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...
13-05-2018
Ancient Assyrian Clay Tablets Reveal Location Of 4,800-Year-Old Lost City
Ancient Assyrian Clay Tablets Reveal Location Of 4,800-Year-Old Lost City
After researchers recovered around 90 cuneiform tablets from the ancient Assyrian empire, philologists translated them and identified the location of a lost ancient city that existed some 4,800 years ago.
The 92 clay tablets belonging to the ancient Assyrian empire were discovered at the archeological site of a large Bronze Age settlement which was explored in 2017 by experts from the University of Tübingen.
The translation of the ancient writings has allowed archaeologists to identify the ruins of the lost Royal City of Mardama.
The name of the lost city was only revealed when 92 cuneiform tablets found at the site were translated.
The cache of clay tablets date back to around 1250BC, to the Middle Assyrian empire and have been translated by University of Heidelberg philologist Betina Faist.
“To our surprise, Dr. Faist was able to identify the site as the ancient city of Mardama,” the archaeologists said.
“This important northern Mesopotamian city is cited in ancient sources, but we didn’t know where it lay.”
“It existed between 2200 and 1200 BC, was at times a kingdom or a provincial capital, and was conquered and destroyed several times.”
One of the clay tablets on the floor of the palace of the Assyrian governor, and a broken ceramic vessel.
The ancient city of Mardama was mentioned in a number of ancient sources, but no one has been able to determine its exact location until now.
The ancient city is believed to have existed between 2,200 BC and 2,100 BC and reached its peak between 1900 BC and 1700 BC.
The ancient city is believed to have been conquered by the Akkadian empire but eventually regained its independence under a Hurrian monarch called Tish-Ulme.
The city then followed a period of prosperity, until it was destroyed by the Turukku from the Zagros mountains, who are sometimes identified as the Sea People.
However, this was not the end of the city. Mardama continued to exist until the era in which the Assyrians ruled over it, during which the recently discovered clay tablets were written.
Ancient writings from the Third Dynasty of Ur, between the years 2100 and 2000 BC portray Mardama as an important city on the northern periphery of the Mesopotamian empire.
“Mardama certainly rose to be an influential city and a regional kingdom, based on its position on the trade routes between Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Syria,” said professor Peter Pfälzner, a professor of ancient near-Eastern archaeology at the University of Tübingen in the statement.
“At times, it was an adversary of the great Mesopotamian powers.”
The ancient tablets mentioned the city being part of the powerful Assyria empire, and that it was the home of an Assyrian ruler believed to have been called Assur-Nasir.
In addition, the ancient clay tablets offer unprecedented insight into the history and lives of the people of the ancient city of Mardama, as well as never-before-seen details about its administration, economy, and commerce.
However, most importantly, the recently-uncovered clay tablets not only show the location of the city which remained lost for thousands of years, but it offers important historical accounts of that time in history.
Now, thanks to the tablets, experts can understand so much more about the cultures and civilizations that ruled the region.
In the near future, experts will continue studying ancient clay tablets hoping to discover more ancient cities that may have existed in ancient Mesopotamia.
Une famille de Mareeba, une ville située de l’État de Queensland en Australie, a raconté avoir repéré un étrange OVNI se comportant de manière incohérente au-dessus de Kennedy Highway vers 21h le jeudi 10 mai 2018.
Saphira Mueller a d'abord pensé que cette lumière était une fusée éclairante ou un ballon. Toutefois, elle a été incapable d'expliquer les incroyables caractéristiques physiques de cet objet non identifié. En effet, il était capable de prendre des virages en épingle à cheveux avec une aisance extraordinaire tout en accélérant subitement.
« Je n'ai jamais rien vu de tel dans ma vie », a déclaré Mme Mueller.
« Moncompagnonet ma fille étaient avec moi, ils ont ététous les deuxsurpris. »
Elle a dit qu'au départ l'objet se déplaçait lentement, mais qu'ensuite les choses sont devenues … étranges.
« Il se déplaçait dansdesdirectionsvraiment étranges :enhaut,sur lescôtés,enbas. »
«Ilbougeait si vite ... Je pensais que mes yeux me jouaientuntour. »
Le co-organisateur du festival Cardwell UFO, Nic Zynaras, a déclaré que l'extrême nord du Queensland était devenu, ces dernières années, une « zone chaude » non officielle pour les observations d'OVNI.
« Toute la régionconnaît une certaineactivité », a déclaré M. Zynaras.
« Les observations sont souventattribuées ou non à desOVNI. »
Il a dit que les objets vus par les observateurs défiaient souvent les lois de la physique.
« L'inertie[de ces OVNI]tuerait les occupantsà bordselon nos normes delaphysique.Ils sont capables de foncerà des vitesses qui défient la logique », a déclaré M. Zynaras.
« Parfois, ils disparaissent etpartent sans laisser de trace. »
Il pense que ces objets pourraient être d'origine militaire, extraterrestre ou même inter dimensionnel.
« Ils vont à des vitesses différentes, certains brillent, d'autres pas. »
Il a dit que le festival d'OVNI qui a lieu au mois d'octobre est une chance de comparer les nombreux témoignages recueillis un peu partout.
« Nous constatons que beaucoup de gens ont vécu des expériences similaires. »
Ni l'Autorité de la sécurité de l'aviation civile ni Airservices Australia ne tiennent de registre des observations d'OVNI, ce qui rend les enquêtes des ufologues plus difficiles …
Is Teleportation Hypothetically Possible In The Universe?
Is Teleportation Hypothetically Possible In The Universe?
What is the chance that humans or aliens somewhere in the Universe have mastered Teleportation?
First, let’s assume it is somehow possible…
I go to the nearest teleportation station after my delicious breakfast of toaster strudel this morning (let’s say in Tampa, FL) to go back to my home (which is in Winnipeg, MB, around 2040 Kms away). I buy the ticket, stand on the pedestal and wait for the transmission to happen while I thumb through the latest copy of “Fate” magazine. The warning light flashes and I get disintegrated into millions of particles, ready to be sent to the station at the destination. Due to some bug, the assembly process doesn’t go well at the destination pedestal. AND BOOM! I’m DEAD. Worst case, the signal never reaches the destination station. I would DIE just because of a transmission error/ reception error due to bad weather or cosmic conditions. HTCP (Human Transmission Control Protocol) would have been nice.
Even if it is possible, it won’t be safe.
It is very safe to say that teleportation is NOT possible in our universe – at least not the kind of teleportation that is seen in Star Trek. To see why let’s assume a human being weighs 70 kg. That would mean that there are at least 7*1027 atoms in the average human body (70 kg of carbon in atoms). With that one number, let’s consider each of the possible proposed teleportation technologies.
Quantum Teleportation:
The physicists or science writers who use the term “teleportation” for this quantum effect are trying for a sensational title to tout their work and to attract attention. This quantum kind of teleportation is not really anything at all like the teleportation in Star Trek. This is transferring the quantum state of one single particle to another single particle some distance away. The neat thing is that you can do this quantum “teleportation” even if you do not know the quantum state of the original particle. But even if this worked perfectly, you would need to apply this 7*1027times to duplicate a human body. However, you need a lot more than just the quantum states to be correct for each atom, you also need the get the positions of all the atoms correct. That problem is addressed in the next method, but it is safe to say that this method of teleportation is for all practical purposes impossible.
Destructive scanning of a body, transmitting the information and then reconstructing the body:
To have a scanner that can record the position of every atom in the body to an accuracy of the order of the size of a hydrogen atom would require position accuracy of about 10X1010^-10meters. To get that accuracy over a distance of order 1 meter this would require 30 decimal digits which would be about 100 binary digits per atom. However there would be a lot of redundancy in this data, so let’s be optimistic and assume you could compress this down to 1 bit per atom, so we still need approximately 7*1027 bits of data to just specify the positions of all the atoms in a human body. A Zettabyte is the approximate data storage capacity of all the computers and storage devices in the world today is at most a few zettabytes (1 zettabyte = 1021 bytes). Therefore the data for the scan of one human would require roughly 10,000 times the total storage of all the data stored on earth right now.
The total traffic on the entire world wide web/internet was about 27,000 petabytes per month in 2011. At that rate, it would take over 3 million years to transmit the bits needed to specify the positions of all the atoms in the body.
Even if you can store and transmit this data and then store it again at the destination, you still have the problem of scanning the original body and constructing the final body. The scanning of the body will probably have to be destructive since you need to essentially take the body apart to get to the inner atoms of the body. So you had better be able to do the scanning in a very short period of time or the person will die during the scanning operation and you will end up reconstructing a dead person at the destination. Finally, you cannot take a long time to construct the body at the destination since the early parts you construct will die while you are finishing the construction of the later parts. It is safe to say that this method of teleportation is for all practical purposes impossible.
Wormholes Wormholes are not really teleportation, they are really a way of travelling faster than the speed of light. So in that sense, it is better than teleportation, but is it possible? Well, first of all, according to general relativity, a wormhole is very unstable and will quickly collapse. The only known way to keep a wormhole open is to use a hypothetical form of matter that has negative energy density. Of course, we have never found or created any kind of matter that has a negative energy density and we have no theory that would predict how to construct the matter with the negative energy density that would be required.
Even if we could construct an object with negative energy density, that does not allow the construction of a wormhole, it would only enable us to stabilize an existing wormhole and prevent it from collapsing. We have no known way to create wormholes in the first place. If we could somehow create a wormhole and prop it open wide enough to use it, the energy requirements would be astronomical. It would likely take more energy than the sun produces to create such a wormhole for even a few seconds. Even if we had a stabilized wormhole, the curvature of space-time in the interior of the wormhole would be very extreme and would certainly spaghettified any object trying to transverse the wormhole in the same way that black holes and their singularities tidally disrupt objects.
Finally, wormholes allow time travel which violates causality and there are good physics arguments that would say that causality violations are not permitted in our universe. Therefore there may be some fundamental physical principle that makes wormholes impossible. It is safe to say that this method of teleportation is for all practical purposes impossible.
