Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
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...
09-01-2017
UFOs making maneuvers over Melbourne, Australia 31-Dec-2016
UFOs making maneuvers over Melbourne, Australia 31-Dec-2016
Here’s one new footage of a fast unidentified flying objects making maneuvers in the sky above Melbourne in Australia. This was filmed with a night vision camera on 31st December 2016.
UFOs were seen flying in and out of 'a major underwater alien base' near Guantanamo Bay almost 50 years ago, according to bizarre claims of a former US Marine.
The ex-Marine has come forward to reveal what he and his comrades experienced in 1968 to 1969 while station at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base.
Although the dates he put down 'are a shot in the dark', he recalls 'heavy UFO traffic over and around the base' that were '50 feet to 100 feet across'.
Scroll down for video
An ex-Marine has come forward to reveal what he and his comrades experienced in 1968 to 1969 while station at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base (pictured). Although the dates he put down 'are a shot in the dark', he recalls 'heavy UFO traffic over and around the base' that were '50 feet to 100 feet across'
The interview was published by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which is said to be the 'largest UFO sightings documenting and investigation organization in the world', reports the Inquisitr.
The interview describes many nights of sightings that he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and although they talked about the activity on base they were forbidden to discuss it in public.
'All of us Marines were amazed at the amount of UFO activity over and around this base,' the witness said.
'Virtually every night UFOs were flying overhead with altitudes of less than 300 feet.'
The Marine, whose name remains anonymous, was given orders to monitor the fence line when he spotted the Martian vehicles.
The testimony was filed as Case 74794 in the archives of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON. The Marine remembers seeing a UFO that looked like a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light' quietly hovering over their heads. Most of the sightings were near the fence line of the base
He described the UFOs being about 50 feet to 100 feet cross, but were not the flashy saucers shown in the movies.
'Most of these UFOs were approximately 50 to 100 feet across, but to the naked eye came off as a dull, hazy hull with a small red light trailing behind it,' he said.
UFOs were seen flying in and out of 'a major underwater alien base' near Guantanamo Bay, according to bizarre claims of a former US Marine.
'When I stood guard duty on the south side of the base, I witnessed on many, many nights UFOs landing and taking off out of the ocean.'
'There were large blue lights moving around after their landing in the ocean and then slowly dimming down as they obviously descended deeper.'
While monitoring his post, he witnessed several UFOs flying around the area night after night – 'landing and taking off out of the ocean', he explained to investigators.
WHAT HAPPENED DURING ONE OF THE MANY UFO SIGHTINGS?
The witness recalled one event that he said was 'most exciting', which he observed while standing guard at the main gate of the base. He remembers seeing the UFO that looked like a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light' quietly hovering over their heads
'It was approximately 7p.m. (dark) when I stepped out of the guard shack and looked across the fence at the deserted Cuban guard house when something caught my eye,' the former Marine said.
'Behind the Cuban guard shack near the ground was a huge white cloud with a blue/white, baby blue pulsating light in the middle of it.'
Bewildered by the sighting, he asked of his comrades what they were seeing as it passed over the shack in their direction.
He remembers seeing the UFO that looked like a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light' quietly hovering over their heads.
A few minutes later the silence was broken by someone yelling 'get the hell out of there'.
A sergeant was yelling from the observation tower, ordering them to vacate the area.
The Marine and other soldier walked towards the barracks just 200 feet away, which allowed them to observe the action from a safe distance.
They saw Intelligence officers pull up to the scene with what looked like a film crew that recorded the alien vehicle while it hovered for about three hours before shooting off into the west.
'The UFO traveled about quarter of a mile, stopped for a moment, then like a bullet, shot straight up in the air until it disappeared,' he said.
After watching the ships take off and land, he assumed there had to be a major underwater UFO base in the Guantanamo Bay.
The witness recalled one event that he said was 'most exciting', which he observed while standing guard at the main gate of the base, reports Open Minds.
Around 7 pm, the former Marine stepped out of the guardhouse, looked over the fence at an empty guardhouse on the other side of the base and saw an enormous white cloud with blue flashing lights near the ground.
U.S. Marines on guard at Guantanamo base in Cuba (pictured), the area where the former Marine witnessed countless UFOs landing on the bay and taking off. He described the UFOs being about 50 feet to 100 feet cross, dull and hazy with a single red light that trailed behind them and blue lights flashed as they landed on the ocean
'It was approximately 7p.m. (dark) when I stepped out of the guard shack and looked across the fence at the deserted Cuban guard house when something caught my eye,' the former Marine said.
'Behind the Cuban guard shack near the ground was a huge white cloud with a blue/white, baby blue pulsating light in the middle of it.'
Bewildered by the sighting, he asked of his comrades what they were seeing as it passed over the shack in their direction.
'ALIENS STOPPED NUCLEAR WAR ON EARTH' SAYS FORMER ASTRONAUT
Aliens came to Earth to stop a nuclear war between America and Russia, according the bizarre claim of a former astronaut.
Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, says high-ranking military officials witnessed alien ships during weapons tests throughout the 1940s.
The UFOs, he says, were spotted hovering over the world's first nuclear weapons test which took place on July 16, 1945 in the desolate White Sands deserts of New Mexico.
The Nasa veteran has regularly spoken about his belief in aliens ever since he landed on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
'White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons - and that's what the extra-terrestrials were interested in,' the 84-year-old Texan told Mirror Online.
NASA contractor explains UFO NASA 'conspiracy'
'They wanted to know about our military capabilities.
'My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth.'
Dr Mitchell says stories from people who manned missile bases during the 20th Century back up his claims.
'Other officers from bases on the Pacific coast told me their [test] missiles were frequently shot down by alien spacecraft,' he said.
He previously said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.
He claimed our technology is 'not nearly as sophisticated' as theirs and 'had they been hostile', he warned 'we would be been gone by now'.
He remembers seeing the UFO that looked like a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light' quietly hovering over their heads.
A few minutes later the silence was broken by someone yelling 'get the hell out of there'.
A sergeant was yelling from the observation tower, ordering them to vacate the area.
The Marine and other soldier walked towards the barracks just 200 feet away, which allowed them to observe the action from a safe distance.
An air view of the Guantanamo US Naval base (pictured) during the 1960s, which is the same time when the ex-Marine swears that 'virtually every night UFOs were flying overhead with altitudes of less than 300 feet'. The Marine, whose remains anonymous, was given orders to monitor the fence line when he spotted the UFOs
They saw Intelligence officers pull up to the scene with what looked like a film crew that recorded the alien vehicle while it hovered for about three hours before shooting off into the west.
'The UFO traveled about quarter of a mile, stopped for a moment, then like a bullet, shot straight up in the air until it disappeared,' he said.
'I would love to go back there just to see if the UFOs are still showing up.'
THINK YOU'VE BEEN ABDUCTED BY ALIENS? IT MAY BE SLEEP PARALYSIS
Agents Mulder and Scully may have said 'the truth is out there' in the X Files, but it may instead be buried inside the brains of people who claim they have been abducted by aliens.
Those who believe they have had a close encounter of the so-called 'fourth kind' may suffer from false memories or sleep paralysis, a psychologist has claimed.
A rare form of the condition, which can involve hallucinations or the feeling of being dragged out of bed, may explain 'alien abductions' that people sincerely believe happened but can't remember.
Writing for The Psychologist, Christopher C French, of Goldsmiths, the University of London, who specialises in the psychology of paranormal belief and experiences, said there are plausible explanations for why people 'see' flying saucers and think they have been abducted.
