NASA has discovered hundreds of potential new planets — and 10 may be like Earth

• NASA's has detected 219 possible new planets.
• About 10 of these new worlds may be Earth-size and habitable.
• The Kepler space telescope that discovered the new planets has so far found more than 4,000 worlds.
• The results suggest there may be billions of Earthlike planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

NASA scientists on Monday announced the discovery of 219 new objects beyond our solar system that are almost certainly planets.

What's more, 10 of these worlds may be rocky, about the size of Earth, and habitable.

The data comes from the space agency's long-running Kepler exoplanet-hunting mission. From March 2009 through May 2013, Kepler stared down about 145,000 sunlike stars in a tiny section of the night sky near the constellation Cygnus.

Most of those stars are hundreds or thousands of light-years away, so there's little chance humans will ever visit them — at least anytime soon. However, the data could tell astronomers how common Earthlike planets are and what the chances of finding intelligent extraterrestrial life might be.

"We have taken our telescope, and we have counted up how many planets are similar to the Earth in this part of the sky," Susan Thompson, a Kepler research scientist at the SETI Institute, said during a press conference at NASA Ames Research Center on Monday.

"We said, 'How many planets there are similar to Earth?' With the data I have, I can now make that count," she said. "We're going to determine how common other planets are. Are there other places we could live in the galaxy that we don't yet call home?"

Added to Kepler's previous discoveries, the 10 new Earthlike planet candidates make 49 total, Thompson said. If any of them have stable atmospheres, there's even a chance they could harbor alien life.

The new Earths next door?

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists wouldn't say too much about the 10 new planets, only that they appear to be roughly Earth-size and orbit in their stars' "habitable zone" — where water is likely to be stable and liquid, not frozen or boiled away. That doesn't guarantee these planets are habitable, though. Beyond harboring a stable atmosphere, things like plate tectonics and not being tidally lockedmay also be essential.

However, Kepler researchers suspect that almost countless Earthlike planets are waiting to be found, because the telescope can "see" only exoplanets that pass in front of their stars.

The transit method of detecting planets that Kepler scientists use involves looking for dips in a star's brightness, caused by a planet blocking a fraction of the starlight (similar to how the moon eclipses the sun).

Because most planets orbit in the same disk or plane, and because that plane is rarely aligned with Earth, Kepler can see only a fraction of distant solar systems — those angled even slightly are invisible to the transit method.

Despite those challenges, Kepler has revealed the existence of 4,034 planet candidates, with 2,335 of those confirmed as exoplanets — and these are just the planets found in 0.25% of the night sky.

"In fact, you'd need 400 Keplers to cover the whole sky," Mario Perez, a Kepler program scientist at NASA, said during the briefing.

The biggest number of planets appears to be a new class of planets, called "mini-Neptunes," Benjamin Fulton, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the California Institute of Technology, said during the briefing.

The size of such worlds is between Earth's and that of the gas giants of our solar system, and they are most likely the most numerous kind in the universe. "Super-Earths," which are rocky planets that can be up to 10 times as massive as our own, are also very common.

NASA/Kepler/Caltech (T. Pyle)

While just 49 of Kepler's thousands of planet candidates are Earth-size and in a habitable zone, the discovery has rocked the scientific world: This could mean billions of such worlds exist in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

"This number could have been very, very small," Courtney Dressing, an astronomer at Caltech, said during the briefing. "I, for one, am ecstatic."

Kepler's big backup plan

NASA Ames/W. Stenzel and JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt

Kepler finished collecting its first mission's data in May 2013, when two hardware failures limited the telescope's ability to aim at one area of the night sky and stare at sunlike stars.

It has taken scientists years to analyze that information because it's often difficult to parse, interpret, and verify. Thompson said this new Kepler data analysis would be the last for this leg of the telescope's first observations.

However, Kepler's work may be far from over. Scientists came up with a backup plan, called the K2 mission.

K2, which kicked off in May 2014, takes advantage of Kepler's restricted aim to study a variety of objects in space, including supernovas, baby stars, comets, and even asteroids.

But a special focus of K2 involves studying smaller, cooler stars called red dwarfs, which are increasingly exciting to astronomers. In February, for example, a different one revealed the existence of seven rocky, Earth-size planets circling a red dwarf star.

An illustration of what it might look like on the surface of TRAPPIST-1f, a rocky planet 39 light-years away from Earth.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Such red dwarf stars are the most common in the universe and can have more angry outbursts of solar flares and coronal mass ejections than sunlike stars.

But, paradoxically, they might harbor the most small, rocky planets in a habitable zone in the universe — and thus may be excellent places to look for signs of alien life.

Kepler will wrap up its work sometime in the next year or two. When it runs out of fuel to do its work, a new and more powerful NASA space telescope, called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), should be ready to pick up the work of locating Earthlike planets.

NOW WATCH: Stephen Hawking warned us about contacting aliens, but this astronomer says it's 'too late'

{ http://uk.businessinsider.com/ }

30-10-2017 om 21:22 geschreven door peter  

First sighting of ‘alien’ comet from beyond our solar system caught on camera

First human sighting of 'alien' comet.

© Alan Fitzsimmons / Queen’s University Belfast / Isaac Newton Group La Palma

An international team of researchers, led by scientists from Queen’s University Belfast, are using powerful telescopes to study the chemical make-up of the small rocky object, which was first identified through a telescope in Hawaii last week.

Read more

Stardust: British firm will scatter your ashes in outer space

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, from the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen’s, described the discovery as sending a “shiver down your spine.” Commenting on the project, he said: 

"By Wednesday this week it became almost certain this object was alien to our solar system.

“We immediately started studying it that night with the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands, then on Thursday night with the Very Large Telescope in Chile," he added.

The first bits of data on the fast-moving object, catchily named A/2017 U1, show it is already on its way back out into the stars after flying close the sun last month.

It is also believed it has been drifting through the galaxy for millions or even billions of years, before entering our solar system by chance. It’s thought it was thrown out of another star system during a planet’s formation.

READ MORE: Sun explosions & space hurricanes: The silent threat to global communications systems

Meabh Hyland, a PhD student from the Astrophysics Research Center at Queen's, said: “It's wonderful and exciting to see this object passing through our planetary system.”

It is hoped more is discovered about the properties and nature of the object as scientists examine it over the next couple of weeks.

{ https://www.rt.com/ }

30-10-2017 om 21:00 geschreven door peter  

UFO hunters claim they've found an 'alien mothership' on Mars

Conspiracy theorists have long pointed to extra terrestrial life existing millions of miles from Earth, but now some believe they've found conclusive evidence a little closer to home.

