Nasa will hold a press conference at 6pm today in which it will present a finding "beyond our solar system", leading to hopes that it may be the discovery of alien life. 

Although the content of today’s “major announcement” remains shrouded in mystery, the agency has said it will reveal details of “exoplanets”, planets which orbit stars other than the sun.

These are significant because they are the major hope for discovering life beyond planet Earth, and scientists focus particularly on those a similar distance from their star as Earth is from the sun.

One of the great questions of all time is whether we are alone in the universePaul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division, NASA in Washington

If the announcement is not the discovery of alien life, the most significant detail may be the extent to which the new planet or planets have the conditions favourable for life, which would make them the focus of more intense study by astronomers.

The most significant detail in this respect is whether or not the new planet or planets include liquid water, the principal ingredient for life.

“One of the great questions of all time is whether we are alone in the universe," Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at Nasa's headquarters in Washington, said at the time.

Watch | Nasa release video of Pluto 'landing'

“We live in a time when humanity can answer this question scientifically. And the first sign of answering this question is looking at exoplanets."

Nasa has so far analysed dozens of planets that orbit sun-like stars at similar distances as the Earth to the sun.

At a press conference earlier this year the organisation announced it had discovered 1,284 new planets, nine of which were in the "habitable zone".

The first earth-like planet to be discovered was, Kepler-186f, a rocky planet that lies within the so-called "habitable zone" and is similar in size to earth. The Kepler space telescope has now located many more such planets.

The press conference will take place at 6 pm GMT (1 pm EST) on Wednesday.

'Great observatory'

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in 2003 and uses infrared technology to examine planets light years away.

After 4,930 days in space the telescope, the fourth and final element of NASA's Great Observatories programme, the craft is now more than 145 million miles from Earth.

It was named, following a public vote, after Lyman Spitzer, a major champion of space telescopes in the 1940s.

In just under 75 minutes we will know what new worlds it has seen.

NASA has given few clues as to its announcement at 6pm GMT, but we do know scientists from its Spitzer telescope will be at the press conference.

They spend their time observing 'exoplanets', and in particular looking for ones similar to Earth that could support life.

22-02-2017 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

Alien breakthrough: NASA makes MASSIVE leap in hunt for extraterrestrial life

SPACE boffins have made a key discovery in the search for extraterrestrial life.

{ http://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

22-02-2017 om 17:56 geschreven door peter  

It's not aliens. It's never aliens. Stop saying it's aliens.

WHAT'S THIS?

IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK / URSATII

BY MIRIAM KRAMER

On Wednesday, NASA will make an announcement about a "discovery beyond our solar system." 

Pretty cool and mysterious sounding, right?

According to the space agency, the announcement is specifically related to "planets that orbit stars other than our sun,  known as exoplanets."

SEE ALSO: Scientists want you to help them find planets in this database of stars

Cool, cool. Exoplanets are a big deal in space science these days so it makes sense that NASA would plug the finding in a press event of some kind. 

View image on Twitter

 Follow

NASA 

✔@NASA

New discovery! We're announcing new findings on planets orbiting other stars tomorrow at 1pm ET: http://go.nasa.gov/2mi6HNl  Q? #askNASA

4:30 PM - 21 Feb 2017

• 4,7624,762 Retweets
• 6,6106,610 likes

You know what doesn't make sense? Rampant speculation that somehow this press conference, scheduled for 1 p.m. ET on a Wednesday — the same time the science journal Nature lifts its embargo every week — is an announcement that NASA has found alien life in the universe. 

That hasn't stopped numerous news organizations and people on social media from speculating that the space agency will, in fact, publicly announce that aliens are real and we've found them. This is my favorite headline so far: "Has Nasa found ALIENS? Space agency to announce ‘discovery beyond our solar system"

 Follow

Hayley McQueen @HayleyMcQueenx

Will be well gutted if nasa's announcement tomorrow isn't about aliens 

1:01 PM - 21 Feb 2017

•  66 Retweets
•  1616 likes

 Follow

Thomas Loughnane @ThomasLoughnan1

'World on brink of being told aliens EXIST' after NASA 'hints at announcement' http://shr.gs/ces1bvP 

7:20 PM - 14 Feb 2017 · Cork, Ireland

'World on brink of being told aliens EXIST' after NASA 'hints at announcement'

THE world's population is being primed for an announcement that aliens have visited Earth after NASA hinted at new developments, conspiracy theorists have shockingly claimed.

express.co.uk

•  66 Retweets
   55 likes

I'll be very sad if NASA's announcement isn't aliens

— Brendan Graham (@BRUNDAN_) February 21, 2017

 Follow

Jada @JadaBrevett

This NASA announcement better be aliens.

1:30 PM - 21 Feb 2017

•  88 Retweets
  
•  1212 likes

 Follow

Baronian Consulting @BaronianConsult

Has Nasa found ALIENS? Space agency to announce ‘discovery beyond our solar system’ http://shr.gs/wKN2RVX 

5:37 PM - 21 Feb 2017

Has Nasa found ALIENS? Space agency to announce ‘discovery beyond our solar system’

NASA scientists are about to announce “new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun”- prompting speculation that it may have found ALIEN life.

express.co.uk

•  11 Retweet
• 11 like

If you want to watch the NASA announcement — which is seriously not about aliens but is about something cool — the agency will stream it live in the window below starting at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday. 

This isn't the first time NASA has gotten the internet's hopes up by plugging a mysterious sounding announcement before a science journal's embargo lifts, either. 

This kind of thing seems to happen every time the agency hints at announcing any science result at all.

