Scientists discover how to ‘upload knowledge to your brain’

Feeding knowledge directly into your brain, just like in sci-fi classic The Matrix, could soon take as much effort as falling asleep, scientists believe.

Researchers claim to have developed a simulator which can feed information directly into a person’s brain and teach them new skills in a shorter amount of time, comparing it to “life imitating art”.

“Our system is one of the first of its kind. It’s a brain stimulation system,” explained Dr Matthew Phillips.

“It sounds kind of sci-fi, but there’s large scientific basis for the development of our system.

“The specific task we were looking at was piloting an aircraft, which requires a synergy of both cognitive and motor performance.

“When you learn something, your brain physically changes. Connections are made and strengthened in a process called neuro-plasticity.

“It turns out that certain functions of the brain, like speech and memory, are located in very specific regions of the brain, about the size of your pinky.”

Dr Matthews believes that brain stimulation could eventually be implemented for tasks like learning to drive, exam preparation and language learning

“What our system does is it actually targets those changes to specific regions of the brain as you learn,” he added.

“The method itself is actually quite old. In fact, the ancient Egyptians 4000 years ago used electric fish to stimulate and reduce pain.

“Even Ben Franklin applied currents to his head, but the rigorous, scientific investigation of these methods started in the early 2000s and we’re building on that research to target and personalise a stimulation in the most effective way possible.

“Your brain is going to be very different to my brain when we perform a task. What we found is … brain stimulation seems to be particularly effective at actually improving learning.”

Source www.telegraph.co.uk

{ http://alien-ufo-sightings.com/ }

10-03-2017 om 14:31 geschreven door peter  

US Government Issues NASA Demand, ‘Get Humans to Mars By 2033’

by Dom Galeon and Jolene Creighton

 

NASA

A Mandate For Humanity

Both chambers of Congress just passed the NASA Authorization Act of 2017. With this transformative development, the space agency got a lot more than just $19.508 billion in funding. They also got a very clear mandate: Get humanity to Mars.

To be clear, Mars has been in the works for some time; however, the 2017 Act places a strong emphasis on this goal, making it the focal point of NASA’s long-term plans. In the document, congress asserts that the space agency is to get humans “near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s.” Opposition to the bill from the administration isn’t expected, so it’s more than likely to be passed into law by the presidency.

There is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multiplanetary in order to safeguard the existence of humanity. -Elon Musk

In order to get to Mars by the 2030s, Congress is asking NASA to develop “an initial human exploration roadmap” that must be submitted before December 1, 2017.

The bill outlines the necessity of this roadmap, stating: “It is the sense of Congress that expanding human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and advancing toward human missions to Mars in the 2030s requires early strategic planning and timely decisions to be made in the near-term on the necessary courses of action for commitments to achieve short-term and long-term goals and objectives.”

To that end, the 2017 Act states that this plan should outline clear goals that are a bit closer to home, instead of just making a grand leap to the Red Planet all at once. The document states, “A human exploration roadmap should begin with low-Earth orbit, then address in greater detail progress beyond low-Earth orbit to cis-lunar space, and then address future missions aimed at human arrival and activities near and then on the surface of Mars.”

Speaking of the planned stages, NASA already has a basic outline: “The human exploration of Mars crosses three thresholds, each with increasing challenges as humans move farther from Earth: Earth Reliant [now until the mid-2020s], the Proving Ground [2018-2030], and Earth Independent [now to 2030s and beyond].”

You can see a full breakdown of each of these stages at this link and a very basic breakdown of the stages in the NASA image below:

With these planned phases, NASA should be able to easily provide Congress with the roadmap that it’s asking for.

Through this new NASA Authorization Act, Congress affirms that “Mars is the appropriate long-term goal for the human space flight program,” and it is likely that the Moon will be a stop over in 2020, if the current administration’s plans push forward.

NASA’s Mars Missions

Recently, much of the news covering missions to Mars involved private space companies, most notably, SpaceX and foreign space agencies — including China and the UAE.

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the company will create a permanent Martian settlement. To that end, Musk’s plan includes the launch of the unmanned “Red Dragon” spacecraft by 2018, then sending a new and reusable rocket by 2022 (which will be powered by the just recently tested Raptor rocket), and eventually launching humans to Mars after that—hopefully landing by 2025. However, much of the details still need to be fleshed out.

Regardless, Musk has made it clear that he thinks such a colonization project will ultimately save the human race. And as this directive by congress reveals, the U.S. government agrees.

See SpaceX’s plans in this video:

To say, however, that NASA has been sitting idly by would be inaccurate. The space agency has been “on a journey to Mars” for some time.

So, what has NASA been up to in relation to the Red Planet? The agency already has a host of rovers currently on Mars. One

, the Curiosity rover, has made much headway in helping us better understand how much water did (and maybe still does) exist on Mars. Another rover is planned for 2020. This Mars 2020 rover will gather and study data on the availability of resources, such as oxygen, on Mars.

In this respect, Sending rovers is one of the first steps in getting people to Mars.

Ultimately, in the end, getting humans to Mars isn’t some empty obsession. It’s a worthwhile endeavor—one that has the potential to inspire generations in the same manner that the Apollo missions (and Moon landing) did. For many, getting to Mars would be the highest point of human exploration they would ever witness. Think of what New Horizon’s arrival at Pluto felt like, and now multiply that by about 100.

Already, Mars rover missions are accelerating innovation and research exponentially, so think of all the things that we could learn once we’re actually there.  It is a bold new era in the final frontier.

References: 

• NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017

{ https://futurism.com/ }

10-03-2017 om 14:06 geschreven door peter  

Self-Replicating “DNA Computers” Are Set to Change Everything

 

Getty Images/Brand X

Pixabay

10-03-2017 om 13:56 geschreven door peter  

UFO hunters spot ‘ALIEN plane which DISAPPEARS in the sky’

UFO hunters were left BAFFLED after a plane was seen in the sky one second, before completely disappearing the next.

