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...
21-01-2018
What Is the Biggest Thing in the Universe?
What Is the Biggest Thing in the Universe?
By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor
Scientists have created the first map of a colossal supercluster of galaxies known as Laniakea, the home of Earth's Milky Way galaxy and many other. This computer simulation, a still from a Nature journal video, depicts the giant supercluster, with the Milky Way's location shown as a red dot.
In space, we're used to dealing with large distances and objects. In the cosmic scheme of things, Earth is small. Even in our solar system, we are easily dwarfed by the planet Jupiter (more than 1,000 Earths would fit in the planet, according to NASA) and our sun (more than a million Earths would fit in there, according to Cornell University).
Even our sun looks puny when it is compared to the biggest stars we know of. The sun is a G-type star, a yellow dwarf — pretty average sized on the cosmic scale. But some "hypergiant" stars are much, much larger. Perhaps the biggest star known is UY Scuti, which could fit more than 1,700 of our suns. (Note that the margin of error is roughly 192 sun-widths, so at the lower end of the margin UY Scuti would move several ranks down the list of the biggest stars.) UY Scuti is only about 30 times more massive than our sun, however, so that shows that mass and size don't necessarily correlate in space.
Progressing up the list of big cosmic objects, other things to consider are black holes and, in particular, supermassive black holes that typically reside in the center of a galaxy. (Our Milky Way hosts one that is about 4 million times the mass of the sun.) One of the biggest supermassive black holes ever found resides in NGC 4889, which has a black hole roughly 21 billion times the mass of the sun.
There are things out there bigger than even supermassive black holes. Galaxies are collections of star systems and everything that is inside those systems (such as planets, stars, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, gas, dust and more). Our own Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, NASA says; a light-year is the distance light travels in a year. It's difficult to characterize what the largest galaxies are, because they don't really have precise boundaries, but the largest galaxies we know of are millions of light-years across. The biggest known galaxy is IC 1101, which is 50 times the Milky Way's size and about 2,000 times more massive. It is about 5.5 million light-years across. Nebulas, or vast clouds of gas, also have impressively large sizes. NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy is commonly cited as one of the largest; it's roughly 1,520 light-years across.
Now at last we are starting to approach the biggest structures in the universe. Galaxies are often bound to each other gravitationally in groups that are called galaxy clusters. (The Milky Way, for example, is part of the small Local Group that comprises about two dozen galaxies, including the Andromeda Galaxy.) At first glance, astronomers thought that these structures were the biggest thing out there. In the 1980s, however, astronomers realized that groups of galaxy clusters are also connected by gravity and connected in a supercluster.
What is the biggest supercluster?
The biggest supercluster known in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. It was first reported in 2013 and has been studied several times. It's so big that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the structure. For perspective, the universe is only 13.8 billion years old.
The structure first came to light as the research team (led by Istvan Horvath of the National University of Public Service in Hungary) was looking at brief cosmic phenomena known as gamma-ray bursts. It is thought that they come from supernovas, or massive stars that explode at the end of their lifetimes.
Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be a good indication of where huge masses of stuff lie in the universe, because big stars tend to congregate in dense areas. The first survey showed gamma-rays particularly concentrated about 10 billion light-years away in the direction of the Hercules and Corona Borealis constellations.
But it's a puzzle as to just how that big structure came to be. A 2013 article from Discovery News (a partner site to Space.com) pointed out that this structure appeared to go against a principle of cosmology, or how the universe formed and evolved. Specifically, this principle says that matter should be uniform when seen at a large enough scale. The cluster, however, is not uniform.
"I would have thought this structure was too big to exist. Even as a coauthor, I still have my doubts," Jon Hakkila, an astronomy researcher at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, said in a 2014 press release. He said there was a very small chance the researchers saw a random number of gamma-rays in that location, but it is far less than one in 100.
"Thus, we believe that the structure exists," he added. "There are other structures that appear to violate universal homogeneity: the Sloan Great Wall and the Huge Large Quasar Group ... are two. Thus, there may very well be others, and some could indeed be bigger. Only time will tell."
Large objects in our solar system
While the solar system is puny compared to the scale of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, here is a list of some of the largest types of objects in our own solar system.
Largest planet: Jupiter, roughly 88,846 miles (142,984 km) at its largest diameter, which is about 11 times the diameter of the Earth.
Largest moon: Ganymede, which coincidentally orbits Jupiter, is roughly 3,273 miles (5,268 km) in diameter and is a little larger than the planet Mercury.
Tallest volcano: Olympus Mons on Mars, roughly 15 miles (25 km) high and three times the height of Mount Everest on Earth. (Olympus Mons is also considered the highest mountain.)
Largest canyon: Valles Marineris on Mars, more than 1,865 miles (3,000 km) long, as much as 370 miles (600 km) across, and 5 miles (8 km) deep.
Largest crater: Utopia Planitia on Mars, which has an estimated diameter of 2,050 miles (3,300 km). It was the general landing area of the Viking 2 spacecraft that landed there in 1976.
Largest asteroid: 4 Vesta, which is 330 miles (530 km) across. It is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Largest dwarf planet: Pluto is the largest dwarf planet, with a diameter of 1,473 miles (2,370 km). It was once thought to be smaller than dwarf planet Eris, but Pluto's measurements were confirmed up close by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
Editor's note: This article was corrected on Jan. 19 to include the size of galaxy IC 1101.
The meteor that caused a huge fireball in the skies above southern Michigan Tuesday night (Jan. 16) was only a few feet in size, researchers have said, but its speed was enough to shake the ground as it exploded in the atmosphere.
Reports about the meteor's appearance poured in on social media and to the American Meteor Society overnight. The meteor occurred around 8:10 p.m. CST (9:10 p.m. EST) and registered as a 2.0 magnitude seismic event, according to an alert issued with the National Weather Service.
"This was an explosion in the atmosphere, not an earthquake, and it produced a seismogram that is very different from what you get from a small, regional earthquake," Larry Ruff, a seismologist at the University of Michigan, said in a statement from the university. "Seismologists who are experienced enough can tell that it's not an earthquake because the character is very different." [Photos: Hunting Meteorites from Florida Fireball in Osceola]
Ruff oversees a seismic station at Ann Arbor on the University of Michigan campus, and has been working there since 1982. He said in 35 years, he's never seen an atmospheric event produce this strong of a seismic signature.
David Gerdes, an astrophysicist at the University of Michigan, said Earth gets hit by about 1,000 visible meteors every second, but most of these objects are only the size of sand grains.
The University of Michigan recorded this seismogram when a bright fireball lit the sky on Jan. 16, indicating a 2.0 magnitude seismic event.
Credit: University of Michigan
"Meteors that penetrate deep enough into our atmosphere to produce the large visible and audible burst like we experienced last night come from objects with diameters of about one meter or more, and are more rare," Gerdes said in the statement.
"Last night's event was recorded by dashboard cameras, security cameras, lightning sensors, and seismological sensors from many locations," he added. "These data will help us form a much better picture of this object's size and trajectory, and if and where any fragments reached the Earth."
The meteor appears here as the bright light on the left.
Credit: T. Masterson
No hazards from this meteor
While the meteor was wowing the public across Michigan, Michael Liemohn, also at Michigan — who studies space hazards such as solar wind — spotted the meteor from his car. He said the object in the atmosphere (also called a "bolide") was much smaller than the 56-foot (17-meter) object that shattered over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, injuring hundreds of people and causing property damage.
"This was probably a rock of only a few feet in diameter," he said in the same university statement. "The primary way that a bolide can be dangerous is broken glass. Weird, but true. They are moving at thousands of miles per hour through the atmosphere, so, supersonic speeds, and they create a sonic boom that can reach the ground. If this bolide had been a slightly bigger rock, then it could have broken windows."
Researchers at the university said that an object of 1 meter (3.2 feet) in size hits Earth every few months, a 10-meter (33-foot) object strikes every few years or decades, and a 100-meter (330-foot) object roughly every few thousand years.
This "Did You Feel It?" map from the U.S. Geological Survey shows where people felt the ground shake as the meteor flew overhead on Jan. 16.
Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Liemohn added that NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) and its partner telescopes are designed to look at very large asteroids, especially those that are bigger than a house. However, smaller objects tend to escape everyone's notice because they are too small to see until they are close to Earth. While PDCO hasn't spotted an imminently threatening object so far, NASA is working on technology to deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid — such as using lasers, or shooting it with a missile.
Ted Bergin, who chairs the astronomy department at Michigan, researches the molecular origins of life and examines how stars and planets are formed. He pointed out that meteors, while small, have an important role in helping astronomers understand the history of the solar system and the universe.
"These rocks are the leftovers of planet formation — they never made it into a planet like our own," he said. "Because of that, they contain inside them the history of our own origins and can tell us how a planet like our own was born."
Editor's note: If you captured an amazing photo or video of the Michigan meteor and would like to share it with Space.com for a story or gallery, send images and comments to: spacephotos@space.com.
THE PROFESSIONAL UFO SKEPTIC WHO BELIEVED IN ALIENS
THE PROFESSIONAL UFO SKEPTIC WHO BELIEVED IN ALIENS
'The Close Encounters Man’ tells the unlikely story of how the government’s astrophysicist debunker became the phenomenon’s most expert defender.