21 Feb

Robert McNees @mcnees

I understand the "HAS NASA FOUND ALIENS" articles are already showing up. I have some bad news. pic.twitter.com/Ayt5q9e9gV

 Follow

Robert McNees @mcnees

NASA: We'll discuss our FY 2018 budget proposal at a press confe-
Public: IS IT ALIENS?
NASA: No, this is our budg-
Public: SO IT'S ALIENS?

5:01 PM - 21 Feb 2017

• 6363 Retweets
• 108108 likes

There's nothing inherently wrong with NASA's habit of mysteriously announcing that an announcement will be made. 

It's actually a great strategy if you want people to watch your mid-day press conferences. But that said, it's also clear that this whole thing just gives news outlets free rein to speculate in an attempt to drive plenty of traffic. 

But here's a good rule of thumb for all you consumers of news out there: It's not aliens. 

Besides, we all know that if it ever is aliens, that news will be dumped overboard on a Friday evening before a long weekend.

BONUS: NASA wants you to help them figure out how to poop in space.

22-02-2017 om 17:48 geschreven door peter  

22-02-2017 om 17:19 geschreven door peter  

22-02-2017 om 17:15 geschreven door peter  

22-02-2017 om 17:11 geschreven door peter  

Unexpected Birth Has This Lady Thinking That She May Be An Alien Hybrid, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Aliens are all around us. On every moon and planet in our solar system, in Earths orbit and skies, and even on our planet. This woman dives into the subject and explains how her life has been impacted by the visits of aliens. 
Scott C. Waring

Video states:

French talking. 6'3" with blonde-hair and green eyes. Lisa has dependably felt like she is "distinctive." More remarkable than her striking nearness is the way that Lisa trusts she might be what numerous in UFO hovers allude to as a human-cross breed. Half breeds are frequently characterized as the offspring of abductees who have been subjected to contact with outsiders where ladies have been impregnated. The outcome is the introduction of an outsider human cross breed with outsider attributes in these crossover kids that lay lethargic. It is the human qualities that are more dynamic.

However something else is seen and these human half and halves feel like they don't completely have a place on Earth. All things considered, the eyes of these human half and halves are regularly profoundly convincing. When they take a gander at you, it feels as though they achieve profound into your spirit. Deep down, they every now and again report longs for flying and out-of-body encounters that regularly carry them into space where contact with their ET starting points are seen. Cross breeds additionally report that they are exceptionally instinctive. They sense, feel and apparently discuss clairvoyantly, with their patrimonial clairvoyant aptitudes tuning into read the contemplations of people without saying a word to them. These qualities and the sky is the limit from there, characterize Lisa's encounters.

Having a secretive birth and numerous UFO-related encounters for the duration of her life, Lisa shares only a couple of her high abnormality perceptions translated into English through UFO Researcher, Luigi Vendittelli from Montreal, Canada. "I have an explanation behind being here and it is somewhat not quite the same as other individuals however I feel there are many individuals like this. There is something to be finished. We have to change things and it's an overwhelming weight to have." Lisa says as she herself tries to get a handle on the riddle of what she feels inside.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

22-02-2017 om 17:00 geschreven door peter  

Alien Ship Hovering Over Nellis Air Force Base On Feb 19, 2017, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: February 19, 2017

Location of sighting: Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

 

Here is a great sighting that took place just a few days ago in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was over Nellis AFB which has over 1,000 square miles of land...which people never question why they need so much land. Its because the Tall Whites moved in. The USAF let the Tall Whites build their own underground base behind the old firing range. An alien race thats lives up to 800 years and is highly arrogant and aggressive. Excellent video by Steven Barone of Youtube. 

Scott C. Waring

 

Eyewitness states:

I shot this video from my backyard in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas, Nevada on the night of February 19, 2017. If you haven't heard of the USA space fleet I highly suggest you look up "Solar Warden" or "Gary McKinnon." He was the Scottish hacker that penetrated the computers at NASA and the Johnson Space Center. He wasn't trying to do any harm but wanted to know more about UFOs and what the USA knew about them. What he found far exceeded anything he was expecting. He found evidence od a secret space fleet that had been in existence since the 1980's. It is said that the USA has at least eight tubular motherships and nearly fifty smaller ones. What really blew him away was a list of non-terrestrial officers and ship to ship transfers. If you believe this then you have to ask where this secret space fleet is based. Where better than Area 51 and Nellis Air Force Base. This is just a theory of mine and I cannot prove it but based on everything I have seen and filmed over a nearly three-year period it is the only thing that makes sense.

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

22-02-2017 om 16:57 geschreven door peter  

United States: Circle-shaped UFO appears after thunderstrike

Here’s one video analysis of a ring that appeared after a thunder strike. This happened somewhere in US recently.

During a recent thunderstorm in the US a UFO appeared. It’s not clear whether the UFO got hit by the lightning strike or whether it was using the lightning for it’s energy. After the lightning strike the UFO becomes visible for a 30 seconds and illuminates the sky and the surrounding area. Then a second lightning strike is heard and the UFO dissappears. When the UFO disappears the area turns dark again.
I made a short video analysis of the footage to explain what happened.
Did the UFO open up a portal in order to travel to another dimension?

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

22-02-2017 om 16:44 geschreven door peter  

Strange UFO activity over Jerusalem

Here’s one new interesting footage of a bright UFOs hovering in the sky above Jerusalem. This was allegedly recorded recently in 2017.

22-02-2017 om 16:41 geschreven door peter  

Kuwait: The Same Two UFOs Appear In Five Videos Taken By Different People In Different Positions

Five different UFO sighting videos made the rounds online after they showed the same UFO over the same city captured in various positions. What makes the videos interesting is the fact that they were taken by three different people in Kuwait. The videos show one round white orb and another UFO in lower altitude, which some enthusiasts believe it was 90% cloaked. It is not happening every day that multiple people record the same UFOs.

