Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 1 MONTH.
ON 06/07/2024 MORE THAN 2.101.500
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
06-12-2017
Robot learns like a toddler to predict future outcomes in its environment
Robot learns like a toddler to predict future outcomes in its environment
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a robot that has the ability to learn like a human toddler, allowing it to predict outcomes. Called Vestri, the robot is capable of learning all by itself with no human supervision required.
Teaching a robot how to play
When toddlers play with toys, they’re doing more than just entertaining themselves. Effectively, with every twist or throw the children learn about how the world works. By manipulating objects, toddlers learn how these respond all by themselves and can then form judgments about how these objects will likely behave in the future if used in the same way.
This great learning strategy, sometimes called “motor babbling”, has been emulated by American scientists into the Vestri robot. The technology in question, called “visual foresight”, effectively enables the robot to imagine what its next action should be and what the likeliest consequences might look like, and then take action based on the best results.
“Children can learn about their world by playing with toys, moving them around, grasping, and so forth. Our aim with this research is to enable a robot to do the same: to learn about how the world works through autonomous interaction,” said UC Berkeley assistant professor Sergey Levine and lead author of the study which was presented at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference. “The capabilities of this robot are still limited, but its skills are learned entirely automatically, and allow it to predict complex physical interactions with objects that it has never seen before by building on previously observed patterns of interaction."
Scientists hope that in the future, such technology could enable self-driving cars to predict roads ahead but for now at least, this ‘robotic imagination’ is fairly simple and limited. Vestri can make predictions only several seconds into the future but even that’s enough to help it figure out how to best move objects around on a table without disturbing obstacles. Vestri chose the right path around 90 per cent of the time.
What’s crucial about this skillset is that no human intervention nor prior knowledge about physics is required. Everything Vestri learned, it’s done so from scratch from unattended and unsupervised exploration — ‘playing’ with objects on a table.
After it had trained itself, Vestri is able to build a predictive model of its surroundings. It then uses this model to manipulate new objects it had never encountered before. The predictions are produced in the form of video scenes that had not actually happened but could happen if an object was pushed in a certain way.
“In the same way that we can imagine how our actions will move the objects in our environment, this method can enable a robot to visualize how different behaviors will affect the world around it,” said Levine. “This can enable intelligent planning of highly flexible skills in complex real-world situations.”
Because Vestri’s video predictions rely on observations made autonomously by the robot through camera images, the method is general and broadly applicable. That’s in contrast to conventional computer vision techniques which require human supervision to label thousands or even millions of images.
Next, the Berkeley researchers want to expand the number of objects Vestri is able to play with but also to enhance the movements its capable of making. By expanding its repertoire, the researchers hope to make Vestri more versatile and adapted to all sorts of environments.
“This can enable intelligent planning of highly flexible skills in complex real-world situations,” Levine concluded.
It’s surprising enough that Bronze Age people were making iron weapons, but imagine they were even using materials from space.
Tutankhamen’s dagger was one item made from meteoric iron.
Image via Wikipedia.
As it says on the tin, the Bronze Age is when civilizations started to produce and use bronze, by smelting copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals. Many other technological and social changes emerged during this period, but archaeologists typically consider this to be the most notable feature. The Bronze Age followed after the Neolithic and was succeeded by the Iron Age. However, when civilization started to transition to the Iron Age, some were already using iron — meteoric iron, that is.
It took a long time before people realized how to properly smelt iron, reduce impurities, and control the carbon content so that the result is just right. But as it sometimes happens, nature provided some people with what they needed (iron) without having to lift a finger — in the form of meteoric iron. Meteoric iron is a native metal found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel, in mineralized forms. Archaeologists had found several Bronze Age artifacts made from meteoric iron, but they didn’t know if this was a rare feat or rather a common occurrence. Now, Albert Jambon, from the Institut de minéralogie, de physique des matériaux et de cosmochimie demonstrated that all iron used during the Bronze Age was meteoric. Space artifacts, as it turns out, aren’t as rare as we might think.
An iron meteorite.
Credits: H. Raab.
Jambon gathered a series of notable findings and analyzed them with a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. X-ray fluorescence is widely used in metal analysis to determine the elemental and sometimes isotopic composition. With this, Jambon was able to identify the specific elemental signature of meteoric iron and determine whether or not the objects had been built from such meteorites.
Among others, he analyzed beads from Gerzeh (Egypt, −3200 BCE), a dagger from Alaca Höyük (Turkey, −2500 BCE) a pendant from Umm el-Marra (Syria, −2300 BCE); an axe from Ugarit (Syria, −1400 BCE), items from the Shang dynasty civilization (China, −1400 BCE), and the dagger, bracelet, and headrest of Tutankhamen (Egypt, −1350 BCE). These come from a wide geographical area from some of the most advanced civilizations of the time. All of them showed similar chemical make-ups, indicating that they were made from meteoric iron.
