Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
02-03-2018
Venus may once have been habitable. Now it can tell us if other worlds might be as well.
Venus may once have been habitable. Now it can tell us if other worlds might be as well.
This is what an ancient, watery Venus might have looked like.
NASA
In his 1954 novel Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagined seas filled with life and underwater cities on our neighboring planet. It wasn’t long, however, before we discovered what really lurks beneath Venus’s thick cloud cover. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States' and Soviet Union's spacecraft found a dense, toxic atmosphere on Venus full of carbon dioxide and clouds of sulfuric acid. On the surface, temperatures were hot enough to melt lead, and the crushing pressure was akin to that found in Earth’s deep oceans.
All of this means that Venus is violently hostile to life. Even so, the planet is so similar to our own celestial body in size, makeup, and location that it’s often referred to as Earth’s twin. And in its distant past, it may have been even more Earthlike—scientists now believe that Venus could have once held oceans and a gentler climate.
“People don’t really fully appreciate how similar these two planets are,” says Suzanne Smrekar, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We hear so much about Mars, and yeah, currently its surface temperature is like Earth's. But probably for most of its evolution Venus was much more like the Earth.”
Despite this similarity, it’s been nearly 30 years since the United States sent a mission to Venus. Smrekar and her fellow Venus researchers believe it’s high time we returned. Venus, they argue, can shed light on Earth’s history, what conditions a planet needs to become habitable, and whether the distant ones we are discovering beyond our solar system might have them.
“The quest to understand life in the universe involves not just the Earth, but the Earth’s twin,” says Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California at Riverside.
A world of difference
Billions of years ago, Venus and Earth formed relatively close together from similar materials.
Earth went on to become a wet, mild world ripe for hosting life. “You really need to have a way to create climate stability for life to get started,” says Michael Way, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. On Earth, plate tectonics, which cycles carbon in and out of the atmosphere, make that stable climate possible. When volcanoes erupt, they shoot carbon dioxide out from the planet’s interior. This greenhouse gas traps heat, keeping Earth toasty enough to support life. If carbon dioxide were allowed to build up, you’d get a hothouse like Venus. However, the Earth slowly recaptures carbon dioxide when it dissolves in rainwater, flows into the ocean, and is used to build carbonate rocks like limestone on the seafloor. As pieces of Earth’s outer shell shift and grind together, they carry carbon back into the mantle.
In other words, plate tectonics powers Earth’s thermostat. Our planet’s restless crust also recycles other nutrients, like phosphorus, that organisms need to survive. “The surface of the Earth is continually replenished by the plates moving underneath each other, Kane says. “Whereas Venus has essentially a single plate.”
While present-day Venus lacks plate tectonics, it may have behaved more like Earth in its early history. “Earth has been remarkably successful at keeping relatively clement climate conditions for at least the last 3.5 to 4 billion years,” Way says. Because the two planets are similar in so many ways, this suggests that Venus might have had a stable climate and oceans at some point as well, he says.
In fact, there is evidence of past water on Venus. Pioneer Venus, an American mission launched in 1978, measured a form of hydrogen called deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen. On Earth, this isotope is much less common than regular hydrogen. But on Venus, deuterium isn’t quite so rare in comparison to ordinary hydrogen, indicating that a great quantity of the lighter version of the element has vanished. “If you measure a big difference in these numbers it tells you that something has escaped from the planet, basically, and that something is water,” Way says.
Another clue came when Venus Express—an orbiter launched in 2005 by the European Space Agency—measured twice as much hydrogen as oxygen escaping from the planet’s atmosphere. This suggests that the elements had once been joined as water.
"Venus is absolutely fascinating because it’s a world that should be very similar to Earth and yet evolved very, very differently,” says NASA’s Lori Glaze.
Public domain
It’s not clear how much water Venus actually had on its surface; it could have been anywhere from a few yards deep across the entire surface to hundreds of yards or more, Way says. To figure out what ancient Venus might have been like, he and his colleagues used a series of computer models to simulate the planet’s atmosphere. They reported that Venus could have had a shallow ocean and surface temperatures similar to those on present-day Earth for several billion years, up until around 715 million years ago.
Venus rotates more slowly than the Earth, which could have helped make it more habitable. Because the Venusian day is so long, the sun heats parts of its terrain for months at a time. At that point, “Warm air rises rather forcefully and creates a planetary-scale cloud that blocks much of the incoming sunlight,” Way says. “That can provide you a shield basically to help you be close to your parent star without overcooking in essence or boiling off your oceans.” This cloud would unleash heavy rains, although they would be concentrated around the area directly facing the sun.
At some point, though, Venus’s fate diverged from that of Earth’s, and the planet wound up as an “uninhabitable hellscape,” Way and his colleagues wrote last month in a paper published to the arXiv. It’s not clear why this happened, Way says. One possibility is that Venus’s seas began to evaporate because the planet receives more solar energy than Earth. In the upper atmosphere, sunlight would have broken the water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen, which then fled into space. Without water to weaken the crust so it could break up, there could be no plate tectonics as we know it. Venus would have become hotter and hotter as water vapor and carbon dioxide built up in its atmosphere.
“It has undergone this runaway greenhouse and now it’s stuck there,” Kane says. “All the carbon is in its atmosphere, it has nowhere to store it because it has no liquid water oceans.”
Earthlings, take heed
The scorching, poisonous place Venus has become can actually give us a glimpse into our own planet’s history.
When the Magellan mission orbited Venus in the 1990s, it took radar images of the planet’s surface that revealed mountains ranges. These features resemble mountains and plains of cooled lava created here on Earth when pieces of crust were jostled about by the sluggish churning of the mantle beneath them, scientists reported in December at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans. Similar forces might be active on Venus; it’s possible that the planet’s intense heat warms its crust enough that small pieces can slightly detach from the mantle about six to nine miles down. Some of the plains surrounding Venus’s mountains had been deformed, suggesting that blocks of crust could have been moving about pretty recently.
This isn’t full-fledged plate tectonics—but it might be the first step in the process. We have little record of how plate tectonics kicked off billions of years ago on Earth, so the more recent activity on Venus might offer a few clues, Smrekar says.
A map of Venus’s surface based on imagery collected by Magellan, Pioneer Venus, and Venera 13 and 14 .
NASA
Our sister planet can help us understand present-day Earth as well, she says. Back in the 1970s, Venus proved key to our discovery that chlorofluorocarbons—chemicals used in hairspray, air conditioners, and other products—were a threat to the ozone layer. While creating computer models for the atmosphere of Venus, researchers at Harvard and MIT found that chlorine is really good at breaking apart oxygen compounds like ozone. Before long, another group at the University of California, Irvine, had realized that the extra chlorine we were pumping into our atmosphere might be doing the same thing on Earth.
Venus also offers a preview of our future. Over time, stars increase in luminosity. This means that the planets in their orbit will be bathed in more solar energy. For a planet with liquid water and an Earth-like atmosphere, that means a one-way ticket to Venusville. “Once you break a planetary atmosphere…[it's] almost impossible to unbreak,” Kane says. “Venus could be the eventual outcome of all atmospheric evolution.”
In fact, it “seems inevitable” that Earth will eventually follow Venus’s path, he says. “The Earth has a delicate balance at the moment; it won’t last forever.”
Jekyll or Hyde?
We’re getting better and better at discovering planets beyond our own solar system—including ones about the size of Earth. We can’t study the soil or atmospheres on these planets to find out if they might be amenable to life, though. “The planets that we’re studying around other stars are planets that we will never be able to go to, at least not in the next several hundred years,” Kane says. “Venus is very much a warning to us, because if we did not have Venus in our solar system…we may very well be far more cavalier in discovering Earth-sized planets around other stars and just assuming that they’re habitable.”
Instead, we realize that two worlds that look the same from a distance can in fact be the Jekyll and Hyde of rocky planets. “As we discover new planets, the only basis we have for comparison are the planets in our own solar system,” says Lori Glaze, a planetary volcanologist at NASA Goddard. “Being able to differentiate between an exo-Venus and an exo-Earth is going to be really important in how we go forward in our exploration.”
It’s possible that Venus’s proximity to the sun is the main reason why it turned out so differently from Earth. But there could be other, more subtle forces at work too, like Venus’s lack of a strong magnetic field. “We’ll need to take those into account because it could mean that we have evil Venuses hiding amongst the planets we find around other stars,” says Kane. On the other hand, if Venus’s slow rotation rate once helped it sustain habitable conditions, it would make sense to measure how quickly exoplanets rotate as well.
“There’s this great cosmic accident that we have in our solar system: two planets that are so similar in size and adjacent in the solar system yet they are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their habitability,” Smrekar says. “If you really want to understand what makes a planet habitable, really the big question is, why are Venus and Earth so different?”
Planning a visit
Even though Venus is our closest neighbor, there’s a lot we don’t know about it.
The planet’s thick blanket of clouds makes it difficult to observe, although missions like Magellan and Venus Express have taken radar and infrared images of the surface. Those pictures revealed another challenge: The surface of Venus isn’t very heavily cratered, indicating that it hasn’t existed for long enough to get dinged up much. “Over the last billion years and perhaps over a much shorter time even, the surface of Venus has been completely reworked,” Smrekar says. Perhaps because the planet lacks plate tectonics, heat periodically builds up underneath the crust until the surface is melted. Because of this, much of the evidence for what Venus’s surface was like in its ancient past has disappeared.
Then there’s the fact that Venus’s extreme conditions destroy any lander that visits within a matter of hours. “It’s a very tough place to send missions; it’s expensive and it’s risky,” Way says. “Mars is much easier to deal with."
This means that funding is harder to secure for Venus than for the Red Planet. “Success begets success,” Smrekar says. “If you find an exciting discovery on Mars you want to follow up on that, and it’s been so long that we’ve had a mission to Venus that it’s hard to get over that hurdle.”
Still, Glaze says, “There’s getting to be quite a groundswell of support for Venus exploration.” Akatsuki, an orbiter launched by JAXA, Japan’s space agency, is currently gathering information about Venus’s climate. And last year, NASA scientists proposed two missions that would have sent probes directly into the planet’s atmosphere. The agency did not select either to advance in its New Frontiers program, but Smrekar, Glaze, and their colleagues are undeterred.
Smrekar would have led the Venus Origins Explorer (VOX) mission to investigate how present-day Venus behaves. It would have used an orbiter to map the planet’s surface and a probe to sample gases in its atmosphere. One of the questions Smrekar and her colleagues would have examined is whether Venus’s craters have been buried in lava flows, which would be a sign of recent geologic activity. They’d have also looked for chemical signatures of active volcanism, such as a thin coating of new minerals formed when lava flows are exposed to the atmosphere.
Another mission headed by Glaze—called Venus In situ Composition Investigations(VICI)—was awarded funding to hone its technology for future competitions. It would have sent two landers to visit highland plateaus that are older than the rest of Venus’s surface. These features might be similar to Earth’s continents, which are built from different kinds rock than its oceanic crust. VICI would have fired a laser into these rocks to vaporize a tiny bit of material, then measured the minerals present in both the plasma it had created and in un-vaporized rock. If Venus’s plateaus have a different composition than the rest of the surface, it could mean that water was involved in forming them.