Images found in footage of Mars, taken from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, appear to show a gigantic 2.1 kilometre long vessel which theorists are claiming is an 'alien mothership'.

UFO hunters believe they have found an 'alien mothership'.

Source: YouTube

UFO hunters firmly believe the discovery is evidence of an alien civilisation on the rocky planet.

“I have processed, colorised and rebuilt the object and in my opinion it is a craft of some kind, possibly tens of thousands of years old," the video's description reads.

The conspiracy theorists have identified certain features of the ship.

Source: YouTube

"It's also over a mile long, so this must have been a mothership, either a Martian one or possibly an off planet alien species, but why did it crash?”

• Is that a UFO? Mystery hovering black ring baffles beach goers
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The video goes as far as to label certain features of the alleged ship, pointing out possible locations of the cockpit and the ship's hull.

However, some commentators have rubbished such claims, insisting it is only a piece of raised ground or a rock formation.

UFO seekers capture clearest view yet of Area 51

VIDEO YouTube channel and UFO enthusiasts 'UFO Seekers' climb Tikaboo Peak in Nevada to catch a rare view of Area 51.

 Source: UFO Seekers

{ https://au.news.yahoo.com/ }

30-10-2017 om 20:40 geschreven door peter  

ALIENS TRUTH COMING? Ex-military and scientist insiders to lift lid on UFOs

EXCLUSIVE: Former military, law enforcement officials and scientists have teamed up to try to get the "truth" about UFOs out there.

30-10-2017 om 20:28 geschreven door peter  

The Most Amazing Space Stories of the Week!

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: CTV

Photo Credit: NASA/Goddard/LRO

Photo Credit: SOHO/ESA & NASA

Photo Credit: University of Warwick

Photo Credit: Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Photo Credit: Flickr/NASA HQ PHOTO

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)

30-10-2017 om 19:55 geschreven door peter  

Cosmologists are heading back to their chalkboards, as experiments designed to figure out the nature of dark matter come up empty.

Map of all matter – most of which is invisible dark matter – between Earth and the edge of the observable universe.

Image via ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech.

By Dan Hooper, University of Chicago

The past few decades have ushered in an amazing era in the science of cosmology. A diverse array of high-precision measurements has allowed us to reconstruct our universe’s history in remarkable detail.

And when we compare different measurements – of the expansion rate of the universe, the patterns of light released in the formation of the first atoms, the distributions in space of galaxies and galaxy clusters and the abundances of various chemical species – we find that they all tell the same story, and all support the same series of events.

This line of research has, frankly, been more successful than I think we had any right to have hoped. We know more about the origin and history of our universe today than almost anyone a few decades ago would have guessed that we would learn in such a short time.

But despite these very considerable successes, there remains much more to be learned. And in some ways, the discoveries made in recent decades have raised as many new questions as they have answered.

One of the most vexing gets at the heart of what our universe is actually made of. Cosmological observations have determined the average density of matter in our universe to very high precision. But this density turns out to be much greater than can be accounted for with ordinary atoms.

After decades of measurements and debate, we are now confident that the overwhelming majority of our universe’s matter – about 84 percent – is not made up of atoms, or of any other known substance. Although we can feel the gravitational pull of this other matter, and clearly tell that it’s there, we simply do not know what it is. This mysterious stuff is invisible, or at least nearly so. For lack of a better name, we call it “dark matter.” But naming something is very different from understanding it.

Astronomers map dark matter indirectly, via its gravitational pull on other objects. Image via NASA, ESA, and D. Coe

(NASA JPL/Caltech and STScI).

For almost as long as we’ve known that dark matter exists, physicists and astronomers have been devising ways to try to learn what it’s made of. They’ve built ultra-sensitive detectors, deployed in deep underground mines, in an effort to measure the gentle impacts of individual dark matter particles colliding with atoms.

They’ve built exotic telescopes – sensitive not to optical light but to less familiar gamma rays, cosmic rays and neutrinos – to search for the high-energy radiation that is thought to be generated through the interactions of dark matter particles.

And we have searched for signs of dark matter using incredible machines which accelerate beams of particles – typically protons or electrons – up to the highest speeds possible, and then smash them into one another in an effort to convert their energy into matter. The idea is these collisions could create new and exotic substances, perhaps including the kinds of particles that make up the dark matter of our universe.

As recently as a decade ago, most cosmologists – including myself – were reasonably confident that we would soon begin to solve the puzzle of dark matter. After all, there was an ambitious experimental program on the horizon, which we anticipated would enable us to identify the nature of this substance and to begin to measure its properties. This program included the world’s most powerful particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider – as well as an array of other new experiments and powerful telescopes.

Experiments at CERN are trying to zero in on dark matter – but so far no dice.

Image via CERN.

But things did not play out the way that we expected them to. Although these experiments and observations have been carried out as well as or better than we could have hoped, the discoveries did not come.

Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared. And although the Large Hadron Collider has by all technical standards performed beautifully, with the exception of the Higgs boson, no new particles or other phenomena have been discovered.

At Fermilab, the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search uses towers of disks made from silicon and germanium to search for particle interactions from dark matter.

Image via Reidar Hahn/Fermilab.

The stubborn elusiveness of dark matter has left many scientists both surprised and confused. We had what seemed like very good reasons to expect particles of dark matter to be discovered by now. And yet the hunt continues, and the mystery deepens.

In many ways, we have only more open questions now than we did a decade or two ago. And at times, it can seem that the more precisely we measure our universe, the less we understand it. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, theoretical particle physicists were often very successful at predicting the kinds of particles that would be discovered as accelerators became increasingly powerful. It was a truly impressive run.

But our prescience seems to have come to an end – the long-predicted particles associated with our favorite and most well-motivated theories have stubbornly refused to appear. Perhaps the discoveries of such particles are right around the corner, and our confidence will soon be restored. But right now, there seems to be little support for such optimism.

In response, droves of physicists are going back to their chalkboards, revisiting and revising their assumptions. With bruised egos and a bit more humility, we are desperately attempting to find a new way to make sense of our world.

Dan Hooper, Associate Scientist in Theoretical Astrophysics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

30-10-2017 om 19:07 geschreven door peter  

BREAKING! HAVE ASTRONOMERS DISCOVERED OUR FIRST INTERSTELLAR VISITOR? NOTE: NOT ALIENS

Contributed by

Phil Plait

@BadAstronomer

This is a pretty big deal: A newly discovered object currently heading out of our solar system is looking very much like it’s our first true interstellar visitor: an asteroid from another star.

Yes. Seriously.

It’s called A/2017 U1, and it’s probably less than about 400 meters wide. It was discovered just last week, on October 19, in observations made by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). This telescope sweeps the skies, looking for moving objects. Right away it looked like this was an unusual object: It was moving too fast.

