Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
02-04-2018
NASA-Funded Study Says There Could Be Alien Life On Venus
NASA-Funded Study Says There Could Be Alien Life On Venus
As noted by a recent report, extraterrestrial could inhabit our solar system, and they could be living within the acid clouds of Venus, notes a NASA-funded study, recently published in the Journal Astrobiology.
The study backed by NASA indicates that Aliens (although not fully developed aliens, but bacteria) could call the hazardous clouds on Venus their home.
Scientists believe the sulfur dioxide-rich upper atmosphere of Venus may be where tiny Venusian aliens are hiding.
Exerpts came to this conlcusion after using space probes to detect dark areas around the rust-colored body, which resemble the light-absorbing properties of bacteria here on Earth.
As noted by experts, these mysterious dark spots on Venus could be blooms of alien bacterial, similar to those found on Earth in lakes and ponds.
Because the clouds of Venus are composed of sulfuric acid, they reflect around 75 percent of the sunlight that hits them, causing them to appear nearly entirely opaque.
Venus has been dubbed as Earth’s Evil twin by a number of astrophysics and astronomers because of the hazardous, and inhospitable conditions reigning on its surface, where it rains Acid, and the temperature is around 462 degrees Celsius.
PLANET-C.
The research, suggesting tiny Venusian alien may inhabit the clouds of Venus, was recently published in the Journal Astrobiology, and it infers how alien microbes may survive by being blown around by extreme winds in the cooler cloud tops of Venus.
The researcher explains that the cloudy, highly reflective and acidic atmosphere of Venus is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and water droplets containing sulfuric acid.
However, this isn’t the first time someone has suggested there may be life on Venus.
In fact, the habitability of Venus’ clouds was first raised in 1967 by noted biophysicist Harold Morowitz and famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Following this theory, the idea that Venus’ clouds may bear alien life was expanded by planetary scientists David Grinspoon, Mark Bullock and their colleagues.
“Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 30–40 percent in the ultraviolet and muted in longer wavelengths. These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be scale dependent,” says Limaye.
I was recording the glitch, which is a 10-30 second cycle that varies in time, but was made by NASA to deliberately cause frustration to the public so the viewers would give up watching the space station. However, as I was recording, I was surprised to see a UFO come from behind the station. I forgot to turn on my mic, so I had to remake the video again. This looks like a round disk. The disk flips at one point in the video, which was cool to see. This does look like an alien craft to me.
Multiple UFOs seen from the ISS live stream March 31st 2018
Multiple UFOs seen from the ISS live stream March 31st 2018
The stills in this video were taken from a brief 30 minute recording from the ISS live stream. The objects show for a split second, appearing as a small flash of light but when zoomed in more details become visible.
Countdown: Burning space station to hit Earth in ‘next 12 hours’
Countdown: Burning space station to hit Earth in ‘next 12 hours’
A Chinese space station that is spiraling out of control is predicted to hit Earth in only half a day. It is also understood that Scientists tracking the space station are unsure of the landing spot once it hits Earth. This is in contradiction to previous analysis that claimed to understand of the landing spot of the out of control space station.
Burning Space Station Predicted to Hit Earth in Twelve Hours
The space station is known as Tiangong-1 and was put into orbit in 2011. Tiangong-1 was the first space station to be put into space by the Chinese. Tiangong-1 was originally put into space as a guide mission in preparation for Tiangong-2, which was to be a laboratory space for the Chinese. Problems with Tiangong-1 had delayed those plans since 2016 when Tiangong-1 started losing altitude due to malfunctions within the space station in 2016.
The deorbit of #Tiangong1 is expected to look something like this. First, the solar panels will rip off, then the body will break apart. Most will burn up in the atmosphere but some debris could make it to the ground. We'll know better about when and where tomorrow.
In November, European scientists believed that Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, and Greece were among countries that represented possible crash sites for Tiangong-1. This is assuming the space station does land indeed, as scientists have stated that it could burn up in the atmosphere before crashing into the Earth. However, updates on April first have confirmed less certainty concerning the site of the crash. The area of the crash is now predicted to encompass a much larger zone. Included in possible crash sites for Tiangong-1 are now the continents of Africa, Australia, South America, and the whole Indian subcontinent.
Space engineering entities for the Chinese seem certain that Tangong-1 will not cause severe damage. It is expected that the space station will disintegrate at an altitude of 80km. Aerospace Corporation has set up a tracking center for Tiangong-1. This tracking center currently reveals that Tiangong-1 has a current orbit above the South Atlantic Ocean. Authorities for the United States Air Force are making claims that a portion of Tiangong-1 will re-enter the Earth within the next twelve hours.
In the quest to answer whether we’re alone, scientists have found that the clouds of venus may help solve the mystery of whether life outside of Earth exists.
Published March 30 in the journal Astrobiology, a new paper says the clouds of Venus may host extraterrestrial microbial life. As the authors state in the paper, whether Venus’ clouds could support life has been discussed for decades, spurred by research indicating that its chemical and physical properties, moderate temperatures and pressure could make it possible for life to exist.
The team was intrigued by dark patches found on the planet's clouds that are made of sulfuric acid and light-absorbing particles similar to those found on Earth. In fact, they theorized the patches could be similar to algae blooms found in our lakes, noting that particles in the patches have similar dimensions to bacteria here on Earth.
The team believes this could make Venus vital in the search for other life forms, however, the planets’ clouds would need to be sampled and tested first.
WETENSCHAPOost-Afrika zal zich afsplitsen van de rest van het continent, voorspellen geologen. Hoewel het een proces is van miljoenen jaren, zijn de eerste tekenen zichtbaar. Zoals een breuklijn in Kenia, en die wordt steeds dieper.
Vorige week stortte in het zuidwesten van Kenia een deel van de drukke Mai Mahiu Road deels in nadat er een vulkanische breuklijn ontstond. Door de scheur zijn delen van de weg verzakt en ontstond een groot gat dat het water opslokte. Dat leidde vervolgens tot nog meer barsten. Op sommige plaatsen is de breuk inmiddels meer dan 50 meter diep en 20 meter breed.
Wetenschapper Lucia Perez Diaz, verbonden aan de Royal Holloway universiteit van London, ziet hierin het bewijs dat het oostelijk deel van Afrika een nieuw continent zal vormen. Kenia, Tanzania, Somalië en een deel van Ethiopië zullen uiteindelijk worden afgescheiden, schrijft The Mirror naar aanleiding van haar publicatie in het blad Conversation.
In het artikel beschrijft ze hoe dit geologisch proces zich voltrekt diep in de aarde. Afrika bestaat nu nog uit één tektonische plaat: de zogeheten Afrikaanse plaat. Alleen, die wordt in het oosten geleidelijk uit elkaar gespleten, ter hoogte van Somalië.
Daardoor zullen er op termijn twee platen ontstaan: de Somalische plaat (de oostelijke plaat) én de Nubische plaat (de westelijke plaat). Het uit elkaar schuiven van (nieuwe) tektonische platen wordt ook wel ‘riftvorming’ genoemd. Doordat breuken in ondergrondse platen in tegenovergestelde hellingsrichting bewegen, ontstaat een soort van vallei tussen twee hooglandgebieden of bergketens.
Die ‘vallei’, ook wel een slenk genoemd, wordt verder uitgediept door erosie én door hitte die gevormd wordt door vulkanische activiteit die uit de kern van de aarde naar de oppervlaktekorst komt. De breuk gaat heel langzaam: jaarlijks gaat het om een verschuiving van zo’n 45 millimeter.
Creative Commons 4.0, AlataristarionDe Somalische plaat omvat het oosten van Afrika.
Geschiedenis
Over zo’n 10 miljoen tot 50 miljoen jaar zal Oost-Afrika zich daardoor hebben afgescheiden van de rest van Afrika, zegt wetenschapper Diaz. In de geschiedenis van Afrika is zoiets overigens wel eerder gebeurd. Zo heeft Madagaskar zich zo’n 110 miljoen jaar geleden losgemaakt van Somalië door middel van een zeer brede slenk.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
This Week's Top Space Stories
This Week's Top Space Stories
By SPACE.com Staff
Photo Credit: P. van Dokkum/R. Abraham/STScI, Space Telescope Science Institute
The Week's Top Space Stories
A "cannonball-like" exoplanet could shed light on Mercury's dramatic history, the last blue moon until the year 2020 will shine this weekend, researchers study a ghostly galaxy that has almost no dark matter and a space station will soon crash into Earth, mostly burning up in the atmosphere. These are some of the top stories this week from Space.com.
Photo Credit: The Aerospace Corporation/CORDS
1. Tiangong-1 satellite is tricky to track
The altitude of the now defunct Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is decreasing, and experts believe the craft will re-enter Earth's atmosphere in the next few days — possibly on April 1. The air resistance, or "aerodynamic drag," that will interact with the spacecraft is tricky to predict because Tiangong-1 is a complex shape. The density of the atmosphere can also change when the sun is at a certain point in its periodic cycle, which would also affect reentry. However it's worth noting that most of Tiangong-1 will burn up in the atmosphere and not make it to Earth's surface
Photo Credit: National Institute of Aerospace/Lunar and Planetary Institute
2. Apollo 17 leaders discuss Mars
Three figures of American spaceflight history — lunar module pilot Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, Apollo 17 flight director Gerry Griffin and backroom scientist Jim Head — spoke at the 49th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The event commemorated the 45th anniversary of Apollo 17, which made the last crewed mission to the moon in December 1972. When speaking on the challenges of Mars exploration, the panelists emphasized the need for more research on the moon before attempting the cross-planetary trip, as well as highlighting the backroom science needed to handle communication delays.
