Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
History is amazing. It gives a peak and an insight into the whereabouts and future alike. However, it can be deceptive at times as well. Indeed, there have been instances when the facts about the royalty, repressive clan, elite or the despots, have been lied about, in accordance with the suitability.
As of present the phenomenon is continuing. History has pitfalls which indicate a disparate focus. Here are some pointers which instigate on the same:
So, there has been a map found in 1513 by Piri Reis. He was the admiral in the 16th century of a Turkish fleet. This map depicts Antarctica to be free of ice; the same is applicable for coastline of America. This cannot be possible. Especially, since apparently Antarctica had ice on it for millions of years! Yet again, the map utilizes math and the longitude and latitude system. While, the fact is that the latter was delved by Professor Charles Hapggod and ascertained that at that time, nothing of the sort ever existed.
piri-map The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica.
Pyramids have always welcomed queries, speculation and utmost fantasy. The author Semir Osmanagic discovery of the pyramids in Bosnia to be over 25,000 years old is indeed mind boggling. Again, the Egyptologists do not abide by this at all. It is indeed surprising that how is this possible, when the first civilization of humanity appeared 6,000 years ago.
The pyramids of Bosnia are hills, was claimed by an Egyptologist. But, the physicist Slobodan Mizrak has recorded high electromagnetic intervals at the tip, which is no ways a natural occurrence. In fact, the archaeologists have also taken concrete from the pyramid and tested them. In accordance with the tests, the construction material was witnessed to be 5 times stronger than ever analyzed by the PUT, Polytechnical University of Turin. Since, when have hills been made of such strong materials!
Studies suggest the pyramids in Bosnia are covered in soil aged around 12-15,000 years old
It has been said and claimed by the historians time and again that the first civilization dates back to 6,000 years ago. However, The Great Sphinx of Giza has been witnessed of having 15,000 years of water erosion, even when it is one of the driest places in the world. Indeed, the findings and claims do not match!
And, it is not done yet!
So, there is the statue of Ramses II, nestled in Luxor in Egypt. Fabricated of red granite, its density level is equivalent to quartz crystal. The statue is an epitome of sacred geometry and advanced mathematics. It is really surprising as to how the ancient Egyptians managed that with the hand tools. In fact, the archeologist Christopher Dunn documented and presented evidence that the Egyptians could not have made these.
The statue of Ramses II is an epitome of sacred geometry and advanced mathematics.
And, there are lies not just about the archeology there is much more to it.
So, every individual thinks that Hitler escaped his bunker. However, it has recently been unfurled by the FBI that he lived into his 70s in Argentina. In the year 1999 it was the US Government found guilty of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. So, do not just believe in history blind folded. There is a lot which remains to be explored and questioned.
How NASA's Mission to 'Touch the Sun' May Reveal Clues About Alien Worlds
How NASA's Mission to 'Touch the Sun' May Reveal Clues About Alien Worlds
By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer
An artist's depiction of a so-called "hot Jupiter"-type planet orbiting a star of about the same size as our sun.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's new mission to the sun may reveal clues about alien worlds, too.
Every day, we rely on the sun for warmth and light, but we need Earth's atmosphere to protect us from our star's harsh conditions — and because in the end our sun is just another star, the same could be true of life on other worlds, planetary scientists told Space.com.
That means studying our sun up close could teach us about planets in distant solar systems as well. And a NASA mission may soon begin to do just that: This fall, the Parker Solar Probe, which launched in August, will start investigating how our star works. Exoplanet scientists are watching the mission to see what data it might offer them about exotic worlds. [Launch Photos! NASA's Parker Solar Probe Blasts Off to the Sun]
"We can learn so much from our sun and particularly for other sun-like stars," Evgenya Shkolnik, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at Arizona State University, told Space.com. In particular, she wants a better sense of the high-energy particles and photons, or particles of light, stars produce. "It's critically important to understand all these things for exoplanet hosts, for sure," she said.
