It resembles a fingerprint, doesn’t it? But it’s really a galaxy, rotating. This image is from ESA’s Gaia space observatory. It shows the rotation of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Image via ESA/Gaia/DPAC.

Last week, ESA’s Gaia mission released a much-awaited second batch of data, providing information on a phenomenal 1.7 billion stars in our Milky Way, which would make it the richest star catalog to date. The data also include information about stars beyond our own Milky Way galaxy. One example is illustrated in the image above, which focuses on one of the nearest galaxies to our Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC. This small galaxy, visible from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, is considered a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way.

Gaia’s job is what’s called astrometry; that is, the space observatory scans the sky repeatedly, observing each of its targeted stars multiple times (ESA said an average of 70 times) over its five-year mission.

In this way, Gaia is gathering data about how stars move in our galaxy and nearby galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud. The image above combines the total density of stars detected by Gaia in the LMC. The information reveals the proper motion of stars – their velocities across our sky – which is represented as the texture of the image, and which gives it a fingerprint-like appearance. ESA said:

Measuring the proper motion of several million stars in the LMC, astronomers were able to see an imprint of the stars rotating clockwise around the center of the galaxy. The impression of motion is evoked by the swirling nature of the line texture.

Bottom line: Image from the ESA’s Gaia mission of the rotation of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) looks like a giant fingerprint in space.

Read more from ESA

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

03-05-2018 om 00:46 geschreven door peter  

“I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite the theory can’t be tested.”

Stephen Hawking said of his study: “We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse, to a much smaller range of possible universes.”

Image via Eleanor Bentall/ Telegraph.co.uk.

Does Stephen Hawking’s last study – published May 2, 2018, in the peer-reviewed Journal of High Energy Physics – prove or disprove the existence of parallel worlds? No. It’s a theory, one of many ideas in modern cosmology, many of which lead to the multiverse concept, the idea that our universe of stars and galaxies is just one of many possible separate universes. Some physicists told media sources that Hawking’s final paper did:

… set out the groundbreaking mathematics needed for a spacecraft to find traces of multiple Big Bangs.

Other physicists disagreed, telling the media:

The paper makes no statements about observational tests. It’s … one of literally several thousand ideas for what might possibly have happened in the early universe.

In fact, the study has been commented on extensively, since it first appeared online in July 2017, in the preprint journal arXiv. Hawking and Thomas Hertog, a former student and frequent collaborator at Belgium’s Catholic University Leuven, posted an updated version of the study on arXiv on March 4, 2018, just 10 days before Hawking’s death on March 14 in Cambridge, England.

The study centers on the decades-long conflict between Albert Einstein’s general relativity theory (nature at very large scales, for example, how gravity works), and quantum mechanics (nature at very small scales; for example, the attempt to understand subatomic particles). The video below, posted to Vimeo just three days ago, features Thomas Hertog explaining more:

Thomas Hertog – Interview from European Research Council on Vimeo.

Hawking and Hertog’s latest study deals specifically with a subset of Big Bang theory, called eternal inflation. Most modern Big Bang theories incorporate the idea of an inflation, which calls for an exponential expansion of space in the universe’s first fraction of a second. Eternal inflation suggests that some pockets of space keep expanding exponentially forever, while some (like the one we inhabit) don’t.

If this theory is an accurate description of the cosmos, then we live in a multiverse consisting of many isolated bubble universes.

If it’s true, then our entire known cosmos of galaxies and stars exists inside a sort of bubble, but many other bubbles – forever unknowable – exist outside ours. Some might have laws of physics similar to (or even the same as) ours. Some would operate very differently. The University of Cambridge issued a statement about Hawking’s final study this week. It explained:

The observable part of our universe would then be just a hospitable pocket universe, a region in which inflation has ended and stars and galaxies formed.

Hawking said in one of his last interviews:

The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes, separated by an inflating ocean. The local laws of physics and chemistry can differ from one pocket universe to another, which together would form a multiverse.

But I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite the theory can’t be tested.

And indeed, in their new study, Hawking and Hertog say this account of eternal inflation as a theory of the Big Bang is wrong. Hertog said:

We predict that our universe, on the largest scales, is reasonably smooth and globally finite. So it is not a fractal structure.

Hawking in the 1960s with his first wife Jane. He said: “My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

Image via Vintage News.

Cambridge’s statement explained more and showed how Hawking and Hertog’s study incorporated some of the most far-out physics of our time:

The theory of eternal inflation that Hawking and Hertog put forward is based on string theory: a branch of theoretical physics that attempts to reconcile gravity and general relativity with quantum physics, in part by describing the fundamental constituents of the universe as tiny vibrating strings. Their approach uses the string theory concept of holography, which postulates that the universe is a large and complex hologram: physical reality in certain 3D spaces can be mathematically reduced to 2D projections on a surface.

Hawking and Hertog developed a variation of this concept of holography to project out the time dimension in eternal inflation. This enabled them to describe eternal inflation without having to rely on Einstein’s theory.

Hertog said:

When we trace the evolution of our universe backwards in time, at some point we arrive at the threshold of eternal inflation, where our familiar notion of time ceases to have any meaning.

The new study harks back to Hawking’s earlier no boundary theory, which predicted that – if you go back in time to the beginning of the universe – the universe shrinks and closes off like a sphere. The new study is a step away from the earlier work, Hertog explained, and he said:

Now we’re saying that there is a boundary in our past.

