MIT designs and builds a plant-robot plantborg that can move towards light

BY ALEXANDRU MICU 

An MIT Media Lab team build a plant-cyborg. Its name is Elowan, and it can move around.

Image credits Harpreet Sareen, Elbert Tiao // MIT Media Labs.

For most people, the word ‘cyborg’ doesn’t bring images of plants to mind — but it does at MIT’s Media Lab. Researchers in Harpreet Sareen’s lab at MIT have combined a plant with electronics to allow it to move. The cyborg — Elowan — relies on the plant’s sensory abilities to detect light and an electric motor to follow it.

Our photosynthesizing overlords

Plants are actually really good at detecting light. Sunflowers are a great example: you can actually see them move to follow the sun on its heavenly trek. Prior research has shown that plants accomplish this through the use of several natural sensors and response systems — among others, they keep track of humidity, temperature levels, and the amount of water in the soil.

However, plant’s aren’t very good at moving to a different place even if their ‘sensor and response systems’ tell them conditions aren’t very great. The MIT team wanted to fix that. They planned to give one plant more autonomy by fitting its pot with wheels, an electric motor, and assorted electrical sensors.

The way the cyborg works is relatively simple. The sensors pick up on the electrical signals generated by the plant and generate commands for the motor and wheels based on them. The result is, in effect, a plant that can move closer to light sources. The researchers proved this by placing the cyborg between two table lamps and then turning them on or off. The plant moved itself, with no prodding, toward the light that was turned on.

While undeniably funny, the research is practical, too. Elowan could be modified in such a way as to allow it to move solar panels on a house’s roof to maximize their light exposure. Alternatively, additional sensors and controlling units would allow a similar cyborg to maintain optimal temperature and humidity levels in, say, an office. With this in mind, the team plans to continue their research, including more species of plants to draw on their unique evolutionary adaptations.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 22:58 geschreven door peter  

Space Rules!

Before humans settle or even set foot on Mars, engineers and scientists have to solve all sorts of problems, like protecting space travelers from dangerous radiation. This will be immensely difficult, but it shouldn’t overshadow other types of challenges — like the legal and political questions — raised by extraterrestrial colonization.

In an essay published Tuesday in Aeon, Marko Kovic, a consultant and president of a think tank named The Zurich Institute for Policy Analysis and Research, broke down what he sees as the four most important unanswered questions for the political structures of off-world settlements.

Break It Down

First off, Kovic poses the question of who’s actually permitted to colonize space. Should individual nations establish their own settlements, or should that right be reserved for international coalitions? What about powerful corporations?

Secondly, there’s the matter of developing laws that are relevant to life on Mars or wherever else. Right now, astronauts are subject to the laws of their home countries, but Kovic argues that it doesn’t make sense to wait the many weeks or months it would take for Earthly legal systems to investigate the first space murderer. Rather, the settlement would need its own legal structure that’s not dependent on Earth.

Kovic’s third question may never have a clear answer — he pondered how various nations like the U.S. China might respond differently to rebellious colonies. When should these settlements become independent, if they should at all?

Fourth, Kovic argued that, independent or not, policymakers should figure out exactly how various settlements on the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else will all interact among each other and with Earth society. Will they all fall under one governing coalition, or will they be separate entities?

Analog Culture

The challenge to each of these comes from the fact that Earthly analogs don’t always hold up — future space societies may find themselves in need of entirely novel governmental structures. On Earth, colonization by and eventual succession from governing nations has often been a bloody mess, so it’s not like we have useful historical examples to guide us.

When you factor in the fact that various terrestrial governments with conflicting philosophies and structures (think representative democracies versus dictatorships) will all have interests in space settlements, a crowd-pleasing solution becomes even harder to find.

So Now What?

Beyond the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that declares space ought to be explored, not exploited or used for military purposes, there are very few rules that govern space. And even that treaty no longer does as good a job as it used to — Kovic said in his essay that it would prohibit Russia, China, or America from colonizing the Moon or Mars, but not a private entity like SpaceX or Blue Origin.

Before we hand the keys to the galaxy over to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, perhaps we should take a moment to come up with some updated ground rules.

Editor’s Note: This post previously misidentified the think tank of which Kovic is president as “The Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research.” It has been updated.

READ MORE: Rules in space [Aeon]

{ https://futurism.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 22:44 geschreven door peter  

Un scientifique de la NASA n’exclut pas que des extraterrestres soient déjà parmi nous

Bien que la NASA n’ait pas encore trouvé de preuve irréfutable de l’existence d’extraterrestres, un scientifique de l’agence affirme dans un article publié sur le site officiel que les aliens auraient déjà visité la Terre. Selon lui, il pourrait s’agir d’une «entité super-intelligente» et «extrêmement petite».

Silvano P.Colombano, qui travaille dans un centre de recherche de la NASA, également professeur, n’exclut pas dans son article que des formes de vie extraterrestre auraient déjà visité la Terre. Il affirme que la vie intelligente peut ne pas être basée sur le carbone, ou ce à quoi nous sommes habitués.

«Je veux simplement souligner le fait que nous pourrions trouver d’autres formes d’intelligence, ou que ces formes pourraient choisir de nous trouver (si ce n’est pas déjà le cas), qui ne seraient pas du tout produites par des organismes à base de carbone comme nous», écrit-il dans un article de recherche publié sur le site Web de la NASA.

Si ces formes de vie extraterrestre ne sont pas basées sur le carbone, cela changerait les hypothèses existantes sur ce qu’il faut rechercher. «À quel point cela pourrait-il changer les hypothèses concernant les voyages interstellaires? Notre durée de vie typique ne serait plus limitée (même si celle-ci pourrait être traitée avec des missions multigénérationnelles ou une cryogénisation) et l’entité pourrait être extrêmement petite mais super intelligente.»