A highland plateau on Venus.
NASA
During its sojourn, the spacecraft would also have measured gases like krypton and xenon. “Once they’re put into the atmosphere when a planet is forming it’s very hard to change them or remove them,” Glaze says. “They kind of remain there like little atmospheric fossils to tell us about what went into the original makeup of Venus’s atmosphere.”
She and her colleagues have built a full-scale prototype lander and tested its landing abilities here on Earth. The vessel is about 14 feet across and has a squat shape stabilizers that resemble spider legs to make it harder to tip over.
Glaze and her team are unfazed by Venus’s fearsome conditions. “We send things down to far deeper in the ocean [to] much, much greater pressures than we’re talking about on the surface of Venus,” she says. And most of the mission’s key measurements could be taken in under two hours—so by the time Venus’s scorching heat melts the lander’s electronics, they will likely have done their duty.
“Venus is hard to explore, sure, but it’s not like it hasn’t been done before 40 years ago,” Smrekar says. We haven’t sent a probe down into Venus’s poisonous skies since last century’s Venera, Vega, and Pioneer Venus missions. To know what to expect on the exoplanets are discovering far away, however, we’ll need to take another trip next door. “It’s incredibly important that we get back to Venus,” Glaze says.
Researchers were surprised by how much water vapor they found in a ‘hot Jupiter’ — three times more than on Saturn.
Credit: NASA, ESA.
Although NASA has already confirmed thousands of exoplanets — planets outsides our solar system — what’s perhaps most staggering is their sheer diversity. Take, for instance, WASP-39b, an exoplanet located about 700 light-years away with about the mass of Saturn but which could not be any more different. By studying it in great detail, astronomers might not only learn how it formed but how planets in our own solar system’s backyard came to be as well.
A water-rich planet on fire
With the help of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers were able to peer inside WASP-39b’s puffy atmosphere right to its very core. By filtering the incoming light partly absorbed by the far-away planet into individual colors, scientists could dissect the composition of its atmosphere.
“This spectrum is thus far the most beautiful example we have of what a clear exoplanet atmosphere looks like,” said lead investigator Hannah Wakeford of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and the University of Exeter in Devon, United Kingdom.
This is how they learned that WASP-39b contains three times more water vapor than Saturn does. This was exciting to learn and totally atypical for a “hot Jupiter” — a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter but whose close proximity to the parent star results in high surface-atmosphere temperatures.
WASP-39b takes only four days to come full circle around its parent star. It’s about 20 times closer to its parent star than Earth is to the sun. It’s also tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its star, like the moon.
Being this close to its star, the planet’s day-side temperature hovers at a scorching 1,430 degrees Fahrenheit (776.7 degrees Celsius). And because the exoplanet’s atmosphere is circulated by powerful winds, the night-side of the planet is also just about as hot. Unlike Saturn, WASP-39b doesn’t have any rings. What’s more, it’s atmosphere is free of high-altitude clouds, which allowed Wakeford and colleagues to easily peer down to its depths.
“WASP-39b shows exoplanets can have much different compositions than those of our solar system,” said co-author David Sing of the University of Exeter in Devon, United Kingdom, in a statement. “Hopefully this diversity we see in exoplanets will give us clues in figuring out all the different ways a planet can form and evolve.”
Due to its high water content and hot proximity to its parent star, scientists are convinced WASP-39b must have formed very differently from Saturn. Most likely, it was bombarded by many icy bodies during its early history and, quite possibly, obliterated other planetary objects in its migratory path.
WASP-39b is truly a unique world, the likes of which we’ve yet to encounter. Scientists hope to learn even more about it once the much anticipated James Webb Space Telescopelaunches in 2019. The powerful instruments on board the space telescope will allow astronomers to study exoplanets in much greater detail and which are much farther away than currently possible.
“By calculating the amount of carbon and oxygen in the atmosphere, we can learn even more about where and how this planet formed,” said Wakeford.
Tardigrades are the most indestructible known complex organism on Earth, and perhaps the cutest of all microorganisms. Although they look like tiny space-bears, they can survive without water for 10 years, in extreme pressures and temperatures, and even in space. Forget cockroaches — tardigrades will outlive us all. Now, researchers from the Jagiellionian University in Poland have identified a new species in Japan. With this information, they were able to more precisely classify tardigrades within this taxonomic group based on their egg appearance.
The half-a-millimeter long critters are more diverse than you would think. There are about 1,200 known species, with about 20 new ones discovered each year.
The researchers sampled moss in a car park in Japan and examined it for tardigrades. From the samples, they isolated 10 individuals and started raising them in the lab.
“Tardigrades are very difficult to maintain in the lab, often because we do not know what to feed them, so M. shonaicus was a rare case where we can maintain the culture, where I succeeded to feed them algae as food. We later found out that they can also feed on rotifers. Many tardigrades are parthenogenetic, where only females exist and all offsprings are produced without mating. But Macrobiotus species, such as [the new species] M. shonaicus, often have two sexes, and require mating,” said co-author of the study Dr. Kazuharu Arakawa from Keio University, Japan.
They were luckily able to successfully breed the tardigrades in the lab and it was actually their eggs that made it clear that they are a new species. The eggs have a solid surface with flexible filaments attached. The individuals and the eggs were examined under phase contrast light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy for a closer look. The DNA was also sequenced for four molecular markers to confirm that this is a brand new species.
The surface of the tardigrade’s egg.
Image credits: Stec et al (2018).
It turns out that the larger taxonomic group to which these species belong—the Macrobiotus hufelandi complex— can be further split up into two clades (groups with shared characteristics): one group with filaments on the eggs and ones that have eggs that look like mushrooms or inverted goblets. This new species is placed in the same clade as species from Kenya (Macrobiotus paulinae), Ecuador (Macrobiotus polypiformis), Scotland (Macrobiotus scoticus), and Argentina (Macrobiotus kristenseni). It is the only known member of this species complex in Japan.
The new species of tardigrade–a rare video of a tardigrade defecating. Video credits: Kazuharu Arakawa/YouTube.
It may seem a bit odd that the tardigrades in Japan are most closely related to ones of South America, Africa, and Europe, but these little creatures are excellent at dispersing.
“Terrestrial tardigrades can enter an ametabolic state called anhydrobiosis as the surrounding environment dries, and the animals stay dormant until they are rehydrated by, for example, rain. The microscopic dried tardigrades are blown like specks of dust in the wind, so tardigrades can travel widely in this form. Some species are found worldwide, probably because they join the world’s ‘aeroplankton’ and establish wherever they land,” explained co-author of the study Dr. Kazuharu Arakawa from Keio University, Japan.
The new species is called Macrobiotus shonaicus and brings the number of tardigrade species in Japan up to 168. It isn’t not known for sure, but hypothesized that they have a wider distribution around the Shonai area in Japan after which they are named. There are likely to be even more species to be discovered, as researchers only searched in a car park and there are sure to be other locations with other new species.
HOW HUMANS MIGHT OUTLIVE EARTH, THE SUN…AND EVEN THE UNIVERSE
HOW HUMANS MIGHT OUTLIVE EARTH, THE SUN…AND EVEN THE UNIVERSE
Nuclear war. Runaway climate change. A global pandemic. Today our world faces all manner of existential threats. But scary possibilities like these are nothing compared to what astronomers say lies in store for Earth. Our planet’s ultimate destiny is to be baked, blasted, and eventually disintegrated.
There’s nothing we can do to prevent this cataclysm. Yet according to scientists who study the far future, including Yale University astronomer Gregory Laughlin, the prospect for life is, oddly, rather bright. Given technological advances and the continuing evolution of our species, humans should be able to survive — in some form — long after Earth has ceased to exist.
But our distant descendants are going to have to do some planet-hopping.
THE MULTIPLANET ERA The first major cosmic crisis will strike in about 1.5 billion years. At that point, according to projections by environmental scientist Andrew J. Rushby at the University of East Anglia in England, the brightening sun will set off what might be termed “super-global” warming. Earth will be heated until the oceans boil.
By then, though, will we care? We already have the technology to establish bases on the moon and Mars. So a billion and a half years from now, we’ll likely have colonized the whole solar system — and perhaps other star systems in our Milky Way galaxy.
As the sun grows hotter, other planets will become more appealing. Just as Earth becomes too toasty to sustain life, Mars will reach a temperature that makes it habitable. Cornell University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger has run models showing that the Red Planet could then stay pleasant for another 5 billion years.
About 7.5 billion years from now, the sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and switch to helium. That will cause it to balloon into an enormous red giant. Mars as well as Earth will be fried. On the other hand, the once icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn will have become tropical water worlds — prime real estate for human colonies. We could live there for a few hundred million years.
Jupiter’s moon Io is dotted with volcanoes heated by gravitational friction.
NASA/JPL/University Of Arizona
About 8 billion years from now, the flaring sun will make conditions intolerably hot all the way out past Pluto. “The exact dates depend on how much mass you estimate the sun will lose and how much planets will move,” Kaltenegger says. But the message is clear: Life will be impossible in our solar system.
THE STAR-HOPPING ERA Fortunately, Laughlin points out, there are 200 billion other stars in the Milky Way, most with planets of their own. Perhaps our descendants will have mastered near-light-speed travel. Even with current technology, however, interstellar travel is conceivable on the kind of timescales we’re talking about.
The fastest spacecraft built to date, Voyager 1, is racing away from the sun at 38,027 miles per hour. At that speed, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star. But future humans might build interstellar arks, giant ships on which generations of travelers would live and die before delivering colonists to a new destination. Such star-hopping colonists could spread across our entire galaxy before Earth overheats, even assuming no advances in rocketry.
At first, those voyagers might choose to set sail for planets around midsize, yellow stars similar to our own. That will take care of us for quite a while, since sunlike stars last 12 billion years before they fizzle. As one star ages and dies, we can move on to the next. We’ve got time.
Fifty billion to 100 billion years from now, though, all of the raw material for new stars will be used up. The last generation of sunlike stars will burn out, and humans will need a new kind of place to live.
It turns out that we have better options than yellow stars like our sun. The Milky Way is dotted with red dwarfs, cooler and dimmer than our sun but built to last. “For the next 10 trillion years, the red dwarfs are just coming into their own,” Laughlin says.
And so planets around red dwarf stars may be our homes until about 15 trillion years from now, when they too will expire.
THE GRAVITATIONAL ERA Red dwarfs will be the last generation of stars. Once they die, the universe will go dark — literally. Even so, Laughlin doesn’t see this as the end of the line for life. Instead, we will enter what he calls “the gravitational era.”
Illustration depicting the end of life on Earth, after the Sun turns into a red giant.
Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo
In this dark future, we might build enormous space power plants around black holes, lowering masses toward them to harvest their gravitational pull “like the weights pulling down in a grandfather’s clock,” says Princeton physicist J. Richard Gott. Or we might tap the internal heat of planets to generate energy: The gravitational interaction between celestial bodies creates friction, which can keep planets hot inside even without any starshine.
Don’t picture cave dwellers huddling around geothermal heaters. Trillions of years of evolution will have long since transformed us, Laughlin says. Perhaps we will have merged with our computers. Perhaps we won’t even have a physical form. The only thing our descendants will definitely have in common with us is the essential spark of life: not flesh and blood necessarily but information.