This makes a lot of sense. Meteoric iron is also already in a metal state, ready for use. It wasn’t abundant, but when it was found, artifacts were crafted from it and then cherished and preserved — which is what allowed scientists to find them in the first place. The Iron Age started around 1200 BCE. But for nearly 2,000 years before that, people were making weapons from space iron. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.
Right outside the Milky Way plane, strange and enormous clouds of hydrogen zip through intergalactic space at incredible speeds. Scientists have known for some time that these mysterious objects exist but it’s only recently that they’ve been mapped in great detail.
An all-sky map showing the radial velocity of neutral hydrogen gas belonging to the high-velocity clouds of the Milky Way and two neighboring galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Credit: ICRAR.
Everything about these clouds speaks to their grand scale. Some of the clouds are millions of times the mass of the sun and stretch over tens of thousands of light-years in diameter.
The hydrogen clouds cover about 13 percent of the night sky but it took the powerful radio telescopes employed by Australian scientists at the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) to peer inside them. The new data enabled the researchers to construct a far more detailed map of the clouds that now shows never before seen features such as clumps and branch-like structures.
“It’s something that wasn’t really visible in the past, and it could provide new clues about the origin of these clouds and the physical conditions within them,” said Tobias Westmeier, one of ICRAR researchers involved in the new research, in a statement.
A false-color all-sky map combining the column density and radial velocity of high-velocity neutral hydrogen gas.
Credit: ICRAR.
What makes these clouds particularly interesting, yet challenging, to study is the fact they move differently from the rotational movement of the galaxy itself. Traveling at break-neck speeds of 43.5 to 56 miles per second, the clouds also seem to be in a hurry to move towards or away from us.
It’s not clear at all at this point how the clouds got here or why they behave the way they do. It could be that the odd objects are leftovers from the formation of the galaxy itself. Alternatively, they could be sourced from some alien galaxy only to be caught in the Milky Way’s gravitational embrace. This latter hypothesis seems to carry more weight given the chemical composition of the hydrogen-rich clouds differs from what you’d typically expect to find within the Milky Way.
Maybe you, dear reader, can help to answer this question. The map is freely available online for anyone to study.
MIT researchers have developed “living” tattoos. They rely on a novel 3D printing technique based on ink made from genetically-programed cells.
Image credits Xinyue Liu et al., 2017, Advanced Materials.
There seems to be a growing interest in living, 3D-printable inks these days. Just a few days ago, we’ve seen how scientists in Zurich plan to use them to create microfactories that can scrub, produce, and sense different chemical compounds. Now, MIT researchers led by Xuanhe Zhao and Timothy Lu, two professors at the institute, are taking that concept, and putting it in your skin.
The technique is based on cells programmed to respond to a wide range of stimuli. After mixing in some hydrogel to keep everything together and nutrients to keep all the inhabitants happy and fed, the inks can be printed, layer by layer, to form interactive 3D devices.
The team demonstrated their efficacy by printing a “living” tattoo, a thin transparent patch of live bacteria in the shape of a tree. Each branch is designed to respond to a different chemical or molecular input. Applying such compounds to areas of the skin causes the ‘tree’ to light up in response. The team says the technique can be sued to manufacture active materials for wearable tech, such as sensors or interactive displays. Different cell patterns can be used to make these devices responsive to environmental changes, from chemicals, pollutants, or pH shifts to more common-day concerns such as temperature.
The researchers also developed a model to predict the interactions between different cells in any structure under a wide range of conditions. Future work with the printing technique can draw on this model to tailor the responsive living materials to various needs.
Why bacteria?
Previous attempts to 3D print genetically-engineered cells that can respond to certain stimuli have had little success, says co-author Hyunwoo Yuk.
“It turns out those cells were dying during the printing process, because mammalian cells are basically lipid bilayer balloons,” he explains.“They are too weak, and they easily rupture.”
So they went with bacteria and their hardier cellular wall structure. Bacteria don’t usually clump together into organisms, so they have very beefy walls (compared to the cells in our body, for example) meant to protect them in harsh conditions. They come in very handy when the ink is forced through the printer’s nozzle. Again, unlike mammalian cells, bacteria are compatible with most hydrogels — mixes of water and some polymer. The team found that a hydrogel based on pluronic acid was the best home for their bacteria while keeping an ideal consistency for 3D printing.
“This hydrogel has ideal flow characteristics for printing through a nozzle,” Zhao says.“It’s like squeezing out toothpaste. You need [the ink] to flow out of a nozzle like toothpaste, and it can maintain its shape after it’s printed.”
“We found this new ink formula works very well and can print at a high resolution of about 30 micrometers per feature. That means each line we print contains only a few cells. We can also print relatively large-scale structures, measuring several centimeters.”
Gettin’ inked
The team printed the ink using a custom 3D printer they built — its based largely on standard elements and a few fixtures the team machined themselves.
