Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
20-10-2016
Filer’s Files #41 – 2016 Dr. Vallee Investigates UFOs- PART I
This picture taken October 3, above Charlottesville, Virginia
Filer’s Files #41 – 2016 Dr. Vallee Investigates UFOs- PART I
In special reports, this week’s files cover: Dr. Jacques Vallée “Passport to Magonia,” UFOs in Ancient Art, Iraqi Minister of Transportation Claims and Ancient ET Space Port.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over California, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings were reported over Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Peru, Portugal, and England in the United Kingdom.
The Filer Research Institute feels the scientific study of UFOs is for the benefit of humankind and is an important endeavor. The US Air Force investigated UFOs publicly for more than twenty years under Project Blue Book; and I continue this advanced research. I believe the God of the universe has spread life throughout the cosmos and UFO’s are visiting us in ever-increasing numbers.
George A. Filer III
New Jersey State Director
MUFON Eastern Region Director
Www.nationalUFOcenter.com. Now receiving 3 million hits a month
Forward these files to your friends and neighbors.
Special Projects
Dr. Jacques Vallée “Passport to Magonia”
Dr. Jacques Vallée in his excellent book, “Passport to Magonia” shows that legends can often be reduced to UFO sightings and abductions. I had the privilege of meeting Jacques Vallee’s after his lecture in Princeton University many years ago. His resume is an impressive one. Born in France, he was trained in astrophysics, and is a former principal investigator on computer networking projects for the Department of Defense. He first became interested in the UFO problem in 1961 while working on the staff of the French Space Committee, where he witnessed the destruction of tracking tapes of unknown objects. The following year, Vallee came to the United States and began working closely with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force scientific consultant on the UFO problem. I had the privilege of visiting with Dr. Vallee in Princeton and feel he has valid arguments for alternate explanations for alien activity that implies different alien capabilities.
Dr. Vallee is widely recognized as the premier investigative scientist in the realm of UFO research today. In addition to authoring numerous articles and books, Vallee served as Steven Spielberg’s advisor during the making of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and was the real-life model for the character portrayed by Francois Truffaut.
He stated, “We are dealing with a yet unrecognized level of consciousness, independent of man but closely linked to the earth…. I do not believe anymore that UFOs are simply the spacecraft of some race of extraterrestrial visitors. This notion is too simplistic to explain their appearance, the frequency of their manifestations through recorded history, and the structure of the information exchanged with them during contact.” Human beings are under the control of a strange force that bends them in absurd ways, forcing them to play a role in a bizarre game of deception. In reading older books, Vallee had noticed a curious correspondence between stories that were hundreds of years old and those he was investigating in the late 1960s.
Flying fairy in balls of light
When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumors, the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries, the observations of the scholars of past ages, and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological descriptions place them in the same category as the present-day Infonauts. In May 1955, Dr. Vallée sighted an UFO over his home in Pontoise, France. However, by 1969, Vallée concluded the extraterrestrial hypothesis was too narrow and ignored too much data. Dr. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, religious movements, angels, fairy-folk, and multidimensional visitation. This hypothesis represents an extension of the extraterrestrial hypothesis ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time, and thus could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected. He feels UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of “space visitors.”
Passport to Magonia, which changed our understanding of the UFO phenomenon by connecting documents and data from earlier centuries that related to incidents in the modern era. Among the numerous parallels between UFOs, folklore, and religious traditions were tales of fairies, elves, leprechauns, apparitions, and strange creatures.
In Celtic regions, witnesses described seeing fairies who were accompanied by strange oval objects from the sky, and these beings were also known for abducting people– not unlike modern reports of alien abduction, he pointed out. A ninth century account from the Archbishop of Lyon, France dealt with three people who were said to emerge from a flying ship– villagers thought they came from a magical land called Magonia that was beyond the clouds. Vallee spoke of how UFO phenomena seems to straddle different layers of reality, and what witnesses actually observe may be modulated by their individual consciousness. People in Asia view the phenomenon as part of nature, and the alien beings hailing from a different plane, rather than another planet, he added.
Passport to Magonia, which changed our understanding of the UFO phenomenon by connecting documents and data from earlier centuries that related to incidents in the modern era. Among the numerous parallels between UFOs, folklore, and religious traditions were tales of fairies, elves, leprechauns, apparitions, and strange creatures. Vallee now seemed to be backing away from the extraterrestrial hypotheses and advancing the radical view that UFOs are paranormal in nature and a modern space age manifestation of a phenomenon which assumes different guises in different historical contexts.
In Celtic regions, witnesses described seeing fairies who were accompanied by strange oval objects from the sky, and these beings were also known for abducting people– not unlike modern reports of alien abduction, he pointed out.
A ninth century account from the Archbishop of Lyon, France dealt with three people who were said to emerge from a flying ship– villagers thought they came from a magical land called Magonia that was beyond the clouds. Vallee spoke of how UFO phenomena seems to straddle different layers of reality, and what witnesses actually observe may be modulated by their individual consciousness. People in Asia view the phenomenon as part of nature, and the alien beings hailing from a different plane, rather than another planet, he added.
Fairy Folk Art Journal;
An Encyclopedia of Fairies (Briggs, 1976) gives many examples of fairy abductions. The similarities between fairy abductions and UFO abductions is also interesting to note. People who claimed interactions with fairies generally reported marks on their bodies consistent with reports of alien abductions. Fairy abductions and UFO abductions also exhibit striking similarities to activities of incubi and succubi. Almost always a thick drink is given to the abductee. The victim is paralyzed and then levitated away. The fairies traveled in circular globes of light which is also commonly reported in UFO abductions. Another similarity to the UFO abduction scenario is the Bigfoot type creature which was called a “bogie” in fairy lore. Many so-called fairies and aliens look and act a lot like what have been described throughout history as demons. Many faerie-tales contain dream-like situations, where the laws of physics are suspended and the experienced reality is different than the usual five-sense reality. It’s no accident that the tales are often described as trippy. They can be seen as basically describing events from a participatory altered state of consciousness, that have then gestated and formed into oral faerie-tales, before being fossilized into literature by folklorists at various times in the 19th and 20th centuries. The point is that there is a tradition stretching back thousands of years of beings abducting humans and their offspring; these beings fly in globes of light, can paralyze their victims, induce amnesia about the event, force strange drinks on their victims, have sex with them and, in many cases, ultimately drive them to madness, physical ruin, or even take over their bodies for their own use. This possession can be permanent or semi-permanent. (Possession takes place after a long period of wearing down of the will through repeated forced encounters which generally include draining of energy through sexual contact.)
Psychological state that calls for outside intervention of some kind?
In this regard French ufologist Jean-Francois Boeded, in his book Fantastiques rencontres au bout du monde (1982) suggested that we should conceive of sightings as starting long before the actual experience. He points to many cases in which witnesses had premonitions that something was about to happen, or for some reason they went home by a different route, or took an unaccustomed walk. Somehow, it would seem, the witnesses were being prepared for the experience they were about to undergo.
This phenomenon is part and parcel of the alien abduction, vampire and possession syndromes. When possessing entities have been questioned during exorcism about how they selected a target for possession they often reply that the subject was chosen before he was born. In most cases, line of contact and the gradually building assault can be traced back to childhood. It could be said, in general, that the process of possession has already begun before either the target or those around him are aware of the signs.
In most cases there is a sensation of the presence before an actual encounter takes place. The scenario described is quite common in many abduction cases.
Jacques Vallee: says. “I’ve seen things that shouldn’t have been there when I was tracking satellites at the Paris observatory.
I saw them visually as part of a team, and that’s really what started my research. Obviously, I had heard of UFOs before then, but I always thought that if there were UFOs astronomers would see them and would tell us, but my first job as an astronomer left me disillusioned. I was part of a team that was tracking satellites for the French Space Committee. We found ourselves tracking objects that were not satellites, and were not anything else recognizable either. One night we got eleven data points on one of these objects on a magnetic tape and wanted to run the tape through a computer and compute an orbit and see the thing again. To this day, I can’t tell you that it wasn’t some piece of technology that somebody had. It could have been some very bizarre piece of human technology, but what intrigued me was that the man in charge of the project confiscated the tape and erased it. That’s really what got me started, because I suddenly realized that astronomers saw things that they did not report.”
The important part of Confrontations is really in the last few chapters that deal with field investigations that Jeanine and I did in Brazil. We went to Brazil specifically to check stories of people being hurt by exposure to the light from UFOs. We spent about two weeks in the interior of the country going from village to village and talking to people. We just barely scratched the surface but in ten days we spoke with fifty people who had been hurt by those beams, some of whom had seen these objects just a week before we arrived.
Were they seeing the same kind of technological craft?
Jacques Vallee: Pretty much. There was a whole variety of objects, but the ones that emitted these beams were classic in terms of shape. They were boxy, rectangular objects that either didn’t make a noise or made nothing more than a hum, like the noise a refrigerator makes. They came over at night, and the beam was a light that not only burned them but pinned them down. When we asked people in Brazil about the phenomenon, we discovered that they didn’t see it as something that comes from another planet, but something that comes from another spiritual plane. That’s the way they put it, but they offered no further explanation than that. They seemed to be just as puzzled by it as a scientist would be. There was this one fellow who was blind and had developed psychic powers, and I tried to push him. I asked him what kind of spirits he thought he was encountering, but he was very straightforward and humble. He said he could invoke the gods of his tradition, but these things were something else. It was like, “yes, these things exist, but they are beyond my reach.”
In our culture, that explanation would be regarded as even more absurd than the activities of extraterrestrials.
Lady wounded by alien light.
Jacques Vallee: It is absurd, just like the explanations by our culture are absurd. But absurdity doesn’t mean meaningless. The absurd is a signal that has a property of taking you out of your normal thinking process and making you aware of other forms of thinking that you didn’t know existed. It’s forcing you to perceive reality at a different level. And what type of mental state is that creating in these villagers?
Jacques Vallee: Terror. The day after an encounter witnesses were very often extremely weak and could hardly walk. They would be taken to a doctor if there was a doctor close by. I spoke with some of the doctors, one of whom had treated thirty-five such cases in the mouth of the Amazon. What do you think of that? That’s such a concentrated activity in one area.
Jacques Vallee: I think the way that we get into trouble studying UFOs is that we mix up the different levels involved. We mix up the physical level, the psychological level, and the mythological or social level. I want to clearly identify these three levels because we need a different type of mythology to deal with each level and each set of events. At the physical level, all we know now is that there are material, physical objects, at least part of the time. They leave traces; they interact with the environment; they throw off heat and light and probably pulse microwaves in very interesting ways. They contain a great deal of energy. I’ve included some energy calculations in Confrontations.
