What is the Wilson Cycle, builder and slayer of supercontinents?

We all know what tectonics is — but does it happen by accident? Does it have to follow rules? Is there a method to the madness? Actually, there is: a beautiful, epic cycle of death and rebirth named after Canadian geophysicist John T. Wilson.

Image via Pixabay.

Geology is, in many ways, a matter of degrees. One of my freshman year professors used to say that nothing “just happens” in geology, that every flake of rock adheres to the same rules that shape whole planets — it’s just a matter of how closely you look. Zoom into a single strand of sand and you’re dealing with petrography — the science of the stuff rocks are made of. Look at the whole beach, and you’re dealing with sedimentology and depositional systems. If you want to know how the beaches got there, you’ll need tectonics.

And while each level of zoom paints a strikingly different picture, they’re all iterations of a single story. A story in which physics, chemistry, sometimes biology, take the leading roles. Their interplay dictates everything, from the intensity of Earth’s magnetic field to the price of gas.

Of these processes, tectonics plays out on the more massive scale of things. Look at a map — it’s tectonics who made it be that way. And it seems to be unique to the Earth. There’re some other planetsaround there that seem to do it, some very similarly to ours, but the way our blue corner of space goes about tectonics is to the best of our knowledge, unique.

But, being the science-savvy folks that you are, I’m sure you know this already. So what I’d want to talk about today is what you’ll find when you zoom out from tectonics one more time. The rules, if you will, which tectonics has to play by. A guidebook that geologists know as:

1. The Wilson Cycle

Well if you’re a stickler for rules it’s technically the Supercontinent Cycle, but that’s just a mouthful so I don’t really use the term.

So let’s get down to business. You know how the Earth’s crust is made out of plates that skim on the surface of a molten ocean of lava (the mantle), bumping into one another. Some of them get pushed back down into the mantle where they’re recycled, so have you ever asked yourself — why don’t we run out of plates?

I don’t even own this many regular plates.
Image credits USGS.

Well, the mantle also helpfully supplies new plate material in rift areas — places where existing tectonic plates drift away from one another, so the mantle can reach the surface and harden into rocks. And when they don’t really feel like bumping into or away from each other, they just slide past one another. We call these latter ones “transform boundaries,” while the bits where plates mash together are known as convergent boundaries and those where they move apart are divergent boundaries. Pretty clever, eh?

Now, what John T. Wilson did to warrant us naming the thing after him was to theorize that the motions of these plates aren’t a random hodge-podge, but rather follow a predictable pattern — a cycle. Give them enough time, and these plates will mush together into a single supercontinent. Wait a bit after that, and you’ll see these plates squabble and break up into a lot of tiny continents, more closely resembling what we know today. The really patient (and ridiculously long-lived) will get so see this happening again and again.

One full cycle is estimated to be around 300 to 500 million years old, and the first one likely started somewhere between 3 and 3.2 billion years ago, when the Earth cooled down enough for the rocks we know and love today to harden into crust.

2. Step one: The Stable Craton

What we consider as being the crust is made up of three large families of rock, two of which form the bulk of it. Geologists also draw a line between oceanic and continental crust. This division stems from a difference in chemical compositions, which translate to physical differences: oceanic crust is generally made up of mafic igneous rocks (which have a lot of heavier minerals such as magnesium and ferriccompounds, so they’re denser,) while continental crust largely made up of felsic igneous rocks (richer in lighter minerals such as feldspars and silica.) Both have generous sprinklings of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.

Being denser, mafic rocks float deeper into the mantle, so they sink below the waterline. Felsic rocks, being less dense, rise above their mafic counterparts and break the waterline, forming land. That’s how they get their names — mafic/oceanic crust naturally bobs below the waterline and forms oceans, felsic/continental crust is light enough to potentially form dry land.

The first step in the Wilson Cycle starts with a single tectonically-stable core (a craton) containing all felsic material surrounded by oceanic crust and, well, the ocean. Since all felsic material is contained here, this core can’t get any lighter or heavier so it stays at a perfect isostatic equilibrium (at a constant level on top of the mantle). There’s no more tectonic movement to form mountains, so erosion has had time to level this continent dead-flat, almost down to the waterline, all over its surface — a state referred to as a peneplane. There’s no volcanic activity and no earthquakes. It’s actually quite uneventful, even for what’s basically a pile of rocks.

3. Step two: The Rifting

Powered by the heat trapped in our planet’s interior, an incredibly hot and extremely powerful jet of molten material known as a mantle plume shoots upwards from the core and begins to eat into the craton. What happens next resembles a blowtorch melting through a slab of metal, but the material this plume is made of also has a lot of weight and speed, meaning it will also push against the rocks at the surface.

An estimate of how the West Gondwana Craton looked like before it split off in Africa and South America. The WGC itself split off from a larger craton earlier throgh similar processes.
Image credits Woudloper / Wikimedia.

The rocks above the plume start to swell from heat dilation, pushing neighboring rocks aside and forming a dome on the surface. At the same time, the underside of the craton begins to melt — you can see a version of this happening in Yellowstone today. The combined effect is that the crust stretches and thins until it eventually fractures under mechanical stress. The fracturing usually follows three different directions, a triple junction, most often asymmetrical and diverging at odd angles from one another. Molten material from the underside rises up and forms surface vulcanism.

