Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
30-01-2019
‘Aliens BUILT the pyramids’ Soviet scientist’s shock Egypt claim to KGB revealed
‘Aliens BUILT the pyramids’ Soviet scientist’s shock Egypt claim to KGB revealed
CONSPIRACY theorists believe they have found "proof" that "aliens built the pyramids" in Egypt.
Until the Eiffel Tower was constructed in 1887, the Great Pyramid was the tallest structure in the world. More than two million stones were used in its construction with no stone weighing less than a ton, making it 20 times the weight of the Empire State building. Inside the pyramid, passageways connect the chambers and shafts run to the exterior. Today the pyramid is rough stone, but it once had a mirror-like masonry. It is believed the Great Pyramid was adorned with a top of solid gold and for centuries, experts have speculated on the purpose of the pyramids.
Conventional theory claims the pyramids were symbolic doorways to the afterlife. Others believe the pyramid was an astronomical observatory, and some say it was a geographical survey instrument.
One outlandish theory states the Great Pyramid was a grain elevator. But experts do agree that they were more than just gigantic tombs.
In Amazon Prime’s ‘The Secret KGB Files’, the 2001 documentary reveals former Soviet spies and conspiracy theorists’ investigations into the possibility that extraterrestrial life built the pyramids using astronomical technology.
One scientist asks why nobody has ever found evidence of a burial in a pyramid.
Conspiracy theorists believe they have found "proof" that "aliens built the pyramids" in Egypt
(Image: Getty)
The documentary’s host, the late Roger Moore said: “Scholars had argued that the technology to contract massive pyramids might not have been available to people at the point in human history when these structures were built.”
The narrator said: “The pyramid builders knew information that would not be rediscovered for centuries. For example, the pyramid’s height corresponds to the distance from the earth to the sun.
“The pyramid was set within four degrees of the corners of a compass, a precision that has never been equaled. The Great Pyramid lies in the exact centre of the earth’s land mass.
One scientist said: “When I began my field research at Giza, I was immediately struck by the fact that whoever built the pyramids could determine longitude and latitude.
“This is amazing, since the technology to fix longitude was not invented until the 1600s.
One former Soviet scientist advised the KGB that the pyramids were built for by alien explorers
(Image: Getty)
“But more to the point, the pyramids were constructed at the exact centre of the earth. Also the size of the pyramids can be seen from the moon.
“For these reasons, I advised the KGB that the pyramids of Egypt were built for navigation by alien explorers.”
Doctor Viktor Ivanovich, former science advisor to the Kremlin said: “It makes perfect sense, Egypt would be an obvious choice for the aliens who had to establish an outpost for planetary expeditions.
“The initial landing by an alien expedition team would pick a flat area with a few obstacles. Egypt would be an obvious choice, since it’s also in the centre of their land of habitable mass of the earth.”
Great Pyramids of Egypt: Evidence That the Stone Blocks Might Have Been Cast, Not Quarried
Great Pyramids of Egypt: Evidence That the Stone Blocks Might Have Been Cast, Not Quarried
"This is not my day job," begins Michel Barsoum as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and "political" science, with materials research mixed in.
As a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, his daily routine consists mainly of teaching students about ceramics, or performing research on a new class of materials, the so-called MAX Phases, that he and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s.
These modern ceramics are machinable, thermal-shock resistant, and are better conductors of heat and electricity than many metals — making them potential candidates for use in nuclear power plants, the automotive industry, jet engines, and a range of other high-demand systems.
A ground level block in front of the Great Pyramid of Khufu includes a irregular lip at the bottom that would have been very hard, and somewhat pointless, to carve. This lip indicates that the block was cast in place — the material in the lip having slid out under the temporary wooden mold before hardening. Barsoum analyzed a piece of material from the bottom lip and says he did not find smoking gun evidence. “The only logical conclusion is that after 5000 years, the binding phase has basically been washed away. Solution? Get samples from the core of that block. Easier said than done.”
Then Barsoum received an unexpected phone call from Michael Carrell, a friend of a retired colleague of Barsoum, who called to chat with the Egyptian-born Barsoum about how much he knew of the mysteries surrounding the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
The widely accepted theory — that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps — had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes.
Burst out laughing
According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water.
"It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing," Barsoum said. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he said, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy.
It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory … yet.
"What started as a two-hour project turned into a five-year odyssey that I undertook with one of my graduate students, Adrish Ganguly, and a colleague in France, Gilles Hug," Barsoum said.
A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids.
They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral.
The stones also had a high water content — unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau — and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous.
The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. "Therefore," Barsoum said, "it's very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block."
More startlingly, Barsoum and another of his graduate students, Aaron Sakulich, recently discovered the presence of silicon dioxide nanoscale spheres (with diameters only billionths of a meter across) in one of the samples. This discovery further confirms that these blocks are not natural limestone.
Generations misled
At the end of their most recent paper reporting these findings, the researchers reflect that it is "ironic, sublime and truly humbling" that this 4,500-year-old limestone is so true to the original that it has misled generations of Egyptologists and geologists and, "because the ancient Egyptians were the original — albeit unknowing — nanotechnologists."
As if the scientific evidence isn't enough, Barsoum has pointed out a number of common sense reasons why the pyramids were not likely constructed entirely of chiseled limestone blocks.
Egyptologists are consistently confronted by unanswered questions: How is it possible that some of the blocks are so perfectly matched that not even a human hair can be inserted between them? Why, despite the existence of millions of tons of stone, carved presumably with copper chisels, has not one copper chisel ever been found on the Giza Plateau?
Although Barsoum's research has not answered all of these questions, his work provides insight into some of the key questions. For example, it is now more likely than not that the tops of the pyramids are cast, as it would have been increasingly difficult to drag the stones to the summit.
Also, casting would explain why some of the stones fit so closely together. Still, as with all great mysteries, not every aspect of the pyramids can be explained. How the Egyptians hoisted 70-ton granite slabs halfway up the great pyramid remains as mysterious as ever.
Why do the results of Barsoum's research matter most today? Two words: earth cements.
"How energy intensive and/or complicated can a 4,500 year old technology really be? The answer to both questions is not very," Barsoum explains. "The basic raw materials used for this early form of concrete — limestone, lime, and diatomaceous earth — can be found virtually anywhere in the world," he adds.
"Replicating this method of construction would be cost effective, long lasting, and much more environmentally friendly than the current building material of choice: Portland cement that alone pumps roughly 6 billion tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere when it's manufactured."
"Ironically," Barsoum said, "this study of 4,500 year old rocks is not about the past, but about the future."
Editor's Note: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the federal agency charged with funding basic research and education across all fields of science and engineering.
The CIA Confirms There’s Extraterrestrial Activity on Our Planet
The CIA Confirms There’s Extraterrestrial Activity on Our Planet
A wave of recently declassified UFO files and statements of high rank officials are slowly turning the UFO phenomenon into reality.
by EWAO
Believing that we are the only civilization in the physical Universe – which scientifically speaking is infinite – shows not only an immense ego, but also an unfathomable ignorance. But what happens when high rank officials
On December 2012, the Russian prime-minister Dmitri Medvedev gave a live interview aired simultaneously on five television channels.