A pattern of hydrogel mixed with cells was printed in the shape of a tree on an elastomer base. After printing, they cured the patch by exposing it to ultraviolet radiation. They then put the transparent elastomer layer onto a test subject’s hand after smearing several chemical samples on his skin. Over several hours, branches of the patch’s tree lit up when bacteria sensed their corresponding stimuli.
Logic gates created with the bacteria-laden ink. Such structure form the basis of computer hardware today. Image credits Xinyue Liu et al., 2017, Advanced Materials.
The team also designed certain bacterial strains to work only in tandem with other elements. For instance, some cells will only light up when they receive a signal from another cell or group of cells. To test this system, scientists printed a thin sheet of hydrogel filaments with input (signal-producing) bacteria and chemicals, and overlaid that with another layer of filaments of output (signal-receiving) bacteria. The output filaments only lit up when they overlapped with the input layer and received a signal from them.
Yuk says in the future, their tech may form the basis for “living computers”, structures with multiple types of cells that communicate back and forth like transistors on a microchip. Even better, such computers should be perfectly wearable, Yuk believes.
Until then, they plan to create custom sensors in the form of flexible patches and stickers, aimed at detecting to a wide variety of chemical and biochemical compounds. MIT scientists also want to expand the living tattoo’s uses in a direction similar to that developed at ETH Zurich, manufacturing patches that can produce compounds such as glucose and releasing them in the bloodstream over time. And, “as long as the fabrication method and approach are viable” applications such as implants and ingestibles aren’t off the table either, the authors conclude.
The paper “3D Printing of Living Responsive Materials and Devices” has been published in the journal Advanced Materials.
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UFO ENCOUNTER CREATED STRANGE LIGHT PHENOMENOM IN MICHIGAN
UFO ENCOUNTER CREATED STRANGE LIGHT PHENOMENOM IN MICHIGAN
A post on Reddit was brought to the attention of Christopher Connelly on January 12, 2017, and it talked about a guy who was having a drink with his boss, who proceeded to tell him a story about a UFO incident.
This incident came to be known as the North Michigan strange light phenomenon.
LARGE BRIGHT LIGHTS APPEARED IN SKY OVER GLEN HARBOR
At first, the guy thought that his boss was joking around, but then he got serious and began to tell him a very strange story. He said that when he had been driving along in his car some 20 years back in north Michigan close to Glen Harbor at around 2.30am his entire car had suddenly lit up even though he was in the middle of nowhere.
He said that the light was insanely bright and there was a shrieking type noise that actually hurt his ears. The many had been out taking photographs of the region as he was a keen photographer and his camera was in the passenger seat of the car. At this point, he described getting out of the vehicle and seeing a strange craft that was hovering above him and it remained there for what seemed to be a very long time. He then reached into his car and grabbed his camera and began to take photographs.
MAN CAPTURED PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE STRANGE LIGHTS
At this point, the man went over to a filing cabinet and started rustling around in some folders. He then showed his friend the photos and at this point, the hairs rose on the back of his neck and his jaw just dropped open as he realized that his friend was not joking.
The photographs seem to have come from a camera that is an older model than the ones on the market today. The only images that were available for investigation were photographs that had been taken of the original photographs and of course this was not the best for analyzing.
The photographs had been taken at night time and they showed snow on the ground, so the temperature would have been cold. The photographs did not reveal if there were clouds around or if there were any other types of meteorological formation. However, they do show that the ground is very heavily illuminated and this created almost complete coverage of the region. The light formations look like pillars that are rising up from the center of the area that is illuminated. The light seems to have a bluish tinge to it and no animals, vehicles or humans can be seen in the pictures.
There does seem to be a signpost in the lower right-hand side of the photo, which is seen on the opposite side of the road and this could indicate that there is a side road leading off the main one. The strange lights do seem to be behind trees but the distance cannot be judged from the person taking the photograph.
An anonymous user had posted the photos on Reddit, who was said to be the co-worker of the person who witnessed the event. The date of the actual event is unknown but it was said to have taken place some twenty years previously.
ANALYSIS OF PHOTOS WAS UNCLEAR
The photograph was analyzed and no craft was seen in the picture. What can be seen is that there appears to be a valley and this is where the lights are coming from. The lights also seem to be hitting a small cloud or fog that is low lying. It is possible that the site may be a construction or fracking site or it could be a city. The lights do seem to look like the light that a site or small town might make.
The pillars of light could be explained away by ice crystals or maybe light pillars. Light pillars are an atmospheric optical phenomenon that seems to extend below or above the light source. The effect comes from the reflection of the light from many small ice crystals that are suspended in the clouds or the atmosphere. The light might come from the Sun if it is close to the horizon or below it. It is also possible that it might come from streetlights or the Moon. Light pillars are commonly found in colder climates, including in Michigan, where the photo was taken.
THE ORIGINAL REDDIT POST
“Was having a drink with my boss in his office today. I’m a conspiracy theorist and he picks at me from time to time regarding some of the stuff I share with him. So he goes “did I ever tell you my ufo story?”
