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...
16-09-2018
SETI Neural Networks Spot Dozens Of New Mysterious Signals Emanating From Distant Galaxy
SETI Neural Networks Spot Dozens Of New Mysterious Signals Emanating From Distant Galaxy
The perennial optimists at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, have joined the rest of the world in deploying AI to help manage huge data sets — and their efforts almost instantly bore fruit. Seventy-two new “fast radio bursts” from a mysteriously noisy galaxy 3 billion miles away were discovered in previously analyzed data by using a custom machine learning model.
To be clear, this isn’t Morse code or encrypted instructions to build a teleporter, à la Contact, or at least not that we know of. But these fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are poorly understood and may very well represent, at the very least, some hitherto unobserved cosmic phenomenon. FRB 121102 is the only stellar object known to give off the signals regularly, and so is the target of continued observation.
The data comes from the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia (above), which was pointed toward this source of fast and bright (hence the name) bursts for five hours in August of 2017. Believe it or not, that five-hour session yielded 400 terabytes of transmission data.
Initial “standard” algorithms identified 21 FRBs, all happening in one hour’s worth of the observations. But Gerry Zhang, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and part of the Breakthrough Listen project, created a convolutional neural network system that would theoretically scour the data set more effectively. Sure enough, the machine learning model picked out 72 more FRBs in the same period.
A Berkeley GIF visualizing the data of a series of bursts.
That’s quite an improvement, though it’s worth noting that without manual and traditional methods to find an initial set of interesting data, we would have little with which to train such neural networks. They’re complementary tools; one is not necessarily succeeding the other.
The paper on the discoveries, co-authored by Cal postdoc Vishal Gajjar, is due to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Breakthrough Listen is one of the initiatives funded by billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner, of mail.ru and DST fame. The organization posted its own press release for the work.
The new data suggests that the signals are not being received in any kind of pattern we can determine, at least no pattern longer than 10 milliseconds. That may sound discouraging, but it’s just as important to rule things out as it is to find something new.
“Gerry’s work is exciting not just because it helps us understand the dynamic behavior of FRBs in more detail, but also because of the promise it shows for using machine learning to detect signals missed by classical algorithms,” explained Berkeley’s Andrew Siemion, who leads the SETI research center there and is principal investigator for Breakthrough Listen.
And if we’re being imaginative, there’s no reason some hyper-advanced civilization couldn’t cram a bunch of interesting info into such short bursts, or use a pattern we haven’t yet grokked. We don’t know what we don’t know, after all.
Whatever the case, SETI and Breakthrough will continue to keep their antennas fastened on FRB 121102. Even if they don’t turn out to be alien SOS signals, it’s good solid science. You can keep up with the Berkeley SETI center’s work right here.
On Saturn’s small moon Enceladus, perpetual fountains of alien seawater launch all sorts of curious stuff into space: water, salt, silica, and even simple carbon-containing compounds fly into the void—many of which are ingredients for life as we know it.
Now, scientists working with data from a dead spacecraft have discovered something even more potentially intriguing: heavy organic compounds containing hundreds of atoms arranged in rings and chains. These are the most complex organic molecules uncovered so far at Enceladus, and—sorry, Europa—they may make the moon the most promising place in our solar system to search for life beyond Earth.
“What we know today is telling us that Enceladus is an outstanding target to go look for life, and there may be microbes living in that ocean today,” says Cornell University’s Jonathan Lunine.
SATURN 101
How did the rings around Saturn form? How many moons does the planet have? See stunning NASA images of the gas giant studied by Christian Huygens and Giovanni Cassini.
Discovered by the Saturn-exploring Cassini spacecraft in late 2005, icy jets erupting from Enceladus were a surprise to most scientists. Blasting through fissures in the south polar region, the jets contain seawater from a global ocean locked beneath the moon’s icy shell. Over the years, scientists have been able to study those jets and calculate the salinity and acidity of the ocean, identify ejected organic compounds such as methane, and determine that hydrothermal vents in the seafloor are providing heat and energy.
But these newly detected complex molecules spin that story forward and raise questions about whether they’re the work of lifeless chemistry or a sign pointing toward alien life.
“We cannot decide this hundred-million-dollar question, but it certainly shows that something is going on there, that complex organic chemistry is happening and that we can probe it from space,” says Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg, lead author on the paper describing the results today in the journal Nature.
“The moon freely delivers its organic inventory at high concentrations to the Cassini spacecraft. That’s just an amazing finding.”
Saturn's icy moon Enceladus sinks behind the planet in a farewell portrait from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which destroyed itself by diving into the ringed giant on September 15, 2017.
Cassini's very last image shows the region on Saturn's night side where the probe entered the planet's atmosphere, sealing its fate. Here, the planet's swirling clouds glow with light reflected from its rings.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL- CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Cassini captured this picture of majestic Saturn and its famed rings as the NASA spacecraft hurtled toward its doom on September 14, 2017.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Cassini gets one of the closest, most detailed views of Saturn's rings during the final phase of its mission.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CLATECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUE
Enceladus appears as a thin crescent under the bright bulk of Saturn in this Cassini image released on September 14.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
The rings of Saturn lay sprawled against the cosmos in one of the last images from Cassini.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Saturn takes center stage in this Cassini image taken mere hours before the end of the mission.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Saturn's wide but thin rings seem almost solid enough to skate across in this unprocessed picture from Cassini.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
As part of ts farewell tour, Cassini took this picture of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
A closeup of frigid Titan reveals dark splotches that Cassini revealed are lakes of liquid hydrocarbons.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH, SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
That includes information Cassini gathered while flying near the planet’s E ring. Thin and diaphanous, this ribbon is formed by dust and ice ejected by Enceladus. As Cassini skirted the E ring’s edge, some of its particles collided with an onboard instrument designed specifically to study cosmic dust and return information about its ingredients.
Postberg and his colleagues decided to look at data gathered during E ring flybys between 2004 and 2008, when the instrument was least contaminated by interplanetary dust from elsewhere in the solar system. Over 15 separate intervals, the spacecraft collected and studied about ten thousand dust particles. And in roughly one percent of those, Postberg and his colleagues identified the signatures of complex organic compounds.
“It was kind of a needle in a haystack problem,” he says.
Clinging to grains of water ice ejected by Enceladus, these heavy, carbon-containing molecules had been launched into space, just waiting for Cassini to come by and collect them upon impact. What’s more, the large compounds are likely fragments of even larger parent molecules that could weigh thousands of atomic mass units, Postberg says.
Floating Film
It’s the first time such heavy organics have been identified at Enceladus. Previously, Cassini detected lighter, gassy molecules such as methane and ethane, which contain one or two carbon atoms and a smattering of hydrogens; these molecules weigh in at around 15 atomic mass units.
But the newly detected molecules are as heavy as 200 atomic mass units and comprise anywhere between seven and 15 carbon atoms, handfuls of hydrogens, as well as nitrogen and oxygen.
“While we have found large molecules outside of Earth before, this is the first time they have been detected emerging from a liquid water ocean,” says Morgan Cable of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who looks for life in improbable places on Earth. (Recently, scientists also found complex organics on cold, dry Mars.)
“Many large organic molecules are not stable in liquid water for extended periods of time, so one of the next questions to ask is, where are these organic molecules coming from?”
Postberg and his colleagues think it’s likely that newly formed heavy organics rise to the top of the moon’s buried ocean and end up floating in a layer near areas where water erupts from fissures at the south pole. There, they stick to ice grains that are carried into space by bubbles rising from the seafloor to the surface.
“Our oceans have a thin film of organic molecules floating on top—think 'oil slick' but made up of life and its byproducts—that covers the ocean to a significant extent,” Cable says. “Now it seems that Enceladus has this too. But is it also made by life?”
Lying in Wait
Though tantalizing, this soup of carbon-containing riches is not an indication of life yet. Many processes could have crafted such structures in the absence of extraterrestrial metabolisms.
“Are they being made by abiotic processing at the bottom of the ocean, where the rock and water meet, or are they the waste products of microbes? That’s the question, with a capital Q,” Lunine says.
Fundamentally, the molecular soup tells scientists that the environment beneath Enceladus’s icy shell is capable of extremely complex chemistries. Whether those reactions are completely independent of life and fueled simply by chemistry and geology, are part of a prebiotic mix from which life could one day emerge, are currently building alien microbes, or are perhaps the waste products of extraterrestrial lifeforms already living in the Enceladian sea is still unknown.
Fractures in the icy shell snake along the south polar region of Enceladus in this Cassini picture.
PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA, JPL-CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE
“We should try to go back to Enceladus as soon as we can,” Lunine says. “It’s waiting for us. It’s not going anywhere, and think of all that microbial poo that could be spewed out into space and analyzed today.”
The instruments needed to answer these questions already exist—all it takes is a return trip. One such mission, designed by Lunine and his colleagues and called the Enceladus Life Finder, could have flown in the near future. But NASA declined to fund the project.
Soon, though, a fleet of spacecraft will be sent to explore another icy ocean world: Europa, which orbits Jupiter. Scientists don’t yet know what kinds of chemistry take place in that alien sea, or if the ingredients needed for life as we know it are similarly abundant.
For now, Enceladus will have to wait. And so will scientists, who will continue hoping that maybe someday soon, they won’t need to mine archival data to answer one of humanity’s most pressing questions, and instead coax this promising astrobiological target into revealing its secrets in real time.
Ruimteobservatorium dat middelpunt is van buitenaards complot vraagt om geduld. Ondertussen zijn webcams van deze andere observatoria uitgeschakeld
Ruimteobservatorium dat middelpunt is van buitenaards complot vraagt om geduld. Ondertussen zijn webcams van deze andere observatoria uitgeschakeld
Een ruimteobservatorium dat het middelpunt is van complottheorieën over aliens en dat nog steeds gesloten is, heeft mensen gevraagd om ‘geduld’ te hebben.
Het Sunspot Solar Observatory in Sunspot in New Mexico trok de aandacht toen het werd gesloten door FBI-agenten, die naar verluidt aankwamen in mysterieuze Blackhawk-helikopters.
Dit leidde tot suggesties dat het observatorium iets vreemds had ontdekt, zoals buitenaardsen of UFO’s.
Veiligheidsprobleem
Het observatorium is slechts een kleine 200 kilometer verwijderd van de plek waar het Roswellincident plaatsvond.
De FBI wilde alleen kwijt dat het gebouw was ontruimd vanwege een ‘veiligheidsprobleem’.
