Viruses, ET and the octopus from space: the return of panspermia

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A major paper revives the oft-mocked theory that life on Earth began in a rain of cosmic microbes. Stephen Fleischfresser reports.

The search for ET, say researchers, could start and end with the octopus.
VIZERSKAYA/GETTY IMAGES

The peer-reviewed journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology recently published a most remarkable scientific paper. With 33 authors from a wide range of reputable universities and research institutes, the paper makes a seemingly incredible claim. A claim that if true, would have the most profound consequences for our understanding of the universe. Life, the paper argues, did not originate on the planet Earth.

The response?

Near silence.

The reasons for this are as fascinating as the evidence and claims advanced by the paper itself. Entitled Cause of the Cambrian Explosion – Terrestrial or Cosmic?, the publication revives a controversial idea concerning the origin of life, an idea stretching back to Ancient Greece, known as panspermia.

The scientific orthodoxy concerning the origin of life is called abiogenesis. This suggests that at some point in the earth’s early history, conditions were favourable for the creation of complex organic chemistry that, in turn, led to the self-organisation of the first primitive life forms.

Much is understood about the process, but exactly how information came to be coded in nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) to form the system of genetic inheritance and expression, and how this transformed into life itself, remains unknown. The other slightly uncomfortable aspect of the abiogenic account is that it seems to take place in a surprisingly short amount of time. The theory requires that the "primordial soup" from which self-replicating RNA emerged formed within an 800 million year period following the stabilisation of the Earth's crust, a timeframe some researchers think is too narrow.

Despite its drawbacks and lack of detail, abiogenesis is the consensus, the only plausible hypothesis for the origin of life.

The panspermia hypothesis, however, disputes nearly every aspect of this story.

Of the 33 authors, Edward Steele and Chandra Wickramasinghe are the most well-known.

Steele, an Australian immunologist, has a history as something of a maverick. He has long championed the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics, a theory first aired by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the French evolutionist prior to Darwin.

Although the latter much admired Lamarck’s work, most scientists have since discarded it. In 1979, Steele took a contrary position, advocating a neo-Lamarckian idea known as “somatic selection hypothesis", published in 1979. The later advent of epigenetics, and the discovery of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in numerous microbial organisms have somewhat restored Lamarck’s tarnished reputation, with some biologists suggesting HGT represents "a form of (quasi)Lamarkian inheritance".

Wickramasinghe is a famed astronomer and astrobiologist with an illustrious career. He has held a string of professorships at Universities in both England and Sri Lanka, and has more than 70 publications in Nature.

One of his more notable contributions, along with his long-time collaborator, the late Sir Fred Hoyle, was the hypothesis that interstellar dust was partly made up of organic molecules, which Wickramasinghe went on to confirm experimentally. This finding prompted him to become a lifelong advocate of the panspermia hypothesis, publishing numerous papers on the topic.

Hoyle thus exerts a posthumous influence over the new paper. Originally Wickramasinghe’s PhD supervisor, he was an odd mix of genius and far-out ideas: he formulated the notion of stellar nucleosynthesis, the now well-established theory that says all elements heavier than helium are created through fusion in the hearts of stars. He also thought that the famous Archaeopteryx fossil, transitional between dinosaurs and birds, was a manufactured fake.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe developed the model of panspermia at the centre of the recent study. The new paper is a review of “the key experimental and observational data gathered over the past 60 years”, write the authors, “consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology”.

The H-W model holds, the authors state, “that life was seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (at or just before 4.1 billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells and organisms, … perhaps even fertilised ova and plant seeds, may have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth helping to drive further the progress of terrestrial biological evolution.”

In other words, the researchers suggest that abiogenesis did not happen on Earth and the main source of genetic novelty is not caused by the selection of naturally occurring advantageous mutations, but rather comes from a rain of extra-terrestrial living matter that integrates itself, via neo-Lamarckian mechanisms such as horizontal gene transfer, into the genomes of terrestrial life.

Beyond this, the model also postulates that various epidemics are caused by the arrival of viruses from space and that extra-terrestrial retroviruses drove the Cambrian explosion.

Not to mention that the octopus might well be an alien.

One might be tempted to laugh, if it weren’t for the volume of titillating evidence they present, and the nagging worry that the naysayers have been wrong before. For decades everyone knew, for example, that continents didn’t just go drifting about the place. Until they did.

But just because theories seen as crackpot by the scientific establishment have later been vindicated does not necessarily mean that is the case here.

The proof advanced “would support an extra-terrestrial origin of life,” writes commentator and evolutionary scientist Keith Baverstock from the University of Eastern Finland, puts it in the same issue of the journal, but is “not evidence that could not be explained in any other terms." In other words, the argument advanced by Steel and colleagues in plausible, but not convincing.

Nonetheless, the paper has withstood a year of intense peer review. As Steele points out to Cosmos, “It has thus passed some severe and tortuous tests already.” The tension between the evidence and the claims based on it make for uneasy reading.

Just as the field of Alzheimer’s research ponders if its main theory of many decades is wrong, perhaps it is worth entertaining a quaint notion: what if panspermia is right?

The paper is remarkable in tone. Far from the cautious claims of normal scientific literature, it is almost triumphant. “The consistency with panspermia of a vast swathe of new data,” Wickramasinghe tells Cosmos, “often entailing new and unexpected developments of technology, over the past four decades have given us the confidence to adopt this tone.”

The evidence is enough to back their confidence, fascinating and detailed. Central to their paper, and indeed their model of panspermia, is the action of viruses, retroviruses, in particular, and much of the evidence presented revolves around them.

Retroviruses are fiendishly clever. They are the foremost practitioners of horizontal gene transfer, integrating their own genetic material into the genome of the infected host to produce more viruses.

Intriguingly, if they infect germline cells, sperm or ova, for example, then the organism will transmit the integrated retrovirus, known as a provirus, to their descendants. In other words, the acquired genetic material becomes part of the offspring’s inheritance. It’s a solidly Lamarckian mechanism and Steele’s own somatic selection hypothesis is based on such viral capacities.

This ability to affect the genetic makeup of their hosts makes viruses a force to be reckoned with. As a group of researchers, led by microbiologist Matthew B Sullivan, wrote in 2016, “viruses modulate the function and evolution of all living things, but to what extent remains a mystery.”

And the truth is there are a lot of viruses around.

Virologist Curtis Suttle from the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues last year published the first research into the number of viruses being deposited from the atmosphere. The amount is staggering, possibly billions a day for every square metre of the earth. Viruses are puissant and ubiquitous.

Steele and colleagues seem to have been finally spurred to action by new virological data connecting viruses and evolution.

In 2017 Pakorn Aiewsakun and Aris Katzourakis from the University of Oxford in the UK published a paper in Nature Communications that concluded that “retroviruses emerged together with their vertebrate hosts in the ocean” at least 460 million years ago. They also established that the two entities demonstrate patterns of co-speciation: as the host organisms transform into new species, their viral counterparts similarly transform. This, claim Steele and colleagues, is a key prediction of the H-W panspermia hypothesis.

