Nearly 30 years ago, the Galileo spacecraft flew past Earth on its journey to Jupiter, prompting astronomer Carl Sagan to develop a novel experiment: to look for signs of life on Earth from space. The spacecraft found high levels of methane and oxygen, suggestions that photosynthesis was occurring on Earth’s surface. Now, astronomers have repeated the experiment, this time with an asteroid-bound spacecraft that swung around Earth in late 2017. It also found Earth to be teeming with life, but with an unsettling corollary: Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane were far higher than they were during the Galileo flyby.

“It’s a challenging intellectual enterprise,” says Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson and principal investigator of NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. “I really tried to channel Carl Sagan.”

The main goal of OSIRIS-REx is to return samples from Bennu, an asteroid as big as the Empire State Building. But during the Earth flyby—which brought the spacecraft 22 times closer to our planet than the moon—scientists pointed its instruments toward home.

The team spotted hurricanes Maria and Jose, and its spectrographs—used to detect gases based on the absorption of specific wavelengths of light passing through the atmosphere—recorded levels of methane, oxygen, and ozone far higher than values expected from a lifeless world. That implies that biological processes were creating these compounds, the team reported last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The researchers also found that visible light was being absorbed by Earth’s landmasses, a clear sign of photosynthesis.

And in an update to Galileo’s findings, OSIRIS-REx recorded methane and carbon dioxide values that were 12% and 14% higher, respectively, than they were in 1990. That’s not surprising, Lauretta says. Twenty-seven years ago, the world contained 2 billion fewer people and far fewer sources of pollution.

These OSIRIS-REx observations are an important test of what a habitable, life-filled planet looks like from afar, says Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the project. “These images and spectra underscore the dazzling possibilities for exoplanets.” But as scientists begin to comb through observations from distant worlds for signs of life, they’ll want to remember some sage advice from the Galileo team: Any measurements that suggest the existence of life must always be carefully scrutinized for other possible explanations. As they wrote, “Life is the hypothesis of last resort.”

{ http://www.sciencemag.org/ }

27-03-2018 om 23:14 geschreven door peter  

China is controle kwijt over ruimtestation dat binnenkort op Aarde terugvalt, maar er is geen reden tot paniek - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Op 29 september 2011 lanceerde Peking zijn eerste ruimtestation, de Tiangong-1 (‘Hemels Paleis’). Ondertussen heeft China de controle over het meer dan acht ton wegende ruimteschip, dat sinds 2013 niet meer operationeel was, verloren.Het ding komt dus sowieso naar beneden. Dat zal tussen 31 maart en 4 april gebeuren. Naar verwachting zal het ruimteschip volledig opbranden in de atmosfeer.Op 25 maart draaide de Tiangong-1 een baan met een gemiddelde hoogte van 216,2 km. Het embryonale ruimtestation was toen nog intact.

Lees ook

Op hol geslagen ruimtestation stort binnen enkele weken neer op aarde. Maar waar?

Het Europese Ruimtevaartbureau ESA voorziet de terugval tussen 30 maart en 2 april, al is dit volgens zijn Bureau voor Ruimteschroot “zeer variabel”. De terugkeer zal plaatsvinden tussen 43 graden noorder- en 43 graden zuiderbreedte. ESA waarschuwt dat het nooit het exacte tijdstip en exacte plaats zal kunnen inschatten.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

27-03-2018 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

Wetenschappers ontdekken “nieuw orgaan” in ons lichaam - HLN.be

Bron: The Independent, Scientific Reports, vrtnws

De lagen van het ‘interstitium’, zoals het netwerk wordt genoemd, werden lang beschouwd als dicht bindweefsel, maar nu blijken het minuscule reeksen vochthoudende kanaaltjes. Die zitten onder de huid, maar ook langs darmen, longen, bloedvaten en spieren. Samen vormen ze een netwerk dat ondersteund wordt door een raamwerk van sterke, flexibele eiwitten. De onderzoekers vermoeden dat de compartimentjes kunnen dienstdoen als schokbrekers die lichaamsweefsel beschermen tegen schade, en dat ze samen ongeveer een vijfde van het lichaamsvocht bevatten.

Levend weefsel

Hoe is het in godsnaam mogelijk dat dit nu pas wordt ontdekt? Dokters David Carr-Locke en Petros Benias van het Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center in New York stootten erop tijdens een kijkonderzoek van het galkanaal van een patiënt, waar ze aanwijzingen zochten van kanker. De camera gaf lichaamsweefsel vergroot weer, waardoor de artsen op patronen stootten die ze nog niet eerder hadden gezien. Zij namen vervolgens contact op met patholoog Neil Theise van de New York University. 

Maar het ging dus om een levende patiënt, terwijl traditioneel onderzoek dood lichaamsweefsel bestudeert waaruit vloeistoffen verwijderd zijn. De kanaaltjes werden dus doorgaans aanzien als een simpele laag bindweefsel, maar Theise ontwikkelde een techniek om het verwijderde weefsel in leven te houden. Dat is meteen ook zijn grote verdienste, zegt professor Patrick Pauwels, hoofd van de dienst Pathologische Anatomie van het UZ Antwerpen. Aan de VRT-nieuwsredactie legt hij uit dat de vloeistofstromen wel degelijk al langer gekend waren, maar dat het nu de eerste keer is dat ze in levend weefsel in detail bestudeerd werden mét het circulerende vocht erin.

Kanker

Theises team analyseerde nog stukjes galkanaal van twaalf andere patiënten en stelden vast dat de laag uitmondt in het lymfevatenstelsel, het netwerk van organen, vaten en weefsel waarin lymfe en lymfocyten zitten en getransporteerd worden. Dat is betrokken bij het afweersysteem van ons lichaam.