And so physics moves on …

Read more about Hawking’s final study via University of Cambridge

In the film below, Stephen Hawking, James Hartle and Thomas Hertog explain their model of the early universe – The No Boundary Proposal – a model of the Big Bang that included quantum effects. These scientists say it explains some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos such as, is there a multiverse? How is there an arrow of time? What really happened during the Big Bang?

Bottom line: Stephen Hawking’s last study was published May 2, 2018, in the peer-reviewed Journal of High Energy Physics.

Source: “A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?’’ S. W. Hawking & Thomas Hertog, 2018 May 2, Journal of High Energy Physics

Read more: 5 Reasons We May Live in a Multiverse

{ http://earthsky.org/ }

03-05-2018 om 00:34 geschreven door peter  

An Astronomer Believes He Spotted Three UFO’s Flying Between Earth And The Moon

An Astronomer Believes He Spotted Three UFO’s Flying Between Earth And The Moon

YouTube has become widely known for featuring countless UFO videos. There are so many videos on YouTube that it’s hard to keep track of them all.

Some of them are hoaxed content created by ‘Video Publishers’ just for revenue, while other videos (much fewer) actually approach the UFO phenomenon from a more scientific point of view.

Now, an amateur astronomer has turned towards YouTube’s online community to try and make sense of three mysterious objects he spotted while observing the Moon from Earth.

The person in charge of uploading the ‘controversial footage’ to YouTube was an amateur astronomer who has a channel called Don’t Stop Motion, who argue he is unsure whether the objects he spotted with his telescope were helium balloons or space junk that he managed to film just as he was exploring Earth’s natural satellite.

Unlike many other videos uploaded to the video-sharing network, the author of this video is just as confused as we are.

Did Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster lose three tires?

Image Credit: YouTube

The YouTuber wrote:

Obviously, after watching the video footage all sorts of theories have been proposed.

It could have been space junk.

He may have filmed helium balloons.

But also, as some commentators argue, the amateur astronomer may have filmed a crystal-clear video of three disc-shaped UFO’s flying between our planet and the moon.

“They move too fast to be balloons. They have the same speed and the same direction, “say some of the commentators who lay into the UFO explanation.

One of the best comments the video made fun of Musk’s Tesla Roadster traveling the solar system: “3 tires fell off Tesla’s roadster”

If you have not seen the footage yet, I invite you to see the clip we shared here below so that you can judge for yourself and tell us what you think the mysterious objects may have been.

Maybe after all, and as many people have claimed, there is without a doubt a great UFO presence on Earth.

{ https://www.ancient-code.com/ }

03-05-2018 om 00:16 geschreven door peter  

While flying over China Airplane passenger filmed this strange phenomenon - Take a Look!!!

Strange phenomenon filmed by plane passenger while flying over China, what can it be? Take a Look

{ https://www.disclose.tv/ }

02-05-2018 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

NASA to Discuss Demonstration of New Space Exploration Power System

Media are invited to attend a news conference at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland at 9:15 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 2, to discuss a recent experiment to demonstrate a new nuclear reactor power system designed for space.

News conference audio and presentation slides will stream live on NASA’s website.

Kilopower could provide safe, efficient and plentiful energy for future robotic and human space exploration missions to the Moon, Mars and destinations beyond. The experiment was conducted November 2017 through March 2018 at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).

News conference participants include:

• James Reuter, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate
• Janet Kavandi, Glenn center director
• Patrick Cahalane, principal deputy associate administrator for Safety, Infrastructure and Operations at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• Marc Gibson, Kilopower lead engineer at Glenn
• Dave Poston, chief reactor designer at NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory

Following the news conference, media will have the opportunity to tour the following facilities at Glenn:

• Stirling Research Lab, where early Kilopower-related tests were conducted
• Electric Propulsion Lab, used to test high-power solar electric propulsion that will be used to develop the power and propulsion element of NASA’s lunar outpost
• Simulated Lunar Operations Lab, where NASA develops planetary rover tires and tools for in-situ resource utilization, a process for generating water, oxygen, and other products using space-based resources

Media interested in participating in the event, in person or by phone, must send their name, media affiliation and phone number to Jan Wittry at jan.m.wittry-1@nasa.gov no later than noon Tuesday, May 1.

Media and the public also can ask questions during the briefing on social media using #AskNASA.

Supporting images and video will be available online at:

• https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/kilopower

The Kilopower project is part of NASA’s Game Changing Development program and is led by Glenn, in partnership with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NNSS and Y-12 National Security Complex.

-end-

{ https://www.nasa.gov/ }

02-05-2018 om 23:51 geschreven door peter  

Salty, subglacial lakes in Canada could be key for studying aliens

 BY MIHAI ANDREI 

A sealed lake is an ideal place to look for clues about extraterrestrial life — and researchers have just identified a few more.

Small valley glacier exiting the Devon Island Ice Cap in Canada. The Devon Ice Cap appears to be the only holder of salty subglacial lakes (as far as we know).

Image credits: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Life on other planets might not be located the most obvious of places. While researchers used to think that Earth-like planets such as Mars or Venus were capable of holding life, modern research has shown that places like Europa or Enceladus are much more likely to be hospitable (Europa and Enceladus are two frozen moons of Jupiter and Saturn respectively). However, astronomers have evidence that beneath the frozen surface lies a vast ocean of liquid where life may very well thrive. Researchers want to explore this avenue before actually landing a shuttle on the surface of these moons (which may take a very long time) and the best way to do that is by studying subglacial lakes.