In de dagen erna liet de lokale sheriff weten dat hij geen idee heeft wat er aan de hand is. Ondertussen blijft het gebouw dicht.
Geheim
De National Solar Observatory (NSO), die het ruimteobservatorium beheert, schreef op Facebook dat het gebouw uit voorzorg tijdelijk is ontruimd.
Veel Facebookgebruikers vroegen waarom de NSO de feiten geheim blijft houden. Velen hadden het over complottheorieën over aliens of speculeerden dat er iets vreemds aan de hand is met de zon.
“Waarom vertellen jullie ons niet gewoon wat er aan de hand is?” schreef iemand. “De FBI moet eerlijk zijn.”
Opvallend is dat ook andere zonne- en ruimtecamera’s buiten werking zijn, aldus Zero Hedge. Het gaat daarbij om:
Een sterrenwacht of observatorium is een instituut van waaruit sterren en andere hemellichamen worden bekeken en bestudeerd. Er wordt onderscheid gemaakt tussen professionele sterrenwachten en volks- of publiekssterrenwachten. In Amerika is een observatorium (National Solar Observatory) dat zich uitsluitend bezighoudt met het bestuderen van de zon. De hoofdvestiging hiervan bevindt zich in Boulder, Colorado, en er zijn een tweetal andere vestigingen waarvan er één zich bevindt in de plaats Sunspot in New Mexico en de andere in Kitt Peak in Arizona.
Nu was er iets bijzonders aan de hand bij het observatorium in Sunspot vorige week.
Sinds die tijd is er een storm aan speculaties losgebarsten over wat nu wel niet de reden is van het , in grote haast, sluiten van dit obsevatorium.
Sheriff Benny House vertelde dat de FBI razendsnel te werk ging, compleet met een Black Hawkhelikopter en teams met mensen die bezig waren met antennes en dergelijke. Hij vertelde geen flauw idee te hebben waarom de FBI zo snel hierbij werd betrokken.
Het feit dat de FBI zo snel kwam, betekent dat de tijdfactor in dit hele verhaal belangrijk is. De FBI werd erbij gehaald om te zorgen dat het observatorium heel snel werd gesloten, zodat niemand nog dingen vanuit de gebouwen kon communiceren met de buitenwereld. Ze hebben ook de gebouwen uitgekamd om te zorgen dat er geen verborgen USB sticks of iets dergelijks achterbleven waardoor men misschien een indicatie zou kunnen krijgen over de reden van de sluiting.
Eén van de theorieën die de ronde doen is dat men door het observeren van de zon heeft ontdekt dat we een soort echte mini ijstijd tegemoet gaan en dat dit iets is, dat niet in het officiële verhaal past en dat men er daarom alles aan heeft gedaan om alle bewijsmateriaal daar weg te halen. Het is tenslotte een observatorium dat zich bezighoudt met de zon, dus wat het ook is, grote kans dat het iets te maken heeft met de zon.
In de volgende video zie je hoe een vader en zoon voorbij de afzetting gaan en het terrein opwandelen.
Wat ze zien is verbazingwekkend. Auto’s staan overal alsof ze plotseling in de steek zijn gelaten, deuren van de gebouwen zijn open en je kunt zo naar binnen lopen. Ook uit de beelden blijkt dat mensen daar in grote haast zijn vertrokken.
En plots zien ze in een prullenbak een DVD van het X-Files spel Unrestricted Access liggen.
Terwijl ze verder rondlopen, ruiken ze een vreemde lucht en krijgen een beetje beklemmend gevoel. Het doet allemaal onwerkelijk aan, alsof je rondloopt in een spookstad.
Ook Tyler van Secureteam is nog druk aan het speculeren over wat het zou kunnen zijn en in zijn video hieronder zie je beelden van het complex die gemaakt zijn vanuit een drone. Op een gegeven moment heeft Tyler het over twee mannen die hij ziet lopen en vraagt zich af welke lui dat wel niet zullen zijn en of ze misschien gewapend zijn.
Die twee zijn waarschijnlijk de twee mannen uit de video hierboven, want die horen op een gegeven moment een drone als ze daar lopen.
Kortom, verwarring alom en het mysterie blijft voorlopig voortduren.
Het Engelse werkwoord to woord cloak betekent verbergen, het niet zichtbaar zijn en dat is wat er regelmatig gebeurt met UFO’s.
Vaak zien ze eruit als een wolk in een lucht waar op je op dat moment eigenlijk helemaal geen wolk zou verwachten en ook in Nederland worden dit soort UFO’s waargenomen.
De meeste mensen kijken naar de grond als ze over straat lopen of op het scherm van hun smartphone. Wanneer ze wat meer naar de lucht zouden kijken, dan is er grote kans dat er veel meer vreemde dingen waargenomen zouden worden.
Door de jaren heen zijn hier talloze artikelen verschenen over hoe ze zich vermommen, cloaken, en dat het liefst in wolken.
Het navolgende is een ervaring van een lezer (dank!) en kan ook anderen misschien helpen om sneller vreemde zaken in het luchtruim te ontdekken:
Ik lees zojuist dit artikel op jullie site en kan hierin relateren. Het onderwerp "UFO's" heeft mij sinds mijn jeugd geboeid en door de loop der jaren er veel artikelen over gelezen, documentaires en de nodige "UFO" filmpjes gekeken. Ben nu in de dertig dus heb redelijk wat jaren in de materie kunnen duiken.
Persoonlijk vind ik maar enkele van de talloze filmpjes interessant (overtuigend zeg ik dus niet) vanwege de veelal arme kwaliteit van de meeste filmpjes en om enigzins sceptisch/gereserveerd te blijven i.r.t. wat er allemaal mogelijk is met foto/video bewerking of ik noem maar iets als lens-flares / halo's.
Voor mijzelf hou ik het op een combinatie van logisch relativeren c.q. een rationale motivering vinden op "wetenschap" en "feiten" gebaseerd en dat er meer tussen hemel en aarde bestaat.
De filmpjes die mij meestal boeiden waren de filmpjes waarin gecloakte objecten zich in wolken bevonden en met de wolken meebewogen of de wolken met hen...
Of "gecloakte" objecten hoog in de lucht die binnen enkele minuten een heel wolkenpakket om hun heen kregen, een smoke-screen zeg maar. Vroeg mij altijd af en hoopte er eigenlijk op dat ik dit ooit zelf met eigen ogen zou mogen aanschouwen.
Wat bedoel ik met gecloakte objecten voor de beeldvorming ? Cloaking als in de films Predator. De contouren van meestal schotel of delta-vormen zijn flauw zichtbaar vanuit een bepaalde hoek en waarschijnlijk lichtval (ben geen expert) waarbij je door of voorbij iets lijkt te kijken maar er bevindt zich degelijk wat.
Met cloaking is men best ver zoals jullie zelf ongetwijfeld weten maar in deze "ufo"-films gaat het om objecten die enkele honderden meters tot een paar kilometer wijd kunnen zijn.
Eind februari 2015 reed ik terug van Zwolle richting het West-Friesland door de polders en over de Markerwaarddijk. Al snel vielen mij enkele enorme schotelvormige gaten in het wolkendek op waarvan ik schatte dat die boven Noord Holland dreven in ik meen Zuid of Zuidwestelijke richting.
Het eerste waar ik aan dacht was de film Independence Day : het moment voordat de UFO's door het wolkendek breken en daarna aan die filmpjes van gecloakte objecten in de lucht.
Eenmaal thuis en op dit onderwerp zoekende leerde ik dat dit werd verklaard als het verschijnsel "Pilotengaten". Ik ben geen expert en probeer zoals gezegd alles tegen elkaar af te wegen dus ik hield het voor mijzelf op 55% dat het voor ons onbekende gecloakte objecten waren en 45% op "Pilotengaten" gerealiseerd door normale vliegtuigen.
De rit van het Oosten naar het Westen duurde langer als een uur en gedurende die tijd had ik goed zicht op de "Pilotengaten". Voor mijn beeld bleven de vormen in het wolkendek redelijk stabiel tijdens de gehele rit. De eerste keer in mijn leven dat ik dit fenomeen had gezien en sindsdien geen "Pilotengaten" meer gezien.
Wat ik later apart vond was het feit dat ik 2 gaten had gezien terwijl het luchtruim op diverse hoogtes over het IJsselmeer / Noordwest Nederland door tig vliegtuigen worden gebruikt (ervan uitgaande dat de gaten in deze contreien waren ontstaan). Ik hield het erop dat het misschien zou kunnen dat onder bepaalde omstandigheden en op een bepaald tijdstip deze twee specifieke "Pilotengaten" echt door vliegtuigen waren gemaakt, de 45% kans :)
2 maanden later zag ik op internet artikelen voorbij komen omtrent "mysterieuze zwarte ringen" die wereldwijd opeens in de lucht verschenen en na verloop van tijd weer oplosten. De filmpjes hiervan vond ik zeer intrigerend en redelijk geloofwaardig.
Okee, zwarte ringen in de lucht zijn geen "reguliere UFO's" maar het is de inleiding tot het volgende :
Circa 2 maanden na het zien van filmpjes over deze "zwarte ringen" was ik op zoek naar artikelen / filmpjes van de Pilotengaten die ik toen in februari had gezien in de lucht.
Tijdens het bekijken van de zoekresultaten viel het mij op dat heel recent links waren gepost met UFO en Utrecht in de titel. Ik klikken en het betroffen opnamen van een "zwarte ring" in de lucht boven Utrecht.... ! Dat terwijl er een paar maanden geleden dus redelijk wat meldingen over de hele wereld waren i.r.t. "zwarte ringen" in de lucht.
De verklaring voor deze "zwarte ring" zou uiteindelijk zijn dat deze afkomstig waren van een toneelstuk, te weten : The Day After. Kan zo zijn, heb het stuk niet bezocht maar er was best wat vuur en rook als ik de trailer van dit toneelstuk zo zag dus het zou kunnen.
Terwijl ik zo zat te zoeken leerde ik dat er zich een "UFO" bevindt te Utrecht op het gebouw de "Inktpot" als overblijfsel van een expositie op hoogte. Nooit geweten en ik vond het wel grappig. Niet om een verband te zoeken met de "zwarte UFO ring" boven Utrecht of iets dergelijks, gewoon grappig maar uiteindelijk wel twee aparte gebeurtenissen die 1e helft van 2015 in de lucht i.r.t. UFO-onderwerp i.m.o.