De onderzoekers vonden aanwijzingen dat kankercellen van tumoren via het interstitium in het lymfesysteem kunnen belanden. Het netwerk zou zo een rol kunnen spelen bij de verspreiding van kanker doorheen het lichaam, waardoor wetenschappers mogelijk nieuwe testen voor kanker zouden kunnen ontwikkelen.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

27-03-2018 om 22:46 geschreven door peter  

By Ed Mazza

Pilots on two separate aircraft reported an unidentified flying object high over southern Arizona last month.

One of them, a commercial pilot flying a passenger jet for American Airlines, said the object was above 40,000 feet and “had a big reflection.”

The Feb. 24th incident began when the pilot of a Learjet reported an object to Albuquerque Center air traffic control while flying over the desert in southeastern Arizona. 

“I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t an airplane but it was, the path was going in the opposite direction,” the pilot said. 

Air traffic controllers asked the pilot of a nearby American Airlines passenger jet traveling from San Francisco to Dallas to let them know if anything passes over the aircraft. 

“If anything passes over us?” the pilot asked, somewhat incredulously. 

A few minutes later, he saw it ― whatever “it” was. 

“Something just passed over us, like a, don’t know what it was, but it was at least two, three thousand feet above us,” he said. “Yeah it passed right over the top of us.”

The American Airlines pilot said he couldn’t make out what the object was but it “had a big reflection” and was going in the opposite direction.

“Was it a Google balloon?” a voice asked.

“Doubtful,” the pilot replied.

“UFO,” someone responded matter-of-factly.

Audio of the mysterious aircraft encounter was first posted on The Drive.

Two months later, it’s still not clear what was up there. 

“We don’t have any comment beyond what you hear,” FAA spokesperson Lynn Lunsford told KOB, the NBC station in Albuquerque. “Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area.”

The reported altitude would put the UFO well above the range of consumer drones. Yet the vague nature of the sightings doesn’t completely rule out balloons or experimental aircraft. 

The sightings occurred near the Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, and about 100 miles from Luke Air Force Base. Several other bases are within 500 miles. However, Lunsford implied that air traffic controllers would likely know if there was military aircraft in the air. 

“We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons,” Lunsford was quoted as saying. 

The location of the sightings was also about 500 miles west of one of the most famous UFO incidents in U.S. history: The 1947 UFO “crash” at Roswell, New Mexico. The federal government later said the object was a high-altitude balloon sent up to look for signs of a possible Soviet nuclear test. 

{https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ }

27-03-2018 om 22:23 geschreven door peter  

27-03-2018 om 22:05 geschreven door peter  

Moment UFOs spotted speeding past helicopter during rescue operation

IS it a bird? Is it a drone? Or something else entirely? Spooky footage captured the moment two UFOs appeared to soar past a rescue helicopter.

SPOOKY footage has captured two UFOs speeding past a helicopter, which was hovering over a crash site where survivors were being rescued.

The silver disc-shaped objects were captured flying behind the military chopper by a local news crew off the southwestern coast of France.

The startling footage from February 2014 has only just come to light after researcher Jason Gleave featured it in his new book UFO PHOTO, published by Flying Disk Press.

• MORE: Time traveller shares chilling warning about the future

A researcher used the latest computer technology to analyse the footage.

Source:Supplied

Jason Gleave, 46, who has studied the film using the latest computer technology, believes the objects are not drones or seagulls.

The former member of the RAF said: “Upon analysing the footage the twin objects pass to the rear of the helicopter at high velocity and dangerously close.

“Other theories as to what they could be are possible drones or even birds, but unlikely drones because they would not normally operate in such a close dangerous proximity to the rescue helicopter, due to the volatile unpredictable weather conditions.

“Upon closer analysis of the video frames the two objects stay together in flight, in a tight compact formation not deviating from each other.”

The UFOs pictured zooming past a helicopter in France.

Source:Supplied

Nick Pope, who ran the Ministry of Defence’s ‘UFO desk’ for three years, backed Gleave’s research.

He said: “Jason has been involved in researching and investigating UFOs and other mysteries (like many experts in this field, he uses the phrase ‘high strangeness events’ to describe a lot of this) for many years, but his particular area of expertise is imagery analysis.

“Jason has skill and experience in carefully examining photos and videos, sorting out the fact from the fiction.”

The story originally appeared in The Sun and has been republished with permission.

27-03-2018 om 21:46 geschreven door peter  

27-03-2018 om 21:32 geschreven door peter  

Looking up at the clouds, imagining shapes of fantastic creatures and scenes has been a pastime of humans since time immemorial. Now a video showing a cloud shaped in a perfect square, which is arguably the most boring shape of all, has been making the rounds on social media, leading some to link the bizarre weather phenomenon to supposed government attempts at geoengineering and weather control through the use of HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program), the often paranoia-inducing radio installation in Alaska.

The video, claimed to be filmed in Tuscon, Arizona and posted March 23, 2018, shows a large, thick cloud covering the sky on an otherwise clear day. As the camera moves to show more of the cloud it reveals perfect 90 degree angles and well defined edges against the backdrop of blue sky. It’s a noteworthy cloud, and it’s understandable that it would spark curiosity.

Of course, this square cloud video could be a hoax. That’s a reality in the age of easily accessible video effects tools and platforms to disseminate videos. This isn’t the first time square-shaped and other strange clouds have been seen, however, and it never fails to excite curiosity and speculation. After all, clouds aren’t known for their conformity to rigid geometry, and well defined angles and squares are rarely seen in nature.

See? Not a square in sight.

