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...
22-04-2018
The Texas Town Where You're Almost Guaranteed to See UFOs
The Texas Town Where You're Almost Guaranteed to See UFOs
Marfa, Texas has been enchanted by sightings of mysterious "ghost lights" for over a century. The glowing balls of light of varying sizes show up in the sky seemingly randomly, and behave in ways that no man-made craft or flying animal should - like zipping from one part of the sky to the other, and disappearing and reappearing. You can travel to Marfa to observe the lights yourself, as they are a popular tourist attraction! But could they just be an optical illusion?
US Route 67 is a magical stretch of road, is that is where the famous unexplained lights of Marfa, Texas appear. Although they don't show up all the time, they show up frequently enough to earn a reputation not only in Marfa, but around the world.
Even scientists have tried to explain them. The University of Texas at Dallas studied the Marfa lights in 2004 and was apparently able to prove a strong correlation between highway traffic and the UFO sightings, deducing that the lights were just an optical illusion caused by passing car headlights, a popular theory at the time.
However, many still believe the Marfa Lights have a much more mysterious story than that, considering that their story began in the late 1800s, before car traffic even existed. Some believers have suggested that the Marfa Lights are a mirage created when cold and hot air mix (more specifically a "fata morgana" mirage), while others have suggested these lights could be electrical discharges in the atmosphere.
What do you think of the mysterious Marfa Lights? Could they be an example of weird natural phenomenon, aliens, or just cars headlights? Have you ever seen them in person?
Share your theories on this amazing phenomenon in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitteror Instagram!
Secret Pentagon UFO Program 'Still Exists' and It's Investigating 'Significant Pilot Encounters'
Secret Pentagon UFO Program 'Still Exists' and It's Investigating 'Significant Pilot Encounters'
Matthew Loffhagen
Image credit: YouTube
In 2017, The New York Times published one of the most important stories in recent history: the government cover-up surrounding unidentified flying objects that had secretly received $22 million in hidden funding.
According to Leslie Kean, the journalist who broke the news, this is only the beginning—genuinely important discoveries are coming from the research that the government is doing by investigating pilots' close encounters.
"This is no laughing matter," Kean recently told WTOP, before going into greater detail about how the government's ongoing program is producing results:
"The researchers in this area have always speculated and wondered what is going on behind the scenes. Is there a government investigation into this? And now we know that the answer is yes. It just establishes a credibility for the topic for people to know that our government takes it seriously enough to have put financial resources into it and to have studied it for all these years. We know that this program existed, it still exists, and it investigated military cases and very significant cases of pilot encounters with these objects."
Referencing the genuinely puzzling phenomena that the government is investigating, Kean mentioned a 2004 incident in which military pilots in the skies above San Diego saw a fleet of Tic-Tac-shaped UFOs that moved in a bizarre fashion.
"These objects in this one incident in 2004 were actually observed coming in from outer space. They came in and then they went out, up into the sky. So whatever that means, that's what happened. They were also seen able to move very, very, very fast from one space to another. Way faster than any airplane could do."
This is an incident that comes up pretty much every time the subject of UFOs is discussed; it's a rare example of a phenomenon that can't be explained away by questioning the observer's credibility. Pilot David Fravor has gone on record multiple times, insisting that he saw proof of advanced alien weaponry that could kick off a real-life War of the Worlds.
That said, it's important to note that not all experts are convinced. Many believe this is more an Orson Welles War of the Worlds situation, in which a benign incident spreads the rumor of mass panic. One expert believes that the San Diego sighting is the result of a fixed camera angle that makes the UFO look more impressive than it actually is, while another sighting of a similar UFO ultimately turned out to be a birthday balloon.
If the most compelling UFO case in history is also subject to speculation and skepticism, it's probably not wise to assume that the US government is making as much headway as Kean would like people to believe.
The subject of UFOs is very polarizing. Some people genuinely believe that they exist (sometimes in the absence of adequate proof), while others refuse to entertain the notion that these reports could be real (despite an occasional lack of an adequate alternative explanation).
For now, we'll just have to keep watching the skies, and hope that, one way or the other, we'll eventually figure out what's going on up there.
NASA's new exoplanet satellite launches successfully, Saturn played a part in the formation of Jupiter's four largest moons and the Senate finally confirms the new NASA administrator. These are just some of the top stories this week from Space.com.
Photo Credit: Orbital ATK
1. New NASA exoplanet hunter lifts off.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on April 18. The mission deployed into Earth orbit 49 minutes after lifting off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. TESS' mission is to hunt for planets circling stars relatively close to the sun.
2. Senate confirms Bridenstine as NASA administrator.
After an unprecedentedly long and contentious nomination process, the U.S. Senate voted along party lines to confirm congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) as NASA's new administrator. The 50-49 vote took place April 19. Bridenstine faced criticism for lacking scientific credentials, in addition to his statements about the LGBTQ community and climate change.
The Lyrid Meteor Shower peaks this weekend, and observers have until April 30 to see shooting stars in the direction of the constellation Lyra (the Harp). NASA recommends waiting until after the first-quarter moon sets at midnight for optimal meteor shower viewing.
Storytellers and exploration folklore inspired the names for places on the surface of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Among the new feature names are Butler Mons, named after author Octavia E. Butler; Caleuche Chasma, named after a Chilean ghost-ship tale; and Kubrick Mons, named after film director Stanley Kubrick.
Two NASA researchers traveled to the extreme environment near the South Pole in preparation for a new mission launching this September. The Ice, Could and land Elevation-2 (ICESat-2) mission will use lasers to track changes in sea ice to investigate how climate change is impacting it. To calibrate the instruments on the satellite, the scientists trekked across Antarctica.
Asteroid 2018 GE3 zipped past Earth on April 15, the day after astronomers discovered it. The space rock passed at about half the distance between Earth and the moon, according to NASA, and is at least three times the size of the meteor that exploded in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.
Two U.S. Air Force satellites launched on April 14 with the goal of improving military communications and space vehicle design. The U.S. Air Force Space Command mission, featuring a communications satellite and an experimental demonstrator, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
An enforcement advisory warning came out on April 12, in which the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stated that organizations launching spacecraft without appropriate regulatory approval will be penalized. Punishment might include monetary forfeitures, and as a precaution, the FCC is advising launch providers to remove any unauthorized spacecraft from their rockets.
9. Saturn played a part in Jupiter moon formation.
A research team found that Saturn's core may have formed alongside the pieces that eventually formed Jupiter's four largest moons. The ringed planet's core may have pulled on this material and scattered it toward Jupiter, where the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto eventually settled into their current orbits.
During an April 12 hearing, NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said that extending some upcoming space station missions could be an option to buy more time in the event that there are delays with commercial crew vehicle development. Lightfoot also answered questions about how NASA would manage with the Trump administration's proposed budget cuts to the agency's Office of Education and other projects.
Strange footage has emerged of bright lights flashing on the International Space Station's live feed, with conspiracy theorists claiming it is 'an uncloaking UFO'.
The live feed caught the attention of UFO hunters after it appeared to be flashing near the ISS.
The conspiracy theorists who posted the video say whatever it is, it must be 'huge' as it was going under the ISS at some distance.
Other UFO hunters have claimed the mammoth alien craft could be 900 feet (300 metres) in diameter and fly from the Earth to the moon in less than a minute.
However, experts have debunked the claim, and say the lights are simply reflections or lens flare from the camera.
