Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
09-04-2018
Zag Buzz Aldrin echt een UFO? Astronaut slaagt voor ‘leugendetectortest’ - HLN.be
Zag Buzz Aldrin echt een UFO? Astronaut slaagt voor ‘leugendetectortest’ -HLN.be
NASADe eerste ruimteselfie ooit werd in 1966 genomen door Buzz Aldrin, de tweede man op de maan.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETOp 20 juli 1969 zette Buzz Aldrin als tweede man ooit enkele stappen op de maan, maar dat is niet het enige waar de astronaut bekend om staat. Hij beweerde later immers in een interview dat hij en zijn collega’s op weg naar de maan een UFO hadden gezien. En volgens een organisatie uit Ohio meent de man dat ook oprecht: hij zou met vlag en wimpel geslaagd zijn voor een leugendetectortest.
De intussen 88-jarige Aldrin maakte gewag van een vreemd object toen hij op weg was naar de maan tijdens de missie van Apollo 11. “Er was daarbuiten iets dat dicht genoeg was dat we het konden observeren. Het had de vorm van een L”, klonk het. Volgens de Institute of BioAcoustic Biology in Albany (Ohio) mogen we zijn getuigenis ook niet zomaar van tafel vegen, want de man zou dat echt geloven. Hij en zijn collega’s Al Worden, Edgar Mitchell en Gordon Cooper zouden deelgenomen hebben aan een onderzoek en zouden ‘onder strikt opgevolgde wetenschappelijke omstandigheden’ geslaagd zijn voor een leugendetectortest.
De beweringen van het Instituut worden nu in heel wat media gepubliceerd, maar er duiken meteen ook heel wat kritische stemmen op. Zo wordt er op de website van de instelling met geen woord gerept over het onderzoek in kwestie, en is het helemaal niet duidelijk of de mannen wel hebben deelgenomen aan een test. Het zou bijvoorbeeld evengoed kunnen dat BioAcoustic Biology oude interviews met Aldrin geanalyseerd heeft, toen de man voor het eerst vertelde over de UFO op weg naar de maan.
APBuzz Aldrin in 2017.
Geen alien
Aldrin twijfelt trouwens zelf sterk aan het feit dat hij in 1969 een ander ruimteschip zag. Drie jaar geleden maakte hij dat duidelijk tijdens een vraag- en antwoordgesprek op sociaalnetwerksite Reddit. “In Apollo 11 zag ik een licht uit het raam van ons ruimteschip, en dat licht leek ons te volgen. Er waren heel wat mogelijke verklaringen voor dit fenomeen, en achteraf bekeken ben ik ervan overtuigd dat het de reflectie van de zon op een van de panelen was. Maar omdat we niet helemaal zeker zijn wat het is, kan je in principe spreken van een ‘unidentified object’.”
De man heeft ook al laten weten dat zijn uitspraken destijds uit hun context werden getrokken in de media. “Ik zag toen geen alien, al geloof ik best dat er buitenaards leven kan bestaan in onze melkweg. En er zijn miljoenen andere melkwegstelsels buiten het onze. Het is dus erg waarschijnlijk dat er ergens anders nog leven is. Maar ik denk dat die honderden lichtjaren van ons verwijderd zijn.”
ReutersBuzz Aldrin was de tweede man op de maan in 1969.
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- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:HLN.be - Het Laatste Nieuws ( NL)
Het leek in niets op een vliegtuig. Oud-bommenwerperpiloot vertelt over UFO die hij zag boven Arizona
Het leek in niets op een vliegtuig. Oud-bommenwerperpiloot vertelt over UFO die hij zag boven Arizona
Een voormalige bommenwerperpiloot, die momenteel voor vliegmaatschappij American Airlines werkt, heeft zich uitgesproken over zijn recente UFO-waarneming boven de woestijn van Arizona.
Blenus Green en zijn copiloot vlogen in februari boven Arizona toen ze van de luchtverkeersleiding te horen kregen dat er in de buurt een vliegend object was gezien dat niet op de radar verscheen.
Kort daarop zag Green een object, zo blijkt uit een geluidsopname van het gesprek met de luchtverkeersleiders.
Zeer fel
“Het vloog over ons heen,” zei Green. “Ik weet niet wat het was, maar het bevond zich 600 tot 900 meter boven ons. Het vloog recht over ons heen.”
Green werd onlangs door een lokale tv-zender geïnterviewd over zijn ervaring. “Ik keek uit het raam en daar was het,” zei hij.
De piloot zei dat het object ‘zeer fel was, maar niet zo fel dat je er niet naar kon kijken’. Het leek in niets op een vliegtuig, voegde hij toe.
Gefascineerd
Het object was met name fel op plekken die geen zonlicht reflecteerden. “Normaal gesproken is het juist andersom,” merkte hij op.
“Het was zo fel dat je de vorm niet kon onderscheiden,” zei hij.
Green, die 20 jaar ervaring heeft als piloot, zei dat hij niet bang was, maar vooral geïnteresseerd. “Ik was erg gefascineerd,” zei hij. “Ik probeerde vast te stellen wat het was omdat het zo ongewoon was.”
The mystery of why Stonehenge was built on the unremarkable chalk plateau of Salisbury Plain may have finally been solved.
An expert claims two of Stonehenge's largest stones had been in place at the site for millions of years before Neolithic people built the monument.
Their coincidental alignment with the sunrise and sunset on the longest and shortest days of the year prompted ancient people to construct Stonehenge around them.
Scroll down for video
The mystery of why Stonehenge was built on the unremarkable chalk plateau of Salisbury Plain may have finally been solved. An expert claims two of Stonehenge's largest stones had been in place at the site for millions of years before Neolithic people built the monument
The coincidental alignment of sarsen stone 16 and the Heel stone with the sunrise and sunset on the longest and shortest days of the year prompted ancient people to construct Stonehenge around them
Mike Pitts specialises in British pre-history and is one of a small number of scientists who have excavated on the site of the ancient monument.
In a paper published in the journal British Archaeology, the freelance archaeologist describes uncovering a pit, around six metres (20 feet) in diameter, besides the heel stone in 1979.
The heel stone is 75 metres (250 feet) from the centre of the stone circle, weighs around 60 tonnes and has not been shaped or dressed, unlike the other sarsens.
It is the point at which the sun rises and falls below the horizon at midsummer and midwinter, from the perspective of those looking towards it from inside Stonehenge.
Mr Pitts believes the hole, rather than being a socket dug for a missing standing stone, was once home to huge heel stone.
A second undressed stone in the centre of the circle lines up with the heel stone and sun at the winter and summer solstice.
This rock, known as stone 16, also has a pit next to it, suggesting it too originated at the site of Stonehenge.
Speaking to The Times, Mr Pitts said: 'The assumption used to be that all the sarsens at Stonehenge had come from the Marlborough Downs more than 20 miles away.
The heel stone is 75 metres (250 feet) from the centre of the stone circle and weighs around 60 tonnes . It is the point at which the sun rises and falls below the horizon at midsummer and midwinter, from the perspective of those looking towards it from inside Stonehenge
'The idea has since been growing that some may be local and the heel stone came out of that big pit.
'If you are going to move something that large you would dress it before you move it, to get rid of some of the bulk. That suggests it has not been moved very far.
'It makes sense that the heel stone has always been more or less where it is now, half-buried.'
Sarsen is a layer of sandstone that formed millions of years ago above the chalk layer on Salisbury Plain.
During the various ice ages, permafrost repeatedly froze and thawed this chalk layer, shattering the sarsen.
Over millennia, these stones sank below the surface, leaving a few fragmented rocks jutting out.
It is made of Sarsen, a layer of sandstone that formed millions of years ago above the chalk layer on Salisbury Plain and can be found across Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. Pictured - Sarsen stones in a garden in Wiltshire
These stones, of varying sizes, can be found across Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, as well as in Kent and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset and Hampshire.
The act of building Stonehenge may have been as important a ceremony to its ancient creators as the use of the finished stone circle, experts claimed in March.
Construction of the 5,000-year-old monument drew people together from all over the country to drink and get to know one another in large ceremonial feasts.
Work on Stonehenge could have been used to show outsiders the power of the small community building it, researchers at English Heritage said.
The theory may explain why some of the Wiltshire site's stones were transported more than a hundred miles (160km) from a quarry in south Wales.
The large standing stones at Stonehenge are made of local sandstone, but the smaller ones, known as 'bluestones', come from a quarry in south Wales
Work on Stonehenge could have been used to show outsiders the power of the small community building it. The theory may explain why some of the Wiltshire site's stones were transported 140 miles (225km) from south Wales, experts said
Susan Greaney, a senior historian at English Heritage, said: 'In contemporary Western culture, we are always striving to make things as easy and quick as possible, but we believe that for the builders of Stonehenge this may not have been the case.