Steele and colleagues derive two points from Aiewsakun and Katzourakis’ findings.

The first is that viruses are successful only because they have evolved to make use of the host’s cellular machinery and genetic regulatory make-up – that is, they are “in touch with the whole of the cell’s very ability to grow and divide to produce progeny cells and to evolve”. Given this, evidence that retroviruses emerged at the same time as, and co-speciated with, their hosts, simply doesn’t add up. Retroviruses are carefully adapted to the stable make-up of their target hosts and such co-variance just shouldn’t happen.

The second point is that the emergence of these retroviruses barely predates the Cambrian Explosion, a period in which sudden and unparalleled biological diversity and complexity appeared on Earth. They also emerge not long after a mass extinction event at the end of the Ediacaran period, 542 million years ago.

Panspermia accounts for all this, the authors explain, thus: the Ediacaran extinction was most likely brought about by comets that brought with them complex retroviruses. The retroviruses were the main driver of the Cambrian explosion. They integrated themselves into the genomes of countless terrestrial species, introducing novel genetic material which resulted in an explosion of diversification of living forms.

They integrated so quickly and easily, without the need or time to evolve to the target host’s genetic make-up, because they arrived already primed to do so. This is because the H-W panspermia hypothesis posits a cosmic biology, in which, write the researchers, “the entire galaxy (and perhaps a local group of galaxies) constitutes a single connected biosphere”. All life, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial, is related, according to this view, as all life comes from the greater biosphere in which genetic material in the “cosmic gene pool” is readily shared. There is an underlying biochemical unity of all life, differing only in which isotopes of essential elements life from different parts of the universe might use.

As Wickramasinghe puts it, “Our point of view is that in the context of an interconnected cosmic biosphere involving at least 100 billion habitable exoplanets in our galaxy alone, and with continuing exchanges of biomaterial, large scale HGT including exchanges of complex genetic packages in the form of viruses, seeds, bacteria is unavoidable.”

One of the reasons for adopting panspermia, he explains, is the “superastronomically improbable transition from non-life to life”.

The idea that abiogenesis occurred on the cosmically insignificant earth in an awkwardly short amount of time strikes him as improbable, at best.

“The choice between life originating on Earth against manifestly insuperable odds,” he says, “and an origin in the connected volume of a large part of the almost infinite universe is a simple binary choice. We chose the most probable.”

Steele and colleagues argue that abiogenesis is deeply unlikely here on earth and that “it is many orders of magnitude more likely that it emerged in one of the trillions of comet-like incubators or water-bearing planets (cosmic-wide versions of Darwin's 'warm little ponds') at a very early time in the growth of this universe”.

Despite this, Wickramasinghe, Hoyle and Steele have all entertained the notion that there is no need for such a creation story. When asked if there must be abiogenesis at some point, somewhere in the universe, Steele replies, “Actually no. If the universe is steady state infinite there is no formal abiogenesis! I am not saying I agree with that. But Big Bang or steady state are so mind-boggling I find both incredible!”

The reason for this, and a common factor amongst the three scientists, is a commitment to, or interest in, the steady state theory of cosmology.

The idea, first put forward by Hoyle and two colleagues in 1948, holds that the universe has no beginning or end and remains the same size. As matter at the outer reaches of the universe loses energy and goes dark, new matter is created.

In this view, biology is as timeless and without origin as the universe itself. Hoyle famously lost the fight over cosmological models to George Gamow and the advocates for the Big Bang. Despite the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964, something predicted by Big Bang theory, Hoyle never recanted his beliefs, and the steady state universe seems an underlying presence in the H-W model of panspermia.

The background theories and characters may be unsettling, but they don’t detract from the evidence upon which the paper rests, which must be taken on its own terms. Much of it is peer reviewed, but it is not always as persuasive as billed. Nonetheless, there is a good deal that gives one pause for thought.

For example, when asked why we haven’t found obvious signs of microbial life elsewhere in the solar system, both Steele and Wickramasinghe seem adamant that such evidence has, in fact, been found. Both point to the work of Gilbert Levin, the principal investigator of the 1976 Viking mission to Mars and his colleague Patricia Straat. Viking’s results pointed to something with a metabolism in the Martian soils, but then couldn’t detect any organic material. The result is interesting, but inconclusive.

The authors also insist fossil microbes have already been found in various meteorites, including the famous Murchison meteorite that fell in Victoria, Australia, in 1969. While they point to refereed journal articles for support, it seems the jury is still out. Once again, the evidence is tantalising but not conclusive.

More recently, traces of seemingly biological carbon deposits have been found in rocks predating the emergence of life, during a period of heavy comet and asteroid bombardment. The authors see this as evidence of life carried to earth, but, as Baverstock suggests, there are other reasons such carbon might be there.

More intriguing is the discovery of bacteria and microbes in unlikely places, such as the stratosphere, 30 to 40 kilometres above the surface of the planet, and more excitingly on the outside of the International Space Station. In the case of the ISS, contamination has been ruled out and the physics suggests that it is not possible for the microbes to have been lofted up from the earth’s surface.

Just as fascinating are suggestive astronomical findings, such as the Rosetta mission’s discovery of organic compounds on and around the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This finding coincides nicely with Hoyle and Wickramasinghe’s demonstration that interstellar dust is partly made of organic molecules.

Perhaps the most intriguing astronomical evidence of all is that which converted Steele to the panspermia hypothesis.

A development from the research into organic interstellar dust, the spectrum of light produced as infra-red radiation passes through cosmic dust turns out to have the exact same spectral signature as freeze-dried E. coli bacteria. Steele’s frustration with the scientific community’s indifference to this staggering result is palpable.

“All our knowledge of the universe,” he says, “has been built this way – get the spectrum (emission, absorption) in the laboratory on Earth, then focus the telescope on a cosmic source/object and ask, What is the spectrum or signature? Does it match that found in the Earth-based laboratory?”

The answer? “It is an exact match – you cannot get better than that in science.”

So why has the result largely been passed over as a curiosity? Steele muses, “The situation is reminiscent to the problem Galileo had with the Catholic priests of his time – most refused to look through his telescope to observe the moons of Jupiter.”

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new paper concerns the origins of the octopus. The discussion begins, as it so often does in the paper, with some intriguing evidence.

Cephalopods (the group comprising squid, cuttlefish, nautilus and octopus) have a somewhat confusing evolutionary tree, first appearing in the late Cambrian period and seemingly descending from an ancestral primitive nautiloid.

Of these, the octopus is the most striking, with features, such as a complex nervous system, sophisticated eyes and a capacity for camouflage, that appear quite suddenly in its evolution. The genes necessary for this transformation, the authors suggest, are not present in its ancestry. Thus, they hold that “it is plausible then to suggest they seem to be borrowed from a far distant ‘future’ in terms of terrestrial evolution, or more realistically from the cosmos at large.”