Strange footage has emerged of bright lights flashing on the International Space Station's live feed (pictured), with conspiracy theorists claiming it is 'an uncloaking UFO'
The video was posted by Belgium-based YouTube channel UFO Today and shows a live broadcast of the spaceship on the 14th April 2018.
'We can see the international space station orbiting earth when suddenly a UFO seems to be uncloaking nearby the international space station', according to UFO Today.
The UFO hunters claimed that the Earth's magnetic field was interfering with the UFO as it revealed itself, causing the lights to flash.
'It looks like the effect we see when a piece of aluminium is put inside a microwave.
'Whatever this object was, it must have been huge since it was going under the international space station at some distance', the user posted with the live feed.
Another prominent UFO hunter Scott C Waring had his own theory about the footage.
He said it was not six separate UFOs but one large one that could be as large as 900 feet (300 metres) in diameter.
'This UFO is going to blow your mind! I mean it just shows up as a single glowing orb', he wrote on his website UFO sightings daily.
The live feed caught the attention of UFO hunters after strange lights started flashing to the right of the station (pictured)
WHAT MAKES SOMEONE BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES?
Over the course of three online-based studies, researchers at the University of Kent showed strong links between the belief in conspiracy theories and certain psychological traits.
Narcissism and self-esteem levels have a large impact on a persons belief in conspiracy theories.
The results showed that people who rated highly on the narcissism scale and who had low self-esteem were more likely to be conspiracy believers.
However, while low self-esteem, narcissism and belief in conspiracies are strongly linked, it is not clear that one - or a combination - causes the other.
But it hints at an interesting new angle to the world of conspiracy and those who reinforce belief.
There are widely believed to be three main reasons as to why people believe in conspiracy theories.
The desire for understanding and certainty - Seeking explanations for events is a natural human desire.
The desire for control and security - Conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security.
The desire to maintain a positive self-image - People who feel socially marginalised are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and it gives them a sense of worth in the UFO community.
These three things tie in with the previously stated qualities and combine to create an avid conspiracy theorist.
'Then it divides into about 4-6 flashing orbs! During this time the UFO is revealed partially, meaning its not 6 UFOs, but one large UFO of about 300 meters diameter', he said.
'Such a craft has the capability to fly from Earth to the moon in under a minute. Its not light speed, but its fast', he said.
However, Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, said there was a simple explanation for these baffling lights.
'Often the images shown to be of UFOs near the ISS are reflections or lens flare from the camera', he told MailOnline.
The conspiracy theorists who posted the video say whatever it is it must be 'huge' as it was going under the ISS at some distance
He said the flashing lights in this clip were probably just a piece of space junk or a satellite in the distance.
'Usually people who post videos like this are more concerned about adding music to the soundtrack and putting ridiculous ideas about UFOs uncloaking themselves like a spaceship in Star Trek', he said.
The footage is the latest in a series of bizarre claims as conspiracy theorists monitor the live feed on the ISS for any anomalies.
In January, a bizarre YouTube video that some claimed reveals a ‘golden UFO’ soaring over Earth sparked fresh speculation among conspiracy theorists about an alien cover-up.
The video focuses on a 2016 clip from the International Space Station’s live feed, showing a slow-moving view over our planet – and, a mysterious glow can be seen emanating from the bottom right corner.
Just seconds later, the footage cuts out to reveal a standby message from the ISS, causing many to claim NASA was attempting to hide an object the YouTubers estimate to be ‘hundreds of miles long.’
WHAT ARE THE KEY DISCOVERIES HUMANITY HAS MADE IN ITS SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE?
Discovery of pulsars
British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar.
Since then other types of pulsars that emit x-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted.
Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnatised neutron stars but when they were first discovered it was believed they could come from aliens.
'Wow!' radio signal
In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the nigh sky above Ohio spotted a powerful radio signal so strong that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data.
In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the nigh sky above Ohio spotted a powerful radio signal so strong that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data
The 72-second blast, spotted by Dr Jerry Ehman through a radio telescope, came from Sagittarius but matched no known celestial object.
Conspiracy theorists have since claimed that the 'Wow! signal', which was 30 times stronger than background radiation, was a message from intelligent extraterrestrials.
Fossilised martian microbes
In 1996 Nasa and the White House made the explosive announcement that the rock contained traces of Martian bugs.
The meteorite, catalogued as Allen Hills (ALH) 84001, crashed onto the frozen wastes of Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984.
Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike.
Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike (pictured)
However, the excitement did not last long. Other scientists questioned whether the meteorite samples were contaminated.
They also argued that heat generated when the rock was blasted into space may have created mineral structures that could be mistaken for microfossils.
Behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005
The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015.
It dims at a much faster rate than other stars, which some experts have suggested is a sign of aliens harnessing the energy of a star.
The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015 (artist's impression)
Recent studies have 'eliminated the possibility of an alien megastructure', and instead, suggests that a ring of dust could be causing the strange signals.
Exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone in 2015
In February this year astronomers announced they had spotted a star system with planets that could support life just 39 light years away.
Seven Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting nearby dwarf star 'Trappist-1', and all of them could have water at their surface, one of the key components of life.
Three of the planets have such good conditions, that scientists say life may have already evolved on them.
Researchers claim that they will know whether or not there is life on any of the planets within a decade, and said 'this is just the beginning.'
Vreemde lichten gezien op livestream ruimtestation ISS. Is dit een UFO die zijn camouflage deactiveert?
Vreemde lichten gezien op livestream ruimtestation ISS. Is dit een UFO die zijn camouflage deactiveert?
Er zijn vreemde beelden opgedoken van felle lichten bij het internationale ruimtestation ISS. Er wordt geclaimd dat het gaat om een UFO die zijn camouflage deactiveert, schrijft de Daily Mail.
UFO-jagers zagen de lichten op de livestream van het ruimtestation. Ze claimden dat het object een doorsnee had van wel 300 meter.
Volgens experts zijn de lichten reflecties of lensflares. De beelden zijn op YouTube gezet door UFO Todayen gemaakt op 14 april jongstleden.
Enorm
“We zien het internationale ruimtestation dat rond de aarde draait als er plotseling een UFO verschijnt bij het ISS,” schrijft het kanaal.
De UFO-jagers beweerden dat de UFO hinder ondervond van het magnetisch veld van de aarde, waardoor de lichten begonnen te knipperen.
“Wat het object ook was, het moet enorm zijn geweest,” klonk het nog.
Oogwenk
UFO-jager Scott C. Waring zei dat het object een doorsnee van wel 300 meter kon hebben en in een oogwenk van de aarde naar de maan kon vliegen.
Nigel Watson, auteur van de UFO Investigations Manual, zei in een reactie dat beelden van UFO’s bij het ISS vaak reflecties of lenslares zijn.
Hij zei dat de knipperende lichten in het filmpje waarschijnlijk het gevolg waren van een stuk ruimtepuin of een satelliet in de verte.
Amerikaanse overheid geeft per ongeluk documenten vrij over hersenspoeling op afstand. Lees ze hier
Amerikaanse overheid geeft per ongeluk documenten vrij over hersenspoeling op afstand. Lees ze hier
Het Washington State Fusion Center (WSFC), een Amerikaans centrum dat gericht is op terrorismebestrijding, heeft deze week per ongeluk een aantal raadselachtige documenten vrijgegeven.
De stukken hebben betrekking op de effecten van hersenspoeling op afstand.
Curtis Waltman schrijft voor onderzoekssite MuckRock dat hij documenten over Antifa en diverse racistische groeperingen had opgevraagd bij het centrum.