He noted that most of the people making these claims are clinically sane, but their belief in life in outer space may influence what they see or feel in strange situations.
'The dates that I have put down is a shot in the dark because that was 50 years ago.'
Last year, a former Nasa employee came forward about the agency covering up a series of UFO sightings that they code named 'Santa Claus'.
Donna Hare claims she was told by numerous sources, which she does not name, about three UFOs that landed shortly after one of the moon landings and Nasa airbrushing UFOs out of satellite pictures, reportedExpress.
The deepest X-ray image ever taken took more than 7 million seconds of observing time.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B.Luo et al.
Hubble has its iconic deep field filled to the brim with galaxies. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has one of its own. In an area just 60 percent the size of the full moon, it peered into an area of ancient galaxies and their massive black holes. Bright, energetic, explosive events hide in this area.
Over 81 days, Chandra looked at 1,055 black holes in this small region, able to see energetic events caused by black holes at the center of galaxies visible only in x-rays. It marks, to date, the best survey of active galactic nuclei in the universe, and creates an even bigger estimate: hiding behind city lights and small backyard telescopes, there are 1 billion active galaxies in the night sky somewhere (though many of those are out of view to even the best ground-based telescopes.)
“The density of these black holes is the deepest we’ve ever seen in the sky,” W. Niel Brandt, the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, said in a press conference at the 229th gathering of the American Astronomical Society. A pre-print of the findings is available here.
But all of the information contained in this area would be nothing without a technique often utilized by backyard astronomers.
“We’ve had to use a bit of a trick to get there, and the trick we use is stacking,” Brandt said.
Stacking involves taking multiple exposures of an object and using these individual frames to build a better composite image. While one exposure may only show a certain amount of light from an energetic event, a progressive number of exposures can build a bigger and brighter pictures. Because events like this move on slow timescales (from a human observer point of view) stacking helps bring clarity to the data.
In addition to Chandra data, archival data from Hubble helped complete the pictures of these active galactic nuclei.
While the dataset, termed the Chandra Deep Field-South, has some of the best resolution of distant supermassive black holes ever, it only reaches a redshift of 10. The galaxies range in age from 3.5 billion to 12.5 billion years old, leaving a little over a billion years of galaxies yet uncharacterized in an area / time called the Epoch of Reionization because these early galaxies ignited neutral hydrogen in the universe and cleared away the opacity it caused, representing the first galaxies.
While the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to see some of these galaxies, a proposed mission called LYNX, a succesor to Chandra, would bring even more clarity to the early universe. It might help determine how supermassive black holes form and attract enough matter to form a galaxy. There are two competing schools of thought: that a small seed grows into a massive one, or that galaxies form from direct collapse black holes, where a massive cloud of gas creates a gravitational well before it can form into a star.
“It would give us real prospects of detecting these seeds individually,” Brandt said.
If LYNX is approved, one thing is certain: stacking will be the key to unlocking the discoveries.
The Crab Nebula is surrounded by synchrotron emission in the surrounding pulsar wind nebula.
WikiMedia Commons
A recent study on intermittent pulsars at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico done by a team of radio astronomers at Jodrell Bank in the UK, led by Professor Andrew Lyne of the University of Manchester, discovered two pulsars putting on a “cosmic vanishing act.”
Pulsars are highly magnetized neutron stars that spin very quickly, emitting narrow beams of electromagnetic radiation. When these beams sweep across the Earth, like the light from a lighthouse, we detect a pulsar.
The intermittent pulsars, which are a type of pulsar not commonly observed, switch between emitting as they usually would and then not producing any radio waves at all.
“They switch instantaneously between the states,” said Lyne in a press release. “They’re ON and then they’re gone, disappearing without any apparent warning.”
The team used a 7-beam receiver in their study to do a usual pulsar search, which they called the Pulsar Arecibo L-Band Feed Array (PALFA) Survey.
Pulsar PSR J1929+1357 was discovered in September of 2012 due to its very bright pulse emissions, but wasn’t confirmed as a pulsar until February 2013 after follow-up observations at Jodrell Bank.
“During the next 9 months it was observed no fewer than 650 times – 100 hours,” said Professor Benjamin Stappers of the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysicas and co-author on the paper. “It was ON on only five occasions – just 0.8 percent of the time.”
During the study, the team also discovered that the pulsar’s rotational slow-down rate is about 80 percent slower when it’s in the OFF period. They believe this is due to a lack of charged particle emission (for a reason still unknown) during the OFF state that causes a decreased spin-down rate.
Dr. Victoria Kaspi of McGill University in Canada and the principal investigator on the PALFA project said there may be more of these disappearing pulsars than regular ones and they may “redefine what we think of as normal.”
Other researches are still unsure about the disappearing pulsars.
“The explanation of the ON-OFF behavior remains a puzzle,” says Dr. Andrew Seymore, a USRA postdoc at Arecibo. “It indicates that the pulsar environment is changing, but just what those changes entail is open to debate.”
The pulsar community is not agreeing yet about the ON-OFF mechanism, but Lyne is still hopeful that more studies on PSR J1929+1357 will produce more answers on the spin-down phenomenon and the pulsar emission mechanism.
Artist’s concept of NASA’s newest Discovery Program missions. Lucy (left) will visit six of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids; Psyche (right) is the first mission to the unique “metal world” of main belt asteroid 16 Psyche.
SwRI and SSL/Peter Rubin
Our modern-day solar system is a result billions of years in the making. Unfortunately, rewinding time to witness the formation of the solar system is out of the question. To determine our solar system’s origins, astronomers instead study “planetary leftovers” for clues about the makeup of the original solar nebula around our infant Sun. NASA’s newest Discovery-class missions, Lucy and Psyche, will provide valuable insight into the past lives of the planetary building blocks that share our local neighborhood.
Asteroids represent a vital part of our solar system’s fossil record. Uncovering their secrets will further astronomers’ understanding not only of how our own solar system formed, but how planetary systems form around stars throughout the galaxy as well.
The newest missions to receive NASA Discovery Program backing will study these fossils in greater detail. Lucy, set to launch in 2021, will examine both a main belt asteroid and six of the Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. According to Harold F. Levison, the mission’s principal investigator and a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO, “the Trojans … hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system.” This is because astronomers believe that the Trojans may have formed much further out in the solar system, and only settled into their current orbits once they were captured by Jupiter’s gravity. The mission is named after the famous 3.2 million-year-old Lucy fossil to highlight the Trojans’ potential for revolutionizing our understanding of the early solar system.
Psyche, launching in 2023, is set to encounter its namesake, the asteroid 16 Psyche, in 2030. Unlike the majority of asteroids found in the main belt, which are icy or rocky, the 130-mile (210 km) wide 16 Psyche is metallic, comprised largely of iron and nickel. With a makeup so unlike its neighboring asteroids and so similar to the Earth’s core, astronomers wonder whether 16 Psyche could be the remnants of an early protoplanetary core that has lost its outer rocky layers via collisions. Psyche’s principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University, hopes the mission will shed light on this unique solar system object and help scientists understand how planetary bodies separate into layers over time. Currently, Psyche’s mission plan includes a 20-month mission duration once the spacecraft reaches its destination to map the surface and study its properties.
The data gathered by Lucy and Psyche will add to the ever-sharpening picture of asteroids that other missions such as NEAR, Dawn, and OSIRIS-REx are designed to provide. According to Jim Green, NASA’s Planetary Science Director, “These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained – and what the future may hold.”
