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
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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...
17-12-2018
Atlantis Discovered in the Bermuda Triangle – The Sunken City Features Giant Pyramids and Sphinxes [Complete]
Atlantis Discovered in the Bermuda Triangle – The Sunken City Features Giant Pyramids and Sphinxes [Complete]
Two scientists, Paul Weinzweig and Pauline Zalitzki, working off the coast of Cuba and using a robot submersible, have confirmed that a gigantic city exists at the bottom of the ocean.
The site of the ancient city — that includes several sphinxes and at least four giant pyramids plus other structures — amazingly sits within the boundries of the fabled Bermuda Triangle.
According to a report by Arclein of Terra Forming Terra, Cuban Subsea Pyramid Complex, the evidence points to the city being simultaneously inundated with rising waters and the land sinking into the sea. This correlates exactly with the Atlantis legend.
Huge UFO Crashed into a remote area of the Zambezi River
Huge UFO Crashed into a remote area of the Zambezi River
Africans were shocked when they noticed a wrecked flying saucer in the waters of the Zambezi river.
The UFO hunters from Africa was informed that recently, near the banks of the Zambezi river struck the giant flying object, fragments of which all went under water. Ufologists suggest that UFOs crashed in the air and unable to land successfully. It is reported that nothing living around a strange metal object was found.
According to socialists, the length of the alien flying machine is about 69 meters, while the width is 23 meters. We will remind that earlier the experts in Antarctica also noticed a broken UFO, which could belong to the aliens.
On May 30, 2018, at 21:00, an automobilist was driving on highway 24 in the evening. Suddenly, he noticed a bright disk-shaped UFO…
Witness report:
“I was driving home one evening heading west on hw 24 near lake george, colorado. the time was approximately 9:00 pm. i noticed a bright, disk-shaped object hovering in the sky above some clouds in the distance. i observed the object for about 10 minutes while driving. the object remained stationary above the clouds and was approximately 1 mile west of my vehicle. i then pulled to the side of the road and got out of my car to observe the craft. as soon as i was outside of my car and observing the craft, it began to flash its lights erratically and seemingly change shape. i observed the craft for about 5 minutes standing on the side of the road by my car. i snapped a few pictures and took a short video. the object continued to hover stationary while flashing its lights rapidly. for some reason, i felt uneasy in the presence of the craft and decided to get back in my car and continue heading west to hartsel (where i lived at the time). as i continued west the object remained stationary (however the lights were constant and not erratically flashing as they were when i was on the side of the road outside of my car)and eventually i lost sight of the craft once i was on the other side of the clouds. the experience was quite remarkable and yet disturbing as well. i am not exactly sure what i saw that evening, but i am convinced that it was something very strange and likely not of this world. earlier that day i had a discussion with my co-worker daniel. he told of some ufo experiences that he had earlier in his life. i told dan that i had never seen a ufo before or experienced a sighting of any kind. interestingly enough, that very evening i encountered a ufo.”
The most mind-blowing, life-altering scientific discoveries of 2018 - PART III
The most mind-blowing, life-altering scientific discoveries of 2018 -PART III
25. This was a banner year for scientists in US politics: Americans elected at least 10 new science pros to Congress.
Foto: Congressional candidate Kim Schrier addresses the crowd at an election night party for Democrats on November 6, 2018, in Bellevue, Washington.sourceElaine Thompson/AP
Researchers hope it’ll give men and their families more male birth control options than the standard condoms and vasectomies.
The year-long trial just got underway, but no pharmaceutical companies have stepped forward yet to fund the drug.
28. A Paris-sized impact crater was discovered under Greenland’s ice. The meteorite responsible may have have weighed 5 billion tons.
Foto: An illustration of asteroids careening toward northern Greenland.sourceNatural History Museum of Denmark/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
A study published in November described thecrater, which was made by a half-mile-wide iron asteroid that slammed into Greenland between 12,000 and 3 million years ago.
A giant meteor could still slam into us today, which is why one retired astronaut is urging NASA to send a telescope up into space to spot the threats.
“For God’s sake, fund it,” retired NASA astronaut Russell “Rusty” Schweickart told Business Insider.
29. There’s a lot more fascinating science to look forward to in 2019. For one, there’s a new lander on Mars.
Foto: Scientists and engineers inside mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrate the landing of the InSight Mars probe on November 26, 2018.sourceAL Seib/AP
The NASA InSight lander spent more than six months careening through space before it landed safely on Martian soil in November.