I was like hahahahaha ok thanks for making fun of me, his face got serious and he goes “listen to this story…”
So he said “20 or so years ago I was driving in northern Michigan near glen harbor (sic) at 2:30am in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden my entire car lit up”.
He described this insane light and shrieking noise that hurt his ears… and he’s going on and on and im waiting for him to laugh and be all like gotcha!!
He had been taking pictures of northern Michigan cuz photography is his hobby, so he had a camera on the passenger seat of his car.
He said he got out and this craft was hovering over him for what seemed like a very long time, he was afraid. Then he remembers he had his camera, so he took it out and said he took pictures.
Still I’m waiting for him to laugh. I gave him a “ya ok” look…then he rolled his chair over to his file cabinet and started rustling around folders…
See the photos attached to this post…the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and my arms. My jaw dropped.
ALIEN INVASION? PHOTOJOURNALIST CAPTURES STRANGE ACTIVITIES OVER CASTLE ROCK
ALIEN INVASION? PHOTOJOURNALIST CAPTURES STRANGE ACTIVITIES OVER CASTLE ROCK
Strange things are going on in skies of Castle Rock.
Photojournalist Dominick Lee is wondering whether there has been an alien invasion in Castle Rock, Colorado after he captured something very strange on video.
CASTLE ROCK SUNRISE REVEALS TWO STRANGE OBJECTS
Lee was covering the school board vote of Douglas County in Castle Rock on Monday when he focused his camera on something other than the administration building. He turned towards the Rock Park to take a landscape photograph and faced his camera to the northeast and started to capture the sunrise in a time lapse. When he positioned the camera and began recording there was nothing out of the ordinary in sight.
It wasn’t until Lee got back to the station and he started to review the video he had captured on the sunrise that found there had been something strange happening. The video revealed objects that had been fast moving. The video showed two objects zooming over the screen and going behind the rocks. The objects were both heading north to south, and Lee said that they were moving far too fast to be any type of aircraft known to man.
BIRDS, INSECTS OR ALIEN INVASION?
There was a great deal of talk in the newsroom where Lee works and people said that perhaps the objects were insects or birds. However, due to the speed at which they moved and went out of the video, this theory has been eliminated. So what could the strange objects be? Is it possible that they are two UFOs and it is the start of an alien invasion of Castle Rock?
Lee slowed the video down to 1% of its normal speed, and it is possible to see two objects streak across the sky, with one object being higher in the sky than the other. He then showed the video at 10% speed, and the objects could be seen flying very fast across the sky. When the video is played in real time, it is almost impossible to see the two objects as they move that fast.
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GEMINI IV MISSION UFO PICTURES FINALLY VIEWABLE
GEMINI IV MISSION UFO PICTURES FINALLY VIEWABLE
Retired USAF Commander McDivitt UFO files can now be viewed.
James McDivitt was a Brigadier General and the Gemini IV mission commander, along with others. What makes this flight stand out among the others is the fact that in June 1965 McDivitt saw something that was very different from what he had seen on all other space flights.
" It had a very definite shape – a cylindrical object – it was white – it had a long arm that stuck out on the side. like a beer can or a pop can, and with a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it. "
UFO HAD ARM STICKING OUT FROM IT SAID MCDIVITT
McDivitt described seeing an object that had a cylindrical shape, and it had a shape that was definite and white. The USAF commander said that the object that looked like a long arm stuck out from the side, similar to a soda can or beer can and something that looked like a pencil that was sticking out from the object.
McDivitt thought that the object was near to the spacecraft, but at the same time, there was some confusion. He said that he was not sure if he was looking at an object that was small and it was close to the craft or if the object was a very large one and it was further away. This was because there had not been anything that he could gauge it by. In other words, he really did not know how big the object was.
COMMANDER GRABBED CAMERA AND CAPTURED PHOTO OF UFO
The commander said that there were two cameras floating around in the spacecraft and he picked one up and captured a photograph of the object, and he then got the other camera and also took a photograph before switching on the rocket control system as he was frightened that the object might hit the spacecraft.
''I don’t know whether it was a very small object up close or a very large object a long ways away. There was nothing to judge by. I really don’t know how big it was.
We had two cameras that were just floating in the spacecraft at the time, so I grabbed one and took a picture of (the object) and grabbed the other and took a picture. Then I turned on the rocket control systems because I was afraid we might hit it.
At the time we were drifting – without checking I have no idea which way we were going – but as we drifted up a little farther the sun shone on the window of the spacecraft.
The windshield was dirty – just like in an automobile, you can’t see through it. So I had the rocket control engines going again andmoved the spacecraft so that the window was in darkness again – the object was gone. "
McDivitt said that at the time of seeing the object their spacecraft was drifting around, so he did not have any idea as to which was it was moving without checking. He went on to describe that as his craft drifted further, he then saw the sun shining on the spacecraft window.
