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 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
08-12-2017
Onderzoekers hebben mysterieus gezoem vanuit diepste van aarde waargenomen en niemand weet wat het is - HLN.be
Onderzoekers hebben mysterieus gezoem vanuit diepste van aarde waargenomen en niemand weet wat het is - HLN.be
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETHet is een vraag die de wetenschap intussen al even bezighoudt: van waar komt het vreemde gezoem dat uit het diepste van onze aarde lijkt te komen? Een studie van het Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris onder leiding van Martha Deen hoopt nieuw licht op de zaak te werpen.
Het is al langer bekend dat de aarde constant een vibratie met een lage frequentie uitstoot. De eerste pogingen om het gezoem waar te nemen dateren al van 1959, maar het duurde nog tot 1998 voor de wetenschap erin slaagde om het bestaan ervan te bewijzen. Dat gebeurde met seismografen op het land. Deen slaagde er nu voor het eerst in om het signaal ook op de bodem van de zee te detecteren en dat kan verstrekkende gevolgen hebben voor het onderzoek.
Haar team verzamelde eerst gegevens van 57 seismografen in de Indische Oceaan, ten oosten van Madagaskar. Dat gebeurde tussen 2012 en 2013. Met een combinatie van technieken verwijderden de onderzoekers vervolgens interferentie van water, stromingen en elektronische storingen. Ze kwamen zo tot de conclusie dat de natuurlijke vibratie van de aarde piekt op frequenties tussen 2,9 en 4,5 millihertz. Die zijn niet met het blote oor hoorbaar, omdat ze zo’n 10.000 keer zachter zijn dan onze gehoordrempel, die op 20 hertz ligt.
Dat het signaal op de bodem van de zee werd waargenomen en dat de aarde voor 70 procent met water bedekt is, suggereert dat het gezoem over de hele aardoppervlakte voorkomt. Deen hoopt dat de ontdekking het onderzoek een nieuwe impuls kan geven en dichter bij de bron van het geluid kan brengen. De resultaten van haar onderzoek publiceerde ze in Geophysical Research Letters. (lees hieronder verder)
FacebookOnderzoekster Martha Deen.
Ze gelooft ook dat het ons kan helpen om de binnenkant van onze planeet nog gedetailleerder in kaart te brengen. Tot nu toe gebeurde dat tijdens aardbevingen, maar die zijn beperkt tot gelimiteerde plaatsen en tijdstippen waar ze vaak voorkomen. Door het gezoem te gebruiken als basis voor seismische golven kan dat probleem omzeild worden. Omdat het de hele tijd wordt gegenereerd en overal op de planeet.
Across the world, the sky is quaking with mysterious, explosive booms leaving residents rattled and baffling experts trying to determine their origins.
More than 64 different incidents involving loud, unexplained booms worldwide have been reported in 2017, according to a recent NY Post report.
The most recently reported skyquake in the U.S. occurred near Daytona Beach, Florida, on Dec. 3, prompting nearby residents to search for answers on social media.
Birmingham, Alabama, residents experienced a similar event last month, which local media dubbed the "Bama Boom."
The "Bama Boom" occurred on Tuesday, Nov. 14, around 1:30 p.m. local time, according to Fox News.
National Weather Service officials in Birmingham tweeted shortly after the boom was reported, stating: "Loud boom heard: we do not see anything indicating large fire/smoke on radar or satellite; nothing on USGS indicating an earthquake."
Some of the possible explanations for loud booms could be lightning from distant thunderstorms, large meteors entering the atmosphere, earthquakes, mining operations such as blasting and super-sonic aircraft.
"Shallow, brittle earthquakes and underground mine bumps can do this, causing both shaking from below and sound in the air," AccuWeather Meteorologist Jim Andrews said. "Then there are both natural and man-made causes originating in the atmosphere."
Supersonic aircraft would be a strong candidate as to the cause, Andrews said. Natural causes could be a meteor surviving entry into the atmosphere or particularly exceptional lightning, given that a thunderstorm is occurring.
A similar occurrence to the "Bama Boom" was reported in June earlier this year along the San Diego coastline, rattling doors and windows.
After initially denying any involvement, a Navy spokesman told the San Diego Union-Tribune that several jets went supersonic, causing the boom.
"Those two aircraft went supersonic about 35 miles from the coast," Kakiel told the Union-Tribune. "Usually you don't hear the side booms travel that far. It was kind of surprising to us."
Since June, there have been several new reports of loud mystery booms in the San Diego area, most recently in early November, according to NBC San Diego.
The November news report suggested a meteorological phenomenon of clashing air masses might be another potential source of the strange rumblings.
"The event may have been caused by a meteorological phenomenon generated by the contrast of hot and cold air masses," according to the report.
In addition to different air masses colliding, Andrews said temperature and atmospheric stability can greatly impact sound as it travels, serving to both amplify the wave and allow it to travel over a longer distance.
He said atmospheric stability, temperature, air masses and topography can alter and affect how sound travels in any given area.
"You could have sounds that are being channeled away from their origin, increasing in loudness and changing in their patterns," he said.
The origin of a sound might be relatively simple, but it produces a more mysterious rumbling as it moves farther away from the source.
The local Birmingham NWS office had no answer to what caused the "Bama Boom" but suggested it could have been caused by supersonic aviation or a meteorite surviving an atmospheric entry as the event occurred near the peak of the Leonid meteor shower.
NASA scientists had no answers as to the cause, adding that the Leonids are too small to make it through the atmosphere to cause the boom reported, according to Al.com.
Days later, another strange boom with mysterious origins was reported in the Denver, Colorado, area, according to a local CBS station.
A follow-up report from the same Colorado news station stated an over-pressurized storage tank erupted at a nearby oil and gas facility around the time of the reports. That was offered as the most likely cause, according to the report.
However, not all origins of the reported sounds have been so easily uncovered. Andrews stressed there are likely many causes both natural and man-made that can be attributed to these types of events around the world.
"With that said, the universe almost surely has many secrets yet to be unlocked," Andrews said.
Mysterieuze luchtbevingen worden overal ter wereld gemeld en stellen experts voor een raadsel. Wat zit hierachter?
Mysterieuze luchtbevingen worden overal ter wereld gemeld en stellen experts voor een raadsel. Wat zit hierachter?
Overal ter wereld worden mysterieuze knallen gehoord die lokale bewoners de schrik van hun leven bezorgen en die experts voor een raadsel stellen.
Er hebben zich dit jaar inmiddels tientallen incidenten voorgedaan. De meest recente luchtbeving is op 3 december gemeld in de buurt van Daytona Beach in Florida.
Inwoners van de plaats vroegen zich op social media af wat er aan de hand was.
Bama Boom
In Birmingham in de staat Alabama gebeurde afgelopen maand iets soortgelijks en lokale media spraken daar van de ‘Bama Boom’.
Mogelijke verklaringen voor harde knallen zijn bliksem, grote meteoren die de atmosfeer binnendringen, aardbevingen, mijnbouwactiviteiten en supersonische vliegtuigen.
