{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 21:09 geschreven door peter  

Humanity has contended with rising seas before — and it didn’t go well for us

BY ALEXANDRU MICU

Some 7,600 years ago, human civilization in Southeastern Europe suddenly came to a halt. New research sought answers as to why this happened, and the findings paint a stark reminder of the toll rising seas can inflict on our society.

Coccolithophore Emiliana huxleyi.

Image credits Jörg Bollmann.

The Neolithic revolution was the first major transformation humanity had paused — the transition foraging to farming. Spreading out from the Middle East, this wave of change took peoples used to hunt and forage wherever they pleased and tied them down, hoe in hand, to sedentary — but oh so lucrative — farms and fields.

Can’t till the sea, though

Around 7,600 years ago, however, the revolution paused — no new agricultural settlements seemed to pop up in Southeastern Europe around the time, existing communities declined, and the progress of civilization as a whole came to a standstill. Up until now, we didn’t have any inkling as to why this happened, but new research from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and the University of Toronto sheds some light on this mysterious period.

According to their findings, this lull in progress was due to an abrupt rise in sea levels in the northern Aegean Sea. Evidence of this event was calcified in the fossils of tiny marine algae preserved in seafloor sediments.

The impact this event had on societal dynamics and overall development during the time highlights the potential economic and social threats posed by sea level rise in the future, the team says. Given that climate-change-associated changes in sea level are virtually unavoidable, the team hopes their findings will help us better prepare for the flooding ahead.

“Approximately 7,600 years ago, the sea level must have risen abruptly in the Mediterranean regions bordering Southeastern Europe. The northern Aegean, the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea recorded an increase of more than one meter. This led to the flooding of low-lying coastal areas that would have been ideal areas for settlement,” says lead author Professor Dr. Jens Herrle.

The findings are based on a sediment core retrieved from the sea floor of the northern Aegean Sea. Herrle and his team used this core to reconstruct salinity levels in this part of the Mediterranean from 11,000 and 5,000 years ago. However, the core was also rich in tiny, calcified fossils of Emiliania huxleyi, a coccolithophore (a species of photosynthesizing plankton that’s ubiquitous even today).

Analyzing them under a scanning electric microscope, the team observed significant size changes in these algae — which indicate a change in the salinity of surface water in the Aegean during their lifetime.

“These calcifying algae evidence two rapid decreases in the salt content, at approximately 8,400 and again 7,600 years ago, which can only be explained by the fact that a higher volume of low-saline surface water flowed from the Black Sea into the northern Aegean at these times,” Herrle explains.

Such a rapid rise in sea levels would need a source, and the team says, surprisingly, it can be traced back to North America:

“The source of this may have been Lake Agassiz in North America. This glacial meltwater lake was enclosed in ice and experienced a massive breach during this period, which emptied an enormous volume of water into the ocean.”

The evidence supports a link between the two timeouts in the Neolithic revolution and the flooding events. The event 8,400 years ago coincides with archaeological findings suggesting that settlements in low-lying areas were under significant hardship from encroaching seas and other associated climatic changes. The renewed rise just 800 years later likely amplified these communities’ woes, keeping them from making the transition to agriculture.

Past fluctuations in sea levels have already had a significant effect on human history during the early days of agriculture, the authors note, warning that it would be unwise to dismiss the challenges it will place in our path in the future.

“Due to climate change, we expect global sea levels to rise by up to one meter over the next 100 years,” Herrle adds. “Millions of people could thus be displaced from coastal regions, with severe social and economic consequences.”

The paper “Black Sea outflow response to Holocene meltwater events” has been publishedin the journal Scientific Reports.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 20:40 geschreven door peter  

This Is What the Entire Known Universe Looks Like in a Single Image

Budassi was able to do this by collecting maps, photographs, and data from Princeton researchers and NASA. In 2005, a team of Princeton researchers published a collection of logarithmic maps of the Universe in Astrophysical Journal (you can see them here). While they look more like charts than they do rich photographs, the researchers were able to accurately "display the entire range of astronomical scales from the Earth's neighborhood to the cosmic microwave background" to a logarithmic scale. Using this information, Budassi put together "Photoshop using images from NASA and some textures created [on] my own." The final result? Our weirdly eyeball-looking, not-exactly-to-scale-but-maybe-the-best-we-can-do-for-now Universe.

• To learn more about why the universe is flat, check out the course "The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries" by our partner The Great Courses Plus. Get a sneak peek below, and watch the rest of this video when you start a free trial here.

{ https://curiosity.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 20:11 geschreven door peter  

New spy plane can travel at five times the speed of sound

By Sean Keach, The Sun

Boeing

Boeing has finally unveiled a successor to the legendary Blackbird SR-71 spy plane, capable of traveling at five times the speed of sound.

The new “Son of Blackbird” was revealed at an event in Orlando, Florida, but it’s only a concept design for now.

The new aircraft will be a direct competitor to Lockheed Martin’s upcoming SR-72.

These rival firms are racing to create a hypersonic aircraft that’s capable of stealthy recon assignments — and strike missions, too.

Speaking to Aviation Week Aerospace Daily, Boeing’s hypersonics chief described how Boeing was planning a two-step development process for the new warplane.

The first stage would involve flight tests of an “F16-size, single-engine” precursor vehicle that acts as a “proof of concept.”

