Daytime UFO over Gothenburg, Sweden

Check out this interesting footage of an unidentified flying object over Gothenburg, Sweden. Filmed earlier this month (November 2018).

Witness report: 

A strange flying object caught in the sky of Gothenburg.Huge like a building,moving and changing in shape

Author (Amirreza M @ Youtube)

{ http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

13-11-2018 om 14:07 geschreven door peter  

13-11-2018 om 01:35 geschreven door peter  

I was just a kid when I was introduced to the menacing and macabre world of the enigmatic Men in Black, those dark-suited ghouls that terrorize UFO witnesses and researchers alike. I eagerly began reading the disturbing-yet-compelling pages of John Keel’s now-classic title, The Mothman Prophecies, which told of distinctly strange goings-on at Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the mid-to-late 1960s. Come to think of it, “strange goings-on” may not be the correct terminology to use. Outright paranormal foulness and malignancy would be far more apt, methinks. A fiery-eyed winged-thing, surreal reports of contact with enigmatic alien entities on lonely, moonlit, tree-shrouded roads, occult phenomena plaguing the entire town by the dead of night, and lives manipulated and transformed in ways near-unimaginable were the order of the day. And then there was the brooding, predatory, and repeated manifestations of the dreaded MIB who, I got the distinct impression, were pulling the supernatural strings of just about all those myriad entities and unspeakable things that had chosen Point Pleasant as their targets.

For reasons I have never truly been able to fathom, from that very day onward I became particularly fascinated by the actions of the Men in Black, their silencing of UFO witnesses, their near-ethereal presence in our world, and, of course, their overwhelming and mysterious elusiveness. Who, or more likely what, were they? From where did they originate? What did they want of us? Why were they so deeply intent on silencing Flying Saucer-seekers? The further and deeper I dug into the subject, the more I found myself attempting to penetrate the veil of unsettling darkness and hostility that seemed to forever surround the MIB. In the immediate years that followed my reading of John Keel’s legendary study of Mothman, I sought out just about as many works on the MIB as was conceivably possible. And, at the absolute top of my list – in undeniably joint first-place – were Gray Barker’s 1956 title They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers and a small and overwhelmingly bizarre book titled Flying Saucers and the Three Men. The latter was penned in 1962 by a curious and undeniably paranoid character named Albert Bender, without who there simply would be no MIB puzzle. Period.

Barker, who had a flair for all-things dramatic, was the perfect person to address the MIB mystery – even though a self-admitted combination of embellishment, parable and exaggeration was his typical and controversial style. But, Barker would never have been in a position to do much of an MIB nature had it not been for the eccentric and occult-obsessed Bender, who, in 1953, was allegedly silenced by a trio of black-garbed, blazing-eyed entities from some strange netherworld after getting too close to the truth about Flying Saucers.

As time went on I also learned, unfortunately, that Barker would tell a tale purely for for effect. He was also someone who was willing to hoax, to fabricate, and to outright lie in the name of the M.I.B. In other words, reading Barker’s works requires one to be on one’s guard all of the time. His writings do contain facts, but there is a hell of a lot of fiction and lying there, too. All of that just has to have a bearing on the early days of M.I.B. lore and legend. Far less Mulder and Scully, and far more H.P. Lovecraft meets Devil Girl from Mars meets Bram Stoker, Flying Saucers and the Three Men presented the MIB not as government agents of the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones variety, but as harshly cold and emotionless aliens who seemed to be as familiar with matters occult and nightmarish as they were with UFOs and faraway, fantastic worlds.

Appearing as well-dressed, pale-faced corpses, the terrible trio intimidated and terrified the obsessive-compulsive Bender to the point of near physical and emotional collapse. No wonder he quit Ufology and moved onto other things, such as focusing on the works of Austrian composer, Max Steiner, who was responsible for the soundtracks to the original of King Kongand Gone with the Wind. Indeed, in 1965, Bender established the Max Steiner Music Society, and left his old life firmly in the past. As for Barker, in 1984 it was ill-health, rather than the black-garbed ones, that took him before he reached sixty. Keel continued on for a quarter of a century after Barker, still caught up in – yet never, ever quite resolving – the conundrum of the three shadowy men from beyond the veil.

Of course, as my teens became my twenties, and then my thirties, my views on the MIB phenomenon changed, in some ways subtly, but in other ways far less so. But there was one thing that never did alter: My earnest wish to solve the puzzle of the true nature, origin and intent of the Men in Black. Since those days of my childhood, I have pursued the MIB on a scale that has easily far exceeded my quests for the truth about Bigfoot, the Chupacabras, and Roswell combined. My first book, A Covert Agenda, which was published in 1997, detailed a number of curious MIB-style encounters in the U.K. from the 1950s onward. My 2003 title, Strange Secrets, included a chapter on the little-known issue of government files on the Men in Black. Three years later, I penned On the Trail of the Saucer Spies, which was a full-length study of the secret surveillance of certain elements of the UFO research community by MIB-type characters in government. Then, in 2011, The Real Men in Black hit the bookshelves. This latter title from me specifically addressed the paranormal side of the MIB phenomenon. And, in that same year, I wrote a new foreword to an updated and expanded edition of Gray Barker’s 1983 book: M.I.B.: The Secret Terror among Us. Since then, I’ve written Men in Black, Women in Black, and The Black Diary. As well as a book on the ultimate Man in Black, the Slenderman. It has been a curious journey, to say the least…

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-11-2018 om 01:27 geschreven door peter  

Ancient tombs found in Egypt? Old news. Mummies in the tombs? Old news. Mummified cats? Not as common, but still old news. Mummified scarab beetles? Now there’s something you don’t hear about very often. Throw in a sealed door that appears to never have been opened and you’ve got the makings of a great discovery in the Saqqara necropolis.

“The (mummified) scarab is something really unique. It is something really a bit rare. A couple of days ago, when we discovered those coffins, they were sealed coffins with drawings of scarabs. I never heard about them before.”

That explains the excited announcement last week by Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, of the discovery of seven tombs – three from the New Kingdom and four from the Old Kingdom – containing a wide variety of animal sarcophagi and wooden statues. The tombs were discovered in a partially excavated area on the edge of the pyramid complex dedicated to the mysterious King Userkaf, the founder of the Fifth Dynasty whose parents and queen are unknown. One of the tombs belonged to Khufu-Imhat, the overseer of the royal buildings in the royal palace. Another of the 4,500-year-old tombs has its door still sealed, meaning it may have escaped looting by grave-robbers. Mohamed Youssef, director of the Saqqara area says it will be opened soon.