The James Webb Space Telescope, often referred to as the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, will launch about a year later than previously planned. NASA announced on March 27 that the new space observatory, designed to peer deep into the universe to seek out new planets and study early stars, is now slated to launch no earlier than May 2020. The delay is necessary because of difficulty testing of some of the telescope's parts such as its tennis-court-size sun shield, which developed small tears when deployed.
NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, recently announced that he will retire from the space agency on April 30. If Congress does not appoint a permanent chief or deputy administrator before then, the leadership role will go to the third person in line: associate administrator Steve Jurczyk. Lightfoot's resignation comes at an interesting moment, because the NASA budget for the upcoming year is typically worked on over the summer; it's therefore likely that Lightfoot's successor will work on NASA's budget policy for 2019.
Photo Credit: P. van Dokkum/R. Abraham/STScI, Space Telescope Science Institute
5. See-through galaxy has little dark matter
Galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 seems to have 400 times less dark matter than it should for its size. The lead author of a recent study suggests this means dark matter is not an essential ingredient to form galaxies, and this finding could also explain the odd nature of this galaxy: it lacks the signature spiral arms that many galaxies have, it is see-through and although it's about the size of the Milky Way, it has roughly 200 times fewer stars.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is tweaking the design of a mission from an environmentally friendly innovation program called e.Deorbit. Rather than going ahead with its mission to send a satellite into low Earth orbit in the year 2023 to retrieve a defunct satellite, ESA has chosen to study whether the mission should be modified to make the vehicle more flexible and capable of performing other space-junk services. E.Deorbit is part of ESA's Clean Space Initiative.
A flat-Earth conspiracy theorist took off aboard a self-made rocket on March 24 and survived the landing after two parachute deployments. The steam-powered rocket reached an altitude of 1,875 feet (572 meters) above the Mojave Desert. The launch comes after two failed attempts, one of which was brought to a halt by the Bureau of Land Management. There are several ground-based ways to tell that the Earth is a sphere, and not a "frisbee," but Mike Hughes' ultimate goal is to see the curvature of the planet for himself by attempting another launch in the future.
Make sure to catch the Blue Moon on Saturday (March 31) because the next one will not happen until Halloween night of the year 2020! One definition of a blue moon is the second full moon to land within a calendar month, and it has nothing to do with the color. But it is a unique treat since blue moon periods happen once every 2.7 years on average. The last blue moon occurred at the end of January this year.
9. Air-inhaling technology could provide almost indefinite spaceflight
An air-breathing electric thruster underewnt its first test by the European Space Agency. Designed to collect molecules in the atmosphere to later use as onboard propellant, this thruster could allow near-Earth orbiting satellites to stay in space almost indefinitely. The thruster works by turning the air molecules it collects into plasma, and the technology could potentially be extended one day for use on Mars satellites as well.
10. Earth-size "Cannonball" exoplanet may share similarities with Mercury
Researchers spotted an alien world that could shed light on the history of Mercury, the solar system's innermost planet. Mercury is mostly metallic, making it quite different from its rocky brethren in the solar system. Since the exoplanet, called K2-229 b, has a different composition than its parent star, it is possible that it went through drastic changes throughout its life that could help us understand Mercury's formation, too.
We May Have Uncovered the First Ever Evidence of the Multiverse
We May Have Uncovered the First Ever Evidence of the Multiverse
For many years, scientists have been very much baffled by a weird anomaly far away in space: a mysterious “Cold Spot” about 1.8 billion light-years across. It is cooler than its surroundings by around 0.00015 degrees Celsius (0.00027 degrees Fahrenheit), a fact astronomers discovered by measuring background radiation throughout the universe.
Previously, astronomers believed that this space could be cooler simply because it had less matter in it than most sections of space. They dubbed it a massive supervoid and estimated that it had 10,000 galaxies fewer than other comparable sections of space.
But now, in a recently published survey of galaxies, astronomers from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) say they have discovered that this supervoide could not exist. They now believe that the galaxies in the cold spot are just clustered around smaller voids that populate the cold spot like bubbles. These small voids, however, cannot explain the temperature difference observed.
To link the temperature differences to the smaller voids, the researchers say a non-standard cosmological model would be required. “But our data place powerful constraints on any attempt to do that,” explained researcher Ruari Mackenzie in an RAS press release.
While the study had a large margin of error, the simulations suggest there is only a two percent probability that the Cold Spot formed just randomly.
“This means we can’t entirely rule out that the Spot is caused by an unlikely fluctuation explained by the standard model. But if that isn’t the answer, then there are more exotic explanations,” said researcher Tom Shanks in the press release. “Perhaps the most exciting of these is that the Cold Spot was caused by a collision between our universe and another bubble universe.”
If more detailed studies support the findings of this research, the Cold Spot might turn out to be the first evidence for the multiverse, though far more evidence would be needed to confirm our universe is indeed one of many.
Blenus Green, a retired B-1 pilot who now flies for American Airlines, sounded amazed and couldn't seem to help smiling as he described seeing a UFO last month over Arizona.
News coverage of the astonishing sight blew up this week, a few weeks after Phoenix New Times — following a TheDrive.com story — published an article and Federal Aviation Administration audio recordings on March 9.
On Wednesday, the first interview of the Abilene, Texas, pilot aired on his hometown TV station, KTAB/KRBC-TV, describing what he saw from his American Airlines cockpit. New Times also interviewed the vice president of Phoenix Air Group, whose Learjet pilot also saw the weird object.
As reported previously, the Learjet pilot reported to Albuquerque Center air traffic control on the afternoon of February 24 that he saw something bright and inexplicable fly over him, which would have put the object at about 40,000 feet.
Kassahun reported that Green has been flying for 20 years and displayed a photo of him in an Air Force uniform. On that day, American Airlines Flight 1095 was flying from San Diego to Dallas. Somewhere over the Sonoran Desert between Picacho and Mammoth, Green saw what the Learjet pilot had seen.
"So sure enough, I was looking out the windscreen to see if it was there, and yeah, I did. I saw it!" Green said in the interview. "It was very bright, but it wasn't so bright you couldn't look at it. You almost really wanted to look at it, to try to figure out what it was. It didn't look anything like an airplane."
In the FAA tape, an Albuquerque Center official asks Green to describe the object. He said it was flying several thousand feet above his Airbus and going "in the opposite direction."
Someone then asked the pilot if it was a "Google balloon."
Blenus Green, a pilot for American Airlines, describes the weird and bright object he saw over Arizona on February 24 in an interview with Texas TV news reporter Pheban Kassahun.
"What was weird about it, (is) normally if you have an object, you know, and if the sun's shining this way, the reflection would be on this side," he told Kassahun, using his hands to help him describe the object. "But this was bright all the way around. It was so bright, you couldn't make it out, what shape it was."
Earlier this week, American Airlines spokeswoman Katie Cody said she could add no further details about the incident.
However, Bob Tracey, vice president of Phoenix Air Group, Inc., which is based in Atlanta, said on Thursday that after receiving a "full debriefing" from the pilot of the Learjet, he's left wondering, "what the hell was it?"
Phoenix Air uses Learjets for a variety of contract work, including as air ambulances for the military's Air Mobility Command. That's what the Learjet pilot and his co-pilot were doing on February 24. Tracey couldn't say if a patient was on board at the time, but assumed it had no passengers because it was on its way back to Georgia from California.
The pilot realizes the public is interested in his story, but he and the company are worried he'll be overwhelmed by the publicity.
"I'm not naming him," Tracey said. "He's going to get buried with phone calls."
The pilot is a 15-year veteran with Phoenix Air, and is a "seasoned captain" with more than 14,000 hours of flying time.
At about the same time that afternoon, the pilot and his co-pilot noticed something flying outside and above them.
"What's that — what the hell is that?" the pilot remembered both of them saying.
Like Green, they mostly noticed the intense bright light of the object. The Learjet pilot described it as "like you woke up in the morning and stared at a bright light," Tracey said.
The brightness didn't fill the whole windshield, though — it was definitely a spot of light, and seemed to come from a source that was flying west at high speed, toward the eastbound Learjet but high above it.
The pilots put their fingers on the window to estimate how high in the sky it was. They concluded it might have been flying at nearly 50,000 feet, or more than 10,000 feet above them.
Then it raced past them. The pilot, knowing that another airplane likely would be coming near the area soon, put in his call to Albuquerque Center to alert air traffic controllers.
The pilot was concerned that "someone's going to whack into this thing."
When the pilot got back from the trip, he gave a casual briefing of the incident to the company's flight operations.
"He didn't think much of it," Tracey said. The pilot has seen many balloons in sky, he said. Sometimes they're sent up by amateurs with expendable GoPros. Like a balloon, it wasn't tracked by radar, and the Learjet's Traffic Collision Avoidance System didn't sound any alarms.
Yet in his full debriefing, he described something that didn't sound at all like a balloon, Tracey acknowledged.
"He said that it passed him at maybe a similar speed that an airliner would," Tracey said. That would be roughly 500 mph each, for a combined speed of "well over Mach 1," or the speed of sound.
Balloons, of course, may travel at high speeds on a vertical line, but not very fast horizontally.
China’s out-of-control, defunct space station is hurtling toward Earth and currently expected to enter the atmosphere sometime in the next 24 hours.
The 8.5-ton space lab, known as Tiangong-1, is likely to burn up upon re-entry, which is expected to happen about 37 miles above ground, so it only poses a small risk to people and property.
However, the exact timing of when the craft, which is about the size of a school bus, will fall back to Earth is uncertain due to how quiet the sun has been. The European Space Agency says it will happen between today and early Monday, while the Chinese Space Agency extends the potential landfall window to Wednesday.
A rogue Chinese space station that weighs 8.5 tons is hurtling toward Earth.
(European Space Agency)
According to Space.com, if the sun is active, its energy pushes more strongly against Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere then balloons and becomes denser at higher altitudes, and the density impacts the drag against Tiangong-1’s orbital speed.