We know about the dangers of those particles and photons from our own experiences here on Earth, where the planet's atmosphere buffers us from the worst side effects of living near the sun: Only with extreme sunbathing do we absorb enough ultraviolet radiation to damage the DNA inside our cells enough to potentially kill us with cancer, and only during the most extreme solar outbursts, called coronal mass ejections, do its highly charged particles overwhelm Earth's magnetic field and thus interfere with our technology.
If an exoplanet is less fortunate in its natural protections or in its star's temperament, those high-energy particles and photons could be the deciding factors in an exoplanet's habitability, said Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA. Even if a planet develops an atmosphere, if it's bombarded by too many stellar particles, that barrage can destroy the atmosphere. "They can strip away the atmosphere and then make the planet uninhabitable," Kopparapu told Space.com.
But both types of high-energy outflow are incredibly difficult to study at a distance — hence the appeal of piggybacking on the Parker Solar Probe.
The spacecraft's path through the sun's broiling outer atmosphere will allow it to get within 4 million miles (6 million kilometers) from what we consider the sun's surface — about the same distance many exoplanets are from their stars, Shkolnik said. In fact, in her lectures about these planets, she edits images of the solar eclipse and planet depictions to convey the incredible environment around these planets.
"I show the corona and put fake exoplanets in there because it is amazing to think that these planets are actually streaming through their suns' coronae," Shkolnik said. Many of those planets are what scientists have dubbed "hot Jupiters" and are uninhabitably gaseous themselves — but that might not be the end of the story.
"There is talk of whether or not moons around these hot Jupiters could be habitable," Shkolnik said. (Scientists haven't discovered any such moons yet, but they're still honing their ability to spot planets, which are much larger.) "That's not a crazy thought, because we think that the moons of Jupiter and Saturn might be places to look for life in our solar system," Shkolnik said.
So Shkolnik is watching for the data Earth's solar probe will beam home beginning later this year, in hopes of using it to isolate information about habitability near at least other sun-like stars. "I won't know how hard or easy that analysis will be until I see the data," she said. [The 7 Earth-Sized Planets of TRAPPIST-1 in Pictures]
And high-energy radiation like ultraviolet light doesn't just potentially destroy ill-shielded life; it can also trick scientists into thinking someplace is more lively than it really is. That's because ultraviolet radiation can break down water and create oxygen, one of the key molecules scientists look for as a potential signature of life. Extrapolating data from the Parker Solar Probe may stop scientists from being fooled by these fake biosignatures, Kopparapu said.
Perhaps most valuable will be any understanding the spacecraft can give us of how the sun's dynamics are shaped by its magnetic field, which seems to guide much of what happens in and around a star.
"Somehow, it's all related to the sun's magnetic field," Shkolnik said. "Even if we don't have the details, we know that much."
India Unveils Its Own Spacesuit Design for 2022 Astronaut Flights
India Unveils Its Own Spacesuit Design for 2022 Astronaut Flights
By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer
India's space agency is designing a spacesuit for its astronauts to wear on trips off Earth; this spacesuit was displayed in August.
Credit: Pallava Bagla/Corbis/Getty
The Indian Space Research Organisation showed off the spacesuit it has designed in-house for its first human space missions at an event held on Sept. 6.
The display comes weeks after the country announced an ambitious timeline to launch its first crewed mission by 2022 in time to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the country's independence. The human-spaceflight program is called Gaganyaan and will build on the legacy of India's first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, who flew in 1984. But this time, India is developing every aspect of the program, which means tackling problems like spacesuit design. [The Evolution of the Spacesuit in Photos]
According to reports by Indian news publications, the agency has already manufactured two of the bright-orange suits and will build a third before crewed flights begin. During the presentation last week, a suit was displayed with text explaining that it is made of four layers and weighs less than 11 lbs. (5 kilograms).
The spacesuits, which have been in the works for two years, are each equipped with an oxygen cylinder that can support an astronaut for an hour, local reports added.
The first crewed flight in the program is expected to last between five and seven days and carry three astronauts into orbit.