Live (or at least it once was ) scarab beetle

However, the center of interest is the animal mummies, especially the scarabs – large dung beetles that were revered in ancient Egypt. (Large set of photos here.) Two of the mummified scarabs were found wrapped in linen and in very good condition inside a limestone sarcophagus with a decorated lid. More were found in a smaller sarcophagus. Mummified scarabs are extremely rare finds and these are not only the first in this area but the first anywhere that date back to the Fifth Dynasty.

Another tomb contained dozens of cat mummies, gold-covered statues of cats and a bronze statue dedicated to the cat goddess Bastet, who was apparently the world’s first cat lady. In addition to the feline collection, there were mummified crocodiles in crocodile sarcophagi, crocodile statues and painted wooden statues of cobras. And of course, the usual burial objects such as amulets, canopic jars and papyri baskets. The mummified cats could have been pets of the tomb owner but more likely they, the other animals and especially the scarabs were gifts for the gods.

Bastet

How many more tombs may have had unusual contents like these but were looted or destroyed? We’ll probably never know. However, it’s good that the Council of Antiquities has recognized their value – even if it’s just to attract tourists with money – and is doing its best to preserve these and future discoveries.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

13-11-2018 om 00:18 geschreven door peter  

UFO spotted by multiple pilots prompts investigation

Pilots saw bright lights "moving so fast" over Ireland Friday. They're not calling the sight aliens, but authorities are taking a closer look.

Space junk could explain what pilots saw over Ireland last week.

NASA/P.Spurny/Astronomical Institute

Pilots flying over Ireland on Friday reported seeing an unidentified flying object, or possibly objects, spurring an investigation into the UFO (or UFOs) by the Irish Aviation Authority.

The sighting was recorded over radio traffic between air traffic control in Shannon, Ireland, and multiple pilots. At 6:47 a.m. UTC, one British Airways pilot can be heard asking controllers if there were any military exercises taking place in the area. Air traffic control responds that no such exercises are visible on radar.

"It was moving so fast," the pilot says. "It [came] up on our left hand side and then rapidly veered to the north. We saw a bright light and then it just disappeared at a very high speed."

The pilot explains the team didn't fear the object was on a "collision course," but was just wondering what it could be.

At that point another pilot cuts in, saying his Virgin Airlines 747 also had encountered multiple meteors or some other sort of objects "making some kind of reentry."

"Appeared to be multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory," the pilot says. "They were very bright where we were."

The Irish Aviation Authority later told local media the reports were being investigated.

Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who also makes a habit of tracking space launches and the many bits of space junk that regularly burn up in the atmosphere, tweeted that he wasn't aware of any satellites known to be reentering at that time.  

But as McDowell himself has pointed out in the past, there are literally thousands of objects whipping around Earth. It's possible any number of them could have reentered the atmosphere and been responsible for what the pilots spotted.

Or, as one of the pilots suspected, it could have been a small meteor burning up in the atmosphere. Four major meteor showers are currently active, according the the American Meteor Society, including the Taurids, which are know to produce bright fireballs in the sky.

• NASA turns 60: The space agency has taken humanity farther than anyone else, and it has plans to go further.

{ https://www.cnet.com/ }

13-11-2018 om 00:11 geschreven door peter  

Aliens? Mysterious UFO spotted by three pilots under investigation amid BIZARRE radar data

A MYSTERIOUS bright light spotted by three separate pilots has sparked an investigation from the Irish Aviation Authority - after an initial report could not explain the UFO sighting.

12-11-2018 om 23:59 geschreven door peter  

UFO investigation launched by Irish aviation officials after pilots flying BA and Virgin Airlines jets report seeing mysterious bright lights 'moving fast' above the country

• BA pilot on flight from Canada to London reported 'very bright light' over Ireland
• She said the object came up on the left side before it 'veered to the north'
• Pilot of Virgin Airlines jet saw 'multiple objects following same sort of trajectory'
• Irish Aviation Authority is investigating the UFO sightings after filing a report

By JULIAN ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE

A UFO investigation is under way in Ireland after pilots flying BA and Virgin Airlines jets reported seeing mysterious bright lights as they crossed the country.

The Irish Aviation Authority launched the probe after sightings on November 9 at around 7.40am.

The pilot of British Airways flight BA94 from Montreal to London contacted Shannon Air Traffic Control after seeing the object on the left-hand side of her Boeing 787.

A UFO investigation is underway in Ireland after pilots flying BA and Virgin Airlines jets reported seeing mysterious bright lights as they crossed the country (stock image of a Boeing 787)

She asked whether military exercises were taking place, according to Airlive.

Air traffic control reportedly said nothing was showing on their radar systems, to which the unnamed pilot replied: 'OK. It was moving so fast.'

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She added that after approaching on the left side, it 'rapidly veered to the north'. She described it as a 'very bright light' that 'disappeared at very high speed'.

The pilot of Virgin Airlines flight VS76 from Orlando to Manchester then reported seeing a similar thing, the website reports.

The pilot of Virgin Airlines flight VS76 from Orlando to Manchester then reported seeing a similar thing, the website reports

He described it as a 'meteor or another object making some kind of re-entry' and said it was 'multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory – very bright from where we were.'

Both planes were flying in high level airspace - an altitude from between 28,500ft and 42,000ft.

Airlive says a third pilot also saw the bizarre lights and that the Irish Aviation Authority has filed a report with the sightings due to be 'investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process'. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

12-11-2018 om 23:45 geschreven door peter  

Alien news: UFO sighting over Britain triggers ALIEN alert

A UFO has been spotted in British skies – triggering both puzzlement and a glut of online speculation aliens have been visiting Kent.

12-11-2018 om 21:53 geschreven door peter  

The Most Reputable UFO Blogs & Resources on The Internet

Any UFO enthusiast knows there’s no shortage of websites and UFO blogs dedicated to the search for alien life. But navigating through hoax sites and click-bait can be tiresome.

There’s also the issue of running into sites where the writers and researchers believe so strongly that every single thing moving in the sky must be aliens.

So where do you go for good unbiased information?

When I do research for my articles, I really put effort into finding reputable sources. Credibility is key. Here’s a list of the top sites I’ve found which provide the most reputable research on UFOs and aliens.

1. The Mutual UFO Network – MUFON

MUFON is by far one of the most reputable sites you can find. They have a global network of trained investigators who research UFO sightings and alien abduction reports around the world.