The second stage is the creation of a “twin-engine, full-scale operational vehicle” that has roughly similar dimensions to the 107-foot-long SR-71.

Boeing’s end goal is an aircraft that can travel at speeds beyond Mach 5 — that’s five times the speed of sound.

The speed of sound — or Mach 1 — is around 767 miles per hour. So hitting Mach 5 would mean the Son of Blackbird would have to travel at an incredible 3,836 miles per hour.

For comparison, a Boeing 747 passenger jet typically reaches cruising speeds of just 549 miles per hour.

The tricky part is that the SR-71 replacement needs to be able to take off, accelerate, slow down and land all on its own — just like the original 1964 model.

Boeing is looking at using a conventional turbojet to hit Mach 3, then switching to a different configuration to boost beyond Mach 5.

Sadly, there’s no guarantee when Boeing will have a sky-ready model, so we’ll just have to drool over concept renderings for now.

{ https://nypost.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 20:01 geschreven door peter  

Kim Wilde claims UFO sighting inspired her to return to music

By Kathleen Joyce | Fox News

Kim Wilde said an encounter with a UFO in 2009 inspired her to make a music comeback.  

(YouTube)

“Kids in America” singer Kim Wilde said an encounter with a UFO in 2009 was one of the reasons she decided to return to music and make a comeback.

Wilde told the BBC after leaving the music business she got married and raised her children. However, two events pushed her to come back and give music a second chance.

Wilde claims she had an encounter with a UFO in 2009. She said she was sitting in the garden at her home with a glass of wine when she saw something.

"Then I looked up in the sky and saw this huge bright light behind a cloud. Brighter than the moon, but similar to the light from the moon,” she said.

"I said to my husband and my friend, 'that's really odd,' so we walked down the grass and looked to see if there was any source. All of a sudden it moved, very quickly, from about 11:00 to 1:00. Then it just did that, back and forth, for several minutes,” Wilde recalled.

"Whenever it moved, something shifted in the air - but it was silent. Absolutely silent."

The singer said she thinks about the moment every day and it gave her an idea for her new album, “Here Comes the Aliens.”

She sings on the album that maybe the aliens will “save us from the apocalypse.”

"Perhaps that's completely naïve," she laughs. "Why wouldn't they be angry with us and fling us off this beautiful earth that we're ruining? I can't deny we haven't been a terrible disappointment,” Wilde said.

She said her career started to flatline in the 1990s when she became older and felt she could not keep up.

"I'd been in it since I was 20, then I was 36 and everyone, I felt, was doing it a lot better than I was. They had the ambition that I didn't have any more. When Madonna came along, I didn't feel I could compete, so I said, 'You know what? You're best off being who you are, and that's going to have to be enough,’” Wilde told the BBC. "Sometimes it was, and a lot of the time it wasn't."

Wilde announced she would be starting her comeback tour on March 30. 

{http://www.foxnews.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 19:51 geschreven door peter  

23-03-2018 om 19:32 geschreven door peter  

23-03-2018 om 19:20 geschreven door peter  

Tiny Mummy’s ‘Alien’ Appearance Finally Explained

23-03-2018 om 18:35 geschreven door peter  

Third DoD UFO video is posted with Washington Post article

To the Stars Academy (TTSA) posted a third Department of Defense (DoD) UFO video in coordination with the posting of an opinion piece by TTSA member Chris Mellon in The Washington Post. Mellon is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence. He served during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Mellon is a current the national security affairs advisor for TTSA.

This video is perhaps the most impressive, but very few details about the video were released, and although most of the media attention has been supportive of the DoD’s UFO program, some doubts and confusion have also arisen.

The new video is being referred to by the TTSA as the “2015 GO FAST FOOTAGE.” According to TTSA, this video, as with the others, is from the Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) system of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet. The actual footage of the object is a little over 30 seconds long. The TTSA video presenting the footage is about two minutes long with an introduction that includes a description of the telemetry seen on the screen of the ATFLIR system.

Two Navy jet-fighter pilots are commenting on the object in the video. Both appear to be very excited about the object. When the video starts, the UFO darts across the screen as the ATFLIR operator is attempting to get a lock on it, which he finally does. The object seems to be moving very fast below the jet-fighter. The telemetry shows that the aircraft capturing the video is at 25,000 feet traveling at 259 knots (approximately 300 mph).

The object appears to be round. ATFLIR displays heat, but as demonstrated in a graphic on the TTSA website, aircraft shape is still discernible with these systems, and in this case, no wings or exhaust are apparent.

The ATFLIR display reveals significant information regarding flight conditions and characteristics of the imagery.

(Credit: To the Stars Academy)

As to when and where this video comes from, we have only a couple of pieces of information. The TTSA website states, “The date, location, and other information has been removed by the originating authority as part of the release approval process.” However, the title indicates the video is from 2015. Also, in the Washington Post article, Mellon describes the video as a “Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015.”

Chris Mellon

(Credit: To the Stars Academy)

It should be noted that these videos have were all posted by TTSA. The DoD has not directly provided them to anyone else, yet. TTSA notes on the GO FAST video, “While TTSA was the first to obtain a copy, it should be available to any member of the press or public via the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA].” However, of the several researchers who have submitted FOIA request I am aware of, none have received copies of the videos. In fact, the responses the DoD have given are a bit odd.