Ondiepe aardbevingen en ondergrondse mijnbouwactiviteiten kunnen dit veroorzaken, waarbij de grond schudt en in de lucht knallen zijn te horen, aldus meteoroloog Jim Andrews.
In juni dit jaar werd langs de kust van San Diego ook een soort ‘Bama Boom’ gehoord. De knal deed ramen en deuren trillen.
Mysterieuze knallen
De marine ontkende in eerste instantie bij het voorval betrokken te zijn geweest, maar een woordvoerder zei later dat meerdere straaljagers in het gebied door de geluidsbarrière waren gegaan.
Sinds juni zijn er echter nieuwe meldingen binnengekomen van harde, mysterieuze knallen in en rond San Diego. Het meest recente geval dateert van november, meldde NBC San Diego.
De zender suggereert dat botsende luchtmassa’s verantwoordelijk konden zijn geweest voor het vreemde gerommel.
In Birmingham weten ze onderhand nog steeds niet wat de oorzaak is van de ‘Bama Boom’. Het geluid zou kunnen zijn veroorzaakt door een supersonisch vliegtuig of een meteoriet, aangezien de knal werd gehoord toen de meteorenzwerm Leoniden piekte.
Geheimen
NASA-wetenschappers konden het mysterie niet oplossen en voegden toe dat de Leoniden te klein zijn om de reis door de atmosfeer te overleven en een knal te kunnen veroorzaken, meldde AI.com.
Enkele dagen later werd opnieuw een mysterieuze knal gehoord in het gebied rond Denver in Colorado. Later bleek dat er een opslagtank was ontploft in een industriegebied.
Niet alle geluiden zijn echter zo gemakkelijk te verklaren. Het universum heeft vrijwel zeker nog veel geheimen voor ons in petto, besloot Andrews.
It seems far too easy for many people to think of the Earth as a fixed, lifeless ball of matter onto which we can project our will, but science clearly shows the Earth is quite ‘alive’ with many different natural processes and signs of ‘life.’ Plate tectonics are perhaps the most visible and dramatic of these, constantly reshaping the face of our planet in fiery displays of violent omnipotence. In recent years, scientists have detected a weak low-frequency vibration similar to seismic waves that seems independent of tectonic activity. A number of theories have been proposed for this “hum” including atmospheric disturbances to the rumble of massive underwater waves passing over the seafloor, but so far identifying a definitive source has eluded scientists because of the difficulty in locating and recording the hum.
Could underwater waves be the cause of the hum?
To aid in the search for the source of the Earth’s deep hum, geophysicists from the Paris Institute of Earth Physics collected seismic data from 57 different monitoring stations on the bottom of the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. The recordings were then processed using sophisticated software which allowed researchers to remove oceanic background noises and electronic glitches. For the first time, researchers were able to record and measure the low-frequency hum, but if you were hoping to be able to listen to the hum, you’re out of luck: the study found it peaks between between 2.9 and 4.5 millihertz, far below the lower human frequency threshold of around 20 hertz.
Too bad we can’t hear the song of the Earth.
Their research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters. While it’s a little disappointing that the hum is far too low for humans to hear, knowing that there’s a strange frequency being given off by the center of the Earth is pretty rad in itself. It’s almost like we detected our planet’s pulse or heartbeat. It’s even better knowing that its cause is still ultimately a mystery. The authors of this study believe their data could help understand some of the processes occurring deep below the surface of the Earth, possibly even allowing them to map the Earth’s core down to 500 kilometers (300 miles). Those pesky Morlocks are soon gonna learn who’s boss.
Mysterious Object Flying Slowly Over Russia Is Being Considered As Best Evidence for Aliens Ever Recorded On Video
Mysterious Object Flying Slowly Over Russia Is Being Considered As Best Evidence for Aliens Ever Recorded On Video
A mysterious triangular object having one light at each corner has been identified as a TR-3B. It was filmed flying slowly over Russia in what UFO conspiracy theorists claim the best evidence of space aliens ever recorded.
The footage shows a shape flying across the skies. It was posted on the dark web and has been circulated among underground UFO groups.
The video was also recently shared on YouTube, which shows an object with three lights moving very slowly through the air and almost floating in the sky.
Many UFO enthusiasts believe that it is physically impossible for any known aircraft to move at such slow speeds.
The aircraft has been described as a black triangle, or a TR-3B, a class of UFO that has been observed during the 20th and 21st centuries. These objects have been linked to a rumoured US Air Force Aurora aircraft development program.
Most reports of black triangles come from Britain and the United States, but they are increasingly being reported in other parts of the world.
Reports describe this UFO class as large, silent, black triangular objects floating or slowly moving at low altitudes above cities and highways.
Sightings of the object usually take place at night, and they are often described as having pulsing, coloured lights visible at each corner of the triangle.
Military Whistleblower Proves His Claim of Observing A UFO Near RAF Base
Military Whistleblower Proves His Claim of Observing A UFO Near RAF Base
An ex-airman established his claims of seeing an unidentified object near an RAF base through a lie detector test.
Larry Warren, 56, claimed that he had seen aliens hovering underneath a craft in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, in 1980.
The incident has since been called “Britain’s Roswell” and has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories for decades.
Warren, assigned to the US Air Force at RAF Bentwaters, managed to pass every question on the polygraph test and now hopes those who doubted his accounts would turn into believers.
Former police detective Gary Heseltine, who investigated the 7/7 bombings, said the result has finally vindicated Larry. Heseltine, the editor of the UFO Truth Magazine, shared the development to his readers.
Heseltine announced that Larry Warren, who has been considered as the original whistleblower from the military of the most famous and unsolved old case in Britain, recently agreed to undertake a professional polygraph test with one of the leading experts in the UK.
Heseltine said that Warren undertook the test where he was questioned about his general honesty and integrity about his involvement.
He stressed that Larry Warren has successfully passed the tests on all counts.
The incident happened more than three consecutive nights, and three Air Force men were dispatched to investigate.
One of the men was Kim Pennington, who got near enough to touch the side of the UFO.
Pennington and one other airman created sketches of the craft for witness statements.
Two nights later, Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt saw strange flashing lights in the trees.
One of the beams reportedly hit the ground just a few feet away and struck weapons storage bunkers at the NATO base.
The event led to allegations that weapons of mass destruction were stored in that facility, something the US and UK governments will neither confirm nor deny.
What are they hiding? Double sonic boom heard over 'alien UFO base' Area 51
What are they hiding? Double sonic boom heard over 'alien UFO base' Area 51
UFO truth seekers believe a double sonic boom being heard over the mysterious Area 51 military could be a sign of something other worldly being hidden in the classified location.
Alien conspiracy theorists are convinced there is more than meets the eye at Area 51.
A video showing the strange noises over the Nevada US Air Force base posted on YouTube by channel UFO Seekers has racked up more than 40,000 hits already.
In the clip, F-22 fighter jets can be seen flying over the infamous airspace.
