Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 2 MONTH.
ON 06/08/2024 MORE THAN 2.161.100
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
16-12-2018
The most mind-blowing, life-altering scientific discoveries of 2018
The most mind-blowing, life-altering scientific discoveries of 2018
Foto: REUTERS/Gregg Newton Spectators at Cocoa Beach watch SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy rocket launch from the Kennedy Space Center on February 6, 2018.
These and other accomplishments were an encouraging reminder that every day, scientists across the globe are learning more about how life and the universe work.
As the new year approaches, take a look back at some of the most marvelous, life-altering, and astonishing scientific discoveries and feats from 2018.
1. In February, SpaceX nailed an impressive feat: the company launched its re-usable, 27-engine Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time. It’s the company’s most powerful yet.
Foto: sourceThom Baur/Reuters
After Falcon Heavy launched on February 6, 2018, two of the rocket’s three reusable boosterslanded safely on the ground in Florida.
The core booster, however, missed its landing pad on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Apparently it hit the water at 300 miles an hour and took out two of the engines on the drone ship,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said. That loss was relatively minor in the context of the launch’s overall success, though.
2. The payload on that Falcon Heavy rocket was Musk’s red Tesla Roadster, complete with a dummy driver and a note on the dash: “DON’T PANIC!”
Foto: sourceYouTube / SpaceX
The car is still cruising the solar system today. In November, SpaceX announced it had sailed past Mars.
3. In March, scientists at NASA revealed new findings about how living in space can mess with your eyes and immune system.
Foto: NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly, left, and his identical twin brother Mark Kelly.sourceGetty Images/Bill Ingalls/NASA
When NASA astronaut Scott Kelly left his identical twin brother Mark on Earth and spent a year in space, scientists seized on the opportunity to learn more about out how life away from our home planet can change a person.
Researchers found that up to 7% of Scott’s gene expression hasn’t returned to its Earthly “normal” state since he came back. Those changes may be part of the body’s response to the stress of living in space, and they could lead to lasting consequences for Kelly’s immune system and retinas.
4. Star-gazers spotted a new kind of aurora that travels farther south than most. Its name is STEVE.
Foto: STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) and the Milky Way at Childs Lake, Manitoba, Canada.sourceKrista Trinder/ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The strange lights were first reported by citizen scientists in Canada in 2015. The amateurs formed a group and started working with researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The result of that collaboration – the discovery of a new kind of aurora – was published in the journal Science Advances on March 14.
STEVE (which stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancementcan be tough to see, though, because the display typically lasts for less than an hour.
5. After three years of studying Mars, Italian scientists determined in July that it’s possible the red planet has a 20-kilometer-wide lake of liquid water at its polar ice cap.
Foto: This artist’s impression shows how Mars may have looked about four billion years ago, when it had an ocean of water.sourceESO/M. Kornmesser
“If these researchers are right, this is the first time we’ve found evidence of a large water body on Mars,” Cassie Stuurman, a geophysicist at the University of Texas told the Associated Press.
Other parts of Mars are too cold for water to stay liquid.
6. Astronomers found a ghost particle in Antarctica, revealing a source of some of the most high-energy radiation in the universe.
Foto: An illustration of a blazar, or spinning black hole that gobbles up matter and shoots out jets of high-energy radiation and particles.sourceDESY/Science Communication Lab
Researchers found the particle, a neutrino, in September using IceCube, an array of sensors embedded in Antarctic ice.
“When scientists tracked the particle back to its source they found a galactic monster called a blazar: a rapidly spinning black hole, millions of times the mass of the sun, that’s gobbling up gas and dust,” Business Insider’s Dave Mosher reported.
7. Humans came closer to touching the sun than ever before, after the Parker Solar Probe launched in November.
Foto: The Parker Solar Probe will come closer to the sun than any other probe before it.sourceNASA Goddard / Youtube
Solar experts hope that by traveling through scorching-hot areas of the sun, which can be 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit, the robot will help unlock mysteries about how our star works.
8. Back on Earth, a bountiful pirate’s booty worth as much as $17 billion was discovered off the coast of Columbia.
Foto: This photo reveals a key distinguishing feature of the San José—its cannons.sourceREMUS image, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The wreck was first found in 2015, and engineers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts sent a submarine drone down to explore it in more detail. In May 2018, they finally revealed the details of their discovery.
The sunken bounty may include gold, silver, and emeralds.
9. A 24-year-old Dutch man invented and launched a plastic-trapping pipe that he hopes will help heal our oceans. (But it’s running into some technical issues.)
Foto: sourceThe Ocean Cleanup
Boyan Slat hopes that his Ocean Cleanup device, which launched in September, will help make a dent in the growing plastic pollution problem. Plastics in the ocean are killing sea turtles and other life in the water at alarming rates.
But as the device combs through plastic stuck in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it’s letting some of that plastic waste escape back out into the ocean, Slat wrote in November.
“We are positive we are close to making it work,” he said.
10. Drugmakers scored some wins this year, too. There’s a new pill for peanut allergies, but it can come with nasty side effects.
Foto: Two new therapies use peanuts to desensitize those with the allergy, in hopes of protecting people from accidental exposure. These products could be the first peanut allergy therapies approved in the US.sourceShayanne Gal/BI Graphics
New allergy drugs like the one from Aimmune aim to re-train people’s immune systems to tolerate allergens like peanuts. Promising data from a trial, which was published in November, showed that after a year on the treatment, 67% of kids with peanut allergies were able to tolerate about two peanuts, compared to only 4% of those who got the placebo.
But the results aren’t always finger-licking good – because the drug includes peanuts, people can have severe reactions. More than 50 people in that trial had to get a shot of epinephrine after they had an allergic reaction.
11. Drugmaker Eli Lilly created a new kind of migraine drug, but it costs $575 a month.
Foto: sourceSamantha Lee/Business Insider
The treatment, which got the green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September, is the first drug that’s been approved to treat migraines. Previously, migraine treatment involved tools or medications originally created to serve a different purpose, like Botox and anti-seizure medicines.
How many galaxies are now known to lie within our Local Group of galaxies? How does our Milky Way rank, size-wise? And what about the vast superclusters beyond?
Artist’s concept showing our Milky Way galaxy, its satellite galaxies, and other galaxies in our Local Group. The Milky Way isn’t really the center of anything; that’s just the way the image is drawn. The 3 largest galaxies in the Local Group are, in descending order, the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Way, and M33 also known as the Triangulum Galaxy.
We know where our galaxy is located, but only locally speaking. The Milky Way galaxy is one of more than 54 galaxies known as the Local Group. The three largest members of the group are our Milky Way (second-biggest), the Andromeda galaxy (biggest) and the Triangulum Galaxy. The other galaxies in the Local Group are dwarf galaxies, and they’re mostly clustered around the three larger galaxies.
The illustration above is a bit misleading because it suggests our Milky Way galaxy lies at the center of the Local Group. It doesn’t, of course, but the image is organized that way, presumably to honor our human perspective.
On the other hand, the Local Group does have a gravitational center. It’s somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
The Local Group has a diameter of about 10 million light-years.
Astronomers have also discovered that our Local Group is on the outskirts of a giant supercluster of galaxies, known as the Virgo Supercluster.
Distances from the Local Group for selected groups and clusters within our local supercluster, called the Virgo Supercluster.
Another artist’s concept of the Virgo Supercluster, via Wikimedia Commons.
At least 100 galaxy groups and clusters are located within the Virgo Supercluster. Its diameter is thought to be about 110 million light-years.
The Virgo Supercluster may be part of an even-larger structure that astronomers call the Laniakea Supercluster. It consists of perhaps 100,000 galaxies stretched out over some 520 million light-years.
The Laniakea Supercluster is one of many such vast structures in space known to astronomers at this time.
Map of superclusters within the nearby universe, with Laniakea shown in yellow.
Er zijn twee verschillende soorten ruimteprogramma's; de ene is de aan het publiek verkochte programma van NASA en de andere is de geheime ruimtevloot. Normaal gesproken zie je weinig van die geheime ruimtevloot, maar soms maken ze een foutje, zoals enkele dagen geleden gebeurde bij het ISS.