Teh path of A/2017 U1 took it from interstellar space to deep inside the solar system on a hyperbolic orbit. A typical highly elliptical comet orbit is shown for comparison. 

Credit: Brooks Bays / SOEST Publication Services / UH Institute for Astronomy 

If an object in the solar system is in a stable, bound orbit around the Sun, its speed depends pretty much on two things: Its distance from the Sun and the shape of its orbit. At the distance of the Earth from the Sun, for example, an object can be moving at anything up to a little over 40 kilometers per second. The Earth orbits in roughly a circle at just under 30 km/sec. An object on an elliptical orbit that stretches as far out as Earth’s orbit will be moving more slowly than that at aphelion (the point in its orbit when its most distant from the Sun).

But if an object is at the same distance as the Earth from the Sun and moving faster than about 42 km/sec, the object is no longer bound to the Sun. This means the object is moving faster than escape velocity (the shape of the orbit is a hyperbola), and will never return. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

A/2017 U1 passed the Sun inside the orbit of Mercury in early September, curving sharply due to the Sun’s gravity, and is now on its way out. It’s already farther away from the Sun than Earth is, moving at a very brisk 44km/sec. That’s too fast. It’s not going to come back; it’s heading out into interstellar space^*.

How did it get this much speed? Sometimes, objects like comets can get an extra kick by passing by a big planet like Jupiter. But A/2017 U1’s orbit doesn’t bring it near any big planets. In fact, the orbit is tilted to the plane of the solar system by 122°, nearly perpendicular to it. That means it had this huge speed already on its way in.

And that means it must have come from interstellar space. From another star. ^†

In fact, tracing the orbit backwards, it looks like it came somewhere from the constellation of Lyra, and was already cruising through interstellar space at a speed of over 25 km/sec! At that speed so far out it can’t possibly have an origin inside our solar system, so this is truly an alien object.

Holy wow. I mean, holy wow.

At first it was thought this might be a comet, but very deep images of it show no activity from it at all, no escaping gas or dust. That makes it extremely unlikely to have any ice on its surface, things like frozen water, carbon dioxide, or carbon monoxide, which are usually seen in comets. Instead, it must be rocky or metallic, like an asteroid. At the moment it’s not clear what it’s made of, but a lot of telescopes are being aimed at it; hopefully soon a spectrum may reveal its composition. That’ll be very interesting indeed.

The interstellar asteroid A/2017 U1, images using a 40 cm telescope when the object was about 60 million km from Earth and at a magnitude of 22 (that’s very faint).

Credit: Gianluca Masi (Virtual Telescope Project) and Michael Schwartz (Tenagra Observatory)

Why is it moving so fast? For quite some time now astronomers have understood that early in the life of the solar system, the big planets have moved around. Jupiter and Saturn were farther out from the Sun and migrated inwards. This can disrupt the orbits of smaller objects like comets and asteroids, flinging them about hither and yon. Eventually this cleared a lot of debris from the young solar system, dropping these rocks into the Sun or ejecting them out into interstellar space.

If it happened here, it happened out there, too. The galaxy is probably littered with rogue objects between the stars, the ejecta from birth pangs of alien solar systems. We’ve seen evidence of rogue planets, ejected in a similar way. It’s certain that there is far more smaller debris out there. Finding one of these asteroids passing through our own solar system was just a matter of time.

I’ll note that the direction it’s coming from, Lyra, is in the galactic plane: Where most of the stars in the galaxy are concentrated. That’s consistent; if it’s coming from another star far, far away then somewhere along the Milky Way’s disk is the most likely point of origin.

This is a phenomenal discovery! Stars are very far away; the nearest is over 40 trillion kilometers — a 50,000 year journey at A/2017 U1’s speed. And it certainly came from much farther away yet. It may have been traveling for millions or even billions of years before approaching our system.

Shapes of various orbits. A mild ellipse (red) has an eccentricity of less than 1, a parabola 1 (green), and a hyperbola greater than 1 (blue).

Credit: Wikipedia / Seahen

Bill Gray of the Pluto Project has been keeping track of the orbital path of this asteroid. I asked him where it appears to be heading, and he told me it’s in the direction of Pegasus (toward a point in the sky with coordinates of RA=23h 51m and Dec=+24° 49', if you’re curious). There aren’t any obvious stars at that spot except for HD 223531, which is 400 light years away. A/2017 U1 won’t really get all that close to it, and won’t pass it for another million years or more anyway (and by the that time the star will have moved substantially, too).

… still, I can’t help but wonder. I put absolutely no weight on this speculation, and would even bet heavily against it, but it’s an obvious thought and I feel I have to at least mention it.

Space is vast. Even in our solar system, the outer planets are billions of kilometers away, with smaller icy objects extending for a trillion or two past that. No doubt, there is debris from other stars passing us at all kinds of distances. Most would never get within a light year, 10 trillion km.

From that distance, the inner solar system is a ridiculously small target. Mercury’s orbit is only about 115 million km across. For something coming from interstellar space, getting that close to the Sun is threading the eye of a very, very narrow needle.

Yet A/2017 U1 did just that. It passed the Sun at a distance of about 45 million kilometers. That’s… weird.

Part of this is what we call a selection effect: An object like this passing out by the orbit of Jupiter would be very faint, so it’s harder to discover. We only see the ones that happen to pass close to Earth. So even before this, I would’ve wagered the first one we discover would be passing through the inner solar system as opposed to farther out.

But still, getting that close to the Sun seems unusual.

Let me be clear: I am NOT saying this is an alien spaceship. But if I were an alien race interested in exploring other systems, this is pretty much the sort of path I’d put my probe on. I’d aim it to pass deep within the alien solar system, check out the habitable planets, and use the star’s gravity to bend the orbit to aim it at the next target.

Again, I’m quite sure this is a natural object and not an alien spaceship. Even so, it’s certainly not a mundane one: It’s a freaking asteroid ejected from another star that’s been wandering the galaxy for eons and passed a few million kilometers from the Sun and Earth and is on its way back out into the void!

Either way, I wish Arthur C. Clarke had lived to see this. He’d have loved it.

^* The shape of an orbit is described by its eccentricity, which you can think of as how far it deviates from a circle. An eccentricity of 0 is a perfect circle, and ellipses have eccentricities up to 1. A parabola has an eccentricity of exactly 1, and anything greater than 1 is a hyperbola. A/2017 U1 has an eccentricity of about 1.2. At first there weren’t enough observations to be sure about that, but now there are so many that the uncertainty in the eccentricity is less than 0.003. It’s hyperbolic for sure. Staggering.

