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...
22-02-2019
The World's 8 Best Places To Hunt For Extraterrestrials And Search For UFOs
The World's 8 Best Places To Hunt For Extraterrestrials And Search For UFOs
It was a clear summer afternoon in Lake Tahoe, California in the late 70's when I saw my first UFO. The rough-hewn cigar-shaped craft hovered for a long period of time at a distance over the lake. It was so obvious that all of my neighbors joined me on the street watching it until it suddenly disappeared. Despite over a dozen witnesses, it was never reported, most people keep UFO experiences to themselves for fear of being labeled crazy. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, there were over 4,881 reported sightings in the United States in 2017, imagine how many were not reported.
What was once a subject of clandestine conversation has now become an international fascination with tourists visiting famed sighting areas and governments from around the world organizing extensive exploration. Even the U.S. Pentagon admitted it ran a secret program to investigate sightings by military pilots of countless unidentified flying objects. The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program officially ended six years ago, but many believe the program is still active.
My fascination with the unknown compelled me to explore unique areas from around the world where visitors can discover the mysteries of the universe, as well as be entertained by historical sightings. Here are my 8 favorite locations for your own out of this world experience.
Alien landscape in ChileCASCADE TRAVEL
CHILE
Chile is often mentioned as the country with the highest recorded number of UFO sightings. Due to its low humidity, high altitude ridges, and clear skies with little pollution, Chile has become a favorite among UFO-seekers from around the world.
The country has even launched the CEFAA (Committee for Studies of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (CEFAA), a government body which investigates UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) under the control of the Chilean Air Force.
Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama DesertESO PHOTO AMBASSADOR YURI BELETSKY
Located in the Atacama Desert of Chile, ESO’s Paranal Observatory is one of the best astronomical observing sites in the world and is the flagship location for Europes ground-based astronomy. It contains several major telescopes including the Very Large Telescope, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, and the VLT Survey Telescope.
The ESO Hotel and La Residencia adjacent to Paranal Observatory provide accommodation for staff and media only. Tourists are not allowed to stay overnight. In order to visit the observatory, it is a two-hour drive from Cerro Moreno airport and opens on weekends only with an advance reservation.
The Alma Observatory at Chajnantor PlateauCARLOS PADILLA -AUI -NRAO
ALMA Observatory is the most ambitious radio observatory on Earth. Unlike optic telescopes, radio telescopes are designed to capture radio waves emitted by sources in space. This is a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that allows researchers to take a closer look at the Universe. ALMA has 66 antennas: fifty-four 12-meter diameter antennas and twelve 7-meter diameter antennas.
It is open every Saturday and Sunday to members of the public who want to visit its facilities located in northern Chile (30 miles from San Pedro de Atacama). Visitors get to see the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF), where ALMA personnel work and where you can observe the control room, laboratories, and the antenna transporter. The area of Chajnantor Plateau (where the massive number of antennas are located) are not open to visitors.
San Clemente, Chile is considered to be the unofficial UFO capital of the world. Researchers say that hundreds of UFO sightings have been reported there, as much as one per week. So popular is the area that the Chilean tourism board established an official UFO trail in 2008. The 19-mile trail runs through the Andes mountains covering sights where close encounters have been reported. Included in the experience are Colbún Lake, which has proved popular with UFOs because of its high mineral content, along with various areas highlighting historic sightings. But the trail's must-see location is El Enladrillado, a huge, bizarre flat area formed by 200 perfectly cut volcanic blocks that were reportedly laid by ancient civilizations. It takes four hours to get to the location on horseback and is believed by many to be a landing pad for extraterrestrials.
Elqui Domos Astronomical Hotel is a small 10-year-old hotel located in the heart of the Elqui Valley, a narrow valley stretched in between the Andes Mountains. The hotel is equipped with a restaurant, an astronomical observatory, an outdoor pool and 11 air-conditioned and centrally-heated rooms. The rooms are divided into 7 geodesic domes and 4 observatory-style cabins.
The domes have a private bathroom, a living room on the first floor and a bed on a mezzanine floor, from where you can uncover the roof of the domes and search the skies.
The Elqui Valley is well known for its perfectly clear skies and nice weather, as well as for its great potential for UFO spotting and studying astronomy.
Take this excursion on horseback to the Andes along the trails of the local cowboys, an adventure that will take you through a natural and wild landscape under a perfect blue sky and along the Cochiguaz river. You will be accompanied by a trained guide who will educate you on the skies using a 12" telescope while sitting around a campfire and drinking pisco sours.
The next morning is a trip to the scientific observatory of Cerro Tololo, which includes a visit to the observatory’s facilities and a guided tour introducing the research done at the complex. That evening check-in to a hotel in Vicuña before a night tour to the observatory.
Mysterious patterns have appeared in the fields of Wiltshire, just one mile from the equally bizarre Stonehenge. Many sightings have occurred here including a large disc-shaped object hovering above the site. The prehistoric monument includes a ring of massive stones dating back to around 3100 BC and is listed as a World Heritage site. Supporters of the theory that ancient aliens built the landmark also consider the area a landing pad for spaceships or a location marker for extraterrestrials.
Sign for Little A'Le'Inn and flying saucer near Area 51. (Getty Images)
AREA 51, NEVADA (S4 Papoose Mountain Facility)
This U.S. military installation is located almost 100 miles north of Las Vegas and is commonly known to UFO conspiracy theorists as a location the U.S. government refused to acknowledge. They believe that the area is a storage facility for the examination of a crashed alien spacecraft including its occupants both living and dead as well as materials recovered at Roswell. They also believe the area is used to manufacture aircraft based on alien technology.
Some UFOlogists are now claiming a secret underground facility has been discovered in the base of the Papoose Mountains, in Lincoln County, Nevada, where recovered alien space crafts and extraterrestrial beings are kept hidden away and no longer at Area 51.
This tour takes you to locations near the famed Area 51, departing from Las Vegas for nighttime explorations. Area 51 is a highly classified remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base so visitors are limited on how close they can get.
Sedona, Arizona is one of America's most popular destinations for spotting U.F.O.s. Nightly tours go out with visitors equipped with night vision glasses, binoculars, and telescopes. The amount of activity recorded is staggering including reported sightings of; Orbs, portals, aliens, and even Bigfoots all within the high desert.
The mysterious Bradshaw Ranch also draws numerous tourists. Located deep within the national forest, it is reported to have been confiscated by the U.S. Government because it housed one of the most powerful inter-dimensional portals on the planet. Visitors are not allowed in the National Forest at night, but several tour operators will take you there and stay until dusk. According to accounts, it’s in the last hour of twilight when many of these phenomena take place. There are even more outrageous reports of a top-secret underground base at the ranch as well as an elaborate tunnel system, possibly used by both extraterrestrials and the U.S. military.
This tour begins with a two-hour meditation walk starting at the Amitabha Stupa, Sedona’s most spiritual vortex. Guides will take you through a guided meditation and even offer a paranormal video tour. After sunset, you can visit a well known hot spot of UFO activity where the company guarantees sightings of UFO’s, using special night vision goggles.
UFOs are not an uncommon sight in Wycliffe Well. They are known to appear at the beginning of the dry season, from May to October. Wycliffe Well is located in the Northern Territory along the Stuart Highway between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek and considers itself the UFO capital of Australia. Wycliffe Well is said to be one of the top five UFO hotspots in the world and guarantees a sighting every couple of days. Visitors can stay in cabins at the Wycliffe Well Holiday Park located 236 miles from Alice Springs.
Ural Mountains Perm Anomalous Zone (Shutterstock)
M TRIANGLE, RUSSIA
This famous Perm Anomalous Zone is located in a remote area near the Ural Mountains in Russia. The M Triangle is one of the most mysterious places in the world and was discovered in the 1980s. Reports of watches that stop, and bright glowing and colored lightning appearing in the sky. Ufologists consider this a sign of underground fractures where strong energy emits. This wave duct for electromagnetic energy usually results in color, sound, and other phenomena.