Interestingly, the octopus has some real and pervasive biochemical differences from the nautilus, presumably the closest living relative of the former’s ancestor. In particular, there is evidence of extensive changes in the RNA, and thus proteins, found in the neural structures of cephalopods.

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These changes have been evolutionarily preserved and are not found to this extent elsewhere in nature, not even in the nautilus. This indicates that a qualitative evolutionary transformation occurred relatively recently and abruptly in behaviourally complex cephalopods. The sheer scale of these changes leads the authors to conclude that it cannot be explained by normal neo-Darwinian processes. Or even Lamarckian processes. And they may have a point.

But here things get weird. “One plausible explanation, in our view, is that the new genes are likely new extraterrestrial imports to Earth – most plausibly as an already coherent group of functioning genes within (say) cryopreserved and matrix protected fertilised octopus eggs,” write the authors. This would “be a parsimonious cosmic explanation for the octopus' sudden emergence on Earth [about] 270 million years ago.”

It’s moments like this that point to the source of the paper’s unease. It lies not with the evidence it presents, but rather the larger conclusions drawn.

The evidence is nonetheless provocative. Taken together it indicates, if nothing else, that there is much we don’t know and that our prevailing scientific orthodoxies will undergo transformations, as all scientific theories do.

The orthodox scientific response is encapsulated in the commentary from the decorated virologist Karin Moelling of the Max Planck Institute Molecular Genetics, in Berlin, and Institute of Medical Microbiology, Zürich, published in the same journal issue.

“So this article is useful, calling for attention, and it is worth thinking about,” she says, “yet the main statement about viruses, microbes and even animals coming to us from space, cannot be taken seriously.”

These kinds of pronouncements have led to the near-radio silence from the media, except for the occasional piece riffing on the theme of space octopuses. Scientific commentary is muted, confused by the tension between the outlandish claims and the peer-reviewed status of the paper.

Maybe we should side with sage advice of the journal’s editor, the renowned British biologist Denis Noble. “The usual mantra ‘further research is needed’ applies even more than usual,” he writes. “In the future, the ideas will surely become testable.”

The authors, too, think this the best course of action. “The whole issue is on the verge of being decided by decisive evidence of extra-terrestrial life being found elsewhere in our solar system,” they conclude.

Instead of dismissing panspermia out of hand, perhaps then, we should just wait for the discoveries that future space probes might bring. Evidence, as always, will be the ultimate decider.

{ https://cosmosmagazine.com/ }

26-12-2018 om 23:50 geschreven door peter  

The Terrafugia Transition could end the long wait for flying cars

The car-plane hybrid goes on sale in 2019, but experts say air taxis might steal its thunder.

It might not the most elegant-looking thing on the road or in the sky, but an automobile-airplane hybrid that’s being called the world's first practical flying car is almost ready to spread its wings.

The two-passenger Transition will go on sale in the U.S. next year at an estimated price of $400,000, according to Terrafugia, the Woburn, Massachusetts-based firm that makes it.

The Transition has four wheels, folding wings and a rear-mounted “pusher” propeller. Powered by a four-cylinder hybrid-electric engine, it can fly 100 miles an hour at altitudes of up to 9,000 feet, with a flying range of 400 miles. There are controls for both flying and driving: for the roads, conventional brake and accelerator pedals and a steering wheel; for flying, the usual yoke and rudder pedals.

The vehicle converts from driving to flying mode in less than a minute, according to Terrafugia. But don’t expect it to get you out of a traffic jam. Though it’s the first vehicle certified to drive on U.S. roads and fly in U.S. skies, it can take off and land only at airfields — and you’ll need a pilot's license.

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Many flying car prototypes have been built in recent decades, but none has proven practical enough to become a full-fledged production vehicle. The Transition is designed mainly for light aircraft owners who don’t want to get stuck when bad weather makes flying impossible, or who want to avoid airfield parking fees and fuel costs, according to Terrafugia. The vehicle runs on ordinary premium gasoline and can be kept in a garage at home.

But the company, now owned by Chinese car maker Geely, also hopes the Transition will attract people who are new to private aviation. “We would like people who never thought of becoming a pilot before to consider it because, hey, it’s a flying car,” Carl Dietrich, Terrafugia’s founder, told Smithsonian Air and Space magazine.

Terrafugia was founded in 2006 with a plan for a “flying SUV” that earned Dietrich a prestigious technology prize. But with recent advances in autonomous passenger drones — electrically powered “air taxis” that take off and land vertically without a runway — experts say vehicles like the Transition are likely to be a niche product.

“The world changed while they were working on that vehicle,” says Richard Anderson, an aerospace engineering professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Investors worldwide are pouring billions of dollars into the development of air taxis, with manufacturers like Airbus and Germany’s Volocopter claiming to be well on the way to bringing the vehicles to market. “The business case is absolutely crystal clear, and the technology is here,” Anderson said.

Terrafugia said it is developing its own vertical-takeoff-and-landing passenger vehicle, dubbed the TF-2, that could take to the skies as a piloted aircraft in 2023. That’s likely to be several years before the first self-piloted air taxis get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Anderson said.

“These vehicles are things that were never seen before, so there's a learning process,” Anderson said of the FAA. “Even if they are willing to embrace the technology, they have to understand it before they're going to let it fly over our heads in a city.”

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{ https://www.nbcnews.com/mach }

26-12-2018 om 23:22 geschreven door peter  

SNAPSHOT: Scientists Levitate Objects Using Sound

By Alison Mackey  

26-12-2018 om 23:05 geschreven door peter  

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26-12-2018 om 21:54 geschreven door peter  

(Lwp Kommunikáció/Flickr)

The paper, published in the Journal of High Energy Physics in May, puts forward that the Universe is far less complex than current multiverse theories suggest.

It's based around a concept called eternal inflation, first introduced in 1979 and published in 1981.

After the Big Bang, the Universe experienced a period of exponential inflation. Then it slowed down, and the energy converted into matter and radiation.

However, according to the theory of eternal inflation, some bubbles of space stopped inflating or slowed on a stopping trajectory, creating a small fractal dead-end of static space.

Meanwhile, in other bubbles of space, because of quantum effects, inflation never stops - leading to an infinite number of multiverses.

Everything we see in our observable Universe, according to this theory, is contained in just one of these bubbles - in which inflation has stopped, allowing for the formation of stars and galaxies.

Visualisation of the inflating multiverse.

(A. Linde/Stanford University)

"The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes, separated by an inflating ocean," Hawking explained.

"The local laws of physics and chemistry can differ from one pocket universe to another, which together would form a multiverse. But I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite the theory can't be tested."

Even one of the original architects of the eternal inflation model has disavowed it in recent years.