'Drawing a large number of people from far and wide to take part in the process of building was potentially a powerful tool in demonstrating the strength of the community to outsiders.
'Being able to welcome and reward these people who had travelled far, perhaps as a kind of pilgrimage, with ceremonial feasts, could be a further expression of the power and position of the community.'
The theory follows English Heritage's recent discovery of feasting at the nearby Neolithic Durrington Walls settlement, also found in Wiltshire.
Stonehenge has been used as a centre for ceremonies throughout its 5,000-year-history. Pictured is an artist's impression of a Neolithic ceremony at the site circa 3,000 BC, when the monument was just a series of ditches without the monoliths it is known for today
According to the charity's historians, this attracted people from across the country to help build the Neolithic monument.
The discovery pushed English Heritage to look again at theories of how Stonehenge was built, concluding that building the monument was important ceremonially and cause for celebration.
Ms Greaney said the new theory may explain a mystery surrounding the impressive distances some of Stonehenge's monoliths were carried.
WHO BUILT STONEHENGE?
Stonehenge was built thousands of years before machinery was invented.
The heavy rocks weigh upwards of several tonnes each.
Some of the stones are believed to have originated from a quarry in Wales, some 140 miles (225km) away from the Wiltshire monument.
To do this would have required a high degree of ingenuity, and experts believe the ancient engineers used a pulley system over a shifting conveyor-belt of logs.
Historians now that the ring of stones was built in several different stages, with the first completed around 5,000 years ago by Neolithic Britons who used primitive tools, possibly made from deer antlers.
Modern scientists now widely believe that Stonehenge was created by several different tribes over time.
After the Neolithic Britons - likely natives of the British Isles - started the construction, it was continued centuries later by their descendants.
Over time, the descendants developed a more communal way of life and better tools which helped in the erection of the stones.
Bones, tools and other artefacts found on the site seem to support this hypothesis.
The large standing stones at the monument are made of local sandstone, but the smaller ones, known as 'bluestones', come from a quarry in south Wales.
Stonehenge's architects would have had to shift the huge rocks 140 miles (225km) from what is now Pembrokeshire Coast National Park to the monument's build site.
Ms Greaney said: 'As soon as you abandon modern preconceptions which assume Neolithic people would have sought the most efficient way of building Stonehenge, questions like why the bluestones were brought from so far away - the Preseli Hills of south Wales - don't seem quite so perplexing.'
The announcement came as English Heritage hosted events to celebrate 100 years since the monument was donated to the nation, including inviting the public - for the first time at the site - to help move and raise a four-tonne stone (pictured)
Stunning aerial footage of prehistoric monument Stonehenge
She added that the idea of 'stone-pulling ceremonies', in which people celebrate moving monoliths by hand, is not a new one.
She said pictures from a 1915 stone-pulling ceremony on Nias, Indonesia, showed people in ceremonial dress 'revelling' in the task and taking part in feasts and dances.
Stonehenge is one of the most prominent prehistoric monuments in Britain.
The monument that can be seen today is the final stage of a project that spanned 1,500 years.
Stonehenge was donated to the nation's heritage collection in 1918 by owners Cecil and Mary Chubb.
Mr Chubb had bought the then-neglected monument on impulse at an auction three years earlier having been sent there by his wife to bid for a set of dining room chairs.
HOW WAS STONEHENGE BUILT?
Stonehenge is one of the most prominent prehistoric monuments in Britain. The Stonehenge that can be seen today is the final stage that was completed about 3,500 years ago.
According to the monument's website, Stonehenge was built in four stages:
First stage: The first version of Stonehenge was a large earthwork or Henge, comprising a ditch, bank and the Aubrey holes, all probably built around 3100 BC.
The Aubrey holes are round pits in the chalk, about one metre (3.3 feet) wide and deep, with steep sides and flat bottoms.
They form a circle about 86.6 metres (284 feet) in diameter.
Excavations revealed cremated human bones in some of the chalk filling, but the holes themselves were likely not made to be used as graves, but as part of a religious ceremony.
After this first stage, Stonehenge was abandoned and left untouched for more than 1,000 years.
Second stage: The second and most dramatic stage of Stonehenge started around 2150 years BC, when about 82 bluestones from the Preseli mountains in south-west Wales were transported to the site. It's thought that the stones, some of which weigh four tonnes each, were dragged on rollers and sledges to the waters at Milford Haven, where they were loaded onto rafts.
They were carried on water along the south coast of Wales and up the rivers Avon and Frome, before being dragged overland again near Warminster and Wiltshire.
The final stage of the journey was mainly by water, down the river Wylye to Salisbury, then the Salisbury Avon to west Amesbury.
The journey spanned nearly 240 miles, and once at the site, the stones were set up in the centre to form an incomplete double circle.
During the same period, the original entrance was widened and a pair of Heel Stones were erected. The nearer part of the Avenue, connecting Stonehenge with the River Avon, was built aligned with the midsummer sunrise.
Third stage: The third stage of Stonehenge, which took place about 2000 years BC, saw the arrival of the sarsen stones (a type of sandstone), which were larger than the bluestones.
They were likely brought from the Marlborough Downs (40 kilometres, or 25 miles, north of Stonehenge).
The largest of the sarsen stones transported to Stonehenge weighs 50 tonnes, and transportation by water would not have been possible, so it's suspected that they were transported using sledges and ropes.
Calculations have shown that it would have taken 500 men using leather ropes to pull one stone, with an extra 100 men needed to lay the rollers in front of the sledge.
These stones were arranged in an outer circle with a continuous run of lintels - horizontal supports.
Inside the circle, five trilithons - structures consisting of two upright stones and a third across the top as a lintel - were placed in a horseshoe arrangement, which can still be seen today.
Final stage: The fourth and final stage took place just after 1500 years BC, when the smaller bluestones were rearranged in the horseshoe and circle that can be seen today.
The original number of stones in the bluestone circle was probably around 60, but these have since been removed or broken up. Some remain as stumps below ground level.
While the mystery of why Stonehenge was built remains a puzzle, the mystery of why it was built where it’s still somewhat standing may have been solved … and the answer opens up a new mystery. A leading Stonehenge expert and one of the few people to have actually excavated at the site claims that two of its largest stones were placed there millions of years before humans arrived … and their summer solstice alignment with the sun was merely a coincidence. Wait, what?
The Heel Stone
In an interview with The Times about his research which has just been published in the journal British Archeology, archeologist, journalist and photographer Mike Pitts describes how he came to this radical theory. It starts at the Heel Stone, the largest sarsen (sandstone block) at the site. Located 75 meters (250 feet) from the center of Stonehenge, outside the entrance and close to the highway, it weighs 60 tons and is 4.7 meters (15.4 feet) high, with an additional 1.2 meters (4 feet) underground. The Heel Stone’s significance starts with the fact that it’s the only sarsen at Stonehenge that has not been shaped or dressed – both signs that it would have been carved before being moved to its present location. Its size and shape indicated otherwise to Pitts.
“The assumption used to be that all the sarsens at Stonehenge had come from the Marlborough Downs more than 20 miles away. The idea has since been growing that some may be local and the heel stone came out of that big pit. If you are going to move something that large you would dress it before you move it, to get rid of some of the bulk. That suggests it has not been moved very far. It makes sense that the heel stone has always been more or less where it is now, half-buried.”
The “big pit” Pitts referred to is a six-meter diameter hole he himself discovered while digging near the heel stone in the 1970s. The size makes it too big to have been used for a standing stone, so he thinks it’s where the heel stone was lying before it was lifted out and moved. In fact, Pitts believes the Heel Stone and Stone 16, another odd-shaped stone, are visible remnants of a large number of broken sarsen boulders buried beneath Stonehenge. He also believes that Stone 16 came from a different hole near the center of Stonehenge … and the two stones at that time had something unusual in common.
“The most likely explanation is that it too held a natural sarsen boulder. It’s possible that at the end of the ice age we had two really large visible sarsen boulders, probably the two largest on Salisbury Plain, close together on the midsummer sunrise-midwinter sunset axis.”
Did that mysterious natural alignment millions of years ago of two huge boulders with the Sun draw people to this site over 5,000 years ago and inspire them to drag more massive stones from 20 mile away to build their own massive monument to … something?
As Egyptians looking at the pyramids might say … stranger things have happened.
Over the weekend, a number of tabloids were discussing a lie detector test which purportedly confirms astronaut Buzz Aldrin saw a UFO on his way to the moon in July 1969.
On Sunday, the UK’s Daily Star reported on the story, borrowing from earlier reports in which the Apollo 11 astronaut addressed something unusual he and fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins observed while en route to the moon.
