SETI astronomer says aliens 'probably look like machines'

UFO researcher Seth Shostak explains the fascination around aliens and what they probably look like with "Star Talk" host Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Do you have an idea of what aliens from outer space look like or are you basing your ideas on pop culture representations?

On Neil deGrasse Tyson's science show "Star Talk," guest SETI Astronomer Seth Shostak and comedian Michael Ian Black discussed alien sightings and the way aliens are portrayed in the media.

"Most people who are into the UFO phenomena -- by the way, that's not a small percentage, that's one-third of the public," Shostak said in a video clip from the show. "There are 10,000-20,000 sighting reported per year in the US, so that's a lot."

While Tyson seems unconvinced, Black thinks this search for aliens is a deeper need for humans to believe there's more life in the universe than just us.

There's also an interesting side note about the common perception of what aliens look like. Instead of the familiar "X-Files" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" images of an alien with the tiny gray body, big head and bulging dark eyes, Shostak thinks they could be more machine-like in appearance.

"Think what we're going to do in this century... invent thinking machines," Shostak said. "The aliens have probably already done that. So the real aliens probably look like machines."

{ https://www.cnet.com/uk/ }

09-01-2017 om 22:14 geschreven door peter  

Chief UFO photographer 'flabbergasted' after spotting UFO flying across the sky over Dawlish

The UFO above Dawlish (circled)

{  http://www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk/ }

09-01-2017 om 22:04 geschreven door peter  

PICTURE: Strange 'UFO' object seen over Buckingham Park last night

09-01-2017 om 21:50 geschreven door peter  

Braintree UFO reports show no shortage of the bizarre

By Bradford Randall
brandall@wickedlocal.com

Records from the National UFO Reporting Center reveal more than half a dozen reports originating from Braintree in the past decade, ranging from black spheres hovering over Weymouth Landing's train station to metallic balls that appear - and disappear - in broad daylight over Skyline Apartments.

Braintree's most recent entry in the catalog of the bizarre was logged in December of 2015, while surrounding towns and cities, including Quincy with three reports in 2016 alone, also populate the database.

That December 2015 sighting, dubbed a "sighting report" by the UFO reporting center, allegedly involved more than five people who observed dark black spheres hovering above the Weymouth Landing commuter rail station shortly after 8 a.m., two days before Christmas.

"During most of the sighting it was difficult to tell how many spheres/shapes there were, but it was a tight group of multiple dark black spheres (they seemed to occasionally change shape) moving roughly east to west," the report, filed anonymously, read. "No way to tell how far away they were, but there was a solid cloud deck, so they were under that altitude whatever it was.

"I have held an FAA certification as a single engine pilot in the past and previously never witnessed anything I'd consider to be a UFO," the Dec. 23, 2015 sighting report concluded.

Here's a brief rundown of some other sighting reports filed from Braintree in recent years.

Triangular UFOs and black helicopters

In July of 2015 a report filed with the UFO reporting center claimed that a triangle shaped object had been observed moving over Quincy and East Braintree in the early morning hours of Sept. 2, 2012.

"I was sitting outside facing west when a triangle shaped object, about the size of a commercial airliner, approached from the north heading south," the report stated. "The object was flying at a much lower altitude than any aircraft of that size normally would."

"When the object was directly in front of me it turned east, moving straight towards me as it lowered its altitude and its speed. When it was less than a football field away from me it suddenly turned southeast, quickly accelerating its speed and moving out of my field of vision."

The report ends claiming that "several black helicopters were seen in the area for the remainder of the night and the following day."

First a light, then a 'bear hug'

The most unsettling sighting report from Braintree was filed in November of 2011 by a man who said he was driving his girlfriend home on the night of July 14, 2011.

When turning onto his girlfriend's street, not named in the report, the driver said he saw "lights that looked like a plane was landing or doing a very sharp turn."

The driver said he stopped his car to look at the object and watched it disappear and reappear over a nearby house.

"It got weird later that night," the sighting report stated, with the driver claiming the lights then followed his car home from Braintree.

"I could hear my name outside my window, weird noises, so I open up my window and something hit me right away like someone had a bear hug on me," the report said. "I could hear in my head 'your species will fall' and then saw a flash in front of the window."

That sighting report ends on a defiant note.

"I never wanted to tell anyone this because no one will ever believe this and I don't care because I'll never forget it till the day I die."

Metallic spheres over Skyline Apartments

A sighting report from August of 2012 is unique to this list in its specificity to the location it supposedly occurred in, at a wooded area behind Skyline Apartments on the afternoon of July 1, 2005.

