplied
A few months later she saw an article in the local newspaper that supported her story, she says.
“It was about a plane flying above Russia and the people in the plane saw exactly the same thing, dropping the lights down,” she says.
“I read the article and I understood ‘OK that’s what I saw.’”
But the strange occurrences didn’t end there, according to Jessie.
“After that things started to happen to me,” she says.
“I lied down on the couch after studying when I was 26 … The window was (opposite) the lounge. I saw an eye looking object, very big, about the size of the window and it started flying towards me. As it was flying towards me, it was like a red cherry colour hologram. There were some symbols inside. And it just stopped near my face. I was like, ‘OK, great I’ve got hallucinations from the study.’ I started to blink my eyes and it was still there. I put my hand in it and it just moved away from my hand. I looked at it and was like, ‘OK what do you want?’ It just stayed there not doing anything. I was buggered. I said to it: ‘I’m just very tired … I’m going to sleep … and you can stay, I don’t care who you are, what you are.’ I just lied down and switched off. It went back to the window and I just fell asleep.
“Two weeks after I started to see internal organs in humans.”
Jessie says it was these experiences that brought her to the UFO-PRSA meetings, which she attends every month.
“People don’t call me crazy here,” she says. “People don’t look at me like I’m cuckoo. I can get support from others and tell other people, ‘You’re not crazy.’”
ENCOUNTERS OF THE EXTRAORDINARY KIND
UFO-PRSA president Larraine Cilia says the group is made up of “like-minded people”.
“This is an open forum where they can tell their story in an environment that’s free of ridicule,” she tells news.com.au.
“Most people who come forward haven’t got anyone else to talk to because there’s still that ridicule factor attached.”
Cilia also offers individual counselling services “for people who have been traumatised not just by abduction scenarios but by poltergeist and paranormal experiences as well”.
“It’s all linked,” she says.
She says the organisation’s purpose is “to waken people up to what’s going on”.
“The media might have someone they’re interviewing on the TV like me, who is serious about the subject, and they’ll have little green men in spaceships on a screen behind them,” she says.
“They make light of it. We really need it to be looked at as a serious subject.
“It’s more common for people to have these encounters than most realise.”
Cilia says she is contacted by at least one new person per week who claims to have spotted UFOs or had alien encounters.
“People don’t go to the police about sightings anymore,” Cilia says.
“They go online and find out where they can report and go straight to the civil UFO groups.
“We get calls from all over Australia.”
She says she typically works through the process of elimination as a first step when responding to witness reports.
“First of all we have a look at the star chart and ask them where what they saw was situated to make sure it wasn’t a planet, meteor, plane or helicopter,” she says.
“Most people realise it’s not because the brain is like a computer. It will compute, ‘Oh my God, that’s not a plane, that’s not a star,’ and that’s when they say, ‘It’s something unusual I’m going to report that.’”
If no obvious explanation can be found she then encourages witnesses to fill out a sightings report on the organisation’s website.
‘I WAS ABDUCTED BY ALIENS. NOW WHAT?’ (FILL OUT A FORM)
A completed section on an Australian UFO Report form from the National archives of Australia.
Source:Supplied
Witnesses are asked to include information on the Australian UFO Report form about where they “first observed UFO” and whether or not it had “seams, windows, lights, pulsating lights, antenna or appendages”.
An entire page is left blank for the witness to draw a UFO comfit, of sorts: “Please sketch the object including shape and colour of features”, the instructions read. Further details are sought as to the appearance of the UFO and how it moved. “Did it separate into two parts? Moved across the sky, hovered in the sky, hovered near the ground, rotated, moved in a straight line, moved erratically, changed direction, landed, and took off?”
Other things to consider include “possible disturbances of radios, television, engines, lights, animals or witnesses” and whether or not the witness suffered any physical effects like: “Illness, electromagnetic, imprints, residue, vegetation change, smoke, vapour trail, noise, vibrations, heat and other”.
A pile of the report forms is left on a desk for members and guests to take from the group’s monthly meeting.
‘NO LONGER IS LIFE POSSIBLE OUT THERE, IT’S VERY PROBABLE’
Ufologist Bryan Dickeson shows UFO society guests diagrams of aliens as described and sketched in witness reports.
Source:news.com.au
Scientist, author and ufologist Bryan Dickeson is there to give a presentation on the electronic UFO sighting databases he has developed for New Zealand and Australia. He shows diagrams of UFOs and aliens based on witness reports and newspaper articles.
“I’ve put it into electronic format so we can access it and search large masses of data and do this in a much more readily and accessible way,” he says.
“The information we’re getting up is very, very interesting. On average in New Zealand one UFO appears every six days. That’s 60 events per year. I’m not talking about lights in the sky. I’m talking about when people actually see something when they come down and it stays for a while then goes away.”
He’s also working on an Australian database and says he’s got “a lot of material”.
“There’s an awful lot of commotion there,” he says.
Ufologist Bryan Dickeson shows UFO Society guests diagrams of UFOs as described and sketched in witness reports.
Source:news.com.au
Dickeson, who has two science degrees, is a second generation ufologist. His parents were naval aerial photographers during WW2 before they founded a UFO group in New Zealand.
Since taking over their work he has investigated multiple reported UFO landing sites.
“There’s a difference of soil samples between the control area and the affected area,” Dickeson says.
“We take a series of controlled samples outside to compare with the altered sample. It’s very hard to actually detect. Sometimes you find different concentrations of irons, magnesium or calcium.”
But how is that linked to alien life?