Nu weet ik helaas niet meer of het vorig jaar of het jaar daarvoor was maar ik zat op een dag op mijn balkon (3 hoog) 's-middags een sigaret te roken met een bakkie thee. De lucht was bijna vrij van wolken in de richting waar ik naar keek en 50 meter tegenover mij staat een gebouw van 3 hoog en daarover heen kijk je onbelemmerd de lucht in richting het Zuidoosten.
Tijdens het kijken naar de lucht viel het mij op dat ik lijnen zag in de verte in het luchtruim nabij de enkele wolken die er waren en die in de wolken opgingen. Ik ging mij focussen en ik was echt flabbergasted toen ik de contouren zag van een gecloakt object in de lucht.
Geen "Pilotengaten" maar dit was the real deal ! Ik zat enkele minuten met complete verbazing in de lucht te kijken. Op alleen zicht schatte ik in dat het ongeveer boven het Markermeer / Flevoland / Provincie Utrecht hing, op welke hoogte ook lastig om in te schatten maar toch minimaal al wel een aantal honderden meters tot een paar kilometer als ik het als zodanig vanaf mijn positie in West-Friesland kon aanschouwen.
Ik zag het object van opzij als het ware en het leek mij een delta-vorm te hebben. Ook het formaat was bizar, inschattend misschien richting een kilometer of wat meer lang. Zoals ik al zei is het lastig om afstanden en dimensies in te schatten van iets wat zich tientallen kilometers ver weg kan bevinden op een x-hoogte maar dat dat ding groot was... daar ben ik 100% zeker van.
Het was echt heel lastig om te zien en je moest je echt wel focussen en ook weten waar je naar zoekt maar ik kon toch niet de enigste zijn ? Zelfs met steeds meer mensen die naar de grond (telefoon) kijken moest minimaal 1 iemand dit ook hebben gezien ? Ik naar binnen en daarna weer naar buiten.
Ik was al overtuigd dat wat ik had gezien echt was maar ik nam toch even break. Weer terug op mijn balkon en focussen in de lucht en het was er nog steeds in de verte. Het bewoog zich langzaam voort en toen viel ik in de volgende fase van verbazing...
Het luchtruim was zoals gezegd goed vrij van wolken m.u.v. de wolken die nu voor een kwart het gecloakte object verhulden. In een mum van een paar minuten tijd ontstonden er nog meer wolken om het gecloakte object heen en was niet meer zichtbaar.
Het wolkenpakket wat zich had gevormd op de plek van het object bewoog nu net zo langzaam in dezelfde richting als waar ik net tevoren het object had zien gaan. Precies zoals hoe ik in het verleden de weinige voor mij redelijk geloofwaardige filmpjes van gecloakte objecten in wolken had bekeken op het internet.
Of het om Mensen / Aliens / andere entiteiten of een combi gaat wil ik mij niet aan wagen. Mijn wens was vervuld, ik had nu zeker weten een "UFO" gezien.
Maar dan kan er toch iemand tegen aan vliegen als het een kilometer of meer lang is ? Zoals hoe ik stealth / camouflage / cloaking begrijp wil je niet op de radar of met het oog zichtbaar zijn van de diverse luchtverkeersleidingen maar toch moeten er vliegtuigen worden omgeleid om niet tegen zo'n gevaarte te knallen dus er moeten insiders zijn, dat lijkt mij goed mogelijk.
Hologrammen etc. laat ik achterwege als optie want anders wordt het te langdradig wat het eigenlijk al is geworden :)
Niet gefilmd ? Stom genoeg heb ik het inderdaad niet geprobeerd of er eigenlijk niet eens aan gedacht waar ik later spijt van had. Ging daarna op bezoek bij mijn ouders en heb nog een aantal minuten in hun tuin gestaan kijkende in het luchtruim en het hele verhaal uitleggende aan mijn pa en hopende dat het weer opdook zodat ik het kon laten zien aan mijn vader.
Die weet dat ik af en toe in ben voor een geintje maar hij wist dat ik op dat moment over wat ik had gezien bloed serieus was dus hij liet mij mijn ding in de tuin doen totdat ik het na een tijdje had opgegeven.
Dat dus mijn persoonlijk relaas omtrent een gecloakt, ik meen deltavormig object van een kilometer of langer in het luchtruim van Nederland.
It was fun poling holes in the recent story about a tiny hole poked in the International Space Station which an astronaut held his finger over until Russian cosmonauts patched it with a modern version of chewing gum and duct tape. Funny stuff … until it was revealed that the hole was not the result of a micrometeorite impact but an accidental drill hole made by a Soyuz contractor who himself had patched it up so the capsule could pass inspection. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Further inspections by the crew have found evidence of more mysterious drill dents and unexplained scratches … this time on the outside. Don’t shout “Aliens!” … yet.
Russian astronaut Sergei Prokopyev showed the original 'drilled hol during a video released by the space agency Roscosmos
“Traces of drilling have been found not only inside the spacecraft’s living compartment, but also on the screen of the anti-meteorite shield that covers the spacecraft from the outside and is installed 15 millimeters away from the pressure hull.”
That chilling revelation was given to the TASS news agency by “a rocket and space industry source.” Prior to plugging the two-millimeter hole discovered after pressure began to drop in the ISS on August 30th, cosmonauts conducted an extensive examination of the area surround it both inside and out. Photo and video images taken of the outer hull using an endoscope (that cheer you just heard was from gastroenterologists) showed more evidence of non-reported-or-repaired drilling.
“During the analysis of those images, traces of drilling were found on the anti-meteorite shield … the top of the drill came through the pressure hull and hit the non-gastight outer shell.”
With that discovery, the finger-pointing began. The non-gastight anti-meteorite outer shell is the last piece installed before the spacecraft is taken to the final assembly workshop. Another anonymous source (see, the Russians use them too) gives this evidence:
“When Soyuz MS-09 has just arrived to the final assembly workshop, it was photographed in details. No hole and no signs of drilling… were found. The spacecraft was drilled later, when it was fully assembled.”
Photographs of the anti-meteorite shield taken when it arrived also showed no damage. That implies the drilling scratches and dents were made at the very end of the assembly cycle or during the 90-checkout. Hmm. How did none of this get caught during the entire 90-day inspection? Have they not heard of fine-toothed combs?
The sources don’t believe the damage occurred while the Soyuz was moved to the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan or when it was connected to the rocket and placed on the launch pad.
This additional information seems to have been released AFTER a commission consisting of specialists from Roscosmos, the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation and the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building completed their investigation and Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin said the damaged materials would be studied “for as long as it takes” but “within reasonable limits.”
Within reasonable limits? This is the only vehicle in use for transporting crew member to and from the ISS. Would he feel the same way if it was a NASA-made capsule … or Musk-made? How quickly would they bring up the pot-smoking? NASA chief Jim Bridenstine contacted his Russian counterpart and offered assistance to continue the investigation, identify all of the parties involved in this serious problem and insure that the crew can return safely.
Sergei Prokopyev (pictured) explained on a video released Monday by the Russian space agency Roscosmos how the crew last week located and sealed the tiny hole that created a slight loss of pressure
It’s not aliens. However, if it’s someone paying the contractor to sabotage the ship or the ISS, who might that be? And why?
Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin said that the hole could have been drilled during manufacturing or while in orbit. He did not say if he suspected any of the current crew of three Americans, two Russians and a German aboard the station (pictured)
Mysterious moon swirls have finally been explained
Mysterious moon swirls have finally been explained
"This was the final piece in the puzzle of understanding the magnetism that underlies these lunar swirls."
by Chelsea Gohd
Light and dark markings swirl over the moon, looking like cream swirled into coffee or clouds against a slate gray sky. These lunar swirls may result from ancient, magnetic lava just below the moon's surface, according to one new study.
A joint study between researchers at Rutgers University and the University of California, Berkeley, pointed to the moon's internally generated magnetic field and past volcanic activity to explain the lunar swirls.
An image of the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.NASA LRO WAC science team
Researchers have known for some time that lunar swirls share space with localized magnetic fields and that when those fields deflect particles from solar wind, parts of the moon's surface weather more slowly than other parts. "But the cause of those magnetic fields, and thus of the swirls themselves, had long been a mystery," Sonia Tikoo, co-author of the study and a researcher at Rutgers University-New Brunswick's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said in a statement. "To solve it, we had to find out what kind of geological feature could produce these magnetic fields — and why their magnetism is so powerful."
The researchers developed mathematical models for these localized fields, or "geological magnets" as they're described in the statement. These models showed that each lunar swirl must exist above a narrow, magnetic object located just below the lunar surface.
Even stranger, researchers think that these subsurface magnetic objects are ancient, long, narrow lava tubes formed by flowing lava or lava dikes, which are vertical sheets of magma in the crust of a moon or planet. Past experiments have shown that, when heated above 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit (600 degrees Celsius) in a zero-oxygen environment, certain minerals in moon rocks break down and release metallic iron, making the rocks extremely magnetic.
So, when the moon was erupting lava over 3 billion years ago, these magnetic lava tubes or lava dikes were likely created and became highly magnetic as they cooled down, according to the statement
Sonia Tikoo, co-author of a new study explaining lunar swirls and researcher at Rutgers University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, looks at moon rock samples in a petri dish.
"No one had thought about this reaction in terms of explaining these unusually strong magnetic features on the moon," Tikoo said in the statement, referring to the lava becoming magnetic moon rock under the surface and causing lunar swirls. "This was the final piece in the puzzle of understanding the magnetism that underlies these lunar swirls."
This study was published July 26 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Are we truly alone in the cosmos? New study casts doubt on rise of alien life in our galaxy
Are we truly alone in the cosmos? New study casts doubt on rise of alien life in our galaxy
The Milky Way may be vast, but some scientists suggest that we are the galaxy's only inhabitants.
by Seth Shostak
A recent study titled "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox" suggests that we may be alone in the galaxy.
ViewStock / Getty Images
It’s something people tell me all the time, and usually in hushed tones: “With a trillion planets out there, we really can’t be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.” In other words, given the enormous amount of real estate in space, aliens are sure to exist. So why haven’t we found any?
I don’t dispute this straightforward idea because, after all, it underpins the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). But not everyone agrees. A recent paper by three researchers at the University of Oxford is throwing shade on those who feel confident that the cosmos is thick with extraterrestrials.