After that, the Russian ex-president revealed to a journalist that every leader of the Kremlin is handed two folders with classified information regarding the visit of extraterrestrial beings.
At that time, Medvedev’s statement was a worldwide premiere, since it was the first time when a high level official publicly acknowledged the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations during the presidential mandate.
A riveting news article was published in 1980 in the “Sputnik” magazine about the perceptions and experiences of UFOs. This article contains reports from ten Soviet and American astronauts. Only one of these astronauts refused the possibility of UFOs getting in and out of our galaxy.
Ievgheni Krunov declared that it’s actually impossible to deny the presence of UFOs, and we should admit that these are more than simple optical illusions, even some of their characteristics like the rapid change of flight course at a 90 degrees angle offers us a lot of food for thought.
Astronaut Ghenadi Strekalov mentioned that he witnessed numerous strange and inexplicable phenomena, but hesitates to classify these events in any way.
Still, he described a phenomenon observed on September 28 1980, during his day shift on the Mir space station: a flying sphere above the Earth, at an altitude of 20-30 km, around Newfoundland.
The atmosphere was clear and the visibility was perfect, so he could watch for about 10 seconds how the sphere was shifting beautiful vivid colors, and afterwards disappearing almost instantly.
Strekalov remembered that the UFO had a perfect oval shape. He claimed that he reported the event to the Mission Control Center, but it did not classify as a UFO, concluding that he must be more precautious in the relation with his superiors.
According to publicly released documents, in the year of 1952 alone have been checked and confirmed over 100 UFO phenomena with no logical explanation, that were registered and labeled in the CIA archives as “inexplicable”.
“Almost 100 believable confessions remain inexplicable at the moment. However, the CIA monitoring will continue and no reports will be made public,” the report notes.
To the disappointment of ufologists around the world, the declassification of those 10 documents coincides with the relaunch of the “X Files” series and apparently those documents do not contain any information regarding crashed UFOs, encounters or kidnappings.
According to the CIA spokesman, the organization believes that the public will find the information extremely fascinating:
"We have decided to release to publicity a few files that even the most skeptical individuals will find appealing. Five of these files are fit for 'X Files' agent Fox Mulder, but the other 5 files are perfect for his skeptical partner, agent Dana Scully.”
Conspiracy theorists believe that CIA’s decision to make these documents public does not coincide with the relaunch of the new X Files series, but rather are an attempt to warm-up the audience for later disclosures.
“Apparently, the CIA used the rebirth of the X Files franchise to remind the people that the agency has agents investigating these cases,” declares Stephen Basset, executive director of Paradigm Research Group, an organization that militates at the White House in order for the government of the United States to admit that aliens are real.
If the world will eventually accept the UFO reality we are yet to find out, but hopefully it won’t take long until our governments will spill the beans about the existence of extraterrestrials.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev talks about aliens on Earth with curious reporter:
Reporter: You know absolutely everything. For example, have aliens visited Earth, you know, those same green men?
Medvedev: Malyana (name of reporter?), so, I'm telling you for the first and the last time. Together with a briefcase containing nuclear codes, a special folder is delivered to the president of the country. On it is written "Completely Secret" (Top Secret). And it is entirely and wholly devoted to the visitors who came to our planet.
Simultaneously, a report is given by an absolutely closed (secret) special service, which deals with the control (regulation?) of aliens on the territory of our country. So, these two folders are given, along with the nuclear briefcase. After the conclusion of the term, of course, these folders are given to the new president.
More detailed information on this topic, you can obtain by watching a famous, chronically-documented film People in Black (the documentary is included below). Several versions have come out.
Reporter: How many of them among us?
Medvedev: How many of them among us I will not say, because it may cause panic.
This is the documentary that Medvedev mentioned: Men In Black (Russian Documentary With English Subtitles)
The new version of Hubble's deep image. In dark grey is the new light that has been found around the galaxies in this field. That light corresponds to the brightness of more than 100 billion suns.
Credit: A. S. Borlaff et al.
One of the Hubble Space Telescope's most famous images peered even deeper into the cosmos than scientists had thought.
That photo is theHubble Ultra-Deep Field(HUDF), which combines hundreds of images taken by the space telescope over multiple years into the deepest view of the universe ever created. The composite pic of a small patch of sky contains a whopping 10,000 galaxies, astronomers have estimated. (The HUDF also refers to that patch of sky, not just imagery of it.)
"What we have done is to go back to the archive of the original images, directly as observed by the HST, and improve the process of combination, aiming at the best image quality not only for the more distant smaller galaxies but also for the extended regions of the largest galaxies," study leader Alejandro Borlaff, from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in the Canary Islands, said in a statement.
The new work revealed that some of the galaxies in the HUDF view are nearly twice as big as previously thought, study team members said.
The Hubble Space Telescope launched to Earth orbit in April 1990 aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. The scope got off to an inauspicious start; its initial images were blurry, a problem that mission team members traced to a slight flaw in Hubble's primary mirror.
Spacewalking astronauts fixed that problem in December 1993, giving Hubble the sharp focus it's known for today.
The 2012 version of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.
Credit: R. Ellis (Caltech), and the HUDF 2012 Team/NASA/ESA
That was the first of five servicing missions that repaired, maintained and upgraded the telescope over the years. The most recent of these, which occurred in May 2009, installed what is today Hubble's main eye on the universe, an instrument called the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
The HUDF image has long been a work in progress. The first version combined data gathered by Hubble from late 2003 to early 2004; later updates have incorporated additional imagery in various wavelengths of light.
The new study, which was published this month in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, looked at the 2012 incarnation of the HUDF, which relied heavily on data gathered by the WFC3.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate) is out now.
Can moons have moons? Yes, and they're called 'moonmoons'! Earth, Saturn and Jupiter's natural satellites may have objects the size of SKYSCRAPERS in orbit around them
Can moons have moons? Yes, and they're called 'moonmoons'! Earth, Saturn and Jupiter's natural satellites may have objects the size of SKYSCRAPERS in orbit around them
Astronomers have yet to confirm the existence of so-called moonmoons
They could exist around at least four larger moons in the solar system
These include Earth's moon, Jupiter's moon Callisto, and Saturn's moons Titan and Iapetus
Earth's moon may be orbited by a mysterious smaller moon that has alluded scientists for decades, according to a new study.
This submoon, also known as a moonmoon, could be as large as a skyscraper but has yet to be spotted by astronomers.
It is one of at least four moonmoons that may exist in our solar system, according to new calculations.
Earth's moon, Jupiter's moon Callisto, and Saturn's moons Titan and Iapetus all have the perfect conditions to host one - if they exist in our star system at all.
