Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 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...
20-07-2018
Scientists Just Discovered 12 New Jupiter Moons - One Of Them Is On A Collision Course
Scientists Just Discovered 12 New Jupiter Moons - One Of Them Is On A Collision Course
Scientists have discovered 12 new moons that orbit Jupiter, but it appears there is an issue: one moon is on a suicide mission!
Researchers came across the new discovery during a search for the mysterious Planet X said to be hiding outside of Neptune`s orbit. If found it would make it the most distant planet out there.
The researchers found the moons back in March of last year thanks to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. However, they did not want to report them and kept them quiet for more than a year so they could get confirmation that they were in orbit around Jupiter.
These are images of one of the new moons, named Valetudo. The moon can be seen moving relative to the steady state background of distant stars.
The Discovery of the New Moons Mean Jupiter Now Has 79 in Total
Jupiter, of course, is known for its big amount of moons, but the addition of twelve more means that in total there are 79 moons in orbit around the planet.
Nine of these moons are in an outer group orbiting around Jupiter in retrograde, which means they are traveling in the total opposite direction to the spin of the planet. Scientists believe they are what is left over of the bigger parent bodies probably broke up with they collided with comets, asteroids, and moons.
In prograde orbit around Jupiter, there are two moons, and they are traveling in line with the spin of Jupiter. These are pieces of a bigger moon that were broken in orbit, and these take about one year to go around the planet.
The 12th new moon that scientists discovered has been called the oddball moon as it is less than one kilometer in width with the body circling Jupiter at a distance crossing path with the other new moons found.
The new moon Valetudo was given the name from the great-granddaughter of the Roman god Jupiter, goddess of health and hygiene. Valetudo is on a collision course that could end in destruction the name Vale Tudo is appropriate when using the Portuguese translation, which means “anything goes”, which is a form of full-contact martial arts.
Sheppard said:
“Valetudo is like driving down the highway on the wrong side of the road. It is moving prograde while all the other objects at a similar distance from Jupiter are moving retrograde. Thus head-on collisions are likely.”
NEW MOON, I SAW YOU ORBIT ALONE Of 12 recently discovered Jovian moons (illustrated in bold orange, blue and green), one orbits in the opposite direction of its neighbors (arrows show orbit direction). Four moons discovered by Galileo are also shown (purple).
ROBERTO MOLAR CANDANOSA/CARNEGIE INSTITUTION FOR SCIENCE
Astronomers have found 12 more moons around Jupiter, and one is really weird. While 11 orbit in the same direction as their nearest neighbors, one doesn’t, potentially putting it on a fatal collision course.
“It’s driving down the highway on the wrong side of the road,” says planetary scientist Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.
Astronomers Just Discovered 12 NEW Moons Around Jupiter
Sheppard and colleagues found the moons while looking for something else entirely: a putative planet that could exist beyond the orbit of Neptune, known colloquially as Planet Nine (SN: 7/23/16, p. 7). During a survey in 2017 of the most distant objects in the solar system using the Victor Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile, Jupiter happened to be visible in the same area of sky that the team was searching during one of its observing runs. “Might as well kill two birds with one stone,” Sheppard thought.
The researchers found a dozen objects moving around the sun at the same rate as Jupiter. Follow-up observations confirmed the moons’ existence and orbits: two inner moons that orbit in the same direction that Jupiter spins, nine outer moons that orbit the planet in the opposite direction and one oddball traveler. The researchers announced two of the moons in 2017 and the remaining 10 on July 16.
The motions of all but the oddball are normal for Jovian moons, which now number a whopping 79. Scientists think that’s because the inner moons formed from a disk of gas and dust that orbited the giant planet in the solar system’s early days, similar to how the planets formed around the sun (SN: 5/12/18, p. 28). The outer moons were probably free-floating space rocks captured when they came too close, and their opposite orbit was set by the direction that they approached Jupiter from.
But one moon broke the mold. This rock, which the team calls Valetudo for the Roman goddess of health and hygiene, is tiny, only about a kilometer across. It orbits in the same direction as Jupiter’s spin, but alongside the farther-out retrograde moons. As a result, Valetudo is probably doomed to collide with one or more of the other moons someday. The researchers are still calculating when, but they expect it to occur sometime between 100 million and a billion years from now.
Valetudo may be the last remnant of a bigger object that has already withstood several collisions, or of a family of moons that has since been smashed to smithereens. “It’s probably the largest surviving member, if not the only one,” Sheppard says.
Such nonconformist satellites are not rare, notes planetary scientist David Jewitt of UCLA, who was not involved in the new work. “But they are very interesting, because we know that they have been captured by their host planets, but we don't know how, or from where,” he says. Figuring out what oddballs like Valetudo are made of could help nail those details down.
Editor's note: This story was updated July 18, 2018, to clarify that of the 12 newfound moons, two were announced in 2017 and the remaining 10 on July 16.
Ce que la science actuelle sait des extraterrestres
Ce que la science actuelle sait des extraterrestres
Plus que jamais, la quête d’une vie extraterrestre passionne les chercheurs. Succès en Angleterre, «Aliens», publié pour la première fois en français cet été, fait le point sur ce que l’on sait de nos potentiels voisins de galaxie
Virginie Nussbaum
Depuis près de soixante ans, la science a les yeux rivés sur les étoiles. En 1959, le SETI, institut dédié à la recherche d’intelligence extraterrestre, voyait le jour et, depuis, des millions de kilomètres de cosmos ont été scannés et inondés d’émissions radio.
Mais où en est-on aujourd’hui? L’Univers est-il désespérément vide, ou y a-t-il des raisons de croire que nous ne sommes pas seuls? Pour faire le point, Jim Al-Khalili, professeur britannique de physique théorique à l’Université de Surrey, s’est entouré d’une douzaine de scientifiques de tous bords.
Dans Aliens, vendu à plus de 50 000 exemplaires en Grande-Bretagne et publié cet été dans sa version française, ils décortiquent les quelques certitudes et nombreuses inconnues qui subsistent quant à nos potentiels voisins de galaxie.
Le Temps: Sommes-nous à un tournant dans notre exploration de l’espace?
Jim Al-Khalili: On peut dire ça, oui! Ces dernières années, des avancées dans le domaine de l’astronomie ont rendu la recherche de vie dans l’espace… faisable, tout simplement. Au lieu de nous contenter de pointer un radiotélescope en espérant capter quelque chose d’intéressant, les technologies actuelles nous permettent d’identifier des planètes semblables à la Terre, à l’image de Proxima b, découverte en 2016 à quelques années-lumière d’ici. En 2020, un nouveau télescope, nommé James-Webb, promet d'étudier encore plus précisément la lumière venue d'autres systèmes stellaires. Des recherches pour le moins respectables, alors que les scientifiques, qui les associaient aux théories du complot et aux petits hommes verts hollywoodiens, les ont longtemps dédaignées.
Le cinéma, comme la littérature, s’empare en effet inlassablement du sujet. Pourquoi cette fascination pour la figure de l’alien?
Parce qu’elle nous renvoie à une question fondamentale: sommes-nous seuls dans l’Univers? Et d’où venons-nous? Pour les croyants c’est simple, Dieu a créé cette planète et nous avec. Mais, scientifiquement, nous aimerions comprendre pourquoi, dans un espace que l’on sait immense, nous ferions office d’exception.
Au contraire, on entend souvent que, au vu de l’immensité de l’Univers, nous devrions avoir un alter ego quelque part…
Ce qui est vrai, c’est que les planètes réunissant tous les ingrédients favorables à la vie – l’eau, l’énergie et le carbone – sont bien plus nombreuses qu’on l’imaginait. On pense même que, sous leurs couches de glace, les lunes de Saturne et Jupiter pourraient être des candidates! Mais ça ne signifie pas pour autant que la vie y soit née comme sur la Terre, ou ait jamais dépassé le stade de cellule microbienne unique.
Car notre propre évolution est le résultat d’une longue chaîne de coïncidences.
Exactement. Et puisque nous n’avons que notre exemple sous la main, nous ne pouvons pas encore chiffrer statistiquement la mince probabilité que ce cas se reproduise. Personnellement, j’ai la conviction que nous observerons des signes de vie microbienne extraterrestre de mon vivant encore.