One eyewitness says that he wants to share something he has seen with his very own eyes, which he has never seen before. He says that it looks like a UFO, which, according to him, gives out circular smoke before the UFO itself vanished. The witness admits he used the Viva Video app but insists that this is not edited at all. He says that he only used the app to get a slow motion of the video for the viewers to see the smoke. He assures the viewers that the video is not done with any camera tricks.

Some UFO observers found the evidence that comes with this sighting overwhelming. They suspect thousands of people witnessed the same thing and expect more UFO videos showing this particular sighting to come over the next few weeks. They speculate that aliens like to visit Kuwait because this is an ancient nation with ancient traditions still in place.

22-02-2017 om 16:39 geschreven door peter  

NASA SENDING SPACESHIP TO ROOT OUT SPACE ALIENS

'Goal to search for evidence of life' on Jupiter moon Europa

Europa

NASA thinks aliens might be hiding on the frozen moon of Jupiter, called Europa, and as such, is sending out a search spaceship to root them out, the aeronautics agency reported.

Just this week, NASA announced three goals for its upcoming exploration mission on Europa. What were they?

“The primary goal is to search for evidence of life on Europa,” NASA wrote, News.com.au reported.

In layman’s terms, that’s tantamount to saying, ‘let’s go look for aliens.’

NASA’s other two goals with its Europa mission, meanwhile, are less eye-widening in nature.

“The other goals are to assess the habitability of Europa by directly analyzing material from the surface, and to characterize the surface and subsurface to support future robotic exploration of Europa and its ocean,” News.com.au reported.

The announced missions come on the heels of NASA’s mulled spacecraft exploration of the ocean – once again, to root out possible alien life forms.

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts!

But before starting that operation, NASA said it wants first to go to Europa. Tantamount to its mission is to find proof positive an ocean actually lurks beneath the surface layers of that moon.

“Scientists agree that the evidence is quite strong that Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, has a global saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust,” NASA said. “This ocean has at least twice as much water as Earth’s oceans.”

And that means the possibility for alien life is significant.

“While recent discoveries have shown that many bodies in the solar system either have subsurface oceans now, or may have in the past, Europa is one of only two places where the ocean is understood to be in contact with a rocky sea floor.”

So what?

As NASA noted: “This rare circumstance makes Europa one of the highest priority targets in the search for present-day life beyond Earth.”

The other moon in the solar system that likely has a rocky sea floor is Saturn’s Enceladus.

NBC News on Tuesday noted NASA’s ongoing pursuit of alien life forms with a short video chronicling the various electronic messages the agency has placed onto Voyager’s Golden Records. The Golden Records were created in 1977 as a means of NASA illustrating and “explaining Earth” via “a series of vinyls” to any alien life forms who happened upon them, the news outlet reported.

“The records include sounds of wind, rain, laughter, heartbeats and animal noises,” NBC News reported. “It also offers a music collection, from Beethoven to Chuck Berry. The images feature equations, diagrams and snapshots of nature and human life. It also contains greetings from 55 languages to say hello to the universe.”

Watch video of Golden Records programmed by NASA in 1977 to explain the story of Earth:

{ http://www.wnd.com }

22-02-2017 om 01:36 geschreven door peter  

UFOs in the Middle East? Mass sightings send social media into frenzy

SEVERAL videos of an alleged mass sighting of UFOs over Kuwait and Iran have sparked a social media frenzy.

22-02-2017 om 01:21 geschreven door peter  

The Most Amazing Space Stories This Week!

NASA unveiled the winners of its space poop challence, life's building blocks were found on the dwarf planet Ceres and an Indian rocket launched a record-breaking 104 satellites to orbit. Here are the most interesting things that happened in the universe this week.

Space poop challenge

Turns out space poop is a problem that puzzles thousands of people. After NASA asked for solutions to let astronauts urinate and defecate inside a spacesuit for more than one day, more than 5,000 entries (representing 20,000 people) answered the call. [Full Story: How to Poop in Space: NASA Unveils Winners of Space Poop Challenge] 

Ceres has organic molecules

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has spotted organic molecules — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — on Ceres for the first time, a new study reports. [Full Story: Life's Building Blocks Found on Dwarf Planet Ceres] 

104 satellites!

The Indian Space Research Organization shattered a spaceflight record on Feb. 14 by launching 104 satellites to orbit on a single rocket. [Full Story: India Launches Record-Breaking 104 Satellites on Single Rocket] 

NASA whittles possible Mars 2020 rover landing sites to three

NASA has selected three potential landing sites for the upcoming Mars 2020 rover: an ancient lake, a past volcanic hotbed and a potential early hot-spring site. [Full Story: Landing Sites for 2020 Mars Rover: NASA Weighs 3 Options] 

North Korea may launch an ICBM this year

North Korea appears to be making serious progress on an intercontinental ballistic missile, which could conceivably allow the nuclear-armed nation to make good on its oft-repeated threat to turn major American cities into "seas of fire," experts say. [Full Story: North Korea's Missile Threats to US May Not Be Empty for Long] 

More delays for commercial crew?