Why, though, are people jumping to the immediate conclusion that this strange weather phenomenon is due to HAARP and not something else? Is it merely because of HAARP’s notoriety and the fact that its name sounds like a comic book super-weapon, or are there specifics of the HAARP research program that would account for these mysterious clouds?

The video in question is on YouTube. Warning: spooky music.

Mysterious 'Square' Cloud Spotted in the Sky

Artist’s rendition of normal clouds.

HAARP is a research facility consisting of an array of high frequency transmitters in Gakona, Alaska. The facility was built in 1993 with the express purpose (as the HAARP FAQ explains) of artificially inducing rare weather phenomena, to better study otherwise obscure and unpredictable atmospheric events.

HAARP uses high-frequency radio transmissions to heat targeted areas of the ionosphere to artificially replicate disturbances that are found in nature. HAARP’s website lists a select few of the phenomena that can be replicated:

With a facility like HAARP, it is possible to perform an experiment at will to create plasma structures and irregularities, use the ionosphere like an antenna to excite low frequency waves, create weak luminous aurora-like glows and a variety of other experiments.

OK, so it’s definitely a weird facility. It’s too bad the “variety of other experiments” are not elaborated on, though it probably wouldn’t reveal much. HAARP denies that they’re hiding a weather control machine up in the frozen north, and they deny that the installation could be at all used to control the weather:

Radio waves  in the frequency ranges that HAARP transmits are not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere—the two levels of the atmosphere that produce Earth’s weather.  Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather. 

The HAARP system is basically a large radio transmitter.  Radio waves interact with electrical charges and currents, and do not significantly interact with the troposphere.

HAARP antenna array. You can see where the public relations problems might come from.

That doesn’t stop the speculation though. Government research into weather manipulation is a real thing, according to the CIA, and if HAARP had nothing to do with these strange clouds then they’re probably kicking themselves for putting this in their FAQ:

When Is the Next Scheduled Research Campaign?

Spring 2018. 

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

27-03-2018 om 21:18 geschreven door peter  

Earlier this month, Vox featured a video essay on its website examining “Why we imagine aliens the way we do.” Vox tells us:

“We often imagine extraterrestrials to look a certain way because we’ve encountered them in books, films, or TV shows, which means that when we’re thinking about aliens, we’re usually thinking about the product of someone else’s imagination.”

Vox is suggesting that we conceptualize aliens as we do almost entirely because of science fiction, in the form of books, movies, TV shows, etc. As I’ve shown in my own work, it’s not quite as simple as that. Vox’s video essay is interesting, but what it neglects to consider is the tremendous influence of the UFO subculture—a subculture sprung from what would appear to be an ontologically real phenomenon.

It is a common misconception that Hollywood pulls its alien imaginings out of thin air; in reality, the movie industry has been drawing creative inspiration from UFOlogy—from real-world reports of otherworldly encounters—for decades. Unidentified Flying Objects are “real,” which is to say they exist independently of cinema, and of pop-culture more broadly. UFOs have been investigated by governments around the world for almost seven decades. What the phenomenon represents is open for debate, but the point is that, even in a world without movies, people would continue to report UFOs. People were reporting UFOs comfortably before Hollywood got in on the act.

Indeed, the first reports of flying saucers in the modern UFO era pre-date Hollywood’s first feature film about UFOs by three years. It was in 1947 that pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting gave rise to the “flying saucer” term, but it wasn’t until 1950 that Hollywood produced The Flying Saucer, a cheap attempt to cash-in on the UFO hysteria then sweeping America—a hysteria incited not by cinema, but by numerous reports nationwide of disc-shaped objects intruding upon America’s airspace.

Ever since 1950, the movie industry has been grabbing hold of UFOlogical concepts and popularizing them through the science-fiction genre: “Men in Black,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “The Fourth Kind,” “Area 51.” Hollywood didn’t create these terms, they were all part of the common language of UFOlogy decades before Hollywood lifted them. The same is true of the now-iconic image of the “Gray” alien—a form that has its roots in pre-existing UFO literature and which has since has found its way into some of the most popular science-fiction movies and TV shows of all time.

The eponymous alien from the 2011 movie, ‘Paul,’ which drew heavily from UFO literature and debate.

A recurrent image in the Vox video is that of the Gray alien, but Vox makes no allusions to its UFOlogical origins; the implication is that Hollywood dreamed it up. In fact, descriptions of what we now call Grays were surfacing in real-world abduction accounts reported to Budd Hopkins and other researchers in the 1970s, and alleged abductee Travis Waltonhad described such entities as early as 1975. It wasn’t until two years later, in 1977, that Hollywood produced its first fully crystalized cinematic image of the Grays in Spielberg’s proudly UFOlogical Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Grays in the movie were based directly on first-hand testimonies gathered by Spielberg’s production designer, Joe Alves.

I interviewed Alves in 2014. He told me: “I talked to a lot of legitimate people… who described to me very simplistic creatures with large eyes and small mouths, no nose.” Based on what he heard during his research for Close Encounters, Alves began conceptualizing the alien beings. “The descriptions I heard were of these big-eyed things with small mouths and no nose, long fingers, that kind of thing.”

Close Encounters was tremendously successful, but it wasn’t until the late-1980s that the big black eyes of the Gray began to penetrate the popular consciousness. Key to this was Whitley Strieber’s 1987 nonfiction Communion, based on his own claimed experiences with alien beings. Communion was adapted for Hollywood in 1989; its poster featured a full-face image of a Gray, staring hypnotically into the eyes of millions of creeped-out cinemagoers worldwide. Then followed Intruders(1992), a miniseries based directly on real-world descriptions of Grays as documented in abduction literature. More Grays would then appear in The X-Files (1993-), Babylon 5 (1994-1998), Dark Skies (1996-1997), and others. By the late-1990s, the image of the Gray had supplanted almost all other pre-existing cultural imaginings of what an alien might look like.