Subglacial lakes are bodies of water perfectly sealed under a glacier — typically an ice cap or ice sheet. There are 400 known subglacial lakes in the world, most of which can be found in Antarctica, with Lake Vostok being probably the most well known. Since they’re sealed off from the rest of the world, life can develop and adapt independently — this essentially means that subglacial lakes are potentially unique microbial habitats which can provide information about how life might have developed on places like Europa. Now, lead author Anja Rutishauser, a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta, has found the first subglacial lakes in the Canadian High Arctic.

“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,” Rutishauser said. “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.”

An artist’s cross-section of Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica. Importantly, the lake is sealed by kilometers of ice.

Image credits: Nicolle Rager-Fuller / NSF.

What makes these newly discovered lakes extra special is that they seem to contain very salty water — all other subglacial lakes we know of are thought to contain freshwater, or only mildly saline water. All subglacial lakes are good analogs for life beyond Earth, but the hypersaline nature of these newly discovered lakes makes them particularly tantalizing analogs for ice-covered moons in our solar system, according to the researchers. There is strong evidence that Jupiter’s icy moon Europa contains hypersaline water.

The lake was discovered using remote sensing, which is promising, especially considering that NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which is set to launch sometime in the 2020s and take samples from Europa, will use similar remote sensing techniques. An analysis of the radar data shows that the lakes are located 550 to 750 meters beneath the Devon Ice Cap, one of the largest ice caps in the Canadian Arctic. They’ve not had contact with the outside world for tens of thousands of years.

“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,” Rutishauser said. “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.”

Now, researchers would like to sample this environment, which is probably more complicated than you’d expect. It’s not just drilling through hundreds of meters (or perhaps even kilometers) of ice that’s problematic: there’s also the matter of contamination — if a unique microbial environment does exist, the last thing you’d want to do is contaminate it.

Journal Reference: Anja Rutishause et al. Discovery of a hypersaline subglacial lake complex beneath Devon Ice Cap, Canadian Arctic. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar4353

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

02-05-2018 om 23:36 geschreven door peter  

World’s largest dead zone identified in the Gulf of Oman — it’s nearly the size of Florida

 BY ALEXANDRU MICU 

Underwater robots have recently made a discomforting discovery: the Gulf of Oman harbors a “dead zone” nearly the size of Florida.

Dead zones are often caused by the decay of algae during algal blooms, like this one off the coast of La Jolla, San Diego, California.

Image and caption credits: Alejandro Díaz / Wikimedia.

Remote-controlled submarines — sent forth by researchers from the University of East Anglia — have identified the world’s largest dead zone. This mass of water, spanning a chilling 63,700-square-mile (roughly 165.000 km²) area in the Gulf of Oman, is nearly devoid of oxygen. That’s an area comparable to the surface of Florida (170,305 km²), and over two times larger than Scotland (80,077 km²).

Although the technical term for such a place is an “oxygen minimum area”, their colloquial name of “dead zones” is quite apt. Marine flora and fauna are completely dependent on oxygen dissolved in the water for their survival. The absence of this element also alters the local nitrogen cycle, causing nitrous oxide emissions — which is a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Dead zones are generally the product of climate change-induced ecological shifts and/or chemical run-off from land — for example, from sewage or chemical fertilizers. One particularly worrying prospect is that as climate change makes ocean water warmer, it will be less able to hold oxygen — meaning more frequent and more intense dead zones.

“Our research shows that the situation is actually worse than feared – and that the area of dead zone is vast and growing,” said Dr Bastien Queste, who led the research. “The ocean is suffocating.”

Dead zones are “a disaster waiting to happen,” he adds.

The Gulf of Oman.

Image via Google Earth.

The Gulf of Oman dead zone sits between a depth of 200 and 800 meters. The team report that it is made up of entirely anoxic or suboxic conditions — meaning there’s no oxygen or very low oxygen present, respectively.

Computer simulations, based on data the team recovered on site, revealed that the dead zone has increased both in size and severity since the 1990s and is still growing, the team reports. Unless addressed it could have drastic consequences for life both in and out of the sea.

“Another interesting question is now that the Gulf of Oman is clearly consuming oxygen faster than it is replenished, how much of that is exported to the Arabian Sea and making the wider Arabian Sea OMZ extend and grow even more?” Queste asks.

The next step for the team is to figure out whether this is due to the overall supply of oxygen decreasing, or an increased consumption of oxygen in the region.

The “Seaglider” robots that made the discovery possible are roughly the size of a person, but can spend several months at depths of 1,000 meters. In an article recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers note that access to these waters had previously been limited by “piracy and geopolitical tensions.”

• The paper “Physical controls on oxygen distribution and denitrification potential in the north west Arabian Sea” has been published in the journal Geophysical Review Letters.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

02-05-2018 om 23:26 geschreven door peter  

ExoMars' First Photos From Orbit Are Absolutely Surreal

By Danny Paez

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

02-05-2018 om 23:15 geschreven door peter  

De allerlaatste theorie van Stephen Hawking en Belgische natuurkundige: het heelal is eindig - HLN.be

Bron: ANP, Belga

Hawking  - die op 14 maart op 76-jarige leeftijd overleed - schreef het artikel samen met de Belgische natuurkundige Thomas Hertog, hoogleraar aan de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Zij opperen dat het heelal eindig is en veel eenvoudiger dan tot nu toe wordt gedacht. De theorie was vorig jaar voor het eerst gedeeld met de wereld. Hawking en zijn pupil Hertog hebben het daarna uitgewerkt. Omdat het om een theorie gaat, moet het onomstotelijke bewijs nog worden geleverd.