Voor de bevoorrading van het Internationaal Ruimte Station (ISS) wordt gebruikt gebruik gemaakt van de Dragon:
Dragon, ook bekend als Dragon 1 of Cargo Dragon is een herbruikbaar onbemand ruimtevaartuig ontwikkeld door het Amerikaanse ruimtevaartbedrijf SpaceX als bevoorradingscapsule. Met zijn eerste onbemande vlucht in december 2010 werd Dragon het eerste commerciële ruimtevaartuig dat succesvol op aarde terugkeerde. Op 25 mei 2012 voltooide een Dragon als eerste commerciële ruimtevaartuig een rendez-vous met het ISS.
Op 8 december 2018 vond er weer een dergelijk rendez-vous plaats. Echter tijdens het streamen van de beelden van deze koppeling, kwam er nog iets in beeld dat eigenlijk verborgen had moeten blijven.
Want achter de Dragon zie je op een gegeven moment een driehoekig ander ruimtevoertuig langs vliegen.
De beelden zijn echt en te zien in de complete live stream die hier staat. De volgende korte video laat zien hoe het driehoekig ruimteschip achter de Dragon langs vliegt.
Het ruimteschip dat achter de Dragon passeert zou natuurlijk heel goed buitenaards kunnen zijn, maar er zijn een aantal argumenten waaruit je zou kunnen afleiden dat je hier te maken hebt met een schip van aardse makelij.
Ten eerste is het belangrijk om te weten dat er naast het ruimtevaartprogramma van NASA een ander programma is. Een programma dat tot op de dag van vandaag geheim is. Voor wat meer achtergrond, hierna een deel uit een eerder artikel:
Aan het eind van de Tweede Wereldoorlog verzamelden zowel de Russen als de Amerikanen niet alleen de wetenschappers die werkten aan conventionele raketten, maar ook de vliegende schotel wetenschappers samen met veel van hun uitrusting, om tegelijkertijd zowel een conventioneel als een niet conventioneel ruimteprogramma te kunnen beginnen.
Het duurde niet zolang voordat de conventionele aandrijving begin jaren '60 overbodig werd. De aanwezige raketprogramma’s waren niets meer dan een dure propaganda-operatie voor publieke consumptie, om een fantasieverhaal levend te houden, een die al heel snel sterk afweek van het werkelijke verhaal.
Het geheime ruimteprogramma kwam onder de toenemende invloed van de wereldelite die georganiseerd was in de Bilderbergconferentie, een groep van machtige industriëlen, bankiers en Europese koninklijke families.
Het legerproject uit 1959, Project Horizon, werd in het geheim ingevoerd om zowel bases op de Maan als op Mars te bouwen. Volgens een aantal betrouwbare klokkenluiders worden deze bases gebruikt en onderhouden door de Bilderbergvloot.
Uit een vrijgegeven document van Wright Patterson kunnen we zien dat men in 1956 al bezig was met het plaatsen van nucleaire aandrijving in schotels. De senior wetenschapper van Lockheed, Boyd Bushman, liet in een interview in 1959 technische tekeningen zien van een operationele vliegende schotel, aangedreven door een nucleaire centrale.
Een technicus uit Area 51, Bill Uhouse, claimde dat hij al vroeg in de jaren '60 samengewerkt heeft met een Grey Alien in vliegende schotel simulators waarin piloten leerden vliegen met deze objecten.
In dezelfde tijdsperiode werkte een luchtmacht technicus, Charles Hall, bij Nellis en had contact met de Tall White Extraterrestrials (Grote Witte Buitenaardsen). Zij lieten hem een TW shuttle schotel van binnen zien waarmee je naar de Maan en naar Mars kon reizen, maar niet dieper de ruimte in. Deze schotel had logo’s van alle grote lucht- en ruimtevaartbedrijven in het interieur van de schotel.
Er was een ongeluk met een door kernenergie aangedreven schotel in 1980 waarbij een lekkage ontstond in een reactorvat. Terwijl de schotel was omringd door drie militaire helikopters kregen drie personen de volle laag straling over zich heen. Deze zaak is uiteindelijk tot in het Congres gekomen, zonder enige vorm van compensatie voor de slachtoffers.
Ongeveer 10 jaar geleden slaagde de Engelsman Gary McKinnon erin om de computers van NASA te hacken en ontdekte de code naam “Solar Warden” en roosters voor alle buitenaardse officieren en lijsten met rompnummers van de grote ruimteschepen, groter dan twee voetbalvelden, en hun kleinere beschermers. Maar, vier jaar voordat McKinnon zijn ontdekking deed werd er op het Open Mind Forum al gesproken over Solar Warden en ook dat de Bilderbergers eigenaar zouden zijn van die bewuste ruimtevloot.
Alle bestaande ruimteprogramma’s dienen om de bevolking zand in de ogen te strooien. De Solar Warden vloot bestond in 2005 uit acht grote ruimteschepen, vergelijkbaar met vliegkampschepen, en 43 “beschermers”, wat natuurlijk ook ruimteschepen zijn.
De driehoekige vorm van een ufo wordt vaak in verband gebracht met het geheime TR-3B project, waarover we in een eerder artikel het volgende schreven:
Officiëel is er uiteraard weinig te weten te komen over dit toestel, maar op de website WijWordenWakker vonden wij de volgende uitleg:
Veel mensen verwarren dit vliegend object met een UFO, terwijl het dat niet is, wel zit er UFO technologie in verwerkt. Van de TR-3B wordt algemeen aangenomen dat het een product is van het "Aurora" zwart-project. Volgens verschillende bronnen is dit de top van de geheime projecten. Dit geheime project van de V.S. kost $ 3 miljard per object en onlangs zijn er 3 TR-3B Astra’s aan Israel verkocht.
De TR-3B is een nucleair aangedreven vliegende driehoek, in staat tot fenomenale snelheden. Het toestel kan door reactieve elektrische stimulatie van kleur en van uiterlijk veranderen en een andere vorm aannemen of onzichtbaar worden voor het menselijk oog. De TR-3B Astra bevat een plasmaveld versneller annex magnetisch veld verstoorder ('disruptor') , waardoor de massa van het toestel incl. inzittenden met 90% verkleind zou kunnen worden, zodat de zwaartekracht nauwelijks invloed heeft op de prestaties van het toestel.
Mede hierdoor zou de snelheid boven Mach 50 uit komen, ter vergelijking: de meeste gevechtsvliegtuigen hebben Mach 2. (Mach 1 is gelijk aan de snelheid van het geluid). Daarnaast zou de Astra uitgerust zijn met een deeltjesversneller/pulselasers, 'scalaire' wapens (waardoor de vijand zo verward wordt, dat men vrijwillig de wapens neerlegt) en tevens 40 neutronenbommen.
Het object bij het ISS vertoont veel overeenkomsten met de TR-3B. Is het dat ook? Of is hier sprake van een totaal ander al dan niet buitenaards ruimteschip?
Het gebeurt niet vaak dat Tyler van Secureteam met zijn mond vol tanden staat, maar dit keer wel. Hij heeft ook geen flauw idee wat het zou kunnen zijn. Hij noemt ook de TR-3B, maar denkt door het vreemde oppervlak en de roodachtige kleur dat we hier misschien toch te maken hebben met een buitenaards schip.
Our relationship with methane is complicated. As natural gas, it’s an efficient fuel that that produces less carbon dioxide than other hydrocarbons. As cow farts, it’s a greenhouse gas often blamed for contributing to climate change. As an abundant substance trapped in permafrost, it gets explosively released when said climate change melts the permafrost in Siberia, creating massive holes. And, as a product of microbial methanogenesis, it’s an important sign that a planet may contain life, or at least have the ingredients to support it. The discovery of methane on Mars in 2004 got the scientific and let’s-move-to-Mars worlds excited. Unfortunately, the party may have been premature – new data shows that all of the Martian methane has disappeared. Who lit a match?
The Trace Gas Orbiter arrived at Mars in 2016. Martian methane—spotted in 2004—has mysteriously vanished
TG MEDIALAB/ESA
“The presence of methane has been confirmed thanks to the observations of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on board Mars Express during the past few weeks.”