4. Step three and four: Divergence and Oceanification

These fractures are deep — they go all the way through the crust. Sometimes, as seems to be the casewith Yellowstone, plumes just die off or are otherwise blocked in the mantle, and that’s that. But if it keeps going, the fractures can become longer and widen until there’s actually no more crust left in the area, forming a rift valley. Nature can’t have that, so water rushes in to fill the gap and hardens the magma into a ‘transition’ crust, which mixes pre-existing felsic and newly minted mafic rocks. Convection cells created by the plume slowly inch the neighboring slabs of rock apart, meaning more empty space, more oceanic crust formed here, and eventually, you have a full blow ocean on your hands.

So there’s an important thing to keep in mind here: rifting breaks continents apart and creates oceans.

This is how oceans are born.
Image credits Hannes Grobe / Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.

As these two continents float away from the rift, the new transition and oceanic crust cool down (becoming denser) and sink lower in the mantle. This process also pulls the original continental material from the rifting area that they’re attached to from about 3-5 km above sea level to roughly 14 km below the waterline in 100-110 million years. Some consider this to be a separate step in the process but that’s more of a geological technicality. I’ve mentioned it so you can get an idea of how much heat dilation affects the buoyancy of rocks (and it’s effect in step 1.)

5. Step Five: Convergence

The more astute of you may be suspecting that the Earth is, in fact, a pretty round object. Now it’s time for our thinking caps to come on.

What happens on one pole of the Earth when there’s a rift actively pumping out new crust on the opposite one for a few million years? Well, it either starts looking like a pug’s face (please be this one) or, or, it can stay round by recycling old crust back into the mantle to make room for the new one. Let’s check.

Damnit, it’s round!
Image credits NASA.

Divergence (with the creation of new crust) will eventually stop as the plume dies off. But it can go on for tens, even hundreds of millions of years, creating a lot of material before that happens. So some old crust needs to crack and subduct into the mantle to make room for all the new stuff. This doesn’t have to happen on the opposite pole, but it has to happen somewhere.

This is the second, closing half of the cycle. As a rule, it’s always oceanic crust that breaks and starts to subduct, since continental crust is just too floaty (in magma that is, not water.) So this subduction zone forms somewhere underwater since that’s where oceanic crust tends to hang around. But wherever it happens you’ll be able to spot it — there’ll be either an island arc nearby, formed by the top plate or a pre-existing continental edge. Part of the subducting crust is dragged down into a trench (about 1-2 km below the normal ocean floor,) and will heat up while it slides into the mantle. At about 120 km deep it’ll begin melting back into magma.

6. Step six: Re-continentalization

Let this process roll for long enough and all the old oceanic crust will subduct and continents will bump back into each other. There are a few more things taking place between S5 and S6, such as new mountains forming as the cratons get smushed, the creation of new subduction zones, but again, geological technicality.

This new continent will mix pieces of the old craton, bits of transition and oceanic crust (which will tend to sink to the bottom during suture,) and metamorphic rocks it picked up along the way.

In many ways, the second half of the cycle acts like the first one in reverse. It’s often less clear-cut than what I’ve told you about here: new rifts can form opposite the ‘old’ one, fracturing the continents even more. And while the effects of these two halves can become apparent hundreds, thousands of years apart, they take place simultaneously — when there’s new crust being formed, the old crust has to be consumed somewhere else. And it happens all the time. There’s constant creation and destruction of land going on on Earth, each day, right below our feet. Well, right below our feet and a few thousand kilometers out at sea, but you get what I mean.

The Wilson Cycle is the ultimate matchmaker and the end-all homewrecker. Give it enough time, and this process will, through sheer trial and error, bring all the land together, then break it up all over again.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 21:43 geschreven door peter  

Scientists track Earth’s ancient, destroyed oceans

We think of oceans as eternal and stable; what could affect these endless fields of water? But everything changes, the plains, mountains, and the Earth itself. Throughout our planet’s geological history, oceans have been born and destroyed, and now we’re one step closer towards knowing how this happened.

The maps are showing different viewing options for the region under Southeast Asia.

Illustration: Grace E. Shephard.

Seeing the past

Millions of years ago, the Earth was a different place. It’s not just the biodiversity and the climate, the oceans and the land looked different, too. That happens because the surface of the Earth is in constant motion. It doesn’t move by much (on the scale of centimeters per year), but give it enough time, and the change becomes noticeable. This happens due to the relative motion of the planet’s tectonic plates, pushed around by upwelling magma from the mantle.

The movement isn’t only lateral — it’s vertical as well. New crust is formed at mid-oceanic ridges, such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and older crust is destroyed. Some of the crust goes up, the other sinks into the mantle, in the “geological graveyard.” This cycle also affects oceans. Sometimes, it opens up or spreads new oceans, and other times it closes them down. The Pacific, for instance, is currently expanding, while the older Atlantic is slowly shrinking. Now, researchers have used seismic tomographyto have a “look” at this geological graveyard up to 2,800 km beneath the surface, identifying how the planet might have looked like 200 million years in the past.

This is not the first time something like this has been done. Several studies, using several different approaches, have retraced our planet’s evolution, sometimes ending up with different models. Now, Grace Shephard at the University of Oslo has found a simple, yet powerful way to combine images from alternative seismic tomography models.

“There are many different ways of creating such models, and lots of different data input can be used,” explains Grace Shephard, who has been a postdoctoral researcher at CEED since she took her Ph.D. at the University of Sydney four years ago.