The MUFON organization has been around since 1969 and takes pride in applying the scientific method to their research.

MUFON approaches every report with an eye towards proving separating the hoaxes & misidentifications from the true mysteries.

If MUFON concludes that a sighting is unexplained, you can be confident they’ve honestly researched it to arrive at that conclusion.

2. The National UFO Reporting Center

Also known as NUFORC, The National UFO Reporting Center keeps a large database of UFO sighting reports. The reports are similar to the database kept on MUFON.

NUFORC was founded in 1974 and actually has a 24/7 hotline for reports.

While they don’t have investigators going out into the field to research reports, their report database is a treasure trove for those looking to find sightings similar to their own or to find multiple reports which corroborate a single event.

3. The UFO Research Center of Pennsylvania

For a more local twist, the UFO Research Center of Pennsylvania provides a real world take on unexplained phenomena.

They don’t post often, and while much of their information includes paranormal topics outside the realm of extraterrestrial life, it’s well-thought out and unbiased.

4. Weird News Section: Express.co.uk

When I first found out that Express had a ton of UFO articles, I was skeptical. Their headlines are total clickbait and they get a bad rap for that in the news world.

But, if you actually delve into the article and read beyond the headline, you’ll actually find a lot of down to earth reporting.

They’re not afraid to say when there’s a legitimate explanation about a particular sighting, though the headline may not lead you to believe that.

5. Huffpost UFO Section

The Huffington Post is a mainstream news outlet, so you know when they post a UFO story, it’s been vetted.

The section is relatively quiet, as a large agency such as Huffpost disqualifies a lot of stories if they can’t get good evidence and confirmation.

One of the nice things is that if you see a UFO sighting on this site, you can be certain people are talking about it all around the world.

6. Black Diamond Social Club

Also known as BDSC by their readers, Black Diamond Social Club is a site with varied topics.

While it’s mostly a men’s magazine, it has an impressive paranormal section that includes articles about UFOs and conspiracy theories.

BDSC is another one of those sites that spends a lot of time researching and weeding out fakes before they put their stamp of approval on it.

What UFO Blogs Do You Read?

I’m always looking for good quality research points. What do you read?

{ https://alienufoblog.com/ }

12-11-2018 om 21:26 geschreven door peter  

TR3B Aircraft: The USA’s Most Secret Plane or Alien Spacecraft? Or Both?

With the exception of the flying disc, the triangular-shaped craft is one of the most common UFO shapes seen in the sky. Some believe it’s an alien spacecraft or a super-secret US Military plane known as the TR3B Astra, TR-3 Black Manta, or just TR3B for short.

The triangle UFO gained mainstream headlines in 1989. That year, a wave of sightings over Belgium began that lasted until 1992. The sightings included dozens of credible witnesses including law enforcement personnel.

Mainstream news outlets covered the story, which is odd even today. Even primetime documentary shows such as Unsolved Mysteries got in on the action.

The Belgian UFO Wave wasn’t the end of the triangle UFO. It seemed that the triangle TR3B was showing up everywhere.

It appeared during the Phoenix Lights incident in 1997 and in various other sightings on record from 2000 through 2018.

Is the Triangle UFO TR3B an Alien Spaceship?

If you’ve read any of my articles before, you already kinda know my answer to this one. We simply don’t know.

What we do know is these sightings have ranged all over Europe and the USA for over 30 years.

The range and timelines of these sightings provide some important distinctions. It’s fair to say these sightings may be of different objects and the entire thing is unlikely to be some massive hoax.

While a sighting here and there might be able to be proven fake, there are some that can’t be simply dismissed.

That being said, conclusive evidence the triangle UFOs are manufactured and controlled by aliens isn’t available either.

TR-3B: A US Military Plane that Officially Doesn’t Exist

The link between UFO sightings and top-secret military aircraft goes hand in hand. The triangle UFOs may actually be a surveillance aircraft built by the US military called the TR-3 Black Manta, or TR-3B for short (also knows as the TR3B Astra).

Officially, the TR-3B doesn’t exist. What’s interesting though, is there’s actually a 2004 patent for a triangular spacecraft. The image from the patent application looks almost exactly like photos taken of the TR3B spacecraft by sighting witnesses.

Sources claim the TR-3 Blank Manta is a nuclear-powered plane developed under the Aurora program. The name is pretty darn cool too.

The plane makes use of stealth and propulsion technology that can be traced back to the 1980’s. These technologies, however, weren’t made public knowledge.

Allegedly, the craft employs a propulsion system based on a fast-spinning mercury-based plasma. While some call it anti-gravity, it sounds more like the way modern gyroscopes can offset weight by maintaining a large angular momentum.

Final Thoughts on the TR3B Astra

In the world of UFOlogy, experimental aircraft are UFOs to the typical observer. The TR3B Astra may be a perfect example of this phenomena.

It’s impossible, however, to claim that all sightings of triangular UFOs going back to the 1980’s can be attributed to a single secret aircraft. Is it possible that counterparts in Europe may have been working on the same technology as the US? That would certainly explain the Belgian Wave of sightings that started it all.

But the scariest possibility isn’t aliens. It’s that our enemies may have leapfrogged us in technology and now fly over our skies uninhibited.

We must also consider that, perhaps, there may also be an extraterrestrial component. Even if the TR-3B is man-made, there are allegations that it contains reverse-engineered alien technology.

Such is the case with top-secret black budget projects. The secrecy surrounding the TR3B creates a flash pan for conspiracy theorists. It also happens to be the military’s best weapon for keeping them secret.

Sightings of the TR3B continue to this very day, and there’s no sign of it going away anytime in the near future.

Sources and additional reading:

Military.com: TR-3B Anti-Gravity Spacecrafts

CNN’s iReport: TR3B Or The USAs Most Secret Plane

Wikipedia: Black Triangle (UFO)

Outer Places: Revisiting the Belgian UFO Wave of 1989/1990

Google Patent Search: Triangular Spacecraft

{ https://alienufoblog.com/ }

12-11-2018 om 21:12 geschreven door peter  

Cigar Shaped Space Ships: A Good Design or Not?

This past October, a cigar shaped object was been discovered hurdling through our solar system. Most likely an asteroid, the object is about 10 times as long as it is wide. It’s certainly an odd shape for an asteroid. Named “Oumuamua”, the object appears to have originated from far away outside our solar system and appears to be just passing through.