The quake-hunting robot could reveal new secrets about why Earth became such a nice place for us to live, while Mars wound up a cold desert planet.
30. People will continue striving to push human limits on Earth, too. At the bottom of the world, two men are attempting to become to travel across Antarctica unaided — which would be a first for humanity.
Foto: sourceCourtesy of Colin O’Brady
“Everyone has reservoirs of untapped potential inside of themselves and can achieve really incredible things,” 33-year-old adventurer Colin O’Brady said in November, before starting his 70-day trek.
The most mind-blowing, life-altering scientific discoveries of 2018 - PART II
The most mind-blowing, life-altering scientific discoveries of 2018 - PART II
12. The FDA also approved a new drug that targets cancers based on DNA instead of tumor location.
Foto: sourcektsdesign/Shutterstock
The drug, called Vitrakvi (larotrectinib), was developed by pharmaceutical company Loxo Oncology and approved by the FDA in November. Vitrakvi has already been tested on patients with lung, colon, breast and thyroid cancers.
Rather than going after certain types of cancer, the drug targets cancers based on genetically similar features (biomarkers).
“This new site-agnostic oncology therapy isn’t specific to a cancer arising in a particular body organ, such as breast or colon cancer,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a release. “Its approval reflects advances in the use of biomarkers to guide drug development and the more targeted delivery of medicine.”
According to data released in October, Loxo said that 81% of patients who tried the drug saw their tumors shrink, while 17% of patients had their tumors disappear entirely.
The drug comes with a steep price tag, though: $393,000 a year.
13. Researchers have also been developing medical robots that are 1,000 times smaller than a human hair and can suffocate tumors.
Foto: sourceJason Drees/Arizona State University
This IV-injectable robot has been successfully deployed inside mice and pigs with breast, skin, ovary and lung cancers. After five years of research, the team of scientists behind the nanorobot published their work in February.
The killer robot attacks the tumor by blocking off its supply of fresh blood. Scientists haven’t tested it out in humans yet, though.
14. Cancer researchers also found new evidence that high-fat, low-sugar diets might help kill cancer cells when used in tandem with a certain type of drug.
Foto: sourceAfrica Studio/Shutterstock
Researchers are zeroing in on potential ways to make cancer drugs more effective by changing patients’ diets.
In July, a team of doctors published the results of a study in which they put mice with cancer on low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diets while administering a treatment called a PI3K inhibitor that’s designed to kill tumors. The results showed that the diet-treatment combination improved the medication’s effects.
Scientists are now moving forward with a human trial.
“We hope very much that we would see, in the future, a much more careful assessment of what diet means and how diet can affect chemotherapy,” Siddartha Mukherjee, the study’s lead co-author and an oncologist at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, told Business Insider.
15. Scientists figured out a way to grow meat in a lab without relying on any products from slaughtered animals.
Foto: sourceShutterstock
A handful of startups are racing to create real pieces of meat out of animal cells in a lab.
But for the most part, the food that’s used to coax those cells to proliferate is an animal product called fetal bovine serum, which comes from slaughtered cows. That means the lab-grown meat isn’t yet cruelty-free.
However, the Dutch startup Meatable claims to have solved that problem by using only stem cells from animals’ umbilical cords.
“This way, we don’t harm the animals at all, and it’s material that would otherwise get thrown away,” Krijn De Nood, Meatable’s CEO, told Business Insider in September.
The company aims to begin serving its slaughter-free burgers and sausages to restaurants in roughly four years.
16. In Egypt, archaeologists opened a 30-ton black sarcophagus and found three skeletons.
Foto: Archaeologists unearth coffin containing three mummies in Alexandria, Egypt on July 19, 2018.sourceREUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
The 2,000-year-old sarcophagus was discovered in July by a construction crew working in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.
“I was the first to put my whole head inside the sarcophagus,” Waziri said. “Here I stand before you … I am fine.”
The three skeletons found in the sarcophagus were most likely soldiers, according to Egypt’s antiquities ministry, and one skull showed signs of fractures caused by a sharp instrument.
17. Egyptian excavators also found a 3,200-year-old dairy product: the world’s oldest cheese.
Foto: sourceUniversity of Catania and Cairo University
The cheese was found in the tomb of a 13th-century BCE mayor of Memphis, Egypt, excavators announced in August.