I think we’ve made a lot of progress in the last few years in understanding the psychological and physiological level. There are some very clear patterns that range from sunburns to conjunctivitis. Sometimes temporary blindness occurs. Sometimes witnesses report a form of paralysis in which they have no control of their muscles during the time when the object is there. I think this has obvious medical implications that are very interesting. The witnesses are often disoriented. In Confrontations, I cite a case I investigated in which the people thought they were driving north when they were driving south. Such confusion in space and time too often contributes to scientists concluding that the witnesses aren’t reliable. We don’t know a lot about the effect of pulsed microwaves on the human brain. One effect might be hallucinations. You may end up having witnesses telling you incredible stories because they were subjected to very strange psychological side-effects of something that was really there. I don’t think that most of the UFO community is ready to deal with that. And I don’t think the scientific community is ready to deal with that. Then there is a third level, the mythological or sociological level. At that level, the physical reality of the actual UFO is totally irrelevant. Jacques Vallee is one of ufology’s major figures – and also its most original thinker.
Vallee, who holds a master’s degree in astrophysics and a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University, was an early scientific proponent of the theory that UFOs are extraterrestrial spaceships. His first book, Anatomy of a Phenomenon (Henry Regnery, 1965), argued eloquently that,
“Through UFO activity … the contours of an amazingly complex intelligent life beyond the earth can already be discerned.”
In Challenge to Science – The UFO Enigma (Regnery, 1966) he and Janine Vallee (who is a psychologist by training, with a master’s degree from the University of Paris) urged the scientific community to consider the UFO evidence in this light.
But by 1969, when he published Passport to Magonia, Vallee’s assessment of the UFO phenomenon had undergone a significant shift. Much to the consternation of the “scientific ufologists” who had seen him as one of their champions, Vallee now seemed to be backing away from the extraterrestrial hypotheses and advancing the radical view that UFOs are paranormal in nature and a modern space age manifestation of a phenomenon which assumes different guises in different historical contexts.
“When the underlying archetypes are extracted,” he wrote, “the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries … religious miracles… and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological descriptions place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts.”
In The Invisible College (E.P. Dutton, 1975) Vallee posits the idea of a “control system.” UFOs and related phenomena are “the means through which man’s concepts are being rearranged.” Their ultimate source may be unknowable, at least at this stage of human development; what we do know, according to Vallee, is that they are presenting us with continually recurring “absurd” messages and appearances which defy rational analysis but which nonetheless address human beings on the level of myth and imagination.
“When I speak of a control system for planet earth,” he says,” I do not want my words to be misunderstood: I do not mean that some higher order of beings has locked us inside the constraints of a space-bound jail; closely monitored by psychic entities we might call angels or demons. I do not propose to redefine God. What I do mean is that mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no power.”Website
UFOs in Ancient Art
Visoki Decani Monastery Kosovo, Yugoslavia Scene from Crucifixion of Jesus Christ of Christ painted in 1350
Iraqi Minister of Transportation Claims Ancient ET Space Port
The opening of a new airport in Iraq, the country’s Minister of Transportation claimed that ancient aliens once used the same location for their spaceships! Speaking to the press, Kazem Finjan may have inadvertently blown the lid off of UFO secrecy when he declared that the current airport sits on the site of history’s first airport from 5000 BC at Dhi Qar.
Finjan told reporters to read the work of Zecharia Sitchin or H. G. Wells if they did not believe him. The official went on to detail how the location of the airport was a preferred spot of the Annunaki because its weather conditions made it ideal for launches to other planets. Throughout Finjan’s speech, his colleagues appear to be nonplussed by his statements, but there are a handful of moments which suggest they were more amused than amazed by the revelations.
That sentiment seems to have been captured by Iraqis who saw the press conference as one journalist called Finjan an imbecile while an academic suggested that he was allowed to speak for so long because no one wanted to be the person who stopped him. One particularly cruel critic contended that the Transportation Minister is evidence that the Iraqi government is rife with “fools, hashish addicts and the most worthless of humanity.”
That harsh rebuke is certainly open to debate amongst Iraqis as is the veracity of Finjan’s claims, since they do not appear to come from any inside information pertaining to ETs in Iraq’s distant past and, instead, were informed primarily by the work Sitchin. Therefore, while the scene may look eerily similar to what one might expect from ‘official disclosure,’ the incident might be better characterized as simply a Sitchin fan detailing what he’d read in the legendary researcher’s books.
Of course, Finjan could someday get the last laugh if the Annunaki ever decide to return to Earth and opt to use their own airport in Iraq as a landing pad. Thanks to Coast to Coast Source: Express.
MUFON Sightings during September
CMS continues to amass sighting reports from around the globe. In September 2016 there were 652 sightings reported to MUFON through CMS from the following countries;
United States 466,
Canada 62,
United Kingdom 38.
Iran 15; India, Australia, and Germany each had 8 sightings.
The National UFO Reporting Center had 529 reports in September.
UFO Conferences
FRINGE New Jersey is pleased to announce that MIKE CLELLAND, author of THE MESSENGERS: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductees, will be appearing as part of FRINGE’s Autumn 2016 Conference, taking place Saturday, Nov. 5, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the Hilton Garden Inn, Hamilton New JERSEY.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:FILER FILES - overzicht met foto's met dank aan Georges Filer en WWW.nationalUFOCenter.com (ENG)
Filer’s Files #41 – 2016 Dr. Vallee Investigates UFOs - PART II
Filer’s Files #41 – 2016 Dr. Vallee Investigates UFOs - PART II
UFO Sightings in the United States
California Light
Huntington Beach— I had just got done surfing with my buddy, and saw this white light that looked like a shooting star do three huge massive circles and then just come to a complete stop over my the Edison power lines on October 3, 2016. I called my family out who were hesitant to believe me until they saw it take off real quick and come straight back. Then we saw a couple other unknown objects in the sky meet up with it and it was like it was a mother ship just spitting out a bunch of tiny red lighted objects. Then we saw another object that had gotten super bright and flared up for at least 18 seconds then went back to flashing colors and then vanished. The other mother ship kept vibrating pulsating and at times taking in objects. Towards the end it got farther away and then just stayed put for awhile you could still see it and blinking. I went inside to eat came out and it was gone. I have an eerie feeling that it might have to do with the recent earthquake activity in California. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Colorado Triangle
Broomfield– I was walking from my apartment complex to the gym on September 30. 2016, My apartment complex is elevated and dimly light resulting in low light and saw a triangle shaped aircraft. It was moving rather slow no more than 50 yards above me silently. It was hard to completely make out its shape but it looked as if it had two wings with three lights on each side with the third light of each wing joining at the peak of the triangle. There is a private airport a half mile away so I’m quite used to the sound of aircraft landing nearby. This aircraft was headed directly south while the private airport is located southeast. I have had multiple experiences with other-worldly entities but none of these encounters were like this one. The craft was not interacting with me until it faded from view. The craft looked EXACTLY like the image I have attached. Thanks to MUFON Cm
Ellicott — Walked out in yard with dog in rural eastern Colorado on October 2, 2016, when I noticed a dark grey almost black Triangle object in sky between two layers of clouds. It stayed in same spot as the clouds were moving below and above it in different directions. The triangle stayed in the same exact spot for three minutes then slowly faded away. The object I saw looked kind of like the shape of a Star Wars Star Destroyer. I know it wasn’t a plane, but it looked designed, big time. “Power lines were near and it was hovering 2,000-3,000 feet above some interstate transmission lines. If any cows are butchered out there, I sure want a Steak from it! All I know is clouds don’t make symmetrical straight edges on two sides. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Florida Triangle
Tampa— I was out front with my telescope and my mom when I first saw the UFO on September 8, 2016. My mom was looking at Saturn. I was looking north and I was looking at a large UFO. I grabbed my mom off the telescope and pointed at the UFO. She instantly saw the UFO and started yelling in excitement. After both of us watched the craft for 20 seconds I banged on the window for my stepdad to come outside and he also saw the craft. We watched the UFO hover over our heads heading south until it faded off to nothing. There were a total of 13 lights that were lit up on the craft (6 on each side of a V shape and one at the point of the V). The craft was slowly spinning. Thanks to MUFON Thanks to MUFON CMS
Missouri Orb
Saint Louis — Stepped out in backyard at dusk and looked to the east/northeast toward St Louis City less than 10 miles away when I first noticed unusually bright and larger than normal light just hovering on September 27, 2016. So I grabbed my strobe flashlight and laser pointer-as soon as I flashed the object it began putting on a color light show. I then I grabbed my iPhone to record video. During analysis of the video I noticed incredible colors and icons changing in split seconds. Towards end of video there is a smaller color changing craft approaching the larger original craft-then they took off to the north in an instant. This isn’t the first time I have witnessed these lights Thanks to MUFON CMS
Nevada Flying Object
I was flying back from Spokane to St. Louis after a weeklong National Trust for Historic Preservation National Conference. We stopped in Las Vegas to catch the next plane on November 2, 2012. After leaving Las Vegas we were in the air for a little while, then right past a huge lake, I don’t know the name of it but it’s not far from Las Vegas, I saw something. I was looking out the window when something shiny caught my eye. I already had my camera out because I was taking photos, so I snapped a photo as fast as I could. The object witch looked like a stereotypical UFO was side by side with the plane I was in but about 500 feet away; it then sharply dipped diagonally below the clouds. I did not say anything to the people with me because I did not want them to think I was nuts. Thanks to MUFON CMS
New Jersey Barbell
Freehold — I exited the rear of the store, and noticed an unusual light approaching on May 28, 2016. It made no sound and I brazenly asked it on to come closer. It did and that’s when it hovered over the Raceways horse stables and that’s when I decided to try and catch it on my phone camera. Later while showing a co-worker, it disappeared from the screen. It did that a couple of times even on his phone when I sent it to him. We both were dumbfounded thinking either aliens or government knew I had it and didn’t want it exposed. Since then I’ve been looked at as if I were dreaming it all up. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Note: Possible lens flare.
New Mexico Orb
Deming— I was driving from Las Cruces to Arizona, I noticed the object shining above the mountain as I topped out of the river bottom on September 28, 2016. I watched the object until I passed it and it was behind me. At first I thought it was a hot air balloon but it never seemed to move, either horizontally or vertically.I continued to watch the object, thinking it would move and lost sight of it when I got past the area where it was directly south of me, which would have been about 10 miles west of Deming, NM. I uploaded the photos in the same order that I took them in, over about a 15 minute period as I was driving. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Pennsylvania Lights
Pittsburg — When I was walking on the street alone, suddenly a light caught my eyes, and I looked up on October 1, 2016. At first I thought it’s a helicopter, but soon I realized it’s not because it made little noise and something unusual. I tried to take photos, however, unfortunately I forgot to turn off the flash, and the object began to change direction and flew away. It looked like a modern warplane but much quieter. As I searched on Google how to report, the object went out of my sight. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Texas Lights
New Braunfels — While camping with my good friend and his wife (who are old navy veterans), we saw and began to observe orange lights rising from the horizon. On October 2, 2016, coming over the western hills in a very odd fashion were reddish orange lights that were brighter than airplane lights. These were not distinct flashing lights like
aircraft, but appeared to be pulsating like a fireball or very bright engine thrust, It was ascending sporadically with maneuvers with bursts of movement before flashing a few times then diving down. This was followed by 3-4 more of the same ascending reddish lights; however none of the others appeared to dive or fall like the first. The lights stopped after 20 minutes or so. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Virginia Lights
Charlottesville — I took a photo last year in April and it reminds me of what my wife took a picture on October 3, 2016 coming into Virginia. Jacquelin Smith, in her experiences of what she witnessed over and around her house in November of 2013, calls anomalies like these, lights that squiggle. She defines squiggling as when a starship becomes like a long fluid tube of continuous light which can loop around itself and through itself. It can create various kinds of geometry and what appears to be a knot. It sure looks as though these lights are squiggling. Thanks to Dan Johnson.