The village of Molyobka sits on the border of the Perm and Sverdlovsk regions. Opposite the village, on the left bank of the Sylva River, is the famous Molyobka Triangle. When Perm geologist Emil Bachurin found a circular, 206-foot impression in the snow in the 80's, the location quickly became a location for enthusiasts to explore Yetis, UFOs, shining spheres, and plasmoids.
The area is currently developing a UFO park, and local businesses are building hotels and observatories for tourists as well as installing gravity meters, infrared cameras, and magnetic-field sensors. UFO tourism is also popular in nearby Tolyatti, where visitors can see some of the world’s largest crop circles.
Joshua Tree SunsetCONTACT IN THE DESERT
JOSHUA TREE, CALIFORNIA
Joshua Tree is on 29 Palms Highway, about a three-hour drive from LAX. The area is known to have many underground waterways all featuring a high mineral content. Joshua Tree National Park was once home to 300 mines and includes a unique white crystal quartz hill behind Giant Rock. Visitors often go searching for the hidden alien base that is rumored to be located somewhere beneath the expansive desert.
UFOlogists believe that Joshua Tree sits on the 33rd North parallel just like Roswell. The research behind the 33rd North parallel provides the location for the most UFO sightings.
Dr. Steven Greer is a controversial UFOlogist who founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project, which seeks the disclosure of allegedly suppressed UFO information. Each week-long expedition is limited to about 25 and includes an intensive training program with Dr. Greer. At night the group meets under the stars for 4-5 hours to make contact using Greer's CE-5 Contact Protocols. During the intensive training program, visitors learn how to make contact with ET civilizations and how to really become an Ambassador to the Universe.
For the past five years, UFO researchers ranging from professionals to fans converge on the California High Desert for a long weekend of lectures and workshops on the unexplained. The Woodstock of UFOlogy is a weekend of education into the Science of UFOs & Extraterrestrial Life, Ancient Aliens, Human Origins, Crop Circles, Government Disclosure, UFO Sightings and Interplanetary Living.
UFO Festival in RoswellROSWELL UFO FESTIVAL
ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO
Roswell has been at the heart of the UFO scene since July 1947 when the military announced it had found the remains of a crashed UFO in the desert nearby. Ever since the legendary Roswell UFO crash of July 1947 alien conspiracy theorists have claimed the remains of a flying saucer, and even dead aliens, were secretly taken into storage.
Visits to the crash sites are difficult to navigate deep in the desert, so many tourists visit the Roswell Spacewalk and the International UFO Museum and Research Center.
Every Fourth of July weekend the city of Roswell organizes the UFO Festival, a celebration of all things extraterrestrial. Thousands of people meet on Main Street for the Comic-Con of UFO devotees. Costume contests, and a long weekend of lectures and book signings put on by Roswell’s International UFO Museum.
PROFESSIONAL ALIEN EXPLORATION
Aside from the numerous tourist locations around the world, the scientific community is ramping up efforts to discover the unknown and to hopefully make contact with extraterrestrials. The following are the top satellite and research programs that are currently active with a few offering tourists to visit their facilities.
A planned space telescope for NASA's Explorers program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method is planned to launch in March 2018. The conclusion is that Europa or Enceladus are both possible life planets as well as the discovery of Kepler-452b. It is the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of a star that is similar to our sun. And, in 2015, NASA announced strong evidence that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.
The James Webb Space Telescope is a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. The telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in Spring 2019 and will study the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth.
(NExSS) is a NASA research coordination network dedicated to the study of planetary habitability. The goals of NExSS are to investigate the diversity of exoplanets and to learn how their history, geology, and climate interact to create the conditions for life.
Project Breakthrough Co-Founders Mark Zuckerberg (L) and Yuri Milner
Billionaire Yuri Milner, physicist Stephen Hawking, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg have launched the $100 million Breakthrough Listen program. The program is focused on astronomical observations in search of evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. It is by far the most comprehensive search ever undertaken for artificial radio and optical signals encompassing a complete survey of the 1,000,000 nearest stars, the plane and center of our galaxy, and the 100 nearest galaxies.
The CNES French Space Agency service is funded by the French government. Its mission is to collect reports of UFO or UAP (Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena) sightings that have occurred over the French territory, to provide an explanation when possible, and to answer questions from the public.
SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is located in Mountain View, California and seeks evidence of life in the universe by looking for some signature of its technology. More than 90 scientists work at the Institute looking for life beyond Earth. The Allen Telescope is sometimes available for tours and is located 350 miles North of the Institute.
Great Refractor Telescope in CaliforniaUC OBSERVATORY
UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley have given the Lick Observatory's 40-inch Nickel Telescope a new pulse-detection system capable of finding laser beacons from civilizations many light-years away. The automated planet finder (APF) is the world's first robotic telescope capable of detecting rocky planets that might support life in other solar systems. Located one hour from San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley, visitors are allowed inside the dome of the36-inch great refractor Thursday-Sunday.
Operated by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. A strange oblong asteroid named Oumuamua was recently detected by Pan-STARRS through its collection of telescopes perched high above the Hawaiian island of Maui. The SETI Institute began scanning Oumuamua with its Allen Telescope Array on Nov. 23, 2017. So far, they have spent 60 hours checking for transmissions over a wide range of frequencies. Another SETI project, Breakthrough Listen, will soon devote 10 hours to investigating Oumuamua using a large antenna in West Virginia.
Chinas five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), is located in a rural part of China’s Guizhou province and will be used to try to solve some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. One of its primary missions is to detect communication signals or messages from alien civilizations.
New NASA Team Tackles Next Challenges in Detecting Life Beyond Earth
New NASA Team Tackles Next Challenges in Detecting Life Beyond Earth
The question, "Are we alone?" has been a subject of speculation for centuries. The answer may soon lie within the grasp of science.
Decides of research have led scientists to look deeply into the nature of life itself — what it is, how it began on Earth, and what other worlds might also support it. A shift in focus is now emerging as scientists recognize that with a strategic push the possibility of detecting life beyond Earth could be on the horizon.
To support NASA’s growing emphasis on detecting life beyond Earth, NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley has established the Center for Life Detection Science. CLDS brings together a diverse group of researchers at Ames and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland to tackle the next set of challenges science must overcome to be able to one day detect life beyond Earth.
“We now have the scientific and engineering expertise to address this profound question with the clarity of scientific evidence — and we have a great community of scientists ready for that grand challenge,” said Tori Hoehler, the principal investigator of CLDS and a researcher at Ames
The center’s formation comes at a critical moment in the field of astrobiology, the study of the origin of life and its potential in the universe. A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that NASA should ramp up efforts to develop technologies capable of detecting life beyond Earth to use on future missions. The report, intended to help NASA develop its science strategy and research goals for the next 20 years, also urged the agency to seek collaboration with a diverse expertise outside of traditional space sciences to get more out of space mission opportunities.
In this spirit, the center is playing a foundational role in establishing a new consortium of researchers from within and outside of NASA with expertise in the physical sciences, biology, astrophysics and more. The Network for Life Detection, or NfoLD, will drive research in ways that inform where NASA should best invest its resources and the design of future missions with the capabilities of detecting life.
CLDS is joined by competitively selected teams from Georgetown University in Washington, DC and Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia to comprise the founding membership of NfoLD.
The Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures asks how we can recognize life “as we don’t know it.” Led by principal investigator Sarah Stewart Johnson of Georgetown University, this team of international researchers will lay the groundwork for detecting biosignatures of lifeforms that could be very different than those found on Earth, allowing for yet-to-be-conceived biochemistries that could produce exotic biomolecules.