Psycho-elektronische wapens
Hij kreeg een aantal stukken opgestuurd met daarin e-mails, notulen van vergaderingen en informatie van andere centra. Er zat ook een bestand bij getiteld ‘elektromagnetische effecten op het menselijk lichaam’.
Het bleek te gaan over ‘psycho-elektronische’ wapens die door middel van elektromagnetisme de mens beïnvloeden.
Denk daarbij aan het lezen of beïnvloeden van je gedachten, het veroorzaken van intense pijn of jeuk en het verstijven van het lichaam.
Mobiele telefoons
Elektromagnetische golven kunnen worden gebruikt om iemands gedachten te lezen en uit te zenden, hun ledematen te manipuleren en hun dromen te beïnvloeden, aldus één van de documenten.
In een ander document wordt uitgelegd hoe elektromagnetische wapens kunnen worden ingezet door middel van bijvoorbeeld een satelliet of mobiele telefoons.
Geen idee
Waltman merkt op dat de stukken niet noodzakelijkerwijs bewijzen dat de Amerikaanse overheid beschikt over dergelijke apparaten.
Hij heeft geen idee waarom dit bestand naar hem is opgestuurd. Mogelijk was het bedoeld voor iemand anders of voor een toekomstig rapport van het WSFC.
Strange rectangular shaped UFO captured above Newton Abbot, UK
Strange rectangular shaped UFO captured above Newton Abbot, UK
A photographer decided to go out and do some sky watching on April 18, 2018 and was hoping to capture something strange and out of the ordinary.
He was scanning the sky looking east when he spotted something moving in his direction.
He couldn't make it out at first but as soon as it got a bit closer he zoomed in with his Nikon P900 camera and he could clearly see that it was in fact a rectangular shaped flying object.
The rectangular shaped object was very high up in the sky and was directly above the town center.
The photographer quickly took several photographs and watched as the UFO then flew off at incredible speed heading north whereby he lost sight of it. Mufon case 91544.
This UFO was reported just a few days ago. It was seen over a construction site and it looks as if some of the workers were looking at it. The white UFO has taken on the appearance of a cloud to hide itself, but not very well. You can even see that there are window like openings around the edges of the craft. Remarkable report. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Was taking pictures of work site caught UFO and frame didn't see until after the fact.
Below is the photo put into Negative format for a different perspective of its details.
US Government Accidentally Posts Records on “Psycho-Electronic Weapons” And “Remote Mind Control”
US Government Accidentally Posts Records on “Psycho-Electronic Weapons” And “Remote Mind Control”
Is this that moment when a Conspiracy theory turns into reality?
According to reports, documents detailing Psycho-Electronic Weapons” and “Remote Mind Control” were accidentally sent to a journalist.
It’s not a secret that various US government agencies keep all kinds of secrets, but only a true conspiracy theorist would suspect that “psycho-electronic weapons” is one of them.
The info was revealed in ‘secret’ documents sent “by accident” to MuckRock, a news agency that specializes in processing Freedom of Information requests (FOIA), a law that gives citizens the right to access federal government information.
It all started when journalist Curtis Waltman wrote to the Washington State Fusion Center (WSFC)—a state security agency responsible for processing data on terrorism and extremis—requesting information about Antifa (the anti-fascist movement) and white supremacist groups.
While he got the documents he was looking for; he also received a strange zip file entitled “EM Effects on the human body.”
Once he extracted the files, he found the following intel:
The documents sent by accident apparently mention telepathy, dream control, hallucinations, remote mind control, and remote mapping of the brain.
The documents, which were apparently sent by accident offer a number of illustrations that show different devices and techniques that aim to manipulate the human mind. The file also features details about weapons that use electromagnetic force to induce intense pain in certain individuals.
Some of the images from the zip file appear to be part of an article published in 1992 in the Australian magazine Nexus, which speaks of a lawsuit by a John St. Clair Akewi against the NSA (National Security Agency).
Aweki claimed that the NSA had “the ability to covertly murder US citizens and conduct psychological control operations to cause certain individuals to be diagnosed as insane.”
What a conspiracy right?
The news magazine focuses on inexplicable facts, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine and other topics.
The documents refer to a number of devices suitable for remote mind control, including cell phones.
According to the editors of the magazine, they tried to cover the case in 1996 but did not manage to provide the protagonist with more details:
“We called Mr. Akewi to follow up on the development of his demand, but he told us firmly and kindly that he could not talk about anything that had to do with the case over the phone and hung up.”
It is widely accepted that the USA and other world powers have experimented with the range of possibilities offered by mind control, but the documents leaked here do not seem official.
However, they are another overwhelming proof of the great interest of the US government in the powers of the mind and their use as a tool for geopolitical and militaristic purposes.
Waltman has said he has no idea why that compressed file was included in what was sent to him.
According to reports, the WSFC has yet to respond on the matter.
As noted by Muckrock, it remains a mystery as to why or how the documents were sent to them: “It could have been meant for another release, it could have been gathered for an upcoming WSFC report, or it could even be from the personal files of an intelligence officer that somehow got mixed up in the release.”
A simulation shows a small body ramming into Mars, kicking up debris that eventually formed its two small moons.
Credit: Robin Canup/Southwest Research Institute
Mars may have gained its two tiny moons after an asteroid-size object slammed into the surface of the Red Planet. New models suggest that an object the size of the largest of the asteroid-belt inhabitants could have kicked up enough material to form Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos.
"Ours is the first self-consistent model to identify the type of impact needed to lead to the formation of Mars' two small moons," Robin Canup, a researcher and associate vice president at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), said in a statement. Canup is one of the leading scientists using large-scale simulations to model planet-scale collisions like the one thought to have formed Earth's own moon.
Scientists have debated the origins of the two Martian moons for decades. One model suggests that they may have been captured from the asteroid belt. Another suggests that they formed out of a disk of debris around the Red Planet. The fact that both moons have a nearly circular orbit around the equator makes a strong case for their birth by impact. [Moons of Mars: Amazing Photos of Phobos and Deimos]
Moons forming from the debris after a smashup isn't unheard of. Earth's moon is thought to have formed after a Mars-size object crashed into the planet 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's diameter is about 8,000 miles (12,875 kilometers). With a diameter of just over 2,100 miles (3,380 km), the moon is about a quarter of its parent planet's size.
Mars, on the other hand, is smaller than our planet, with a diameter of just over 4,200 miles (6,760 km). Phobos and Deimos are very small, with diameters of only 7.5 and 14 miles (12 and 22.5 km), respectively, and with very close-in orbits.
"A key result of the new work is the size of the impactor," or the body that collided with the planet, Canup said. "We find that a large impactor — similar in size to the largest asteroids, Vesta and Ceres — is needed, rather than a giant impactor."
Vesta is the second largest object in the asteroid belt, with a diameter of 329 miles (530 km). Ceres is the largest inhabitant of the asteroid belt, with a diameter of 584 miles (940 km) — it is large enough that it is classified as both an asteroid and a dwarf planet.
New research simulates a small body slamming into Mars, producing its small moons Phobos and Deimos.
Credit: Robin Canup/Southwest Research Institute
The last of many
Phobos and Deimos were likely not the only moons created by the collision, according to the researchers' model. After the large impactor smashed into the planet, some of the debris formed a disk that flew up to circle the Martian equator.
"The outer portions of the disk accumulate into Phobos and Deimos, while the inner portions of the disk accumulate into large moons that eventually spiral inward and are assimilated into Mars," said Julien Salmon, a researcher at SwRI and second author on the paper.