NASA’s Discovery Program has been in operation since 1992. Designed to promote missions that complement NASA’s largest “flagship” projects while focusing specifically on solar system science, the Discovery Program consistently launches smaller, less expensive spacecraft with shorter turnaround times. Discovery mission budgets are capped at $450 million, but their “smaller” budgets have in no way limited these missions’ contributions to planetary science. Some of the program’s most famous missions include Lunar Prospector, Stardust, Mars Pathfinder, MESSENGER, and Kepler. The Discovery Program’s core directive also emphasizes education and outreach, bringing the excitement of solar system science and discovery home to the public.
An artist's illustration of an asteroid breaking apart in space. A new study suggests this might be the fate of the asteroid 3200 Phaethon.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Purple rocks on Mars, the sudden loss of a "Star Wars" icon, unexpected orbits from China's satellites and (expected) New Years' comet flybys — it's Space.com's best space stories of the week.
Redhead goes purple
Although Mars looks entirely red from Earth, NASA's Curiosity rover caught a glimpse of purple rocks embedded in the planet's surface. The rocks, near the foot of the Red Planet's 18,000 ft (5.5 km) Mount Sharp, likely contain an iron-oxide mineral called hematite, also found in other Mars rocks. [Full Story: NASA's Curiosity Rover Spots Purple Rocks on Mars]
Loss of a legend
Carrie Fisher, the actress best known as Princess Leia from the "Star Wars" films, passed away the morning of Dec. 27 after suffering a heart attack two days earlier. She most recently reprised her famous role in 2015's "The Force Awakens." [Full Story: Actress Carrie Fisher, 'Star Wars' Icon, Dies at 60]
Out of place
Two commercial Chinese Earth-observation satellites reached a different orbit than intended, looping around Earth lower than expected after their Dec. 28 launch. The two are following an egg-shaped orbit, and would re-enter Earth's atmosphere within months without adjustment. [Full Story: China's New Earth-Observation Satellites in Unexpected Orbits: Report]
See also:China's Lofty Space Ambitions Include 2018 Landing on Moon's Far Side (New White Paper)
Ancient seas
The dwarf planet Ceres holds what seems to be an ocean's worth of ice layering its cold, dark craters — suggesting it could have hosted an ocean billions of years ago. Ceres is the largest body in the solar system's main asteroid belt, and it is about a third the size of Earth's moon. [Full Story: Dwarf Planet Ceres Likely Had Ocean Long Ago]
Slow-motion breakup
A rocky object called 3200 Phaethon, an asteroid with comet-like features, is being slowly shredded to pieces as it orbits hair-raisingly close to the sun. The strange asteroid features a comet-like tail of debris because of its extremely close orbit — it approaches closer to the sun than any other named asteroid, to within half Mercury's orbit, before swinging away again — and its trail of debris sparks the yearly Geminid meteor shower when Earth passes through. [Full Story: Space Shredder: Sun May Be Tearing Asteroids Apart]
Earth-sci panic
Amid rumors and what-if scenarios regarding Earth science's fate in the new US presidential administration, NASA tells researchers to "be a source of signal, not a source of noise." [Full Story: Earth Scientistss Are Freaking Out. NASA Urges Calm.]
Go deep
Astrobiologists are advocating for NASA's 2020s lander on Jupiter's moon Europa to drill into the moon's ice — in order to avoid any contamination caused by thrusters blasting to slow the lander down. The moon's tantalizing water-vapor plumes make the moon one of the solar system's most promising potential sites for extraterrestrial life. [Full Story: NASA's Europa Lander May Drill to Find Pristine Samples on Icy Moon]
Good location
New research suggests that the faint star Proxima Centauri, home to the newly-discovered exoplanet Proxima b, is indeed gravitationally bound to the nearby Alpha Centauri binary system. Researchers have wondered since Proxima Centauri's discovery whether the star orbits the binary system — and if it does, that's a very good sign for the habitability of Proxima b, our nearest exoplanet neighbor. [Full Story: Proxima Centauri's Origins Could Mean Its Exoplanet Really Is Habitable]
New Mars digs
NASA has made progress toward picking the landing site for its Mars 2020 rover, narrowing the choices down from 54 to 8 high-priority sites that could have hosted water (and therefore supported life) in the ancient past. The agency is also considering the best locations for a future human landing site. [Full Story: Where to Land on Mars: NASA Makes Progress in Quest for 2020 Rover Site]
The White House Now Has a Plan for Handling an Asteroid Disaster
The White House Now Has a Plan for Handling an Asteroid Disaster
Impact: An asteroid impact wold spark climate disaster claim the theorists
(Photo: PA)
IN BRIEF
Who can forget the startling scenes of a giant meteor flashing across the cold winter skies of Russia in 2013, when the "Chelyabinsk Event" reminded us of just how vulnerable we really are to asteroid impacts?
Now, the White House has finally released a report outlining the protocols for responding to an Earth-bound near-Earth object (NEO).
In 2013, a meteor broke apart over Russia, sparking panic and injuring over 1,400 people. Called the “Chelyabinsk Event,” the culprit meteor was estimated to be around 17-20 m (56-65 ft) in diameter and released approximately 500 kilotons of energy. In fact, before the atmosphere absorbed most of the energy, the meteor had about 29 times the energy of the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima.
POSSIBLE ASTEROID IMPACTS
Every year, there could be dozens (if not more) of interstellar objects like comets and asteroids that come very close to Earth. In fact, as of January 3 of this year, 15,420 Near-Earth Objects(NEOs) had been discovered. On March 21, 2016, an NEO under 1 LD (lunar distance) from Earth was estimated to be 35-86 m (114.8-282.1 ft) in diameter. If that object had broken through the atmosphere and landed on Earth, the damage and devastation would be immense.
Yet even more threatening is the possibility of asteroid 2013 TV135 impacting the Earth. This asteroid has only a 1 in 63,000 chance of impacting within the next 100 years, but if it does, it would be absolutely catastrophic. The asteroid measures in at about 400 m (1,300 ft), which is around 4% of the size of the asteroid that is said to have killed the dinosaurs. So, while no dino-killer, the asteroid would certainly pack enough of a wallop to give the Earth one cosmic migraine.
A size comparison of some of the more notable objects to strike the Earth in the last 50,000 years or so. Credit: theobjectreport.com
WORKING TOGETHER
The United States government is not taking the possibility of an asteroid impact lightly. In January of 2016, NASA joined with US defense and research agencies to form the Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound NEOs (DAMIEN) group. This group released a report detailing its strategy for dealing with NEOs.
The authors of this report state that “While it is highly unlikely that there will be a civilization-ending NEO impact over the next two centuries, the risk of smaller but still catastrophic NEO impacts is real…There is currently no whole-of government or international strategy to respond to such an even through all phases of a NEO impact scenario.”
Within the report, this group outlines seven strategic goals that they will use to help mitigate the risks of a possible asteroid impact.
1. Enhance NEO Detection, Tracking, and Characterization Capabilities
2. Develop Methods for NEO Deflection and Disruption
3. Improve Modeling, Predictions, and Information Integration
4. Develop Emergency Procedures for NEO Impact Scenarios
5. Establish NEO Impact Response and Recovery Procedures
6. Leverage and Support International Cooperation
7. Establish Coordination and Communications Protocols and Thresholds for Taking Action
According to Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer: “The amount of time needed to mount a robotic planetary mission is typically 5-6 years, so I’d say realistically, you’d need about 8-10 years advance warning to do something about an asteroid in space.”