“That’s a good question,” Dickeson says. “The thing is we don’t really know what we’re looking for.”
While Dickeson concedes he has more questions than answers, there’s one thing he says he knows for sure.
“No longer is life possible out there, it’s very probable,” he says.
‘THE ALIENS HAVE BEEN HERE FOREVER’
As the meeting draws to an end, the group discussion moves to how to cope with life after being abducted by aliens, and returned to Earth.
One woman in the audience raises her hand to share her knowledge.
“Once you start accepting what’s happened, you let go of the fears around you,” she says.
Another woman mentions that those who have been abducted and returned “get angry” when questioned about their experiences. Others agree.
“It’s important to find out how they feel in a general way without creating anxiety,” she says.
*Anna says she’s had extraterrestrial encounters all her life.
“Since I was a child I’ve been in contact,” she says.
“But I don’t speak publicly about it because of the ridicule factor that’s attached to it.
“I’m one of those who knows. I just know.”
What does she know?
“I don’t have to believe I know,” she reiterates without further explanation.
Know what exactly?
“That aliens have been here forever,” she says.
“I know where we come from. I just know a lot of things that I’ve never been taught. Some of it I’ve been told and some of it I’ve brought here with me. I’ve chosen to come here in this lifetime. I believe originally we came from Mars.”
Several other members nod knowingly and agree as Anna explains that the Orion star system and volcanoes on the red planet “line up with the Giza pyramids”.
“There’s too many coincidences,” she says.
*David, who doesn’t want to be named publicly for fear of ridicule, interjects:
“The photograph of the structures on Mars is a copy of Tor Hill in England,” he says.
“The structures on the mound around Tor Hill, in England are the same as on Mars.”
His girlfriend, *Kylie, adds: “There’s also buildings on Mars as well.”
And with that, the meeting is over and its members walk off into the yonder, under a twinkling night sky.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:News from the FRIENDS of facebook ( ENG )
Ambtenaar: “Ik word al sinds mijn negende bezocht door aliens”
Ambtenaar: “Ik word al sinds mijn negende bezocht door aliens”
De Australische UFO-gemeenschap bestaat uit advocaten, wetenschappers, ambtenaren en studenten die één ding gemeen hebben: ze hebben een UFO gezien of claimen in contact te staan met buitenaardse bezoekers.
De organisatie, de UFO & Paranormal Research Society of Australia (UFO-PRSA), komt eens per maand bijeen. De leden hekelen de manier waarop de massamedia abductees en believers afschilderen. Er wordt vaak gesproken van ‘kleine groene mannetjes’, maar volgens de leden zijn sommige aliens in werkelijkheid grijs.
“Het bewijs dat aliens al op aarde zijn geweest is publiekelijk beschikbaar,” zei één van de leden. “Via het leger, de luchtmacht en de marine. De overheid moet ons niet langer voor de gek houden. Diverse astronauten en piloten hebben zich al uitgesproken.”
Ze verwijst naar de Amerikaanse astronaut Edgar Mitchell, die zei dat aliens de aarde al hadden bezocht en dat de overheid bewijs hiervoor onder het tapijt heeft geveegd.
Enorme helikopter
Jessie (43), een ambtenaar uit Sydney, claimt al vanaf haar negende te worden bezocht door aliens. Ze zei dat ze voor het eerst werd bezocht door een buitenaards wezen toen ze in Oezbekistan woonde.
“Ik was alleen thuis toen er plotseling een grijs wezen achter de kast vandaan kwam,” zei ze. “Ik was er niet bang voor, het was mijn vriend. Hij wilde gewoon bij me zijn. Hij liet me door middel van telepathie weten dat hij moest gaan, maar spoedig weer zou terugkeren.”
Jessie zei dat de alien zich weer liet zien toen ze 14 jaar oud was. “Ik werd wakker van een hard geluid,” zei ze. “Ik zag vanuit het raam iets wat leek op een enorme helikopter met vreemde lichten.”
“De UFO hing 150 meter boven het huis,” zei ze. De hele omgeving was verlicht. Plotseling verdween het object en was alles weer donker. Er was niets meer te zien en ik ging weer slapen.”
Belachelijk
Voorzitter van de UFO-PRSA Larrain Cilia zegt mensen wakker te willen schudden. “Als de media iemand interviewen over dit onderwerp, laten ze op de achtergrond altijd kleine groene mannetjes in ruimteschepen zien,” zei ze. “Ze maken het onderwerp belachelijk, terwijl we er op een serieuze manier naar moeten kijken.”
Er zijn volgens haar veel meer mensen die dit soort dingen meemaken dan we denken. “Mensen gaan niet meer naar de politie als ze iets hebben gezien,” zei Cilia. “Ze gaan speuren op internet en sluiten zich aan bij UFO-groepen. We krijgen telefoontjes uit het hele land.”
Landingsplekken
“De informatie die we krijgen is zeer, zeer interessant,” zei wetenschapper Bryan Dickeson. Hij zegt al diverse UFO-landingsplekken te hebben onderzocht. Hij stuitte onder meer op verschillen in bodemmateriaal.
Anna zegt al haar hele leven contact te hebben met buitenaardsen. “Al van kinds af aan heb ik contact,” zei ze. “Maar ik spreek er niet openlijk over omdat ik bang ben voor gek te worden versleten.”
Gebouwen
Volgens Anna zijn aliens hier al sinds mensenheugenis. Ze denkt dat we oorspronkelijk van Mars naar de aarde zijn gekomen. “Het sterrenbeeld Orion en vulkanen op de rode planeet staan op één lijn met de piramides van Gizeh,” zei ze.