Earth's moon (file photo) may be orbited by a mysterious smaller moon that has alluded scientists for decades, according to a new study. This submoon, also known as a moonmoon, could be as large as a skyscraper but has yet to be spotted by astronomers
Scientists at Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Bordeaux team up for the new study.
Following decades of speculation, the team's calculations revealed for the first time the conditions required for a moonmoon to form.
Computer models showed such an object could only exist around large moons that are relatively distant from their parent planets.
A moonmoon would have to orbit within a very fine distance margin, researchers found.
It would need to orbit close enough to remain within the gravitational pull of its moon rather than the larger planet - but far away enough to avoid being torn apart or pulled out of orbit by its moon.
Meeting these stringent requirements would be difficult, but not impossible, according to the calculations.
A moonmoon would have to orbit within a very fine distance margin to avoid being pulled away by the larger planet. Jupiter's moon Callisto (top left), and Saturn's moons (top right) Titan and Iapetus all have the perfect conditions to host one. Uranus and Neptune do not
Four moons in the solar system could host a mini-satellite, including Earth's moon, Jupiter's moon Callisto, and Saturn's moons Titan and Iapetus.
Even if these moons have the right conditions to host a moonmoon, it remains extremely unlikely that one has landed in the right spot.
'Something has to kick a rock into orbit at the right speed that it would go into orbit around a moon, and not the planet or the star,' study coauthor Dr Sean Raymond, of the University of Bordeaux, told New Scientist.
If that moon shifted its position during the course of its evolution, as Earth's moon has, its unlikely that the moonmoon would have remained in its orbit, he said.
This may explain why a moonmoon has yet to be spotted in our solar system, experts said.
'I think we can say for sure that there's not a moonmoon that's kilometres across around Jupiter or Saturn,' Queen's University Belfast astronomer Michele Bannister, who was not involved in the study, told New Scientist.
'A moonmoon down to the size of a skyscraper could exist out there, but I'd call it moonmoonlet.'
A new study shows that Earth’s moon should, theoretically, be able to have its own moon. Why doesn’t it?
Size comparison of the major moons in our solar system via Emily Lakdawalla.
Most of the planets in our solar system have orbitingmoons, and even someasteroids have their own moons. But do any moons have moons? Is it possible? Could there be so-called submoons? Carnegie Science’sJuna Kollmeiersaid her 4-year-old son sparked her interest in this subject by asking this seemingly logical question. It’s a simple enough question. If most other objects in the solar system can have moons, why not moons themselves?
Kollmeier decided to try to answer the question, along with her colleague Sean Raymond of Université de Bordeaux. Their results have now been published in a new peer-reviewed paper in the February 2019 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
As explained by Raymond in a statement from Carnegie Science:
Planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets, so it was natural to ask if smaller moons could orbit larger ones.
So far at least, no submoons have been found orbiting any of the moons considered most likely to support them – Jupiter’s moon Callisto, Saturn’s moons Titan and Iapetus and Earth’s own moon. According to Kollmeier:
The lack of known submoons in our solar system, even orbiting around moons that could theoretically support such objects, can offer us clues about how our own and neighboring planets formed, about which there are still many outstanding questions.
Earth’s moon should theoretically be able to have its own moon. Why doesn’t it?
Image via NASA/Goddard.
The researchers found that only large moons on wide orbits from their host planets would be capable of hosting submoons. Usually, any submoons orbiting smaller moons closer to their planet would have their orbits destabilized by tidal forces. Jupiter’s large moon Callisto, Saturn’s large moon Titan, another Saturn moon called Iapetus and Earth’s moon could all theoretically have submoons, so why don’t they?
There may be other sources of submoon instability, such as the non-uniform concentration of mass in Earth’s moon’s crust, according to the researchers.
Even asteroids can have moons, such as 2004 BL86. It is about 1,100 feet (325 meters) in diameter, and its moon is tiny, only 230 feet (70 meters) wide.
Image via NASA.
Part of the answer might also have to do with how the primary moons formed in the first place. Earth’s moon is thought to have been born out of a collision between Earth and another body about the size of Mars – and that collision may have helped life on Earth to get started. But some other moons, like those orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, originated from the same cloud of gas and dust that the planets themselves formed from. Kollmeier added:
And, of course, this could inform ongoing efforts to understand how planetary systems evolve elsewhere and how our own solar system fits into the thousands of others discovered by planet-hunting missions.
It may be that in many or even most cases, there are multiple factors that make the orbits of submoons inherently unstable. Knowing whether that is true or not may have to wait for discoveries of moons orbiting distant exoplanets. Moons themselves are much harder to detect and only one promising candidate has been found so far – a possible exomoon orbiting the Jupiter-sized exoplanet Kepler-1625b. That possible moon – about the size of Neptune – is large enough and far enough from its planet that submoons should be possible as well. Astronomers will need to verify that primary moon first – if it does exist – before looking for any submoons.
Even little Pluto has five moons, including the largest one – Charon – shown here. So how many moons with their own moons could there be out there?
Image via NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI.
Even though Earth’s moon doesn’t have a submoon now, it may in the future, according to the researchers – an artificial one, perhaps NASA’s planned Lunar Gateway. The Lunar Gateway would help to establish humanity’s presence in deep space, as outlined by William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters:
The Gateway will give us a strategic presence in cislunar space. It will drive our activity with commercial and international partners and help us explore the Moon and its resources. We will ultimately translate that experience toward human missions to Mars.
Raymond has also written a cool poem about moons having moons, which you can enjoy on his blog here.
Bottom line: The possibility of moons having their own moons is a fascinating one, even though we haven’t found any examples yet. This new research from Carnegie Science shows that it is indeed possible, but only under the right circumstances.
The experts are telling us that the Midwest could experience the coldest weather that it has ever seen this week. Wind chill temperatures of -40 and -50 degrees will be common throughout the region, and it is being projected that some spots will actually get hit by wind chill temperatures of up to -60 degrees. A shift in the polar vortex is being blamed for this life-threatening weather, and we are being told to expect the coldest temperatures to arrive on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. But all-time records are already being set. For example, according to Accuweather the temperature in the city of International Falls, Minnesota hit 45 below zero on Monday morning…
The coldest weather in years will put millions of people and animals throughout the midwestern United States at risk for hypothermia and frostbite to occur in minutes during the final days of January.
The deep freeze continued across the Upper Midwest on Sunday with temperatures plummeting well below zero in the morning. The low of 45 below zero F in International Falls, Minnesota, shattered the day’s record of 36 below zero F from 1966.
Please keep in mind that was not a wind chill temperature.
That was the actual temperature outside.
As the week progresses, bitterly cold temperatures will be accompanied by heavy snow and strong winds across the Midwest. The polar jet stream has weakened, and as a result the polar vortex will “dip into parts of North America”…
The wintry onslaught will be driven by the Northern Hemisphere’s polar vortex, the pocket of cold air sitting atop the North Pole. When temperatures rise in the Arctic, the polar jet stream — the torrent of westerly winds that hold the polar vortex in place — can weaken and dip into parts of North America.