Currently, Phobos is spiraling inward, and should crash into Mars in another 50 million years or so. Deimos will escape that fate, as it is slowly spiraling outward, away from the planet.
Previous simulations of impactors also created multiple moons, but their size meant that Phobos and Deimos wouldn't exist today.
"Larger impacts advocated in prior works produce massive disks and more massive inner moons that prevent the survival of tiny moons like Phobos and Deimos," Salmon said.
In addition to their existence, the new research also provided clues about what future missions might find when they visit Phobos and Deimos.
"The model also predicts that the two moons are derived primarily from material originating in Mars, so their bulk compositions should be similar to that of Mars for most elements," Canup said.
In 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch the Mars Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to visit the two Martian moons. MMX will land on the surface of Phobos and collect a sample to return to Earth in 2029.
"A primary objective of the MMX mission is to determine the origin of Mars' moons," Canup said.
"Having a model that predicts what the moons' composition would be if they formed by impact is a key constraint for achieving that goal."
US Military's Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Spotted by Satellite Trackers
US Military's Mysterious X-37B Space Plane Spotted by Satellite Trackers
By Leonard David, Space.com's Space Insider Columnist
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane on Sept. 7, 2017.
Credit: SpaceX
The U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane has apparently been spotted by satellite watchers.
The craft's latest mystery mission, known as OTV-5 (short for Orbital Test Vehicle-5), began on Sept. 7, 2017, when the robotic spacecraft launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.
Skywatcher Cees Bassa from the Netherlands reported a chance sighting of a bright satellite of unknown identity, observed early on April 11. He estimated a circular orbit of about 54.5 degrees inclination and 220 miles (355 kilometers) altitude.
Bassa alerted the global satellite-observing network and others that this could be OTV-5.
Another satellite spotter — Russell Eberst in Edinburgh, Scotland — had reported seeing a satellite of similar brightness and orbit last October.
"I produced rough search elements that proved too rough to recover the object," said Ted Molczan, a Toronto-based satellite analyst. "I found, with very slight tweaks, the preliminary orbit that Cees had posted could be made to fit both his and Russell's observations," Molczan told Inside Outer Space.
Artist's illustration of the X-37B orbiting Earth
Credit: Boeing
Bassa noted that this object's orbit correlates well with the OTV-5. The orbit passes very close — within 2 degrees of longitude — from KSC at the time of liftoff. Meanwhile, another satellite tracker, Marco Langbroek, also in the Netherlands, noted that the U.S. Air Force had earlier announced that the OTV-5 would have the highest inclination of the series of missions to date.
"Looks like a pretty probable identification," Langbroek reported.
Molczan is more certain. "Cees recovered the object, which can now be identified beyond reasonable doubt as OTV-5," he said. "As Cees cautions, further tracking may reveal a bit more eccentric orbit, but the mean altitude is about 355 kilometers, and the inclination is close to 54.5 degrees.
"I estimate that the ground track nearly repeats at intervals of about 31 revolutions, or about two days," Molczan added. "Similar behavior has been seen during portions of all previous OTV missions. If it carries an imaging payload, then the orbit affords frequent revisit of targets, but it could serve some other operational purpose that I cannot guess."
When OTV-5 will return to Earth is anybody's guess. The X-37B program completed its fourth mission on May 7, 2017, landing after 718 days in orbit and extending the program's total number of days spent in orbit to 2,085.
The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office is running the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle program.
"The fifth OTV mission continues to advance the X-37B's performance and flexibility as a space technology demonstrator and host platform for experimental payloads," Air Force officials said in a prelaunch statement. "This mission carries small satellite ride shares and will demonstrate greater opportunities for rapid space access and on-orbit testing of emerging space technologies."
The current mission is hosting the Air Force Research Laboratory Advanced Structurally Embedded Thermal Spreader payload to test experimental electronics and oscillating heat pipe technologies in the long-duration space environment.
"The many firsts on this mission make the upcoming OTV launch a milestone for the program," Randy Walden, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, said in the statement. "It is our goal to continue advancing the X-37B OTV so it can more fully support the growing space community."
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.
George Filer III, 82, serves as the New Jersey director of MUFON – am American based non-profit organisation that investigates UFO sighting.
But he has more than 20 years first hand experience in the skies – and he has revealed some of them are unexplainable.
When Filer was stationed in Scotland during the Cold War, he recalls flying a military aircraft that attempted to intercept such an object that appeared as big as a bridge on radar.
APP
SHOCKING: The man revealed he had encountered a UFO
“We were doing over 400mph and I would say it was doing 10, 20 times our speed”
George Filer
He revealed: “When we got closer, we could see lights off in the distance – kind of like a cruise ship you would see at night, with multiple lights across it.
“As we got, I don’t know, about 5 miles from it – it went up into space.
“We were doing over 400mph and I would say it was doing 10, 20 times our speed and it was this huge object.
“So we were convinced that it was something that was not ours, let’s put it that way. … to me, it looked like a long cylinder.”
George originally detailed his story with American news outlet Asbury Park Press, but it has since gained popularity online.
It has now been shared on a number of conspiracy channels
In December last year, it was revealed The Pentagon ran a secret $22million (£16.5million) project to investigate UFO
According to the New York Times, the Defense Department ended funding for the programme in 2012 and shut it down.
“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an email.
But Luis Elizondo, a military intelligence official who ran the programme, said it continued after funding dried up and he continued to work on it until October, when he resigned in protest of “excessive secrecy and internal opposition.”
In this UFO Sightings video clip: Roswell: A brief look at the Roswell UFO encounter, and the controversy around it. For over 60 years, the debate has raged on. What happened in Roswell? An alien encounter or a government cover-up? Get a closer look at Roswell.
UFOs aren’t a new phenomenon. In fact, humans have been describing unidentified flying objects for millennia, with depictions of disk-like objects and unusual atmospheric objects found in the art and literature of ancient civilizations from the Sumerians and the Egyptians to the Greeks and Romans.
But the modern era of UFOs took off in the middle of the 20th century, right around the time rockets and high-tech aircraft were being devised, often in secret. Coincidence? Paranoia? Perhaps. In any event, these seven UFO sightings certainly occurred, but it’s up to you to decide what explanation you’ll believe in.
1. Kenneth Arnold, 1947
Pilots E.J. Smith, Kenneth Arnold, and Ralph E. Stevens look at a photo of an unidentified flying object which they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)
The origin of today’s fascination can be traced back to civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold. While flying his small aircraft near Washington’s Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947, Arnold claimed to have seen nine blue, glowing objects flying fast—at an estimated 1700 mph—in a “V” formation. He first believed the objects to be some sort of new military aircraft (this was, after all, just two years after WWII and the first year of the Cold War), but the military confirmed that there were no tests being conducted near Mount Rainier that day. When he described their motion as similar to “a saucer if you skip it across water,” the media coined the now-ubiquitous phrase “flying saucer.” Soon, other reports of a group of nine UFOs cropped up across the region, including sightings by a prospector on Mount Adams and the crew of a commercial flight in Idaho. The government never had a true explanation for the sightings—it simply claimed that Arnold had seen a mirage or was hallucinating. But UFO mania had set in, and just a few weeks later, the infamous Roswell sighting would perpetuate the obsession.