The Oceans Across Space and Time team will investigate the possibilities of past or present life in the oceans of the icy, outer moons of our solar system, or on ancient Mars. By studying the conditions of aquatic systems that control their habitability, the team, led by principal investigator Britney Schmidt of Georgia Tech, will determine possible means of detecting biological activity in those systems.
Meanwhile, the center is connecting this new community of NfoLD researchers by building an interactive repository of information where researchers can explore and debate approaches in life detection that may one day be used to search for evidence of life on other worlds.
“The search for life beyond Earth cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach,” said Hoehler. “To give ourselves the best shot at success, we need to develop tools and strategies that are tailored to detecting life in the unique conditions of other worlds, which are very different not only from Earth but also from each other.”
NfoLD’s three founding teams are expected to be joined in the coming year by dozens of new teams that are pursuing life detection-themed science or technology development. It represents a relatively new organizing model supported by NASA, called a research coordination network. NASA’s Astrobiology Program organized its first successful one in 2015 — the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, which was formed to study the habitability of planets beyond our solar system. NfoLD is the second one to come online with at least three more expected to form in future years in areas of astrobiology.
Top Image: This image is an artist's conception of what life could look like on the surface of a distant planet. Credit: NASA
------
For news media: Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should get in touch through the NASA Ames media contacts page.
There are lots of reasons why colonizing space seems compelling. The popular astronomer Neil deGrasse Tysonarguesthat it would stimulate the economy and inspire the next generation of scientists. Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, argues that “there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multiplanetary…to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen.” The former administrator of NASA, Michael Griffin, frames it as a matter of the “survival of the species.” And the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking hasconjecturedthat if humanity fails to colonize space within 100 years, we could face extinction.
Illustration by NASA/JPL-Caltech
To be sure, humanity will eventually need to escape Earth to survive, since the sun will make the planet uninhabitable in about 1 billion years. But for many “space expansionists,” escaping Earth is about much more than dodging the bullet of extinction: it’s about realizing astronomical amounts of value by exploiting the universe’s vast resources to create something resembling utopia. For example, the astrobiologist Milan Cirkovic calculates that some 1046 people per century could come into existence if we were to colonize our Local Supercluster, Virgo. This leads Nick Bostrom to argue that failing to colonize space would be tragic because it would mean that these potential “worthwhile lives” would never exist, and this would be morally bad.
But would these trillions of lives actually be worthwhile? Or would colonization of space lead to a dystopia?
In a recent article in Futures, which was inspired by political scientist Daniel Deudney’s forthcoming book Dark Skies, I decided to take a closer look at this question. My conclusion is that in a colonized universe the probability of the annihilation of the human race could actually rise rather than fall.
The argument is based on ideas from evolutionary biology and international relations theory, and it assumes that there aren’t any other technologically advanced lifeforms capable of colonizing the universe (as a recent study suggests is the case).
Consider what is likely to happen as humanity hops from Earth to Mars, and from Mars to relatively nearby, potentially habitable exoplanets like Epsilon Eridani b, Gliese 674 b, and Gliese 581 d. Each of these planets has its own unique environments that will drive Darwinian evolution, resulting in the emergence of novel species over time, just as species that migrate to a new island will evolve different traits than their parent species. The same applies to the artificial environments of spacecraft like “O’Neill Cylinders,” which are large cylindrical structures that rotate to produce artificial gravity. Insofar as future beings satisfy the basic conditions of evolution by natural selection—such as differential reproduction, heritability, and variation of traits across the population—then evolutionary pressures will yield new forms of life.
But the process of “cyborgization”—that is, of using technology to modify and enhance our bodies and brains—is much more likely to influence the evolutionary trajectories of future populations living on exoplanets or in spacecraft. The result could be beings with completely novel cognitive architectures (or mental abilities), emotional repertoires, physical capabilities, lifespans, and so on.
In other words, natural selection and cyborgization as humanity spreads throughout the cosmos will result in species diversification. At the same time, expanding across space will also result in ideological diversification. Space-hopping populations will create their own cultures, languages, governments, political institutions, religions, technologies, rituals, norms, worldviews, and so on. As a result, different species will find it increasingly difficult over time to understand each other’s motivations, intentions, behaviors, decisions, and so on. It could even make communication between species with alien languages almost impossible. Furthermore, some species might begin to wonder whether the proverbial “Other” is conscious. This matters because if a species Y cannot consciously experience pain, then another species X might not feel morally obligated to care about Y. After all, we don’t worry about kicking stones down the street because we don’t believe that rocks can feel pain. Thus, as I write in the paper, phylogenetic and ideological diversification will engender a situation in which many species will be “not merely aliens to each other but, more significantly, alienated from each other.”
But this yields some problems. First, extreme differences like those just listed will undercut trust between species. If you don’t trust that your neighbor isn’t going to steal from, harm, or kill you, then you’re going to be suspicious of your neighbor. And if you’re suspicious of your neighbor, you might want an effective defense strategy to stop an attack—just in case one were to happen. But your neighbor might reason the same way: she’s not entirely sure that you won’t kill her, so she establishes a defense as well. The problem is that, since you don’t fully trust her, you wonder whether her defense is actually part of an attack plan. So you start carrying a knife around with you, which she interprets as a threat to her, thus leading her to buy a gun, and so on. Within the field of international relations, this is called the “security dilemma,” and it results in a spiral of militarization that can significantly increase the probability of conflict, even in cases where all actors have genuinely peaceful intentions.
So, how can actors extricate themselves from the security dilemma if they can’t fully trust each other? On the level of individuals, one solution has involved what Thomas Hobbes’ calls the “Leviathan.” The key idea is that people get together and say, “Look, since we can’t fully trust each other, let’s establish an independent governing system—a referee of sorts—that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. By replacing anarchy with hierarchy, we can also replace the constant threat of harm with law and order.” Hobbes didn’t believe that this happened historically, only that this predicament is what justifies the existence of the state. According to Steven Pinker, the Leviathan is a major reason that violence has declined in recent centuries.
The point is that if individuals—you and I—can overcome the constant threat of harm posed by our neighbors by establishing a governing system, then maybe future species could get together and create some sort of cosmic governing system that could similarly guarantee peace by replacing anarchy with hierarchy. Unfortunately, this looks unpromising within the “cosmopolitical” realm. One reason is that for states to maintain law and order among their citizens, their various appendages—e.g., law enforcement, courts—need to be properly coordinated. If you call the police about a robbery and they don’t show up for three weeks, then what’s the point of living in that society? You’d be just as well off on your own! The question is, then, whether the appendages of a cosmic governing system could be sufficiently well-coordinated to respond to conflicts and make top-down decisions about how to respond to particular situations. To put it differently: If conflict were to break out in some region of the universe, could the relevant governing authorities respond soon enough for it to matter, for it to make a difference?
Probably not, because of the immense vastness of space. For example, consider again Epsilon Eridani b, Gliese 674 b, and Gliese 581 d. These are, respectively, 10.5, 14.8, and 20.4 light-years from Earth. This means that a signal sent as of this writing, in 2018, wouldn’t reach Gliese 581 d until 2038. A spaceship traveling at one-quarter the cosmic speed limit wouldn’t arrive until 2098, and a message to simply affirm that it had arrived safely wouldn’t return to Earth until 2118. And Gliese 581 is relatively close as far as exoplanets go. Just consider that he Andromeda Galaxy is some 2.5 million light-years from Earth and the Triangulum Galaxy about 3 million light-years away. What’s more, there are some 54 galaxies in our Local Group, which is about 10 million light-years wide, within a universe that stretches some 93 billion light-years across.