A Cigar Shaped Alien Ship?

While Oumuamua is almost certainly an asteroid, there are some who believe it could possibly be an alien ship. Even prominent mainstream scientists such as Stephen Hawking admit the possibility cannot be ruled out just yet. But if it was an alien ship, does the cigar shape even make sense? Is there any scientific theories or data that indicate a cigar-shaped craft would be the best geometry for an interstellar ship?

The elongated cigar shape has long been a staple of UFO sightings. Only a handful of more common geometries exist in the realm of ufology. But does the geometry meet the sniff test for space travel?

The Cigar Shape We Already Use

No, I’m not talking about the Goodyear Blimp. I’m talking about modern day rockets. The human race has relied on cigar shaped rockets for our meager space travel endeavors for decades. Sure, the rockets don’t remain in that shape once they exist the earth’s atmosphere, but they are cigar shaped nonetheless.

We design our rockets for low drag. In deep space, there is no atmosphere in space to create drag. A spacecraft might still, however, be slowed down by friction from cosmic dust and other particles. The oblong cigar-shape helps to minimize this. For especially long journeys lasting maybe for years or even decades, that lower friction could add up to significant savings.

Oblong Shape for Protection

Another benefit of the cigar shaped craft is protection from space debris. It’s critical that a craft uses as little mass as possible because it takes a lot to move mass over great distances. Low mass could mean a flimsy ship and nobody wants to be on one of those hurdling through space at Mach 30.

Assuming a cigar-shaped space vessel is moving through space like an arrow, engineers could place protective armor at the nose for protection while going lighter on the sides. Modern-day airplanes already use this idea in their nose construction.

What About Warp Speeds?

This is where it gets a bit complicated. The benefits of the cigar shaped spaceship begin to fade once we break past light speed. Since it’s impossible for anything to physically move faster than the speed of light, the only way for a warp engine to work is by bending the fabric of space itself. It would require a tremendous amount of energy.

A warp drive might be able to use an intense artificial gravity field to shrink the space in front of the ship while expanding the space behind it. The ship itself wouldn’t really move, but space would move around it. It would travel in its own little ‘gravity bubble’. In such a scenario, a cigar or oblong shape would have little benefit. In fact, the ship could be any shape imaginable with no detriment.

It’s safe to say that a cigar shaped spaceship would only be beneficial for space travel at sub-light speeds.

Manned vs. Unmanned Space Travel

Here’s another thing to consider. Human beings don’t do well in zero gravity for long periods. We lose muscle mass, bone density, and our immune systems shut down. In a zero-gravity environment, we’re literally dying. Without a way to create artificial gravity of some sort, humans simply can’t survive space flights lasting for years.

One way to create artificial gravity is by using a gravity field generation device. Currently, human beings don’t have this type of technology.

We could also construct rotating spaceships where artificial gravity is created by the centrifugal force of rotation. The design is known as a Stanford Torus and it’s basically a big spinning ring. This type of ship would provide reliable artificial gravity for long-term space voyages or even permanent colonization in space.

The rotating design could be used for even multi-generational space travel to migrate explorers over hundreds of years to a new solar system for example.

Unfortunately, as cool as the rotation spaceship is, it’s not cigar shaped. So where does that leave us with the viability of cigar shaped spacecraft? Is it really a good geometry for space travel? As usual, when it comes to complexities such as this, the answer is, “it depends”.

Bringing it All Together

For faster-than-light travel, a cigar shaped craft doesn’t really provide any benefit. It’s not bad. There’s simply no advantage to the shape. As it also turns out, a cigar-shaped spaceship doesn’t have a way to provide artificial gravity needed for humans to survive long-term in space.

So what’s the verdict?

For a long-term travel at less than the speed of light, a cigar-shaped craft would be good for unmanned missions. Robots don’t need artificial gravity. We must note, however, aliens might not have the gravitational requirements of human beings. So while an oblong craft may not be good for humans, it could be perfectly safe for an alien race in the right circumstances.

A cigar shaped ship will only be good for humans over long travel periods if we can develop an artificial gravity generator. Without it, humans will perish in a relatively short time in such a ship. Because of the connection between gravity & warp speed, once we have the technology to build an artificial gravity generator, we’ll likely already know how to build warp engines. At that point, we’ll be able to travel faster than the speed of light eliminating the benefit of the cigar shape anyway.

A rotating vessel is currently the only option for humans to travel for long periods in deep space. The cigar shape would be a death trap. Human beings in a cigar-shaped craft for many years would be doomed to waste away to nothing, eventually falling ill and dying as their immune system shuts down.

What do you think about space travel and our place in it? Would you want to take a journey in cigar shaped spaceship or a Stanford Torus? Let us know in the comments!

Featured Image Source: Pixabay

{ https://alienufoblog.com/ }

12-11-2018 om 20:43 geschreven door peter  

The buried secrets of the deadliest location on Earth

By Matthew Ponsford

In the mid-1980s, as a group of American archaeologists pored over satellite images showing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, they did not know what to make of one unexpected pattern: a near-perfect ring, about 200km across.

Cenotes, the blue water sinkholes that are a staple of Yucatan tourist brochures, dot this arid landscape, opening up seemingly at random as you trek across the vast flatlands of the Yucatan, a dogleg of low, dry forest on Mexico’s eastern edge. But seen from space, they cluster together to form a pattern: an arc, articulating nearly half a circle, as if a drawing compass had been stuck into the map on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and spun around until running out of land.

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The archaeologists had discovered the pattern, which encircles the Yucatecan capital, Merida, and port towns of Sisal and Progreso, while trying to understand what had become of the Mayan civilisation that had once ruled over the peninsula. The indigenous Maya had depended on the cenotes for drinking water, but the uncanny circular arrangement of the holes perplexed the researchers as they presented their findings to fellow satellite specialists at a scientific conference Selper in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1988.

For one scientist in the audience, Adriana Ocampo, then a young planetary geologist at Nasa, the circular formation sounded a klaxon she had been trained to anticipate.

Ocampo, now 63, explains that she saw not just a ring, but a bullseye.

This is something amazing

“As soon as I saw the slides that was my ‘Aha!’ moment. I thought ‘This is something amazing’. ‘This could be it’,” said Ocampo, now director of Nasa’s Lucy programme, which will send a spacecraft into Jupiter’s orbit in 2021. “I was really excited inside but I kept cool because obviously you don’t know until you have more evidence.”