10-03-2017 om 00:17 geschreven door peter  

Private Space Stations Could Orbit the Moon by 2020, Robert Bigelow Says

by Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor

Giant space-station refueling depots could be orbiting the moon by 2020, but only if the Trump administration makes the funding and national drive needed for it to happen a priority, according to aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. 

Bigelow, whose company, Bigelow Aerospace, has launched three private space-habitat prototypes into orbit — including the first inflatable space-station module, said that a commercial station in lunar orbit would be a vital destination for moon exploration. 

"The key is going to be how fast the Trump administration can react," Bigelow said in an interview Friday (March 3). The administration would have to move quickly "to energize funds and to galvanize the private sector" to make a lunar depot by end of 2020 possible, he added. [Bigelow Aerospace's Inflatable Space Station Idea (Photos)]

Bigelow spoke with Space.com just days after the private spaceflight company SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, announced that it will launch a private flight around the moon in 2018. On Feb. 26, Musk told reporters SpaceX had "significant deposits" from two as-yet unnamed individuals for a private trip around the moon aboard the company's Dragon crew capsule. The flight will launch on SpaceX's new Falcon Heavy rocket, which is scheduled to make its first test flight later this year. 

"SpaceX has indicated that they can provide transportation for a circumlunar flight by 2018," Bigelow said. "If the timeline is met, SpaceX would be in a position to offer commercial transportation to the moon by 2020."

Last week, another space entrepreneur — Amazon's billionaire founder Jeff Bezos — told the Washington Post that his private space company Blue Origin is eyeing its own plan for moon-bound spacecraft and a lunar lander.

Bigelow himself has often said that private space stations and habitats for the moon and beyond have been goals for his Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace. Last Wednesday (March 1), Bigelow unveiled his company's concept images of a lunar depot on the way to the moon, and in lunar orbit. 

Bigelow Aerospace launched two uncrewed prototype inflatable habitats, called Genesis I and Genesis II, in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Then in 2016, the company's Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (or BEAM) was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship as part of a NASA test for future space habitats. It is the first privately built and inflatable room ever installed on the space station. And so far, it's performed well, Bigelow said. [The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module in Pictures]

"We are pleased, so far, with the performance of the spacecraft," he added. 

Bigelow Aerospace has also teamed up with the United Launch Alliance, a launch-providing partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to launch a colossal inflatable space habitat into orbit in 2020. That spacecraft, called the BA-330 for its 330 cubic meters (or about 11,650 cubic feet) of internal volume, would launch on a ULA Atlas V rocket and expand in orbit to serve as a free-flying private space station. 

"The BA-330 is three times the size of anything on the ISS," Bigelow told Space.com, adding that the company aims to be able to provide the habitats at a fraction of NASA's cost. 

Bigelow said that a BA-330 habitat could potentially be placed into a low-lunar orbit using two of ULA's upgraded Centaur rocket stages, known as ACES (Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage). The space station would orbit somewhere between 100 and 150 kilometers above the moon, serving as a gateway for astronaut crews making their way to or from the lunar surface. 

The BA-330 could also be a fueling station for other spacecraft operating near the moon, something that will be essential for the permanent settlement of the moon, Bigelow said. 

"You'll be able to give the astronauts a waystation, a place where they can have the experience of being farther from Earth than anyone has been in the last 45 years," he added.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

{ http://www.space.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Georgia UFO recalled as football-shaped

A Georgia witness at Savannah recalled events from 2007 when a football-shaped object moving silently about 75 feet above a two-story building appeared to be about three to four feet in length, according to testimony in case 82024 from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.

The witness first noticed a dark, round silhouette with small wings coming toward him over Savannah, GA.

(Credit: Google)

The witness was outside on top of a two-story building watching a meteor shower on August 12, 2007.

“I was looking towards the north when I noticed a dark, round silhouette with small wings off in the distance against the glow of the city sky,” the witness stated.“Sometimes I would see owls flying at night, but this was obviously not an owl.”

The witness thought the object might be a bird.

“My first thought was that this has got to be the fastest bird with the shortest wings I have ever seen and the wings were not moving. I then realized that it was coming directly towards me. I instantly jumped up from my seat to give it my full attention.”

The object was about 75 above a two-story building. Pictured: Savannah, GA.

(Credit: Google)

The witness guessed at the object’s altitude.

“The building I was standing on is two stories tall and I would guess that the object was about 75 feet above that. It was traveling from north to south in a straight line at approximately 35 to 45 mph. It was shaped like an American football with the tips cut off with two small, rectangular wings that were angled at about 45 degrees. I would guess that it was about three to four feet in length. The object had the appearance of molten lava.”

The center of the object appeared to be glowing red. Pictured: Savannah, GA.

(Credit: Google)

The witness noticed other characteristics of the object.

“It was not tremendously bright, but it was bright enough that I could see it perfectly. The center was glowing red and the rest was orange, yellow and black swirls with it being darker towards the edges. It looked like it had been cast from molten lava. It made no sound that I could hear and I didn’t see any type of propulsion like a propeller or an exhaust of any kind. It flew directly over me as I tracked it as it flew overhead and then out of my sight.”

Georgia MUFON Field Investigator David Marchant, Sr. and State Section Director Jeremy Haslam are investigating. This case was reported to MUFON on February 12, 2017. Please remember that most UFO sightings can be explained as something natural or man-made. The above quotes were edited for clarity. Please report UFO activity to MUFON.com.

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:34 geschreven door peter  

A Star Is Headed in Our Direction and Could Threaten Life on Earth

It won't get too near, but it will come close enough to wreak unimaginable havoc on our planet.

Based on a recent study done, Gliese 710 — a K-spectral type star in the constellation Serpens Cauda  — is bound for a close encounter with our solar system. Right now, it’s still about 64 light years away. At its current speed and path, it is estimated that it will be at its nearest distance to Earth in about 1.35 million years. That distance is roughly 1.2 trillion miles or 77 light-days (1 light-day is the distance light can travel in one day, or about 26 billion kilometers). When that time comes and at that distance, even at the size of only half our sun, Gliese 710 will appear as the “brightest and fastest object on the night sky formed outside the solar system”.