If you’re jonesing for an extraterrestrial, you should check outThe Close Encounters Manby Mark O’Connell. O’Connell, a writer for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and founder of the UFO blog High Strangeness, set out to write “a UFO book people wouldn’t need to hide from other people.” He found his ideal subject in J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer hired by the United States Air Force in 1948 to debunk the reports of strange objects in the sky flooding in from across the country. Eventually Hynek broke with his handlers and became the first scientist to lend credence to the UFO phenomenon. The author of 1972’s The UFO Experience: A Scientific Study, he would go on to found the Center for UFO Studies in 1973, present a speech on flying saucers to the United Nations in 1978, and develop the “close encounter” scale that would inspire Steven Spielberg’s popular Close Encounters of the Third Kind (“a huge boon to his work,” O’Connell told me. “They shot a scene where the little aliens grab Hynek’s pipe from him and stick it up their noses, but it was cut down to a six-second cameo.”)
In telling the life story of Hynek, the “astro-beatnik,” O’Connell winds up with a stunning panorama of the UFO movement—from fringe conspiracy theorists to amateur astronomers to agnostic scientists—as well as its colossal impact on pop culture and modern science. I recently spoke with O’Connell over the phone about Hynek’s unique story of skeptic turned believer, the scientific study of the inexplicable, and what makes a good UFO witness.
VICE: What had to happen for a scientist as disciplined as Hynek to reach an epiphany and come around to a belief in flying saucers?
Mark O’Connell: It was a gradual process punctuated by traumatic moments. He had been involved in the Air Force’s first UFO study, Project Sign, where he simply looked over the collected UFO reports and classified as many as he could as misidentified astrological objects like comets or meteorological phenomena like strange clouds, or normal things like aircraft or weather balloons. At the end, there were about 20 percent of the cases left unsolved. He just put those aside, thinking with enough time and resources we could probably explain those away as well. So he filed the report, went back to teach at Ohio State and Wesleyan Universities.
What led to Hynek getting involved with UFOs again?
Three years later, the Air Force’s UFO studies were reinvigorated under a new commander who wanted to take a fresh look at things. When he discovered Hynek was still teaching about 90 miles up the road, he paid him a visit to hear more about the work he’d done. And Hynek was shocked to discover it hadn’t faded away. People were still seeing and reporting close encounters, and there remained a consistent 20 percent that couldn’t be explained. The numbers never changed, but his thinking changed.
How did Hynek’s thoughts on UFOs change?
Shortly after that he gave an address to the Optical Society of America in Boston in 1952. He said, “Look, this is something we need to study that could represent an entirely unknown realm of nature, and as scientists we ought to be curious enough to want to study it.” And that was earthshaking. But he often outraged the other side too, like in the infamous swamp gas case in Michigan of 1966. Over a hundred witnesses had seen floating lights in the nighttime, and it caused huge national furor, made headlines all over the country. So the Air Force sent Hynek in to investigate. After three days of intense investigations, Hynek—a guy who went where the facts lead him and nowhere else—concluded that these people had quite possibly seen swamp gas. Everyone in Michigan was deeply offended to be shown up nationally as crackpots. So Hynek said, “You know, I’m not going to carry water for the Air Force any more,” and went his own way and decided to begin conducting his own research. And, by the way, one of the things he said to the Optical Society was something that’s always stuck in my mind: “Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and the American public should not be taught that it is.”
Where’s the line between a conspiracy theorist and a fact-based skeptic who becomes skeptical even of other skeptics?
I don’t think we’ve found that line and that was one of the frustrations of Hynek’s career. There was a brief period in the early 1980s when his Center for UFO Studies was really thriving. They had money coming in—they had a lot of support from the scientific establishment and were able to dedicate resources to investigating UFO cases. But over time they became less exciting to other UFO people. They were grabbing fewer headlines; financing fell apart; and the center wasn’t able to do nearly as much. So I think Hynek’s efforts to bring the phenomenon into the sunlight and devote scientific study to it never had the opportunity to fully blossom. His goal was to cross that line and bring those two sides together. He came close, but I think he never quite achieved it.
What were Hynek’s chief takeaways about the study of UFOs?
Hynek observed that a meteorologist can’t study a tornado in a lab, only the results. He thought the same thing about UFOs: You have to get a little creative when you’re researching something as off the wall as UFOs, which do seem to deliberately make it hard for us to understand them. I compare it to the “Confuse-a-Cat” sketch from Monty Python. We’re the confused cat, and we need to be shocked out of our stupor by something that seems to have little to do with our version of reality. And so many of us who write and think about UFOs have to reach for new frameworks to define the issue and then study it.
How has our relationship with UFOs changed in the present time as compared to Hynek’s heyday?
It’s changed quite a bit. One of the sad things about my book—and maybe this makes a case for writing a sequel—is that Hynek passed away in 1986, and it was exactly a year later that the entire UFO field went through a complete paradigm shift with the publication of Whitley Strieber’s Communion [which was later made into a movie starring Christopher Walken]. Strieber was already a successful horror writer at the time, right up there with Stephen King and Peter Straub. In Communion, he tells the true—according to him!—story of his alien abduction while he and his family were staying at their cottage in upstate New York. So all of a sudden, the alien encounter narrative was flipped on its head. Up to that point, close encounters, when they were reported, generally took place in isolated locales—a lonely country highway or a deserted farm out in the boonies where there would be very few people to see what was happening. Now, afterCommunion, the aliens are appearing in your bedroom at night, a scenario Budd Hopkins and several other researchers confirmed. Now whether that shift is conscious or whether it points to some change in how we see ourselves, who knows?
If on one side of the spectrum we have Carl Sagan and on the other, say, ErichVon Däniken, who theorized that ancient culture and religion was created by alien astronauts,where do we place Hynek?
I would put him maybe close to the center, but more on the Sagan side. They both had a lot of contempt for UFO charlatans. So yeah, he would definitely put himself far from the Von Däniken side, but he also would have thought Sagan was being closed-minded and intellectually dishonest to a degree.
What can ufology bring to modern science?
The ability to use imagination as part of the scientific process. We hear all the time from NASA how, just recently, we’ve discovered a planet that has five or six other planets in its orbit or how the Tabby Star dims in such a way as to suggest an alien megastructure. We have all these wild, seemingly impossible things that are now proving to be true. At the same time, we have people—and I’m not knocking them because I love and respect the work they do—like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy, who’re crusading for scientific education, but will draw the curtain on UFO stuff because it “makes us look silly.” I think we need to get past that, because it doesn’t make you look silly, it makes you look like someone who is interested in learning more about the world around us and finding the borderline of science and studying the things that science could not explain. And I think that’s a pretty good approach for any scientist.
What makes for a good UFO eyewitness?
A keen sense of observation is key. A strong linguistic capability is very helpful because people who see UFOs are trying to describe something unheard of in human experience and need to be able to develop a new language. Too often you see people unable to describe what they’ve seen and experienced simply because there are no words for it, at least not yet.
I’ve been haunted by the fear that there is no vast conspiracy guiding the government, only stupidity and bungling. To what extent are you able to believe in the military’s ability to orchestrate certain cover-ups, as opposed to just lose things or mishandle data?
Hynek made a good distinction: “You can cover up knowing something or you can cover not knowing something.” I think government obfuscation is a big part of the story, but for many people that translates into “Oh, they’re hiding something from us.” One of the first important UFO writers, Donald Keyhoe, was provoked by the fact that nobody in the Air Force would return his calls. His reaction was, “Ah ha, they’re covering something up!” Well, no, they just didn’t want to talk to you.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Recent work by J.W. McCormack appears in Conjunctions, the Culture Trip, the New York Times, and the New Republic.
Close Encounters Manby Mark O’Connell will be published on June 13 by Harper Collins.
NASA werkt aan nieuwe energiebron voor toekomstige ruimtereizen
NASA werkt aan nieuwe energiebron voor toekomstige ruimtereizen
Vivian Lammerse
En deze Kilopower-reactor gooit hoge ogen.
Stroom is een essentieel onderdeel voor de mensen die afreizen naar de ruimte. Denk maar aan het simpel aandoen van een lamp, maar ook bij het uitvoeren van experimenten. Het genereren van elektriciteit is daarnaast ook noodzakelijk om astronauten weer veilig te laten terugkeren naar de Aarde. En een betrouwbaar en efficiënt energiesysteem is daarom broodnodig.
Kilopower Op dit moment is NASA aan het experimenteren met een Kilopower-reactor. Volgens NASA is deze nieuwe krachtbron veilig, efficiënt en kan het voldoende energie leveren voor toekomstige verkenningsmissies in de ruimte. Zo zou deze lichtgewicht generator tot tien kilowatt elektrisch vermogen kunnen leveren voor zeker tien onafgebroken jaren. Dat is genoeg om twee gemiddelde huishouders van stroom te voorzien. Voor de toekomstige Marskolonisten een fijne gedachte.
Rode planeet Het grote voordeel van Kilopower is dat het overal energie kan bieden, waar mensen – of robots – ook naartoe gaan. “We willen een energiebron ontwikkelen die extreme omgevingen aankan,” zegt NASA-onderzoeker Lee Mason. “En met Kilopower strekt ons bereik uit over heel Mars, zelfs op de noordelijke breedtegraden waar zich water bevindt.” Wat dat betreft is Kilopower een stuk betrouwbaarder dan bijvoorbeeld zonnepanelen. Op Mars varieert namelijk de kracht van de zon in de loop van de seizoenen sterk. Zo kunnen er bijvoorbeeld voor maanden zandstormen over Mars razen.
Het prototype van de Kilopower-reactor.
Afbeelding: NASA
Maan De onderzoekers denken ook dat de Kilopower-reactor goed zal gedijen op de maan. “Daar kan Kilopower worden ingezet om te helpen zoeken naar hulpbronnen in permanent beschaduwde kraters,” legt Mason uit. Ook zou de reactor tegen de enorm koude maannacht kunnen, die wel veertien dagen duurt.