That was the news in 2004 when the European Space Agency’s ESA Mars Express orbiter detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. The next question was, “Where does this methane come from?” One possibility is from above when organic carbon from solar system dust falls to the surface and reacts with solar radiation to form methane. Another is from below, produced by chemical reactions or live or decayed microorganisms. In 2014, NASA’s Curiosity rover detected a seasonal spike in methane – unexplained but still confirming the presence of the gas.
Sniff, sniff.
Then came the spoiler. In 2016, the ESA launched the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) which began scanning the Martian atmosphere this year arrived at Mars in 2016, this year began to scan the atmosphere for methane with Belgium’s Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) spectrometer and the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite spectrometer developed by Russia. Designed to detect very low levels of atmospheric methane (about 50 particles per trillion), scientists were confident they would finally get solid gas data.
“But we already know we can’t see any methane.”
There’s no methane showing up on Mars. Ann Carine Vandaele, NOMAD’s principal investigator and a planetary scientist at the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy in Brussels, delivered the disappointing news this week at the semiannual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. Yes, they gave the TGO a software whack upside its head to make sure it was functioning normally and it was. How bad is this news? It could mean that there isn’t and never was any life on Mars, and there’s no methane that could possibly be used as a fuel by settlers from Earth.
No hot coffee on Mars? Why go?
The researchers aren’t giving up, especially since the Trace Gas Orbiter will be operational until at least 2022. They’re hoping there might be a mistake or they may find a sign this is just a temporary aberration and the methane is hiding somewhere. However, they probably already feel the same way Looney Tunes’ star Marvin the Martian often felt:
One of the more compelling reasons to accept the modern theory of the big bang and what came after it is because of how ridiculous it sounds and, as we all can empirically observe, the universe is ridiculous. Diving into the fundamental processes and epic, majestic, and impossibly old and huge events that started the chain reaction we find ourselves currently embroiled in, we start having to describe our reality with words like “gluon,” “quark,” and “hot soup.” Those are silly words for a silly universe. Yet, with the help of 21st century super-technology, researchers are beginning to see that these aren’t abstractions that only live inside equations, they’re tangible things (with the right measuring devices), and researchers with the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory seem to have cooked up a pot of the hot soup that emerged from the big bang and condensed into all the atoms we know and love.
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
It was a small pot. Subatomic in size, actually, but only slightly less impressive than a fine lobster bisque. The soup in question is called quark-gluon plasma, a “perfect fluid”—meaning that it flows with with essentially zero viscosity, or as opposite from molasses as you can get—that condensates into the protons and neutrons which make up the nuclei of atoms. To do this, researchers smashed different small particles into nuclei of gold atoms at close to the speed of light and a detector recorded what was expelled from the tiny, violent explosions. According to their predictions, a quark-gluon plasma perfect fluid (see? it’s ridiculous) would flow in the exact geometry of the exploded particle, which is precisely what happened. According to PHENIX spokesperson Yasuyuki Akiba:
“If such low viscosity conditions and pressure gradients are created in collisions between small projectiles and gold nuclei, the pattern of particles picked up by the detector should retain some ‘memory’ of each projectile’s initial shape—spherical in the case of protons, elliptical for deuterons, and triangular for helium-3 nuclei.”
This shows the different geometric flows produced by the quark-gluon plasma upon impact.
Credit: Javier Orjuela Koop, University of Colorado, Boulder
Julia Velkovska, deputy spokesperson at PHENIX elaborated on the results:
“The latest data—the triangular flow measurements for proton-gold and deuteron-gold collisions newly presented in this paper—complete the picture. This is a unique combination of observables that allows for decisive model discrimination.”
“In all six cases, the measurements match the predictions based on the initial geometric shape. We are seeing very strong correlations between initial geometry and final flow patterns, and the best way to explain that is that quark-gluon plasma was created in these small collision systems. This is very compelling evidence.”
So what’s the takeaway from all this? Well, it’s another in an increasingly frequent series of steps to the big, previously unassailable questions about the nature of our reality and how it all got here. Also, a step closer to science literally playing God in a way never thought possible when that phrase was coined. Whether you think that’s pretty cool, or pretty scary is another matter entirely. But hey, there have been billions of humans who have lived and died in a time when nobody could even dream of blowing up subatomic particles at the speed of light with huge weird machines, and you’re not one of them. That’s pretty cool.
Mufon submitter 96854 has uploaded a video of a black oval UFO moving through the sky over Utica, New York.
The video was taken in Utica, New York on December 6, 2018. It is a short clip, but worth a look.
We see what appears to be a black object in an oval form moving from right to left. At normal speed it is easy to miss, but the submitter added a slow motion clip which gives us a much better view.
The object moves behind the clouds, but is clearly seen in the cloud breaks. We took the still frame and moved in closer.
Two satellites of the European Galileo network (one illustrated) were launched in incorrect orbits, a mistake that allowed scientists to test Einstein’s theory of gravity.
An orbital oopsie has led to new proof of Albert Einstein’s physics prowess.
In 2014, two satellites intended for Europe’s Galileo network, the equivalent of the United States’ GPS network, were placed into orbit incorrectly, causing them to travel around Earth in ellipses rather than circles. That wasn’t ideal for the satellites’ originally intended navigational use, but scientists realized the wayward satellites were perfect for another purpose: testing Einstein’s theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity.
According to general relativity, gravity affects not just space, but also time. The deeper within a gravitational field you are, the slower time passes (SN: 10/17/15, p. 16). So a clock at a higher altitude will tick faster than one closer to Earth’s surface, where Earth’s gravity is stronger. The satellites’ orbital mishap allowed the most precise test yet of this effect, known as gravitational redshift, two teams of scientists report in a pair of papers in the Dec. 7 Physical Review Letters.
As the two misplaced satellites move in their elliptical orbits, their distance from Earth periodically increases and decreases by about 8,500 kilometers. Using the precise atomic clocks on the satellites, the scientists studied how that altitude change affected the flow of time. The clocks sped up and slowed down by tiny fractions of a second as expected, agreeing with the predictions of general relativity within a few thousandths of a percent, the teams report.
Watch Russian Tu-160s drill with Venezuelan jets from INSIDE strategic bomber’s cockpit (VIDEOS)
Watch Russian Tu-160s drill with Venezuelan jets from INSIDE strategic bomber’s cockpit(VIDEOS)
After Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers performed a rare 10-hour-long practice flight with the Venezuelan Air Force over the Caribbean, the Defense Ministry has released footage showing the drill from a unique perspective.
During the flight mission, which lasted roughly ten hours, two White Swans practiced “interaction” with Venezuela’s Su-30 and F-16 fighter jets which shadowed the nuclear-capable supersonic strategic bombers for part of the exercise, in “full accordance” with international laws, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement accompanying the spectacular footage.
One video shot inside the cockpit shows Tu-160 pilots in orange flight suits and combat helmets taking off from Maiquetia Airport and conducting their drills over the cloudy skies and clear blue waters of the Caribbean.
Other footage released by the MoD features the strategic bombers take-off under the cover of darkness and returning to base hours later in rays of sunlight, accompanied by Venezuelan fighters.
The arrival of two strategic bombers, nicknamed the ‘White Swan’ in Russia and designated as ‘Blackjack’ by NATO, to Venezuela after a 10,000-kilometer flight over the Atlantic, has angered Washington as an apparent ‘projection of power’ in its backyard, even though the Russian military never mentioned anything related to the US.
Caracas in the meantime slammed the US for meddling in its “sovereign right to defense and security cooperation,”especially hypocritical amid Washington’s insinuations about a possible military intervention in Venezuela.
RAKETVLIEGTUIG VOOR TOERISTEN BEREIKT VOOR HET EERST ÉCHT DE RUIMTE
Brecht Herman
EPAHet uitzicht uit SpaceShipTwo, een raketvliegtuig voor ruimtetoerisme.
DE KRANTTwee piloten zijn er gisteren voor het eerst in geslaagd om de ruimte te bereiken met een raketvliegtuig dat bedoeld is voor toeristische ruimtetripjes. Volgens de Britse miljardair Richard Branson is het nog maar een kwestie van maanden voor de eerste toerist de ruimte in vliegt.