In Hollywood’s UFO movies, broadly speaking, art imitates life. If the opposite were true, then following the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time, we might reasonably have expected thousands of people to have begun reporting ten-foot-tall blue aliens. This did not happen; just as Hollywood’s forceful projection of the “little green men” meme has failed to result in mass sightings of little green men (although reports of such entities do lightly pepper the UFO literature).

When it comes to UFOs and aliens, Hollywood produces depictions, albeit not entirely faithful ones, of what people actually report. This is not to say that what’s reported is necessarily true or accurate, but merely that Hollywood sees dramatic potential in these reports. The resulting cinematic imagery then plants itself into our pop-cultural landscape, influencing our perceptions and expectations of alien life and contact.

So, we should keep in mind that a significant factor in why we imagine aliens as we do is that people across the decades claim to have encountered them in real life; these individuals have then reported their alien encounters to interested parties, and the details of these cases have been gradually appropriated by Hollywood for entertainment purposes, devaluing the original reports while transforming fact-based ufological detail into sci-fi iconography. So, while it’s certainly fair to say that Hollywood is the force primarily responsible for shaping popular expectations of alien life and visitation, let us not forget the immense debt Hollywood owes to UFOlogy.

27-03-2018 om 21:02 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious RED MIST GLOW at the International Space Station

A really strange event happened yesterday when a massive red mist glow appeared in Space. The International Space Station was also completely surrounded by the red mist glow.

A few days earlier a bizarre phenomenon has occurred in four countries, where strange orange snow has fallen in Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania, turning ski resorts into ‘apocalyptic’ looking scenes.

News reports say that the orange snow was likely the result of winds blowing sand from the Sahara desert but is it really just sand blowing up from the Sahara desert that is causing the orange snow?

Streetcap1 who recorded the red mist glow: “Sahara sand can travel into space causing the red mist glow? What could be the real source of this strange space phenomenon?”

Orange snow - Credit image: Margarita Alshina - Instagram.

In 1950 Velikovsky published the ground breaking book 'Worlds in Collision' and in it Velikovsky argued that a huge comet-planet passed by, and interacted, with earth in historical times.

Velikosysky wrote about Nibiru.

Since its arrival in the inner solar system in 2003, it is said that planet Earth at the certain moment will encounter the tail of Nibiru and one of the first visible signs of this encounter is the reddening of the earth's surface by a fine dust of rusty pigment as well as massive clouds of charged, red, iron-oxide dust.

This red dust is blown around, creating red sandstorms and is the cause of blood-red and strange sunsets and red skies (orange/red glows) - (even at night), and colored clouds that spread from horizon to horizon, reports earthchangeshotline.

When viewed from Earth, Nibiru appears a blood red color because of this accompanying red dust cloud, which is outside its atmosphere.

Whether the 'hypothetical' celestial body Nibiru is really the cause of the orange snow and the strange red mist glow in space is always the question, but at least it is a very strange phenomenon.

To see the original ISS footage of the red mist glow go to 45 minutes in at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/113863929
  

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

27-03-2018 om 20:47 geschreven door peter  

Apparent Alien Ships Seemingly Make Ski Lift Out Of Control, Leaving Two People Severely Injured

A pair of UFOs appeared to have visited the Gudauri ski resort in the Caucasus Mountains, Georgia.

A pair of lights was captured by a live feed camera looking up a slope. They suddenly made an appearance out of nowhere over the ski resort. The live feed also shows several people pointing to the strange bright aerial objects.

The unidentified objects appear so strange that it can be assumed it was not a natural sky phenomenon. Adding to the mystery is that the ski lift went out of control the moment the bright objects appeared.

The ski lift started to run backwards without apparent reasons at high speed. Skiers had to jump to safety, but many others failed to get off safely, felling out of the chairlift and flying through the air.

Ten people suffered injuries after the ski lift went out of control and two of them have been seriously injured, including a pregnant woman.

Many believe that the malfunction has been caused by the UFO-like bright lights over the ski area.

Three videos of the incident were posted online.

The first one shows the moment the UFOs appear over the ski resort. The second and third videos show the terrifying moments the ski lift goes out of control and people flying through the air.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

27-03-2018 om 20:32 geschreven door peter  

Another Footage Shows An Encounter Between U.S. Military and A UFO

A mysterious object moving over the Atlantic Ocean was caught on video. The newly released footage apparently shows a U.S. Navy encounter with a UFO.

An infrared camera aboard an F/A-18 fighter jet moving at 25,000 feet reportedly captured the 35-second clip in 2015.

An alleged pilot appears surprised with what they are encountering after the sensor locks-on to the fast moving UFO.

The weapons system operator also saw the same thing.

To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences released the video online. It is claimed to be a private scientific research company. The organization did not mention how the footage was obtained, but it was reportedly available through a Freedom of Information request to the DoD.

Two similar videos were released to the public in December 2017 when Pentagon acknowledged the $22 million program from 2008 to 2012 that investigated UFOs.

The pair of videos allegedly showed an encounter between U.S. Navy fighter jets and a white, oval-shaped flying object in 2004 off the coast of San Diego. One of the pilots in the incident was retired Commander David Fravor, who told CNN that he observed what looked like a 40-foot-long Tic Tac maneuvering and changing direction rapidly.

In October 2017, radar caught a strange flying object. Pilots flying along a commercial route in broad daylight over Oregon also saw the bizarre aerial thing. Fighter jets were dispatched to see what was going on, but they found nothing.