David voegde toe: “De structuren rond Tor Hill in Engeland worden ook op Mars gevonden.” Zijn vriendin Kylie reageerde: “Er zijn ook gebouwen op Mars.”
ENGELSE STAD OPGESCHRIKT DOOR VREEMD OBJECT IN DE LUCHT ( VIDEO )
ENGELSE STAD OPGESCHRIKT DOOR VREEMD OBJECT IN DE LUCHT ( VIDEO )
Tientallen mensen waren afgelopen zondagavond getuige van een vreemd vliegend voorwerp boven de Engelse stad Swindon.
De stad ligt overigens vlakbij de plek waar een helikopterbemanning enkele dagen eerder een onbekend voorwerp filmde met de infraroodcamera.
De plaatselijke krant in Swindon stond er vol mee en iedereen die het object had gezien wilde graag zijn of haar verhaal vertellen.
Zoals de voormalige telefoonmonteur Graham Woodward die samen met zijn 18-jarige zoon naar huis reed toen ze drie hele felle witte lichten in de vorm van een driehoek waarnamen. Een driehoek met een rood lichtin het midden.
Woodward is ervan overtuigd dat het geen drone of een vliegtuig was omdat er geen navigatielichten te zien waren.
Toen ze de auto stopten en de ramen opendeden, was er ook geen enkel geluid van motoren te horen. “Het ziet er in ieder geval totaal anders uit dan ieder ander vliegend object dat ik ooit heb gezien”, zo zei hij.
Het vreemde object bleef ongeveer drie minuten lang hangen, voordat het naar links afboog en uit het zicht verdween.
Woodward en zoon waren zo verbaasd dat ze onmiddellijk het alarmnummer van de politie belden.
De onderstaande video is gemaakt in Liden, een voorstadje van Swindon, door Richard Newton die het object zag rond dezelfde tijd als Woodward in Swindon.
Richard is er eveneens van overtuigd dat het geen drone of een vliegtuig was.
Ook andere getuigen zoals een echtpaar zeiden het volgende:
“Wij zagen ook die drie lichten rond een uur of half negen. Het waren absoluut drie felle witte lichten en het leek totaal niet op een vliegtuig”.
Alhoewel er natuurlijk altijd mensen zijn die de gebeurtenis proberen af te doen als een vliegtuig, zijn er dit keer toch teveel getuigen die allemaal volhouden dat de vreemde lichten die ze hebben gezien, niets met een vliegtuig te maken hebben.
Het toeval wil dat de Amerikaan Steven Barone over wie wij al vaker schreven en die naast de Nellis Airforce Base woont in Nevada ook iets dergelijks heeft waargenomen.
Wat Steven filmde zag er ongeveer zo uit:
Ook de waarneming van Steven vond plaats op zondagavond laat, maar vanwege het tijdsverschil toch zo’n zeven uur later dan die in het Engelse Swindon.
Volgens Steven bleef het object ongeveer een uur lang bewegingloos hangen, en bleef hij filmen totdat de batterij van zijn camera leeg was.
Het voorval lijkt eveneens veel op wat een gezin uit Australië de stuipen op het lijf joeg en waarover wij eerder schreven.
Buitenaards of een menselijk experiment zoals de TR-3B?
Bijzonder is natuurlijk wel dat er veel verhalen zijn over een buitenaardse basis onder Nellis Airforce Base. Een basis van de zogenaamde Tall White Aliens.
Extraordinary UFO DARPA Stealth Craft Over Eastern Caribbean!! Black Knight Operation? 9/28/2016
Extraordinary UFO DARPA Stealth Craft Over Eastern Caribbean!! Black Knight Operation? 9/28/2016
Extraordinary DARPA UFO! Craft During Tropical Storm Matthew!? Stealth Black Knight Observation Over Eastern Caribbean!!
#1 Most Viewed UFO Youtube Channel Thirdphaseofmoon Shares Your Incredible UFO Videos To the World! Upload your UFO Video To Youtube, Then Copy Paste The Link To My Email!cousinsbrothersproductions@gmail.com Keep Your Eyes on the Skies! We are not Alone!
A UFO book gathering interest and momentum at the moment is ‘UFOs OVER ROMANIA’. In the west, little is known about its author, Dan D. Farcas PhD. With that in mind, I recently took the opportunity to interview Dan in order to try and learn a little more about his interests and how he became involved in UFO research in his home country of Romania.
RL: How and when did you first become interested in the UFO phenomenon?
Dan D. Farcas PhD
DF: I should split the question into two. I’ve always been interested in extraterrestrial issues, but only relatively lately into UFOs. When I was 8 or 9 years old, one of the things I used to play at with my younger brother was to draw our imaginary adventures in a primitive type of comic book. I still have some of them. Most of these adventures took place in outer space, travelling from one planet to another. At the same period of time, I started to write a book on astronomy. In the forties, in Romania, there were no such books available.
When I was 25-35, I published several science fiction short stories, mainly on space travel and contacts with aliens. In these stories, I felt it was quite normal for an alien to appear suddenly, in human form, in an earthly environment, but I still had doubts about UFOs as extraterrestrial vehicles.
I published some popular science articles about extraterrestrial civilizations and, around 1980, I was invited to write a book about this topic. On this occasion, I thought it is normal to inform myself on the UFO phenomenon. Only then, I discovered, by reading some good books, how many well documented cases exist and how important they are.