Brad Pitt, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie en zo’n zeshonderd andere doodgewone - weliswaar behoorlijk rijke - stervelingen staan sinds gisteren een stevige stap dichter bij een reis naar de ruimte. Ze boekten jaren geleden voor 175.000 à 220.000 euro een retourtje bij Virgin Galactic, het commerciële ruimtevaartbedrijf dat deel uitmaakt van de Virgin Group van de flamboyante miljardair Richard Branson. Weinigen die geloofden dat het er ooit echt van zou komen, maar intussen zou het vooral verbazen mocht het niét gebeuren.
REUTERSHet uitzicht uit SpaceShipTwo, een raketvliegtuig voor ruimtetoerisme.
Drie keer zo snel als het geluid
Gisteren voerde Virgin Galactic een succesvolle vierde test uit met SpaceShipTwo. Het vliegtuig bereikte een hoogte van 82,7 kilometer. Volgens CEO George Whitesides is dat de ruimte, hij valt daarvoor terug op de 80-kilometergrens die de Amerikaanse luchtvaart hanteert. Nochtans is 100 kilometer een breder aanvaarde grens. Hoe dan ook: gisteren was een belangrijke dag voor het ruimtetoerisme - “een dag waar we al lang op wachtten”, zei Whitesides. Aan boord van SpaceShipTwo bevonden zich, behalve twee ervaren piloten, nog een dummy en ladingen om het gewicht van zes ruimtetoeristen te simuleren. Bij een vorige test had de raket 41 seconden gebrand, goed voor een maximumhoogte van 50 kilometer. Nu lieten de piloten zich 60 seconden lang omhoogstuwen, tot ze bijna drie keer zo snel als het geluid gingen. Even waren ze gewichtloos, voor ze veilig terugkeerden richting begane grond. De data die op hogere hoogte en aan hogere snelheid verzameld werden, moeten Virgin Galactic in staat stellen om hun commercieel ruimtetuig verder op punt te stellen. “Dit is een onwaarschijnlijk gevoel: vreugde, opluchting en goede hoop voor wat er zit aan te komen”, zegt Branson. “We werken nu het resterende deel van ons testprogramma verder af. We gaan de raketmotor nog langer laten branden om nog sneller en hoger te vliegen, zodat we duizenden private astronauten een nieuw zicht kunnen geven op onze planeet en de kosmos.”
APHet raketvliegtuig bij het opstijgen.
Achttien toeristen per week
Veiligheid heeft de hoogste prioriteit in die plannen. Geen overbodige luxe: in 2007 stierven bij een explosie drie technici van een andere firma toen ze een systeem voor het ruimtetuig aan het testen waren. Bij een testvlucht gelijkaardig aan die van gisteren kwam in 2014 een piloot om het leven toen SpaceShipTwo ontplofte. Whitesides: “We denken veel na over mogelijke risico’s en we beseffen dat alles veilig moet zijn. Maar als we geen enkel risico nemen, kunnen we ook geen vooruitgang boeken.” Wanneer precies de eerste toerist richting ruimte gaat, ligt nog niet vast. Maar recent zei Branson dat hij verwacht dat hijzelf binnen enkele maanden, “niet binnen enkele jaren”, een ruimtetoerist wordt. Het plan is om zijn kinderen Holly en Sam, dertigers, mee te nemen. “Snel daarna zullen de eerste ruimtepassagiers volgen.” Het plan is om één vlucht per week te organiseren. Op termijn moeten extra vliegtuigen het mogelijk maken om drie vluchten per week - goed voor 18 toeristen - te organiseren.
AP
De landing van het raketvliegtuig in de woestijn.
VirginHet uitzicht uit SpaceShipTwo, een raketvliegtuig voor ruimtetoerisme.
A new shape-shifting drone promises to offer rescue teams robotic help even in those hard-to-reach areas.
The drone in it’s T-shape configuration (more on that later). Image credits UZH.
Teams digging through collapsed or damaged buildings are often the only chance of salvation for those trapped after fires, earthquakes, or similar events. It’s obviously dangerous and laborious work. Not only are such structures very unstable, but they’re usually also very hard to navigate (on account of all the fallen rubble).
Needless to say, having drones scour collapsed buildings ahead of human teams would be the safest course of action. However, drones would often have to enter such sites through narrow points — a crack in a wall, a partially open window, through bars — something the typical size of a drone does not allow. A team of researchers from the Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich and the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Lausanne Federal Polytechnic School (EPFL) plans to address this issue.
The little drone that folded
“Our solution is quite simple from a mechanical point of view, but it is very versatile and very autonomous, with onboard perception and control systems,” explains Davide Falanga, researcher at the University of Zurich and the paper’s first author.
The drone’s most obvious advantage over counterparts is its ability to morph in shape to tackle cramped environments. and guarantee a stable flight at all times. The team says they’ve drawn inspiration from birds that fold their wings mid-air to navigate narrow passages. In a very similar fashion, the drone can squeeze itself to pass through gaps and then go back to its previous shape while flying. The drone can also transport objects, including during this morphing process.
Both teams collaborated closely to design the drone — a quadrotor with four propellers that rotate independently, each mounted on mobile arms outfitted with servo-motors that can fold around the frame. It also sports a video camera. What really keeps the drone aloft during these foldings is a control system designed and programmed by the team. It keeps tabs on each propeller’s position in real time, adjusting their thrust as the drone weaves and bobs through the air.
The drone’s standard configuration is the traditional quadcopter X-shape (like these drones here), with the four arms stretched out and the propellers at the widest possible distance from each other. When faced with a narrow passage, the drone can morph into an H-shape, with all arms lined up along one axis. It can also take on an O-shape (with all arms folded as close as possible to the body) or a T-shape, which can be used to bring the onboard camera as close as possible to objects that the drone needs to inspect.
“The morphing drone can adopt different configurations according to what is needed in the field,” adds Stefano Mintchev, co-author and researcher at EPFL.
The researchers plan to further improve the structure of their drone so that it can fold in all three dimensions. They also want to develop software that will make the drone truly autonomous, so it can find its own way through rubble and collapsed buildings in real-life scenarios. “The final goal is to give the drone a high-level instruction such as ‘enter that building, inspect every room and come back’ and let it figure out by itself how to do it,” says Falanga.
The paper “The Foldable Drone: A Morphing Quadrotor that can Squeeze and Fly” has been published in the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Is Elon Musk HIDING something? Mystery 'object' seen near SpaceX craft before 'feed CUT'
Is Elon Musk HIDING something? Mystery 'object' seen near SpaceX craft before 'feed CUT'
A MYSTERIOUS object has been spotted on the SpaceX Dragon’s live feed bearing similarities to an infamous "spy plane", before the live feed was reportedly "cut".
The cargo spacecraft was on its way to the International Space Station when eagle-eyed viewers noticed something strange on the SpaceX live feed.
Conspiracy duo Blake and Brett Cousins shared the discovery on their YouTube channel thirdphaseofmoon, with Blake claiming the footage “could change history”.
In the video, a large dark triangular object moves past the SpaceX Dragon, floating upwards into the atmosphere at a startling speed.
The Cousins’ report the live feed "was cut" before the camera angles changed just seconds after the object was spotted.
Speaking of the figure, Blake asks: “Could this be the infamous TR-3B up in space visiting up close?
“This is stunning footage,” he continues as he slows down the startling clip.
The TR-3 Black Mamta is the name for a highly-speculated secret surveillance plane used by the US Air Force.
Blake recalls he initially thought the object could be a reflection from the ISS, but this trail of thought was quashed as the object moved behind the Dragon’s solar panel.
CIRCLING BACK? Thee object can be seen again just moments later(Pic: YOUTUBE/ATHIRDPHASEOFMOON)
“This thing’s huge,” he remarks as the object makes its way across the screen.
He continues: “Notice the portals underneath – it definitely matches the characteristics of a TR-3B.”
A similar object is spotted just moments later floating near the SpaceX Dragon, before the feed is cut yet again.
“It’s going be hard to suppress this,” concludes Brett as he marvels at the huge object.