At this point, he said he could see that the windshield of the spacecraft was dirty and smeared, similar to that of a car, and he could not see through it. He had the rocket control engines going and then moved the craft, so the window was dark again, but the strange object had gone.
The photo that McDivitt took on that day has now been revealed and can be viewed by ufologists, and it is interesting. Many people will suggest conventional explanations as to what the object was, but others will say that this is undeniable proof that UFOs do exist and they are out there in space.
I think the regular fighter jets, F22's etc were there as a distraction, to cover for the real testing of experimental Hypersonic aircraft. The burst of flame you captured is possible evidence of some type of Scram/ Ram Jet type technology, may be the cause of the double Sonic Boom?
A little-known planet beyond the solar system could be a scaled-up version of Earth, according to new research.
Experts found that the distant exoplanet, known as K2-18b, is likely a 'super Earth' made up of rock, just like our own planet.
K2-18b orbits within its star's habitable zone, making it an ideal candidate to hold liquid water on its surface, a key element needed for the presence of alien life.
Scroll down for video
A little-known planet beyond the solar system could be a scaled-up version of Earth, according to new research. Experts found that the distant exoplanet known as K2-18b (artist's impression), is a super Earth that is likely made up of rock
COULD THE PLANETS HOST ALIEN LIFE?
Researchers found that K2-18b is either a mostly rocky planet with a gaseous atmosphere – like Earth, but bigger – or a mostly water planet with a thick layer of ice on top of it.
K2-18b orbits within its star's habitable zone, making it an ideal candidate to have liquid surface water, a key element in harbouring conditions for alien life.
Its newly found neighbour, named K2-18c, is probably too hot to be in the habitable zone, like K2-18b it also appears to be a super-Earth.
The researchers say K2-18b will be a prime target for Nasa's James Webb Space telescope, which will search for planets with habitable atmospheres, when it launches in 2019.
The new study, from researchers at the University of Texas, Scarborough, and University of Montreal, Canada, also found that K2-18b has a neighbour.
This newly discovered exoplanet, named K2-18c, may be a second rocky super Earth - although it is unlikely to host alien life, scientists lclaim.
Both planets orbit the red-dwarf star K2-18, located 111 light years from Earth in the constellation Leo.
The new study used data collected by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which has its headquarters in Munich, Germany.
'Being able to measure the mass and density of K2-18b was tremendous, but to discover a new exoplanet was lucky and equally exciting,' said lead author Ryan Cloutier, at the University of Montreal.
The data set used by the researchers came from the ESO's 3.6-metre (12 ft) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Readings of K2-18 were taken by the telescope's planet-finding High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (Harps) instrument.
Harps measures the 'radial velocity' of stars, which describes their speed of movement toward or away from the sun, and is affected by the presence of planets.
The researchers set out to find whether K2-18b was a scaled-up version of Earth made mostly of rock, or a scaled-down version of Neptune made mostly of gas.
The new study also found that K2-18b has a neighbour, which has been named K2-18c. The data used by the researchers came from the ESO's 3.6-metre (12 ft) telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile (file photo
To do this, they first figured out the planet's mass, using radial velocity measurements of the K2-18 star and a machine learning calculator.
'If you can get the mass and radius, you can measure the bulk density of the planet and that can tell you what the bulk of the planet is made of,' Mr Cloutier said.
The team found the planet is either a mostly rocky planet with a gaseous atmosphere – like Earth, but bigger – or a mostly water planet with a thick layer of ice on top of it.
It was while looking through the data of K2-18b that Mr Cloutier noticed strange signals, which the researchers realised was a second exoplanet.
While the newly described planet K2-18c is closer to its star, and probably too hot to be in the habitable zone, like K2-18b it also appears to be a super Earth.
The researchers say K2-18b will be a prime target for Nasa's James Webb Space telescope when it launches in 2019.
'With the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) we can probe the atmosphere and see whether it has an extensive atmosphere or it's a planet covered in water,' Mr Cloutier said.
Study coauthor Professor René Doyon, also from the University of Montreal, added: 'There's a lot of demand to use this telescope, so you have to be meticulous in choosing which exoplanets to look at.
'K2-18b is now one of the best targets for atmospheric study, it's going to the near top of the list.'
Superaarde ontdekt waar leven kan bestaan. Wat gaan we aantreffen op deze unieke planeet?
Superaarde ontdekt waar leven kan bestaan. Wat gaan we aantreffen op deze unieke planeet?
Op een planeet die op 111 lichtjaar staat, bestaat mogelijk buitenaards leven. Dat blijkt uit nieuw onderzoek.
De exoplaneet staat bekend als K2-18b en wordt ook wel een superaarde genoemd: een grote, rotsachtige planeet waar leven zou kunnen bestaan.
K2-18b draait in de bewoonbare zone om zijn ster, wat betekent dat er vloeibaar water mogelijk is.
Buurman
De studie is uitgevoerd door onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Texas in Scarborough en de Universiteit van Montreal in Canada.