NASA intends to put a backup plan in place in the event that SpaceX and Boeing are not ready to fly humans to space in 2019, according to a new report. [Full Story: Private Astronaut Taxis by SpaceX, Boeing May Not Be Ready by 2019: Report] 

Giant exoplanet rings host star's bell

A gigantic exoplanet and its host star have a very special relationship, a new study suggests. The gas-giant planet, known as HAT-P-2b, induces heartbeat-like pulsations in the star every time the two bodies get close. [Full Story: Cosmic Love: Star's Heart Beats for Giant Alien Planet] 

How to make an alien language

The production designer for the Oscar-nominated science fiction movie "Arrival" talks about creating the striking visual elements of the film. [Full Story: Talking in Circles: Creating the Alien Language of 'Arrival'] 

Super space prank

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson just pulled off a prank that's literally out of this world. [Full Story: A NASA Astronaut Just Pulled Off an Awesome Prank in Space] 

Winston Churchill's thoughts on alien life

Winston Churchill was known for his leadership during World War II, but a newfound essay on alien life reveals another side of him, one that was deeply curious about the universe. [Full Story: Winston Churchill on Aliens: 1939 Essay Discovered] 

Help astronomers find Planet 9

Think you can find Planet 9? A new citizen-science project lets participants search for hidden objects beyond the orbit of Neptune, where a possible ninth planet may lie. [Full Story: Think You Can Find Planet 9? Check Out This Citizen-Science Project] 

Off-Earth art

On Friday (Feb. 10), a 3D printer aboard the International Space Station created a sculpture that represents human laughter — the first such piece of art ever to be produced off Earth, project representatives said. [Full Story: 3D-Printed 'Laugh' Is 1st Major Artwork to Be Made in Space] 

Should we send messages to aliens?

Although there's some fear surrounding the act of sending messages to hypothetical extraterrestrial intelligences, it could be one of the most important things humanity could do — scientifically speaking. [Full Story: This Is Why Sending Messages to Aliens Might Be a Good Idea] 

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.‪

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• In Space Everyone Can Hear You Poop | Video
• Photos: Dwarf Planet Ceres, the Solar System's Largest Asteroid
• In Photos: India's Record-Breaking Satellite Launch

{ http://www.space.com/ }

22-02-2017 om 01:11 geschreven door peter  

The Most Interesting Science News Articles of the Week

Each week we uncover the most interesting and informative articles from around the world, here are 10 of the coolest stories in science this week.

Deep-Sea Toxins?

A recent study of creatures living in some of the deepest places in the ocean revealed disturbingly high levels of pollutants.

Scientists captured and tested crustaceans from the Mariana Trench, comparing them with crabs from the Liaohe River, one of the most polluted in China. Tests found incredibly high amounts of pollution in the deep-sea animals. [Read more about pollution in the Mariana Trench.]

Opioid-Cocaine Connection

Fatal overdoses from cocaine use in the U.S. are on the rise. A recent study revealed an increase in the number of deaths due to a combination of cocaine and opioids. [Read more about the drug connection.]

AC Without Energy?

A simple-to-produce material could one day cool buildings without power. The futuristic supermaterial cools using radiative cooling, just like Earth. [Read more about the futuristic wrap.]

Walk on the Wild Side

Studying how animals move can be tricky. Scientists have devised a unique way to study them — by having them run and walk on treadmills. [Read more about exercising ants.]

Let the Hidden Be Revealed

Archaeologists studying the tomb of Tutankhamun say it may hide a secret chamber with Queen Nefertiti's tomb. So far, scans of the tomb have not revealed any such secrets. [Read more about the secrets of King Tut's Tomb.]

Prepare for Battle, Cancer

In the future, troops of microscopic robots may help fight cancer. Scientists have created magnetically controlled swarms of magnetic devices to perform specialized tasks. [Read more about the robot army.]

Dueling to the death?

In South Australia, a battle to the death ensued and was captured on video. A red-bellied snake took on a brown snake and one of them paid the price. [Read more about the dueling snakes.]

Baby Sea Monsters

Researchers discovered that the ancient marine reptile known as Dinocephalosaurus gave birth to live young rather than laying eggs. [Read more about the ancient "Nessie".]

Ancient Pottery and the Geomagnetic Fields

Pottery jugs from over 2,500 years ago have secrets of Earth's geomagnetic field. The act of heating to create the jugs locked data about the field into the pieces and experts have unlocked some of those secrets. [Read more about the secrets of the geomagnetic field.]

Ruling the World

While sponges may be simple creatures, after a mass extinction some 445 million years ago, they all but ruled the world. The Ordovician mass extinction killed off around 85 percent of all species on Earth at the time. [Read more about the sponges.]

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+.

{ http://www.livescience.com/ }

22-02-2017 om 01:01 geschreven door peter  

Athena: ESA's Big X-ray Telescope

Athena, or Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics, is a European Space Agency (ESA) large-class mission expected to launch in 2028. 

The spacecraft is an X-ray observatory expected to answer questions about the hot and energetic universe. The two main questions include "How does ordinary matter assemble into the large-scale structures that we see today" (such as galaxy groups and clusters) and "How do black holes grow and influence the environment around them." A black hole's environment is best seen in X-rays, and hot gases, which are visible in X-rays, can give clues about galactic structure formation and evolution.

Science objectives of Athena include investigating:

• how galaxy groups and clusters form and evolve;
• how hot "baryons," or subatomic particles, evolve;
• missing baryons in the intergalactic medium, or plasma between galaxies;
• how black holes and supermassive black holes grow over time;
• how black holes influence "active" galaxies (those galaxies that produce an extraordinary amount of energy);
• the effects of active galactic nuclei on galactic clusters and star formation.

The launch vehicle hasn't been determined yet, but it's possible that Athena will launch on an Ariane 5. After launch, the spacecraft will then be placed in a stable gravitational area in space known as a Lagrange point. In this case, Athena will use L2, which is on the "dark" side of the Earth (meaning that it is exactly opposite of the sun.) L2 has also been used for missions such as WMAP (the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) and Planck, and will be the location of the future NASA James Webb Space Telescope after launch in 2018.

Athena will perform about 300 pointed observations of celestial objects each year, ESA stated. Each observation will last an average of 105 seconds. While there will be a planned observation campaign, there will be flexibility to move Athena to a target if a transient event in the sky is noticed, such as a gamma-ray burst. Planning allows this to happen twice per month, ESA said.