2. Roswell, 1947
Roswell UFO Museum Sign. (Credit: David Zaitz/Getty Images)
It’s the mother of all UFO sightings, but no object was actually observed flying in the Roswell incident. In the summer of 1947, rancher William “Mac” Brazel discovered mysterious debris in one of his New Mexico pastures, including metallic rods, chunks of plastic and unusual, papery scraps. When Brazel reported the wreckage, soldiers from nearby Roswell Army Air Force Base were called in to retrieve the materials.News headlines claimed that a “flying saucer” crashed in Roswell, but military officials purported that it was only a downed weather balloon. Ever since, conspiracy theorists have been hard at work trying to prove the wreckage was extraterrestrial, with one gentleman, Ray Santilli, going as far as releasing a video in 1995 of an alien dissection purported to have taken place after the incident. (Santilli would admit in 2006 that it was a staged film, but he maintained that it was based off of actual footage.)
As it turns out, the government was indeed covering something up—but it wasn’t aliens. The crashed weather balloon was, in fact, part of a top-secret military endeavor called Project Mogul, which launched high-altitude balloons carrying equipment used to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The Air Force provided plenty of proof in a 231-page report released in 1997 called “Case Closed: Final Report on the Roswell Crash.” Though the mystery has been thoroughly debunked, interest in the case has only grown, and Roswell’s tourism is heavily based around its famous “UFO sighting.” It’s home to the International UFO Museum and Research Center, a spaceship-shaped McDonald’s and an annual UFO festival, held each summer.
3. Lubbock Lights, 1951
The “Lubbock Lights”, photographed at Lubbock, Texas, by 19-year old Carl Hart, Jr. in 1951. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)
On the evening of August 25, 1951, three science professors from Texas Tech were enjoying an evening outdoors in Lubbock, when they looked up and saw a semicircle of lights flying above them at a high speed. Over the next few days, dozens of reports flooded in from across town—Texas Tech freshman Carl Hart Jr., even snapped photos of the phenomenon, which were published in newspapers across the country and Life magazine. Project Blue Book investigated the events, and their official conclusion was that the lights were birds that reflected the luminescence from Lubbock’s new streetlamps. Many people who saw the lights, however, refuse to accept this explanation, arguing that the lights were flying too fast.
4. Levelland, 1957
One of several people who witnessed the UFO in Levelland, Texas in 1957, holding up a drawing of what he saw. (Credit: Carl Iwasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)
Have you ever seen the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind? There’s a famous scene where a UFO makes the electronics in a car go haywire. As it so happens, that’s not just a Hollywood invention for the silver screen—there’s real-life precedence. In 1957, dozens of citizens of Levelland, Texas, individually reported seeing a rocket or strange lights that interfered with their vehicles: Engines died, lights cut out. Though the police initially thought the reports were a hoax, they, too, saw the mysterious lights, as they investigated the situation.Project Blue Book, a UFO research group created by the Air Force, was assigned to investigate the case. Their findings? It was an electrical storm and ball lightning that caused the lights and the mechanical malfunctions, despite the fact that there were no reported thunderstorms in the area that night.
The September 19, 1976, incident in Tehran, Iran, started much like many others, with phone calls from concerned citizens reporting a bright light in the sky. An F-4 fighter jet was set out to investigate, but as it neared the object, its instruments blacked out, forcing the pilot to return to base. A second F-4 took its place, and as it neared the unusual light, it achieved radar lock. But then, according to the pilot, the UFO released a glowing object—the pilot assumed it to be some sort of missile headed straight for him. As he prepared to fight back, the pilot experienced malfunctions with his instruments, and he witnessed another bright object released from the UFO that headed straight toward the ground. He safely returned to base, despite the faulty equipment.After the incident, Iran contacted the United States to aid them in an investigation. An unclassified memo by U.S. Air Force section chief Lieutenant Colonel Olin Mooy detailed the events of the night: There are explanations for nearly all of them.
First, the bright light seen by civilians (and possibly the pilots) might have been Jupiter, which was visible in the sky that night. Second, as author Brian Dunning notes in a podcast, the second F-4 jet had a long history of electrical problems, meaning that the instrumentation might have failed regardless of a UFO situation. It also could explain the radar lock—it might simply have been a malfunction. The first F-4, reports Dunning, was never turned in for maintenance following the incident, so there’s no official indication that its instrumentation failed. And finally, as for the “alien missiles,” there was a meteor shower that night, which could easily account for the sightings.
6. Rendlesham Forest, 1980
A general view of disused missile silos at the former RAF Bentwaters base near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk where an alleged alien interference with US nuclear weapons site took place. (Credit: PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo)
In December 1980, U.S. Air Force members stationed at two British Royal Air Force bases, Woodbridge and Bentwaters, reported seeing strange, colorful lights above Rendlesham Forest, about 100 miles northeast of London. One man who entered the forest to investigate claimed to have discovered some sort of spacecraft there, and the next day, others confirmed damage to nearby trees and a higher-than-normal level of radiation at the site.Several days later, more sightings were reported. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt recorded his observations on an audio tape as he watched the lights, and while not definitive proof, theorists consider this the strongest evidence of the events. But the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which oversaw reports of UFO incidents until the early 2000s, did not find any credible threat to the nation, and thus did not pursue investigations further. As at Roswell, UFO tourism is prevalent in Rendlesham Forest, and there’s even an official Rendlesham UFO trail that visitors can hike, off of which is a model of the reported spacecraft.
7. The Belgium Wave, 1989-90
Flying triangle claimed to have been photographed on June 15, during the 1990 Belgian UFO sighting over Belgium.µ(Credit: J.S. Henrardi)
At the end of November 1989, citizens of Belgium reported seeing a large, triangular UFO hovering in the sky. But other than these visual sightings, no evidence of the UFO’s existence was to be found—for now. A few months later, in March 1990, new sightings of multiple objects were reported, which were confirmed by two military ground radar stations. Two F-16 fighter jets were sent out to investigate the anomalies, and though the pilots could not see anything visually, they were able to lock onto their targets with radar. But the UFOs moved so fast that the pilots ended up losing them. Some 13,500 people are estimated to have witnessed the incident, making it one of the most widely experienced UFO sightings of the modern era.The Belgian Air Force had no logical explanation for the activity, but it acknowledged that an unknown activity had taken place in the air. The Belgians reached out to the UK’s Ministry of Defence to investigate further, but once they determined that the incident was not a hostile or aggressive one, they stopped the investigation.
An archived NASA photo allegedly shows evidence that the moon landing was fake. According to a conspiracy theorist, the boulders in the background are not simple rocks but are actually something else.
( NASA )
An archived NASA photo provides further proof to the allegations that the moon landing was fake, according to a conspiracy theorist.
There is a mountain of evidence that the moon landing really happened, but there remains a group of people who believe that it was all a hoax. After looking at the NASA photo, which side will you be on?
NASA Photo Allegedly Shows Structure On The Moon
The image in question shows John W. Young, the commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, collecting samples from the moon's surface. The description of the photo says that the Lunar Roving Vehicle was parked among "the field of large boulders in the background."
However, according to a video uploaded on the YouTube channel UFOmania, the boulders shown in the image are not simple rocks but rather "habitat building, spaceship, and extra personnel."
There are two suggestions on what really happened with the moon landing. The first suggestion is that the whole thing was staged, with the images and videos taken in a studio that was made to look like the moon. Pursuing this thought, the structure in the background of the image may have been part of the studio where the moon landing was filmed.
The second suggestion, meanwhile, is more sinister. Some believe that the Apollo 16 astronauts discovered evidence of alien life on the moon, and the images and videos were mostly edited to remove all instances showing proof of it. The image may then be thought of showing one of these alien structures.
Most commenters on the YouTube video, however, remain adamant that the things in the background of the image are really just rocks. Conspiracy theorists, however, will keep saying otherwise, and it is up to you to decide what to believe.