Most of the U.S. appeared to be outside the likely landfall area, but a senior member of Aerospace Corp. told Space.com that all predictions are subject to change based on new information.
In this June 13, 2013, file image released by China's Xinhua News Agency, the Shenzhou-10 manned spacecraft is seen while conducting docking with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space module.
(AP)
Although the Chinese station has received intense media coverage, each year around 1,000 large objects such as lost satellites and rocket stages fall back to Earth. These numbers are projected to increase over the coming years as more and more satellites are placed into orbit.
Experts say there is also an economic risk that Tiangong-1 could present to air traffic as it hurtles toward Earth.
This undated file photo shows researchers installing China's first space station module Tiangong-1 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gansu Province prior to its launch on Sept. 29, 2011. (AP)
“The problem here is less the probability for an aircraft to be directly hit by space debris (which is low, but not zero), but the difficulty to predict precisely the area of possible impacts and their exact time of occurrence, because of uncertainties resulting from variations of solar activity,” Dieter Isakeit, chair of the information and communication committee for the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, told Fox News in a statement.
Air traffic controllers could take a more conservative approach, Isakeit says, and “totally close” large areas to air traffic for several hours if they don’t have more reliable data about where the station is headed.
That type of closure has happened during other events, such as volcanic eruptions.
In this June 18, 2012, file image released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Chinese astronauts, from left, Liu Wang, Liu Yang and Jing Haipeng wave while aboard the orbiting Tiangong-1 space station.
(Xinhua News Agency/AP)
The good news is that it’s very unlikely that anyone will be hit with debris from the rogue space station.
“When considering the worst-case location, the probability that a specific person will be struck by Tiangong-1 debris is about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot,” the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation told the Sun. “In the history of spaceflight, no known person has ever been harmed by re-entering space debris.”
Indeed, only one person is known to have been hit by falling space debris: American woman Lottie Williams, who was struck but not injured by a falling piece of a U.S. Delta II rocket while exercising in an Oklahoma park in 1997.
Most famously, America's 77-ton Skylab crashed through the atmosphere in 1979, spreading pieces of wreckage near the southwestern Australia city of Perth, which fined the U.S. $400 for littering.
WE COULD ALL BE PETS IN AN ELABORATE ALIEN ZOO, CLAIMS NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON
WE COULD ALL BE PETS IN AN ELABORATE ALIEN ZOO, CLAIMS NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON
Planet Earth could be an elaborate zoo created by a hyper-intelligent alien civilisation, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has claimed. And such aliens, he added, might even be inflicting “weird politics” on us as a form of entertainment.
Tyson, who was among the guests at the Starmus conference in Tenerife, Spain, said he remained pessimistic about humanity making contact with intelligent alien life, arguing our relative lack of intelligence could either be bad news for discovery or allow us to exist in blissful ignorance.
“I fear the day we come upon a species such as that. Maybe I don’t fear it, I just hope that all they would do for us is create a zoo where we are happy. And maybe that is what they call Earth.”
Tyson was in part responding to statements made by Stephen Hawking in July last year. At the time Hawking said the discovery of alien life could destroy humanity but we should keep searching for it anyway.
But Tyson said the likelihood of that happening were low. “A sufficiently intelligent civilisation would have positively no interest in us at all,” he said. “In the same way as when you’re walking down a street and there’s a worm there.”. And even if you wanted to kill all the worms, he continued, you’d soon get bored and do something else.
“Maybe our biggest protection against being killed by alien civilisations is their conclusion there’s no intelligent civilisation on Earth,” Tyson continued. “Suppose in fact intelligence has come to the galaxy. Who are we to then decide that we are intelligent? We define our intelligence. Of course we’re intelligent because we define it.” he said.
“The microbes in our lower gut would think of humans as dark, anaerobic pockets of faecal matter in the service of their life. That’s the purpose of human life to them.”
Tyson also argued the tiny genetic difference between a human and a chimp made it likely alien intelligence, if it does exist, is already way beyond our on. “We would not be able to comprehend their simplest of thoughts any more than a chimp can understand ‘Let’s go have dinner at the buffet later I’m going to have some carbohydrates and protein because I’m on a low fat diet’. What would that sentence mean to a chimp?” he joked. To a hyper-intelligent alien race, Tyson continued, Stephen Hawking’s intelligence might be the equivalent of an alien toddler.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, cosmologist and author, is also well-known for his television work on shows such as Cosmos and StarTalk Katie Kramer/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
He also had a word of warning for those that would have humanity become an interplanetary species. “Yes, being a multi-planet species I think that looks good on paper. Put your eggs in more than one basket. If one basket gets smashed the species is preserved. In practice it is completely unrealistic. Let’s terraform Mars, turn Mars into an Earth-haven, ship four billion people there,” he said.
“Are we really going to do that?” It would be far cheaper and easier, he added, to work out how to deflect the asteroid or defeat the pandemic that could spell our early demise. “It plays well as a news headline,” he continued. “I want the solar system to be our backyard, but the motivation should not be to stop everyone dying from a cosmic event.”
Tyson isn’t the only one making bold claims about the reality of life on Earth. Earlier this month Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said there was only a “one in a billion” chance we weren’t living in a simulation. His proof? Advancements in gaming since Pong was released in 1972.
“Now, forty years later, we have photo-realistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality,” said Musk.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
'It's a space WAR' Alien ‘battle’ near Area 51 baffles UFO hunters
'It's a space WAR' Alien ‘battle’ near Area 51 baffles UFO hunters
ALIEN hunters were left in a frenzy when they spotted what they believed to be a UFO ‘battle’ in the skies above a city in Nevada which is just a two hour driver from Area 51 – an alleged extraterrestrial hotspot.
On February 19, a driver in Henderson, Nevada, just a short drive from Las Vegas, was waiting in his car when he saw bright lights in the sky.
The unnamed motorist says the bright star-like lights in the footage, which was taken during broad daylight, started moving towards each other at a rapid speed as if they were attacking each other.
The witness said: "I was waiting in the car while my buddy went into the store. I noticed about 9 to 10 brights dots in the sky that looked like stars.
“The dots were in a line on approx 45 degree angle. All of a sudden they started to move upward on that same angle and it looked like they were attacking each other.”
YOUTUBE • GETTY'It's a space WAR' Alien ‘battle’ near Area 51 baffles UFO hunters
The man says that there were many bursts of energy and it lasted for about 20 seconds
To add more fuel to the conspiracy, the location where the footage was taken is just a two hour drive from Lincoln County, where Area 51 is based.
Area 51 is a top secret US military base which has been the centre of countless UFO theories over the years, including the infamous Roswell crash.
Some comments left beneath the video shows that some people are convinced this is a genuine UFO battle.
YOUTUBE
Alien ‘battle’ spotted near Area 51 by UFO hunters
GETTY
The incident took place near roswell
Rico Greem said: “Space war for the freedom of mankind.”
Corine Thomas said: “I believe this video, it's only a matter of time folks. The watchers are protecting us from the unruly greys.”
However, there were doubters of the authenticity, claiming that it was just reflection playing tricks on the mind.
Dan Aliyev wrote: “It’s reflections of cars turning.”
Carlos Urquides said: “It's the reflection of cars lights. If they were shooting lasers like that something would have clearly been destroyed. I believe in ufos but not this!”
Resource Scavengers: Theories on Why Aliens Would Visit Earth
Resource Scavengers: Theories on Why Aliens Would Visit Earth
Perry Jones
With UFO reports and sightings continuing to mount, one must wonder what reason Aliens would have to visit earth. There are plenty of theories out there, so I want to collect them all here as well as give my opinion on the subject. Read through all the theories and be sure to comment on which one you think makes the most sense. If you have something in mind not mentioned here be sure to let me know.
1. Simple Curiosity
The easiest to understand and most logical reason why aliens would visit earth is simple curiosity. We humans have spent countless hours out in the wild exploring our planet - observing, hunting, photographing, and cataloging its species. It’s not hard to imagine that alien visitors are doing the same. Curiosity seems to be innate to every living creature, the dog sniffing around wondering what’s in your hand, the deer scouting your back yard, etc. Perhaps these extraterrestrials are on a quest to explore the universe and catalog its inhabitants. Now there are good and bad sides to this proposition, just like some who go out in search of elephants and zebras are peaceful and simply want to carefully watch from a distance, others are hunters intent on bringing down the animal and mounting it as a trophy. The one positive we have as humans is that it seems we would be rather easy prey for a hunter, especially a race of aliens with such technological advancements as space travel. We would be equal to hunting ants, which doesn’t sound very appealing.
2. Claiming the Planet
Now there are a couple theories under the umbrella of what I will call “claiming the planet”. One is that it was their original home and they want it back. To me this one is a little far out there, but I have seen this theory online. Basically those who propose this idea tend to also believe the hollow earth theory, and that at the center of the earth lives all sorts of races. Included among them are the reptilians. In short, alien visitors are scoping us out for an upcoming battle to take back their rightful home land.
In the 2013 Superman movie Man of Steel, Kryptonian's have run out of resources and need to flee from their planet to ensure survival. Clark Kent, one of the last of an extinguished race disguised as an unremarkable human, is forced to reveal his identity when Earth is invaded by an army of survivors who threaten to bring the planet to the brink of destruction.
Another theory is that they need a new home. In this scenario our alien visitors are searching out a new place to live because their old planet just doesn’t cut it anymore. It may be a lack of resources (see below) or they have devastated their own planet and need a new one, which ties into the hippie theory that they want to prevent us from doing the same. Others have suggested that they are fighting with an enemy species that calls earth home.