“That’s the most important lesson from thinking about the far future universe,” Laughlin says. “We’re being naïve when we think of life only in terms of Earthlike planets and carbon-based life.”
Information-based life can keep going almost forever. The gravitational era that begins around 15 trillion years from now could continue for quintillion years and beyond, Laughlin estimates. A quintillion is a 1 followed by 18 zeroes. It is trillion times as long as the entire history of our hominid line on Earth.
WILL THE UNIVERSE DIE BEFORE WE DO? Still, even this near-eternity is not the same as eternity. At some point, life runs into the physical limits of matter itself.
Physics theories suggest that sometime between 10^34 (1 decillion) and 10^64 (1 vigintillion) years from now, the protons found in the nuclei of all atoms will decay. That means black holes will be the only organized form of matter in the universe. Future humanity can’t have any physical form at this point.
At 10^100 years — 10 duotrigintillion years A.D. — even black holes will evaporate. There will be no energy or structures of any kind — just a cold, eternal mist of farflung particles. This really is the end point for life.
Or maybe not. Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University, one of the founders of modern cosmological theory, is exploring a model in which the universe goes through endless cycles of creation. His latest version, developed with Anna Ijjas of Columbia University, suggests that the universe could experience a new Big Bang well before the final black hole apocalypse.
If it does come, a new Big Bang would wipe away all traces of this universe — unless we can find a way to leapfrog into the next cosmic cycle. Current physics offers no guidance here.
Then again, we have quite a while to ponder the problem.
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Do you see what I see? Researchers harness brain waves to reconstruct images of what we perceive
Do you see what I see? Researchers harness brain waves to reconstruct images of what we perceive
Don Campbell
A new technique developed by neuroscientists at U of T Scarborough can, for the first time, reconstruct images of what people perceive based on their brain activity gathered by EEG.
The technique developed by Dan Nemrodov, a postdoctoral fellow in Assistant Professor Adrian Nestor’s lab at U of T Scarborough, is able to digitally reconstruct images seen by test subjects based on electroencephalography (EEG) data.
“When we see something, our brain creates a mental percept, which is essentially a mental impression of that thing. We were able to capture this percept using EEG to get a direct illustration of what’s happening in the brain during this process,” says Nemrodov.
For the study, test subjects hooked up to EEG equipment were shown images of faces. Their brain activity was recorded and then used to digitally recreate the image in the subject’s mind using a technique based on machine learning algorithms.
It’s not the first time researchers have been able to reconstruct images based on visual stimuli using neuroimaging techniques. The current method was pioneered by Nestor who successfully reconstructed facial images from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in the past, but this is the first time EEG has been used.
And while techniques like fMRI – which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow – can grab finer details of what’s going on in specific areas of the brain, EEG has greater practical potential given that it’s more common, portable, and inexpensive by comparison. EEG also has greater temporal resolution, meaning it can measure with detail how a percept develops in time right down to milliseconds, explains Nemrodov.
“fMRI captures activity at the time scale of seconds, but EEG captures activity at the millisecond scale. So we can see with very fine detail how the percept of a face develops in our brain using EEG,” he says. In fact, the researchers were able to estimate that it takes our brain about 170 milliseconds (0.17 seconds) to form a good representation of a face we see.
This study provides validation that EEG has potential for this type of image reconstruction notes Nemrodov, something many researchers doubted was possible given its apparent limitations. Using EEG data for image reconstruction has great theoretical and practical potential from a neurotechnological standpoint, especially since it’s relatively inexpensive and portable.
In terms of next steps, work is currently underway in Nestor’s lab to test how image reconstruction based on EEG data could be done using memory and applied to a wider range of objects beyond faces. But it could eventually have wide-ranging clinical applications as well.
“It could provide a means of communication for people who are unable to verbally communicate. Not only could it produce a neural-based reconstruction of what a person is perceiving, but also of what they remember and imagine, of what they want to express,” says Nestor.
“It could also have forensic uses for law enforcement in gathering eyewitness information on potential suspects rather than relying on verbal descriptions provided to a sketch artist.”
The research, which is published in the journal eNeuro, was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and by a Connaught New Researcher Award.
“What’s really exciting is that we’re not reconstructing squares and triangles but actual images of a person’s face, and that involves a lot of fine-grained visual detail,” adds Nestor.
“The fact we can reconstruct what someone experiences visually based on their brain activity opens up a lot of possibilities. It unveils the subjective content of our mind and it provides a way to access, explore and share the content of our perception, memory and imagination.”
For as long as we have looked up at the stars and wondered about what lies beyond that vast, black void between us there has been the yearning to set out and explore the reaches of our planet, solar system, and beyond. We as a species have spent vast quantities of money and time towards this end, and yet at this moment we are confined to a relatively small region around our own planet. Yet throughout the years there have been those who have claimed to have actually managed what we desire, and have reportedly managed to travel between planets. Whether it be by space ship, teleportation, or other mysterious means, such bizarre reports claim that free travel amongst the cosmos is not only possible, but that it has already happened. Here are some of the weirder of these.
Perhaps the most common way that people have claimed to have been whisked off around the solar system is the old-fashioned way; aboard some sort of alien spacecraft. One early account of this type was the deeply odd story of a Dana Howard, who in 1936 allegedly made contact with a towering, 8-foot tall, golden haired woman from Venus who called herself Diane. Howard claims that the Venusian took her aboard a spaceship, described as being gem-studded and translucent, and she was flown off to the distant Venus. There she found inhabitants of ethereal physical beauty, who manipulated life essences to heal themselves and had teleportation technology. Howard would even claim to have married a Venusian and to have had children living there. She went on to describe Venus and its people in great detail over the years in numerous books, including My Flight to Venus (1954), Diane: She Came From Venus (1956), Over the Threshold (1957), and Vesta, the Earthborn Venusian (1959), all of which were purportedly helped along by the occasional visits from the mysterious Diane.
Another apparent traveler to Venus was Howard Menger, who in the 1950s claimed to have had frequent contact with extraterrestrials from when he was a child, and to have made several trips out into the solar system aboard UFOs over the years. He reportedly went to Venus, with its groves of huge redwood-like trees, as well as to the Moon, which apparently had advanced domes and hover trains, and Saturn, where he would claim he had originally been born as a man named Sol du Naro, who had been romantically involved with a woman from Venus. According to Menger, while on Saturn he had learned that he had died and then had his consciousness beamed into 1-year-old Howard Menger, after which he had grown up as an Earthling. Menger wrote several books about his completely bonkers tales, and made quite a splash in UFOlogy at the time. Making it all even weirder is that he would later claim that none of it had happened at all, and that it was all an illusion implanted into his mind during CIA mind control experiments. Again, whether any of it is real or not, it sure is a wild ride.
Venus
Even more well-known is the tale of Polish immigrant George Adamski, who in 1952 apparently made contact with a Nordic-looking Venusian named Orthon in the Mojave Desert. Adamski would then allegedly make numerous trips to both Venus and the Moon aboard a giant bell-shaped spacecraft. The people of Venus were said to have blonde hair, blue eyes, and to be very beautiful, and the moon was described as having forests, cities, and mountains, as well as lights that glittered in the air like “millions of fireflies.” Although Adamski’s stories are mostly accused of being cheap knock-offs of pulp science fiction stories, he has nevertheless gone on to become one of the more well-known UFO contactees.
Such claims of strange travels around the solar system were not done aboard any sort of space craft, but rather through supposed mental powers, psychic projection, or other mystical means. One of the earliest and weirdest of such reports is the case of the Swedish philosopher, inventor, scientist, and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, who claimed that in 1774 he had had a potent spiritual awakening. During this time, he said he gained the power to open his mind to speak with angels or demons, and to make psychic journeys, an ability which he used to travel across Heaven, Hell, and to other parts of the solar system, not through the power of any technology, but through the power of God.
Swedenborg claimed that he had been guided along on this journey by God and angels, and that he saw many wondrous things in other parts of our universe. Among his many detailed accounts, some of the more interesting are what he claimed to have seen in our solar system. He said that he had visited Mars, the Moon, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus, and that each of these places had their own unique civilizations. The Martians were described as being totally without body hair and wearing tree bark for clothing. They apparently lived in a peaceful Utopian society where there was no crime or war. On Venus there were two races of people, a benevolent, peaceful tribe, and another dedicated to violence, war, and thievery. Saturn had its humble people who lived simple lives and buried their dead by covering the bodies with leaves, and the Moon had a race of stout dwarves with booming voices. The people of Mercury were said to wear tight-fitting clothing and to be stern and serious deep thinkers and philosophers, while the population of Jupiter were jovial jokesters and liked to walk about on their hands.
All of these things were explained in meticulous detail in Swedenborg’s writings of his experiences, and although it seems pretty obvious now that there are no such beings as far as we know on any of these planets, at the time it was eaten up by those who followed him and it captured the imagination. He would spend the rest of his life trying to fulfill what he saw as his mission from God to reform Christianity, and he would publish a total of 18 tomes to this effect, the most well-known being his book The Heavenly Doctrine. Did he see any of this at all, perhaps existing in an alternate dimension or reality, or is this all the ramblings of a delusional mind?
In the late 19th century we have the account of the Denton family of England, who were claimed to have the power of psychometry, which means they could basically hold or touch an object and divine facts about it. In the case of William Denton and his family, they could see past events in vivid detail simply from touching historical objects or fossils, and some of them even claimed to have used this power to project themselves to other parts of the solar system. Denton’s son claimed that he had visited Venus and seen numerous strange and wondrous animals, as well as massive trees shaped like mushrooms and water that was “heavy but not wet.” Other members of the family and Denton himself supposedly visited Mars, which had yellow-haired people with four fingers who possessed fantastical flying machines, as well as Jupiter, whose inhabitants apparently had large blue eyes, long flowing blonde hair, and the ability to float through the air at will. Although the Dentons could have very well been attention seeking cranks, it is all very outlandish and entertaining nevertheless.
In the early 1900s there was also the purported 1906 psychic journey of a Sackville G. Leyson, who happened to be the president of the Society for Psychical Research at the time. Through astral projection, Leyson said he had managed to travel to Mars, of which he gave a quite detailed description. According to Leyson, the landscape was perpetually shrouded in red clouds and mist, and there was an odd substance like snow that often fell, but which was not cold and made the ground soft. He said that the planet was populated by two different races of beings with vastly different physical appearances. One was a race of hulking giants covered in hair, who towered over him and had a single eye in the middle of their foreheads, elephant-like ears, the nose of a lion, and who lived in rock huts aboveground. There was also claimed to be a smaller race of dwarves, who only came up to Leyson’s knees. These diminutive creatures supposedly live in underground lairs, had webbed hands and feet, a fish-like face with no nose, bulbous eyes on the sides of their heads, and the ability to scale sheer walls like an insect. It is widely believed that this report was likely a piece of creative journalism, but it is certainly strange enough to warrant mention.