Illustration by NASA/JPL-Caltech
These facts make it look hopeless for a governing system to effectively coordinate law enforcement activities, judicial decisions, and so on, across cosmic distances. The universe is simply too big for a government to establish law and order in a top-down fashion.
But there is another strategy for achieving peace: Future civilizations could use a policy of deterrence to prevent other civilizations from launching first strikes. A policy of this sort, which must be credible to work, says: “I won’t attack you first, but if you attack me first, I have the capabilities to destroy you in retaliation.” This was the predicament of the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War, known as “mutually-assured destruction” (MAD).
But could this work in the cosmopolitical realm of space? It seems unlikely. First, consider how many future species there could be: upwards of many billions. While some of these species would be too far away to pose a threat to each other—although see the qualification below—there will nonetheless exist a huge number within one’s galactic backyard. The point is that the sheer number would make it incredibly hard to determine who initiated a first strike, if one is attacked. And without a method for identifying instigators with high reliability, one’s policy of deterrence won’t be credible. And if one’s policy of deterrence isn’t credible, then one has no such policy!
Second, ponder the sorts of weapons that could become available to future spacefaring civilizations. Redirected asteroids (a.k.a., “planetoid bombs”), “rods from God,” sun guns, laser weapons, and no doubt an array of exceptionally powerful super-weapons that we can’t currently imagine. It has even been speculated that the universe might exist in a “metastable” state and that a high-powered particle accelerator could tip the universe into a more stable state. This would create a bubble of total annihilation that spreads in all directions at the speed of light—which opens up the possibility that a suicidal cult, or whatever, weaponizes a particle accelerator to destroy the universe.
The question, then, is whether defensive technologies could effectively neutralize such risks. There’s a lot to say here, but for the present purposes just note that, historically speaking, defensive measures have very often lagged behind offensive measures, thus resulting in periods of heightened vulnerability. This is an important point because when it comes to existentially dangerous super-weapons, one only needs to be vulnerable for a short period to risk annihilation.
So far as I can tell, this seriously undercuts the credibility of policies of deterrence. Again, if species A cannot convince species B that if B strikes it, A will launch an effective and devastating counter strike, then B may take a chance at attacking A. In fact, B does not need to be malicious to do this: it only needs to worry that A might, at some point in the near- or long-term future, attack B, thus making it rational for B to launch a preemptive strike (to eliminate the potential danger). Thinking about this predicament in the radically multi-polar conditions of space, it seems fairly obvious that conflict will be extremely difficult to avoid.
The lesson of this argument is not to uncritically assume that venturing into the heavens will necessarily make us safer or more existentially secure. This is a point that organizations hoping to colonize Mars, such as SpaceX, NASA, and Mars One should seriously contemplate. How can humanity migrate to another planet without bringing our problems with us? And how can different species that spread throughout the cosmos maintain peace when sufficient mutual trust is unattainable and advanced weaponry could destroy entire civilizations?
Human beings have made many catastrophically bad decisions in the past. Some of these outcomes could have been avoided if only the decision-makers had deliberated a bit more about what could go wrong—i.e., had done a “premortem” analysis. We are in that privileged position right now with respect to space colonization. Let’s not dive head-first into waters that turn out to be shallow.
Phil Torres is the director of the Project for Human Flourishing and the author of Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks.
A citizen astronomer looking for Planet 9 found something that actually exists but still has professional astronomers scratching their heads and mouthing the words, “This changes everything.” It’s an ancient white dwarf star with rings like Saturn that is far older and colder than any other ringed white dwarf star, which may force astronomers to change their theories on how white dwarfs form, age and die. Will Planet 9 be forced out of hiding due to jealousy over the publicity this discovery is getting?
“This object was found by Melina Thévenot of Germany using the Backyard Worlds project. She originally thought it might be a cold brown dwarf, something the project is very interested in and has had a lot of success finding.”
In a press release by Arizona State University, (and in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters), ASU astronomer Adam Schneider announced the discovery which he had verified as part of NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project which was launched two years ago as a way to get free research assistance by using volunteer astronomers to sort through infrared data available online and look for anomalies. Citizen astronomer Thévenot was hoping for a cold brown dwarf (no Snow White jokes, please) because they’re rare and unusual objects that are too big to be a planet but too small for a star – the perfect key to fame when your project has no fortune.
“When Melina investigated further, she found that although the object had significant infrared brightness; it was not a nearby brown dwarf. The team looked at it together, and we determined it was likely a white dwarf with infrared excess.”
An illustration of LSPM J0207+3331 )
Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Scott Wiessinger)
The ringed white dwarf (located 145 light-years away in the constellation Capricornus) still brought Melinda fame because the infrared excess is a sign the rings are warmer than normally seen around a white dwarf and highly unusual because of its advanced age — LSPM J0207+3331 (the dwarf’s official non-Disney name) is 3 billion years old, which is three times older than any other white dwarf with a ring or disk.
Is this a big deal? Schneider didn’t know because he’s a brown dwarf expert (who knew NASA astronomers were such specialists?) so he sent it to John Debes, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and a white dwarf expert. As such, he was gushing with astronomical excitement when he saw the data.
“This white dwarf is so old that whatever process is feeding material into its rings must operate on billion-year timescales. Most of the models scientists have created to explain rings around white dwarfs only work well up to around 100 million years, so this star is really challenging our assumptions of how planetary systems evolve.”
But wait … there’s more! Debes looked at follow-up observations taken by the Keck II telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and discovered that the ring or disk around this old white dwarf was made of multiple components. Normally, as a ringed white dwarf dies, the particles in the ring fall to the surface of the old star and the ring eventually disappears. LSPM J0207+3331 is far too ancient to still have rings of any kind.
Artist’s impression of a baby star still surrounded by a protoplanetary disc
Put all of those anomalies together and Melina Thévenot gets a “this changes everything” merit badge and a laurel and hardy handshake. Believe it or not, Schneider says that’s enough incentive for Backyard Worlds: Planet 9’s estimated 150,000 volunteers to have discovered over 1,000 potential brown dwarfs in just two years.
What about Planet 9? Are these dedicated citizen astronomers being used by NASA for free research under the guise that it really wants them to find the elusive and yet-unproven Planet 9?
Melina Thévenot is probably back on her computer trying to prove them wrong.
One of the problems with UFO reports from over the years actually has to do with their diversity. That is to say, some of the already far-fetched sounding reports of “flying saucers” might be more easily accepted by scientists if they all described essentially the same thing, rather than a seemingly endless variety of unusual aerial vehicles in our skies. The fact that such variety does exist, according to many accounts, lessens the likelihood that a majority of those cases represent some legitimate phenomenon.
Another problem is that very few of the so-called “flying saucers” appear to be anything that actually resembles saucers or discs at all. Even Kenneth Arnold’s famous 1947 sighting, which led to this first unofficial name for what later became known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs, raises some doubts: Arnold initially described objects that more closely resembled some variety of flying wing or delta shaped craft, on par with some of our modern stealth aircraft. His memory of the incident appears to have changed slightly within a few months, after the proliferation of the “flying saucer” meme in American newspapers.
However, there have been plenty of incidents from over the years that did involve alleged objects resembling pancakes, flattened spheres, doughnuts without holes, and other similar disc-shapes. Often, these more traditional “saucers” that appear in UFO literature from time to time are fitted with something akin to a spherical dome on the top and/or the bottom of the craft. Many of these unusual objects also produce light from one or more locations, usually on the underside of the craft.
It is one such alleged “saucer” along these lines that also comprises what may be, arguably, one of the most unusual UFO incidents of the 20th century. The sighting occurred on September 10, 1976, shortly before 1 AM at a farm outside Colusa, California, where Bill Pecha was awake and watching television that morning. His viewing was interrupted with what began as some kind of interference, followed by his television turning off completely. Moments later, his air conditioner also quit running, leading Pecha to think that a circuit breaker might be to blame.