Man On The Moon
NASA recently released a 4K video showing the surface of the moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The work of the spacecraft will help start plans for manned missions to the moon in the future.
President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, confirmed that the Russian space program is planning to send astronauts to the moon in a modern space race that also involves the United States and Japan. Russia is planning to first establish a space station on the lunar orbit and then place modules on the moon itself.
Whether the astronauts will find evidence of alien life on the moon remains unclear. However, something that they will surely find there is space junk, as 400,000 pounds of garbage have been left on the moon by previous missions.
Dit is de foto die volgens complottheoretici bewijst dat de maanlanding nep was
Dit is de foto die volgens complottheoretici bewijst dat de maanlanding nep was
In 1969 werd Neil Armstrong de eerste mens die voet op de maan zette. Tenminste, als we het officiële verhaal mogen geloven.
Veel mensen geloven dat de maanlandingen één grote leugen zijn. In het verleden is er al veel materiaal gepresenteerd waaruit zou moeten blijken dat de maanlandingen een hoax zijn.
Er is nu een oude foto opgedoken die gemaakt is door een astronaut en die volgens sommigen bewijst dat het maanoppervlak dat we zien op maanfoto’s niets meer is dan een filmset.
Maanbasis
De foto is gemaakt tijdens Apollo 16, een missie die plaatsvond in 1972. Op de foto is te zien dat astronaut John Young monsters op het maanoppervlak verzamelt.
Op de achtergrond zijn grote en kleinere stukken rots te zien. In het bijschrift staat dat op de foto rotsblokken zijn te zien, evenals de Lunar Roving Vehicle.
Complottheoretici zien ook nog iets anders, namelijk een maanbasis in de verte. Ook zien ze personeel dat niet op de foto te zien zou moeten zijn.
Buitenaards leven
Volgens YouTube-kanaal UFOmania zijn de ‘rotsblokken’ in werkelijkheid ‘gebouwen, een ruimteschip en extra personeel’, schrijft Tech Times.
Volgens één theorie zijn de maanlandingen in scène gezet en zijn de beelden gemaakt in een filmstudio. De voorwerpen op de achtergrond zouden dan onderdeel moeten zijn geweest van de studio.
Een andere theorie stelt dat de astronauten van Apollo 16 buitenaards leven hebben ontdekt op de maan en dat de beelden zijn bewerkt om het bewijs hiervoor te verhullen. In dit geval zou de foto één van deze buitenaardse structuren tonen.
When we think about the reality of meeting an extraterrestrial race, we often think about the difficulty, and sometimes supposed impossibility, of communicating or even recognizing that communication was being attempted. We wonder, also, how we could recognize a culture completely outside of our frames of reference. Could we even identify alien artwork, let alone appreciate it? Could we recognize alien music, if they indeed had a concept of music? A paper published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that humans would be able to recognize and appreciate alien music due to our ability to process language, provided that it follows a couple of rules, and suggests that we might have an easier time understanding a completely alien culture than we’ve previously thought.
OK, music nerd time. Sorry. The rules in question aren’t specifically musical rules, or even specific grammatical rules, but sort of “meta rules” of structure and coherence. Alien musicwould need to be built on local and non-local dependencies. Dependencies, in terms of music, are the commonalities that make a song sound like one coherent piece. A local dependency binds two adjacent things together—something like a drum pattern repeating every four bars—and non-local dependencies bind non-adjacent things together. Non-local dependencies can be understood in terms of pop-music: the classic verse-chorus structure. The two verses are non-adjacent, because they’re separated by a chorus, but the second verse follows a rule set up by the first. This is used to create anticipation, resolution, emotional resonance and all the things that make music awesome. It’s not confined to pop-music at all, you’ll find local and non-local dependencies throughout all human music from classical, to punk rock, to non-western music like that from India or the Arab peninsula, that use completely different scales and rhythmic figures, but pop’s simplicity makes it a very easy example.
Right, got that out of my system. That explanation is important, though. Essentially, as long as alien music had some sort of internal structure, we’d be able to recognize it even if it followed exactly zero musical rules that our culture had prepared us for.
Music is just emotional math, and instruments are human-powered calculators.
To figure this out, Vincent Cheung and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences wrote some “alien” music of their own. Their description of the alien music is “randomly generated combinations of tone-triplets that were combined in a palindrome-like manner.” They brought in musicians of different levels of expertise and played for them their “alien music,” in a composition alongside random sequences with no internal grammatical rules. The musicians were tasked with determining which sequences followed randomly generated grammatical rules local dependencies, and which sequences had no grammatical rules. The team found that they could, and that they could identify non-local dependencies within the compositions as well.
Sequences of repeating electronic tones that only follow a weird internal logic? Now you’re speaking my language.
Repeating the tests with the musicians in an MRI machine, the team found something surprising. An area of the brain on the right hemisphere was lighting up, which mirrored “Broca’s area.” Broca’s area—named for anatomist Paul Broca—is part of the cerebral cortex on the left side of the brain and it’s responsible for our understanding of dependencies in language. It’s what flips out when you hear grammatical mistakes in language. What the researchers found is that we have a twin area on the other side of the brain that understands grammar in more ethereal and subjective things like music. It seems we might be hard-wired to understand structure itself, regardless of our cultural frameworks.
There are so many works of fiction that deal with the obvious communication and cultural barriers that would be between us and any alien species. The 2016 film Arrival, and the short story it was based on, dealt with that question and cast a linguist as the hero figure who deciphers an alien language that doesn’t even conform to our sense of time. Close Encounters of the Third Kind involved communication through music specifically. It seems reasonable to imagine that any species that can travel through space would base their culture and communication on some internal set of rules, even if it doesn’t resemble ours in the slightest. This research could suggest that we’d be able to easily recognize that there are rules, not just chaos, which would eliminate the very first barrier to understanding.
Let’s get a few things out of the way right up front. The Exploding Ants would be a great name for a band. The Suicidal Exploding Ants would be even better. A collection of exploding ants in one of those plastic ant farms would provide some people with hours of sadistic fun, even if they’re not using recreational mood enhancers. And, for those who are wondering, exploding ants are real but exceedingly rare creatures and researchers in Borneo have just discovered a new species of them living in treetops. Depending on how big they are, the people of Borneo probably appreciate them staying up there.
According to a new study published in ZooKeys,Colobopsis explodens is the latest entry on the list of 15 known species of exploding ants, which were first discovered in 1916, live (and apparently die violently) mainly in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, and haven’t added a new name to the species catalogue since 1935. That changed recently when researchers from the Natural History Museum Vienna, Technical University Vienna and other institutions traveled to Borneo, Thailand, and Malaysia to survey ants. (How did they explain to their parents that their goal in life was to climb trees in jungles to count ants? Asking for a friend.)
One, two, three … is that one big ant or two mating?
What they found high in the trees were bloated ants which, when confronted with dangers like predators or scientists, self-erupted and sprayed a sticky yellow and highly toxic goo everywhere as their final dying act for the ant collective. Myrmecologists (people who study ants) have a less descriptive name for this suicidal behavior – autothysis – and report seeing it in a few species of termites, but nothing like the horror movie plot-ish display these ants put on in Borneo.
The team confirmed that not all of the ants had the ability to become tiny suicide bombers, finding that only a minor class of workers were exploders. They’re born with large, poison-filled glands and extra-strong abdominal muscles that contract under stress, bursting the glands to release the poison … killing the brave exploding ant (although the whole action is probably reflexive and involuntary) and either killing the predator or wounding it enough that in never visits that treetop again. The chemical in the sticky goo is an irritant and corrosive – entangling, immobilizing and painfully torturing the invader. Is this going to make a great movie or what? (A short documentary video on the exploding ants can be seen here.)