In more modern times we have far-out tale of Ingo Swann, who was allegedly a psychic with the power of remote viewing, which basically entails being able to witness things happening in different locations far away from the person’s actual physical body. In this case it was far away indeed, because Swann would claim that in a remote viewing experiment along with fellow psychic Harold Sherman they had managed to project all the way to Mercury and Jupiter to make observations of these places before the U.S. had even launched its Mariner 10 and Pioneer 10 space probes to explore these regions of the cosmos. While at Mercury, Swann claimed that he had discovered the planet had a thin atmosphere, a magnetic field, and solar winds, and that its sky was painted with constantly shifting lights akin to the Aurora Borealis.
He also claimed that Mercury had a primitive form of plant life like a sort of lichen, which covered the rocks on the surface. Shockingly, when the Mariner 10 did a flyby of the planet 3 weeks later, it found that indeed Mercury was very much as Swann had described it, although the probe was not close enough to be able to verify the presence of lichen on the surface. It had previously thought that Mercury had no magnetic poles or any atmosphere at all, but Swann had apparently seen this first, and the Mariner 10 findings backed this claim up somewhat.
Concerning Jupiter, Swann described it as a frigid place with a noxious, poisonous atmosphere possessing a myriad of colors like a “giant fireworks display.” He also said that he had seen vast, raging tornadoes on the surface, as well as ferocious winds far stronger than any on Earth, and he claimed the planet also had strong magnetic forces and a 30,000-foot-high mountain range. Eight months later the Pioneer 10 passed Jupiter and saw that many of these predictions were all strikingly true. It was impressive enough that former American astronaut Edgar Mitchell was reported as saying:
He described things and gave details that were not known to scientists before the Mariner 10 and Pioneer 10 satellites flew by and got the information. These are things that Mr. Swann couldn’t have guessed or read about. His impressions of Mercury and Jupiter cannot be dismissed.
Pioneer 10
Another who praised Swann’s findings was former scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who said “His impressions of Jupiter, along with his experience with Mercury, most certainly point the way to more experimentation.” It seems all very impressive, but it has over the years become apparent that the story was played up to be a lot more amazing than the actual facts. One of the problems is that only the things that matched up with what was found by the space probes were apparently reported on, when in fact there were many other details that were flat-out wrong and just not mentioned. Indeed, renowned science fiction author Isaac Asimov found that half of Swann’s observations were wrong, and that the other half could have been lucky guesses based on information already available on planets in science books of the time. Even more damning still was an assessment made by famous astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, Carl Sagan, who at one point said after looking through the whole case:
Recently, two courageous American mystics made an “astral projection” trip to Jupiter, describing the nature of the planet prior to the arrival of the Pioneer 10. I was asked to examine the accuracy of their account. If their reports had been submitted in my elementary astronomy course, they would have received grades of “D.” These reports were not better than what can be extracted from the worst popularizations of planetary astronomy; they were filled with the most obvious misunderstandings both about Jupiter and Pioneer 10. There is no evidence that any mystic has done better in guessing the nature of the planets than he could do without his mystical powers but with the ability to read the better elementary astronomy books.
Ouch. It appears that the very few things the two remote viewers had happened to stumble upon as correct were played up in news reports and a legend was born. It is important to note that in later years Swann did not stop making claims of the weird. In the 1970s he began trying to establish psychic connections with plants, and through this he claimed that he had learned of an impending ecological disaster through mental images projected into his mind by the plants. He wrote of these efforts and other various psychic pursuits in his 1975 book To Kiss Earth Good-Bye. Considering the time-frames involved coinciding with heavy drug culture and the damning skepticism against him, whether any of this planetary travel was achieved through the use of mind powers or the tripping of balls is left open to speculation and interpretation.
In more recent reports we have yet another Mars story and those bases. In 2014, a man only known as Captain Kaye came forward to claim that he was a whistleblower for a military base on Mars. Kaye said that he had spent 17 years on the Red Planet in a program called “The Mars Defense Force,” which had the purpose of protecting the solar system from invading alien races, and which has a colony on the planet called Aries Prime. Eyebrows might be raised even more than they are when hearing that Kaye explains that Mars has a completely breathable atmosphere and a balmy, pleasant climate. According to Kaye, military personnel at the base were ordered to retrieve an alien artifact at a cave on Mars, and this resulted in a catastrophic battle that would see around 1,000 soldiers lose their lives. It has since been determined that Kaye’s real name is Randy Cramer, and that he is a vocal advocate of the idea that the U.S. faked the moon landings in order to cover up the work being done on Mars, so make of that what you will.
These are truly outlandish claims to be sure, seemingly ripped straight from a science fiction story, and perhaps they are just that: science fiction. After all, we have no evidence at all of any of this other than these, let’s be honest, rather implausible claims. However, some of these have gone on to be discussed and debated, and they do go to show that we will probably always have stories like these of people supposedly breaking out of the confines of our planet to reach out towards the stars. Whether real or not, such reports serve to capture the imagination, and illustrate our fascination with the universe beyond what we know
NASA's gloednieuwe Marslander arriveert op lanceerbasis
NASA's gloednieuwe Marslander arriveert op lanceerbasis
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Nog een paar maanden en dan vliegt de lander – die letterlijk ín Mars gaat kijken – de ruimte in.
De afgelopen jaren is er hard aan de Marslander geknutseld in Denver. Maar nadat onderzoekers onlangs de laatste hand aan de Marslander legden, was het tijd voor een tripje naar de lanceerbasis in Californië. Met een vliegtuig is de lander deze week overgebracht naar de Vandenberg Air Force Base, waar deze op zijn vroegst op 5 mei het luchtruim zal kiezen.
UITGESTELD
Eigenlijk had Mars InSight al in 2016 gelanceerd moeten worden, maar problemen met één van de belangrijkste instrumenten aan boord van de lander, hielden deze op aarde.
Testen De komende maanden wordt de lander op de lanceerbasis klaargemaakt voor lancering. Zo zal de komende weken bijvoorbeeld gekeken worden of deze de vliegreis goed heeft doorstaan. Daarna zal de software een update krijgen en alle hardware – waaronder ook de wetenschappelijke instrumenten aan boord van de lander – getest worden. En dan moet er nog iets belangrijks gebeuren, zo vertelt projectmanager Tom Hoffman. “Eén van de belangrijkste activiteiten voor de lancering is het voltanken van het ruimtevaartuig met de brandstof die deze nodig heeft voor de reis naar Mars.” Als dat gebeurd is, zal de lander enkele tests ondergaan die erop gericht zijn om heel nauwkeurig het massamiddelpunt vast te stellen. “Dat moeten we weten om ons ervan te verzekeren dat de binnenkomst en afdaling in de Martiaanse atmosfeer gaat zoals gepland.”
Mars InSight in volle glorie.
Afbeelding: NASA / JPL-CALTECH.
Mei Er is dus nog wel wat werk aan de winkel. Maar de onderzoekers hebben dan ook nog enkele maanden te gaan. Pas vanaf 5 mei kan er gelanceerd worden. Dat heeft alles te maken met de positie van Mars ten opzichte van de aarde. Die is elke 26 maanden gedurende enkele weken bijzonder gunstig voor het op pad sturen van Marsmissies. En in 2018 loopt die gunstige lanceerperiode van 5 mei tot 8 juni.
Als alles volgens plan gaat, zal Mars InSight in november op Mars arriveren. En daar gaat deze Marslander baanbrekende onderzoeken doen. Zo is InSight de allereerste missie die erop gericht is om diep onder het oppervlak van Mars te gluren. De sonde is daartoe uitgerust met een boor die tot zo’n 4,5 meter diep kan reiken. Het is de bedoeling dat Mars InSight onder meer de hitte afkomstig uit het binnenste van Mars gaat meten en bevingen op Mars onderzoekt.
Hubble ontdekt enorm veel water in de atmosfeer van exoplaneet WASP-39b
Hubble ontdekt enorm veel water in de atmosfeer van exoplaneet WASP-39b
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Het suggereert dat deze exoplaneet heel anders ontstaan is dan gedacht.
Om een beeld te krijgen van de samenstelling van de atmosfeer van WASP-39b zetten astronomen ruimtetelescopen Hubble en Spitzer in. De telescopen bestudeerden het licht van moederster WASP-39 nadat het door de atmosfeer van WASP-39b was gereisd. Het levert het meest complete spectrum van de atmosfeer van een exoplaneet op. Sterker nog: het is het meest gedetailleerde inkijkje in de atmosfeer van een exoplaneet dat we met de huidige telescopen kunnen verkrijgen.
Water En door het licht dat door de atmosfeer van WASP-39b heen sijpelt, te bestuderen, konden de onderzoekers vervolgens meer zeggen over de samenstelling van die atmosfeer. En het levert een grote verrassing op. Zo blijkt de atmosfeer van deze Saturnus-achtige planeet ontzettend veel water te bevatten: WASP-39b heeft zo’n drie keer meer water dan ‘onze’ Saturnus!
Deze artistieke impressie laat WASP-39b en een stukje van zijn moederster zien.
Afbeelding: NASA, ESA & G. Bacon (STScI).
Ontstaansgeschiedenis Het suggereert dat WASP-39b heel anders ontstaan is dan de Saturnus in ons zonnestelsel. De grote hoeveelheden water in de atmosfeer wijzen erop dat de planeet ooit gebombardeerd werd door grote hoeveelheden ijzig materiaal. Dat materiaal zou de exoplaneet vervolgens in zijn atmosfeer hebben opgesloten. Maar de exoplaneet kan alleen aan zo’n bombardement zijn blootgesteld als deze op dat moment veel verder van zijn moederster verwijderd was dan nu het geval is. “Exoplaneten laten ons zien dat de vorming van planeten gecompliceerder en verwarrender is dan we dachten dat het was,” aldus onderzoeker Hannah Wakeford. “En dat is fantastisch.”
PERMANENTE DAGZIJDE
WASP-39b heeft een synchrone rotatieperiode, wat betekent dat altijd dezelfde zijde van de planeet op de moederster gericht is. Die permanente dagzijde is gloeiendheet. Maar doordat WASP-39b krachtige winden kent die de warmte van die dagzijde naar de nachtzijde transporteren, is die nachtzijde ongeveer net zo warm.
Hete Saturnus WASP-39b bevindt zich op zo’n 700 lichtjaar afstand van de aarde en heeft een massa die vergelijkbaar is met die van Saturnus. Alleen staat WASP-39b veel dichter bij zijn moederster dan Saturnus bij de zon staat. Sterker nog: de afstand tussen WASP-39b en zijn moederster is zo’n acht keer kleiner(!) dan de afstand tussen onze zon en Mercurius. Het betekent dat WASP-39b in tegenstelling tot Saturnus ontzettend warm is: zo’n 776,7 graden Celsius (zie kader). Onderzoekers spreken dan ook wel van een ‘hete Saturnus’. Hoewel we zulke planeten niet in ons zonnestelsel aantreffen, kan WASP-39b wel meer inzicht geven in hoe en waar planeten ontstaan en ons helpen om de evolutie van ons eigen zonnestelsel beter te doorgronden. “We moeten naar buiten kijken om ons eigen zonnestelsel te begrijpen,” aldus Wakeford.