Teleportation…No. Tele-duplication, YES, absolutely will happen in some format…
The replication of inert data patterns exists today and can be transmitted and printed in 2D and 3D formats. It hasn’t happened with organic or living matter to my knowledge, but it’s reasonable to assume that technology will progress and data patterns for the organic matter will be transmitted at some point. It will be required that an “ink cartridge” for that matter must be in place. Whether that’s some polymer or vat of goo is TBD.
The salient point is that I can fax, email or print a document in 2D or 3D, and the original document or pattern is unchanged. The paper or material at the receiving end is a replica, not a transported version of the original object. It’s a copy. If a hypothetical 3D printer had a cartridge of the organic material comprising a pig, and you had a file with the correct pattern, then you could print bacon. But once you did, you would still have the original file. On the Starship Enterprise, you’d have a vat of goo, from which you’d make bacon, but you’d still have the file bacon.cfg after you’d made breakfast.
Asimov, Heinlein, Clark and others far smarter than I have addressed this topic in ways that have captivated me for decades. A person/consciousness could transmit to the moon or an alien planet, and the duel existence of the original and transmitted copy would make for a damn fine sci-fi story.
The transmission of a copy of organic matter will be within our technical reach in the near future. The transport of a specific organic entity and its consciousness transcends technology, going to a metaphysical or religious realm that is unknowable at this point.
Summary
It is very safe to say that there is no method for teleportation of human bodies that could possibly work or be practical in our universe. Sorry, Star Trek fans a “Heisenberg Compensator” will not help you. More importantly “Toaster Strudel” is not that tasty either.
Fly over Mars’ Neukum Crater, in this video based on images taken by ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.
This animation, based on images by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express spacecraft, takes you on a flyover of the Neukum Crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The crater is about 63 miles (102 km) wide and .6 miles (1 km) deep, with two shallow depressions and a dune field in its interior.
Neukum Crater is situated in Noachis Terra, one of the oldest known regions on Mars, dating back to at least 3.9 billion years. Here’s how ESA describes the crater:
This complex impact crater has a diverse geologic history, as indicated by various features on the crater rim and floor. Particularly striking are the dark dune fields, likely made up of volcanic material blown in and shaped by strong winds.
The crater’s shallow interior has been infilled by sediments over its history. It is also marked with two irregular depressions that may be a sign of a weaker material that has since eroded away, leaving behind some islands of more resistant material.
Over time the crater rim has undergone varying degrees of collapse, with landslides and slumped material visible in the crater walls. Many smaller craters have also overprinted the rim and pockmarked the interior since Neukum Crater was formed, highlighting its long history.
The crater is named for the German physicist and planetary scientist Gerhard Neukum, one of the founders of ESA’s Mars Express mission. Neukum led the development of the high-resolution stereo camera on Mars Express.
European Space Agency (ESA)
ESA’s Mars Express, a Mars obiter, launched in June 2003.
Bottom line: Video flyover of Mars’ Neukum Crater, based on images from ES’s Mars Express.
Asteroid 2010 WC9 will pass at about half the moon’s distance, in one of the closest approaches ever observed of an asteroid of this size. Click in for information about viewing online.
Asteroid 2010 WC9 will safely pass at about half’s the moon’s distance on Tuesday, May 15, 2018. Estimates of its size range from 197 to 427 feet (60-130 meters), making the May 15 pass one of the closest approaches ever observed of an asteroid of this size. This asteroid was “lost” and then found again. The Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona first detected it on November 30, 2010, and astronomers watched it until December 1, when it became too faint to see. They didn’t have enough observations to track its orbit fully and so predict its return. On May 8, 2018 – almost eight years later – astronomers discovered an asteroid and gave it the temporary designation ZJ99C60. Then they realized it was asteroid 2010 WC9, returning.
During the 2018 return, closest approach of asteroid 2010 WC9 will happen on May 15 at 22:05 UTC (6:05 pm EDT; translate to your time). At that time, the asteroid will be 0.53 lunar-distances from Earth (126,419 miles or 203,453 km from Earth). According to orbit calculations made by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the May 15 close approach is the closest of this particular asteroid in nearly 300 years.
Is this a large asteroid? No, not by any absolute measure. But it is larger than the estimated size of the Chelyabinsk meteor, which entered Earth’s atmosphere, breaking windows in six Russian cities and causing some 1,500 people to seek medical attention, in 2013. Estimates of asteroid 2010 WC9’s diameter range from 197 to 427 feet (60-130 meters); estimates of the Chelyabinsk meteor’s size before encountering Earth’s atmosphere center around 65 feet (20 meters).
Asteroid 2010 WC9 is an Apollo type space rock. At no time will it be visible to the eye as it sweeps past Earth. It might get as bright as magnitude +11, which would make it bright enough to be seen in amateur telescopes pointed at the correct location and time.
Asteroid 2010 WC9 is travelling though space at a speed of 28,655 miles per hour (46,116 km/h).
Want to view the asteroid online? Guy Wells at Northolt Branch Observatories in London, England – which specializes in observations of near-Earth asteroids and other small solar system objects – emailed EarthSky on Friday to say:
We are planning to broadcast this asteroid live to our Facebook page on the night of May 14, likely around midnight, if the weather forecast remains positive. The broadcast will be less than 25 minutes in duration, as the asteroid will cross our field of view within that period of time. The asteroid will be moving quite rapidly (30 arcseconds per minute). Our display will update every five seconds. We are of course collecting astrometric data whilst this is happening, but the motion of the asteroid will be apparent every five seconds!
Daniel Bamberger, also at Northolt Branch Observatories, sent along the two images below. He wrote:
We imaged this object twice: First on May 9, when it was still known by its temporary designation ZJ99C60; then again on May 10, after it was identified as asteroid 2010 WC9, which had been a lost asteroid for eight years.
It is still a faint object of 18th magnitude, but it is brightening very rapidly: 2010 WC9 will be brighter than 11th magnitude at closest approach, making it visible in a small telescope!
Bottom line: Asteroid 2010 WC9 will pass at about half the moon’s distance on May 15, 2018. It’s one of the closest approaches ever observed of an asteroid of this size. Northolt Branch Observatories in London will offer a live viewing of the asteroid on its Facebook page, starting around midnight (London time) on May 14.
The modern understanding of the Pentagon's relationship with unexplained flying phenomena has become remarkably more pointed in the last six months since the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Programwas uncovered. Its disclosure came in between our own exclusive reporting on two very strange and well-documented encounters with strange aircraft operating in U.S. airspace. Now, new documents are coming to light that show the Department of Defense's own spy agency was also interested in subjects that border on science fiction and the even the paranormal, including warp drive, extra-dimensional manipulation, dark energy, and other highly exotic forms of space travel.
The documents were first discovered by George Knapp's I-Team, part of Las Vegas CBS affiliate Channel 8 News, which has been investigating the government's supposed connection with 'UFOs' for decades. Recently Knapp has been digging deeper into Bigelow Aerospace—which is located in Las Vegas—and its starring role in the previously classified program. It is no secret that Robert Bigelow, a former real estate developer turned inflatable space station entrepreneur, has been highly interested in UFOs, but the depth of the company's official relationship with the Defense Department regarding the topic was something entirely unheard of before the disclosure of the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program occurred in December 2017.
Abbreviated AATIP, that effort, and its funding, sprang from Nevada Senator Harry Reid's interest in the topic, along with that of a Defense Intelligence Agency official. The program, which eventually cost $22 million and ran roughly between 2008 and 2012, began after Bigelow won the contract, apparently to investigate UFO sightings, along with pretty much everything else that goes along with the topic for better or worse, on behalf of the military.
A team of nearly 50 scientists, analysts, and investigators were assembled to work on the program, which was originally and very cryptically dubbed the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program before gaining its more recent moniker. The contract between the DIA and Bigelow made sure not to spell out its focus, instead referring to exotic technologies without mentioning UFOs. The I-Team writes:
"The agreement with DIA did not mention UFOs at all. It used more generic terms such as future threats and breakthrough technologies, and specified 12 focal points including, lift, propulsion, materials, versions of stealth as well as human interface and human effects."
AP Real estate mogul and Bigelow Aerospace chief Robert Bigelow.
The modern understanding of the Pentagon's relationship with unexplained flying phenomena has become remarkably more pointed in the last six months since the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was uncovered. Its disclosure came in between our own exclusive reporting on two very strange and well-documented encounters with strange aircraft operating in U.S. airspace. Now, new documents are coming to light that show the Department of Defense's own spy agency was also interested in subjects that border on science fiction and the even the paranormal, including warp drive, extra-dimensional manipulation, dark energy, and other highly exotic forms of space travel.
It was under the AAWSA name that the organization funded at least two studies into advanced propulsion and space technology research that border on the fantastical. The first of these studies, dated March 29, 2010, deals with "advanced space propulsion" for faster-than-light travel, discussing theoretical physical constructs such as "spacetime-altered regions" and "gravity/antigravity" forces. The second study, which the AAWSA program published on April 2, 2010, covers similar ground, but also includes discussions about "dark energy" and "extra dimensions."
The AAWSA experts did this work under the auspices of DIA's Defense Warning Office, which makes good sense, at least conceptually. This organization first came into being in 2002 and is "charged with identifying sources of increasing threats to U.S. interests in critical regions," according to an official briefing.
DIA VIA LAS VEGAS CHANNEL 8 One of the figures from the March 2010 report.
"This office will also identify opportunities to affect adversary behavior prior to and in the early stages of a crisis." that presentation notes. In 2003, these tasks expanded to also include work "to provide the earliest possible warning of technological developments that could undermine U.S. military preeminence."
UFO sightings are often indications of advanced and secret military aircraft research and development projects. Having a team of experts try and determine if any of the reports translated to real programs, especially those that potential opponents such as Russia or China might have been working on, would be well with DIA's mandate for the office.
That AAWSA team would have delved into known developments in associated fields would also make sense in this context. If America's adversaries were rapidly advancing toward practical warp drives and other advanced propulsion and space research, DIA would definitely want to know in order to help inform U.S. policy responses.
"These studies are so loaded with information," Senator Reid reportedly said at one point, according to Las Vegas' Channel 8. "One thing we learned is over the decades a lot of things happen there's no explanation for. Well there are now.
TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL VIA AP
Nevada Senator Harry Reid.