Washington Lights
Long Beach — A man was outside having a cigarette and saw two groups of orange orbs to the west over the Pacific Ocean on September 24, 2016. There were two orbs to the south and 6 or 7 to the west hovering… (The orbs looked like a constellation.) Then three of the orbs flew into a triangular formation. The witness then took a video. Then another orange orb approached at a rapid speed from the north. Skies were clear and there was little wind at the time of the sighting.
Note: The orbs are not Chinese lanterns. They do not flicker and also the movement in different directions would eliminate Chinese Lanterns as an explanation. Thanks to William Puckett, Director Website
Worldwide UFO Sightings
Australia Disc
Brisbane — My brother and I had gone out onto the balcony with a glass of wine on May 10, 2016. The sun had gone down but the sky was clear and cloudless except for a funny mist with blinking lights. At first we saw a series of compact lights shrouded by a misty cloud on an otherwise completely clear night. It looked like a cloaked UFO. It had lights above and below in a disc shape, like a hamburger bun. They were blinking in and out and so was the mist. Eventually after about 15 minutes it completely blinked out. It didn’t move from its initial position but video shows it was hovering in position. We immediately thought it was a cloaked UFO, or one that was trying to cloak itself but was malfunctioning. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Brazil Lights
Baturité — Just when I noticed a large explosion without sound, a light rand, which attracted me and so I started gravar.
Só could see that the triangular UFO began to expel a ball that came down toward the ground.
Prudentopolis — On September 27, 2016, the Brazilian UFO Magazine received an e-mail from Rodolfo Schier informing on the appearance of a possible crop circle in the city of Prudentopolis, 200km from Curitiba, capital city of the State of Parana. A video was also sent by a local resident, Mr. Tito Santini, showing this possible crop circle. Santini is the owner of the farm where this same phenomenon happened last year (October 6th) and was also investigated by the UFO Magazine.
Initial analyses on video and photos received pointed to a strong possibility that the circle was authentic. A. J. Gevaerd Editor of Revista UFO (UFO Magazine) (Website)
Canada Orbs
North Bay — I was on my deck outside when I noticed an object moving very fast and making abrupt turns in different directions on September 25, 2016. I kept my eye on it for quite some time. It would turn fast then zoom up into the air very fast much faster than a passing plane. I took a video of the ufo but I did catch something. I just don’t know what it is. I’m interested to know what I saw since I’ve never seen anything like it. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Germany Disc
Munich — I had just arrived for Oktoberfest and walked around taking photos with my phone on 29th September 2016. The next day, I was checking my photos and I noticed one of them which I didn’t remember to have taken. I think it was taken when I was changing the normal camera of my phone to the frontal camera and caught this photo of something similar to a UFO Blimp. I didn’t see the object during the Oktoberfest, just the next day in the photo. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Peru Humanoid
Pachacamac, Lima — Witnesses at a gas station reported appearance of a humanoid on August 22, 2016, at 3:30 AM.
Fernando Távara, MUFON Peru, investigated this case, interviewed witnesses, obtained the original video and came to the conclusion that the object is a helium balloon of «Bugs Bunny» cartoon character. Thanks to MUFON CMS
Portugal Triangle
Oeiras, Lisbon – On October 5, 2016 at 9:30 pm, I happened to look at the sky and see a big and totally quiet craft heading south in a straight line with three very dim yellowish lights in a triangle formation. There was another light near the forward tip of the triangle slightly offset to the side in formation creating the appearance of a very big silent dark triangle moving through the starry sky completely silent at a speed of about 400 knots. This is a place where aircraft heading for Lisbon airport fly overhead making a lot of noise and blinking a lot of lights. I use Flight radar 24 sometimes to track them for curiosity and nothing was flying above at this time.
This seemed like a big dark triangle, moving in straight line in complete eerie silence with non blinking dim yellow lights. It was at least double or triple the size of a commercial aircraft. Thanks to MUFON CMS
UK/England Triangle
Newcastle– I was on the beach taking photos of the sunset and a storm over the Irish Sea on September 29, 2016. I took several photos and when I returned home and looked at the photos I noticed the green light in the sky. It appeared to come through the clouds and descend downwards the sea. My photo’s show this in various stages, I felt shocked and of what the photos depict coming through a storm cloud and then down towards the beach. I was not aware of this whilst taking the photos initially. I am hoping you will give me an idea as to what it is. Thanks to MUFON CMS
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Chinese astronauten stappen Tiangong-2 binnen
Chinese astronauten stappen Tiangong-2 binnen
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Voor het eerst heeft het in september gelanceerde ruimtelaboratorium visite ontvangen: twee Chinese astronauten.
De Chinese astronauten – Jing Haipeng en Chen Dong – koppelden hun ruimtevaartuig – Shenzhou – aan het ruimtelaboratorium. Om vervolgens kort daarna hun ruimteschip te verlaten en zelf het ruimtelab binnen te gaan.
Dertig dagen Het is de bedoeling dat de astronauten 30 dagen in het ruimtelab verblijven. Ze zullen in het lab verschillende wetenschappelijke experimenten doen en tevens controles uitvoeren in Tiangong-2.
De twee Chinese astronauten in Tiangong-2. Afbeelding: CNSA.
Tiangong-2 Tiangong-2 werd vorige maand door de Chinezen in een baan rond de aarde geplaatst en is de opvolger van Tiangong-1. Tiangong-1 werd in 2011 gelanceerd en mocht eerder ook al Chinese astronauten verwelkomen. Deze astronauten verbleven echter maar 15 dagen in het ruimtelab.
China maakt er geen geheim van te dromen van een eigen ruimtestation. Maar daar komt natuurlijk heel wat bij kijken. De kennis en kunde die het bouwen van zo’n ruimtestation vereist, verkrijgt China door te ‘oefenen’ met de lancering van de Tiangong-modules. Naar verwachting zullen de Chinezen ergens in het volgende decennium klaar zijn voor het echte werk: de bouw van een ‘echt’ ruimtestation.
Staat deze voedselprinter over vijf jaar bij jou in de keuken?
Staat deze voedselprinter over vijf jaar bij jou in de keuken?
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Maak maar alvast ruimte op je aanrecht: de voedselprinter komt eraan! Binnen vier tot vijf jaar kan dit exemplaar – of iets wat erop lijkt – al in je keuken staan!
Voedselprinters zijn er natuurlijk allang. Maar vaak zijn ze groot en log en allesbehalve gebruiksvriendelijk. Je moet er eigenlijk (letterlijk!) voor gestudeerd hebben om ze te kunnen gebruiken. Dat moet anders, zo bedacht Hod Lipson, professor aan de faculteit werktuigbouw aan Columbia University in New York en een pionier op het gebied van robotica, 3D-printen en voedselprinten. Hij ontwikkelde – samen met twee studenten – een voedselprinter voor ons allemaal.
Gemak Eén van de twee studenten die samen met Lipson aan de voedselprinter knutselde, is Drim Stokhuijzen. Het ontwerp van de revolutionaire voedselprinter werd de afstudeeropdracht waarmee hij zijn studie industrieel ontwerpen aan de TU Delft afrondde. “Deze voedselprinter had een compleet andere start dan bestaande voedselprinters,” zo vertelt hij aan Scientias.nl. De huidige voedselprinters zijn eigenlijk niets anders dan gemodificeerde 3D-printers. “Maar voor deze voedselprinter begonnen we echt met niets.” Het doel? Een voedselprinter die net zo gemakkelijk in gebruik is als de welbekende koffiemachines met de minstens zo bekende cupjes die door George Clooney aan de man worden gebracht. “De voedselprinter moest eenvoudig zijn: plug and play.”
Vers van de pers: vismousseline met wortel.
Hoe werkt ‘ie? En dat is gelukt. Want iedereen kan met deze voedselprinter – die ook nog eens heel klein is en dus met gemak op je aanrecht past – uit de voeten. Stokhuijzen legt uit: “Je hebt een soort capsules met daarin gepureerd en ingevroren voedsel waar geen additieven aan zijn toegevoegd. Het apparaat vertelt je in welke volgorde je deze capsules in het apparaat moet stoppen. Een robotarm kan deze capsules pakken en de inhoud op een bord plaatsen. Terwijl de robotarm daarmee bezig is, verhit een infraroodmodule de geprinte lagen.” Terwijl het voedsel geprint wordt, wordt het dus ook gekookt. In de toekomst kun je de capsules gewoon in de winkel kopen. Ook voorziet Stokhuijzen een soort ‘Spotify’ gevuld met gerechtjes waar je als trotse eigenaar van de voedselprinter uit putten kan.
De capsules die je in de 3D-printer moet stoppen.
Supplementen Wellicht zie je jezelf op korte termijn al je pannen en deksels en maatbekers en ander keukengerei bij het grof vuil zetten. Maar wacht nog even! “Dit apparaat vervangt het koken niet,” benadrukt Stokhuijzen. De voedselprinter is niet bedoeld om drie of vier gangen te creëren, maar is een aanvulling op je eigen kookkunsten. “Stel, je hebt een drukke werkdag gehad en niet zo gezond gegeten, dan kun je een gezond gerechtje printen,” legt Stokhuijzen. Omdat je de volledige controle over de samenstelling van het gerechtje hebt, kan het je exact bieden wat je die dag tekort bent gekomen (zie ook het filmpje hieronder).
In de toekomst gaat dat nog een stap verder, voorspelt Stokhuijzen. “De voedselprinter wordt dan je persoonlijke diëtist.” Op basis van je persoonlijke gegevens – die nu reeds door smartphones worden verzameld – weet de printer precies wat je op dat moment nodig hebt.
QUICHES
In principe kan de voedselprinter van Lipson en studenten alles printen. “Vlees, vis, noem het maar op,” vertelt Stokhuijzen. “Maar in beginsel zullen we voor toegankelijke gerechtjes kiezen, bijvoorbeeld quiches.” Want de grote massa zal de voedselprinter sneller omarmen als deze smakelijk uitziende gerechten print en vlees ziet er geprint nu eenmaal niet echt lekker uit.