The stealth planes leave strange trails as they cut through the Nevada skies at speeds of up to 1,500mph, Dailystar.co.uk reports.
Then, as one accelerates away, a frighteningly loud double booming sound can be heard.
The heavily guarded Area 51, deep in the Nevada desert, is at the centre of many alien-related conspiracy theories.
These fighter jets are a distraction from the real testing within the site.
Conspiracy theorist
It is claimed that alien flying saucers crashed on Earth, such as the alleged 1947 Roswell incident, and that the wreckage and even corpses were taken to Area 51 for experimentation and to be analysed away from public view.
One theory suggests that USAF scientists have tried to emulate the alien technology to create their own top-secret spy craft capable of travelling into space at the base.
The new footage has sent alien conspiracy theorists into overdrive.
One viewer suggested that these fighter jets are a distraction from the real testing within the site.
And they even theorised the boom may not have come from the planes.
One YouTube poster said: "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, maybe the cause of the double sonic boom?”
Another added to the conspiracy, saying: “Still waiting for the day for NASA and the whole world to officially tell us that extraterrestrial aliens have been living with us this whole time and that they are real.”
Area 51 has been used by American aviation authorities since 1955 and is closed off to those without top-level security clearance.
However, the US Government did not even admit the base existed until 2013, in a series of documents released as part of a Freedom of Information request, and it is heavily protected by armed guards.
NASA's Curiosity rover spotted this wonderfully round pebble on Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Red circle by Amanda Kooser/CNET
If we ever found a real cannonball on Mars, it would make us question everything we know about the history of the Red Planet. That transformative moment hasn't happened yet.
NASA's Mars Curiosity rover Twitter account posted an intriguing message on Tuesday highlighting some spherical objects found on the planet:
Mars may be named for the god of war, but these weird things aren't cannonballs. They're pebbles.
The round 5mm concretion I found (L) contains calcium sulfate, sodium + magnesium, making it different from the hematite-rich "blueberries" (R) @MarsRovers Opportunity found. Cool!
The Curiosity image shows a delightfully round shape sitting on the dusty surface of Mars. Though the rover first snapped images of the area in late 2016 and early 2017, the photos are receiving renewed attention thanks to a Dec. 2 post on popular alien-theorist blog UFO Sightings Daily, which refers to the round shape as a "cannon ball" about the size of a softball and suggests it is evidence of a war on Mars.
NASA says the sphere is actually less than a quarter inch (5 millimeters) in size and is composed of calcium sulfate, sodium and magnesium.
The tweet also includes an image taken in 2004 by NASA's Opportunity rover, of a collection of spherules known as "blueberries," that shows how round concretions really aren't that odd on Mars. For reference, those hematite-rich spheres are only about the size of BB pellets. Erosion over time left the "blueberries" exposed.
Seeing strange things on Mars has been an entertaining pastime ever since 1976, when NASA's Viking 1 mission revealed a "face on Mars" that the space agency says is really just a regular old mesa. Since then, we've fancifully spotted everything from a "spoon" to an ancient god.
This is all a lot of fun, but, as the non-cannonball shows us, everything (so far) has a perfectly mundane explanation.
K2-18b and its neighbour, newly discovered K2-18c, orbit the red-dwarf star k2-18 locataed 111 light years away in the constellation Leo.
New research using data collected by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has revealed that a little-known exoplanet called K2-18b could well be a scaled-up version of Earth.
Just as exciting, the same researchers also discovered for the first time that the planet has a neighbor.
"Being able to measure the mass and density of K2-18b was tremendous, but to discover a new exoplanet was lucky and equally exciting," says lead author Ryan Cloutier, a PhD student in U of T Scarborough's Centre for Planet Science, U of T's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Universite de Montreal Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx).
Both planets orbit K2-18, a red-dwarf star located about 111 light years away in the constellation Leo. When the planet K2-18b was first discovered in 2015, it was found to be orbiting within the star's habitable zone, making it an ideal candidate to have liquid surface water, a key element in harbouring conditions for life as we know it.
The data set used by the researchers came from the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) using the ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory, in Chile. HARPS allows for measurements of radial velocities of stars, which can be affected by the presence of nearby planets, to be taken with the highest accuracy currently available. The instrument makes it possible to detect very small planets orbiting those stars.
In order to figure out whether K2-18b was a scaled-up version of Earth (mostly rock), or a scaled-down version of Neptune (mostly gas), researchers had to first figure out the planet's mass, using radial velocity measurements taken with HARPS.
"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," says Cloutier.
After using a machine-learning approach to figure out the mass measurement, Cloutier and his team were able to determine the planet is either a mostly rocky planet with a small gaseous atmosphere - like Earth, but bigger - or a mostly water planet with a thick layer of ice on top of it.
"With the current data, we can't distinguish between those two possibilities," he says. "But 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."
The JWST, which will be launched in 2019, will be instrumental in collecting a range of data for studying the solar system, early universe and exoplanets.
"There's a lot of demand to use this telescope, so you have to be meticulous in choosing which exoplanets to look at," says Rene Doyon, a co-author on the paper who is also the principal investigator for NIRISS, the Canadian Space Agency instrument on board JWST.
"K2-18b is now one of the best targets for atmospheric study, it's going to the near top of the list."
It was while looking through the data of K2-18b that Cloutier noticed something unusual. In addition to a signal occurring every 39 days from the rotation of K2-18, and one taking place every 33 days from the orbit of K2-18b, he noticed a different signal occurring every nine days.
"When we first threw the data on the table we were trying to figure out what it was. You have to ensure the signal isn't just noise, and you need to do careful analysis to verify it, but seeing that initial signal was a good indication there was another planet," Cloutier says.
Cloutier collaborated with an international team of researchers from the Observatoire Astronomique de l'Universite? de Gene?ve, the Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx), Universite? de Grenoble, U of T Scarborough, and Universidade do Porto.
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 meaning it has a mass similar to Earth. Cloutier, who had set the goal of discovering a new exoplanet within his PhD, considers himself very lucky to have discovered it in this dataset.
"It wasn't a eureka moment because we still had to go through a checklist of things to do in order to verify the data. Once all the boxes were checked it sunk in that, wow, this actually is a planet."
Images captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, reveal that the surface of Deimos is mostly smoooth, marred only by recent impact craters.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Mars is the only terrestrial planet to host multiple moons. The smaller of the two, the lumpy moon Deimos, bears more resemblance to an asteroid than to most of the moons in the solar system, a similarity that raises questions about its formation.
Discovery and nomenclature
On August 12, 1877, the focused search for Martian moons by American astronomer Asaph Hall resulted in the discovery of Deimos. Six days later, he identified the second Martian moon, Phobos.
The existence of the moons had been suggested years before, when Johannes Kepler proposed that since Earth hosted one moon and Jupiter four (as only the Galilean moons were known at the time), Mars might have two moons in orbit around it. However, no signs of such moons existed until Hall undertook his careful search.