Athena is expected to last five years, although consumables (such as fuel) have been rated for 10 years in the case of a mission extension. 

Athena history

Athena is named after an Ancient Greek goddess who favored Odysseus, the hero of the Odyssey. The telescope project was born out of the reformulation of several older missions. At first, ESA and NASA were each pursuing different telescope projects, called XEUS and Constellation-X respectively. This changed in 2008 after officials from NASA, ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) agreed on an International X-Ray Observatory (IXO) to merge the Constellation-X and XEUS projects.

The United States periodically conducts studies among space scientists to determine the priorities for the coming decade, which is called the decadal survey. ESA has its own priority list that draws from the recommendations of the Cosmic Vision Programme 2015-2025. The 2010 U.S. decadal survey ranked IXO fourth among large-scale missions. In 2011, ESA issued a statement saying the agency would go alone for large-scale missions. It cited the lack of support in the decadal survey for three joint European missions, and added that it had concerns that NASA funding would not let the missions launch in a timely fashion.

ESA subsequently moved forward with a modified version of IXO under Cosmic Vision, known as Athena. Athena was among the candidates proposed for the first large-class mission launch competition in 2012, but officials ultimately chose JUICE (the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer). Athena was instead chosen in 2014 for the second large-class mission opportunity, for a launch in 2028.

"The mission has now entered the study phase; once the mission design and costing have been completed, it will eventually be proposed for 'adoption' around 2019, before the start of the construction phase," ESA wrote in a summary page about the mission.

While Athena's design is still being determined, the telescope will likely have an X-ray telescope with a focal length (distance between the center of its lens, and the focus of the telescope) of about 12 meters, or 39 feet. It will also include two instruments: an X-ray Integral Field Unit for high-spectral resolution imaging, and a Wide Field Imager that will get more moderate resolution spectroscopy over a wide field of view.

"The telescope will use silicon pore optics (SPO), which will provide a unique combination of a large collecting area and good angular resolution across a large field of view while meeting a stringent mass budget," ESA stated on another page. Arrays of these pores will be placed into modules using commercially available silicon wafers, the agency added. These wafers will be cut, arranged and stacked in a radial pattern to focus the light.

Supporting the X-ray optics will be a mirror assembly module that will include a sun protector, a straylight baffle and a thermal baffle so that the telescope can perform its sensitive observations with a minimum of interference. 

Other X-ray telescopes in space

With dozens of X-ray telescopes launched into space, it is difficult to summarize all of the missions quickly. The first of these launched in the 1970s, and observations from X-ray telescopes continue today. Some of the larger and more recent missions are summarized below.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched on the STS-93 shuttle mission in July 1999, and is still operating. Chandra is considered one of NASA's "Great Observatories," referring to a program in the 1980s and 1990s that birthed the large-class observatories of the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope. Chandra has made numerous discoveries, including imaging a halo of hot gas around the Milky Way, showing that nearly all stars on the main sequence of evolution emit X-rays, and observing X-ray emission from Sagittarius A* (the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's center).

XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission) is an ESA mission launched in December 1999 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. XMM-Newton is a part of ESA's Horizon 2000 program, a previous long-term plan the agency followed for choosing missions. Its mission has been extended several times, and the observatory remains in good health. Its discoveries include measuring the spin rate of a supermassive black hole (along with another observatory called NuSTAR) and making observations of massive galaxy clusters, which help confirmed the presence of dark energy.

The Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission has instruments on board that can observe these transient phenomena using gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet and optical wavelengths. It flew into orbit in 2004 aboard a Delta II rocket, and remains in operation. It has seen black holes, supernovas (star explosions), active galactic nuclei, comets and many other things. Among its discoveries was finding a new kind of gamma-ray burst that is not associated with a supernova, which was a surprise to astronomers.

ESA's INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), which launched in 2002 and is still operational, has a similar mission to Swift. In conjunction with NASA and the Russian Space Agency, INTEGRAL examines gamma-ray bursts. Besides gamma-ray bursts, it has performed observations of X-ray binaries as well as X-ray sources outside of the galaxy. This includes the cosmic X-ray background, the remnant of radiation left over from when the Milky Way was born.

Additional resources

• ESA: Athena Mission Summary
• ESA: Cosmic Vision 2015-2025

EDITOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS

• Europe Targets Black Holes with Next Big Space Mission
• X-ray Space Telescope of the Future Could Launch in 2028
• Black Holes: Facts, Theory & Definition