Dans le document, il suggère également que des extraterrestres pourraient avoir découvert une technologie que les êtres humains ne pourraient pas comprendre. «Si nous adoptions un nouvel ensemble d’hypothèses sur les formes d’intelligence et de technologies supérieures que nous pourrions trouver, certains de ces phénomènes pourraient correspondre à des hypothèses spécifiques et nous pourrions entamer une enquête sérieuse», a-t-il souligné.

Plusieurs médias ont repris les propos du scientifique et, vu la résonance médiatique, le scientifique a tenu à expliquer ses propos à la revue Live Science.

«Mon point de vue était simplement que les rapports de phénomènes aériens non identifiés devraient faire l’objet d’une étude sérieuse, même si les chances d’identifier une technologie étrangère est très faible», a-t-il expliqué. Source

{ https://lesavoirperdudesanciens.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 22:29 geschreven door peter  

SETI Institute found no traces of aliens on the “interstellar asteroid”

Long-term observations of the Oumuamua asteroid at the time of its approach to the Earth exclude the presence on its surface of “any artificial sources of radio waves or other signals.” This conclusion was made by astronomers from the SETI Institute for Extraterrestrial Civilizations, who published an article in the journal Acta Astronautica.

“We tried at least some signal that indicated the man-made character of this object. We didn’t find anything like that, despite the very high sensitivity of our telescopes. On the other hand, it’s impossible to say for sure that our observations completely exclude the fact that Oumuamua created the aliens, “says Gerry Harp from the SETI extraterrestrial civilization search institute in Mountain View (USA).

In the middle of October last year, the Pan-STARRS1 automated telescope discovered the first “interstellar” celestial body. This object was tentatively called a comet, received the temporary name C / 2017 U1, and dozens of ground-based and orbital telescopes began to follow it.

Before it left the near-Earth space, scientists managed to get a lot of pictures and data on its physical properties, which indicated that this object is more like an asteroid than a comet. It was renamed 1I / 2017 U1, and later received the name Oumuamua, which means “intelligence officer” in the language of the indigenous inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands.

Subsequently, the unusual cigar-shaped form of Oumuamua and the presence of large quantities of organic matter on its surface once again forced scientists to rethink what it really was – the nucleus of an “extinct” comet, a real asteroid or something completely different.

For example, at the beginning of November, astronomers from Harvard suggested, basing on this fact and the fact that the trajectory of the “interstellar scout” movement changed in an unusual way when it approached the Sun, that it could be a man-made object.

According to them, Oumuamua is a kind of interstellar “sailboat”, launched by aliens in the direction of the solar system. His unusual form helped him not to stray from the course and reach the Earth in several million years of flight.

Harp and his colleagues checked whether this was the case using the data collected by the ATA radio telescope after Oumuamua reached the Earth as close as possible when this celestial body crossed the orbit of our planet in late November and early December 2017.

The short distance and high power of the ATA allowed astronomers to check whether there are even the smallest sources of radio waves on the surface of the interstellar “scout”, whose power is tens and hundreds of times inferior to cell phones and walkie-talkies.

The maximum power of the radio transmitter, which would remain invisible for this observatory, is only 500 milliwatts, which is clearly not enough to establish contact with the Earth or to communicate with other planetary systems.

All this, according to Kharp, suggests that Oumuamua can hardly be an “interstellar probe” created by aliens to establish contact with Earth. Nevertheless, observations of it and the subsequent interstellar objects will help us to understand how the worlds are arranged outside the solar system and how suitable they are for life.

{ https://www.planet-today.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 21:59 geschreven door peter  

252 million years ago, climate change nearly wiped out life on Earth; something similar is happening today

 BY MIHAI ANDREI 

Great climatic changes triggered the Earth’s biggest extinction, which wiped off 70% of terrestrial life and 96% marine life 252 million years ago, a new study suggests. A similar process seems to be taking place today, researchers warn.

The barbary ape is one of the many creatures currently threatened by extinction as a result of human action.

Then…

We’re 252 million years in the past, in a period called the Permian. Almost all of the Earth’s landmass is clumped together into a supercontinent called Pangaea. Although it’s still in its earlier phases, life on Earth has developed to be remarkably diverse. But evolution was about to suffer a massive setback — a dramatic extinction that came to be known as “The Great Dying.”

“It was a huge event. In the last half a billion years of life on the planet, it was the worst extinction,” said Curtis Deutsch, an oceanography expert who co-authored the research with University of Washington colleague Justin Penn and Stanford University scientists Jonathan Payne and Erik Sperling.

Despite the magnitude of this event, researchers have found relatively few clues about it — until some 20 years ago.

The problem is that 252 million years is a long time (even in geological terms), and finding reliable evidence that survived the onset of this much time is not easy. However, modern dating techniques (particularly the U–Pb dating of zircon crystals) allowed geologists to pinpoint this extinction to a few thousands of years — which given the scale of things, is quite impressive.

Similarly, radiometric studies have revealed that the extinction coincided with (and was likely caused by) massive volcanic eruptions. However, not all was clear. Specifically, it was unclear how the volcanic eruption and the extinction event were related.

Now, a new study suggests that the determining mechanism was an all too familiar one: climate change.

Image credits: University of Washington.

Essentially, the eruptions caused intense and abrupt global warming, which in turn depleted the oxygen from the oceans, causing the ocean’s creatures to effectively suffocate. Using a complex model powered by a supercomputer, the authors found that the combination of these two factors alone (warming water and low oxygen) can “account for more than half the magnitude of the ‘Great Dying’”.

If those two factors seem somewhat familiar, it’s because they’re also taking place today.

… and now

The story seems remarkably similar to what we’re experiencing today, as researchers themselves underline in the study.