“We wanted a quick and simple way to see which features are common across all of the models. By comparing up to 14 different models, for instance, we can visualize where they agree and thus identify what we call the most robust anomalies.”

The Arctic is a region where little is known about plate tectonics far back in time. That is one of the reasons why Australian Grace E. Shephard decided to join the CEED team of the University of Oslo.

Photo: Dag Inge Danielsen/UiO.

A continental traffic jam

This tomography data gives more accurate and more easily available information about the movements of the oceans and continents, as well as the interaction between the Earth’s crust and the mantle. By seeing at what depth the former seafloor lies (the paleo-seafloor), and supposing that it sinks at a rate of 1 cm/year, researchers can calculate when the paleo-seafloor sank. Using this method, scientists found that there was a period around 100–140 million years ago that experienced more ocean destruction; it’s unclear why this happened. They also learned of an area of the mantle which is more ‘sticky’ — viscous — and exerts more opposition to sinking plates, resulting in a “traffic jam.”

The analysis raises new possibilities of understanding our planet’s history, but there’s still plenty of work to do. The models have to be constantly fine-tuned and improving using real-life observations.

“Studying these processes in new ways opens up new questions. That is something we welcome, because we need to find out what questions to ask and what to focus on in order to understand the development of the Earth. We always have to keep in mind what is an observation and what is a model. The models need to be tested against observations, to make way for new and improved models. It is an iterative procedure.”

Using the same approach, we can also derive information about the future. While it’s impossible to gauge how life will evolve over such a long timescale, geologically speaking, not that much will change.

“If you look at Earth from space, the distribution of continents and oceans will then look much the same, even though life, the climate and sea level may have dramatically changed. If we move even further ahead, say 10 or 100 million years, it is very hard to say how oceans may be opening and closing, but we have some clues. Some people think that the Atlantic will close, and others think the Arctic or Indian oceans will close. We can follow the rules of the past when we look to the future, but this task keeps geoscientists very busy.”

Journal Reference: On the consistency of seismically imaged lower mantle slabs, G. E. Shephard, K. J. Matthews, K. Hosseini & M. Domeier, Scientific Reports 7,

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 21:26 geschreven door peter  

The Idea of Creating a New Universe in the Lab Is No Joke

 by ZEEYA MERALI

Physicists aren’t often reprimanded for using risqué humour in their academic writings, but in 1991 that is exactly what happened to the cosmologist Andrei Linde at Stanford University. He had submitted a draft article entitled ‘Hard Art of the Universe Creation’ to the journal Nuclear Physics B. In it, he outlined the possibility of creating a universe in a laboratory: a whole new cosmos that might one day evolve its own stars, planets and intelligent life. Near the end, Linde made a seemingly flippant suggestion that our Universe itself might have been knocked together by an alien ‘physicist hacker’. The paper’s referees objected to this ‘dirty joke’; religious people might be offended that scientists were aiming to steal the feat of universe-making out of the hands of God, they worried. Linde changed the paper’s title and abstract but held firm over the line that our Universe could have been made by an alien scientist. ‘I am not so sure that this is just a joke,’ he told me. 

Fast-forward a quarter of a century, and the notion of universe-making – or ‘cosmogenesis’ as I dub it – seems less comical than ever. I’ve travelled the world talking to physicists who take the concept seriously, and who have even sketched out rough blueprints for how humanity might one day achieve it. Linde’s referees might have been right to be concerned, but they were asking the wrong questions. The issue is not who might be offended by cosmogenesis, but what would happen if it were truly possible. How would we handle the theological implications? What moral responsibilities would come with fallible humans taking on the role of cosmic creators?

Theoretical physicists have grappled for years with related questions as part of their considerations of how our own Universe began. In the 1980s, the cosmologist Alex Vilenkin at Tufts University in Massachusetts came up with a mechanism through which the laws of quantum mechanics could have generated an inflating universe from a state in which there was no time, no space and no matter. There’s an established principle in quantum theory that pairs of particles can spontaneously, momentarily pop out of empty space. Vilenkin took this notion a step further, arguing that quantum rules could also enable a minuscule bubble of space itself to burst into being from nothing, with the impetus to then inflate to astronomical scales. Our cosmos could thus have been burped into being by the laws of physics alone. To Vilenkin, this result put an end to the question of what came before the Big Bang: nothing. Many cosmologists have made peace with the notion of a universe without a prime mover, divine or otherwise.

At the other end of the philosophical spectrum, I met with Don Page, a physicist and evangelical Christian at the University of Alberta in Canada, noted for his early collaboration with Stephen Hawking on the nature of black holes. To Page, the salient point is that God created the Universe ex nihilo – from absolutely nothing. The kind of cosmogenesis envisioned by Linde, in contrast, would require physicists to cook up their cosmos in a highly technical laboratory, using a far more powerful cousin of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. It would also require a seed particle called a ‘monopole’ (which is hypothesised to exist by some models of physics, but has yet to be found). 

The idea goes that if we could impart enough energy to a monopole, it will start to inflate. Rather than growing in size within our Universe, the expanding monopole would bend spacetime within the accelerator to create a tiny wormhole tunnel leading to a separate region of space. From within our lab we would see only the mouth of the wormhole; it would appear to us as a mini black hole, so small as to be utterly harmless. But if we could travel into that wormhole, we would pass through a gateway into a rapidly expanding baby universe that we had created. (A video illustrating this process provides some further details.)