The Hippie Theory: To save us from Ourselves. Some UFO researchers out there see aliens as benevolent creatures out to save the universe from harm. For Earth, as we race towards Nuclear Armageddon, space people hope to prevent us from reaching a catastrophic end. They seem to have a non-interventionist strategy apparently, since we have no concrete evidence of Alien visitation. This is a popular theme of movies like Arrival, and some books. To me this is nonsense. It’s the hippy spiritual outlook, from the same people who are sitting in the middle of a field chanting and trying to summon star beings. Yes, this really happens.
3. They Need Food
If other planets are dry, barren, and desert like, or cold and icy then chances are that very few animals or plants could survive those conditions, which would make food supply scarce. Perhaps that’s why aliens are so darn skinny. Now that is a bit of a joke, but seriously - evolution would no doubt adapt alien physiology to require a smaller caloric intake, but still any living being will still require sustenance. If Aliens really are in search of food, the question becomes does earth even offer the food that aliens would want? Assuming that their biology would process the same components that we do – protein, fats, and carbohydrates - the earth has plenty to offer. It’s doubtful that we are being hunted as food, but the possibility exists. As I mentioned earlier, humans hunt animals as they catalog species, so an alien race might do the same thing.
4. Water
There are plenty of UFO sightings near and around water. This makes it easy to guess that aliens want our water… and again it looks like a lot of those planets they may come from are pretty dry. I can’t imagine a scenario where a biological entity could completely evolve beyond the need for water, so if you are short on supply and NEED water, it makes sense that you are going to look for it. Obviously, Earth has a huge supply of it being made up of approximately 70% H2O. Remote viewer Ingo Swan, a member of the top secret Stargate Program, claimed to have witnessed a UFO near water. He described his sighting in his book Penetration:
Dawn arrived, and Swann saw a fog developing over the lake. This went on for five minutes, until the fog developed a luminous neon-blue color. Then, according to Swann, the color changed to an “angry purple” Axelrod and one of the twins each placed a hand firmly on Swann’s shoulders while “a network of purple, red, and yellow lightning bolts shot in all crazy directions through the ‘cloud.’ Swann said he would have jumped if the two had not held him down. He saw an object, almost transparent at first, but then “solidly visible over the lake.” It was triangular or diamond-shaped, growing in size.”
Swann, in terror and amazement, heard a strong wind moving past, rustling the pine trees so much that some cones and branches fell on them. The object then began to shoot out ‘ruby red laster-like beams’ as it continued to grow even more in size while maintaining its position on the lake. Very quietly, one of the twins said, ‘Shit! They’re enveloping the area. They’re going to spot us.”
As Swann later recalled the event, some of the red laser beams from the object were ‘blasting’ pine trees, and he could hear low frequency pulsations. Axelrod whispered to Swann that the beams were probably honing in on deer or other forest creatures, as they sense biological body heat. ‘They’re sure to hone in on us,’ he told Swann. Just then, one of the twins literally lifted and dragged Swann away, but not before Swann noticed the water of the lake surging upward, ‘like a waterfall going upward, as if being sucked into the ‘machine.'”
The four ran quickly and at great length, sustaining minor cuts and bruises. Eventually they stopped, breathing hard, and waited for more than thirty minutes, until one of the twins said all was clear.”
Now the skeptic is going to say if alien explorers have the technology to travel light years away, you would think they have an invention that can condense air into water. I mean we can do that here on planet Earth already. (For a little bit more on that kind of stuff read Magnus Marrissink’s article on Weather Control) I think it’s more likely our celestial visitors are being seen around water for another reason:
5. Toxic and Hazardous Waste Dumping
In economics, there is a term called rent seeking. It basically means to increase ones own wealth by limiting access to that which is lucrative. In college, I wrote a paper arguing that the developed world practiced a form of rent seeking by passing its problems onto the third world so that they are restrained from advancing. So an alien presence could do such a thing by waste dumping, or polluting, our planet as a way of forcing Earth to need the resources they have brought. So if this is the case, aliens may be a form of space pirates traveling the galaxy, dumping their toxic trash on foreign planets and preserving their own planet, while trading their interstellar goods for other useful items.
6. Biological Material: DNA Collection, Science Experiments, and Cross Breeding
Humans have truly pushed the boundaries in science, and we are capable of engineering humanity itself. The Nazis first delved into eugenics, and now today we do the same under other guises. We take fetal tissue and repurpose it, extract cartilage and all sort of other nutrients from one source and infuse it into our food supply and other places. Degenerative joints are treated with stem cells …. athletes receive platelet rich plasma injections. Eggs are plucked from ovaries and stored next to sperm for future use. So why wouldn’t that material hold value to an alien species? Is it all that difficult to imagine a scenario where aliens would attempt to cross breed with a human? We have done the same with lions and tigers in creating the liger. The problem with the liger is that it's parents, the lion and tiger, though closely related are far enough apart in terms of genetics that any offspring are sterile. From PBS:
Lions and tigers are two different species. They look different, they have different lifestyles, they vocalize differently, and they generally live on different continents. Yet when they are brought together artificially, they can interbreed. Such hybrids are called tions and ligers.
Do they challenge the definition of species? Not really. The key words are "interbreed successfully"; tigons and ligers generally are sterile and short-lived -- an evolutionary dead end.
If species exist, why? And what maintains them over time? Biologists are still wrestling with these questions, which some call the "species problem" or the "species crisis."
Biologist Ernst Mayr sees the species as a small gene pool protected from too much variability by a reproductive barrier. In other words, the species is a population adapted to a certain niche, and if the members of different species could interbreed with each other, too much genetic variability would occur, reducing the success of the adaptation. "The basic biological purpose of the species," says Mayr, "is the protection of a harmonious gene pool." To bolster his argument, he points out that hybrids between species are usually less successful and are often sterile.
This may be the case with a hybrid alien-human creature as well, thus necessitating the constant need for new biological material to produce "children". Humans may share some genetic similarity with our Alien Visitors, or may even have been engineered at some point if you believe the Ancient Alien theories or have studied topics such as bloodlines of the Annunaki.
Obviously we get into some dark subject matter here, but if you dare to search out the stories of alien abduction, babies implanted and then stolen from wombs, human experimentation in the deepest parts of the Dulce Base….the idea of aliens looking for biological material becomes a lot easier to believe, and a lot more scary. Perhaps such an experiment is taking place on a cosmic level, with a cross bred race serving as workers and slaves to a master race. Since they can’t reproduce, the need for biological material would never end. Are these sightings a search team looking for targets specimens?
7. Material Resources
This I find to be the most plausible reason we would be visited. We are exploring our solar system and excite over the possibility of harvesting minerals from other planets. A NASA supported scientist, chemical engineer Ken Debelak of Vanderbilt University, is learning how to use carbon dioxide (the main gas in Mars' atmosphere) to harvest rocket fuel and water from the red planet. Among the other resources present inside martian rocks and soil lies a bounty of useful elements: magnesium and hydrogen for rocket fuel, oxygen to breathe, water to drink.
8. Gold and Minerals
Perhaps there is something to the idea that UFO's were in search of gold in ancient times. Gold is inert and doesn't react with other substances, it is an excellent conductor of electricity, and reflects infrared energy. According to Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer and Planetarium Director for the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, "you can use gold blankets to protect spacecraft against the intense heat of a star or any sort of heat source." It helps that gold can be hammered into extremely thin sheets: one ounce of gold can be beaten out to 300 square feet. That would allow a space craft to receive its many benefits without the burden of significant weight.
We all know about ancient astronaut theory, the pyramids, and the connection to gold, but how about mercury?
Now on the flip side of things, minerals that are valuable here on earth may not serve any purpose on an alien planet. What ever the reason Aliens may be visiting us, it is a scary proposition. While some of the more far out theories like biological material theft may one day prove true, the skeptic in me says it has to be a simper answer: That's why I am sticking to the idea that UFO's, if real, are dumping their trash here and picking up some valuable mineral resources to take home.
Which of the theories above do you think makes the most sense?
Why do you think aliens are visiting earth?
Do you have your own theory or explanation? Let me know!
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
The Argument from Ignorance – Trapping UFO Enthusiasts for Decades
The Argument from Ignorance – Trapping UFO Enthusiasts for Decades
I recently saw a hashtag from a UFO enthusiast on Twitter that said #ProveTheyDontExist. It really got my gears going. You know why? This same logical fallacy has been used to justify all sorts of crazy nonsense for decades. Normally a staple of religious zealotry, the Argument from Ignorance has infected the fields of science, medicine, mental health, and just about every other academic thought pool. It’s also made its way into UFOlogy.
The center of the earth is made of cheeseburgers. I know this is true. I know because mankind has yet to prove that the center of the earth is not made of cheeseburgers.
The above statement should seem preposterous to you. Not only is it highly unlikely that cheeseburgers exist at the center of the earth, humans have yet to explore the center of the earth to find out exactly what it contains. Sure we can make educated guesses based on our understanding of science, but until we actually drill down, we’ll never know for sure.
Now look at this next example:
Aliens built the great pyramids. We don’t know definitively how humans might have done it, so it must have been aliens.
See anything familiar? While it might be a bit more subtle than claiming the center of the earth is comprised of cheeseburgers, it’s just as logically errant. One could replace the word aliens in that statement with just about anything else and it would be just as untrue. In fact, the Ancient Alien theory resembles a religion more than science or archaeology.
Now, read this:
I saw an object in the sky that wasn’t a bird or a plane, or anything else I know of. Therefore, it must be an alien-controlled spaceship.
This one really hits close to home because so many people I know have taken this position. And this statement is at the crux of many UFO claims. But here’s the thing – if you saw an unidentified flying object, it makes zero sense to follow that statement with an identification because it’s unidentified. This statement is, in fact, no less ludicrous than the center of the earth being made of cheeseburgers.