“Occasionally this ring of winds deforms or even splits, which allows the cold air to spill southward over mid latitudes — this is exactly what’s happening now,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior research scientist with Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, in an email. “It just so happens that the lobe of cold air is located over central North America, with Chicago in the crosshairs.”
This is an extremely dangerous situation, and we will probably read about some people that underestimate the danger and end up dead.
According to weather.com, the air will be so cold that it “could lead to frostbite on exposed skin in a matter of minutes”…
This bitter cold will be accompanied by strong winds at times Tuesday through Thursday, leading to life-threatening wind chills in the Midwest that could lead to frostbite on exposed skin in a matter of minutes. A large swath of the Midwest will have wind chills in the 30s, 40s and 50s below zero by Wednesday. A few spots in Minnesota and eastern North Dakota may see wind chills in the 60s below zero.
Unless you absolutely must go out for some reason, if you live in the Midwest you should stay inside until temperatures begin to warm up again.
In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!
Now that even the president of the United States is acknowledging that this winter could be “the coldest ever recorded”, I want to remind everyone that we were warned about this months in advance…
I wrote article after article warning that this would happen, and now it is happening.
At this hour, schools and businesses are closed throughout North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin as blizzard-like conditions sweep through both states. And Chicago is bracing for what will likely be the coldest day ever in the history of the city…
After seeing a high around 34 on Monday at O’Hare International Airport, temperatures will drop to near zero before the end of the day, according to the National Weather Service. By Tuesday night, temperatures are expected to take another plunge, to 23 below zero, flirting with Chicago’s coldest temperature ever: minus 27 on Jan. 20, 1985.
Temperatures are forecast to inch up to a daytime high of about minus 14 on Wednesday — the first subzero high temperature in five years and the coldest winter high ever recorded in Chicago — before dipping, again, to about minus 21 overnight. The coldest daytime high in Chicago was minus 11 on Christmas Eve 1983.
Our planet is changing, our climate is collapsing, and this is going to put an increasing amount of strain on social order.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!-
And we are already starting to see evidence of this. In fact, Chicago police are telling us that in recent days people have been getting robbed of their expensive winter coats at gunpoint…
Chicago police are reporting gunpoint robberies targeting people wearing pricey Canada Goose jackets as temperatures plunge in the city.
Over the past two weeks, police say there’s been a spate of the thefts in which people wearing the luxury coats have been targeted and forced to give up the jackets. The coats can cost upward of $1,000 and are often seen on celebrities.
Six people had their Canada Goose coats stolen last week and two more were targeted Wednesday.
Unfortunately, this is only just the beginning.
Global seismic activity is rising, weather patterns are becoming more extreme, and a worldwide environmental collapse is already well underway. If you have any doubts that this worldwide environmental collapse is happening, just read this excellent article by Chris Martenson.
We have been making the wrong decisions for decades, and now the consequences of those decisions are starting to catch up with us. The clock is ticking, but most Americans are still completely and utterly clueless about what is coming.
Recordkou in Amerika: Chicago kouder dan Antarctica en Siberië. Wat is er in vredesnaam aan de hand met global warming?
Recordkou in Amerika: Chicago kouder dan Antarctica en Siberië. Wat is er in vredesnaam aan de hand met global warming?
Vrijwel de hele Verenigde Staten gaan momenteel gebukt onder extreme kou. In Chicago is het deze week kouder dan op Antarctica en in Siberië.
In Chicago daalt het kwik voor het eerst sinds begin jaren tachtig tot -33 graden Celsius. De gevoelstemperatuur bedraagt -45 graden.
De Chicago River is bijna geheel dichtgevroren en zelfs Lake Michigan, waar de rivier in uitmondt, begint geleidelijk aan te bevriezen.
Noodtoestand
In de stad is een weerswaarschuwing afgegeven.
De gouverneur van de staat Illinois, Jay Robert Pritzker, heeft de noodtoestand afgekondigd.
Scholen, universiteiten, musea en restaurants zijn dicht vanwege de extreme kou en slechts een enkeling gaat de weg op.
Ook elders in het Amerikaanse Middenwesten, waaronder Minnesota en Wisconsin, worden temperaturen gemeten die men er al tientallen jaren niet meer gezien heeft.
Records
Overal gaan records aan diggelen. Het record van zondag van -43 graden Celsius in International Falls in Minnesota heeft het dagrecord van -38 graden uit 1966 verbroken.
De ergste omstandigheden worden verwacht van North Dakota tot het noorden van de staat Illinois. Vannacht kunnen de temperaturen daar dalen tot wel -40 graden.
“In het mooie Middenwesten daalt de gevoelstemperatuur tot -60 graden (Fahrenheit), het koudste ooit gemeten,” tweette president Trump.
Global warming
“En de komende dagen wordt het nog kouder. Mensen kunnen niet eens een paar minuten buiten blijven. Wat is er in vredesnaam aan de hand met global warming? Kom snel terug, we hebben je nodig!” zei hij cynisch.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!
Not only is it clear that the next war will be fought in space, but it looks like we’reinching ever closer to it breaking outany day now. Many of my favorite topics to cover here at MU (space weaponry, mystery booms, unidentified aircraft) all seem to be making the headlines with increasing frequency, suggesting a new space race is underway – one that will end with the fiery wrecks of satellites and space stations crashing to the ground and one of the world’s superpowers becoming the new undisputed king of space. Who will come out on top?
“GET SOME, SPACE COMMIES!”
Certainly not the average schmoes like you and me. Whether or not we’re actually standing on the precipice of a shooting war in space is still up in the air, but one thing is certain: the U.S. Air Force is hard at work preparing for it. Since 2010, the Air Force has been testing its secretive X-37B space plane in orbit above the Earth, and nobody really knows what it’s been doing up there. Well, someone knows, but not us average schmoes. Schmoes never know the good stuff.
The X-37B has once again reached another milestone this week, surpassing 500 days in continuous flight above the Earth. The X-37B is operated by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and controlled by the 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. Despite the numerous milestones and records the super-secret spacecraft has chalked up, Air Force officials are still tight-lipped about its true purpose. Interestingly enough, the craft was also caught on camera yesterday; it’s quite a spooky sight as it zooms quickly by stars in the background. What’s the X-37B doing up there?
The X-37B is essentially hiding in plain sight.
When the craft was first put into orbit in 2010, officials with the USAF assured everyone the X-37B has no offensive capabilities and was there to support “technology risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept development.” It’s long been suspected that the craft has something to do with surveillance, tracking spy satellites, or is even a type of reusable spy “satellite” itself, one which can land and be serviced when needed. Could it be that whatever the craft is spying on or doing up there is so sensitive that the Air Force can’t risk transmitting data back to Earth at all, hence why it must land every once in a while?
Who knows. Everything is pure speculation at this point. It’s also unknown when the X-37B might come back down to Earth. Will we ever know what this secretive craft is up to?