We have no reason to believe that even the most advanced physics hackers could conjure a cosmos from nothing at all, Page argues. Linde’s concept of cosmogenesis, audacious as it might be, is still fundamentally technological. Page, therefore, sees little threat to his faith. On this first issue, then, cosmogenesis would not necessarily upset existing theological views.

But flipping the problem around, I started to wonder: what are the implications of humans even considering the possibility of one day making a universe that could become inhabited by intelligent life? As I discuss in my book A Big Bang in a Little Room (2017), current theory suggests that, once we have created a new universe, we would have little ability to control its evolution or the potential suffering of any of its residents. Wouldn’t that make us irresponsible and reckless deities? I posed the question to Eduardo Guendelman, a physicist at Ben Gurion University in Israel, who was one of the architects of the cosmogenesis model back in the 1980s. Today, Guendelman is engaged in research that could bring baby-universe-making within practical grasp. I was surprised to find that the moral issues did not cause him any discomfort. Guendelman likens scientists pondering their responsibility over making a baby universe to parents deciding whether or not to have children, knowing they will inevitably introduce them to a life filled with pain as well as joy.

Other physicists are more wary. Nobuyuki Sakai of Yamaguchi University in Japan, one of the theorists who proposed that a monopole could serve as the seed for a baby universe, admitted that cosmogenesis is a thorny issue that we should ‘worry’ about as a society in the future. But he absolved himself of any ethical concerns today. Although he is performing the calculations that could allow cosmogenesis, he notes that it will be decades before such an experiment might feasibly be realised. Ethical concerns can wait.

Many of the physicists I approached were reluctant to wade into such potential philosophical quandaries. So I turned to a philosopher, Anders Sandberg at the University of Oxford, who contemplates the moral implications of creating artificial sentient life in computer simulations. He argues that the proliferation of intelligent life, regardless of form, can be taken as something that has inherent value. In that case, cosmogenesis might actually be a moral obligation.

Looking back on my numerous conversations with scientists and philosophers on these issues, I’ve concluded that the editors at Nuclear Physics B did a disservice both to physics and to theology. Their little act of censorship served only to stifle an important discussion. The real danger lies in fostering an air of hostility between the two sides, leaving scientists afraid to speak honestly about the religious and ethical consequences of their work out of concerns of professional reprisal or ridicule.

We will not be creating baby universes anytime soon, but scientists in all areas of research must feel able to freely articulate the implications of their work without concern for causing offence. Cosmogenesis is an extreme example that tests the principle. Parallel ethical issues are at stake in the more near-term prospects of creating artificial intelligence or developing new kinds of weapons, for instance. As Sandberg put it, although it is understandable that scientists shy away from philosophy, afraid of being thought weird for veering beyond their comfort zone, the unwanted result is that many of them keep quiet on things that really matter.

Artwork illustrating the concept of an alternate 'bubble' universe in which our universe

As I was leaving Linde’s office at Stanford, after we’d spent a day riffing on the nature of God, the cosmos and baby universes, he pointed at my notes and commented ruefully: ‘If you want to have my reputation destroyed, I guess you have enough material.’ This sentiment was echoed by a number of the scientists I had met, whether they identified as atheists, agnostics, religious or none of the above. The irony was that if they felt able to share their thoughts with each other as openly as they had with me, they would know that they weren’t alone among their colleagues in pondering some of the biggest questions of our being.

Zeeya Merali

----

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

{  http://bigthink.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

Mars SHOCK CLAIM: UFO and alien base found on Red Planet

CONSPIRACY theorists believe they have hit the jackpot after discovering what they claim is a UFO and alien base on Mars.

13-11-2017 om 20:58 geschreven door peter  

Mystery UFO video supposedly from USS Nimitz fighter jet intrigues researchers

Written by Barnett Parker

USS Nimitz Tic Tac UFO leaked FLIR footage

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) -UFO researchers around the world have been abuzz in recent weeks about a video supposedly shot in 2004 from a Super Hornet fighter jet based on the carrier USS Nimitz.

The video shows an object in the distance that doesn’t act like a typical aircraft – and it veers out of sight as a fighter jet closes

The story first came to light in a 2015 article in fightersweep.com – and the tale was rekindled exponentially when former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge referenced it Oct. 11 during his announcement about the creation of his To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science.

Author John B. Alexander of Las Vegas believes the incident happened, but he hasn’t confirmed the video. Alexander – whose books include “UFOs” Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities” -- told FOX5 he believes the video originated with the U.S. Navy.

Alexander said in an email that he “asked one of the guys who saw it in a classified version,” and that his source “was very highly placed, and I mean very highly placed.”

He added: “The update is they believe the video to be real, but do not-- do not -- confirm the authenticity. Others videos are likely soon to similar incidents.”

DeLonge didn’t show any video from the 2004 incident with the Nimitz and various UFOs about 100 miles from San Diego but he has teased that one of the group’s goals is to release such previously classified video and documents.

This screen grab shows unidentified object streaking to left.

Since the announcement, what could be described as video from the display the pilot sees has popped up in several places on Youtube and other internet sites.

The origin of the video is uncertain, although two UFO researchers say it first appeared in 2007 on what they describe as a website run by German film students.

Researcher Isaac Kol lives in London and sometimes posts on the Web forum Above Top Secret.

He recently posted:

Back in 2007, I tracked the first online copy of the video back to the website of a group of German film students that specialized in creating science fiction movies with lots of special effects (Vision Unlimited).