Lees ook

Het laatste cadeau van Stephen Hawking zorgt voor een extra vrolijk Pasen in Cambridge

Multiversum

Het heelal ontstond bijna 14 miljard jaar geleden met de oerknal. De grote vraag is wat er sindsdien precies gebeurde. Er zijn allemaal natuurwetten gevonden en algemeen aanvaarde theorieën uitgewerkt, maar natuurkundigen zoeken nog naar de grote theorie daarachter, de basis van alles, een verklaring voor zowel het heel grote (het heelal) als het heel kleine (minieme deeltjes). Een van de theorieën is dat het universum eigenlijk bestaat uit een oneindige verzameling mini-heelalletjes. Dat wordt een multiversum genoemd. Het ene universum bevat sterren en herbergt leven, anderen zijn dan weer zo goed als leeg. Wij zouden in één van die heelalletjes wonen. Het probleem is dat het aantal mogelijke natuurwetten dan misschien ook oneindig is.

Die theorie klopt niet, zeggen Hawking en Hertog. Ze schrijven: “Wij stellen dat het universum redelijk gelijkmatig en ook eindig is.” Dat betekent niet dat er “een enkel, uniek universum is, maar wij suggereren wel dat het aantal mogelijke heelallen veel kleiner is.” Wat er buiten hun eindige heelal te vinden is, laten ze in het midden. 

Testen

Het probleem is volgens Hertog dat de gangbare theorie niet voorspelt in wat voor heelal wij ons zouden moeten bevinden en dus ook niet degelijk kan getest worden. “De grote uitdaging voor de moderne kosmologie is om dit multiversum een rigide wiskundige basis te geven en te kneden tot een wetenschappelijke theorie die kan getest worden. Onze publicatie is een stap in die richting”, aldus Hertog. “In onze theorie wordt het enorme multiversum gereduceerd tot een veel meer hanteerbaar en kleiner scala aan mogelijke universums.”

“Ons model is gebaseerd op holografie”, legt hij verder uit. “Een nieuw concept binnen de snaartheorie die de algemene relativiteitstheorie tracht te verzoenen met kwantumfysica. Holografie stelt ons in staat om de tijdsdimensie te projecteren en we hebben dit toegepast op alles wat er volgens de gangbare theorie ‘voor’ de oerknal gebeurde”, aldus Hertog. Het resultaat is dat het scala van mogelijke universums veel beperkter is en het idee van uiteenlopende vormen van universum verdween.

Wat nu?

Hertog gaat op zoek naar manieren om de nieuwe theorie te testen. “Ik ben van plan om meer in detail te bestuderen wat deze vertelt over eigenschappen van ons universum die binnen het bereik van onze ruimtetelescopen liggen. Ik vermoed bijvoorbeeld dat de oerknal gepaard gaat met zwaartekrachtgolven die via de inflatietheorie (die zegt dat het universum in de eerste fase van zijn evolutie aan een steeds hoger tempo uitdijt) een invloed hebben op patronen van kosmische achtergrondstraling. Als we die invloed kunnen vaststellen zitten we wellicht op het juiste spoor”, aldus de Leuvense onderzoeker.

Hawking was een van de beroemdste wetenschappers van de afgelopen decennia. Hij leed sinds zijn studententijd aan ALS, een dodelijke en ongeneeslijke ziekte aan de zenuwen die spieren aansturen. De meeste patiënten hebben na de diagnose hooguit nog een paar jaar te leven. Hawking leefde meer dan vijftig jaar met de ziekte. Hij was aan een rolstoel gekluisterd en kon alleen praten via een computer. Hawking koos de woorden met een wangspier en de computer sprak die uit met een kenmerkende robotachtige stem.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

02-05-2018 om 22:45 geschreven door peter  

Ondanks doemscenario’s: magnetisch veld van Aarde zal voorlopig niet omkeren volgens nieuwe studie - HLN.be

Bron:  Cosmos Magazine

Het nieuws was er begin dit jaar nochtans niet naast. Volgens het onafhankelijke wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Undark was het magnetisch veld van de Aarde de afgelopen 200 jaar met zo’n 15 procent afgezwakt en zat er een omkeer van de polen aan te komen. Het meest concrete gevolg zou zijn dat kompassen het noorden daardoor op Antarctica zouden situeren en het zuiden ergens in Canada. En dat zou nog gevolgen hebben, onder meer voor dieren die gebruik maken van het magnetisch veld van de Aarde om zich te oriënteren, zoals sommige vogels en vissen.

Lees ook

Magnetische polen kunnen switchen en tot chaos leiden: “Zelfs doorspoelen wc wordt dan onmogelijk”

Onbewoonbaar

En dat was nog niet alles, volgens sommige experts. Ook de bescherming die het magnetisch veld ons biedt tegen schadelijke zonne- en kosmische straling zou verzwakken. Satellietsystemen liepen het risico het te laten afweten, net als computers en ander elektrisch en elektronisch materiaal. Volgens het Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics van de universiteit van Colorado konden zelfs “delen van de planeet onbewoonbaar worden tijdens de omwisseling”.