Paul Steinhardt, physicist at Princeton University, has gone on record saying that the theory took the problem it was meant to solve - to make the Universe, well, universally consistent with our observations - and just shifted it onto a new model.

Hawking and Hertog are now saying that the eternal inflation model is wrong. This is because Einstein's theory of general relativity breaks down on quantum scales.

"The problem with the usual account of eternal inflation is that it assumes an existing background universe that evolves according to Einstein's theory of general relativity and treats the quantum effects as small fluctuations around this," Hertog explained.

"However, the dynamics of eternal inflation wipes out the separation between classical and quantum physics. As a consequence, Einstein's theory breaks down in eternal inflation."

Hawking's last theory is based on string theory, one of the frameworks that attempts to reconcile general relativity with quantum theory by replacing the point-like particles in particle physics with tiny, vibrating one-dimensional strings.

This illustration shows the evolution of the Universe, from the Big Bang on the left, to modern times on the right.

Image: NASA

In string theory, the holographic principle proposes that a volume of space can be described on a lower-dimensional boundary; so the universe is like a hologram, in which physical reality in 3D spaces can be mathematically reduced to 2D projections on their surfaces.

The researchers developed a variation of the holographic principle that projects the time dimension in eternal inflation, which allowed them to describe the concept without having to rely on general relativity.

This then allowed them to mathematically reduce eternal inflation to a timeless state on a spatial surface at the beginning of the Universe - a hologram of eternal inflation.

"When we trace the evolution of our universe backwards in time, at some point we arrive at the threshold of eternal inflation, where our familiar notion of time ceases to have any meaning," said Hertog.

In 1983, Hawking and another researcher, physicist James Hartle, proposed what is known as the 'no boundary theory' or the 'Hartle-Hawking state'. They proposed that, prior to the Big Bang, there was space, but no time. So the Universe, when it began, expanded from a single point, but doesn't have a boundary.

According to the new theory, the early Universe did have a boundary, and that's allowed Hawking and Hertog to derive more reliable predictions about the structure of the Universe.

"We predict that our universe, on the largest scales, is reasonably smooth and globally finite. So it is not a fractal structure," Hawking said.

It's a result that doesn't disprove multiverses, but reduces them to a much smaller range - which means that multiverse theory may be easier to test in the future, if the work can be replicated and confirmed by other physicists.

Hertog plans to test it by looking for gravitational waves that could have been generated by eternal inflation.

These waves are too large to be detected by LIGO, but future gravitational wave interferometers such as space-based LISA, and future studies of the cosmic microwave background, may reveal them.

The team's research was published in the Journal of High Energy Physics, and can be read in full on arXiv. Good luck.

Artist’s impression of merging binary black holes.

Credit: LIGO/A. Simonnet.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

26-12-2018 om 21:36 geschreven door peter  

How the Oumuamua mystery shook up the search for space aliens

The interstellar visitor made it respectable to talk about alien spaceships.

By Corey S. Powell

Last year, an enigmatic object named Oumuamua startled astronomers when it came streaking past the sun, giving humanity its first close-up look at an object from beyond our solar system. This year, the interstellar visitor did something even more remarkable: It made it respectable to talk about alien spaceships.

The turning point came in November, when Avi Loeb, the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, co-wrote a paper saying that Oumuamua is so unusual that scientists should consider the possibility that it’s not a far-out comet or asteroid, as his colleagues assumed, but rather an artificial structure.

In other words, maybe it’s an interstellar craft built by extraterrestrials.

Some of Loeb’s colleagues were intrigued. Others were disconcerted. But suddenly mainstream scientists were talking about how to tell if Oumuamua is a natural object or — as Loeb raised as a possibility in his paper — an alien spacecraft designed to capture the force of sunlight (a so-called lightsail).

Loeb is well aware that most scientists recoil from anything that sounds like UFO craziness, but he believes an overabundance of skepticism has cut them off from out-of-the box ideas. “The point of doing science is not to have a prejudice,” he says. “A prejudice is based on the experience of the past, but if you want to allow yourself to make discoveries, then the future will not be the same as the past.”

Jason Wright, a Penn State astronomer who recently launched a graduate program in SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), shares Loeb’s desire for open discussion — and offers an upbeat assessment of the field’s growing respectability. “There’s a real culture change. SETI is becoming a serious scientific discipline,” he says.

STRANGE VISITOR FROM THE STARS

It was clear from the start that Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh) would shake up astronomy’s status quo. Shortly after its discovery, scientists realized that the object’s unusual trajectory meant it had to have come from outside the solar system — and that it could have been traveling for millions of years. They quickly dubbed the mysterious object Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “messenger from the past.”

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There were more surprises. Oumuamua was too far away for astronomers to observe its shape directly, but they could tell by the extreme way its brightness shifted as it tumbled through space that it wasn’t like any space rock they had ever seen.

“It’s very elongated, with an axis ratio of at least 7 to 1,” astronomer Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii said in an email. In other words, it’s at least seven times as long as it is wide — shaped like a cigar, perhaps. Or, as Loeb proposes in his paper, maybe a flattened disk.

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Patrick Treuthardt, Ph.D.@PTreuthardt

The relative size of 'Oumuamua, the first extra-solar asteroid discovered. #ScaleOfThings Original images: M. Kornmesser/ESO, Daniel Schwen http://ift.tt/2zekLOR 

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Astronomers’ models predict that most of the small bodies wandering in interstellar space are comets. But when Meech and others examined it, Oumuamua showed no sign of the expected comet-like tail. It’s also quite small, on the order of 1,000 feet long, and it seems to be much more reflective than the comets we know.

Intrigued by its oddities, several groups of SETI researchers listened for possible radio transmissions from Oumuamua — and heard nothing.

AN INVISIBLE PUSH

The biggest puzzle about Oumuamua was the way it moved. As it zoomed away from the sun, it sped up slightly, as if given an invisible push. “It doesn’t take much to provide the little acceleration we see,” says Michele Bannister, a comet expert at Queens University Belfast, “but the effect is definitely there.”

Comets often accelerate that way when gases boil off their surface under heat from the sun. But observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope showed no such material coming off of Oumuamua.

At this point, Loeb thought it was time to consider a more radical interpretation and, with a post-doctoral student, Shmuel Bialy, wrote the provocative paper. In it, the scientists consider the possibility that Oumuamua lacks a tail because it isn’t a comet at all, and that the acceleration was caused not by boiling gases but by the pressure of sunlight against a very wide, thin lightweight structure.

“The Spitzer data are consistent with a sail about 20 meters [60 feet] across,” Loeb says. He and Bialy suggest that such an object could be technological debris or even “a fully operational probe.”