Although that’s still quite a long way off, the devastating threat it poses when the flyby finally happens cannot be dismissed because its impact will be felt for the next 10 million years.

The information that Gliese 710 will pass close to us is not entirely new. In fact, scientists have been aware of this for years, which is why they have been tracking its movement. However, it’s knowing that it will make a much closer approach than what was once thought — probably about five times closer — that’s new. And more importantly, it’s the direction it’s taking that’s causing serious alarm.

According to the data collected from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission, Gliese 710 will not directly hit any object in our solar system, but it will likely travel through the Oort cloud, which is circling our solar system and is filled up with billions of comets and other icy objects. Because of its strong gravitational force, Gliese 710 — as it is passing through the Oort cloud — can influence the movement of the swarm of comets, change their course and hurtle towards our planet.

Not all those comets may make their way to us, though. Some may drift away further into space, get absorbed by the sun, pulled into other planets with stronger gravity, or maybe fall into a black hole? However, it’s impossible to think that none of those billions will hit us directly. And that’s what’s terrifying because we’re potentially looking at a comet shower that will last for 3 – 4 million years.

Remember that it took just one asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs. Just imagine what a barrage of comets can do.

Authored by Filip Berski and Piotr A. Dybczyński from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, the paper detailing the latest findings on Gliese 710 was published in November 2016 through the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

{ http://wallstreetpit.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:28 geschreven door peter  

Detecting Life on Alien Planets Just Became Easier With This New Technique

The chemical-based analysis is not only simple. It's supposedly 10,000 times more sensitive than any existing method.

Searching for life outside Earth has become a never ending quest. And researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California might have come up with the easiest way yet.

Their method makes use of a process called capillary electrophoresis to separate liquid into its individual components. The process begins with mixing the liquid sample with a liquid reagent. Then, through a process known as induced fluorescence detection, different molecules moving at various speeds can be observed by shining a laser into the mixture. Finally, an electrical current is applied to the mixture, which then allows scientists to see the molecules separate from each other depending on how quickly they respond to the charge applied.

The test is meant to search for amino acids — what we acknowledge to be the building blocks from which all of life on Earth was derived from. It has been modified not just to enable detection of more amino acids in a single test, but also to detect amino acids regardless of how salty or alkaline the liquid sample is. This improvised method is specifically designed to detect alien life on an ocean world.

To find out if their method works, the research team analyzed amino acids in the waters of California’s Mono Lake. Specifically, they analyzed what is referred to as the ‘Signature 17 standard’ — the most common amino acids on Earth. Why did they choose this particular body of water? Because the lake has high alkaline content which makes it almost inhabitable, much like how alien waters probably are on surfaces like Mars; Europa — one of Jupiter’s moons; and Enceladus and Titan — Saturn’s moons.

To identify which amino acids were life-forming and which were not, the team studied the ‘chirality’ of the molecules. Chiral molecules — like what amino acids are — exist in two forms that are identical images of each other. These images are called right-handed and left-handed.

For amino acids that come from non-living sources, the distribution of right-handed and left-handed amino acids is nearly even. But for living sources, left-handed amino acids dominate over the right-handed ones. Taking off from this, scientists are inferring that alien life might also show a preference for either side. So finding such amino acids might be the clue that would point to the existence of alien life forms.

As reported by Phys.org, Peter Willis, the project’s principal investigator, was quoted as saying: “Using our method, we are able to tell the difference between amino acids that come from non-living sources like meteorites versus amino acids that come from living organisms.”

So when do we get to test this method outside our planet? Because it is supposedly ‘relatively simple and easy to automate’, there’s no reason to think that it can’t be deployed in a spacecraft soon. Especially since it’s the ideal complementary tool to help facilitate NASA’s upcoming missions that aim to find life on ocean worlds outside our planet.

The study was published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

{ http://wallstreetpit.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

This New Tech Could Get Us To Mars In 72 Hours

Five months to get there is just too long. It’s about time we cut the Red Planet's travel time short as putting boots on Mars should no longer be just a sci-fi dream but rather a reality.

Mars may be our nearest neighboring planet, but with the conventional rockets we have right now, it will still take us about five months to get there. And that simply isn’t satisfactory. There has got to be a way to make that trip shorter.

There are currently a few ongoing projects working towards this end. There’s the controversial propellant-less EM Drive which no one can explain for certain how it works, but has somehow passed its initial test.

And then there’s Charles Bombardier’s space train concept — the Solar Express that is envisioned to travel at approximately 1,864 miles per second, or 1% the speed of light, and cut travel time to Mars from a few months to just 2 days.

There’s also Positron Dynamics co-founder and CEO Ryan Weed’s antimatter-powered rocket that will make use of matter’s annihilation property — hit matter with its anti-matter counterpart to annihilate each other and generate pure energy that will be used to power the rocket and blast it into space with an accelerated speed that can enable travel to Mars in just a few weeks.

And now comes the latest bet:  photonic propulsion — a concept that was explained by NASA scientist and University of California Physics Professor Philip Lubin in a recent video (posted below) released for NASA 360. It basically makes use of a beam of light for propulsion, hence the name photonic propulsion, for photons or visible light particles.

Lubin heads a team of scientists who has recently been given a $100,000 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant to start planning and testing this photonic propulsion project that’s being called Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration or DEEP-IN.

To make the plan work, a laser array first needs to be placed in the Earth’s orbit. This orbiting laser array will then be used to push a solar sail. Much like a normal sail that catches wind to propel water vessels, a solar sail works the same way. Instead of wind, however, it catches light, and uses this to propel a space-bound probe — one that’s ideally ultralight (wafer-thin is how it’s being described), fuel-less, frictionless, and capable of travelling for a longer period of time at a speed that has so far been unattainable — 621 miles per second, or about 30% the speed of light.