WHAT IS THAT? Viewers spot a strange object on SpaceX live feed (Pic: YOUTUBE/ATHIRDPHASEOFMOON)
The video has already been viewed more than 13,000 times since its upload yesterday (December 12).
And viewers are convinced the object in the video is a top-secret TR-3B craft.
One person wrote: “Can you imagine how Elon Musk must have felt when he saw that?”
Another added: “If you look closely, it looks like you can see it has delta wings.”
For the first time ever, Virgin Galactichas reached space — by one definition, anyway.
Virgin'sVSS Unity suborbital spacelinerreached a maximum altitude of 51.4 miles (82.7 kilometers) during a rocket-powered test flight over California's Mojave Desert today (Dec. 13) after firing its hybrid rocket motor for 60 seconds, company representatives said.
That's above the 50-mile (80 km) boundary that the United States Air Force uses when handing out astronaut wings, but below the more famous "Karman Line" at 62 miles (100 km) up. The Karman Line is perhaps more commonly accepted; for example, it was the target altitude for the Ansari X Prize, which offered $10 million to the first private team to launch a reusable crewed craft to space twice within a two-week span. [In Photos: Virgin Galactic's 1st Trip to Space with SpaceShipTwo Unity]
That prize was collected in October 2004 by the group behind SpaceShipOne, whose design Virgin Galactic adapted for VSS Unity and its other piloted, six-passenger spaceliners (which are collectively termed SpaceShipTwo vehicles).
"SpaceShipTwo, welcome to space," Virgin Galactic representatives said via Twitter during today's flight.
Today's flight began at just past 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) when VSS Unity took to the skies beneath its WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane, VMS Eve, from the Mojave Air and Space Port. Eve dropped Unity at an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), at which point pilot Mark Stucky and co-pilot Frederick C.J. Sturckow fired up the spaceliner's onboard rocket motor.
The engine burned for 60 seconds, accelerating Unity to a maximum velocity of Mach 2.9, or 2.9 times the speed of sound, Virgin Galactic representatives said. Today's mission ended at 11:15 a.m. EST (1615 GMT), after the spaceliner touched down at Mojave in a runway landing.
The flight was the fourth rocket-powered test mission of VSS Unity, which Virgin Galactic officially unveiled in February 2016. The other three powered tests occurred in April, May and July of this year, and took Unity to maximum altitudes of 16.0 miles, 21.7 miles and 32.3 miles (25.7, 34.9 and 52 km), respectively.
Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane takes off with the SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity from Mojave Air and Space Port ahead of the fourth powered test flight of the passenger space plane on Dec. 13, 2018.
Credit: Virgin Galactic
When it's fully up and running, VSS Unity will carry passengers on brief trips to suborbital space, for $250,000 per ticket. These missions will allow customers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and also see the curvature of Earth against the blackness of space, company representatives have said.
Virgin Galactic envisions SpaceShipTwo as a prolific research vehicle as well, and the spaceliner has already toted scientific experiments on its test flights. Today's mission, in fact, featured four NASA-sponsored research payloads — the first ones to make it aboard SpaceShipTwo via the agency's Flight Opportunities Program.
These experiments are investigating how dust behaves on planetary surfaces; how liquids and gases interact in microgravity; how microgravity affects plant growth; and how to reduce the vibrational loads on scientific payloads during launch, re-entry and landing.
"The anticipated addition of SpaceShipTwo to a growing list of commercial vehicles supporting suborbital research is exciting," Ryan Dibley, Flight Opportunities campaign manager at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, said in a statement. "Inexpensive access to suborbital space greatly benefits the technology research and broader spaceflight communities."
VSS Unity is Virgin Galactic's second SpaceShipTwo vehicle. The first, VSS Enterprise, broke apart during a rocket-powered test flight on Oct. 31, 2014. The tragic accident claimed the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injured pilot Peter Siebold.
Virgin Galactic traced the cause of the accident to Enterprise's "feathering" re-entry system, which was deployed too early in the flight. The company instituted measures to make sure such a problem could not recur on VSS Unity and other vehicles, Virgin Galactic representatives have said.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now.
This artist's illustration shows a giant cloud of hydrogen streaming off the warm, Neptune-size planet GJ 3470b. Intense radiation from the planet's host star is heating the hydrogen in GJ 3470b's upper atmosphere to a point where it escapes into space.
Credit: D. Player (STScl)/NASA/ESA
A gaseous alien world is evaporating at a record rate, shedding considerable light on an exoplanet mystery, a new study reports.
The Neptune-size planet, known as GJ 3470b, orbits close to a young, activered dwarf starthat lies 97 light-years from Earth. The radiation streaming from this star is stripping away GJ 3470b's upper atmosphere so dramatically that the planet likely won't remain a Neptune-size body for much longer, study team members said.
"This is the smoking gun that planets can lose a significant fraction of their entire mass," co-author David Sing, a professor of physics and Earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a statement. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]
"GJ 3470b is losing more of its mass than any other planet we've seen so far; in only a few billion years from now, half of the planet may be gone," Sing added.
The researchers, led by Vincent Bourrier of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study GJ 3470b, which lies 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from its parent star. That's just one-tenth the average distance between Mercury — our solar system's innermost planet — and the sun.
This graphic plots exoplanets based on their size and distance from their star. Planets about the size of Jupiter, planets roughly the size of Earth and so-called super-Earths are found both close to and far from their stars. But planets the size of Neptune (in the middle of the plot) that are close to their star are scarce. This so-called desert of hot Neptunes shows that such alien worlds are rare, or, they were plentiful at one time but have since disappeared.
Credit: A. Feild (STScl)/NASA/ESA
The Hubble data show that the red dwarf's proximity and activity are taking a serious toll on GJ 3470b. The telescope's Imaging Spectrograph instrument detected a vast cloud of hydrogen gas surrounding the planet — hydrogen that was once part of GJ 3470b's atmosphere. Indeed, the planet, which is just 2 billion years old, may already have lost about 35 percent of its mass in this way, the researchers said.
Which brings us to the exoplanet mystery. Over the past decade or so, astronomers have found lots of "hot Jupiters," "hot Earths" and "hot super-Earths" in extrasolar systems — tightly orbiting gas giants, Earth-size worlds and planets just a big bigger than our own, respectively. But there's a surprising dearth of "hot Neptunes."
The new study, along with previous Hubble-based research documenting the (less extreme) evaporation of another roughly Neptune-size world known as GJ 436b, provides a possible answer: Hot Neptunes just don't last very long. They likely lose so much of their mass that they erode into super-Earths, or perhaps even Earth-size worlds. (Note: Both GJ 3470b and GJ 436b don't orbit tightly enough to be considered "hot Neptunes" themselves; technically, they're "warm Neptunes.")
New Steven Greer Huge Alien Disclosure of Close Encounters of the 5th Kind
New Steven Greer Huge Alien Disclosure of Close Encounters of the 5th Kind
Steven Greer shows how advanced trans-dimensional ET technologies interface with the coherent meditative and thought states during Close Encounters of the 5th Kind (CE-5) events. Understand how ET craft and beings can appear around us in ways that are astonishing and very close and very usually overlooked. For many years people have been seeing UFO’s in the skies and in space and it is an undeniable fact that our earth has been visited by extraterrestrial life forms in the past and present. Close Encounters of The Fifth Kind was first coined by Dr. Steven Greer and is the fifth type of contact on the Hynek’s scale.
For NASA astronomers, this was not a good year. In June, a review board found that the agency's prized observatory—the already overdue and vastly overbudget $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—was still years away from taking flight and capturing the faint light of the universe's first stars. The holdup: torn sunshields and loose bolts. Also in trouble was the next big astrophysics mission in line, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), intended to pin down the nature of mysterious dark energy by surveying wide swaths of the sky. Not even off the drawing board, WFIRST was predicted to burst its $3.2 billion budget by $400 million, another review panel found—not a plus for a mission that the administration of President Donald Trump was already thinking of canceling.