Using a 26-inch refractor at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., Hall made a methodical study of the region around the red planet. Peering closer to Mars than previous astronomers, he found Deimos circling only 14,576 miles (23,458 kilometers) from the center of the planet, traveling around its equator. Phobos orbited even closer in. Their close proximity and small size had kept them hidden in the glare from the planet.
Like many objects in the solar system, the Martian moons take their names from Greek mythology. In Homer's ancient poem, "The Iliad," Deimos (Flight) and Phobos (Fear) were the twin sons of Mars (Ares to the Greeks), and accompany him into battle.
Exploring the moons
Deep space mission planners are eying Deimos, a moon of Mars, as an exploration target for humans. Here, the path to reach the Martian moon is laid out.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
It took almost another century for scientists to begin to understand the two tiny Martian moons. In 1971, NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft became the first manmade satellite to orbit another planet. Images from the craft revealed that both Deimos and Phobos have lumpy, potato-like shapes, rather than being spherical like Earth's moon. Observations of Deimos were limited by the tidal locking of the moon to the planet, resulting in the same side always facing outward.
As the exploration of continued, scientists were able to glean more information about the two tiny moons. The Viking orbiters flew by in the late 1970s, with the second orbiter passing within 19 miles (30 km) of Deimos. The Soviet Phobos 2 mission, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, and the European Mars Express all provided more clues about the two curious moons. Rovers from the planet's surface even got in on the act, with Spirit and Opportunity and Curiosity all providing images from the ground.
In 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch the Mars Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to visit both Phobos and Deimos. MMX will land on the surface of Phobos and collect samples to be returned to Earth in 2029.
"Understanding how Phobos and Deimos formed has been a goal of the planetary science community for many years," David Lawrence, of the Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement. Lawrence leads the team to develop one of the instruments for MMX.
In 2016, a low-cost Mars orbiter mission called PADME (Phobos And Deimos and Mars Environment) was proposed to visit the moons. Among its major aims is to characterize where Deimos and Phobos came from — whether they were created at the same time as Mars, or captured from the asteroid belt, or somewhere else. PADME competed in NASA's Discovery Program but lost out to the Psyche and Lucy missions to visit asteroids.
NASA is considering sending humans to Mars in the 2030s, which led some scientists to suggest a mission to one of its moons instead might be beneficial. It would reduce the complication of landing on a surface with an atmosphere, although humans would need to be tethered to the surface of Deimos or Phobos if they wanted to stay put.
But future explorers may be in for a shock. Powerful solar eruptions could charge regions of the Martian moon to hundreds of volts, potentially affecting electronic equipment.
"We found that astronauts or rovers could accumulate significant electric charges when traversing the night side of Phobos — the side facing Mars during the Martian day," William Farrell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. "While we don't expect these charges to be large enough to injure an astronaut, they are potentially large enough to affect sensitive equipment, so we would need to design spacesuits and equipment that minimizes any charging hazard."
Formation and composition
The dark moons are made up of material similar to Type I or II carbonaceous chondrites, the substance of asteroids and dwarf planets such as Ceres. They are tiny, with the smaller Deimos having a radius of only 3.9 miles (6.2 km). This, combined with their potato-like shape, hints that both moons might be asteroids, pushed by Jupiter from the asteroid belt and snatched up by the gravity of Mars.
But this is far from conclusive. The close orbit of Deimos is nearly circular. It travels around the equatorial plane of Mars in 30 hours, a little over a Martian day. To reach such a stable orbit would require braking by the atmosphere, but the atmosphere on the red planet is thinner than on Earth.
Another possible origin for the moons is that dust and rock could have accreted, or drawn together, while in orbit around Mars. A third possibility includes a collision, much like the one that formed Earth's moon, with most of the large debris being shed from the planet's orbit, leaving behind only Deimos and Phobos.
A recent proposal combines the last two possibilities. According to researchers, a collision once scattered debris into a ring around Mars. As Phobos approaches the red planet, it will be torn into a ring again, scientists predict.
"Solving the riddle of how Mars' moons came to be will help us better understand how planets formed around our sun and, in turn, around other stars," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), said in a statement.
From the surface of Mars, the tiny moon appears star-like. At full moon, Deimos shines about as brightly as Venus. When the moon eclipses the sun, it appears as a small dot crossing its surface.
But the pair won't shine in the sky forever. Within 100 million years, the closer Phobos will collide with the red planet. Deimos will suffer the opposite fate. Its orbit is slowly drawing it away from Mars, and eventually the moon will be cast off into space.
Deimos has a number of craters caused by impact from meteorites. But craters on Deimos look different from those on most bodies in the solar system. When a rock collides with another body, material from the impact tends to fly up in the air and fall back to the surface, creating ejecta deposits. But the small size of the moon means that objects only need to travel 13 mph (20 km/h) to fly off into space. Although the moon is covered with regolith that may lie as deep as 328 feet (100 meters), it is created by meteorites pulverized by impact, rather than by castoff material.
Only two of the craters on Deimos are named. In 1726, English author Jonathan Swift cited Kepler when he referred to two Martian moons in his fictional work, "Gulliver's Travels." A few years later, the French writer Voltaire referenced two moons in a short story. The two craters bear the names of these authors.
Facts about Deimos:
Radius of moon: 3.9 miles (6.2 km)
Semi-major axis around Mars (distance from planet's center): 14,576 miles (23,458 km)
La dissimulation des OVNIs est Une Opération TOP SECRÈTE de la CIA
La dissimulation des OVNIs est Une Opération TOP SECRÈTE de la CIA
Un théoricien de la conspiration affirme que les observations d’OVNI et d’extraterrestres seraient, en réalité, une vaste dissimulation à l’échelle mondiale organisée par la CIA et le gouvernement américain.
Mark Pilkington, un expert spécialisé dans le domaine de l’inexpliqué, a exposé ces hypothèses troublantes après avoir longuement étudié les phénomènes OVNI. L’auteur britannique prétend que les étranges engins aperçus dans le monde entier existent réellement, mais qu’ils ne sont pas d’origine extraterrestre.
Les soucoupes volantes et les avions non identifiés seraient, en réalité, une technologie secrète développée par les États-Unis, affirme-t-il.
M. Pilkington a prétendu qu’une organisation obscure qu’il a surnommée « mirage men » était derrière cette immense dissimulation.
Il a produit un nouveau documentaire du même nom dans lequel il expose la vérité qui se cache derrière les OVNI.
Les observations d’avions non identifié seraient ainsi simplement des avions secrets américains. Il prétend même que le crash de Roswell serait des appareils, certes mystérieux, mais d’origine bien humaine.
Les autorités de l’US Air Force auraient récupéré un « disque volant » dans un ranch près de cette ville du Nouveau-Mexique en 1947.