Our civilization is now truly global in scale and scope, and it behooves us to comport ourselves accordingly and take cognizance of all the potential threats to our survival—whether destructive wars, disease pandemics, climatic change, or the threat of extraterrestrial impactors. Hopefully, the survival of humanity will not be threatened by the impact of an NEO anytime soon; but if it is, we can rest a little easier knowing that measures are being taken and there is finally a sound plan in place.
Space disaster: Artist's impression of a 'super-impact'. A very large asteroid, about 800km in diameter, strikes the Earth
How likely is it that UFO’s are indeed just secret military aircraft? When all the evidence is compiled and what facts we know are brought forth, could all these UFO sighting really just be a catagory of military technology that is so secret that only a handful of top officals truely know about it?
We all know the Goverment has decieved the public time after time,in fact they tend to cover the truth with rumors on top of rumors then a few far fetched tales to confuse the public even more. Could the UFO phenomenon really just be th ultimate cover story for one of the most secret operations.
The presidents of the United states most likely have very little information into these operations, as it would give the the deniablity when asked questions. Think about this, top generals of the military hold there position for years longer than a president can be in office so who really controls what is happening, and what secrets can be withheld.
Given the pace of how fast technology moves and how advanced our computers alone have become I think it is quite possible that the majority of sighting really are prototype systems.
What better cover than its a “unidentified flying object” you can literilly fly it over a vast population and then say “We dont know” its the perfect cover. Dont get me wrong i stongly believe that we are not alone in this universe however there really has not been a smoking gun that could not be disputed. If there is that smoking gun that has crossed the path of the public then the “man’ has done a very good job at making it go away. Especilly in this day and age where just about anything can be duplicated by fancy graphics programs.
Could there be both manmade systems as well as extraterestrial systems among us?
Leslie Kean's new Infrared UFO Video from Chile - Solved?
Leslie Kean's new Infrared UFO Video from Chile - Solved?
Leslie Kean is a well-known UFO writer, author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (2010.See my review of it here).
In recent years Kean has been working with the CEFAA, an official organization within the Chilean Air Force to investigate UFOs (similar to the now-disbanded Project Blue Book in the U.S. Air Force). In 2012, she promoted a newly-released "UFO video" by CEFAA, asking provocatively "Is this the case UFO skeptics have been dreading?". In the end, the much-hyped "UFO" turned out just to be a fly buzzing near the camera, and all those Chilean Generals and Pilots and Government Officials who pronounced it authentic were full of baloney.
The CEFAA, a government agency investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) within the department of civil aeronautics (DGAC) in Chile, has released a summary of its meticulous investigation into the relatively recent “AGA case.” The acronym “AGA” refers to the prestigious Air Force War Academy (Academia de Guerra Aérea) in Santiago, Chile, which provides training for high level Air Force officers.
The sighting of unexplained lights in formation at the Academy was video taped on two cell phones. Due to technical problems, the videos are not accessible on the CEFAA website.
By "technical problems," she apparently means that none of the Chilean Generals, Pilots, or government officials could figure out how to upload a cell phone video to a website. However, since that video only showed indistinct lights in the sky, taken on a shaky camera, practically nobody else got excited about this case.
But now she is back, big time. The CEFAA recently released a new UFO video, some of it using infrared imaging, and it quickly became the #1 trending item on Facebook. In a January 5, 2017 article on the Huffington Post, Kean wrote
An exceptional nine-minute Navy video of a UFO displaying highly unusual behavior, studied by Chilean authorities for the last two years, is now being released to the public. The CEFAA - the Chilean government agency which investigates UFOs, or UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena), has been in charge of the investigation. Located within the DGAC, the equivalent of our FAA but under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Air Force, CEFAA has committees of military experts, technicians and academics from many disciplines. None of them have been able to explain the strange flying object captured by two experienced Navy officers from a helicopter.
The object and its "envelope," according to astrophysicist Luis Barrera.
UFOlogist Ted Roe is a member of NARCAP, the group that investigated the CEFAA's fly video and pronounced it to be an unknown object. Roe posted to a Facebook discussion of the current video, "Our experience w CEFAA has been pretty good. .. they've got a pretty strong college of experts and, at first glance, this case is provocative" (ellipsis in original). Apparently by describing his experience with the CEFAA as "pretty good," that means "we made fools of ourselves over this video of a fly." (Roe is currently embroiled in a nasty controversy concerning how he allegedly drove Isaac Koi, an outstanding researcher, out of UFOlogy.)
CEFAA caption: "The object moved away from the massize plume it ejected just moments earlier. "
IPACO updated the CEFAA's map to show the calculated path of the presumed aircraft (blue). The red line shows the helicopter's path.
And now Mick West of Metabunk seems to have driven the final nail into the coffin of the great Chilean IR UFO video. After explaining how all of the aspects of the video are consistent with that of an aircraft, West writes
This looks like a plane, flying away from the camera considerably higher than the helicopter (somewhere around 15,000 to 25,000 feet), that briefly creates an aerodynamic contrail.
The plane that seems to fit best is LA330, a two engined A320, which was reported to be climbing through 20,000 feet at that exact visual position at 14:01:39. It was actually 65 miles away, not 35-50. This explain[s] why it was not seen on radar (the actual plane was on radar, just not where they thought it was)
As the French skeptic Gille Fernandez noted, we have a situation here where a major UFO case was solved by 'amateurs' in two or three days, after having been unsuccessfully investigated by "experts" for two or three years. The same thing happened with the "Roswell slides" in 2015.
Leslie Kean doesn't agree with this at all. On January 7 she wrote on her Facebook page
There are many holes in this flight LA330 hypothesis. First and foremost is that the Chilean authorities would have easily determined this to be the explanation if indeed it were.
Those same Chilean "authorities" who gave us the El Yeso reflection UFO and the El Bosque fly UFO video? She has a lot more confidence in them than I do.
NASA is plunging into the solar system’s origins, selecting two planetary missions to visit mysterious asteroids. The agency has chosen Lucy, which will visit Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, and Psyche, which will orbit a large metallic asteroid, for its next Discovery missions, its low-cost planetary science mission line.
Lucy, set for a 2021 launch, will take advantage of a unique orbital moment to fly past six of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, which precede and follow the gas giant's orbit, a region previously unexplored by spacecraft. Launching in 2023, Psyche will orbit a rare iron and nickel asteroid of the same name, believed to be the stripped-bare core of an ancient planetesimal, and will test whether such bodies could have been hot enough to have formed molten, spinning cores.
“Lucy and Psyche will take us to unique worlds that humankind has never explored before," says Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. "With this, NASA is continuing its legacy of firsts.”
The Jupiter Trojans have long been an exploratory goal for NASA. But Harold Levison, Lucy's principal investigator and a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, came to the project from his theoretical work. A decade ago, he helped devise a leading model of the solar system's formation that, among its virtues, gave birth to objects with orbits like the Jupiter Trojans. These are the fossils of planet formation, he says. "If we're going to detangle what happened out there, the Trojans are the place to look."
Lucy will make a grand tour, examining its targets with an infrared spectrometer and new versions of the black-and-white and color cameras found on New Horizons, the Pluto explorer. After passing one asteroid in the main belt, in 2027 it will fly past four Jupiter Trojans over the course of a year and a half. And then, 5 years later, it will pass a rare binary asteroid system in an orbit highly tilted from Jupiter’s orbital plane. It's a complicated trajectory that was only possible with the 2021 launch, which may have helped its selection. "I've been worshipping at the feet of the celestial mechanics god for the last 30 years," Levison says, "and they're paying us back."