Yet astronomers are about to look skyward and dream even bigger dreams. The decadal survey in astrophysics, which sets priorities for future missions by NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation, began last month. Dozens of astronomers, broken into committees, will identify science goals and develop a wish list of telescopes, both on the ground and in space, that could best address them. One of the toughest tasks will be to decide which—if any—of four proposed successors to the JWST and WFIRST most deserves to fly as a NASA flagship observatory. It would be launched in the 2030s to L2, a gravitationally balanced spot between the sun and Earth.
In a special online presentation, Science examines those dream telescopes. The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), a 15-meter-wide giant with 40 times the light-collecting power of the Hubble Space Telescope, is a bid to look back at the universe's first galaxies, and to answer the question: Is there life elsewhere in the universe? The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) would also focus on that question, but with a smaller mirror. HabEx would fly in tandem with a separate spacecraft carrying a starshade the size of a soccer field. By blocking the glare of a star, the starshade would reveal Earth-like exoplanets, enabling HabEx to scrutinize their faint light for signatures of life. The Lynx Xray Observatory would gather x-rays from the universe's first black holes to learn how they help galaxies form and evolve. And the Origins Space Telescope, with machinery to chill its telescope to just 4° above absolute zero, would study a little-explored kind of infrared radiation emanating from the cold gases and dust that fuel star and planet formation.
Whichever concept rises to the top, researchers hope it has a smoother path to space than the missions chosen in previous surveys. The 2001 survey picked the JWST as its top priority, but that telescope will be lucky to meet its scheduled launch in 2021, 2 decades later. WFIRST was the top pick of the 2010 survey, but it won't fly before 2025. There's a general sense that the initial proposals were immature and unrealistic, says Roger Blandford of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who chaired the 2010 survey. "There's frustration all around."
This time, NASA wants the concepts on a firmer footing. Not only did the agency identify the four flagship concepts early, back in 2015, but it has since funded teams to work up rough designs for each one. In June 2019, the teams will deliver to NASA a report that includes two concepts—one expensive and big, the other constrained and relatively affordable at less than $5 billion in most cases. (Here, Science examines the larger concepts.)
"This prepreparation will put the survey in a better situation to evaluate the possibilities," says Fiona Harrison, a high-energy astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who was named last month as co-chair of the survey along with Robert Kennicutt of Texas A&M University in College Station. The product of the decadal survey—a prioritized list of missions delivered in 2020—is supposed to be consensual, in part so that agencies and scientists can lobby Congress for funding with a unified voice. But competition among the four flagships will be fierce.
LUVOIR's backers tout its wide appeal as a general-purpose observatory in the mold of Hubble. LUVOIR's instruments cover the parts of the spectrum where the universe is brightest, and the huge size of its mirror means it can peer the farthest, at the faintest objects, with the sharpest vision. "It transcends astrophysics," says Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. Critics argue that LUVOIR's huge mirror will lead to a huge price tag and inevitable delays, as the JWST's 6.5-meter mirror already has.
Proponents of the cheaper HabEx hope it will ride high on surging enthusiasm for exoplanets—and a concern for simplicity and thrift. But flying in formation with a distant starshade is an untested technique. And though HabEx can study a few nearby planets in detail, its smaller mirror—4 meters compared with LUVOIR's 15 meters—means more distant worlds will be out of reach. LUVOIR and HabEx will compete head-to-head for the committee's attention, and HabEx and LUVOIR team member Chris Stark of STScI says there won't be a need to launch both. "There are only so many nearby stars."
A race to the stars
Four NASA space telescope concepts targeting different wavelengths and goals are competing to fly in the 2030s. Astronomers are now picking a favorite.
BICKEL/SCIENCE
Origins would look back in time to see how dust and molecules coalesced to create the first galaxies and black holes and how the disks around young stars clump into exoplanets. But the JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile can capture some of the same wavelengths, squeezing Origins's discovery space.
Lynx would take up the mantle of NASA's aging Chandra X-ray Observatory, zooming in on hot gas swirling into a black hole or jetting from the center of a galaxy. That would placate x-ray astronomers still smarting from the low rating their International X-ray Observatory proposal received in the 2010 decadal survey. "We got robbed at the last decadal," says STScI x-ray astronomer Rachel Osten. "Is it time for x-rays?"
Whichever mission wins the decadal's favor, funders will ask: How do we know it won't be another JWST, swallowing up budgets and delaying other projects? Study director Dwayne Day of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in Washington, D.C., which organizes the decadals, says the survey is taking a sophisticated approach to estimating costs, hoping "to avoid sticker shock, committing to something that is too expensive to afford."
Day says project teams usually estimate costs by tallying labor, materials, and testing. "It's good, but it leaves out unforeseen circumstances, threats." So, for the past decade NASEM has been paying The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California, to apply a cost model called CATE (for Cost And Technical Evaluation) to any proposals a decadal wishes to consider.
CATE draws on a database that goes back decades and contains details of cost and performance for more than 150 NASA missions and 700 instruments. When presented with a new mission, CATE can say how similar missions have fared in the past. The model is particularly powerful in assessing the things that can go wrong. "The best forecasters can't have hands on all the unknown unknowns," says Debra Emmons, a senior manager with Aerospace in Chantilly, Virginia. For example, if a sensor takes longer than expected to develop, or if an international partner delivers an instrument late, the project can be delayed and costs can rise. "[CATE] assesses technical threats, monetizes them, and makes a forward projection," she says. Paul Hertz, NASA's astrophysics chief in Washington, D.C., calls it "a great addition to the tool set."
The project teams are wary of the exercise, fearing that if they produce a scientifically bold and technically challenging proposal, CATE might judge it to be risky and expensive, Emmons says. And NASA wants the four project teams to be ambitious. "The missions had better be hard to do because the questions are hard," Hertz says.
But with the still-grounded JWST on everybody's mind, astronomers are eager to ensure that the winner of the great space telescope bake-off is at once dreamy and real. Blandford says: "It gives a rationale for making these terrible decisions."
For NASA astronomers, this was not a good year. In June, a review board found that the agency's prized observatory—the already overdue and vastly overbudget $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—was still years away from taking flight and capturing the faint light of the universe's first stars. The holdup: torn sunshields and loose bolts. Also in trouble was the next big astrophysics mission in line, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), intended to pin down the nature of mysterious dark energy by surveying wide swaths of the sky. Not even off the drawing board, WFIRST was predicted to burst its $3.2 billion budget by $400 million, another review panel found—not a plus for a mission that the administration of President Donald Trump was already thinking of canceling.
Yet astronomers are about to look skyward and dream even bigger dreams. The decadal survey in astrophysics, which sets priorities for future missions by NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation, began last month. Dozens of astronomers, broken into committees, will identify science goals and develop a wish list of telescopes, both on the ground and in space, that could best address them. One of the toughest tasks will be to decide which—if any—of four proposed successors to the JWST and WFIRST most deserves to fly as a NASA flagship observatory. It would be launched in the 2030s to L2, a gravitationally balanced spot between the sun and Earth.
In a special online presentation, Science examines those dream telescopes. The Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), a 15-meter-wide giant with 40 times the light-collecting power of the Hubble Space Telescope, is a bid to look back at the universe's first galaxies, and to answer the question: Is there life elsewhere in the universe? The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) would also focus on that question, but with a smaller mirror. HabEx would fly in tandem with a separate spacecraft carrying a starshade the size of a soccer field. By blocking the glare of a star, the starshade would reveal Earth-like exoplanets, enabling HabEx to scrutinize their faint light for signatures of life. The Lynx Xray Observatory would gather x-rays from the universe's first black holes to learn how they help galaxies form and evolve. And the Origins Space Telescope, with machinery to chill its telescope to just 4° above absolute zero, would study a little-explored kind of infrared radiation emanating from the cold gases and dust that fuel star and planet formation.
Whichever concept rises to the top, researchers hope it has a smoother path to space than the missions chosen in previous surveys. The 2001 survey picked the JWST as its top priority, but that telescope will be lucky to meet its scheduled launch in 2021, 2 decades later. WFIRST was the top pick of the 2010 survey, but it won't fly before 2025. There's a general sense that the initial proposals were immature and unrealistic, says Roger Blandford of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who chaired the 2010 survey. "There's frustration all around."