His post also included, “in 2007, I was inclined to reach the tentative conclusion that it was a hoax... I find it very interesting that the current rounds of discussion seem to ignore the provenance of the footage…”

Kol told FOX5 in an email, “I don’t claim to have debunked that footage – merely shown that the place that it was originally posted raises red flags pending further evidence.”

Robert Powell lives in Austin, Texas, and publishes on the Facebook page Scientific Coalition for Ufology.

He said: “The video was first found on a German film site back in 2007 I believe. That makes one suspicious, but there is no proof that the video was doctored by the German film students. I'm not aware that anyone has looked at the video and made a determination that it was edited in some fashion.”

Powell has filed a freedom of information requests to obtain all the documentation he can about the November 2004 incidents with the Nimitz.

Alexander noted he believes audio tapes of the pilots communicating with flight control also exist.

One reason researchers found this video so intriguing is the way the UFOs baffled the Navy’s best fighter jets and radar systems in the days around Nov. 14, 2004.

The story on fightersweep.com described the anomalous aerial vehicles as dropping from above 80,000 feet, according to radar returns and then hovering 50-feet off the water within a matter of seconds.

The objects then moved away at “speeds, turn rates and accelerations faster than any known friendly or threat aircraft.”

{ http://www.fox5vegas.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 19:54 geschreven door peter  

Virgin Galactic Wants to Send People on Superfast Trips Across Earth

13-11-2017 om 19:37 geschreven door peter  

The Week's Top Space Stories

A United Nations committee finds 2017 may be one of the hottest years on record, NASA launches a $100K contest for aerosol sensor design, the NASA administrator nominee advances in his confirmation process, and laser weapons might soon be mounted onto aircrafts in some of this week's top stories from Space.com.

1. U.S. Air Force signs new laser weapon contract

2. Top three hottest years on record may soon include 2017

3. Uber Collaborates with NASA on flying car project

4. Ultra-long-lasting supernova raises questions about star deaths

Photo Credit: NASA/YouTube

5. NASA will award $100K for best astronaut air-safety design

6. A 1972 engine may benefit manned missions to Mars

Photo Credit: NASA

7. Happy 50th anniversary, Saturn V!

Photo Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

8. Earth may have more than one planetary neighbor

The closest exoplanet to Earth, Proxima b, might have company. According to a new study, a dusty ring encircling the star suggests other planets may orbit the star Proxima Centauri. [Full Story: The Closest Exoplanet Proxima b May Have Neighbors]

Photo Credit: Joel Kowsky/NASA

9. Senate committee votes along party-lines for NASA administrator nomination

Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin

10. NASA awards contracts for moon-orbiting space station's power and propulsion module

{ https://www.space.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 19:25 geschreven door peter  

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit the worst possible place on Earth

A new study by the Tohoku University and the Tsukuba Institute of Meteorological Research (both in Japan), published in Nature, suggests that the reign of Dinosaurs could have possibly continued if the massive asteroid that struck our planet 66 million years ago had impacted Earth elsewhere and not at the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Authored by Kunio Kaiho and Naga Oshima, the new study titled: “Site of asteroid impact changed the history of life on Earth: the low probability of mass extinction,” indicates that the asteroid that impacted Earth had a little more than a one-in-10 chance of triggering a mass extinction on Earth as it struck our planet violently.

The massive collision event, which eventually gave rise to the Chicxulub crater annihilated around 75 percent of animal life on our planet in what is today referred to as the Cretaceous-Paleogene or K-Pg extinction event.

Scientists now say that the collision was an exceptionally unlikely shot.

Tyrannosaurus, a prehistoric era dinosaur.

Image Credit Shutterstock

According to the newly published study, had the massive asteroid impacted our planet in any other part of the world, like in the middle of most continents or even the ocean, Earth’s massive reptiles most likely would have survived the extinction event.

“This significant event could [only] have occurred if the asteroid hit the hydrocarbon-rich areas occupying approximately 13% of the Earth’s surface,” they said in a study recently published in the journal Nature.

In fact, researchers note that only 13 percent of Earth’s surface had the necessary ingredients to turn the collision event into a mass extinction.

Researchers argue that the massive energy produced during the collision had a combustible impact on the humongous reservoirs of hydrocarbons and crude oil stored beneath a shallow sea in the Yucatán Peninsula.

In fact, one thing led to another. The combustion created after the impact would have blown out massive amounts of soot and sulfur into our planet’s stratosphere blocking the sun, which triggered a set of events that caused entire ecosystems to collapse, and eventually destroying up to three-quarters of Earth’s inhabitants.

Global map showing the amount of organic matter in sedimentary rocks ejected if the Chicxulub asteroid hit various locations at the end of the Cretaceous.

Image Credit: Nature

“The probability of mass extinction was quite low even with an asteroid as large as the [Chicxulub asteroid] because hydrocarbon-rich and sulfate-rich sites were rare,” said Kaiho and Oshima. If the asteroid had hit a low–medium hydrocarbon area, mass extinction could not have occurred.”

According to previous calculations, scientists believe that the asteroid impact released energy around a billion times more powerful than the combined power of the atomic bombs that were released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Scientists concluded that around 87 percent of our planet surface—in areas like most of present-day Africa, China, India, and the Amazon—would not have had high-enough concentrations of hydrocarbons to lead to such an apocalyptic result on dinosaurs if the asteroid had collided there.

Such an extinction event would have been triggered if the asteroid had crashed into marine coastal areas rich in algae, such as the present-day eastern coast of North America, the Middle East, and Siberia, concluded scientists.