Maar zo een vaart zal het niet lopen volgens de nieuwe studie van IJslandse, Duitse, Britse en Franse wetenschappers. Het magnetisch veld is in het verleden al verscheidene keren omgekeerd, zo klinkt het, en dat zal het zeer waarschijnlijk opnieuw doen. Maar volgens de nieuwe modellen is dat niet voor meteen.

Indicatie

Volgens eerder onderzoek zouden de magnetische polen elke 300.000 jaar wisselen en de laatste keer gebeurde dat 780.000 jaar geleden. Technisch gezien zijn we dus al flink overtijd. Maar volgens de British Geological Survey gaat het eerder op een indicatie dan om een feit. Want op sommige momenten in onze geschiedenis zat er zelfs miljoenen jaren tussen een wissel. (lees hieronder verder)

De nieuwe studie wijst er ook op dat magnetische wissels helemaal niet zo onaangekondigd komen als iedereen denkt. Veel vaker nog komt er ook zoiets voor als geomagnetische excursies, waarbij het magnetisch veld van de Aarde alleen maar wiebelt en buigt voor een bepaalde periode, maar daarna weer gewoon op zijn plaats valt.

Gewiebeld

De wetenschappers onderzochten de twee recentste gevallen daarvan: het Laschamp-event (41.000 jaar geleden) en het Lake Mono-event (34.000 jaar geleden). Ze ontdekten dat het magnetisch veld van de Aarde duizenden jaren daarvoor ook had gewiebeld, respectievelijk 49.000 en 46.000 jaar geleden, en dat de sterkte van het veld toen ongeveer dezelfde was als nu.

Er was echter ook een groot verschil. Daarvoor verwijzen de wetenschappers naar de Zuid-Atlantische Anomalie (SAA), een gebied met verzwakt magnetisme dat zich uitstrekt van Zimbabwe tot Chili en volgens sommigen een rode vlag is voor eenmagnetische switch. Bij de twee recentste geomagnetische excursies waren er ook zulke gebieden met verzwakt magnetisme, maar die hadden een veel grotere omvang dan die van vandaag.

Gelijkenissen

Volgens de onderzoekers zou die vaststelling de kans flink verkleinen dat een dergelijke excursie zich nu opnieuw voordoet en er drastische gevolgen zijn. “Onze studie toont aan dat geen van beide eerdere excursies sterke gelijkenissen vertoont met de verandering in het geomagnetisch veld van nu en dat het daardoor hoogst onwaarschijnlijk is dat zoiets zich nu opnieuw zou voordoen”, aldus Richard Holme. “Onze studie doet vermoeden dat het huidige verzwakte veld weer zal aansterken zonder een extreem event en dat een omkering van de polen dus onwaarschijnlijk is.”

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

02-05-2018 om 22:36 geschreven door peter  

Erik Larsen and Dan Radel, Asbury Park Press

Orthodox Jewish women in Lakewood don't study at Beth Medrash Govoha, but community members say women are crucial in supporting education there. 

Thomas P. Costello, Asbury Park Press

What exactly was that in the night sky over Wall Township on St. Patrick’s Day?

Was it a UFO, or was it something else?

Jeff Wallace, 43, of Wall, would sure like to know. He was driving to pick up his stepdaughter from the Quick Chek on Belmar Boulevard that Saturday night, when he observed three lights in a triangular pattern “moving very slowly” across the sky.

He stopped his vehicle and took several photos of the lights with the camera on his smartphone. The photos are dark; but a triangle of lights is faintly visible. 

The Air Force, which commands Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, about 30 miles from Wall as the crow flies (or UFO), looked at the photos; it doesn’t know what it was either.

POLL: Do you think UFOs point to existence of extraterrestrial life? 

“There’s not enough from the photos … we weren’t able to tell,” said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Lauren Russell, a spokeswoman for the Joint Base, after copies of the photos were circulated by personnel there.

Pat Marcatillio, aka Dr. UFO is the president and founder of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania UFO Paranormal Study Group  Brian Johnston

Fullscreen

And with that, Wallace joins the thousands of other New Jerseyans who say they have seen a UFO in the sky, without knowing for sure what they saw. The National UFO Reporting Center says on its website that it has received nearly 2,200 reports of UFO sightings in New Jersey, with the first one reported back in 1930. MUFON  – the acronym for the nonprofit Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network – says there were eight sightings, not including Wallace's, just in March.

Interest in UFOs has been on the rise of late, with more videos of UFO sightings from Navy pilots being declassified.  One of the more recent included Navy pilots being amazed by what a UFO could do as they trailed it flying over the Eastern Seaboard in 2015.

What’s out there?

On Feb. 26, a person reported seeing a 40-foot-long, disk-like craft with rows of red and white alternating lights hovering over the trees in Jackson, according to a report filed with the National UFO Reporting Center. The center also had two reports from Tinton Falls, one on Dec. 28 — a rapidly falling white-blue light — and another on Jan. 10, with a report of a black, oval-shaped craft.

Of the eight cases of UFO sightings over New Jersey in March reported to MUFON, spokesman Roger Marsh said two of the sightings involved triangular-shaped objects similar to what Wallace saw in Wall: One in Egg Harbor Township three days before the Wall incident, on March 14, and another over North Brunswick five days later, on March 22, Marsh said.