Little is known about Lucy's targets. The team knows their colors, from which they infer composition, and some of their reflectivity. From this limited information, it's clear they are diverse in type, and not homogenous leftovers from the formation of Jupiter. It's likely they originated farther out from their current orbit, Levison says, and found their way to Jupiter during the reconfiguration of the planets. The most interesting target is the binary pair Patroclus and Menoetius, Levison adds. Binaries are rare in much of the solar system, but common in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, far from the gravity of planets. That could indicate the duo are nearly pristine leftovers from that early era.
Psyche, meanwhile, has its origins in research conducted by Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the project's principal investigator and planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe. With several colleagues, Elkins-Tanton identified remnant magnetic fields in meteorites that could be linked to ancient planetesimals, the building blocks of planets. Such magnetism was thought only to come from the spinning molten cores of full-fledged planets, not cooler, smaller protoplanets. But they surmised that a radioactive isotope of aluminum may have been abundant enough to heat the planetesimals from the inside-out, forming a molten core.
It was controversial. At the first meeting where they presented this idea, in 2011, "they lined up three deep at the microphones to rebut me even before I started talking," Elkins-Tanton says. But it gradually caught on, and then the Jet Propulsion Lab called, suggesting a mission to test their hypothesis.
They settled on 16 Psyche as a target. At 210 kilometers in diameter, it is one of the largest known members of the asteroid belt, and thought to be largely iron and nickel in composition, similar to Earth's core. They suspect it could have once been the molten core of a planetesimal that might have neared Mars in size. And late last year, observations from NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility also discovered signs of what looks to be water or hydroxyl on Psyche's surface, which could make it a promising resource-rich depot for human exploration in the future.
After its launch in October 2023, Psyche will arrive at its target in 2030. While orbiting, it will use a magnetometer to search for signs of a remnant magnetic field, which could have once been half as strong as Earth’s. "A little fridge magnet in space," Elkins-Tanton says. It will also employ a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer to study radiation emitted by the asteroid, to judge its metallic composition. It's not an asteroid mission in the classic sense, Elkins-Tanton adds. "We want to understand the interior of a planet. It just happens this planet is categorized as an asteroid."
The Lucy mission will visit six Trojans, asteroids that precede and follow Jupiter’s orbit.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA has supported many missions to small bodies in recent years, but its appetite has not waned. Lucy and Psyche are different, but worthy, missions, says Michael A'Hearn, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park. "Psyche is important because it will tell of the evolution of bodies in the solar system, whereas Lucy is telling us more about the origins of Trojans." Many scientists suspect the Jupiter asteroids are similar in composition to comets, he adds.
Each capped at $450 million in costs, these proposals were selected from five final candidates, all focused either on Venus or small solar system bodies. After an initial cull in 2015, the teams received $3 million to flesh out their proposals. After weeks of waiting over the holidays, the candidates learned of their selection only hours before the final announcement today.
The agency also announced it would extend another year of funding to the Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam), one of the finalists, though its plans beyond that were not immediately clear. “This mission is an important capability for the agency,” says Jim Green, NASA’s planetary science division director in Washington, D.C.
The final five candidates were:
Lucy and Psyche;
NEOCam, a space-based telescope that would discover and study 10 times more Earth-threatening asteroids and comets than known today;
DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging), a probe that would plunge into Venus's atmosphere for 63 minutes and study its chemical and isotopic composition; and
VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy), a Venus orbiter that would map the planet with radar at high resolutions, hunting for active volcanism.
The announcement comes as a particular rebuke for planetary scientists focused on Venus. For years, these researchers have been frustrated by NASA's refusal to return the planet, which it last directly targeted in the early 1990s. After failing to win selection in the previous Discovery round earlier this decade, scientists worked to clarify their scientific questions and needed measurements. By selecting two Venus missions among its final five candidates, NASA seemed to signal their success in coming together.
Many planetary scientists were also wary of the NEOCam mission. NASA faces a congressional mandate to identify 90% of mid-sized near-Earth objects by 2020. Although NEOCam would provide worthy scientific research, scientists feared it would take a Discovery slot away from more deserving work—fears that were ultimately unfounded. But bypassing NEOCam means it is unlikely that NASA will meet its congressional obligation, unless Congress ultimately decides to separately finance the mission.
The B612 Foundation, which once promised to launch a private asteroid telescope similar to NEOCam, has backed away from its plans. The $650 million Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), currently being built in Chile with the support of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, will identify many near-Earth asteroids as it surveys the entire sky every 3 nights once it begins operations in 2023. But simulations suggest the LSST is unlikely to meet the 90% threshold on its own. According to a White House strategy memo released late last month, the best strategy may be to combine a space-based telescope with the LSST.
For 2 decades, NASA's Discovery program has supported low-cost planetary missions, with a goal of launching a new probe every 2 to 3 years. However, it has been 5 years since the last launch, and the most recent selection, the InSight probe to Mars, has been plagued by delays, with its launch falling back to 2018. NASA had a goal of selecting two Discovery missions this round to help it get back on schedule, though there had been concerns whether federal budget uncertainty would allow it. Green says missions should launch every 32 to 36 months going forward. “The program is now back, now healthy.”
NASA is Sending a Probe to Explore a “New Type of World”
NASA is Sending a Probe to Explore a “New Type of World”
NASA/JPL-Caltech
IN BRIEF
NASA's given the go-ahead for a mission to the asteroid 16 Psyche—a giant piece of metal that may be all that's left of the nickel-iron core of an ancient protoplanet.
As part of the agency's low-cost Discovery Program, it may furnish us with some insight about the Earth's mysterious inner core, and shed some light on the evolution of the Earth and the other planets.
Psyche is believed to be the stripped-bare core of an ancient planetesimal.
LEARNING ABOUT INNER SPACE
It’s the only known asteroid in the Solar System not made of rock or ice. Discovered way back in 1852, 16 Psyche is a strange hunk of metal orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, and is one of the ten most massive objects in the asteroid belt. Recently, NASA just gave the thumbs up for a mission to send a probe to 16 Psyche, as part of two newly approved Discovery Program missions—missions that could reveal a great deal about how the earliest planets that orbit the Sun were formed.
“This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world—not one of rock or ice, but of metal,” explained planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who first proposed the mission in 2015. “16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the Solar System, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.”
The Psyche mission is expected to launch by 2023 and arrive at its destination in 2030. The long journey will include an Earth gravity assist maneuver in 2024, and a Mars flyby in 2025—two encounters that will provide an opportunity to do some interesting science on the voyage. The robotic mission will spend 20 months in orbit taking photos of 16 Psyche, measuring its composition, and registering the object’s magnetic field strength and gravity.
Believed to have once been the liquid metallic core of a planet about the size of Mars, 16 Psyche has a diameter of more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) and seems to be mostly made up of iron and nickel—with a surface possibly bearing volatiles like water or hydroxyl, according to observations from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. It’s thought that the surface of the ancient planet was whittled down after a series of collisions with multiple objects in the Solar System, leaving behind the naked metallic core as a kind of stillborn protoplanetary embryo.