Source: Site of asteroid impact changed the history of life on Earth: the low probability of mass extinction

Featured image: Shutterstock

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13-11-2017 om 18:53 geschreven door peter  

This star has a spiral disk of dust around it. Processes in the inner disk – winds, or swirls or clashes of pebbles – seem to be casting shadows on the outer disk.

A team of mainly Dutch astronomers said on November 9, 2017 that it has observed moving shadows on a dust disk around a young star designated HD135344B. The star is 450 light-years away. It’s in a formation stage and shows striking spiral arms. On multiple days, the astronomers captured an image of this star and its dust disk. They used the SPHEREinstrument on the Very Large Telescope in Chile, which can block the image of a central star in order to capture orbiting exoplanets or the details of dust disks like this one, with the goal of learning more about star formation. These astronomers believe that processes in the inner disk cast their shadows at the outer disk.

The astronomers published their findings November 9 in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal. Their statementexplained:

The discovery builds on an earlier publication in which the researchers made one image of the disk. By making multiple images, the astronomers clearly saw variations in the shadows. As a result, they could study the shadows in more detail …

The astronomers saw subtle variations of brightness in the outer dust disk. They presume this is because the gas and dust in the inner disk quickly turn around the star. The astronomers do not know yet which process causes the quick turning of the dust.

Astronomer Tomas Stolker is the first author of the paper about the shadows. He said the turning of the dust may be due to:

… winds, or swirls or clashes of pebbles.

The astronomers expect 1 or more large exoplanets – Jupiter-like worlds – to emerge from this dust disk eventually. Read more about this research from Astronomie.nl.

View larger. | Dust disk around the star HD 135344B. The star itself is removed from the picture. Image via Tomas Stolker/ astronomie.nl.

Bottom line: For several days, astronomers imaged the young star HD 135344B and its dust disk. They saw moving shadows on the disk, which they believe is caused by a turning of the gas and dust in the star’s inner disk. Hence we learn more about the process by which stars and planets form.

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

13-11-2017 om 18:42 geschreven door peter  

SHOCK AS MYSTERIOUS UFO 'HOVERS ABOVE CALIFORNIA NAVY BASE'

ALIEN hunters have been sent into a frenzy by these images appearing to show a UFO near an American Navy base.

We all remember the gripping testimony, a former agent of the CIA, who spoke publicly for the first time through a video about his experience dealing with extraterrestrials, their ships and the cover-up of the phenomenon. The 15-minute video aired on May 3, 2013, the last day of the Citizen's Public Hearing. The 77-year-old man, obviously in poor health, but well articulated, spoke to two researchers about the UFO phenomenon.  

Smartphone, computer, television and video game. What they have in common, apart from circuits, is an extraterrestrial influence. Many theories say that the aliens make available to humans, slowly, everything that is already obsolete on their planets. In this way, they can observe the development of human civilization (as we do with rats).

Well, if this story is real, we are just guinea pigs of social experiments coordinated by races of much more developed civilizations. Concepts of psychology such as behaviorism (which preaches that behavior is always based on responses and stimuli) could easily describe this type of action.  

RELATED ARTICLES

• UFO hovers over photographers head, he takes this extraordinary picture from below
• California Coast Reveals A Underwater Entrance To An Alien Base  

{ http://www.disclose.tv/ }

13-11-2017 om 18:06 geschreven door peter  

BLACK KNIGHT SATELLITE? 'Alien UFO' found in NASA images 'orbiting the Moon'

A LEGENDARY "alien satellite", that is said to have orbited Earth for nearly 13,000 years, has been caught on camera in NASA images orbiting the Moon, UFO fans claim.

13-11-2017 om 17:52 geschreven door peter  

𝐑𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐄𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡-𝐄𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐲 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟖, 𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭

{ https://www.youtube.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 17:35 geschreven door peter  

Is this PROOF of alien life? Shock as mysterious UFO 'hovers above California navy base'

ALIEN hunters have been sent into a frenzy by these images appearing to show a UFO near an American Navy base.

13-11-2017 om 17:31 geschreven door peter  

US SECRETARY OF ENERGY MAKES SOME VERY INTERESTING COMMENTS ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF PARALLEL UNIVERSES

13-11-2017 om 17:10 geschreven door peter  

13-11-2017 om 16:59 geschreven door peter  

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way right up front. First, NASA needs help coming up with names for new space objects. The subject of this article is named OGLE, which is bad enough, but its full name is OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb, a string of letters and numbers that would be better in a password (secretly level: medium – needs some special characters). Have they run out of Greek and Roman gods? How about hiring the guy at a record company who names new bands? Second, although the subject of this article may be some new kind of mysterious planet, it’s probably not Planet X nor Nine nor Nibiru.

The object was first discovered in June 2016 by astronomers from the University of Warsaw working on the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, which means they used gravitational microlensing to detect its presence as its gravity bent the light of its star (and used the discovering telescope to come up with the odd ogling name). Its presence 22.000 light years away was confirmed a few days later by scientists using NASA’s orbiting Spitzer telescope.

Spitzer space telescope

At this point, the discovery gets exciting enough to publish a paper about it. In the study submitted to the Astronomical Journal, lead author Y-H Ryu of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute reveals that OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb is something to ogle at – its mass is 13 times that of Jupiter or 4,000 times Earth’s mass, making it one of the largest planets ever discovered … IF it’s a planet. That sort of mass usually indicates an object is a brown dwarf – a non-functioning star that is not performing hydrogen thermonuclear fusion. However, Ogle’s orbit is at a fairly close distance from its star where astronomers have long assumed that gravity would not allow it to exist – they even describe this area as a “brown dwarf desert.”