“There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped,” Aldrin was quoted saying. The story was quickly picked up and re-written by other news outlets, some of which elaborated on sightings of unusual things seen by Aldrin, and other astronauts over the years.
The focus of the story had not been UFOs, however, so much as a study which purportedly “confirmed” what Aldrin and other astronauts had claimed to see. According to The Star, an Albany, Ohio-based company called The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology “carried out complex computer analyses of the astronauts’ voice patterns as they told of their close encounters.”
“Although the technology is still top-secret,” The Star reported, “these studies are claimed to be more reliable than current lie detector tests, and could soon replace those used by the FBI and police.”
Aldrin on the job.
Little else was said about the Albany-based company where the study was carried out, apart from the fact that astronauts Al Worden, as well as Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, participated. It is noteworthy that Mitchell passed away in February 2016, and Cooper in October 2004, indicating that the lie detector tests in question must have occurred at least 14 years ago; strangely, the tabloids are only now picking up on this story (Update: Newsweek commented on the story shortly after publication of this article, referring to voice recordings which were tested, rather than the actual voices of the astronauts; if nothing else, this would allow for a more recent, posthumous testing of Cooper and Mitchell’s voices to have been possible).
Looking for further details about the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology online first brings up a Facebook page associated with the company, which describes its endeavors as follows:
“The research being conducted by the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology is on the forefront of energy medicine; creating the doorway to our next dimension of health revolution. In addition, the techniques hold promise in answering questions about how our universe was formed, and how our aging and perception of time can be monitored using frequency.”
Admittedly, I share an interest in subjects like cosmology and human perception of time too, although the wording of the company’s mission statement above seems a little odd (pseudoscientific is another way of putting it). From the Facebook page, a link to the company’s website leads to a page where URL links to everything from aura-color readers, to Mike Adam’s “Health Ranger” website can be found. Needless to say, links and associations like these would be enough to cause many to reconsider whether the studies involving Buzz Aldrin and others were indeed “more reliable than current lie detector test,” as The Star reported, let alone whether they might “soon replace those used by the FBI and police.” It might also explain why there hasn’t been much said about them until now.
Our intent isn’t to pass judgment here, so all discussion of the veracity of “top-secret” studies in acoustic biology aside, Aldrin has claimed many times that he and the Apollo 11 crew observed something while en route to the moon. The question remains as to what, precisely, that was.
In 2012, I wrote about the claims which appeared in writer Jay Barbree’s book Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight, where the author said he was told by a confidential source that what the astronauts saw was sunlight reflecting off “a top-secret spy satellite” as it tumbled out of control.
Buzz Aldrin in space, with the Earth visible in the background.
According to Barbree’s account, “The only UFO Apollo 11’s astronauts were seeing as Neil had suspected had been built here on Earth — one they could not identify… and when I told him, he laughed and said, ‘Well, what the hell, isn’t that what a UFO is — an unidentified flying object?’”
The only issue with this explanation is that apparently neither Barbree, nor his “secret” source, bothered to validate the information. As pointed out to me in 2012 by space journalist and historian Jim Oberg, “Barbree’s story is way off base, he relied on an old memory of Armstrong’s instead of checking with actual mission records that show the encounter was 212,000 miles out, nowhere near the geosynchronous arc (24,000 miles) where the spy satellites lurked. He wanted to tie in an unrelated juicy rumor (a correct one) with his Armstrong biography, and didn’t take basic validation steps.”
In other words, while the spy satellite explanation is both juicier, and seems more down-to-earth than the alien spacecraft theory, it remains equally unlikely on further inquiry.
At the end of the day, we still don’t know exactly what it was Aldrin and his crew observed, although Aldrin himself has suggested in the past that it may have been a discarded rocket panel from their own vessel, and that “it was not an alien.” We also have no confirmation as to whether experimental bio-acoustic technologies are really any better than a standard polygraph test at validating his experiences. Hence, Buzz Aldrin’s UFO encounter remains an interesting case, but certainly not conclusive evidence of aliens.
Aliens may someday take the place of the gods in the human collective consciousness. At least, that’s according to new research presented by Dr. Diana Pasulka at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Pasulka conducted a six-year study in which she travelled around the country speaking with scientists, Silicon Valley tech gurus, professionals, entrepreneurs, and other Very Important People who admit to believing in extraterrestrial intelligence. Pasulka’s study reveals that not only is belief in extraterrestrial intelligence widespread and found in nearly all strata of society, but it has also approached levels rivaling modern rates of belief in deities.
There’s a reason heaven is usually depicted as being in the sky.
According to a recent presentation Pasulka gave under the title The Incarnational Technological Self: The Case of the Crashed UFO Artifact, this widespread belief in aliens stems from a variety of cultural factors and scientific endeavors:
Widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the realist effect produced by the search for planets that might support life, as well as alleged alien artifacts that have recently made news in outlets such as the New York Times.
In her new book American Cosmic, Pasulka claims that science fiction and other pop culture texts have become a means of answering questions formerly answered by religion. Through her research, Pasulka found that more than half of U.S. adults and more than 75% of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. Compare that to recent surveys by the Pew Research Center which have found that only around 68% of Americans are absolutely certain in their belief in God, and it’s clear to see that something is happening here. But we don’t know what it is yet, do we?
More importantly, will the symbol be a big-eyed grey alien head, or a flying saucer?
It makes total sense that advanced extraterrestrial aliens could take the place of gods in our mythologies. The similarities are many: both are omniscient beings who (mostly) live in the cosmic heavens and who are capable of near-magical abilities. Couple those with the mounting evidence that life likely began in space, and it’s safe to say that perhaps Scientology is only the beginning of what could be a wave of new religions which venerate alien beings as opposed to flying spaghetti monsters. Any potential discoveries of alien life will certainly lead to the creation of alien-worshipping religions, an idea which pops up in science fiction regularly. Is Earth ready for discovery, or will it lead to renewed clashes between and among the religious?
A video posted on April 5, 2018 from Brazil appears to show a weird “humanoid” shape floating in the skies over the city of Goania. Taken from a cell phone in a car, the video shows this strange UFO floating completely stationary while trees and other objects come in and out of frame, briefly obscuring the bizarre shape. Curiously, the object (or whatever it is) filmed bears an eerie similarity to footage of odd floating humanoidshapes taken in Sydney, Australia, and Abu Dhabi, UAE in October of 2017.
The Brazilian video was originally posted on Facebook and then uploaded to YouTube by the channel secureteam10, where you can watch it for yourself. If it’s a fake, it’s a very good fake. That’s not to say it is, in fact, a floating alien, returned messiah, more ghost planes, or any of the other speculative explanations, of course. It could very well be a trick of the light or an oddly shaped cloud (probably not a weather balloon, swamp gas, or ball lightning, though). What’s strange is that very similar things have been photographed or videoed in wildly different parts of the world under different atmospheric conditions.
As Ian Fleming wrote, “Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action.” That’s a good line and metaphor, not a suggestion to go throw rocks at floating humanoids, which would be horrible, horrible advice.
In October of 2017, the Sydney humanoid was filmed. This sighting happened on a apparently clearer day, and earlier in the day than the Brazil video. Once again, this video shows a dark UFO with what look to be arms hanging by its sides. In contrast to the Brazil humanoid, this object does appear to move, and the “arms” are far less pronounced in the Sydney video. It’s hard to tell, but the object does look like it’s slowly moving through the sky, parallel to the ground. Also, the Sydney humanoid apparently disappeared and reappeared several times over the course of the sighting.
What if it’s just some guy minding his own business, just trying to float around for a while?
The Abu Dhabi sighting was also in October, 2017. From the very limited documentation on this sighting, it looks closer to the Sydney video than the Brazilian video. Which is interesting, considering that they happened around the same time. The Dubai Astronomy Group stated that the object photographed in the sky over Abu Dhabi was likely pieces of a Russian refueling rocket breaking up in the atmosphere. While that explanation may make sense in the case of the Abu Dhabi event, specifically, it does not explain the sighting in Sydney, where the object appears to be moving perpendicular to gravity, and it certainly doesn’t explain the humanoid UFO in Brazil, where the object appears to be completely motionless, let alone falling and breaking apart.
It’s hard to say with any certainty at all that these events are connected. It’s easy to look at a shape and see what you want to see, and especially if that shape has the vaguest resemblance to something human. At this point it’s merely curious, but it will certainly be interesting to see if any more floating humanoids show up in the coming months.