In deze uitdagende omgevingen is de Kilopower-reactor volgens de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie perfect voor de klus. Om hier zeker van te zijn, voeren de onderzoekers verschillende testen uit. Eind maart volgt het laatste en grootste experiment, waarbij de reactor voor 28 uur op vol vermogen zal draaien.
Scientists used the Blue Waters supercomputer to show that a black hole’s relativistic jets and accretion disk both may be spinning – and precessing over time – around an axis separate from the black hole itself.
The video above shows a first-of-its-kind simulation – produced using the Blue Waters supercomputer – demonstrating that a black hole’s relativistic jets follow along with the precession of a black hole’s tilted accretion disk.
These scientists said:
At close to a billion computational cells, it is the highest resolution simulation of an accreting black hole ever achieved.
Relativistic jets – that is, jets containing particles that move near the speed of light – tend to be associated with the central, supermassive black holes of some active galaxies, radio galaxies and quasars. They tend to be located many billions of light-years away and may extend outward from supermassive black holes across millions of light-years of space.
Black hole accretion disks – while akin to earthly hurricanes and while theorized and discussed by scientists for decades – are also highly complex systems. Both the relativistic jets and the accretions disks of black holes are located so far away that it’s impossible to observe many details about them. That’s why scientists use computer simulations to study them.
Nearly all previous simulations assumed accretion disks and jets aligned with the spin of the black hole. But, in reality, most galaxies’ central supermassive black holes are thought to harbor tilted disks — meaning the disk rotates around a separate axis than the black hole itself.
The recent simulations by the Blue Waters supercomputer – located on the campus of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana – are the first to show the jets aligned with the accretion disks and also to show the jets’ streams gradually changing direction in the sky, or precessing. The scientists who ran the simulations said this is:
… a result of space-time being dragged into the rotation of the black hole. This behavior aligns with Albert Einstein’s predictions about extreme gravity near rotating black holes, published in his famous theory of general relativity.
Physicist Alexander Tchekhovskoy at Northwestern is a co-author of the study, which was published in the peer-reviewedjournal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Tchekhovskoy said:
Understanding how rotating black holes drag the space-time around them and how this process affects what we see through the telescopes remains a crucial, difficult-to-crack puzzle. Fortunately, the breakthroughs in code development and leaps in supercomputer architecture are bringing us ever closer to finding the answers.
Bottom line: Scientists used the Blue Waters supercomputer to show that a black hole’s relativistic jets follow along with the precession of its tilted accretion disk. In other words, both may be spinning around an axis separate from the hole itself.
Astronomers looked back to a time only 800 million years after the Big Bang and found whirlpool shapes in small, very young galaxies.
A simulation of rotating disc, resulting in a whirlpool shape, much like that of our Milky Way and other spiral galaxies via R. Crain (LJMU) and J. Geach (U.Herts)/ ALMA.
At last week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington D.C., astronomers from University of Cambridge in England reported looking back to a time soon after the Big Bang and discovering swirling gas in some of the earliest galaxies. That is, these small galaxies – observed as they appeared nearly 13 billion years ago – already spun like a whirlpool, similar to our own Milky Way and many other spiral galaxies. These astronomers said it’s the first time they’ve detected movement in such young galaxies, so early in the history of the universe.
The researchers – led by Renske Smit from the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at the University of Cambridge – used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to conduct this research. The team said it expected more chaos in the structure of these early galaxies.
They were surprised to find these newly born galaxies swirling and rotating in a whirlpool motion.
Hubble Telescope image of the night sky where the galaxies were found, plus 2 zoomed-in panels of the ALMA data.
Image via Hubble (NASA/ESA), ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), P. Oesch (University of Geneva) and R. Smit (University of Cambridge).
Light from distant objects takes time to reach Earth, so observing objects that are billions of light years away enables us to look back in time and directly observe the formation of the earliest galaxies. The Universe at that time, however, was filled with an obscuring ‘haze’ of neutral hydrogen gas, which makes it difficult to see the formation of the very first galaxies with optical telescopes.
Smit and colleagues including Stefano Carniani, also at Cambridge, used ALMA to observe two small newborn galaxies, as they existed just 800 million years after the Big Bang. By analysing the spectral ‘fingerprint’ of the far-infrared light collected by ALMA, they were able to establish the distance to the galaxies and, for the first time, see the internal motion of the gas that fuelled their growth.
The astronomers also found that – despite their relatively small size, about five times smaller than the Milky Way – these galaxies were forming stars at a higher rate than other young galaxies. Smit commented:
In the early universe, gravity caused gas to flow rapidly into the galaxies, stirring them up and forming lots of new stars. Violent supernova explosions from these stars also made the gas turbulent.
We expected that young galaxies would be dynamically ‘messy’, due to the havoc caused by exploding young stars, but these mini-galaxies show the ability to retain order and appear well regulated. Despite their small size, they are already rapidly growing to become one of the ‘adult’ galaxies like we live in today.
The astronomers said the data from their project on small galaxies paves the way for larger studies of galaxies during the first billion years of cosmic time.
Artist’s concept of whirlpool movement in a galaxy, via Amanda Smith/ University of Cambridge.
Bottom line: Astronomers from University of Cambridge in England used the ALMA telescope in Chile to identify small, very young galaxies – only 800 million years after the Big Bang – already taking on a spiral shape.
The team of Larry Atkins, Robert Ward and Darryl Landry made the finds on an isolated Michigan lake — they declined disclosing the exact location so as not to draw unwanted attention to the lake and its residents. In an interview with Space.com, Atkins said he plans on continuing the hunt for at least the next week.
The first find happened around 9 a.m. EST (1300 GMT), and Atkins discovered a second one himself just 15 minutes later. "It looked like a perfect black charcoal briquette, with a little snowdrift on top," Atkins told Space.com Thursday. Based on his two decades of experience hunting meteorites — fragments of rocks that remain after some space-rock fireballs break up in the atmosphere — he said there was no question it was from space. The rock showed up clearly on the fresh ice, although from a distance Atkins did question whether it was a small pile of leaves. [Small Michigan Meteor Packed a Seismic Punch, Experts Say]
Meteorite-hunter Larry Atkins poses with one of the meteorites found on Jan. 18, 2018, two days after a meteor caused a spectacular fireball in the Michigan night sky.
Credit: Darryl Landry
The finds had masses of between 20 and 100 grams, and were small enough to "fit in the palm of your hand," Atkins said. He added that from a quick look at the meteorites, they all appear related and they all looked like ordinary chondrites — the most common type of meteorite found on Earth. The team has already picked out one sample they plan to send to the Field Museum in Chicago, Atkins said. The rest they will keep for their personal collections, they said.
Meteorite-hunter Robert Ward poses with one of the meteorites found on Jan. 18, 2018, two days after a meteor caused a spectacular fireball in the Michigan night sky.
Credit: Darryl Landry
Fellow team member Robert Ward also flew in from Arizona, arriving at 1:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT) Jan. 18. By 3 a.m., he was already scouting for possible locations, based on radar information his team received from the American Meteor Society and NASA. His first find came around 10 a.m. — another chondrite, he said. Ward gave a phone interview to Space.com yesterday (Jan. 19) while out on the ice, scouting for more meteorites.
"The data was spectacular — it was a very quick discovery and everything came together," said Ward, referring to the amount of information available to help him make the discovery. He has searched for meteorites since age 13, roughly 28 years ago, and has made 600 distinct finds on all continents except Antarctica. "I'll be here until Sunday, but I may come back out … later in a few weeks."
Picture of a rock that meteorite-hunters say likely came from a meteor that exploded in the atmosphere over Ann Arbor, Michigan Jan. 16, 2018.
Credit: Larry Atkins
Public and professional participation
The excitement of the fireball sent people out into the Michigan cold in hopes of finding a piece of space. Among them was University of Michigan seismologist Larry Ruff, who thought it would be a fun idea to venture out in the fresh snow and go meteorite hunting. He didn't find anything, but enjoyed the experience, he said.
"It's been really cold here, but today was one of the warmer days," Ruff told Space.com in an interview Jan. 18, explaining that temperatures then were as high as 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 7 degrees Celsius). "That explains why everyone was happy to get out of the house and look for some meteorites."
Ruff searched in a park along with fellow Earth sciences professor James Gleason, who specializes in the composition of meteorites. The professors met lots of other wannabe meteorite-finders, too. Ruff joked that he was jealous that others had made the first finds, but added, "the debris field area is so huge, and somebody has to make a find."
Ruff, who oversees the Ann Arbor seismic station at the University of Michigan, said the fireball produced one of the strongest seismic waves he had ever seen. He added that "seismic wave" did not mean an earthquake, but signified a disturbance in the atmosphere.
Sightings across the Midwest
The American Meteor Society has received 657 reports about the fireballsince it lit up the skies Tuesday night (Jan. 16), according to their website, with observers reporting from a number of states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Some observers even saw it from the province of Ontario, in Canada.
"This was a very slow moving meteor — speed of about 28,000 miles per hour (45,000 km/h)," the AMS added in a news release issued Wednesday (Jan. 17). "This fact, combined with the brightness of the meteor (which suggests a fairly big space rock), shows that the object penetrated deep into the atmosphere before it broke apart (which produced the sounds heard by at least 77 observers)."