M. Pilkington affirme que c’est l’un des « exemples les plus célèbres » du travail des « mirage men ».
Il a expliqué au site web Sputnik :
« Au début des années 1950, l’armée américaine testait beaucoup de nouvelles technologies et il était commode de les déguiser en OVNI. »
« C’était un double bluff. »
M. Pilkington a ajouté que l’US Air Force a découvert que les gens acceptaient plus facilement les rumeurs sur les OVNIS et les aliens que toute autre explication impliquant des avions secrets.
Il est bien connu que les États-Unis développaient d’étranges avions expérimentaux pendant la Guerre Froide avec l’Union soviétique.
Les patrons du Pentagone avaient même leur propre soucoupe volante appelée Avrocar, connue sous le nom de « Project Silverbug ».
M. Pilkington affirme que l’histoire des observations d’OVNI est intimement liée à l’histoire de la guerre froide.
« Il n’existe pas de preuve irréfutable, mais la CIA ne va jamais l’admettre. »
« La mythologie OVNI a servi de couverture parfaite [pour tester des engins secrets américains.] »
Le Daily Star Online avait déjà révélé les liens entre les Nazis et le programme spatial américain tout au long des années 1950 et 1960.
A 2013 map of the background radiation left over from the Big Bang, taken by the ESA's Planck spacecraft, captured the oldest light in the universe. This information helps astronomers determine the age of the universe.
Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration.
The Big Bang Theory is the leading explanation about how the universe began. At its simplest, it says the universe as we know it started with a small singularity, then inflated over the next 13.8 billion years to the cosmos that we know today.
Because current instruments don't allow astronomers to peer back at the universe's birth, much of what we understand about the Big Bang Theory comes from mathematical formulas and models. Astronomers can, however, see the "echo" of the expansion through a phenomenon known as the cosmic microwave background.
While the majority of the astronomical community accepts the theory, there are some theorists who have alternative explanations besides the Big Bang — such as eternal inflation or an oscillating universe.
The phrase "Big Bang Theory" has been popular among astrophysicists for decades, but it hit the mainstream in 2007 when a comedy show with the same name premiered on CBS. The show follows the home and academic life of several researchers (including an astrophysicist).
In the first second after the universe began, the surrounding temperature was about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 billion Celsius), according to NASA. The cosmos contained a vast array of fundamental particles such as neutrons, electrons and protons. These decayed or combined as the universe got cooler.
This early soup would have been impossible to look at, because light could not carry inside of it. "The free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds," NASA stated. Over time, however, the free electrons met up with nuclei and created neutral atoms. This allowed light to shine through about 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
This early light — sometimes called the "afterglow" of the Big Bang — is more properly known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). It was first predicted by Ralph Alpher and other scientists in 1948, but was found only by accident almost 20 years later. [Images: Peering Back to the Big Bang & Early Universe]
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, both of Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, were building a radio receiver in 1965 and picking up higher-than-expected temperatures, according to NASA. At first, they thought the anomaly was due to pigeons and their dung, but even after cleaning up the mess and killing pigeons that tried to roost inside the antenna, the anomaly persisted.
Simultaneously, a Princeton University team (led by Robert Dicke) was trying to find evidence of the CMB, and realized that Penzias and Wilson had stumbled upon it. The teams each published papers in the Astrophysical Journal in 1965.
Determining the age of the universe
The cosmic microwave background has been observed on many missions. One of the most famous space-faring missions was NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, which mapped the sky in the 1990s.
Several other missions have followed in COBE's footsteps, such as the BOOMERanG experiment (Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics), NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.
Planck's observations, first released in 2013, mapped the background in unprecedented detail and revealed that the universe was older than previously thought: 13.82 billion years old, rather than 13.7 billion years old. [Related: How Old is the Universe?] (The research observatory's mission is ongoing and new maps of the CMB are released periodically.)
Examining the CMB also gives astronomers clues as to the composition of the universe. Researchers think most of the cosmos is made up of matter and energy that cannot be "sensed" with conventional instruments, leading to the names dark matter and dark energy. Only 5 percent of the universe is made up of matter such as planets, stars and galaxies.
Gravitational waves controversy
While astronomers could see the universe's beginnings, they've also been seeking out proof of its rapid inflation. Theory says that in the first second after the universe was born, our cosmos ballooned faster than the speed of light. That, by the way, does not violate Albert Einstein's speed limit since he said that light is the maximum anything can travel within the universe. That did not apply to the inflation of the universe itself.
"We're very confident that the signal that we're seeing is real, and it's on the sky," lead researcher John Kovac, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Space.com in March 2014.
But by June, the same team said that their findings could have been altered by galactic dust getting in the way of their field of view.
"The basic takeaway has not changed; we have high confidence in our results," Kovac said in a press conference reported by the New York Times. "New information from Planck makes it look like pre-Planckian predictions of dust were too low," he added.
The results from Planck were put online in pre-published form in September. By January 2015, researchers from both teams working together "confirmed that the Bicep signal was mostly, if not all, stardust," the New York Times said in another article.
This graphic shows a timeline of the universe based on the Big Bang theory and inflation models.
Credit: NASA/WMAP
Separately, gravitational waves have been confirmed when talking about the movements and collisions of black holes that are a few tens of masses larger than our sun. These waves have been detected multiple times by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) since 2016. As LIGO becomes more sensitive, it is anticipated that discovering black hole-related gravitational waves will be a fairly frequent event.
Faster inflation, multiverses and charting the start
The universe is not only expanding, but getting faster as it inflates. This means that with time, nobody will be able to spot other galaxies from Earth, or any other vantage point within our galaxy.
"We will see distant galaxies moving away from us, but their speed is increasing with time," Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb said in a March 2014 Space.com article.
"So, if you wait long enough, eventually, a distant galaxy will reach the speed of light. What that means is that even light won't be able to bridge the gap that's being opened between that galaxy and us. There's no way for extraterrestrials on that galaxy to communicate with us, to send any signals that will reach us, once their galaxy is moving faster than light relative to us."
Some physicists also suggest that the universe we experience is just one of many. In the "multiverse" model, different universes would coexist with each other like bubbles lying side by side. The theory suggests that in that first big push of inflation, different parts of space-time grew at different rates. This could have carved off different sections — different universes — with potentially different laws of physics.
"It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse," Alan Guth, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a news conference in March 2014 concerning the gravitational waves discovery. (Guth is not affiliated with that study.)
"It's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously."
While we can understand how the universe we see came to be, it's possible that the Big Bang was not the first inflationary period the universe experienced. Some scientists believe we live in a cosmos that goes through regular cycles of inflation and deflation, and that we just happen to be living in one of these phases.
Early Earth Took a Heavy Beating After the Moon Was Formed
Early Earth Took a Heavy Beating After the Moon Was Formed
By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor
Early Earth was bombarded by material that plunged all the way to its core or splashed off, requiring the planet to take more hits to deposit some of the elements present in its mantle.
New simulations suggest that much of the material that crashed into our young planet may have been swallowed up by Earth's core or ricocheted back into space, requiring more collisions to leave the elemental signatures scientists see in the crust today.