“Voluminous emissions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, rapid global warming, and a decline in biodiversity—the storyline is modern, but the setting is ancient,” Penn State geosciences professor Lee Kump, who was not part of the research team, wrote in a Science piece responding to the new findings.

Indeed, it’s stunning how similar the two situations are. In both cases, an event caused temperatures to rise in a relatively short amount of time — but whereas 252 million years ago that was a volcanic eruption, in this case, it’s the greenhouse gas emissions outputted by mankind.

“The ultimate, driving change that led to the mass extinction is the same driving change that humans are doing today, which is injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” Justin Penn, a University of Washington doctoral student in oceanography and the study’s lead author, told the Seattle Times.

“The study tells us what’s at the end of the road if we let climate [change] keep going,” warned Curtis Deutsch, Penn’s co-author and PhD adviser, as the latest projections show emissions hitting record-breaking levels this year. “The further we go, the more species we’re likely to lose… That’s frightening. The loss of species is irreversible.”

Scientists are also tracking oxygen depletion in the oceans, and have reported some worrying trends, which already start to resemble what was happening in the late Permian.

Simply put, we may be witnessing the start of another catastrophic period for Earth’s biodiversity, and contrary to popular belief, life doesn’t necessarily “bounce back” — it may be permanently affected. Previous studies have indicated that it took life at least 4-6 million years to recover after the Great Dying, while other authors put that figure towards 30 million years.

Credits: NASA.

Another striking similarity between the Great Dying and modern times is the devastation of insect populations. The ancient extinction is the only known mass extinction of insects — and insect populations have declined dramatically in the past few decades — the blink of an eye, in geological time.

If this all seems a bit alarming, well, it should. Finding so many similarities between the world’s greatest extinction event and today’s times is not something to be happy about. If our greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, life on Earth (including humans) may be irreparably damaged.

“As our understanding of the drivers and consequences of end-Permian climate change and mass extinction improves,” Kump wrote, “the lessons for the future become clear.”

Within the Paris Agreement, countries pledged to reduce emissions and limit global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial levels, but globally, action has been lackluster, and several studies have found that an increase of over 4 degrees Celsius is much more likely.

World leaders are currently meeting in Katowice at the annual UN climate summit (in which the Paris Agreement was also signed) to decide the best course of action, but despite some remarkable initiatives, there are few reasons for optimism.

It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of such massive processes, but it’s important to remember that collectively, our decisions are one of the most powerful geological forces in our planet’s history. Your decisions do matter — make it count.

• The study “Climate change and marine mass extinction” has been published in Science.

{ https://www.zmescience.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 21:38 geschreven door peter  

NASA verspreidt unieke geluidsopname: “Luister naar de windop Mars” - HLN.be

Bron: Belga

Sensoren in de seismometer en een weerinstrument registreerden de vibraties tengevolge van wind op Mars. “Hoofdtelefoon en subwoofer aanbevolen”, zegt de NASA. Het is allemaal “bas”. InSight doet, met medewerking van de Koninklijke Belgische Sterrenwacht, in het bijzonder onderzoek naar het binnenste van de Rode Planeet.

In onderstaand Youtube-filmpje kan je de wind op Mars beluisteren:

Lees ook

Marslander InSight stuurt nieuwe foto’s door van de rode planeet

Bekijk ook:

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

07-12-2018 om 21:11 geschreven door peter  

Chinezen onderweg naar ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, een plek waar nooit eerder ruimtetuig landde - HLN.be

Ponsaerts 

Vanavond om 19.30 uur onze tijd lanceren de Chinezen met hun ‘Lange Mars-4’-draagraket vanaf de Mongoolse grens een onbemande ruimtesonde richting de Maan. Niks speciaals, zal u denken: Neil Armstrong zette daar al voet aan grond, volgende zomer zelfs al 50 jaar geleden. In die halve eeuw werd de Maan ook zowat ‘platgelopen’, of beter ‘gereden’ door de vele robotwagens die er al op verkenning gingen. Tóch gaan de Chinezen nu voor een opmerkelijke primeur. Als eersten willen ze hun maanlander met robotjeep op de achterkant van het hemellichaam neerzetten, een plek waar nog nooit eerder iemand landde.

“Dat de Chinezen op een plek zullen landen van waarop de aarde nooit is te zien, is een absolute primeur”, weet ook Koen Geukens van Volkssterrenwacht Urania. “De maan blijft immers altijd met dezelfde zijde naar ons gericht. Dat alleen al maakt Chang’e-4 een héél speciaal project.” Maar naast prestige speelt er ook een wetenschappelijk belang. “De achterzijde van de Maan wordt als de ideale locatie beschouwd om het heelal te bestuderen, zonder storende invloeden zoals radiosignalen afkomstig van de aarde”, legt de sterrenkundige uit. “De Chinezen hopen onder meer straling op te vangen van waterstofgas uit de begintijd van het heelal. Analyse van bodem en gesteente moeten voorts uitmaken of de achterzijde verschilt van de voorzijde. Waarschijnlijk kennen beide een andere voorgeschiedenis. Zo weten we al dat er aan de andere kant amper of geen donkere zeeën zijn. Alle bijkomende info leert ons ongetwijfeld meer over de voorgeschiedenis, en mogelijk ook het ontstaan van de enige natuurlijke satelliet van onze aarde.”

Aardappelen en bloemzaden

De robotwagen van Chang’e-4 neemt ook aardappelen en zaden van bloemen mee naar de maan. Niet om daar te planten of te zaaien, wel om te bestuderen hoe deze zich in die omgeving zullen ontkiemen. “Ook dat is een primeur. De info kan nuttig zijn om voedsel te verbouwen in het toekomstige bemande ruimtestation dat de Chinezen binnen enkele jaren rondom de maan zou willen laten cirkelen”, zegt de ruimtevaartspecialist.