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

27-03-2018 om 20:19 geschreven door peter  

Exclusive Photos: Lockheed Skunk Works' X-44A Flying Wing Drone Breaks Cover

We finally get to see one of the key missing links that bridged the gap between Lockheed's RQ-3 Darkstar and RQ-170 Sentinel flying-wing drones. 

27-03-2018 om 01:45 geschreven door peter  

By Peter Economy

The Leadership Guy

A lot of attention has been directed of late to the efforts of super-successful entrepreneurs to launch their own, privately-funded space programs. Amazon's Jeff Bezos has his Blue Origin program, Elon Musk is busy launching his Tesla Roadster into orbit around Marswith his SpaceX rockets, Richard Branson is looking to launch well-heeled tourists into space with his company Virgin Galactic, and so on.

However, long before these multi-billionaires got into the space business, governments were into it big time. The U.S. and Russia have been launching satellites and spacecraft into space since the 1950s, and other countries have joined in the fun since then.

In 2011, China launched a 19,000-pound space station--Tiangong-1--atop a Long March 2F rocket, and into orbit around the Earth. A variety of missions were conducted over the next couple of years, and the space station was eventually put into sleep mode--where it was expected to remain for many years.

View image on Twitter

SPACE.com

✔@SPACEdotcom

China's Tiangong-1 Space Lab Expected to Fall to Earth Over Easter Weekend https://goo.gl/8m1ms4 

11:13 PM - Mar 22, 2018

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• 69 people are talking about this

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However, the space station's orbit gradually decayed, and in 2016, China lost control of Tiangong-1.

That's a problem, because 19,000 pounds of metal and other materials will soon be headed to the earth's surface -- and where it will land, no one knows. Actually, scientists are pretty sure where it won't land. According to Holger Krag of the European Space Agency (ESA):

"Owing to the geometry of the station's orbit, we can already exclude the possibility that any fragments will fall over any spot further north than 43ºN or further south than 43ºS."

Translated into English, this puts countries such as Spain, Turkey, India, Italy, and parts of the U.S. at greatest risk of being hit by debris from the fallen spacecraft (some pieces as heavy as a couple hundred pounds are expected to survive reentry into the earth's atmosphere).

Daily Mail Online

✔@MailOnline

Out-of-control Chinese space station carrying toxic chemicals could crash into Earth next WEEK http://dailym.ai/2FW3Q6Z 

9:46 AM - Mar 21, 2018

China's Tiangong-1 space station will crash into Earth around April 4

Predictions of Tiangong-1's most likely point of impact (pictured) come from Aerospace, a US research organisation based in El Segundo, California, that advises on space flight.

dailymail.co.uk

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The good news is that although the risk of being hit by wayward Chinese space station debris is very real, the probability is actually quite small that any one person will become a victim--according to experts, about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.

So, depending on where you live, next weekend might bring a sky show like few of us have ever seen as Tiangong-1 spectacularly crashes to Earth. Here's hoping it doesn't land in your town.

{ https://www.inc.com/ }

27-03-2018 om 01:22 geschreven door peter  

Weird Object Freaks Out Airline Passengers

This is interesting, I'm sure there's a rational explanation for this.

Nose is up 90 degrees, shifts, flattens plane 180 degrees. No trail of exhaust to follow movements from where it initially appeared in the clouds. Keep track of the right side of the craft - it rises completely up as one continuous object. It's one massive craft. Amazing

{  https://www.disclose.tv/ }

27-03-2018 om 01:04 geschreven door peter  

A snowy morning scene in March 2018 at the Ocean Grove pier in New Jersey. Posted to EarthSky Facebook by John Entwistle.

A new study – published March 13, 2018, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications – again links warming Arctic temperatures to colder weather. Although this correlation is far-from-settled science, these particular researchers did find that severe winter weather in the eastern U.S. is two to four times more likely when the Arctic is abnormally warm than when the Arctic is abnormally cold. Likewise, according to this study, northern latitudes of Europe and Asia may have colder winters when the Arctic is warm. This research has drawn fire from global warming deniers and prompted contrarian viewpoints in some publications. How can we know who or what to believe?

Here’s what we can know, with some confidence. Measurements show that the Arctic has been abnormally warm, and sea ice in the Arctic has been low. Measurements have their uncertainties also, but many measurements – for example, sea ice measurements from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado – show these trends in the Arctic. It appears that the Arctic is not only warming, but warming at a rate two to three times faster than the observed rate of warming for the rest of the globe. This phenomenon is known among climate scientists as Arctic amplification.

• Explainer: How do scientists measure global temperature?

At the same time, as many of us know, the winter of 2017-2018 was extreme. There were record-breaking polar vortex disruptions, severe bomb cyclones and nor’easters in the U.S. Northeast and record-breaking cold and snow in the U.S. and Europe.

So … what’s happening here? It seems counterintuitive that a warmer Arctic would cause colder winters.

Should we believe this new study?

View larger. | Geographic locations of cities analyzed in the new study. The authors said: “We chose a geographically diverse set of 12 cities to analyze Arctic variability and severe winter weather, though we chose more cities in the northeastern and mid-western U.S. where severe winter weather is more common than in other regions of the U.S.”

Image via Cohen et al.

In deciding whether you believe it, it’s important to realize that measurements are in a different category in science from analysis. The March 13 study – authored by Judah Cohen of MIT, Karl Pfeiffer of Atmospheric & Environmental Research, Inc. and Jennifer Francis of Rutgers – used the tools of science to analyze existing data. These authors described their study as an:

… extensive, quantitative analysis of the link between Arctic variability and severe winter weather across the mid-latitudes. In this study we find a robust relationship between Arctic temperatures and severe winter weather in the United States. When the Arctic is warm, both cold temperatures and heavy snowfall are more frequent compared to when the Arctic is cold.