The Oxford academics were addressing a puzzle known as the Fermi Paradox, which describes the disconnect between our expectation of many worlds swarming with aliens and the fact that they remain undiscovered. Nearly 70 years ago, the celebrated physicist Enrico Fermi mouthed a deceptively simple question: “Where is everybody?” He made a quick estimate of how long it would take for any society bent on building an empire to colonize the entire Milky Way and realized it was only a few tens of millions of years, which is nearly 1,000 times shorter than the age of the galaxy.
This raised an obvious problem: There’s been more than enough time for aliens to spread out, and yet we don’t see them.
Perhaps the Fermi Paradox is keeping you awake at night. If so, the Oxford scientists offer some succor. The source of your discomfort, they say, could be your inflated estimate of how many alien societies might be out there.
To make such estimates, nearly everyone deploys the Drake Equation — a simple formula that was cooked up by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961. It reckons how frequently intelligent species arise by multiplying the probability that biology will appear with the likelihood that it will become smart enough to develop science and technology.
Most people who wield the Drake Equation simply suppose (which is to say, guess) the values of its terms. For example, they might say that the chance that microbes will eventually bubble out of the primordial soup of a watery planet is between one and 10 percent. But the Oxford scientists rightly point out that we really don’t know this percentage with any degree of accuracy. It could be that the probability that biology will arise is many orders of magnitude less. Similar issues apply for some of the other terms in the Drake Equation.
If we own up to the true extent of these uncertainties and do the requisite math, the Oxford study finds that there’s at least a 53 percent chance that we’re alone in the Milky Way and at least a 40 percent chance that we’re alone in the visible universe. Homo sapiens could be the smartest thing going.
This result, they claim, melts the Fermi Paradox like butter on a hot griddle — maybe no one has colonized the galaxy because no one else inhabits it.
Perhaps now you can sleep better. If so, great, but I can’t.
While there’s no arguing against the fact that many of the steps that lead to intelligent creatures have unknown and possibly very low probabilities, that situation could change soon. The discovery of microbes on one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn — something that might happen while you still have your teeth — would strongly boost the chance of finding life elsewhere, and essentially guarantee that biology is as universal as door dings in a parking garage. At that point, the analysis by the Oxford team could itself dissolve.
Frankly, exploration is seldom done well on blackboards. For 2,000 years academics argued over the possibility that a continent-size land mass sat at the bottom of the globe. The ancient Greeks suggested that this was required by symmetry, which may have qualified as a good idea in 350 B.C. A better, if less optimistic, argument could have been made in the year 1600 by noting that all of the waters of the southern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans explored to date were known to be devoid of any large polar continent. Since these two sprawling bodies of water cover 55 million square miles, whereas a land mass the size of Antarctica is 5 million square miles, the a priori chances were more than 10-to-one against there being a continent just out of sight to the south.
Obviously this analysis would have been wrong, but it demonstrates that you don’t make new discoveries by computing probabilities, only by investigating — by actually doing an experiment. In the case of the Antarctica hypothesis, that meant sending ships south.
We can try to reckon the odds of success in our hunt for cosmic confreres. That’s always worthwhile. But, such exercises should not deter us from an actual search.
Dr. Seth Shostak is senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California and host of the “Big Picture Science” podcast.
Google Maps est l’un des endroits préférés des ufologues pour dénicher des OVNIS en visite sur notre planète. Le dernier cas en date nous vient du Brésil où des internautes pensent avoir découvert un objet volant non identifié sur une image de Google Street View.
Alors véritable OVNI, ou simple objet terrestre ?
Un OVNI dans le ciel brésilien ?
La photo a été prise au-dessus du Parque Eloy Chaves, situé à Jundiaí, dans l’État de São Paulo, au Brésil. L’objet doré est bien visible au loin dans le ciel bleu dégagé, et il fait effectivement penser à un vaisseau volant. La photo du mystérieux objet récupérée sur Google Street View a très vite été partagée des milliers de fois sur les réseaux sociaux et les commentaires ont abondé.
Évidemment, les ufologues pensent avoir découvert une énième preuve de l’existence des extraterrestres et de leur grand intérêt pour notre planète. Pourtant, l’étrange objet sur cette photo prise au-dessus de la Avenida Luiz José Sereno, sur la Estrada da Ermida, pourrait être une simple anomalie dans la prise de vue des cameras de Google.
Et ce ne serait pas la première fois que cela arrive.
Un simple bug logiciel plutôt qu’un OVNI
L’idée que des soucoupes volantes survolent la Terre est très excitante, mais l’explication de ces « phénomènes » pourrait être bien plus simple en réalité. Ce que beaucoup d’ufologues prennent pour un OVNI pourrait en effet être simplement un ballon, un cerf volant, un débris transporté par le vent, ou un bug graphique du logiciel de Google. Et oui, même les services du géant Google n’échappent pas aux bugs !
En effet pour modéliser le monde, la société utilise ses Google Cars qui parcourent la planète pour prendre des clichés de tous les endroits. Et pour ce faire, les Google Cars n’utilisent pas une seule caméra mais plusieurs à la fois. Un algorithme développé par Google se charge ensuite de les assembler. C’est justement à ce stade que des bugs ou des artefacts se glissent parfois dans les images de Maps.
Il arrive aussi que de la poussière ou de la matière organique se dépose sur les lentilles des caméras de Google, donnant lieu à d’étranges tâches qu’on pourrait prendre pour des objets extraterrestres. Un problème que corrigent en général les algorithmes de Google. Mais il arrive que certaines passent entre les mailles du filet. Les ufologues ont ainsi reporté au fil des ans de nombreux supposés « OVNI » dans les images de Maps.
D’autres cas de prétendus OVNI reportés dans Google Maps
En juin dernier, la chaîne YouTube spécialisée dans le paranormal et les « phénomènes étranges et inexpliqués », NowYouKnow, a publié une vidéo montrant une étrange tache ovale photographiée dans le ciel de la province de Neuquen par Google Earth. Nous en avions parlé dans cet article. Malheureusement, Google a actualisé ses clichés de Street View et le supposé OVNI n’est plus visible.
En mai 2018, une tache similaire avait été découverte dans Google Maps par un ufologue du nom de Pedro Ramirez. Ce qui Ramirez a considéré comme « un vaisseau construit par une civilisation extraterrestre avancée » a été photographié au-dessus de Punalu’u Black Sand Beach, une des plus célèbres plages de Hawaï. Mais il y a de grande chance que le supposé OVNI soit en réalité une tâche causée par un dépôt de poussière sur l’optique de la caméra de Google, un drone ou simplement un débris emporté par le vent.
Plusieurs clichés de Google Maps supposés montrer des vaisseaux aliens ont également été identifiés par les ufologues sur des photos de l’Antarctique. L’ufologue russe Valentin Degterev a par exemple publié une photoqui selon lui montre le site du crash d’un vaisseau extraterrestre. Une allégation démentie par Andrew Flemming, un chercheur travaillant pour le British Antarctic Survey, qui pense lui qu’il s’agit simplement d’une crevasse comme on en trouve beaucoup dans la région.Le même Valentin Degterev pense avoir découvert une autre preuve de l’existence des extraterrestres sur cette photo de Maps prise en Antarctique. Mais le supposé vaisseau alien pourrait bien n’être qu’un simple rocher en réalité. Vous pouvez aussi jeter un œil à cette image de Google Maps où des internautes pensent reconnaître les restes d’une soucoupe volante… qui se serait écrasée en Antarctique.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft captured this image of a giant hole (dark patch at top) in the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, on Sept. 11, 2018.
Credit: NASA/SDO
The northern lights just got a boost thanks to a big hole in the sun's atmosphere, and there could be something of a repeat showing tonight.
A moderate geomagnetic storm made flickering auroras visible to skywatchers as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin early this morning (Sept. 11), according to Spaceweather.com.
That storm was triggered by an especially potent and fast-moving burst of solar wind — the stream of charged particles flowing constantly from the sun — which escaped through a gaping hole in the sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona.
The northern and southern lights result when such particles slam into molecules high up in Earth's atmosphere, generating a glow. Earth's magnetic field channels these particles toward the planet's poles, which explains why the auroras are usually restricted to high latitudes. But special circumstances — such as coronal holes and giant explosions of solar plasma called coronal mass ejections — can extend the intensity and the reach of these dazzling light displays.
A moderate geomagnetic storm brought the northern lights within sight of skywatchers as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin in the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2018.
Credit: NOAA/SWPC
The geomagnetic storm responsible for this morning's ramp-up is now subsiding, Spaceweather.com reported. But there's still a 70 percent chance of minor storming through tomorrow (Sept. 12), according to forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center.
So, look up tonight if you live in the upper Midwest, New England, the Pacific Northwest or somewhere else along similar latitude lines — you may just get lucky!
Scientists do not yet know what causes the mysterious fast radio bursts, but a form of alien transportation has been suggested.
Image:The mysterious signals were found in data collected by the Green Bank Telescope in the US
By Alexander J Martin, science & tech reporter
Scientists searching for extraterrestrial life say they have spotted 72 mysterious signals from an alien galaxy using artificial intelligence (AI).
The researchers at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute discovered the unusual signals when examining 400 terabytes of radio data from a dwarf galaxy three billion light years away from Earth.
Almost all artificial intelligence technology involves automating data analysis, combing through huge data sets to identify patterns or unusual occurrences.
The signals they spotted - fast radio bursts (FRBs) - are bright and quick pulses which were first discovered in 2007 and are believed to come from distant galaxies, although it is not yet know what causes them.
"The nature of the object emitting them is unknown," SETI said, adding: "There are many theories, including that they could be the signatures of technology developed by extraterrestrial intelligent life."
Last year, scientists at Harvard University suggested that FRBs could result from energy leaks from powerful transmitters built by alien civilisations in order to send giant light sail ships on interstellar voyages.
A light sail would use the tiny amount of pressure exerted by light to produce a small but constant acceleration which allows a spacecraft to reach a great speed.
The FRBs were detected in data collected by the Green Bank Telescope, part of the US Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless communications signals are banned to prevent interference with the telescopes.
Gerry Zhang, a PhD student at Berkeley, developed the machine-learning algorithm used to examine the 400tb of data, in which another researcher had already identified 21 FRBs.
"Gerry's work is exciting not just because it helps us understand the dynamic behavior of FRBs in more detail," said SETI's Dr Andrew Siemion, "but also because of the promise it shows for using machine learning to detect signals missed by classical algorithms."
Dr Siemion added: "These new techniques are already improving our sensitivity to signals from extraterrestrial technologies."