Vervolgonderzoek met nog krachtigere telescopen kan mogelijk een nog beter beeld geven van de atmosfeer én ontstaansgeschiedenis van WASP-39b. We moeten daar echter nog wel even op wachten. De opvolger van Hubble – de nog krachtigere James Webb-telescoop – wordt naar verwachting pas volgend jaar gelanceerd.
Het multiversum: pure science-fiction of heel wetenschappelijk verantwoord?
Het multiversum: pure science-fiction of heel wetenschappelijk verantwoord?
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Hoe een wild idee uitgroeide tot een mogelijk oplossing voor het grootste natuurkundige probleem dat we kennen.
Met name sci-fi-schrijvers zijn er dol op: het multiversum. Maar wie denkt dat dit wilde idee enkel het domein van fantasten is, heeft het mis. De laatste decennia duikt de term ‘multiversum’ namelijk ook steeds vaker op in wetenschappelijke papers, geschreven door heel respectabele wetenschappers. En in veel van die papers wordt het idee van een multiversum niet keihard onderuit geschoffeld, maar verder afgetast en niet zelden omarmd. “Er zijn veel wetenschappers die denken dat het multiversum bestaat,” vertelt professor Daniel Baumann, verbonden aan de Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica van de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Wat is het multiversum? Voor we ons verder in hun redeneringen verdiepen, is het goed om helder te krijgen wat we nu eigenlijk onder een multiversum moeten verstaan. “Je hebt het universum en dat werd lang gedefinieerd als: alles.” Maar met de opkomst van het idee van het multiversum was die definitie duidelijk niet afdoende. “Daarom definiëren we het universum nu als alles wat we kunnen zien. Er wordt dan ook wel gesproken van het waarneembare universum. Het multiversum is dan eigenlijk ook niets anders dan een verzameling van meerdere van die waarneembare universa die overigens helemaal losstaan van elkaar.”
De kosmologische constante en snaartheorie Dat ons universum niet het enige universum is, is geen nieuw idee. Maar pas sinds een paar decennia zijn ook respectabele onderzoekers bereid gebleken om dat idee enigszins serieus te nemen. Het is volgens Baumann te herleiden naar een aantal schokkende ontdekkingen en theorieën die in de tweede helft van de vorige eeuw gepresenteerd werden: – Het begint met de kosmische inflatie-theorie die volgens sommigen onomstotelijk leidt tot het ontstaan van een multiversum. Volgens de kosmische inflatie-theorie zou het heelal kort na de oerknal een fase hebben doorgemaakt waarin het in zeer korte tijd – een fractie van een seconde – zeker quintiljoenen (dat is een 1 met 30 nullen) keren groter werd. In de loop van de tijd werden er tientallen modellen ontwikkeld die deze inflatie beschreven. En veel ervan voorspellen een ‘eeuwige inflatie’: oftewel een inflatie die nooit gestopt is. Dat is verrassend, want ons universum dijt nog wel uit, maar lang niet zo snel als kort na de oerknal. Hoe zit dat? Sommige onderzoekers stellen dat het te verklaren is doordat de ruimtetijd het ten tijde van de kosmische inflatie zwaar te verduren kreeg, waardoor bubbels in die ruimtetijd ontstonden. En elke van die bubbels herbergde een universum met zijn eigen natuurwetten (ook wel pocket universes genoemd). In sommige van die bubbels – zoals de onze – stopte de supersnelle uitdijing, in andere ging deze door. Ondertussen zou de inflatie ook tussen de bubbels doorzetten, waardoor deze letterlijk uiteengroeien en er tussen de bubbels ruimte ontstaat waarin continu nieuwe bubbels – en dus oneindig veel universa – kunnen ontstaan.
Kort na de oerknal vond de inflatie plaats: gedurende een fractie van een seconde groeide het universum enorm.
– Misschien wel de belangrijkste aanwijzing voor het bestaan van een multiversum is volgens Baumann echter de versnelde uitdijing van het waarneembare heelal. In 1998 ontdekten onderzoekers aan de hand van supernova’s dat het heelal versneld uitdijt. Dat was alleen te verklaren als er sprake was van een kosmologische constante: een onzichtbare energie in het heelal (we noemen deze nu: donkere energie) die afstotend werkt. Maar met die versnelde uitdijing en benodigde kosmologische constante werd een groot natuurkundig probleem geboren. Want experimenten wezen uit dat de kosmologische constante veel kleiner is dan de theorie voorspelt. Baumann noemt het het grootste probleem in de natuurkunde. “Als dit probleem er niet was, zou ik zeggen dat we niet eens over het multiversum hoeven te praten. Maar het multiversum lost dit probleem op.”
“ALS ER VERSCHILLENDE NIET MET ELKAAR IN VERBINDING STAANDE UNIVERSA ZIJN, VERTELT SNAARTHEORIE ONS DAT ZE HEEL VERSCHILLENDE EIGENSCHAPPEN ZOUDEN KUNNEN HEBBEN”
– Om dat te begrijpen, moeten we een sprongetje maken naar de derde en laatste theorie: de snaartheorie. Volgens deze theorie is materie, maar ook energie opgebouwd uit snaren. De theorie heeft echter één grote beperking: hij vereist minstens tien dimensies en wij kennen er maar vier. Sommige onderzoekers vermoeden dan ook dat de ‘missende dimensies’ niet waarneembaar zijn, doordat ze heel compact ‘opgerold’ zijn. Maar – nu komt het – om die extra dimensies onwaarneembaar klein te houden, moet je energie toevoegen. En de energie die in die extra dimensies zit opgeslagen, draagt bij aan de kosmologische constante. Daarnaast zijn er tal van manieren waarop je die extra dimensies kunt oprollen en elke manier resulteert in een compleet andere set natuurwetten. “Als er verschillende niet met elkaar in verbinding staande universa zijn, vertelt snaartheorie ons dat ze heel verschillende eigenschappen zouden kunnen hebben,” aldus Baumann. En ook de kosmologische constante in elk van die universa kan dus net weer ietsje anders zijn. Dat we in ons heelal zo’n kleine kosmologische constante meten, is volgens sommige onderzoekers dan ook vooral een kwestie van geluk hebben. Want met een kosmologische constante die net iets groter is, zouden deeltjes niet eens de kans krijgen om zich aan elkaar te binden, laat staan dat er sterren, planeten en uiteindelijk leven kan ontstaan. “We leven waar we kunnen leven,” zo vat Baumann die theorie samen.
Op zoek naar bewijs En daarmee lijkt het idee van het multiversum het rijk der fabelen te zijn ontgroeid. Maar bewezen is het nog niet. Wat ons natuurlijk bij de vraag brengt of dat überhaupt ooit mogelijk is. Volgens Baumann hebben verschillende onderzoekers zich daar reeds het hoofd over gebroken, maar tot een overtuigend antwoord kwamen ze niet. Veelal wordt voorgesteld op zoek te gaan naar sporen van botsingen tussen pocket universes. Kort na hun ontstaan moeten die bubbels immers vrij dicht bij elkaar hebben gezeten en het lijkt niet onaannemelijk dat het wel eens tot botsingen is gekomen. “Je kunt het vergelijken met wanneer je water kookt: het water zet snel uit en er ontstaan bubbels die botsen.” Dergelijke botsingen kunnen in het geval van de pocket universeshun sporen na hebben gelaten in wat onderzoekers de kosmische achtergrondstraling noemen: warmtestraling die kort na de oerknal is uitgezonden. De afgelopen decennia is deze kosmische achtergrondstraling met behulp van verschillende instrumenten onderzocht en daarbij is natuurlijk ook gezocht naar sporen van botsingen met andere universa. “Maar er is niets gevonden,” vertelt Baumann. Echt verrassend is dat wellicht niet. Baumann wijst erop dat een botsing tussen twee pocket universes al snel resulteert in de ondergang van beiden. “Dus het is nog niet zo gemakkelijk voor twee universa om elkaar aan te raken zonder dat ze elkaar vernietigen.”
Nachtmerrie Bewijs voor het bestaan van het universum is dus lastig te verkrijgen. En dat is ook de reden dat Baumann er niet enthousiast over is. “Ik vind het niks. Het is lastig om dingen die we niet kunnen zien te toetsen, te definiëren en te voorspellen.” Maar dat is wel waar de natuurkunde om draait: “Beschrijven wat we zien, wat we kunnen manipuleren en aanraken.” Met andere universa gaat dat niet (zie kader). “Maar tegelijkertijd kan ik ook niet ontkennen dat het multiversum bestaat,” stelt Baumann. In die zin zou je het multiversum de nachtmerrie van elke natuurkundige kunnen noemen.
In science-fictionfilms die het multiversum als een voldongen feit presenteren, zie je regelmatig dat mensen van het ene naar het andere universum reizen. Zou dat mogelijk zijn in het multiversum waar de verschillende wetenschappelijke theorieën voorzichtig op hinten? “In eerste instantie zou ik zeggen van niet, omdat de bubbels niet met elkaar in verbinding staan en omdat we niet verder kunnen reizen dan we kunnen zien (oftewel niet sneller kunnen reizen dan het licht, wat wel nodig zou zijn om het waarneembare universum te kunnen verlaten, red.).” Dat gezegd hebbende, wil Baumann er wel direct een kanttekening bij plaatsen. Want hoewel de algemene relativiteitstheorie stelt dat we niet sneller kunnen reizen dan het licht, is dat in theorie wel mogelijk, namelijk middels een wormgat. “Dat is volgens mij de enige optie om van het ene naar het andere universum te reizen.” Maar wormgaten zijn tot op heden niet gevonden, dus afgaand op wat we nu kennen, blijft de conclusie dat we vastzitten in ons eigen universum.
En misschien is het idee van het multiversum ook wel meer een vloek dan een zegen. Het roept in ieder geval een interessante filosofische vraag op. “Is dit wetenschap? Kunnen we geloven dat iets echt is als we het nooit gezien hebben?” Je zou misschien denken van niet. Maar die conclusie zul je Baumann niet zo snel horen trekken. Hij onderbouwt dat door te verwijzen naar de quarks: elementaire deeltjes die we onmogelijk kunnen waarnemen, maar toch alom geaccepteerd zijn. “Er is een theorie (het Standaardmodel van de deeltjesfysica, red.) en die hebben we op alle mogelijke manieren getest en elke keer weer blijkt dat we de quarks nodig te hebben. En daarom geloven we dat ze bestaan, ook al is het onmogelijk om een vrije quark waar te nemen.” Op vergelijkbare manier zouden we – ook al kunnen we het niet zien – het multiversum kunnen omarmen. Sterker nog: het is misschien wel het beste waar we op mogen hopen. “Ik ben niet zo hoopvol dat we andere universa gaan observeren,” stelt Baumann. “Dus ik hoop dat we een theorie kunnen ontwikkelen waarvan verschillende aspecten getest kunnen worden en waaruit blijkt dat het multiversum een onvermijdelijke consequentie van inflatie en snaartheorie is.”