Et si nous détectons effectivement des voisins, à quoi pourraient-ils ressembler?
Nous avons tendance à tout antropomorpher: notre alien typique est un E.T., avec deux bras, tout au plus quelques doigts en moins… alors que notre apparence est totalement accidentelle! Le filmPremier contact, sorti en 2016, est intéressant à ce niveau car il représente les extraterrestres sous la forme de pieuvres immenses, dont l’intelligence se révèle très éloignée de la nôtre. En réalité, il y a plus de chances que les extraterrestres ne nous ressemblent pas du tout.
Ou qu’ils prennent la forme de machines, comme le suggère votre livre?
En effet. Pensez à l’humanité: nous utilisons déjà des robots alors que nous en sommes au tout début de nos explorations. Il y a fort à parier que, d’ici à quelques centaines d’années, l’intelligence artificielle voyagera pour nous, car elle survit dans des conditions extrêmes. Logiquement, ceux qui nous rendraient visite aujourd’hui devraient être en avance sur nous technologiquement parlant. Il est donc probable qu’ils nous apparaissent sous la forme de machines en silicone plutôt que d’êtres biologiques.
Il se pourrait que les aliens nous aient devancés au point d’avoir déjà disparu…
C’est possible. Sur l’échelle temporelle du cosmos, notre fenêtre de recherche est plus qu’étroite. Peut-être que des civilisations se sont formées puis éteintes il y a des milliards d’années, et que nous avons tout bonnement manqué la fête.
Votre livre pose une autre question intéressante: s’ils existent, pourquoi les aliens entreraient-ils en contact avec nous?
Dans les scénarios hollywoodiens, on les imagine nous attaquer, nous manger ou encore nous utiliser à des fins de procréation. Pourtant, rien ne peut nous assurer que cette forme de vie serait elle aussi basée sur l’ADN, et donc que ces interactions auraient un sens. Et que pourrait-on posséder que cette civilisation avancée n’ait pas déjà? Non, je pense que sa motivation serait avant tout la curiosité. Vouloir savoir et comprendre n’est pas un trait humain, mais un trait d’intelligence.
Pour résumer, nous investissons du temps et des sommes folles à chercher quelque chose d'hautement improbable...
Cet argument revient régulièrement, dans toutes les branches scientifiques: pourquoi rechercher le boson de Higgs au Cern plutôt qu'une cure contre le cancer? Mais comprendre le monde et comment il fonctionne est ce qui nous rend humain. Et nous continuerons à le faire.
Aliens: ce que la science sait de la vie dans l’Univers, sous la direction de Jim Al-Khalili, Quanto, 2018, 320p.
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Alien Planets Without Oxygen Could Still Be Home To Extraterrestrial Life
Alien Planets Without Oxygen Could Still Be Home To Extraterrestrial Life
Scientists should not quickly rule out planets without oxygen in the quest for alien life. Researchers said these no-oxygen worlds could in fact be filled with microbial life. ( NASA/JPL )
The search for extraterrestrial life should not disregard planets with zero oxygen, as these other worlds may just be teeming with microbial life.
A team of researchers has found huge fluctuations in oxygen levels of ancient Earth that took place before the Great Oxidation Event.
They believe the same fluctuations could be happening in other planets, which means it is possible that planets with undetectable oxygen could be home to simple microorganisms that dominated the Earth a few billion years ago.
The Great Oxidation Event
Researchers at the University of Washington have found that, for hundreds of millions of years before the Great Oxidation Event, oxygen levels varied tremendously.
Around 3.5 billion years ago, the only life forms on the planet were one-celled microorganisms, such as the blue-green algae called cyanobacteria.
These simple microbes evolved a way to make their own food by using sunlight to create sugar out of water and carbon dioxide. The process, called photosynthesis, created oxygen as a waste product, which the bacteria released into the atmosphere.
Over a billion years, some experts believe the one-celled cyanobacteria became multicellular, allowing it to pump more oxygen into the atmosphere in an event that changed the course of the planet.
A Minor Whiff Before The Major Event
The Great Oxidation Event, which is believed to have happened between 3 and 1 billion years ago, is one of the defining moments in Earth's history. Without the rise of oxygen levels, plant and animal species seen today, including humans, would not be around.
However, the researchers say they have found an instance of rising oxygen levels before the Great Oxidation Event took place. This ancient "whiff" shows that oxygenation did not happen in a single geological breath. It was a complex process characterized by ebbs and flows in oxygen levels.
"The production and destruction of oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere over time was a war with no evidence of a clear winner, until the Great Oxidation Event," says lead author Matt Koehler, PhD student in Earth and space sciences.
Implications For The Search For Alien Life
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could keep researchers involved in the search for alien life from discounting false negatives, such as planets that may not have detectable oxygen levels.
When searching for signs of life in other planets, experts look for biosignatures that increase the possibility of success. One of these is the presence of oxygen. However, just because a planet does not have oxygen does not mean life cannot exist on it.
Ancient Earth, after all, was teeming with bacteria at least a billion years before the planet's oxygen levels rose. The researchers believe it is entirely possible that a planet with no oxygen may just be in the ebb phase of its own oxygenation event.
"One of the strongest atmospheric biosignatures is thought to be oxygen," says coauthor Roger Buick, "but this study confirms that during a planet's transition to becoming permanently oxygenated, its surface environments may be oxic for intervals of only a few million years and then slip back into anoxia."
Rock Samples Show Signs Of Oxygen
By analyzing sediment samples collected at the Jeerinah Formation in Western Australia, Koehler's team found rising oxygen levels that took place 2.66 billion years ago.
The minor oxygenation event lasted 50 million years, which is hardly a blink in geological time, and spanned hundreds of miles across a wide body of water.
The researchers looked for traces of nitrogen isotopes and selenium in the rock layers. Both are indications of the presence of oxygen.
They found a gradual rise in nitrogen isotopes ended by an abrupt disappearance, leading the researchers to believe that oxygen levels gradually rose before immediately dropping off.
They also found traces of selenium in a shallow part of the marine basin, which means the selenium must have come from the land. When oxygen levels are high, more selenium gets drained into the sea through the rusting of rocks and is deposited into ocean sediments.
The samples collected by the researchers show high selenium levels in the sediments, suggesting that there was an oxygen spike in the atmosphere at the time.
In 2007, an international team of researchers also discovered a similar whiff that took place 50 to 100 million years before the Great Oxidation Event.
The asteroid Ryugu as seen by Hayabusa 2 from 40 km away.
JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu and AIST
It’s been nearly four years since the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 blasted off, heading for a small asteroid that was then known only as 1999 JU3.
Back then, we didn't have many details about 1999 JU3—not even a good picture of the object. But JAXA, the Japanese space agency, still planned to visit it with Hayabusa-2, use explosives to blast debris off its surface, scoop up the fresh asteroid dust and return its cargo back to Earth, after depositing a few mini-rovers on the surface of the asteroid, of course.
The asteroid needed a better name. Eventually it was reborn as Ryugu, the name of the underwater palace of the Dragon God in Japanese mythology. The hero in one Japanese legend visits Ryugu and returns with precious cargo, a trajectory that Hayabusa-2’s creators hope to emulate with more success than the original Hayabusa mission. While that sample-return mission to an asteroid did succeed in bringing back a very small sample of asteroid dust in 2010, the mission encountered a host of obstacles and malfunctions.
Hayabusa-2 started its final approach towards Ryugu on June 3, and the asteroid is starting to come into focus. But it takes time to get a clear picture. In this image, taken on June 10 from 1,500 miles away, Ryugu is a blob just 5 or 6 pixels across.
Ryugu as seen from 1500 km away.
JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu and AIST
By June 14, Hayabusa-2 was 700 km away, and JAXA researchers were finally able to see the asteroid’s rotation, which is in retrograde—rotating in the opposite direction in relation to the orbit of planets around the Sun. It was also rotating around its vertical axis.
A gif of the asteroid Ryugu as seen from 700 km away.
JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu and AIST
As the spacecraft gets closer, more details emerge. Researchers found that Ryugu makes a full rotation every 7.5 hours, and found that it’s tapered shape resembled a spinning top. Mission Manager, Makoto Yoshikawa wrote “When I saw these images, I was surprised that Ryugu is very similar in shape to both the destination of the US OSIRIS-REx mission, asteroid Bennu, and also the target of the previously proposed MarcoPolo-R mission by Europe, asteroid 2008 EV5.” Yoshikawa writes. “So far, the asteroids we have explored have been different in shape, so Ryugu and Bennu could be the first time two similar-shaped asteroids have been examined. It will be interesting to clarify exactly what this similarity means scientifically.”
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to begin its approach to the asteroid Bennu in August of this year. Though they are on two separate timelines (OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016, and will spend a year surveying the asteroid), a main goal of both missions is to return a sample of an asteroid to Earth, a project scientists from each mission have been working closely together on to share information.
Images taken by Hayabusa-2 of Ryugu at distances between 220 km and 100 km.
In the most recent photo (seen at the top of this post) an even more detailed image comes into focus, an angular spinning shape pocketed with craters. Project Manager, Yuichi Tsuda compares the shape to the crystalline shape of fluorite, which he says in Japanese is known as the “firefly stone.” The resemblance is pretty uncanny.
Fluorite crystals can bear a striking resemblance to the asteroid Ryugu.
Ryugu is technically classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, but this does not mean you need to worry about it. As Ryan Mandelbaum points out at Gizmodo the ‘potentially hazardous’ designation does not mean that an asteroid is likely to hit Earth any time soon. It could, maybe at some point in the distant future, but it’s being tracked and closely monitored, so we’d have plenty of warning should its path eventually cross our own.
Researchers are interested in Ryugu because it is a C-class asteroid, one of the most common types of asteroids. By analyzing material from the space rock, scientists hope to get a better understanding of how bodies in the solar system, from asteroids to planets, developed.
Hayabusa-2 is scheduled to arrive at Ryugu on June 27, staying about 20 km above the asteroid’s surface. If all goes well, it will gather its first sample sometime between September and October.
Why this blind, catlike robot could transform search and rescue
Why this blind, catlike robot could transform search and rescue
No vision, no problem.
by Sarah Cahlan
MIT's Cheetah 3 robot can climb stairs and step over obstacles without the help of cameras or visual sensors.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Scientists at MIT have created a four-legged robot that can climb debris-ridden stairs and leap almost three feet into the air, but the ominous-looking catlike bot — dubbed "Cheetah 3" — is intended not to hasten the robot apocalypse but to help bring about a new generation of first-responder robots.
As seen in a video released by the university, the 90-pound, retriever-sized robot navigates with touch sensors rather than cameras — a bit like the way humans feel their way when it's too dark to see.
“Cheetah 3 is designed to do versatile tasks such as power plant inspection, which involves various terrain conditions including stairs, curbs and obstacles on the ground,” Sangbae Kim, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and one of the robot's developers, said in a statement.
Kim plans to give Cheetah sight, but for early tests he wanted to keep the robot in the dark. "In order to be as agile as animals, including humans, we need to have a great blind controller first before relying on vision," he told NBC News MACH in an email.
Growing concern over fire risk involving Kia vehicles
Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University, sees big potential for search-and-rescue robots that maneuver with touch technology. Such bots could navigate in areas shrouded in darkness or obscured by airborne dust, said Murphy, who is not involved in the Cheetah project.
“It would be so great when that technology that they're showing matures and could be added to the robots that are the size of a shoebox,” she said of the MIT researchers' work. Small bots, of course, are able to get inside nooks and crannies too confined for humans — and relay information that human rescuers can then use to extricate victims of building collapses, for example.
“If you just start excavating, you could possibly trigger a secondary collapse that would kill the survivor or another survivor that you haven't found yet,” she said.
Search-and-rescue robots aren't new, but Cheetah 3 is one of many new bots now in development. Last fall, Honda unveiled a five-foot-tall robotthat can rotate its torso 180 degrees in order to climb steep stairs. Last February, the Italian Institute of Technology released a video showing its WALK-MAN humanoid bot wielding a fire extinguisher.
Next year, Kim and his team plan to equip Cheetah 3 with robotic arms that can be controlled by a human operator. They aim to have a commercial version of their bot ready in five years.
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9 UFO Sightings No One Can Explain
9 UFO Sightings No One Can Explain
Krista Carothers
Lots of unidentified flying objects turn out to be weather balloons, clouds, or planes, but there are definitely sightings that can’t be explained away so easily.
Most UFOs don’t stay unidentified
Christoff/Shutterstock
UFO sightings often turn out to have very simple explanations, such as “aircraft, astronomical objects, rocket launches, balloons (escaped party balloons at sunset are particularly effective!), birds, insects, intensely bright squid lights used by Japanese fishermen, and so forth,” saysSeth Shostak, senior astronomer and fellow at theSETI Institute, which is dedicated to exploring the origins of life and intelligence in the universe. In 1973, before he became president, Jimmy Carter reported seeing a UFO, but it’s widely believed to have been the planet Venus. The debris found at Roswell Army Airfield in New Mexico in 1947 turns out to have been from a top-secret experimental spy balloon project that wasn’t declassified for almost half a century.
But not all can be explained away
Ivan Cholakov/Shutterstock
In December 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense acknowledged to The New York Times that it had been running a program focused on investigating unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) received about $22 million in funding between 2007 and when it was shut down in 2012, according to the Pentagon. Two infrared videos were released with the articles that showed an encounter between Navy fighter jets and a UFO off the coast of California in 2004. Commander David Fravor, who was piloting one of the jets, told the paper that after a radio operator asked him to check out a mysterious aircraft, he flew to the specified location and saw the seawater churning below him. A whitish, oval-shaped aircraft was hovering above the water. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Fravor told the Times, admitting that it made him feel “pretty weirded out.” Here are more science mysteries no one has figured out.
Unidentified, but not necessarily alien
Natural Earth Imagery/Shutterstock
Of course, just because there’s no explanation for an event does not mean it was a visit from extraterrestrial intelligence. There are plenty of phenomena that scientists don’t understand—they’re not even sure why ice is slippery. Shostak says he doesn’t know exactly what the AATIP videos show (though he has some ideas), but he’s not convinced that they indicate cosmic visitors: “There’s no explanation for about one-third of the murders in New York City,” he says. “Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t committed by people!”
Still, humans have been spotting mysterious objects in the sky for centuries, with cases increasing dramatically in the middle of the twentieth century, when aviation and the Cold War presumably made people extra wary of unexplained lights in the sky. Here are a few of the most notable examples of encounters that haven’t been solved yet.
China, 11th century
Humannet/Shutterstock
Around the year 1088, Shen Kuo, a well-respected poet and military tactician, wrote a book called Dream Pool Essays (named after his garden estate) that covered his scholarship in astronomy, mathematics, geology, zoology, botany and more. In the book, he describes what might be the first recorded UFO sighting; an object nicknamed “the Pearl” regularly appeared in the sky over Yangzhou province. Its door would open and very bright light would pour out. “The spectacle was like the rising sun, lighting up the distant sky and woods in red,” according to the text.
Mount Rainier, Washington, 1947
Jeff Zenner Photography/Shutterstock
The flying-saucer era can be traced back to a sighting of a UFO that didn’t even look like a saucer. Amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying over Washington on a clear June night when he spotted a flash of bluish light near Mount Rainier. Then he saw more—nine flashes in total. He said the lights moved around, like “the tail of a Chinese kite,” according to a 1967 book about the incident by Ted Bloecher. Arnold at first thought they were jets, then maybe geese, and then he ruled both of those out and did not know what he was looking at. Later, when he described the sight to reporters, he said something about how the lights moved “like a saucer if you skip it across the water.”
Socorro, New Mexico, 1964
jo Crebbin/Shutterstock
By the mid-1960s, UFOs were being investigated by the U.S. government through Project Blue Book, and space alien plots were common in movies and TV shows; TheOuter Limits series started in 1963. When Socorro, New Mexico, police officer Lonnie Zamora heard a loud roaring sound and saw a flame in the sky, he abandoned the speeding car he’d been chasing to check it out. He found a round object in a canyon and saw two figures in white near it, but as he got closer, the object flew away. Investigators from Project Blue Book apparently believed Zamora wasn’t making up the story and weren’t able to come up with a clear explanation (despite the event’s proximity to the White Sands Missile Range). They classified the case as “unidentified.” Find out all the secrets about Area 51 the US government won’t tell you.