^†There’s another possibility: If there’s another planet in our solar system orbiting far, far beyond Neptune, and the asteroid started somewhere nearby (that is, as part of our solar system since the start) and passed close to this planet, it could get a kick in velocity and get flung down towards us at higher speed. However, a lot of things have to line up for this to happen so the odds on this are incredibly low, so low I’d put them at essentially 0. But I’d be remiss not to at least mention it. [UPDATE (Oct. 29, 2017): Bill Gray (mentioned in the article) sent me a note; he points out that even if such an encounter happened, it's essentially impossible for it to give a kick to the asteroid large enough to get it moving at 25 km/sec, the excess speed U1 was moving when it was still far from the Sun. I agree, so ignore this footnote!]

{ http://www.syfy.com/ }

30-10-2017 om 18:32 geschreven door peter  

Available now is the new book from Kevin Randle. Its title:Encounter In The Desert. The subtitle: The Case For Alien Contact At Socorro. If you know your UFO history, you’ll know exactly what the title of the book refers to. Namely, an incident that went down on April 24, 1964 and which, for many, has become a UFO classic. It was on the afternoon of the day in question that local police-officer Lonnie Zamora broke off from pursuing a teenager in a speeding car and headed to a nearby dynamite shack. The reason? A sudden roaring sound coming roughly from the area where the shack was positioned. Quite naturally, Zamora thought that there may have been an explosion at the site. He was wrong. What Zamora came across – many UFO researchers believe – was nothing less than a landed UFO, piloted by two smallish humanoids dressed in white. A close encounter? For many, yes. But not for all.

Those who are skeptical of the Socorro affair suggest that what came down may have been a vehicle of the military. Others suggest that an ingenious prank was the cause of all the fuss. The story was told extensively in Ray Stanford’s 1976 book, Socorro “Saucer” In A Pentagon Pantry. Now, more than forty years after Stanford’s book was published, we have Kevin Randle’s take on Socorro. It’s clear from very early on that Randle is of the opinion that what landed at – and soon took off from – Socorro was an alien spacecraft. To his credit, though, Randle tackles just about every theory under the Sun.

That something happened is not a matter for debate. Something clearly did. The big question is: what, exactly, happened? We know that the local police, the Air Force and the FBI all took a deep interest in the case. In part, surely, because the primary witness was a then-serving police officer. I say “primary” because, as Randle notes, there is evidence of other witnesses having seen something too.

Randle takes us on a real-life detective story as he seeks to uncover the truth of the weird event. We are treated to a good, solid study of the case, of the craft that Zamora encountered, and of the diminutive pilots. Randle also demonstrates that the Air Force’s Project Blue Book undertook an in-depth investigation of the controversy. It was an investigation handled seriously and carefully by the USAF.

Personally, I have no firm conclusion regarding what happened on that April 24, 1964 day. And, having read Randle’s book, I’m still not sure what to think of it. Yes, Randle does indeed make a good case that the claims of the craft being one of ours doesn’t really hold water. He cites, for example, the words of Hector Quintanilla, who was in charge of the USAF’s operation, Project Blue Book, at the time. Quintanilla followed a theory that perhaps what Zamora had seen had military origins. Randle refers to “…some special tests being conducted at White Sands involving a Lunar Surveyor and helicopters.” While this looks promising – in terms of an answer – we learn that Quintanilla, having addressed this theory, came away “dejected” and convinced that “the answer to Zamora’s experience” was not to be found in military experiments, after all.

Randle also has a 17-page chapter on the hoax theory. Philip Klass – a real piece of work who I crossed swords with in the 1990s – crops up in this chapter, as one would expect. A definitive debunker – rather than an open-minded skeptic – Klass pursued various clues and data to try and make a case for a hoax. His conclusions were not particularly persuasive. Far more interesting, though, is a relatively recent claim which suggests the whole thing was concocted by a bunch of local students, and who had grievances against Zamora. Randle says: “Zamora harassed the students for seemingly no reason, and at every possible opportunity. Many of the college kids did not like him.” This is a very intriguing chapter which, I suspect, will make some conclude that a hoax is indeed what it was. Randle offers his thoughts, however, as to why he disagrees with this scenario.

While Randle does make a good argument for something unknown having touched down, there is one thing that I found seriously distracting. The book runs to 284 pages, which is enough for a solid conclusion to be reached. But, here’s the problem I have: There is a lot of material in the book which has zero to do with the Socorro case. For example, Randle notes carefully that beings – whether human or alien – were seen around the craft. So, as a result of this, we have an entire chapter (Chapter 6, titled “Other ‘Unidentified’ Occupant Sightings”) on this aspect of Ufology. We’re told of a landing with entities in Kansas in 1952, of an Oklahoma-based incident in 1966, and of one in Berlin, Germany in 1950. Of course, there is nothing wrong with noting this. But, a 12-page chapter, which has nothing to do with Socorro? Randle could have made his point – that there are good, other landing/occupant cases on record – in a couple of paragraphs. As I see it, this chapter comes across as filler, as padding, to make the book longer.

I felt exactly the same about Chapter 7, “Psychological Solutions.” This chapter includes nothing less than a 10-page section on the 1952 “Flatwoods Monster” saga. It also includes a 13-page study of the famous Kelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky “Goblin” incident of 1955. Combined, that’s 23-pages. Yes, Randle makes valid points concerning various parallels to the Socorro incident. But, just as I said in the paragraph immediately above, this chapter too comes across as filler. Chapter 11 is 24-pages long and it deals with other landing cases. Yes, again, Randle makes connections between Socorro and these other landing-themed ones. But – also again – Randle could have made his point in a page or two. Or even less. The material I have issues with amounts to almost 60 pages of the book, and which really has very little to do with Socorro at all. It could all have been condensed and wrapped up in a few pages. Or combined into one chapter. The text of the book is 249 pages (minus the Bibliography, Index etc), so roughly a quarter of the book veers away from Socorro.

That said, I do recommend people read Randle’s book, as it’s high time that a new study of the Socorro case surfaced. And, now, it has. The padding aside, this is a good study of the April 1964 incident and will almost certainly provoke lively debates among ufologists.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

30-10-2017 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

Alien Space Vehicle Apparently Crash Lands In UFO Sighting Hotspot After Residents Notice Mysterious Light

A mysterious craft has gotten alien hunters into a frenzy after it reportedly went down in a UFO sighting hotspot.

A bright light allegedly appeared in Peruibe, south Brazil, earlier in October and residents apparently saw vegetation smashed to the ground.

The local officials, according to the report, condoned off immediately the strange mark on the ground, which measured 13 by 2 meters.

What makes the story interesting is that it took a week before Brazilian media reported the incident, fueling claims of a cover-up.