The results of their research have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
Newfound Alien World May Bridge Rare Gap in Planet Types
Newfound Alien World May Bridge Rare Gap in Planet Types
By Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Contributor
A size comparison of the Earth, Wolf 503b and Neptune. The color blue for Wolf 503b is imaginary; nothing is yet known about the atmosphere or surface of the planet.
Credit: Robert Simmon (Terre), NASA/JPL (Neptune)/NASA Goddard
A student who began her master's degree in May partnered with an international team of researchers to discover a special cosmic neighbor twice the size of Earth.
Graduate student Merrin Peterson and a team of Canadian, German and American scientists used data from NASA's Kepler telescope to study Wolf 503b, a planet located 145 light-years away in the patch of sky where the constellation Virgo is visible.
Peterson, a student at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at the University of Montreal, said in a Sept. 6 statement released by the university that the discovery of this world happened rather quickly. The find occurred after she and her adviser, Björn Benneke, ran a program in May 2018 to find "interesting exoplanet candidates'' from a recent release of Kepler data, she said. [10 Expoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]
According to the statement, exoplanet Wolf 503b orbits an old "orange dwarf" star slightly dimmer than the sun, and goes around it quite closely and quickly — every six days. Wolf 503b is also fascinating because there's nothing in our solar system quite like it for comparison, according to university officials. Its size puts the exoplanet in a scientific sweet spot — Wolf 503b is in the zone where it might be a rocky "super-Earth," or gaseous like a "sub-Neptune."
Merrin Peterson, an Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) graduate student who started her master’s degree at the University of Montreal in May 2018.
Credit: University of Montreal
Kepler has studied the radii of thousands of exoplanets strewn across the universe, but because of a yet-to-be-well-understood phenomenon that researchers call the Fulton gap, there aren't many exoplanets 1.5 to 2 times the size of Earth. This is what makes additional observations of Wolf 503b — with a radius 2.03 times that of Earth — brimming with discovery potential.
Typically, these Fulton-gap planets observed by Kepler are challenging to study. They orbit distant, dim stars, according to the statement, making it hard for researchers to figure out their density, measure the wavelengths of light coming from them or investigate their atmospheres.
But this star is relatively close to Earth, making it appear brighter and riper for study.
"Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study," Benneke, also at University of Montreal, said in the statement.
An artist's concept shows the size of super-Earth 55 Cancri e compared with Earth. A ground-based telescope in Spain was able to identify 55 Cancri e, which suggests that telescopes on the ground help in the search for habitable planets around other stars.
Credit: NASA/JPL
According to Peterson, this star's proximity and brightness will help support several tests, like measuring the star's movement when tugged by the planet to determine Wolf 503b's mass. Knowing the mass will help scientists learn about the composition of our celestial neighbor. ''At its radius, if the planet has a composition similar to Earth, it would have to be about 14 times its mass," university officials said. ''If, like Neptune, it has an atmosphere rich in gas or volatiles, it would be approximately half as massive.''
And once the Jame Webb Space Telescope takes flight, scientists will be able to observe Wolf 503b for the presence of water in its atmosphere, or other chemical content. According to the research team, characterizing Wolf 503b's atmosphere will inform astronomers about what other Fulton-gap-size planets might be like.
"Wolf 503b offers a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of 'super-Earths' and 'sub-Neptunes' as a whole," the study authors wrote in their paper.
The paper detailing Peterson's findings was accepted Aug. 30 for publication in The Astronomical Journal.
Are octopuses aliens? Bizarre new theory suggests the sea creatures’ eggs arrived on earth on a comet from outer space
Are octopuses aliens? Bizarre new theory suggests the sea creatures’ eggs arrived on earth on a comet from outer space
A group of 33 scientists think octopuses descend from alien material that came to earth on an icy comet
By Saqib Shah
THEY sure look strange, but could octopuses be extraterrestrials? 33 scientists think so.
From being able to switch colour and shape to guessing footie results, the eight-armed sea-dwellers aren't easy to pin down.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
Have our alien overlords been living alongside us all along?
But an extraordinary new theory claims these creatures descend from organic alienmaterial that hitched a ride on an icy comet that smashed into Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.
And those touting the idea aren't tinfoil-hat-wearing loonies either.
The group of 33 happen to be researchers from reputable institutions who published their findings in an actual scientific journal.
They claim octopuses evolved from squids after the introduction of alien DNA.
GETTY - CONTRIBUTOR
33 scientists are standing by the bizarre new theory
According to the experts, the "remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity" that resulted in the emergence of the octopus 270 million years ago goes against what we know about Darwinian evolution - that it's a slow, gradual process.
They say the genes behind this ultra-fast form of natural selection don't appear to have come from an ancestral origin.
The study, published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, claims: "The genome of the octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens.
THE SIMPSONS
Did the Simpsons already predict this theory? The show's aliens Kodos and Kang definitely look like octupuses
"Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene.
"The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral nautilus to the common cuttlefish to squid to the common octopus are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form.
"It is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant 'future' in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large."
The new paper hinges on previous ideas put forward by its authors several decades back, chief among them the Panspermia hypothesis.
This theory suggests that extraterrestrials seeded Earth's population billions of years ago when viruses, microbes and even tiny life forms arrived on our planet from outer space.
It all sounds a bit like Ridley Scott's Alien origin movie Prometheus, only swap out naked humanoid ETs for sea molluscs.
In the paper, the researchers indicate that octopus eggs were among these new forms of life that came from an alien source, hinting at why today they're so darn clever.
However, a number of other researches have gone on the record to dismiss the findings, which even the authors claim are fanciful.
These include biologist P.Z. Myers, who debunked the paper as “garbage,” and urged that the “novelties” in cephalopod evolution don't point to octopuses having originally come from another planet.
In a review of the recent study, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics scientist Karin Moelling noted that there's no evidence to back up the claim that octopuses came from aliens, thus making it impossible to take the paper seriously.
She added that there are other, more simpler explanations for the so-called "Cambrian explosion", where scores of life forms appeared on earth between 485 million to 541 million years ago, reports Inquisitr.
But one thing everyone should agree on is that the insane theory makes for fun food for thought.
What animals do you think could be aliens? Let us know in the comments.
“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.” – Douglas Adams
Smart man, that Douglas Adams. He, of course, is the renowned and brilliant author of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy stories – originally a BBC radio series, later turned wildly popular novel series and then hit movie. That quote above is from his lesser known work: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, also quite popular among his fans.
It’s pretty well common sense, that is, if a thing appears to be a thing, it probably is that thing. There are exceptions though. Outside of a discussion of the fallibility of our senses, the weirdness of our world quite regularly presents us with items and ideas that defy that ineffable logic above.
One such item – an item that actually belongs to a group of objects known as out-of-place-artefacts – is called the Klerksdorp Sphere (or spheres as is actually the case). Also commonly known as the grooved spheres, the Klerksdorp Spheres are what some are calling definitive proof of the advanced technological abilities of ancient (pre-historic) cultures. You might think that Erik von Däniken should have his hands in this argument, but as far as I can tell he doesn’t.
The spheres are described as small, smooth metal spheres, usually about an inch in diameter, many with concentric grooves running around their circumference. Those forwarding claims of advanced ancient technology claim that they are perfect spheres, which, if you’re familiar with sculpture you’re aware of how difficult that is to achieve. The spheres apparently vary in colour between a dark blue to varying hues of red. But their most impressive feature is that, according to some, they could not be manufactured on Earth, but rather could only be made in space. The common story is that this has been confirmed by NASA. They are said to be perfectly balanced and to be the hardest objects known to man (alternately they are claimed to only be as “hard as steel”).
The Klerksdorp Spheres
The spheres have been found by miners and rock hounds in and around a mining operation near a small town called Ottosdal, South Africa, which is owned by a local mining company called Wonderstone Ltd. Wonderstone’s primary product is a mineral called Pyrophyllite – composed of aluminum silicate hydroxide (Al2Si4O10(OH)2). Pyrophyllite is a relatively soft mineral used in manufacturing, from train brakes to aerospace technologies and even as a sculpture medium. The Wonderstone deposit is said to be somewhere between 2.8-3 billion years old, and it is inside this Pyrophyllite deposit that all of the Klerksdorp Spheres have been found.
That number is generally blamed for the confusion. The more conspiratorial among us claim that, since the Klerksdorp spheres consist of a different, much harder material than the Pyrophyllite, this means that they cannot be natural formations and if they are not natural, then they must be manufactured. Pyrophyllite is sedimentary rock which generally measures a three on the Mohs scale of hardness, while the spheres, which remain unmeasured, appear much harder (highly scientific, I know). This apparent discrepancy combined with the fact that the parent deposit of stone is roughly 3 billion years old, we have a duck that doesn’t appear to be a duck.
Add to this the story that they are perfect spheres, so highly balanced that they baffled NASA scientists, and you’ve got a ready-made out-of-place-artefact.
The problem is, much of the above is not true.
The spheres have been studied by a number of people since their first discovery, most notably Paul. V. Heinrich, Geologist and Archaeologist at Louisiana State University, and a team led by Professor of Geology at the University of Johannesburg, Bruce Cairncross. Also notably, no record exists of any NASA funded or directed study of these artefacts.
There are many photos that show (without much room for argument) that most known examples are actually not perfect spheres. In fact, many aren’t even spherical at all. They’re generally described by researchers as flattened spheres or discs. Sometimes they’re even inter-grown, like soap bubbles. Some have concentric grooves and others don’t. And as mentioned, at least insofar as no such record exists, they have never been measured for hardness (though I can’t imagine why not). But since they are quite easily broken open to reveal a well-defined internal radial structure, the contention that they are so hard they cannot be scratched, even by metal tools, is easily dismissed[1].
Another issue is, as may already be obvious, that they are not made of metal. According to Paul Heinrich – who used petrographic and x-ray diffraction analysis to determine their composition – the majority of the spheres are actually made of hematite, while some few of them consist of magnetite or wollastonite.[2]Hematite is an iron-ore mineral, the most common and important iron-ore mineral on the planet, in fact. It’s used in many manufacturing processes, though most famously in jewellery, its polished black appearance is apparently quite appealing, though its colour can range from black to silver-grey to brown and reddish-brown.
As to the question of how such hematite deposits could form inside the Pyrophyllite, and how they could emerge with such a manufactured appearance, both Cairncross and Heinrich agree, as do several other geologists, that the spheres are what’s known as volcanic concretions.