So what exactly is Ogle? Astronomers can’t decide (there’s nothing more exciting than a competition among astronomers – kind of a Dancing With The Stargazers) so they have to make do with the 2016 pictures and computer models until its three-year orbit puts it in front of its start to cause another microlensing event.

Artist’s interpretation of the Milky Way’s galactic bulge

If it’s indeed a giant exoplanet, it “is likely to be the first Spitzer microlensing planet in the Galactic bulge/bar.” ‘Galactic bulge’ – now there’s a good name for the space phenomenon that is the middle of the Milky Way (not to mention a great name for a band or a malady that affects aliens on long space flights with little opportunity for exercising. At the local astronomers betting parlor, the odds favor some sort of failed brown dwarf over giant exoplanet or some new form of orbiting space object. The bookie tells those wanting to place bets on Planet X to go for something with better odds, like the lottery.

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-11-2017 om 16:51 geschreven door peter  

Astronomical event called “The Star of Bethlehem” graces the predawn sky on November 13, 2017

Get ready for the most exciting sky event of 2017! A truly fascinating event occurs on November 13th. "The Star of Bethlehem" graces the predawn sky.

They are the brightest celestial objects after the Sun and Moon. Venus and Jupiter are going to converge for a close jaw-dropping encounter. Astronomers refer to a close celestial pair-up like this as a conjunction.

What Was The Star of Bethlehem? Many Christians see the star as a miraculous sign to mark the birth of the Christ (or messiah). Some theologians claimed that the star fulfilled a prophecy, known as the Star Prophecy.

Astronomers have made several attempts to link the star to unusual astronomical events, such as a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, a comet or a supernova.

The truth is, we don't know the answer, and in fact, no one else does either, in spite of what you might hear. If there was a clear-cut answer to this question, everyone would already know the answer and wouldn't have to ask.

Some scholars say that the Star of Bethlehem must have been a supernatural event, not a natural occurrence of astronomy. Indeed, perhaps this is a mystery that modern science can never truly unravel.

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 16:25 geschreven door peter  

Doughnut-Shaped UFO Floats Over A Famous Lake In Southwest China

Taiwanese salesman John Chen claimed he had captured a UFO in a doughnut shape on camera in southwest China.

The businessman said he snapped some scenic shots of the favourite tourist spot Lake Dian on November 1 after attending a trade show held in Yunnan Province.

Together with his sister-in-law, he was shocked to see a strange ring-shaped aerial thing when they were reviewing at one picture at home in Taipei.

The object appears to have a hole in the middle and ridged sides, similar to the shape of a classic doughnut.

In hope to find what the object could be, Mr Chen decided to look for a UFO expert.

Mr Chen happened to consult the leading British UFO researcher Philip Mantle about the strange thing in the photo. However, Mr Mantle could not explain it and called the incident an open verdict.

Mr Chen said that he did not see the strange thing the time as it was his wife’s sister who noticed it. He tried to share the photos with his colleagues, but they did not capture the same thing in the sky.

Mr Mantle said that he could not see any evidence that the pictures were tampered in any way, but admitted that the object could also be some airborne debris.

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

13-11-2017 om 16:18 geschreven door peter  

Watch Alleged U.S. Navy Footage Seemingly Shows A UFO That Defies Physics

An unidentified flying object that defied physics is claimed to be in a leaked U.S. Navy video footage, which has emerged after a former Area 51 insider shared about the encounter.

Several F-18 pilots are said to have outmaneuvered by extraordinary UFO during the terrifying encounter. Former U.S. national security chief Chris Mellon, who claimed to have spent time at Area 51 military base, said that U.S. Navy personnel aboard the USS Nimitz recorded the UFO on video during the seven-hour encounter.

Mr. Mellon claimed that he served for nearly 20 years in the U.S. federal government in several national security roles under the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The former national security chief was reportedly on a committee with oversight of all special access programs in Department of Defense. He also said to have spent ten years on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Mellon is one of the ex-senior government insiders who has gone forward after joining former Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge’s alien truth-seeking organization To The Stars Academy.

Mr. Mellon, who also had accessed on classified projects at the highly-secretive military facility in Nevada, detailed the bizarre incident that said to take place off the San Diego coast in broad daylight.

Now, a video has surfaced, claiming to be the footage recorded in 2004. It has been released anonymously and recently doing the rounds on social media.

The clip shows a mysterious object hovering in the skies.

It seems to show one of the F-18’s crosshairs lining the UFO up, but the bizarre thing speeds out of sight.

Many UFO experts believe that the craft disappeared with supersonic speed.

UFOlogist Tyler said that it looks like legit F-18 footage, which has been corroborated by men that were in the incident.

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

13-11-2017 om 16:08 geschreven door peter  

Best Cases of Alien Abduction

Best Cases Alien Abduction

by Billy Booth

Dave and Les Jacobs / Getty Images

1961 BETTY AND BARNEY HILL ABDUCTION

Called the "flagship case" of alien abduction. A husband and wife (Betty and Barney Hill) taking a short vacation see a bright object in the evening. They are stopped on the road by aliens and become part of an abduction case for the ages. Regressive hypnosis plays a major role in unveiling a dark secret... a secret of alien abduction, and medical experimentation.