“HET MULTIVERSUM KAN ERVOOR ZORGEN DAT WETENSCHAPPERS TE SNEL OPGEVEN”
Zover zijn we echter nog lang niet. Op dit moment is het multiversum geen onvermijdelijke consequentie van allerhande theorieën, maar enkel een fraai passende oplossing voor een groot natuurkundig probleem. Baumann illustreert dat aan de hand van een voorbeeld. “De astronoom Johannes Kepler vroeg zich lang geleden af waarom de aarde zo ver van de zon staat. Hij probeerde daar een theorie voor te bedenken. Later zou blijken dat daar helemaal geen theorie voor ontwikkeld kan worden. Want toen we naar andere planetaire systemen gingen kijken, ontdekten we dat het toeval is: we leven hier, omdat we elders niet kunnen leven. Nu is de aarde geen fundamenteel concept in de natuur. De kosmologische constante is dat wel. En op dit moment zijn we geneigd die te verklaren, zoals we de afstand tussen de zon en de aarde verklaren: door er andere universa bij te halen en te concluderen dat we gewoon geluk hebben gehad met onze kleine kosmologische constante. En daarmee lijkt de puzzel opgelost.” Maar in tegenstelling tot de planetaire systemen uit het voorbeeldje van Johannes Kepler, kunnen we die andere universa niet waarnemen of aantonen dat hun bestaan – zoals dat van de quarks onvermijdelijk is – en dus hangt de oplossing van de puzzel van aannames aan elkaar. Wat ons terugbrengt bij de vraag van Baumann: “Is dit wetenschap?” Daar kun je in dit stadium over discussiëren. Maar één ding staat wel vast: het multiversum drukt wel een stempel op de wetenschap. Nu al. “Het ontmoedigt onderzoekers om echte oplossingen te vinden en kan ervoor zorgen dat ze te snel opgeven.” Niet alleen als het gaat om het multiversum, maar ook om andere lastig te verklaren problemen in de natuurkunde.
En zo blijft het multiversum naar verwachting nog wel even onderwerp van discussie. “Wetenschappers houden ervan of ze hebben er een hekel aan. Maar weinigen hebben er geen mening over. Het is een polariserend thema dat de manier waarop we wetenschap bedrijven kan herschrijven.”
Bronmateriaal:
Interview met Daniel Baumann Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel: gegamar0 / Pixabay
Do 12,000-Year-Old Texts Hint An Atomic Bomb Exploded On Earth Destroying Civilization?
Do 12,000-Year-Old Texts Hint An Atomic Bomb Exploded On Earth Destroying Civilization?
Does this 12,000-Year-Old Text Reveal An Atomic Bomb Exploded on Earth In The Distant Past?
More than 12,000 years ago, an incredible event left a mark in the ancient Hinducivilization.
Countless ancient texts describe fascinating accounts that many authors believed, occurred thousands of years ago on Earth. While many ancient civilizations across the globe have left a mark in history with countless ancient scripts, monuments, and objects that force us to reevaluate what we know about history, many of these accounts are perceived with a notion of disbelief by mainstream scholars. Some call these accounts as mythology, some refer to it as folklore, but the truth is that there are countless ancient texts that indicate how ancient civilizations around the globe experienced incredible things, and they made sure to document them as well as they could.
Controversial as it may be, many people around the world believe there is a high chance that in the distant past, tens of thousands of years ago, mankind was visited by beings, not of Earth. Many people still believe we are being visited even today, and there is ample evidence that suggests we are continuously visited by civilizations, not from Earth. Today, evidence of visitations can be found in countless images, videos, and recordings made available to the public. There are countless videos and images of alleged UFO sightings. Some of them may not be real, but some of them could very well be the real deal.
However, how would ancient mankind, thousands of years ago document what they had seen? Imagine living 10,000 years ago somewhere in India, and you look up to the sky and see what is today referred to as a UFO. How would you best document that experience?
Ancient civilizations across the world resorted to rock art, petroglyphs, geoglyphs, potteryart, and even in writing. From the Gods who came down from heaven, mentioned in numerous ancient cultures across the globe, to incredible flying ‘discs’ mentioned by the ancient Egyptians thousands of years ago, evidence that suggests we have been visited by ancient aliens can be found all around us.
Possible written evidence of ancient alien contact and advanced technology existing on Earth thousands of years ago can perhaps be found if we take a look at the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
These ancient texts are believed to document incredible technologies, and stories of what many believe is evidence of flesh and blood aliens among us.
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana.
It consists of 100,000 verses divided into 18parts or books that are equivalent to eight times the Iliad and Odyssey combined.
These ancient texts are more than a historical narration.
It is a combination of facts, legends stories, and myths.
A vast collection of didactic discourses written in a beautiful language, nurturing all Hindu mythology and creating one of the major world religions: Hinduism.
Among those historical texts, we see a story of a devastating event that occurred thousands of years ago. This event, incomparable to any other historic even in ancient history, sounds very familiar to events that rocked modern history: The use of atomicbombs.
Historian Kisari Mohan Ganguli, argues that the Mahabharataand the Ramayana are full of descriptions of largenuclearholocausts that are apparently of incredibly higher proportions than those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Curiously, when a student asked Dr. Oppenheimer if the first nuclear device that went off was the one at Alamogordo. during the Manhattan Project, he responded… Well … yes. In modern times, yes, of course.
So, what does that ancient text say? And how can you be sure it actually describes a nuclear event, unfolding on Earth thousands of years ago?
A manuscript illustration of the Sky Battle of Kurukshetra, fought between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, recorded in the Mahabharata Epic.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The ancient Hindu text, the Mahabharata:
“Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful Vimana, hurled a single projectile charged with the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand suns, rose with all its splendor.
It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.
The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable.
Hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white.
…After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected… …to escape from this fire the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.”
A second passage:
“Dense arrows of flame, like a great shower, issued forth upon creation, encompassing the enemy. A thick gloom swiftly settled upon the Pandava hosts. All points of the compass were lost in darkness. Fierce wind began to blow Clouds roared upward, showering dust and gravel.
Birds croaked madly… the very elements seemed disturbed. The sun seemed to waver in the heavens The earth shook, scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon.
Elephants burst into flame and ran to and fro in a frenzy… over a vast area, other animals crumpled to the ground and died. From all points of the compass, the arrows of flame rained continuously and fiercely.”
— The Mahabharata
The above text describes a violent and terrible event, one that many authors argue, can only be compared to a nuclear bomb detonating on Earth.
However, there are many other references in the Ramayana which seem to be very similar to those described in the above text.
But is there evidence, other than the texts supporting the theory that a nuclear device detonated on Earth thousands of years ago?
According to ancient astronaut theorists, there is.
The evidence, note ancient astronaut theorists, was found in 1992, when researchers discovered in Rajasthan, 16 kilometers west of Jodhpur, a layer of radioactive ash, covering an area of about eight square kilometers.
The radiation was allegedly so intense that it still contaminates the area today.
The ancient archaeological sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro are treated as another important piece of evidence- There, experts discovered skeletons scattered throughout the area almost as if a sudden, extremely destructive event occurred there, devastating entire cities.
“(It was a weapon) so powerful that it could destroy the earth in an instant– A great soaring sound in smoke and flames– And on it sits death…”
— The Ramayana
So what really happened thousands of years ago? What did ancient man document in these ancient texts? Is it really possible that a device similar to an atomic bomb exploded on Earth, some 12,000 years ago?
Do the Mahabharata and the Ramayana really describe nuclear weapons? If so where did these weapons come from? The Gods?
If an atomic bomb really went off in the past, was a crater left behind? Ancient Astronaut theorists say yes, and point to a crater with 2154 meters in diameter, located 400 kilometers from Mumbai.
The date the crater was created, according to experts, ranges from 12,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Scientists Suggest The Moon Was Created 1,000 Years Before Our Planet, And It Formed Inside Earth
Scientists Suggest The Moon Was Created 1,000 Years Before Our Planet, And It Formed Inside Earth
Not only do researchers suggest the moon formed before the Earth, but they also indicate how the moon formed ‘inside’ a sort of vaporized Earth at temperatures of 2,200 ° C to 3,300 ° C and pressures of tens of atmospheres.
The Moon formed within a cloud of vaporized rock, and perhaps it came into existence before our own planet suggests a new scientific theory.
Most scientists believe that the Moon originated as a result of the impact of a Mars-sized body called Theia against Earth, some 4.5 billion years ago.
The violent clash threw rocks and molten metals into the orbit of our planet that ended up merging with each other, eventually forming Earth’s eternal companion we see in the sky.
However, a new study led by the University of California Davis and the Harvard University tells a different story than we have heard in the last few decades; The Moon may have formed before our planet, radically changing everything we know about our satellite and planet.
“The new work explains features of the moon that are hard to resolve with current ideas,’ said Sarah Stewart, a professor at the University of California Davis.
“The moon is chemically almost the same as the Earth, but with some differences,” she said. “This is the first model that can match the pattern of the moon’s composition.”
Researchers suggest how Earth’s satellite was formed before, and at much higher temperatures, than the formation of our planet.
The new explanation, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, recognizes episodes of the collision, but not in the way that was counted so far.
Meet Synestia, a new theory of formation
(Sarah Stewart/UC Davis based on NASA rendering)
According to the new version, the Moon arose inside the Earth, when our planet was inside a “synestia,” a huge, spinning, doughnut-shaped mass of hot, vaporized rock.
It is a new type of planetary object, recently proposed by the same authors, which is also formed by the brutal clash of other large bodies.
Its name derives from «syn» together, and «Hestia» the Greek goddess of architecture.
The authors of the new study believe that these cosmic donuts were gigantic, up to ten times the size of Earth, but probably did not last long, only around hundreds of years.
They shrink rapidly as they radiate heat, which causes the rock vapor to condense into liquid and eventually collapse into a molten planet.
“Our model starts with a collision that forms a synestia,” explains Simon Lock, a Harvard researcher.
“The Moon was formed inside the vaporized Earth at temperatures of 2,200 ° C to 3,300 ° C and pressures of tens of atmospheres,” he concludes.
Mr. Lock indicates how isotope tests have revealed a fingerprint which undoubtedly proves that our planet and its faithful companion, the moon, are nearly identical.
Despite this fact, studies have proven that our moon has far less volatile elements like potassium, sodium, and copper, which are relatively common on Earth.
“There hasn’t been a good answer for this,” Mr. Lock said.
“People have proposed several explanations for how the moon could have wound up with fewer volatiles, but no one has been able to quantitatively match the moon’s composition.”
As explained in the new synestia theory, cosmic bodies are created within a so-called ‘seed,’ a relatively small amount of liquid rock located in the center of the swirling cloud of super-hot matter.
As the material cools over time, the vaporized rock turns into a liquid.
Eventually, the molten rock falls down throughout the cloud and most of it gathers around the seed to form a plane.
Scientists suggest that as our planet was formed, some of the rock-rain condensed at the surface of the Synestia, and rained down onto the proto-moon, while the Earth synestia gradually shrank.
The moon was created before, and at much higher temperatures.
Scientists say that apart from this difference, the celestial bodies are nearly identical.
According to the new theory, the moon may have formed around 1,000 Years before our planet as it emerged from the synestia much faster.
Mr. Lock explained how “the rate of rainfall is about ten times that of a hurricane on Earth.”
“Over time, the whole structure shrinks, and the moon emerges from the vapor. Eventually, the whole synestia condenses and what’s left is a ball of spinning liquid rock that eventually forms the Earth as we know it today,” he added.