While the concept sounds pretty much like another science fiction movie plot, Lubin says it’s not that far-fetched because we already have the technology. It just needs to be enhanced further. If successful, an umanned probe using photonic propulsion is expected to reach Mars in only 3 days, while a manned craft will take about a month — four months faster than any normal spacecraft can do at this time.

It’s a grand new idea, and it comes with a myriad of potential problems, of course. Primarily, there’s the challenge on how the probe would be able to decelerate when it reaches Mars. There’s also the certainty of encountering space debris and how to protect the craft from those. Then there’s ‘time dilation’, the concept that says that as one gets farther out in the universe, the slower time seems to pass. Plus there’s also the matter of how we can beam the information back to Earth.

All those problems aside, the idea that we have in our midst viable tech that can revolutionize space travel is quite an exciting one. Especially because it’s production is not expected to be at an exorbitant cost. By successfully making these solar sails, Mars will just be one among the many possible destinations. So, let’s all patiently wait and root for Lubin’s team to work their way towards the new age of space travel.

{ http://wallstreetpit.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:21 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s New Plan Could Help Unravel Some of the Weirdest Mysteries of the Universe

It involves a super-freezer, quantum physics and dark energy.

As announced by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) last Monday (March 6), a box the size of an ice-chest will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the SpaceX CRS-12 this summer. Containing lasers, a vacuum chamber and an ‘electromagnetic knife’ that will be used to slow down gas particles until they become motionless, NASA intends to use this box to create the coldest spot in the universe.

The box and its accompanying set of instruments are collectively referred to as the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL). Developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it is currently in the final stages of assembly at the JPL Complex in Pasadena, California, after which, it will undergo testing prior to its actual trip to space.

NASA’s ‘cool toolkit’ was designed to freeze atomic gas particles to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, which is over 100 million times colder than the deepest regions of the cosmos. Supposedly, when atoms are ultra-cooled to this extreme temperature level, they are capable of forming a state of matter referred to as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

A Bose-Einstein condensate is a kind of fluid that flows as if there was no friction, which is why it’s called a ‘superfluid’. While in this state, traditional laws of physics become overshadowed as quantum physics takes over. Instead of behaving like particles, matter tends to become more wave-like, moving as a single entity rather than several different entities.

So far, this behavior can only be observed for fractions of seconds on Earth because the atoms can’t help but be pulled to the ground by Earth’s gravity. In space, however, the story will be a little different. Without gravity to intervene, it might become possible to observe the atoms in their wave-like form longer. Instead of just a mere fraction of a second, the atoms can be observed for up to about 5 to 10 seconds. And with more improvements, that observation time can probably be stretched even further from just seconds into minutes.

A total of five teams are planning to run experiments using the Cold Atom Lab. Among them is Eric Cornell — of the University of Colorado, Boulder and the National Institute for Standards and Technology — who won a Nobel Prize for being the first person ever to create Bose-Einstein condensates in the lab.

So what’s the whole point of this novel strategy? According to CAL Project Scientist Robert Thompson of JPL: “Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity.”

What he specifically means is that the discoveries and lessons that will be gained from the experiments might one day lead to the construction and development of better sensors, quantum computers and atomic clocks for space navigation. Additionally, it might also help shed light on some of the most mysterious forces in the universe — dark energy and dark matter. Just think, this ‘supercool’ project might be the key that will allow us to cross over from our ordinary physical world into the bizarre realm of the quantum universe. Pretty exciting, isn’t it?

{ http://wallstreetpit.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:18 geschreven door peter  

‘UFO’ lands at Murrow Primary School to help children with creative writing

Ben Jolley

Wisbech PSCO Ruth Moulder attended Murrow Primary School where a UFO had appeared in the school grounds.

PHOTO: Facebook/Policing Wisbech.

After checking the craft to make sure there were no occupants, the school children were allowed to take a closer look at the unidentified craft.

“No, aliens haven’t landed and are starting their world domination from Murrow,” she said.

The craft was built by school caretaker Martin Bane, after headteacher Ruth Bailey came up with the idea to encourage the children at the school in terms of their creative writing.

“Intergalactic checks will be made to ensure the craft is taxed, insured and has a valid MOT,” added PCSO Moulder.

{ http://www.wisbechstandard.co.uk/news }

09-03-2017 om 23:14 geschreven door peter  

What It Will Take to Become an Interstellar Civilization

The new movie “Interstellar” is set in a not-so-distant future, but distant enough that they’ve managed to build something still elusive in 2014: a spaceship that can travel between solar systems. Such starships have been a technological mainstay in science fiction for decades, but they remain a crazily complicated proposition in everything from propulsion to human reproduction.

Still, that hasn’t stopped researchers from trying. Last month, a bunch of rocket scientists, microbiologists and entrepreneurs gathered in Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center to discuss—in level and serious tones—how to become a spacefaring civilization. The meeting is called the 100-Year Starship symposium, and it’s brought brains together once a year since 2011 to figure out what we need to do now if we want to have an interstellar spacerocket a century from now.

The group has made progress defining the challenges and pointing their noses toward solutions, but much work remains (like, say, building a starship). To quote Contact, it “sounds less like science and more like science fiction.”

Nonetheless, the 100-Year Starship adherents—backed by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—keep plugging away. At their most recent gathering, 7 major hurdles emerged from their three days of discussion.

1. Before we can make an Enterprise, we may have to make an enterprise.

With all the obvious tech challenges, this top hurdle is easy to overlook—but it’s a question of human motivation. What would motivate people to work on something that won’t be finished till they’re dead? Like Veruca Salt, when we want things, we want them now.

But even if we manage to motivate ourselves, what mechanism can provide continuity in funding and oversight across decades, let alone across generations? Government funding is fickle and depends on election cycles and budget reviews. Philanthropy rests on the whims of the wealthy. The long-term viability of crowdfunding is unproven.