The composition and size of the meteor isn't well-understood yet, but early reports suggest that it was only a few feet in size, rather than the impressive Chelyabinsk bolide diameter of 17 meters (51 feet). When that bolide exploded over Russia in 2013, it injured hundreds of people and caused property damage, mainly because the sonic wave from the meteor shattered glass.
Meteorites range from the durable to the delicate. If the Michigan bolide was made of lesser stuff than iron or stone, exposure to the elements will erode any fragments quickly. That's why Ruff said it's important to get outside quickly, to make sure as much evidence is gathered as possible.
A rock, pulled out of the snow, that meteorite-hunters say likely traces back to a fireball that exploded over Ann Arbor, Michigan Jan. 16, 2018.
Credit: Larry Atkins
Record of the early solar system
Over 50,000 meteorites have been found on Earth alone, according to NASA. Of those, about 99.8 percent come from asteroids — small, rocky bodies in our solar system. This means that meteorites serve as a record of the early solar system, since asteroids are leftover fragments from the small bits of rock and gas that formed the planets roughly 4.5 billion to 4.6 billion years ago.
"The study of meteorites tells us much about the earliest conditions and processes during the formation and earliest history of the solar system, such as the age and composition of solids, the nature of the organic matter, the temperatures achieved at the surface and interiors of asteroids, and the degree to which materials were shocked by impacts," NASA officials said.
This fireball over Michigan was too small to cause damage, but past events on Earth have. A meteorite strike on Earth about 66 million years ago is one of the principally cited causes for the dinosaurs' extinction. The impact left behind a 180-mile (300 kilometer) crater called Chicxulub, which is in the Yucatan Peninsula. Another well-known impact site is Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is about 0.6 miles (1 km) across. Craters are also found all over the solar system — on the moon, Mars and many other locations.
NASA has a Planetary Defense Coordination Office charged with looking for potentially hazardous objects careening toward Earth. They haven't yet seen an object that poses an imminent threat to life on Earth, but NASA and its partners continue searching, just in case. Scientists are also working on several technologies to deflect or destroy threatening asteroids, such as lasers or missiles.
Though NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was vaporized in Saturn’s atmosphere back in September (RIP), it’s still revealing fascinating insights about the planet and its moons from beyond the grave. Two new papers using data from the zombie orbiter has found that Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has “sea level” just like Earth.
At face value, our planet and the Saturnian moon couldn’t be more different. Titan has a green, eerie glow and electric sand. Earth has cats and things that are nice/not mostly terrifying. But oddly enough, Titan is the only other world in the solar system that has stable liquid on its surface.
In December, researchers from Cornell University published two studies in the Geophysical Research Letters — one about Titan’s topography and the other about its bodies of liquid. In the latter, the team describes how they used Cassini data to find that Titan’s bodies of water “follow a constant elevation relative to Titan’s gravitational pull,” according to NASA.
Titan
Cassini measurements reveal that Titan’s three seas are somehow connected beneath the surface, and that hydrocarbons flow similarly to the way water does on subterranean Earth. Smaller lakes seem to crop up hundreds of meters above sea level on the alien moon, similar to some lakes on Earth, and there’s “common liquid level” that the researchers were able to find.
“We’re measuring the elevation of a liquid surface on another body 10 astronomical units away from the sun to an accuracy of roughly 40 centimeters,” the study’s lead author Alex Hayes, an assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell, says in a statement. “Because we have such amazing accuracy we were able to see that between these two seas the elevation varied smoothly about 11 meters, relative to the center of mass of Titan, consistent with the expected change in the gravitational potential. We are measuring Titan’s geoid. This is the shape that the surface would take under the influence of gravity and rotation alone, which is the same shape that dominates Earth’s oceans,” said Hayes.
So while none of us are ever actually going to Titan, it’s comforting to know that our planet has a pal out there that it’s a little similar to, even if Titan is kind of like Earth’s Waluigi.
Hi there. You’ve made it to the bottom of this story! Speaking of which… we’re giving away an epic $5,000 ski trip to Banff, Alberta. Click here to enter! ⛷
This is what it looks like to land on Saturn’s moon Titan.
But the origin of the object, dubbed Oumuamua, has finally been explained by academic Fabo Feng at the University of Hertfordshire.
The Breakthrough Listen project announced in December it planned to conduct more tests on the strangely shaped space object after the initial investigation revealed no sign of alien life.
But now Mr Feng thinks he may have discovered the asteroid’s origins, reported Express.co.uk.
WIKIPEDIA
PATH: Trajectory of ʻOumuamua through the inner Solar System
Oumuamua, which is also described as an interstellar, may have come a nearby group of young stars, he said.
He added: “Reconstructing the object's motion, my research suggests it probably came from the nearby 'Pleiades moving group' of young stars, also known as the 'Local Association'.
“It was likely ejected from its home solar system and sent out to travel interstellar space.”
The mysterious rock is the first foreign object in the solar system to be spotted.
It’s still unknown how long it has been traveling for.
It was spotted by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii on October 19 and travelling at about 95,000 kilometres per hour.
Mr Feng added: “I simulated how it has probably travelled through the galaxy and compared this to the motions of nearby stars.
“I found the object passed 109 stars within a distance of 16 light years.
“It went by five of these stars from in the Local Association, a group of young stars likely to have formed together, at a very slow speed relative to their movement.”
Mr Feng went on to explain that the interstellar has a particularly slow speed compared with most objects in the galaxy.
He added that this suggested that it was of a very young age and hadn’t travelled far, as similar objects were likely to speed up with age.
Despite being the only interstellar spotted in the solar system, Mr Feng believes it is possible there were millions of similar objects that haven’t been seen yet.
He said: “My research suggests there are likely more than 46million similar interstellar objects crossing the solar system every year.
“Most of them will be too far away for us to see with our current telescopes.
“But new telescopes and surveys should soon be able to find these interstellar messengers, which may be sending us important information about how stars and planets formed.”
A small asteroid passed relatively close to Earth this month, having been discovered just six days earlier. This might sound scary, but it’s unusual that such an object would actually collide with the Earth.
Each year about 50,000 tonnes of extraterrestrial material (rocks and dust) hits our planet. This comes as tiny pieces – even if it all came at once, it would be only slightly larger than the “lorry-sized” asteroid that passed us in January.
But while scientists can readily spot fairly large asteroids greater than about a kilometre across, what risk do such smaller asteroids that may be more difficult to track pose? Should we worry?
It is widely believed the dinosaurs were wiped out 65m years ago by an asteroid impact. The environmental changes that it caused – a rapid rise in atmospheric temperature and global forest fires, followed by plummeting temperatures and acidified ocean waters – were a consequence of the size of the asteroid, probably about 10km across.
This is almost three orders of magnitude larger in diameter, and about 30m times heavier, than the year’s worth of asteroids that hit us today.
The Earth had a brush with an object estimated to be around 20 metres across almost five years ago over Chelyabinsk in Russia. Nobody saw it coming. Spectacular footage of the incoming fireball was recorded by commuters on their way to work, shocked to see the dark February morning lit by something originally thought to be a missile.
The rock exploded in the atmosphere, with many meteorite fragments scattered across the region. The largest piece, of about 600kg, was recovered several months later in an ice covered lake. Although many people were hurt when the object powered its way through the atmosphere, the injuries mostly came from window glass shattered by the atmospheric shock wave it caused.
The inhabitants of the Chelyabinsk region had a lucky escape – no crater was created by the asteroid because it burst into pieces about 30km up in the atmosphere. Luckily, this is the most likely situation for an object that size.
Meteor Crater in Arizona.Kevin Walsh/wikipedia, CC BY-SA
It is not until an asteroid is about 50 metres across that a crater is produced on impact. Even when it is two or three kilometres across – the size of Meteor Crater in Arizona – it is not near large enough to cause destruction on the global scale of the dinosaur extinction event. But it would certainly cause local problems if the impact was in an inhabited area. Imagine the asteroid that created the Meteor Crater – literally and figuratively – hitting central London, Washington or Mumbai.
Monitoring threat
There are several international observing programmes using automated telescopes specifically dedicated to mapping all “Near Earth Objects”. These are asteroids with a closest approach to the sun of less than 1.3 Astronomical Units – one such unit is the distance between the Earth and the sun. A special watch is kept for “potentially hazardous objects”, which are Near Earth Objects over 150 metres in diameter with orbits that cross that of the Earth.
Fortunately, practically all of these objects are in stable orbits, and are not designated hazardous. Asteroids with sizes down to about five metres across can now be observed. Although, as the Chelyabinsk event illustrated, there are still objects that evade the watchers. Part of the reason that the Chelyabinsk object went undetected, was because it came into the atmosphere at a very low angle from the direction of the sun. But the main reason was the sheer number of such objects, and the relatively short time (about a decade) that we have been actively tracking them.
It is salutary to look at the number of detections of Near Earth Objects. The Minor Planet Center maintains a database of observations, keeping a running total which, by the end of December 2017, stood at over 17,500. A further 28 have already been spotted this month. You can get an idea here where all these objects are relative to the Earth and the sun – I guarantee that you will be more than a little perturbed when you see how surrounded we are by these missiles.
One of the major problems that civilisation has is that while we are becoming incredibly efficient at spotting Near Earth Objects, we still cannot do anything about one that might be on a collision path with the Earth. NASA currently has a project, DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), to redirect a threatening asteroid at the preliminary design phase. A spacecraft, about 1.5 metres across, will be aimed to crash into an asteroid (Didymos B) about 140 metres across. Didymos B orbits a primary body, Didymos A. The aim of the project is to change the orbit of Didymos B around its binary partner, while not altering the orbit of Didymos A around the sun.