And despite the fact that scientists came up with a relatively solid theory, there’s still some work to do.
“We’ve done calculations of each of the processes that go into forming the moon and show that the model could work, but there are various aspects of our theory that will need more interrogation. For example, when the moon is in this vapor, what does it do to that vapor? How does it perturb it? How does the vapor flow past the moon? These are all things we need to go back and examine in more detail.”
Moon formed when small planet CRASHED head on with Earth creating ‘dust doughnut’
Moon formed when small planet CRASHED head on with Earth creating ‘dust doughnut’
THE Moon was formed when a planet in its infancy crashed into Earth which resulted in a ‘dust doughnut’ around our planet that would go on to become the lunar satellite.
Moon formed when small planet CRASHED head on with Earth creating ‘dust doughnut’
Experts had previously believed the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized infant planet – known as Theia – hit Earth with a glancing blow, striking at a 45 degree angle some 4.5 billion years ago.
As a result, chunks of Theia and Earth collected in Earth’s orbit to eventually form the Moon.
But experts from Harvard University, the University of Bristol and University of California now believe the chance the collision actually happened are virtually impossible.
New research suggests Earth did hit another small planet some 4.5 billion years ago, but the collision was head on.
The impact was so intense that it vaporised the smaller planet, creating a ring of dust – called a synestia – around Earth.
Chunks of molten rock from Earth joined the synestia, which allowed the Moon to form.
In astronomical terms, synestias are extremely brief, only lasting for a couple hundred years, before they shrink rapidly, causing rock vapour to condense into liquid, which ultimately becomes the core of a planet, or in this case the Moon.
According to experts in the study, this would explain why the Moon has a different chemical composition from Earth as the majority of it is formed from another planet.
Sarah Stewart, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at University of California, said: "The Moon is chemically almost the same as the Earth, but with some differences.
"This is the first model that can match the pattern of the Moon's composition."
Simon Lock, graduate student at Harvard and visiting student at UC Davis who first developed the idea of synestias, said: "Our model starts with a collision that forms a synestia.
"The Moon forms inside the vaporized Earth at temperatures of four to six thousand degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of tens of atmospheres."
Unprecedented: 7,000-Year-Old Submerged Archaeological Site Found Off The Coast Of Florida
Unprecedented: 7,000-Year-Old Submerged Archaeological Site Found Off The Coast Of Florida
“This will forever transform the way we approach offshore archaeology.”
An ancestral burial site belonging to native America culture has been found under the ocean near Key Manasota (Manasota Key Offshore, MKO), on the west coast of the Florida peninsula, local secretary of state Ken Detzner recently announced.
The research carried out so far shows that during the Early Archaic Period, when the sea level was much lower than at present, the area where the Cay is located was not submerged and there was a small freshwater lake where the ancient Floridians buried their deceased.
The site near the community of Venice was first discovered by an amateur diver in June 2016, who reported the find to the Archaeological Research Office (BAR) pointing towards the existence of possible human remains in the area.
A carved wooden stake discovered by divers. Image Credit: Ivor Mollema/Florida Department of State
As it is illegal to excavate any site where there are burials, underwater archaeologists had to use other techniques and tools. Experts used sonar and magnetometers for their research and, after a year and a half, they are finally able to claim that the area, with less than an acre of extension (around of 4 thousand square meters), was firm land not covered by the sea during the Early Archaic Period.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said in a statement that the archaeological site called MKO is located on the continental shelf, off the west coast of the state, in what was once a freshwater lake, when sea levers where much lower than at present.
As the sea level rose, that lake was submerged by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and covered by material known as “peat.” This is a brown material consisting of partly decomposed vegetable matter forming a deposit on acidic, boggy, ground; This peat remained intact in the seabed, which helped preserve the ancient remains.
Underwater archaeologists mapped the entire site.
Image Credit: Ivor Mollema/Florida Department of State
According to Detzner, BAR archaeologists have done “an incredible work of documentation and research that can help understand the native peoples better.”
The Secretary of State stressed that “out of respect for the individuals buried there and their possible alive descendants,” divers and other persons are prohibited from accessing the site, already protected by the laws of Florida and controlled by representatives of the forces of order that perform frequent patrols.
Timothy Parsons, director of the Historical Resources Division of the State Department, said that the MKO deposit is “a revelation for the world of archeology.”
Ryan Duggins, supervisor of underwater archeology at the BAR, considered “inspiring” the fact that found a submerged field under the Gulf of Mexico “so well preserved.”
“This will forever change the way we approach offshore archaeology.”
Image Credit: Ivor Mollema/Florida Department of State
“We now know that this type of site exists on the continental shelf,” said Duggins.
On behalf of the Seminole people, Paul Backhouse, head of tribal historical conservation, expressed his satisfaction at being able to elaborate a plan with other institutions that will “allow the ancestors to continue resting in peace without human interference for the next 7 thousand years.”
“We are truly humbled by this experience,” Duggins explained in a statement.
“It is important to remember that this is a burial site and must be treated with the utmost respect.”
Als je in een zwart gat springt kun je eeuwig blijven leven. Deze studie laat zien waar je mogelijk uitkomt
Als je in een zwart gat springt kun je eeuwig blijven leven. Deze studie laat zien waar je mogelijk uitkomt
Als je in een zwart gat springt zul je niet aan stukken worden gescheurd, maar kom je in een vreemde realiteit terecht. Dat suggereert althans een nieuwe studie.
Zwarte gaten zouden je verleden uitwissen en je naar een parallel universum sturen met een oneindig aantal mogelijke toekomsten.
Als gevolg daarvan zou je eeuwig kunnen leven, zo claimen onderzoekers.
Ander universum
In ons universum is er vanwege de natuurkundige wetten maar één toekomst mogelijk.
Wiskundige Peter Hintz van de Universiteit van Californië – Berkeley kwam tot de ontdekking dat in zogeheten Reissner-Nordström-de Sitter-zwarte gaten andere wetten lijken te gelden.
Als je in zulke zwarte gaten springt, kun je dat mogelijk navertellen. Als je namelijk de singulariteit weet te omzeilen kun je in een ander universum terechtkomen.
Tegelijkertijd
Wat er vervolgens gebeurt is niet bekend, omdat de relatie tussen oorzaak en gevolg in een dergelijk universum niet bestaat. Alles wat is, was en zal zijn is tegelijkertijd mogelijk.
Professor Hintz bestudeerde een specifiek soort niet-roterend zwart gat, dat een zogeheten Cauchy-horizon bevat.
Die Cauchy-horizon zorgt ervoor dat het verleden niet langer de toekomst bepaalt. Natuurkundigen hebben altijd gezegd dat deze horizon je zou vernietigen.
Uitzondering
Uit de berekeningen van dr. Hintz blijkt dat Reissner-Nordström-de Sitter-zwarte gaten een uitzondering op de regel vormen. Hier zouden ruimtereizigers ongedeerd doorheen moeten kunnen gaan.
Unusual Heat Anomaly Detected In The Gulf Of Mexico
Unusual Heat Anomaly Detected In The Gulf Of Mexico
An unusual observation has been noticed in the Gulf of Mexico as a persistent heat anomaly continues to appear on multiple instruments and weather maps.
Is an underwater volcano starting to erupt or is a hydro thermal vent possibly? The last reading was 133 degrees!
One of the largest underwater volcanoes, a so-called asphalt volcano, resides in the Gulf of Mexico and is discovered in 2003 by a research expedition to the Gulf of Mexico.
But they not only discovered the underwater volcano, also they discovered alongside the asphalt were areas soaked with petroleum and methane hydrate, also spewed from the volcano.
Is it possible that the strange heat anomaly comes from this huge underwater volcano and could it be a sign of an underwater eruption or a sign that the volcano has come back to life?
Pilots report intruder ‘UFO’ spotted in broad daylight
Pilots report intruder ‘UFO’ spotted in broad daylight
Allison Yee
It was the bizarre sight that had pilots and air traffic controllers stumped.
Flying high above the ground over Crater Lake in Oregon, an unregistered aircraft was causing havoc as baffled pilots radioed in reports of an unidentified object flying outside registered flight plans.
On the ground, it was a similar situation, with radars alerting air traffic controllers to a mystery object in the air.
Pilots and air traffic officials noticed the suspicious flying object in the air last October. Photo: Getty
Now audio obtained by blog The Drive has revealed an exchange between officials as they struggled to figure out the incident last October.
"You know that target south of the boundary there? The 0027 code moving very fast at 37,000?" a radar operator can be heard saying.
The object was evident on radars, but wasn't responding to any attempts to communicate.
Photo: Getty
"Oh, look at that thing,” replies a centre controller. “Huh, um and you don’t have anything on him?"
With the operator replying he didn’t, the Sun reports sightings of the object continued for another 30 minutes, and saw another United Airlines flight calling in reports of a ‘large white plane’.
Fighter jets were dispatched to investigate - but the object disappeared.
Photo: Getty
Officials took the sightings seriously, with F-15 fighter jets later taking off from Portland International Airport in a bid to investigate and intercept the object.
However their search was futile as the flying object has mysteriously vanished.
"The fighter scrambled, they went out looking around a little bit but we, you know, we lost anybody having sight of the aircraft,” the Sun reports a FAA Seattle Center Official saying.
Spooky footage shows 'fleet' of 10 UFOs
VIDEO The eerie video shows the tiny specks circling before vanishing into thin air. Facebook/Daniel Zeljkovich
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STASI: Don’t worry, chances of an alien cyber-attack are much lower than total human annihilation
STASI:Don’t worry, chances of an alien cyber-attack are much lower than total human annihilation
If aliens wanted to attack us, they don't need to hack our computers, they'd just bio-germ us into non-existence.
(STOCKSNAPPER/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO)
Cyber-attack anyone? Never mind the Russians — what about the Martians?
Two astrophysicists, whose heads are more in the clouds than in outer space, have just published a research paper proposing that aliens could/might cyber hack attack the Earth causing chaos, mass destruction or maybe universal (like the whole universe) good times. And it's getting a lot of international, and perhaps even inter-species, attention.
The non-peer reviewed paper, (in other words not written for other astrophysicists to evaluate it), by Michael Hippke of the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany and John Learned, of the University of Hawaii, says this cyber attack could come from something as simple as a friendly message about possible communication between us and E.T.
Or as they put it: "A complex message from space may require the use of computers to display, analyze and understand. Such a message cannot be decontaminated with certainty, and technical risks remain which can pose an existential threat. Complex messages would need to be destroyed in the risk averse case."
Not so fast, brother. I asked two people who know more about this stuff, than, well, anybody if that makes any sense.
Hell, they said, if aliens wanted to attack us, they don't need to hack our computers, they'd just bio-germ us into non-existence. So rest assured, there is no risk, repeat no risk of E.T.s hacking your Instagram account and posting naked pictures of themselves.
Why would aliens from deep space bother hacking our Facebook pages when they can just steal our DNA?
(CHRIS CLOR/GETTY IMAGES/BLEND IMAGES)
Retired Army Col. John Alexander, a former Green Beret and founder of the Advanced Theoretical Physics Group, who ran the military's psychokinesis group (bending metal with the mind) and author of the book UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, told me, "While hypothetically possible, the probability is so remote as to not be worth any concern, let alone time and effort in countering it." Ouch.