This time, NASA wants the concepts on a firmer footing. Not only did the agency identify the four flagship concepts early, back in 2015, but it has since funded teams to work up rough designs for each one. In June 2019, the teams will deliver to NASA a report that includes two concepts—one expensive and big, the other constrained and relatively affordable at less than $5 billion in most cases. (Here, Science examines the larger concepts.)
"This prepreparation will put the survey in a better situation to evaluate the possibilities," says Fiona Harrison, a high-energy astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who was named last month as co-chair of the survey along with Robert Kennicutt of Texas A&M University in College Station. The product of the decadal survey—a prioritized list of missions delivered in 2020—is supposed to be consensual, in part so that agencies and scientists can lobby Congress for funding with a unified voice. But competition among the four flagships will be fierce.
LUVOIR's backers tout its wide appeal as a general-purpose observatory in the mold of Hubble. LUVOIR's instruments cover the parts of the spectrum where the universe is brightest, and the huge size of its mirror means it can peer the farthest, at the faintest objects, with the sharpest vision. "It transcends astrophysics," says Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. Critics argue that LUVOIR's huge mirror will lead to a huge price tag and inevitable delays, as the JWST's 6.5-meter mirror already has.
Proponents of the cheaper HabEx hope it will ride high on surging enthusiasm for exoplanets—and a concern for simplicity and thrift. But flying in formation with a distant starshade is an untested technique. And though HabEx can study a few nearby planets in detail, its smaller mirror—4 meters compared with LUVOIR's 15 meters—means more distant worlds will be out of reach. LUVOIR and HabEx will compete head-to-head for the committee's attention, and HabEx and LUVOIR team member Chris Stark of STScI says there won't be a need to launch both. "There are only so many nearby stars."
A race to the stars
Four NASA space telescope concepts targeting different wavelengths and goals are competing to fly in the 2030s. Astronomers are now picking a favorite.
BICKEL/SCIENCE
Origins would look back in time to see how dust and molecules coalesced to create the first galaxies and black holes and how the disks around young stars clump into exoplanets. But the JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile can capture some of the same wavelengths, squeezing Origins's discovery space.
Lynx would take up the mantle of NASA's aging Chandra X-ray Observatory, zooming in on hot gas swirling into a black hole or jetting from the center of a galaxy. That would placate x-ray astronomers still smarting from the low rating their International X-ray Observatory proposal received in the 2010 decadal survey. "We got robbed at the last decadal," says STScI x-ray astronomer Rachel Osten. "Is it time for x-rays?"
Whichever mission wins the decadal's favor, funders will ask: How do we know it won't be another JWST, swallowing up budgets and delaying other projects? Study director Dwayne Day of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in Washington, D.C., which organizes the decadals, says the survey is taking a sophisticated approach to estimating costs, hoping "to avoid sticker shock, committing to something that is too expensive to afford."
Day says project teams usually estimate costs by tallying labor, materials, and testing. "It's good, but it leaves out unforeseen circumstances, threats." So, for the past decade NASEM has been paying The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California, to apply a cost model called CATE (for Cost And Technical Evaluation) to any proposals a decadal wishes to consider.
CATE draws on a database that goes back decades and contains details of cost and performance for more than 150 NASA missions and 700 instruments. When presented with a new mission, CATE can say how similar missions have fared in the past. The model is particularly powerful in assessing the things that can go wrong. "The best forecasters can't have hands on all the unknown unknowns," says Debra Emmons, a senior manager with Aerospace in Chantilly, Virginia. For example, if a sensor takes longer than expected to develop, or if an international partner delivers an instrument late, the project can be delayed and costs can rise. "[CATE] assesses technical threats, monetizes them, and makes a forward projection," she says. Paul Hertz, NASA's astrophysics chief in Washington, D.C., calls it "a great addition to the tool set."
The project teams are wary of the exercise, fearing that if they produce a scientifically bold and technically challenging proposal, CATE might judge it to be risky and expensive, Emmons says. And NASA wants the four project teams to be ambitious. "The missions had better be hard to do because the questions are hard," Hertz says.
But with the still-grounded JWST on everybody's mind, astronomers are eager to ensure that the winner of the great space telescope bake-off is at once dreamy and real. Blandford says: "It gives a rationale for making these terrible decisions."
Factory Robot Went Havoc, Impales Worker With Steel Spikes
Factory Robot Went Havoc, Impales Worker With Steel Spikes
A factory in China had a robot malfunction, which caused a worker to be impaled. The work in question managed to survive being impaled by 10 metal spikes.
49-year-old Mr. Zhou was working a night shift at a porcelain factory in the Hunan province when he was struck by a falling robotic arm. The accident had him impaled with foot long, half-inch thick metal rods. At first, he was taken to a local hospital before he was transferred to the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University to be handled by specialists due to the nature and severity of his injuries. There were six steel rods fixed on a plate that pierces his right shoulder and chest. Four rods pierced other parts of his body. During the operation, doctors found that one of the rods missed an artery by just 0.1mm.
The reds were troublesome during the operation as they prevented doctors from carrying out X-Rays. This meant the surgery was essentially done blind. Surgeons worked throughout the night to remove all the rods. Mr. Zhou's condition is now stabilized and he will be undergoing treatment and physiotherapy to assist his recovery. He is already doing great however and has regained control of his right arm.
Mr. Zhou was lucky not to suffer the same fate as an American factor worker named Wanda Holbrook. The maintenance technician was killed by a rogue robot who had entered the area she was working in and then crushed her head. At the time, she was inspecting an area where components were assembled. This was when the robot entered the section she was working in, much to her surprise.
These are not the only cases of deaths due to malfunctions and robots going rogue. In 2015, another car industry worker in Germany was also killed by a robot. The 22-year-old male, who is unnamed, was part of a team that was set up the stationary robot at a Volkswagen plant when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate. Another case last year, was when a construction worker somehow survived after he was electrocuted, the shock throwing him from his workstation, which caused him to be impaled through the anus by a four-feet steel bar.
There was also the case of Tang Ming, 37 years old, who had accidentally touched live wires on a building site and the shock sent him flying backward onto the protruding metal rod. Rescuers wisely left the pole inside of him and rushed him to the hospital where surgeons managed to extract it. Ming had to undergo seven exhausting hours of surgery at the Sichuan University West China Hospital in Chengdu, capital of China's southwestern Sichuan Province.
Real life 'shrink ray' can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size - and could be used to make the next generation of miniature robots
Real life 'shrink ray' can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size - and could be used to make the next generation of miniature robots
The 'shrink ray' can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size
Scientists can put all kinds of materials in the polymer before they shrink it
This could include a variety of materials such as metals, quantum dots or DNA
These tiny structures could be be used in many fields, including in robotics
MIT researchers have created a real life 'shrink ray' that can reduce 3D structures to one thousandth of their original size.
Scientists can put all kinds of useful materials in the polymer before they shrink it, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA.
The process - called implosion fabrication - is essentially the opposite of expansion microscopy, which is widely used by scientists to create 3D visualisations of microscopic cells.
Instead of making things bigger, scientists attach special molecules which block negative charges between molecules so they no longer repel which makes them contract.
Experts say that making such tiny structures could be useful in many fields, including in medicine and for creating nanoscale robotics.
MIT researchers have created a real life 'shrink ray' that can reduce 3D structures (pictured) to one thousandth of their original size
'It's a way of putting nearly any kind of material into a 3-D pattern with nanoscale precision,' said Edward Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
Using the new technique, researchers can create any shape and structure they want, according to the paper published in Science.
The method can create lots of different shapes, including tiny hollow spheres to microscopic chains.
After attaching useful materials to the polymer 'scaffold', they shrink it, generating structures one thousandth the volume of the original.
The researchers shrank hollow linked cubes and an Alice in Wonderland etching using the method.
Scientists say the technique uses equipment that many biology and materials science labs already have, making it widely accessible for researchers who want to try it.
Currently scientists are able to directly print 3D nanonscale objects.
However, this is only possible with specialised materials like polymers and plastics which have limited applications.