As Pecha went outside and headed in the direction of the breaker, he began to notice his hair standing on end, as though some source of high-voltage electricity could be felt nearby. This concerned Pecha, since he now suspected there might be faulty cabling to blame, presenting a potential electrocution hazard. It was about that time that something in the sky a short distance away caught Pecha’s attention.
“I glanced up and saw this big object,” Pecha recalled. “And I saw these objects hanging down, like cable-like fixtures hanging down below it.” The main body of the craft was a disc shape, which appeared to be rotating in a clockwise orientation, with a large dome that remained stationary on top. The object made little or no sound, and was silver or gray in color, except for the very bottom of the craft, which Pecha described as having a “porcelain” look about it. Light could also be seen emanating from below the craft. The object appeared to be hovering directly above a television antenna at the top of a telephone pole nearby, which Pecha presumed to be the cause of the power disturbance inside his home a few minutes earlier.
Pecha’s description of the weird aircraft sounds more like something from War of the Worlds than from other UFO literature around that time. “As I watched it,” Pecha said, “these tentacle-like things went up and these lights came out of this saucer-like thing, and these big lights came on which was a shaft of lights two of them.”
Pecha went back to his house and awakened his wife, who was still asleep inside. By the time she was able to look out the window at the craft, she described seeing the lights which reminded her of traditional landing lights on a plane. Bill Pecha then went into his 10-year-old son’s room, the window of which provided a view to the west of their home, where Pecha says he was able to see two more similar craft in the distance, also positioned directly over power lines as the initial object had been.
Badly frightened, Pecha and his wife reportedly left with their children and went to the home of a nearby friend named Gail Arrant, speeding despite having their pickup truck’s lights off, for fear that the object would see them. Arriving at the Arrant home, Gail came outside and was able to see a distant object which the Pechas identified as the large, domed saucer that had hovered over their home.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Arrant said in an ABC news interview the following year. “No question whatsoever, it was there. I thought, it doesn’t matter to me if anyone believes me or not I know what I saw and Bill too. I mean, it was frightful.”
The National Enquirer, who at the time investigated UFOs fairly often, sent Bob Pratt to look into the case, but the story never made it to print. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) also investigated the incident, of which the following detailed information about Pecha’s observation of the distant objects over the power lines was given, appearing later in a write up by Brad Sparks in the February, 1977 APRO Bulletin:
Each of these far encounter UFOs emitted two light-like beams that hit the tops of the power transmission towers each object was between. The right hand UFO’s beams were blue and all four towers were lit up in blue light. The beams were emitted upwards at 30 to 45 degrees below the horizontal. The towers held up six power lines. One or both of the highest two of these lines glowed bright red from the insulators oftowers-1 and 2 out to an estimated fifty to one hundred feet on both sides of the towers, Pecha reported. (These were the same towers lit up in blue light by the UFO on the Left.) The beams on towers 1 and 2 had “darker” (by this Pecha said he meant brighter, or more intense) blue “jerky” light streams inside them, Pecha said. He said the “jerkiness” was unlike lightning or a zig-zag and it did not seem to have a phase velocity or motion. He could not determine if the beams from the UFO on the right had these “jerky” light-streams or if the power lines near towers-3 and 4 glowed red. The towers and the UFO on the right were more distant than the ones on the left. The left-hand towers were about 4,450 and 5,150 feet away (towers-1 and 2, respectively)—the lines between these towers pointed about 53 degrees off Pecha’s line of sight (so he had a good view of them). The right-hand towers were about 6,200 and 7,320 feet away (towers-3 and 4 respectively). But the lines on these latter towers are pointed only 4 1/2 degrees off Pecha’s line of sight—hence they would have been difficult to see. (The lines from towers-1 and 2 run southeast to northwest, but turn almost due west at tower-2.)
Despite the specificity of the information about Pecha’s observation in the APRO bulletin, finding corroborating data from agencies in the nearby vicinity was more difficult. Allan Hendry, who at the time of the Colusa incident was a full time investigator at J. Allen Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), followed several potential lines of interest, and was unable to find any additional data, as he noted in The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO Sightings:
I checked with the following agencies to see if they could account for the event, with no success: Sacramento Air Traffic Control, Chico Air Traffic Control, the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center, Colusa County Airport, and Beale Air Force Base. On the outside chance that a helicopter with a bright searchlight was somehow behind the sightings, I checked with the California Highway Patrol, the California Forestry Air Coordinator, and the Sacramento National Guard, with negative results; still, there are other sources of helicopters, both civilian and military, within an hour of Colusa. I even tried balloon launch sites; the National Weather Service balloon launched at 4 P.M. bursts after two hours and is not illuminated—if the UFO was one, it would have departed against the wind.
Hendry also contacted the Central Valley Project to see if they had registered any outages in the area coinciding with the disturbances Pecha described, and none were logged by the company. Nonetheless, Hendry noted that “Everyone from the policemen to the publisher of the local paper vouched for Pecha’s reputation of honesty and calmness,” and found no reason to believe he had misreported or sensationalized his family’s experience in any way, strange though it was.
The following year Pecha, family friend Gail Arrant, and even J. Allen Hynek and Allan Hendry of CUFOS, were featured in an ABC news segment which covered the case, as featured in the video below:
By some measures, one might say that the circumstances Pecha and the other witnesses described were the least unusual aspect of the entire affair. The description of the object, however, seems to fall squarely into the realm of early 20th-century science fiction; seldom are “tentacles” or other similar appendages reported elsewhere, even in the more colorful reports of actual saucer-shaped unidentified flying objects. In that regard, the Colusa, California UFO incident remains one of the most intriguing, and yet also truly perplexing cases of unidentified structured aircraft seen in the last century.
WARMED FROM WITHIN? Mars has frigid polar ice caps. But a theoretical underground chamber of magma could help melt ice near the south pole, creating what some scientists think is a lake hiding under the ice.
NASA, ESA AND STSC
If Mars conceals a lake beneath its south polar ice cap, the planet must also have a hidden chamber of magma to keep the water liquid, a new analysis suggests.
Signs of a 20-kilometer-wide lake, buried beneath about a kilometer and a half of ice near Mars’ south pole, were first reported in 2018 by a team led by planetary scientist Roberto Orosei (SN: 8/18/18, p. 6). The discovery kicked off a debate over what it would take to keep the lake liquid in such a frigid environment.
Planetary scientists Michael Sori and Ali Bramson considered various scenarios, including dust mixed in the ice cap to improve its insulating abilities and episodes of past volcanism on the Red Planet. The only way to create enough heat to explain the lake is if a subsurface pool of magma under the ice also exists, the duo reports in the Feb. 12 Geophysical Research Letters.
“We tried to do our due diligence and think of all sorts of alternative factors that could raise the temperature,” Sori says. “The magma stuff was the only one that did it. None of the other factors really even came close.”
The possible lake — the first report of so much liquid water existing on Mars today — appeared as a bright reflection to the radar of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter. The Martian environment, though, is too cold for water to remain liquid on its own. Orosei, of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Bologna, Italy, and his colleagues had suggested that salts dissolved in the water could keep its melting point low, allowing the lake to exist as a briny sludge.
Conditions beneath the ice are still too cold — an average of –68° Celsius — to explain the lake’s existence just with salts, argue Sori and Bramson, both of the University of Arizona in Tucson. But their calculations show that if around 300,000 years ago, a volcano released magma into a chamber at least five kilometers wide and buried about 10 kilometers beneath where the lake appears to be, that pool could generate enough heat to still be melting salty ice today. Without salt, the magma chamber would have to be larger or closer to the surface, the researchers say.
If the magma chamber is real, it would mean that Mars has been geologically active much more recentlythan planetary scientists think (SN: 3/4/17, p. 12). Previous studies suggested that the most recent geologic activity near Mars’ south pole was millions of years ago, at least.