{ http://www.space.com/ }

22-02-2017 om 00:47 geschreven door peter  

Abduction on North Canol Road, Northern Canada

Kevin's Account written, Feb 2001 posted March 21, 2004) In August or September 1987 (later determined to be Wednesday September 2, 1987), I left Ross River (where I lived) and headed up the North Canol Road by myself on my motor bike for moose (hunting). I was planning on spending 3 days in the area between Sheldon Lake and Macpass. A guy I worked with and a friend of his were to leave a day later and I was to meet them for some fishing. We were all to stay at a trailer at Dewhurst Creek. I left Ross River early in the morning and the temperature started to drop. Then it started to rain very hard and very cold. When I got to Gravel Creek, I stopped at Art John's Cabin and put on extra clothes while standing under the edge of his roof. I knew the rain would not stop, so I got back on my bike and headed off. I arrived at the trailer ½ hour before dark, very cold and very tired. I lit up a fire, cooked supper and went straight to bed looking forward to the morning hunt. Over night the rain had stopped. At daybreak (September 3, 1987) I put my gear and my gun on my bike and headed towards Macpass. A couple of miles down the road, I was putting along at about 10 mph looking into the trees and watching the hillsides. I decided to stop for a restroom break. I stopped where I could see some mountainsides and some valleys. I parked on the right side of the road. The sun was shining; the air was perfectly still and a bit cool. I was standing just in front of my bike watching the mountains to the south, when I noticed to the left out of the corner of my eye, what I first thought was an airplane. It was 400 to 500 yards away and about the size of a DC-3 plane or a full-size school bus. It was travelling north to south, at about 40 yards above ground and moving maybe 30 km/h. Right away I thought "boy is he low". I blinked my eyes because I couldn't make out any tail fin or wings. It had what looked like portholes all along the side of it. It was cigar shaped with a grey strip down the middle and a dark green on top and bottom. I thought to myself, "something's wrong with this picture", then I realised there was no sound! If it was an airplane, the roar would have filled the valley. As I watched, it seemed to partially dematerialize and then return to solid form, it did this as it was moving, a couple of times. Then it dawned on me, oh, oh, I don't think I should be seeing this; it's a UFO and probably doesn't want to be seen! I crouched down on the road, hiding behind the roadside grass. I then watched it go behind a cone-shaped hill and not come out. I stood up looking for it and feeling very excited and happy about what I saw and thinking they didn't even know they were being watched. I was standing beside my bike when I heard a loud metallic clunk behind me around the corner. Right away I thought, somebody must be here and I've got to tell them what I saw. The noise I heard sounded like a heavy trunk lid on a car slamming shut. I quickly walked along the edge of the road to the corner to see who was there. I came face to face (about 20 yards) with 2 grey creatures in blue jump suits, about 5 ft. tall with big insect looking heads, pointy faces, big eyes, thin arms, body and legs. I immediately thought "they're not little green men*, they're grasshopper people". At that same instant, the one on the left raised his left hand to his waist, which held some type of flashlight device and I saw a bright flash of light come from it. I instantly felt paralyzed and was convinced time had stopped, everything was black, no sound. I tried to yell "No!" but all that came out was a distorted grunt. Next thing I knew I was standing on the side of the road scared, shaking and confused. Within seconds I remembered all of this that had just taken place and I thought, "I'm getting out of here before they get me again." I turned around to get my bike and for some reason it was not there, then I noticed it was on the other side of the road. I said to myself, "what the hell is this? I didn't put it there". Still panicking I rushed over and got on it and realized the keys were gone. I always left the keys in it, that way I could not lose them while sneaking around in the bush. I immediately started looking down the road and suddenly saw them in my hand. I started my bike and raced back to the trailer. I was feeling scared and amazed at the same time and then noticed that all the shadows of the trees were pointing in a different direction than that of the morning sun. About 15 minutes later I was at the trailer. Half an hour later it was dark. I thought "no way, I only left here an hour ago, what's going on?" I was really confused then, I said to myself, "I'm not telling anybody about this, I'll just forget the whole thing". I put on a pot of coffee and could then hear a soft humming sound above the trailer. I could also feel a soft vibration in everything (trailer, air, etc.). After about 10 minutes it had all stopped. I had a very strong feeling that they were outside. I did not look out the windows. Later that night I still couldn't sleep and while having my coffee I began to have flashbacks of the past events. I remember being in a dream-like state watching scenery flash by underneath as if I was flying. I watched mountains and rivers and forests go by at a very high rate of speed. I then became aware of other sounds and seemed to wake up. I opened my eyes and could see nothing but black, very deep and inky black. As I was looking at this, the blackness pulled back, revealing a face, I had been looking into the eyes of a grey type creature. I could hear in my mind a voice saying "there is nothing to worry about". I could hear him talking in my mind. There were 3 or 4 of these types walking around, but only one talked to me. The two I saw earlier on the road, I never saw again. (Note: the aliens that he saw at this point were of the typical "grey type" while the ones at the edge of the road were more insectoid.) I then sat up and had an idea of what might be going on and I asked, "Are you going to do experiments on me?" and the one said, "They've already been done." I felt really good then because, except for a strange sensation in my hands everything felt normal. I kept rubbing my hands together but did not look at them, as there was a totally strange environment to look at instead. I experienced no discomfort. The being nearest me asked if I would like to see my home planet and I said sure. I then walked over to the window, where there was a machine that looked like a big copy machine. He asked me not to touch it, I replied "Don't worry, I'm not touching anything in here". He then said, that bright white star is your home. I didn't know anything about astronomy at the time, but I always thought earth was blue, so right away I thought he's lying. He also explained to me about space and stars etc. but I can't remember any of it now. I was also asked if I would like to go on a trip. I replied "Not yet", I felt very honoured to be asked and I did want to go, but felt that the time was not right. Then I was told I would have to forget all of this. I was disappointed at hearing this. The first part of the experience was very scary, but once I was with them, I found them to be friendly, helpful and their looks didn't bother me. They actually seemed like old friends. They gave me a clear glass, ¾ full with a yellow liquid and said to drink it up, it would make me forget everything. I told them, I did not want to forget an experience like this. It should be remembered! I was told it was for my own good that I forget. So I took 3 little sips and put the glass down. Next thing I know, I'm on the road by my bike, scared to death and wanting to get out of there. The next day I met up with the other two guys and never said anything to them. Martin Jasek, M.Sc., P.Eng. http://www.ufobc.ca/yukon/n-canol-abd/in { http://www.ufocasebook.com/ }

22-02-2017 om 00:38 geschreven door peter  

Alleged Alien Abductee Details Childhood Encounters at the International UFO Congress: We’d Tell Our Parents, ‘The Bald Men Are Coming’

BY CATHY FREE

Congress met in Fountain Hills, Arizona, last week, taking over the posh We-Ko-Pa Resort with their usual displays of space alien paraphernalia, panels about extraterrestrial abductions and occasional close encounters with tourists who dared to mix it up with cowboy boots, flying saucer earrings and “I Don’t Believe in Humans” T-shirts.