MUFON, which has been in existence since 1969, is a national organization of civilians that includes scientists, retired military personnel, aviation experts and ordinary people who have witnessed things they simply can’t explain. The network catalogs and tracks cases of alleged UFO sightings on a daily basis from across the globe.

Michael Schratt, a military aerospace historian with MUFON, said he is convinced that about 95 percent of the “triangles” reported by eyewitnesses, are in fact man-made aircraft. The remaining 5 percent – unknown.

“The primary focus of my research deals with ‘black budget’ classified aircraft built and test flown by the U.S. military-industrial complex,” Schratt said. “Specifically, aircraft produced by manufacturing facilities along the West Coast – aka ‘Aerospace Alley.’”

Schratt said he has come to believe this is the case after spending the past 35 years interviewing engineers, test pilots and contractors who have worked in what he refers to as the “black world.”

Indeed, most UFOs that people see with any detail tend to be isosceles triangles – much like stealth airplanes. In many reports, the craft are reported to be moving slowly — too slow for commercial aircraft — and utterly silent.

More: 70 years ago at the Shore, UFOs filled the sky

More: Brick Township's UFO triggered Air Force probe

More: Forty years ago, the Jersey Shore trembled

The New York Times first reported in December about a mysterious $22 million Pentagon program tracking UFOs called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

At the same time as the story was published in The Times, the Defense Department declassified two videos from 2004 off the Southern California coast that were recorded by cameras aboard U.S. Navy fighter jets, which included the simultaneous audio of the radio communications between the pilots.

Pilots David Fravor and Jim Slaight, who were flying in F/A-18F Super Hornets, had described seeing an oval-shaped object hovering above the sea below them, USA Today reported.

When they flew lower to have a look at it, Fravor said, “it accelerated like nothing I’ve seen before,” they told the newspaper.

Fravor told USA Today he was mystified by what he saw in the 2004 incident: “It had no (exhaust) plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. I want to fly one.”

After that third video of UFOs over the Eastern Seaboard was released, The Washington Post published an opinion piece titled, “The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?” which was penned by Christopher Mellon, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Footage courtesy of: To The Stars Academy

“The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies,” Mellon wrote in The Post. “Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest.”

But not everyone believes the videos are all that compelling.

Robert Sheaffer, author of “Bad UFOs: Critical Thinking About UFO Claims” and operator of the website “The Debunker's Domain,” is a self-avowed skeptic.

“They have only released two very blurry infrared videos of objects that appear to be distant jets, without sufficient information to do a really good analysis of them,” Sheaffer told Space.com for a Jan. 9 article. “So, ultimately, all you have are a few UFO believers in and outside government who were able to get away with funneling a few million Pentagon dollars to themselves for UFO research, and have very little to show for it.”

'The truth is out there'

Ret. Air Force Major George Filer III, 82, who serves as the New Jersey director of MUFON, is one of the believers. As a former flight and intelligence officer with a 20-year service record, he said he has personally witnessed some pretty bizarre phenomena. He asserted that he knows firsthand that four-star generals and admirals are briefed regularly about “anomalous aerial vehicles.”

When Filer was stationed in Great Britain and assigned to an air tanker unit at the height of the Cold War, he recalls flying aboard a military aircraft over Scotland that attempted to intercept such an object that appeared as big as a bridge on radar.

“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,” he said. “As we got, I don’t know, about 5 miles from it – it went up into space. And we were doing over 400 (miles per hour) 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.”

More: Could it be a UFO? American Airlines pilots spot flying object at 40,000 feet

More: Why we freak out over 'UFO' sightings

Filer doesn’t know who or what is piloting these vehicles, but he has his own theories. If they are visitors from another world, that they may be using the world’s oceans to conceal themselves from detection – which is why there are so many sightings near water, he postulates.

Ufology, the study of UFOs, attracts people from all walks of life. But because of the social stigma associated with seeing a UFO and the assumption that UFO means “alien spaceship,” when it simply means that something is simply unidentified, most people won’t even discuss their experiences unless someone first shares their own, Filer said.

In fact, Filer believes that many more people have seen UFOs than have not – but because of fears about being labeled a kook, they keep such accounts mainly to family and close friends.

The ridicule factor has been quite effective in silencing people, Filer said.

One colorful character from Mercer County, who embraces the eccentricity of this subculture is Pat Marcattilio, 75 – who goes by the nickname “Dr. UFO,” which is also emblazoned across his personalized license plates.

Marcattilio, of Hamilton, is the founder of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania UFO Paranormal Study Group. Since 1984, the group has met monthly at the Hamilton Township Free Public Library to share their interest in the subject.

“I was coming home from Atlantic City with a bunch of guys in my car and the State Police pulled me over at Columbus,” Marcattilio said. “So I pulled over and (the trooper) walks up to me and said, ‘Hey, I gotta tell you my UFO story.’”

Marcattilio believes that the government is not only aware of the existence of extraterrestrial life, but is in fact concealing such evidence from the public. Why? To avoid the same mass hysteria that occurred not far from his home 80 years ago this October – when some Americans listening to their radios became convinced that Martians were invading Grover’s Mill during a performance of “The War of the Worlds” led by Orson Welles.

“I think we’ve gone way beyond that, we accept them, I believe,” he said. “I think it’s time for them to be real and for the government to say that we have galactic neighbors and they’re visiting us.”

Pat Marcattilio (Dr. UFO) talks about recent UFO footage released by 'To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science' Brian Johnston

Back in Wall, Wallace doesn’t know what he snapped a photo of on that night one month ago, when he said the sky was “clear enough to see stars.”