The chamber’s existence could also be a blow to the purported lake’s habitability: If the lake is only a few hundred thousand years old, that doesn’t give life much time to have gotten started.
Sori and Bramson remain neutral on whether their findings make the lake more or less likely to exist. “Honestly, we’re not sure,” Bramson says. The researchers suggest that future searches look for either the magma chamber or the lake. So far, other radar searches using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have not spotted the lake (SN: 12/22/18, p. 29).
The jury is out among other researchers too. The new research doesn’t rule out the role of salts in melting ice, says planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann of Caltech who was not involved in either study. But “this paper is a nice contribution that explores an alternative hypothesis,” she says.
Orosei stands by his team’s observations. Theoretical arguments showing how difficult it is for liquid water to be present beneath the ice, he says, do not prove the water is not there. “I think that we are just entering a long and exhausting debate,” he says.
CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK A massive collision that left Neptune’s second largest moon, Proteus (as seen in the background of this illustration) with a huge crater may have spawned its smallest moon, Hippocamp (foreground).
NASA, ESA, AND J. OLMSTED/STSC
Neptune’s smallest moon may be a chunk of a neighboring moon that was knocked off by a comet.
In 1989, Voyager 2 flew by Neptune, right, and spotted six small inner moons, represented in the composite at left. A tiny moon between Proteus and Larissa went undetected at the time, but Mark Showalter discovered the moon in 2013 using the Hubble Space Telescope and has now officially named it Hippocamp. (Image not to scale.)
One of seven moons that orbit closer to Neptune than the planet’s largest moon, Triton, the newly dubbed Hippocamp is just roughly 34 kilometers across, researchers report in the Feb. 21 Nature. The second-largest moon, Proteus, is Hippocamp’s nearest neighbor, orbiting about 12,000 kilometers away.
“Why would such a small moon be so close to such a big moon?” wondered astronomer Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. He and his colleagues used more than a decade’s worth of observations with the Hubble Space Telescope to find the new moon, which was first reported in 2013 (SN Online: 7/16/13). Bigger moons tend to gobble up small ones as the moons form. Stranger still, the pair was probably even closer in the past, because the physics of their orbits suggests that Proteus is slowly migrating away from Neptune.
Pale gray dot
Neptune has seven inner moons (illustrated here with the planet’s rings), and the smallest now has a name: Hippocamp.
C. CHANG
Source: A.J. Verbiscer/Nature 2019, M.R. Showalter et al/Nature 2019
Showalter thinks Hippocamp is a piece of Proteus that was chipped off by a massive collision with a comet. Proteus has a massive crater, called Pharos, which is so big that the impact that made it nearly broke Proteus apart. The collision could have kicked up a cloud of debris that eventually coalesced into a smaller moon.
“They’re far away now, but they were part of the same object in the past,” Showalter says.
The name Hippocamp references a half-horse, half-fish creature from Greek mythology, which pulled a chariot for the god Poseidon (the Roman Neptune). All of Neptune’s moons have names related to the sea in Greek and Roman mythology.
That suits Showalter, who is a scuba diver. “The true story is, I’m very fond of sea horses,” he says.
Editor’s note: This story was updated February 20, 2019, with a new artist’s illustration of Hippocamp.
Citations
M.R. Showalter et al. The seventh inner moon of Neptune. Nature. Vol. 566, February 21, 2019, p. 328. doi: 10.1028/s41586-019-0909-9.
Around this time of year – if the western horizon stays clear – the last few minutes of daylight fall perfectly on Horsetail Falls, making it glow as if on fire. Photographers call it the firefall …
For two weeks out of the year, a spectacular event known as the firefall takes place within Yosemite National Park. Hundreds if not thousands of photographers flock to the valley in hopes of capturing the elusive moment, that is, if the weather, snow and light cooperate. If Yosemite receives an ample amount of snowfall throughout the winter, and if the western horizon stays clear, the last few minutes of daylight fall perfectly upon Horsetail Falls and illuminate it in a vibrant orange and red. The waterfall glows so fiercely that it appears to be on fire. Yesterday, after the valley received several feet of snow for a few days, one last clearing snowstorm led to the perfect mix of ingredients. Water flowing from the beautiful Horsetail Falls and a dazzling mix of broken clouds floating past El Capitan as the sunset set the fall ablaze.
Thank you, Mike!
Bottom line: Fireball at Yosemite National Park, February 17, 2019.
It’s a question that has grabbed the attention of humanity since long before history has been recorded. What life exists outside of this little ball that we call Earth? Whether we’re talking about the gods of Olympus or the Klingons ofStar Trek, it is a theme that has appeared consistently throughout all of human history.
As science expands our knowledge of the universe every year, we half expect the news that extraterrestrial life has been found. But what if we’ve been looking in all the wrong places?
Science predicts many examples of counterintuitive forms of life. While impossible on Earth, they could very well exist elsewhere in the universe. So, without further ado, here are the top 10 scientifically possible extraterrestrial life-forms.
Silicon is a molecule whose structure and chemical properties are remarkably similar to the properties of carbon—the element on which most life on Earth is based. An important part of life as we know it is the ability of carbon to form complex chains of atoms and molecules sufficiently large to contain biological programming such as DNA.
Silicon, also commonly used in computer chips, is the closest that humanity has ever come to designing their own intelligent system. It would have the potential to organically form its own version of DNA under the right circumstances.
Additionally, there are examples on Earth of organisms using silicon in biological structures, specifically in a form of algae known as diatoms. They are responsible for the usage of over six billion metric tons of silicon each year in Earth’s oceans as well as the production of almost 20 percent of the planet’s oxygen.[1]
As a result, it is likely that silicon might exist as a stage of early life on other planets, converting their atmospheres into oxygen and getting them ready for more advanced life later on.
9. Arsenic-Based Life
Although it seems counterintuitive that one of the most iconic poisons on Earth has a basis in forming life, science suggests that it is entirely possible for arsenic to be incorporated into complex biomolecules.
The argument for arsenic in life-forms stems from its chemical similarity to phosphorus, a staple part of DNA in Earth life. Some studies suggest that arsenic may have once been a part of the DNA in early life on Earth, taking the place in DNA that phosphorus does now.
In an early stage of life before microbial activity was able to leech phosphorus from rocks in the ocean, arsenic would have been far more available to organisms living near hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean.[2]
Although evidence suggests that phosphorus is a more efficient chemical than arsenic in advanced life, the poisonous element would likely be good enough for early, simple forms of life. Creatures made of this substance may lurk in the depths of alien oceans.
8. Ammonia-Based Life
Water is an essential part of all Earth life. Our bodies use the liquid as a solvent, which is necessary for almost all chemical reactions that create energy and sustain functions. This is seen in humans and all the way down to the smallest microbes.
But what if there was an alternative to water? Recent science suggests that there is.
For life to exist in a substance other than water, it would be necessary for it to either have a large temperature range at which it is liquid or exist on a planet with little, if any, temperature change over the course of its year. Water exists in a liquid form between 0 degrees Celsius (32 °F) and 100 degrees Celsius (212 °F), a range of 100 degrees Celsius (180 °F).
Ammonia is liquid between -77.7 degrees Celsius (-107.86 °F) and -33.3 degrees Celsius (-27.94 °F), a relatively large range of 44.4 degrees Celsius (79.92 °F). While one might think that such temperatures would be too cold to sustain life, it is likely that the reactions and processes necessary for life could still exist, albeit at a slower speed.[3]
As such, organisms using ammonia rather than water as a chemical solvent would likely live longer but metabolize and evolve more slowly than water-based life.
7. Methane-Based Life
There are some environments in which methane would be far more prevalent than water. Saturn’s moon Titan is a prominent example.