After attaching useful materials to the polymer 'scaffold', they shrink it, generating structures one thousandth the volume of the original. The researchers shrank hollow linked cubes (pictured) using this method
Researchers shrank an Alice in Wonderland etching using the method. Scientists say the technique uses equipment that many biology and materials science labs already have, making it widely accessible for researchers who want to try it
To overcome this, researchers decided to adapt a technique that was developed a few years ago for high-resolution imaging of brain tissue.
This technique, known as expansion microscopy, involves embedding tissue into a hydrogel and then expanding it.
Hundreds of research groups in biology and medicine are now using expansion microscopy as it enables 3D visualisation of cells and tissues with ordinary hardware.
The new technique involves reversing the process.
By doing this, scientists could create large-scale objects embedded in expanded hydrogels and then shrink them to the nanoscale.
They call this approach 'implosion fabrication.'
Just like they did in expansion microscopy, the researchers used a very absorbent material made of polyacrylate. This is a plastic commonly found in nappies.
Scientists can put all kinds of useful materials in the polymer before they shrink it such as metals, quantum dots and DNA. Pictured is the machine used to shrink objects
The polyacrylate forms the scaffold over which other materials can be attached.
It is then bathed in a solution that contains molecules of fluorescein, which attach to the scaffold when they are activated by laser light.
Then, they use two-photon microscopy to target points deep within the structure.
They attach fluorescein molecules to these specific locations within the gel.
These acts as anchors that bind to other types of molecules that are in the structure.
'You attach the anchors where you want with light, and later you can attach whatever you want to the anchors,' Dr Boyden said.
'It could be a quantum dot, it could be a piece of DNA, it could be a gold nanoparticle.'
Researchers think these nanobjects could be used to create better lenses for cell phone cameras, microscopes (stock image), or endoscopes
Once the desired molecules are attached in the right locations, the researchers shrink the entire structure by adding an acid.
The acid blocks the negative charges in the polyacrylate gel so that they no longer repel each other, causing the gel to contract.
Using this technique, researchers can shrink the objects 10-fold in each dimension (for an overall 1,000-fold reduction in volume).
This ability to shrink not only allows for increased resolution, but also makes it possible to assemble materials in a low-density scaffold.
This means it can be easily modified and later the material becomes a dense solid when it is shrunk.
Researchers think these nanobjects could be used to create better lenses for cell phone cameras, microscopes, or endoscopes.
Farther in the future, researchers say that this approach could be used to build nanoscale electronics or robots.
WILL GLOBAL WARMING CAUSE SPECIES TO SHRINK?
A study conducted by the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada found that over the last century, the beetles in the region have shrunk.
By looking at eight species of beetle and measuring the animals from past and present they found that some beetles were adapting to a reduced body size.
The data also showed that the larger beetles were shrinking, but the smaller ones were not.
Around 50 million years ago the Earth warmed by three degrees Celsius (5.4°F) and as a result, animal species at the time shrunk by 14 per cent.
Another warming event around 55 million years ago - called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) - warmed the earth by up to eight degrees Celsius (14.4°F).
In this instance, animal species of the time shrunk by up to a third.
Woolly mammoths were a victim of warming climate, shrinking habitat and increased hunting from a growing early-human population which drove them to extinction - along with many large animals
Shrinking in body size is seen from several global warming events.
With the global temperatures set to continue to rise, it is expected the average size of most animals will decrease.
As well as global warming, the world has seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of large animals.
So called 'megafauna' are large animals that go extinct. With long life-spans and relatively small population numbers, they are less able to adapt to rapid change as smaller animals that reproduce more often.
Often hunted for trophies or for food, large animals like the mastadon, mammoths and the western black rhino, which was declared extinct in 2011, have been hunted to extinction.
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Scientists are able to shrink objects
Scientists are able to shrink objects
For the first time, researchers have produced nano-objects by shrinking. First, they assembled 3D objects in a special hydrogel, then an acid caused the gel and its contents to shrink. The 3D design thus became an object ten to a thousand times smaller - without distortions or defects. The big advantage: this "implosion fabrication" method is feasible with conventional technology and enables completely new nanoconstructs, as the researchers report in the specialist journal "Science".
Many research labs are already stocked with the equipment required for this kind of fabrication. Credit: The researchers
Team invents method to shrink objects to the nanoscale
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a method that, for the first time, produces detailed 3D objects on a nanoscale - by shrinking. To do this, they first position the components of the object in a larger pre-variant. Then they shrink the whole thing and create the desired object in nano format.
This so-called "implosion fabrication" is made possible by a special hydrogel made of polyacrylate/polyacrylamide. If, for example, this gel is exposed to an acid, the water content and the chemical bonds change so that the entire gel contracts evenly.
Complex 3D structures on the nanoscale - produced by shrinking. A 3D pattern created using implosion fabricationCredit: MIT/ Daniel Oran
The new method considerably expands the existing possibilities of nano-fabrication, as the researchers emphasize:
"With implosion fabrication, we can produce all kinds of structures, gradients, unconnected shapes or objects from several materials"
The big advantage is that these 3D structures can be assembled and designed before shrinking with a precision that is hardly possible in nano size.
Basic lab equipment can produce minuscule 3D-printed objects
Ed Boyden and colleagues
Alice in Wonderland created using implosion fabrication before and after shrinking - But Boyden thinks it can go much smaller. In a handful of tests, they were able to expand and shrink the structure by 8000 times.
When David Letterman hosted “The Late Show,” he liked to play a couple of games called “Is This Anything?” and “Will It Float?”. If Dave were back on TV today (and don’t we wish he was), he’d have a field day with the ongoing hole-in-the-space-station controversy which is in the news again this week after two Russian cosmonauts spent eight hours outside the station looking at the hole, scraping off a mysterious yellow substance and trying to come up with an explanation. Was it anything and will the explanation float?
The Soyuz spacecraft hole had to be repaired from outside by two astronauts
(Image: RT question more)
“Yes, we also observe it [the hole].”
Sputnik News covered Russian Mission Control’s conversations with the two cosmonauts on the space walk earlier this week, the latest step in the mystery that began in August when a small leak was found in the Soyuz capsule attached to the Russian side of the ISS – a leak that was initially blamed on a meteorite (and initially plugged with the finger of an astronaut) but later suspected to have been made while the capsule was still on the ground and somehow managed to be patched well enough to pass inspections. While the hole was plugged from the inside with epoxy, its existence and the conspiracy theories surrounding its yet-unexplained cause forced Roscosmos to schedule the spacewalk to observe the hole from the outside.
Spacewalking is a lot harder than it looks
“There’s nothing, that’s the problem.”
The task was easier planned than done, as cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko pointed out that he and Sergei Prokopyev had no handles, handrails or any other things to hold on to as they made their way 30 meters (100 feet) to the capsule and the spot when they thought the hole might be hidden behind insulation … a trip that took nearly four hours. Once there, they used a knife (this isn’t the Starship Enterprise) to cut a 25-by-25 cm (10-by-10 inch) piece from the insulation to expose the 2 millimeter hole and send videos back to Mission Control.
At this point, the plot thickens.
“The photos taken by cosmonauts have been studied, and no drill traces have been detected on the micrometeorite protection plates.”
While the surface inside showed drill marks suggesting that the hole was manmade, there were no such marks on the other side. The cosmonauts were also seen scraping a mysterious yellow substance from the hole to be taken back to Earth for analysis.
“Some kind of double-flowering yellow. And black ones.”
Was this description lost in Google translation or were the cosmonauts puzzled as they tried to figure out for themselves if this was something used to plug the hole on the ground or when it was found in space after the leak? Or is it something else?
“Return home.”
At that point in the live broadcast, Russian Mission Control quickly ordered the cosmonauts to patch the insulation and get back inside – an order that took over three more hours to follow. Roscosmos head Dimitri Rogozin immediately commended them on a spacewalk that was “unprecedented in its complexity” and will “enter the history of space exploration.”
After eight hours, that yellow stuff was probably starting to look good enough to eat
What about the mysterious yellow-black substance? Neither Rogozin nor Roscosmos had any further comments. The substance will be brought to Roscosmos on December 20th, but the part of the capsule with the hole will be discarded before hitting Earth’s atmosphere, which means the only clues to the cause of the hole are the videos and the strange substance.
What will Roscosmos reveal about it? Is it anything? Will it float?
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
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