STIRRING THE SETI POT

Loeb anticipated a harsh reaction to his paper, and his expectation was soon fulfilled. Twitter buzzed with snide comments. “A new paper, which claims Oumuamua is an alien probe, is full of poop,” one skeptic tweeted. “The Loeb paper says WHAT IF ALIEN LIGHT SAILS? Occam says no,” tweeted another in a reference to Occam’s Razor (a philosophical principle that when there are two competing explanations for an occurrence, the simpler one is usually better).

One researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, disparaged the Bialy and Loeb paper as “irresponsible,” and said it was “just out to grab attention.”

Loeb shrugs off the reflexive dismissals, but partly embraces that last critique, saying his lofty academic position actually obligates him to be a pot-stirrer: “I can say these things other people can’t because I have tenure at Harvard. The whole idea of getting tenure is to allow you to be free in your mind. I used the opportunity of Oumuamua to make a statement.”

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SPACE

Climate change killed the aliens, and it might kill us too, new simulation suggests

In his view, searching for evidence of alien artifacts is no more outrageous than physicists exploring higher dimensions or astronomers invoking dark matter to explain the motions of galaxies. Or, more to the point, no more outrageous than searching for microbes on Mars.

“All I’m doing is following the standard scientific process, looking for explanations,” Loeb says.

What’s different is that the stakes are so high. Finding evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization would be far more profound than finding extraterrestrial microbes. It would tell us that humans aren’t the only intelligent species around.

A UNIVERSE OF QUESTIONS

Wright believes the excitement over Oumuamua, combined with the other recent developments in the field, is breathing new life into SETI research.

“There’s a popular misperception that it’s just people listening for radio signals and coming up with one null result after another,” he says of SETI. He counters that there are actually a tremendous number of ways to search for alien life once scientists broaden their horizons.

Wright raises the possibility that a now-defunct alien civilization left behind artifacts on the moon, where they could have survived even if deposited there billions of years ago. His colleague Paul Davies at Arizona State University has enlisted students to comb through archival images of the lunar surface to see if they can find evidence of any alien “technosignatures.”

Wright has participated in studies of Tabby’s Star, whose intermittent dimming had some scientists wondering if it was encased within a vast artificial structure built by aliens. While the latest results show that’s not the case, Wright is undeterred. Almost all such searches are destined for failure, he says, and all it takes is one success to change the world.

With that in mind, he advocates digging through existing astronomical data to look for other stars whose peculiar behavior could indicate the presence of alien construction projects. “There are many rich datasets sitting out there to look through,” he says.

This is exactly the sort of unfettered curiosity that Loeb says he wanted to spark with his Oumuamua hypothesis. “Why have a prejudice? Why argue that it must be natural? What do we gain, other than putting blinders on our eyes?” he asks. “We should examine each and every interstellar object entering the solar system to check if it’s natural or not. Even if most of the time it’s natural, every now and then we might be surprised.”

And what a surprise that would be.

WANT MORE STORIES ABOUT SPACE ALIENS?

• Interstellar 'porch light' just might help us find space aliens
• Can we figure out alien languages?
• Climate change killed the aliens, and it might kill us too, new simulation suggests

26-12-2018 om 20:26 geschreven door peter  

David Wilcock: The Man Who Worked at Area 51 Underground Facilities (Video)

David Wilcock introduces us to David Adair, an insider from the original Disclosure Project lineup who has worked for most of his life developing secret rocket technology.

He was an exceptional child who developed a strong interest in the future of space travel after devouring countless books in his local library.

As he started launching rockets in a cornfield in Ohio, the military took an interest in his unusual hobby.

Once they realized that his technology was far in advance of theirs, he was brought in to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and eventually to descend into the depths of Area 51.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

26-12-2018 om 19:51 geschreven door peter  

Poetin pakt uit met zijn militaire macht: van hypersonische raketten en drones tot onbemande ‘robottanks’ - HLN.be

Bron: Reuters, CNN, The Independent, ABC News

De Russische president pakte voor het eerst uit met zijn beruchte hypersonische raket, de Kinzhal (“de dolk”), gedragen door een intercepteerjet van het geavanceerde type MiG-31K. Een primeur. De raket die volgens Rusland “geen gelijke in de wereld kent”, behoort tot de nieuwe soort wapens waar Poetin al uitgebreid mee pronkte tijdens zijn gespierde militaristische beleidsverklaring in maart. De Kinzhal zou een reikwijdte van 2.000 kilometer hebben en vuurt vanuit de lucht nucleaire of conventionele kernkoppen af. Volgens Moskou vliegt het projectiel tot tien keer sneller dan het geluid en is het daarmee nauwelijks te intercepteren. “Onoverwinnelijk”, besluit Poetin.

Lees ook

Poetin: “We moeten beseffen dat de wereld kwetsbaar is”

In totaal scheerden voor de Victory Day Parade liefst 75 vliegtuigen, jets en helikopters door de blauwe lucht. Zo ook het ultieme Russische paradepaardje, de geavanceerde vijfde generatie Su-57 straaljager. Opnieuw een primeur. Het gevechtsvliegtuig raasde over het Kremlin, vers uit de oorlogsgebieden van Syrië - waar de Su-57 uitgebreid werd getest.

“Robottank”

Verder rommelden 159 militaire voertuigen over het Rode Plein, met de nieuwe onbemande Uran-9 “robottank” als ster van de show. Gewapend met onder meer een 30 mm automatisch kanon, een machinegeweer en anti-tankraketten, lijkt de kwieke Uran-9 recht uit een sciencefictionfilm te komen. De vanop afstand bestuurde snelle tank - een multifunctioneel robotsysteem - kan bestuurd worden vanop een afstand tot zo’n 3 kilometer. Het onbemande tuig onderging eveneens testen in Syrië. Ook de ontmijningstank Uran-6 maakte zijn opwachting. Het onbemande vehikel wordt in de Syrische steden Palmyra, Aleppo en Deir Ezzor ingezet om vanop veilige afstand mijnen te laten ontploffen.

The Terminator

Daarnaast maakte ook het door de makers ‘The Terminator’ gedoopte gevaarte zijn debuut. Het gaat om een gepantserd voertuig ontworpen om tanks op het slagveld te ondersteunen. Het gevechtsvoertuig is (nucleair) explosiebestendig en bewapend met raketwerpers, kanonnen, granaatwerpers en een machinegeweer.

Ook enkele exemplaren van de nieuwste generatie YARS intercontinentale ballistische raketten denderden voorbij. Dit type raket zou 10 nucleaire kernkoppen kunnen dragen over een afstand tot wel 12.000 kilometer. Rusland heeft naar verluidt 73 van de projectielen in voorraad; 63 op mobiele platformen en 10 in silo’s. “De raket kan tijdens de vlucht manoeuvreren en zowel actieve als passieve afleidingen inzetten, waardoor de Yars in het voordeel moeten zijn tegen moderne raketdefensiesystemen”, klinkt het.