De wetenschappers hebben ook ontdekt dat de planeet een buurman heeft, genaamd K2-18c. Beide planeten draaien rond de rode dwerg K2-18, die in het sterrenbeeld Leeuw staat.
De onderzoekers wilden vaststellen of K2-18b rotsachtig was, zoals de aarde, of een gasreus zoals Neptunus.
Waterplaneet
Met behulp van de HARPS-telescoop wisten ze te achterhalen dat de planeet waarschijnlijk rotsachtig is en een atmosfeer heeft, net als de aarde. Mogelijk gaat het om een waterplaneet die bedekt is met een dikke laag ijs.
De andere planeet staat een stuk dichter bij zijn ster, wat betekent dat het er waarschijnlijk te heet is voor leven.
Bijna bovenaan
De atmosfeer van K2-18b zal verder worden onderzocht met de James Webb-ruimtetelescoop, die volgend jaar wordt gelanceerd.
Veel mensen willen gebruikmaken van de telescoop, dus je moet van tevoren keuzes maken, aldus professor Rene Doyon van de Universiteit van Montreal. “K2-18b staat bijna bovenaan onze lijst.”
RADIOSIGNAAL OPGEVANGEN VAN GROOT OBJECT DAT ONZE ATMOSFEER BINNEN KWAM
RADIOSIGNAAL OPGEVANGEN VAN GROOT OBJECT DAT ONZE ATMOSFEER BINNEN KWAM
Er bestaan radarsystemen die waken over de uiterste rand van onze atmosfeer om zo binnenkomende meteoren te kunnen registreren.
Een dergelijke meteoor veroorzaakt een vrij kort signaal, maar enkele dagen geleden legden deze radarsystemen iets heel bijzonders vast.
Het soort radarsystemen waar we het hier over hebben, kunnen ons niet lang van te voren waarschuwen dat er een onbekend object op de aarde af komt, want ze registreren deze pas op het moment dat het object, meestal een meteoor, onze dampkring binnen komt.
Een dergelijke meteoor of ander object laat bij binnenkomst van de dampkring een zogenaamd ionisatiespoor achter en het is dit spoor dat door een radarsysteem kan worden opgevangen.
De hoogtes waarop deze waarnemingen plaatsvinden, ligger ergens tussen de 85 en 105 kilometer boven het aardoppervlak en schematisch ziet het er als volgt uit:
Normaal gesproken veroorzaken dit soort objecten naast een visueel signaal ook een kleine geluidsblieb die meestal een seconde of net iets langer duurt en er dan als volgt uitziet op een scherm:
Echter, op 2 december 2017 rond een uur of half acht in de avond gebeurde er iets bijzonders en registreerde het iets dat vele malen groter was dan normaal. Waar het geluid normaal ongeveer een seconde aanhoudt, duurde het dit keer ruim twee minuten en was ook veel luider dan gewoonlijk.
Het wil sporadisch wel eens voorkomen dat er langere echo's worden opgevangen en men noemt dit verschijnsel "Sporadic E". Wanneer dit gebeurt, duurt het alleen veel langer dan een paar minuten, soms dagenlang en wordt veroorzaakt door de reflectie van een radiostation via de ionosfeer, maar als dit verschijnsel zich voordoet, dan gebeurt het alleen gedurende de zomer op het noordelijk halfrond.
Dus, wat er enkele dagen geleden gebeurde, was geen "Sporadic E".
De radarsignalen worden gepubliceerd via een website genaamd LiveMeteors.com en ze streamen dit ook live. De volgende video is de livestream en zo is te zien en horen wat voor effect normale meteoren hebben op dit radarsysteem.
En dan ter vergelijking wat er op die bewuste 2 december 2017 te horen en te zien was op de schermen. Een geluid dat minutenlang aanhield en een veel groter radarsignaal veroorzaakte dan gebruikelijk.
Vooralsnog blijft het een raadsel wat dit signaal veroorzaakt kan hebben. Het zou natuurlijk een technisch mankement kunnen zijn, hoewel daar niets over is vermeld. Het is ook heel onwaarschijnlijk dat we hier met "Sporadic E" te maken hebben.
En toch, als je op de radarsignalen afgaat, dan is er een enorm object onze dampkring binnen gekomen en wie weet wat het geweest zou kunnen zijn.
Researchers in Scotland are testing genetic engineering to create mutant rats in an attempt to control the out-of-control rodent population there and potentially around the world. All together now:
What could possibly go wrong?
A press release from The Roslin Institute, the animal science research wing of the University of Edinburgh (where Dolly the sheep was cloned), describes the noble goal of the program. Pest control costs the UK economy about £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) annually and residents of British cities will tell you that it’s not working – estimates say the rat population in the UK numbers 10 million and in London it increased by 10 percent in the past year. Besides the damage and the continued spread of diseases, including the plague, rodent control by poisoning, shooting, traps and worse devices are often inhumane.