Jennifer Francis commented in a statement from Rutgers on March 13:

Basically, this confirms the story I’ve been telling for a couple of years now. Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings, and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south.

These researchers found that when Arctic warming occurred near Earth’s surface, the correlation with severe winter weather was weak. But when the warming over the Arctic extended high into the atmosphere, into the stratosphere, disruptions of the stratospheric polar vortex were likely.

View larger. | These authors assert in their study that: “As the Arctic warms, the continents become colder.”

 See a complete explanation of this image via Cohen et al.

Global warming skeptics pounced on this study. For example, Steven Milloy – who is, among other things, the publisher of the website JunkScience.com, a former columnist for Fox News and a co-creator and manager of the Free Enterprise Action Fund – posted the following tweet, which lifts language directly from Cohen et al.’s Nature paper:

View image on Twitter

Steve Milloy

✔@JunkScience

Boom... Nature study admissions undercut almost all climate studies:

1. Correlation not causation.
2. Historical record inadequate.
3. Physical mechanism not understood.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02992-9 …

3:08 PM - Mar 14, 2018

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He’s pointing to the part of Cohen, Pfeiffer and Francis’ own study where they themselves point out some of this study’s unknowns and challenges, and, by extension, some of the unknowns and challenges inherent in modern climate science. Do these acknowledged unknowns and challenges undercut this study – or almost all climate studies – as Milloy suggests?

Let’s look at the answer in a wider context. Does asking scientific questions in any field suggest that area of science is not worth pursuing?

Of course not.

If it did, science as a whole would have come to a dead standstill long ago, and our lives would be far less easy and comfortable than they are today. Think of electricity. Do you suppose Thomas Edison had questions, as he figured it out? Do you think he might have had challenges?

The fact is, scientists are supposed to question themselves and each other. They’re supposed to work through challenges. It’s what they’re trained to do. It’s how science gets done. It might be helpful here to mention that all science is a process, as all scientists and many non-scientists know. Scientists question, and try to answer their own questions or learn how other scientists have answered them, and this constant questioning-and-answering pushes their investigations of nature forward … or, I should say, our investigations of nature, since science is a cultural activity, paid for in large part by our tax dollars.

Do global warming skeptics like Steven Milloy understand that questioning is part of the process of science? I have no idea. It’s possible he doesn’t; he’s trained as a lawyer, not a scientist.

Should we believe that Arctic warming is correlated with colder winters as this study suggests? Belief or disbelief doesn’t enter into it, for scientists, and it shouldn’t for you either. The results are just out there, for you and me to read about, be informed about and think about, and for future scientific studies to either confirm or refute.

This study is one small clue in the investigation of climate change, which has already been going on for decades. Will this one little clue be swept away by better ones? Maybe. Time will tell.

Until then, claims that the study has been undercut because scientists are questioning themselves and each other … well, those claims just show some writers’ ignorance of – unawareness of, unconsciousness of, unfamiliarity with, inexperience with, lack of information about – the way science works.

It may be willful ignorance, or not.

See how Step #5 (Make a Conclusion) has an arrow leading back to Step #1 (Ask a Question)? Scientists are continually questioning because science isn’t a body of facts; it’s a way of investigating nature.

Image via SlidePlayer.com.

By the way, someone is bound to ask in the comments who supported the study by Cohen, Pfeiffer and Francis. That is a valid and excellent question. For virtually any published science study, you can find a section at the very bottom called Acknowledgements. These authors’ acknowledgements are as follows:

We are grateful to Barbara Mayes-Boustead and Steve Hallberg for generously sharing with us the AWSSI [Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index] data. J.C. is supported by the National Science Foundation grants AGS-1303647 and PLR-1504361. J.F. is supported by NASA grant NNX14AH896 and NSF/ARCSS grant 1304097.

In his criticism of the study, Steven Milloy didn’t have as established a mechanism for mentioning who currently funds him, but he’s well-known for having been a paid advocate for Philip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations. Read more about who funds Steven Milloy.

Wondering who funds EarthSky? Our small organization receives revenues from three sources: ads on this website, donations and sales in our store.

A cold winter, via Onepony/Fotolia/ScienceDaily.

Bottom line: A warm Arctic means colder, snowier winters in the northeastern U.S., according to a new study. You don’t have to believe it; just think about it.

Source: Warm Arctic episodes linked with increased frequency of extreme winter weather in the United States

Via Rutgers University

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

27-03-2018 om 00:57 geschreven door peter  

Composite infrared image from Juno of clusters of massive cyclones surrounding Jupiter’s north pole.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM.

The Juno spacecraft has found that the giant planet Jupiter is full of big surprises; its interior composition and structure seem to be quite different, and its winds even more active, than originally thought. Now, giant cyclones at the planet’s poles have been seen in greater detail than ever before. They are not only stunning, but unique from atmospheric storms of any other planet in our solar system, even other gas and ice giants. Also, other new data from Juno builds on previous findings, including showing that the planet’s strong winds penetrate deep into the atmosphere and last longer than any similar ones on our planet.

The new findings are published (here and here) in the March 8, 2018, edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

In a statement from NASA, Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, said:

These astonishing science results are yet another example of Jupiter’s curve balls, and a testimony to the value of exploring the unknown from a new perspective with next-generation instruments. Juno’s unique orbit and evolutionary high-precision radio science and infrared technologies enabled these paradigm-shifting discoveries.

Juno is only about one-third the way through its primary mission, and already we are seeing the beginnings of a new Jupiter.