DART is scheduled for launch in December 2020, intercepting Didymos in October 2022. So we have fewer than five years to wait before we find out whether we can protect our planet from its unruly neighbours.
For now, while small asteroids certainly can pose some danger, the threat is more regional than that posed by larger asteroids. So there is no need (yet) to start stockpiling baked beans and bottled water against our imminent demise by asteroid attack. The 50,000 tonnes of space material that hits Earth each year falls mainly as dust grains less than half a millimetre across. And given that we are all still here (at the time of writing…), it poses no threat to humanity.
Deze wetenschappers denken een piramide te hebben ontdekt op Mars. Lees hier over hun opmerkelijke vondst
Deze wetenschappers denken een piramide te hebben ontdekt op Mars. Lees hier over hun opmerkelijke vondst
Al lange tijd vragen wetenschappers zich af of er leven is of ooit is geweest op Mars. The Cydonia Institute heeft nu afbeeldingen gevonden van vermeende kunstmatige structuren op het Marsoppervlak.
In de kloof Candor Chasma op de rode planeet troffen de onderzoekers een driehoekige piramidevormige formatie aan, die sterk lijkt op de zogeheten Reuleaux-piramide.
De formatie is duidelijk te zien op vijf foto’s die zijn gemaakt door de Mars Global Surveyor en de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Intelligentie
Volgens de geologen en aardwetenschappers zijn er twee mogelijke verklaringen. De formatie kan zijn ontstaan als gevolg van natuurlijke mechanismen of zijn achtergelaten door een intelligentie.
(MRO/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
Het ontwerp van de driehoekige piramide is uitzonderlijk als je kijkt naar de geometrie en symmetrie, aldus de onderzoekers.
Ze merken op dat soortgelijke monumenten op aarde worden gebouwd door moderne ingenieurs en worden gevonden in landen als China.
Meer foto’s
Ondanks natuurlijke afzettingen en erosie zijn de zijden van de formatie erg symmetrisch. De onderzoekers achten de kans dan ook klein dat de piramide is ontstaan door natuurlijke processen.
De kans is groot, zo stellen ze, dat de formatie een kunstmatige oorsprong heeft. “We raden de NASA en de Universiteit van Arizona aan er meer foto’s van te maken met de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,” zeggen ze.
Belangrijke kandidaat
Als ook die foto’s wijzen in de richting van een kunstmatige oorsprong, zou de formatie een belangrijke kandidaat moeten zijn voor het onderzoek naar potentiële archeologische voorwerpen op Mars, besluit het team.
Did Ancient Mars Host an Alien Civilization? US Congressman Asks NASA Panel (Video)
Did Ancient Mars Host an Alien Civilization? US Congressman Asks NASA Panel (Video)
Is It Possible That Ancient Mars Was Host To An Alien Civilization?
This is exactly the question that Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, R-Calif., asked of a NASA panel of planetary scientists on July 18, 2017. To be clear, there is no official evidence that this is the case. Mars, as far as we know, did not host any alien civilization in the past.
Mars Was Very Different Billions of Years Ago
The Mars we know today is not the Mars of the past. Ancient Mars likely had rivers, lakes, and possibly oceans. It’s not an impossible scenario to believe that life, in some form, once existed there. That being said, the existence a full-blown intelligent civilization is another story. It took earth almost 3.8 billion years to develop intelligent life. Mars is only about 4.5 billion years old. Life would have had to begin very early in the planet’s history to have enough time to develop into something capable of meeting our definition of a ‘civilization’.
Based on what we know, ancient Mars could have looked something like this, especially if life had taken hold.
Ancient Martian Alien Civilization: Unlikely, But Not Impossible
As a rule of logic, it’s nearly impossible to disprove a negative. Though the panel of NASA scientists said it would be extremely unlikely, they didn’t quite say it was an impossibility. We understand a bit about Martian history, but our scope of research is obviously limited. If life on Mars had developed and then suffered some extinction event a few billion years ago, there would be very little evidence left today. There’s also the question as to whether humans would be able to recognize alien life at all.
What Convinced Congressman Rohrbacher to Ask This Question?
Judging from the reaction of the young man sitting behind the congressman when he finally asked the question, it’s likely that he was asking on his behalf. It’s no secret that Congressman Rohrbacher isn’t a scientist. He does, however, sit on the Committee on Science Space and Technology and has been consistently pro-NASA relative to his other Republican counterparts. He is also keen on having NASA send humans back to the moon.
The Video
You can see the congressman’s question in the video below as well as the response from NASA scientist Dr. Kenneth Farley. Farley is quick to correct Rohrbacher in that Mars was very different billions of years ago vs. thousands of years ago as the question was posed. A few billion years is a long time. If an alien civilization existed on Mars billions of years ago, the time has most likely wiped that slate clean.
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EXCLUSIF : Un Ex-agent britannique en charge d’enquêter sur les OVNIs dit que les Extraterrestres EXISTENT et qu’il y a une DISSIMULATION en cours
EXCLUSIF : Un Ex-agent britannique en charge d’enquêter sur les OVNIs dit que les Extraterrestres EXISTENT et qu’il y a une DISSIMULATION en cours
EXCLUSIF : Un Ex-agent britannique en charge d’enquêter sur les OVNIs dit que les Extraterrestres EXISTENT et qu’il y a une DISSIMULATION en cours
UN ENQUÊTEUR qui a passé des années à se pencher sur le phénomène OVNI pour le Ministère de la Défense (MoD) a parlé exclusivement à Express.co.uk sur les revendications que des aliens intelligents vivent ici sur Terre et l’histoire explosive est dissimulée par les dirigeants mondiaux.
Nick Pope a travaillé pour le ministère britannique de la Défense de 1985 à 2006, et entre 1991 et 1994, il a mené des enquêtes approfondies sur toute menace potentielle de défense posée par le phénomène des OVNI.
Le projet a été stoppé et il n’y a pas eu de menace.
Aujourd’hui basé aux Etats-Unis, M. Pope parcourt le globe en prenant la parole lors de conférences sur les ovnis et les extraterrestres, tout en décrivant dans des documentaires ce qu’il a découvert.
Cependant, lorsqu’il s’agit de révéler ses véritables croyances sur l’existence d’extraterrestres intelligents et leur présence sur Terre – mais caché par un camouflage à l’échelle planétaire, comme le pensent des milliers de théoriciens et de prétendus chercheurs de vérité – M. Pope a toujours joué un rôle de premier plan.
Pendant des années, des croyants aux extraterrestres ont affirmé que le gouvernement américain, et peut-être d’autres, ont rencontré des aliens de passage sur Terre et leur ont permis d’opérer dans des bases souterraines cachées, d’où ils effectuent des recherches sur notre planète.
En échange de cela, le gouvernement reçoit la technologie qui leur a permis d’arriver ici.
Diverses théories suggèrent même qu’une de nombreuses espèces extraterrestres vivent ici, y compris des reptiliens, des gris et des “grands blancs” ou pléiadiens de type humain.
L’astronaute de la NASA Edgar Mitchell et l’ancien ministre canadien de la Défense, Paul Hellyer, font partie des plus grands adeptes de ces théories.
Express.co.uk a demandé à M. Pope de dévoiler pour la première fois son point de vue sur cette théorie et d’autres théories, et il ne s’est pas retenu.
L’homme de 52 ans a révélé qu’il est convaincu que les extraterrestres existent, quelque part dans l’Univers.
Toutefois, dans un coup porté aux chasseurs d’ovnis, il a déclaré qu’il n’était PAS convaincu qu’il y ait eu des preuves “fumantes” qu’aucun d’entre eux n’ait jamais visité la Terre.
Et, il a catégoriquement dit qu’il ne croit AUCUNE des théories du complot que des extraterrestres secrètement cachées dans des bunkers top-secrets travaillent conjointement avec les gouvernements mondiaux.
Scientifiquement, il n’est pas convaincu que les extraterrestres pourraient même atteindre la Terre.
S’il y a des OVNIs provenant d’autres planètes, ils “ne seraient que des sondes automatisées ou des engins contrôlés par l’intelligence artificielle”, a-t-il ajouté.
Les États-Unis avaient auparavant nié tout intérêt pour les OVNI depuis les années 1960, mais le Pentagone a maintenant confirmé l’existence du Programme avancé d’identification des menaces aériennes (AATIP).
M. Pope a déclaré: “Comme la plupart des gens qui s’intéressent au phénomène OVNI, j’ai réfléchi soigneusement à mes croyances à la lumière des révélations récentes concernant le projet de surveillance des Ovnis du Pentagone.”
“L’histoire était sans doute très importante. Le gouvernement américain a constamment déclaré qu’il ne s’intéressait pas aux OVNIs et que les observations d’OVNIs n’étaient pas prises en considération.”
“Nous savons maintenant qu’il y avait un intérêt officiel et que les observations faisaient l’objet d’une enquête.”
“De plus, le projet AATIP du Pentagone avait accumulé des preuves intrigantes: témoignages de militaires, vidéos d’avions militaires poursuivant des objets non identifiés, alliages et autres matériaux qui proviennent d’incidents d’OVNIs non spécifiés.”
Il a dit que certaines personnes impliquées dans ce projet du Pentagone en sont venues à croire qu’un certain nombre de ces objets non identifiés étaient d’origine extraterrestre.
M. Pope a ajouté: “C’est une grande affaire, et cela devrait conduire à un recadrage du débat sur les OVNIs. Pour le moment, cependant, il n’y a toujours pas de preuve définitivement concluante.”