Approaching the scientists, heart pounding, Ocampo asked if they had considered an asteroid impact – one giant and violent enough to have scarred the planet in ways still being revealed 66 million years on.

“They didn’t even know what I was talking about!” she laughed, three decades later.

In the mid-1980s, a group of archaeologists discovered that Yucatan’s cenotes formed a near-perfect ring, about 200km across

(Credit: NASA Image Collection/Alamy)

Ocampo's chance encounter was the beginning of a scientific correspondence that would establish the foundations for what most scientists believe today: that this ring corresponds to the edge of the crater caused by an asteroid 12km wide, which struck the Yucatan and exploded with unimaginable force that turned rock to liquid.

Since the early ‘90s, teams of scientists from the Americas, Europe and Asia have worked to fill in the remaining blanks. They now believe the impact instantly created a crater 30km deep, causing the Earth to act like a pond after a pebble is dropped, rebounding up in the centre to create a mountain – just for a moment – reaching twice the height of Mt Everest, before crashing down. In the years that followed the cataclysmic impact, the world would have changed beyond recognition, with the plume of ash blocking the sky and creating perpetual night-time for more than a year, plunging temperatures below freezing, and killing off about 75% of all life on Earth – including almost all the dinosaurs.

Today, that centre point, the place where that imaginary compass stuck and the mountain once rose, is a buried a kilometre below a tiny town called Chicxulub Puerto.

Scientists believe that the ring corresponds with the edge of a crater formed by an asteroid impact that occurred 66 million years ago

(Credit: Science History Images/Alamy)

When I visited that settlement of a few thousand people, low-rise houses painted yellow, white, orange and ochre surrounded a type of modest town square that makes up the area’s many photogenic but unremarkable Yucatecan villages. The town has had so little publicity that the few dinosaur-lovers who do try to make their way in pilgrimage along the Yucatan's long, twisty roads between prickly scrubland forest often end up lost in another nearby town called Chicxulub Pueblo, half an hour’s drive inland.

Without that impact, humanity might well have never existed

Even if they reach the correct town, located 7km east along white-sand coastline from the popular holiday resort of Progreso, there are few indications that this was the scene of one of the most consequential and disastrous acts of the last 100 million years of Earth's history. Stroll around the main square and you'll catch sight of paintings of dinosaurs by local children. There is a playground nearby where climbing frames and slides are topped with hard plastic sauropods in primary colours. The only monument, in front of the church on the main square, takes the form of a cartoonish bone, made from concrete, laid in front of an altar like plinth depicting dinosaur species.

Until Ocampo's findings were published in 1991, this area of the Yucatan had been the subject of little international interest. Today, there is a museum, opened in September 2018 between Chicxulub Puerto and the Yucatan capital Merida, 45km to the south). The Museum of Science of the Chicxulub Crater, a joint project by the Mexican Government and the country's biggest university, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), aims to take people back to the moment, 66 million years ago, when the 12km asteroid changed world history, ending the reign of the giant beasts that had lasted hundreds of thousands of years. And by boosting local awareness of the cataclysmic events that took place here, the museum hopes to begin the process of bringing tourists to explore the Yucatan’s prehistoric past, which overlaps with popular Mayan historical destinations like Chichen Itza and the party city of Cancun.

It is believed that the asteroid impact would have wiped out 75% of all life on Earth, including almost all of the dinosaurs

(Credit: Science Photo Library/Alamy)

Chicxulub Puerto and its surrounds deserve to be better known worldwide, says Ocampo, who was born in Colombia but moved as a child to Argentina, arriving in the US at age 15. The asteroid, although bringing unimaginable violence to this area, benefitted one species above all others: humans, who, millions of years later, would evolve into the ecological gap created by the destruction of the world's biggest predators.

Without that impact, humanity might well have never existed.

“It gave us a leg up to be able to compete, to be able to flourish, as we eventually did,” she said.

Ocampo's discovery came at the end of a decade-long quest for the location of the asteroid impact. The key to her ‘Aha! moment’ had been an intuition she’d picked up after working with a legendary figure in space science, Eugene Shoemaker. Shoemaker – the pioneering American geologist who is credited as one of the founders of the field of planetary science and remains, 21 years after his death, the only person whose ashes are buried on the Moon – had instructed her that near perfect circles were unlikely to have been caused by other terrestrial forces, and could provide clues to Earth’s geological development.

The small, coastal town of Chicxulub Puerto is believed to be the centre of the impact crater

(Credit: Adamcastforth/Wikimedia Commons)

The idea that a giant asteroid had wiped out the dinosaurs was proposed by Californian father-son duo Luis and Walter Alvarez in the early 1980s. “But, then, it was extremely controversial,” Ocampo said. What she did was to place one of the final connecting jigsaw pieces that began linking scattered ideas between scientists who were working independently with fragments of information, often on overlapping investigations.

Without that impact, humanity might well have never existed

For example, as early as 1978, geophysicist Glen Penfield, working alongside Antonio Camargo-Zanoguera for Mexico’s national oil company Pemex, had flown out over the Caribbean waters that lap the shore at Chicxulub Puerto. Using a magnetometer, he scanned the waters looking for signs of oil, instead finding the underwater half of the huge crater. But that evidence belonged to Pemex, so was not made available to the scientific community.

In fact, the first person to connect the Yucatan ring with the Alvarez asteroid theory was a Texan journalist named Carlos Byars who wrote an article for the Houston Chronicle in 1981 asking if the two were linked. Byars later shared his theorywith a grad student named Alan Hildebrand, who then approached Penfield after examining a rock layer in Haiti, and it was the two of them who determined that the crater wasn’t a volcano, but an asteroid impact. “[Byars] gets the credit for being the first to put the pieces together – a newspaperman!” Ocampo said. “It’s an amazing story when you put all the pieces together.” 

Texan journalist Carlos Byars was the first person to connect the Chicxulub Crater with the theory that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

(Credit: Graham Prentice/Alamy)

But the story is not simply one of history, it could also give us insight into life beyond Earth. Lessons learned in the asteroid crater have informed research by Nasa’s Curiosity rover, which touched down on Mars in 2012 and has spent the last six years investigating the Martian environment and geology.

Debris discovered from asteroid impacts on Mars compared with ejecta from the Chicxulub Crater shows similarities that indicate that Mars must once have had much thicker an atmosphere than it does now – one closer to the atmosphere that supports life on Earth. “It’s important for us to know what happened in the past to be prepared for the future,” Ocampo said. “It provides a really good insight into what has happened in the geological evolution of Mars.”