But the applicability of these studies to the Defense Warning Office's core mission seems dubious, as do portions of the underlying research itself. Neither report suggested that the technology they described was anywhere near practical or that any foreign government was close to achieving a relevant breakthrough.
"This paper has considered the possibility—even likelihood—that future developments with regard to advanced aerospace technologies will trend in the direction of manipulating the underlying spacetime structure of the vacuum of space itself by processes that can be called vacuum engineering or metric engineering," the March 2010 study says in its final discussion section. "Far from being simply a fanciful concept, a significant literature exists in peer-reviewed, Tier 1 physics publications in which the topic is explored in detail."
"The idea that a sufficiently advanced technology may interact with, and acquire direct control over, the higher dimensions is a tantalizing possibility, and one that is most certainly worthy of deeper investigation," the second document concludes. "Of course, this may not be actualized until many years in the future, but consider the many spectacular physical phenomena that are believed to be true at this early point in the 21st century."
What these statements do clearly reflect is the vision of the primary "contractor" for these studies, EarthTech International, Inc., a small firm headquartered in Austin, Texas. This company no longer has a functional website and otherwise has a virtually non-existent presence on the internet. "We strive to translate these ideas into laboratory experiments," according to an archived copy of the company's website from 2017.
Here's a clip from a 60 Minutes segment with Bigelow that was filmed before the revelations about his involvement with the Pentagon's Aviation Threat Identification program were exposed:
A cursory internet search on EarthTech's CEO Harold Puthoff, Ph.D., who authored the March 2010 study, and Eric Davis, Ph.D., another employee who co-authored the other report, quickly turns up a web of links to Bigelow and his other fringe scientific and paranormal investigative endeavors, including the now defunct National Institute for Discovery Science, or NIDSci. You can find a mirrored copy of that entity's website, circa 2008, here. Independent consultant Richard Obousy, who helped produce the April 2010 document, also has connections to the Nevada businessman.
Puthoff is now Vice President of Science and Technology at To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a non-profit organization that reportedly is, at least in part, continuing the AAITP's work independently. Luis Elizondo, who was the government head of AAITP and its follow-on guise, is its Director of Global Security and Special Programs.
The full extent of the AAWSA effort, including how many similar studies it funded and at what cost, as well as the later AAITP, still remains unclear. So far, two videos the latter iteration of the group examined in detail have captured the most public attention through the media. F/A-18 Hornet Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) targeting pods shot both of these clips and they feature small "tic-tac"-like objects racing around at high speed over the water.
But the main video and pilot account wasn't new when news of the existence of AAITP first broke. It had been floating around in defense circles for over a decade, but more open disclosure about the origin of the video on an official level, as well as subsequent interviews with the pilot that took it, certainly elevated it to mainstream news.
Beyond that, accounts of Bigelow's special unit's investigation include claims that mysterious material from downed objects was being stored in storage lockers and that the program went far beyond documenting and evaluating eyewitness reports of UFOs. Instead, it took a holistic approach, which may have included evaluating the impact on human biology in association with sightings and other unexplained events and even seemed to have delved into other paranormal domains.
This would seem to match up with the picture of the program's work we now have based on the documents Knapp's I-Team obtained. What we know for sure, beyond the basic facts surrounding the project and information that Elizondo, the guy who led the program on the DoD side, has given to the press, is that some very strange studies resulted from its mandate. Once again, the studies Las Vegas' Channel 8 uncovered are official DIA documents that the United States Government paid EarthTech and other Bigelow associates to produce and kept on file for its own internal use.
If nothing else, the existence of these studies supports the perception that this program went far beyond just trying to interpret and document eye-witness accounts of UFOs and trying to identify what was buzzing around in earth's atmosphere. And they are bound to leave just about anyone wondering if this is what has been released, imagine what else exists that hasn't, whether out of fear of embarrassment or risk to national security.
Update: 7:25pm PST—
Here is another one titled "Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy."
In the YouTube video, secureteam10 describes the image as “a very strange formation of rocks that are put together in what appears to be a very artificial way, arranged in a perfect circle.”
The formation is “much different from the craters that we normally see on Mars and the moon and the other planets in the solar system,” secureteam10 added. “This almost looks like these rocks were arranged in this circular formation – either that, or these could potentially be some sort of ruin that is a part of a much larger structure, potentially buried.”
The rocks sparked plenty of comment on YouTube, with not everyone convinced that the rocks had been arranged in the circular pattern. “It really just looks like a crater to me,” noted one commenter. “Looks like a boulder that is weathered,” wrote another commenter. “The circle on Mars is clearly part of a bagel,” quipped another.
Features on the Red Planet’s surface continue to be a source of fascination.
Earlier this year, for example, UFO hunters claimed that an image taken by NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover shows an ancient tree stump on the surface of the Red Planet.
Although explained as a missle test by the U.S. Navy, a light zooming across the western sky ignited a firestorm of speculation on social media.
Jersey Roots is a look at the history of Monmouth and Ocean counties. Have a local historical topic you would like more information about? Contact Erik Larsen at elarsen@gannettnj.com.
An article from the front page of the Asbury Park Press on March 28, 1966.
(Photo: Asbury Park Press archives)
Fifty years ago, seeing something strange or unrecognizable in the night sky was taken with some modicum of seriousness.
Perhaps this was due to the national paranoia associated with the Cold War. On the contrary maybe it was a reflection of an optimistic zeitgeist. In the 1960s, humankind was at the dawn of a new era, one in which it would no longer be confined to the exploration of one world. This was a time when popular culture was capturing the imagination of a public coming to terms with the idea that we may neither be alone nor the oldest civilization in the universe.
For several weeks in the spring of 1966, there was a wave of UFO sightings across the United States that had made national headlines. The reports were coming from credible eyewitnesses – police officers and firefighters – in addition to ordinary citizens, who all calmly recalled their encounters with fantastic objects in the sky, while occasionally giving pause to express incredulity at their own experiences.
Later that year, in response to this rash of sightings, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite hosted a prime time special, “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?” That September, “The Byrds” fantasized about such visits from the outer cosmos in the song, “Mr. Spaceman." And, in the fall television lineup that year, a little series called "Star Trek" premiered on NBC.
'UFO: Friend, Foe Or Fantasy'
“Michigan’s weird, blinking lights apparently have extended their appearances to Ohio and Wisconsin,” read an Associated Press dispatch from March 27, 1966. “As before there was no full explanation.”
In Washington, Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Michigan, who would be president a decade later, called for a congressional investigation into what was happening. Many Michigan residents felt the number of incidents were “sufficient to justify some action by our government,” Ford said.
On the same day that Ford called for House and Senate committee hearings on the matter, some residents at the Jersey Shore were seeing something strange in the sky over northern Ocean County.
“Space creatures Shore bound? Four residents in Brick say they spotted UFO,” was the headline on the front page of the Press on March 28, 1966.
The previous day, Air Force veteran James Novello, 63, of Brick, watched a brightly-lit, lemon-shaped object seem to hover over his Breton Woods neighborhood on the Metedeconk River.
Novello, who had logged more than 6,000 flight hours in the Air Force, where he had served as a radar operator, told a Press reporter that the object looked to be about 100 feet in length and 70 feet wide, at about a distance of a 1½-miles away and at an altitude of 1,500 feet.
His 13-year-old son, Raymond, had been the first in his family to see the object. The teen had awakened at about 4:30 in the morning on March 27 because of a bright light penetrating through the night sky. He watched it through his telescope before waking up his parents.
“I just don’t know what to say,” Novello told a Press reporter. “Based on our observations, we’re almost positive it couldn’t have been a balloon, an airplane or temperature inversion.”
The family even woke up a neighbor, Joan Clayton, to have a look and share in the experience.
All of them stood in bewilderment for more than an hour at what they were watching. At times, the object seemed to alter its shape and luminosity. They constantly checked with each other to make certain their eyes were not playing tricks on them. Clayton confirmed the account to a Press reporter at the time.
“We all saw it, we checked each other’s observations, and we know it’s incredible – but there it was,” Novello said, who telephoned the police.
The following day, officials at then-McGuire Air Force Base in Wrightstown confirmed they were investigating reports of a UFO over the Jersey Shore. An official at then-Lakehurst Naval Air Station said the base had launched two weather balloons that day, though neither one would have coincided with the time of the Brick sightings.
Meanwhile, the New Jersey State Police had received two other reports about the object from other eyewitnesses in Brick, who had seen the same thing at the same time as the Novellos and their neighbor.
“We get a lot of these reports, especially at this time of year when atmospheric conditions make them common, but we can readily explain 99 percent of them,” an Air Force spokesman told the Press. “This one, though, does not fit most quick explanations.”
Two giant swaths of radiation, known as the Van Allen Belts, surrounding Earth were discovered in 1958. In 2012, observations from the Van Allen Probes showed that a third belt can sometimes appear. The radiation is shown here in yellow, with green representing the spaces between the belts.
Credit: NASA/Van Allen Probes/Goddard Space Flight Center
Giant donut-shaped swaths of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles surround Earth. James Van Allen, a physicist at the University of Iowa, discovered these radiation belts in 1958 after the launch of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite. The radiation belts were eventually named after him.
Van Allen's experiment on Explorer 1, which launched Jan. 31, 1958, had a simple cosmic ray experiment consisting of a Geiger counter (a device that detects radiation) and a tape recorder. Follow-up experiments on three other missions in 1958 — Explorer 3, Explorer 4 and Pioneer 3 — established that there were two belts of radiation circling the Earth.
While observations have continued for decades, our knowledge of the belts became more enhanced when the Van Allen Probes launched in 2012. They found that the belts were more complex than previously imagined. The probes showed that the shape of the belts depends on what particle is being studied. They also uncovered information hinting there is less radiation than imagined in certain parts of the Van Allen belts, which means spacecraft and humans would not need as much radiation protection if they are voyaging in that region.
On the 60th anniversary of Explorer 1, NASA said that studies of the Van Allen belts are even more important today. "Our current technology is ever more susceptible to these accelerated particles because even a single hit from a particle can upset our ever smaller instruments and electronics," said David Sibeck, Van Allen Probes mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, in a 2018 statement. "As technology advances, it's actually becoming even more pressing to understand and predict our space environment."