Wallace was about a quarter-mile from Camp Evans, a former signal laboratory for the U.S. War Department, when he first spotted the object.  The site witnessed a milestone in scientific history on Jan. 10, 1946, when Signal Corps scientists used a radar antenna to bounce radio signals off the moon.

“I guess you could call me a star gazer. I’m pretty observant of my surroundings,” Wallace said. “I’ve been skeptical about UFOs my whole life, but the lights could have been a UFO. They started moving erratically in a pattern that was not like a plane.”

Wallace said he observed a meteor once, but this wasn’t like any meteor he ever saw. He noted that he had never seen a light pattern like the one he witnessed on March 17.

Then, after he took the photos, whatever it was just vanished.

• Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com and Dan Radel: 732-643-4072 or dradel@gannettnj.com.

{ https://www.app.com/ }

02-05-2018 om 22:12 geschreven door peter  

02-05-2018 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

Atoms may hum a tune from grand cosmic symphony

AN EXPANDING CLOUD OF ATOMS COULD OFFER INSIGHT INTO UNANSWERED COSMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS.

An expanding, ring-shaped cloud of atoms shares several striking features with the early universe.

(Credit: E. Edwards/JQI)

{ http://jqi.umd.edu/ }

02-05-2018 om 21:49 geschreven door peter  

02-05-2018 om 21:41 geschreven door peter  

John Podesta Stars in “Documentary” Suggesting Clinton Lost Because of Aliens

by Michael Graham

Conspiracy Theorists Wonder Whether Clinton Lost Because the Deep State Wanted to Stop Her From Releasing Secret Alien Files

No, you’re not in the Twilight Zone: That really was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman and former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta on Ancient Aliens Friday night.

The long-running History Channel series is a haven for believers in the government/UFO conspiracy, alien abductions, and “The Reptilians.” (Season 8, Episode 5: “Could ancient myths about reptilian creatures provide evidence that they are more than just a pop-culture creation?”). The show has even pondered whether the moon is hollow and houses a secret alien base (Season 11, Episode 11).

This weekend Ancient Aliens kicked off its 13th season with a review of efforts to get the federal government to release its treasure trove of documents and data on what really happened at Roswell, Area 51, etc.

And there—in between artist renditions of flying saucers and interviews with UFO conspiracy theorists like Georgio Tsoukalos and Stephen Bassett—was well-known Democrat politico John Podesta.  Among the conspiracies promoted in this new (ahem) “documentary” is the suggestion that the real reason Hillary lost an impossible-to-lose campaign in 2016 wasn’t the Russians or the FBI.

It was aliens.

As conspiracy-debunker Jason Colavito says in his review of the episode:

“The show speculates that Clinton would have led a UFO disclosure movement had she won the presidency in 2016, and there is a strange implication that ‘the CIA and the Pentagon were worried about Hillary Clinton’ and therefore arranged for her to lose the election.”

John Podesta’s obsession with alien encounters and government disclosure is no secret. The Washington Postand others have written about it in the past. And video of Podesta’s 2002 appearance in a press event urging the government to release all its UFO files has a staple of “The Truth Is Out There” documentary industry.

Podesta’s passion has even made an appearance in the #Russiagate story, as InsideSources has reported. Among the Podesta emails released by Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign were several from Blink-182 front man (and UFO activist) Tom DeLonge referencing “Classified Science,” “DOD topics” and Roswell.

What is unusual about the latest Ancient Aliens episode (“The UFO Conspiracy”) is Podesta’s decision to sit down for an on-camera interview, participating directly in the program.

“Right after I left law school, I started working on that at the Department of Justice then at the Senate Judiciary Committee, and then when I worked for President Clinton’s White House,” Podesta says to the camera. “I was one of the people spearheading an initiative to declassify what turned out to be over a billion pages of documents that were resident at the national archives in President Clinton’s case. I think he was interested in the phenomenon.”

Podesta also discusses supposedly alien materials found at alleged UFO crash sites, materials currently in the possession of budget-hotel-billionaire-turned-aerospace-exec Robert Bigelow. “There were also indications that there were certain polymers that were discovered at crash sites that were unexplained and reviewed,” Podesta claims.

Podesta’s expertise on polymers may be suspect, but he knows his politics. In fact, there are a surprising number of political names in the episode: The Clintons; former Senators Harry Reid, Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens; George Stephanopoulos, even President Obama who, the History Channel reminds us, oversaw the CIA’s release of 13 million documents, many of which related to the UFO issue.

These document dumps, according to conspiracy-theorist Bennett, are “all part of an effort to move us in a direction that we can accept as a society [the fact that] extraterrestrials are here and have been here for thousands of years.”

But are we ready?  “Secretary Clinton was also interested in the topic” of releasing UFO documentation and was very open about that fact “if elected, she would have ordered a more thorough declassification review,” Podesta says.

After this statement from Hillary’s campaign manager, the show’s narrator intones: “Many believe that if Clinton had won, there would have been a seismic shift from the government’s long-held policy of secrecy concerning UFO investigations to a new policy of full disclosure.”

Is this the answer to Hillary’s question “What Happened?” That’s certainly the documentary makers’ implication:

“The CIA, the Pentagon, they were worried about Hillary Clinton…winning the presidency and going to the Pentagon and basically saying, ‘you’re going to get me the information I need to disclose the extraterrestrial presence, or I’m going to fire every single one of you,’” Bassett says.