Saga Susseliton Souza, a UFO investigator, said they noticed that it was not human-made after looking at it in the last few days. They believed it was a UFO that landed and caused the vegetation to crumble.

It was reported that a power cut in the area occurred at the time of sighting and residents claimed to have experience nausea and malaise.

The city is considered a UFO hotspot with 79 sightings reported since 1998.

Just last week, apparent alien pyramids were found under the sea. The UFO hunter claimed that they are 6.6km south of New Providence Island in the Bahamas. The structures are estimated to be 100 m wide and 60 m high. The pyramids, according to the UFO hunter, are evidence that nearby island was once inhabited by Aztec like people or ancient Mayans.

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

30-10-2017 om 17:38 geschreven door peter  

Watch – UFO In Skies Over Cumbria

From the darkness came light in the Cumbrian night sky as a glowing light beams brightly while slowly glides across.

At least one person on the ground was left stunned as they witnessed the striking sight, wondering what the object could be. They decided to film the UFO as it cruises above. The witness uploaded the video to YouTube, identifying themselves as Space Bound and posing a question: Is this a UFO?

Cumbria is not new to strange sightings above the sky. Carlisle fireman Jim Templeton was on an outing with his family in Burgh Marsh in 1964. He did not expect their simple trip to go global. It was an early summer afternoon when Jim took a photo of his five-year-old daughter. The picture shows a spaceman in the background. No one saw something unusual in the marsh that day.

Police and Ministry of Defence investigated the case, but no concrete explanation up to this day.

In another incident, an unnamed man in Carlisle reported having been living with an alien. The man had seen a UFO above his house. He added that he was living with aliens that move around the house.

In the MoD UFO reports, a lot of other sightings are made public. One of them happened on February 6, 2009, when a clearly defined, shiny silvery metallic cylinder with rounded ends was spotted between Mealrigg and Langrigg at 5:30 pm near Aspatria. It was reported to be 50 feet long with a small protrusion on the upper rear body. Interestingly, the UFO reportedly made no sound.

30-10-2017 om 17:31 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE

By Emma Parry, Digital US Correspondent in Hulett, Wyoming

THE man involved in one of the most infamous alien abduction cases of all time has hit out at skeptics and non-believers - saying 16 separate lie detector tests - taken by himself and witnesses to the unexplained 1975 incident - prove his story is TRUE.

Travis Walton, disappeared without a trace after he and the crew of loggers he worked with claimed to have seen a huge UFO in the forest they were working in.

JOHN CHAPPLE

Originally crew members were suspected of murder but Travis reappeared five days later saying he had been taken into a space craft by alien creatures.

The dad-of-four says he has spent the past 40 year defending himself against those trying to discredit him - and has even written a book debunking every alternate theory to what happened to him.

The 64-year-old, who says the incident is still “fresh in his mind’, told the Sun Online it was important to share his story because the public have a right to “know what's out there”.

Travis, a logger in the mountains of Arizona, was leaving work on November 5, 1975, with five crew members in a truck when the alleged incident took place.

They saw some glimmers of light through the trees – and pulled up, thinking it was a fire.

“When we pulled up into the light where we had straight view – it was unmistakable I yelled stop and one of the guys in the back said it’s a spaceship or a flying saucer it was less than 100 feet away," Travis said.

Travis Walton abduction tale will leave you questioning the existence of aliens

TRAVIS WALTON

TRAVIS WALTON

“It was a clearly defined metallic disc outlined against the sky and fantastic in the grandeur of it.

“All the guys in the crew – as frightening as it was – also describe it as being beautiful it was so perfect.

“I got out as soon as Mike who was driving stopped and I left the door open and went towards it.

“It was just an impulse I thought it would be gone by the time I got close. It was immediately alarming to the other guys and the closer I got they were yelling at me to get back in the truck.

"Later they said it looked like I was in a trance but looking at them it seemed like they were in a trance too.”

TRAVIS WALTON

The spaceship began to make loud noises and move so Travis dived for cover behind a log.

He then tried to stand up and run away but was hit by a strong "force" and was thrown into the air.

“When it hit me it was a stunning force. I did not see this blast of energy but the men in the crew gave a statement to the sheriff’s department and said it looked like a long blue flame – others compared it to stepping on a landmine or grenade because it threw me through the air.

"They were immediately certain it killed me.”

TRAVIS WALTON

Fearing for their lives – and thinking Travis was dead – the rest of the crew fled to get help.

A huge search party involving the sheriff department, helicopters, ATVs and men on horseback - could not find any trace of Travis.

Meanwhile Travis’s account of what he remembers next is even more bizarre.

TRAVIS WALTON

He says he awoke from consciousness on a spaceship surrounded by small creatures he believes were aliens.

“It was very blurry and I had some double vision but I could see the outline of these forms around me I thought they were doctors but when my vision got clearer and I could see these were not doctors - I just flipped out," he said.

“The one that was closest to me - I tried to hit it away - but I felt like I could hardly move my arm.

TRAVIS WALTON

"It was more of a push than a hit because I was so weakened but the creature felt soft and lighter than I expected. It fell back into one that was standing near it.

"I backed away and bumped up against a shelf and looked around and saw an array of tools or instruments and I very quickly just grabbed one and started flailing at them.

"They stopped and stood there staring at me and that stare was in my nightmares for many years after that. I couldn’t tolerate that stare."

Travis says he managed to escape through a door and into a narrow passageway then into another room with control panel in it.

A human being dressed in what looked like a space helmet then appeared and took him to a separate room where he was put on a table and given a mask which rendered him unconscious.

TRAVIS WALTON

The next thing he knew he was waking up on the road about 15 miles from where he disappeared just outside the nearest town of Snowflake, Arizona.

Travis, who had no idea he had been gone for five days, managed to walk into town where everyone who saw him described him as looking “devastated” and “shell shocked”.

But then the battle to get people to believe his story began - and Travis was thrust into the world's spotlight.

Travis's wrote a book about his experiences called Fire In The Sky which was later turned into a movie of the same name.

JOHN CHAPPLE

Travis said: "From the beginning it was a battle against people trying to explain it away - the locals didn’t want to believe it, the sheriff didn’t want to believe it - you know he thought it was a murder then a drug hallucination.

"I had a whole battery of psychiatric tests and there was nothing wrong in that department, drug tests proved there was nothing in my system."

And over 40 years later Travis stands by his story – and has taken five separate lie detector tests to prove it is true – while witnesses and crew members have taken a total of 11 polygraph tests.

TRAVIS WALTON

Experts believe there is a million to one chance of there being any mistakes in this number of passed tests.

Speaking at the Devil's Tower UFO rendezvous in Hulett, Wyoming, Travis said: "I decided to break my silence. I started refuted these things that people have been saying about me and my story.