John Greenewald of TheBlackVault.com is an experienced FOIA researcher with perhaps the most extensive online repository of documents received via FOIA requests. Greenewald has several FOIAs filed in regards to these videos and their release. One of the first he submitted was for the records of Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), the agency that investigated these videos and determined them to be unknown. Greenewald also sent a FOIA to the National Security Agency (NSA) for information about AATIP. In both cases, he was told no records exist. The response may be due to the way in which the requests were submitted. For instance, when he filed the first FOIA, he was not sure of the exact name of the DoD UFO program. In the second FOIA, he was asking for NSA records in a particular database which may not have records on AATIP. Greenewald says over the phone an NSA representative did confirm to him the name of the program is Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program. AATIP has been called Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program, among other variations. Apparently, the NSA is aware of the program.

FOIA response received by Greenewald.

(Credit: John Greenewald/TheBlackVault.com)

Government UFO documents researcher Paul Dean has filed a FOIA requesting the forms regarding the declassification of the videos. The response he received says his request “has been placed in our [Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff] complex processing queue and is being worked based on the order in which the request was received. Our current administrative workload is approximately 2,246 open requests.”

It may be some time before Dean receives any further information. All of this indicates that TTSA’s suggestion that researchers use FOIA to obtain more information is going to be a lengthy and challenging process.

The documents are particularly relevant because there have been some mixed messages from government agencies. Although the DoD confirmed to the New York Times that AATIP existed, according the UK tabloid The Sun, a spokesperson for the U.S., Defense Intelligence Agency told them “There is some confusion about this program and claims about its purpose in press reporting… the Defense Intelligence Agency has not released any information, files or videos.”

More recently, an article covering skeptic perspectives on the videos in CNET claims a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense said “The Department of Defense did not release those videos. I cannot confirm their authenticity. I don’t have any additional info to provide.”

Still, despite these confusing statements, mainstream media seems to mostly be taking Elizondo’s word in regards to his conclusions regarding the mysterious nature of the videos. Senator Harry Reid and Navy pilots have backed his claims. However, even though Elizondo says AATIP still operates today, most mainstream media outlets are still reporting that the program closed in 2012. That is when the DoD says they stopped funding AATIP. Elizondo says AATIP continued after 2012, and he told me that since he left AATIP this past October, a high ranking official has replaced him as the chief of the program. In his interview for the International UFO Congress, Elizondo explained that after they lost funding, “we very quickly continued our efforts and we started to dual-use a lot of what we were doing.”

“…as an example, one may be interested in putting out a requirement looking for let’s say advanced ICBM technology,” Elizondo continued. “So you would go out, and you would ask folks, ‘I want you to be able to give me a paper that helps me understand anything coming into Earth’s orbit with these particular profiles.’ So hypersonic velocities, loads over ability et cetera, and what might be useful for let’s say identifying North Korean ICBM missiles coming into the continental United States could also be useful in identifying other objects, things that are coming in with that same flight pattern but not necessarily a ballistic missile.”

Luis Elizondo during the International UFO Congress interview filmed by To the Stars Academy.

(Credit: International UFO Congress/To the Stars Academy)

In an interview on Open Minds UFO Radio, Leslie Kean, one of the authors of the New York Times article that broke the AATIP story in December, referred to a memo regarding the release of the videos by the DoD. She was not at liberty to share the document with the public at that time. The release of this memo would help clear up some of the questions.

Despite the many loose ends and unanswered questions dangling out there, the media seems to be accepting that indeed UFOs are a real phenomenon in which the U.S. government has had an interest. The gist of Mellon’s Washington Post article, titled “The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?,” is that it is time the U.S. government take this issue more seriously.

When asked by a BBC Radio 5 host what the military should do about UFOs, Mellon responded, “The first thing we need to do for national security and scientific reasons is to increase collection, analysis and research and development.”

“We have in existence proof here that there are propulsion capabilities and aeronautical capabilities beyond what we have,” Mellon explained. “Ergo, we ought to expand research and development in promising leads that might provide us with similar capabilities. At the same time, we can easily and dramatically expand our knowledge and understanding simply by putting someone in charge and try to answer the question.”

According to Mellon, various government agencies and branches of the military do have an interest in UFO incidents, but they do not share information with each other. Nor do they apply the necessary resources to figure it out. He seems to agree that these cases Elizondo has identified as significant are worthy of a renewed effort to take a serious look, with the appropriate resources, at the UFO phenomenon.

Mellon writes, “…the national security implications of these incidents are concerning — but the scientific opportunities are thrilling. Who knows what perils we may avoid or opportunities we might identify if we follow the data?”

• Note: This article was updated on March 22 as a result of a clarification by Leslie Kean. The DoD memo regarding the release of the videos was in the possession of the authors of the New York Times article posted on December 16, 2017. She is not aware of whether TTSA also has a copy of the memo. She adds, “there is absolutely no question that the videos were cleared by the DOD from their files.”