Absence of an Explanation is Never Equivalent to Proof
Does this make you uncomfortable? It should. And there is a good reason. The charge that alien life is visiting our planet is extraordinary and, as a result, must require extraordinary proof.
Credibility, Credibility, Credibility
One of the primary complaints of UFO researchers and enthusiasts is that they aren’t taken seriously by mainstream science. But when you look at some of the most popular thought-processes exhibited by them, it’s pretty easy to understand why.
In order to gain respect from the scientific community, UFOlogists must illustrate that they are credible. A researcher must be able to exercise solid and valid logic when making conclusions. Those conclusions must be drawn from the actual evidence, not a lack thereof. Similarly, they must also exercise the same logic when sharing dubious news stories and articles with questionable sources.
Researchers need to spend the energy searching for the truth of each sighting, not the validation of that which they wish to be true. Recognizing the Argument from Ignorance is the first step in this process. UFOlogists can make great changes by learning to filter out claims that use the proof of nonexistence as a requirement.
The photo of the strange structure was brought to light by Tyler Glockner, who runs
Researchers believe extraterrestrials left one vital clue in its design in Giza, Egypt – its co-ordinates.
The speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second and the geographic co-ordinates for the Great Pyramid are 29.9792458°N.
However, humans could not measure the speed of light with this precision until 1950.
YouTube user Manu Seyfzadeh asks: “Is it possible that those who placed the great pyramid on the Giza plateau had an inkling of the speed of light to a degree of accuracy not possible without highly technical equipment?”
GETTY
CRAFTED: Researchers believe extraterrestrials left a huge hint in its design
Another truther writes: “The speed of light in the metric system appears in the design and location of the Great Pyramid, when the decimal point is slid along the value.
“Aliens chose this location for a reason. This striking similarity is difficult to accept as a coincidence.
“There can be no doubt that it is a mathematically intelligent design associated with the stellar belief of its builders.”
Conspiracy theorists are convinced the Pyramid was constructed by aliens dubbed “ancient astronauts”.
They supposedly visited Earth thousands of years ago, studied different tribes and were mistaken for Gods.
“Aliens chose this location for a reason”
Truther
These “researchers” believe extraterrestrial beings bestowed the Egyptians with advanced scientific knowledge.
ANCIENT ALIENS, SUPERHEROES, AND THE DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF
ANCIENT ALIENS, SUPERHEROES, AND THE DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS BELIEF
Co-author: Abby Moore (superhero theorist). Are myths of ancient astronauts filling the voids left behind in the exodus from the myths of religion? Perhaps the popularity of the Ancient Aliens television series parallels the decline of traditional religious belief in 21st-century America. After all, twice as many Americans believe in ancient aliens visiting humans on Earth (35%) than believe in the pure evolution of human life on Earth (19%). Maybe TV shows about ancient aliens and Hollywood movies about superheroes provide the big cosmic narratives that once belonged almost solely to theology. Think about it: ancient aliens and superheroes both have superpowers once reserved for Gods, prophets, and miracle makers.
For the record, I am an existentialist without the angst, influenced by Sartre, Sagan, and others. In a vast and ancient universe of two trillion galaxies and three sextillion stars stretching across 100 billion light years, I am not a cosmic narcissist who believes a Creator has a special plan for me or my species on a speck of a planet in a remote part of one galaxy. Yet, the cosmic vastness gives me hope that— to quote the astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) in Planet of the Apes (1968)— there has “to be something better than man. Has to be.” As explained in my most read essay in Medium, these better-than-human extratrerrestrials have never visited Earth (though I wish they would). Instead, we are witnessing the electronic birth of a new religion based in the myths and imaginary legends of extraterrestrial reality-TV stars—the “ancient aliens” who star in every episode, but have yet to appear.
21st Century Non-Belief
Much has been written about the decline of religious belief in 21st-century America, as documented in various surveys by the Pew Research Center. Americans who have no religious belief and/or no religious affiliation rose to 22.8% in 2014, up from 2% in the 1950s. While religious writers blamed the decline on the usual suspects (the breakdown of society, the decay of traditional values, and so on), the atheists and humanists tweeted their cheers of hope, apparently overlooking the possibility that a decline in traditional religious belief does not automatically equate to a rise in reason, science, and enlightenment. Given the increasing paranormalism in America, it could be the opposite. Make no mistake, something will fill the void.
According to the United States Census, the current US population is an estimated 327 million people. If indeed 22.8% of Americans are non-believers, that total equals about 75 million people. Age is definitely a factor in non-belief. Over 33% of millennials claim no religious belief, while GenX non-believers are at 23%, Baby Boomers are 17%, and those born before 1945 are 11%.
TABLE 1. Source: Pew Research Center website (2014); accessed November 11, 2017.
According to Pew, about 50% of the unaffiliated are disenchanted with religion or don’t need religion because of their beliefs in “science” and the lack of evidence for a Creator. Another 20% have a beef against organized religion, while 18% are unsure of their beliefs and 10% are inactive.
What’s most interesting to me is not the increase in atheists and agnostics, but the 15.8% who believe “nothing in particular.” 15.8% equals just over 50 million people. Since I doubt all of these people are nihilists, I wonder what they believe about the origins and destiny of the human species.
Are they merely disinterested in religion? Have they outgrown religion, with no need to replace it with any other worldview or cosmology? Do they believe in evolution or that the observable universe is indeed 13.7 billion years old and contains two trillion galaxies? Do they believe in human-caused climate disruption or the Anthropocene? Do they believe we got here via the advice and interventions of ancient aliens? Or do mobile phones, cool threads, hipster restaurants, and Netflix subscriptions provide the needed daily dope—such that they do not need a cosmology for themselves or for our species?
GRAPH 1. Beginning in the late 1960s, we can see the post-Apollo rise of the nones. Source: Gallup and National Public Radio, 2013.
The Apollo Effect
According to Gallup surveys and National Public Radio, the “nones” stayed below 5% until the Apollo program in the late 1960s. The rise of the nones began with the launch of rockets to the moon and continued long after the Apollo program was shut down. For readers who might not know, Apollo 8 orbited the moon in 1968 and took the famed Earthrise image, with Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969 and Apollo 17 marking the last journey to the moon in 1972.
GRAPH 2. The post-1990 rise of the internet and rise of nones. Source: MIT Technology Review (“How the Internet is Taking Away America’s Religion,” April 4, 2014) and Allen Downey (“ “Religious Affiliation, Education, and Internet Use,” March 21, 2014).
The Internet Effect
According to computer scientist Allen Downey, the rise of the internet correlates with the rise of non-belief from 1990 to 2010. During that period, the increase in non-believers jumped from 8% to 18% of Americans. In a study of four decades of survey data trends regarding demographics, socioeconomics, religious affiliation, and internet usage, Downey concluded that:
Religious upbringing increases the chance of religious affiliation as an adult. Decreases in religious upbringing between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 25% of the observed decrease in affiliation.
College education decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in college graduation between the 1980s and 2000s account for about 5% of the observed decrease in affiliation.
Internet use decreases the chance of religious affiliation. Increases in Internet use since 1990, from 0 to nearly 80% of the general population, account for about 20% of the observed decrease in affiliation.
Please keep in mind that “correlation” does not equal “causation.” Correlations show patterns that we must connect to other knowledge, evidence, and observations.
What Accounts for the Other 45%?
Given there are 75 million non-believers, what other trends might account for the startling growth in numbers? If we follow Downey’s study and assume upbringing, education, and the internet can account for 55% of the increase, what else accounts for the other 45% (33.7 million people)?
Is it the growth of the scientific outlook? That’s possible, given that only 9% of Americans believed in pure evolution in 1982 and the total has more than doubled to 19% in 2014 (according to Gallup). However, it is likely a good chunk of that 19% is accounted for in the 55% of Downey’s study?
Could the increases be attributed to the various “New Atheist” books published in the past few years? Recent works include: Sam Harris’ The End of Faith (2004), Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism(2004),Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion(2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (2006), Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great(2007), and Victor Stenger’s God: the Failed Hypothesis(2007). These books might have had marginal influence on creating more non-believers, but my guess is that most of the readers of these books were already atheists. Plus, the sales of these books are dwarfed by the audience size of Ancient Aliens.
As dramatized in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith was the indisputable artifact left on Earth by advanced extraterrestrials. Ancient Aliens hijacked this concept and dumbed it down to the lowest possible level, while filling the intellectual void left by the death of philosophy long divorced from cosmology.
The Rise of Ancient Alien Theory: Hijacking the 2001 and Apollo Narratives
Published at the pinnacle of the space age in 1968, Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? hijacked the space narrative from Apollo and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. 2001 appeared in 1968, along with Planet of the Apes, Apollo 8 (the first journey to the moon), and Chariots of the Gods?. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969 as von Daniken’s book was becoming popular around the world. Chariots of the Gods? did what few other works tried (outside of a few episodes of the original Star Trek): it connected human destiny on Earth to the stars we were beginning to explore with the Apollo program. As I wrote in my previous essay about ancient-alien theory:
“The ancient-astronaut theory draws upon two valid cosmological concepts: 1) the reality of the immensity of space and time; and 2) the possibility of advanced civilizations somewhere in the cosmos. Given that the scale of the observable universe is immense and that NASA’s Kepler telescope suggests there may be billions of planets in the Milky Way, there is almost certainly life elsewhere in the cosmos, perhaps including intelligent civilizations.”
“Given that the observable universe is 13.7 billion years old and it took 4 billion years for intelligent life to emerge on Earth, then it is possible the remaining 9 billion years produced civilizations that may have existed for millions or billions of years. If so, they may have developed space travel technologies that allow them to traverse the great distances with relative ease…Such a possibility is one reason why 2001 offers such a compelling vision of human origins and destinies. After all, it would be an epochal moment to find a black monolith somewhere on Earth or the moon, beaming out a radio signal to an alert and curious species.”