If we could create an “econosphere” around long-term space travel—one that makes money and produces spinoff products, so people get salaries and gadgets—it could support itself. Space travel may have to become a business. And not just any business: a profitable one. Companies like Virgin Galactic, Deep Space Industries, and Planetary Resources are aiming to do just that.

2. We have to move fast.

It’s in the very definition of the project that we have to get to the stars. But it took poor Voyager 38 years just to get out of the solar system. Ain’t nobody got time for that. We have to figure out how to move fast through space, for a long-ass time. Engineers have a few ideas: Fusion rockets, ion drives, hydrogen-scooping ramjets, and antimatter annihilation systems, for instance.

3. Staying alive, staying alive.

A starship has to be both sustainable and life-sustaining. It will be a closed ecosystem that must either have or produce everything humans need to survive and make more humans.ment discovery would take a year to reach the crew.) Its residents would in turn need to train the next generation of caregivers.

Medical professionals draw par

Oxygen, food, and water are no-brainers. But we also need our microbiome, and we’re only now starting to investigate what happens to our symbiotic microbes off-Earth. The microbiomes of babies born en route remain a totally open question. And if they’re in microgravity, will those babies’ eye cells know where to migrate to become eye cells?

4. Take me to the space hospital.

Nobody likes going to the hospital, but it’s nice to know they’re there if you get MRSA or need an MRI. An interstellar starship will have limited machinery, limited medicine, a limited supply of doctors. Plus, access to new Earth-medicine techniques would be delayed or nonexistent. (If the ship travels, say, a light-year away, word of a cancer treatallels between this situation and that in developing nations with little health-care infrastructure. Studying either could benefit the other.

5. Crew-on-crew interaction.

After a certain amount of time locked in a room together, you and even the most unobtrusive person will get on each other’s nerves. You’ll be like, “Why do you always have to look at me like that?” and they’ll be like, “I’m not looking at you like anything.” Etc. Now imagine that drawn out over years or decades on an interstellar mission.

And beyond the everyday communication problems, disseminating information in a crisis—without causing panic or misinformation—could prove difficult. Imagine small-town social dynamics, in space. That’s why it’s important to choose a mix of crew members most likely to succeed.

But first we have to find out what that mix is. Agencies across the world are already investigating this psychological puzzler. The Mars HI-SEAS experiment began its third mission on October 15, and six (lucky?) people will spend eight months on a simulated martian colony in Hawaii. The European Space Agency teamed up from 2007-2011 with the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems to do the Mars 500 mission, in which three different crews experienced isolation together aboard a pseudo-spaceship and then on a pseudo-Martian surface.

6. Oops-factor.

When you break your printer beyond repair, you go buy a new one. But when you break your 3-D space printer that makes all of the parts for your other space stuff? You’re in trouble. The 100-Year Starship team is endorsing what they term a “steampunk” approach: Teaching spacefarers how to make high-tech things work with low-tech, macgyvered solutions.

7. Stepping stones.

One does not simply walk into Mordor, and one does not simply build an interstellar starship. Giant leaps aren’t real: They’re just a bunch small steps added together. To become interstellar, we have to start with simply sending humans to space regularly, cheaply. We have to start manufacturing and mining off-planet. And we need to establish human colonies on the Moon, and probably on Mars, to make sure we have enough resources and practice before we set off toward Earth 2.0.

Currently, the best bet rests in the hands of private industry. NASA’s asteroid capture mission promises a step in that direction. But private companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, which have both announced partnerships with NASA, may be able to make space their material domain faster and cheaper.

Image by Algol / Shutterstock

{ http://discovermagazine.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

"Fast Radio Bursts Could Be Powering Alien Probes" --Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

{ http://www.dailygalaxy.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

Ringmakers of Saturn: 2,000 Mile Long UFO Photographed by NASA?

For more incredible information on the UFO/ET phenomenon please read The Alien Enigma by JP Robinson.

Dr. Norman Bergrun, a former NASA research scientist published an astounding bookRingmakers of Saturn which revealed photos taken of Saturn’s rings from the Voyager I flight in 1980. Voyager I was sent to the rings of Saturn to investigate some strange anomalies that they had witnessed through their observations from Earth and NASA couldn’t believe what they found in the images that were sent back.

Bergrun who worked with NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, has won prestigious awards which include the California Society of Professional Enigineers Archimedes Engineering Achievement Award. Aside from his involvement with NASA Bergrun also worked on high-profile, top-secret aerospace projects for Lockheed Martin.

Being privy to top-secret documents during his time there came at a cost, as Bergrun himself explained in a Project Camelot interview, "I had to sign my life away for thirty years." He also intimated that there was a limit to what he can say even now, and revealed that his life would be in serious danger should he say too much.

With exclusive access to the raw NASA photographs been sent back from Voyager I in 1980, Bergrun saw firsthand what the general public was not allowed to see, making him the first legitimate, verified member of the scientific community to discover cylindrical vehicles. Bergrun’s book exposed for the first time exactly what Voyager I saw, but unable to get it published in America he travelled to Scotland and finally got it published in Aberdeen, Scotland

One of the photographs in his book is of an artificially constructed object in the A-ring of Saturn that he calls an ‘electromagnetic vehicle’. It was an astounding 2000 miles long and over 450 miles in diameter, that is over twice the length of Great Britain! What kind of high-technology must it take to build an object of that size, and who could be responsible for such an impossible feat of engineering?

Dr. Bergrun said, "I don't know who built it but what I found out is these things inhabit Saturn, that's where I first discovered them. And they're proliferating, they're now in Uranus and Jupiter...wherever you see some rings now. I call it the ringmaker."

Describing what he could see in the anomalous Voyager I images, he explained "I could be looking down on the rings, I could see parallel lines crossing all of the rings at once - that's about as long as you can go. I could tell that those lines demarked the outside of an object."

He explained why what he was seeing was an electromagnetic vehicle, "I say that it is an electromagnetic vehicle because I can identify streamline patterns with respect to it that I knew were what we called 'potential lines' and that says it was electrical".