Heerlijk Natuurlijk heeft Stokhuijzen de proef op de som genomen en het geprinte voedsel geproefd. Hij blijft enthousiast. “Het is net als met een gewone printer, waarbij de kwaliteit van de inkt de kwaliteit van de print bepaalt. Als je goede ingrediënten gebruikt, is het geprinte voedsel heerlijk.”
Gezond Waarschijnlijk had Stokhuijzen een paar jaar geleden niet gedacht dat hij vandaag zo enthousiast zou zijn over geprint voedsel. “Ik was bij aanvang heel sceptisch,” erkent hij. “Ik vroeg me af of we 3D-geprint voedsel wel nodig hadden. Ik was net druk bezig met gezond eten en dat lijkt haaks te staan op het reageerbuis- en robotachtige geprinte voedsel.” Maar opeens realiseerde Stokhuijzen zich dat gezond eten dankzij de voedselprinter veel gemakkelijker kan worden. “Als je nu door de supermarkt loopt, dan wil je voedsel dat kostenefficiënt, oftewel niet te duur is. Maar het moet ook voedzaam en gezond zijn. En het moet gemakkelijk te bereiden zijn. En lekker. Het is eigenlijk onmogelijk om aan al die vereisten tegelijkertijd te voldoen: als je iets makkelijks wilt, is het vaak ongezond. En als je iets heel gezonds wilt, is het vaak duurder. En dus maak je in de supermarkt eigenlijk altijd een verkeerde keuze.” De voedselprinter maakt daar een einde aan, omdat deze voedsel kan creëren dat aan alle genoemde eisen voldoet. “Deze voedselprinter kan gezond eten democratiseren.”
Een geprinte polenta met bietjes.
Acceptatie Maar hoelang moeten we daar nog op wachten? “Deze voedselprinter is een proof of concept en wordt op dit moment in het laboratorium doorontwikkeld. We verwachten dat deze over vier tot vijf jaar in de keuken te vinden is.” Of dat werkelijk haalbaar is, hangt met name af van ons, de consument. “Op dit moment is de markt nog vrij sceptisch,” stelt Stokhuijzen. “De acceptatie van de voedselprinter is denk ik de grootste uitdaging. Misschien komt die vanuit de mensen zelf. Of eerst vanuit atleten, waarna de consument aansluit.”
De voedselprinter heeft voorlopig de naam ‘Sanna’ gekregen.
Software Maar acceptatie door de massa is niet de enige hobbel die genomen moet worden. Er komt nog veel meer bij kijken. Zo is er bijvoorbeeld dringend behoefte aan software voor het ontwerpen van voedsel. Al jarenlang wordt voor het ontwerpen van constructies en apparaten een beroep gedaan op CAD-systemen. Maar deze systemen schieten tekort als er met voedsel wordt gewerkt. Daar is speciale software voor nodig die bijvoorbeeld kan voorspellen hoe een 3D-geprinte vorm eruit ziet als deze een x aantal minuten is gekookt bij een temperatuur van x graden Celsius.
Er is dus nog werk aan de winkel. Maar de voedselprinter lijkt een onstuitbare technologie te zijn. “We verwachten dat deze voedselprinter rond de 100 dollar gaat kosten,” vertelt Stokhuijzen. De capsules zullen qua prijs absoluut de concurrentie aankunnen met kant-en-klaarmaaltijden, maar wel iets duurder zijn dan de maaltijden die je helemaal zelf bereidt. Stokhuijzen kan in ieder geval niet wachten. “Als de voedselprinter op de markt komt, krijgt deze zeker een plekje in mijn keuken. Het is zo makkelijk op drukke dagen. Net als gisteren: ik had gesurfd en ’s avonds zin in eten. Maar dan ben ik te lui om iets te koken en neem ik toch maar een pizza. Of ik kook snel pasta. Maar dan kijk ik achteraf op de verpakking en blijkt er weer heel veel zout in te zitten. Met de voedselprinter kan ik een gemakkelijk en gezonde keuze maken én heb ik de controle over wat er in mijn eten zit.”
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Eindelijk weten we waarom het 's nachts donker is13 oktober 2016
Eindelijk weten we waarom het 's nachts donker is13 oktober 2016
Tim Kraaijvanger
Waarom is het ’s nachts donker? Het heelal telt ontelbaar veel sterren, dus dan zou het toch altijd licht moeten zijn? Niet dus en dankzij Hubble begrijpen we nu beter waarom dit zo is.
Midden jaren negentig werd een ruwe schatting gedaan van het aantal sterrenstelsels in het zichtbare universum: ongeveer honderd miljard sterrenstelsels. Onderzoeker Christopher Conselice en zijn collega’s beweren dat er twintig keer zoveel sterrenstelsels zijn, oftewel twee biljoen stuks. Een twee met twaalf nullen.
Conselice en zijn teamleden gebruikten foto’s van de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop en gegevens van eerdere onderzoeken om nauwkeurige 3D-modellen te maken van de verdeling van sterrenstelsels in het heelal. Conselice beweert dat er veel meer sterrenstelsels zijn dan we met hedendaagse telescopen kunnen zien. 90% van alle sterrenstelsels is te zwak en is te ver verwijderd om te spotten. Tenminste, met de huidige generatie telescopen. Op dit moment worden enkele supertelescopen gebouwd, waarmee we nog meer sterren kunnen ontdekken. Een belangrijke rol is weggelegd voor de James Webb-telescoop, die Hubble gaat vervangen.
“STEL, JE STAAT BIJ EEN BOS EN KIJKT TUSSEN TWEE BOMEN, DAN ZIE JE EEN ANDERE BOOM DIE IETS VERDER WEG STAAT. ZO ZOU HET OOK MET STERREN MOETEN ZIJN.”
Het is een bijzondere ontdekking dat er twintig keer zoveel sterrenstelsels zijn. Maar hoe verklaart dit het feit dat de nachthemel zwart is en dus niet wit? Het is immers logischer wanneer er overal licht zou zijn. In de Melkweg zwerven miljarden sterren om ons heen, maar in het hele universum gaat het om vele biljarden sterren. Met zo’n extreem groot aantal sterren verwacht je een permanent verlichte hemel.Toch?
Met ontelbaar veel sterren om ons heen zou het altijd ‘dag’ moeten zijn. Toch is dat niet zo.
Natuurlijk is het licht van verre sterren zwakker dan het licht van de zon, maar daar staat tegenover dat er op grotere afstand ook meer sterren staan. Een mooie vergelijking is een bos met bomen. Sta je voor dit bos, dan zie je waarschijnlijk tot aan de horizon bomen. Stel, je kijkt tussen twee bomen, dan zie je een andere boom die iets verder weg staat. Zo zou het ook met sterren moeten zijn.
Paradox van Olbers Wetenschappers hebben dit probleem een naam gegeven:de paradox van Olbers. Problemen zijn er echter om opgelost te worden. Onderzoeker Christopher Conselice beweert dat er meerdere factoren zijn waarom het ’s nachts donker is. Ten eerste komt het door de roodverschuiving van licht. Het komt erop neer dat de afstand tussen een ster (de lichtbron) en ons netvlies (de ontvanger) in vrijwel alle gevallen toeneemt (het heelal dijt immers uit), waardoor de golflengte van licht tijdens de reis langer wordt. Dit heeft als gevolg dat het licht zo ver wordt uitgerekt, dat we verre sterrenstelsels op een bepaald moment niet meer kunnen zien met onze ogen. Dit wordt nader uitgelegd op pagina 15 van het paper.
Stof Maar er zijn nog andere factoren. Zo wordt een deel van het sterrenlicht geabsorbeerd door stof in een sterrenstelsel, maar ook door stof tussen sterrenstelsels (het zogenoemd intergalactisch medium). Dit is opvallend, want lange tijd werd deze verklaring voor een donkere nacht als niet logisch verklaard. Sommige wetenschappers beweerden in het verleden dat licht het stof verwarmt, waardoor het uit zichzelf gaat gloeien. Volgens het paper van Conselice klopt dit wel, alleen gloeit het stof in het nabij-infrarode golflengtegebied. Dit is infrarode straling en dus elektromagnetisch straling die voor het menselijk oog niet waarneembaar is.
Stof houdt licht tegen, zoals hierboven. Dit is de beroemde Paardenkopnevel: één van de kroonjuwelen in het sterrenbeeld Orion. Helaas is deze donkere nevel niet zo makkelijk te observeren als zijn buurman, de Orionnevel.
Niet oneindig oud De laatste factor is het feit dat het heelal nog niet oneindig oud is. Het universum mag namelijk 13,8 miljard kaarsjes uitblazen op de verjaardagstaart. Licht reist snel, maar niet oneindig snel. Ons heelal is pas 13,8 miljard jaar oud, dus dit is de maximale tijd dat licht naar ons onderweg kan zijn geweest. Sterren die extreem ver van ons af staan, kunnen we dus nog niet zien, omdat het licht ons nog niet bereikt heeft.
The Universe is Far Bigger Than We Thought, and It Has 10x More Galaxies
The Universe is Far Bigger Than We Thought, and It Has 10x More Galaxies
NASA/ESA
IN BRIEF
It turns out the observable universe has at least 10 times more galaxies than the mid 1990s Hubble Deep Field images count of about 100 to 200 billion.
The development of more advanced space telescopes in the future could unveil even more of the observable universe.
THE EXPANDED UNIVERSE
It turns out, what we call the observable universe — the part visible within our cosmological horizon, A.K.A. the final frontier — has at least 10 times more galaxies than the mid 1990s Hubble Deep Field images count of about 100 to 200 billion.
Using collected data from various deep space images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other sources, an international team of scientists led by Christopher Conselice from the University of Nottingham, UK, created a 3D map of the known universe. Mathematical models were used to calculate for galaxies current telescopes cannot yet observe. These showed that, to make sense of the numbers and the maps, about 90% of galaxies are far, far away and too faint to be seen clearly.
The map recreates, as accurately as possible, different times in the universe’s history as far back as 13 billion years in its past. Accordingly, when the universe was several billion years younger than today, it contained 10 more galaxies per unit volume. Galaxies decrease in number (and increase in size) as the billion years go by. “This gives us a verification of the so-called top-down formation of structure in the universe,” Conselice explains.
This helps answer Olbers’ Paradox (why the night sky remains dark, despite the many stars). The myriad of stars within the billions of galaxies invisible to the human eye because ofredshifting of light, the universe’s dynamic nature, and intergalactic dust and gas absorbing light. This keeps the night sky mostly dark — keeping the night sky mostly dark.
BIGGER SPACE FOR LIFE
“It boggles the mind that over 90% of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied. Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we observe these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes,” explains Conselice about the far-reaching implications of the new results.
The development of more advanced space telescopes in the future, beginning with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2018, would certainly help us see the observable universe clearly. Who knows what remains lurking just by that expanded frontier of space.