"E.T. alien cyber-attacks don't make sense on any level. They don't need to sow discord as we already have that on our own. If they were to invade, a biological attack makes far more sense. If E.T. understands the physics of getting to Earth, they also understand biology. Therefore, if control or depopulation is the goal, bio-warfare is far easier than mano-a-mano ala Hollywood. Why risk a fight when they could wipe us out without loss of any of their lives. They could also repopulate using cloning technology and just raise a docile herd."
Dr. Alexander believes the real threat comes more from AI that we create ourselves than from a cyber hack attack from outer space.
Even Bill Birnes, who starred in History Channel's "UFO Hunters," and is the author of the upcoming, "UFOs and The White House: What did Our Presidents Know and When did They Know It?" said, "Art from as far back as the Middle Ages, notations in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and stories from other cultures all point to the presence of some types of anomalous craft in the skies. Even Ezekiel is specific about what is flying above him. If aliens wanted to take over this planet, why worry about computer code?"
Alien obsession around the world
And he continued, "An advanced species looking to inhabit Earth would concern themselves more with the DNA code and seek gradually to hybridize our race. Hybridizing our species, which I believe is already taking place, is the most efficient and logical way to take over a planet."
So in other words, why would aliens from deep space bother hacking our Facebook pages when they can just steal our DNA?
Birnes, who has devoted his life to researching UFOs and the aliens aboard them, believes, "We have already become a hybridized species-when our planet was first visited hundreds of thousands of years ago."
We are the extraterrestrials.
Damn! It's just my luck I got to be one of the short greys and not one of tall ones with the giant eyes who never have a bad hair day.
The darling of the microscopic world is the tardigrade, a hardy little microbe that’s so tiny it’s invisible to the naked eye. Nicknamed the “water bear,” this minuscule metazoan can survive some of the harshest climates in our universe, like deep oceans, red-hot geothermal vents, and even the walls of space-bound rockets. But that’s not why humans like them so much. We love them because, up close, the tardigrades we’re familiar with are plump, doughy, and altogether very cute.
But tardigrades are not a species but rather an entire family of organisms, and not all of its members evolved such pleasing aesthetics. On Wednesday, in the journal PLoS One, researchers led by Daniel Stec, Ph.D., from the Jagiellonian University in Poland report the discovery of Macrobiotus shonaicus sp. nov., a newly discovered species of tardigrade.
In this video uploaded by study co-author and Keio University biologist Kazuharu Arakawa, Ph.D., one can’t help but notice this tardigrade is not as cute. If the tardigrades we’re used to seeing look like little water bears, this one looks like a mid-length water bear turd with legs or a small, impaired platypus … if you’re feeling generous.
Alas, like humans among all the great apes, not all tardigrade species can be so lovable. The tardigrade type you’ve probably cooed over is the eutardigrada, images of which are commonly used as visual shorthand for the tardigrade class as a whole. Indeed, close-up shots of eutardigrades themselves, a subclass of over 700 species, make them seem quite cute.
Eutardigrades, in contrast, are objectively adorable.
But there are many species of tardigrades, found all over the world and probably beyond. The new species, M. shonaicus sp. nov., is actually one of 168 known tardigrade species in Japan alone.
The researchers found this aesthetically impaired little guy in a similarly homely place: a scoop of moss from a car park in Tsuruoka-City, Japan, where Arakawa rented an apartment nearby (“specific permission was not required,” the authors note). Using phase contrast light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, they snapped close-up shots of the new species, revealing a scary mouth, scary claws, and really scary eggs.
Here it is in its entirety, looking rather bland:
Kind of leech-like, if you ask me.
Here’s its scary mouth:
M. shonaicus's freaky mouth.
Here are its freaky claws:
Yikes.
The eggs are the pièce de résistance. Close up, they’ve got a bulbous middle that narrows into a floppy opening crowned with wild, ragged filaments. They do not look unlike a ripe pimple caught mid-pop.
See? Not cute.
These scary eggs, however, were key to the organism’s classification as a new species. Though the organism as a whole is most similar to M. anemone from the United States, M. naskreckii from Mozambique, and M. patagonicus from Argentina, the researchers determined that M. shonaicus’ eggs put it into a class of its own.
“[It] can be easily distinguished from these species by the presence of thin flexible filaments on terminal discs of the egg process,” they write, describing the flailing, itchy-looking things in the image above. The eggs, furthermore, have a solid, poreless surface, putting them in a subclass known as the persimilis. The new classification is as follows:
Despite itself, M. shonaicus has earned its place on the tardigrade family tree.
In the biological world, it’s not easy to earn your place as a unique species with its own classification. Perhaps it’s for the best, then, that M. shonaicus has so many, uh, unique features, even though its overall appearance leaves much to be desired.
A small asteroid will zip safely by Earth on Friday (March 2), and you have a chance to see it as a pinprick of light in the sky in a live webcast.
The newfound near-Earth asteroid, called 2018 DV1, is about the size of a bus and will approach within 70,000 miles (113,000 kilometers) of Earth during its flyby, according to scientists with NASA's Asteroid Watch program. The asteroid is about 23 feet (7 meters) wide, the program's asteroid-tracking widget stated.
The Virtual Telescope Project will host a free webcast, led by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi in Ceccano, Italy, for the event. The webcast will feature views of the asteroid as seen by a 16-inch (41 centimeters) robotic telescope at the Tenagra Observatories in Arizona. You can watch the webcast live hereFriday, beginning at 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT). [In Photos: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
Astronomers using a telescope at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona first spotted asteroid 2018 DV1 on Monday (Feb. 26), according to an updatefrom the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This NASA graphic shows the orbit of asteroid 2018 DV1 in relation to Earth. The asteroid will fly within 70,000 miles (113,000 kilometers) of Earth on March 2, 2018.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Friday's asteroid flyby comes on the heels of another close encounter by the asteroid 2018 DU on Sunday (Feb. 25). That asteroid got within about 196,000 miles (315,000 km) of Earth during that flyby.
The Virtual Telescope Project is also tracking another asteroid, called 2017 VR12, as it makes its ownclose flyby of Earth on March 7. The asteroid will be nearly 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) from Earth at its closest point during the flyby.
According to the Minor Planet Center, asteroid 2017 VR12 is 492 to 1,542 feet (150 to 470 m) wide. That size, combined with its flyby distance to Earth, qualifies the object as a "potentially dangerous" asteroid. But that doesn't mean you should panic; NASA classifies any near-Earth asteroid that is larger than 492 feet across in an orbit that approaches within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) as a potentially hazardous object.
This NASA graphic shows the orbit of asteroid 2018 DV1 in relation to Earth. The asteroid will fly within 70,000 miles (113,000 kilometers) of Earth on March 2, 2018.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Friday's asteroid flyby comes on the heels of another close encounter by the asteroid 2018 DU on Sunday (Feb. 25). That asteroid got within about 196,000 miles (315,000 km) of Earth during that flyby.
The Virtual Telescope Project is also tracking another asteroid, called 2017 VR12, as it makes its own close flyby of Earth on March 7. The asteroid will be nearly 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) from Earth at its closest point during the flyby.
According to the Minor Planet Center, asteroid 2017 VR12 is 492 to 1,542 feet (150 to 470 m) wide. That size, combined with its flyby distance to Earth, qualifies the object as a "potentially dangerous" asteroid. But that doesn't mean you should panic; NASA classifies any near-Earth asteroid that is larger than 492 feet across in an orbit that approaches within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) as a potentially hazardous object.
Black-Hole Bursts Turn 'Mini-Neptunes' into Rocky 'Super-Earths'
Black-Hole Bursts Turn 'Mini-Neptunes' into Rocky 'Super-Earths'
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com Contributor
A Neptune-like planet's atmosphere (foreground) is swept backward by radiation from an outburst at the center of the Milky Way (right).
Credit: M. Weiss/CfA
Monster black holes near the center of our Milky Way galaxy may have transformed "mini-Neptune" exoplanets into rocky super-Earths, new research shows.
Supermassive black holes are thought to reside at the centers of most, if not all, large galaxies. They gobble up surrounding matter and, in turn, generate bright flares of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation.
The new findings suggest that these powerful bursts could strip nearby exoplanets of their thick, gaseous atmosphere, leaving behind a bare, rocky core. These rocky bodies would likely be heavier than Earth, making them so-called super-Earths, according to a statement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]
"It's pretty wild to think of black holes shaping the evolutionary destiny of a planet, but that very well may be the case in the center of our galaxy," lead study author Howard Chen, a researcher at the Northwestern University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in the statement.
In the study, the researchers examined the environment surrounding Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole that lurks in the center of our galaxy, around 25,000 light-years from Earth.
"We wondered what these outbursts from Sagittarius A* would do to any planets in its vicinity," study co-author John Forbes, of the CfA, said in the statement. "Our work shows the black hole could dramatically change a planet's life."
Specifically, the researchers studied the effect that the high-energy radiation from Sagittarius A* has on exoplanets that are located less than 70 light-years from the black hole and have masses somewhere between Earth's and Neptune's. These exoplanets can be known as "super-Earths" because they are bigger than our rocky, oceanic Earth, or "mini-Neptunes" because they are smaller than the cold, gas-shrouded Neptune.
The new study shows that the high-energy radiation from Sagittarius A* could blow away a large amount of the thick, gaseous atmosphere of Neptune-like planets near the black hole and leave behind rocky super-Earths, according to the statement.
"These super-Earths are one of the most common types of planet that astronomers have discovered outside our solar system," study co-author Avi Loeb, of the CfA, said in the statement. "Our work shows that in the right environment they might form in exotic ways."
In fact, the recent findings suggest that this process may be the most common way in which rocky super-Earths form near the center of the Milky Way, the researchers said.
It is possible that some of these planets may be found in the habitable zone of a star, where temperatures are just right for liquid water, and perhaps life, to exist. However, it would be difficult for any life to arise in the challenging environment of the galactic center, due to damaging supernova explosions, high-energy gamma-rays and additional black-hole outbursts, which could completely erode a planet's atmosphere, according to the study.
Furthermore, a passing star could cause gravitational disruptions that would tear the planet away from its life-sustaining host star. Such disruptions may be more common in areas packed with stars, such as Sagittarius A*, the researchers said.
"It is generally accepted that the innermost region of the Milky Way is not favorable for life," Loeb said. But "even though the deck seems stacked against life in this region, the likelihood of panspermia, where life is transmitted via interplanetary or interstellar contact, would be much more common in such a dense environment. This process might give life a fighting chance to arise and survive."
Detecting exoplanets near the core of the Milky Way is challenging due to its distance from Earth, abundance of stars and thick clouds of dust and gas that block light. However, larger, next-generation, ground-based telescopes — such as the European Extremely Large Telescope — could help to overcome these challenges by searching for "transits," in which an exoplanet orbits in front of its star.
Another method that could prove useful for detecting these elusive exoplanets involves searching for stars with traces of unusual elements in their atmospheres that would indicate that the star has migrated away from the center of the galaxy, the researchers said in the statement.
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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.