Wél licht aan de ‘Dark Side of the Moon’

Anders dan Pink Floyds legendarische album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ uit 1973 doet vermoeden, is er dus wel degelijk licht aan de andere zijde. “Voor of achter, het heeft niks met licht of donker te maken. Net als aan onze kant is er een dag- en nachtcyclus van ongeveer vier weken”, legt Geukens uit. “Tijdens Nieuwe Maan, wanneer wij vanaf de aarde tegen de onverlichte helft van de maan aankijken, baadt de achterkant in het zonlicht.” Ook al gebeurt dat in het licht, landen wordt er wel relatief lastig. “De maan belemmert natuurlijk de radiocommunicatie tussen het commandocentrum en de lander. De Chinezen hebben daarom in mei communicatiesatelliet Queqiao gelanceerd. Vanop zo’n 455.000 kilometer moet die, van achter de Maan, de signalen van de maanrover en -lander naar de aarde doorsluizen. Ook dat werd nooit eerder gedaan.”

Als alles volgens plan verloopt, zal de Chang’e-4 na een vlucht van 27 dagen kort na Nieuwjaar op de zuidelijke maanpool landen. Voor wie er stiekem al op hoopte: buitenaardse wezens zullen de Chinezen ook daar níet aantreffen. Daarover brachten eerdere satellietbeelden van onder meer de Nasa al uitsluitsel.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

07-12-2018 om 21:01 geschreven door peter  

Nieuwe theorie over de onzichtbare 95 procent van het heelal

 { https://www.ru.nl/ }

07-12-2018 om 20:29 geschreven door peter  

07-12-2018 om 20:07 geschreven door peter  

What Are These Mysterious Sky Phenomenon? (Video)

by N.Morgan

For the last few weeks, the skies have been filled with these unexplainable, boomerang shaped craft that are being seen across the country.

In the video below, MrMBB333 pieces together these different sightings and researches the possible causes or reasons for their existence. He shares his sighting and gives his best assessment of his experience.

It seems that one the days in which the skies are filled with chemtrails, these triangle shapes appear.es Geoengineering help propel these objects?  Or is it a mere coincidence these occurrences are happening at the same time?

References:

• https://www.mrmbb333.com/
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaVp-iXRPfiSxbkhmi56IHQ

See all stories by N. Morgan

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

07-12-2018 om 19:56 geschreven door peter  

‘Oumuamua, the interstellar interloper who buzzed through the solar system before we had a chance to really get to know it, is becoming like one of those mystery guests at a party or wedding. You know the type. Everyone kind of remembers something about them but no one actually talked to them, no one is quite sure who invited them and the pictures and videos are blurred or only show them from the back. That’s ‘Oumuamua … and another group of astronomers/guests just issued a new report saying they’ve been listening to it ever since and haven’t heard a thing. Did someone offend our mysterious, possibly alien guest? Or is it really just a space rock?

“We were looking for a signal that would prove that this object incorporates some technology – that it was of artificial origin.”

Dr. Gerald Harp from the SETI Institute is the lead author of a paper – “Radio SETI observations of the interstellar object ′OUMUAMUA” published in the February edition of Acta Astronautica – which details work done by scientists using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California to listen to ‘Oumuamua as it swung by at a distance of 170 million miles away or less than the diameter of Earth’s orbit.

“Observations were made at radio frequencies between 1 and 10 GHz using the Array’s correlator receiver with a channel bandwidth of 100 kHz. In frequency regions not corrupted by man-made interference, we find no signal flux with frequency-dependent lower limits of 0.01 Jy at 1 GHz and 0.1 Jy at 7 GHz. For a putative isotropic transmitter on the object, these limits correspond to transmitter powers of 30 mW and 300 mW, respectively.”

In astronomical terms, that’s like putting a glass up to the wall of your hotel room and listening to the guests next door. And?

“We didn’t find any such emissions, despite a quite sensitive search. While our observations don’t conclusively rule out a non-natural origin for ‘Oumuamua, they constitute important data in accessing its likely makeup.”

Despite high hopes that it might be an alien spacecraft or probe (like the Harvard scientists who still believe it was), Harp says all they heard was space crickets. Nothing. Not even the whoosh of slight acceleration that a light sail (the Harvard idea) might make as it sped up from being pushed by solar rays.

Does this mean they should pack up the Allen Telescope Array and go home?

“While no signals were found coming from ‘Oumuamua, the types of observations reported by SETI Institute scientists may have utility in constraining the nature of any interstellar objects detected in the future, or even the small, well-known objects in our own solar system.”

Of course not, say the scientists making sure they don’t jeopardize their future funding. This exercise will allow them to refine their listening when the next interstellar object flies by. In fact, those Harvard guys have identified some candidatesalready in the solar system. With this new research, they’re ready for them.

Thanks, ‘Oumuamua!

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-12-2018 om 19:35 geschreven door peter  

After travelling more than 1.25 billion miles in 27 months, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe has finally reached its destination. On December 3, 2018, the probe reached the diamond-shaped asteroid named Bennu in NASA’s first asteroid-sampling mission. The reason for this $800 million mission is to gather samples from the asteroid and return them to Earth in the year 2023. The name OSIRIS-REx stands for “Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer”.

Asteroid in space (not Bennu)

But the probe isn’t ready to start digging for samples just yet. It is currently flying alongside the asteroid and will continue to do so for the next four weeks. The probe will fly around the 1,650-foot asteroid, even getting as close as 4.4 miles from its surface. The reason for these close flybys is to determine the asteroid’s mass and its exact shape before entering its orbit on December 31^st.

• Click here to see the asteroid named Bennu.

Heather Enos, who is from the University of Arizona and is OSIRIS-REx Deputy Principal Investigator, told Space.com, “Manoeuvring around a small body that basically has no gravity is a very challenging endeavor.” She continued by saying, “So, we do have to get a little more information to proceed every step of the way.”