Finland, 1969
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A group of fighter pilots on a navigation flight saw seven objects shaped like disks or balloons hovering about 5,000 feet in the air over a field. As the jets approached, the objects flew off at what the air force pilots called astonishing speed, according to an article in the Finnish Defense Forces’ magazine, Ruotuväki. The incident is the only UFO encounter acknowledged by the country’s air force.
France, 1981
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When the French UFO investigation division (called GEIPAN) released its records to the public in 2007, its website crashed from too many users. One of its most famous unexplained cases happened near the southern village of Trans-en-Provence, where a resident said an 8-foot oval-shaped craft landed on his property and then quickly took off again. It left behind marks, which GEIPAN confirmed appeared to have been made by a heavy object.
New Jersey Turnpike, 2001
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Several drivers actually pulled off the highway to get a better look at what they described as a group of golden-orange lights moving quietly overhead near the Arthur Kill Waterway. One of the witnesses was a lieutenant from the nearby Carteret Police Department. Air traffic controllers couldn’t come up with any explanations, and the National Weather Service didn’t have any ideas either. Here are more everyday mysteries scientists can’t explain.
Chicago O’Hare International Airport, 2006
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On a cold November afternoon, pilots, ramp workers, mechanics, and United Airlines employees working at or near Concourse C at O’Hare saw what looked like a very unusual aircraft hovering above the airport. All described it as a shiny gray disc, according to the Chicago Tribune, and some thought it was spinning. After several minutes, it shot silently upward and punched a hole in the cloud above. Unfortunately, nobody got a photo or video, and the Federal Aviation Administration said it hadn’t caught anything on its radar systems.
Arizona, 2018
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Two commercial pilots—one in a Learjet and the other flying an American Airlines plane—both reported seeing an object pass two or three thousand feet over them in Arizona airspace in February. The Federal Aviation Administration released the radio exchanges between the pilots and the air traffic controller and confirmed that it did not know of any other aircraft that was supposed to be in the area at the time, according to Fortune. You’ll also want to check out the 13 weirdest things archaeologists have ever found.
Civilian reports
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The SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak says he’s received thousands of reports of sightings that witnesses can’t explain. “I hear from members of the public every day who have seen or experienced something they attribute to alien presence,” he says. But he’s not convinced that aliens are invading, and he doesn’t think we should worry. “Keep in mind that there are more than 3,000 satellites in orbit making images of the Earth—many at very high resolution. If we were really being buzzed by extraterrestrial craft, they would be seen by satellites all the time.” Read more about the UFO myths scientists want you to stop believing.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEETHet was groot nieuws toen de Marsrover Curiosity van de NASA vorige maand meldde dat hij organische moleculen op Mars gevonden had. In de late jaren 70 had de ruimtevaartorganisatie al gezocht naar sporen van leven op de rode planeet, maar zonder resultaat. Een nieuwe studie zegt nu dat de NASA de organische moleculen ook toen in handen had, maar ze verbrandde. Per ongeluk.
Het was begin vorige maand dat de ontdekking van Curiosity wereldnieuws was. De rover – die al zes jaar rondzwerft op Mars – had organische moleculen gevonden in afzettingsgesteenten van 3 miljard jaar oud. En dat kon erop wijzen dat er ooit leven was op Mars.
Curiosity was niet de eerste rover van de NASA die er op zoek ging naar sporen van leven. In de late jaren 70 stuurde de ruimtevaartorganisatie al eens twee Vikingrobots naar Mars om organische (lees: uit koolstof opgebouwde) moleculen te vinden. De missie moest een makkie worden, want de oppervlakte van de rode planeet werd constant onder vuur genomen door kleine koolstofrijke meteorieten. Sporen van koolstof vinden kon toch geen probleem zijn?
EPAEen foto vn het landschap op Mars, zoals hij genomen werd door Curiosity.
Dat was het wél. Na vijf jaar zoeken had geen van beide Vikings ook maar iets bovengehaald. Een nieuwe studie – die gepubliceerd werd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets – zou daar nu een verklaring voor hebben. De koolstof was er de hele tijd, maar de Vikings zouden alle bewijsmateriaal per ongeluk verbrand hebben.
“Er werden in totaal vier stalen geanalyseerd, elk verschillende keren, door ze snel op te warmen tot een van vier temperaturen”, aldus wetenschappers van het Ames Research Center van NASA en het Atmosphere, Media, Spatial Observations Laboratory in Frankrijk die het onderzoek uitvoerden.
500 graden Celsius
De Vikings verhitten hun bodemstalen tot een maximumtemperatuur van 500 graden Celsius om vluchtige organische componenten die er mogelijk in zaten, vrij te laten komen. Die moesten dan waarneembaar zijn in de verdampte bodem. Maar waarom werd er niets gevonden?
NASADe planeet Mars werd midden jaren 70 prachtig gefotografeerd door marssonde Viking 1.
Volgens de onderzoekers van de nieuwe studie kan er nog iets anders gespeeld hebben. Er zou immers nog iets anders in de bodem gezeten hebben, waarop de NASA niet gerekend had. In 2008 ontdekte de Marsrover Phoenix een ongewone stof toen hij door de bodem ging aan de noordpool van de planeet: perchloraat. Dat is een extreem brandbare stof, die op Aarde gebruikt wordt om raketbrandstof te maken en vuurwerk sneller te doen branden. Als die stof op Mars aanwezig was, zou de verhitting in de oven van de Vikings het perchloraat hebben doen ontbranden, waardoor elk spoor van mogelijke organische moleculen meteen vernietigd was.
Bewijs
Als die these klopte, moest er bewijs zijn in de as. Als koolstof en perchloraat samen branden, ontstaat de molecule chloorbenzeen. Toeval wilde dat Curiosity daar sporen van vond tijdens een missie in 2013. Om zeker te zijn, gingen de onderzoekers ook terug naar de Vikings zelf.
Ze doorzochten de data van de robots naar sporen van chloorbenzeen en vonden die. Ze zaten in stalen die door Viking 2 waren genomen en daarop kwamen de onderzoekers tot de conclusie dat de robot ooit organisch materiaal in zijn hand moet hebben gehad, maar het per ongeluk zelf vernietigde.
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RUSSIA DESTROYS EXTRATERRESTRIAL DRONES
NASA zou voor het eerst glimp opgevangen kunnen hebben van ster die planeet verslindt - HLN.be
Koen Van De Sype
APEen illustratie die RW Aur A voorstelt, op 450 lichtjaar van de Aarde.
WETENSCHAP & PLANEET De NASA zou wel eens voor de allereerste keer een glimp opgevangen kunnen hebben van een jonge ster die een babyplaneet verslindt. De ster in kwestie – RW Aur A – is een paar miljoen jaar oud en bevindt zich op 450 lichtjaar van onze Aarde. Als de waarneming bevestigd wordt, zou het om een buitengewone observatie gaan. Ze kan astronomen meer inzicht geven in de processen rond de ontwikkeling, de vernietiging en het overleven van planeten.
De waarneming werd gedaan door het Chandra X-Ray Observatory van ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA. RW Aur A – dat zich in ruimtevaarttermen met zijn 4.275 biljoen kilometer niet zo heel ver van onze Aarde bevindt – wordt al sinds de jaren 30 van vorige eeuw bestudeerd en astronomen braken er zich het hoofd over waarom het optische licht van de ster zo wisselt met de tijd. Om de paar decennia neemt het licht ongeveer een maand af, waarna het terugkeert.
In 2011 veranderde er echter iets. De ster dimde vaker en voor langere periodes: de eerste keer voor 6 maanden, in 2014 zelfs voor 2 jaar en in januari vorig jaar werd het opnieuw donkerder.
Om een tip van de sluier op te lichten werd Chandra ingeschakeld. Meer bepaald tijdens een optisch heldere periode in 2013 en duistere periodes in 2015 en 2017, toen ook een vermindering van X-stralen werd vastgesteld. Omdat die X-stralen uit de hete buitenste atmosfeer van de ster afkomstig zijn, konden schommelingen in de intensiteit iets meer zeggen over de dichtheid en de samenstellingen van het absorberende materiaal rond de ster.