Early probe findings
Part of the interest in the Van Allen belts comes from where they are located. It is known that the belts can swell when the sun becomes more active. Before the probes launched, scientists thought the inner belt was relatively stable, but when it did expand, its influence extended over the orbit of the International Space Station and several satellites. The outer belt fluctuated more often. The ISS has been permanently inhabited since 2000, with typical astronauts staying there for six months at a time. In 2015-16, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko remained there for almost a year. As astronauts stay in orbit for longer, their radiation exposure may also increase, leading to concerns about long-term habitation for astronauts in space.
So scientists are interested in close study of this region. In 2012, a new set of probes launched. The Van Allen Probes (formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm probes) have several scientific goals, including discovering how the particles — ions and electrons — in the belts are accelerated and transported, how electrons are lost and how the belts change during geomagnetic storms. The mission was planned to last two years, but as of May 2018 the probes were still operating at more than double the expected mission lifetime. However, fuel reserves are running low and the probes will likely retire in the next couple of years.
Usually, scientists take a few months after launch to calibrate their instruments, but a team with the Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope asked that their instrument be turned on almost immediately (three days after launch); they wanted to compare observations before another mission, SAMPEX (Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer), de-orbited and entered Earth's atmosphere.
"It was a lucky decision," NASA said in February 2013, noting that a solar storm had already caused the radiation belts to swell as soon as the instrument was turned on. "Then something happened no one had ever seen before: the particles settled into a new configuration, showing an extra, third belt extending out into space," the agency added. "Within mere days of launch, the Van Allen Probes showed scientists something that would require rewriting textbooks."
An artist's depiction of the two Van Allen probes orbiting Earth.
Credit: JHU/APL
Protective shield
Data gathered by the probes also showed that the radiation belts shield Earthfrom high-energy particles. "The barrier for the ultrafast electrons is a remarkable feature of the belts," study lead author Dan Baker, of the University of Colorado in Boulder, said in a statement.
"We're able to study it for the first time, because we never had such accurate measurements of these high-energy electrons before." [Gallery: NASA's Van Allen Probes]
This new information helped scientists model the belts' changes. But there was more information to come. In January 2016, scientists revealed that the shape of the belts depends on what type of electron is being studied. This means the two belts are much more complex; depending on what is being observed, they can be a single belt, two separate belts or just an outer belt (with no inner belt at all.)
"The researchers found that the inner belt — the smaller belt in the classic picture of the belts — is much larger than the outer belt when observing electrons with low energies, while the outer belt is larger when observing electrons at higher energies," NASA wrote at the time. "At the very highest energies, the inner belt structure is missing completely. So, depending on what one focuses on, the radiation belts can appear to have very different structures simultaneously."
What is still poorly understood, however, is what happens when particles from the sun hit the belts during a geomagnetic storm. It is known that the number of electrons in the belts changes, either decreasing or increasing depending on the situation. Also, the belts eventually return to their normal shape after the storm passes. NASA said it isn't clear what kind of storm will cause a specific type of belt configuration. Also, the agency noted, any previous observations were done only with electrons at a few energy levels. More work needs to be done.
Luckily, scientists got the chance to observe a storm up close in March 2015, when one of the Van Allen Probes happened to be situated inside the "right" spot in Earth's magnetic field to see an interplanetary shock. NASA describes such shocks as similar to when a tsunami is triggered by an earthquake; in this case, a coronal mass ejection of charged particles from the sun creates a shock in specific areas of the belts.
"The spacecraft measured a sudden pulse of electrons energized to extreme speeds — nearly as fast as the speed of light — as the shock slammed the outer radiation belt," NASA wrote at the time. "This population of electrons was short-lived, and their energy dissipated within minutes. But five days later, long after other processes from the storm had died down, the Van Allen Probes detected an increased number of even higher energy electrons. Such an increase so much later is a testament to the unique energization processes following the storm."
In 2017, the Washington Post published an article with some of the sounds of space recorded from an instrument on the Van Allen Probes, called Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS). Although humans cannot hear these sounds — because there is no medium in which the waves can carry the sound — translating this data was fairly straightforward, the Post wrote. "The electromagnetic waves are in the same frequency range as the part of the sound spectrum that is audible to humans. It was a simple matter to translate those radio waves as MP3s — turning EMFISIS data into a radio broadcast from the heavens."
Designing better spacecraft
The Van Allen Probes are specially hardened to withstand the intense radioactive environment of the belts. Some spacecraft, however, are more vulnerable — especially when a solar storm hits. At worst, spacecraft can short out due to an electrical overload. Communications can also be disrupted. Fortunately, sometimes instruments can be turned on or off on a spacecraft during a solar storm.
The shape of the Van Allen belts can vary widely depending on how energetic the individual electrons are, and general conditions in the Earth’s magnetic environment. During geomagnetic storms (4), all three regions in the belts can balloon.
Credit: NASA GODDARD/DUBERSTEIN
Radiation, of course, also poses a human risk. Astronauts are subject to lifetime radiation limits from their time in space, to reduce any risk of cancer. Since only a few dozen people have spent six months or longer in space, however, it will take decades to understand the long-term effects of radiation on humans.
The astronauts on the ISS do not regularly spend time inside the belts, but from time to time solar storms expand the belts to the orbit of the space station. In the 1960s, several Apollo crews went through the Van Allen belts on their way to and from the moon. Their time in that radiation-intensive region, however, was very short, in part because the trajectory was designed to pass through the thinnest known parts. With more study, astronauts can be better protected for long-term stays in Earth orbit.
"We study radiation belts because they pose a hazard to spacecraft and astronauts," said David Sibeck, the Van Allen Probes mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, in an August 2016 NASA statement. "If you knew how bad the radiation could get, you would build a better spacecraft to accommodate that."
Newer findings from the probes show that radiation in certain zones may be less harsh than scientists thought. In March 2017, the Van Allen Probes made a finding showing there is less radiation in the inner belts that previously theorized, which means less shielding is required for spacecraft and satellites in that region. The most energetic electrons residing in the inner radiation belt are there for less time than scientists thought beforehand.
The following year, the probes discovered that some communications wavelengths (called very low frequency communications) emanating from Earth are sometimes a sort of a shield against high-energy particle radiation in space. This means that human activity has effects even in the near-space environment around Earth.
As of 2018, the Van Allen Probes are running low on fuel and are expected to finish their mission around 2020. Goddard is working on a CubeSat (small spacecraft) mission called GTOSat that will continue studying the Van Allen belts.
"This mission of firsts will serve as a pathfinder for new radiation-tolerant technologies that could help scientists realize a long-sought dream: deploying a constellation of small satellites beyond low-Earth orbit to gather simultaneous, multi-point measurements of Earth's ever-changing magnetosphere, which protects the planet from the constant assault of charged particles streaming off the sun," NASA said in May 2018.
Human technology has advanced significantly over the past 5,000 years, and the Earth bears the scars to prove it. We've altered the landscape, the climate and the biological diversity. We've erected skyscrapers for the living and colossal tombs for the dead. Perhaps most important, we've learned to harness a portion of the planet's energy, but we still thirst for so much more power.
This insatiable appetite for energy will continue to chart the course of human civilization in the 5,000 years to come. As a result, it will also dictate what Earth will look like in A.D. 7010.
In 1964, Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev theorized that a civilization's technical advancement directly correlates to the amount of energy its citizens can manipulate. Along these lines, he defined three classifications for advanced civilizations in the galaxy:
Type I civilizations are masters of planetary energy, meaning that they can harness the sum energy of an entire world.
Type II civilizations can summon the power of an entire star system.
Type III civilizations command energy on a galactic scale.
Cosmologists use this Kardashev Scale to predict the technical advancement of future and alien civilizations. Currently, modern humans don't even rank on the scale. We're essentially a type 0 civilization, but we'll eventually become a type I. Kardashev himself predicted that this transition would occur. But when?
Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku forecasts this transcendence occurring within a mere century. Physicist Freeman Dyson raises that estimate to less than 200 years. Back in the day, Kardashev envisaged that it would take only 3,200 years to reach type II status.
If humanity only reaches type I status by A.D. 7010, then it will still have the ability to manipulate and control atmospheric and geothermal forces. Warfare and self-destruction might still pose a threat to humanity's survival, but ecological concerns will be a thing of the past.
If we achieve type II status by that point, then 71st century humans will wield even greater technological power. Dyson proposed that such a civilization would be capable of encapsulating a star with a swarm of satellites to harvest its energy. Other theorized type II feats include interstellar travel and the ability to move entire planets -- and all this on top of whatever breakthroughs have occurred in genetics and computing.
Such future humans will likely differ greatly from us culturally or even neurologically. They may well be what futurists and philsophers refer to as posthumans or transhumans.
Regardless, a lot can happen in 5,000 years. We might destroy ourselves with warfare or unwittingly ravage the planet with nanotechnology. Perhaps we'll fail to mitigate the threat posed by asteroid and cometcollisions. We might even encounter an alien type II civilization long before we achieve that level ourselves.
Explore the links on the next page to learn even more about humanity's future.
Berry, Adrian. "The Next 500 Years: Life in the Coming Millennium." W H Freeman & Co. February 1996.
Cain, Frasier. "How Advanced Can a Civilization Become?"Universe Today. April 16, 2004. (June 3, 2010)http://www.universetoday.com/2004/04/26/how-advanced-can-a-civilization-become/
"Earth may be too hot for humans by 2300: study." Associated Foreign Press. May 11, 2010. (June 2, 2010)http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jTXA_CTHXzXzc-HxwAVLW-nh-eww
Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku. (June 2, 2010)http://mkaku.org/
Hawking, Stephen. "Science in the Next Millennium." White House Millennium Council. March 6, 1998. (June 2, 2010)http://clinton4.nara.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/shawking.html
Perry, Charles A. and Kenneth J. Hsu. "Geophysical, archaeological, and historical evidence support a solar-output model for climate change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Sept. 5, 2000. (June 2, 2010)http://www.pnas.org/content/97/23/12433.full.pdf
Parker Solar Probe: deze nieuwe ruimtesonde gaat de zon aantikken
Parker Solar Probe: deze nieuwe ruimtesonde gaat de zon aantikken
Jurjen de Jong
De ruimtesonde wordt deze zomer gelanceerd en zal dwars door de hete atmosfeer van de zon vliegen.