The book, entitled “De ce tac civilizaţiile extraterestre” (Why cue the extraterrestrial civilizations), published in 1983, was a small bestseller. Then many people asked me about UFOs, so I continued to inform myself more seriously, and published a lot, especially after 1990.
RL: Have you ever had a personal experience with ‘high strangeness’?
DF: I have the memory of several “night visits”, before the age of 5 years. I argued then that they were not dreams. The only thing I remember now is a green hand disappearing behind my bed, somehow in to the wall. I even gave a name to this apparition, something like “that with the hand”.
I had also, in this period, some unexplainable phobias. I felt a terror if I get a glimpse of certain common objects. These reactions have disappeared with time.
RL: Has being an academic aided you in your research of the UFO phenomenon?
DF: I was trained in mathematics, physics and astronomy at a university level. This helped me not only to understand the size and structure of the universe, or what means spaces with more dimensions, but it also gave me a strong sense of sizes, such as differences between thousands, millions and billions of years, or light years. I noticed that, for many, this often means only “very much”, leading to serious confusions.
On the other hand, academic training in such domains, gives you a higher censorship toward certain facts that you hear reported. Among other things, this made me sceptical for a long time, that UFOs may be spacecraft. Of course, life has forced me, in many fields, to go beyond the dogmas learned in school.
Finally, the academic education and my life experience helped me to understand the limitations of some instruments considered “taboo” in our culture. I understood the limits of the scientific method, of the mathematics and logic. All these have relevance in investigating the UFO phenomenon.
RL: Whilst compiling your research for your new book UFO’s OVER ROMANIA you will have read many eye witness reports, did any one account stand out to you and why?
DF: For this book I used, mostly, investigations made by people that I have known and I had confidence in, but I gave also many pages to the cases that I investigated personally over the last 20 years. There were, on the one hand, strange accounts of military pilots, and on the other hand, unexplained encounters of just ordinary people. I was impressed most by the sincerity of all the witnesses and by their desire to find an explanation for what had happened. With the stories from civilians, I was most impressed by the mixture between the classical UFO lore and some characters or features I knew before only in folkloric or religious realms.
But to understand all the things that surprised me, I think it’s better to recommend reading the book, with all those stories.
RL: Has the language barrier been an obstacle in sharing Eastern European UFO reports?
DF: The language barrier is a very serious one. It was partially overcome in technical fields in which international cooperation is mandatory and where you use a limited vocabulary; but it is still a problem in many other areas, including ufology.
The ufological literature, in Romanian language, and about Romanian cases, is not very extensive, but even so, there are many interesting cases and developments which are not known abroad. The situation is, I think, similar in other Eastern European countries.
RL: You are the chairman of ASFAN. What is this organization?
DF: In 1998, Ion Hobana, a well known writer and ufologist, Harald Alexandrescu, astronomer, and myself, took the initiative of creating the Romanian Association for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (ASFAN), as an organisation of well established specialists in various disciplines relevant for active involvement in UFO research. It was and has remained the only non-governmental and non-profit organisation in Romania, with legal personality, dedicated exclusively to ufology. The legal permission for the establishment of ASFAN was obtained at the Court of the City of Bucharest on September 28, 1998, taking into consideration the approval of the Ministry of Research and Technology and that of the General Mayor of Bucharest. The offices of ASFAN were established in the building of the “Admiral Vasile Urseanu” Astronomical Observatory of the Municipality of Bucharest, Boulevard Lascăr Catargiu 21, Bucharest, property of the City.
For the 21 founding members (demanded by the law at that point in time), highly skilled individuals were selected: mathematicians, astronomers, engineers, specialists in radar, aeronautics, meteorology, photo-imaging, informatics, medicine, as well as interdisciplinary oriented personalities. The main aim was to have a multidisciplinary and pluralistic approach to the phenomenon. The initial elected board was: chairman Ion Hobana (1931-2011), Vice-chairman myself, and executive director Harald Alexandrescu Ph.D., mathematician and astronomer (1944-2005). Since 2011, I am the chairman.
At the beginning, ASFAN organised, for three years, public lectures on a monthly basis. A more complex, one day UFO Conference was organised in May 2014. We had also several other public encounters and actions. ASFAN members were invited to appear on virtually all of the main Romanian TV channels and radio stations for debates on current UFO events and related issues. Unfortunately, the funding and the time available for the members was always very limited, so the achievements of ASFAN were much lower than had been hoped, and in time most of members became inactive with no one to take their place.
ASFAN received and examined written reports, photos, video footage and other UFO data (far from all cases). The most interesting ones are available (in Romanian) on the website of the organization. There are no printed UFO publications in Romania, but some ASFAN members have or had permanent UFO columns or articles published in Romanian popular science magazines.
Ion Hobana kept in touch with many ufologists worldwide, he participated in international conferences and invited to Romania several ufologists from abroad. Other ASFAN members tried to maintain these contacts, making new ones too, with several UFO research organisations and specialists abroad.
RL: In UFOs OVER ROMANIA you discuss ‘hypercivilizations’. Could you just expand on what this is?
DF: In our Galaxy (the Milky Way), there are around 200 billion stars. Around 30 billion planets can host life. More and more specialists admit that the basic components of life are travelling throughout space, “infecting” immediately all appropriate planets upon contact. In ideal conditions, in three-four billion years of undisturbed evolution, the random game of mutations and the subsequent changing of the environment could produce on such a planet a complex life system, as we see on our Earth and, in some cases, even a “technological civilisation”, that means intelligent beings capable of building spaceships to travel to other inhabitable planets.