"I took each and every theory the sceptics came up with and just blew them out of the water with facts.

"I am certain I’m not the only one who has been taken - this is absolutely real and it’s important that the general public come to a gradual understanding of that.

"I’m not trying to shock or amaze or frighten anyone - on the contrary - in relating how frightened I was I don’t want anyone to share that fear.

TRAVIS WALTON

"I think it’s important for them to realize what happened with me 45 years ago – it was not even an abduction.

"I entertained that term for a while because that’s what other people called it but now I’d say it was more of an ambulance call – that I was injured in a way that would have been fatal and the aliens had the technology available to help me."

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

30-10-2017 om 01:46 geschreven door peter  

For the First Time Ever, a Robot Was Granted Citizenship

 Hanson Robotics

30-10-2017 om 01:02 geschreven door peter  

Plane Carrying NBA Team Oklahoma City Thunder Hit By ‘UFO’ While Landing In Chicago

Anything can happen during accidents. Deaths, bone-chilling injuries, end of careers. But this accident is special. Out of the world, may be. A chartered plane carrying NBA Team Oklahoma City Thunder gets hit by a UFO while landing in Chicago. Yes, an unidentified flying object. The impact was so intense that it damaged the nose cone of the Delta Airlines Boeing 757-200.

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Images of the dented plane were posted on social media by the team's basketball stars, who were in Chicago to play a game against the local side Chicago Bulls.

The team members have also written to NASA to understand what actually went wrong.

View image on Twitter

{ https://www.indiatimes.com/ }

29-10-2017 om 23:55 geschreven door peter  

UFO hunters claim 'alien mothership' spotted on Mars in NASA images

Extraterrestrial theorists believe they've found proof of alien life on Mars.

YouTube channel Paranormal Crucible claims NASA images show a 2km long downed "alien mothership" on the surface of Mars.

The images from the video were found in footage taken from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor - which surveyed the red planet until 2006 when the space agency lost contact with it.

"I have processed, colorised and rebuilt the object and in my opinion it is a craft of some kind, possibly tens of thousands of years old," explains the description underneath the video.

"It's also over a mile long, so this must have been a mothership, either a Martian one or possibly an off planet alien species, but why did it crash?"

But some people who watched it appear not to be convinced and have their own theories about what the object is.

One said: "It's sunken ground, not raised, look at the location of the light and the shadows compared to the surrounding craters."

Another dismissed claims of alien life, believing it's a deep ditch but questioned "how the hell it got there... It's in the middle of a very flat desert".

It's not the first time conspiracy theorists have claimed an alien civilisation is living on the red planet.

Last year, astonishing photos taken by NASA appear to show a "pair of wheels on the side of a hill" which so-called "truth-seekers" believe is evidence aliens used "advanced forms of transportation" up there.

Alien life forms would have a tough time surviving, as the planet has no liquid water on it and often reaches temperatures as low as -125C.

{ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ }

29-10-2017 om 23:38 geschreven door peter  

Nicola Davis

@NicolaKSDavis

A mysterious object detected hurtling past our sun could be the first space rock traced back to a different solar system, according to astronomers tracking the body.

While other objects have previously been mooted as having interstellar origins, experts say the latest find, an object estimated to be less than 400m in diameter, is the best contender yet. 

READ MORE

“The exciting thing about this is that this may be essentially a visitor from another star system,” said Dr Edward Bloomer, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

If its origins are confirmed as lying beyond our solar system, it will be the first space rock known to come from elsewhere in the galaxy.

Published in the minor planet electronic circulars by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the observations reveal that the object is in a strong hyperbolic orbit – in other words, it is going fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the sun. 

Objects originating from, and on long-period orbits within, our solar system can end up on a hyperbolic trajectory, and be ejected into interstellar space – for example if they swing close by a giant planet, since the planet’s gravity can cause objects to accelerate. But Dr Gareth Williams, associate director of the Minor Planet Center, said that wasn’t the case for the newly discovered body. 

“When we run the orbit for this [object] back in time, it stays hyperbolic all the way out – there are no close approaches to any of the giant planets that could have given this thing a kick,” he said. “If we follow the orbit out into the future, it stays hyperbolic,” Williams added. “So it is coming from interstellar space and it is going to interstellar space.”

The object’s orbit.

“If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit, this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet,” the report notes. A second report, published later the same day, redesignated the object as an asteroid on account of new analysis of its appearance, giving it the handle A/2017 U1.

According to observations made by astronomers, the object entered our solar system from above, passing just inside Mercury’s orbit and travelling below the sun, before turning and heading back up through the plane of the solar system towards the stars beyond. At its closest, on 9 September, the object was 23.4m miles from the sun.

READ MORE

First spotted earlier this month by a telescope at an observatory in Hawaii, astronomers around the world are now following the path of the object. Among them is Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from Queen’s University Belfast.

“It is fairly certain we are dealing with our first truly identified alien visitor,” he said. Fitzsimmons added that his team is currently working on measuring the objects’ position better to improve calculations of its trajectory, and to gather information relating to its chemical makeup, and size. 

Early results, he said, suggest that the object might be similar in make-up to many of those of the Kuiper belt – a region past Neptune in our solar system that contains myriad small bodies.

Bloomer says we should not be too surprised if it does indeed turn out to have come from elsewhere in the galaxy.

“Beyond the planets and past the Kuiper belt we think there is a region called the Oort cloud, which may be home to an astonishing number of icy bodies,” he said.

“Computer models have suggested that disturbances to the Oort cloud do send some stuff in towards the inner solar system, but it would also send stuff outwards as well – so we might be throwing out icy bodies to other star systems.”

If so, Bloomer said, there is no reason to suspect that disturbances to other star systems, as a result of gravitational interactions or other processes, wouldn’t throw material out too. “Just statistically, some of them are going to reach us,” he added. 

Williams noted that objects could also be thrown out from the inner region of other solar systems as a result of gravitational interactions with giant planets, casting them into interstellar space.

And Fitzsimmons added that there was another possibility – that the object had been thrown out during the planet-forming period of another solar system.

“We know now that many stars, probably the majority of stars in our galaxy, have planets going around them, and we know from studying those stars but also primarily from studying our own solar system, that planet building is a very messy process,” he said.

With large quantities of material thrown out into interstellar space, said Fitzsimmons, is was expected that there would be objects travelling between the stars.

“This object itself could have been between the stars for millions or billions of years before we spotted it as it plunged into our solar system,” he said.

But, he noted, puzzles remain, not least that Kuiper belt bodies, which are believed to be icy, would give rise to an atmosphere and tail if brought close to the sun. 