Het team ontdekte dat de donkere periodes veroorzaakt werden door een dicht gas dat het licht van de ster verduisterde. In 2017 werden er heel veel ijzeratomen uitgestoten, wat aangaf dat de ster minstens 10 keer meer ijzer bevatte dan in de heldere periode in 2013.
Dat ijzer zou ontstaan zijn door een botsing van twee jonge planetaire lichamen, waarvan er zeker eentje groot genoeg was om een planeet te zijn. Puin – met daarin ijzer – van de lichamen viel op de ster, wat een dikke sluier van stof en gas veroorzaakte, dat het licht van de ster tijdelijk dimde.
Interpretatie
“Computersimulaties voorspellen al langer dat planeten op een jonge ster kunnen botsen, maar we hebben dat nog nooit kunnen observeren”, aldus Hans Moritz Guenther van het Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research van het Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hij leidde de studie. “Als onze interpretatie van de data correct is, zou dit de eerste keer zijn dat we een directe waarneming kunnen doen van een jonge ster die een of meerder planeten verslindt.”
De vorige keren dat het licht van de ster – die ongeveer dezelfde massa heeft als onze relatief oude zon – gedimd werd, zou er iets soortgelijks gebeurd kunnen zijn: botsingen van twee planetaire lichamen of grote resten van eerdere botsingen die tegen elkaar aan knalden en nog verder in kleine stukken gebroken werden.
De resultaten van het onderzoek werden gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Astronomical Journal.
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Complotdenkers zijn niet gek. Socioloog legt uit waarom we nog veel van hen kunnen leren
Complotdenkers zijn niet gek. Socioloog legt uit waarom we nog veel van hen kunnen leren
Het merendeel van de complotdenkers is niet gek. En als we hen serieus nemen, kunnen we veel van hen leren. Dat stelt socioloog Jaron Harambam, die zijn proefschrift schreef over complottheorieën.
Hij kwam via de films van Zeitgeist in aanraking met de wereld van de samenzweringstheorieën.
“Daar ging mijn wereld echt van op zijn kop staan,” vertelt hij aan De Correspondent. “Hier werd verteld hoe ons geldsysteem werkt, hoe geld eigenlijk uit het niets wordt gecreëerd.”
“Ik las daar niets over in de reguliere media,” vervolgt hij.
Gelijk
Harambam stoort zich aan het dominante denken van veel wetenschappers en media over complotdenkers.
“Ze pikken een paar figuren uit die complot-scene die het meest extreem zijn en gaan er vervolgens van uit dat alle complotdenkers zo zijn,” zegt hij.
Hij wijst erop dat er complotdenkers zijn die gedegen onderzoek doen en veel dieper graven dan sommige wetenschappers.
“En soms hebben complotdenkers gewoon gelijk, maar krijgen ze dat gelijk pas later,” klinkt het.
Genoeg vragen
Er zijn rond 9/11 bijvoorbeeld nog genoeg vragen over de toedracht en de officiële lezing die nog niet beantwoord zijn.
“Deze complotdenker heeft zijn verhaal niet dichtgetimmerd, maar doet open onderzoek naar die vragen,” zegt hij.
“Hij doet alleen beweringen die hij kan staven en documenteert zijn bevindingen heel secuur,” voegt hij toe.
Totaal onduidelijk
Volgens hem zijn complotdenkers niet de enigen die worstelen met de waarheid. Over de recente gifgasaanval in het Syrische Douma zegt hij: “Wat daar werkelijk gebeurd is, is door allerlei propaganda van verschillende partijen totaal onduidelijk.”
Sommige wetenschappers, politici en media willen ons doen geloven dat er maar één waarheid is, maar die bestaat niet, aldus Harambam.
Mysterious sarcophagus to be opened in two days, Egypt’s MOA says
Mysterious sarcophagus to be opened in two days, Egypt’s MOA says
Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities (MOA) has finally decided to open a mysterious sarcophagus uncovered in Alexandria within the next two days, according to Waad Allah Abu al-Ela, head of the MOA’s project sector.
On July 1 a large black granite sarcophagus was accidentally unearthed in an Alexandrian construction site. It was found at a depth of 5 meters and dates well over 2,000 years ago, likely at the Ptolemaic era between 305 BC and 30 BC.
A man’s head sculpted from Alabaster was also found, likely belonging to the owner of the tomb.
Abu al-Ela said that they will use thick pipes to raise the sarcophagus lid until they can see inside. Once something was found, a specialized restoration team will immediately take over, transferring the contents into an Alexandria museum storage to quickly start restoration procedures.
“If nothing was found inside the sarcophagus and we did not find any inscriptions on the coffin’s body, we will keep it in place until it can be lifted later,” he said.
Speculation ran wild across the globe following the discovery as the unique specifications of the tomb has prompted some experts to conclude the sarcophagus belongs to none other than Alexander the Great, who’s tomb has yet to be uncovered. Born in 356 BC and living until 323 BC, Alexander was one of the world’s greatest conquerors and ruled the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon.
The MOA considers this the biggest coffin unearthed yet from Alexandria, as it weights around 20 to 30 tons, with dimensions that are 185 cm tall, 265 cm long and 165 cm wide.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ayman Ashmawy, an MOA official stated that to their surprise the layer of mortar between the coffin’s lid and the body was undamaged, meaning it had not been opened since it was buried 2000 years ago, an incredible rare occasion.
However Abu al-Ela denounced the speculation, stating that the tomb is far too poor and weak to belong to someone like Alexander the Great. He also stated that the weight of the sarcophagus is not abnormal, as coffins weighting more than 90 tons have been found in the past.
Mustafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities supported Abu Ela’s doubt, and stated that while the coffin might not be suitable for Alexander, it could still belong to an ancient Egyptian noble.
Mysterieuze zwarte sarcofaag uit Alexandrië wordt na 2000 jaar opengemaakt. Wat gaan archeologen aantreffen?
Mysterieuze zwarte sarcofaag uit Alexandrië wordt na 2000 jaar opengemaakt. Wat gaan archeologen aantreffen?
De mysterieuze sarcofaag die onlangs in Alexandrië is ontdekt, wordt vandaag of morgen geopend. Dat heeft het Egyptische ministerie van Oudheden besloten.
Begin deze maand werd bij toeval een gigantische zwarte sarcofaag gevonden in een bouwput in Alexandrië.
De graftombe bevond zich op een diepte van vijf meter en is ruim 2000 jaar oud. Er werd ook een albasten hoofd van een man gevonden, waarschijnlijk van de eigenaar van de tombe.
Alexander de Grote
Met behulp van zware pijpen zal het deksel van de sarcofaag worden gehaald. De eventuele inhoud van de tombe wordt vervolgens overgebracht naar een museum in Alexandrië.
Na de ontdekking werd op internet druk gespeculeerd over de vondst. Sommige experts claimden dat de sarcofaag toebehoort aan niemand minder dan Alexander de Grote, wiens tombe nog altijd niet is ontdekt.
Het gaat om de grootste grafkist die ooit in Alexandrië is opgegraven. De tombe weegt 20 tot 30 ton en is ruim 2,5 meter lang.
Extreem zeldzaam
Opvallend genoeg is de laag cement tussen het deksel en de grafkist onbeschadigd, wat betekent dat de tombe in ruim 2000 jaar niet geopend is. Dat is extreem zeldzaam.
Volgens het ministerie gaat het niet om de tombe van Alexander de Grote. In het verleden zijn grafkisten van meer dan 90 ton gevonden.
Are we alone in the universe? Could alien life exist, and if so, is there a reasonable explanation for why—scientifically speaking—we’ve never seen any evidence for it?
This is a question many have asked over time, although it is most famously attributed to physicist Enrico Fermi, for whom the so-called “Fermi Paradox” is named. The general premise has to do with what appears to be the contradictory nature of high probability for the existence of alien life, versus the paltry evidence to support it.