A concretion is the result of the process of precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between sediment grains. In simpler terms, it means that the small grains of iron-ore sediment, slowly filter through the considerably larger substrate grains of the host mineral – in this case Pyrophyllite – eventually collecting in small pockets within the deposit. It most often produces small, hard, roughly spherical stones within other, softer sedimentary host materials. As with the Klerksdorp Spheres, concretions also often have characteristic grooves, which are believed to be a result of fine-grained laminations within which the concretions grew – basically, the shape of the hole in which they found themselves.[3]
Concretions on Bowling Ball Beach, south of Mendocino, CA
Now, far be it for me to tell you what’s what, but this process is really quite well-understood and documented. And there are other examples of such concretions found all around the world. There are even some that seem even more incredible than the incredible Klerksdorp Spheres, namely The Waffle Rock of West Virginia. And while some experts have claimed that it’s odd for hematite and Pyrophyllite to interact in this way, but, as with most geologic processes, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility for two such materials to meet and interact in a way that’s consistent with their own physical properties.
All of the pseudo-scientific claims surrounding these objects revolve around the notion that they could not have formed naturally. Cairncross, Heinrich, et al, seem to have lain waste to that idea. Statements these researchers have made regarding their conclusions have been twisted and distorted by tabloid journalists in years past, and have muddied the waters surrounding the mythical nature of these artefacts. But rest assured, the truth can be found with a little digging.
References.
[1] Writers at Virtuescience.com cite a quote by Roelf Marx, a member of Cairncross’ research team, which claims that the stones cannot be scratched. No original citation of these remarks seems to exist, therefore it may be erroneous. http://www.virtuescience.com/grooved-spheres.html
[2] Heinrich, P.V., 2007, South African concretions of controversy: South African Lapidary Magazine. vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 7-11.
[3] Cairncross, B., 1988, “Cosmic cannonballs” a rational explanation: The South African Lapidary Magazine. v. 30, no. 1, pp. 4-6
Jellyfish have a complicated relationship with humans: They are often feared by beachgoers because of their sting. They can get unintentionally caught up in commercial fishing nets. Some jellies can even clog intake pipes of coastal power and desalination plants, and in high concentrations, can force closures of popular beaches.
For scientists, however, jellyfish are fascinating research subjects – they play important roles in the marine ecosystem and are a key source of food for some fish and sea turtles. Some even protect commercially valuable species, such as oysters, from predators.
Whatever your view may be, many misconceptions exist about jellyfish. Let’s bust the top three myths:
Myth #1: Jellyfish are all the same species
On the contrary, there are more than 200 documented species of true jellyfish (and many more of their stinging relatives) across the globe. The environmental conditions required for each species to thrive can differ. In fact, NOAA and Smithsonian Institution scientists recently found that sea nettles in the Chesapeake Bay are considerably different than those in the open ocean and recognized it as a new species.
Myth #2: Jellyfish go after people
Not true. Any contact with jellyfish is incidental. Humans are not on their menu, but when we are in their environment we can get in the way of their tentacles. While jellyfish don’t have a brain, they can sense light and have coordinated swimming behaviors, which help keep them in good places to hunt for microscopic plants and fish eggs/larvae, or other prey like fish, worms, and crustaceans.
Myth #3: Applying urine to a jellyfish sting can reduce the pain
Perhaps the most interesting of myths, the use of urine to treat stings, has been tested and proven unhelpful. A better idea? Try an acidic liquid like vinegar. There are also several commercially available products marketed for stings.
What to do if you get stung: First, look for any tentacle adhering to skin, and flush the area well with cold ocean water. Do not rub the sting area because you could inadvertently distribute the venom further into the body. Then vinegar or evidence-based commercial product should be applied if there is continuing pain.
Image via NOAA.
Bottom line: NOAA busts three myths about jellyfish.
Massive armada of UFOs emerging out of a giant “spiral” near the sun?!
Massive armada of UFOs emerging out of a giant “spiral” near the sun?!
On September 11, 2018, Maria G. Hill from Salem, Indiana has photographed something extraordinary near the sun what can be described as large disk-shaped UFOs as well as a huge fleet of smaller UFOs that accompany the massive disk-shaped UFOs.
Gina wrote on her Facebook: September 11, 2018, 8:02 AM Salem, Indiana:
“This is what showed up in my camera after I took a picture of the sun in the eastern sky this morning. iPhone 8 with a camera lens adapter.”
“A green circular door-like object is at the center of the vortex/worm hole and a serpent snake at the top right above it, by a circular disc. I am sure this has a symbolic meaning with the snake and the disc – pictures and videos are on my timeline” she continued.
Besides, in the two videos here and here Gina talks about the massive UFO disks and the fleet of smaller UFOs.
If the objects in the images are not lens flares or objects reflecting in the lens of the camera, but massive mother ships and a fleet of smaller UFOs, then could that be the reason for the sudden shutdown of 7 solar observatories?
A bizarre, unexplained situation has unfolded in and around the tiny enclave of Sunspot, New Mexico. A week after U.S. federal government officials ordered the evacuation of the National Solar Observatory facility there, as well as a nearby post office, the first site remains closed due to a “security issue” and no one can or will say what it is.
Members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and potentially other federal government agencies, arrived in Sunspot on or about Sept. 7, 2018, at which point they ordered everyone out of the National Solar Observatory site, which is technically at Sacramento Peak, situated above the tiny town. They also told the clerk in the Sunsport Post Office to evacuate.
"The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy [AURA] who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time," AURA spokesperson Shari Lifson, told the Alamogordo Daily News on Sept. 7, 2018. "We don’t know [when the facility will open again]."
"We are working with the proper authorities on this issue," she continued. "The local authorities do know and are aware of the situation. I don’t know when the facility was vacated but it was within the last day. It’s a temporary evacuation of the facility. We [will] open it up as soon as possible.”
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION4The National Observatory Facility at Sacramento Peak above Sunspot, New Mexico.
This "temporary" evacuation has now lasted seven days and it's not entirely clear how much of Sunspot is still off limits, with some residents complaining about not being able to get to their homes. Lifson had no additional information when the Albuquerque Journal asked for an update on the situation on Sept. 12, 2018. The Apache Point Observatory, about half a mile away from the Sacramento Peak site, never closed and remains in operation.
Lifson might be right that local authorities know that there is a situation, but there is no indication that they know what it is specifically. No one, including AURA's spokesperson, seems to know knows for sure what law enforcement entity told people to leave the post office. Otero County Sheriff Benny House said the FBI asked him to support the initial evacuations at the observatory itself, but gave him no other information and that he and his deputies left after there was no evidence of an ongoing or imminent threat.
GOOGLE EARTH
A map showing all of Sunspot, New Mexico, with the town's post office marked to the right and the Sacramento Peak observatory facility at the lower left.
"There was a Black Hawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything," Sheriff House explained tothe Alamogordo Daily News on Sept. 7, 2018. "We went up there and everything was good. There was no threat. Nobody would identify any specific threat. We hung out for a little while then we left. No reason for us to be there. Nobody would tell us what we’re supposed to be watching out for."
It's important to note that AURA has consistently described the situation was a "security issue" rather than a "risk" or a "threat," which strongly suggests the reason for the evacuations was not tied to something such as a bomb threat. Had there been a danger of some sort chemical or biological hazard, the responding officials would have been wearing suitable protective gear.
There are unconfirmed reports that some individuals were dressed as if they were responding to some sort of hazardous material spill, but it seems curious that Sherrif House would have left this detail out of his comments. That sort of incident, or even a crime such as murder, also wouldn't explain why the FBI and other federal officials would have had to descend on Sunspot, do so without apparently alerting local law enforcement or U.S. Postal Service officials in advance, and then refuse to explain the situation in any way to them. The FBI declined to even confirm or deny that it had been or was still in Sunspot to the Albuquerque Journal.
A map showing the general area around the National Solar Observatory facility at Sacramento Peak near Sunspot, New Mexico. Hollman Air Force Base is marked to the left. White Sands Missile Range is off the map, due north of Holloman.
"The Sacramento Peak Observatory serves the solar physics community as the only high-resolution solar facility with extensive spectroscopic capabilities open for community access in the United States and as a development testbed for the high-order AO [Adaptive Optics] capability needed for DKIST [Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope]," the National Science Foundation, which technically owns the site, said in a draft environmental impact statement that it published in February 2018. "The 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is currently under construction on Haleakalá in Maui, Hawai'i, and is planned to replace the function of DST [Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope] for NSO [National Solar Observatory]."
The National Science Foundation commissioned the environmental impact survey as part of deliberations about whether to curtail operations at the site, transfer greater responsibility for the facilities to another entity, or shutter it all together, due to funding constraints. Before the U.S. government closed the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak completely due to the ongoing "security issue," there were reportedly only a limited number of researchers and other personnel there anyway, as the Dunn Solar Telescope is the only remaining part of the facility that is still in operation.
The Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope inside the observatory is a vacuum telescope designed to track the Sun and its movements while gathering imagery and spectroscopy data about the rays it emits and its sunspots. It is possible that the telescope could point low enough to gather useful information about objects at Holloman or White Sands in the valley below. It is also possible that the U.S. government could have had concerns about what it might be able to see in outer space, or at least who saw what and what they did with that information, but this seems quite unlikely.
Richard B. Dunn Solar Telescope is a massive installation. It doesn't just resemble an iceberg, it's similar to one in that the majority of it is hidden from view below the surface. The facility looks right out of a science fiction movie and penetrates hundreds of feet below the ground.
µIt seems more plausible that a foreign operative or an operative working on a foreign government's behalf might have been able to install an antenna/sensor apparatus onto the top of a structure that is part of the facility and within line-of-sight of the valley below without anyone noticing. This could allow them to persistently gather electronic intelligence on whatever might be happening on, around, and over White Sands and at Holloman. With the capabilities of modern electronics and batteries, it's possible that such a system wouldn't even need to be hard wired.
For instance, check out this 360 photo of a publically accessible viewpoint and weather station adjacent to the main solar telescope tower up at Sacremento Peak. The small building is covered with antennas and electronics which have a perfectly clear line of sight to the valley below. Clandestinely placing a sensor package here that is able to collect certain emissions while blending in with the clutter seems like a relatively rudimentary task—hiding in plain sight if you will.
This is just one area of a fairly large complex of observatories and other buildings, many of which are in disuse, but which may already be adorned with antennas and other electronics and have an unobstructed line-of-sight towards White Sands. Otero County Sheriff House's comment in which he states there were officials and workmen inspecting towers and antennas could indicate that there were looking for just such a device.