The person who reported the incident, 15 at the time, said they were walking along railroad tracks from Quincy Point into Braintree when they noticed something strange behind the apartments.

"So we're walking along and notice a basketball-size metallic sphere suspended in mid-air, nothing holding it or propping it up, just still about 40 or so feet in the air, maybe 10 feet above the trees."

The sighting report continues, "it seemed like it knew we were watching it. Then I looked away and my brother looked down or something and it was just gone."

Read more UFO sighting reports from Braintree at the National UFO Reporting Center's website.

Follow Bradford Randall on Twitter @randalljourno.

{ http://braintree.wickedlocal.com/news/ }

09-01-2017 om 21:46 geschreven door peter  

Dr Steven Greer Testifies about Extra-Terrestrial Technology

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 20:35 geschreven door peter  

Deze unieke foto toont hoe de aarde en de maan eruitzien vanop Mars - HLN.be

 Bron: NASA, National Geographic

De aarde en de maan op één foto. Het bruine vlak in het midden is Australië. 

© afp.

Een nieuw beeld dat de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft vrijgegeven, toont de aarde en de maan op één foto. De foto werd samengesteld uit beelden van de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter van NASA, en toont ons hoe we er vanop 205 miljoen kilometer uitzien.

 { http://www.hln.be/ }

09-01-2017 om 20:24 geschreven door peter  

09-01-2017 om 20:16 geschreven door peter  

09-01-2017 om 20:09 geschreven door peter  

09-01-2017 om 20:04 geschreven door peter  

800 Million Year Old Woman Found And Looks Just decades Old, Sept 1969, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: Sept 1969
Location of discovery: Kemerovo Region, Russia 

I imagine the Russian scientist that studied this woman is probably still alive. This was an alien woman, and she was preserved inside a stone-like capsule with a liquid inside, the liquid would have been studied, and eventually found to be regenerating. Although it didn't bring the woman back from death, it kept her looking young. Therefore the scientist probably found this out, hid the info about it, and kept it for himself. He is probably still alive and well today somewhere using this liquid every so often to become younger. Alien technology could keep us young forever.
Scott C. Waring

Video translation states: 
TRANSLATION FROM RUSSIAN: In September 1969, at the village of Rzhavchik Tisulskago in the Kemerovo region, a very strange burial was discovered.

During the stripping work at a coal mine in the core coal seam which lies at a depth of over 70 metres, miner Karnaukhov discovered a marble casket of amazingly accurate mechanical manufacture.

At the command area Alexander Alexandrovich Masalygina ordered all work to be stopped immediately.

The casket was brought to the surface and workers began to open it by pecking on the edges of the fossilized putty. Not so much from the blows, but from the effects of solar heat, the putty melted into a clear liquid and flowed.

This was a shock to all who saw it. the coffin was filled to the brim with pink-blue crystal clear liquid.

In it lay a slim, unusually beautiful woman — who looked about thirty, with a fine European features and large, wide-open blue eyes. Her covering was dark brown 

She was dressed in a white lace transparent dress length just below the knee. The short sleeves were embroidered with colorful flowers. Underwear was absent. It seemed that she was not dead, but sleeping.

At her head was a black, rectangular metal box, rounded at one end (something like a cell phone), of approximately 25 to 10 cm in size.

After about ten to fifteen hours, the coffin was open for all to see. The whole village came to see this wonder.

However, in less than 24 hours the mysterious finding was reported in the district centre.

The fire brigade, the military, and militia all confirmed the discovery. By 2 pm that day, a brick-red helicopter landed and the place was declared contagious and onlookers pushed away.

Then the authorities sealed off the place and quarantined all who touched the coffin, even those who had been standing near.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 19:19 geschreven door peter  

NEWPORT BEACH UFO Hunters DEFENDS ITS UFO RESEARCH AGAINST SKEPTICS, Jan 2016, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of news: January 4, 2017
Location: New Port Beach, California, USA
Source of news: 

http://abc7.com/science/newport-beach-nonprofit-focuses-on-ufo-research/1686671/

UFO and alien research are fast becoming a new science. Its make its place among other scientific areas like astronomy and astrophysics, yet it gets far more attention that both those science areas combined. UFOlogists are the new scientists of this era that will make the biggest difference in the world than any other area of science in the world. The discovery of alien will change the perceptual field of every human being on Earth, how they see themselves, their home, their community and their planet, at which point humans will begin to scrutinise every faucet of human history and contemplate how alien interaction and interference throughout our evolution has changed our history. 
Scott C. Waring

News states: 
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (KABC) -- For many, UFOs are the stuff of science fiction movies that belong in the same category of little green men and alien abductions - but one Orange County nonprofit begs to differ.