DISCOVERY PROGRAM
The Psyche mission can open a window onto the earliest ages of the Solar System, an era less than 10 million years after the birth of the Sun. The mission will help us understand how planets were formed, and give us an idea as to how planets and other bodies in the cosmos develop and differentiate into multiple layers—cores, mantles, and crusts—in their earliest histories.
Apart from the Pysche mission, NASA also approved a mission called Lucy to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. “Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” explains Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Like Psyche, Lucy will also help us understand an earlier, fascinating era in our Solar System’s history. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about—boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science,” Zurbuchen added. At the moment, both Psyche and Lucy are in their mission formulation stages.
While Discovery Program missions are relatively low-cost, the significance of their potential contributions is priceless. “These are true missions of discovery that integrate into NASA’s larger strategy of investigating how the Solar System formed and evolved,” said Jim Green, Planetary Science director at NASA. “These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the Sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained—and what the future may hold.”
Our Universe May Exist in a Multiverse, Cosmic Inflation Discovery Suggests
Our Universe May Exist in a Multiverse, Cosmic Inflation Discovery Suggests
By Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer
Our universe may be one of many, physicists say.
Credit: Shutterstock/Victor Habbick
The first direct evidence of cosmic inflation — a period of rapid expansion that occurred a fraction of a second after the Big Bang — also supports the idea that our universe is just one of many out there, some researchers say.
On Monday (March 17), scientists announced new findings that mark the first-ever direct evidence of primordial gravitational waves — ripples in space-time created just after the universe began. If the results are confirmed, they would provide smoking-gun evidence that space-time expanded at many times the speed of light just after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.
The bottom part of this illustration shows the scale of the universe versus time. Specific events are shown such as the formation of neutral Hydrogen at 380 000 years after the big bang. Prior to this time, the constant interaction between matter (electrons) and light (photons) made the universe opaque. After this time, the photons we now call the CMB started streaming freely.
Credit: BICEP2 Collaboration
The new research also lends credence to the idea of a multiverse. This theory posits that, when the universe grew exponentially in the first tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, some parts of space-time expanded more quickly than others. This could have created "bubbles" of space-time that then developed into other universes. The known universe has its own laws of physics, while other universes could have different laws, according to the multiverse concept. [Cosmic Inflation and Gravitational Waves: Complete Coverage]
"It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse," Alan Guth, an MIT theoretical physicist unaffiliated with the new study, said during a news conference Monday. "It's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously."
Other researchers agreed on the link between inflation and the multiverse.
"In most of the models of inflation, if inflation is there, then the multiverse is there," Stanford University theoretical physicist Andrei Linde, who wasn't involved in the new study, said at the same news conference. "It's possible to invent models of inflation that do not allow [a] multiverse, but it's difficult. Every experiment that brings better credence to inflationary theory brings us much closer to hints that the multiverse is real."
When Guth and his colleagues thought up cosmic inflation more than 30 years ago, scientists thought it was untestable. Today, however, researchers are able to study light left over from the Big Bang called cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).
In the new study, a team led by John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found telltale signs of inflation in the microwave background. The researchers discovered a distinct curl in the polarization pattern of the CMB, a sign of gravitational waves created by the rapid expansion of space-time just after the Big Bang.
If multiple universes exist, they may collide with each other and leave behind signs in the cosmic microwave background radiation, researchers say.
Credit: Stephen Feeney/UCL
Linde, one of the main contributers to inflation theory, says that if the known universe is just one bubble, there must be many other bubbles in the cosmic fabric.
"Think about some unstable state," Linde explained. "You are standing on a hill, and you can fall in this direction, you can fall in that direction, and if you're drunk, eventually you must fall. Inflation is instability of our space with respect to its expansion.
"You have something growing exponentially," he added. "If you just let it go … it will continue exponentially growing, so this [the known universe] is one possibility of something going wrong with this instability, which is very, very right for us because it has created all of our space. Now, we know that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong once and a second time and a third time and into infinity as long as it can go."
Worlds Without End: The Many Kinds of Parallel Universes
Worlds Without End: The Many Kinds of Parallel Universes
Detlev van Ravenswaay / Photo Researchers, Inc
IN BRIEF
Parallel universes are a staple of science fiction, but the notion originates in some very important cosmological theories that may help us understand our universe.
And if parallel universes really do exist, could we ever travel to one?
MULTIVERSAL
It’s a frequent staple of science fiction—the notion that there’s another universe out there, coextensive with yet sejunct from our own; a distinct, alternate reality populated by our doppelgängers, who made all the right choices and are happily living the life we always dreamed for ourselves.
Or perhaps there’s a “multiverse”—a multitude of divergent spacetime continua, offspring of that same primordial Big Bang that gave rise to our own, each exhibiting some uniquely different physical, mathematical, or chemical property that might preclude the evolution of life as we know it.
These are familiar concepts—but what is a parallel universe, really? There are nearly as many definitions as there are potential universes in a multiverse, but let’s take a look at just a few of the myriad possibilities of cosmological plurality.
But if the universe were infinite, then it’s mathematically conceivable that somewhere out there amidst all that immeasurable vastness is a lonely pocket of spacetime where matter and energy have assumed identical, or nearly identical, configurations to our own little corner of cosmic creation.
This form of “parallel universe” would be safely cushioned from us by the universal speed limit set by the velocity of light; but if you really wanted to get there, it’s been calculated that an identical cosmological volume would only be 1010^115 meters away, and your identical copy just 1010^29 meters away.
And that’s hardly the strangest form of parallel universe. Some cosmologists envision the early inflationary epoch spawning a multitude of “bubble universes”—in other words, the universe expanded at such a breakneck speed that pocket spacetimes pinched off and became contiguous but separate universes.
“Every experiment that brings better credence to inflationary theory brings us much closer to hints that the multiverse is real,” says Andrei Linde, a theoretical physicist at Standford University.
And there are, of course, many other scenarios that admit of cosmological parallelism. If certain superstring cosmologies are correct, our universe is a 3-dimensional “brane,” one of many, floating like drifting plankton within a hyperdimensional “bulk.” Or, according to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which alternate universes are continually generated by every particle in the universe exploring every possible timeline, we’re living in a sea of infinite potential subject to our every whim.
The cyclic, oscillating ekpyrotic model of the universe.
VOYAGE TO ANOTHER UNIVERSE
So even if there are multiple universes floating around out there somewhere, what are the odds of us ever being able to reach and explore one? Probably less than zero. We’ve already discussed above the physical impossibility of traveling fast enough to reach the disparate pockets of statistical repetition in an infinite universe; the odds hardly improve when it comes to universes even further removed from us.
And if the brane-theories are remotely correct, it would require liberating oneself completely from the tridimensional constraints of our local brane and “casting off” into the hyperdimensional spaces beyond, hoping somehow to locate and enter another brane. Or, if the “ekpyrotic” scenario is correct, you could conceivably wait until two branes collide, and make the transition at that catastrophic and highly uncertain point in time. This all assuming one is in possession of near-godlike powers of control over matter and energy, and is invulnerable to cosmos-creating energies.
Bottom line: parallel universes or no, we’ve got plenty to keep us occupied within the humble ambit of our own restricted and provincial little spacetime configuration, so perhaps it’s time we adjust our expansive imaginations to just accept the Lilliputian dimensions of our local spacetime.
China Claims It’s Made the Impossible EmDrive Possible
China Claims It’s Made the Impossible EmDrive Possible
shutterstock
IN BRIEF
Rumor has it that the Chinese are testing that fabulous Sangraal of spacecraft propulsion—the EmDrive.