“A bien des égards, l’AATIP n’était pas différent du projet du gouvernement britannique sur les OVNIs, que j’ai dirigé dans les années 90: nous aussi avons eu de nombreux cas avec des témoins militaires; nous avons eu des photos et des vidéos et de temps à autre, nous avons discuté de la possibilité que certaines de ces observations soient d’origine extraterrestre”.
Alors, qu’en est-il de la question?
Il a dit: “Je ne peux toujours pas exclure cette possibilité, et j’aimerais que ce soit vrai: le monde serait beaucoup plus intéressant avec des extraterrestres que sans.”
“Cependant, bien que j’aie vu des preuves intrigantes, je n’ai pas encore vu de preuves définitives.”
“En fin de compte, même si je suis sûr qu’il y a de la vie ailleurs dans l’univers, je ne sais pas si on nous rend visite ou non.”
“Si c’est le cas, je soupçonne qu’il s’agit de sondes automatisées, ou d’engins exploités par une sorte d’intelligence artificielle.”
“Même s’il y a des extraterrestres de chair et de sang quelque part, le rayonnement cosmique et l’immensité du temps nécessaire pour parcourir des distances interstellaires excluent probablement les formes de vie biologique qui font de tels voyages – à moins qu’il n’y ait un moyen de contourner ce qui semble être la barrière absolue de la vitesse de la lumière.”
M. Pope a dit pour l’instant que des concepts comme la déformation de l’espace-temps ou l’utilisation de vortex “sont de la science-fiction et non des faits scientifiques, donc si nous recevons la visite d’extraterrestres, il s’agira probablement d’intelligence artificielle et non d’entités biologiques”.
A dash cam video caught the fireball as it made its way down to Earth.
Commuters and drivers had something other than the road to watch Wednesday night.
Motorists not only in the Fort but across most of northern Alberta spotted a flash of bright light in the sky around 5:22 p.m. Soon afterwards, videos of the event started to pop up online. One of those was the Fort’s own Corbet Kratko.
He was heading home from work when he spotted the fireball. Thankfully, he had his dash cam running.
“I thought it was pretty cool,” he said. “I was thinking to myself ‘I wish I had a camera on me’. I saw it and phoned my wife and said ‘I just saw a meteor. It’s pretty neat. I wish I had a picture for you’ and just as I’m saying that to her I thought ‘wait a minute, my dash cam’.”
Kratko said he’s seen a few meteorites in his lifetime or at least partially including the one that flew over Alberta back in 2008 and light up the night sky. He said he was outside at the time and caught how bright the fireball was.
Frank Florian, director, planetarium and space sciences with the TELUS World of Science in Edmonton, said the meteorite that came down was brighter than Venus when it came through the planet’s atmosphere. Despite what some might believe, Florian confirmed what people were seeing was a meteorite and not a UFO.
He believes the meteorite mostly likely landed just north of Fort McMurray.
“When you get a bright fireball like this passing through Earth’s atmosphere from space, it does create quite a stir especially when it occurs during a time when people are using transport going home,” he said. “It’s not completely rare and in fact during the spring period...there’s more fireballs seen during the spring time than any other time of the year. There was another one in Michigan the night before. You might be saying are these associated? The fact is there’s things flying down on the Earth every single day. It just so happens the Earth has a lot of water, a lot of uninhabited places so a lot this stuff gets unnoticed.”
Florian likened the meteorite coming into Earth’s atmosphere like a brick hitting a solid wall. The meteor then breaks apart and when it hits the air, it causes that streak of light. He said air that can’t get out of the way fast enough heats up and causes a flash.
With people have more access to technology like dash cams, Florian said more people are coming forward with videos of fireballs. He said more eyes on the sky only helps astronomers.
Since the metoerite fell during the winter, Florian suspected it will be difficult to get the to possible crash site. He urged anyone who might be snowmobiling in the Fort McMurray area to keep an eye out for possible meteorite fragments.
Florian also asked any witnesses to file a report at the Meteorite and Impact Advisory Committee of the Canadian Space Agency website. Just scroll down the left side and look for the section on fireballs.
It would be quite exciting to listen to answers about aliens and UFOs from somebody who had really flown to space and had spent some time in Cosmos. When NASA astronaut Col. Jack Fischer was asked about aliens and UFOs and what other astronauts think about the extraterrestrial life and its existence, Fischer answer was quite simple but interesting. He said that he had not seen any aliens or UFOs yet. He said that he had the wish of encountering aliens or UFOs and if he would have managed to do so, then he would have taken photos. I haven’t! I wish I had. If I had, I would’ve taken pictures; I’d be rich, but I haven’t yet,” said Fischer.
But Fischer believes that there might be other worlds in the universe where there is possibility of the presence of alien life. According to him, as there are innumerable numbers of stars in the Universe, it should not be confirmed that our Earth is the only bearer of life. Fisher stated, “I definitely believe that there are others out there because when you see how many stars there are you can’t possibly think we’re the only ones.”
As Fisher has said that he believes that there is chance of the presence of alien life and UFOs in other stars systems, it can be said that like him many more astronauts might have the same belief about aliens. Astronaut Fisher told all these things at the NASA Glenn Research Centre where he addressed hundreds of people and answered many questions related to space, Mars mission as well as aliens.
When asked about his take on missions to Mars, Fischer said that astronauts will soon travel to Mars and that the path to the Red Planet runs right through Cleveland. He said that he is eagerly waiting to see the summer testing of NASA’s new and most highly advanced Orion spacecraft which will be sent to Mars in the upcoming days. Fisher has spent four and a half months in the International Space Station and came back to earth in the month of September last year.
Sovershenno Sekretno, a very popular and respected Russian newspaper, published an article in its October 2011 issue. The author is Vladimir Kucharyants, writer and journalist. The title is (in English) Worlds of Professor Ludvig.
Professor Genrikh Mavrikiyevich Ludvig was a highly educated Russian scientist, an inmate of Stalin’s concentration camps, a philosopher, a scholar of ancient languages, daring architect, a teacher, a freethinker who lived in the stifling ideological climate of Communism…a person who did not break down under enormous pressure, torture, and betrayal.
Vladimir Kucharyants was his student in the 1960s, but only in recent years has discovered the scope of Professor’s Ludvig’s knowledge, ideas, and legacy. There is much more that needs to be discovered, and the Russian writer continues his quest. He is still not sure who Genrikh Ludvig really was: a phenomenally educated scientist who possessed encyclopedic knowledge; a mystic; a person who was ordained into secret knowledge.
Those who research the UFO phenomenon and ancient astronauts hypothesis will learn from the Sovershenno Sekretno article that Professor Ludvig was able to study amazing ancient manuscripts during his sojourn in the Vatican’s library (in the 1920s). There he read about extraterrestrials who had visited the Earth in antiquity; subsequently, he began his research of Maya civilization, and interpreted their symbols to be spaceships and spacesuits. In addition, Professor Ludvig mentioned that the library contained manuscripts about alchemy and ancient codes.
The Sistine Hall of the Vatican Library.
(Credit: Maus-Trauden/Wikimedia Commons)
When the NKVD (KGB) arrested him in 1938, Professor Ludvig was accused of being a Vatican (but also Turkish, Polish, German and American) spy. He survived the concentration camps and torture, and carried his incredible knowledge, language skills (he was fluent in 20 languages, including ancient ones), ideas and beliefs with him, through the years full of suffering and ordeals. He was informed on or denounced to the secret police by his wife.
Professor Ludvig prison picture.
(Credit: Sovershenno Sekretno)
Kucharyants mentions that Professor Ludvig showed his students photocopies of the Vatican’s ancient manuscripts ( containing information about extraterrestrials that had visited our planet) with drawings, described to them the hidden essence of ancient myths; he told them of the Fiery Pillar that destroyed an advanced ancient civilization; he showed the students photos of the fortress walls discovered in Babylon, melted with the horrendous temperature and believed that nuclear blasts could cause this.
Professor Ludvig was very much interested in Sumerian civilization and possessed great knowledge about it; he discussed the esoteric meaning of pyramids in Egypt (he considered them to be sort of “energy machines”); he studied the Etruscan civilization; he knew about Cabbala.
A Gulag labor camp.
(Credit: www.gulag.eu)
Professor Ludvig was also an inventor, and designer of military technology. He helped his country, even during his imprisonment. During his days as an inmate of the GULAG, during World War II, he had at least 17 inventions to his name: such as the construction of military airfields in marshy areas; a noiseless underground station for testing aerial engines; a bomb thrower for close distance tank warfare; and many more. His reward was extension of the prison sentence in 1942 for another ten years, after he was denounced for his criticism of Stalin’s policies inside the concentration camps.
Professor Ludvig in the 20s.
(Credit: Sovershenno Sekretno)
Ludvig knew the secrets of herbs and their esoteric medicinal properties, and once this knowledge helped him survive, when he had to cure the wife of the concentration camp commander, or face death.
There is much more information in the Sovershenno Sekretno article (for example, his friendship with another great and highly talented Russian scientist Alexander Chizevsky, whose work I have described in my articles). I urge all those who are interested in the ancient astronauts hypothesis to learn more about Professor Ludvig. I will also try to discover more, although there are few sources available.
Genrikh Mavrikiyevich Ludvig who passed away in 1973, had fantastic intellect, and made incredible discoveries. I am sure his former student Vladimir Kucharyants, who was able to uncover Professor’s notes and writings from the 1930s, will find more documents and materials.
With the recent revelation by the Pentagon and their admission that there has been an ongoing program to investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon; the fact that Montana has had several cases of interest within that context came to mind.