“We have the makings of a technology that could reduce or eliminate a pest population in a humane and species-specific manner. We need more research to better understand the risks, and whether these can be mitigated, but we believe the potential benefits merit further investigation.”
Professor Bruce Whitelaw of The Roslin Institute unveils the next generation in rat control — the allegedly humane practice of CRISPR/ Cas 9 DNA editing. Unfortunately, the technique the researchers plan to use has the inhumane name “x-shredding.” (Marketing is everything, even in vermin control.) If you remember from high school biology, male mammals have XY chromosomes while females have XX. The researchers will edit the male rodent DNA to install x-shredder code which will demolish the X chromosomes in their sperm so they can only pass Ys to their offspring, thus putting their chance of having female offspring at zero. Fewer females means fewer rat babies which means fewer adult rats, rodent damage and vermin control expenses.
Versions of this technique have been used before – most recently to create sterile male mosquitoes to stop the spread of the zika virus. X-shredding doesn’t sterilize the male rodents and only stops the creation of females – is this really the time to blame females of any species for a problem?
What could possibly go wrong?
“One of the biggest risks that we’re worried about is it if it were to de be deployed, we target an animal and it spreads to a non-targeted individual. So you target a rat in New Zealand and it makes its way to Asia where it could have unforeseen ecological consequences. But there are mitigation strategies that we could implement if this were to occur.”
Gus McFarlane, the doctoral student heading the x-shredding project, describes some problems. Migration could be restricted by targeting rats on an island and researchers are already testing self-destruct genes that lose their power over generations. On the other hand, there’s little information on what eating these modified rodents will have on native bird and animal populations.
As always, proponents point out that these techniques could be used on other pests like cane toads, conveniently forgetting that those pests themselves were introduced as a means of pest control.
Is CRISPR/ Cas 9 yet another technology moving too fast to be controlled? Do we have to wait for the answer to come from mutant rats?
How far would you travel for love? To another city? Another country? Another continent? How about to another galaxy? At the age of 17, a now-septuagenarian named David Huggins claimed he somehow charmed an extraterrestrial named Crescent who was visiting Earth and lost his virginity to her. He says their lovemaking resulted in around 60 hybrid children and Huggins eventually told anyone and everyone – believers or not – about his love through his loving paintings of Crescent and himself. Now the world is about to learn more about this intergalactic love story as the long-awaited documentary, Love & Saucers, is released for streaming on December 12th.
Without giving too much of the tale away, Love & Saucers is the story of David Huggins’ encounters with aliens, starting with the first in 1951 at age eight in Georgia, the first romantic embrace with Crescent at age 17, which led to trips to her spaceship for sex, and his life with her and the rest of these Earth visitors. Crescent and her fellow ETs cared for their hybrid children and forbade Huggins from telling anything about them to anyone. That changed in his late 40s and he reveals that the most therapeutic and loving way he could tell this story is through paintings. His unusual and often NSFW art has been displayed in galleries and published in a book.
That may have been the end of Huggins’ truly out-of-this-world tale if he hadn’t been heard on a radio interview in 2014 by Brad Abrahams. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because director Abrahams and his partner, producer Matt Ralston, recently started a crowdfunding campaign for Cryptozoologist, a documentary about the dedicated people who look for humanoids, monsters and other cryptid creatures. The pair has been interviewing and filming Huggins off-and-on since they met him and became convinced that he was serious and his story was worthy of a broader audience.
David Huggins
To illustrate thist, the filmmakers spent time in Hoboken, New Jersey, interviewing Huggins’ co-workers, neighbors, others who have had alien encounters, and his son. No, not one of the hybrids, but the human offspring of his human marriage to a human woman named Janice (they’re now divorced). Was there a love or hate triangle between the humans and the alien? You’ll have to see the documentary to find out.
The trailer for Love & Saucers shows a man who is sincere in telling his story and an artist who appears to love both the paintings and his subjects. He seems to be making one last attempt to convince the world that his encounters were real and not hallucinations, that his love was real and not fiction, and that his paintings are selfies, not CGI phonies. That’s a credit to both Huggins and the documentary team.
Do you trust Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking when they warn that artificial intelligence, particularly in autonomous weapons, may be advancing faster than we can control it? Have you ever been steered wrong by a Google map? Would you trust Google in more difficult tasks, like creating artificial intelligence? Do you believe Google has the best interests of humanity in mind in all that it does? Would you be excited if Google announced it had developed an artificial intelligence that created its own AI child that can outperform humans? Would like to check with Elon and Stephen again? Do you think it’s too late?
Researchers at Google Brain – a name that seems to be becoming more oxymoronic by the day – announced this week that they have developed an artificial intelligence called AutoML, which is short for Automated Machine Learning, but the ‘M’ could also stand for ‘Mother’ because its main purpose is to develop and generate its own artificial intelligences. You could call this new AI a ‘child’ but you’d be too late because Google Brain has already thought of that. However, to reduce the possibility of panic, its official name is the more innocent NASNet.
NASNet? Won’t the other AI kids call him Nazzy?