1967 THE BETTY ANDREASSON ABDUCTION

In South Ashburnham, Massachusetts on the night of January 25, 1967, one of the most celebrated cases of UFO abduction began. Betty Andreasson was working in her kitchen while her seven children, mother, and father were in the living room... suddenly a bright light invades the house. From the yard, alien creatures are seen hopping toward the house! One of the strangest abduction cases.

1967 ABDUCTION OF HERBERT SCHIRMER

As Patrolman Schirmer passed through the intersection of Highway 6 with Highway 63 on the outskirts of Ashland, he saw what appeared to be red lights on a large truck stopped a short way down Highway 63. He decided to turn around and check it out. He drove the short distance down 63 and stopped with his headlights shining on the object. According to Schirmer, the object was definitely not a truck. The red lights that he had seen were blinking through the oval portholes of a metallic, oval-shaped object.

1969 THE BUFF LEDGE CAMP ABDUCTION

Only seven and a half years after the Betty and Barney Hill story, the New England states would again host an alien abduction. Buff Ledge in Vermont would be the site of a visitation by four UFOs which would make revolutionary aerial maneuvers, Two counselors would suffer missing time, and seek professional help.

1973 PASCAGOULA, MISSISSIPPI ABDUCTION (PARKER, HICKSON)

Fifteen different people see a large, silver UFO fly over a housing project in St. Tammany Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana. Only a scant 24 hours later, Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson would unwillingly take a journey into the unknown... strange creatures with claw-like hands abduct them. J. Allen Hynek investigates.

1975 THE ABDUCTION OF SERGEANT CHARLES L. MOODY

Alamogordo, New Mexico would be the location of a UFO encounter involving Air Force Sergeant Charles L. Moody on August 13, 1975. Moody was in the desert observing a meteor shower at ab 1:15 A.M. when he saw a glowing, metallic, disk-shaped object falling toward the ground about 300 feet away.

1975 THE TRAVIS WALTON ABDUCTION

As seven bloggers began their journey home, they see a "luminous object, shaped like a flattened disc." All of the men agreed that Travis Walton, captivated by the sight, left the truck to get a closer look. A blue beam hits him, throwing him to the ground. He would vanish for five days, and soon begin telling his story of the inside of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

1976 The Stanford, Kentucky Abductions

While America was still buzzing over the Travis Walton abduction, three women are abducted near Stanford, Kentucky. Heading for Hustonville on Highway 78, they suddenly see a "bright, red" object in the clear, night sky, turning a nice evening into a night of terror. Read about this in depth investigation here.

1976 The Allagash Abductions

The Allagash Waterway incident would involve multiple witnesses.

Four artists were enjoying a canoeing trip on the Allagash Waterway when their pleasant evening was turned into a nightmare... A nightmare of missing time and alien abduction. At first only missing time, and then forgetfulness. Finally a connection is made, and little by the details become known in this compelling case of alien abduction.

1976 The Dechmont Forest Abduction

Robert Taylor was sixty-one-years-old at the time that he had the most unusual encounter of his life. He had worked as a forester all of his adult life in the Dechmont woods located in Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland. On the morning of Friday, November 9, 1979, he and his red setter rounded a corner on a forest trail and saw an unbelievable sight, a UFO! The object appeared to be hovering just above the forest floor. It made no sound, and seemed to be motionless.

1985 The Whitley Strieber Abduction

Well known writer Whitley Strieber would be abducted by aliens while in his isolated cabin in upstate New York over the Christmas season of 1985.

He encountered 4 types of alien beings, which subjected him to medical tests.

1987 The Ilkley Moor Alien

A policeman named Philip Spencer claims to have taken a picture of an alien being. If this is true, it is one of only a few in existence. The scary Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire, England would hold the secret of the strange creature encountered one early morning.

Godfrey was frightened, but ran after the creature, taking one photograph. See it here. Through hypnosis, he would recall an odd flying object, and an alien abduction.

1988 Father & Son Abducted

John Salter Jr. and his son are abducted by benevolent aliens. One of the few cases in which alien abduction turned out to be a good thing. Medical experimentation has a happy ending, with improved health for both abductees.

1989 Linda Cortile-Napolitano Abduction

An extremely compelling case of alien abduction is that of Linda Napolitano. Napolitano has claimed that she was abducted by the so-called "greys," who floated her from a closed bedroom window into a hovering UFO. As time went by, several different eye witnesses came forward to substantiate her claims... Several bystanders, including a well known politician, actually see the incident.

1993 The Kelly Cahill Abduction

In August 1993, 27-year-old Kelly Cahill, her husband, and three children were driving home after a visit to a friend's house. Their routine journey would soon become a harrowing trip into an unknown world of strange beings that occupied space but were void of color as we know it. The Dandenong foothills, near Victoria, Australia would be forever linked to one of the strangest creatures in Ufological archives.

1997 Abduction in Wales

One of the weirdest cases reported to the Welsh Federation of Independent Ufologists is the multiple sighting of UFOs on the same night - except one family got too close for comfort and were apparently abducted. The strange and disturbing events began to unfold when for several nights an elderly man living in Little Orme, Conwy, was troubled by what he called "frightening" beams of light over the Great Orme.

Watch Now: 10 Disturbing Alien Abductions

{https://www.thoughtco.com/ }

13-11-2017 om 01:16 geschreven door peter