An annotated satellite image of the National Solar Observatory complex at Sacramento Peak, at the low left, and the associated enclave of Sunspot, New Mexico.
Individuals looking to spy on Holloman or White Sands could have been using the local post office to send copies of that information to their handlers or to an intermediate location, as well. A suspect could even work or live up there. As such, the FBI or other agencies could have decided to temporarily shut down its operations in order to comb it for evidence, even just as a basic precaution.
"We don't know what they [the FBI] took, what their reason for being there was," Sergeant Jon Emery of the Otero County Sheriff’s Office told KOB 4, a local NBC affiliate television station in Albuquerque, on Sept. 13, 2018. "We have no information on it." It is not clear if federal authorities have removed anything from the site, or, if they did, what it might have been.
Using the site as a possible testing location for some sort of sensor or directed energy weapon, or even commandeering the high-powered telescope for a national security use, such as spying on or blinding enemy satellites, also comes to mind. The telescope has been used for laser experiments in decades, but there isn't even circumstantial evidence that points to the U.S. government using it for a similar purpose today. Nor would evacuating a town to do so make much sense.
The nearby Apache Point Observatory, which is more active than its northerly neighbor, does have a high-power laser system that is used for taking lunar measurements.
A Notice To Airman (NOTAM) is currently posted warning aviators to stay away from the site, but that isn't too odd considering the facility openly uses a device that can harm pilots' and passengers' eyes. The NOTAM reads:
!FDC 8/9292 ZAB NM..AIRSPACE SUNSPOT, NM..LASER RESEARCH WI AN AREA DEFINED AS APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY, 324649N1054913W OR THE BOLES /BWS/ VOR 098 DEGREE RADIAL AT 10NM, SFC-FL600. AT A TYPICAL ANGLE OF 45 DEGREES, FM THE SFC, PROJECTING UP TO FL600 AVOID AIRBORNE HAZARD BY 5NM. THIS BEAM IS INJURIOUS TO PILOT'S/AIRCREW'S AND PASSENGER'S EYES. ALBUQUERQUE /ZAB/ ARTCC, 505-856-4500 IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. 1809140110-1809140230
The incident is very strange, to say the least. It sounds more like the opening of an '80s science fiction adventure film than something that is actually happening and it has begun to trigger all types of outlandish theories. These include that the telescope identifying a world-changing solar flare or spotted proof of alien life in our solar system. Both of these suppositions seem to have been shot down by the director of the telescope facility, who said his teamwould gladly release the data the telescope was collecting before feds arrived.
But something is going on out of the ordinary up there, and based on what we do know, it seems like espionage is a real possibility.
UPDATE: We have posted a new article with video from inside the complex and new details here. And yes, the story just keeps getting stranger.
Unexplained 'Security Issue' Keeps National Solar Observatory Facility Shuttered
Unexplained 'Security Issue' Keeps National Solar Observatory Facility Shuttered
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
Aerial view of the Sunspot Solar Observatory site on Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. Sunspot is part of the National Solar Observatory, which is funded by the US National Science Foundation.
Credit: National Solar Observatory/NSF
It's been more than a week, and a National Solar Observatory (NSO) facility in New Mexico is still closed for an undisclosed "security issue."
The NSO's Sunspot Solar Observatory, on Sacramento Peak in the southern part of the state, was evacuated last Thursday (Sept. 6), as was a nearby post office, according to the Albuquerque Journal. FBI agents have reportedly been investigating the site, and they're apparently keeping local law-enforcement personnel in the dark.
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which manages the Sunspot observatory with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, hasn't said much, either. The organization released a statement saying that AURA "is addressing a security issue" at Sunspot "and has decided to temporarily vacate the facility as a precautionary measure until further notice." AURA "is working with the proper authorities on this issue," the statement adds, without specifying who those authorities are.
And we may not get answers anytime soon. At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) today (Sept. 14), AURA Corporate Communications Coordinator Shari Lifson sent out an email update, which stated that AURA "has decided that the observatory will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern."
Unsurprisingly, the dearth of information has led to a lot of speculation about what's going on. The rumors range from the downright silly (the feds shut Sunspot down to keep news about a deadly solar superflare from getting into our panicky heads) to the intriguingly believable (this may be an espionage investigation).
Observatory team members have shot down one of the more farfetched theories, however. The "telescope did not see aliens," Sunspot Solar Observatory director James McAteer, who's also an associate professor of astronomy, solar physics and space weather at New Mexico State University, told Albuquerque news station KOB4.
"All data will be made public in its unaltered form," McAteer added. "Nothing is hidden or kept secret."
The FBI hadn't returned a phone call as of press time. The agency has consistently declined to comment on the Sunspot situation over the past week, according to other news organizations.
This story was updated at 2:30 p.m. EDT to include the latest update from Shari Lifson and James McAteer's comments.
After long believing that exploding stars forged the coveted metal, researchers are now divided over which extraordinary cosmic event is truly responsible.
Across history and folklore, the question of where Earth’s gold came from—and maybe how to get more of it—has invited fantastical explanation. The Inca believed gold fell from the sky as either the tears or the sweat of the sun god Inti. Aristotle held that gold was hardened water, transformed when the sun’s rays penetrated deep underground. Isaac Newton transcribed a recipe for making it with a philosopher’s stone. Rumpelstiltskin, of course, could spin it from straw.
Modern astrophysicists have their own story. The coda, at least, is relatively clear: About four billion years ago, during a period called the “late veneer,” meteorites flecked with small amounts of precious metals—gold included—hammered the nascent Earth. But the more fundamental question of where gold was forged in the cosmos is still contentious.
For decades, the prevailing account has been that supernova explosions make gold, along with dozens of other heavy elements on the bottom few rows of the periodic table. But as computer models of supernovas have improved, they suggest that most of these explosions do just about as well at making gold as history’s alchemists. Perhaps a new kind of event—one that has traditionally been difficult, if not impossible, to study—is responsible.
In the past few years, a debate has erupted. Many astronomers now believe that the space-quaking merger of two neutron stars can forge the universe’s supply of heavy elements. Others hold that even if garden-variety supernovas can’t do the trick, more exotic examples might still be able to. To settle the argument, astrophysicists are searching for clues everywhere, from alchemical computer simulations to gamma-ray telescopes to the manganese crust of the deep ocean. And the race is on to make an observation that would seal the deal—catching one of the cosmos’s rarest mints with its assembly line still running.
* * *
In 1957, the physicists Margaret and Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle laid out a set of recipes for how the lives and deaths of stars could fill in almost every slot in the periodic table. That implied that humans, or at least the elements making up our bodies, were once stardust. So was gold—somehow.
“The problem itself is rather old, and now for a long time has been the last stardust secret,” said Anna Frebel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Big Bang left behind hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Stars then fused these elements into progressively heavier elements. But the process stops at iron, which is among the most stable elements. Nuclei bigger than iron are so positively charged, and so difficult to bring together, that fusion no longer returns more energy than you have to put in.
To make heavy elements more reliably, you can bombard iron nuclei with charge-free neutrons. The new neutrons often make the nucleus unstable. In this case, a neutron will decay into a proton (popping out both an electron and an antineutrino). The net increase of a proton leads to a new, heavier element.
When additional neutrons are thrown into a nucleus more slowly than it can decay, the process is called slow neutron capture, or the s process. This makes elements such as strontium, barium and lead. But when neutrons land on a nucleus faster than they decay, rapid neutron capture—the r process—occurs, beefing up nuclei to form heavy elements including uranium and gold.
In order to coax out the r-process elements, the Burbidges and their colleagues recognized, you would need a few things. First, you have to have a relatively pure, unadulterated source of neutrons. You also need heavy “seed” nuclei (such as iron) to capture those neutrons. You need to bring them together in a hot, dense (but not too dense) environment. And you want all this to happen during an explosive event that will scatter the products out into space.
To many astronomers, those requirements implicate one specific kind of object: a supernova.
A supernova erupts when a massive star, having fused its core into progressively heavier elements, reaches iron. Then fusion stops paying off, and the star’s atmosphere crashes down. A sun’s worth of mass collapses into a sphere only about a dozen kilometers in radius. Then, when the core reaches the density of nuclear matter, it holds firm. Energy rebounds outward, ripping apart the star in a supernova explosion visible from billions of light years away.
A supernova seems to tick the necessary boxes. During the star’s collapse, protons and electrons in the core are forced together, making neutrons and converting the core into an infant neutron star. Iron is abundant. So is heat. And the glowing ejecta keep expanding out into space for millennia, dispersing the products.
By the 1990s, a specific picture had begun to emerge in computational models. Half a second after the core of a massive star collapses, a gale of neutrinos streams out, continuing for up to a minute. Some of that wind would blow off iron nuclei that could serve as seeds, along with lots and lots of neutrons.
“That was the hope,” said Thomas Janka of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. “This was, I would say, the most interesting and the most promising site for forming the r-process elements for almost 20 years.” And the explanation still has its adherents. “If you open a textbook, it will tell you that the r process is made by supernova explosions,” said Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
But as supernova models got more and more sophisticated, the situation got worse, not better. Temperatures in the neutrino-driven wind didn’t seem to be high enough. The wind might also be too slow, allowing seed nuclei to form so abundantly that they wouldn’t find enough neutrons to build up heavy elements all the way up to uranium. And the neutrinos could also convert neutrons back into protons—meaning there might not even be a lot of neutrons to work with.
That left theorists circling back to one of the strongest points of the supernova model. Supernovas make neutron stars, which seem indispensable to the process.
“They are fantastic for this type of nucleosynthesis,” said Stephan Rosswog at Stockholm University. “You start with this gigantic amount of neutrons that you don’t have anywhere else in the universe.” But a neutron star also has a strong gravitational field, he said. “The question is just, well, how can you convince the neutron star to eject something?”
One way to crack open a neutron star would be to use the same explosion that birthed it. That didn’t seem to work. But what if you came back later, and tore one open again?
* * *
In 1974, radio astronomers found the first binary neutron-star system. With each orbit, the pair were losing energy, implying that one day they would collide. The same year, the astrophysicists James Lattimer and David Schramm modeled what would happen in such a situation—not specifically the clash of two neutron stars, since that was too complicated to calculate at the time, but the similar merger of a neutron star and a black hole.
While supernova explosions can briefly outshine the entire galaxies that host them, neutron stars are extremely difficult to see. The supernova that produced the Crab nebula was observed by many different cultures in the year 1054; the neutron star it left behind wasn’tdetected until 1968. A merger of two neutron stars would be still more difficult to find and understand. But although nobody had ever seen one, this kind of exotic event could be responsible for the r-process elements, Lattimer and Schramm said.