Investigators think it’s either cow- or goat-milk cheese.
Cheese-lovers on social media quickly exclaimed that they wanted to eat the ancient curd, even though it might contain deadly bacteria.
18.Chinese scientists announced in January that they’d cloned monkeys, thereby breaking the “technical barrier” for cloning humans.
Foto: Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two cloned macaque monkeys at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.sourceThomson Reuters
The scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience cloned the monkeys using the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep two decades ago. But it’s still very difficult to clone primates: it took 127 eggs to produce two live macaques. (Scientists named the baby monkeys Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua.)
The researchers said they do not intend to clone people any time soon. Instead, they want to use the scientific breakthrough to better study diseases and potential new drugs.
19. Researchers also figured out other advanced new ways to make babies. But a recent announcement about genetically edited babies drew questions and criticism from scientists around the world.
But a more controversial announcement came from Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who claims to have successfully edited the genes in a pair of twins born in China in November. By using a cut-and-paste DNA-editing technique called CRISPR, he said, the babies were born immune to HIV.
Jiankui hasn’t produced any evidence to back up his claims, though, and it’s not clear why anyone would need to genetically edit babies to ward off HIV, since life-saving drugs already exist for the auto-immune disease.
Scientists also worry that if Jiankui’s claims are true, the changes he made could have far-reaching consequences, since any genetic mutations the babies may have would get passed on to their offspring.
20. Scientists also learned more about our human ancestors this year. It turns out that early humans didn’t hesitate to get freaky with other species, and interbred with hominins like Denisovans and Neanderthals.
Foto: Neanderthal paintings can be seen in a cave in Pasiega.sourceThomson Reuters
A genetic study published in March revealed that as early Homo Sapiens made their way out of Africa, they had sex and interbred with Denisovans on numerous occasions.
21. A female scientist won the Nobel Prize in physics this year for only the third time ever.
Foto: sourceCole Burston/Getty Images
Donna Strickland, an associate professor of physics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics with a French scientist for her work on lasers.
“All this tremendous beauty and complexity of the biological world all comes about through this one simple, beautiful design algorithm,” Arnold said after she won half of the 2018 prize. “What I do is use that algorithm to build new biological things.”
The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to 210 people. Strickland, whose Wikipedia entry had previously been rejected because she wasn’t famous enough, was surprised to learn that out of all those winners, she was only the third woman.
“Is that all, really? I thought there might have been more,” she said.“We need to celebrate women physicists, because we’re out there.”
This year, a female chemist won the Nobel Prize, too. Frances Arnold became the fifth womansince 1901 to get it. The award recognized her work in using directed evolution to produce enzymes for new chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The Nobel Prize in chemistry prize has been awarded to 181 people since 1901.
22. Scientists discovered two new kinds of giant dinosaurs.
Foto: Here’s how the Ingentia Prima dinosaur may have looked.sourceJorge A. Gonzales
A study about one new species, which was discovered in Argentina, was published in July. The creature is called Ingentia Prima, a name derived from the Latin words for “huge” and “first.” The dinosaur weighed as much as three African elephants when it roamed 210 million years ago (that’s 30 million years earlier than scientists previously thought giant dinosaurs existed).
Another dinosaur, called Ledumahadi mafube, was discovered in South Africa, according to research published in September. It’s believed to have lived roughly 200 million years ago. That means both creatures would’ve been around at the time of Pangea, when the world’s land was still one supercontinent.
23. Climate scientists learned more about how our warming planet is hurting us.
Foto: Augustin Dieudomme looks out at the flooded entrance to his apartment complex near the Cape Fear River as it continues to rise in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in Fayetteville, North Carolina on September 18, 2018.sourceAP Photo/David Goldman
The heat-trapping gas that’s been added to Earth’s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels also means that a trillion dollars in coastal real estate could be threatened by the end of this century. That’s according to a recent report released by the Trump administration, which also found that thousands more people will die each year from heat-related conditions if we keep up business-as-usual.
24. Investigators cracked the Golden State Killer case using DNA matching. The implications of that strategy are huge.
Foto: Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who authorities said was identified by DNA evidence as the serial predator dubbed the Golden State Killer, appears at his arraignment in Sacramento, California on April 27, 2018.sourceFred Greaves/Reuters
A study released in October estimates that 60% of white Americans- who are the biggest consumers of DNA testing services- could now be identified up to a “third cousin or closer” using available DNA data.
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."
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
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