First and foremost is the Mariana UFO incident from August 1950 when Nicolas Mariana filmed 16 mm color movies of two UFOs that appeared as shiny, circular craft. It has withstood years of research conducted by a slew of investigators, including the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the Air Force, and Dr. Robert M. L. Baker, as well as others, without being debunked, and is believed to be one of the strongest cases supporting the existence of unidentified flying objects and remains unexplained.
Another extraordinary case in Montana happened at Malmstrom Air Force base in March 1967 when two maintenance crews reported seeing UFOs in the early morning hours over the E-Flight (missile) silos. Later that morning, one of the Minuteman missiles had gone off alert; meaning it had become inoperable. This was at one of the two sites where the maintenance crews had been stationed during the night.
Thinking this to be due to the crews doing maintenance or perhaps even neglecting their duty, crew commander, Figal, looked into the incident. Just as inexplicably, the entire flight of ten ICBMS went inoperable also; with all the missiles being reported a “No-Go” at this point. After a check was conducted, it was found that each of the missiles had gone off alert status due to a guidance and control fault and not due to a power outage. It has been conjectured that perhaps the UFO had caused the missiles to become inoperable, as the cause was unknown.
Malmstrom Air Force Base missile maintenance team removes the upper section of an ICBM at a Montana missile site.
(Credit: U.S. Air Force/ John Parie)
I discovered this next case, Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Case #55741, after I became MUFON’s State Director of the Montana chapter through the Case Assistance Group. I was doing a bit of inventory and getting some background information on the types of cases that Montana had been dealing with. Even though I had been a Field Investigator for Michigan for over seven years, this was my first stint as a State Director, thus I wanted to be as prepared as I could. Montana, with its “big sky,” fewer city lights to block out the stars and breath-taking mountain ranges, is a sky-watcher’s dream and definitely different than what I was used to living in an urban area.
This incident, listed on the database as a CE-2, happened at around midnight on May 10, 2004 when an entire Army Special Forces unit saw an unknown spherical shaped object through night vision goggles while on security duty in Kabul, Afghanistan. Kabul, the largest city in Afghanistan, is the capital of Kabul Province and is located along the eastern sector of the country. It has a population of 3.3 million people and is the largest city in Afghanistan. Geographically it sits 5876 feet above sea level between the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Kabul River. The climate, which tends to be cooler than rest of the Southwest Asia due to the elevation, is semi-arid with most of the precipitation occurring in the winter months, usually as snow.
Kabul, Afghanistan
(Credit: Google Maps)
In his report, the Montana resident stated that while out on detail in Kabul, Afghanistan, he and an entire Army unit of fifteen men witnessed a UFO. The witness stated he was unsure of the exact date but felt it was around May 10th of that year. He stated that this craft was “huge” and was so close they could have thrown a rock at it and hit it. He said it seemed to come out of nowhere and floated over one of the mountains from the south which was east of the base they built. The object made no noise. The bizarre thing was that he could not see it with the naked eye, but it could be seen through his night vision goggles. He described the object has having the appearance of a light bulb but was a sphere and was about the size of the moon in comparison. He said it had a translucent appearance but was glowing, lighting up the surrounding area with its lights. When they saw it, they stopped and looked in amazement and awe.
As they watched it, it was hovering about 50-100 feet in the air, moving slowly about five to ten mph. It was about 100 yards from the outside perimeter of the base camp and as they were watching the craft, their commander was at the base camp, about a quarter of a mile to the southwest of their position. The commander could also see the object. He got on the radio and announced to the unit to “get back to work, its nothing,” meaning the craft they were looking at.
The squad leader was in the passenger seat and his friend was driving. He stated they were “pulling roaming security” from one traffic control point to the other from the south of the base to the north of their base camp. After their commander told them to go back to work, they watched this craft for about ten more minutes before they had to turn around and head back north. The craft stopped about ¼-mile northeast of their position and appeared to stop over campfire that some locals had made.
The UFO then shot out a beam at their camp, but they couldn’t see the base of the fire from where they were, just the flickering of it on the back of the mountain. They could not see what was happening down on the ground with that beam of light. In the meantime, their squad leader stopped watching and wanted to go back to work, so the specialist turned the Humvee around and they started driving north to the north T.C.P.
US Army (USA) Soldiers use a High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) to cross a river during a fact-finding mission, in the Organ Province of Afghanistan, during Operation ENDURING FREEDOM.
(Credit: US Department of Defense)
The witness stated he wanted to keep watching the object, but they lost sight of it when they left because a hill blocked their view; which was the same hill that blocked the beam they had seen. After a minute of driving north he observed that the object had taken off from over the local’s campsite. He stated it took off at a rapid speed, making in a 90-degree angle straight up until they could no longer see it. To him it appeared that the lights on the craft seemed to have a delayed reaction because the craft took off so fast, what he said was an alarming rate. It made dashes of light across the sky as it did, then it was gone. His report to MUFON was the first time that he had told anyone about this incident besides his family.
William Puckett, was the lead investigator for this case and did an excellent job investigating this reported sighting. He concluded at that time that this was an Unknown and closed the case on April 10, 2014. I looked over the information that was listed on the report and listened to the audio clip interview given by the witness. I felt him to be credible, giving good details in a coherent, factual manner. I didn’t detect anything in his manner of speaking that would indicate intentional deception.
Given the increased interest in cases involving military personnel with the revelation that the Pentagon has had a program to investigate UFOs, maybe this next case needs to be looked into further. One thing that stood out when listening to his interview was that he mentioned being in the Paktika Province of Afghanistan, not Kabul and that the mission was secret. Another question I had was that if the object could only be seen through infrared glasses, were they all wearing them? He states that all fifteen of them saw the object. Also notable is the fact that his commander, who was at the base camp, was seeing the object too a quarter of a mile away, so it’s possible that there were many more witnesses to this object.
As it is stands now, it is just one of the thousands of cases reported by military personnel who have either witnessed or interacted with a UFO. While doing research of the MUFON CMS database, 157 such cases were found where the military was somehow involved; either by witnesses stating UFOs were chased by military craft, usually F-16s, or former military personnel were reporting their own experiences to MUFON. Thus, like those 157 cases that I personally found amongst the files, this case remains unknown. Nevertheless, this case stands out as significant if only for the fact that these men were Special Forces Security Unit, and by virtue of their training, were excellent and reliable observers; even if they hadn’t been on duty and on high alert. While it is only the opinion of this Field Investigator, and no supporting evidence has been found, like videos or photos, it might be worthwhile to make further attempt at contacting the four others listed in the report in an effort to get a clearer picture of this sighting. While these three cases may be exceptionable, they may not be the last.
Lunar Fountain? Accessible Ice Could Lurk in Moon's Lava Tubes
Lunar Fountain? Accessible Ice Could Lurk in Moon's Lava Tubes
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com Contributor
New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) suggest there is an underground network of lava tubes beneath the lunar surface that could offer astronauts easy access to water.
The stunning new photos show multiple small pits in a large impact crater known as the Philolaus Crater, which is located near the north pole of the moon. Researchers said these pits are likely lava tube "skylights" — entrances to underground tunnels that were once filled with lava.
Ancient volcanic deposits on the moon suggest the lunar interior has a substantial amount of water.
Credit: Olga Prilipko Huber
The underground tunnels could also provide access to subsurface ice, and in turn, water. Astronauts would therefore be able to use this water resource during future missions to the moon, said a new study from the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and the Mars Institute. [Photos: The Search for Water on the Moon]
"The highest-resolution images available for Philolaus Crater do not allow the pits to be identified as lava tube skylights with 100 percent certainty, but we are looking at good candidates considering simultaneously their size, shape, lighting conditions and geologic setting," Pascal Lee, planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and the Mars Institute, said in a statement.
This series of images shows the location of some of the newly-discovered potential lava tube skylights at Philolaus Crater, near the moon's North Pole.
The Philolaus Crater is approximately 43 miles (70 kilometers) wide and located about 340 miles (550 km) from the moon's north pole. The pits appear to be small, rimless depressions, measuring between 50 and 100 feet across (15 to 30 meters), with completely shadowed interiors, according to the statement.
The pits identified on the floor of the Philolaus Crater are located along sections of winding channels thought to be collapsed lava tubes, also known as sinuous rilles.
Earlier research identified over 200 pits across the moon's surface, but the new images are the first to identify possible skylights located in the moon's polar region, where water ice accumulates, the study said. Therefore, the newfound skylights would offer easier access to subsurface ice, alleviating the need to excavate the lunar surface, the researchers said.
"This discovery is exciting and timely as we prepare to return to the moon with humans," Bill Diamond, president and CEO of the SETI Institute, said in the statement. "It also reminds us that our exploration of planetary worlds is not limited to their surface and must extend into their mysterious interiors."
Formed about 1.1 billion years ago, Philolaus Crater is relatively young, which makes it a great target for studying the moon's recent evolution, the researchers said in the statement.
Lava tube skylight candidates at Philolaus Crater near the moon's North Pole.
Credit: NASA/Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/SETI Institute/Mars Institute/Pascal Lee
Also, the crater is located on the nearside of the moon, which means that it would offer future lunar missions the benefit of direct communications with Earth, according to the statement.
Going forward, the researchers plan to further investigate Philolaus Crater to confirm whether or not the pits are lava tube skylights, and if the underground network of tubes actually contains water ice.