Onze zon bevat 99,86% van alle massa in ons zonnestelsel en toch zijn we nog nooit zo dicht bij deze gigantische massa geweest. Binnenkort gaan we een record verbreken door met de Parker Solar Probe(PSP) dichterbij dan ooit te komen. Daarnaast hopen we uiteraard op nieuwe interessante ontdekkingen over de zon!
Parker De Park Solar Probe is vernoemd naar de wetenschapper Eugene Parker. Deze Amerikaanse astrofysicus heeft veel bijgedragen aan onze kennis over de zon en met name de zonnewind. Desondanks weten we eigenlijk nog verrassend weinig over beiden. Laten we eerst kijken wat we wel al weten.
De zon De zon staat op een afstand van ongeveer 150 miljoen kilometer en met een leeftijd van 4,59 miljard jaar is ze essentieel voor ons leven op aarde. Als we astronomen moeten geloven is onze zon een vrij gemiddelde ster, op ongeveer de helft van haar leven. De zon bestaat in de buitenste lagen voor 70% uit waterstof en voor 28% uit helium. De kern bestaat voor 35% uit waterstof en 63% uit helium. De overige percentages zijn zwaardere elementen. De dichtheid en temperatuur zijn in de kern hoog genoeg voor kernfusie, zodat de zon door middel van dit proces waterstof omzet naar helium. Hiernaast zie je hoe de zon er schematisch ongeveer uitziet. De zon lijkt voor sommigen misschien op een soort grote vuurbal, maar in feite is de zon niets anders dan een gigantische bal plasma. We kennen allemaal gasvormig, vloeibaar en vast als aggretietoestanden. Deze toestanden zijn afhankelijk van de temperatuur. Als we nu een gas nog verder verhitten, zullen de elektronen van de atomen van dit gas losraken van de kern. Fysici noemen dit ionisatie. Een verzameling van deze geïoniseerde deeltjes is niet meer elektrisch neutraal en wordt daarom ‘geladen’ genoemd. Deze deeltjes vormen samen nu een plasma. Dat de zon een bal plasma is, is niet vreemd als we kijken naar de temperaturen die zich hier bevinden. De kern van de zon heeft een temperatuur van 15,5 miljoen graden Celsius. Dit neemt af tot 6000 graden Celsius aan het oppervlak en tot ongeveer 4300 graden Celsius in de atmosfeer van de zon. Daarna gebeurt er iets opvallends in het buitenste gedeelte van de atmosfeer van de zon: de corona. In dit gedeelte wordt de temperatuur weer heel hoog. Het kan hier rond de 2 tot soms wel 20 miljoen graden Celsius zijn. Overigens kunnen we de corona op aarde waarnemen bij een zonsverduistering als de ring die nog zichtbaar blijft als de maan zich voor de zon bevindt. Vervolgens gaat de corona over in de zonnewind. Deze ‘wind’ bestaat vooral uit restproducten van waterstof en helium (elektronen, protonen en alfadeeltjes), die de ontsnappingssnelheid van de zon bereiken en daardoor het zonnestelsel ingeblazen worden. Dit gebeurt zo frequent dat de zonnewind daarom een constante stroom is. Op aarde worden we deels afgeschermd tegen deze zonnewind door ons aardmagnetisch veld. We kunnen de zonnewind indirect waarnemen door middel van de poollichten (aurora borealis en aurora australis). Dit licht ontstaat na een interactie van de zonnewind met ons aardmagnetisch veld, waardoor er botsingen van geladen deeltjes in de hoge atmosfeer van de aarde optreden. Voor satellieten is de zonnewind ook belangrijk, want deze kan flinke verstoringen veroorzaken als de zon erg actief is.
Activiteit De activiteit van de zon is zichtbaar door: zonnevlekken, zonnebevingen, zonnevlammen en protuberansen. Zonnevlekken nemen wij waar als zwarte vlekken op de zon. Dit zijn plekken waar veel magnetische activiteit is, waardoor het energietransport van de binnenkant naar de buitenkant wordt verhinderd. Dit resulteert in lagere oppervlakte temperaturen. Dan heb je zonnebevingen. Deze zijn vergelijkbaar met aardbevingen, maar hebben andere oorzaken. Dit wordt bestudeerd in de helioseismologie. Protuberansen zijn wolkachtige verschijnselen aan de zijkant van de zon in de atmosfeer van de zon, welke we niet direct kunnen waarnemen, maar wel met een coronograaf of een speciaal filter. Deze protuberansen bestaan uit een veel kouder plasma dan de corona. Als een protuberans uiteenvalt, kan dit een zonnevlam veroorzaken. Dit is een explosie die ontstaat als er veel energie vrijkomt, die eerst vastgehouden werd door het magnetische veld van de zon. Zo’n zonnevlam gaat vaak gepaard met een plasmawolk. Op aarde kunnen we het goed merken als er een sterke plasmawolk ons aardmagnetisch veld bereikt, aangezien de poollichten dan over een groter gebied op aarde zichtbaar zijn. Zo is het in de geschiedenis enkele keren voorgekomen dat van de polen tot aan de evenaar de poollichten zichtbaar waren.
Deze zojuist genoemde fenomenen zijn sterk afhankelijk van de 11-jarige zonnecyclus, waarin er een minimale en maximale activiteit van de zon is. Hoe actiever de zon, hoe meer zonnevlekken waarneembaar zijn en groter de kans op zonnevlammen en andere activiteit. Aangezien zonnevlekken met het blote oog waarneembaar zijn (ga nu niet in de zon kijken!), worden deze al lang door de mens bestudeerd. De oudste gedocumenteerde waarnemingen komen uit 364 v.Chr. uit China. Tussen 1826 en 1843 kon Samuel Heinrich Schwabe bevestigen dat de zon een 11-jarige cyclus doormaakt, aan de hand van zonnevlek waarnemingen. Echter houdt de zon zich niet altijd zo strikt aan deze cyclus. Soms duren cycli namelijk een stuk korter of langer. Het is daarom van belang dat we de zonneactiviteit beter leren begrijpen en daardoor beter kunnen voorspellen.
PSP Nu komen we op het punt dat de PSP belangrijk wordt. Dit ruimtevaartuig gaat namelijk tussen 31 juli en 19 augustus 2018 gelanceerd worden vanaf Cape Canaveral Air Force Station door een Delta IV Heavy draagraket en heeft als doel ons meer te leren over de zon. Zo moet de PSP onder meer de structuur en dynamica van de magnetische velden waaruit de zonnewind ontstaat, ontrafelen. Er wordt door fysici gebruik gemaakt van de wiskunde van de magnetohydrodynamica, maar helaas is dit niet voldoende, omdat het chaotische gedrag van de zon moeilijk te vatten is. Daarom kan de PSP ons met nieuwe metingen en observaties hopelijk weer verder op weg helpen om de magnetische velden en het ontstaan van de zonnewind beter te begrijpen. Zoals we al zeiden, zijn er in de corona enorm hoge temperaturen. Dit is al sinds de jaren veertig van de vorige eeuw bekend, maar een sluitende theorie, die beschrijft hoe dit kan, bestaat nog niet. Er wordt gedacht aan verhitting door energietransport vanuit de kern van de zon door middel van magnetohydrodynamische golven. Ook zijn er theorieën waarbij heet plasma de warmte transporteert vanuit de kern van de zon. De hoop is er dat de PSP fysici zal helpen een keuze te maken tussen de verschillende theorieën, of helpt met het opzetten van een betere/nieuwe theorie. Een ander doel van de PSP is het begrijpen van de mechanismen die de versnelling en transport veroorzaken van deeltjes met een hoge energie. Dit soort deeltjes kunnen een sterke en vooral negatieve invloed hebben op aarde en op satellieten rond de aarde. Het is daarom goed om beter te begrijpen hoe deze deeltjes onze aarde bereiken en wat de rol en relaties precies zijn van verschillende elementen van de zonneactiviteit.
Voor het eerst vernoemt NASA een ruimtevaartuig naar een nog levende wetenschapper. Hier krijgt Eugene Parker (in het midden) uitleg over de ruimtesonde die zijn naam draagt.
Afbeelding: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Instrumenten De wetenschappelijke experimenten worden gecategoriseerd aan de hand van de volgende afkortingen: FIELDS (Fields Experiment), IS☉IS (Integrated Science Investigation Of The Sun), WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar PRobe) en SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons). Met FIELDS zal PSP metingen doen aan de elektrische en magnetische velden en golven, de plasma dichtheden, de temperaturen van de elektronen en radio emissies met behulp van twee magnetometers. IS☉IS is een instrument om deeltjes, zoals protonen en zware ionen die flink versneld worden, te meten in de atmosfeer van de zon en in het binnenste gedeelte van de heliosfeer (het gebied waarin de zon invloed uitoefent). WISPR is een telescoop die simpel gezegd foto’s zal maken van de corona, het binnenste gedeelte van de heliosfeer, de zonnewind en andere fenomenen die PSP passeren. Deze foto’s kunnen dan bestudeerd worden. Dan is er nog SWEAP, waarmee de meest voorkomende deeltjes van de zonnewind (de elektronen, protonen en alfadeeltjes) bestudeerd zullen worden aan de hand van metingen van hun snelheid, dichtheid en temperatuur.
Ingewikkelde weg Om de zon te bereiken zal de PSP een lange ingewikkelde weg afleggen. Allereerst zal het ruimtevaartuig naar Venus vliegen om daar zeven scheervluchten te doen. Op deze manier kan door middel van zwaartekrachtsslingers de PSP in de juiste richting versnellen en dichterbij de gewenste baan rond de zon te komen. De PSP zal 24 maal rond de zon vliegen en de kortste afstand tot het oppervlak van de zon zal 6.2 miljoen kilometer zijn. Daardoor is het mogelijk om voor de eerste keer door de corona heen te vliegen. De missie van de PSP zal zeker zo’n zeven jaar duren.
De PSP nadert de zon.
Afbeelding: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben.