“There is no evidence that this object has behaved like that, all our data show it as an unresolved point of light, implying it is more like a rocky asteroid than an icy comet,” he said. “There are mysteries to be solved here.”

{ https://www.theguardian.com/international }

29-10-2017 om 23:14 geschreven door peter  

Small Asteroid or Comet 'Visits' from Beyond the Solar System

A small, recently discovered asteroid -- or perhaps a comet -- appears to have originated from outside the solar system, coming from somewhere else in our galaxy. If so, it would be the first "interstellar object" to be observed and confirmed by astronomers.

This unusual object – for now designated A/2017 U1 – is less than a quarter-mile (400 meters) in diameter and is moving remarkably fast. Astronomers are urgently working to point telescopes around the world and in space at this notable object. Once these data are obtained and analyzed, astronomers may know more about the origin and possibly composition of the object.

A/2017 U1 was discovered Oct. 19 by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, during the course of its nightly search for near-Earth objects for NASA. Rob Weryk, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), was first to identify the moving object and submit it to the Minor Planet Center. Weryk subsequently searched the Pan-STARRS image archive and found it also was in images taken the previous night, but was not initially identified by the moving object processing.

Did you ever wonder how NASA spots asteroids that maybe getting too close to Earth for comfort? Watch and learn. Find out more about NASA finds, studies and tracks near-Earth objects

by visiting https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense .

Weryk immediately realized this was an unusual object. "Its motion could not be explained using either a normal solar system asteroid or comet orbit," he said. Weryk contacted IfA graduate Marco Micheli, who had the same realization using his own follow-up images taken at the European Space Agency's telescope on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. But with the combined data, everything made sense. Said Weryk, "This object came from outside our solar system."  

"This is the most extreme orbit I have ever seen," said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist at NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "It is going extremely fast and on such a trajectory that we can say with confidence that this object is on its way out of the solar system and not coming back."

The CNEOS team plotted the object's current trajectory and even looked into its future. A/2017 U1 came from the direction of the constellation Lyra, cruising through interstellar space at a brisk clip of 15.8 miles (25.5 kilometers) per second.

The object approached our solar system from almost directly "above" the ecliptic, the approximate plane in space where the planets and most asteroids orbit the Sun, so it did not have any close encounters with the eight major planets during its plunge toward the Sun. On Sept. 2, the small body crossed under the ecliptic plane just inside of Mercury's orbit and then made its closest approach to the Sun on Sept. 9. Pulled by the Sun's gravity, the object made a hairpin turn under our solar system, passing under Earth's orbit on Oct. 14 at a distance of about 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) -- about 60 times the distance to the Moon. It has now shot back up above the plane of the planets and, travelling at 27 miles per second (44 kilometers per second) with respect to the Sun, the object is speeding toward the constellation Pegasus.   

"We have long suspected that these objects should exist, because during the process of planet formation a lot of material should be ejected from planetary systems. What's most surprising is that we've never seen interstellar objects pass through before," said Karen Meech, an astronomer at the IfA specializing in small bodies and their connection to solar system formation.

The small body has been assigned the temporary designation A/2017 U1 by the Minor Planet Center (MPC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where all observations on small bodies in our solar system -- and now those just passing through -- are collected. Said MPC Director Matt Holman, "This kind of discovery demonstrates the great scientific value of continual wide-field surveys of the sky, coupled with intensive follow-up observations, to find things we wouldn't otherwise know are there."

Since this is the first object of its type ever discovered, rules for naming this type of object will need to be established by the International Astronomical Union.

"We have been waiting for this day for decades," said CNEOS Manager Paul Chodas. "It's long been theorized that such objects exist -- asteroids or comets moving around between the stars and occasionally passing through our solar system -- but this is the first such detection. So far, everything indicates this is likely an interstellar object, but more data would help to confirm it."

The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) is a wide-field survey observatory operated by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. The Minor Planet Center is hosted by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and is a sub-node of NASA's Planetary Data System Small Bodies Node at the University of Maryland (http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/ ). JPL hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). All are projects of NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, and elements of the agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office within NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

For more information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense

For asteroid and comet news and updates,

follow AsteroidWatch on Twitter twitter.com/AsteroidWatch

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov 

Laurie Cantillo / Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1077 / 202-358-1726
laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov / dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov 

Roy Gal
University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy
301-728-8637
roygal@hawaii.edu

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

29-10-2017 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

BREAKING NEWS: Oklahoma City Thunder Plane Hit By A UFO

A lot of people contacted me in the last hours about this strange event that happened at Delta flight 8935.

This happened to NBA team Oklahome City Thunder, after a game on Friday night. After the game in Minneapolis they flew to Chicago and their plane was hit by an unidentified flying object at 30.000 feet (9.1km) in the air.

Their plane landed in Chicago and no one was hurt. NBA players posted photos of a damaged plane on social networks:

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Steven Adams 

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Hey @NASA @neiltyson @BillNye 
We had a rough flight to say the least. 

30000 feet in the air. 
Flying to chicago. 

What caused this?

07:14 - 28 Oct 2017

•  1,2621,262 Replies
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Josh Huestis 

✔@jhuestis

I guess we hit something? 30,000 feet up...

07:09 - 28 Oct 2017

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Here’s the official statement from a Delta Airlines:

“Delta flight 8935, operating from Minneapolis to Chicago-Midway as a charter flight for the Oklahoma City Thunder, likely encountered a bird while on descent into Chicago. The aircraft, a Boeing 757-200, landed safely without incident; customers have since deplaned and maintenance teams are evaluating. Safety is Delta’s top priority.”

I guess there are some realy big birds flying at 30k!

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

29-10-2017 om 22:22 geschreven door peter  

Two recent studies explore the possibility of an ancient ocean on dwarf planet Ceres, largest world in the asteroid belt. If it existed, what happened to it? And could Ceres still have liquid water today?

Left, Ceres as seen by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from its high-altitude mapping orbit at 913 miles (1,470 km) above the surface. Right, a map showing variations in Ceres’ gravity field as measured by the Dawn spacecraft. This gravity map supports the idea of an ancient ocean on Ceres.

Image via NASA JPL.

Ceres – orbiting between Mars and Jupiter – was classified as a planet when it was first discovered in 1801, until the 1850s when it became known as the largest of the little worlds in the asteroid belt. In 2006, astronomers re-classified it as a dwarf planet. Still, it may seem odd to you to imagine little Ceres, a world only 590 miles (950 km) across, having an ocean. And yet Ceres is known to have water-containing minerals on its surface. Two recent studies explore the possibility of an ocean on Ceres in the distant past, and they shed light on the question of what happened to this ocean, if it existed, and on whether Ceres might still have liquid water today.