When the probe enters the asteroid’s orbit on December 31^st, it will move at just 4 inches per second and get within one mile of its surface which will also set a record for the closest proximity that a spacecraft will have orbited a small body. The probe will then search around the asteroid for the best area to take samples and once an area is picked by July 2020, it will then spiral down to the surface and collect the sample. The entire process of collecting the sample won’t last much longer than about five seconds.

The probe will leave the asteroid in March 2021 and head back to Earth. Then in September 2023, the asteroid sample will land in Utah inside of a special return capsule.

Asteroid in space (not Bennu)

Once the sample is collected, researchers will then study it with high-tech equipment in order to better comprehend the early days of the solar system and the potential role that carbon-rich asteroids could have played in the evolution of life on Earth. And by studying Bennu’s trajectory through space, it could help scientists better understand the non-gravitational forces that determine their paths, therefore helping to predict asteroid-impact forecasts.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-12-2018 om 19:17 geschreven door peter  

Now that our technology can keep up with our interest in Mars and we have a few rovers running around looking at stuff, we’re going to start finding weird things and mysteries. Everything’s new and exciting on another planet. We really have no idea what we might find, especially since scientists are now confident that Mars used to have liquid water and the potential to support life. Of course, Mars is a whole unexplored planet and we’re looking at it through a couple small camera lenses and a time-delay, so naturally everything is going to appear a bit more mysterious than it probably is. The opposite could also hold true: what we see through the Mars rovers’ eyes as just a piece of rock or mineral deposit might, in fact, be the bones of an ancient Martian dinosaur. Well, probably not, but it is true that we’re finding surprising and mysterious things on Mars already.

Last week was full of activity on Mars (relatively). Just after the Insight rover touched down on the Martian surface, NASA reported that the Curiosity rover found a mysterious, shiny object on the Martian surface. NASA nicknamed the object “Little Colonsay,” presumably because it resembles the Isle of Colonsay in Scotland. That means at NASA mission control, when they received pictures of a mysterious, unidentified object from another planet, someone said “Hey, that looks like Scotland!” See? Everyone’s a goofball.

The Little Colonsay object. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL

Little Colonsay is a small object that stands out from the rest of the Martian surface by how shiny and homogeneous it looks. It’s hard to tell exactly how large it is from the photo, taken by the small black and white camera on the Curiosity rover. It looks to be a reflective metallic material. NASA says the object might be a meteorite:

“The planning team thinks it might be a meteorite because it is so shiny. But looks can deceive, and proof will only come from the chemistry.”

So far, NASA has found six iron meteorites on the surface of Mars, and they all look similar to the Little Colonsay object, though not similar enough to immediately say that it’s an iron meteorite. There are, assuredly, a whole lot of people who would disagree with the planning team and jump to their own conclusions on what its shininess must be proof of.

Regardless, no one will know what the Little Colonsay object is until Curiosity has a chance to analyze it. NASA says a previous attempt was made to collect the object and analyze its structure, but the rover’s arm missed its target. According to NASA, the object will be analyzed soon.

Whether it’s a meteorite or something else, only time will tell.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-12-2018 om 18:59 geschreven door peter  

Will the next Cold War be fought in the really cold realm of outer space? Those who think about these things for a living point to the U.S. announcement of the formation of a separate military branch known as the Space Force as an indication of the affirmative. Who will they be fighting? No less of an expert than Nick Pope, former investigator for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), said this week he believes it was be extraterrestrials. Meanwhile, Russia unveiled its own new space weapon – a laser cannon capable of knocking planes, satellites, flying saucers and other crafts out of space. Is that weapon for us or ‘them’? And what’s China doing while everyone else is watching these two?

“There are conspiracy theories suggesting President Trump’s plans for a Space Force reflect a need to protect Earth against hostile aliens. There were similar conspiracy theories about President Reagan’s Star Wars plan. While there may not be an alien connection, President Trump surely knows all of America’s UFO secrets – some of which were released earlier this year as part of the AATIP project – and this may have contributed to his keenness to develop a military Space Force. And of course he knows that the two key battlespaces in any future conflict are going to be cyberspace and outer space, so it’s vitally important for the US to dominate those battlespaces.”

In an interview with Star Online, Pope hints that the president knows what many of the alleged unidentified objects in the sky really are and, wherever they come from, he wants to be ready in case they start firing, bombing, blasting or something worse. Pope believes President Trump would have demanded to see this information, contrary to conspiracy theorists who contend those with the information are withholding it from him.

“I do not want to reveal more details. It is not the time yet. But experts will understand that with such weaponry, Russia’s capacities for defending itself have multiplied.”

Here’s something else for the Space Force to worry about … Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this week that the Russian army has deployed the Peresvet laser cannon (paging Austin Powers) that can “zap satellites out of space.” Named after Alexander Peresvet, a 14th century Russian Orthodox Christian monk and heroic warrior. The cannon looks sufficiently scary (see the video here) but the announcement did not include a demonstration – is this merely a case of laser-rattling or has it already been used and we just don’t know about it?

If you want to throw in one more superpower, China’s National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) denied this week that the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will begin searching for aliens in 2019 despite Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, bragging that “It will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe.” While NAOC wants the world to believe that FAST is looking for radio millisecond pulsars and gravitational waves, it’s no secret that China wants to be the first nation to publicly announce the discovery of alien life.

Unless it has already visited us, as a NASA scientist implied this week. Who should we believe? Who do YOU believe? Are we in trouble … or is it too late?

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-12-2018 om 18:45 geschreven door peter  

It’s been almost a year since the New York Times dropped a bombshell last December, which detailed the existence of a secretive UFO study program overseen by the Pentagon.

The news was shocking for many, as it was the first public confirmation of taxpayer-funded UFO studies undertaken by a U.S. Government agency since the conclusion of Project Bluebook, the United States Air Force study that ended in 1968 (although there are whispers of other, smaller-scale studies that may have occurred since that time).