{ http://www.openminds.tv/ }

23-03-2018 om 17:57 geschreven door peter  

New LightSail 2 Spacecraft Will Boost Solar-Sailing Interplanetary Missions

23-03-2018 om 13:03 geschreven door peter  

This Military Device Uses Lasers to Scream, Flash, and Burn Clothes

 

Getty Images

23-03-2018 om 12:48 geschreven door peter  

Graham Hancock: An Entire Episode Of The Human Story Has Been Lost

Hancock describes an advanced civilization very different from our own, with advanced technological skills. This should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve, but it was brought into use almost overnight.

Amazing research and presentation. still coming into grasps with this. but really angry of those mainstream academics from the Dark-ages for freezing funds towards discovery and research.

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

23-03-2018 om 12:37 geschreven door peter  

Pentagon’s New Arms-Research Chief Eyes Space-Based Ray Guns

BY PATRICK TUCKERTECHNOLOGY EDITOR READ BIO

Neutral-particle beams, a concept first tried in the 1980s, may get a fresh look under Michael Griffin.

The next thing in space-based weapons could be decades old, according to Michael Griffin, the first defense undersecretary for research and engineering.

“Directed energy is more than just big lasers,” Griffin said. “That’s important. High-powered microwave approaches can effect an electronics kill. The same with the neutral particle beam systems we explored briefly in the 1990s” for use in space-based anti-missile systems. Such weapons can be “useful in a variety of environments” and have the “advantage of being non-attributable,” meaning that it can be hard to pin an attack with a particle weapon on any particular culprit since it leaves no evidence behind of who or even what did the damage.

Like lasers, neutral-particle beams focus beams of energy that travel in straight lines, unaffected by electromagnetic fields. But instead of light, neutral-particle beams use composed of accelerated subatomic particles traveling at near-light speed, making them easier to work with (though the folks that run CERN’s hadron collider may disagree). When its particles touche the surface of a target, they takes on a charge that allows them to penetrate the target’s shell or exterior more deeply.

This all makes neutral-particle beams attractive as space-based anti-missile systems. Over the years, various defense companies have released mockups of proposed designs that seem to come out of an issue of Popular Mechanics circa 1950.

The Pentagon first tested the concept in the late 1980s as part of a program called the Neutral Particle Beam, or NPB. According to a 1990 writeup that military scientists sent to lawmakers, it explored the possibility of a space-based weapon that could “kill missiles and reentry vehicles in the boost, post-boost, and mid-course portion of an ICBM trajectory as well as discriminated objects during the midcourse phase” — meaning a defensive system that could  knock out missiles as they were leaving the launch pad or flying in space toward their target.

{ http://www.defenseone.com/}

23-03-2018 om 12:28 geschreven door peter  

Commercial Plane over Turkey almost hit by UFO

Kerry John together with his wife flew over Turkey somewhere over Izman and Khios Sea heading into Athens around 4.30 pm on March 21, 2018 when they noticed something that appears to be flying away at right angles from the commercial jet and somehow without either of them appearing to turn they end up almost following the black object.

Kerry states: In my days I was the vice president of the UFO society in Canberra Australia. We investigated sightings but I must admit this was odd even for me.

It was obviously close as the angle relative to the plane changed quite rapidly.

Up at altitude we often see in undisturbed air as this was a very calm air, white streaks like fine layers of crystalline clouds.

This was spotted by my wife a little before I filmed it. It was a thin black line. When I first saw it and to me incorrectly, it appeared to turn straight towards the plane I thought I had seconds to live and was relieved to realize it was facing away and we appeared to fly by.

Note: Black object is a UFO or a Missile? In case it is a missile better you think twice before you take a commercial plane that flies over Turkey!

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

23-03-2018 om 11:58 geschreven door peter  

A Viking spacecraft image of the Tharsis region of Mars. The scene shows the Tharsis bulge, a huge ridge covered by the 3 large aligned Tharsis Montes shield volcanoes (from lower left to right): Arsia, Pavonis, and Ascraeus Mons. To the left of the Tharsis Montes lies the huge Olympus Mons shield volcano. Read more about this image here.

Image via NASA/JPL/USGS.

A new study suggests oceans on Mars were shallower and formed several hundred million years earlier than thought, and links their existence to the rise of the planet’s Tharsis volcano system.

Tharsis is a vast volcanic plateau centered near the equator in Mars’ western hemisphere. The region is home to the largest volcanoes in our solar system.

Michael Manga, a University of California, Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science, is senior author of the paper, published Monday (March 19, 2018) in the journal Nature. Manga said in a statement:

Volcanoes may be important in creating the conditions for Mars to be wet.

The early ocean known as Arabia (left, blue) would have looked like this when it formed 4 billion years ago on Mars, while the Deuteronilus ocean, about 3.6 billion years old, had a smaller shoreline. Both coexisted with the massive volcanic province Tharsis, located on the unseen side of the planet, which may have helped support the existence of liquid water. The water is now gone, perhaps frozen underground and partially lost to space, while the ancient seabed is known as the northern plains.

Image via Robert Citron/UC Berkeley.

Those who adhere to the theory that Mars never had oceans of liquid water often point out that estimates of the size of the oceans don’t jibe with estimates of how much water could be hidden on Mars today as permafrost underground, and how much could have escaped into space. These are the main options, scientists say, given that the polar ice caps don’t contain enough water to fill an ocean.

The new study proposes that the oceans formed before or at the same time as Mars’ largest volcanic feature, Tharsis, instead of after the volcanic system formed 3.7 billion years ago.