In any case, a larger known universe means an even wider space to accommodate the search for possible extraterrestrial life. Why not? Every time we think that we understand more of it, the universe seems to always surprise us with more.
L'univers compte 10 fois plus de galaxies que ce que l'on pensait
L'univers compte 10 fois plus de galaxies que ce que l'on pensait
Selon les dernières données du téléscope spatial Hubble, l'univers compte environ 2000 milliards de galaxies, révèle une étude de la Nasa, jeudi.
L'univers compte environ 2 000 milliards de galaxies, c'est-à-dire "dix fois plus" que ne le pensaient les scientifiques jusqu'alors, estime une équipe internationale d'astronomes, dans une étude (en anglais) publiée jeudi 13 octobre.
Ces dernières années, les astronomes pensaient que l'univers contenait entre 100 milliards et 200 milliards de galaxies.
L'équipe du professeur Christopher Conselice, de l'Université de Nottingham (Royaume-Uni), a travaillé à partir des données du télescope spatial Hubbledéveloppé par la Nasa avec l'Agence spatiale européenne, mais aussi d'autres télescopes.
Elle a ensuite construit des images en 3D et extrapolé le nombre de galaxies présentes à différentes époques de l'histoire de l'univers. Plus les galaxies sont distantes, plus leur lumière peine à nous parvenir. Les télescopes actuels ne permettent d'étudier que 10 % des galaxies.
"C'est sidérant que penser que 90% des galaxies du cosmos doivent encore être étudiées", déclare Christopher Conselice. "Qui sait ce que nous allons découvrir quand nous serons en mesure d'étudier ces galaxies grâce à la nouvelle génération de télescopes?"
Un résultat temporaire
L'équipe d'astronomes a utilisé des méthodes de type statistique et s'est servi de ce que l'on connaît de l'univers proche, pour deviner ce qui se passe plus loin. "L'étude est très intéressante même si on peut avoir quelques réserves sur le nombre précis de galaxies", a déclaré François Hammer, astronome de l'Observatoire de Paris et spécialiste de la formation des galaxies.
"Le professeur Conselice a fait ce qu'on peut faire de mieux à notre époque. Mais son résultat ne peut pas être considéré comme le dernier mot", a dit l'astrophysicien. "C'est un travail qui ne pourra être confirmé que lorsque nous aurons des télescopes géants qui nous permettrons de voir beaucoup mieux dans ces régions lointaines."
On a Long Trip to Mars, Cosmic Radiation May Damage Astronauts' Brains
On a Long Trip to Mars, Cosmic Radiation May Damage Astronauts' Brains
By Christopher Wanjek, Live Science Contributor
President Obama on Tuesday reaffirmed his vision to send humans to Mars. In an editorial posted on CNN.com, the President wrote of his desire of "sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time."
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden echoed the President's enthusiasm, describing in a companion blog post co-written with John Holdren, a senior advisor to the President, how NASA plans to to "utilize public-private partnerships to enable humans to live and work in space in a sustainable way."
Key to the ambitious endeavor, however, is ensuring the astronauts' safety, which may be difficult, according to a NASA-funded study coincidentallypublished Monday (Oct. 10) in the journal Scientific Reports.
The new study, in rodents, shows that astronauts could suffer from a phenomenon called "space brain" during the long trip to Mars, as cosmic radiation bombards their bodies and damages their brain cells.
Researchers exposed the laboratory-bound rodents to a level of radiation similar to that expected on a six-month one-way trip to Mars. They found that the radiation caused significant long-term brain damage, including cognitive impairments and dementia, a result of brain inflammation and damage to the rodents' neurons. [10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain]
The researchers said the new study revealed a far greater extent of brain damage than what was hinted at in their shorter, six-week study, conducted last year.
"This is not positive news for astronauts deployed on a two- to three-year round-trip to Mars," said Charles Limoli, a professor of radiation oncology at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, who led the study.
NASA told Live Science that the agency is funding such studies to better understand the risks posed to its astronauts, although the agency was not aware that Limoli's study was published and could not comment on the details.
Radiation hazards
Astronauts in space face two kinds of radiation hazards. One is the solar radiation from the sun, including ultraviolet rays, X-rays, protons and electrons. The other is cosmic radiation, which emanates from all directions in deep space and comprises atomic particles far more energetic (and thus more damaging) than solar radiation.
Limoli's research was aimed at assessing the possiblehuman health problems that could be caused by cosmic radiation on a prolonged space journey. There are almost no studies so far that have looked at this, Limoli said. Humans have lived on the International Space Station (ISS) for months at a time. Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov (born Valeri Ivanovich Korshunov but later changed his name) holds the record for the longest, continuous time in orbit — almost 438 days aboard the Mir space station.
However, because Mir (which is no longer in use) and the ISS are relatively close to Earth, Earth's magnetosphere — a natural magnetic field that deflects charged atomic particles from the sun and deeper space — mostly protects astronauts on board the orbiting labs from dangerous radiation exposure. Tests have shown that Polyakov and other astronauts have no serious brain damage as a result of their time in orbit. [5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions]
Astronauts who visited the moon ventured beyond this protective magnetosphere, but their entire round-trip lasted only about two weeks, so their radiation exposure was kept to a minimum. One previous study, done in 2013 in mice, suggested that radiation may hasten the development of Alzheimer's.
To simulate the cosmic radiation exposure humans would face during a long Mars trip, Limoli's group exposed rodents to charged particles at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.
The researchers found that although the bombardment of the radiation was painless, it caused significant brain damage in the rodents. Imaging revealed that the animals' brain cells had a sharp reduction in features of the cells called the dendrites and spines, which would disrupt the transmission ofsignals among neurons, they said.
Limoli told Live Science that loss of dendrites and spines were "like a tree losing its leaves and branches," compromising the health of the tree. These physical losses explained the deficiencies the rodents showed in behavioral tasks designed to test learning and memory, Limoli said. In humans, this loss could lead astronauts to make poor decisions that could affect the safety of the crew, he added.
The researchers also discovered that the radiation affected the part of the brain that normally suppresses prior unpleasant and stressful associations, as part of a process called "fear extinction." This loss of fear extinction could make the astronauts prone to anxiety, Limoli said. [Infographic: How Radiation Affects the Human Body]
Yet Limoli remains optimistic that NASA can still send astronauts safely to Mars. "This is not a deal breaker," he told Live Science. "This [cosmic radiation] is simply something we have to deal with."
A 30-month trip
NASA estimates that a 30-month trip to Mars — six months of travel each way, plus 18 months living on the Red Planet — would expose astronauts to a total of 1 sievert (Sv) of radiation. For comparison, Limoli said people who undergo certain kinds of radiation treatment for brain cancer may need to endure a dose at least 10 times higher than that through the course of that treatment. He said that these cancer patients, although they may be cured of cancer, have notable declines in their cognitive function.
Astronauts could be protected from cosmic radiation in two ways, a NASA press officer told Live Science. One would be to a passive method of installing thick metal shields or layers with water, either around the entire spacecraft or around sleeping chambers to block the radiation. Cosmic radiation is very penetrating, however, and shields that would be thick enough to block the rays would add considerable weight (and thus, expense) to the Mars mission.
Another way is an active method of installing an electromagnetic field to deflect the radiation, analogous to the magnetosphere itself. Limoli said his group and others are working on another strategy, medicines that could repair the damage caused by radiation, or protect or even restore neurons.
It will certainly be a memorable trip to Mars, and NASA hopes the astronauts will stay healthy enough to remember it.
Follow Christopher Wanjek @wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the author of "Food at Work" and "Bad Medicine." His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on Live Science.
6 Private Deep Space Habitat Concepts That May Pave the Way to Mars
6 Private Deep Space Habitat Concepts That May Pave the Way to Mars
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
Credit: NASA
INTRO: Housing Humans in Deep Space
To bring astronauts to Mars by the 2030s, NASA has selected six private companies to design and develop deep space habitats under the second Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Broad Agency Announcement.
NextSTEP-2 focuses on developing deep space habitation concepts through partnerships between the public and private sectors. Here are the new prototypes they created.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
1. Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is working to revamp the design of a logistics module from the space shuttle resupply missions and create a full-scale habitat prototype. The company has also dreamed up a wilde plan for an orbital outpost around Mars, known as Mars Base Camp.
The design includes an environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) and an avionics system for navigation, communication and management of all flight functionality. Last year, Lockheed Martin unveiled their design for a new spaceflight system called "Jupiter" that could fly astronauts to the space station, the moon and beyond.
Credit: Orbital ATK
2. Orbital ATK
A Virginia-based private spaceflight company, Orbital ATK, is working on a design based on the Cygnus spacecraft, which currently flies automated and unmanned cargo supply missions to the International Space Station.
Orbital ATK's cislunar habitat concept will test interfaces between the new Cygnus-based spacecraft, the Orion crew module and other space modules. Its goal is to demonstrate the feasibility of long-term operations in deep space.
Credit: Sierra Nevada Corportation
3. Sierra Nevada Corporation
Sierra Nevada Corporation's idea for a deep space habitat involves 3 to 4 rocket launches for a long-duration habitat that will be constructed in space. Their prototype is based on the company's Dream Chaser cargo module.
The design includes a large inflatable fabric environment module, an environmental control and life support system (ECLSS), and a propulsion system.
Credit: NanoRacks
4. Nanoracks
A Texas-based company named NanoRacks is teaming up with Space Systems Loral and the United Launch Alliance to find out whether an existing launch vehicle's upper stage can be converted into a pressurized, habitable environment for space exploration. This low-cost approach to sending humans into deep space could be achieved with any type of rocket.
Credit: Bigelow Airspace
5. Bigelow Aerospace
Bigelow Airspace, a company based in North Las Vegas, Nevada, is developing a prototype of an expandable habitat called XBASE (Expandable Bigelow Advanced Station Enhancement). The 330-cubic meter (432 cubic yards) habitat will attach to the International Space Station and serve as a testing platform for the technology necessary to safely send humans into deep space.
Boeing, a U.S. aerospace giant based in Houston, Texas, is also developing a modular habitat system. The company plans to be able to operate the International Space Station for at least 15 years after the giant space laboratory's mission is scheduled to end in 2024.
The modular habitat system aims to demonstrate that humans can safely live and work in space for extended periods of time.
PARIS ─ A proposed space nation called Asgardia is now accepting applications for future citizens.
Leaders of the Asgardia project discussed the prospective space nation at a news conference in Paris Wednesday (Oct. 12). The leaders aim to launch Asgardia's first satellite in 2017 and say they would like to eventually have aspace station where some, but not all, of its planned 150 million (mostly Earth-dwelling) nationals would live and work.