As I estimated that, in the history of our Galaxy, could come into being a number of technological civilizations, of which, only a few hundred survived the childhood diseases that we face now on Earth, and still exist. But these civilizations have not arisen simultaneously. The first may have been born a billion years ago, or even earlier. Therefore in our Galaxy, the surviving civilizations have appeared, most likely, one in a several million years. So, they are far apart from us not only in space, but also in time.
What will become of our civilization (if it will survive) over millions (or billions) of years? How would the inhabitants of a civilization that has outstripped us with millions of years look like? It is impossible for us to imagine. We can accept however that they have been transformed into something else, beyond our understanding; into something we can name as a “hypercivilization”.
If somebody considers that we were too optimistic and the intelligent beings are much scarcer, we should add that our Milky Way is only one of at least 150 billion, more or less similar, galaxies of the Universe accessible to our instruments. And we have strong reasons to believe that there are other Universes too, maybe “parallel” ones, maybe from other states of matter, or parts of a “Multiverse” etc. Therefore it is almost absolutely sure that in the Cosmos there are hypercivilisations.
School and science fiction, but not only, set our minds on patterns ignoring completely the possibility of hypercivilizations. There is a primitive extraterrestrial hypothesis, which assumes that all cosmic civilizations are more or less at the same level with us. Therefore it nurtures some false preconceptions as: very long and difficult cosmic voyages, landing on the lawn of White House, equal rights, conversation, invasion, intervention, aid, and so on.
This primitive view is completely implausible. If hypercivilizations exist (and they exist, with a probability of 99.999999…%) they exploited, in the smallest detail, our Galaxy, millions of years ago, so they have known, for a long time, about our existence. A difference of millions of years, or even hundreds of millions, is as huge as between us and a lizard or even an ant. If an entomologist would propose to study an anthill, he will try to disturb, as little as possible, its life. He could of course make experiments, examining or modifying some ants, or even taking them in remote laboratories, trying to create new “races” and so on, but will not “present credentials” to the queen of the ants. If the entomologist have the technology, he will create some robot ants, sending them in to the hill and watching from a safe place, for example “on the computer screen”, the data transmitted by them. Hypercivilizations might treat us in a similar way. Therefore no settlement, no destruction, on one hand and no official contact, conversation or substantial help, on the other hand, are to be expected from highly advanced cosmic civilisations, even if they are here now.
The arising of a technological civilization could be a very rare event in our Galaxy, occurring probably once in several millions of years. So it is normal for us to be of interest to the higher intelligences. But they will forbid any aid. This is not, only, because of human aggressiveness and xenophobia, making from all new technology new weapons, nor only to avoid a “cultural shock”, which could virtually destroy all our social, scientific, religious, economical, political, military and cultural structures. I suppose they have also some other reasons for that. Hypercivilisations could wait (and maybe harvest even now) our original ideas, viewpoints, creations (in art, science, philosophy, ethics etc.), or something else, produced as a result of millions of years of our independent evolution. And all that expected crop could be destroyed by a premature contact. Some old, apparently absurd, stories may be an indication of such an attitude: the punishment for the apple of the forbidden tree of knowledge, the chaining of Prometheus, or the fallen angels (from Book of Enoch), thrown into a pit full of fire, because they were taught earthlings different skills.
The higher intelligences may gather and store our lives in a kind of virtual reality; this could explain: channelling, “xenoglossia”, “walk-ins”, “reincarnation”, ghosts, etc. In such a super-memory it is possible to travel in the past, without changing the real past, or to see scenarios of the future (sometimes apocalyptical), without accepting fatality.
Of course, all the above is not a proof that the hypercivilisations are the explanation for everything strange and particularly for UFOs. It is only one hypothesis; but one which cannot be easily discarded. And we can speculate even further, supposing for example that the spiritual world was before, or that the material world is only a kind of a great virtual reality and so on. Also, the whole Universe (or rather the “Multiverse”) could be much older and much more complex than the part we can observe with our instruments. Was there something before the “Big Bang”? What is beyond the limits of our closed Universe (maybe in another dimension or another reality, maybe in a spiritual state of matter)?
RL: In your opinion, how do we keep moving forward with UFO research?
DF: UFOs exist! To understand them, first of all, we have to collect facts, focusing on the sincerity of the witnesses and on the honesty of the ufologists, avoiding: tricksters, deception, exaggeration, inventions, misinterpretation of natural phenomena, or of man-made vehicles, as well as deceptive mental phenomena.
In the same time, we have not to forget the great distance from reality to the stories reported about it, interposing (unconsciously!) images seen elsewhere, perhaps in a dream, screen memories, all embellished, filtered, rearranged in a logical and socially convenient order, to match beliefs or prejudices, self delusions, wishful thinking, compulsions or even sexual fantasies, all deeply embedded into the subconscious. These mechanisms are acquired starting with our earliest moments of life and continuing with language, family, religion, environment, social pressure, school, science, media etc. This can change completely what we perceive. Of course, that does not mean the witnesses have not seen anything! Behind their stories, most (if not all) of them went through real and strange experiences.
The scientific method brings additional issues. Science admits only truths that: persist over time and can be inspected by any interested person, possibly in an experiment. Often science also demands that the observations be quantifiable. But, around us, there are so many phenomena which do not meet these conditions. Sometimes we are “culturally hypnotized” to not see them.