De Buk-M2, een middellang afstandsraketsysteem ontworpen voor luchtverdediging, kon niet ontbreken op de parade. Het systeem zou tot 24 luchtlandingsdoelen tegelijk kunnen volgen en vier daarvan neerhalen met een bereik tot 25 kilometer hoogte en 45 kilometer grondafstand. Het is ook inzetbaar tegen doelen op de grond en op zee.

Drones

En dan waren er onder meer ook de allernieuwste militaire drones, zoals de Korsar en de helikopterachtige variant Katran. De Korsar kan aan luchtverkenning doen, maar ook raketaanvallen uitvoeren en middelen aanleveren. De drone kan tot 10 uur lang in de lucht blijven, op een maximale hoogte van 6.096 meter en heeft een range van meer dan 160 kilometer.

 AFP 

Een Korsar-drone.

AFP 

Een Katran-drone. 

Ook de Berkut, een militaire sneeuwscooter uitgerust met een machinegeweer en gebouwd om de Arctische ambities van Moskou te ondersteunen, was erbij. De sneeuwmobiel heeft een metalen frame en een speciaal hittesysteem waardoor de temperatuur binnenin te allen tijden een aangename 18 graden Celsius blijft, zelfs bij buitentemperaturen tot -50°C. In hetzelfde thema rolden ook verschillende wit gecamoufleerde luchtafweersystemen voorbij.

Tot slot marcheerden een slordige 13.000 troepen over het plein. ”Het is belangrijk dat alle landen en mensen erkennen dat de wereld breekbaar is en dat de stabiliteit alleen sterker wordt als we bereid zijn naar elkaar te luisteren, elkaar te vertrouwen en te respecteren”, sprak het Russische staatshoofd tussen al het oorlogsgeweld verzoenend tot de manschappen en de rest van de wereld.

REUTERS

 Photo News

Photo News

 Photo News

AP 

Su-25 jets zorgden voor een Russisch kleurenspektakel.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

26-12-2018 om 19:35 geschreven door peter  

Poetins nieuwe hypersonische raket “kan kernbom voorbij raketschild vliegen” - HLN.be

Bron: ANP, Belga

Poetin kondigde in maart een aantal nieuwe wapens aan, waaronder de Avangard, tijdens een van zijn meest oorlogszuchtige toespraken in jaren. Poetin zei dat het “onoverwinnelijke” raketsysteem bijna elk punt in de wereld kan raken en een in de VS gebouwd raketschild kan ontwijken. 

Lees ook

Poetin pakt uit met zijn militaire macht: van hypersonische raketten en drones tot onbemande ‘robottanks’

De raket werd vanop een basis ten zuiden van het Oeralgebergte gelanceerd en trof haar doel op een zowat 6.000 kilometer verder gelegen testsite in Kamtsjatka. De Russische president bekeek de test op afstand vanaf het Russische ministerie van Defensie in Moskou. 

Poetin noemde het Avangard-systeem een “groot succes” voor het leger en liet weten dat de raket “twintig keer sneller dan de geluidssnelheid kan vliegen”. Nog volgens de Kremlinleider zal het raketsysteem volgend jaar in dienst wordt genomen. Hij benadrukte dat dit “nieuw type van strategisch wapen” de komende decennia de veiligheid van Rusland zal garanderen.

REUTERS

 EPA

 REUTERS

 REUTERS

Bekijk ook:

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

26-12-2018 om 19:16 geschreven door peter  

Drone captures Flying Humanoid above Browns Bay, Auckland, New Zealand Dec 2018, Video UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: Dec 6, 2018

Location of sighting: Auckland, New Zealand 

 

This UFO looks a lot like a giant flying whale. UFOs are not always in disk shape, but come in many other strange shaped that you may have never imagined could exist before. The object is flooding long ways, and rotates a little bit. So I am wondering if this UFO was searching for something or someone? I only wish the drone had flown closer to the UFO rather than just recording it from a distance. 

Scott C. Waring

 

Eyewitness states:

I saw this over Browns Bay, Auckland, New Zealand on 6 December 2018. It was traveling about 5 to 10,000 feet up, moving across the sky from the east, in a northerly direction. I lowered the camera for about 3 seconds while keeping my eye on the object. Before I could raise the camera again, the object disappeared. I have included slow motion, close-up views of the object in the video at 200 percent and 400 percent magnification.

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-12-2018 om 18:00 geschreven door peter  

Ancient tile pillar found on Mars near Curiosity NASA rover, Dec 2018, Photos, UFO sighting News.

 

Date of discovery: December 26, 2018

Location of discovery: Mars

Source photo: 

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/212819

Today I found a blue tiles on a broken pillar in a Mars gigapan photo. The tiles are very similar to small blue tiles that are seen on bathroom floors, ancient roman walls and such. The pillar itself seems to be made of a cement type of material, with corners and edges broken off, but the rectangle design of the pillar still intact. Near it is a hollow object that looks like an airplane wing, but its probably part of a structure that was once in this location.  I also found a few other interesting objects and placed the photos below for you to check out. 

Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/ }

26-12-2018 om 17:45 geschreven door peter  

This day in UFO history: The 1980 UFO Landings In Rendlesham Forest (25-12-1980)

England holds one of the most compelling UFO landing accounts. In late December 1980, invasion of unidentified flying objects over a period of several nights took place in the joint air bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge, situated within the vast Rendlesham Forest in late December.

Description of alien beings added to the controversial stories of the twin air bases. The hype took into another level with anomalous radar readings, electromagnetic effects, and surrealistic atmospheric conditions. Professionals, deemed to be credible, have been coming forward revealing their knowledge of the real alien event on the Bentwaters and Woodbridge Air Force Bases.

Uncorrelated object showed on the radar screens at RAF in Norfolk shortly after midnight on December 27, 1980. The thing then suddenly vanished in the area of the Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk. Bentwaters RAF radar also picked up the object.

The bases were allegedly housed a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, and the Woodbridge was the base of the 67th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron.

The radar operator that night, Mal Scurrah, said that they did not have any idea of what they captured on their radar. They checked the air traffic agencies and found out that there should have been nothing in the vicinity at the time. They sent a jet aircraft to investigate, and the pilot reported seeing a dazzling light in the sky in front of them after getting within about a quarter of a mile.

They saw on radar the object was stationary and it moved off in seconds. In just five minutes the UFO reached 90,000 feet and higher, and they had lost it in the radar scope.

The Woodbridge/Bentwaters started their extraordinary events with the sighting of a massive glowing object by three security guards of the twin bases. They followed the lights into the forest with initial thought that it was a commercial or military aircraft that crash landed.

The patrol was stunned to see a saucer-like craft with small beings with large heads suspended by a type of beam from the bottom of the craft. The beings reportedly performing a repair to their craft unaware of the three men watching their activities.

The guards radioed the base headquarters and requested emergency help. Assistance reportedly arrived headed by senior officers of the base. Later, there would be off record reports that they encountered strange anomalies, such as reality-bending, time displacement, and surreal atmospheric conditions.