Few details were given about the program, apart from its name–The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program–and confirmation of its existence by the likes of Luis Elizondo, the former head of the program, as well as politicians like Harry Reid who helped secure funding for it. It was also revealed that much of the funding allocated for the program–a meager $22 million, according to the NYT–was funneled to aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, who used it to outsource UFO research to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). Some of the funding may have also been put toward the furtherance of scientific studies of alleged paranormal activity at a ranch southeast of Ballard, Utah, known as Skinwalker Ranch.

Plenty of questions remain about all of this, of course. Despite Elizondo’s entry into the private sector (he now works for Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy, along with a number of other scientists with similar backgrounds in the unexplained), few additional details have been forthcoming about the Pentagon’s UFO interests. There were a few videos that were released, however, reportedly made with Raytheon’s Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) system; but as with most UFO videos, these leave much to the imagination, and remain far from being satisfactory “proof” capable of resting the doubts of the more skeptical among us. In other words, nothing conclusive about UFOs themselves–video or otherwise–has emerged with the knowledge of the Pentagon’s ongoing UFO studies.

Nothing akin to further evidence for their existence was even needed, of course, in order to stir the proverbial pot of public interest. A recent article at The Daily Beast, commenting on a summary of the original New York Times piece that appeared in The New Yorker, quoted the latter as saying that, “The internet went slightly more bananas than usual last weekend over The New York Times’ story implying that extraterrestrials are real and the U.S. government has been tracking them for years.” As The Daily Beast notes, “The [New York Times’s] reporting was long-awaited validation for anyone who has ever claimed a UFO sighting, or an inexplicable encounter with the beyond.

Not so fast.

Did the New York Times really imply, as The New Yorker suggests, “that extraterrestrials are real?” In short, the answer is no: the New York Times article never even used the term “extraterrestrial” (nor it’s acronym form, E.T.)… not even once. This was by design, of course: one of the article’s co-authors, Leslie Kean, has long championed the case for renewed interest in the UFO phenomenon by scientific and government organizations. She has also warned against conflating the terms “UFO” and “extraterrestrial,” and even addressed this specifically in the introduction of her 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record, where she noted:

It’s extremely important to establish at the very beginning that neither I nor the other writers are claiming that there are alien spacecraft in our skies, simply because we do not deny data showing a physical presence of something there. The term “UFO” has been misused and has become so much a part of popular culture that its original (and accurate) definition has been nearly completely lost. Almost everyone equates the term “UFO” with extraterrestrial spacecraft, and thus, in a perverse twist of meaning, the acronym has been transformed to mean something identified rather than something unidentified. The false but widespread assumption that a UFO is, of necessity, an alien spaceship is usually the reason the term generates such an exaggerated and confusing range of emotional responses. A recognition of the extraterrestrial hypothesis as being a valid, although unproved, possible explanation worthy of further scientific scrutiny is something entirely different from approaching the subject of UFOs as if this discovery had already been made.

I doubt that Leslie Kean would call the conflation of terms like UFO and extraterrestrial a “perverse twist of meaning” if she secretly meant “extraterrestrial spacecraft” every time she talked about UFOs. Hence, why it’s all the more important to address the problem she brings to light in the passage above.

No matter how carefully we attempt to frame discussions on the UFO subject, it is often difficult to escape the insinuation that UFOs are synonymous with extraterrestrials. In my own experience, there have been occasions where I have proposed ideas like time travel, interdimensional, or psychosocial phenomenon as alternative hypotheses to explain aspects of the UFO situation (these are speculative ideas, of course, and in my opinion, some are even less likely than the ever-popular “extraterrestrial hypothesis” or ETH. Nonetheless, I have at least been willing to entertain and write about these ideas, though never committing to them in the absence of solid evidence). In such cases, the conversations have often tended to come back around to something like, “so you’re saying that aliens are time travelers from the future?” In essence, the “extraterrestrial” stereotype prevails, even in cases where other theories are on the table.

Even when proposing alternatives like advanced “black budget” or military programs and experimental aircraft as possible sources for some UFO sightings (an idea that should seem entirely plausible, and perhaps even most likely in several cases), the stigma seems to remain. All too often, the idea that our government could have built some of these aircraft becomes attached to shadowy stories of “crash retrievals” and other similar things. In other words, we might be building them… but we couldn’t have learned to do something like that on our own: we must have stolen our ideas from the aliens! 

Note the similarity here between the “back-engineered crash retrieval” theories, and the myriad ancient astronaut ideas that have emerged over the years. Whether it’s UFOs we see buzzing around in our skies today or ancient monuments that seem impossible to build even with modern engineering knowledge, the intellectual black hole that is the ET hypothesis remains ever-present.

Of course, the very fact that there are several competing “theories” about what UFOs are points to the bigger problem: that despite the popularity of the “extraterrestrial” idea, rational-minded thinkers who have looked at the subject all realize that there simply isn’t enough evidence to support this idea, or any other theory about them, for that matter. We literally do not yet have enough evidence to tip the scales in favor of any single theory about what UFOs are, despite the accumulation of anecdotal evidence suggesting that they might exist… whatever “they” might be.

The best we seem to be able to do is acknowledge that some theories appear to be more likely than others. Arguably, the ETH could be seen as being more likely than fantastic alternatives like time travel, interdimensional gateways, or notions that UFOs are “quantum-topological” points of intersection between our perceived reality and the “Matrix” exterior to the simulation in which we operate, to paraphrase something cool that David Bowie once supposedly said about a UFO he saw.