As the name suggests, the idea is famously attributed to Enrico Fermi, and was suggested under circumstances of such fame in the scientific literature that they border the mythical. As the story goes, Fermi was on his lunch break with fellow Los Alamos employees Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York in 1950, when discussion about a funny little cartoon depicting dumpster-diving aliens returning from a visit to New York caught their imagination. Musing more broadly on the subject of aliens, Fermi is said to have asked, “where is everybody?”
Los Alamos National Laboratory (Public Domain)
It was a decidedly scientific question, despite its simplicity: where is the evidence of aliens, if it otherwise seems so likely that we aren’t alone in the universe?
Taking a stab at this famous conundrum, a recent paper published by a team of Oxford researchers with the University’s Future of Humanity Institute argues that the absence of evidence may, in fact, actually be evidence of absence: we may be alone after all.
The problem, researchers Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord argue, has a lot to do with human expectations, which build on earlier models for the likelihood of whether life exists elsewhere; namely the Drake equation, which supposes a decent probability that alien civilizations exist, which are technologically advanced to the degree they would be potentially observable to us.
As stated in a portion of the paper’s abstract:
We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference. When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial ex-ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it. This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.
As Vox reports, “the paper’s authors do not appear to be making any definitive claim about whether or not aliens exist; simply, our current knowledge across the seven parameters suggests a high likelihood of us being alone,” noting that with new forthcoming information, the Oxford team “would update that likelihood accordingly.”
Naturally, criticisms will arise from such a claim. To consider just a few of them here, it seems difficult (even in probabilistic terms) to suggest the unlikelihood of alien life elsewhere given the expansiveness of the universe, let alone the fact that so little of it has been explored by humans. Also, this isn’t the only solution to Fermi’s paradox that has appeared recently; there are constantly a variety of contrasting viewsabout what might, or might not, explain it.
Sure, Frank Drake’s famous aforementioned equation also focused on the question of alien life, and more specifically, those civilizations which would be sophisticated enough that any evidence for their existence would be detectable by us. While we might expect that a significantly advanced alien civilization would leave an easily discernible cosmic footprint, it may just the opposite: what if our cosmic neighbors have advanced to the point that they employ what we might call “cleaner,” energy sources and other sustainable technologies… and thus, maybe they’re less easily detected, as well?
Bottom line, it’s nearly impossible to conceive of what alien life and their technology would be like without anthropomorphizing the argument (that is, projecting our own ideas, values, and expectations onto things). However, there are at least a few other problems with the Oxford study, one of which has to do with what Fermi actually said about aliens in the first place.
Fermi’s ID photo from his years at Los Alamos (Public Domain).
The paper leads off, naturally, with the famous story of the Fermi lunch at Los Alamos. “While working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1950,” the paper reads, “Enrico Fermi famously asked his colleagues: ‘Where are they?’ ” Although it’s a famous and often-cited story, some have questioned whether it’s entirely true and accurate. Robert H. Gray, writing for Scientific Americanin 2016, noted that Fermi’s fellow diners at the famous lunchtime discussion had a pretty clear memory of the conversation when asked about it years later, and noted that Fermi hadn’t been merely discussing where all the aliens were. More specifically, they had been talking about interstellartravel, and why there was so little evidence in the specific form of alien spacecraft:
Both York and Teller seemed to think Fermi was questioning the feasibility of interstellar travel—nobody thought he was questioning the possible existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. So the so-called Fermi paradox—which does question the existence of E.T.—misrepresents Fermi’s views. Fermi’s skepticism about interstellar travel is not surprising, because in 1950 rockets had not yet reached orbit, much less another planet or star.
All discussion of UFOs aside (since, to date, there is nothing that conclusively proves that these objects are in any way related to alien spacecraft), the minor detail of what Fermi actually meant may not be enough to change the outcome of the Oxford study’s findings, which purportedly employed “millions” of logarithmic simulations to arrive at the mathematical conclusion that we’re 53 to 99.6 percent likely to be the only civilization in the galaxy. Further, we run a 39 to 85 percent chance of being the only intelligent life in the entire observable region of the universe.
However, if we consider that the basic averages of the Oxford study boil down to there being roughly a 50% chance that we’re alone in the universe, our potential desolation still amounts to a coin flip: either we’ve got some interstellar neighbors out there somewhere, or we do not. We simply don’t know yet.
So maybe it’s a little too soon to be cashing in on whether aliens exist or not; we still have an awful lot of the universe we’ve yet to explore, and innumerable scientific advances that will be required before we can embark on our ultimate journey. For the time being, maybe it’s best to keep an open mind, and see what the innovations of the coming years have to say about what may await us out in that great and final frontier.
Our planet continues to change due to the various forcesfalling under the blanket term of climate change. While this obviously poses challenges and threats the likes of which humanity hasn’t seen since perhaps the last Ice Age, there are a few positive effects that help lessen the blow of witnessing the beginning of a new, hot and decidedly wet era of human history.
Remember that awesome Kevin Costner movie? Yeah, it’s going to be like that.
As Earth changes around us, strange animal sightings are becoming more common in populated areas likely thanks to loss of habitat and food sources. Along those same lines, the melting Arctic and Antarctic sea ices are revealing new, untouched areas of the Earth possibly containing entirely new forms of life.
In the archaeological world, a rapidly changing Earth has meant that many ancient mysteries have begun to reveal themselves from below the ground or the bottom of the seas. The latest case comes out of Ireland’s Boyne Valley where a harsh drought has meant a sharp decline in native grass and scrub plants. With that ground-covering vegetation out of the way, historians conducting aerial drone photography in the area have been able to discover a mysterious ancient ringed structure lying literally right under their feet.
The Boyne Valley
The structure appears to be composed of concentric rings, the largest of which is about 200 meters in diameter. Like other ancient henges, the rings are composed of post holes, implying that this was once some sort of walled enclosure. Anthony Murphy, founder of Mythical Ireland, says the discovery was a complete surprise to even the most seasoned local researchers:
We couldn’t believe it to be honest. It soon became apparent that were looking at something very very exciting. I was aware of the possibility that previously unrecorded things might show up, but I didn’t think they’d show up in the Boyne Valley because it’s been under intense scrutiny for the past few decades by archaeologists. Only because of the drought has it become visible.
The discovery was made not farm from Brú na Bóinne, or Boyne Valley tombs. The tombs are a UNESCO World Heritage site and date back some five or six thousand years.
The Newgrange burial mound at Boyne Valley was constructed with a network chambers and passages.
Like other Neolithic monuments, the Boyne Valley site consists of burial mounds, henges, and earthworks. Its overall purpose or use remains a mystery, though many of the structures are believed to have been used for archaeoastronomical rituals or timekeeping.
Dozens of Long White Structures On Moons Surface Found, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Dozens of Long White Structures On Moons Surface Found, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of discovery: March 2014 , but revisiting today. Coordinates of discovery: 3°53'18.47"S 17°34'20.73"W Method used: Google Moon map I wanted to take a look at the structures I discovered back in 2014, because many of the buildings and discoveries have been deleted or the URLs don't exist any more. These buildings are still there on Google Moon which is a free program to download and use from your desktop. The structures measure about 100-150 meters long and 10-15 meters wide. I don't think they are structures to live in, but probably have a purpose like air or breathing filtration or collecting of energy or even as a transmitting antenna. Glad to see they are still there. Scott C. Waring
65 million years ago, a monster asteroid wiped out 2/3 of all life on Earth, including the dinosaurs. But an astrophysicist explains why it’s the smaller near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a greater imminent threat.
Sixty-five million years ago, a 15 kilometer [9 mile] sized asteroid wiped out two-thirds of all life on Earth, including the dinosaurs. But it’s probably not this kind of monster asteroid that we should be worried about. It’s actually the smaller NEOs that pose a greater imminent threat, like the asteroid that struck Earth on June 2 that scientists only saw coming a day in advance.
Internationally renowned astronomers, astrophysicists and space researchers gathered for a conference in Garching near Munich, Germany, from May 14-June 8, 2018, for the to develop new strategies for the improved detection, scientific and commercial exploitation of and defense against NEOs.
Flyeye-telescope planned by ESA as part of the global effort to hunt out risky celestial objects such as asteroids and comets.
Image via A. Baker/ESA.