Anyway, happy 500th day, supersecret scary spaceplane. Please don’t blow us all up.
Airplane passenger captures an alien craft "Fast Mover" under the water
Airplane passenger captures an alien craft "Fast Mover" under the water
Interesting footage of a USO also called a “Fast Mover” at high velocity under the water filmed from an airliner en route to LAX.
A plane passenger has filmed a USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) at the moment the commercial plane flew above the Sea of Japan and even the plane is flying at a cruising speed of almost 1,000 km per hour the USO goes even faster.
Some people will say that the long dark trail/object underwater is just a shadow of the plane but if we compare the shadow of a plane on water with the USO then we see that is completely different.
What we are seeing is the USO with a long trail of water displacement behind it, indicating that the USO is moving through the water at high speed.
The plane passenger is not the only person who has witnessed such an underwater alien craft also Marc D’Antonio, an astronomer and chief video analyst for UFO organisation MUFON witnessed what he believes must have been an alien craft travelling at impossible speeds under the water while he was on board a US Navy submarine in the North Atlantic ocean.
According to Marc D’Antonio the US Navy is running a top secret programme to detect unidentified submerged objects “fast movers” beneath the sea.
This UFO was recorded by a drone in Spain last week. The UFO was sitting on the mountain side and noticed the flying drone...so it immediately did a flyby to investigate it. The object moved incredibly fast, so fast it appears to be a tube, when actually its an oval disk. In the close up you can see that its actually caught four times in the photo...thats how fast this is moving. Those four time are stretched out touching each other so that it appears to be long, when its not. UFOs are often atrracted to aircraft and this one was no exception. Yes UFOs can be small like this one. Aliens have drones, because not all species of aliens can walk among us without being noticed, and many breath different gases. Scott C. Waring News states (translated from Spanish:
According to his conclusions, the object captured by the camera of the drone is "cylindrical shape, with a length of about 2 meters". "It comes out of a brush and travels about 600 meters in a time of about two seconds, which would be about 1,080 kilometers per hour," something that "completely discards the explanation of an insect or any animal." "We may talk about a vehicle about two meters long that I doubt very much that it is human technology and that it goes out to see what is approaching," he concludes. Do you believe it? Do not? The truth is out there.
Giant Glowing UFO Over Homes In Colombia Frighten Residents, Jan 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Giant Glowing UFO Over Homes In Colombia Frighten Residents, Jan 2019, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: January 2019
Location of sighting: Velez Santander, Colombia, South America
Check out this video of a huge glowing white ball behind a cloud. The object is big and right above a neighborhood thats staring in awe at the UFO above them. The craft his hiding 75% inside of a cloud that it made, but part of it is exposed, probably so that the aliens on board can see out their windows first hand. Staring at a computer screen would seem less personal and so really, who could blame them? I placed the screenshot in negative format below and the UFO turns dark black...and really stands out.
An aurora australis, the southern version of the phenomenon, as seen from the International Space Station in 2010.
Credit: NASA
Auroraspaint the sky around the poles when the sun is particularly active, flinging highly charged particles at Earth's atmosphere. Scientists once thought that the gorgeous events were mirror images, but to their surprise, displays at the north (theaurora borealis) and south (the aurora australis) don't precisely match.
Ever since scientists realized these two celestial displays don't line up, they've been trying to sort out why. Now, a team of researchers thinks it has found the reason — asymmetry in Earth's magnetic tail. But what's stranger is that the asymmetry is caused by the precise inverse of what scientists expected.
"The reason this is exciting is that earlier we have thought that the asymmetry in the system enters the magnetosphere by a mechanism called tail reconnection," Anders Ohma, a doctoral candidate at the University of Bergen in Norway and lead author on the new study, said in a statement released by the journal. "What this paper shows is that it's possible that it is actually the opposite." [Northern Lights Photos: The Amazing Auroras on Earth]
It all comes down to Earth's magnetic tail, which is created by interactions between our planet and the sun. Those interactions begin with Earth's magnetic field, which scientists believe springs from the innards swirlingthrough Earth's core and creating an electrical charge. Magnetic fields — from refrigerators to planets — create invisible magnetic field lines arcing between the North and South Poles that can govern the behavior of material around them.
But Earth's magnetic field isn't the only one out there — the sun also has one, which affects the constant flow of highly charged plasma particles that streams out in every direction. The magnetic field embedded in that stream, called the solar wind, interferes with the one Earth produces, squishing it on the daylit side of Earth facing the sun and stretching it on the nightside facing away from the sun into a tail-like shape.
Magnetic field lines carry through the contorted field, and they aren't fixed in place — they break and reform in dramatic events called reconnections. This phenomenon in the tail is what scientists had thought caused nonmatching northern and southern auroras. (It's the tail that matters for the aurora because that's the side of the magnetic field that's in darkness, and auroras are only visible at night.)
Instead, the team behind the current research realized that the solar wind's magnetic field doesn't always line up precisely with Earth's. When it's skewed, it introduces asymmetry between the North and South Poles into Earth's magnetic field — and that, in turn, causes the mismatch between northern and southern auroras.
Aurora Dazzles Above Iceland
Credit: Copyright Elizabeth M. Ryan
The northern lights can be an awesome sight for casual stargazers and professional photographers alike. See some amazing aurora photos by Space.com readers in 2016. HERE: This dramatic panorama by photographer Elizabeth M. Ryan hosts a collision of legends: Icelandic villages, beaches and basaltic rocks, and Greek gods, as well as the beauty of the aurora borealis.
Auroras from Space Station
Credit: Tim Kopra/NASA via Twitter (@astro_tim)
NASA astronaut Tim Kopra captured this stunning view of auroras over Earth as seen from his window on the International Space Station on May 4, 2016.
Aurora and the Pacific Northwest
Credit: ESA/NASA
Colorful aural lights dance exquisitely across the Pacific Northwest in this amazing photo from the International Space Station captured in early 2016.
Unusual Aurora Over Canada
Credit: Jeff Williams (via Twitter as @AstroJeff)
NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, aboard the International Space Station, tweeted a photo of an aurora over Canada on April 5, 2016.
Aurora Corona and the Moon Over Sweden
Credit: Mia Stålnacke
Astrophotographer Mia Stålnacke sent in a photo of an auroral display alongside the moon on Jan. 23, 2016, taken in Sweden
Tim Peake Tweets Aurora Australis
Credit: ESA/NASA
Tim Peake tweeted an image of the Aurora Australis taken from his vantage point on the International Space Station, April 17, 2016.
So, the researchers gathered simultaneous far-infrared observations of northern and southern lights and tracked how closely the two auroras matched. Then, they added in data about reconnections in Earth's magnetic tail. But when they compared the two sets of measurements, they saw exactly the opposite of what they had expected to see — instead of these dramatic reconnections increasing the asymmetry of auroras, they nudged the auroras back into matching.