According to a computer model, life which relies on methane would be able to exist in extremely cold areas as well as regions entirely without oxygen. The model revealed that a cell wall could be constructed that would work in liquid methane at -180 degrees Celsius (-292 °F).
Along with the fact that cell membranes could be created with nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen molecules, which are known to exist in Titan’s oceans, this function means that simple organisms could exist in the frozen depths of methane oceans.[4]
As with ammonia-based organisms, life in methane oceans would inherently be paced much slower than life on Earth. Slow evolution and metabolism would occur due to the frigid temperatures necessary to maintain the ocean of liquids.
Carbon-based life-forms are the only type which we, being carbon-based ourselves, know anything about. Thus, we’re sure that hundreds of planets exist within the potentially habitable zones of their stars. These planets would be able to support life as we know it with oxygen, liquid water, and even the chemicals and reactions necessary to jump-start life.
Additionally, carbon-based life is the only type that we are sure exists, as evidenced by our own planet.
This isn’t to say that carbon-based life on other planets would look at all like Earth’s. Through evolution, it is possible for extraterrestrial carbon-based life to take on a dramatically different form by adapting to fit its environment.
Just look at the massive number of life-forms that exist on Earth. They live everywhere from frigid oceans to the mouths of active volcanoes and fault lines. The existence of organisms on Earth in such extreme environments is proof that it is entirely possible for this kind of life to exist on a wide variety of other planets, including some that we would consider uninhabitable for humans.[5]
5. Hybrid Life
If creatures could hypothetically evolve using an entirely different basis for life than that on Earth, why couldn’t they combine multiple methods? For example, life could be based primarily in silicon, contain elements of carbon or arsenic, and use ammonia as a solvent.
As previously mentioned, some life-forms on Earth incorporate silicon structures into their cells. So why not take it a step further? If an organism evolved on a planet with a relative abundance of multiple elements that could be used in the processes of life, why not take those two and make them into a composite whole?
Silicon and carbon can bond with each other as well as silicon and oxygen, carbon and oxygen, and silicon and fluoride. So it is possible for these molecules to react and form complex chains that would store and transmit information in a manner similar to DNA.
This could also work if a planet had a biosphere with a subset of creatures which used an element such as carbon as their base and another subset which used a different element such as silicon. Rather than a creature being based in two different elements, the biosphere as a whole could contain two different elemental bases for life.[6]
By modeling conditions that are possible in space, a 2007 study found that plasma and dust can function in a way that may qualify as life. They may even form microscopic double helix strands of solid particles through the polarization of plasma and dust. Sound familiar?
Even more fascinating, the study found that these strands can undergo changes such as those associated with organic molecules, specifically DNA. They can divide, copy, and even evolve as less stable strands break apart and more stable ones endure.[7]
These life-forms could exist as chilling entities formed of nonorganic materials in the void between stars inside massive dust clouds or in plasma or dust rings surrounding stars. Through continued evolution, it is entirely possible for such clouds to one day achieve sentience.
Although science does not currently suggest that stars or galaxiesthemselves could form life, it does indicate that life with organic compounds can form outside of a home planet with the help of nearby stars and star structures.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, organic compounds have been detected in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. Complex organic molecules such as methanol, dimethyl ether, and methyl formate, all of which are essential in organic life, were detected in two nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This suggests that given time and the right circumstances, these compounds could eventually form into self-replicating molecules that would become the basis of life in such nebulae. Later, they could create more complex biological structures. As they would evolve without the basic function of gravity such as on Earth, we have no idea what these creatures might look like.[8]
2. Panspermia
A popular theory is that life propagates through the universe through planetary ejection caused by large impacts on previously populated planets. This theory states that life can be distributed by dust, debris, asteroids, and comets carrying microorganisms from other planets.
For panspermia to be plausible, the organisms must be able to survive intense forces and extremely hot and cold temperatures for extended durations. This is due to the inherent forces involved in an asteroid impact, the heat from friction with a planet’s atmosphere, and the extended time when the organism is in transit through space—potentially thousands or millions of years.[9]
Organisms like that exist on Earth already. These extremophiles can resist extreme cold and heat as well as UV rays and intense forces. Although they are among the most basic known forms of life, they have an unparalleled ability to survive conditions that would kill most other organisms.
Thus, it is entirely plausible that life could have spread throughout the universe via asteroid impacts and the extremophiles that were carried on these alien asteroids.
Even if life was based on the extremophiles from another planet, the simplistic nature of these organisms makes it unlikely that they would evolve into anything that looked like the more complex creatures on the original planet. This is due to the different traits necessary to survive on the two planets.
1. Not At All
Unfortunately, it is entirely possible that we are the only planet in the universe that has life. Due to the vastness of space and the limit that light speed imposes on intergalactic travel, it may be impossible for us to ever discover other life or even determine if it exists at all. In the observable universe, we have not found any concrete evidence that life does or has ever existed on other planets.
With that being said, the universe is only about 13.8 billion years old. While this may seem like a long time, we have no way of knowing how old the universe will become. Perhaps we are the first planet to evolve life, with many others to follow in the future.
We estimate that the universe’s heat death (a state in which there is no longer any free thermal energy) will occur somewhere in between 1 and 100 trillion years. In the worst-case scenario, we are only 1.38 percent of the way through the universe’s expected life span. At best, we are about 0.01 percent of the way there. That is a lot of time for life to happen.[10]
Still, we can’t help but wonder if our signals will ever be received by someone or something out there or if they will just shoot forever through the cold, dark void of space.
0
1
2
3
4
5
- Gemiddelde waardering: 0/5 - (0 Stemmen) Categorie:ALIEN LIFE, UFO- CRASHES, ABDUCTIONS, MEN IN BLACK, ed ( FR. , NL; E )
'No cause for alarm, Captain!': NASA confirms mysterious blue light spotted in InSight photos by actor William Shatner is just a lens flare, as the robotic lander plays cup-and-ball on Mars- PART I
'No cause for alarm, Captain!': NASA confirms mysterious blue light spotted in InSight photos by actor William Shatner is just a lens flare, as the robotic lander plays cup-and-ball on Mars - PART I
InSight played Martian game of cup-and-ball over the weekend as it attempted to stow its grapple instrument
The InSight lander placed its seismometer closer to the ground to better hear faint Marsquakes days prior
The InSight lander deployed its first instrument onto the surface of Mars around the end of December
NASA says instruments have been positioned to lowest point yet for the best possible listening opportunity
It might be some time before NASA’s InSight lander starts churning out data, but the new Mars explorer is steadily trucking on with its preparations.
A new animation shared by the space agency shows InSight getting its grapple instrument in place, in a process that looks much like the age-old cup-and-ball game.
InSight has spent the last two months slowly setting up its instruments and conducting equipment health assessments ahead of its mission to listen for underground marsquakes.
In the meantime, the lander’s social media account has attracted the attention of many space enthusiasts – including Star Trek actor William Shatner, who questioned the source of a peculiar blue light that has appeared in some of the photos.
Scroll down for video
A new animation shared by the space agency shows InSight getting its grapple instrument in place, in a process that looks much like the age-old cup-and-ball game. The grapple is one of the many instruments that will help InSight collect unprecedented data about the red planet
‘After a few tries, I’ve successfully stowed by grapple, by grabbing a small restraint mounted on my arm,’ the InSight Twitter account shared this weekend.
‘Sort of a Martian twist on the classic cup-and-ball game.’
An animation posted alongside the update shows the claw-like gripper chasing around a small ball before finally catching it.
The grapple is one of the many instruments that will help InSight collect unprecedented data about the red planet.
InSight’s Twitter updates sparked curiosity on social media last week when actor William Shatner noticed a blue light in one of the animations.