Our knowledge of Ceres has vastly increased in the past couple of years, since the Dawn spacecraft began orbiting it in early 2015. Dawn’s mission was recently extended, by the way.

NASA said:

The Dawn team found that Ceres’ crust is a mixture of ice, salts and hydrated materials that were subjected to past and possibly recent geologic activity, and that this crust represents most of [an] ancient ocean. The second study builds off the first and suggests there is a softer, easily deformable layer beneath Ceres’ rigid surface crust, which could be the signature of residual liquid left over from the ocean, too.

Julie Castillo-Rogez, Dawn project scientist and co-author of the studies, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, said:

More and more, we are learning that Ceres is a complex, dynamic world that may have hosted a lot of liquid water in the past, and may still have some underground.

Earth-Ceres size comparison. Ceres is little, but it accounts for approximately 1/3 of the mass of the asteroid belt. In 2006, IAU astronomers briefly considered changing the status of Ceres back to that of a major planet, but then opted to make both Ceres and Pluto dwarf planets. The reason is neither Ceres nor Pluto “dominates its orbit.” Both share their orbits with many other smaller bodies, in the case of Ceres, asteroids in what we call the asteroid belt.

Image via ThePlanets.org.

Anton Ermakov, a postdoctoral researcher at JPL, led the first study, which is an analysis of measurements made via the Dawn spacecraft of Ceres’ gravity. Such measurements enable scientists to estimate the composition and interior structure of a world like Ceres. This study is published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research. The measurements came from observing the spacecraft’s motions with NASA’s Deep Space Network. The scientists were looking small changes in the spacecraft’s orbit, which indicate gravity anomalies.

NASA said:

Three craters — Occator, Kerwan and Yalode — and Ceres’ solitary tall mountain, Ahuna Mons, are all associated with ‘gravity anomalies.’ This means discrepancies between the scientists’ models of Ceres’ gravity and what Dawn observed in these four locations can be associated with subsurface structures …

[Ermakov’s study also found] the crust’s density to be relatively low, closer to that of ice than rocks. However, a study by Dawn guest investigator Michael Bland of the U.S. Geological Survey indicated that ice is too soft to be the dominant component of Ceres’ strong crust. So, how can Ceres’ crust be as light as ice in terms of density, but simultaneously much stronger? To answer this question, another team modeled how Ceres’ surface evolved with time.

Ahuna Mons on Ceres, a mountain about 4 miles (6 km) tall, in a simulated view using NASA’s Dawn spacecraft images. This region on Ceres is associated with gravity anomalies, which helps scientists probe Ceres’ interior structure.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

Roger Fu at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, led this second study, which is published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. It investigated the strength and composition of Ceres’ crust and deeper interior by studying the dwarf planet’s topography.

NASA explained:

By studying how topography evolves on a planetary body, scientists can understand the composition of its interior. A strong, rock-dominated crust can remain unchanged over the 4.5-billion-year-old age of the solar system, while a weak crust rich in ices and salts would deform over that time.

By modeling how Ceres’ crust flows, Fu and colleagues found it is likely a mixture of ice, salts, rock and an additional component believed to be clathrate hydrate. A clathrate hydrate is a cage of water molecules surrounding a gas molecule. This structure is 100 to 1,000 times stronger than water ice, despite having nearly the same density.

The researchers believe Ceres once had more pronounced surface features, but they have smoothed out over time. This type of flattening of mountains and valleys requires a high-strength crust resting on a more deformable layer, which Fu and colleagues interpret to contain a little bit of liquid.

The team thinks most of Ceres’ ancient ocean is now frozen and bound up in the crust, remaining in the form of ice, clathrate hydrates and salts. It has mostly been that way for more than 4 billion years. But if there is residual liquid underneath, that ocean is not yet entirely frozen.

This is consistent with several thermal evolution models of Ceres published prior to Dawn’s arrival there, supporting the idea that Ceres’ deeper interior contains liquid left over from its ancient ocean.

Artist’s concept of Dawn spacecraft orbiting Ceres. Our knowledge of this little world has greatly increased, thanks to Dawn, whose mission was recently extended. Yet mysteries remain.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Bottom line: Two recent studies explore the possibility of an ocean on Ceres in the distant past, and they shed light on the question of what happened to this ocean, if it existed, and on whether Ceres might still have liquid water today.

Via NASA JPL

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

29-10-2017 om 22:08 geschreven door peter  

Ancient Hindu Manuscript reveals Interplanetary Travel and flight existed 7,000 years ago

By Ivan 

It is believed that Bharadwaja made approximately 500 guidelines describing in details aviation and other technologies, present on earth thousands of years ago.

However, the authors note that the current manuscript features only between 100 to 120 guidelines. Experts are convinced that foreign rulers who invaded India stole many of these manuscripts, studying them to produce many of the technologies we see today on Earth.

These reports seem to back the Vaimānika Śāstra, an early 20th-century Sanskrit text said to describe in great detail aerospace technology claiming that ‘Vimānas’ mentioned in ancient Sanskrit epics were in fact advanced aerodynamic flying vehicles, similar to modern-day rockets capable of interplanetary flight, as suggested by the popular Ancient Astronaut Theory.

The texts were revealed in 1952 by G. R. Josye and contain 3000 shlokas in 8 chapters. The propulsion of the Vimānas, according to Kanjilal (1985), is by “Mercury Vortex Engines,” a concept similar to electric propulsion.

The authors said the aircraft the sage described is capable of traveling between countries, continents, and planets. According to the authors, this proves the aviation system in the ancient world was very advanced, more so than what exists today, and that most of the technologies that existed on Earth thousands of years ago, before the rise of ‘modern civilization’ are now completely gone, missing not only from society but from history books as well.

What the authors presented from the manuscript is mindboggling. Many scientists at the conference were marveled. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mumbai, Rajan Welukar said: “there is no reason to believe in what they say about the Vedas, but it is something that is worth studying.”

Interestingly, many studies have offered contradictive results when studying the feasibility of ‘ancient flying machines’.

in 1974, a study by the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore found that the heavier-than-air aircraft that the Vaimānika Śāstra described were aeronautically unfeasible.

But despite this fact, there are still many authors and scholars who are convinced that these ancient machines were in fact blueprints of highly advanced flying machines. Some of these researchers and scholars encourage aggressive inquiry into ancient books discussing technology that may surpass our very own today, in the 21st century.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

29-10-2017 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

For kidney patients, surgical outcomes were similar whether a human or a machine wielded the scalpel

BY 

MARIA TEMMING 

HELPING HANDS  Use of surgical robots for laparoscopic kidney removal has been ramping up, but adding a robot to the mix doesn’t necessarily make surgery more efficient. 

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

29-10-2017 om 20:42 geschreven door peter