At the International UFO Congress — the world’s largest convention dedicated to unidentified flying objects — it doesn’t matter what political party you’re from, or, for that matter, what species.

Anyone is welcome at the week-long event, even skeptics, providing that they leave their snarky comments and tin foil hats at home.

“While the Roswell UFO Festival may be better known to the general public, the UFO Congress occupies a very special place in the hearts of UFO researchers and enthusiasts,” says Noe Torres, author of The Real Cowboys and Aliens: UFO Encounters of the Old West, who was one of this year’s convention speakers.

“There are no alien parades, alien dog costume contests or other gimmicks,” Torres, of Edinburg, Texas, tells PEOPLE. “It’s about exploring the history of UFO research and examining some of the most outstanding cases of the past and present.

This month marks the 26th year that hundreds of UFO enthusiasts worldwide descended upon the pretty desert town of Fountain Hills, with a population of 23,235, to celebrate starry skies and strange lights, spaceships, crop circles and alien life forms of all kinds at the conference sponsored by the paranormal research organization, Open Minds.

Although there were plenty of booths selling E.T.-themed merchandise (alien lawn statues, little green men necklaces, Fifty Shades of Greys books), most of the 2,000-plus conference goers came for the latest research on UFO sightings and crashes, speeches about government cover-ups and conspiracies, a popular UFO film festival and “experiencer” sessions featuring people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

News reporters were not allowed to attend sessions featuring “abductees,” but people who claim to have been visited or whisked away by small creatures with large dark eyes were not in short supply.

Audrey Starborn Hewins, 43, came to the conference to offer support therapy to alien “experiencers” after claiming several close encounters of her own since age 5.

Hewins, of Oxford, Maine, says that she and her identical twin, Debbie, were visited frequently by grey aliens as girls growing up in Athens, Ohio.

“We’d tell our parents, ‘We don’t want to go to bed — the bald men are coming,'” she tells PEOPLE. “They started doing all kinds of experiments on us when we were 12.”

In later years, Hewins says she was saved from drowning in the ocean by an alien being.

“It was then that I decided to dedicate my life to helping others who have also had encounters,” she says. “I won’t want them to feel alone. It’s hard for people to come forward because they’re afraid that everyone will think they’re crazy. Only another experiencer can fully understand.”

Although Hewins has spent a lifetime dealing with skeptics, she found a believer in Robert Davis, a neuroscientist from North Port, Florida, who delivered a keynote address about a research project he worked on involving more than 2,300 people who claim they’ve had alien encounters.

“Despite initial feelings of confusion and anxiety, many UFO ‘contact experiencers’ manage to reach a place of integration and healing,” Davis tells PEOPLE, “but for some, it can be a difficult, long-term struggle. They often find that speaking of their experience can be traumatic to their psychological well-being and have devastating consequences. For many, it’s frightening to accept that this experience is valid.”

Abductees’ needs are not properly addressed by the psychological community, says Davis, even though their experiences are “shared by many thousands, if not millions, worldwide.”

“It’s unreasonable to think that they all would be lying or reporting dreams and fantasies,” he tells PEOPLE. “These events are consistently reported and should be taken seriously by everyone, in spite of their uniqueness.”

Ken Johnston knows the feeling of not being taken seriously, but that’s never stopped him from speaking out about what he calls a government conspiracy to cover up evidence of an alien base on the moon.

The retired aerospace engineer and astronaut trainer says one of his duties was to take care of photos from five lunar missions and provide them to scientists from around the world who were studying moon samples.

After the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, Johnston was told to destroy everything in his files, he tells PEOPLE. But he instead kept a set of the photos for himself and released them to the public in 2015, before donating his collection to the Roswell International UFO Research Center and Museum. One of the photos, he says, shows what looks like a base on the moon, with visible lights and structures.

“The United States, Canada and the U.K. have attempted to debunk any person who tries to provide information that might prove ETs exist and that they may have just messed with our DNA to make us who we are,” says Johnston, who now lives in Belen, New Mexico, and gave a presentation at the International UFO Congress about his findings.

“But now that the whole world has access to my personal archive, more anomalies are being discovered by people from all over the world, including Mexico, Europe and Africa,” he says. “Researchers worldwide now use my archives to help discover evidence of extraterrestrial life, past and present, on the moon.”

Closer to home in Arizona, thousands of people will soon be marking the 20th anniversary of the state’s most famous UFO sighting — the “Phoenix Lights” incident of March 13, 1997, when police phone lines were clogged with calls from residents reporting a triangular formation of lights in the night sky.

Dozens of those witnesses were at the International UFO Congress, including several who took to the stage to share what they saw that night.

Phoenix physician Lynne Kitei, 69, counts herself among more than 10,000 people who reported seeing bright orange lights in the shape of a boomerang, floating silently over the city 20 years ago.

Kitei wrote a book about her experience, The Phoenix Lights, and is now a familiar face every year at the International UFO Congress.

“What I saw that night is the most documented mass UFO sighting in modern history,” she says. “You can choose to believe or you can choose not to believe. Ever since that night, I’ve been a believer. We are not alone.”

{ http://people.com/human-interest }

22-02-2017 om 00:30 geschreven door peter  

Nasa's 'holy grail': Entire new solar system that could support alien life discovered

Andrew Griffin 

Scientists have found a new solar system filled with planets that look like Earth and could support life, Nasa has announced.

At least three of the seven planets represent the “holy grail for planet-hunting astronomers”, because they sit within the “temperate zone” and are the right temperature to allow alien life to flourish, the researchers have said. And they are capable of having oceans, again suggesting that life could flourish on them.