According to the study, Tharsis was smaller at that time, so it didn’t distort the planet as much as it did later – in particular the plains that cover most of the northern hemisphere and are the presumed ancient seabed.

The researchers say that the absence of crustal deformation from Tharsis means the seas would have been shallower, holding about half the water of earlier estimates. Manga said:

The assumption was that Tharsis formed quickly and early, rather than gradually, and that the oceans came later. We’re saying that the oceans predate and accompany the lava outpourings that made Tharsis.

Tharsis, now a 3,000-mile-wide (5,000 km) eruptive complex, dominates the topography of Mars. Earth, which is twice the diameter and 10 times more massive than Mars, has no equivalent dominating feature. Tharsis’ bulk creates a bulge on the opposite side of the planet and a depression halfway between. This explains why estimates of the volume of water the northern plains could hold based on today’s topography are twice what the new study estimates based on the topography 4 billion years ago.

The scientists suggest that Tharsis spewed gases into the atmosphere that created a global warming or greenhouse effect that allowed liquid water to exist on the planet, and also that volcanic eruptions created channels that allowed underground water to reach the surface and fill the northern plains.

A map of Mars today shows where scientists have identified possible ancient shoreline that may have been etched by intermittent oceans billions of years ago. The new study counters another argument against Mars oceans: that the proposed shorelines are irregular, varying in height by as much as a kilometer, when they should be level, like shorelines on Earth. The study says the irregular elevations of these shorelines can be explained by the growth of the volcanic province called Tharsis some 3.7 billion years ago, which would have deformed the topography and misaligned the shorelines. Arabia (magenta) is more than 4 billion years old, while the Deuteronilus (white) and Isidis (cyan) shoreline are several million years younger. The solid contour lines represent the Tharsis bulge (left) and the antipodal bulge it created (right), with dashed contour lines indicating the depressions in between.

Image via Robert Citron/UC Berkeley.

Bottom line: A new study links water oceans on ancient Mars to the rise of the planet’s Tharsis volcano system.

Read more from UC Berkeley

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

23-03-2018 om 01:28 geschreven door peter  

The craft’s last data reveal new details about the gas planet’s clouds and rings

BY 

LISA GROSSMAN 

 

COMING INTO FOCUS  Saturn shines in this Cassini image taken in October 2013. Even though the spacecraft is gone, scientists are still learning from its 13 years’ worth of data.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA, SSI, CORNELL UNIV.

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — It’s been six months since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft plunged to its doom in the atmosphere of Saturn, but scientists didn’t spend much time mourning. They got busy, analyzing the spacecraft’s final data.

The Cassini mission ended September 15, 2017, after more than 13 years orbiting Saturn (SN Online: 9/15/17). The spacecraft’s final 22 orbits, dubbed the Grand Finale, sent Cassini into the potentially dangerous region between the gas giant and its rings, and its final orbit sent it directly into Saturn’s atmosphere.

That perspective helped solve mysteries about the planet and its moons that could not be tackled any other way, scientists said March 19 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

“In so many ways, the Grand Finale orbits provided information that was totally unexpected,” said Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “So many of our models were not correct.”

Here are five things we now know and a few outstanding mysteries.

1. Saturn’s clouds go deep

Those final daredevil orbits allowed Cassini to measure the gravity of Saturn and its rings independent of one another. Looking at the planet’s gravity field alone revealed that the swirling bands of clouds penetrate much deeper into the planet than expected.

Astronomers this month announced a similar discovery for an even larger gas giant, reporting that the Juno spacecraft, which is orbiting Jupiter, had found that the planet’s rotating cloud belts reach roughly 3,000 kilometers below the top of the atmosphere.

Saturn’s clouds reach a few times deeper than that. “This was an astonishing result,” Spilker said.

“People used to think that maybe Saturn was just a slightly smaller version of Jupiter, but it’s evident that that’s not the case,” says planetary scientist Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, who was not involved in the gravity measurements. The difference speaks to how diverse planets are, he says. “Every place you look, everywhere we’ve been to, it’s just been so dramatically different and unique.”

2. Ring rain is eroding the innermost ring

Grains of ice from the rings are raining down into Saturn’s atmosphere, Cassini’s final orbits confirmed. This “ring rain” idea has been suggested since the 1980s, but only by tasting the atmosphere and directly sampling the space between Saturn and the rings could Cassini confirm the rains are real.

In its last five full orbits, Cassini found a zoo of organic molecules in and just above Saturn’s atmosphere, said planetary scientist Kelly Miller of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The spacecraft found a lot of water, which wasn’t surprising — water makes up about 90 percent of the rings. But there were also a lot of hydrocarbons similar to propane, plus some methane and sulfur-bearing molecules.

The types of molecules became less well-mixed as the spacecraft looked deeper into Saturn’s atmosphere, which is what would happen if the particles came from the rings and sank at different speeds. The researchers think this material is especially raining from Saturn’s D ring, the thin innermost ring. Other Cassini data suggest this ring is losing mass.

“The D ring is slowly being eroded away and going into the planet,” Spilker said.

3. Organics could explain mysterious ring hues

The organics in the ring rain could solve a debate about why Saturn’s rings appear reddish in some spots.