Asgardia, named after the Norse gods' home of Asgard, will be a democracy with an emphasis on the freedom of the individual to develop space technologies, according to Igor Ashurbeyli, Asgardia project team leader and founder. People can now apply to be selected as one of the first 100,000 citizens through the nation’s website, asgardia.space. At the time of publication, the number of applicants has reached more than 84,000, according to the website. While Asgardia is not officially a nation (yet), prospective citizens must fulfil the legal requirements for Asgardia's United Nations application — for example, they must be from nations that allow multiple citizenships. [Incredible Technology: How to Build a Space Station Colony]
Asgardia would be a nation in space, in low-Earth orbit, or beyond, the project leaders said. The Asgardia project team said they think they need at least tens of thousands of citizens before they formally apply to the U.N. for recognition (although there are 14 countries in the world with fewer than 100,000 citizens).
But, not all Asgardians need to live in space, just as citizens of an Earth-bound nation may live outside that country's borders. And Asgardians could claim to be citizens of the new state for the time being, even if Asgardia is not formally recognized by the U.N., Ashurbeiyli told Space.com, through an interpreter following the Oct. 12 news conference. The team said they also want to crowdsource Asgardia's flag design and insignia.
The prospective nation is being established to "serve humanity" and for "peace in space," according to Ashurbeyli. A scientist by training, Ashurbeyli founded what is now a holding company, Socium Holding, which, according to the Asgardia website, has "more than 10,000 employees across 30 companies worldwide." According to his own website, the companies under Scoium Holding are "operating in many diverse sectors within the fields of science, technology and the social sphere."
"If you look at a nation’s population, statistically, 2 percent of the population are creative and productive and progressive, so we hope that looking at the population of Earth, 7.5 billion, we are hoping that 150 million would be those creative progressive people [who become Asgardians]," Ashurbeyli told Space.com.
He said that during citizenship selection, preference will be given to those applicants who develop and invest in space technologies. Ashurbeyli described Asgardia as a state not distracted by things like infrastructure, such as roads and hospitals. He called Asgardia "… a mirror reflection of Earth in space, but without the borders, boundaries, religious constraints and without the state lines; a digital mirror reflection without all those drawbacks. We prefer dialogue with people and companies, not states…[Asgardia] facilitates and inside that envelope they can create.”
Ram Jakhu, the director of McGill University’s Institute of Air and Space Law in Montreal, is the Asgardia project team legal expert. Jakhu told Space.com via Skype on Oct.12 that with the selected citizens, a government and an inhabited spacecraft to call territory, Asgardia would eventually fulfill three of the four elements the U.N. needs to consider a nation as a state. The fourth is recognition by U.N. member states.
During the same Skype call, Jakhu told Space.com that "if [Asgardia] does good things," then he doesn't think gaining recognition by existing U.N. member states will be a problem.
"The [Asgardia] vision is very, very clear: This nation will do things to help protect the Earth and, secondly, it will be for exclusively peaceful purposes and also allowing access to developing countries that don't have that [space access]. So, if that is done, recognition will not be a major problem. If these four elements [territory, people, government and recognition] are achieved it become a state and can apply for its membership of the United Nations."
No fees are required for the citizenship applications and new citizens will not be expected to contribute to the cost of the first satellite, to be called Asgardia, which the program team plans to launch in late 2017. Ashurbeyli would not provide any details about the satellite or what its function will be, but said it was "100 percent funded."
Ashurbeyli said Asgardia's first satellite would be launched from one of the spacefaring nations, but the launching state (the country that will pay for the launch) would be a country with an emerging economy that is not a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty. The project team views partnering with a developing country as a way to get countries involved that have not previously had access to space.
The Outer Space Treaty (OST) is an international agreement made during the Cold War in 1967, and assumes all activity in space will be led by a nation-state. Ashurbeiylj said he views the OST as restrictive, with its state actors-led approach. Ashurbeyli wants private individuals and companies to be able to act in space without direct government involvement. The OST also says that no nation-state can own territory in outer space and signatories are obliged to follow this. Partnering with a non-signatory nation would avoid such legal complications with regard to exploiting space resources, he said. Non-OST signatory African countries ─ Ethiopia and Kenya, in particular ─ are seen as potential candidates for the satellite's launching state.
The Asgardia project team also has plans for satellites that would protect the Earth from asteroids and space debris. Asgardia project team member, Joseph Pelton, who is the director emeritus of the Space & Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University, told Space.com after the news conference that the defense of the Earth would require different spacecraft.
For asteroid defense, Pelton envisages a flotilla of spacecraft that would be launched to meet the huge space rock years before it reached Earth and would fire lasers at the object’s surface. The laser fire would vaporize parts of the surface and the resulting jets of vapor would create enough force to slowly push the asteroid in another direction, avoiding Earth. Pelton expects Asgardia to work with Earth-based nation states to fund such a defense system.
For a defense against coronal mass ejections (powerful bursts of charged particles from the sun that can damage satellites or power grids), Pelton told Space.com: "I am working with Jim Green who is head of planetary sciences at NASA and we think it might be possible to deploy a system at L1, a million and a half kilometers [930,000 miles] out, that would have one to two Tesla magnetic fields that would be like an artificial Van Allen belt." Tesla is the unit of measurement for the strength of a magnetic field (not only the name of a car company), and the L1 orbit lies between the Earth and the moon. The Van Allen belts are a collection of charged particles, gathered in place by Earth’s magnetic field, which deflect harmful particles from the sun.
Pelton went on to describe a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space stationpositioned at L1, that uses solar power to create the magnetic force field to mitigate the impact of the coronal mass ejections. For these defense projects and other space technology developments, Ashurbeyli said he foresees crowdfunding as one potential source of investment capital.
Largest-Ever Destroyer Just Joined US Navy, and It Could Fire Railguns
Largest-Ever Destroyer Just Joined US Navy, and It Could Fire Railguns
USS Zumwalt in full dress for its commissioning in Baltimore
(Credit: US Navy)
IN BRIEF
The U.S. Navy has officially commissioned the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), the largest and most high-tech destroyer ever that packs a massive 78 MW of power.
The USS Zumwalt is a glimpse of the technology and sophistication we can expect to see in future warships.
The U.S. Navy’s largest destroyer ever built, the USS Zumwalt, carried out trial operations last year — and now the high-tech warship has officially entered the fleet. The ship is the most advanced in its class, and the name of its captain, James A. Kirk, makes the futuristic cruiser sound like something out of “Star Trek.”
“Today’s ceremony marked the culmination of over three years of dedication and hard work by some of the finest sailors I have had the pleasure to lead,” said Kirk, according to the U.S. Navy.
It took almost five years and over $3.5 billion to build the USS Zumwalt. The destroyer sports an all-electric propulsion system, a stealthy “tumblehome” design, a vertical missile launcher, and an advanced computerized system.
And it packs 78 MW of power — nearly as much electricity as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier — thanks to two 45.4-MW Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbines driving Curtiss-Wright electric generators and two 3.8-MW Rolls-Royce RR4500 turbine generators.
That’s enough energy to run the ship and power a small town at the same time, according to the U.S. Navy. This massive front of electricity could also fire the Navy’s next-gen beam weapons and railguns. We could one day see Zumwalt-class warships equipped with kinetically-charged railguns capable of launching projectiles as far as 201 km (125 miles) at Mach 6 speeds.
The destroyer’s large size can also support its missile launcher and aircraft simultaneously.
“The Zumwalt-class is much larger than today’s destroyers with a considerably larger flight deck – enough space to operate host Joint Strike Fighters, MV-22 Ospreys, and unmanned systems and a Vertical Launch System second to none,” said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, according to the U.S. Navy.
The USS Zumwalt will make its way to San Diego, where it will install its combat systems and receive final testing before engaging in fleet operations.
Watch the destroyer cruise along in Bath, Maine below.
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The Universe Has 10 Times More Galaxies Than Scientists Thought
The Universe Has 10 Times More Galaxies Than Scientists Thought
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
More than a trillion galaxies are lurking in the depths of space, a new census of galaxies in the observable universe has found — 10 times more galaxies than were previously thought to exist.
An international team of astronomers used deep-space images and other data from the Hubble Space Telescope to create a 3D map of the known universe, which contains about 100 to 200 billion galaxies. In particular, they relied on Hubble's Deep Field images, which revealed the most distant galaxies ever seen with a telescope. [Video: Our Universe Has Trillions of Galaxies, Hubble Study]
Then, the researchers incorporated new mathematical models to calculate where other galaxies that have not yet been imaged by a telescope might exist. For the numbers to add up, the universe needs at least 10 times more galaxies than those already known to exist. But these unknown galaxies are likely either too faint or too far away to be seen with today's telescopes.
"It boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied," Christopher Conselice, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., who led the study, said in a statement. "Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we observe these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes.”
Looking far out into deep space also means looking back in time, because light takes a long time to travel across cosmic distances. During the study, Conselice and his team looked at parts of the universe up to 13 billion light-years away. Looking this far allowed the researchers to see partial snapshots of the evolution of the universe since 13 billion years ago, or less than 100 million years after the Big Bang.
They discovered that the early universe contained even more galaxies than it does today. Those distant galaxies were small and faint dwarf galaxies, they found. As the universe evolves, such galaxies merge together to form larger galaxies.
In a separate statement, Conselice said that the results are "very surprising as we know that, over the 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution since the Big Bang, galaxies have been growing through star formation and mergers with other galaxies. Finding more galaxies in the past implies that significant evolution must have occurred to reduce their number through extensive merging of systems."
The Universe Has 10 Times More Galaxies Than Scientists Thought
The Universe Has 10 Times More Galaxies Than Scientists Thought
By Hanneke Weitering, Staff Writer-Producer
More than a trillion galaxies are lurking in the depths of space, a new census of galaxies in the observable universe has found — 10 times more galaxies than were previously thought to exist.
An international team of astronomers used deep-space images and other data from the Hubble Space Telescope to create a 3D map of the known universe, which contains about 100 to 200 billion galaxies. In particular, they relied on Hubble's Deep Field images, which revealed the most distant galaxies ever seen with a telescope. [Video: Our Universe Has Trillions of Galaxies, Hubble Study]
Then, the researchers incorporated new mathematical models to calculate where other galaxies that have not yet been imaged by a telescope might exist. For the numbers to add up, the universe needs at least 10 times more galaxies than those already known to exist. But these unknown galaxies are likely either too faint or too far away to be seen with today's telescopes.
"It boggles the mind that over 90 percent of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied," Christopher Conselice, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., who led the study, said in a statement. "Who knows what interesting properties we will find when we observe these galaxies with the next generation of telescopes.”
Looking far out into deep space also means looking back in time, because light takes a long time to travel across cosmic distances. During the study, Conselice and his team looked at parts of the universe up to 13 billion light-years away. Looking this far allowed the researchers to see partial snapshots of the evolution of the universe since 13 billion years ago, or less than 100 million years after the Big Bang.
They discovered that the early universe contained even more galaxies than it does today. Those distant galaxies were small and faint dwarf galaxies, they found. As the universe evolves, such galaxies merge together to form larger galaxies.