Understanding the auroras themselves isn't vital, as auroras are just symptoms of how the sun affects the Earth through a set of phenomena called space weather. But space weather can interfere with navigation and communication satellites and even put power grids out of commission. And scientists are still trying to figure out precisely how space weather works and how they can better predict it. Auroras are just the prettiest phenomenon to start cracking.
The research is described in a paper published last month in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured these images of Bennu's south pole on Jan. 17.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin
NASA's OSIRIS-REx missionis orbiting an asteroid closer than any spacecraft has ever orbited a body — and it shows in an incredible pair of photographs that the team released yesterday (Jan. 24).
The spacecraft slipped into orbit around the asteroid, called Bennu, on Dec. 31, after the team carefully mapped the object to design a safe path for the probe. That was a challenge, since Bennu is the smallest space rock that's ever been orbited.
But the dangerous maneuver has paid off. OSIRIS-REx is orbiting just about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) above Bennu's surface, giving its cameras an incredible view of the asteroid's rocky surface. Scientists believe that rugged shape is the result of Bennu having formed from a bunch of rubble loosely clumped together. [The Greatest Asteroid Encounters of All Time!]
The two images shown here were taken by an instrument called NavCam, which is the main camera the team uses to steer the spacecraft. The images, snapped on Jan. 17, show Bennu's south pole.
Another recently released image of the south pole of Bennu, taken while the spacecraft was preparing for orbit, was captured at a distance of about 8 miles (12 km) but still gives scientists a detailed view of the surface topography.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured this image of Bennu's south pole on Dec. 17, before it slipped into orbit around the asteroid.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
This photo was captured by a different camera on the spacecraft, called MapCam, which is one of the probe's science instruments rather than a dedicated navigation camera. Its main purpose is to photograph the asteroid in color and help the team select where it will collect a sample to bring home to Earth for analysis.
The sampling process won't begin until mid-2020, after the team has had plenty of time to study Bennu from all angles and make an informed decision about where to collect the sample — informed in part by detailed observations of the surface boulders that could interfere with sampling equipment.
WE’RE LISTENING A radio telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., was the first to listen for signals from intelligent aliens in 1960. Now scientists are using another instrument, the Green Bank Telescope (shown), to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
JOHN M. CHASE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Long an underfunded, fringe field of science, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may be ready to go mainstream.
Astronomer Jason Wright is determined to see that happen. At a meeting in Seattle of theAmerican Astronomical Societyin January, Wright convened “a little ragtag group in a tiny room” to plot a course for putting the scientific field, known as SETI, on NASA’s agenda.
The group is writing a series of papers arguing that scientists should be searching the universe for “technosignatures” — any sign of alien technology, from radio signals to waste heat. The hope is that those papers will go into a report to Congress at the end of 2020 detailing the astronomical community’s priorities. That report, Astro 2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, will determine which telescopes fly and which studies receive federal funding through the next decade.
“The stakes are high,” says Wright, of Penn State University. “If the decadal survey says, ‘SETI is a national science priority, and NSF and NASA need to fund it,’ they will do it.”
SETI searches date back to 1960, when astronomer Frank Drake used a radio telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., to listen for signals from an intelligent civilization (SN Online: 11/1/09). But NASA didn’t start a formal SETI program until 1992, only to see it canceled within a year by a skeptical Congress.
Private organizations picked up the baton, including the SETI Institute, founded in Mountain View, Calif., in 1985 by astronomer Jill Tarter — the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact (SN Online: 5/29/12). Then in 2015, Russian billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner launched the Breakthrough Initiatives to join the hunt for E.T. But the search for technosignatures still hasn’t become a more serious, self-sustaining scientific discipline, Wright says.
“If NASA were to declare technosignatures a scientific priority, then we would be able to apply for money to work on it. We would be able to train students to do it,” Wright says. “Then we could catch up” to more mature fields of astronomy, he says.
THE SETI VANGUARD Astronomer Jason Wright (third from the left, wearing sunglasses) and his students visited the Green Bank Telescope as part of the first-ever SETI graduate course at Penn State University.
CHRISTIAN GILBERTSON
In the last five years, scientists’ attitudes toward the search for intelligent alien life have been changing, Wright says. SETI used to have a “giggle factor,” raising images of little green men, he says. And talking about SETI work as an astronomer was considered taboo, if not academic suicide. Now, not so much. “I have the pop sociology theory that the ascension of geek culture has something to do with it,” Wright says. “Now it’s like all the top movies are comic books and science fiction.”
When NASA requested a report in 2018 on what technosignatures are and how to look for them, SETI researchers thought hopefully that the space agency might be ready to get back into the SETI game. Colleagues tapped Wright to organize a meeting to prepare the technosignatures report, posted online December 20 at arXiv.org.
But Wright didn’t stop there. He convened the new workshop group with the goal of dividing up the work of writing at least nine papers on specific SETI opportunities for the decadal survey. By contrast, there was only one submission on SETI research, written by Tarter, in the 2010 decadal survey.
The SETI situation has also evolved since the 2009 launch of the Kepler space telescope, which discovered thousands of exoplanets before its mission ended in 2018 (SN Online: 10/30/18). Some of those planets outside our solar system are similar in size and temperature to Earth, raising hopes that they may also host life. Old arguments that planets like Earth are rare “don’t hold much water any longer,” Wright says.
The exoplanet rush has sparked a surge in research about biosignatures, signs of microbial life on other planets. NASA’s next big space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is planning to search directly for signs of alien life in exoplanet atmospheres (SN: 4/30/16, p. 32). So far, though, no one has found any biosignatures, let alone technosignatures. But the focus on searching for the one makes the case for ignoring the other seem all the weaker, Wright says.
“Astrobiology and the search for life has become such a big part of what NASA does,” he says. “The fact that it won’t look for intelligent life has become ever more incongruous with its other activities.”
Editor's note: This story was updated on January 28, 2019, to correct the instrument that Frank Drake used to look for alien intelligence. It was a previous radio telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., not the current Green Bank Telescope.
SOLAR SHIELD Earth’s magnetic field (illustrated) is powered by circulation of iron-rich fluid in the core. New research suggests Earth’s solid inner core formed about 565 million years ago, saving a weakening magnetic field from collapse.
MARC WARD/SHUTTERSTOCK
Earth’s inner core solidified around 565 million years ago — just in time to not only save the planet’s protective magnetic field from imminent collapse, but also to kick-start it into its current, powerful phase, a new study suggests.
The finding, reported online January 28 in Nature Geoscience, supports an idea previously proposed by simulations that Earth’s inner core is relatively young. It also provides insight into how, and how quickly, Earth has been losing heat since its formation 4.54 billion years ago —key to understanding not only the generation of the planet’s magnetic shield but also convection within the mantle and plate tectonics.
“We don’t have many real benchmarks for the thermal history of our planet,” says Peter Olson, a geophysicist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the new study. “We know the interior was hotter than today, because all planets lose heat. But we don’t know what the average temperature was a billion years ago, compared with today.” Pinning down when iron in the inner core began to crystallize could offer a window into how hot the interior of the planet was at the time, Olson says.