The Chicxulub Crater has been nominated for recognition as a Unesco World Heritage site

(Credit: Reinhard Dirscherl/Alamy)

But, in the Chicxulub Crater, much of the incredible knowledge remains buried below ground, rarely recognised by visitors or locals despite the opening of the museum and Mexico’s application to have the crater recognised by Unesco. There is precious little for visitors to see as the impact was so long ago. Tourists who do visit one of the few remnants – the stunning cenotes, where you can swim among fish and dangling tree roots – may be unaware that these geological features exist only because the soft limestone they are made of was forced to the surface from deep underground by the impact. Over thousands of years, dripping water has carved out the sinkholes.

It is a unique place in our planet – It truly is

Ocampo has visited the peninsula numerous times since her discoveries there in the late 1980s, but when asked if people are aware of the importance of this place, she responds unhappily.

“The short answer is no,” she replied. “We need to do better. We need to educate, we need to make them aware of the extraordinary ground that they are living on.”

“They [local people and authorities] are trying to raise the knowledge base and it would be wonderful to help,” said Ocampo, who is also a proponent of planetary science education in Latin America. “It is a unique place in our planet. It truly is.”

“It should be preserved as a World Heritage site.”

• Places That Changed the World is a BBC Travel series looking into how a destination has made a significant impact on the entire planet.

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12-11-2018 om 20:29 geschreven door peter  

Vertelt David Attenborough sprookjes in plaats van de harde waarheid? Discussie over nieuwe natuurreeks - HLN.be

Bron: AD.nl

De BBC zond gisterenavond de eerste aflevering uit van een nieuwe vijfdelige serie van Sir David Attenborough. Die laat de leeuw, chimpansee, tijger, wolf en keizerspinguïn zien in de spectaculaire visuele pracht die we van de maker van ‘Planet Earth’, ‘Life’ en ‘Blue Planet’ kennen. In de weerbarstige natuur worstelen de koningen van het dierenrijk om te overleven en om hun jongen groot te brengen. Maar hun werkelijk grootste bedreiging - de mens - is in documentairereeks ‘Dynasties’ niet te zien.

Lees ook

Sir David Attenborough haalt uit naar Bear Grylls om ‘sensationeel slachten’ van dieren in survivalprogramma: “Hij mag het komen uitleggen”

“Kijkers haken af op waarschuwingen voor de menselijke destructie van de natuur”, verklaart de wereldberoemde filmmaker in een interview met The Guardian. Attenborough (92) noemt de bedreigingen wel, maar waakt er bewust voor om alarm te slaan en kijkers op hun eigen verantwoordelijkheid voor het milieu te wijzen. “Moet je bij elke bedreigde diersoort zeggen: ‘let op, ze zijn in gevaar’? Hoe vaak kun je dat doen zonder dat mensen afknappen?” Zijn films zijn juist bedoeld om kijkers even te laten ontsnappen aan Trump, de brexit en ander negatief nieuws, verklaart hij.

“Verraad”

Het levert hem snoeiharde kritiek op van de bekende Britse zoöloog George Monbiot. “David Attenborough pleegt verraad aan de levende wereld die hem dierbaar is”, schreef Monbiot in The Guardian. “In het licht van de verbijsterende ineenstorting van de dierenpopulaties is zulk escapisme niet uit te leggen.” Het Wereld Natuur Fonds waarschuwde twee weken geleden dat de natuur in zo’n schrikbarend tempo verloren gaat dat nu de mensheid zelf wordt bedreigd. In minder dan vijftig jaar tijd is 60 procent van de wilde zoogdieren, vogels, vissen en reptielen op aarde verdwenen.

Door zogenaamd ongerepte natuur te laten zien, scheppen filmmakers als Attenborough een vals beeld van veiligheid en overvloed, betoogt Monbiot. “Hun camera stelt ons gerust dat er nog uitgestrekte gebieden zijn waar de natuur floreert. Dat leidt ertoe dat mensen achteroverleunen in plaats van in actie komen.”

Oneens

De Nederlandse natuurfilmer en ecoloog Ruben Smit is het hartgrondig oneens met die kritiek. “Als je met een opgeheven vingertje te werk gaat, krijg je een moralistische film waar niemand naar kijkt. Ik geloof erin dat je mensen eerst moet verwonderen. Dan kun je ze wijzen op de waarde van de natuur en wakker schudden: dit staat op het spel.”

Zijn films ‘De Nieuwe Wildernis’ over de Oostvaardersplassen en ‘Wad’, maakte hij volgens de school van Attenborough. In ‘Wad’ zijn geen mensen, vissersboten of boorplatformen te zien. Pas aan het einde, in de aftiteling, vertelt hij over de bedreigingen van de Waddennatuur. “Dat leverde mij ook kritiek op. Maar ik geloof oprecht dat de boodschap harder binnenkomt als je net negentig minuten ademloos hebt zitten kijken naar mooie beelden. Met anderhalf uur beelden van dode vissen, plasticsoep en zeehondjes die worden doodgeknuppeld, trek je geen kijkers.”

Realiteit

Monbiot, vroeger zelf filmmaker bij de BBC, liep ook steevast tegen een muur als hij voorstelde een documentaire te maken over ‘de milieurealiteit’. Maar juist levende legende Attenborough, die als belichaming van de Britse omroep wordt gezien, had zijn macht volgens hem moeten aangrijpen om kijkers wél op die realiteit te wijzen.

Overigens wordt Attenboroughs oceanendocumentaire ‘Blue Planet II’ beschouwd als startpunt van de protestbeweging tegen de plasticsoep, die heeft geleid tot een Europees verbod op wegwerpplastic. Fundamentele problemen als overconsumptie - waar tv-kijkers zelfs iets aan kunnen doen - gaan natuurfilmers volgens Monbiot echter steevast uit de weg. “Met dank aan David Attenborough weten veel mensen nu behoorlijk veel over de natuur. Maar zij zijn nog altijd verbijsterend onwetend over wat er met de natuur aan het gebeuren is.”

Bekijk ook:

Geen plastic rietjes en wattenstaafjes meer tegen 2021

Grote opkuis van oceanen van start

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

12-11-2018 om 18:08 geschreven door peter  

12-11-2018 om 17:53 geschreven door peter  

According to a report published by The Mutual UFO Network a Montana witness near Great Falls reported that a contact on the Malmstrom Air Force Base described a 10-minute power outage after a circular-shaped object “over a half-acre in size” hovered over the base” on January 24, 2018.