Bergrun thought it could be possible that these craft were actually making the rings, hence the book’s title, but other scholars have raised the possibility that they could be mining the precious metals and nutrients that make up the rings. Either way, what an incredible discovery, another one that appears to have been left out of the public domain. A reviewer commenting on Bergrun’s book wrote, “Saturn's rings are ‘not’ natural, but are some type of effluent from massively huge, cylindrical objects, themselves measured in terms of earth diameters!”

In his 1986 book, Bergrun published images of these immense objects for the very first time, thus verifying his claims as legitimate. The pictures he presents show 'immensely large, enormously powerful space vehicles located in the vicinity of Saturn and its moons' as his introduction explains. 

'These photographic revelations are reinforced by, and are consistent with, scientific data extending over centuries as far back as Galileo. The pictures have been obtained by the author using simple, repeatable enhancement techniques applied to publicly available NASA photographs from Voyager 1 and 2 flybys of Saturn. Having been obtained by pre-scheduled flight programming, Voyager photographs are scientifically unique in that they are strictly impersonal.'

Whoever is responsible for these vast machines clearly has access to unimaginable technology which raises yet more questions surrounding the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Questions which for now will remain unanswered.

{ http://www.jp-robinson.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 22:53 geschreven door peter  

09-03-2017 om 18:56 geschreven door peter  

DE AARDE VALT BIJNA UIT ELKAAR EN NIEMAND REAGEERT ( VIDEO )

Waar op ieder journaal de hoofdpunten van het nieuws de huidige gigantische aardveranderingen zouden moeten zijn, wordt het publiek afgeleid met “lijsttrekkers”. 

Vergeleken met dezelfde periode van de vorige eeuw is tussen 2000 en eind 2016 het aantal zware aardbevingen met 2.680 procent toegenomen. 

Wat er in onze tegenwoordige tijd nogal eens ontbreekt, is wat men vroeger “gezond verstand” noemde. Het zelf nadenken over iets en niet zomaar iets aannemen omdat een ander dat zegt. 

Tegenwoordig worden mensen gebombardeerd met informatie via de mainstream kanalen, wat niet alleen betekent dat ze dikwijls verkeerde informatie krijgen, maar ook dat ze zelf geen enkele moeite doen om over iets na te denken. 

Niet alleen worden ze zo volgepompt met foutieve, misleidende informatie, vervolgens worden ze vakkundig afgeleid door niet aflatende sportevenementen, beroemdheden en stompzinnige amusementsprogramma’s. 

Wanneer je die televisie eindelijk uitzet en zelf een stukje onderzoek gaat doen, dan schrik je. De bulk van de mensheid is in slaap gesukkeld met de mantra “klimaatopwarming” en denkt verder geen seconde na over de gigantische veranderingen die nu op onze aarde plaatsvinden. 

Door deze klimaatopwarming hoax programmering vergeten de meesten dat verschijnselen zoals aardbevingen en vulkanen niet worden beïnvloed door mensen die teveel CO2 zouden uitstoten. 

Hierna volgen twee afbeeldingen. De ene laat het aantal en locaties zien van zware aardbevingen (hoger dan 6 op de schaal van Richter) in de eerste 16 jaar van de vorige eeuw en het tweede plaatje die uit onze huidige eeuw. 

Op het eerste plaatje zie je een totaal van 97 zware aardbevingen, op de tweede een totaal van 2.697 zware!

Deze toename is dermate groot, dat je je toch eens moet gaan afvragen waardoor dit nu eigenlijk komt. Het lijkt alsof er onzichtbare krachten inwerken op de aarde, waardoor alles letterlijk beeft en schudt. 

Met vulkanen krijg je een vergelijkbaar beeld. Niemand vraagt zich af hoe het kan dat enkele van de meest gevaarlijke vulkanen ter wereld opeens weer tot leven komen. We zien dan wel eens beelden van de Etna vulkaan, maar er zijn er nog veel meer. Op dit moment zijn er 35 grote vulkanen die nu uitbarsten of op het punt staan om uit te barsten. 

Hoe kan het dat al deze vulkanen nu opeens allemaal actief worden? 

Volgens de USGS is magma ondergronds gesmolten rots en is lava gesmolten rots dat door het oppervlak van de aarde breekt. Iets zorgt er op dit moment voor dat het magma door de aardkorst naar buiten wordt geduwd. 

Nog niet zo lang geleden spraken wetenschappers van “dode vulkanen”, maar zoals we nu beginnen te merken, zijn die helemaal niet dood. Er zijn zoveel van die “dode vulkanen” die opeens weer vol leven lijken te zitten. 

Het is ook niet een plaatselijk fenomeen, het gebeurt wereldwijd, van IJsland tot Indonesië, waar de bekende Sinabung vulkaan onlangs zeven keer op één dag tot uitbarsting kwam. Ook geldt er opnieuw een waarschuwing voor IJsland waar klaarblijkelijk vier vulkanen op het punt staan uit te barsten. 

Er is nog een heel actieve, maar relatief onbekende vulkaan en dat is de Erta Ale 

Erta Ale is een actieve schildvulkaan gelegen in de Afar-driehoek, in het noordoosten van Ethiopië. Het is de meest actieve vulkaan van Ethiopië. 

Erta Ale is 613 meter hoog, en is een van de enige vier vulkanen ter wereld met een lavameer op de top. Dit lavameer is het langst bestaande lavameer ter wereld. 

Erta Ale’s laatste grote uitbarsting was in 2005, toen duizenden mensen die in de buurt van de vulkaan woonden moesten vluchten. In 2007 was er nog een kleinere uitbarsting 

Schematisch ziet die vulkaan er als volgt uit:

Echter, ook deze vulkaan is de laatste tijd veel actiever geworden dan gebruikelijk. 