NASA Plans to Build a Moon-Orbiting Space Station: Here's What You Should Know
NASA Plans to Build a Moon-Orbiting Space Station: Here's What You Should Know
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer
NASA is planning a deep-space habitat around the moon called the Lunar Orbiting Platform Gateway, as the next destination for astronauts. The cis-lunar space station will be a waypoint for future missions to the moon and beyond.
Credit: NASA
You've probably heard about the moon-orbiting space station that NASA plans to start building in the next half-decade.
This outpost, known as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, will help humanity extend its footprint out into deep space and also enable a variety of interesting scientific and commercial activities on and around the moon, NASA officials have said.
But maybe you're a little hazy on the details of the Gateway (a much nicer shorthand than the acronym LOP-G) — what it will look like, for example, or where exactly it will set up shop. If so, the following primer on the basics of this planned deep-space station should help. [21 Most Marvelous Moon Missions of All Time]
A small outpost
NASA plans to build and visit the Gateway using the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket and Orion deep-space capsule, both of which are still in development.
The first piece of the 55-ton (50 metric tons) outpost, its power and propulsion element (PPE), is currently scheduled to lift off in 2022. Other key components, such as a robotic arm, a crew habitat module and an airlock, will follow in relatively short order, if all goes according to plan. The Gateway could be ready to accommodate astronauts by the mid-2020s, NASA officials have said.
Those crewmembers won't have nearly as much room to roam as they do on the 440-ton (400 metric tons), Earth-orbiting International Space Station (ISS). As currently envisioned, the Gateway will feature a minimum of 1,942 cubic feet (55 cubic meters) of habitable volume, compared to the 13,696 cubic feet (388 cubic m) on the ISS.
The ISS typically houses six crewmembers at a time, who serve missions of five to six months apiece. And these missions overlap; rotating international crews have occupied the ISS continuously lsince November of 2000.
An artist’s illustration of NASA’s planned Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway outpost (left), being approached by an Orion spacecraft.
Credit: NASA
The Gateway, however, will support a maximum of four crewmembers at a time, and they will be more or less isolated, living and working at the station for 30- to 90-day stints. Because getting NASA astronauts out to lunar orbit will require expensive (and, therefore, relatively infrequent) SLS-Orion launches, the Gateway will likely be uninhabited for most of the year — unless other users want to take advantage of the outpost, that is.
"It doesn't have to be U.S. crew. We're trying to use interoperability standards for both the docking, power, avionics, a lot of other systems," John Guidi, deputy director of the Advanced Exploration Systems division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said in June during a presentation with the space agency's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group.
"The attempt there is to open up the ability for other nations, other companies, to dock," Guidi added. "They would have to bring their own resources. We won't have food, water, etc. available for everybody. We're just planning enough for our missions. But that is a capability we want to have in this Gateway."
There will be lots for Gateway dwellers to do. They could operate rovers on the lunar surface with virtually no commanding latency, for example, or take sorties down there themselves. And they'll doubtless conduct lots of scientific experiments aboard the outpost, just as ISS crewmembers do today. (Meanwhile, doctors and mission planners will be carefully monitoring how these astronauts cope mentally and physiologically with their deep-space environment.) [Moon Base Visions: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Photos)]
But the outpost will host and support research year-round, no matter how often astronauts visit, NASA officials have said. The agency envisions affixing a variety of scientific gear to both the interior and the exterior of the mini-station, and many of these devices will gather data autonomously.
NASA has big plans for the Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway, a small, moon-orbiting space station that the agency aims to start building in 2022.
Credit: NASA
A jumping-off point
The Gateway will, of course, be much more distant from Earth's surface than the ISS, which circles a mere 250 miles (400 kilometers) above our planet.
NASA plans to assemble the Gateway in a highly elliptical "near-rectilinear halo orbit," which will bring the outpost within 930 miles (1,500 km) of the lunar surface at closest approach and as far away as 43,500 miles (70,000 km). (Reminder, the moon lies about 238,900 miles, or 384,400 km, from Earth on average.)