Some of the senior officers allegedly communicated with the alien beings.

Called out on the second night of the sightings was then the now famous Colonel Halt. The group of Colonel Halt was reportedly one of the groups to chase the glowing UFO in the forest. He made an audio recording of the details of his trek into the woods.

Patrolmen Jim Penniston, John Burroughs, and Larry Warren later co-wrote a book about the incident, titled Left at East Gate.

Other men who were present during the encounter later revealed that there was an underground theater where soldiers were interrogated, sworn to secrecy and threatened. They also revealed that they were shown several films featuring UFO recoveries around the world. It was also reported that an alien being was there in one of the meetings.

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

26-12-2018 om 14:48 geschreven door peter  

Fisherman At Outer Banks Captures Video Of Multiplying Lights Over Atlantic

A minute and a half video credited to a night fisher in Outer Banks is making the rounds on social media with wild speculations, including a possible UFO sighting off the coast in North Carolina.

ViralHog posted the clip to YouTube on November 9 and reported that it was made in mid-November at Cape Lookout, situated in the southernmost point of the Core Banks. It has since gained around 100,000 views.

Cape Lookout National Seashore’s National Park Service officials said that they weren’t certain what the set of mysterious lights might be, but considered them to be peculiar.

One Outer Banks resident said the mysterious lights have been making appearances off the cape for over 20 years and they have come to believe these lights are harmless. Derek Maxey said the strange lights are not a concern, but he offered no guess at the source of the lights.

ViralHog did not name the angler who recorded the video, but someone named C.R. Larkin posted a similar video on November 24. Larkin wrote that the clip was recorded on November 13 off Cape Lookout, between 9 pm and 10 pm.

Larkin said in his post with the YouTube video that he rebaited his hooks around 9 pm and cast them out into the surf before he walked back to his chair. When Larkin turned back to the ocean, he spotted a light in the sky. Larkin described it as a very bright light, silent and stationary. After around an hour, Larkin stated that the light faded in and out and several times became multiple lights.

The strange lights disappeared at one point for almost 20 minutes and then reappeared much closer to Larkin’s position, according to the witness report.

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

26-12-2018 om 14:44 geschreven door peter  

(Devlin Gandy)

For Peruvian geoscientist, Andrés Ruzo, the myth had fascinated him since childhood. But it wasn't until he was completing his PhD project on geothermal energy potential in Peru that he began to question whether the river could actually be real.

According to the experts he spoke to, the answer was a unanimous "no" - after all, hot rivers do exist, but they're generally associated with volcanoes, and there are no volcanoes in that part of the country.

But when Ruzo went home over the holidays and asked his family where the myth had come from, his mother told him that the river didn't just exist, she and his aunt had actually swum in it before.

It sounded pretty ridiculous, but in 2011, Ruzo took a chance and hiked into the Amazon rainforest with his aunt, and saw the famed river with his own eyes. 

Much to his disbelief, it was steaming hot.

"When I saw this, I immediately grabbed for my thermometer," said Ruzo in a TED talk back in 2014. "The average temperature in the river was 86 degrees Celsius [187 degrees Fahrenheit], not quite boiling but definitely close enough ... It's not a legend."

The most puzzling part was the sheer size of it.

Hot springs aren't uncommon, and thermal pools get to these temperatures in other parts of the world, but nothing even comes close to the scope of the river - it's up to 25 metres (82 feet) wide and 6 metres (19.6 feet) deep, and runs burning hot for an incredible 6.24 km (3.87 miles).

Add that to the fact that the river is around 700 km (435 miles) from the closest volcanic system, and the temperature just didn't make any sense. In fact, it's the only river of its kind anywhere in the world that we know of.

With the permission of the local Shaman, Ruzo has spent recent years studying the river, its surrounding ecosystem, and its water in the lab, in the hopes of figuring out what's going on.

(Devlin Gandy)

To be clear, Ruzo obviously wasn't the first to discover the river, and as suggested by its indigenous name - Shanay-timpishka, which means "boiled with the heat of the Sun" - he also wasn't the first to wonder what made it so hot.

But his research - backed in part by a National Geographic Young Explorers grant - is finally revealing some of its secrets. It turns out, it's not the Sun that boils the water, but fault-fed hot springs.

Imagine Earth is like a human body, with fault lines and cracks running through it like arteries. These 'Earth arteries' are filled with hot water, and when they come to the surface, we see geothermal manifestations - like the boiling river.

Chemical analysis has revealed that the water in the river originally fell as rain.

Ruzo now hypothesises that this happens far upstream - perhaps as far away as in the Andes - and along its journey seeps down into the ground, where it's heated up by Earth's geothermal energy. It eventually emerges in the Amazon, at the bubbling river. 

This means the system is part of an enormous hydrothermal system, the likes of which haven't been seen anywhere else on the planet.

Even more exciting, Ruzo has worked with biologists Spencer Wells and Jonathan Eisen to sequence the genomes of the microbes living in and around the river, and discovered brand new species that are able to survive the heat.

Of course, as fascinating as the river is, it can also be deadly. The water gets so hot that Ruzo has regularly seen animals fall in and slowly start boil to death.

"The first thing to go are the eyes," he explained in his TED talk. 

Eventually, the animals can no longer swim, and water fills their mouths and lungs, causing them to be cooked from the inside out. Gruesome.

Still, people do actually swim in the river, as his mother claimed, but only after heavy rainfalls when it's diluted with cold water. More often, the water is used to make tea and for cooking.

Ruzo continues to study the river and its source. But his main focus now is how to protect the river and its surrounding land - while his results are ready for publication, he's refusing to release many of them until the Peruvian government will guarantee they'll put appropriate conservation measures in place.

"In the middle of my PhD, I realised, this river is a natural wonder," Ruzo told Maddie Stone over at Gizmodo in 2016. "And it's not going to be around unless we do something about it."

He's released a book called The Boiling River on his adventures, and is hoping that by spreading the news about the unique system, people might take on the cause themselves and decide that the site significant enough to save from loggers and developers.

"I don't like the concept of one person leading this charge - I think it's about building a community on an international scale," said Ruzo. "The planet's gotten small, and natural wonders like this are few and far between."

A version of this article was first published in February 2016.

{ https://www.sciencealert.com/ }

26-12-2018 om 00:59 geschreven door peter  

WE JUST FOUND OUT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO MANIPULATE OUR ATMOSPHERE

While you were sleeping, drinking coffee, binging on Netflix or otherwise unaware of what was happening in the atmosphere, China and Russia were experimenting with it behind your back.

Nobody knows why scientists from the two countries joined forces to perform those tests. There is speculation that the experiments, which involved heating the ionosphere (the layer of the upper atmosphere with a high concentrations of ionized plasma) had something to do with the military, but the real reason remains unknown. Their results were recently published in Earth and Planetary Physics.