Which ones are the exploders?
If that’s not enough, the other castes in the colony have their own non-exploding quirks. There are so-called “doorkeepers” which have huge heads that they use to block the entrance to the ant nest. For the first time ever, the researchers witnessed a male and female ant mating in flight – yes, they can fly too and do it while airborne, putting them in an ant version of the mile high club. And, because no other species want to mess with them, they feast on whatever they want, including fruit, other insects and fish.
Now, all we need is for some of these Colobopsis explodens to be exposed to a high level of radiation – maybe a disabled space station loaded with toxic fuel crashes in the jungle – and we’ve got a reason for them to grow to monstrous sizes and destroy entire cities until a character played by Chris Pratt figures out how to build a giant magnifying glass to fry them into extinction. Revenge of the Ant Farm – coming soon to a theater near you.
Unknown satellites in the solar system. Are they extraterrestrial? Videos.
Unknown satellites in the solar system. Are they extraterrestrial? Videos.
In our solar system there are many objects such as asteroids, comets or planets that astronomers have documented and described in detail. Of course, there are also satellites and satellites made by humans or larger space debris, such as burned rocket launchers.
In space, however, there are objects that astronomers can not identify, and some even consider them non-Earth satellites. What are they actually?
1. We do not know the celestial body Astronomers in space are constantly searching for unknown asteroids that could also endanger our planet Earth. That is why, in 1999, in the American state of New Mexico, the Linear Satellite project was created, where scientists searched by means of an automatic telescope to search for unknown or unidentified asteroids.
Over the course of this project, they discovered an unknown body with a diameter of 30 to 50 meters, which runs around the Sun on a nearly circular path with a circulation period of 1.09 years. This object, which was named 1999 CG9, is about 158 million kilometers from the Sun, about 9 million kilometers away from our planet Earth. The greatest mystery for astronomers is its atypical orbit, which is almost circular. All other celestial bodies move along the elliptical path.
Brain Marsden of the Harward Smithsonian Center is convinced that due to the size of the object, it can not be the burning degree of a carrier rocket. Therefore, he believes that this object could come from a moon that has a small gravitational force when it was thrown into space in the event of a larger meteorite.
However, a detailed analysis of the composition of the 1999 CG9 satellite would be required to confirm this assumption. Some scientists, however, are skeptical about this, because it would be a really good piece of the Moon that was thrown into the universe, and its circular path, which scientists have not explained yet.
2. Unknown Celestial Body Even in November 1991, however, astronomers from the Kitt Peak Observatory in the US discovered a body that behaved similarly to the 1999 CG9 object. The Sky & Telescope magazine, which has been named the 1991 VG even referred to as a “true UFO,” because its orbit almost exactly copies the orbit of our blue planet, and it also features light effects.
The biggest mystery for astronomers is the fact that the 1991 VG does not reflect the radar waves at all, which is quite a matter of fact for other cosmic bodies. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of scientists consider the possibility that the natural body would behave as absolutely excluded.
Some scientists think it could be the remains of an earlier probe or rocket, but later it was found that such a orbit does not correspond to the calculated orbit of missiles and satellites so far. At the beginning of December 1991, this body traveled only 450,000 kilometers from the Earth
There is the possibility that this mysterious object is in fact some non-Earth probe or satellite, as was said by Australian astronomer Duncan Steel of the University of Adelaide. Later, however, he took his words back and said he was not convinced that this body was of extraterrestrial origin.
In the summer of 2017, the 1991 VG spacecraft can be seen from the southern hemisphere, and astronomers believe they can identify the satellite that is copying the Earth’s orbit. It will be just one of the burnt levels of the carrier rocket than most scientists think, or it may be a non-Earth probe, which does not exclude British astronomer Duncan Forgan. Let’s surprise you.
NOSTRADAMUS IS QUOTED AS SAYING MANKIND WOULD DISCOVER A MACHINE IN SPACE THAT WAS SENT TO US BY THE WATCHERS! IN 2018-2019!
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Hypersaline lakes could help search for extraterrestrial life
Hypersaline lakes could help search for extraterrestrial life
There are roughly 400 known subglacial lakes around the world.
By Joseph Scalise
A group of international researchers have discovered what they believe to be the first isolated hypersaline subglacial lakes in the world, a new studypublished in the journalScience Advances reports.
The team came upon the strange formations -- which sit between 1,800 and 2,500 feet beneath the Devon Ice Cap in Canada -- after looking at airborne radar data acquired by NASA and The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics to analyze bedrock conditions below the cap.
"We weren't looking for subglacial lakes," said lead author Anja Rutishauser, a PhD student at the University of Alberta, according to Phys.org."The ice is frozen to the ground underneath that part of the Devon Ice Cap, so we didn't expect to find liquid water."
Radar helped uncover the lakes because the method sent electromagnetic waves beneath the ground and recorded when they reflect backat contrasts in the subsurface materials. That method revealed radar signatures suggesting the presence of water. However, the team did not initially think liquid could exist in such freezing temperatures.
There are roughly 400 known subglacial lakes around the world. However, most sit in Antarctica or Greenland. The ones in the research are the first ever discovered in the Canadian Arctic. In addition, while most subglacial lakes contain fresh water, the ones in the study are made of hypersaline water that likely comes from salt-bearing geologic outcrops below the ice. That is what allows them to stay liquid despite frozen temperatures.
The newly discovered lakes are important because they act as a habitat for microbial life and could help scientists understand how life could exist in outer space. While that applies to all subglacial lakes, the fact that the Devon lakes are hypersaline makes them great examples of what might exist on any ice-covered moons in our solar system.
"If there is microbial life in these lakes, it has likely been under the ice for at least 120,000 years, so it likely evolved in isolation," wrote the team in their study. "If we can collect a sample of the water, we may determine whether microbial life exists, how it evolved, and how it continues to live in this cold environment with no connection to the atmosphere."
THE CHALLENGES OF AN ALIEN SPACEFLIGHT PROGRAM: ESCAPING SUPER EARTHS AND RED DWARF STARS
In a series of papers, Professor Loeb and Michael Hippke indicate that conventional rockets would have a hard time escaping from certain kinds of extra-solar planets.
Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle
THE CHALLENGES OF AN ALIEN SPACEFLIGHT PROGRAM: ESCAPING SUPER EARTHS AND RED DWARF STARS
Since the beginning of the Space Age, humans have relied on chemical rockets to get into space. While this method is certainly effective, it is also very expensive and requires a considerable amount of resources. As we look to more efficient means of getting out into space, one has to wonder if similarly-advanced species on other planets (where conditions would be different) would rely on similar methods.
Harvard Professor Abraham Loeb and Michael Hippke, an independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory, both addressed this question in two recently–released papers. Whereas Prof. Loeb looks at the challenges extra-terrestrials would face launching rockets from Proxima b, Hippke considers whether aliens living on a Super-Earth would be able to get into space.
Artist’s impression of Proxima b, which was discovered using the Radial Velocity method.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
For the sake of his study, Loeb considered how we humans are fortunate enough to live on a planet that is well-suited for space launches. Essentially, if a rocket is to escape from the Earth’s surface and reach space, it needs to achieve an escape velocity of 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h; 25,020 mph). Similarly, the escape velocity needed to get away from the location of the Earth around the Sun is about 42 km/s (151,200 km/h; 93,951 mph).