Detlef Koschny, head of the Near Earth Objects team at the European Space Agency (ESA) and a lecturer with the Technical University of Munich Chair for Astronautics, explains why scientists are increasing their research focus on smaller NEOs.
Let’s start with a basic question: How is an asteroid different from a meteorite?
Detlef Koschny: Asteroids are objects larger than one meter – for example the object that exploded over Botswana earlier this month. Meteoroids are objects smaller than one meter. If they enter and pass through a planet’s atmosphere [and hit the ground], they are called meteorites. Comets are asteroids with large amounts of volatile compounds such as water ice. If they come close to the sun, these compounds vaporize, creating their distinctive tails.
Hollywood disaster films like Armageddon always feature colossal asteroids on a direct collision course with Earth. So why should we be worried about smaller NEOs?
Detlef Koschny: NEOs that might potentially come close to or hit our planet range in size from a few millimeters to about 50 to 60 kilometers [30 to 37 miles] in diameter. We’ve detected the majority of the larger NEOs and computed their trajectories and the statistical risk for collision with Earth 100 years into the future.
We’ve mapped 90 percent of the asteroids that are a kilometer in size or larger. We know precisely where the big ones are and that they won’t pose a threat. In the “mid-size” region, the situation is completely different: We have only detected and mapped less than one percent of NEOs smaller than a kilometer.
If a 100-meter (328 feet) asteroid hit Earth, it would cause significant damage in an area the size of Germany, and even affect the surrounding region. But asteroids of this size don’t strike Earth very often. Maybe every 10,000 years on average.
Going from 100 meters down to 50 meters (164 feet), the statistical frequency of strikes increases to once every 1,000 years. Exactly a century ago in 1908, a 40-meter object struck the Earth over Tunguska, Siberia, destroying an area of forest the size of the Munich metro area.
And then if we go down to asteroid sizes around 20 meters (66 feet) – like the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013, which ended up injuring 1,500 people – these occur on average once every 10 to 100 years. We will definitely see something like that again in our lifetime.
Nobody saw the Chelyabinsk asteroid coming before it hit. And scientists only spotted the one that hit Botswana a few hours in advance. What is the current state of NEO detection technology?
Detlef Koschny: Right now, there are two main survey programs running on Earth, both funded by our American colleagues. They utilize optical telescopes that cover a large field of view and can continually scan the night sky to detect any objects that are bright enough.
When it comes to detecting larger objects, this strategy works quite well, as these are visible even when they’re still far away from the Earth. But to detect smaller objects down to a size of 20 meters (66 feet) is very difficult. They are not bright enough to be detected until they are at least as close as the Moon.
If you only have two of these telescopes on the planet and it takes each telescope three weeks or so to cover the complete sky, you have to be really lucky that a small asteroid crosses your field of view just when you’re looking in the right direction.
That’s why we are currently developing extremely wide-field telescopes that will have the ability to scan the entire sky in just 48 hours. Additionally, within the ESA Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program, in which I work, we mobilize observatories and astronomers worldwide through the NEO Coordination Centre at the Agency’s European Space Research Institute (ESRIN) facility in Italy.
Dr. Detlef Koschny, lecturer with the TUM Chair for Astronautics and head of the Near Earth Objects team at the European Space Agency (ESA).
Image via A. Battenberg/TUM.
So what are your recommendations for improving detection and tracking capabilities, and what new detection technologies are being deployed either currently or in the near future?
Detlef Koschny: There’s a system called Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) that just went online in the U.S. It consists of small telescopes which, while they don’t see very faint objects, cover almost the complete night sky once per night. Here in Europe, we are building the Flyeye telescope, with a one-meter effective aperture. It provides us with a big field of view that is more than 100 times the size of the full moon in the night sky. In one night, with one telescope, we can cover about half the sky. The strategy to achieve this was developed by one of our master’s students here at TUM.
Our conclusion as the conference wraps up and one of the recommendations we’ll be making in the post-conference whitepaper: There’s an urgent need for more telescopes that can scan the sky for these NEOs, and a global network of telescopes that are working in concert, so that we can truly cover the smaller size range of asteroids in near-earth orbit. We definitively need to FIND these objects first before we can take any concrete action to defend ourselves against them.
Bottom line: An astrophysicist explains why it’s the smaller near-Earth objects (NEOs) that pose a greater imminent threat.
Zeewier reist 20.000 kilometer en meert aan op Antarctica
Zeewier reist 20.000 kilometer en meert aan op Antarctica
Caroline Kraaijvanger
Dit is de langst bekende biologische drijftocht ooit.
Onderzoekers hebben langs de kust van Antarctica zeewier ontdekt dat daar niet thuishoort. DNA-onderzoek wijst uit dat een deel ervan afkomstig is van de Kerguelen-eilanden in de zuidelijke Indische Oceaan. En een ander deel komt helemaal uit de Zuid-Georgia-eilanden in de zuidelijke Atlantische Oceaan. Het betekent dat dit zeewier tienduizenden kilometers heeft afgelegd alvorens het bij Antarctica aanmeerde.
Onmogelijke reis Het is volgens onderzoekers de langste bekende biologische drijftocht ooit. En dat niet alleen: het is een reis die tevens onmogelijk werd geacht. Zo wist het zeewier polaire winden en stromingen die ondoordringbaar werden geacht, te trotseren en Antarctica – dat altijd gezien wordt als een geïsoleerd gelegen continent – te bereiken (zie kader). “Dit onderzoek laat zien dat levende planten en dieren Antarctica over de oceaan kunnen bereiken, en dat de Antarctische kustlijnen waarschijnlijk constant gebombardeerd worden met allerlei plant- en diersoorten,” aldus onderzoeker Crid Fraser. “Wij dachten altijd dat het Antarctische ecosysteem zo uniek was vanwege de geïsoleerde omgeving, maar dit onderzoek laat zien dat deze verschillen bijna volledig te wijten zijn aan extreme omgevingsfactoren, niet isolatie.”
Sterke westenwinden en oppervlaktestromingen zorgen er in principe voor dat drijvende objecten van Antarctica vandaan bewegen. Tot stormen de boel verstoren, zo stellen de onderzoekers. Hun nieuwste modellen laten zien dat hoge golven die tijdens deze stormen ontstaan grote ‘vlotten’ zeewier helpen om naar Antarctica te reizen.
Andere dieren Als zeewier op deze wijze bij Antarctica kan komen, dan kunnen nog veel meer organismen Antarctica bereiken, zo redeneren de onderzoekers. “Dit zeewier groeit niet op Antarctica, maar kan als vlot dienen voor andere planten en dieren” stelt onderzoeker Erasmo Macaya. “Als die vlotten van zeewier naar Antarctica drijven, kunnen we binnenkort enorme veranderingen zien in de ecosystemen daar.” Antarctica warmt namelijk razendsnel op. “Als planten en dieren vrij vaak over zee naar Antarctica reizen, zullen ze zich kunnen vestigen zodra de lokale omgeving voldoende gastvrij is,” aldus Fraser.
Het onderzoek heeft ook implicaties voor niet-levende drijvende objecten, zoals plastic. “Het zou goed kunnen dat de stormen en zeestromingen die dit zeewier hebben vervoerd, ook plastic naar Antarctica kunnen transporteren, waardoor het kwetsbare ecosysteem daar extra onder druk komt te staan,” vertelt onderzoeker Erik van Sebille. “We moeten er zo snel mogelijk achter komen of dat zo is.”
Dat blijkt uit nieuw onderzoek. Klein minpuntje: we kunnen er onmogelijk bij.
Het onderzoek onthult dat de aarde veel meer diamanten herbergt dan gedacht. Maar de meeste van die diamanten zitten ontzettend diep: tussen 140 en 240 kilometer onder het oppervlak.
Kratons De diamanten zitten opgesloten in de ‘wortels’ van rompgebergtes (ook wel kratons genoemd). Dit zijn een soort omgekeerde gebergten die je kunt vinden onder het centrum van de meeste aardplaten. Ze reiken tot wel 240 kilometer diep en zijn al lange tijd ‘tektonisch stabiel’. Dat betekent dat ze al zeker 1 miljard jaar geen grootschalige deformatie of metamorfose hebben ondergaan. De diepste secties van deze kratons worden ook wel aangeduid als ‘wortels’ en dringen tot in de aardmantel door. En het nieuwe onderzoek onthult nu dat deze ‘wortels’ voor wel 1 tot 2 procent uit diamanten bestaan. Als je dan het volume van de wortel van een kraton in ogenschouw neemt, moet je concluderen dat deze meer dan 1 biljard (10^15) ton diamanten herbergt. En aangezien er zo’n 10 van deze wortels zijn, zou het in totaal zelfs om 10^16 ton diamanten gaan.