“We’ve had this debate going on for a couple of years now — are they red because of good old-fashioned rust like Mars, or because of the same kinds of organic materials … that make carrots and tomatoes and watermelon red?” said planetary scientist Jeff Cuzzi of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “To me, this answers the question of what makes the rings red: It’s organics.”

It’s still not clear where the organics come from, though. They could be created within the rings, or they could come from cosmic dust from the tails of comets. Miller and her colleagues are comparing the ring rain molecules with data on comet 67P, which the Rosetta spacecraft observed, to see how well they match up (SN: 11/11/17, p. 32).

4. Titan’s “magic islands” aren’t islands, or bubbles

Mysterious disappearing features in the lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan are caused by sunlight reflecting off giant waves, said planetary scientist Alexander Hayes of Cornell University.

SUN GLINT This infrared image taken by Cassini in 2014 shows a bright, mirrorlike reflection (yellow spot at upper left) in Kraken Mare, a northern sea on Saturn’s moon Titan. That reflection combined with radar data suggests that what were thought to be mysterious disappearing islands in the sea are actually tall waves.

JPL-CALTECH/NASA, UNIV. OF ARIZONA, UNIV. OF IDAHO

These features were named “magic islands” when they were first spotted in 2014. As recently as April 2017, planetary scientists thought they had the islands solved: They seemed to be the result of champagnelike bubbles of nitrogen burbling through the moon’s methane and ethane seas (SN Online: 4/18/17).

But Hayes presented newly analyzed data from August 2014, when Cassini looked at Kraken Mare, the moon’s largest northern sea, in radar and infrared wavelengths within two hours of each other. The radar images showed a magic island, and the infrared ones showed a peak in brightness at the same spot.

Because the observations were taken two hours apart, the island probably couldn’t have been due to bubbles, Hayes said — bubbles would pop or disperse too quickly. Instead, he thinks the brightening could be the glint of sunlight reflecting directly off of giant waves on the lake, like how the ocean ripples with gold at sunset. Simulations of Titan’s atmosphere suggest these waves could be raised by winds as slow as 0.5 meters per second, which would barely move a wind vane on Earth.

5. Enceladus’ plumes may brighten by the pull of another moon

Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus has plumes that may be driven by nudges from another moon.

The spurts of liquid water were discovered in 2006. Over the next six years, scientists noticed that the plumes varied in brightness (a proxy for how much material is gushing from the moon) on a daily cycle, probably driven by Saturn’s different positions in Enceladus’ sky.

Then, in 2015 some researchers noted that the plumes’ overall brightness had been decreasing since the beginning of the Cassini mission.

One possible explanation was that the plumes changed with Saturn’s seasons. Another was that ice built up in the vents, clogging them and decreasing the flow. But looking at the full 13-year dataset, planetary scientist Francis Nimmo found that the plumes grow brighter in a regular cycle every four and 11 years. The pattern is too coherent to be explained by clogged vents, said Nimmo, of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Oddly, the plume grew brighter in 2017, so the seasonal explanation doesn’t fit either.

The variations could be explained by a neighboring moon, Dione. Every time Dione and Enceladus line up, their gravitational stress on each other could force Enceladus’ vents open a bit more, causing the plumes to grow brighter.

Unsolved enigmas

So far, analyzing data from Cassini hasn’t answered all of scientists’ questions. Is Enceladus the only moon with plumes? Dione showed signs of activity, too, but Cassini wasn’t able to confirm it. How thick is Enceladus’ ice sheet? Why are Titan’s smaller lakes full of clear, pure methane, when scientists expected the lakes to be clogged with hydrocarbon silt?

Even though the spacecraft is gone, it left decades’ worth of data to sift through in search of answers. “Cassini is going to keep on giving as long as we keep looking,” Hayes said.

Editors’ note: This story was updated on March 21, 2018, to include the affiliations of Jeff Cuzzi and Francis Nimmo.

Citations

• L.J. Spilker and S.G. Edgington. A voyage into unique territory: Cassini’s Grand Finale. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 19, 2018.
• J.N. Cuzzi. Saturn’s rings after Cassini. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 19, 2018.
• K.E. Miller et al. Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer observes organic molecules in the upper atmosphere of Saturn. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 19, 2018.
• A. Hayes. Winds, waves and magic islands at Titan’s largest sea: Kraken Mare. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 19, 2018.
• C. Porco et al. Enceladus’ plume temporal variability from analysis of Cassini ISS Images. Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, March 19, 2018

Further Reading

• C. Crockett. 4 surprising things we just le }arned about Jupiter. Science News Online, March 7, 2018.
• L. Grossman. Saturn’s rings are surprisingly young and may be from shredded moons. Science News. Vol. 193, January 20, 2018, p. 7.
• L. Grossman. R.I.P. Cassini. Science News Online, September 15, 2017.
• L. Grossman. As Cassini’s tour of Saturn draws to a close, a look back at postcards from the probe. Science News. Vol. 192, September 2, 2017, p. 16.

{ https://www.sciencenews.org/ }

23-03-2018 om 01:14 geschreven door peter  

By Lee Speigel

In 2005, astronaut Leroy Chiao was commander of the International Space Station for six and a half months. During a spacewalk with cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov, the two were installing navigation antennas. They were 230 miles above Earth, traveling at over 17,000 miles per hour, when something unusual caught Chiao’s eye.