The planet’s iron-nickel core is made up of two layers: a solid inner core and a molten outer core. When that solid inner core formed is a long-standing mystery (SN: 9/19/15, p. 18). “Proposed ages have been anywhere from 500 million years ago to older than 2.5 billion years,” says coauthor John Tarduno, a geophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York.
The interplay of the two layers drives the geodynamo, the circulation of iron-rich fluid that powers the magnetic field. That field, surrounding the planet, protects Earth from being battered by the solar wind, a constant flow of charged particles ejected by the sun. As the inner core cools and crystallizes, the composition of the remaining fluid changes; more buoyant liquid rises like a plume while the cooling crystals sink. That self-sustaining, density-driven circulation generates a strong magnetic field with two opposing poles, north and south, or polarity.
Traces of magnetism in ancient rocks suggest that Earth had a magnetic field as far back as 4.2 billion years ago. That earlier field was likely generated by heat within the planet driving circulation within the molten core. But over time, computer simulations suggest, the heat-driven circulation wouldn’t have been strong enough alone to continue to power a strong magnetic field. Instead, the field began to shut down, signaled in the rock record by weakening intensities and rapid polarity reversals over millions of years. And then, at some point, Earth’s inner core began to crystallize, jump-starting the geodynamo and generating a new, strong magnetic field.
Feeling stable
Heat driving convection within Earth’s hot, molten core (orange) powered the planet’s magnetic field for billions of years. New evidence suggests that by about 565 million years ago, that field was weak and increasingly unstable (left). Sometime after that, the inner core began to solidify (red, at right), which stabilized and strengthened the field, giving it relatively consistent magnetic north and south poles (right).
Now scientists think they’ve found evidence of when that magnetic field breakdown was happening. Researchers led by geophysicist Richard Bono, now at the University of Liverpool in England, examined magnetic inclusions within a suite of rocks in Quebec, Canada, dating to about 565 million years ago. Analyses of the inclusions — needlelike iron-rich grains that align themselves with the orientation of the magnetic field that existed when the rocks formed — show that the planet’s magnetic field was extremely weak at that time, the researchers report.
“These paleo-intensity values were 10 times less than the present magnetic field, lower than anything observed previously,” Tarduno says. “It suggested there’s something fundamental going on in the core.”
Combined with previous studies that have found that the magnetic field was also rapidly reversing polarity during that time period, the new result indicates that Earth’s field may have been on the point of collapse about 565 million years ago. That suggests that the inner core hadn’t yet solidified. Fortunately for life on Earth, it eventually did.
“Presumably things worked out well for our planet,” Tarduno says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it had to.”
The new finding is “potentially very important,” Olson says. Because the rocks bearing the magnetic grains didn’t cool instantaneously but over a long time, the data represent an average field intensity for about a 100,000-year period. That means the scientists haven’t just captured a snapshot in time of a fluctuating field, but have found a true, persistent signal, he says. Computer simulations have suggested that the weak field phase may have lasted much longer, from about 900 million to 600 million years ago. More paleo-intensity data from within that time span, as well as from other locations, would help to confirm that the observed weak phase really signaled the final throes of that pre–inner core field.
Peter Driscoll, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., was one of the theoreticians who estimated how long the weak phase might have lasted. Driscoll, whose commentaryaccompanies the study in Nature Geoscience, notes that a young solid inner core also highlights lingering conundrums about how quickly Earth cooled. For example, “if the core is cooling quickly, that means it was very hot in the recent past, and that the lower mantle was very hot in the recent past” — so hot that both were molten just 1 billion to 2 billion years ago. “We absolutely do not see that in the rock record.”
Driscoll adds that he hopes the new study garners attention to the glaring gap in paleomagnetic data from this time period. “There’s a lot more time here that we could be filling in.”
SOLAR SHIELD Earth’s magnetic field (illustrated) is powered by circulation of iron-rich fluid in the core. New research suggests Earth’s solid inner core formed about 565 million years ago, saving a weakening magnetic field from collapse.
MARC WARD/SHUTTERSTOCK
Earth’s inner core solidified around 565 million years ago — just in time to not only save the planet’s protective magnetic field from imminent collapse, but also to kick-start it into its current, powerful phase, a new study suggests.
The finding, reported online January 28 in Nature Geoscience, supports an idea previously proposed by simulations that Earth’s inner core is relatively young. It also provides insight into how, and how quickly, Earth has been losing heat since its formation 4.54 billion years ago —key to understanding not only the generation of the planet’s magnetic shield but also convection within the mantle and plate tectonics.
“We don’t have many real benchmarks for the thermal history of our planet,” says Peter Olson, a geophysicist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the new study. “We know the interior was hotter than today, because all planets lose heat. But we don’t know what the average temperature was a billion years ago, compared with today.” Pinning down when iron in the inner core began to crystallize could offer a window into how hot the interior of the planet was at the time, Olson says.
The planet’s iron-nickel core is made up of two layers: a solid inner core and a molten outer core. When that solid inner core formed is a long-standing mystery (SN: 9/19/15, p. 18). “Proposed ages have been anywhere from 500 million years ago to older than 2.5 billion years,” says coauthor John Tarduno, a geophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York.
The interplay of the two layers drives the geodynamo, the circulation of iron-rich fluid that powers the magnetic field. That field, surrounding the planet, protects Earth from being battered by the solar wind, a constant flow of charged particles ejected by the sun. As the inner core cools and crystallizes, the composition of the remaining fluid changes; more buoyant liquid rises like a plume while the cooling crystals sink. That self-sustaining, density-driven circulation generates a strong magnetic field with two opposing poles, north and south, or polarity.
Traces of magnetism in ancient rocks suggest that Earth had a magnetic field as far back as 4.2 billion years ago. That earlier field was likely generated by heat within the planet driving circulation within the molten core. But over time, computer simulations suggest, the heat-driven circulation wouldn’t have been strong enough alone to continue to power a strong magnetic field. Instead, the field began to shut down, signaled in the rock record by weakening intensities and rapid polarity reversals over millions of years. And then, at some point, Earth’s inner core began to crystallize, jump-starting the geodynamo and generating a new, strong magnetic field.
Feeling stable
Heat driving convection within Earth’s hot, molten core (orange) powered the planet’s magnetic field for billions of years. New evidence suggests that by about 565 million years ago, that field was weak and increasingly unstable (left). Sometime after that, the inner core began to solidify (red, at right), which stabilized and strengthened the field, giving it relatively consistent magnetic north and south poles (right).
Now scientists think they’ve found evidence of when that magnetic field breakdown was happening. Researchers led by geophysicist Richard Bono, now at the University of Liverpool in England, examined magnetic inclusions within a suite of rocks in Quebec, Canada, dating to about 565 million years ago. Analyses of the inclusions — needlelike iron-rich grains that align themselves with the orientation of the magnetic field that existed when the rocks formed — show that the planet’s magnetic field was extremely weak at that time, the researchers report.