Volgens onderzoekers die er kortgeleden zijn geweest, is het niveau in het lavameer de afgelopen weken aanzienlijk gestegen, waardoor het nu aan alle kanten overstroomt. Wetenschappers constateerden dat door tektonische bewegingen er ook nieuwe “scheuren” zijn ontdekt waardoor het lava naar buiten komt. 

In de volgende video zijn recente beelden te zien van deze vulkaan en na het zien daarvan begrijp je de bijnaam: “Gateway to hell”. 

 

De tektonische platen op aarde schuiven overal en dit is niet zomaar. De wereld staat er echter bij, kijkt ernaar en er is in het hele mainstream land niemand die in staat is om al deze vreemde zaken met elkaar in verband te brengen. 

Niemand die hardop durft te vragen hoe het in hemelsnaam mogelijk is dat er plotseling zulke grote krachten werkzaam zijn op onze planeet. 

Het hoofd in het zand steken heeft geen zin; het zelf nadenken en op onderzoek gaan wel. 

Volgens een astronoom van de Radboud Universiteit is een vreemde planeet in ons zonnestelsel die bovengenoemde effecten zou kunnen veroorzaken grote onzin. 

De verhalen over Niburu of 'Planet X' zijn allemaal quatsch, dat is allang weerlegd en dus hoaxes. Dit soort beweringen komt doorgaans niet van wetenschappers die zich full-time hiermee bezig houden, maar van amateurs die 's avonds na hun werk blijkbaar niets beters te doen hebben dan sprookjes verzinnen. 

De dame die dit antwoord kreeg, schreef ons verder nog (dank!): 

Wat ik nog wel wil benadrukken is dat die astronoom van de Radboud Universiteit mijn opmerking volkomen negeerde, over dat aantoonbaar UV C, helium en lithium in groeiende hoeveelheden het aardoppervlak bereiken, zodat alles wat leeft dit constant inademt (vandaar ongetwijfeld die explosief toenemende luchtwegklachten, ook bij niet-rokers en plattelanders!). Met name dat UV C ons op ooghoogte bereikt, is ongehoord, omdat wetenschappers (zoals bijv. meteorologen) altijd hebben beweerd dat UV C door de dampkring rondom de aarde wordt tegengehouden. Maar omdat die dampkring zo dun geworden is, bereikt kosmische straling ons steeds meer rechtstreeks. Voor goed onderbouwde toelichting hierop: zie de site op YouTube van Higher Truth Channel en ook BP Earth Watch, die sinds een paar dagen ook werkt met een meter, die nucleaire straling meet. 

Het maakt ons niet uit wat je wel of niet wilt geloven, we zouden het alleen erg prettig vinden wanneer bovenstaande je in ieder geval tot nadenken stemt. 

Want, de heftige aardveranderingen zijn echt en er is “iets” dat dit veroorzaakt.

{ http://niburu.co/ }

09-03-2017 om 18:51 geschreven door peter  

BUITENAARDSEN VERMAKEN ZICH OVER DOMHEID MENSEN ( VIDEO )

Het kan niet anders dan dat de buitenaardsen zich vol verbazing afvragen welk niet al te intelligent ras deze planeet aarde bevolkt. 

Ze vliegen open en bloot voor iedereen zichtbaar af en aan bij hun basis onder een vulkaan en de wereldbevolking doet net alsof ze helemaal niets zien. 

Wat is het toch met mensen dat ze willens en wetens hun ogen sluiten voor iets zo essentieels als volkeren van andere planeten die hier bases hebben, doen wat ze willen en wij aardbewoners die net doen alsof ze niet bestaan? 

Natuurlijk hebben bepaalde overheden overeenkomsten met buitenaardsen en doen ze hun uiterste best om deze informatie bij het publiek vandaan te houden, maar kom, we leven in 2017 en informatie kan op heel veel verschillende manieren worden gedeeld en toch verandert er helemaal niets. 

Deze week wordt er door een webcam bij de bekende Popocatépetl vulkaan in Mexico weer het zoveelste bijzondere tafereel vastgelegd. 

Je ziet van links een UFO aankomen die zo te zien verdwijnt in de krater van de vulkaan.

Dan zie je een tijdje niets en even later verschijnt de UFO weer, zoals te zien op de volgende afbeelding.

Volgens ufologen is het een vaststaand feit dat er zich een buitenaardse basis bevindt op een diepte van enkele kilometers onder deze Popocatépetl. 

Maar, zelfs als je niet zou geloven dat er zich daar een buitenaardse basis bevindt, dan nog zijn de beelden die in de loop der jaren zijn gemaakt dusdanig, dat er geen enkele twijfel meer over bestaat dat er onbekende vliegende objecten in de vulkaan verdwijnen en ook weer uit tevoorschijn komen. 

De opname van enkele dagen geleden volgt hierna. 

 

De meest beroemde opname van de Popocatépetl is wel die uit oktober 2012 waar een enorm sigaarvormige UFO met onvoorstelbaar grote snelheid de vulkaan binnenvliegt. 

 

Een deel uit een eerder artikel over een andere beroemde vulkaan:

Naast de Popocatépetl is er in Mexico nog een bekende vulkaan, de Colima, waar regelmatig vreemde objecten worden waargenomen. 

Ook daar was het afgelopen vrijdag raak met een sigaarvormige UFO. 

Omdat er een goede vergelijking gemaakt kan worden met de krater van de vulkaan heeft men berekend dat deze UFO’s ongeveer 500 meter lang zijn. De grootste van de twee heeft ook een soort metallic-achtige glinstering, wat normaal is, omdat deze opnames gemaakt zijn bij zonsopgang. 

Deze vulkaan bevindt zich op ongeveer 500 kilometer afstand van de hoofdstad Mexico City.

De vulkaanuitbarstingen wereldwijd nemen toe en het was dan ook een kwestie van tijd totdat mensen verbanden gingen leggen tussen de toenemende UFO activiteit bij vulkanen en die van vulkanische uitbarstingen. 