But the Chinese have been known to make some pretty fantastic, and insupportable claims; and there's so far not a shred of evidence that the EmDrive actually works.
MADE IN CHINA
If you’ve seen Rogue One (or any Star Wars movie), you’ve seen how those X-Wing and TIE fighters were able to do those crazy maneuvers in space using just their thruster engines, right? Well, that’s supposed to be impossible in a vacuum. But with the EmDrive (short for Electromagnetic Drive), which is able to generate thrust without needing a propellant, it just might be possible—of course, it’ll need more than just that.
This is assuming that the EmDrive actually works—and not just in theory.
Well, China claims to have been able to prove that it does, and says it’s already begun testing one. The news comes from a government-sponsored article published at the Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, which claims that the country has been doing “key technology research” for five years now into the EmDrive for “possible engineering applications.”
In a press conference announcement, officials from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) confirm that they have indeed developed EmDrive prototypes and have begun testing if the device could actually work in space.
“We have successfully developed several specifications of multiple prototype principles,” claimed CAST communication satellite division head Chen Yue. “The establishment of an experimental verification platform to complete the milli-level micro thrust measurement test, as well as several years of repeated experiments and investigations into corresponding interference factors, confirm that in this type of thruster, thrust exists.”
Also at the press conference, Li Feng, chief designer of the communication satellite division of CAST, explained what exactly it is they’re doing. “This technology is currently in the latter stages of the proof-of-principle phase, with the goal of making the technology available in satellite engineering as quickly as possible,” he said. “Although it is difficult to do this, we have the confidence that we will succeed.”
This would seem to confirm information from unnamed sources which claim that an EmDrive is being tested on its Tiangong-2 space laboratory.
NO REAL PROOF
Apart from these mysterious sources, however, there’s no actual indication that China indeed has a functioning EmDrive in space—especially since China doesn’t exactly enjoy a good record when it comes to trustworthy research. And, Chinese tests or no, it’s certainly not proven that this “propellantless” thruster technology actually works. Despite NASA’s recent publication of their peer-reviewed study, experts remain skeptical about the EmDrive. They are also taking the NASA study with a sizable grain of salt.
This is a violation of Newton’s third law of motion, which says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Action and reaction is a direct result of the conservation of momentum. The violation of such a basic law as the conservation of momentum would invalidate much of the basis for all of physics as we know it. Hence, many scientists and engineers feel the thrust measurements reported for the EM Drive are due to experimental error. Adding to this is the fact that those who believe the results are valid do not yet have an experimentally or a theoretically plausible proven physical explanation.
The EmDrive created by Shawyer's space company Satellite Propulsion Research LtdRoger Shawyer, Satellite Propulsion Research Ltd
The EmDrive is the invention of British scientist Roger Shawyer who, in 1999, proposed that – based on the theory of special relativity – electricity converted into microwaves and fired within a truncated cone-shaped closed metal cavity causes microwave particles to exert more force on the flat surface at the large end of the cone. There is less combined particle momentum at the narrow end due to a reduction in group particle velocity, so this thereby generates thrust.
His critics say that – according to the law of conservation of momentum – his theory cannot work as, in order for a thruster to gain momentum in one direction, a propellant must be expelled in the opposite direction – and the EmDrive is a closed system.
However, Shawyer says that, following fundamental physics involving the theory of special relativity, the EmDrive does in fact preserve the law of conservation of momentum and energy.
Hello! This is how scientists plan to communicate with aliens
Hello! This is how scientists plan to communicate with aliens
The song Across the Universe by The Beatles, and compositions by Vivaldi and Gershwin have been sent to space for communicating with aliens.
Scientists from San Francisco-based Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (METI) plan to send signals to distant planets and communicate with aliens instead of waiting for them to initiate the interaction.
An image of Sun's nearest star Proxima Centauri shot by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
ESA/Hubble & NASA
The astronomers are planning to start the talks with aliens by sending laser or radio signals. The first celestial body they will send the message to is none other than Proxima Centauri, the star that is nearest to the Sun. Other far-off celestial bodies located hundreds or thousands of light years away will then be sent the communication signals.
"If we want to start an exchange over the course of many generations, we want to learn and share information," said Douglas Vakoch, president of METI and former director of Interstellar Message Composition at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in California, phys.org reported.
Founded last year, METI is going to host two workshops in 2017 in St. Louis and Paris. The organisation also plans to raise $1 million for its mission to install transmitters at remote spots in space.
For now, the researchers are thinking about how to create and send the simple yet powerful message, "Hello," to the aliens. However, the project is also turning controversial, with people asking whether we want aliens to know our whereabouts, especially if they are hostile.
To this question, physicist Mark Buchanan reacted by stating: "We have almost zero idea of whether aliens are likely to be dangerous," according to the journal,Nature Physics.
On the other hand, positive responses have also been received by METI.
"I think there's something to be learned, nothing to be feared, and at least the possibility of discovering something truly revolutionary: We have company nearby," Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the SETI Institute, was quoted as saying by phys.org.
The first mission of this sort was spearheaded by NASA in the early 1970s, when Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft had carried a message in the form of a gold plaque, which was followed by a phonograph record.
Also, a radio message was beamed by SETI's Frank Drake, which could be collected in the form of a pictogram of images.
The song Across the Universe by The Beatles, and compositions of Vivaldi and Gershwin have also been sent to space for communicating with distant celestial bodies and aliens.
So far, no regulations have been formulated for sending the signals to space.
Internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner funded the SETI and the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project at the University of California, Berkeley, which aims at scanning space in order to discover any sign of alien technology.
Watch: Chilean government declassifies UFO encounter details after 2 years [VIDEO]
Watch: Chilean government declassifies UFO encounter details after 2 years [VIDEO]
In a rare instance, the government agency of Chile has confirmed that one of its helicopters encountered an "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon".
In picture: A screenshot from the video that shows the UFO.Video Screengrab
The Chilean government has declassified a video from two years ago that shows what is apparently an unidentified flying object (UFO) moving at speeds equal to its Navy helicopter. There have been several sightings of what people consider UFOs across the world, but rarely are they acknowledged by governments.
The Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos (CEFAA) or the Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena — a Chilean government agency that studies paranormal and possible extraterrestrial encounters or evidence -- have categorised this one as an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, which could be just another term for UFO.
According to an official statement from CEFAA: "On November 11, 2014, a helicopter of the Chilean Navy (Airbus Cougar AS-532), equipped with an infrared high-definition FLIR camera, was patrolling in the coastal sector between the port of San Antonio and Quinteros a At 16:48 UTC, when the camera operator detected an unknown object, apparently flying at a constant speed similar to that of the helicopter, and moving forward."
This seems consistent with other UFO sightings, where the objects reportedly fly at speeds matching those of the aircraft they are being recorded from. Also, in most cases, the objects move closer to the human air vessels before disappearing.
The CEFAA has said in the statement that the encounter — which lasted for more than 10 minutes — was confirmed by both the helicopter pilot and the camera operator. They then reportedly tried to confirm the existence of the object with the local Air Traffic Control (ATC), but the ATC said it did not detect any such object on the radar.
The ATC also did not detect any other airplane or weather balloon in the area, debunking theories that this might have been a man-made vessel. Other theories on what it could have been have also been debunked, given the altitude at which it was flying and other such metrics.
The helicopter crew then reportedly tried to hail the object over known radio frequencies, but received no reply. The object then reportedly disappeared in the clouds before the helicopter crew could make out more of its details.