Science often speaks of “laws of nature”. We do not know any of these laws, but only the laws of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. which are “falsifiable”, as underlined epistemologist Karl Popper. So statements like: “it was scientifically proven that X can not exist”, or “that Y must exist”, have no logical foundation. An example is that classical: “it is scientifically impossible, therefore please do not bother me with alleged facts”.
Ufology can not be entirely a science; it can not bring abductions in to the laboratory, nor can it present a UFO, on demand, to any sceptic. But the fact that ufology is not a science does not diminish its importance and also it would be desirable to not diminish its respectability. When people from different countries, cultures and religions, with different backgrounds and occupations, are reporting the same story, with dozens of details that are consistent – despite the fact that these persons have never known each other and have not read any of the dedicated UFO literature – that means we face no more a fantasy or pure coincidences but a real phenomenon. Applying appropriate statistical operations, ufology can try to strip the primary perception of observations by the many cultural veils placed on it, even if this endeavour will never be perfect.
In conclusion, UFO research should concentrate on: gathering as more testimonies as possible, developing methods of removing cultural filtering, and using good statistical instruments.
Another issue is that science is not the only way of knowing, even if it claims that. Science, religions, folklore, paranormal studies, ufology etc. touch, each by its own means and in its “light zone”, an extremely complex reality; and often one part denies the truths of the others. To overcome this limitation, we all must learn, in a pluralistic approach, to respect all truths, as long as we cannot refute them, by obvious facts, not only by theories. Therefore we all should accept the truths of others, even if they contradict our own truths. And we should remain always open to dialogue. It is the only way to ascend to the higher truths we are searching for.
RL: Dan, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and good look (luck?) with your new book UFOs OVER ROMANIA.
Diamond UFO Over Trees Startle Onlookers In Veracruz, Mexico On Sept 29, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Diamond UFO Over Trees Startle Onlookers In Veracruz, Mexico On Sept 29, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: Sept 29, 2016 Location of sighting: Veracruz, Mexico This diamond UFO was seen today over Mexico and surprised some eyewitnesses as you can see from the video. The UFO is staying low over the treetops to try to keep out of view, but still be able to scan and record its scientific data. Scott C. Waring
Crop Circle Found In Prudentópolis, Paraná, Brazil On Sept 27, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Crop Circle Found In Prudentópolis, Paraná, Brazil On Sept 27, 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: Sept 27, 2016 Location of discovery: Prudentopolis, Parana, Brazil This crop formation was found in a farmers field in Brazil two days ago. Notice that the reeds are bent 100% flat and in the same direction. Most the time, formations have swirls in the flattened reeds, but not this one. This one is unique. These places could be the location of a ship landing and analysing the soil, seed and the genetic makeup of the seed, which may have been artificially made to grow more and make more profits. This could also be a message sent through subspace aimed to reach us and test our intelligence, to see if we are ready for contact. Sadly we don't have an arial view of the full crop formation...drone footage would be perfect. Scott C. Waring
Black holes are galactic monsters with voracious appetites: Once something crosses the monster's event horizon (the black center region in this computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole), it doesn't come out.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)
There are some things in the universe that you simply can't escape. Death. Taxes. Black holes. If you time it right, you can even experience all three at once.
Black holes are made out to be uncompromising monsters, roaming the galaxies, voraciously consuming anything in their path. And their name is rightly deserved: Once you fall in, once you cross the terminator line of the event horizon, you don't come out. Not even light can escape their clutches.
But in movies, the scary monster has a weakness, and if black holes are the galactic monsters, then surely they have a vulnerability. Right?
Hawking to the rescue
In the 1970s, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking made a remarkable discovery of a secret buried under the complex mathematical intersection of gravity and quantum mechanics: Black holes glow, ever so slightly, and given enough time, they eventually dissolve. [Hawking Wants to Power Earth With Mini Black Holes: Crazy or Legit?]
Wow! Fantastic news! The monster can be slain! But how? How does this so-called Hawking radiation work?
Well, general relativity, which describes how gravity behaves, is a supercomplicated mathematical theory. Quantum mechanics is just as complicated. It's a little unsatisfying to respond to "How?" with "A bunch of math," so here's the standard explanation: The vacuum of space is filled with virtual particles, little effervescent pairs of particles that pop into and out of existence, stealing some energy from the vacuum to exist for the briefest of moments, only to collide with each other and evaporate, returning to nothingness.
Every once in a while, a pair of these particles pops into existence near an event horizon, with one partner falling in and the other free to escape. Unable to collide and evaporate, the escapee goes on its merry way as a normal nonvirtual particle.
Voilà! The black hole appears to glow as particles and radiation escape. In doing the work to separate a virtual particle pair and promote one of them into normal status, the black hole gives up some of its own mass. Subtly, slowly, over the eons, black holes dissolve. Not so black anymore, huh?
Here's the thing: I don't find that answer especially satisfying, either. For one, that explanation does not appear in Hawking's original 1974 paper which unveiled the process, and for another, it's just a bunch of jargon that fills up a couple of paragraphs but doesn't really go a long way in explaining this behavior. It's not necessarily wrong, just … incomplete.
Let's dig in. It'll be fun.
The way of the field
First things first: "Virtual particles" are neither virtual nor particles. In quantum field theory — scientists' modern conception of the way particles and forces work — every kind of particle is associated with a fieldthat permeates all of space-time. These fields aren't just simple bookkeeping devices; they are active and alive. In fact, they're more important than particles themselves. You can think of particles as simply excitations — or "vibrations" or "pinched-off bits," depending on your mood — of the underlying field.