Het is een enorme uitdaging om zo dichtbij de zon te vliegen, aangezien de enorm hoge temperaturen in de nabijheid van de zon afgeweerd moeten worden. Hiervoor is een hitteschild dan ook een vereiste. Het schild van de PSP is 11.43 cm dik en gemaakt van een licht en sterk koolstofvezelcomposiet, zodat schade van hoge temperaturen tegengehouden kan worden. Op deze manier kunnen de meetinstrumenten en de computerystemen blijven functioneren. Erg belangrijk is de energievoorziening. Hiervoor wordt gebruikgemaakt van zonnepanelen. Echter, wanneer de PSP te dichtbij de zon komt, zullen deze zonnepanelen moeten worden ingetrokken, zodat ze afgeschermd worden door het hitteschild. Vervolgens worden dan een paar kleinere zonnepanelen uitgeklapt. Deze panelen hebben een speciaal ingebouwd koelsysteem, zodat ze niet oververhit raken. De nadering van PSP tot de zon zal toch niet schadeloos zijn. Naar verwachting zal straling van de zon toch zorgen voor lichte schade in het materiaal en een verslechterde werking van de elektronica. Ook zal de communicatie onderbroken worden als de PSP dichtbij de zon komt. Daarom zullen de banen heel erg elliptisch moeten zijn, zodat er ook lange perioden zijn dat de PSP ver genoeg is om bij te komen en zich op te laden met de grote zonnepanelen.
De Parker Solar Probe kan, net als Eugene Parker, onze kennis over met name de corona en de zonnewind enorm vergroten. Laten we daarom hopen dat de missie met succes gelanceerd zal worden en dat de weg naar de zon vlekkeloos zal zijn, zodat we over een tijdje weer over nieuwe inzichten over het gedrag van de zon en de zonnewind kunnen schrijven.
Jurjen de Jong (1993) is masterstudent Space Studies aan de KU Leuven. Daarvoor heeft hij een propedeuse werktuigbouwkunde in Breda, een bachelor wiskunde en een bachelor natuurkunde in Utrecht behaald en afgelopen juli een master in de wiskundige natuur-en sterrenkunde in Gent afgerond. Jurjen leest graag over de verschillende ontdekkingen ontwikkelingen op wetenschapsgebied en door er over te schrijven hoopt hij zijn kennis te delen met een groter publiek. Later hoopt hij een baan in de ruimtevaartsector te krijgen. Eerder verschenen van Jurjens hand al dit interessante artikel waarin hij uitzoekt of het nodig is dat ook de ruimtevaart groener wordt. Ook zocht hij voor Scientias.nl uit of de ruimtelift werkelijk toekomst heeft. Recent publiceerde hij ook twee artikelen over de quantumcomputer die voor een revolutie kan gaan zorgen.
Bronmateriaal:
NASA, link: http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/, geraadpleegd op: 4/22/2018 N.J. Fox et al. (2016). “The Solar Probe Plus Mission: Humanity’s First Visit to Our Star”. Space Sci Rev 204:7-48. DOI: 10.1007/s11214-015-0211-6 A. Hanslmeier. (2007). “The Sun and Space Weather”. Springer
Afbeelding bovenaan dit artikel:
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Seizoensgebonden verandering in atmosfeer kan wijzen op buitenaards leven
Seizoensgebonden verandering in atmosfeer kan wijzen op buitenaards leven
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Een veelbelovende biosignatuur!
De afgelopen decennia zijn er duizenden exoplaneten ontdekt. En verschillende van deze planeten lijken op het eerste gezicht geschikt voor buitenaards leven. Maar hoe kunnen we erachter komen of op die planeten daadwerkelijk leven is? Vaak wordt dan allereerst gekeken naar de atmosfeer. Zo weten we dat de samenstelling van onze aardse atmosfeer voor een groot deel bepaald wordt door de aanwezigheid van leven. Zo ligt leven bijvoorbeeld ten grondslag aan het zuurstofrijke karakter van onze atmosfeer. Zuurstof zou dus een biosignatuur kunnen zijn: een aanwijzing dat er leven is op een andere planeet.
Biosignatuur Maar in het blad The Astrophyscial Journal Letters komen wetenschappers met een nog veelbelovendere biosignatuur op de proppen. Ze pleiten ervoor om te kijken naar seizoensgebonden veranderingen in de samenstelling van de atmosfeer.
Noordelijk halfrond De onderzoekers wijzen erop dat de seizoenen niet alleen veranderingen in weer en de lengte van de dagen met zich meebrengen. Ook de samenstelling van de atmosfeer verandert. Zo zorgt plantengroei er in de zomer voor dat de hoeveelheid CO2 in de atmosfeer boven het noordelijk halfrond – waar de meeste vegetatie te vinden is – afneemt. Tegelijkertijd neemt de concentratie zuurstof hier in de zomer toe.
Beter Op vergelijkbare manier zouden seizoensgebonden veranderingen in de samenstelling van buitenaardse atmosferen ook kunnen wijzen op de aanwezigheid van leven. Het zoeken naar dergelijke veranderingen is misschien nog wel effectiever dan de zoektocht naar bijvoorbeeld hoge concentraties zuurstof in de atmosfeer. Want wie zegt dat die aliens net als sommige levensvormen op aarde zuurstof genereren? Bovendien kan zuurstof ook geproduceerd worden in de afwezigheid van leven. “De aanwezigheid van leven afleiden op basis van seizoenen vereist geen gedetailleerd begrip van de buitenaardse biochemie, omdat het ontstaat als een biologische reactie op seizoensgebonden veranderingen in de omgeving en dus geen consequentie is van specifieke biologische activiteit die wel eens uniek kan zijn voor de aarde,” stelt onderzoeker Stephanie Olson.
Hier op aarde ontstaan seizoenen doordat de as van onze planeet wat schuin staat. Betekent dat dan dat de aanpak van Olson alleen werkt op exoplaneten met een schuine as? Zeker niet. Ook exoplaneten met een ovaalvormige baan kunnen seizoenen kennen, doordat ze het ene moment dichter bij hun moederster staan dan op andere momenten. Meer onderzoek moet uitwijzen welke veranderingen we in buitenaardse atmosferen kunnen verwachten en wat voor telescopen we nodig hebben om die veranderingen waar te kunnen nemen.
In a mission scheduled for the summer of 2020, NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars, the organization announced Friday.
The Mars 2020 mission, or the Red Planet rover mission, scheduled to launch in July of that year, will include the Mars helicopter, which NASA described as a “small, autonomous rotocraft.”
“NASA has a proud history of firsts,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars.”
The use of the helicopter is designed to show Mars’ ability to handle heavier-than-air vehicles. It will fly as an attachment to the belly pan of the Mars 2020 rover.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) says:“Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease. It is caused by the poliovirus. The virus spreads from person to person and can invade an infected person’s brain and spinal cord, causing paralysis.” So, you may well ask, what relevance does that have to the kinds of things that get discussed here at Mysterious Universe? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a strange story which has its origins in the late 1940s, specifically July 1, 1949. That was the date on which a still-unknown doctor and his wife encountered a UFO of the Flying Saucer kind while they were on vacation in Canada.
So impressed and amazed by what they saw, the pair – whose names are blacked-out in the now-declassified U.S. Air Force files on the affair – decided to contact the military and share their experience. The Air Force stated in its 1949 files, prepared by agent Elbert W. Farris, of Scott Air Force Base, Illinois: “Dr. and Mrs. [Deleted] of Decatur, Indiana, were interviewed on August 15, 1949, and stated that they had seen an unidentified aerial object which they thought to be a flying saucer. The sighting took place July 1, 1949 on Highway 70 about 50–70 miles north of Ft. Francis, Ontario, Canada, and near the east side of Lake of the Woods, Canada.”
That was far from being the end of the story, though. From documentation forwarded to staff at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, we learn that: “The object was described as silvery gray in color, flying in a westerly direction and was in sight for about 5 seconds. No vapor trails or protruding objects were noted. The object pursued a straight path of flight with an erratic motion comparable to that of an oblong object being thrown through the air. The aerial anomaly appeared to be faster than an airplane. It did not hover and was likened to a small aircraft at two thousand feet. Dr. [Deleted] observed no fins, no vapor trail and heard no sound. After passing across his line of vision, the object was lost from view behind the trees. The day was bright and sunny, and Dr. [Deleted] emphasized that he had definitely observed an object in the air unlike any other known to him. Mrs. [Deleted] corroborated her husband’s statements.“
It wasn’t just the Air Force that looked into the matter. It was the FBI, too. Indeed, the FBI’s office at Indianapolis addressed the issue because the doctor “found himself in the midst of a polio epidemic and that as a result he had read as much literature as possible with respect to polio, its symptoms, diagnosis, etc. Dr. [Deleted] told that in his opinion, the cases which were thought to be polio in the vicinity of Decatur, Indiana, were not polio, but possibly the result of uranium poisoning and that he felt the presence of flying saucers had direct bearing on the polio epidemic.”
Aliens spreading the polio virus? Or contaminating people with uranium? The FBI also recorded: “[The Doctor] pointed out that flying saucers were observed in the Carolinas in 1948 and there was a polio epidemic in the vicinity at that time. Dr. [Deleted] stated he had consulted one of the physicians at the Benjamin Harrison Air Base and had also checked the records with reference to allegations concerning the sighting of flying saucers and had done a little research with respect to correlating the presence of flying saucers and any polio epidemic.”
The documentation shows that personnel at the Indiana University Medical School considered the whole thing to be a waste of time – a huge joke and nothing else. That didn’t stop the Air Force from taking a careful and close look at the available data, however. On this aspect of the story, the Air Force files reveal the following: “Tabulation of flying saucer sightings from the available sources of the Indianapolis Starand the Indianapolis News, reveals that the majority of sightings took place in July and August for the years 1947, 1948 and 1949,” agent Farris recorded.