As Prof. Loeb told Universe Today via email:
“Chemical propulsion requires a fuel mass that grows exponentially with terminal speed. By a fortunate coincidence the escape speed from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun is at the limit of attainable speed by chemical rockets. But the habitable zone around fainter stars is closer in, making it much more challenging for chemical rockets to escape from the deeper gravitational pit there.”
As Loeb indicates in his essay, the escape speed scales as the square root of the stellar mass over the distance from the star, which implies that the escape speed from the habitable zone scales inversely with stellar mass to the power of one quarter. For planets like Earth, orbiting within the habitable zone of a G-type (yellow dwarf) star like our Sun, this works out quite while.
This infographic compares the orbit of the planet around Proxima Centauri (Proxima b) with the same region of the Solar System.
Credit: Pale Red Dot
Unfortunately, this does not work well for terrestrial planets that orbit lower-mass M-type (red dwarf) stars. These stars are the most common type in the Universe, accounting for 75% of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. In addition, recent exoplanet surveys have discovered a plethora of rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars systems, with some scientists venturing that they are the most likely place to find potentially-habitable rocky planets.
Using the nearest star to our own as an example (Proxima Centauri), Loeb explains how a rocket using chemical propellant would have a much harder time achieving escape velocity from a planet located within it’s habitable zone.
“The nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is an example for a faint star with only 12% of the mass of the Sun,” he said. “A couple of years ago, it was discovered that this star has an Earth-size planet, Proxima b, in its habitable zone, which is 20 times closer than the separation of the Earth from the Sun. At that location, the escape speed is 50% larger than from the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. A civilization on Proxima b will find it difficult to escape from their location to interstellar space with chemical rockets.”
Hippke’s paper, on the other hand, begins by considering that Earth may in fact not be the most habitable type of planet in our Universe. For instance, planets that are more massive than Earth would have higher surface gravity, which means they would be able to hold onto a thicker atmosphere, which would provide greater shielding against harmful cosmic rays and solar radiation.
Artists impression of a Super-Earth, a class of planet that has many times the mass of Earth, but less than a Uranus or Neptune-sized planet.
Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
In addition, a planet with higher gravity would have a flatter topography, resulting in archipelagos instead of continents and shallower oceans – an ideal situation where biodiversity is concerned. However, when it comes to rocket launches, increased surface gravity would also mean a higher escape velocity. As Hippke indicated in his study:
“Rockets suffer from the Tsiolkovsky (1903) equation : if a rocket carries its own fuel, the ratio of total rocket mass versus final velocity is an exponential function, making high speeds (or heavy payloads) increasingly expensive.”
For comparison, Hippke uses Kepler-20 b, a Super-Earth located 950 light years away that is 1.6 times Earth’s radius and 9.7 times it mass. Whereas escape velocity from Earth is roughly 11 km/s, a rocket attempting to leave a Super-Earth similar to Kepler-20 b would need to achieve an escape velocity of ~27.1 km/s. As a result, a single-stage rocket on Kepler-20 b would have to burn 104 times as much fuel as a rocket on Earth to get into orbit.
To put it into perspective, Hippke considers specific payloads being launched from Earth. “To lift a more useful payload of 6.2 t as required for the James Webb Space Telescope on Kepler-20 b, the fuel mass would increase to 55,000 t, about the mass of the largest ocean battleships,” he writes. “For a classical Apollo moon mission (45 t), the rocket would need to be considerably larger, ~400,000 t.”
Project Starshot, an initiative sponsored by the Breakthrough Foundation, is intended to be humanity’s first interstellar voyage.
Credit: breakthroughinitiatives.org
While Hippke’s analysis concludes that chemical rockets would still allow for escape velocities on Super-Earths up to 10 Earth masses, the amount of propellant needed makes this method impractical. As Hippke pointed out, this could have a serious effect on an alien civilization’s development.
“I am surprised to see how close we as humans are to end up on a planet which is still reasonably lightweight to conduct space flight,” he said. “Other civilizations, if they exist, might not be as lucky. On more massive planets, space flight would be exponentially more expensive. Such civilizations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission, or a Hubble Space Telescope. This should alter their way of development in certain ways we can now analyze in more detail.”
Both of these papers present some clear implications when it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). For starters, it means that civilizations on planets that orbit red dwarf stars or Super-Earths are less likely to be space-faring, which would make detecting them more difficult. It also indicates that when it comes to the kinds of propulsion humanity is familiar with, we may be in the minority.
“This above results imply that chemical propulsion has a limited utility, so it would make sense to search for signals associated with lightsails or nuclear engines, especially near dwarf stars,” said Loeb. “But there are also interesting implications for the future of our own civilization.”
Artist’s concept of a bimodal nuclear rocket making the journey to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations in the Solar System.
Credit: NASA
“One consequence of the paper is for space colonization and SETI,” added Hippke. “Civs from Super-Earths are much less likely to explore the stars. Instead, they would be (to some extent) “arrested” on their home planet, and e.g. make more use of lasers or radio telescopes for interstellar communication instead of sending probes or spaceships.”
However, both Loeb and Hippke also note that extra-terrestrial civilizations could address these challenges by adopting other methods of propulsion. In the end, chemical propulsion may be something that few technologically-advanced species would adopt because it is simply not practical for them. As Loeb explained:
“An advanced extraterrestrial civilization could use other propulsion methods, such as nuclear engines or lightsails which are not constrained by the same limitations as chemical propulsion and can reach speeds as high as a tenth of the speed of light. Our civilization is currently developing these alternative propulsion technologies but these efforts are still at their infancy.”
One such example is Breakthrough Starshot, which is currently being developed by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation (of which Loeb is the chair of the Advisory Committee). This initiative aims to use a laser-driven lightsail to accelerate a nanocraft up to speeds of 20% the speed of light, which will allow it to travel to Proxima Centauri in just 20 years time.
Artist’s impression of rocky exoplanets orbiting Gliese 832, a red dwarf star just 16 light-years from Earth.
Hippke similarly considers nuclear rockets as a viable possibility, since increased surface gravity would also mean that space elevators would be impractical. Loeb also indicated that the limitations imposed by planets around low mass stars could have repercussions for when humans try to colonize the known Universe:
“When the sun will heat up enough to boil all water off the face of the Earth, we could relocate to a new home by then. Some of the most desirable destinations would be systems of multiple planets around low mass stars, such as the nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1which weighs 9% of a solar mass and hosts seven Earth-size planets. Once we get to the habitable zone of TRAPPIST-1, however, there would be no rush to escape. Such stars burn hydrogen so slowly that they could keep us warm for ten trillion years, about a thousand times longer than the lifetime of the sun.”
But in the meantime, we can rest easy in the knowledge that we live on a habitable planet around a yellow dwarf star, which affords us not only life, but the ability to get out into space and explore. As always, when it comes to searching for signs of extra-terrestrial life in our Universe, we humans are forced to take the “low hanging fruit approach”.
Basically, the only planet we know of that supports life is Earth, and the only means of space exploration we know how to look for are the ones we ourselves have tried and tested. As a result, we are somewhat limited when it comes to looking for biosignatures (i.e. planets with liquid water, oxygen and nitrogen atmospheres, etc.) or technosignatures (i.e. radio transmissions, chemical rockets, etc.).
As our understanding of what conditions life can emerge under increases, and our own technology advances, we’ll have more to be on the lookout for. And hopefully, despite the additional challenges it may be facing, extra-terrestrial life will be looking for us!
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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 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...
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