"This is an exciting possibility that a new generation of caving astronauts or robotic spelunkers could help address," Lee said. "Exploring lava tubes on the moon will also prepare us for the exploration of lava tubes on Mars. There, we will face the prospect of expanding our search for life into the deeper underground of Mars where we might find environments that are warmer, wetter and more sheltered than at the surface."
Their findings were presented Jan. 11 at NASA's Lunar Science for Landed Missions Workshop, which is held at the Ames Research Center.
Colored areas on this map show spots with elevated water content compared with surrounding terrain on the moon's surface. Yellow and red indicate the richest water content.
Credit: Milliken lab/Brown University
Editor's Note:This article was corrected to note that the potential lava tubes were sighted by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), not Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Earth Resides in Oddball Solar System, Alien Worlds Show
Earth Resides in Oddball Solar System, Alien Worlds Show
By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor
The Kepler-11 system has a sun-like star with six orbiting planets.
Credit: Tim Pyle/NASA
Our solar system may be an oddball in the universe. A new study using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope shows that in most cases, exoplanets orbiting the same star have similar sizes and regular spacing between their orbits.
By contrast, our own solar system has a range of planetary sizes and distances between neighbors. The smallest planet, Mercury, is about one-third the size of Earth — and the biggest planet, Jupiter, is roughly 11 times the diameter of Earth. There also are very different spacings between individual planets, particularly the inner planets.
This means our solar system may have formed differently than other solar systems did, the research team suggested, although more observations are needed to learn what the different mechanisms were. [The Most Intriguing Alien Planet Discoveries of 2017]
"The planets in a system tend to be the same size and regularly spaced, like peas in a pod. These patterns would not occur if the planet sizes or spacings were drawn at random," Lauren Weiss, the study's lead author and an astrophysicist at the University of Montreal, said in a statement.
The research team examined 355 stars that had a total of 909 planets, which periodically transit across their faces (as seen from Earth). The planets are between 1,000 and 4,000 light-years away from Earth.
After running a statistical analysis, the team found that a system with a small planet would tend to have other small planets nearby — and vice-versa, with big planets tending to have big neighbors. These extrasolar systems also had regular orbital spacing between the planets.
"The similar sizes and orbital spacing of planets have implications for how most planetary systems form," researchers said in the statement. "In classic planet-formation theory, planets form in the protoplanetary disk that surrounds a newly formed star. The planets might form in compact configurations with similar sizes and a regular orbital spacing, in a manner similar to the newly observed pattern in exoplanetary systems."
In our own solar system, however, the story is very different. The four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are very widely spaced apart. The team pointed to evidence from other research that Jupiter and Saturn may have disrupted the structure of the young solar system. While the statement did not specify how, several other research studies have examined the movements of these giant planets and their potential impact on the solar system.
Each of the exoplanets examined in the study was originally found by Kepler, which launched in 2009 and continues to send data today. But more-detailed information was obtained with the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii; Weiss is a member of the California-Kepler Survey team there, which is examining the light signatures of thousands of planets discovered by Kepler.
Weiss said she plans a follow-up study at Keck to look for Jupiter-like planets in multiplanet systems. The aim is to better understand if the presence of a Jupiter-size planet would alter the position of other planets in the same system.
"Regardless of their outer populations, the similarity of planets in the inner regions of extrasolar systems requires an explanation," researchers said in the statement. "If the deciding factor for planet sizes can be identified, it might help determine which stars are likely to have terrestrial planets that are suitable for life."
Mars hogs the spotlight. But nearly half of all sun-like stars are predicted to harbor Venus-type planets that most likely are lurking just inside the inner edge of any given solar system’s habitable zone.
Credit: NASA
Global view of Venus captured in the ultraviolet spectrum by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft.
Trouble is, sixty years into the Space Age, planetary scientists are still largely clueless about how the temperature and pressure vary with altitude; the dynamics of its deep atmosphere as well as its planetary interior. Understanding these two key points, say astronomers, could help them explain how our own Venus morphed from what four billion years ago might have been a planetary Valhalla into a real hellhole. That is, a planet with temperatures approaching 735 degrees Kelvin at the surface, surface pressures 92 times that of Earth and an atmosphere that is 96.5 percent carbon dioxide.
Yet understanding these two key points remain crucial to interpreting data from potential extrasolar earths and super-earths at the inner edge of extrasolar habitable zones. That is, the nearest point where such terrestrial planets can maintain liquid water and surface temperatures that would foster clement conditions conducive to the onset of life as we know it.
Without a reliable research baseline for Venus, upcoming missions like NASA’s TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will produce data that researchers may not be able to accurately interpret. That is, if we are ever going to be able to say with any certainty when, why and how long any given Venus-type planet across the galaxy may have had liquid water and clement weather.
As I noted here previously, as a star’s luminosity grows over time, Venus-type planets are briefly in the habitable sweet spot early in their history. That is, before their stars’ growing luminosity drives water off its surface and out of its atmosphere and turns what may have been a promising climate into a runaway greenhouse of the sort we see on our own Venus.
It’s a problem outlined in a new paper just published on the academic physics research website arXiv.org. "Venus: The Making of an Uninhabitable World" was submitted by scientists from the U.S., Canada and NASA in response to a solicitation by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences for white papers regarding the future of astrobiological research.
Stephen Kane, the paper’s lead author and a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California at Riverside and colleagues, argue that this forthcoming plethora of new data on exo-Venuses needs corroboration and verification using data on our own Venus. Trouble is, the kind of data from our solar system’s Venus doesn’t yet exist.
As the authors note, “an improved sampling of pressure, temperature, composition, and dynamics of the Venusian atmosphere as a function of latitude would aid enormously in our ability to study exoplanetary atmospheres.” They note that in particular, planetary scientists need new direct measurements of the deuterium to hydrogen ratios within and below our sister planet’s clouds in order to better constrain how much water was actually present during Venus’ storied history.
In terms of where things went wrong, Kane argues that we do have a better understanding of mars than Venus. He says that’s not just because of the amount of Martian missions, but also because the mars interior cooled relatively quickly leaving the geological history in a more preserved state.
“Venus has a complex geological history including resurfacing events that make it difficult to trace the history of the planet back without more surface data,” said Kane.
In fact, Kane says understanding Venus is more important than understanding Mars if seeking to get a handle on what makes some earth-size planets habitable and others not.
“Our sister planet provides an ideal laboratory for us to investigate an alternative Earth where a runaway greenhouse would have prevented any chance of life,” said Kane.
Does the planetary science community have a blind spot when it comes to Venus?
But he says the larger issue is that exoplanet community can often have a blind spot for planetary science. Interestingly, he says that’s because most of the exoplanet detection techniques have their origins in stellar astrophysics.
“So, we find ourselves at a point where we have stellar astronomers discovering terrestrial planets without the needed tools to interpret their data,” said Kane. “Fortunately, this is forcing a much-needed collaboration between the exoplanet and planetary science communities.”
To date, Kane cites three Venus missions as most important.
— The Soviet's Venera 9 lander because it successfully landed on the surface in 1975 and became the first mission to return pictures from the surface of another planet.
— NASA’s Magellan because it performed detailed radar mapping of the Venusian surface, giving us our first comprehensive topographical map of Venus.
— The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express provided insights into the planet’s atmospheric dynamics and presented possible direct evidence of ongoing volcanic activity at the surface.
But now, Kane says researchers really need another Venus orbiter mission with a glider and lander components in order to gather new data that would help them correctly model the transition of a habitable atmosphere to a runaway greenhouse.
Kane says at present that ability is hampered by our lack of knowledge of the atmospheric chemistry that occurs in the high-pressure environments of Venus.
“We desperately need to obtain better measurements of the Venusian surface compositions, ideally with seismic data that would allow us to model the interior,” said Kane.
He says researchers’ current ability to understand the interiors of terrestrial exoplanets is hampered by the lack of knowledge about the percentage of Venus' composition that consists of rocky materials, such as silicates and metals.
“For the Earth, these relative compositions are similar to the sun, but for Venus, we just don't know,” said Kane.
As for the best example of a true extrasolar Venus to date?
Of more than forty extrasolar Venus-type planets currently known, Kane says the one that’s most like our own Venus lies some 220 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus. There, every nine days, the roughly earth-sized planet Kepler-1649b circles its parent low-mass, Red dwarf star in a very short nine-day orbit. The incoming radiation the planet receives from its star is the same that Venus receives from the Sun, says Kane.
As for what puzzles Kane most about our own Venus?
Kane says the most obvious puzzle is Venus’ retrograde clockwise rotation, who explains that the planet’s primordial rotation rate was probably counter-clockwise, like almost everything else in the solar system.
“The fact that it now rotates slowly backward points to an interesting past that can be explained by a possible giant impact early in its history, or perhaps caused by friction with [its] incredibly dense atmosphere.”
But was Venus was ever truly habitable?
Assuming that Venus did indeed have liquid water oceans, Kane says we can hypothesize that the water evaporated and was disassociated in the upper atmosphere by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.
Kane says Venus’ other main puzzle is the nature of the so-called "stagnant lid" surface of Venus. It doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, but instead has a single crust that is occasionally ruptured by volcanoes.
Venus’ surface age, now estimated to be some 500 million years old, indicates that it was rapidly resurfaced in the past. Kane says that makes it difficult to know how that process worked or what the previous (possible water-bearing) history of Venus may have been.
Earth became habitable as early as 4 billion years ago, right after it cooled and formed liquid water oceans, says Kane.
“it is very possible that Venus was similarly habitable at that time,” said Kane.
Discovering when the current surface became a stagnant lid, says Kane, would be of enormous aid in constraining just how long Venus may have been habitable.
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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.