Such a possibility is attractive, at least in theory. If ancient aliens have visited our planet, they would have possessed highly advanced sciences and technologies. They would have been viewed as gods, angels, and miracle makers by premodern humans, who would have looked upon the beings and technologies with awe, wonder, and fear.
A 1970s-style Captain Kirk got in on the ancient alien narrative, too.
Since Chariots of the Gods? was a huge best-seller, it was made into a documentary film, Chariots of the Gods (1970). Creator of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling even narrated a one-hour TV version called In Search of Ancient Astronauts (1973). A copycat version of the film, Mysteries of the Gods, was released in 1976—hosted by none other than William Shatner, a.k.a. Captain Kirk, looking rather hip in a green turtleneck and black velour blazer, while sporting a 1970s-style toupée. With films and TV shows as publicity, Chariots of the Gods? sold over 40 million copies during the 1970s.
Without a doubt, 2001, Planet of the Apes, and von Daniken’s book and films were trying to account for human origins and destiny at the pinnacle of the space age and the Apollo program. When I first encountered Chariots of the Gods? as a boy in the suburbs of Texas in the 1970s, it seemed like a plausible counter-narrative to the self-righteous evangelicals in my school and neighborhood. As explained here, I eventually began to question the validity of the assertions and realized the ancient-alien theory was bogus pseudoscience. To be frank, I was kinda bummed out. But, logic and evidence mattered more to me. Still do.
Of course, there were mainstream media efforts to debunk Chariots of the Gods? These included a 1976 Skeptical Inquirer article, a book entitled The Space Gods Revealed that featureda forward by Carl Sagan, and a BBC-PBS production of Nova (the episode “The Case of the Ancient Astronauts”). Nevertheless, the book’s pseudoscientific ideas continued to circulate around the world in the decades that featured the rise of non-belief in the wake of Apollo. Given that Chariots of the Gods? sold 40 million copies, can we assume it had zero impact on traditional religious beliefs?
In 2009, a two-part episode of Ancient Aliens appeared on the History Channel. So popular was the show that the History Channel programmed the Ancient Alien series, which began in 2010 and is still running every season—134 episodes and counting! As point of comparison for the atheist programs, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s 2014 Cosmos reboot only had 13 episodes and seems to appear on TV far less often than Ancient Aliens. I have seen both series listed in Netflix. Why would Ancient Aliens far outstrip Cosmos if the issue was merely a scientific outlook?
The prime-time episodes of Ancient Aliens draw well over one million viewers, plus there are endless repeats during days and evenings. These audiences are far larger than anything on the Science Channel. Who knows how many millions of viewers have seen the various episodes of Ancient Aliens? Among the 45% and 33 million non-believers unaccounted for in Downey’s study, how many millions might be fans of Ancient Aliens?I don’t know but it is a question worth considering. I bet the total is far from zero. After all, recent surveys show that 35% of Americans believe aliens have visited Earth in the ancient past (see the Chapman surveys below).
Still going strong almost 50 years after Chariots of the Gods?.
The Ancient Aliens series features fanciful storytelling, with many scenes shot at the various remote sites where “evidence” of ancient aliens supposedly exists. Still, it’s all pseudoscientific nonsense—simply because there are no proven artifacts of extraterrestrial origin. There is no academic conspiracy against the ancient-alien theorists as implied in the narration and comments of the talking heads. What’s needed is proven evidence, as cleverly suggested by the monolith in 2001. But we haven’t discovered a monolith or the “chariots.” I wish we had.
In Chariots of the Gods?, Mysteries of the Gods, and Ancient Aliens, virtually all of the so-called evidence and arguments provided by the theorists are myth, superstition, hearsay, anecdotal, or involve an inference or conclusion that is fallacious, implausible, or unknowable. The “evidence” and arguments also contain inaccuracies, mistaken assumptions, unrelated facts, and false similarities. The few remaining pieces of “evidence” — which are a tiny fragment of the absurd claims — are simply mysteries yet to be solved or mysteries that will never be solved. One might say this is also a key point in the cultural emergence of “alternative facts.”
Ancient Aliens: A New Cosmic Religion
But the pseudoscience, endless fallacies, and alternative facts have not prevented the multi-season programming of the television series. Even if the History Channel decided against renewing the series, it would run for decades in syndication and for eternity online, at least until real extraterrestrials arrived or we finishing wrecking the planet.
According to Chapman University, the belief in ancient aliens is growing rapidly: from 20% in 2015 to 35% in 2017.
Chariots of the Gods? and Ancient Aliens have given birth to new cosmic religion narrative, with von Daniken as the great prophet and his followers serving as the scribes—Giorgio Tsoukalos, Graham Hancock, David Childress, and others. Like God and his prophets, the unseen aliens have superpowers and have shaped our past and perhaps our destiny, especially if they return. The ancient alien narrative is like the standard Creator narratives, in that it assumes most everything humans have done follows from pre-ordained grand plans, with mysterious or hidden purposes, effected by an all-powerful force from the sky, a force that has yet to return to prove it exists. Like the Creator narrative, we humans must have been special beneficiaries. After all, the ancient aliens have taken the time to visit our tiny planet, thus caring enough to allegedly build stone structures, design ancient batteries, create cool statuettes, and paint pictographs before cruising to the next galaxy or star system.
Despite (or because of) the pseudoscience, the ancient alien theorists are doing a far better job of connecting humanity to the cosmos than Hollywood filmmakers and contemporary philosophers. The ancient-alien theorists have a fervant audience of followers who feel the theory connects our origins and destinies to the stars. Meanwhile, Hollywood merely sends us into space to wage Star Wars and battle Alien monsters.
All of the above is why I predict the ancient-alien narrative will continue to grow over time, precisely because it is filled with mystical and magical beliefs that mirror religious mythologies. Ancient Aliens makes us feel special—just like Jesus, ETs came to visit us and advise us. After hijacking the 2001narrative, von Daniken and his scribes have built the ancient-astronaut theory into a new religion, a new cosmic narrative filling the void left by contemporary philosophy as it shrinks before a massive and expanding universe. Meanwhile, secular society provides us with mobile phones and IMAX movies, and says we and our tribes are special—so super-special that superheroes will save us in case the aliens don’t make it back in time.
Superheroes: Our Secular Gods
Born of Nietzsche’s 19th century “Ubermensch,” the superhero emerged to counter horiffic “supermen” of the 20th century — the Marxist New Man and the Nazi Aryan man. By the early 20th century, the Soviet Union promised to create the Marxist New Man, the new human supposedly liberated from capitalism and united via communism and “scientific” materialism, supposedly destined to operate on an international scale. Countering the Marxist New Man, Nazi Germany concocted a racist Aryan Man, a mythical superman from the past supposedly destined to rule Europe and much of the world. Of course, both of these visions of a “new man” resulted in genocide and mass slaughter in totalitarian societies, culminating in World War II and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people before, during, and after the war.
In America’s land of a mythic “Democratic Man,” the only “superman” would be Superman, Batman, and subsequent legions of superheroes to save us in comics and movies. Though superheroes are fictional, their stories draw on real world events, such as nuclear weapons and environmental destruction. Superheroes function like secular gods providing stories about humanity’s survival and redemption in the face of apocalypse. In the end credits for The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), we see a giant sculpture of the Avenger superheroes, as if they are a pantheon of gods from Ancient Greece or Rome.
Pantheon of Secular Gods. Above: Statue of The Avengers from The Age of Ultron. Below: Justice League Superheroes
Superhero films have proven especially popular in the 21st century, with a trendline that mirrors the rise of non-belief in America.
Well into the 21st century, the superhero films just keep coming from Hollywood. Be it Superman, Batman, X-Men, Wonder Woman, or The Avengers, it seems almost all superhero films feature superheroes confronting a doomsday scenario for humanity. The superheroes must “save the world” because we can’t do it. Just as ancient-aliens fills the void left by philosophy divorced from science, superheroes fill the void left because industrial society has become divorced from nature, yet it is utterly reliant on the resources we are depleting. Oceans are acidifying, sea levels are rising, and nuclear war is still a possibility, while terrorism, exploitation, and endless tribal warfare plague secular society. Superheroes are needed to save us from ourselves because we know we have no answers, no real solutions for our problems, no leaders or institutions left to trust. It’s the same thing, over and over again, as illustrated in presidential elections.
In the 21st century, Americans expect their presidents to be superheroes battling the doomsday scenarios of the other party—thus we give the presidents ever-expanded political and legal powers, as if we are trying to give them superpowers and make them into superheroes with super solutions. Both major parties do it. Don’t deny it. When the dictator arrives in America, it will be in the guise of a presidential superhero with political superpowers. As Trump has shown, the superhero prez won’t even need to be rational or coherent or even sane. They just need to be superheroes who zap the bad guys. This is what happens when religion and nationalism merge with Hollywood and the 24/7 media spectacle.
In superhero movies and sequels, the superheroes must return to save us, again and again. Ancient-alien theorists claim extraterrestrial visitors shaped our past, present, and perhaps our future when they return. The return of aliens and superheroes echoes the promised return of Jesus and Nietzsche’s cycle of the eternal return, the superhero feedback loop. Ancient aliens and superheroes have superpowers beyond anything humans have, not unlike the Gods and prophets in religions. In the end, superheroes are our secular Gods and fulfill functions formerly reserved for religion, while ancient-alien theory claims to offer a secular narrative that connects us to the stars, yet ends up as another religion—a merger of the space age and new age.
Superhero stories and ancient-alien theory now stand in for contemporary philosophy, divorced from 21st century cosmology and declared “dead” by Stephen Hawking. In the absence of a science-based popular philosophy that offers us hope, meaning, and purpose (beyond tribalism, consumerism, and strip-mining other planets) amid the cosmic vastness, the ancient-alien theory provides hope and meaning by connecting our origins and destiny to a story that begins in the stars—even it is in a universe of alternative facts.