De Chileense autoriteiten hebben een opmerkelijk filmpje van het leger van ruim 9 minuten vrijgegeven waarin een onverklaarbaar vliegend object is te zien. De ufo werd op 11 november 2014 bij daglicht gespot en geregistreerd door een helikopter die een controlemissie vloog boven zee ten westen van de hoofdstad Santiago.
Experts van de CEFAA - een overheidsorganisatie die merkwaardige verschijnselen in de lucht onderzoekt - hebben twee jaar lang intensief gespeurd naar een verklaring. Omdat die niet is gevonden, zijn de beelden nu openbaar gemaakt. CEFAA-generaal Ricardo Bermúndez, die nauw betrokken was bij het onderzoek, staat voor een raadsel. "We weten niet wat het was, maar we weten wel wat het niet was", meldt hij in een verklaring.
Wat er precies gebeurde op de dag dat het object werd gezien, is uitvoerig beschreven. Aan boord van de legerhelikopter (een Airbus Cougar AS-532) waren een piloot, een legerkapitein en een legertechnicus die tijdens de missie een nieuwe, geavanceerde infraroodcamera zou testen. Het weer was helder, de temperatuur 10 graden Celsius en de vliegsnelheid 152 kilometer per uur. Om 13.52 uur ontdekte de techicus, terwijl het toestel over de kustlijn vloog om de grond te observeren, boven zee een vreemd object.
Blote oog De drie mannen konden, zo blijkt uit verklaringen die ze los van elkaar gaven, het raadselachtige ding makkelijk met het blote oog zien. Het vloog op een afstand van circa 65 kilometer bij de heli vandaan. De technicus richtte direct de camera op de ufo, zoomde in terwijl de piloot en legerkapitein contact zochten met twee radarstations op de grond. Die konden wel de heli zien, maar niet het vliegende object. Ook de radars van de heli en de camera registreerden het verschijnsel niet.
Uit een bandopname blijkt dat de helikopterpiloot meermaals heeft geprobeerd tijdens de vlucht contact te maken met de CEFAA. De man gebruikte daarvoor een internationale radiofrequentie die zowel door het leger als burgers mag worden gebruikt. Hij kreeg echter nooit antwoord. Terwijl hij zat te bellen bleef de techicus filmen met als eindresultaat een zwartwit-filmpje van bijna 10 minuten. De beelden tonen zwarte, grijze en witte gebieden die gerelateerd zijn aan verschillende temperaturen. Zwart staat voor heet, grijs voor warm en wit voor koel.
Omkeren De drie mannen zouden zich zijn rotgeschrokken van de verschijning. De technicus stopte met filmen toen de heli weer terug moest naar het vliegveld. Tijdens het keren verdween de ufo achter de wolken. Weer op de grond alarmeerden ze de CEFAA die de beelden direct ging onderzoeken. Gedurende die analyse werd ook de heli-crew ondervraagd. "Het zijn goed getrainde, betrouwbare professionals die geen enkele reden hebben om zoiets te verzinnen. Ze hebben iets gezien wat ze niet kunnen verklaren, zo benadrukken ze nog steeds'', aldus Ricardo Bermúndez.
Op de vrijgegeven beelden is te zien dat het object lijkt te bestaan uit twee, door een horizontale as verbonden, ovale of ronde delen die naast warmte mogelijk ook een soort gas, rook of vloeistof produceerden. Volgens de Chileense autoriteiten, die ook nog ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA en andere landen inschakelden, zijn het in geen geval straalmotoren van bijvoorbeeld een vliegtuig, omdat er tijdens de bijzondere waarneming geen andere toestellen in de lucht waren. Ook was geen sprake van een weerballon, bijzondere weersomstandigheden of apparatuur van de heli die onvoldoende functioneerde.
Het filmpje is volgens de CEFAA reglementen openbaar gemaakt, omdat de organisatie er verder niks mee kan. "Wij weten het niet. Laat het publiek nu maar oordelen", aldus de generaal.
In de derde eeuw was het hommeles op het Europese vasteland: talrijke oorlogen deden het Romeinse rijk langzaam maar zeker afbrokkelen. Maar niet alleen op aarde stond die periode in het teken van onrust, ook in de ruimte heerste er chaos. Twee sterren botsten met elkaar en veroorzaakten zo een gigantische explosie. Het resultaat daarvan kunnen we binnenkort bewonderen, bijna twee millennia later.
Het licht dat 1.800 jaar geleden ontstond bij een monumentale ontploffing tussen twee sterren komt in 2022 eindelijk aan op aarde. Dat betekent dat er een mooie ster bijkomt aan het firmament. De verwelkoming van een nieuwe ster is een uiterst uitzonderlijke gebeurtenis die je echt niet wil missen.
Voor ze met elkaar in botsing kwamen, waren de twee sterren te zwak om ze vanop aarde met het blote oog te kunnen waarnemen. Het licht dat ontstond na de botsing is 10.000 keer helderder en dus wel perfect waarneembaar. De nieuwe ster zou misschien zelfs even helder zijn als de Poolster.
We hebben er 1.800 jaar op moeten wachten, maar straks komt het licht van de nieuwe ster op aarde aan. Maar na ongeveer zes maanden moeten we er helaas weer afscheid van nemen.
"Voor het eerst in de geschiedenis kunnen ouders naar een donkere vlek in de hemel wijzen en zeggen: 'Kijk kinderen, daar verstopt zich een ster die weldra zal oplichten!'" zo zegt Matt Walhout, astronoom aan het Calvin College in Michigan, waar de voorspelling werd gedaan. "Niemand heeft ooit de geboorte van een ster voorspeld. We denken dat amateur astronomen zullen wedijveren met andere liefhebbers om de ster als eerste te spotten."
Niet alleen is dit een prachtige en unieke gebeurtenis voor sterrenliefhebbers, het is ook een uitgelezen kans voor astronomen om de geboorte van een nieuwe ster van dichtbij mee te maken. De wetenschap kan er alleen maar wel bij varen.
Zes maanden lang zal de zogenoemde 'Boom Star' een van de helderste sterren aan het firmament zijn voor ze geleidelijk aan weer uitdooft. Na twee tot drie jaar zou de ster haar oorspronkelijke helderheid terugkrijgen.
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AMAZING! GIANT STAIRCASE FOUND IN ANTARCTICA HAS SPARKED MYSTERY!
AMAZING! GIANT STAIRCASE FOUND IN ANTARCTICA HAS SPARKED MYSTERY!
We all probably know a very small percentage of our world's past history because what we have learned until now is all according to ancient records.
But sometimes recorded history is not interpreted correctly and once it happens we can humbly assume that we know so very little about our ancestors and the countless unknown ancient civilizations that roamed the Earth.
One such ancient and legendary city that remains to this day one of the most intriguing topics is the lost and almost forgotten "Atlantis". The city was barely mentioned during ancient times with the name Atlantis being mentioned only by the great philosopher Plato. There are writtings from other diverse cultures that speak of mythical lands, which could be a hint that Atlantis is the one and the same as those legendary lands.
Some people even think that Atlantis is located in the continent of Antarctica. The freezing continent is indeed a stage for mystery and all sorts of conspiracies. But every now and then we have new reports of strange phenomena happening there and photographic evidence of strange land anomalies that could very well be ancient structures buried in the ice.
Recently a mysterious staircase was spotted via satellite, with many truthers pointing that it's probably a long lost pyramid or temple, perhaps from the mythical Atlantis.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.