Since astronomers first started using telescopes, it could be seen that Jupiter seemed to be an active world, with its well-known colorful atmospheric belts, and of course the Great Red Spot. Thanks to probes like Voyager, Galileo and now Juno, we can see these phenomena in much greater detail than ever before. The atmospheric belts are incredibly turbulent, with jet streams and storms far more powerful than any on Earth.

Jupiter’s atmospheric marvels are not limited to its equatorial regions, however; Juno has provided unprecedented views of the planet’s poles, where massive cyclones churn with unearthly ferocity. Infrared images created from data taken by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument look almost surreal, like cosmic artwork.

The clusters of cyclones around the poles look kind of like a space pizza – a dazzling, yet unearthly sight. Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome, and lead author of oneof the new papers, said:

Prior to Juno we did not know what the weather was like near Jupiter’s poles. Now, we have been able to observe the polar weather up-close every two months.

Each one of the northern cyclones is almost as wide as the distance between Naples, Italy, and New York City – and the southern ones are even larger than that. They have very violent winds, reaching, in some cases, speeds as great as 220 mph (350 kph). Finally, and perhaps most remarkably, they are very close together and enduring.

There is nothing else like it that we know of in the solar system.

Jupiter’s south pole has cyclones, too. This computer-generated image of cyclones at Jupiter’s south pole was created using data from the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument on Juno.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM.

Interestingly, the cyclones remain close to each other but never seem to merge together.

Not only are Jupiter’s storms unearthly, so are its auroras, which are much more powerful than any here, and “defy earthly laws of physics.”

Juno had also already shown that the planet’s equatorial belts extend much farther down into the atmosphere than thought, and new gravity measurements have also now shown a north-south asymmetry. Luciano Iess, Juno co-investigator from Sapienza University of Rome, said:

Juno’s measurement of Jupiter’s gravity field indicates a surprising north-south asymmetry, similar to the asymmetry observed in its zones and belts.

The stronger the asymmetry, the deeper the jet streams are. The Jovian weather layer, from the very top to a depth of 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers), is now estimated to contain about one percent of Jupiter’s mass (about 3 Earth masses). Earth’s atmosphere is less than one millionth the mass of the planet itself, by comparison.

Another, more distant view of Jupiter’s south pole.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt.

Juno has also sent back incredible views of Jupiter’s colorful belts in the equatorial regions.

Image via NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran.

Color-enhanced image showing intricate details in Jupiter’s cloud patterns.

Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran.

Tristan Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France, and lead author of the March 8 paper on Jupiter’s deep interior, said:

Juno also found that Jupiter rotates almost as a solid body, beneath the active weather layer.

This is really an amazing result, and future measurements by Juno will help us understand how the transition works between the weather layer and the rigid body below.

Juno’s discovery has implications for other worlds in our solar system and beyond. Our results imply that the outer differentially-rotating region should be at least three times deeper in Saturn and shallower in massive giant planets and brown dwarf stars.

Juno has conducted 10 science passes over Jupiter so far; the next one will be on April 1.

Visit the Juno mission’s website

This story was originally published at AmericaSpace. Re-printed here with permission.

Bottom line: Thanks to Juno, we now know that Jupiter’s interior composition and structure appear different, and its winds more active, than originally thought. Also, Juno has now seen giant cyclones at Jupiter’s poles in greater detail than ever before.

Source: Jupiter’s atmospheric jet streams extend thousands of kilometres deep

Source: A suppression of differential rotation in Jupiter’s deep interior

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

27-03-2018 om 00:41 geschreven door peter  

DNA Tests Reveal Surprising Details About Tiny ‘Atacama Alien’

The most comprehensive study to date performed on the so-called Atacama Alien has revealed, according to the first study, that 8 percent of the DNA was unmatched to human DNA. The second set of DNA tests matched 98 percent of the DNA.

Remeber the alien-like creature discovered in the Atacama desert of chile a while ago? Well, new DNA results have revealed a number of peculiar characteristics about the mysterious creature.

A complete genomic study of a skeleton discovered more than a decade ago in the Atacama desert (Chile), and ‘falsely’ taken as an alien, has revealed unpublished bone molecular rarities.

The findings of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine eliminate any remaining dilemmas on the planetary origin of the specimen, assuring that it is human, and not an alien. The analysis also answers questions about the mysterious skeletal remains that have long been a genetic enigma.

Now, after five years of genomic analysis, Garry Nolan, professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford, and Atul Butte, director of the Institute of Computational Health Sciences at the University of California-San Francisco, in the United States, have identified the mutations responsible for the anomalous sample.

The researchers found mutations in not one, but several genes known to control bone development. In addition, some of these molecular oddities have never been described before.

The mysterious-looking skeleton, nicknamed Ata, was discovered more than a decade ago in an abandoned town in the Atacama desert in Chile.

After changing owners and finally finding a permanent home in Spain, the mummified specimen began to attract public attention.

Just six inches tall (about 15 centimeters), about the length of a dollar bill, with an elongated, angular skull and sunken, tilted eye sockets, the possibility of Ata coming from another world began to circulate on the Internet as people started speaking about aliens with extremely tiny bodies.

“I had heard about this specimen through a friend of mine, and I managed to get an image of it,” says Nolan. You can not look at this specimen and not think it’s interesting; It is quite dramatic. Then I said to my friend: “Look, whatever it is, if it has DNA, I can do the analysis.”

With the help of Ralph Lachman, a professor of Radiology at Stanford and an expert in a type of pediatric bone disease, Nolan made things clear.

His analysis pointed to a decisive conclusion: this was the skeleton of a human woman, probably a fetus, who had suffered serious genetic mutations.

In addition, Nolan saw that Ata, although most likely a fetus, had the bone composition of a 6-year-old girl, an indication that she had a rare bone aging disorder.