Is it really that easy to keep this kind of operation a secret when you’re using a super-transmitter like Russia’s Sura Ionospheric Heating Facility to pump the ionized plasma into the ionosphere full of radio energy in order to manipulate it? Maybe it is when the real action is going on 310 miles above your head.

After Russia had released enough energy to stimulate the ionosphere, the China Seismographic Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES) Zhangheng-1 used its sensors to observe the whole thing from orbit and record what exactly was going on up there. At least most of the tests didn’t set off plasma disturbances — except one.

That problematic test triggered a spike in electricity that was 10 times more loaded with negatively charged ions than the sky surrounding it — never mind that it covered 49,000 square miles.

There was another test that, while not sounding quite as sci-fi-horror as the previous one, still shot the temperature of ionized gas up by 212 degrees Fahrenheit in one area.

What can experiments like this tell us? If you’ve ever seen an aurora, you’ve seen a phenomenon that happens because of charged particles in the ionosphere getting too close to Earth’s magnetic field. More important, the ionosphere bounces radio waves off the surface, and free electrons in this layer of the atmosphere affect many types of communications that are prone to being cut off by space weather like solar storms.

This is where the military speculation comes in. It is highly possible that Russia and China were trying to manipulate the ionosphere to figure out how to prevent their communications getting cut off. Communications can also be blocked by structures that scatter radio waves or an increase in plasma, whether natural or artificial.

Ionospheric research is conducted right here in the US. The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) has been plagued by so many conspiracy theories that there was an open house in 2016 to clear false rumors of everything from weather manipulation to mind control.

If all this is still freaking you out, scientists have also managed to create an aurora in the ionosphere, which is so much cooler than fireworks.

{ https://usanewsgroup.com/ }

26-12-2018 om 00:48 geschreven door peter  

“Wat een cadeautje op kerstochtend”: Nederlanders getrakteerd op prachtig zeldzaam weerfenomeen- HLN.be

Parelmoerwolken ontstaan op 20 tot 30 kilometer hoogte. Het kleine beetje vocht dat hier aanwezig is, condenseert pas bij temperaturen beneden -80 graden Celsius. Als het zo extreem koud is, ontstaan dunne wolkenflarden. Doordat die wolken bestaan uit zeer kleine ijskristallen, wordt het zonlicht sterk gebroken en ontstaat bij de juiste omstandigheden, vooral net na zonsondergang of even voor zonsopgang, een kleurenspel. En dan is het genieten geblazen:

Sytse Schoustra@SytseSchoustra

#parelmoerwolken op #Terschelling vanmorgen !!! Nog nooit eerder gespot hier !!!

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9:33 AM - Dec 25, 2018

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Sytse Schoustra@SytseSchoustra

@janvissersweer #Parelmoerwolken op #Terschelling bij zonsopkomst !!

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9:37 AM - Dec 25, 2018

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peter van suijlekom@oelavans

Geluk dat je af en toe door de lage bewolking de #parelmoerwolken kon zien vanaf #Terschelling

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10:25 AM - Dec 25, 2018

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peter van suijlekom@oelavans

Parelmoerwolk vanmorgen boven het Wad met daarin een vliegtuig.

• 82

10:15 AM - Dec 25, 2018

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Sytse Schoustra@SytseSchoustra

#parelmoerwolken op #Terschelling, nog een paar van dit zeldzame fenomeen ! Kicken was dit vanmorgen !! :)

• 86

2:39 PM - Dec 25, 2018

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Jannie de Graaf@Janniedegraaf

Wat een cadeautje op kerstochtend: parelmoerwolken #parelmoerwolken #buienradar #helgavanleur

• 95

9:58 AM - Dec 25, 2018 · Den Helder, Nederland

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• Die vreemde speciale wolk van gisteren? Zo heet het fenomeen

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26-12-2018 om 00:37 geschreven door peter  

Testruimteschip van Elon Musk voor missie naar Mars krijgt vorm. Lancering voor maart of april volgend jaar. In 2024 moeten eerste mensen vertrekken - HLN.be

Bron: Business Insider

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Elon Musk

✔@elonmusk

Stainless Steel Starship

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8:39 AM - Dec 24, 2018

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Het testruimteschip is een basisversie van de Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), die 100 passagiers en 150 ton cargo naar Mars zou moeten brengen. Volgens Elon Musk zou het prototype – dat hij de ‘test hopper’ noemt – in maart of april van volgend jaar al gelanceerd kunnen worden.

Lees ook

VIDEO. SpaceX brengt met vier jaar vertraging militaire satelliet in de ruimte

Tweets

De tweets kwamen zaterdag in de aanloop naar de lancering van een militaire satelliet door SpaceX. De Falcon 9 met een GPS-satelliet van een half miljard aan boord vertrok zondag - succesvol - vanop de lanceringsbasis Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Musk liet eerder al verstaan dat tests met het prototype - ‘hops’, want het gaat om lanceringen, de raket wordt niet in een baan om de aarde gebracht - een grote stap zijn in de richting van de bouw van de Big Falcon Rocket. Die zal bestaan uit een Starship van 55 meter hoog en 9 meter breed, dat gelanceerd zal worden met de Super Heavy-raketbooster van 67 meter hoog. 

 SpaceX

SpaceX

“Ik zal een volledige technische presentatie geven van Starship als het testruimteschip dat we bouwen in Texas succesvol gelanceerd is, hopelijk in maart/april”, tweette Musk zaterdag. “De ‘test hopper’ heeft dezelfde breedte als het Starship, maar is alleen niet zo hoog.” De Super Heavy zal meteen gebouwd worden zoals die er in de definitieve versie moet uitzien.

In Boca Chica werden foto’s genomen en gedeeld op sociale media van wat eruit ziet als onderdelen van de ‘test hopper’ die aankomen op de site en geassembleerd worden. Een Twitteraar maakte zelfs een simulatie van waar de onderdelen in de raket moeten komen.

Het is de vraag of SpaceX de timing zal halen voor de testraket. In november verklaarde Musk nog dat er radicale wijzigingen aangebracht zouden worden in het design van het ruimteschip en deze maand kwam het nieuws dat SpaceX samenwerkte met de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA voor de bouw van een nieuw type hitteschild voor het Starship.

Mensen

Musk blijkt er duidelijk in geloven. Meer nog. Op 31 oktober kondigde hij aan dat de eerste mensen naar Mars zouden moeten kunnen vertrekken over 6 jaar. “We mikken nog altijd op 2024”, vertelde hij tijdens een interview voor de podcast Recode Decode.

 SpaceX

SpaceX

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26-12-2018 om 00:21 geschreven door peter  

MYSTERIOUS TRIANGULAR OBJECT FLOATS PAST SPACEX DRAGON CAPSULE

{ https://www.gaia.com/articles/latest }

25-12-2018 om 23:42 geschreven door peter  

25-12-2018 om 23:18 geschreven door peter