How much of the decline of traditional religious belief can be attributed to the rise of ancient alien theory? I don’t know, but given this analysis, I bet it is far from zero. This possibility is why the traditional religions will try to colonize the ancient-alien theory. Already, one prominent religious leader suggests we baptize extraterrestrials upon meeting them. If the ancient aliens do show up and don’t believe in a Creator, we might well need the superheroes to save us from a religious war in space!
_____________
Barry Vacker is author of the new book, Specter of the Monolith (2017), which explores the meaning of Apollo and films like 2001 and Interstellar, while outlining a new and entirely original space philosophy for the human species. The book is available in Apple’s iBooks, Barnes & Noble (here), and Amazon (here).
With the latest available orbital data and space-weather forecasts, the reentry prediction window has stabilised and shrunk further to a time frame running from midnight 1 April to the early morning of 2 April (in UTC time)
Reentry will take place anywhere between 43ºN and 43ºS. Areas above or below these latitudes can be excluded. At no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible. This forecast was updated approximately weekly through to mid-March, and is now being updated every day.
Tiangong-1 (天宫一号, Heavenly Palace 1) is China’s first space station and an experimental space laboratory. Its major goal was to test and master technologies related to orbital rendezvous and docking. It is identified by its UN COSPAR ID 2011-053A. It was launched on 30 September 2011 at 03:16:03.507 UTC by a Long March 2F/G rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert, Inner Mongolia, China. One uncrewed and two crewed missions, executed by the Shenzhou (神舟, Divine Craft) spacecraft, took place during its operational lifetime.
What’s happening?
The Tiangong-1 space station will reenter Earth’s atmosphere and substantially burn up in the March–April 2018 timeframe.
As of mid-January 2018, the spacecraft was at about 280 km altitude in an orbit that will inevitably decay; it will mostly burn up due to the extreme heat generated by its high-speed passage through the atmosphere (some spacecraft, like Soyuz capsules, are designed to withstand reentry).
Following launch in 2011, the Tiangong-1 orbit began steadily decaying due to the faint, yet not-zero, atmospheric drag present even at 300 or 400 km altitude. This affects all satellites and spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, like the International Space Station (ISS), for example.
As a result, such craft must conduct regular ‘reboost manoeuvres’ to maintain their orbit – typically, ground controllers command the craft’s engines or thrusters to fire for a certain amount of time, speeding it up so that it gains altitude.
During its operational life from launch through to December 2015, regular orbital maintenance manoeuvres were executed by Tiangong-1 in order to maintain an operational altitude of between 330 and 390 km above the Earth’s surface.
What was the original disposal plan?
Initially, a ‘controlled reentry’ was planned for the spacecraft at the end of its life.
This means that ground controllers would have commanded the engines to fire, slowing the craft by a significant amount so that it would fall toward the surface. Firing the engines would have been done at a specific moment so that it would reenter the atmosphere and substantially burn up over a large, unpopulated region of the South Pacific ocean. Any surviving pieces would fall into the ocean, far from any populated areas. This is precisely what ESA did, for example, for the Agency’s series of five ATV cargo spacecraft between 2008 and 2015.
However, in March 2016 the Tiangong-1 space station ceased functioning but maintained its structural integrity. In so far as can be fully confirmed, ground teams lost control with the craft, and it can no longer be commanded to fire its engines. It is, therefore, expected to make an ‘uncontrolled reentry.’
Q: How big is Tiangong-1? What shape is it?
The spacecraft’s 10.4 m-long main body is made up of two cylinders of approximately equal length: a service module and an experiment module. The thinner service module provides power and orbit control capabilities for the station. It has two solar panels, each approximately 3 x 7 m in size. The thicker experimental module comprises an enclosed front conical section, which include a docking port, a cylindrical section, and a rear conical section. The experimental module is habitable.
The overall mass of the spacecraft was reported to have been approximately 8.5 tonnes including fuel at launch. Given that the space station exceeded its originally planned operational lifetime of two years and continued operating successfully for two more years after that, a considerable amount of fuel must have been consumed to sustain the orbit and the habitable environment conditions inside.
This means that a significantly lower mass on reentry is likely, comparable to the mass of defunct satellites that make uncontrolled reentries typically a couple times per month.
To date, who’s done or is doing what?
China notified the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) of the upcoming re-entry and committed to enhanced monitoring and forecasting of the orbital decay, including requesting an international joint monitoring and information dissemination campaign under the framework of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).
IADC comprises space debris and other experts from 13 space agencies/organisations, including NASA, ESA, European national space agencies, JAXA, ISRO, KARI, Roscosmos and the China National Space Administration.
IADC members will use this event to conduct their annual reentry test campaign, during which participants will pool their predictions of the time window, as well as their respective tracking datasets obtained from radar and other sources. The aim is to cross-verify, cross-analyse and improve the prediction accuracy for all members.
ESA is acting as host and administrator for the campaign, as it has done for the twenty previous IADC test campaigns since 1998. A special case for ESA was the campaign in 2013 during the uncontrolled reentry of ESA’s own GOCE satellite.
Regular updates are being provided via the website of the China Manned Space Agency in both Chinese and English.
As of January 2018, the mean altitude of the space station is 280 km. The further decay, and hence re-entry, is assumed to be uncontrolled in the sense of orbit maintenance. This has, however, not been unambiguously confirmed by the Chinese authorities. It has however been reported that the attitude, i.e. the orientation, of Tiangong-1 is stabilised.
Over which parts of Earth will it burn up?
Due to the orbital inclination of the Tiangong-1, approximately 42.8 degrees, and the likely uncontrolled nature of the reentry, the final impact point can be anywhere on Earth between 42.8 degrees North and 42.8 degrees South in latitude.
As you can see in the chart at right in the map above, the re-entry location itself is not uniformly distributed. Due to the geometry of the craft’s circular orbit, the probability of reentry happening at the maximum (42.8 degrees N) and minimum (42.8 degrees S) latitude are higher than at the equator.
Why is this?
Because of the low eccentricity and non-polar inclination of the orbit (in other words, because the orbit of the space station around the Earth is circular and at an angle with respect to the equator), the space station spends more time near the edges of the band then it spends crossing the equatorial region of Earth. This leads to a higher likelihood of reentry occurring near the edges of the latitude band, i.e., the top and bottom of the band in the map above.
Will it completely burn up during reentry?
At launch, the total mass of the space station was about 8.5 tonnes (including fuel). Following its launch in September 2011, Tiangong-1 operated successfully for two full years on its scheduled operational mission plus an additional two years, and much of its fuel must have been consumed to maintain orbit altitude and maintain conditions inside the module. This means that the station’s mass is likely to be significantly lower on reentry, comparable to other end-of-life satellites, of which each month, typically, 3-4 uncontrollably reenter Earth’s atmosphere. Tiangong-1’s mass without fuel is estimated to be, therefore, about 7.5t.
Through comparisons with similar reentries, and simulations for objects of similar mass and size, we may not exclude that a (small) fraction of the Tiangong-1 mass may reach ground, in some fragments, distributed over a large footprint area. It is very difficult to estimate how much, precisely, without more knowledge of the spacecraft’s design and construction.
Will anyone know the precise location and time of reentry in advance?
Only from one day before the actual reentry will it become possible to roughly predict which ground tracks, and hence which regions on Earth, might witness the reentry.
But even then, an impact location prediction on the order kilometres is, for an uncontrolled reentry, beyond current technical capabilities due to complexities of modelling the atmosphere, the dynamics of the reentering object and limitations in observing the spacecraft.
In general, the uncertainty associated with an uncontrolled reentry prediction is on the order of 20% of the remaining orbital lifetime. Practically, this means that even 7 hours before the actual reentry, the uncertainty on the break-up location is a full orbital revolution – meaning plus or minus thousands of km!
If the spacecraft does have a functioning attitude control system now, this could stop working under the higher dynamic pressure loads (due to falling lower into the atmosphere) closer to reentry and the uncertainty in the final reentry time window could rise (this was the case, for example, with ESA’s GOCE reentry).
Once it reenters and breaks up, what is the risk that any pieces reach ground?
Tiangong-1 is a large spacecraft comparable in size and mass to other, frequently used space stations and cargo vessels such as ESA’s ATV, the Japanese HTV, Russian Progress and American Dragon or Cygnus.
From monitoring the controlled reentries of those types of spacecraft, it can be surmised that Tiangong-1 will break up during its atmospheric re-entry and that some parts will survive the process and reach the surface of Earth.
Video of ESA’s ATV 1 breaking up during its controlled reentry in September 2008
Given the uncontrolled nature of this reentry event, the zone over which fragments might fall stretches over a curved ellipsoid that is thousands of kilometres in length and tens of kilometres wide. While a wide area could be affected, it is important to point out that a large part of the Earth is covered by water or is uninhabited.
Hence the personal probability of being hit by a piece of debris from the Tiangong-1 is actually 10 million times smaller than the yearly chance of being hit by lightning.
In the history of spaceflight, no casualties due to falling space debris have ever been confirmed.
How does Tiangong-1 reentry compare to the reentries of similar-size craft in the past?
With its 8.5 metric tonnes of (initial) mass, Tiangong-1 is definitely not the largest uncontrolledreentry in spaceflight history. That would be Skylab with 74 metric tonnes.
Tiangong-1 falls within the category of modern space freighters (crewed and uncrewed) such as the already mentioned ATV (12 t), Japan’s HTV (10 t), Russia’s Progress (7 t) and Soyuz (7 t), the US Dragon (7 t) or Cygnus (5 t) and the Chinese Tianzhou (13 t). These masses are for the loaded craft; in the table below, they are shown at reentry.