He’s followed by Linda Moulton Howe, whose previous work includes “Neil Armstrong’s Secret: UFO’s on the Moon?”

“As this year of 2016 went forward. We all expected that this headline that we’ve been waiting for that is going to break,” she said. “John Podesta was trying to get ready to open up [the fact] that we’re not alone in the universe.”

“All of that crashed when a different person became president of the United States,” Howe said.

Was Hillary Clinton’s historic loss engineered by shadowy government figures afraid she would expose their relationship with our alien overlords? Was the real villain of 2016 the “Cigarette-Smoking Man?”

The truth it out there. On cable TV. And it stars John Podesta.

{ http://www.insidesources.com/ }

02-05-2018 om 21:34 geschreven door peter  

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ONGEWONE GEISERUITBARSTINGEN BIJ YELLOWSTONE SUPERVULKAAN, USA ( VIDEO )

{ http://niburu.co/ }

02-05-2018 om 21:19 geschreven door peter  

Do you have a brain implant? If so, you may want to step away from the window during an electrical storm. A new medical report details the experience of a woman being treated for a mysterious nerve condition with deep brain stimulation whose implant was shut down by a lightning strike which also knock out her TV and air conditioner – which were her main concerns until she noticed the neck problem the implant was controlling suddenly returned. While this could be serious and possibly fatal, is this also a cure for abductees who suspect they were given implants? (Asking for a friend.)

The current edition of the Journal of Neurosurgery recounts the strange and potentially life-threatening experience of a 66-year-old woman in Slovenia who was suffering from neck dystonia – a rare and painful disorder where the neck muscles contract involuntarily, causing them to twist the entire head uncontrollably from side-to-side and front-to-back. The constant movement causes stress in the face, jaws, arms and other body parts, and bone spurs on the spine that result in numbness and weakness in the arms and legs. While medications and therapy can reduce the pain and symptoms, there is no known cure for the mysterious disease. However, deep brain stimulation – where a wire is inserted through a hole in the skull to direct electrical impulses to the part of the brain that controls movement – is effective in stopping the muscle contractions. This type of treatment helped the Slovenian sufferer for five years … until the lightning struck.

“The patient was not charging the battery of her IPG during the event, and the recharger for the IPG was disconnected from the power supply during the storm. The recharger and IPG were therefore not destroyed. The patient realized that something was wrong only 1 hour after the storm subsided, when the dystonic tremor in her neck reappeared.”

The patient was able to quickly get to a nearby clinic. The POR (Power On Reset) warning appeared on the device’s display but the battery had held its charge and nothing else appeared to be damaged. As every technical help desk operator will promise you, the system came back after hitting “reset” – immediately stopping the tremors and the subsequent pain.

Things may have turned out differently and probably fatally if she was charging the device during the lightning hit  by holding the recharger over her skin. Instead, it was the power surge in the air that knocked it cold. With these types of medical devices becoming more common, concerns increase for shutdowns by electrical interference. It’s not just lightning either.

“Patients should be regularly warned to avoid environmental sources that generate strong EMFs, such as arc welding equipment, electronic power generators, electrical substations, ham radio antennas, power lines, microwave communication transmitters, industrial furnaces, induction heaters, resistance welders, and transmission towers for television and radio signals. [Also] medical devices that generate strong EMFs, such as MRI units, cardioverter machines, and diathermy devices.”

This seems like yet another Nietzschean example of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” but the places that can kill or injure someone with a brain implant seems long enough and broad enough to make one want to stay home, turn off all devices and TVs and warm food on a conventional gas stove.

Will getting zapped by lightning help someone with an alien implant? Probably not. You don’t hear about them needing to be charged, so they must be powered by something other than batteries. If aliens have figured out how to travel to Earth and abduct humans for the purpose of inserting implants, they’ve no doubt figure out how to block strong EMFs.

The best solution for alien implantees may be finding a sympathetic doctor with really long and thin needle-nose pliers or playing football.

{http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

02-05-2018 om 17:22 geschreven door peter  

Mystery: The Moon giving off a Beam of Light!

On May 1, 2018 Jason Maggard filmed the moon about an hour after sunset what he called as the most amazing moon rise ever.

Indeed amazing but even more strange, it looks like the moon was giving off a beam of light straight up for about the first 30 minutes after rising on the horizon.

Later on the moon came back to the moon as we know.

Since Jason is convinced that it was not the sun that illuminated the moon he wonders what could have been the cause for this rare sky phenomenon.

Maybe you have an explanation for it?

  

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

02-05-2018 om 17:13 geschreven door peter  

Galapogos Island In Shape Of Standing Alien Figure! NASA Photos, UFO Sighting News.

Date of discovery: May 2, 2018

Location of discovery: Galapagos Islands, Eastern Pacific

NASA source: https://images.nasa.gov/details-sts077-711-012.html

 

This island photo was taken during the STS-77 space shuttle mission back in 1996. If you look carefully you will notice that there is one larger island that looks like a standing person with an enlarged head. You can even make out an eye, where the mouth of a volcano sits, probably the entrance to an underground base here. Next to it to the left, is another island, in the shape of a face wearing an armored helm. 

 

Many people write off such discoveries as coincidence, but these are actually alien signs that they have placed around the globe in order for humans to one day realize that they are not alone and aliens have been around long before humans. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

02-05-2018 om 17:09 geschreven door peter