Rich Reynolds has a new post at his UFO Conjectures blog titled “Ufologists vs Paranormalists.” Rich begins as follows: “I’ve written about the drive of some in the UFO community to insert UFOs among the weird litany that encompasses the paranormal category, all things outside the normal scheme of things: ghosts, Big Footed creatures, ‘sea monsters,’ men who dress in black, mystical visions (of angels, Holy Mary, saints, and sinners), et cetera.” Rich adds: “…the persistent attempts to lump UFOs among the queer phenomena that pops up in situ to a few humans have to be thwarted by real UFO aficionados. UFOs are a phenomenon worthy of its own, singular attention, not a mystery to be hawked like a carnival ride or sideshow.” You can find Rich’s article at this link.
Me and Rich are good mates, but we certainly don’t agree on everything – and his new article is a perfect example of that! It’s important – as I see it anyway – to note that Rich’s interest in UFOs dates back decades. We’re talking about the period in time when UFOs were known as Flying Saucers, and when the aliens referred to us as “earthlings” and as the “people of planet Earth” (or was that just in old B&W sci-fi movies? Maybe…). We’re also talking about times when thieving aliens stole soil by the bucketful, when strange tripod-landing marks were found in the fields of irate farmers, and when long-haired, know-it-all aliens tried to save us from atomic destruction. But, those days are – largely – gone. Today’s Ufology, in many respects, is very different. And much stranger. Which brings us back to Rich.
As I have always said, the most important people in the field of Ufology are the witnesses. Not the radio-hosts, not the bloggers, not the authors, and not the researchers. Without witness testimony, we have very little to go on, in terms of what the UFO phenomenon is or might be, and what it’s up to. And, like it or like it not, there are far more than a few cases on record which do suggest a connection between the UFO issue and what we might call paranormal phenomena. To ignore the weird shit side of Ufology is, in essence, self-censorship. Of course, there is nothing new about this paranormal connection. Check, out – as just one example of many – John Keel’s 1970 book, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse. Keel made it very clear that there are crossovers between Ufology and other supernatural phenomena.
Rich refers to “men who dress in black.” Rich may not like it (in fact, I’m sure he doesn’t) but the vast majority of all MIB encounters have nothing to do with visits from the likes of “government agents.” Things would be much simpler if they were from the NSA, the CIA or the FBI! The real MIB are often pale and cadaverous. They don’t seem to be fully self-aware. There are reports of UFO witnesses falling sick after encountering the MIB – sometimes seriously so, too. Other witnesses tell of violent poltergeist activity in the home, after the MIB have left. People feel mind-controlled and hypnotized by the Men in Black.
Rich also makes mention of “Big Footed creatures.” Yes, the Bigfoot-UFO phenomenon is without any doubt at all a highly controversial one. Indeed, I know for sure that the vast majority of Bigfoot seekers in the field of Cryptozoology absolutely cringe when the “Sasquatch and Saucers” issue rears its problematic head. But, the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of Bigfoot/UFO cases on record. Stan Gordon wrote an entire book on the subject: Silent Invasion. It’s essential reading for those who want to learn more about the paranormal links to the Bigfoot issue.
I could go on and on (and I will for a while): there are cases in which alien abductees have seen dead friends and relatives on-board UFOs. Abductees talk of their soul or life-force being ripped from their bodies. Strange synchronicities abound in Ufology. It’s possible to interact with entities that many perceive as alien via the likes of DMT. There is no need for our strange visitors to land on the lawns of the White House: they have far weirder ways of interacting with us at a personal level. Disturbing cases of paranormal “possession” have been reported by UFO witnesses. All of this is far removed from what I think Rich prefers Ufology to be – which is, I suspect, the days when the likes of Donald Keyhoe, Ed Ruppelt, Harold T. Wilkins, and APRO were flying high. Back then, it was all nuts-and-bolts spaceships (rocket-ships, even). Not now, though.
But, like I said, the witnesses are the people who we need to listen to, as they are the ones who had the experiences. And even though it might not sit well with many, the reality of the situation is that there really is far more to Ufology than just us “earthlings” being visited by an extraterrestrial equivalent of NASA. The situation is way, way weirder.
For years scientists have been searching for signs of extraterrestrial life on other planets. Earlier this week a new technology was presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) in Liverpool, and it is one that could help solve the mystery of the outer space. It’s an artificial intelligence technology that is designed to predict the probability of life on other planets.
A team based at the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at Plymouth University presented on April 4 their study that involves using artificial neural networks (ANNs) to classify planets into categories based on how they could possibly sustain life.
ANNs are systems that replicate how the human brain learns. They are commonly used in machine learning. They are also known for being good determiners of patterns that are too complex for the human brain to process, according to an EWASS press release.
The different categories used in the study are present-day Earth, the early Earth, Mars, Venus or Saturn’s moon Titan. The reason why the team’s network uses these five as categories is because they are rocky bodies with atmospheres that are potentially habitable in our solar system.
Because life is known to only exist on Earth at present, the network uses a “probability of life” metric based on the atmospheric and orbital properties of the five bodies. This is how the AI system estimates the probability of life on other planets.
“We’re currently interested in these ANNs for prioritizing exploration for a hypothetical, intelligent interstellar spacecraft scanning an exoplanet system at range,” study presenter Christopher Bishop said.
“We're also looking at the use of large area, deployable, planar Fresnel antennas to get data back to Earth from an interstellar probe at large distances. This would be needed if the technology is used in robotic spacecraft in the future,” he added.
The team trained their artificial neural network with more than one hundred spectral profiles, each having seven hundred parameters that are said to contribute to habitability. The team indicated that so far, their network performs well when it is given a test spectral profile that it hasn’t encountered before.
“Given the results so far, this method may prove to be extremely useful for categorising different types of exoplanets using results from ground–based and near Earth observatories,” project supervisor Dr. Angelo Cangelosi said.
The team is hoping for ANNs to be used in future space missions. Scientists could select an exoplanet to observe based on the category the network assigned it to, thereby reducing the resources needed in identifying other potentially habitable planets.
A new technology could help predict extraterrestrial life on other planets.
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Alien PROOF: Buzz Aldrin and three other astronauts PASS lie detector on 'UFO encounters'
Alien PROOF: Buzz Aldrin and three other astronauts PASS lie detector on 'UFO encounters'
BUZZ Aldrin who was the second man to walk on the moon and three other astronauts have passed lie detector tests over claims they experienced alien encounters while in orbit, it has been claimed.
The astronaut’s accounts of alien sightings were examined under laboratory conditions and all four astronauts passed the test which was carried out using the latest technology, according to reports.
Testing was said to be carried out by The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology in Albany, Ohio using complex computer analysis of the spacewalker’s voice patterns as they told of their extraterrestrial encounters.
Buzz Aldrin, 88, said he saw a UFO on the way to the moon: “There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped.”
BioAcoustic’s Sharry Edwards said the tests show Mr Aldrin is certain he saw a UFO.
GETTY
Alien news: Buzz Aldrin said he could not explain it
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Canada Presents Radioactive Physical Evidence Of A Real UFO
Canada Presents Radioactive Physical Evidence Of A Real UFO
Does new alien Canadian coin suggest that extra-terrestrial revelation is imminent?
Last week, the Royal Canadian Mint announced the release of a new coin depicting a man being borne over by an unidentified flying object. The inspiration behind this unusual coin is the so-called Falcon Lake Incident, the most sensational UFO story in Canadian history and one of the most inexplicable close encounter stories of all time. The release of the coin has naturally led to a great deal of chatter about the evidence behind contact with extra-terrestrial beings and whether it stands up to scrutiny.
The Falcon Lake incident in itself has provided UFO researchers with fairly robust evidence of extra-terrestrial involvement including fragments of the bizarre material used to forge the craft and the severe burn marks suffered by the man who encountered the vessel which was described as smelling very strongly of sulfur.
“If it does indeed turn out that there is relevant physical evidence, if this evidence is carefully collected and analyzed, and if this analysis leads to the identification of several facts concerning the UFO phenomenon, then will be the time for scientists to step back and ask, what are these facts trying to tell us? If those facts are strong enough to lead to a firm conclusion, then will be the time to confront the more bizarre questions. If, for instance, it turns out that all physical evidence is consistent with a mundane interpretation of the causes of UFO reports, there will be little reason to continue to speculate about the role of extraterrestrial beings. If, on the other hand, the analysis of physical evidence turns up very strong evidence that objects related with UFO reports were manufactured outside the solar system, then one must obviously consider very seriously that the phenomenon involves not only extraterrestrial vehicles but probably also extraterrestrial beings.”
Of course, the Falcon Lake incident is not the only event in recent decades which have confounded skeptics. In addition to various fragments of supposed alien crafts, there has also been a huge amount of electrooptical data, video footage and eye witness testimonies over the years. This vast sum of evidence led Luis Elizondo, the former director of the ATTIP study which focused on unidentified flying objects, to say, “If this was a court of law, we are beyond reasonable doubt.”