Picture two neutron stars approaching their final embrace. In the last few orbits around each other before glomming together into a bigger neutron star or a black hole, the pair are wracked by enormous gravitational tides. The collision ejects enormous amounts of material.
“Kind of like you squeeze a tube of toothpaste, stuff comes flying out the end,” said Brian Metzger, a theoretical astrophysicist at Columbia University. Behind each neutron star stretches a tail, with perhaps 10 neutrons to every proton, all heated to billions of degrees. Heavy nuclei form in about a second. Because they have so many extra neutrons they are unstable, radioactive. They glow, eventually decaying to things like gold and platinum.
At least, this is how it works in simulations.
(Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Quanta)
* * *
Neutron star mergers and supernovas are both capable of making making r-process elements. But there’s a big difference in just how much each of those options can make. Supernovas produce perhaps our moon’s worth of gold. Neutron star mergers, by contrast, make about a Jupiter-size mass of gold—thousands of times more than in a supernova—but they happen far less frequently. This allows astronomers to search for the distribution of r-process elements as a way to track their origins.
“Think of r-process [elements] as chocolate,” Ramirez-Ruiz said. A universe enriched in the r-process elements predominantly by supernovas would be like a cookie with a thin, evenly spread glaze of chocolate. By contrast, “neutron star mergers are like chocolate chip cookies,” he said. “All of the chocolate, or the r process, is concentrated.”
One way to assess the distribution and rate of r-process events is to look for their byproducts on Earth. Long after supernovas light up the Milky Way, the nuclei they make can coalesce onto interstellar dust grains, slip past the solar and terrestrial magnetic fields, and fall to Earth, where they should be preserved in the deep ocean. A 2016 paper in Nature that looked at radioactive iron-60 in the deep-sea crust found traces of multiple nearby supernovas in the past 10 million years. Yet those supernovas did not appear to correspond with r-process elements. When the same team looked in deep-sea crust samples for plutonium 244, an unstable r-process product that decays over time, they foundvery little. “Whatever site is creating these heaviest elements is not a very frequent one in our galaxy,” Metzger said.
Not everyone agrees with that conclusion. Another team, led by Shawn Bishopat the Munich Technical University, still hopes to find radioactive plutonium on Earth from recent supernovas. In work now underway, his team is searching for hints of r-process elements in sediments that contain microfossils: the tiny remnants of bacteria that take in metals from their environment to make magnetic crystals.
Astronomers can also look for evidence of a chocolate chip-cookie universe farther afield. The r-process element europium has one strong spectral line, allowing astronomers to look for it in the atmospheres of stars. Among the old stars that are found in the halo of the Milky Way, observed r-process signatures have been hit or miss. “We can find two stars that have very similar, say, iron content,” Ramirez-Ruiz said. “But their europium content, which is the signature for the r process, can change by two orders of magnitude.” Because of this, the universe is looking more chocolate chip than chocolate glaze, argues Ramirez-Ruiz.
Astronomers have found an even cleaner example. Many dwarf galaxies experience just one brief burst of activity before settling down. That gives them a narrow window for an r-process event to occur—or not. And up until 2016, not one star in any dwarf galaxy seemed to be enriched in r-process elements.
That’s what made the phone call MIT’s Frebel received one night so surprising. Her graduate student Alex Ji had been observing stars in a dwarf galaxy called Reticulum II. “He called me at two in the morning and said ‘Anna, I think there’s a problem with the spectrograph.’” One star in particular appeared to have a strong europium line. “I made this joke. I said, ‘Well, Alex, maybe you found an r-process galaxy,’” Frebel said. He actually had, though. Reticulum II has seven stars enriched in the r-process elements, all implicating a single, otherwise uncommon event.
(Lucy Reading-Ikkanda / Quanta)
* * *
To advocates of the neutron-star merger model, all of this fits nicely. Neutron star mergers are naturally rare. Unlike a single massive star collapsing and going supernova, they require two neutron stars to form, to be in a binary orbit, and to merge perhaps a hundred million years later. But critics also point out that they might be too rare.
In our galaxy, neutron star mergers could happen as rarely as once every hundred million years, or as often as once every 10 thousand years—rates that differ by a factor of 10,000. “The thing that shook me is: The people who were saying neutron star mergers are going to explain the r process were also taking this highest rate,” said Christopher Fryer, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
When Fryer and colleagues used more moderate guesses about how often neutron star mergers occur and how much r-process material they yield, they found that neutron star mergers can explain only 1 percent of the r-process elements observed in the universe. And if the true rate lies at the lowest end, they could contribute a hundred times less again. “More people are going back to ‘Huh, what other sources of r process can we have?’” Fryer said.
That’s where supernovas may see their stock rise again. If perhaps 1 percent of core collapse supernovas behave differently than the standard simulations predict, they might also be able to make considerable amounts of r-process elements in a chocolate chip pattern. One way to salvage a supernova explosion is if a star detonates with massive, magnetically powered jets instead of neutrinos, argues Nobuya Nishimura, an astrophysicist at Keele University in England, and his colleagues in a recent paper. That would create a rapid explosion of neutron-rich matter, allowing seed nuclei to grow into at least some of the r-process elements. “It’s not like you can have a tea party there,” Fryer said. “You just need to stay [in that region] for 100 milliseconds.”
The answer, many astronomers believe, will end up being some kind of compromise. That shift may already be happening. “R process is really not rprocess anymore now,” Frebel said. Maybe it can be broken in half, with the “weak” r-process elements lighter than barium coming from supernovas, and the heavier ones like gold coming from neutron star collisions.
* * *
And there’s one more dark horse still lurking out there: the merger of a neutron star and a black hole, which Lattimer and Schramm had originally considered. The neutron star in the pair would still eject material, just as before. But the rate of those events is even fuzzier. “Maybe even they are the dominant ones producing r-process elements,” Janka said. “We don’t know. We need better data.”
That data may already be on its way. The last few orbits of a neutron star merger or a merger between a neutron star and a black hole warp and drag space-time so much that gravitational waves roar out of the system. LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), which has already succeeded at “hearing” such a crescendo between merging black holes, is approaching a sensitivity that should let it start picking up neutron star mergers in distant galaxies. The longer it doesn’t, the less often it seems these events occur. Once LIGO reaches its full design sensitivity, a nondetection could spell doom for neutron star merger models. “If they still have not found something, there will be a moment in which Enrico [Ramirez-Ruiz] and Brian [Metzger], etcetera, should wonder, and get back to the board,” said Selma de Mink, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam.
The dream, though, is to go beyond making inferences about r-process events and see one actually in action. Twoteams may have already done so. In 2013, the Swift satellite picked up a short gamma-ray burst: a type of event also attributed to colliding neutron stars. Other telescopes zoomed in on the aftermath.
In simulations, an observational signature called a kilonova follows neutron-star mergers. The radioactive nuclei made through the r process spread and glow, causing the system to ramp up in brightness for about a week before starting to fade. And these elements are so opaque that only red light can penetrate out. The 2013 event matched both predictions, but it was so far away that it was hard to fully interpret. “It’s not compelling, but it’s suggestive,” Metzger said.
Many of the astronomers who made that discovery are now part of teams hoping to find a closer, more definitive kilonova. That entails pouncing on a LIGO signal from merging neutron stars and quickly finding its source in the sky with more traditional telescopes—perhaps even measuring its light spectrum using something like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. In doing so, it may be possible to see a cloud of newborn r-process elements—or to infer something from their absence. “The world of gamma-ray bursts has trained us very well,” said Wen-fai Fong of the University of Arizona. “It is definitely like a race. How quickly can you react?
Astronomers with the Breakthrough Listen program used AI (artificial intelligence) to find 72 repeating, short, unpredictable radio bursts, from a mysterious source 3 billion light years away.
Researchers with Breakthrough Listen said on September 10, 2018, that they’ve now used artificial intelligence, AI, to discover 72 new fast radio bursts from a mysterious source some 3 billion light-years from Earth. The source is a known “repeater” of fast radio bursts – the only such object known to date – calledFRB 121102.
Fast radio bursts, aka FRBs, are bright pulses of radio emission, lasting just milliseconds. They’re thought to originate in distant galaxies.
Most FRBs are one-offs, but this source – FRB 121102 – emits repeated bursts. FRB 121102 emitted 21 bursts previously detected during Breakthrough Listen observations made in 2017 with the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. Now – using AI – astronomers have found 72 more
What are these mysterious bursts? Previous studies showed the bursts from 121102 emanating from a galaxy 3 billion light-years from Earth. Beyond that, we don’t know much about the source. Theories range from highly magnetized neutron stars, blasted by gas streams near to a supermassive black hole, to suggestions that the burst properties are consistent with signatures of technology developed by an advanced civilization.
The 72 newly discovered FRBs are not about new observations. They’re about new and more powerful data-analysis techniques, made possible by artificial intelligence.
Breakthrough Listen researchers used artificial intelligence to search through radio signals recorded from a fast radio burst, capturing many more than humans could. Image via Breakthrough Listen/Berkeley.edu.
The statement from Breakthrough Initiatives continued:
In search of a deeper understanding of this intriguing object, the Listen science team at the University of California, Berkeley SETI Research Center observed FRB 121102 for five hours on August 26, 2017, using the Breakthrough Listen digital instrumentation at the [Green Bank Observatory]. Combing through 400 TB [terabytes] of data, they reported … a total of 21 bursts.
All were seen within one hour, suggesting that the source alternates between periods of quiescence and frenzied activity.
Now, UC Berkeley Ph.D. student Gerry Zhang and collaborators have developed a new, powerful machine learning algorithm, and reanalyzed the 2017 GBT dataset, finding an additional 72 bursts that were not detected originally.
Zhang’s team used some of the same techniques that internet technology companies use to optimize search results and classify images. They trained an algorithm known as a convolutional neural network to recognize bursts found with the classical search method … and then set it loose on the 400 TB dataset to find bursts that the classical approach missed.
Gerry Zhang said:
This work is only the beginning of using these powerful methods to find radio transients. We hope our success may inspire other serious endeavors in applying machine learning to radio astronomy.
Bottom line: Breakthrough Listen astronomers used AI (artificial intelligence) to find 72 repeating, short, unpredictable radio bursts from a mysterious source known as FRB 1211023, located some 3 billion light years away.
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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.
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