Sometimes, the fields start wiggling, and those wiggles travel from one place to another. That's what we call a "particle." When the electron field wiggles, we get an electron. When the electromagnetic field wiggles, we get a photon. You get the idea.
Sometimes, however, those wiggles don't really go anywhere. They fizzle out before they get to do something interesting. Space-time is full of the constantly fizzling fields.
What does this have to do with black holes? Well, when one forms, some of the fizzling quantum fields can get trapped — some permanently, appearing within the newfound event horizon. Fields that fizzled near the event horizon end up surviving and escaping. But due to the intense gravitational time dilation — which says that the faster you travel, the more time seems to slow down — near the black hole, they appear to come out much, much later in the future. [8 Ways You Can See Einstein's Theory of Relativity in Real Life]
In their complex interaction and partial entrapment with the newly forming black hole, the temporarily fizzling fields get "promoted" to become normal, everyday ripples — in other words, particles.
So Hawking radiation isn't so much about particles popping into existence near a present-day black hole, but rather the result of a complex interaction at the birth of a black hole that persists until today. You can think of that complex interaction as preventing the black hole from ever growing to its maximum possible extent — even at its birth it was doomed to disappear.
Patience, child
One way or the other, as far as we can tell, black holes do dissolve. I emphasize the "as far as we can tell" bit because, as I said at the beginning, generality is all sorts of hard, and quantum field theory is a beast. Put the two together, and there's bound to be some mathematical misunderstanding.
But with that caveat, we can still look at the numbers, and those numbers tell us we don't have to worry about black holes dying anytime soon. A black hole with the mass of the sun will last a wizened 10^67 years. Considering that the current age of our universe is a paltry 13.8 * 10^9 years, that's a good amount of time. But if you happened to turn the Eiffel Tower into a black hole, it would evaporate in only about a day. I don't know why you would, but there you go.
Learn more by listening to the episode "Do black holes die?" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Andy, Rowan H., @MarkRiepe, @ChattaboxReilly, and @Just_Rachel for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.
The things most people know about helium are that it makes balloons float up and it makes your voice squeaky if you inhale some. But helium is more than just fun and games: it is also a scarce industrial resource with important uses in technology and medicine — and scientists are still learning more about its many strange properties.
So let's get this party started, with some of the most unusual applications and facts about helium.
Credit: NASA
1. Lighter than air
Helium is one of lightest and least dense of all the chemical elements, thanks to the chemical stability and extremely small size of single helium atoms. Helium's low density is what causes balloons filled with the gas to float, buoyed up by the denser surrounding air.
Credit: US Navy
2. Under the sea
Because helium is easily compressed and non-toxic, it is used in specialized "breathing mixtures" of gases for very deep scuba diving, as a replacement for the nitrogen that makes up about 75 percent of our air.
At high pressures, such as underwater below around 100 feet (30 meters), dissolved nitrogen can quickly build up in body tissues and cause fatal decompression illness, or dangerous bouts of "nitrogen narcosis," an effect similar to sudden and extreme drunkenness.
To get around the problems of breathing nitrogen, technical and commercial divers who plunge to depths of up to 400 feet (122 m) or beyond use breathing mixtures like "heliox," in which the fraction of nitrogen in the air has been replaced with helium.
Credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory
3. Powering the sun
Helium takes its name from "Helios," the Greek god of the sun, which was where the chemical element was discovered in the 1860s, by astronomers studying the signature "gas absorption lines" of the color spectrum of sunlight.
Helium makes up around 45 percent of the mass of the sun, where it is formed at scorching temperatures by the fusion of hydrogen — the primary process that keeps the sun and all the stars burning.
In turn, atoms of helium are fused in stars to create the heavier elements, including carbon, oxygen and silicon.
Credit: NASA/Apollo 15
4. Over the moon
Most helium atoms have two proton and two neutron particles in the nucleus, an isotope called helium-4. But some form an isotope with two protons and just one neutron, called helium-3, which has been proposed as an ideal fuel for fusion power generation.
Helium-3 is almost unknown on Earth. But, it has been identified in large quantities on the moon, where helium from the solar wind has rained onto the lunar surface for billions of years. Several space agencies, including those in Russia, China and India, have suggested helium-3 could provide a potential payoff for lunar exploration.
Credit: Alfred Leitner
5. Super cool
Helium gas condenses into a liquid at extremely low temperatures, around minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 268 degrees Celsius) at atmospheric pressure, and starts to exhibit very strange behavior at even lower temperatures.
Below minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 271 degrees C), just a shiver above absolute zero, helium-4 becomes a so-called superfluid, with about 1/8th of the density of water and zero friction. Among the many curious properties of superfluid helium is its ability to quickly flow through any leak, and even upwards along the walls of a container, which means it's extremely difficult to keep it from escaping.
Credit: Jan Ainali
6. vision
Because helium easily liquefies at such low temperatures, it is used as a coolant for powerful superconducting electromagnets, such as the magnets used in the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.
Liquid helium is also used to cool the ring-shaped magnetic coils in hospital MRI scanners to temperatures of about minus 441 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 263 degrees C), which allows them to generate brief but intense magnetic fields.
The magnetic fields cause atoms inside the body to resonate with their own magnetic signatures, which can be detected by the scanner and used to build a detailed image of internal organs and tissues.
Credit: Bureau of Land Management
7. In short supply
It takes billions of years for pockets of helium to form in the Earth’s crust from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. This makes it hard to find, and for many years, the price of helium for applications like MRI scanners has been rising.