This six-day orbit will keep the Gateway out of the moon's shadow at all times, permitting constant communication with Earth, NASA officials have said. And with this orbit, the outpost can serve as a jumping-off point, both for landers headed down to the lunar surface and for vehicles venturing out into deep space.
"We eventually want to go to Mars, and the systems that are going to take crew to Mars and back are going to be fairly large — very large," Guidi said.
As much as possible, NASA wants to avoid having to haul this heavy gear out of Earth's deep gravity well, to make Red Planet treks more efficient and cost-effective, Guidi added. And the Gateway should be able to help with that.
"So, we're thinking if we can use the SLS-Orion to take us to cislunar space, [in other words, to] go to the Gateway, we can move the Gateway a little bit in orbit — and the PPE is capable of doing that — dock to Mars-type transportation-habitation systems and send them off," Guidi said. Then, when those craft return, they can "again rely on SLS-Orion to make the link between the lunar environment and home," he said.
Step by step
The ball is already rolling on Gateway hardware design. For example, NASA expects to announce the prime contractor for the PPE in March of next year.
And five different companies — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp. — are scheduled to deliver "ground prototypes" of their proposed habitat modules for testing sometime next year. (NASA is also negotiating with a sixth potential habitat-module contractor, NanoRacks, agency officials have said.)
If everything works out, NASA astronauts could set foot on the moon before the end of the 2020s, Guidi said. This goal is in keeping with President Donald Trump's Space Policy Directive 1, which instructs the agency to set up a long-term, sustainable outpost on the lunar surface.
That same directive also makes clear, however, that humanity's push out into the solar system should not end at the moon.
"Mars is still important. It's still the long-term goal," Guidi said. "But the near-term focus is more about our neighbor in cislunar space."
Scientists are pushing the limits of 3D printing with these shape-shifting materials
Scientists are pushing the limits of 3D printing with these shape-shifting materials
The tech could be used to create magnetically controlled implants or "soft robots."
by Tom Metcalfe
MIT researchers are developing 3D-printed materials that can change their shape in response to changes in magnetic fields.
Ben Gruber / Reuters file
Three-dimensional printing has been used to create all sorts of things, from car parts and experimental rocket engines to entire houses. Now scientists at MIT have found a way to 3D print objects that can change shape almost instantaneously in response to magnetic fields.
So far the researchers have created a few demonstration objects with the new technology, which uses plastic “3D ink” infused with tiny iron particles and an electromagnet-equipped printing nozzle. These include a plastic sheet that folds and unfolds, a star-shaped object that can catch a ball and a six-pointed structure that scrunches up and crawls like a spider.
But the researchers see broad applications for small shape-changing devices — what some call "soft robots" — especially in medicine.
“You can imagine this technology being used in minimally invasive surgeries,” said Xuanhe Zhao, a professor of engineering at MIT and a member of the team that developed the 3D-printed shape-shifting technology. “A self-steering catheter inside a blood vessel, for example — now you can use external magnetic fields to accurately steer the catheter.”
Other uses could include magnetically controlled implants to control the flow of blood, and devices that could be guided by magnet through the body — to take pictures, clear a blockage or deliver drugs to a specific location, Zhao said.
The technology might one day make it possible to 3D print entire soft robots, Zhao said. These could have information stored as magnetic data directly inside their structural materials, instead of needing additional electronics.
“The MIT soft robotics development is very cool ... It's an important step in terms of being able to control materials,” said Jim McGuffin-Cawley, an engineering and materials science professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who was not involved with the MIT project. He noted that the technology allows researchers to make precise changes to the shape-shifting materials by using magnetic fields to control very small moving parts inside the materials themselves.
MIT is releasing free software and a recipe for its magnetic ink so that other scientists around the world can use the technology and print their own shape-shifting materials, Zhao said.
“With these three components they can design their own untethered, fast-transforming soft robots,” he said. “We hope this method can find very important applications in the fields of soft robotics [and] materials.”
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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.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