“I saw some lights that seemed to be in a line and it was almost like an upside-down check mark, and I saw them fly by and thought it was awfully strange,” Chiao told The Huffington Post.

Chiao’s fellow spacewalker, Sharipov, hadn’t seen the lights because he was facing the opposite direction.

This experience, recreated in the above video (and still image below), launches “NASA’s Unexplained Files,” one of several programs presented as part of Science Channel’s week-long “Are We Alone?“ series, beginning March 2.

A down-to-Earth explanation is offered for Chiao’s sighting: the bright lights of a fishing boat hundreds of miles below him. But is that the only possible interpretation of what the astronaut saw?

It’s easy for many to have no doubt that he witnessed an intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. But Chiao doesn’t believe there’s ever been any tangible evidence that someone else is visiting Earth or has done so in the past.

“I’m skeptical of claims that we’ve been visited by aliens from another planet or other dimension, but I don’t rule it out 100 percent. I have an open mind and I do believe there’s other life in the universe.

“If there is life out there that’s so much more advanced than we are and they know either how to travel great distances in short amounts of time, or they’re able to come from a parallel universe into ours, why don’t they just come and show themselves?”

“NASA’s Unexplained Files” episodes highlight possible out-of-this world UFOs either seen or photographed by astronauts over many years.

An alleged photographic piece of UFO evidence occurred on the 1972 Apollo 16 moon mission when astronauts returned to Earth with several film cannisters, one of which showed something intriguing above the lunar surface — something that looks very much like a “classic” flying saucer.

Watch this clip about the Apollo 16 object from ‘NASA’s Unexplained Files’:

Throughout the week, “Are We Alone?” targets both believers and skeptics with tantalizing presentations of:

“NASA’s Unexplained Files“ — exploring unusual discoveries and possible UFO sightings.

“Close Encounters“ — focusing on unsolved UFO stories and reports from around the world.

“Alien Planet Earths“ — zeroing in on the ongoing, exciting search for Earth’s twin planets that may harbor life.

“Through The Wormhole With Morgan Freeman“ — seeking answers to the question “Is God An Alien Concept?”

ANNOTATION: Astronaut Leroy Chiao contacted this writer to clarify the fishing boat theory about what he saw in 2005: “One minor point is that it wasn’t just one fishing boat, but a line of them strung out along the South American coast. That’s why it looked like five lights from the ISS.”

“Are We Alone?” week premieres on the Science Channel, Sunday, March 2 at 10:00 p.m. Check your local listings.

{ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 00:53 geschreven door peter  

Big harpoon is 'solution to space junk'

Jonathan AmosScience correspondent@BBCAmos

Airbus is testing a big harpoon to snare rogue or redundant satellites and pull them out of the sky.

The 1m-long projectile would be attached, through a strong tether, to a chase spacecraft.

Once the target was captured and under control, the chase vehicle would then drag its prey down into the atmosphere to burn to destruction.

Airbus has been working on the concept for a number of years now, developing ever bigger systems.

It is a response to the growing problem of orbital junk - old pieces of hardware that continue to circle the globe and which now pose a collision threat to operational satellites.

• UK 'space drones' look to Proton ride
• Old satellites will need 'rapid disposal'
• Space junk mission prepares for launch

Image copyrightES

Something in the region of 20,000 items of 10cm or larger are currently being tracked.

The latest Airbus harpoon is being designed with the capability to capture one of the biggest rogue items of the lot - Europe's defunct Envisat Earth observation platform.

This 8-tonne behemoth died suddenly in orbit in 2012. "Envisat is the outlier," explained advanced project engineer Alastair Wayman.

"If we can design a harpoon that can cope with Envisat, then it should be able to cope with all other types of spacecraft including the many rocket upper-stages that remain in orbit."

The testing at the aerospace company’s facility in Stevenage, UK, involves firing the harpoon, using compressed air, into a panel that is representative of the kinds of material used to build satellite structures.

Typically, this takes the form of 3cm-thick, composite honeycomb panels that incorporate a lot of aluminium.

"The harpoon goes through these panels like a hot knife through butter," said Mr Wayman.

"Once the tip is inside, it has a set of barbs that open up and stop the harpoon from coming back out. We'd then de-tumble the satellite with a tether on the other end."

This is where harpoons should come into their own, over other methods of capture such as nets and robotic arms. A harpoon is relatively simple. You line up the target and shoot.

"Many of these targets will be tumbling and if you were to use a robotic arm, say, that involves a lot of quite complex motions to follow your target," Mr Wayman explained.

"Whereas, with the harpoon, all you have to do is sit a distance away, wait for the target to rotate underneath you, and at the right moment fire your harpoon. And because it's a really quick event, it takes out a lot of the complexity."

You still have to bring the tumbling satellite under control using thrusters on the chase vehicle - but computer simulations show this should be possible.

The European Space Agency, which is responsible for Envisat, is considering all options at the moment, and the demonstration missions that fly in the next few years will almost certainly go for easier, more cooperative targets first. Indeed, a miniature version of the Airbus harpoon is set to launch next month on a mission called RemoveDebris.

This demonstrator satellite, developed at the Surrey Space Centre, will carry its own piece of junk which it will release and then attempt to retrieve. It will trial a net, but will perform a harpoon test as well to further knowledge about how such systems will behave in the weightless environment of space.