The young solar system was a violent place. Planetesimals, the massive objects that didn't quite manage to grow into planets, wound up destroying themselves as they crashed into other objects during a period known as late accretion. These collisions left traces of highly siderophile elements — metals have an affinity for iron, such as gold, platinum and iridium— within our planet's mantle. [How the Moon Formed: 5 Wild Theories]
By measuring how much of these metals was mixed into the mantle, scientists estimated that about half a percent of the Earth's present mass came from colliding planetesimals. But these estimates assumed that the mantle held onto all of the highly siderophile elements.
New simulations suggest that instead, some of the material might have been carried all the way into the core, where it would have mixed up or would have been thrown out of the system entirely. Both outcomes would have reduced the amount of metals that would have mixed into the mantle. That means Earth may have absorbed two to five times as many impacts as previously thought.
This Southwest Research Institute animation depicts an object 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) wide crashing into the early Earth at 19 kilometers per second (12 miles per second). The right-side view shows the mixing of the object and Earth materials after the impact.
Credit: Southwest Research Institute
"We modeled the massive collisions and how metals and silicates were integrated into Earth during this 'late accretion stage,' which lasted for hundreds of millions of years after the Moon formed," Simone Marchi, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado and lead author of a Nature Geoscience paper outlining these results, said in a statement. Marchi worked with Robin Canup, also at SwRI, and Richard Walker, a geologist at the University of Maryland.
"Based on our simulations, the late-accretion mass delivered to Earth may be significantly greater than previously thought, with important consequences for the earliest evolution of our planet," Marchi said.
2 Bizarre Ancient Galaxies Found in a Colossal Sea of Dark Matter
2 Bizarre Ancient Galaxies Found in a Colossal Sea of Dark Matter
By Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer
An artist's impression of a pair of galaxies from the very early universe.
Credit: D. Berry/NRAO/AUI/NSF
Two enormous galaxies seen merging in the distant universe have astronomers rethinking the leading theory of how galaxies form.
When the universe was in its infancy, the very first galaxies were tiny "dwarf galaxies" thatclumped togetherto form the larger galaxies seen today. Known as hierarchical formation, this theory suggests that galaxies form in a step-by-step process as smaller galaxies are pulled together by their mutual gravitational attraction.
But now, the recent discovery of two distant galaxies that are abnormally huge has led astronomers to rethink that theory because it suggests that those dwarf galaxies assembled into large galaxies a lot faster than previously thought.
Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile were surprised to find that these gigantic galaxies existed when the universe was only 780 million years old, or about 5 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years. Because the light from those galaxies takes about 13 billion years to reach Earth, astronomers observing those galaxies are looking back in time at how the galaxies appeared 13 billion years ago.
"With these exquisite ALMA observations, astronomers are seeing the most massive galaxy known in the first billion years of the universe in the process of assembling itself," Dan Marrone, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson and lead author of the new paper, said in a statement.
A composite image shows ALMA data of the two galaxies of SPT0311-58 in red. These galaxies are shown over a background image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Credit: Marrone, et al./B. Saxton/AUI/NSF/ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/NASA/ESA/HubbleDuring this time period in the ancient universe, known as theepoch of reionization, space was saturated with an opaque fog of cold hydrogen gas. As the first stars formed, energy from their starlight began to ionize the hydrogen gas, breaking it down into a transparent soup of electrons and protons.
"We usually view that as the time of little galaxies working hard to chew away at the neutral intergalactic medium," Marrone said. “Mounting observational evidence with ALMA, however, has helped to reshape that story and continues to push back the time at which truly massive galaxies first emerged in the universe."
Around that same time in the ancient universe, dark matter — a mysterious, invisible form of matter that accounts for about a quarter of the universe's mass — also began to form clumps. As gravity pulled together clumps of both visible matter and dark matter, galaxies were born inside "halos" of dark matter. In a way, dark matter acts as scaffolding for young galaxies as they form by providing the gravity needed to pull mass together.
In this case, astronomers saw that both giant galaxies reside inside one even more enormous dark-matter halo. The researchers said that this is one of the largest examples of a dark-matter halo ever discovered.
To top it off, the two galaxies appear to be merging and will someday form "the largest galaxy ever observed at that period in cosmic history," ALMA officials said in the statement. "This discovery provides new details about the emergence of large galaxies and the role that dark matter plays in assembling the most massive structures in the universe."
The two galaxies, collectively known as SPT0311-58, were originally spotted by astronomers at the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica. Initially, the scientists thought SPT0311-58 was a single galaxy, but further observations by ALMA found that SPT0311-58 is actually a pair of huge galaxies.
"There are more galaxies discovered with the South Pole Telescope that we're following up on," said Joaquin Vieira, a co-author of the study and astronomy professor at the University of Illinois. "Our hope is to find more objects like this, possibly even more distant ones, to better understand this population of extreme dusty galaxies and especially their relation to the bulk population of galaxies at this epoch."
Witness: I heard US pilots mention “small beings” after the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident
Witness: I heard US pilots mention “small beings” after the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident
Witness: I heard US pilots mention “small beings” after the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident
A new witness has come forward trying to clarify one the most important UFO case that occurred on British soil.
YouTube
NEW WITNESS: The man claims to have heard a USAF man talk of 'little people'.
A 62-year-old man, who asked Express.co.uk not to release his name to the public, claims to have heard US Air Force (USAF) personnel discuss “lights” and “little beings” just days after the event happened.
The notorious UFO case of the Rendlesham Forest occurred in December 1980.
The event, nicknamed “the British Roswell,” took place near two military bases and involved the landing of a UFO in the nearby forest, with physical evidence and about 30 qualified witnesses who saw something that night.
The witness, quoted by Express—a British newspaper who has been heavily criticized for releasing ‘phony’ articles—says that at that time, the witness was working in the warehouse of a newspaper and magazine company in Felixstowe.
One night, he found himself in the bar of The Marlborough Hotel, between Christmas and the New Year of 1980, when he heard the bizarre exchange between military personnel he mentioned beings, not from Earth.
As quoted by the express, the witness said: “The seafront hotels were very popular among USAF personnel, in particular, the newly opened Flying Boat bar at the Marlborough.
Did aliens land in 1980 in the Rendlesham Forest?
Image credit: Shutterstock
“I knew a few of the USAF personnel by name, but it was just through bar talk, and we had no relationship outside of the bar.
“I was just having a drink at the bar.
“There was a few USAF personnel in the Boat, as we called it and a small group of them stood alone in the corner of the bar.
“I looked over at them from time to time and could see they were having a serious discussion over something.
“One airman seemed to be particularly agitated.
“I edged over towards them, whether I wanted to be nosy, or just get closer to the fire I don’t know, but I did overhear a few words.
“The airman that was agitated talked about lights and little people.”
The witness who remained anonymous says that at that time, he had no idea about the Rendlesham case, and did not find out about it until around four years later.
“Obviously it was a little eerie, but the events of 1980 were not known usually at that time, so it meant nothing to me.
“The airman was calmed down by his pals, and they got another round in.