Now that the evidence is becoming all the more overwhelming, it has been suggested that those in positions of authority have decided to slowly create a process of normalization before revealing that extra-terrestrial visitors to Earth are real. Why this process is beginning at this current time and why it has taken so long for the powers that be to admit to the world that the hundreds of UFO sightings the world over are real are questions which still have to be answered. However, it is very unlikely that the reason has anything to do with the threat of an impending alien invasion as it appears that these beings have been visiting this world for quite some time.
Video – Do Extraterrestrials lived in Mexico before 7000 Years ago?
Video – Do Extraterrestrials lived in Mexico before 7000 Years ago?
ANCIENT treasure including artefacts which are said to to depict alien beings “found in a historic cave” have added to claims ancient civilisations on Earth were visited by advanced species from outer space.
The ancient aliens theory claims there is evidence in historical records of a race of advanced astronauts arriving on Earth and helping our forefathers build monuments such as the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.
It is based on supposed depictions of flying saucers and alien-like beings in thousands of year old arts and crafts, coupled with the mysteries of how structures like the pyramids and Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, which were constructed with technology of the time.
Now, a video has gone viral online claims to have produced further evidence to support the alien myth.
In the video, you see a number of what appears to be Klaus Dona artefacts, which are known to date back thousands of years.
Some of the figures display alien-like figures, with long faces and round eyes.
And more sculptures appear to show spaceships floating above the ground, Dailystar.co.uk reports.
Others are said to be completely unexplainable and some claim it could its proof several other races co-existed thousands of years ago.
The clip was captured in Mexico and uploaded to YouTube channel UFOmania before going viral.
Viewers have tried to get to the bottom of the mystery.
One posted: “Haven’t seen these artefacts before, but none of this surprises me. There’s a lot more to come.”
And another added: “Incredible evidence to support that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race for a very long time.”
A third believed: “They lived on Earth for over 7,000 years and they created man.”
Others were not as convinced, stating they may not be entirely real.
A viewer pointed out: “All in mint condition, I reckon they are fake.”
Others said that just because objects in the shape of no human creatures were created, it did not mean these creatures ever truly existed.
One posted: “So, the fact that an ancient culture drew pictures and made sculptures of creatures that don’t look like any known life form on Earth proves their existence?
“Ok, so by the same logic, Centaurs, Minotaurs, Dragons, Unicorns, Satyrs, and Gryphons must all exist.”
An unprecedented mission to the sun heads to its summer launch site, the Milky Way galaxy is growing faster than the speed of sound and Virgin Galactic aces its first test flight since a fatal crash. These are some of the top stories this week from Space.com.
1. Virgin Galactic performs first test flight since 2014 crash
Virgin Galactic made its first powered flight in more than three years on Thursday (April 5) after recovering from a fatal test flight accident in 2014. The company's SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity suborbital vehicle was released from a mothership at around 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), in a position several miles north of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The pilots fired Unity's hybrid engine for 30 seconds and the vehicle reach a top speed of Mach 1.87 and an altitude of 84,271 feet (25,686 m).
Researchers finally spotted an echo of Jupiter's moon Callisto in its bright auroras, visible with the Hubble Space Telescope. These observations, and the footprints of Jupiter's other largest moons, bring scientists closer to learning more about Jupiter's magnetic field.
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.
4. Space agencies worldwide tracked the end of Tiangong-1
On April 1, China's Tiangong-1 space lab burned up in Earth's atmosphere. Among the many organizations that predicted its descent over the southern Pacific Ocean were the China National Space Administration and the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, an international group comprised of NASA, the European Space Agency and the space agencies of an additional 11 nations. To predict its unpredictable tumble, experts looked at several forecasting factors like the drag of Earth's upper atmosphere.
5. 60 years in the making, solar mission begins next step
On Sunday (April 1) NASA's Parker Solar Probe finished final checks and began its journey to Cape Canaveral, Florida. The final assembly of this mission will then pick up where scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center left off, to prep the sun-studying mission for a July 31 launch. A solar mission like the Parker Solar Probe is 60 years in the making, and it's designed to observe the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona, up close like never before.
The Milky Way galaxy is already a massive celestial body, but new research suggests the visible part of our home galaxy and others like it are expanding at about 1,100 mph (1,770 km/h) — 1.4 times the speed of sound at sea level on Earth. Stars are forming on the outskirts of the galaxy, and the Milky Way will only get bigger in 4 billion years when it dramatically merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.
Recovery efforts are ongoing in India to restore contact with a missing communications satellite, and this event may signal the country's second mission failure in less than a year. According to the Indian Space Research Organisation and multiple media reports, the GSAT-6A behaved normally after launching on March 29 aboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket, but went silent as the satellite was about to perform its final engine firing.
8. Slice of cosmic space-time seen in new 3D model
Astronomers pinpointed 4,000 early galaxies and created one of the largest 3D maps of the young universe. Using special filters, scientists were able to observe the ancient past at 16 well-defined cosmic-time destinations. The epochs range from 11 billion to 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20 percent of its current age.
On March 31, skygazers picked up their cameras to photograph the last Blue Moon until 2020. The full moon that peaked last Saturday at 8:37 a.m. EDT (1237 GMT) was called the Blue Sap Moon, because it's around the time of year that tree tapping occurs. The popular definition of a blue moon calls it the second full moon in a calendar month, and the next one won't occur until Halloween night in more than two years.
10. Black holes in galactic centers may trigger more space-time ripples
Gravitational waves could be more abundant if black holes in the middle of galaxies are accelerating the mergers of massive objects. Ripples in space-time form when two objects with a lot of mass come together, and these objects usually exist as a binary system. A new study suggests that these objects are more likely to merge with one another when a black hole severely modifies their relationship.
11. Hundreds pay tribute to Stephen Hawking at his funeral
The family of famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking invited about 500 people to his funeral ceremony this week. Hawking passed away on March 14 at the age of 76, and according to media reports, the bell at Cambridge University's Great St. Mary's Church rang out 76 times to mark each year he lived.
Secretive X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 200 Days in Orbit
Secretive X-37B Military Space Plane Wings Past 200 Days in Orbit
By Leonard David, Space.com's Space Insider Columnist
Artist's illustration of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane in Earth orbit. One of the vehicles just soared past 200 days in its latest mission, in which it is carrying out classified duties.
Credit: Boeing
The U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane has winged past 200 days in orbit on its latest clandestine mission.
That mission, known as Orbital Test Vehicle-5 (OTV-5), began Sept. 7, 2017, when the robotic spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
According to Air Force officials, one payload flying on OTV-5 is the Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader, or ASETS-11, of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). This cargo is testing experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipes for long durations in the space environment. [The X-37B Space Plane: 6 Surprising Facts]
The X-37B space plane has a payload bay about the size of a pickup-truck bed, which can be outfitted with a robotic arm.
Credit: Boeing
Dual-use tech
"The X-37B has been and remains a technology demonstrator," said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
"Given that most space technology is dual-use, with the ever-increasing sway toward warfare in space, it's likely that the more militaristic uses of the space plane will be pursued more vigorously, and likely openly given the [presidential] administration's proclivity toward chest thumping," she told Space.com, expressing her personal view.
How long the unpiloted, reusable craft will stay aloft is not known, but experts have said it's likely to land at KSC's Shuttle Landing Facility, as the OTV-4 mission did back on May 7, 2017. That was a first for the program, as all prior missions had ended with a tarmac touchdown at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Each X-37B mission has set a new flight-duration record for the program.
OTV-1 began April 22, 2010, and concluded on Dec. 3, 2010, after 224 days in orbit.
The second OTV mission began March 5, 2011, and concluded on June 16, 2012, after 468 days on orbit.
OTV-3 chalked up nearly 675 days in orbit before finally coming down on Oct. 17, 2014.
And OTV-4 conducted on-orbit experiments for 718 days during its mission, extending the total number of days spent in space for the OTV program to 2,085 days.
Risk-reduction role
The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office manages the X-37B project, using it to perform risk-reduction, experimentation and concept-of-operations development for reusable space-vehicle technologies.
The space drone has a payload bay about the size of a pickup-truck bed, which can be outfitted with a robotic arm. X-37B has a launch weight of 11,000 lbs. (4,990 kilograms) and is powered on orbit by gallium-arsenide solar cells with lithium-ion batteries.
The classified X-37B program "fleet" consists of two known reusable vehicles, both of which were built by Boeing. Looking like a miniature version of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter, the military space plane is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.6
Specially garbed technicians attend to an X-37B spacecraft after it landed at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ending the fourth Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-4) mission in May of last year.
Credit: USAF
Trail gone cold
The orbital path of the currently flying space plane is a tad puzzling, said Ted Molczan, a Toronto-based satellite analyst.