Niet zo exotisch “Dit laat zien dat diamant misschien niet zo’n exotisch mineraal is, maar op de geologische schaal vrij veel voorkomt,” aldus onderzoeker Ulrich Faul. “We kunnen er niet bij, maar toch, er zijn daar veel meer diamanten dan we eerder dachten.”
Seismische activiteit De onderzoekers kwamen deze enorme voorraad op het spoor nadat ze zich bogen over een anomalie in seismische data. Al decennialang houden onderzoekers de seismische activiteit – in feite niets anders dan geluidsgolven die door de aarde reizen en ontstaan door bijvoorbeeld aardbevingen, tsunami’s en explosies – wereldwijd in de gaten. Aan de hand van deze seismische data kunnen onderzoekers zich een beeld vormen van hoe de aarde er van binnen uitziet; de snelheid waarmee de geluidsgolven door de aarde bewegen, wordt immers bepaald door de temperatuur, dichtheid en temperatuur van het gesteente waar deze doorheen moeten reizen. En zo onthult seismische data bijvoorbeeld dat geluidsgolven significant versnellen wanneer ze door de ‘wortels’ van oude kratons bewegen. En dat is vreemd (zie kader).
Kratons zijn kouder dan de omringende mantel, ook is hun dichtheid kleiner dan die van de omringende mantel. Je zou dus verwachten dat geluidsgolven wanneer ze door de diepste secties van deze rompgebergten bewegen iets versnellen. Maar de versnelling die we zien, is veel groter dan onderzoekers kunnen verklaren.
Virtuele gesteenten Die anomalie vormt het uitgangspunt van dit nieuwe onderzoek. Faul en collega’s gingen in het laboratorium na hoe geluidsgolven door verschillende mineralen bewegen. Vervolgens maakten ze ‘virtuele gesteenten’ die uit verschillende combinaties van die mineralen waren samengesteld en berekenden hoe snel geluidsgolven door deze virtuele gesteenten bewogen. Er bleek slechts één type gesteente te zijn dat geluidsgolven net zo sterk versnelde als de kratons en dat was een gesteente dat voor 1 tot 2 procent uit diamant bestond. In dit scenario bevatte het gesteente zeker 1000 keer meer diamant dan eerder werd gedacht. Maar dat had verder geen impact op de dichtheid van de kraton (die dus kleiner is dan die van de omringende mantel). “Het zijn een soort stukjes hout, drijvend op water,” legt Faul uit. “Kratons hebben een iets kleinere dichtheid dan hun omgeving, dus ze duiken niet terug de aarde in, maar blijven aan het oppervlak drijven. Dat is hoe de oudste gesteenten bewaard blijven. En wij ontdekten dat je slechts 1 tot 2 procent diamant nodig hebt voor stabiele kratons die niet zinken.”
Dat kratons zoveel diamanten herbergen, is achteraf gezien trouwens best logisch. Diamanten ontstaan namelijk diep in de aarde, onder hoge druk, bij hoge temperaturen en komen aan het oppervlak door vulkaanuitbarstingen. Deze uitbarstingen zorgen ervoor dat er geologische kanalen ontstaan die opgebouwd zijn uit een gesteente dat kimberliet wordt genoemd. Diamanten reizen door deze kanalen – samen met magma dat diep uit de aarde komt – naar boven. De meeste van deze kimberlieten kanalen zijn gevonden aan de rand van de ‘wortels’ van kratons. Het lijkt dan ook niet meer dan logisch dat deze wortels voor een deel uit diamant bestaat. “Het is indirect bewijs, maar het komt allemaal samen,” aldus Faul. “We hebben alle verschillende mogelijkheden vanuit elke hoek bekijken en dit is de enige redelijke verklaring.”
This mosaic of Cerealia Facula inside the dwarf planet Ceres' Occator Crater is based on images obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft in its second extended mission, from an altitude as low as about 21 miles (34 kilometers).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
You may have seen the bizarre bright spots speckling the dwarf planet Ceres — but not like this.
NASA's Ceres-orbiting Dawn spacecraft has captured jaw-dropping new photos of several of the bright-white features, formally known as faculae, that lie at the bottom of the dwarf planet's 57-mile-wide (92 kilometers) Occator Crater.
"The new images of Occator Crater and the surrounding areas have exceeded expectations, revealing beautiful, alien landscapes," Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement yesterday (July 16).
The $467 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 with a bold goal: to orbit and study the two largest bodies in the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. Both objects are considered leftovers from the solar system's planet-formation period (hence the mission's name).
Dawn reached Vesta in July 2011 and eyed the object up close for more than a year, finally leaving for Ceres in September 2012.
Dawn discovered the Occator Crater bright spots during its approach to Ceres in early 2015, and later found a number of other crater-associated faculae around the dwarf planet. The probe's observations have since revealed that the bright spots are salty deposits, composed primarily of sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride.
Scientists think this material was left behind when briny water boiled away into space, but they're not sure where, exactly, those brines came from — specifically, how deep underground the reservoirs were.
This close-up photo of the Vinalia Faculae in Ceres' Occator Crater was captured by NASA's Dawn spacecraft in its second extended mission, from an altitude as low as 21 miles (34 kilometers).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Dawn team members are using the probe's observations to tackle this and other questions about the 590-mile-wide (950 km) Ceres. Some of the most intriguing data and eye-popping photos come from Dawn's most recent mission phase, during which the probe has circled above Ceres at an altitude of just 21 miles or so.
Dawn spiraled down to this superlow orbit early last month and will remain there through the end of its operational life, which is expected to come in a few months. The spacecraft is nearly out of hydrazine, the fuel that powers Dawn's small orientation-controlling thrusters. When the hydrazine is gone, Dawn will be unable to point its science instruments at Ceres, or its communications gear at Earth.
The Dawn team is presenting the results from the latest (low-orbit) mission phase this week at the Committee on Space Research conference in Pasadena.
Canada – Les OVNI sont majoritairement observés au Québec
Canada – Les OVNI sont majoritairement observés au Québec
L’organisme manitobain UFO Research a compilé des données sur les observations d’OVNI survenues au Canada au cours de l’année 2017. Il s’avère que le Québec est la province où ce genre de phénomène est le plus souvent rapporté.
En 2017, 1101 observations d’OVNI ont été rapportées au Canada. Le Québec en regroupe, à lui seul, 518, ce qui constitue un véritable record ! Ce nombre est en nette augmentation depuis 2016 où « seulement » 430 objets volants non identifiés avaient été signalés.
La province de l’Ontario, qui est la plus peuplée du pays, ne compte que 241 observations d’OVNI, tandis que 128 ont été rapportées en Colombie-Britannique.
Parmi les grandes métropoles du pays, c’est à Montréal que la population a observé le plus d’OVNI avec 74 signalements. En seconde position, on retrouve Toronto avec 57 observations.
Les récits d’OVNI sont très différents et les témoins ont vécu des expériences parfois étonnantes. Ainsi, un objet gris en forme de beignet a été vu en train de tourner sur lui-même à Rimouski. À Saint-Jean-Baptiste, un engin de couleur rouge s’est approché de 10 campeurs avec de s’éloigner dans la stupeur générale.
Selon cet organisme, 8 % des cas recensés demeurent complètement inexpliqué, alors que 43 % ne sont que de simples « lumières dans le ciel ».
Les durées de ces observations sont d’environ 15 minutes après quoi les OVNI disparaissent à la vue des témoins.
Depuis 1989, année à partir de laquelle Ufology Research a commencé à collecter ses données, le nombre de signalements n’a cessé de croître. Au tournant des années 2000, la tendance s’est accrue de manière surprenante. 2012 fut une année exceptionnelle puisque près de 2000 OVNI ont été observés.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