Farris added: “A responsible medical authority, confidential informant, CI-1, advised that the theory is ‘interesting’ and worthy of further research. [The Doctor] produced membership cards which show him to be a member of the Masons, Scottish Rite, Knights of Pythias, Loyal Order of Moose and the Eagles. He served as a Naval officer for 14 months and also held a commission in the United States Public Health Service. He is an associate member of the Association of Medicine, Bloomington, Indiana, and he is an associate member of the Association of Military Surgeons. He is a physician and surgeon.“
The uranium angle, brought up by the doctor, was also addressed. Agent Farris contacted, in his own words, “a reliable medical authority at Benjamin Harrison Air Force Base, Indiana,” who could hopefully “determine whether the possibility of uranium poisoning, as expounded by Dr. [Deleted] had any basis in fact.” Farris had more to say on this matter: “The authority, who preferred to remain anonymous, is hereinafter known as Confidential Informant CI-1. Informant CI-1 advised the writer that the Polio period extends from April to October, with the peak months of the disease being reached in July and August. Informant CI-1 was doubtful if the answer to the question of uranium poisoning could be readily answered, and he was of the opinion that the possibility and its connection with the Polio epidemic prevalent throughout the United States had never been explored.”
Personnel at the Aero Medical Laboratory Research Department at Wright-Patterson were also questioned by Farris: “Does [the] uranium element produce any physiological reaction in human beings corresponding to symptoms applicable to many of the so-called Polio clinical and sub-clinical conditions?” “Are topographical areas where so-called Flying Disc are predominantly seen (or known uranium deposits) pinpoints of endemic areas of clinical symptoms resembling Polio?”
On October 6, 1949, another Air Force report was prepared, this one revealing the following: “While it is true that some of the clinical symptoms of poliomyelitis may be similar to uranium poisoning, the over-all clinical syndrome is quite different. Progress in the case of uranium poisoning is very dismal, with recovery unlikely. Besides the heavy metal poisoning effect of uranium poisoning, there is also the prolonged and continuous radiation effect of uranium which cane be detected in the broad picture.”
The report adds: “This is quite a distinctive clinical feature of uranium poisoning which any physician should readily be able to recognize. It is also a feature which does not diminish with time and, hence, the patient does not recover. This results because the uranium is a long-lived radioactive isotope, which becomes fixed in the body and cannot be eliminated to any appreciable extent. Because of the above considerations, it is the opinion of this office that there is little, if any, ground for the theory that the annual poliomyelitis epidemics are related to radioactivity in any way. It is also to be noted that the annual outbreak of poliomyelitis during the summer months has been prevalent for many years prior to flying saucers and the widespread use of radioactive isotopes.”
The strange saga of a Flying Saucer, a doctor and his wife, the polio virus and the matter of uranium poisoning, was finally over. The file was closed on what was undeniably one of the weirdest UFO-themed investigations that the U.S. Air Force found itself involved in.
Red Glowing UFO spotted in the Constellation Canes Venatici
Red Glowing UFO spotted in the Constellation Canes Venatici
A skywatcher from Aztec New Mexico observed the constellation Canes Venatici by using his telescope when he captured an amazing red glowing object that travelled an enormous distance in space in just three minutes.
The skywatcher states:
On May 8, 2018 I was in my backyard doing astrophotography. My subjects that night were a pair of galaxies in the spring sky, NGC4631 and NGC4656 in the constellation Canes Venatici.
My equipment was a 103mm apochromatic refractor and a Canon EOS 6d DSLR.XX I was shooting 3 minute sub frames at the time. The object appeared on one of my subframes as it crossed thru the field of view.
My first impression was that it was some satellite or high flying aircraft. One of my submitted photos shows how far the object moved across the frame during this particular 3 minute exposure.
I just continued shooting more 3 minute frames of the galaxy field with the intention of deleting this frame from my total set of 15 frames to be stacked later for the final picture.
The object never appeared in any of my other frames and I did not see anything like it again that night.
The dimensions of the galaxy the object flew by ( NGC4631 ) is approx. 10' x 1.5' of arc. So, the object would have been quite small. Its astronomical magnitude was estimated at 8.0 - Mufon case 91964.
Astronaut Scott Kelly said he saw things out in space while he was onboard the space station. He of course keeps with his signed contract with NASA to keep quiet about what he believes it to really be. He talks about having doubts about if it was stars or unidentified flying objects that he witnessed. Its clear that Scott Kelly wants to hint to the public the truth of seeing extraterrestrial craft while in orbit around earth, but he is still afraid of the repercussions from the US government, which in essence could strip him of his retirement.
Scott Kelly is not the only astronaut to see things in space. Over 15 astronauts from Russia and America have witnessed strange flying objects that cannot be explained. So if so many experience astronauts say they have seen UFOs while in space, why are the public still doubting the existence of aliens? Scott C. Waring
News states:
“Flying in airplanes and flying in space, you know, I have had experiences where if I let my imagination run wild. I could say, ‘Wow. That’s an alien spaceship,’” Kelly explains. “Even on the space station. I mean, I would often see something, and I would be like, ‘That’s not behaving like a star or a satellite.’”
Kelly says he also experienced this when flying jets, especially over the water at night.
Astronomers have begun searching for signals from extraterrestrials in the Galaxy
Astronomers have begun searching for signals from extraterrestrials in the Galaxy
On the radio telescope CSIRO Parkes in Australia began a large-scale search for messages from extraterrestrial civilizations. Astronomers survey a fair part of the Galaxy, and now they are hoping to find signals from aliens.
The idea of interstellar radio communication was expressed long ago. In the end, in the universe there are not so many ways to transfer information over long distances. Almost the only opportunity to learn something about the distant cosmos is to receive and analyze the electromagnetic radiation of celestial bodies. So, if a certain civilization has astronomy in general, that is, telescopes. And surely these tools cover all possible types of radiation, from radio waves to gamma rays. For any serious astronomy, this is simply necessary, given how different the sky looks in different ranges. And from the receiver (telescope) one step to the transmitter. Why radio waves, not, say, visible light or X-rays? They have a number of advantages. For radio communication is not an obstacle interplanetary dust and atmosphere of almost any composition. Radio waves are best focused, which allows you to choose where to send the signal and where to wait for it. The radio signal is most easily changed if it is necessary to put information into it. Finally, radio emission requires less energy, which is also very important. The first searches for such signals were made back in the 1960s and have since been repeatedly renewed on an increasingly advanced technical basis. Although no one received a greeting from the brothers by reason, or in any case did not notice, humanity does not lose hope and is ready to try again and again. “Vesti.Nauka” (nauka.vesti.ru) already talked about the project Breakthrough Listen, founded by Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner. One of the tools involved in this initiative is the Australian telescope. The search for alien messages with his help began in 2016. But then it was about “listening” to a few stars in the immediate vicinity of the Earth. Now the work came out literally to the galactic level. This was facilitated by the modernization of the telescope, carried out with the help of a Russian billionaire. The radio telescope nowadays simultaneously looks at 13 directions in the sky. This allows him to survey the entire area of the Milky Way, visible from this point on the globe. It covers the galactic latitudes from minus 6.5 to plus 6.5 degrees and longitudes from minus 174 degrees to plus 60 degrees. The total area is 3000 square degrees, which is 15,000 times larger than the full Moon. Astronomers expect to “hear” a transmitter sent to Earth, equivalent to only 20 Arecibo locators, even if it is not closer to Earth than the center of the Galaxy. True, if aliens radiate radio waves not in a narrow cone, but evenly in all directions, they will need more impressive power at this distance: 1014 watts. But a populated planet may be closer, and who knows what energies are subject to the brothers in the mind? New high-speed receivers perceive 130 gigabits of information per second. Only in 2018 it is planned to spend 1500 hours of observations and accumulate almost 100 petabytes of data. This is one of the most ambitious projects to search for extraterrestrial civilizations (SETI). The main task in processing information is to identify signals of artificial origin. Developers use for this purpose their own mathematical algorithm and invite everyone to participate in its improvement. In addition, it is necessary to reject the interference of terrestrial origin. Among the sources of such signals are satellites, airplanes and so on. This will help the fact that the telescope now receives radio waves from several directions at once. The fact is that terrestrial and near-Earth radio sources are quite powerful (because they are close). They break through even into those petals of the radiation pattern, which “look” is not at all on them. Therefore, such a signal, unlike a truly cosmic signal, looks outgoing from several directions at once.
“We hope to find evidence that our planet is not the only one among the hundreds of billions in the Galaxy where a reasonable life has arisen,” concludes Danny Price of the University of California at Berkeley. Of course, astronomers are not going to spend the observational time of the instrument, which has become so perfect, solely on the search for a hypothetical “Ay, earthlings!”. In parallel, in the same data, specialists will look for rapid radio bursts – mysterious outbursts, of which we have talked a lot.
Le SETI travaille sur de nombreux projets différents et l’un d’eux a pour but d’utiliser une intelligence artificielle afin de nous aider à rechercher et à trouver une forme de vie extraterrestre. Comment ? Tout simplement en lui apprenant à penser différemmentde nous.
L’Institut est un organisme sans but lucratif. Créé au milieu des années 80 par Thomas Pierson et Jill Tarter, il a pour but d’explorer, de comprendre et d’expliquer l’origine et la nature de la vie dans l’Univers.
En tout, le SETI compte une cinquantaine de chercheurs différents et il a également eu de nombreux mécènes tout au long de son histoire.
Le SETI, une histoire très mouvementée
Parmi les plus connus se trouvent Carl Sagan, David Packard ou encore les incontournables William Reddington Hewlett et Paul Allen.
L’institut finance plusieurs programmes différents et l’un d’entre eux a pour but de chercher des signaux d’une vie extraterrestre intelligente en utilisant des télescopes et des radiotélescopes.
Et tout le problème est là, finalement. Le SETI, comme tous les organismes du même genre, cherche des signes d’intelligence en se focalisant sur des techniques et technologies de communication semblables aux nôtres.
Toutefois, cette stratégie a bien entendu ses limites. Si une civilisation extraterrestre existe réellement, alors rien ne dit qu’elle utilise les transmissions radio pour communiquer.
Prenez notre propre planète par exemple. Contrairement à ce que pensent beaucoup de gens, l’être humain n’est pas la seule espèce intelligente à vivre sur ce monde. Les fourmis, par exemple, vivent elles aussi en société et elles ont même développé des techniques d’agriculture semblables aux nôtres… et ce avant même que nous en ayons l’idée.
Or justement, pour communiquer entre elles, les fourmis n’utilisent pas les ondes radio. Elles font appel à une forme de communication olfactive.