For many years, the world’s single main supplier was the Federal Helium Reserve near Amarillo, Texas, which was established after World War I to secure American supplies of helium as a lifting gas for military airships.
In the 1950s, during the Cold War, helium found a new use: purging and pressurizing the rocket engines of nuclear missiles and space missions.
Credit: Thomas Abraham-James/Helium One
8. Helium horde
In recent years, some natural gas producers in the U.S., Canada and Qatar have started to tap small concentrations of helium, which has eased the rise in price.
Recently, scientist announced the discovery of a major helium gas field at Rukwa, in the East African Rift Valley region of Tanzania, which may be even larger than the entire helium reserves of the United States.
This discovery and others like it may ease global demand, but scientists have warned that helium is the “ultimate non-renewable resource” – hard to find, difficult to keep, and impossible to recycle.
Researchers have found that Aboriginal Australians are some of the oldest living populations on Earth. Here, Eske Willerslev talks to Aboriginal elders n the Kalgoorlie area in southwestern Australia in 2012.
Credit: Preben Hjort, Mayday Film.
A group of humans migrating out of Africa some 40,000 to 70,000 years ago mingled with an as-yet unknown branch of humanity, researchers say.
Modern humans originated about 150,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. However, scientists have long debated when and how the modern human lineage spread out of Africa to nearly every corner of the globe. Nearly everyone outside Africa descended from an exodus that occurred between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago, but recent archaeological findings and climate models suggest that migrations of modern humans from Africa began at least 100,000 years ago.
One way to find out whether, in the past, modern humans dispersed from Africa in one wave or many — and to see if they intermingled with any other human lineages along the way — is to examine the genomes of present-day modern humans. [See Photos of Our Closest Human Ancestor]
We're interested in understanding how our species has come to be how it is through the lens of ancient DNA," said Swapan Mallick, bioinformatics director at Harvard Medical School in Boston and lead author of one of the three studies appearing in the Sept. 22 issue of the journal Nature.
Previous human genetic databases often sampled a relatively narrow range of populations, which could skew results or miss key details aboutthe migrations of modern humans out of Africa. Now, three studies have collected new, high-quality data from 787 human genomes from more than 280 geographically diverse populations around the world, including typically understudied and rapidly disappearing groups.
Among the understudied groups researchers looked at are African populations, which have considerable genetic, linguistic and cultural diversity. They also examined genomes from Australia, where previous research uncovered some of the earliest archaeological and fossil evidence of modern humans outside Africa.
New branch of humanity?
The genetic analyses revealed the genomes of present-day aboriginal Australians might harbor evidence of ancient interbreeding with an unknown human lineage.
"Who these people are, we don't know," said Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and senior author of one of the three studies.
Recent work suggested that Denisovans have contributed about 5 percent of their DNA to the genomes of present-day people of the Pacific islands of Oceania. However, these new findings suggest that what seemed to be evidence of Denisovans in the Pacific were actually signs of an unknown human lineage.
"These guys were very distantly related to Denisovans, but by no means Denisovan," Willerslev told Live Science. "They were even more distantly related to Neanderthals, and they might have been even more distantly related to modern humans. We believe that they interbred with modern humans shortly before modern humans crossed into the ancient continent of Sahul — what is now Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania — some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago."
Leaving Africa
The new findings also shed light on the controversy over whether modern humans dispersed from Africa in a single exodus or in multiple distinct waves at different times. When it came to people from Papua New Guinea, "we could discover, in the genomes of the Papuan individuals analyzed here, small traces of an additional, early expansion out of Africa that was previously hypothesized only from archaeological remains," Mait Metspalu, an evolutionary geneticist at the Estonian Biocenter in Tartu, Estonia, and senior author of one of the three studies, told Live Science.
The researchers suggest that at least 2 percent of the Papuan genome harbors traces of an early migration that happened about 120,000 years ago. Previous research suggested that non-Africans largely descend from an exodus that happened between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago.
"Our results, while for the most part confirming the already accepted model of a single expansion out of Africa as the source event of all non-African populations, show that additional expansions were not as unlikely as we thought," Luca Pagani, a molecular anthropologist at the Estonian Biocenter and lead author of one of the three studies, told Live Science.
Oldest living population
The scientists also discovered that aboriginal Australians "are one of the oldest living populations on Earth, and have been in the same area for the past 50,000 to 60,000 years," Willerslev said.
There was a great deal of controversy "over whether or not aboriginal Australians directly descend from the first humans entering Australia," Willerslev said. "The answer to that question is yes — our data is completely consistent with aboriginal Australians descending from the first humans to enter Australia. It shows a very long connection between those people and the land. [How Did Life Arise on Earth]
"I can't think of any other place in the world where humans have been so long in the same spot as Australia," Willerslev said. "Yes, there are populations in Africa that are older, but we have no idea if they stayed in the same area in Africa for as long a time."
This is the first comprehensive population-level whole-genome study of human genetic diversity in Australia. "We found that because aboriginal Australians have spent such a long time in Australia, they are very genetically diverse," Willerslev said. "An aboriginal Australian from eastern Australia and one from southwestern Australia are almost as different genetically as an Asian is from a European."
The researchers noted that about 90 percent of aboriginal Australians speak languages belonging to a single linguistic family, "but some people in northwest Australia speak other language families," Willerslev said. "It'd be very interesting to see what the story is there when it comes to how they migrated to Australia."
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