For the big harpoon back in Stevenage, it is now ready to move to its next development stage. This will involve firing the projectile over a distance of 25m, the sort of separation over which the real flight model would have to work.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

{ http://www.bbc.com/news }

23-03-2018 om 00:39 geschreven door peter  

2 Weeks Before His Death, Stephen Hawking Predicted ‘The End Of The Universe’

According to a report by the Sunday Times, the world-renowned astrophysicists’ co-authored a mathematical study in which he and his colleagues sought to prove the multiverse theory, and how different universes exist out there.

In addition, he also predicted how the universe we currently live in would eventually fade to darkness as stars throughout the cosmos run out of energy.

His last scientific paper—titled ‘A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation’—is currently being reviewed by a leading scientific journal and is expected to be accepted for publication shortly.

A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation collects concepts from his theory of the lack of limits, which states that the universe expanded from a small point after the Big Bang.

As explained by the Sunday Times, this new proposal suggests that this great explosion was only one of an infinite number of explosions that occurred, each of which created its own universe.

In this context, Thomas Hertog, who collaborated with Hawking, explained that the work makes the multiverse easier to understand, by making it “a verifiable scientific framework.”

However, upon closer inspection, and as explained by follow-up articles published by Gizmodo and the Register, the study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed actually leans away from the multiverse theory, as the two scientists concluded; “we conjecture that the exit from eternal inflation does not produce an infinite fractal-like multiverse, but is finite and reasonably smooth”.

However, in the study, research shows that, if the correct mathematical tools are used, a space probe capable of discovering its existence could be sent. These mathematical tools are explored in the new study waiting to be peer-reviewed.

If this proposal of the British astrophysicist had succeeded while Hawking was still alive, Hertog assured that it would have allowed him to obtain the Nobel prize that “he had wanted for so long.”

“This was Stephen: to boldly go where Star Trek fears to tread,” said Hertog, professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven University in Belgium.

“He has often been nominated for the Nobel and should have won it. Now he never can.”

However, this will not happen since the recognition is not delivered posthumously.

Meanwhile, the latest theory developed by the scientist is still being analyzed by specialists of the US scientific journal Physical Review Letters, who must give their approval before it is published.

A number of scientists around the world have said how Professor Hawking’s work may represent the breakthrough that cosmology needs, as it’s the first theory that may be verifiable through experiments.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

23-03-2018 om 00:15 geschreven door peter  

Some 70,000 years ago, a rogue star duo whooshed by our solar system — and early humans probably saw it

BY MIHAI ANDREI

If you happened to be alive 70,000 years ago, you might have witnessed an extremely rare event: a duo of rogue stars passing relatively close to the Sun — close enough to gravitationally disrupt the comets and asteroids in the outskirts of the solar system.

Artistic depiction of a brown dwarf.

Image credits: NASA / JPL.

In a time when humans were just leaving Africa and Neanderthals were still around, two small reddish stars were approaching our solar system. We now call them Scholz’s star, after the astronomer who discovered them (Ralf-Dieter Scholz). The system is currently some 20 light-years away from Earth, but 70,000 years ago, it was much closer. A team of astronomers now analyzed the orbit of nearly 340 objects in the solar system with hyperbolic orbits (very open, not quite typical elliptical), finding that the trajectory of some of them was influenced by Scholtz’s star. They report that some comets and asteroids in the Oort Cloud — the outer limit of our solar system — were disrupted by the passing of the star.

“Using numerical simulations we have calculated the radiants or positions in the sky from which all these hyperbolic objects seem to come,” explains Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, who together with the other coauthors publishes the results in the MNRAS Letters journal.

“In principle,” he adds, “one would expect those positions to be evenly distributed in the sky, particularly if these objects come from the Oort cloud; however, what we find is very different: a statistically significant accumulation of radiants. The pronounced over-density appears projected in the direction of the constellation of Gemini, which fits the close encounter with Scholz´s star.”

Despite the name, Scholz’s star is actually a binary system consisting of a red dwarf and brown dwarf, with the entire system having just 0.15 solar masses. Because it was so small, it didn’t disturb all the hyperbolic objects in the solar system. Authors explain that the disturbance might also just be a coincidence, completely unrelated to Schultz’s star — but since both the timing and the location of the disturbance fit so well, it’s highly unlikely.

Scholtz’s star passed approximately 52,000 astronomical units away from the Sun (1 astronomical unit is equivalent to the distance between the Earth and the Sun) — the equivalent of 0.82 lightyears. It’s estimated that a star passes through the Oort Cloud every 100,000 years. However, an approach closer than 50,000 astronomical units only happens every 9 million years, according to current models.

The results have been published in two papers:

• Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, Sverre J Aarseth. Where the Solar system meets the solar neighbourhood: patterns in the distribution of radiants of observed hyperbolic minor bodies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 2018; 476 (1): L1 DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/sly019
• Eric E. Mamajek, Scott A. Barenfeld, Valentin D. Ivanov, Alexei Y. Kniazev, Petri Väisänen, Yuri Beletsky, Henri M. J. Boffin. The closest known flyby of a star to the solar system. The Astrophysical Journal, 2015; 800 (1): L17 DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/800/1/L17

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

22-03-2018 om 23:53 geschreven door peter