Humans like to deal in absolutes, and nobody ever said that getting to the bottom of something like UFOs would be easy. At least on the civilian level, we appear to still be in the mode of trying to determine if there actually is a phenomenon, apart from all the anecdotal data that implies it. If… and that’s a big if… there is a provable phenomenon here worthy of study (as many have argued over the decades), then perhaps some of it could be of extraterrestrial origin. It’s not impossible, but it remains unproven.

We have a ways to go before we can make any firm conclusions about what UFOs are… and that’s why making presumptions about them in the meantime becomes a real problem.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-12-2018 om 18:17 geschreven door peter  

GETTY -

CONTRIBUTORA strange 'dark fluid' could fill key gaps in our understanding of the universe

Every month it seems like some new form of ‘dark’ stuff is discovered which has the potential to rewrite huge chunks of scientific textbooks: dark matter, dark energy, even dark life. When will the darkness stop? According to some new mind-bending research published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, never, because 95% of the universe could be covered in a mysterious and bizarre “dark fluid.”

This new study attempts to solve one of the longstanding mysteries of astrophysics: why seemingly empty space in the cosmos seems to exert gravitational forces on objects. Theories proposing dark matter and dark energy don’t quite reconcile the gravitational effects physicists have observed in seeming empty space with the theory of general relativity, and that’s where this new theory of “dark fluid” comes in.

According to Oxford physicist Jamie Farnes, author of the theory, Einstein’s theory of relativity and the concepts of dark matter and dark energy can all work together if we combine dark energy and dark matter into a dark fluid which covers nearly everything in the universe:

Previous approaches to combining dark energy and dark matter have attempted to modify Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which has turned out to be incredibly challenging. This new approach takes two old ideas that are known to be compatible with Einstein’s theory—negative masses and matter creation—and combines them together. The outcome seems rather beautiful: dark energy and dark matter can be unified into a single substance, with both effects being simply explainable as positive mass matter surfing on a sea of negative masses.

Farnes admits that the idea of fluids with negative masses “sounds a little far fetched” but assures that “they are considerably less strange than you may immediately think.” The concepts of negative mass and negative energy can resolve many of the problems in modern physics – although we currently don’t have any way of conclusively proving they exist; their existence is merely inferred from gravitational effects seen in deep space.

While I can only begin to wrap my head around these theories, it’s pretty fascinating to think that we may only be able to perceive 5% or so of the stuff in the universe around us. Who knows what may be out there

Dark matter: The invisible material that makes up 27% of the universe

Here are the key facts...

• Dark matter is a material that scientists believe makes up almost a third of the known universe.
• It has never been observed by scientists because it reflects no light, making it invisible.
• Astronomers only know it exists because of its effects on other objects, such as the gravitational pull of galaxies.
• According to the European Space Agency: 'Shine a torch in a completely dark room, and you will see only what the torch illuminates.
• 'That does not mean that the room around you does not exist.
• 'Similarly we know dark matter exists but have never observed it directly.'
• Dark matter is thought to hold galaxies together, stopping the rapidly spinning objects from being torn apart by their own gravity.
• It is closely linked to dark energy, another hypothetical substance, which is thought to make up 68% of the known universe.
• Together, that means 95% of the universe is made up of dark energy or dark matter – meaning all but 5% of the cosmos cannot be explained by modern physics.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

07-12-2018 om 18:07 geschreven door peter  

A recent video showing a cigar-shaped UFO hovering in the sky over Keller, Texas on November 18th, 2019 at sunset.

Image left: UFO Keller, Texas - Image right: UFO El Paso, Texas

For those suggesting blimp, that is a reasonable explanation, however the witness described that it was still for 20 minutes and TexasUFOs could also not find any "cached" internet results that showed that the Goodyear blimp was scheduled for Keller on November 18th.

One commenter said she saw exact the same cigar-shaped object on November 28, 2018 over Katy, Texas. At first she thought it was a weird cloud but then it started to move on and was going pretty fast.

The sighting over Keller, Texas shows much similarity with the UFO sighting over El Paso, Texas on September 5, 2018.

  

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

07-12-2018 om 17:29 geschreven door peter  

UFO Recorded When Texas Woman Was Watching Sunset, Nov 19, 2018, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: November 19, 2018

Location of sighting: Keller, Texas, USA

News source: 

• https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/northeast-tarrant/article222718130.html

I have said it before and I will say it again...if you have never seen a UFO and want too...then watch seven sunsets in a row and I promise you will see something that cannot be explained away. 

 

Here a woman in Texas was watching the sunset and was lucky enough to catch a UFO as it hovered in the background. The setting sun really lights it up like a roman candle. During sunset, UFOs become vulnerable to the angle of the sun, human witness and UFO combined. This triangle will allow the UFO to be seen for a few minutes. 

Scott C. Waring

{ http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

07-12-2018 om 17:16 geschreven door peter  

A drawing of an abduction by Myriame, one of Dumont's patients.

• This article originally appeared on VICE France.

Nicolas Dumont could not be more casual as we chat about alien abductions. "It's not a hallucinatory experience or a spiritual one," says the clinical psychologist. "The experience leaves physical marks behind, plus victims get extraordinary powers, like the gift of healing or clairvoyance."

Dumont's patients believe they've experienced an alien abduction, with some saying they've been taken multiple times. The claims are so convincing in their detail, says Dumont, that he's fairly certain something must have happened.

Dumont isn't the first psychologist to specialize in this. John Edward Mack, a professor at Harvard and former psychiatrist, spent part of his life studying this same phenomenon, following nearly 200 cases of people who believed they had been abducted by aliens. In 2003, he explained in an interview: "When you're talking to a psychotic who's telling you something that seems like a psychosis, you do get the feeling that it never happened. But in these cases, it's nothing like that. These people are healthy. They question themselves sometimes. But they're describing an experience that's real and intense—something being done to their bodies."

A while ago, I spoke to some of Dumont's patients about their experiences. This time, I wanted to chat to the psychologist about how he thinks he can tell whether someone has been abducted or not and why he's convinced that more medical professionals should be open to believing in the supernatural.