“I asked the airman that went to the bar whether his mate was all right. He just answered he was a little upset, nothing more.
“A short while later the agitated airman let his emotions get the better of him again, and he started waffling on. However, I could not make out what he was saying.
“One of his mates then put an arm around him, attempting to calm him down and told him to keep quiet or he would be in trouble.”
The mystery deepened as, according to the witness, when he returned days later to the pub, he encountered the airman that was there a couple of days ago.
He asked him whether if his mate had recovered from the last time I saw them, to what he responded, I think so, but he had been sent back to the States, and no-one knew why’.”
Meet Earth’s newest named cloud, the asperitas cloud, 1st new addition to the International Cloud Atlas in over half a century.
Asperitas clouds, caught on November 26, 2017 by Roberto Porto. They’ve been described as “… as if viewing a roughened sea surface from below.”
Here’s an unusual cloud, the asperitas cloud, caught by Roberto Porto at Teide National Park on the island of Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands.
A year ago, this cloud wouldn’t have had an official name, despite many photos sent for years to the Cloud Appreciation Society. Thanks to the society’s founder, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the World Meteorological Organization finally officially recognized this cloud in the 2017 version of their International Cloud Atlas.
It was the first new addition to the Atlas in over half a century.
In an article at The Verge announcing the newly official cloud name, Pretor-Pinney described the formations as:
… localized waves in the cloud base, either smooth or dappled with smaller features, sometimes descending into sharp points, as if viewing a roughened sea surface from below. Varying levels of illumination and thickness of cloud can lead to dramatic visual effects.
Want to see these clouds in motion? Check out the video below by Alex Schueth, who caught them over Lincoln, Nebraska in July, 2014.
Bottom line: Asperitas clouds seen over the island of Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands
Experts record “noise” coming from within our planet
Experts record “noise” coming from within our planet
Researchers have recorded a noise coming from within our planet using instruments placed on the ocean floor. Scientists are convinced that the new findings could be used to map the interior of the Earth in more detail and precision.
Using seismic instruments placed on the ocean floor, researchers have successfully quantified Earth’s vibrating “buzz.”
No, it’s not aliens, it’s not an alien base, nor is there an alien spaceship at the bottom of our oceans.
An illustration of the internal composition of our planet.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Scientists have known for some time that earthquakes can cause the Earth to vibrate for long periods of time.
However, in 1998 a team of scientists discovered that the Earth also constantly generates a low-frequency vibrational signal in the absence of earthquakes.
Since then, seismologists have proposed different theories to explain the existence of this continuous vibration, from atmospheric disturbances to ocean waves that move on the bottom of the sea.
They also measured the vibration using seismometers on the ground but had not yet measured it successfully at the bottom of the sea, which could help scientists better quantify sources of vibrations.
Now, using seismic instruments strategically placed on the ocean floor, researchers have managed to successfully quantify Earth’s vibrating “buzz.”
A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, explains how experts managed to detect the frequencies to which the Earth vibrates naturally, and confirms the feasibility of using oceanic instruments to study the Earth’s buzz.
Capturing the buzz on the ocean floor could provide new insights into the magnitude of the source, according to Martha Deen, a geophysicist at the Institute of Earth Physics in Paris, France, and lead author of the new study.
In addition, the new findings could be used to map the interior of the Earth in more detail and precision.
Studying the buzzing of seismometers at the bottom of the ocean may give a better overall picture than using only ground-based seismometers by increasing the coverage of data in large uncovered areas, said Deen.
“The Earth is constantly moving, and we wanted to observe these movements because we could benefit from having more data,” Deen explained.
The new research examined the permanent free oscillations of the Earth: low-frequency seismic signals that can only be measured with sensitive instruments. The vibration caused by these signals is constantly present in the ground and is observable in the absence of earthquakes.
‘Britain’s Atlantis’ found at bottom of the North sea – a huge undersea world swallowed by the sea in 7000BC
‘Britain’s Atlantis’ found at bottom of the North sea – a huge undersea world swallowed by the sea in 7000BC
ByPaul Pinkerton
Doggerland was an area of land, now lying beneath the southern North Sea, that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe during and after the last Ice Age. It was then gradually flooded by rising sea levels around 6,500–6,200 BCE. Geological surveys have suggested that it stretched from Britain’s east coast to the Netherlands and the western coasts of Germany and the peninsula ofJutland. It was probably a rich habitat with human habitation in the Mesolithic period, although rising sea levels gradually reduced it to low-lying islands before its final destruction, perhaps following a tsunami caused by the Storegga Slide.
The archaeological potential of the area had first been discussed in the early 20th century, but interest intensified in 1931 when a commercial trawler operating between the sandbanks and shipping hazards of the Leman Bank and Ower Bank east of the Wash dragged up a barbed antler point that dated to a time when the area was tundra. Vessels have dragged up remains of mammoth, lion and other land animals, and small numbers of prehistoric tools and weapons
British scientists and researchers have recently started using 4D technology to explore the remains of an area inhabited before sea levels destroyed it over 7,000 years ago. Historians believe that the area spanned over 100,000 square miles and was home to dozens of prehistoric Britons. It was once known as Doggerland. Using the 4D technology, researchers will show how Doggerland was colonized and inhabited before being washed away. The researchers like to call this area “Britain’s Atlantis”.
Over the years, experts from Bradford and Nottingham have worked on the multi-million pound 4D project. With the tool, they hope to find evidence of flint tools, animal DNA, and pollen from plants. One of the researchers working on the project, Mr. Vince Gaffney, says that he hopes the 4D tool will find something so other researchers can use the information.
Historians believe that Doggerland was submerged sometime between the years of 18,000 and 5,500 BC. The area was just recently found by divers in the area; they were doing research three years ago to find more oil resources when they discovered the remains of the other world. Some historians believe that this area could have been home to thousands of people and was most likely once the heartland of Europe. After the divers’ discovery, climatologists, archaeologists, and geophysicists mapped the area and found out this Atlantis stretched from Denmark to Scotland.
This could be a leftover from Doggerland – staticgirl -CC BY-NC 2.0
Until the middle Pleistocene, Britain was a peninsula of Europe, connected by a massive chalk anticline, the Weald–Artois Anticline across the Straits of Dover. During the Anglian glaciation, approximately 450,000 years ago, an ice sheet filled much of the North Sea, with a large proglacial lake in the southern part fed by the Rhine, Scheldt, and Thames river systems. The catastrophic overflow of this lake carved a channel through the anticline, leading to the formation of the Channel River, which carried the combined Scheldt and Thames rivers into the Atlantic. It probably created the potential for Britain to become isolated from the continent during periods of high sea level, although some scientists argue that the final break did not occur until a second ice-dammed lake overflowed during the MIS8 or MIS6 glaciations, around 340,000 or 240,000 years ago.