"There were indications that OTV-5 went to a significantly higher-inclination orbit than previous OTV missions," he told Space.com. "There was too little information to narrowly constrain a search."
Molczan said he assisted in one fruitless search, but it was of the roughly 44-degree-inclination orbit implied by the OTV-5 launch's "Notice to Airmen," the routine report put out to warn any aircraft pilots who may be near the flight path.
"The final orbit may be more like 60 degrees," he said. "If an object is not found within days or a few weeks of launch, then the trail goes cold and discovery depends on a chance sighting."
Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades.
This rover is an early version of a vehicle that will one day be sent to Jupiter’s moon Europa
NASA/JPL-Caltech
We recognize Earth as the blue planet, but it’s not the only ocean world in our neighborhood. Oceans may be concealed beneath thick crusts of ice on moons orbiting Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, and on the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris. Saturn’s moon Titan even boasts liquid seas right on its surface, although they are full of methane rather than water.
If anywhere in our solar system holds signs of life, it is likely to be these frigid worlds. Scientists are determined to explore the distant seas of Titan and Jupiter’s moon Europa, and are designing ice-gripping rovers and submarines to take the plunge into their mysterious depths. They will have to contend with bitter cold, liquids that behave differently than the water we are used to on Earth, and other hostile conditions.
Here’s how these hardy robots will explore two very different types of alien seas.
Cruising gassy seas
Over the course of its mission to explore Saturn and its moons, the Cassini spacecraftdiscovered hundreds of small lakes on Titan’s surface, as well as three seas similar to the Great Lakes in size and depth.
Titan also has water ice on its surface and a water ocean likely buried beneath its crust. But its methane seas are intriguing because they are part of a process that resembles the water cycle we have here on Earth. As on our own planet, liquid on Titan evaporates from the seas, forms clouds, and rains back down. Researchers would like to find out more about how this methane cycle works. What’s more, carbon and nitrogen compounds that could support life are plentiful on Titan; scientists hope to investigate whether some form of life could have evolved to depend on liquid methane the way terrestrial life depends on water.
NASA has considered sending a buoy to drift through Titan’s seas. One drawback is that this capsule would be at the mercy of winds and currents. “Most likely a buoy encountering [the] shore would just get beached and might be refloated with the tide,” Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland, said in an email. There are no guarantees that it would make it back to sea, though.
A submarine, on the other hand, could set its own course and would be able to explore beneath the sea surface and sample sediments on the seafloor. NASA hopes to send a submarine to Titan in the next 20 years. Its generator—which would be powered by heat from the decay of radioactive materials such as plutonium—will be key to keeping the submarine’s electronics toasty in Titan’s seas, which are roughly -290 degrees Fahrenheit.
Dealing with the cryogenic conditions on Titan “needs careful engineering, but no physical miracles,” says Lorenz, who is the submarine’s lead designer. “The waste heat from a radioisotope power source is an essential part of that, together with…some judicious choices of foam insulation.”
Another challenge is that we don’t know the exact chemical makeup of Titan’s seas. They are mainly methane—similar to liquid natural gas found on Earth—and a smaller amount of liquid ethane and dissolved nitrogen gas. But the exact ratio in which these ingredients appear isn’t clear, and may vary quite a bit between Titan’s seas. So the project is designing a submarine that can navigate a liquid expanse whose density and viscosity are not yet firmly established.
Engineers are particularly concerned about the nitrogen in Titan’s seas, which could form bubbles that would interfere with the submarine’s navigation. This might happen when some of the waste heat from the vessel’s generator seeps into the environment. “That heat is not enough to boil the surrounding liquid, but we believe it’s enough to cause that dissolved nitrogen that’s in the liquid to come out,” says Jason Hartwig, a cryogenic propulsion engineer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
The propeller itself could also create effervescence as it slices through the liquid. Behind each blade is a little void, Hartwig says. This drop in pressure can give bubbles an opportunity to form, similar to how a can of soda fizzes when you open it.
All those tiny bubbles could cause two big problems. Firstly, they might get in the way of the submarine’s scientific equipment, making it more difficult to measure depth and other conditions. Even more worrying, the bubbles might prevent the submarine’s propellers from working properly.
“If we’re trying to move from one location in the seas to another, are all those bubbles going to coalesce at the back end of the submarine?” Hartwig says. “You try to spin the propellers and the vehicle won’t move, it will just sit and spin."
“This whole effervescence issue is a non-factor for submersibles on Earth because the amount of air that can get dissolved in water is very, very low,” Hartwig continues. “The pressure is higher on Titan and because the liquid is colder more gas is dissolved in the liquid, which means more gas can come out.”
Since we don’t know the exact chemical composition of Titan’s seas, it’s not certain how much nitrogen they hold. To get a better sense of what a submarine might encounter, Hartwig and his colleagues at Washington State University have recreated Titan’s seas here on Earth. They filled a test chamber with different mixtures of methane, ethane, and dissolved nitrogen at temperatures and pressures similar to those on Titan, then added a little heater in to mimic the heat that would radiate from an actual submarine.
The good news: if a submarine has stopped moving in order to collect samples, it might not have to worry. It probably wouldn’t emit enough heat to create the amount of fizz needed to stymie its instruments, the team reported in February in the journal Fluid Phase Equilibria. However, “We still haven’t ruled out the propeller issue,” Hartwig says. He intends to repeat the experiment with a propeller instead of a heater to find out how much bubbling the vessel might face as it journeys through Titan’s seas.
A possible design for a submarine that would explore Titan’s seas
NASA Glenn Research Center
The submarine we send to Titan could have the same long, slender shape we are used to seeing on Earth. This kind of vehicle would weigh around 2,600 pounds and be about 20 feet long, Hartwig says. However, it would have to return to the sea surface in order to communicate with Earth. It would also have to wait until the 2040s to arrive, when Earth will be high enough above Titan’s horizons to give the submarine a direct line of sight (and communication) back to our planet.
NASA is also considering sending a smaller, turtle-shaped submarine. This “Titan Turtle” would be paired with an orbiter to relay information to Earth. It could communicate while submerged and could potentially launch a few years earlier because it wouldn’t need to rely on Earth’s position in the sky.
Titan is unique among ocean worlds, Hartwig says. Nowhere else in the solar system are liquid seas so easy to reach. But a Titan submarine could inspire designs for future vessels that will explore seas hidden beneath the ice crust on other bodies. “I’ve always looked at Titan as a pathfinder,” Hartwig says.
Under the ice
One of these less accessible seas can be found on Europa. While the moon’s surface is lashed with radiation from Jupiter’s magnetic field and is a bleak -280 degrees Fahrenheit, the ocean underneath is protected by a wall of ice that averages 5 to 15 miles thick. Because this ocean is made of water, it’s a tantalizing place look for life and study what chemical conditions might be needed for it to form.
To get through Europa’s icy barricade, scientists are testing robots that would melt or cut their way down to the ocean. These robots could carry submarines, rovers to drive along the underside of the ice, or even landers that would sink to the seafloor. Once they hit the water, these probes would likely encounter balmy temperatures around 32 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s actually a fairly comfortable environment for our electronics,” says Andy Klesh, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “What is a little bit more troublesome is the saltwater.”
Europa’s seas could be as briny as or own and may even be significantly saltier, says Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “As an added challenge, there is likely some sulfuric acid in the mix,” he says. This means a probe’s electronics will be in danger of corrosion. The robot would also face formidable pressures as it ventured deeper into the ocean. On the seafloor, the pressure would be akin to that at the bottom of the Mariana Trench on Earth.
All in all, a journey to Europa’s seas is going to be a pretty rough ride. “We have the challenges of deep space exploration along with the challenges of deep ocean exploration,” Klesh says. “We have a vacuum in space; we have high pressure under the ice. And we have radiation on the way out there…we’re protected from that underneath the ice but then the environment’s trying to corrode us along the way.”
The easiest place to visit will be the underside of Europa’s ice shelf, he says. Klesh, Hand, and their colleagues are working on a rover that would drive around on the bottom of the ice. A rover or deep-sea probe wouldn’t be buffeted by currents, as would likely happen with a submarine. “These rovers [and] these landers may be the best way to explore in a very controlled matter and not be tossed about or knocked into other things,” Klesh says. The underside of the ice is also a particularly good place to search for life. On Earth, algae and microbes like to anchor themselves beneath the ice. If life exists on Europa, it may be drawn to this kind of terrain as well.
Klesh and his team are eager to begin the hunt. They’ve been testing their rover—currently known as BRUIE (Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration)—in Alaska’s freezing lakes. Its wheels sport both circular sawblades and little panels that act like snowshoes, distributing the rover’s weight across the ice. This prevents BRUIE from cutting into the ice and getting stuck in place.