In a separate statement, Conselice said that the results are "very surprising as we know that, over the 13.7 billion years of cosmic evolution since the Big Bang, galaxies have been growing through star formation and mergers with other galaxies. Finding more galaxies in the past implies that significant evolution must have occurred to reduce their number through extensive merging of systems."
Ancient Meteorite Impact Rained Debris On US East Coast
Ancient Meteorite Impact Rained Debris On US East Coast
By Calla Cofield, Space.com Staff Writer
A meteorite may have hit the surface of the Earth about 56 million years ago, raining debris for hundreds of miles across the Atlantic Ocean and what is now the East Coast of the U.S.
Evidence of the impact appeared in the form of tiny, roughly spherical bits of glass that were found buried in ancient layers of Earth in New Jersey and off the coast of Florida. A falling meteorite can hit the Earth with an incredible amount of energy, and vaporize or melt the surrounding water, rock and soil. The superheating can form new physical structures, like glass.
The pellets were found in four separate locations, some of them separated by more than to 1,000 kilometers (621miles), but they appear to be from the same impact event, according a new study announcing the discovery, published in the Oct. 13 issue of the journal Science. It is not yet known how big the meteorite was, or where it hit the Earth, the authors of the study said.
A single impact
Morgan Schaller, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, was looking for biological fossils from a period in Earth's history known as the Paleocene-Eocene boundary (or the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), which took place about 55 million years ago. While searching for small, white shells, he happened to spot one of the black glass spheroids, also known as microtektites or microkrystites, according to a statement from Rensselaer.
"It was an accident," Schaller, who co-authored the new study, told Space.com.
That original core sample came from a site in New Jersey. Schaller and his colleagues looked at two other core samples — another in New Jersey, and a second sample taken from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, more than 620 miles (1,000 km) away. A fourth sample was later taken from another site in New Jersey to confirm that the other samples had not been contaminated or potentially altered by underground drilling; the microtektites were found there as well, according to the paper. [When Space Attacks: The 6 Craziest Meteor Impacts]
During the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, Earth experienced a period of intense global warming. While some evidence has suggested that volcanic activity may have been responsible for the global heating, the new paper explains that the newly discovered microtektites could not have been formed by volcanic activity. For one, the microtektites contain high-temperature glass. A terrestrial volcano cannot produce temperatures and conditions required to produce high-temperature glass, Schaller told Space.com, but meteorite impacts can.
In addition, the scientists found "shocked quartz" in the microtektites. Quartz has a very organized molecular structure, and a "shocked" grain shows signs of intense physical pressure that has altered what is normally an orderly molecular arrangement. Those quartz grains were not liquefied by the impact, the researchers said, but were mixed with the liquid material and can be found essentially petrified in the microtektites. Shocked quartz does not form from volcanic activity, Schaller said.
Those characteristics indicate that there was a meteorite strike, but they also show that all of the microtektites found in the four different sites formed from the same event, Schaller said. All four locations contain microtektites with high-temperature glass and with shocked quartz, and they also have the same chemistry, he said, suggesting that the material they formed from originated in the same place.
"Wherever the projectile hits, the material it hits has a unique chemistry to begin with," Schaller said. That material could be a dense rock found in the Appalachian Mountains or carbonate platforms at the bottom of the ocean. "All that stuff's going to be [vaporized or melted] and flung up in [the] air, and have very little time to mix with one another. So you're going to find a range of chemistries [in the microtektites] that are all kind of consistent with different mixes of the material that was hit."
The impact crater
Even though the microtektites share chemistries, that doesn't necessarily reveal where they originated. Schaller said the best way to find the impact site will likely be by looking for microtektites from this same impact in more locations. In theory, the microtektites would be more abundant and larger the closer they are to the impact site.
"Right now, all we can say is that it's either small and close by, or big and far away," Schaller said. But he added that this approach doesn't always reveal an impact site — ejecta, or material flung from volcanoes, have been found "all over the globe" from what's known as the Australasian Impact, but scientists have not been able to find the impact crater.
To find more microtektites from the newly discovered impact, the team will have to study layers of Earth from areas that were underwater when the impact took place, Schaller said, because the microtektites are quickly destroyed when they're on the surface of the Earth and exposed to weather.
"I think I'd compare their preservation potential to a scoop of ice cream," he said. "But they do get preserved in ocean sediment."
(The three New Jersey sites where the team took samples would have been under water 56 million years ago).
The association of the impact with the onset of the Paleocene-Eocene boundary is "nothing short of remarkable," Schaller said in a statement from Rensselaer. He told Space.com that because the microtektites can be radiometrically dated, they offer a new milestone in the Earth's history that could help scientists date layers of Earth in the future. The goal of studying this particular period in Earth's history, he said, is to understand what happens to the planet when global temperatures rise.
Reverse Saturn: Bizarre Planet's Giant Rings Spin the Wrong Way
Reverse Saturn: Bizarre Planet's Giant Rings Spin the Wrong Way
By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor
A strange and colossal ring system around an alien planet is apparently stuck in reverse, circling opposite to the planet's own orbit around its parent star. While the arrangement appears unstable, new calculations show the rings could remain for at least 100,000 years.
These rings could account for bizarre eclipse behavior seen in 2007 for this star, called J1407, researchers on the new study suggested. Back then, astronomers observed an eclipse of the star last for several weeks, varying rapidly in brightness over the course of minutes. In 2015, the team suggestedthat there could be a planet orbiting this star with rings over a hundred times larger than the rings of Saturn.
In the new simulations conducted this year, the team calculated whether the planet could hang on to its ring system even as the gravitational effect of the star pulls on the rings. Because of the planet's highly elliptical orbit, the star's tug could potentially destabilize the rings when the planet approached closer, the researchers said. [The Strangest Alien Planets We Know (Gallery)]
According to the simulations, the system can stay stable for more than 10,000 orbits lasting 11 years each, with one stipulation, said lead author Steven Rieder, a postdoctoral fellow at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Japan.
"The system is only stable when the rings rotate opposite to how the planet orbits the star," Rieder said in a statement. "It might be far-fetched, massive rings that rotate in opposite direction," he added, "but we now have calculated that a 'normal' ring system cannot survive." More usually, a planet's rings circle in the same direction as the planet is traveling, and the planet orbits in the same direction as the star turns.
It's also possible that the stellar eclipses were created by a free-floating object passing between Earth and the star, but this would be true only if that object's velocity as measured in the observations was not correct, Rieder said. He added that this would be a strange explanation, as the measurements the team obtained are "very accurate."
The researchers said they next plan to examine how the ring structure was created, and how it evolves. A paper based on the research will appear shortly in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Sending Humans to Mars: 8 Steps to Red Planet Colonization
Sending Humans to Mars: 8 Steps to Red Planet Colonization
By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer
After the red dust settles from President Barack Obama's reiteration of his ambitious goal to have humans reach Mars in the next two to three decades, the next question becomes: What will it take to get there?
"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time," Obama wrote in an op-ed on CNN.com yesterday (Oct. 11).
NASA has laid out detailed plans for the journey to Mars. It's feasible to get there by the 2030s — if that deadline is stretched out to the last year of the decade, said John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. [5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions]
Other experts say Obama's stated timeline is not bold enough.
"We are far closer today to sending humans to Mars than we were to sending men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later," said Robert Zubrin, president of nonprofit organization The Mars Society and the author of "The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet," (Free Press, 2011). The next president should announce an ambitious goal to get to Mars by the end of the second term, or by 2024, Zubrin said. Otherwise, the momentum for the mission could be lost, and space exploration could be delayed further, he added. [SpaceX to Mars: Awe-Inspiring Video Shows Vision for Red Planet Exploration]
Either way, before astronauts start packing their spacesuits and intergalactic playlists, scientists have to sort out a few problems.
Step 1: Build American technology to get astronauts to space
Currently, the United States relies on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the International Space Station. That is set to change, as private spaceflight companies have taken on the challenge of building a system to launch humans and cargo spaceward: Elon Musk's SpaceX is working on the Dragon robotic launch vehicles, while Boeing is building its CST-100, Logsdon said. Musk has also said that SpaceX's robotic launch vehicle could head off to Mars as soon as 2018. (A launch vehicle is a rocket-powered vehicle designed to send spacecraft or satellites into space.)
Step 2: Build bigger spacecraft
A Mars voyage requires a spacecraft that can carry multiple people, along with all the supplies for a three-year round-trip, including potential cargo items, said Bret Drake, an engineering specialist with Los Angeles-based Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit organization that researches launch vehicles, satellite systems, ground control systems and space technology for the federal government.
"To sustain a crew all the way to Mars means being able to launch rather heavy payloads, because you have to have the fuel and supplies for the round-trip," added Logsdon. "And there's no 7-Eleven on Mars where you can stock up to come home," he told Live Science.
One alternative is to create a giant spacecraft; another is to develop multiple smaller modules that can be launched separately into orbit and then assembled in space, Logsdon said. (Some of these modules could hold people while others could hold supplies, for instance).
Either way, the basic technology is there, Zubrin said. "It has to be larger than any we've built before," he said. Even so, "there isn't new science here."
Currently, Lockheed Martin is developing a four-person spacecraft called the Orion, which will sit atop the heavy-lift launch system, called the Space Launch System (SLS), that NASA is developing to take people into deep space. Orion already completed one successful test flight on Dec. 5, 2014, and is set to take a trip around the moon in 2018.
Step 3: Build bigger rockets
Launching a bigger spacecraft into deep space requires bigger rockets on any launch vehicles used. NASA plans to conduct a second test of what will be the world's largest rocket, which will be part of the SLS, sometime in 2021, according to NASA. SpaceX is also developing the Falcon Heavy rocket, which is designed to launch heavier payloads, including people, into space.
Step 4: Stick the landing
After people enter Mars' orbit, they need to land on the Red Planet. With past missions, friction, thermal effects and parachutes could provide the deceleration needed to land. But a parachute won't have enough stopping power for such heavy crafts.
However, scientists are making progress on that front.
For instance, SpaceX has shown that high-speed crafts can decelerate using supersonic retropropulsion, which involves firing engines while landing, Drake said. "We now have a feasible technical solution for how to get large vehicles to the surface of Mars," Drake said.
Step 5: Figure out long-term habitation on a space station
Astronauts have logged many weeks and months on the International Space Station (ISS), demonstrating the feasibility of long-term habitation systems, such as those that provide safe water, process waste, and filter air in space. Similar systems could be used for a stay on Mars, experts say.
The difference, however, is that the ISS is in low Earth orbit, just a few hours' trip to the home planet. If anything breaks, Earth can still come to the rescue. That won't be possible on Mars, which is at least a six- to nine-month journey, even when the planets are at their closest point to each other.