Tiangong-1-class reentries Credit: ESA CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Note: Shuttle Colombia (STS-107), with a mass of 82 t, unexpectedly broke up during a controlled reentry on 1 Feb 2003, leading to the loss of vehicle and crew.
How will ESA share news or updates on the reentry?
In addition to news posted here in the blog, ESA will regularly update authorities in ESA Member States with detailed information on the reentry, as it does during all such events.
What is ESA doing to tackle the problem of space debris?
ESA is leading the effort to tackle the problems of space debris by:
Monitoring and tracking objects in space By the end of the 2009-2020 period, ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme will have overseen an investment of €200 million aiming to develop Europe-wide warning systems for space weather, near-Earth objects (such as asteroids) and debris objects left in orbit by human activities. Within SSA, ESA is developing and demonstrating the technologies needed to find and track debris and alert satellite operators – who control our vital weather, navigation, telecommunication and science research satellites – when evasive action may be necessary.
Developing technologies to mitigate and remediate space debris ESA’s Clean Space office launched the CleanSat project to support European Industry in developing technologies for spacecraft in low-Earth orbit that will then be fully compliant with debris-mitigation regulations. CleanSat covers four technology areas:1. Passivation: Explosions of satellites are a major source of debris. Passivation reduces the likelihood of a satellite exploding in the future by deactivating its power systems and batteries and venting any leftover propellant.2. Design for demise: Many spacecraft reenter the atmosphere. By using materials and designs that are likely to burn up entirely, the engineers are reducing the chances that pieces are left to hit the ground.3. Deorbiting systems: International debris guidelines require satellites to remove themselves from low-Earth orbit within 25 years of their end of life. ESA is carrying out studies to develop technologies that will ease the deorbiting at the end of life without affecting mission efficiency (examples include compact solid robot thrusters for deorbiting and ‘terminator sails’ that could be unfurled to increase air drag and hasten reentry).4. Design for servicing: This involves incorporating standard features onto future satellites, such as grips and handles, that will enable robotic servicing missions to capture satellites for removal, repair or refuelling.
While the first action to tackle the challenge of space debris is to stop producing further debris, it is also important to remove the largest items of debris currently in heavily-trafficked orbits, as a preventative measure to reduce the likelihood of future explosions or collisions.
ESA’s Clean Space office is working to prepare the first ‘active debris removal’ (ADR) mission, called e.Deorbit. The objective of the mission is to use a custom satellite – the chaser – to capture a heavy, ESA-owned derelict satellite and remove it from an altitude of 800-1000 km and a near-polar orbital trajectory. The mission will be also an opportunity to demonstrate technologies needed for target characterisation, disposal methods and capture mechanisms – three technology areas of high interest to ESA and European industry for future space servicing vehicles.
What specific technologies will help avoid future reentries such as this?
While not a specific technology, the main way for any spacecraft operator to avoid reentries such as this is to ensure that their missions are fully capable of conducting controlled, completely destructivereentries at the end of life. The specific technological approach taken depends on the mass of the spacecraft in question:
For satellites up to 1-2 tonnes: Technologies which will enhance ‘design for demise’ during reentry in the atmosphere. By using materials that are likely to burn up entirely during reentry and designs that will encourage complete breakup at an early point in the reentry process, already in the manufacturing phase engineers can reduce the chances that any pieces survive reentry to reach the surface.
For larger satellites: Efficient controlled deorbiting systems are needed. ESA is conducting studies to develop technologies that will ease deorbiting at the end of life without affecting overall mission efficiency, such as improved pressure gauges to maintain an accurate measure of the propellant remaining in a spacecraft’s fuel tank.
Vermoedelijke opvolger Pluto laat zich (nog) niet zien
Steven Stroeykens
rvEen vergelijking tussen de (vermoedelijke) grootte van planeet X (midden) met de aarde (links) en Neptunus (rechts). Die zou tot tien keer zo zwaar zijn als de aarde.
WETENSCHAPAstronomen beginnen steeds sterker te vermoeden dat er zich in ons zonnestelsel een onontdekte planeet schuilhoudt die de banen van andere hemellichamen beïnvloedt. Die zou veel groter en zwaarder zijn dan de vroegere negende planeet Pluto en verder weg staan van de zon dan alle andere planeten.
Er zijn bizarre dingen gaande in het buitenste stuk van het zonnestelsel voorbij Neptunus, de verste van de acht planeten. In die koude buitenwijk van het zonnestelsel draaien een heleboel kleine, ijzige hemellichamen, waaronder ook Pluto, dat in 2006 tot ‘dwergplaneet’ werd gedegradeerd. Astronomen noemen die kleine hemellichamen meestal nogal fantasieloos ‘trans-Neptunian objects’ of TNO’s (objecten voorbij Neptunus). Samen vormen ze de zogeheten ‘Kuipergordel’, een vele miljarden kilometers grote zwerm voorbij Neptunus.
Áls de planeet bestaat, is het een grote bol ijs die zich schuilhoudt in de ijskoude, donkere buitenste delen van ons zonnestelsel»
Het zijn de vreemde banen van sommige TNO’s in de Kuipergordel die astronomen nu aan het denken hebben gezet. Ze draaien immers niet rond de zon in nette cirkels die ongeveer in eenzelfde vlak liggen — zoals de acht planeten doen — maar beschrijven heel langgerekte ellipsvormige banen die schots en scheef georiënteerd staan in de ruimte. Sedna bijvoorbeeld — een duizend kilometer grote bal ijs en rots die er maar liefst 11.000 jaar over doet om één keer rond de zon te draaien — verwijdert zich één keer per omloop tot ruim 140 miljard kilometer van de zon. Da’s dertig keer zo ver als Neptunus en 940 keer zo ver als de aarde.
Kudde schapen
Maar de banen van die avontuurlijke TNO’s zijn niet helemaal willekeurig, integendeel. Er is een groepje bij met verdacht gelijkaardige banen, in een gelijkaardige hoek tegenover de rest van het zonnestelsel en reikend tot gelijkaardige afstanden. Dat moet een reden hebben, denken astronomen, en dan is een nog onbekende planeet de meest voor de hand liggende. Misschien trekt en sleurt zijn zwaartekracht aan de TNO’s en houdt hij die in het gareel als een herdershond bij een kudde schapen?
Als planeet nummer 9 echt bestaat, is het alleszins een behoorlijk fors exemplaar. Misschien zelfs tien keer zo zwaar als de aarde en érg ver weg: gemiddeld 60 à 75 miljard kilometer van de zon, volgens een schatting van Mike Brown en Konstantin Batygin van het California Institute of Technology. Op zijn verste punt zou hij nog een stuk verder kunnen komen dan Sedna. Ter vergelijking: de aarde staat op amper 0,15 miljard kilometer van de zon.
Grote bol ijs
Wat voor planeet het is, weten we niet, maar een grote bol ijs, mogelijk met wat gesteente en ander materiaal ertussen gemengd, is een goede gok. Hij houdt zich immers schuil in de ijskoude, donkere buitenste delen van ons zonnestelsel, ver weg van de zonnewarmte. Doordat hij zich zo ver weg van ons en de zon bevindt, moet planeet 9 – als hij al bestaat – erg lichtzwak zijn en moeilijk te vinden. Zelfs door de grootste telescopen zou hij niet meer zijn dan een onooglijk klein lichtpuntje, verloren tussen de miljarden verre sterren in onze Melkweg. Dat verklaart waarom hij nooit eerder is waargenomen door een telescoop. Het belet astronomen niet om te proberen. Onder meer het team van Brown is aan het speuren geslagen met de Subara, een grote telescoop op een bergtop in Hawaï.
Op basis van de banen van bekende TNO’s kunnen astronomen wel ruwweg de baan van planeet 9 schatten, maar nog niet op welk punt van die baan hij zich momenteel bevindt. Dat betekent dat hij op heel veel plaatsen aan de hemel zou kunnen staan. Om zeker te zijn moet die héle baan afgespeurd worden, met een ruime onzekerheidsmarge eromheen. De zoektocht zou dus weleens lang kunnen duren, maar de astronomen zouden natuurlijk ook geluk kunnen hebben en morgen al op de planeet stoten.
rvOmdat de planeet zich op liefst 60 à 75 miljard kilometer van de zon zou bevinden, moet het er ijskoud zijn en bestaan uit een grote bal ijs met eventueel wat ander materiaal ertussen.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
Algerian Sky suddenly turns into red – Sahara Sand or Iron Oxide?
Algerian Sky suddenly turns into red – Sahara Sand or Iron Oxide?
A rare weather event has happened this week in Algeria where the sky suddenly turned into red. The phenomenon in Algeria is just one example of extreme weather events taking place all over the world every week.
A completely red sky has been filmed in Algeria due to incoming Sahara sand according to weather specialists, but others are convinced that it is iron oxide coming from the Nibiru system similar to the strange red dust mist captured by the International Space Station live feed camera, a few days ago.
Two Cylinder UFOs Seen Over Iowa By Aircraft Pilot, Jan 29, 2018, UFO Sighting News.
Two Cylinder UFOs Seen Over Iowa By Aircraft Pilot, Jan 29, 2018, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 29, 2018 Location of sighting: Burlington, Iowa, USA Source: MUFON #91139 These two UFOs are flying in military formation, meaning they are watching out for one another...a wingman of sorts. The pilot says that he saw two shiny cylinder UFOs leaving the earths atmosphere. Most UFOs have the ability to create clouds, contrails and aircraft light flashes, in order to camouflage themselves. Clearly these UFOs are doing the same to look like rockets. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
While Piloting aircraft at 10,000 ft observed two separate contrails emitted in pulses from 2 small blunt highly reflective cylindrical objects.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