Map showing the hypothetical extent of Doggerland (c. 8,000 BC), which provided a land bridge between Great Britain and continental Europe. – Max Naylor – CC BY-SA 3.0
During the most recent glaciation, the Last Glacial Maximum that ended in this area around 18,000 years ago, the North Sea and almost all of the British Isles were covered with glacial ice and the sea level was about 120 m (390 ft) lower than it is today. After that, the climate became warmer and during the Late Glacial Maximum much of the North Sea and the English Channel was an expanse of low-lying tundra, around 12,000 BC extending to the modern northern point of Scotland
With the new technology, there is now research on two more North Sea valleys being led by Mr. Gaffney. The project is funded by a European grant. Mr. Gaffney and his team hope to use remote sensing data to reconstruct the ancient landscape. Besides this research, the team hopes to get some core sediment samples from the landscape to eventually create a map showing rivers, lakes, hills, and coastlines.
After the area slowly started sinking into the water, a storm surged and the sea levels rose abruptly, creating an island around 6,500 BC. One thousand years after the first storm, the whole island was then submerged and lost.
The team hopes to learn more about the lifestyles of the territories. One researcher from Wales says that the project will let the team look into the ways of the people and also what it was like to live in the Mesolithic period. The new 4D technology will open up new doors for researchers and historians to find out more about territories, colonies, and people from thousands of years in the past.
Scientists ‘Inject’ Information Into Monkeys’ Brains
Scientists ‘Inject’ Information Into Monkeys’ Brains
CreditChristoph Hitz
When you drive toward an intersection, the sight of the light turning red will (or should) make you step on the brake. This action happens thanks to a chain of events inside your head.
Your eyes relay signals to the visual centers in the back of your brain. After those signals get processed, they travel along a pathway to another region, the premotor cortex, where the brain plans movements.
Now, imagine that you had a device implanted in your brain that could shortcut the pathway and “inject” information straight into your premotor cortex.
That may sound like an outtake from “The Matrix.” But now two neuroscientists at the University of Rochester say they have managed to introduce information directly into the premotor cortex of monkeys. The researchers published the results of the experiment on Thursday in the journal Neuron.
Although the research is preliminary, carried out in just two monkeys, the researchers speculated that further research might lead to brain implants for people with strokes.
“You could potentially bypass the damaged areas and deliver stimulation to the premotor cortex,” said Kevin A. Mazurek, a co-author of the study. “That could be a way to bridge parts of the brain that can no longer communicate.”
In order to study the premotor cortex, Dr. Mazurek and his co-author, Dr. Marc H. Schieber, trained two rhesus monkeys to play a game.
The monkeys sat in front of a panel equipped with a button, a sphere-shaped knob, a cylindrical knob, and a T-shaped handle. Each object was ringed by LED lights. If the lights around an object switched on, the monkeys had to reach out their hand to it to get a reward — in this case, a refreshing squirt of water.
Each object required a particular action. If the button glowed, the monkeys had to push it. If the sphere glowed, they had to turn it. If the T-shaped handle or cylinder lit up, they had to pull it.
After the monkeys learned how to play the game, Dr. Mazurek and Dr. Schieber had them play a wired version. The scientists placed 16 electrodes in each monkey’s brain, in the premotor cortex.
Each time a ring of lights switched on, the electrodes transmitted a short, faint burst of electricity. The patterns varied according to which object the researchers wanted the monkeys to manipulate.
As the monkeys played more rounds of the game, the rings of light dimmed. At first, the dimming caused the monkeys to make mistakes. But then their performance improved.
Eventually the lights went out completely, yet the monkeys were able to use only the signals from the electrodes in their brains to pick the right object and manipulate it for the reward. And they did just as well as with the lights.
This hints that the sensory regions of the brain, which process information from the environment, can be bypassed altogether. The brain can devise a response by receiving information directly, via electrodes.
Dr. Mazurek and Dr. Schieber were able to rule out this possibility by seeing how short they could make the pulses. With a jolt as brief as a fifth of a second, the monkeys could still master the game without lights. Such a pulse was too short to cause the monkeys to jerk about.
“The stimulation must be producing some conscious perception,” said Paul Cheney, a neurophysiologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, who was not involved in the new study.
But what exactly is that something? It’s hard to say. “After all, you can’t easily ask the monkey to tell you what they have experienced,” Dr. Cheney said.
Dr. Schieber speculated that the monkeys “might feel something on their skin. Or they might see something. Who knows what?”
What makes the finding particularly intriguing is that the signals the scientists delivered into the monkey brains had no underlying connection to the knob, the button, the handle or the cylinder.
Once the monkeys started using the signals to grab the right objects, the researchers shuffled them into new assignments. Now different electrodes fired for different objects — and the monkeys quickly learned the new rules.
“This is not a prewired part of the brain for built-in movements, but a learning engine,” said Michael A. Graziano, a neuroscientist at Princeton University who was not involved in the study.
Dr. Mazurek and Dr. Schieber only implanted small arrays of electrodes into the monkeys. Engineers are working on implantable arrays that might include as many as 1,000 electrodes. So it may be possible one day to transmit far more complex packages of information into the premotor cortex.
Dr. Schieber speculated that someday scientists might be able to use such advanced electrodes to help people who suffer brain damage. Strokes, for instance, can destroy parts of the brain along the pathway from sensory regions to areas where the brain makes decisions and sends out commands to the body.
Implanted electrodes might eavesdrop on neurons in healthy regions, such as the visual cortex, and then forward information into the premotor cortex.
“When the computer says, ‘You’re seeing the red light,’ you could say, ‘Oh, I know what that means — I’m supposed to put my foot on the brake,’” said Dr. Schieber. “You take information from one good part of the brain and inject it into a downstream area that tells you what to do.”
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:SF-snufjes }, Robotics and A.I. Artificiel Intelligence ( E, F en NL )
Boeing CEO Says Boeing Will Beat SpaceX to Mars
Boeing CEO Says Boeing Will Beat SpaceX to Mars
By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor
The race to Mars is on, it seems, and Boeing's CEO believes the megarocket his company his helping to build for NASA will deliver astronauts to the Red Planet before billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX.
According to Fortune, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was speaking on CNBC today when host Jim Cramer asked whether Boeing or SpaceX would "get a man on Mars first."
"Eventually we're going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket," Muilenburg said, according to Fortune.
Boeing is the main contractor for the first stage of NASA's giant Space Launch System , which is designed to launch astronauts on deep-space missions using the space agency's new Orion spacecraft. (United Launch Alliance, Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne are also SLS contractors.) NASA hopes to build a "Deep Space Gateway" near the moon before using SLS and Orion vehicles to send explorers to Mars. The first test launch is scheduled for 2019.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, has long aimed to build a colony on Mars using SpaceX rockets. The company is developing a reusable megarocket— called the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR — that would fly astronauts to Mars, the moon and other deep-space destinations. SpaceX also aims to launch a new heavy-lift rocket, the Falcon Heavy, in January. Last week, Musk announced on Twitter that the Falcon Heavy's first test flight will launch his own Tesla Roadster into space. Its destination? Mars orbit.
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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.
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