VICE: How many patients have you seen who think they've been abducted by aliens?

Nicolas Dumont: Firstly, it's not as if they all come in saying "I was abducted by aliens," but lots of them think that it might be what happened. In the four years I've been doing this, I've seen about 100 patients, all French, who have shown signs of an abduction. I still see five of them regularly, several years after they first came to me. One of them, Sonia, has been experiencing these kinds of abductions since she was little.

What do you do when someone shows up at your office saying they were taken? 

I have a two-pronged approach. First of all, the diagnosis: I want to understand who I'm talking to. A person is, first and foremost, a very precise personality and from a very precise culture. Their cultural context and their approach to the world are fundamental to this part of my approach. Then I go into the exploration phase with the patient. The goal is to clarify what they want. Some want to understand what happened, others want to end it, and, of course, many want confirmation of the idea they were abducted. Lots of them ask me for hypnosis, but that doesn't always work.

---

Watch: China Built a Space Base in Argentina to Explore the Dark Side of the Moon

---

So what's the evidence you look for that makes you believe a patient may have been abducted?

Often these people tell me they were awoken in the middle of the night and found themselves paralyzed. They saw non-human beings around them, whether they were at home or in an external place that might have been a spaceship. Sometimes they were in both. Some hadn't experienced anything until they woke up at home thinking it was morning before realizing 48 hours had just gone by. We call that "missing time"—it's very common. The best-known case is that of Betty and Barney Hill in 1966.

From there, whatever your culture and background, the same elements are always there. Almost universally, my patients talk about the presence of a table, very specific beings and telepathic contact. Mentioning these specifics right away focuses my thinking toward whether the person has actually experienced something or not. Very often, these people claim to have new powers. Some people can float out of their bodies, while others acquire healing powers. And most have marks on them from the experience.

"There are also the little gray men who are particularly invasive and devoid of empathy. They’re the worst because their coldness is very often traumatizing."

You talk about "beings." Are there multiple races of aliens trying to contact us? 

After several years of research and interviews, I'm convinced there are. It seems like there are reptile aliens who sometimes provoke terror, other times a kind of love. Then you have the blond humanoids who are very tall and paternal; patients feel good around them. There are also the little gray men, who are particularly invasive and devoid of empathy. They're the worst because their coldness is very often traumatizing. Some patients also tell me of contact with insectoid creatures, whom they perceive as superior entities—the ones in charge.

I see. And what are some of the personal traits of the patients who come to see you?

In the vast majority of cases, I'm seeing people who've experienced childhood abuse, accompanied by deep emotional deprivation. Of course, that's immediately used by skeptics who make a connection between their trauma and the experiences they claim to have had. But in reality, those two things have nothing to do with each other.

Why?

I truly believe that people who've been abused in the past have already been in contact with a certain "otherness." Their past experiences have created an ontological shock. We might compare this to going outside after having been in a dark room. When you've experienced an intrusion like having been abused as a child, I think you might, unfortunately, be more prepared than others to experience this kind of terrifying contact.

And what are they like after their experience? 

What's interesting to me is the very particular link that forms between the abductee and these beings. They can feel the next abductions coming in advance. I think it's an initiation of sorts. After such an experience, you feel an overhaul of the self. Your guidance center in life isn't your specific personality any longer, but rather this mystery within you, something that's bigger than yourself. So basically, the person emerges from an individualist vision and acquires a vaster conscience. It's an awakening of the heart.

"I don’t fear for my reputation; I want to understand and help people. Other psychologists are afraid to talk about this to their colleagues. I’m not bothered by anything about it because I approach it with clinical psychology tools."

I imagine it must not be very common to specialize in all of this.

There are people who live through extraordinary things, like having out-of-body experiences. That's just how it is. Same goes for these abductees. I don't fear for my reputation; I want to understand and help people. Other psychologists are afraid to talk about this sort of stuff to their colleagues. But nothing about this bothers me because I approach it scientifically. Sure, I run into plenty of reticence—but I also meet people with open minds. I'm only ever looking to have conversations. Those who don't want to hear about it simply haven't ever seen the evidence.

How about you? Have you ever had an experience with aliens?

I saw a UFO when I was young. But I completely put the memory aside. It came back to me three years ago. Also, my siblings practiced spiritism when we were young—I'd see glasses moving on the table. It was incredible, being in contact with an invisible phenomenon.

And is that where your interest in abductions came from? 

I studied psychology in college in the most classical sense. But even then, I was already curious about everything relating to extraordinary experiences. When I read the testimonies of people who’d had near-death experiences, and realized just how much those experiences had changed their lives, I asked myself, 'What’s the point of doing therapy for decades if a single experience can change everything?' And after that, I never shut the door on people's experiences. I went to the INRES (Institute for Research on Extraordinary Experiences) where I met the writer Stéphane Alix [author of "Aliens: An Investigation"]. It was thanks to him that I got so deeply into abductions. I think you have to have gone through all these steps in order to understand what people say they have experienced.

And what do you do when you are certain that a patient hasn't been abducted? 

It depends on the case. If we're looking at a pathological liar, he won't allow us to dispute his version of events. I saw a patient a while back who had already managed to indoctrinate UFOlogists—he was really feeding off of that, that feeling of being special. That's typical with pathological liars. On the other hand, some do accept that it wasn't an abduction after all. But on my end, I never tell them that they weren't abducted; I never tell someone they're a liar. It's a discussion, and my job is simply to point the person in the right direction.

Do you think that alien beings come to visit us?

It's my job to calm my patient's suffering when they've been through some thing that could potentially destroy them.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

{ https://www.vice.com/en_us }

07-12-2018 om 01:31 geschreven door peter  

07-12-2018 om 01:05 geschreven door peter