Jan Harzan, the executive director of Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Newport Beach, believes that we are definitely not alone in the universe.

"UFOs are real. These are structured, highly technological, structured devices flying in and about our planet under obvious intelligent control that's not us," Harzan said.

Harzan has spent most of his life researching UFOs along with field investigators and a research team.

MUFON looks into the reports that come in daily.

"Could it possibly have been an aircraft? A satellite? The space station?" Harzan said.

The organization has investigated more than 7,000 cases in the past year. It considers a small percentage of those cases hoaxes, and about 30 percent are classified as UFOs.

According to Harzan, a man who has worked as a contractor for the Department of Defense says he and his friends spotted a UFO in 2013 during a hunting trip in Canada.

"The very first thing that was intense was just how bright this thing was," said the man, whose identity was not revealed.

Harzan considers this case, which was reported in 2016, as one of the most compelling pieces of evidence.

Despite the many skeptics who believe UFOs only belong in Hollywood, Harzan believes his research can lead to huge advancements in technology.

"Number one, we can move instantaneously anywhere on the planet, we wouldn't need to be sitting on airplanes," he said. "What about moving off planet and going to the moon or going to Mars?"

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 19:16 geschreven door peter  

Giant “Alien” Claw Unearthed In Peruvian Desert

Alien enthusiasts claim they discovered three large fingered hand that might belong to a giant humanoid or an alien buried deep in a desert in Peru.

Though any serious scientific bodies are yet to examine the discovery, the claw is quite the find.  The team that unearthed the so-called giant alien claw called themselves as paranormal enthusiasts. Members of the team say they excavated the appendage in Cusco, Peru.

The team further claim that they also discovered an elongated human skull near the giant claw site, which they say in a desert in the South American country. The exact location is not yet revealed, but the team gave a hint that the finding was done in a system of underground caves.

The discovery was sent to alien investigator Brien Forester, a Peru-based paranormal researcher. Brien then allegedly let a team of unnamed experts examined the fingers, and they concluded that it had too many bones to be from a human.

The team also claimed the hand was verified to be a genuine biological object through an x-ray. The claw is scheduled for further testing in America.

The team revealed that radiocarbon and DNA testing would bring out the true origin of the strange hand.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

09-01-2017 om 19:05 geschreven door peter  

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.

09-01-2017 om 19:02 geschreven door peter  

Very fast UFO caught on tape over Paris, France 30-Dec-2016

Check out this interesting footage of a so-called fastwalker flying across the sky above Paris in France. This was filmed on 30th December 2016.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

09-01-2017 om 19:00 geschreven door peter  

Is there a massive underwater UFO base in Guantanamo Bay? Conspiracy theorists claim Marine saw secret craft 'virtually every night'

• Testimony filed as Case 74794 in the archives of the Mutual UFO Network
• UFOs were dull and about 50 to 100 ft across, with a red light behind it
• One specific occasion he witnessed a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light' quietly hovering over his and a fellow soldiers head

By Stacy Liberatore

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.

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'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. 

{

09-01-2017 om 01:00 geschreven door peter  

How NASA uses a common amateur astronomy technique to make huge discoveries

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.

{ http://www.astronomy.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers discover two pulsars with an 'off' switch

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.

{ http://www.astronomy.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 00:36 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s newest Discovery-class missions will teach us more about our solar system and its formation.

By Alison Klesman  

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.

{ http://www.astronomy.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 00:30 geschreven door peter  

Best Space Stories of the Week — Jan. 1, 2016

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]

Plus: A Promising Spot for Life on Mars

New Years' comets are coming

Comets in the New Year's Eve and early 2017 skies will be a feast for the eyes — if you have a telescope or binoculars handy. Look out for their shining flybys above. [Full Story: 'New Year's Eve Comet' and More: Three Flybys Will Kick Off 2017 New Year]

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• Destination Mars: NASA’s 2020 Mars Rover Science Plan | Video
• Planets, Constellations and Quadrantid Meteors In Jan. 2017 Skywatching | Video
• What's It Like On Our Neighbor, Proxima b?

{ http://www.space.com/ }

09-01-2017 om 00:23 geschreven door peter  

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.

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

 (Photo: NASA / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)

References: 

• Motherboard, 
• The White House, 
• NASA

{ https://futurism.com/ }

08-01-2017 om 23:56 geschreven door peter