Tenslotte iets wat misschien niet veel mensen weten, is dat er diverse getuigenverklaringen zijn van reddingswerkers die vreemde wezens hebben waargenomen op de hellingen van de Popocatépetl vulkaan. 

Navolgend een deel uit een eerder artikel. 

De professionele bergbeklimmers (Mountain Rescue) die zich bij en rond de vulkaan bezighouden met onder andere het in veiligheid brengen van verdwaalde toeristen en dergelijke, maken melding van vreemde wezens. 

Ze zijn tussen de twee en twee en een halve meter groot en worden waargenomen op de helling van de vulkaan, dichtbij de krater. 

Ze zijn lang en dun en beschikken niet over een uitrusting zoals een rugzak of iets dergelijks. Ze hebben niets om zich tegen de barre weerscondities op die hoogte te beschermen.

Deze wezens zijn niet een keer bij toeval waargenomen. Ze worden op regelmatige basis gezien door leden van Mountain Rescue en anderen. 

Tot grote verbazing van de bergbeklimmers kunnen de wezens in een heel korte tijd een aanzienlijke afstand overbruggen op de steile gladde berghelling. 

Een afstand op de berghelling waar de bergbeklimmers normaal gesproken drie uur over doen, wordt door deze wezens in tien minuten afgelegd. 

Guillermo Vidalez is één van de bergbeklimmers die ze met eigen ogen heeft gezien. Hij zegt dat het eigenlijk onmogelijk is voor iets of iemand om een berghelling in zo'n korte tijd te beklimmen, gezien de condities van het terrein en het weer. De wezens zagen er uit als dunne, lange figuren en ze waren te ver van Vidalez verwijderd om contact te kunnen maken. 

Grote vraag is natuurlijk: Wie zijn deze wezens en wat hebben ze daar op die helling van de vulkaan te zoeken.

Het enige dat wij kunnen doen is al dit soort vreemde voorvallen blijven rapporteren in de hoop dat er ooit eens ergens iets of iemand echt wakker wordt onder de grote massa en dat die zich gaan afvragen waarom ze hier nooit iets van in het journaal terug zien.

Ook voormalig minister van defensie van Canada doet niet aflatend zijn best de mensheid te laten doordringen van het feit dat buitenaardsen bestaan en ook hun voertuigen. Navolgend een interessant recent interview wat hij had met RT News.

{ http://niburu.co/ }

09-03-2017 om 18:34 geschreven door peter  

A Real Life “Hibernation Chamber” is Being Made For Deep Space Travel

 

An artist’s rendering of what Spaceworks’ human stasis pods would look like.

SpaceWorks

IN BRIEF

• Spaceworks, led by John A. Bradford, is proposing to use a new method to allow humans to 'hibernate' during extended space trips.
• The process involves cooling the body a little below the normal body temperature (37 C), to slow down heart rate and blood pressure.

THERAPEUTIC HYPOTHERMIA

Manned, long-term, deep space missions are an exciting prospect, but one that remains in the realm of distant possibilities–particularly because we don’t have all the technological innovations needed to make it happen.

One major consideration is the time it takes to reach the destination. Mars, which is at the top of various space programs’ go-to destinations for manned missions, is about six months if travel time away from Earth. If we wanted to explore even further, keep in mind that New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft to leave Earth, took nine and a half years to reach Pluto.

Science fiction conveniently sidesteps this challenge by putting the space explorers into deep sleep–a state of suspended animation. But slowing the human metabolism down while ensuring that a person will stay alive for extended periods is a lot easier said than done.

Spaceworks however, led by John A. Bradford, is proposing to use a method they refer to as “therapeutic hypothermia.” The process involves cooling the body a little below the normal body temperature (37 C), to slow down heart rate and blood pressure. This process is already being used in the medical world. By bringing the body temperature of patients undergoing treatment for cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injuries down to 32 and 34 degrees Celsius, doctors have more time to address the issues.

The method normally allows patients to stay in stasis for about 2-4 days, but has worked for as long as two weeks. Spaceworks not only believes they can extend this for months, but also that they can create the technology needed to automate the process and apply it for deep-space missions.

SUSPENDED ANIMATION

Unlike the cryo-chambers depicted in films however, where row upon row of space travelers are left in suspended animation in individual pods, Spaceworks is conceptualizing an open chamber that allows the crew to go into stasis in shifts.

“There would be some robotic arms and monitoring systems taking care of [the passengers]. They’d have small transnasal tubes for the cooling and some warming systems as well, to bring them back from stasis,” Bradford describes an interview with Quartz.

This not only addresses concerns of adding too much weight to a spacecraft, but also ensures that there will be people awake to manage possible emergencies and conduct standard monitoring.

As for the long-term health effects of space travel, Spaceworks is trying to find ways of incorporating exercise into stasis. The team is looking into using electrical stimulation, which is already used to aid physical therapy. Having this technology in place also solves a lot of logistical issues for manned space missions. With crew members awake, you have to factor in the volume of food, water, and air needed to keep them alive for months and years at a time. It could also help manage the psychological impact of long-term space travel and hopefully lower the risk of space crews succumbing to depression, claustrophobia, or anxiety.

According to Spaceworks, they are due to begin animal testing next year, with human testing set to follow after in space and on the International Space Station.

References: 

• Digital Trends, 
• Quartz, 
• Spaceworks/International Astronautical Congress

{ https://futurism.com/ }

09-03-2017 om 15:02 geschreven door peter  

Aliens, black holes and spoon bending: Freaky incidents scientists STILL can’t explain

SOMETIMES ignorance is bliss – particularly when it comes to alien lifeforms on other planets.

{ http://www.dailystar.co.uk/ }

09-03-2017 om 14:20 geschreven door peter  

UFOS OVER PYRAMIDS: Crystal clear footage of bizarre objects at Giza goes viral

A STUNNING video which appears to show three crystal clear UFOs hovering over the ancient pyramids of Giza has gone viral.

09-03-2017 om 13:28 geschreven door peter