To understand the genetic basis of Ata, Nolan turned to Butte for help with genomic evaluation.

He accepted the challenge and performed such a thorough evaluation that he almost reached the level of patient care.

Butte noted that some people might wonder about the point of these in-depth analyzes.

“We thought it would be an interesting exercise to apply the tools we have today to really see what we could find,” he says. The phenotype, the symptoms and the size of this girl were extremely unusual, and the analysis of this kind of truly disconcerting and ancient samples better teaches us how to analyze the DNA of children nowadays under current conditions.“

To understand the genetic factors involved, Butte and Nolan extracted a small sample of DNA from Ata’s ribs and sequenced the entire genome.

The skeleton is approximately 40 years old, so its DNA is modern and relatively intact. In addition, the data collected from the complete genome sequencing showed that Ata’s molecular composition was aligned with that of a human genome.

Human but…

Nolan detected that 8 percent of the DNA was unmatched by human DNA, but that was due to a degraded sample, not to extraterrestrial biology. Later, a more sophisticated analysis could match up to 98 percent of the DNA.

The genomic results confirmed Ata’s Chilean lineage and presented a series of mutations in seven genes that, separately or in combinations, contribute to various bone deformities, facial malformations or skeletal dysplasia, more commonly known as dwarfism.

Some of these mutations, although found in genes that are known to cause disease, have never before been associated with bone growth or developmental disorders.

“Knowing these new mutational variants could be useful,” says Nolan, “because they add to the reservoir of known mutations that must be sought in humans with this type of bone or physical disorders.”

Source: Stanford Medicine

{https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

26-03-2018 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

An Alien star ‘collided’ with the Solar System 70,000 years ago and its effects still endure

About 70,000 years ago, a small reddish star approached our solar system and gravitationally disturbed comets and asteroids. Astronomers have verified that the movement of some of these objects is still marked by that stellar encounter.

About 70,000 years ago, the Scholz star grazed our solar system and, although it barely possessed 9% of its mass, it caused changes in the orbits of dozens of comets.

In 2015, when astronomers discovered that event, they assumed that it didn’t leave behind many consequences.

Image Credit: Credit: NASA, Michael Osadciw/University of Rochester, Illustration-T.Reyes

However, researchers from the universities of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and Complutense (Madrid, Spain) have shown that the event did leave behind a number of important consequences.

“In principle, one would expect those positions to be evenly distributed in the sky, particularly if these objects come from the Oort cloud,” says the study’s lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos from the Complutense University of Madrid.

“However, what we find is very different: a statistically significant accumulation of radiants.”

When analyzing the positions of some 340 objects from the outer Solar System, scientists discovered that several dozens of them were not where they expected them to be located.

In addition, they perceived that several comets followed trajectories that locate their origins in different places. In the absence of further research, these facts disseminated by the Royal British Astronomical Society raise new questions about our Solar System, such as how much material was previously in another part of the galaxy.

Among scholars of the controversial and hypothetical Planet X, also called Nibiru, some argue that because of the large size and appearance -4 times the size of Jupiter and reddish in color- that has been attributed to it, Nibiru is not a planet but rather a star, more precisely a red dwarf.

Currently, the star of Scholz is a small red dwarf, dark in the constellation of Monoceros, about 20 light-years away and moving in the opposite direction from our solar system, never to return.

However, at the closest point in its passage through the solar system, the Scholz star would have been a star of magnitude 10, about 50 times weaker than it can normally be seen with the naked eye at night.

Within any million year period, there could be as many as 600 stars passing within 16.3 light years of our Sun, writes Science Alert.

However, it is magnetically active and can record bursts that make it briefly thousands of times brighter.

So, it is possible that the Scholz star was visible to the naked eye by our ancestors only 70,000 years ago.

Featured image credit: José A. Peñas/SINC

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

26-03-2018 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

ORANGE SNOW? RARE PHENOMENON STRIKES COUNTRIES ACROSS GLOBE [PHOTOS]

Snow with an orange-tint has been seen in countries around the globe including Russia, Ukraine and Romania.

The rare occurrence, which only happens once every 5 years, is due to snow and rain mixing with dust that has accumulated in the air from Sahara Desert storms, the BBC reports.

• Related: Too Many Snow Days? Districts Consider Extending School Year Due to Winter Weather

“Looking at satellite imagery from NASA, it shows a lot of sand and dust in the atmosphere drifting across the Mediterranean,” Steven Keates, a weather forecaster at the UK’s Met Office, told The Independent. “When it rains or snows, it drags down whatever is up there, if there is sand in the atmosphere.”

CNN Weather Center

✔@CNNweather

What turned snow orange in Sochi, Russia? Believe it or not, according to the Athens Observatory, winds transported sand and dust from the Sahara some 1500 miles (2400 km) from north Africa to southern Russia. More could be on the way Monday.

7:22 PM - Mar 25, 2018

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Although it’s happened before, there’s more sand now, which has caused people to complain of sand getting in their mouths. In Greece, the desert dust has blanketed the entire country. Greece has the highest concentration of dust in more than a decade, according to The Athens Observatory meteorological service, CNN reports.

• Related: Watch: World’s Longest-Lasting Rainbow Smashes Previous Guinness World Record

Those who witnessed the rare phenomenon took to social media to document the unusual event.

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In February 2007, orange snow which was apparently oily and smelled, was reported in various regions across Siberia.

Although some suggested the snow was discolored due to dust picked up from a desert storm, environmental groups believed otherwise, considering high levels of iron, acids and nitrates were in the snow, according to The Guardian. An exact cause for the mysterious event was never determined.

26-03-2018 om 23:38 geschreven door peter