“My base contact described the object only as black,” the reporting witness stated. “If contacted, Malmstrom AFB will confirm the power outage but nothing more. Investigators are on their way. Last sighting was in May 2017. This source is reliable and confirmed as am I.”

The witness describes himself as a retired police detective “not given to exaggerations.”

The filed report indicates the object was black in color with no structural features. The object size was larger than 300 feet. No exterior lights. No emissions. The object was hovering at less than 500 feet in altitude. The object was over one mile away from the witness. No landing was observed.

Investigators contacted the media relations department at Malmstrom and did not receive a reply. The power outage may have been limited to the launch site area and not the entire base. '

MUFON CAG Investigator Marie Cisneros and Montana State Director John Gagnon closed this case as Information Only.

“Ruled out for astronomical or weather anomalies,” Cisneros and Gagnon stated in their report. “Ruled out for bolides or fireball activity. Ruled out for obvious hoax.

“Our conclusion: Unidentified object. Size, shape, flight pattern and path does not fit with known conventional aircraft. Because this was reported by someone other than the witness, this case has to be filed as an Information Only unless further information is forthcoming by the witness.”

Malmstrom Air Force Base is in Cascade County, Montana, adjacent to Great Falls. It is the home of the 341st Missile Wing (341 MW) of the Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). As a census-designated place, it has a population of 3,472.

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

12-11-2018 om 17:41 geschreven door peter  

UFO reported streaking across Irish skies on Friday morning

Pilots saw bright lights streaking across the sky at an ‘astronomical’ speed

Ronan McGreevy

If aliens are visiting Earth they have proved to be very elusive.

Photograph: iStock

The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) is investigating an unidentified flying object (UFO) which streaked across the sky on Friday morning and disappeared.

Several commercial aircraft reported seeing at least one bright light with one pilot stating that the UFO was going at an “astronomical” speed of at least Mach 2 (2,500 km/h), which is twice as fast as a commercial jetliner.

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/einn/EINN-High-Nov-09-2018-0630Z.mp3

The Irish Aviation Authority is investigating a unusual sightings by a number of pilots of commercial aircraft while in contact with Shannon Air Traffic Control last weekend.

If there are little green men and women visiting Earth for the first time, they have proved to be very elusive.

The British Airways 787, call sign Speedbird 94, radioed Shannon Air Traffic Control at 6.47am asking if there were any military exercises off the west coast of Ireland.

A pilot recounted: “It was moving so fast. It appeared on our left hand side and rapidly veered to the north. We saw a bright light and it then just disappeared at a very high speed.

“We were just wondering. We didn’t think it was likely political. We were just wondering what it might be”, she added. 

A Shannon air traffic controller responded: “There’s nothing showing on either primary or secondary (radar)”.

A pilot from a Virgin Airlines plane, callsign Virgin76, came on to air traffic control and suggested it might be a “meteor or another object making some kind of re-entry. There appeared to be multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory. They were very bright from where we were.”

The pilot also confirmed that he he had seen “two bright lights that seemed to bank over to the right and climb away at speed at least from our perspective.”

A third pilot responded: “Glad it wasn’t just me”.

An IAA spokesman said the authority is investigating the incident and will file a report. “This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrance investigation process.” The spokesman added that it was unlikely to be aliens from another planet.

{ https://www.irishtimes.com/news }

12-11-2018 om 15:22 geschreven door peter  

Audio: Close encounter with UFO off Irish coast leaves pilots ‘wondering’

By Catherine Shanahan
Health Correspondent

The Irish Aviation Authority has begun an investigation into the sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) by a number of aircraft off the south-west coast of Ireland last Friday.

At approximately 6.47am on November 9, the pilot of a British Airways flight, call sign Speedbird94, contacted Shannon Air Traffic Control (ATC) to ask if there were military exercises taking place in the airspace through which her Boeing 787 was passing.

There were no military exercises underway.

Shannon ATC replied: “There is nothing showing on either primary or secondary [radar].”

The pilot responded: “OK. It was moving so fast.”

The controller then asked: “Alongside you?”

The BA pilot, flying from Montreal to Heathrow, describes how the UFO came up along the left-hand side of the aircraft, “then rapidly veered to the north”.

She said it was “a very bright light” that “disappeared at very high speed”.

She said they were “wondering” what it could be, that it did not seem to be on a collision course.

The pilot of a Virgin Airlines Boeing 747, call sign Virgin76, then joined the conversation and made reference to a meteor or another object re-entering the earth’s atmosphere and said there were “multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory”.

He said they were very bright “where we were”.

Shannon ATC than asked if the pilots knew which direction the objects were heading. The Virgin Airlines pilot said it was in his “11 o’clock position” with “two bright lights over to the right”, that then climbed away at speed. Shannon ATC told the pilot it would pass that information on. Shannon ATC then told Speedbird94 that “other aircraft in the air have also reported the same thing so we are going to have a look and see”.

Another pilot said the speed of the UFO was “astronomical, it was like Mach 2”, or twice the speed of sound.

The Virgin Airlines flight, from Orlando to Manchester, can carry 455 passengers, while the 787 has 214 seats. A third aircraft, a Norwegian Air 737 travelling from Stewart, New York, to Shannon, which can carry 200 passengers, was also party to the conversation.

The BA flight was passing over Kerry at the time, while the other two flights were off the south-west coast, heading eastbound, and in high-level airspace, which extends from 24,500ft upwards.

The Irish Examiner contacted the Irish Aviation Authority to ask if it was investigating the UFO. 

In a statement, the authority said: “Following reports from a small number of aircraft on Friday, November 9, of unusual air activity, the IAA has filed a report.

“This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process.”

{ https://www.irishexaminer.com/ }

12-11-2018 om 15:13 geschreven door peter  

Investigation launched after several pilots report close encounter with UFO (AUDIO)

The UFO was first spotted by a baffled British Airways pilot last Friday (November 9) at approximately 6:47am local time while flying over the south-west coast of Ireland.

Trevor Buckley@IrishAero

Very interesting report on Shannon high level Friday 9 November at 0630z with multiple aircraft with reported sightings of a UFO over County Kerry. Skip to 17 minutes to listen reports on @liveatc http://archive-server.liveatc.net/einn/EINN-High-Nov-09-2018-0630Z.mp3 … #Aviation #UFO #Ireland

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6:18 PM - Nov 11, 2018

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The pilot was flying a Boeing 787 from Heathrow to Montreal when he made a call to Shannon Air Traffic Control (ATC) to ask if there were military exercises taking place in the airspace.