En toute logique, si une vie extraterrestre intelligente existe quelque part dans l’Univers, alors sa technologie a de fortes chances d’être très différente de la nôtre. Dans ce cas, les observations menées par le SETI ou même par le Breakthrough Listen sont loin d’être suffisantes.
Une IA pour penser différemment
Le SETI en a parfaitement conscience et l’organisation a ainsi monté un nouveau groupe de travail intitulé Decoding Alien Intelligence, un groupe piloté par Nathalie A. Cabrol, la directrice du Centre Carl Sagan.
La première session s’est déroulée entre le 14 et le 16 mars dernier et plusieurs scientifiques multidisciplinaires se sont ainsi réunis pour débattre de l’intelligence extraterrestre et tenter de déterminer les formes qu’elle pourrait potentiellement revêtir.
Nathalie A. Cabrol s’intéresse depuis longtemps à cette délicate question et elle avait même écrit un article entièrement dédié à la chose en 2016, un article dans lequel elle disait en substance que l’être humain allait devoir apprendre à penser en dehors de ses propres connaissances pour espérer découvrir une forme de vie extraterrestre.
Plusieurs pistes sont bien entendu envisageables et l’une d’elles en particulier semble dotée d’un fort potentiel. Graham Mackintosh, un consultant travaillant en collaboration avec le SETI et spécialisé dans toutes les questions liées à l’IA, pense en effet que l’intelligence artificielle pourrait jouer un rôle décisif dans la recherche d’une forme de vie extraterrestre intelligente en cherchant des signaux bien différents de ceux envisagés par nos propres scientifiques.
Compte tenu de sa nature, une IA n’est pas limitée par son vécu ou par son expérience et elle a donc la possibilité d’aborder des problématiques sous un angle très différent de celui de l’esprit humain.
En conséquence, Graham Mackintosh pense que la clé de la recherche d’une forme de vie extraterrestre réside peut-être dans l’IA.
Bien sûr, rien n’est encore acté pour le moment, mais il faut avouer que cette piste semble assez prometteuse
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How Cold War anxiety and citizen science fuelled Canada's massive UFO report files
How Cold War anxiety and citizen science fuelled Canada's massive UFO report files
Canadian government quietly collected thousands of citizen reports of UFO and alien sightings
CBC Radio
From the 1950s to the mid-1990s, the Canadian government quietly collected and documented thousands of citizen reports detailing UFO sightings or alien encounters.
(Ben Shannon/CBC)
Flying saucers. Little green men. Mysterious flashes in the sky.
They're all common elements in reported sightings of paranormal phenomena from around the world.
One might wonder who would take the time to listen to accounts of aliens from people who were otherwise going about their daily business.
It turns out that, for decades, the Canadian government did just that.
Matthew Hayes, a PhD student at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., has been looking into nearly 15,000 pages of documents detailing UFO sightings that the Canadian government had collected between the 1950s and 1990s.
T (Steph Hayes)
Matthew Hayes, a PhD student at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., has been looking into nearly 15,000 pages of documents detailing UFO sightings. They're publicly available in an online database run by Library and Archives Canada.
"I'm not out to prove it one way or the other: whether aliens exist, or whether UFOs exist. I'm really just interested in it as a social phenomenon," he told Ideas.
"What did UFOs mean to scientists and politicians, and to the military in Canada? What did they do about it, and how do they understand it?
The earliest recorded UFO reports date back to shortly after the end of the Second World War. During the war, Canadians might have looked to the sky worried they would spot incoming enemy aircraft. Some people reported sightings to the RCMP.The government came up with a formal questionnaire for investigators to use when people reported a UFO sighting.
(Ben Shannon/CBC)
Many of the documents Hayes is studying come from the results of this questionnaire. Others are memos between government officials debating what to do with the questionnaire responses.
Among some of the encounters described in the files:
Four separate witnesses in Peterborough described an aircraft about 50 feet (15 metres) long travelling at high speeds at high altitudes. They didn't know what it was, only that it did not look like any kind of airplane they were familiar with.
While cleaning the dishes in her home on the Bloodvein First Nation, Man., a woman observed a three-foot-tall creature with an egg-shaped head, sharp pointy ears and wrinkled eyes. She didn't see a nose or a mouth.
In 1967, mechanic Stefan Michalak described seeing a flying saucer-like object while prospecting around Falcon Lake, Manitoba. The object somehow severely burned and injured him. It's arguably the best-known and most extensively documented encounter with a so-called UFO in Canada.
By 1990, the government's documentation of UFO sightings slowed considerably, according to Hayes. In 1995, Canada shut down the program altogether.
But back in the '50s, officials were much less ready to dismiss UFO reports as crazy stories.
A witness's drawing of an unidentified object found in the archive of UFO reports. (Library and Archives Canada)
As historian Edward Jones-Imhotep explained, paranoia around the unidentified in that era was very real, fuelled in part by stories of aliens but also by more immediate anxieties regarding the Soviet Union.
"If you take a globe of the world in 1950 and you look down on the North Pole, you realize very quickly that the shortest line between the Soviet Union and the United States," he explained.
"So the line that Soviet bombers would take to attack U.S. cities with hydrogen bombs, for instance, passes directly over Canada."
Cold War anxiety, fear
Canada became, rather incidentally, an area of "intense interest" during the Cold War. Its skies had to be monitored constantly and extensively.
That ended up including any citizen reports about unusual phenomena, which may describe anything from a possible Soviet attack to the product of a child's overactive imagination.
But it could also be partly attributed to basic fear: not of actual aliens, for the most part — but fear of the unknown.
"The real fear, it seems, is the fact that these things are simply unidentified," said Jones-Imhotep.
Historian Edward Jones-Imhotep explains that the paranoia around aliens in the late 21st century can be partially explained by real-world anxieties of the Cold War.
(Angela Lewis)
"It's the idea that perhaps they're aliens, perhaps are extraterrestrials, but more threatening than that is just the idea that there are things that you don't know about — the things that you can't identify."
From a political viewpoint, fear of the unknown can percolate down to colour citizens' perception of the unknown. The language about aliens in popular culture at the time, which could reflect intrigue or xenophobia, could just as easily be applied to a hostile foreign power.
If you can create or stoke this kind of fear of aliens ... you can also end up translating that same language into fear of the Soviets.-
Edward Jones-Imhotep
"They have hostile motives. They can't be trusted. They're up to these secret projects," said Jones-Imhotep.
"If you can create or stoke this kind of fear of aliens, there's a way that you can also end up translating that same language into fear of the Soviets."
Citizen science
Whatever one may think of the veracity of the UFO reports — or of the reliability of the people who made these reports — it's hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the files that currently live in the government's digital archives.
And while the approach might seem scattershot at first glance, it was in fact done with a purpose in mind.
Lorraine Daston, executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, describes the project as "an involuntary exercise in citizen science" that covered more ground than any single scientific mission could.
(Ben Shannon/CBC)
"It's often very difficult to detect patterns unless you have an enormous haul of data," she explained.
"Even though 15,000 [pages] sounds like a large number, if you're scanning the sky every night for a decade, it's not that many. So they're [relatively] rare."
There aren't enough scientists or government inspectors interested in possibly paranormal events to cover all that ground — so they turned to volunteers.
Professional skepticism
In the end, none of the reports gathered by the Canadian government — or any other government, as far as we're aware — provided undisputed proof that aliens have ever made contact with humans.
But they still provide some insight into the intelligence-gathering strategies of the time. They also provide some entertaining reading.
An excerpt from a 1990 report out of Bloodvein First Nation, Man., where multiple community members alleged to have witnessed 'a U.F.O. and little men.'
(Library and Archives Canada)
Take this note that Hayes found, of a meteorological officer from the Department of Transport describing a 1968 report of an unidentified flying object over Frobisher Bay.
"[The officer] is of the opinion that the object was an experimental or weather balloon at a height of well over 100,000 feet."
It continues: "There have been no reports of landing by little green men or other weird non-world creatures. Furthermore, there have been no reports that all our women are pregnant."
Written by Jonathan Ore. This episode was produced by Nicola Luksic and Tom Howell.
Our guests for this program:
Matthew Hayes is a PhD student in Canadian Studies at Trent University. His thesis centres on the roughly 15,000 pages of UFO-related documents archived by the Canadian government from the early Cold War to 1995.
Edward Jones-Imhotep is an associate professor of history at York University. His work centres on the social and cultural life of machines. He is the author of The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War.
Stan Michalak's father Stefan experienced Canada's most famous UFO sighting at Falcon Lake in 1967.
Chris Rutkowski co-authored the book about the Falcon Lake incident with Stan Michalak. He is a science writer with a special interest in UFO sightings.
Lorraine Daston is the director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. She is the author of numerous books on the history of science and co-editor of Biographies of Scientific Objects.
Massimo Pigliucci is a professor of philosophy at City University New York and author of Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk.
‘UFO’ haalt energie uit bliksemschicht. Dit opzienbarende filmpje is zojuist viraal gegaan
‘UFO’ haalt energie uit bliksemschicht. Dit opzienbarende filmpje is zojuist viraal gegaan
Een bizar YouTube-filmpje van een UFO die energie uit een bliksemschicht zou onttrekken, is viraal gegaan. De video is geplaatst door het kanaal SecureTeam10, meldt Fox News.
Het filmpje toont naar verluidt een object bij een bliksemschicht in de lucht boven Tsjechië. De video is enkele dagen geleden geplaatst en al meer dan een half miljoen keer bekeken.
Natuurlijke energiebronnen
Een ‘driehoekige UFO’ zou de schicht met gemak volgen. Sommigen zeggen dat het inderdaad om een UFO gaat, terwijl anderen denken dat het een hoax is.
“Ze laden duidelijk hun ‘batterijen’ op door gebruik te maken van natuurlijke energiebronnen,” schreef iemand.
“Aliens zijn niet echt, ze zijn in de jaren veertig verzonnen door Hollywood,” schreef iemand anders.
Back to the Future
Meerdere mensen trokken een parallel met de filmreeks Back to the Future omdat een bliksemschicht ervoor zorgde dat de auto van Marty McFly kon vliegen.
“Doc Brown deed het in Back to the Future en nu gebruiken aliens bliksemschichten om hun vaartuigen aan te drijven,” klonk het.
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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...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