No other star system has ever been found to contain so many Earth-sized and rocky planets, of the kind thought to be necessary to contain aliens.

The researchers might soon be able to find evidence of life on the planets, they have said. British astronomer Dr Chris Copperwheat, from Liverpool John Moores University, who was part of the international team, said: “The discovery of multiple rocky planets with surface temperatures which allow for liquid water make this amazing system an exciting future target in the search for life."

Any evidence of life is likely to be “strong, very strong or conclusive”, the scientists said. It will be done by looking for what molecules are in the atmosphere – if they were to find things like oxygen, and in the right amounts, then it would probably indicate that there was biological activity.

Co-researcher Dr Amaury Triaud, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, said: “We hope we will know if there's life there within the next decade.”

Even if life isn’t ever found near TRAPPIST-1, it might eventually develop there. The star is relatively young – even when our own Sun has run out of fuel and our solar system is destroyed, the newly-discovered one will still be in its early infancy.

TRAPPIST-1 “burns hydrogen so slowly that it will live for another 10 trillion years – more than 700 times longer than the Universe has existed so far, which is arguably enough time for life to evolve”, wrote Ignas AG Snellen from the Leiden Observatory, in an accompanying article about the discovery.

• READ MORE

How the new solar system that could support life would actually look

All of the planets were found using a method called “transit photometry”. That works by watching out for when a planet passes, or transits, in front of its host star – blocking out a small amount of light, allowing us to see the planet and learn about its size.

Scientists first found the star TRAPPIST-1 in 2010, after monitoring the smallest stars close to the Sun. Since then, they have been watching out for those transits – and after seeing 34 of them clearly, they proposed that they can be attributed to the seven new planets.

They then worked to understand the size and composition of each of the worlds. That work is still continuing, but the researchers believe that the planets have large oceans, are temperate and other conditions that could make way for alien life.

Dr Michael Gillon, from the STAR Institute at the University of Liege in Belgium, said: “This is an amazing planetary system – not only because we have found so many planets, but because they are all surprisingly similar in size to the Earth.”

If a person were on one of the planets, everything would look a lot darker than usual, the scientists said. The amount of light heading to your eye would be about 200 times less than you get from the sun, and would be comparable to what you can see at sunset.

Despite that relative darkness, everything would still feel warm, the researchers said. That’s because roughly the same amount of energy would be coming from the star as warms our Earth – but it does so infrared.

Because the star is so dim in relative terms, all of the planets are warmed enough to sit in the temperate zone. That’s despite the fact that they are all so close to it – each of them sitting nearer to the star than Mercury, the planet in our solar system that orbits closest to the Sun.

“The spectacle would be beautiful,” said Amaury Triaud, one of the scientists involved in the research. “Every now and then you’d see another planet, about as big as another moon in the sky.”

The sun would also look about 10 times bigger than our own does from Earth, Dr Triaud said, despite the fact that it is in fact only 8 per cent as big. And it would be a sort of salmon pink, said Dr Triaud, who noted that the scientists initially thought it would be a deep reddish crimson but most of that red light would be infrared and so invisible.

This chart shows, on the top row, artist conceptions of the seven planets of TRAPPIST-1 with their orbital periods, distances from their star, radii and masses as compared to those of Earth. The bottom row shows data about Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It’s unlikely that any possible life that is on the planet would actually see this way, the scientists noted, since they would probably have evolved entirely different eyes – or perhaps none at all.

The researchers hope that they can do more work to watch the planets and learn more about their character. They want to look in particular at the seventh, outermost planet because at the moment they are not sure how it interacts with the inner ones.

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope is already being used to search for atmospheres around the planets. Future telescopes, including the the European Extremely Large Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope, may be powerful enough to detect markers of life such as oxygen in the atmospheres of exoplanets.

The first exoplanet was found in 1992. Since then, astronomers have detected more than 3,500 of the worlds, distributed across 2,675 star systems.

About a fifth of the sun-like stars are thought to have Earth-sized planets close enough to them to support life.

In all, there might be 40 billion potentially habitable words sitting just in our galaxy, the Milky Way, astronomers estimate.

Scientists have long thought that Earth-sized planets were abundant, but the new research shows just how many of them there might be. Many of those planets might never be seen, because they don’t pass in front of their host star and so aren’t visible.

That might mean that the new system is actually not all that out of the ordinary. Scientists expect that for each planet we find, there are as many as 100 we can’t see – and so the scientists might not actually have been lucky, but rather seen something that wasn’t that unusual.

• More about: 
• Nasa
• exoplanets
  • TRAPPIST-1

{ http://www.independent.co.uk/ }

22-02-2017 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

UFO Recorded In This Weeks The Walking Dead TV Show, S07E10, Feb 2017, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: February 21, 2017
Location of sighting: Walking Dead S07E10

Here is the last place you would expect to find a UFO...on The Walking Dead set from this weeks episode. The UFO is at 28:27 minutes into the show. It was found byLampicka PSN of Youtube and shows a dark object that moves from the right to the left of the screen. The UFO is a dark disk and showed up on purpose. UFOs have have mind control, especially good for making you temporarily forget what you saw, and even make you remember things. Its even possible this UFO showed up to get caught on the scene on purpose so that it could use its mind control methods on the most popular TV show in America...which may reach a lot of viewers out there. 

It was Elon Musk that stated last week, "if there are super intelligent aliens out there, they probably already observing us. That would seem quite likely and we are just not smart enough to realise it."

In other words, aliens are everywhere, but we have to put the effort into uncovering the evidence before us. Scott C. Waring

{  http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

21-02-2017 om 23:57 geschreven door peter