“These paleo-intensity values were 10 times less than the present magnetic field, lower than anything observed previously,” Tarduno says. “It suggested there’s something fundamental going on in the core.”
Combined with previous studies that have found that the magnetic field was also rapidly reversing polarity during that time period, the new result indicates that Earth’s field may have been on the point of collapse about 565 million years ago. That suggests that the inner core hadn’t yet solidified. Fortunately for life on Earth, it eventually did.
“Presumably things worked out well for our planet,” Tarduno says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it had to.”
The new finding is “potentially very important,” Olson says. Because the rocks bearing the magnetic grains didn’t cool instantaneously but over a long time, the data represent an average field intensity for about a 100,000-year period. That means the scientists haven’t just captured a snapshot in time of a fluctuating field, but have found a true, persistent signal, he says. Computer simulations have suggested that the weak field phase may have lasted much longer, from about 900 million to 600 million years ago. More paleo-intensity data from within that time span, as well as from other locations, would help to confirm that the observed weak phase really signaled the final throes of that pre–inner core field.
Peter Driscoll, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., was one of the theoreticians who estimated how long the weak phase might have lasted. Driscoll, whose commentaryaccompanies the study in Nature Geoscience, notes that a young solid inner core also highlights lingering conundrums about how quickly Earth cooled. For example, “if the core is cooling quickly, that means it was very hot in the recent past, and that the lower mantle was very hot in the recent past” — so hot that both were molten just 1 billion to 2 billion years ago. “We absolutely do not see that in the rock record.”
Driscoll adds that he hopes the new study garners attention to the glaring gap in paleomagnetic data from this time period. “There’s a lot more time here that we could be filling in.”
A new study suggests that the mysterious moai statues on Easter Island were placed to mark sources of fresh water.
Image in public domain.
A Polynesian population called the Rapa Nui arrived on Easter Island in 1200 AD. Despite the unpredictable weather and nutrient-poor soil, they established a thriving and industrious culture, leaving behind many impressive artifacts. Most famous among these artifacts are the giant moai: giant basaltic statues scattered across the island.
Although they are still shrouded in mystery, several explanations have been proposed. The most straightforward one is that the moai represent the inhabitants’ gods or ancestors, watching over them. But a new study has a new idea: the statues are marking valuable sources of freshwater.
As if Easter Island wasn’t inhospitable enough, there’s another problem: freshwater. Easter Island is a volcanic high island, consisting mainly of three extinct coalesced volcanoes. While there are freshwater lakes inside the volcano craters, there are no streams or other sources of surface freshwater. This must have been quite a worry for the Rapa Nui people, and the megaliths may have been built in to indicate freshwater, researchers suggest. The relationship isn’t straightforward, however: it’s not that all moai are indicators of freshwater, but everywhere there is some subsurface water source, there’s always moai nearby.
“Our results suggest that ahu locations are most parsimoniously explained by distance from freshwater sources, in particular coastal seeps, with important implications for community formation and inter-community competition in precontact times,” researchers write.
The team analyzed the connection between the moai (and the platforms they were placed on, called ahu) and rock mulch agricultural gardens, marine resources, and freshwater sources — the three most important resources for the Rapa Nui civilization. They didn’t find any connection to the first two, but the third one provided a good fit. The fresh water would pass through the ground into aquifers, seeping into caves as well as emerging around the coast. Controlling these places would have been quite valuable to the natives.
This may mean that, at least in part, the statues were built to indicate territorial domination over a sparse resource.
“What is important about it is that it demonstrates the statue locations themselves are not a weird ritual place — represent ritual in a sense of there is symbolic meaning to them, but they are integrated into the lives of the community,” said Prof Carl Lipo from Binghamton University in New York, who was co-author of the research.
However, not everyone is convinced by this theory. Jo Anne Val Tilburg, an Easter Island expert from the University of California, Los Angeles believes that these freshwater seeps would have been minor resources, so it is highly unlikely that the moai were built in relation to them.
Whatever the case may be, the enigma of the moai and their creators will undoubtedly continue to puzzle us and stir debates for many years to come
Alexander Weygers, a Renaissance man in the mold of the tech industry’s stated ideal, inspired an art dealer to become an acolyte.
Alexander Weygers made numerous detailed drawings of an aircraft called the “Discopter”, a vertical liftoff aircraft that looked very much like what was to be later termed “flying saucer” and other drawings of an American cities specifically flying saucers in San Francisco and as well as a port in Chicago.
He sent these detailed plans to all the branches of the U.S. Military and was eventually told that they were intrigued by the concept and the design of the craft but were not prepared at that time because the war effort superseded its development.
However he did indeed patent the design for the “Discopter” in January 1944 with the U.S. Patent Office and it served as the prototype for other similar aircraft that have been developed up to the present day.
Ashlee Vance visits the dealer whose curiosity about Weygers has evolved into an obsession.
A mysterious and unexplained security breach at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) turned deadly this week, highlighting the serious nature of the Air Force’s secretive desert research facilities which include Area 51. According to apress releaseissued yesterday, at 5:18 pm local time on January 28, an unidentified male sped through a security checkpoint at the entrance to the site. Both the Nye County Sheriff’s Office and the NNSS Security Protective Force Officers pursued the man in what became a high-speed chase which lasted eight miles.
Eventually, the man came to a stop and exited his vehicle. That’s when things got weird – and dangerous. According to the NNSS, the man got out of his car and began approaching security officials carrying an unknown “cylindrical object.” The man did not respond to officers’ verbal commands to stop, forcing security personnel to open fire. The man was pronounced dead at the scene; no officers were harmed.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal says the FBI is investigating the incident. The Nevada National Security Site, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, is home to the U.S. military’s underground nuclear testing program, weapons development programs, and many nuclear research projects. The infamous Area 51 is a remote detachment of the NSS found just an hour to the east of the main site.
I’m sure you’re wondering the the same thing I am: what exactly was the “cylindrical object” the man was holding when he got out of his car? What would someone want to smuggle into the secretive research facility? The vague way the object has been described in both the press statement and news reports is rather curious. Was this an attempt at sabotage? A foreign intelligence operation gone wrong? Or did the man take a wrong turn fleeing Area 51 with some type of exotic alien material?
While it’s much more probable the object was an empty can of Icehouse or a flashlight, the lack of details released to the public so far leaves the imagination free to wander. Even if this happens to be a case of bad decision making due to mental illness or intoxication, it highlights the deadly seriousness of the many “No Trespassing” signs surrounding Area 51 and other secretive research sites in America’s deserts. No grainy cellphone photo of alleged alien technology or an experimental black triangular drone is worth risking your life.
But seriously: what was the mysterious “cylindrical object” the man was carrying? Why was he trying to get into such a heavily guarded facility? Does this have anything to do with the other Area 51-related revelation this week about secret ‘motherships’ possibly being tested at the site?
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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..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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