In a post on the Google Research blog, the researchers explain that AutoML is more than just a parent — it’s a teacher as well. In the described experiment, AutoML trains its child NASNet to recognize objects in a video – things like people, cars, clothing items, etc. If this sounds like a human parent pointing to pictures in a book and getting their child to say “cat,” you’re right. If you can imagine that human parent correcting the child who said “cow” instead of “cat,” you’ve also described what AutoML does to NASNet. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
Oh, you gullible humans. Unlike a human parent, AutoML can correct and repeat this training thousands of times without getting frustrated, hungry or tired, and NASNet can endure this repetitive training without getting fidgety or needing to use the bathroom. Once the education was complete, NASNet was tested on two well-known datasets — ImageNet for images and COCO for objects – and outperformed all other computer vision systems.
Think about that for a minute. A machine made by a machine outperformed the best machines made by humans. Are we ready for this? Is Google?
Is this the future?
“We suspect that the image features learned by NASNet on ImageNet and COCO may be reused for many computer vision applications. Thus, we have open-sourced NASNet for inference on image classification and for object detection in the Slim and Object Detection TensorFlow repositories.”
Open source! Without any standards nor regulations in place, the Google Brain (do you see the oxymoron yet?) has unleashed its AI and its fast-learning child upon the world. Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) own DeepMind company, which is supposed to be working on issues concerning the moral and ethical development of AI, didn’t have anything to say.
It’s easy to see how advanced object recognition will help applications like driverless cars. Are we ready for driverless cars to begat driverless golf carts that are smarter than their parents? Will they take us where we want us to go … or where they plan to dump us?
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
Sky-Watcher Caught Giant Interstellar Cylinder UFO Near Orion Nebula
Sky-Watcher Caught Giant Interstellar Cylinder UFO Near Orion Nebula
Do you remember the mysterious cylindrical shaped object from interstellar space named Oumuamua that came within our solar system last month?
Now, on November 29, 2017 a sky-watcher from North Carolina was out collecting data on M42 Orion Nebula.
As he still was fine focusing his 8 in astrograph / Newtonian Telescope a giant cylinder shaped UFO appeared on his laptop screen which he captured in a single 30.2 second frame.
Just as he thought the thrill was over several other objects appeared on the laptop screen which he also captured in a 5 frame sequence at 30.2 second frames and it clearly shows the movement of the objects at the bottom of the frames.
GIF image: See the movement of the objects at the bottom of the frames.
The sky-watcher who has submitted the revealing space images to Mufon - case 88566, says: “It's not the first and surely not the last as I search the night sky for galaxies, nebula and the truth that's out there.”
Tom DeLonge dropped a bombshell of a Facebook post in which he wrote, “As promised, the first ever DECLASSIFIED videos of UFOs are on their way. ” The truth embargo, or UFO coverup if you prefer that terminology, simply won’t be able to survive this development.
Around the world, lists of patients in need of an organ transplant are often longer than the lists of those willing (and able) to donate — in part because some of the most in-demand organs for transplant can only be donated after a person has died. By way of example, recent data from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) showed that the number of patients waiting for a heart transplant in the United Kingdom has grown by 162 percent in the last ten years.
Now, 50 years after the first successful heart transplant, experts believe we may be nearing an era where organ transplantation will no longer be necessary. “I think within ten years we won’t see any more heart transplants, except for people with congenital heart damage, where only a new heart will do,” Stephen Westaby, from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, told The Telegraph.
Westaby didn’t want to seem ungrateful for all the human lives saved by organ transplants, of course. On the contrary, he said that he’s a “great supporter of cardiac transplantation.” However, recent technological developments in medicine may well offer alternatives that could save more time, money, and lives.
“I think the combination of heart pumps and stem cells has the potential to be a good alternative which could help far more people,” Westaby told The Telegraph.
An Era of Artificial Organs
Foremost among these medical advances, and one that while controversial has continued to demonstrate potential, is the use of stem cells. Granted, applications for stem cells are somewhat limited, though that’s down more to ethical considerations more than scientific limitations. Still, the studies that have been done with stem cells have proven that it is possible to grow organs in a lab, which could then be implanted.
Science has also made it possible to produce artificial organs using another technological marvel, 3D printing. When applied to medicine, the technique is referred to as 3D bioprinting — and the achievements in the emerging technique have already been quite remarkable.
Other technologies that are making it possible to produce synthetic organs include a method for growing bioartificial kidneys, the result of a study in 2016.
For his part, Westaby is involved in several projects working to continue improving the process: one uses stem cells to reverse the scarring of heart tissue, which could improve the quality of life for patients undergoing coronary bypass. Westaby is also working on developing better hardware for these types of surgical procedures, including inexpensive titanium mechanical heart pumps.
Together with 3D bioprinting such innovations could well become the answer to donor shortages. The future of regenerative medicine is synthetic organs that could easily, affordably, and reliably be printed for patients on demand.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.