"One key advancement for the life-support system is increasing the reliability of the systems," Drake said. "For Mars missions, there are no quick-abort modes back to Earth, nor ground-up resupply if systems fail. So the life-support systems need to be reliable, and maintainable by the crew, for long periods of time — many years," Drake said.
Step 6: Avoid deadly cosmic radiation
Astronauts going on a Mars mission will need protection from two forms of radiation: solar proton events (or solar flares) and galactic cosmic radiation.
The first "can be mitigated by proper vehicle design, along with a dedicated storm shelter, such as a water wall made from the life-support system water supply," Drake said. (This would involve literally lining the walls with the water used for drinking and showering.)
Shielding people from galactic cosmic radiation is trickier. In free space, cosmic radiation levels are extremely high. However, the Mars ScienceLaboratory, which landed on the Martian surface aboard the rover Curiosity, has measured cosmic radiation levels and showed that radiation exposure at the surface of the red planet is similar to levels seen aboard the ISS, Drake said. Because the ISS is located in low Earth orbit, it is below the two doughnut-shaped radiation belts called Earth's Van Allen belts, which block from Earth many of the charged particles spewed from the sun, as well as from cosmic rays, Logsdon said.
One strategy may be to make the trip through free space very quickly, minimizing the exposure to the area with the highest radiation, Drake said.
"It's safer to be on the surface of Mars than free space," Drake said.
Step 7: Get to the moon
Before making the three-year round-trip to Mars, many of these long-term space systems will be tested in cislunar orbit, according to NASA's timeline of the journey to Mars. Sometime between 2018 and 2030, NASA plans to send crewed missions on spacewalks in the region of space near the moon. Some of these missions could last a year, in preparation for the epic voyage to Mars.
The plans also include a trip to redirect and sample material from an asteroid.
This will provide an opportunity to test out all of the elements of the Mars mission, while not being too far from Earth in case something goes wrong, Logsdon said.
Step 8: Build housing on Mars
Once people have taken the effort to get to Mars, they won't just turn around. The outbound voyage would take six to nine months, but explorers can't return until Mars and Earth are in good alignment relative to the sun, which could take 14 months, Logsdon said. (The return trip will be much shorter if the Earth and Mars are on the same side of the sun, rather than on opposite sides.)
In a way, Mars pioneers would be similar to "the explorers of the 16th century that went on ships across the ocean and were gone from their home country for a long time," Logsdon said.
Given that, it makes sense to make some kind of permanent structure, Logsdon said.
"You need, on the Martian surface, some sort of habitat," Logdson said. "You're not going to live inside a spacesuit all the time. Though it seems far-fetched, the movie "The Martian" showed a relatively realistic depiction of a potential Mars living setup, he added.
Extreme microbes that live in hostile places on Earth may feed off of cosmic rays that zip through space, according to a study of a bizarre bacterium thriving deep in a dark gold mine.
If life exists on other planets such as Mars, it too could be gobbling upcosmic rays in order to survive, the new study suggests.
"When you have radiation penetrating deep below the surface, where there might be water on Mars or [Jupiter's moon] Europa, then it could start chemical reactions that life could use," said study author Dimitra Atri, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Seattle. Organisms that live off of galactic cosmic rays could even dwell on rogue planets that are not bound to any star and instead drift throughout interstellar space, Atri added. [Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures]
Where there's no light
Life on Earth relies largely on energy from the sun. Light drivesphotosynthesis, which, in turn, supplies the nutrients that most organisms use, either directly or indirectly, in order to survive. Still, if light is not available, life can find other sources of energy, such as heat, or chemical energy, previous research has found.
Prior work has even found that life-forms can live off the ionizing radiation — which has enough energy to ionize or charge atoms — from radioactive materials. For instance, the bacteriumCandidatus Desulforudis audaxviator, found about 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) deep in a South African gold mine, lives off the energy from radioactive isotopes of uranium, thorium and potassium in the rocks there. Specifically, ionizing radiation from these isotopes breaks down water in the area into hydrogen gas, which the bacterium can use as fuel, and helps to generate other biologically useful molecules.
"Most research on ionizing radiation concerns its potentially harmful effects, such as damage to DNA," Atri told Live Science. "But a bacterium that is cut off completely from sunlight and the rest of the biosphere can survive completely off of ionizing radiation."
Atri investigates galactic cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles, mostly protons, that careen across space from beyond the solar system. After he read about radiation-loving Ca. D. audaxviator, he began to wonder if other microbes could live off of energy from galactic cosmic rays as well.
Cosmic rays and extreme life
Galactic cosmic rays possess much higher energy than other sources of radiation on Earth. When they hit the atmosphere or surface of a planet, they generate a cascade of particles — such as electrons, positrons and neutrons — as well as dangerous gamma-rays. "Galactic cosmic rays are everywhere, and they have so much energy, they can penetrate even below the surfaces of planets," Atri said.
Using computer simulations, Atri found that galactic cosmic rays, though rare, could provide a steady flow of energy for life underground; this energy was comparable to that emitted by radioactive substances on Earth.
The energy flow could extend to potential life on other planets as well, he said.
Atri suggested that one way to see if this concept might actually help sustain life would be to conduct a lab experiment that exposed the bacterium Ca. D. audaxviator to the kind of particles that galactic cosmic rays generate when they hit the atmospheres or surfaces of planets.
Atri detailed his findings online Oct. 5 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Video – Plans for first space nation ‘Asgardia in Space’ revealed , citizenship applications opened
Video – Plans for first space nation ‘Asgardia in Space’ revealed , citizenship applications opened
Get ready to pack your bags because there’s a new nation in town, or rather in space. Scientists have unveiled plans for “Asgardia”, a floating nation and defender of the Earth with room for 100,000 citizens.
Dr Igor Ashurbeyli of the Aerospace International Research Center announced the plans in Paris, saying Asgardia aims to “flourish free from the tight restrictions of state control that currently exist.” He announced the plans on the same day he became chairman of UNESCO’s Science of Space committee.
Ashurbeyli said their mission is to act as guardians of the Earth, and the “nation” would first get to work building a protective shield to protect Earth from debris, asteroids and coronal mass ejections from the sun.
Currently all space programs, including commercial, must be supervised and authorised by a government on Earth. When applications for Asgardian citizenship goes above 100,000 they can apply to the UN for the status of state, according to Ashurbeyli.
An online registration form is welcoming applications for citizenship, with the first 100,000 qualifying for automatic citizenship. No word yet on how people can become citizens in the future, or whether there’ll be a wall built between Asgardia and Earth.
Named after the city in the sky ruled by Odin in Norse mythology, Asgardia is the work of a team of scientists and legal experts who claim it will someday become a member of the United Nations with its own flag and national anthem.
Asgardia gets underway in late 2017, when the team plan to launch a satellite into a low-Earth orbit. Until then we’ll have to stay here on boring old Earth.
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Video – Plans for first space nation ‘Asgardia in Space’ revealed , citizenship applications opened
Video – Plans for first space nation ‘Asgardia in Space’ revealed , citizenship applications opened
Get ready to pack your bags because there’s a new nation in town, or rather in space. Scientists have unveiled plans for “Asgardia”, a floating nation and defender of the Earth with room for 100,000 citizens.
Dr Igor Ashurbeyli of the Aerospace International Research Center announced the plans in Paris, saying Asgardia aims to “flourish free from the tight restrictions of state control that currently exist.” He announced the plans on the same day he became chairman of UNESCO’s Science of Space committee.
Ashurbeyli said their mission is to act as guardians of the Earth, and the “nation” would first get to work building a protective shield to protect Earth from debris, asteroids and coronal mass ejections from the sun.
Currently all space programs, including commercial, must be supervised and authorised by a government on Earth. When applications for Asgardian citizenship goes above 100,000 they can apply to the UN for the status of state, according to Ashurbeyli.
An online registration form is welcoming applications for citizenship, with the first 100,000 qualifying for automatic citizenship. No word yet on how people can become citizens in the future, or whether there’ll be a wall built between Asgardia and Earth.
Named after the city in the sky ruled by Odin in Norse mythology, Asgardia is the work of a team of scientists and legal experts who claim it will someday become a member of the United Nations with its own flag and national anthem.
Asgardia gets underway in late 2017, when the team plan to launch a satellite into a low-Earth orbit. Until then we’ll have to stay here on boring old Earth.
A Florida witness at Fernandina Beach recalled a 2006 encounter with an “intelligent creature” in the dark at his home, according to testimony in Case 79026 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
When the witness stepped out of his car, he noticed a ‘cloaked creature’ walking around the corner of the house from the backyard. Pictured: Fernandina Beach, FL.
(Credit: Google)
The witness had just pulled into his driveway about 9 p.m. during September 2006 when the incident began.
“I encountered an unknown, intelligent creature,” the witness stated.“It was very dark out with no cars or street lights nearby.”
The witness stopped his car and turned it off, then opened his door and stood up to exit the vehicle.
“As I stood up, I saw something that is difficult to describe. With the car door still open, I saw what looked like some kind of cloaked creature walking around the corner of the house from the backyard. It was hard to see. It looked like the shadow of a human-sized creature. It was totally black and moved like a person walking upright.”
There was a distortion associated with the creature.
“It blocked out what was behind it and I could really only see the distortion it caused. The distortion had wavy edges as if it was surrounded by energy. I could make out its head and shoulders, but only in vague form.”
The creature looked directly at the witness. Pictured: Fernandina Beach, FL.
(Credit: Google)
The witness saw the creature move.
“The creature took several steps and at the instant that I thought to myself, ‘What is that?’ – it stopped dead in its tracks and appeared to look right at me. At this time, I was scared to death that this creature had noticed me and was looking right at me. After a few seconds of looking at each other, the creature turned and walked back around behind the house and I never saw it again. The entire encounter lasted about 20 seconds.”
The witness recalled stories that a family member told.
“When I saw this I thought for many years it was a ghost or demon as my grandmother often told stories of seeing ghosts. Only recently have I begun to think it was an intelligent creature with a technology that was inexplicable.”
The witness was unable to go inside his home alone that evening.
“After the encounter I got back into my car and drove to my roommate’s work and waited for him to get off work and come home with me. This was the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had. This is the second unknown encounter I’ve had. I reported to MUFON a UFO sighting I had around 1996. For years I believed that encounters like these were just crazy people. I have been forced over the years to believe that we are clearly not alone and not the smartest or most technologically advance creatures on this planet and beyond.”
The creature then backtracked, and went back the same it had come. Pictured: Fernandina Beach, FL.
(Credit: Google)
Fernandina Beach is a city in Nassau County, population 11,487. MUFON Florida State Section Director Thomas Branham closed this case as an Unknown.
“The Field Investigator has only the statement made by the witness and cannot prove or disprove the sighting of a cloaked, black, human like figure at night,” Branham stated in his report. “Although there may be a simple explanation of this occurrence, the Field Investigator would only be making an assumption. Under these circumstances the Field Investigator feels the best conclusion would be Unknown Other.”
Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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