The version of BRUIE that will eventually visit Europa will likely be carried through the ice by the robot responsible for digging down to the sea. That means it has to be pretty small, likely 18 inches or less in length, Klesh says. In two weeks, he plans to test collapsible wheels on BRUIE, which would allow it to become more compact and portable. The team also hopes to send BRUIE on its most ambitious mission yet—a trip nearly 1,000 feet beneath sea ice without a tether.
Ideally, a rover on Europa would also be untethered. “We have had a tendency to end up slicing the tether at least once during almost every trip when we’ve been out there,” Klesh says. But despite the risk of tangling it represents, a cord may be needed to provide power and communicate with equipment on the surface.
BRUIE’s razor-sharp wheels are equipped with panels to prevent it getting stuck as it drives on the underside of the ice
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Klesh and his team are also looking for easier ways to reach the ocean. They have used submersibles to explore moulins—steep, flooded shafts that form inside glaciers—in Alaska. Last summer, their robot traveled about 160 feet deep beneath the ice, and was able to find connecting points between different tunnels. It’s possible that Europa also has moulins in its ice shell that a rover or submersible could use to travel part of the way down to the water.
There’s still a long way to go before a rover is ready to make the jaunt to Jupiter’s moons or beyond. Hopefully, Klesh says, the planned Europa Clipper and Europa Lander missions will pave the way for a probe to be sent beneath the ice.
In the meantime, the rovers that will one day explore Europa could teach us a few things about our own planet. BRUIE is already being used to scope out how thawing permafrost is releasing methane in Arctic lakes. And this fall, the intrepid rover will take a three or four-month-long sojourn in those chilly waters.
“The scientific goal is to leave the rover underneath the lake ice to watch the seasonal changes as the ice forms and thickens above these methane-rich lakes as the sun sets and the winter goes dark,” Hand says. This could reveal how a rover might become frozen in place as the ice around it thickens. It’s also a chance to learn more about an environment too punishing for humans to observe on our own.
“The largest ocean world of all is right here on Earth,” Klesh says. “The techniques we’re using to start to look at exploring Europa, we’re applying here to explore…regions we have never been able to go to before.”
Exclusive: Massive Ancient Drawings Found in Peruvian Desert
Exclusive: Massive Ancient Drawings Found in Peruvian Desert
Armed with satellites and drones, archaeologists discover new Nasca lines and dozens of other enigmatic geoglyphs carved into the earth.
SEE NEWLY DISCOVERED ANCIENT DRAWINGS IN PERU DESERT
Researchers surveying in southern Peru with drones have captured images of ancient geoglyphs, and more than 50 of the massive ancient drawings are considered new discoveries by archaeologists.
Etched into the high desert of southern Peru more than a millennium ago, the enigmatic Nasca lines continue to capture our imagination. More than a thousand of these geoglyphs (literally, 'ground drawings') sprawl across the sandy soil of Nasca province, the remains of little-understood ritual practices that may have been connected to life-giving rain.
Now, Peruvian archaeologists armed with drones have discovered more than 50 new examples of these mysterious desert monuments in adjacent Palpa province, traced onto the earth's surface in lines almost too fine to see with the human eye. In addition, archaeologists surveyed locally known geoglyphs with drones for the first time—mapping them in never-before-seen detail.
Some of the newfound lines belong to the Nasca culture, which held sway in the area from 200 to 700 A.D. However, archaeologists suspect that the earlier Paracas and Topará cultures carved many of the newfound images between 500 B.C. and 200 A.D.
Unlike the iconic Nasca lines—most of which are only visible from overhead—the older Paracas glyphs were laid down on hillsides, making them visible to villages below. The two cultures also pursued different artistic subjects: Nasca lines most often consist of lines or polygons, but many of the newfound Paracas figures depict humans.
“Most of these figures are warriors,” says Peruvian archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, the new glyphs' co-discoverer. “These ones could be spotted from a certain distance, so people had seen them, but over time, they were completely erased.”
A VIEW FROM THE SKY AND SPACE
Many of the newly discovered Nasca lines are too faint to be seen by the human eye, yet visible when captured in low altitude by a drone camera.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY LUIS JAIME CASTILLO, PALPA NASCA PROJECT
The new geoglyphs add crucial data on the Paracas culture, as well as the mysterious Topará culture, which marked the transition between the Paracas and the Nasca. Centuries before the famous Nasca lines were made, people in the region were experimenting with making massive geoglyphs.
“This means that it is a tradition of over a thousand years that precedes the famous geoglyphs of the Nasca culture, which opens the door to new hypotheses about its function and meaning,” says Peruvian Ministry of Culture archaeologist Johny Isla, the Nasca lines' chief restorer and protector.
Ironically, the discovery of the new geoglyphs was only made possible because of threats to previously known Nasca lines.
Isla's work is extraordinarily difficult, and made even harder by spotty maps. Of the estimated 100,000 archaeological sites in Peru, Isla's colleague Castillo says only about 5,000 have been properly documented on the ground. Even fewer have been mapped from the air.
Ancient Peruvians created geoglyphs like the Nasca lines by moving stones to define edges of the lines, and then scraping the top layer of earth between the edges to reveal lighter soil beneath.
ART BY FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA/NGM STAFF
SOURCE: MARKUS REINDEL, GERMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE
Castillo, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and the country's former vice-minister of cultural heritage, has long championed using drones and other aerial mapping techniques to catalog archaeological sites. Now, Isla and Castillo have much more data to work with, thanks to National Geographic Explorer and “space archaeologist” Sarah Parcak.
“When we were thinking about countries to go to ... it had to be a country that everyone in the world would know is important, where the Ministry of Culture would be open to new technology, and where most of the sites would be out in the open and fairly easy to detect,” says Parcak, an archaeologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Peru definitely fit the bill.”
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
This newly discovered Nasca line feature, captured by a drone, consists of several straight lines with no discernible pattern which were likely made at different times and for different purposes.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY LUIS JAIME CASTILLO, PALPA NASCA PROJECT
Once GlobalXplorer volunteers flagged potential targets in the satellite data that may be potential archaeological sites or instances of looting, Parcak then turned the target locations over to Peruvian archaeologists. With the support of the Sustainable Preservation Initiative, Castillo and three of his students embarked on a ground-truthing expedition funded by the National Geographic Society.
When Castillo's team visited Nasca and Palpa provinces in December 2017, they didn’t find much evidence of fresh looting at the GlobalXplorer candidate targets. Instead, they found decades-old looting sites and encroachment fueled by the region's booming illegal gold mines.
But when researchers photographed the sites from overhead with drones, they found something new—and unexpected. The high-resolution images contained hints of dozens of ancient geoglyphs, carved into the desert crust.
How could so many geoglyphs hide in plain sight? Over time, many of the lines and figures have been reduced to faint depressions in the soil, visible only on 3-D scans of the terrain captured by the eagle-eye perspective provided by drones. And despite satellites' awe-inspiring surveillance power, they can’t see everything.
The most powerful satellite that GlobalXplorer uses can see a foot-wide object from 383 miles above Earth's surface. That’s the equivalent of seeing a single human hair from more than 650 feet away. But the lines that trace the newfound geoglyphs are mere inches across—too fine to spot from space.
Low-flying drones operating at altitudes of 200 feet or less, in contrast, can spot objects less than a half-inch wide. “The [drone camera] resolution is incredibly high,” says Castillo.
MORE TO DISCOVER, MORE TO PROTECT
Now that researchers have documented the newfound lines, they're eager to protect them. The new geoglyphs fall within the UNESCO World Heritage Site encompassing the Nasca and Palpa lines, and according to Isla, they are not under immediate threat.
However, the newfound lines have yet to be registered with the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. The lines' co-discoverer, Fabrizio Serván, a student at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, says that the necessary maps and drawings are currently being drafted.
Perhaps the lines will soon have company. GlobalXplorer users have flagged hundreds of new potential sites that Peruvian archaeologists will continue ground truthing this fall and winter.
“The data and information obtained with the GlobalXplorer project are extraordinary in quality and quantity, and above all in a relatively short period of time,” says Isla. “This puts us at the forefront in the registry of archaeological sites and geoglyphs in particular.”
“We give the data to local experts: This is their cultural patrimony, they're the stakeholders,” says Parcak. “We're providing a resource.”
In the future, Parcak and Castillo say that GlobalXplorer data can help protect archaeological sites from unplanned urban and rural encroachment, which, beyond looting and the occasional errant truck driver, is by far the biggest threat facing Peru's geoglyphs.
Castillo describes the ongoing encroachment as “land trafficking”: a sophisticated effort within Peru to forge deeds and build illegal housing by the acre, erasing the country's cultural heritage in the process.