You can listen to the archived recording of the call from 17 minutes here.

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/einn/EINN-High-Nov-09-2018-0630Z.mp3

ATC said there were no military exercises underway and added: “There is nothing showing on either primary or secondary [radar].”

RT

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2 pilots report UFO sighting

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“OK. It was moving so fast,” the pilot replied. “Alongside you?” asked the controller. The pilot went on to describe the UFO that appeared along the left side of the aircraft and then “rapidly veered to the north.”

READ MORE: NASA astronaut asked ground control what the ‘alien-like’ object was that he saw in space

The pilot said they saw “a bright light” that “disappeared at very high speed.” She said that she did not believe it to be on a collision course but was “wondering” what it could be.

Read more

Chemtrails, contrails or just aliens? UFO stuns onlookers across China, Inner Mongolia (VIDEOS)

A Virgin Airlines Boeing 747 pilot then joined the conversation to suggest that a meteor or some other object was re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. The pilot said there were “multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory,” and that they were “very bright where we were.”

When Shannon ATC asked the pilots which direction the objects were heading, the Virgin Airlines pilot said it was in his “eleven o’clock position” with “two bright lights over to the right,” that then climbed away at speed. “Very interesting, that one,” said the pilot.

READ MORE: Aliens, cavorting witches, disco? Blue lights dancing in the sky puzzle Muscovites (VIDEO)

After a third pilot chimed in to say “Glad it wasn’t just me,” and reported a UFO that was “astronomical, it was like Mach 2,” (2,500kph or twice the speed of sound), Shannon ATC told the BA pilot that “other aircraft in the air have also reported the same thing so we are going to have a look and see.”

The Irish Aviation Authority said they had filed a report of the “unusual air activity” following reports from a “small number of aircraft on Friday.”

“This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process,” read the IAA statement to the Irish Examiner.

{ https://www.rt.com/ }

12-11-2018 om 15:12 geschreven door peter  

Earth is rich in water, and has been for a few billion years, but scientists are still debating just where all that life-sustaining liquid came from. At least some of it was thought to have been brought here by comets or asteroids, but that idea still falls short in explaining how so much water ended up on Earth’s surface – and deep below, as well. Now, a team of scientists at Arizona State University (ASU), led by Peter Buseck, has come up with a new proposal. The new peer-reviewed paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on October 9, 2018.

The new research suggests that Earth’s water came from both rocky material, such as asteroids, and from the vast cloud of dust and gas remaining after the sun’s formation, called the solar nebula.

• The 2019 lunar calendars are here! Order yours before they’re gone. Makes a great gift.

Earth’s ocean water is similar to that found in asteroids. That’s one reason scientists have long thought that most earthly water came from an asteroid bombardment in the days of the early solar system. The ratio of deuterium– a heavier hydrogen isotope – to normal hydrogen is a unique chemical signature in various water sources. In the case of Earth’s oceans, the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio is close to what is found in asteroids. But, according to Steven Desch, also at ASU and one of the team members:

It’s a bit of a blind spot in the community. When people measure the [deuterium-to-hydrogen] ratio in ocean water and they see that it is pretty close to what we see in asteroids, it was always easy to believe it all came from asteroids.

Jun Wu at ASU is lead author of the study. He added:

The solar nebula has been given the least attention among existing theories, although it was the predominant reservoir of hydrogen in our early solar system.

The hydrogen in Earth’s oceans may not represent the hydrogen throughout the planet as a whole, however. Samples of hydrogen from deep inside the Earth, close to the boundary between the core and mantle, have notably less deuterium – indicating that this hydrogen may not have come from asteroids, after all. The noble gases helium and neon, with isotopic signatures inherited from the solar nebula, have also been found in the Earth’s mantle.

How to explain these differences? The researchers needed to develop a new theoretical model of Earth’s formation to answer that question. According to the model, Earth was the largest of many planetary embryos – aka protoplanets – in the early solar system.

Essentially, their model shows large, waterlogged asteroids eventually forming into planets like Earth through collisions.

The surface of the very young Earth was initially an ocean of magma. Hydrogen and noble gases from the solar nebula were drawn to the planetary embryo, forming the first atmosphere. Nebular hydrogen, which contains less deuterium and is lighter than asteroidal hydrogen, dissolved into the molten iron of the magma ocean.

Hydrogen was then drawn toward the center of the Earth – a process called isotopic fractionation. Hydrogen was delivered to the core through its attraction to iron, while much of the heavier isotope, deuterium, remained in the magma which eventually cooled to form the mantle. Impacts from smaller planetary embryos and other objects continued to add additional water and mass until Earth reached its final size.

The end result was that Earth had noble gases deep in its interior, with a lower deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in its core than in its mantle and oceans. Most of Earth’s water did come from asteroids, but some also came from the solar nebula. As Wu noted:

For every 100 molecules of Earth’s water, there are one or two coming from the solar nebula.

So what about comets, since they have so much water-ice in them? According to Desch:

Comets contain a lot of ices, and in theory could have supplied some water. But there’s another way to think about sources of water in the solar system’s formative days. Because water is hydrogen plus oxygen, and oxygen is abundant, any source of hydrogen could have served as the origin of Earth’s water.

Also, comets have higher deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratios, so they are actually not good sources for Earth’s water. The D/H ratio of hydrogen gas in the solar nebula was only 21 ppm, too low to have supplied most of the water on Earth. Asteroids are a much better match, along with the solar nebula.

Finally, the new results have implications for rocky exoplanets orbiting other stars. Many such worlds have now been discovered, and if there is a greater chance for some of them to also have liquid water, that also increases the chances of those planets being habitable. According to the researchers:

Our results suggest that forming water is likely inevitable on sufficiently large rocky planets in extrasolar systems.

Bottom line: The origin of Earth’s water has been debated for a long time, but this new study points to a source – the solar nebula, or cloud of gas and dust left after the sun’s formation – that had been previously mostly overlooked. The new work, based on computer modeling, may have implications for rocky worlds orbiting distant stars.

Source: Origin of Earth’s Water: Chondritic Inheritance Plus Nebular Ingassing and Storage of Hydrogen in the Core

Via Arizona State University

{ https://earthsky.org/ }

12-11-2018 om 14:43 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

12-11-2018 om 14:24 geschreven door peter