“We're not fighting a looter with his shovel, running away when you're blowing a whistle; we're fighting an army of lawyers,” he says. “This is a constant battle, so the work we're doing—documenting the sites, geo-referencing—is the best protection we can give the sites.”
En Arizona, deux pilotes de ligne aguerris ont, tour à tour, croisé un objet volant qu'ils ne sont, l'un comme l'autre, absolument pas parvenus à identifier...
Le 24 février dernier, un premier pilote survole l'Arizona et voit soudainement apparaître un objet volant qu'il n'arrive, à aucun moment, à identifier. Quelques minutes plus tard, c'est un autre pilote sur un autre vol qui voit surgir le même objet. Une drôle d'histoire dont Paris-Match se fait l'écho et qui, certes, laisse perplexe mais génère surtout un certain nombre d'interrogations.
Compte tenu de cette curieuse apparition au dessus du désert de l'Arizona, les deux pilotes décident de contacter, chacun de leur côté, la tour de contrôle d’Albuquerque. Leurs appels ont été rendus public la semaine dernière par un site de référence spécialisé dans l'actualité de la défense répondant au nom de The War Zone.
Le premier avion aurait, semble-t-il, contacté les contrôleurs aériens de ladite tour et demandé : "Est-ce que quelqu’un est passé au-dessus de nous il y a environ 30 secondes ?". Réponse du contrôleur alors en place : "Négatif". Et le dialogue de se poursuivre : "OK, mais quelqu’un l’a fait"."C’est un OVNI !". Quelques minutes plus tard, même son de cloche. Un vol d'American Airlines contacté par la tour de contrôle répond à la question suivante : "Que je vous prévienne si quelque chose nous passe au-dessus ?"... "Ici America 1905. Oui, quelque chose vient juste de nous survoler. Je ne sais pas ce que c’était mais ça se trouvait environ 2000 ou 3000 pieds (entre 600 et 900 mètres) au-dessus de nous".
Pour l'heure, le pilote oeuvrant au sein d'American Airline ne semble pas convaincu par le fait qu'il puisse s'agir d'un ballon lancé par Google dans le cadre de son projet Loon. Lequel projet consiste, tel que le rapporte le géant de l'Internet sur son site, en "un réseau de ballons stratosphériques conçu pour apporter une connectivité Internet aux communautés rurales et reculées".
A cela, s'ajoute le fait que, dans l'absolu, rien ne justifie le fait qu'un avion vole en plein jour sans s'être signalé auprès du contrôle du trafic aérien, poursuit le site The War Zone. Le mystère demeure donc entier. A moins, s'interroge le site spécialisé, qu'il puisse s'agir d'un ballon sonde dont le lancer n'est, pour l'heure, pas particulièrement bien réglementé.
Un « énorme OVNI vaisseau mère » a été filmé au-dessus du ciel nocturne en Caroline du Nord. Les images partagées sur YouTube par The UFO Institute montrent l’engin, composé de six lumières dans un champ proche de Columbus.
Les lumières sont restées statiques pendant toute la durée de la vidéo, tandis qu’un vrombissement de type moteur à réaction étrange remplissait l’air. Il a été filmé par un cameraman mystérieux le 3 avril, que l’on entend dire : « J’aimerais bien savoir ce que sont ces lumières », pendant la mystérieuse rencontre.
Le commentateur Chris Lo a ajouté un commentaire plus hostile sous la séquence, écrivant : « J’habite en Caroline du Nord près de là-bas. »
« Si je l’avais vu je lui aurais tiré dessus. Je ne viens pas en paix. »
L’observation est l’une des 20 observations enregistrées en Caroline du Nord jusqu’à présent en 2018.
C’est l’un des dix meilleurs états d’Amérique pour les observations d’OVNIs.
La semaine dernière, des séquences audio de deux pilotes de jet faisant état d’un OVNI en train de voler au-dessus d’eux dans l’Arizona ont été diffusées.
Les théoriciens de la conspiration ont suggéré que la dernière observation pourrait être celle d’un avion militaire expérimental connu sous le nom de TR-3B, qui pourrait se trouver sur les bases voisines de Fort Bragg ou de la Pope Air Force.
On dit que l’avion, qui n’a jamais été officiellement reconnu, utilise la technologie « anti-gravité » pour planer dans le ciel.
The space travellers’ accounts of strange space sightings were examined under laboratory conditions.
All four astronauts taking part passed the test, carried out using the latest technology.
Experts say the results prove they were “completely convinced” signs of alien life they claimed to have witnessed during historic missions were genuine.
Aldrin, Al Worden, Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper all took part in the study.
GETTY
APOLLO 11: Buzz Aldrin, now 88 was the second human to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969
“There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped”
Buzz Aldrin
The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology in Albany, Ohio, carried out complex computer analyses of the astronauts’ voice patterns as they told of their close encounters.
Although the technology is still top-secret, these studies are claimed to be more reliable than current lie detector tests and could soon replace those used by the FBI and police.
One of the first tested was Apollo 11 pilot Buzz Aldrin, now 88 – the second human to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969.
Aldrin has always maintained he spotted a UFO on the way to the moon, saying: “There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped.”
BioAcoustic’s Sharry Edwards said tests reveal Aldrin is sure he saw the UFO even though his logical mind “cannot explain it”.
Apollo 15 pilot Al Worden, 86, stunned Good Morning Britain viewers when he claimed to have seen extra-terrestrials.
He believes we are all descended from ancient aliens. Voice recordings of fellow Nasa pioneers Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, both now dead, were also analysed.
Apollo 14’s Mitchell claimed to have seen several UFOs, while Cooper actually described trying to chase a cluster of objects. The tests revealed both men believed they were telling the whole truth.
Paucity of phosphorus hints at precarious path for extraterrestrial life
Paucity of phosphorus hints at precarious path for extraterrestrial life
A 15cm wide fragment of the Seymchan iron-nickel meteorite found in Russia in 1967. The long filament of dark grey material in the centre is the phosphorus-rich mineral schreibersite. Credit: M. Pasek / University of South Florida.
Work by Cardiff University astronomers suggests there may be a cosmic lack of a chemical element essential to life. Dr. Jane Greaves and Dr. Phil Cigan will present their results at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool.
Greaves has been searching for phosphorus in the universe, because of its link to life on Earth. If this element—with the chemical code P—is lacking in other parts of the cosmos, then it could be difficult for extra-terrestrial life to exist.
She explains: "Phosphorus is one of just six chemical elements on which Earth organisms depend, and it is crucial to the compound adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which cells use to store and transfer energy. Astronomers have just started to pay attention to the cosmic origins of phosphorus and found quite a few surprises. In particular, P is created in supernovae—the explosions of massive stars—but the amounts seen so far don't match our computer models. I wondered what the implications were for life on other planets if unpredictable amounts of P are spat out into space and later used in the construction of new planets."
The team used the UK's William Herschel Telescope, sited on La Palma in the Canary islands, to observe infrared light from phosphorus and iron in the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant around 6500 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Taurus.
Composite of infrared (shown as red), visible (green) and ultraviolet (violet) images of the Crab Nebula, with IR enhanced and visible/UV balanced to yield neutral star colors. Credit: J. Greaves
Cigan, an expert on these stellar remnants, says: "This is only the second such study of phosphorus that has been made. The first looked at the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant, and so we are able to compare two different stellar explosions and see if they ejected different proportions of phosphorus and iron. The first element supports life, while the second is a major part of our planet's core".
The astronomers struggled with foggy nights at the telescope, back in November 2017, and are only just starting to get scientific results from a few hours of data.
Cigan cautions "These are our preliminary results, which we extracted only in the last couple of weeks! But at least for the parts of the Crab Nebula we were able to observe so far, there seems to be much less phosphorus than in Cas A. The two explosions seem to differ from each other, perhaps because Cas A results from the explosion of a rare super-massive star. We've just asked for more telescope time to go back and check, in case we've missed some phosphorus-rich regions in the Crab Nebula."
Spectrum of one position in the Crab Nebula from the William Herschel Telescope, La Palma. Credit: IAC
The preliminary results suggest that material blown out into space could vary dramatically in chemical composition. Greaves remarks: "The route to carrying phosphorus into new-born planets looks rather precarious. We already think that only a few phosphorus-bearing minerals that came to the Earth—probably in meteorites—were reactive enough to get involved in making proto-biomolecules.
'If phosphorus is sourced from supernovae, and then travels across space in meteoritic rocks, I'm wondering if a young planet could find itself lacking in reactive phosphorus because of where it was born? That is, it started off near the wrong kind of supernova? In that case, life might really struggle to get started out of phosphorus-poor chemistry, on another world otherwise similar to our own."
The researchers now plan to continue their search, to establish whether other supernova remnants also lack phosphorus, and whether this element, so important for complex life, is rarer than we thought.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.