The lander’s social media account has attracted the attention of many space enthusiasts – including Star Trek actor William Shatner, who questioned the source of a peculiar blue light that has appeared in some of the photos
But, NASA says there’s nothing unusual (or alien-related) about the dancing light.
‘Just a bit of lens flare as the sun dips low on the horizon,’ NASA explained on Twitter. ‘(Both photos were taken shortly before sunset.) No cause for alarm, Captain!’
Earlier this month, the InSight lander leaned in for a better listen of Mars’ underground tremors. The robotic explorer placed its seismometer on the surface at the end of last month, and is now getting even closer ‘for a better connection with Mars.’
This will help its instruments pick up fainter signals that may otherwise have been missed.
Days prior, InSight leveled out its seismometer and adjusted the internal sensors ahead of lowering everything down toward the ground.
NASA’s InSight lander is leaning in for a better listen of Mars’ underground tremors. The robotic explorer placed its seismometer on the surface at the end of last month, and is now getting even closer ‘for a better connection with Mars.’ Before and after images show its instrument at its lowest position yet
INSIGHT'S THREE KEY INSTRUMENTS
The lander that could reveal how Earth was formed: InSight lander set for Mars landing on november 26th
Three key instruments will allow the InSight lander to 'take the pulse' of the red planet:
Seismometer: The InSight lander carries a seismometer, SEIS, that listens to the pulse of Mars.
The seismometer records the waves traveling through the interior structure of a planet.
Studying seismic waves tells us what might be creating the waves.
On Mars, scientists suspect that the culprits may be marsquakes, or meteorites striking the surface.
Heat probe: InSight's heat flow probe, HP3, burrows deeper than any other scoops, drills or probes on Mars before it.
It will investigate how much heat is still flowing out of Mars.
Radio antennas: Like Earth, Mars wobbles a little as it rotates around its axis.
To study this, two radio antennas, part of the RISE instrument, track the location of the lander very precisely.
This helps scientists test the planet's reflexes and tells them how the deep interior structure affects the planet's motion around the Sun.
‘It’s always good to be centered and balanced,’ the InSight Twitter account shared.
The lander also released the slack in its cable to keep it from fluttering around in the wind.
Now, NASA says the instruments have been positioned to the lowest point yet for the best possible listening opportunity.
‘My seismometer has now crouched down to its lowest level, for a better connection with Mars,’ the InSight Twitter account posted this week. 'Faint signals are easier to hear if you keep your ear close to the ground.’
The InSight lander deployed its first instrument onto the surface of Mars around the end of December.
Images from the lander show the seismometer on the ground, after it was lifted onto the surface by the lander's robotic arm.
It will record the waves traveling through the interior structure of the planet, and could help explain mysterious 'marsquakes' scientists believe occur regularly.
At the time, NASA said the lander war performing flawlessly, and was ahead of schedule.
New images from the lander show the seismometer on the ground, after it was lifted onto the surface by the lander's robotic arm. It will record the waves traveling through the interior structure of the planet, and could help explain mysterious 'marsquakes' scientists believe occur regularly. This was the first time a science instrument had ever been placed onto the surface of another planet.
WHAT WILL THE SEISMOMETER DO?
The seismometer allows scientists to peer into the Martian interior by studying ground motion — also known as marsquakes.
Each marsquake acts as a kind of flashbulb that illuminates the structure of the planet's interior.
By analyzing how seismic waves pass through the layers of the planet, scientists can deduce the depth and composition of these layers.
'InSight's timetable of activities on Mars has gone better than we hoped,' said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman, who is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
'Getting the seismometer safely on the ground is an awesome Christmas present.'
The InSight team has been working toward deploying its two dedicated science instruments onto Martian soil since landing on Mars on Nov. 26.
Engineers tested the commands for the lander, making sure a model in the test bed at JPL deployed the instruments exactly as intended.
Scientists also had to analyze images of the Martian terrain around the lander to figure out the best places to deploy the instruments.
On Tuesday, Dec. 18, InSight engineers sent up the commands to the spacecraft.
On Wednesday, Dec. 19, the seismometer was gently placed onto the ground directly in front of the lander, about as far away as the arm can reach — 5.367 feet, or 1.636 meters, away).
'Seismometer deployment is as important as landing InSight on Mars,' said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt, based at JPL.
'The seismometer is the highest-priority instrument on InSight: We need it in order to complete about three-quarters of our science objectives.'
NASA InSight✔@NASAInSight
Whew – winding down after a long day, but I’ve done it: I’ve placed my seismometer on the surface of Mars! With SEIS, I’ll be able to listen in for marsquakes and help reveal the heartbeat of
The 'Martian rock garden' it built in a Pasadena warehouse to test its InSight rover Engineers practice deploying InSight's instruments in a lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Several of them are wearing sunglasses to block the bright yellow lights in the test space, which mimic sunlight as it appears on Mars.
The seismometer allows scientists to peer into the Martian interior by studying ground motion — also known as marsquakes.
'Having the seismometer on the ground is like holding a phone up to your ear,' said Philippe Lognonné, principal investigator of SEIS from Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) and Paris Diderot University.
'We're thrilled that we're now in the best position to listen to all the seismic waves from below Mars' surface and from its deep interior.'
In the coming days, the InSight team will work on leveling the seismometer, which is sitting on ground that is tilted 2 to 3 degrees.
The first seismometer science data should begin to flow back to Earth after the seismometer is in the right position.
'We look forward to popping some Champagne when we start to get data from InSight's seismometer on the ground,' Banerdt added.
'I have a bottle ready for the occasion.'
Meanwhile, the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), which does not have its own separate instrument, has already begun using InSight's radio connection with Earth to collect preliminary data on the planet's core.
Not enough time has elapsed for scientists to deduce what they want to know — scientists estimate they might have some results starting in about a year.
This image shows some of the instruments visible in the selfie image sent back to Earth by InSight early last Tuesday morning
NASA also recently has finally pinpointed the exact landing location of its new Mars explorer, thanks to a powerful camera on its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
While the space agency knew InSight had landed within an 81-mile-long (130 km) ellipse on the red planet, there was no way to determine exactly where it touched down within this region.
Now, a series of images captured this week by MRO's HiRISE camera have confirmed that the lander, heat shield, and parachute all sit within 1,000 feet of each other on a lava plain called Elysium Planitia.
NASA has finally pinpointed the exact landing location of its new Mars explorer, thanks to a powerful camera on its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. While the space agency knew InSight had landed within an 81-mile-long (130 km) ellipse on the red planet, there was no way to determine exactly where it touched down within this region
In the images released today by NASA, InSight and its parts appear as bright teal specks on rust-colored landscape.
But in reality, this is only a trick of the light.
'Light reflected off their surfaces causes the color to be saturated,' NASA explains.
'The ground around the lander appears dark, having been blasted by its retrorockets during descent. Look carefully for a butterfly shape, and you can make out the lander's solar panels on either side.'
Just days ago, NASA's new InSight lander snapped its first selfie from the red planet, giving the mission team (and the rest of the world) a good look at its solar panels and deck now that it's settled in.
InSight also sent back the first complete view of the 14-by-7-foot swath of land that will soon serve as its 'workspace.'
In the images released today by NASA, InSight and its parts appear as bright teal specks on rust-colored landscape. But in reality, this is only a trick of the light
A series of images captured this week by MRO's HiRISE camera have confirmed that the lander (red dot), heat shield, and parachute all sit within 1,000 feet of each other on a lava plain called Elysium Planitia. Previously, the space agency only knew they'd landed within an 81-mile ellipse (blue)
Each of the new images is a mosaic of several captures stitched together.
While the selfie, captured by the robotic arm, is a composite of 11 pictures, the workspace view includes 52 individual photos.
This is allowing scientists to get a good look at the area well before InSight starts putting down its instruments and digging into the ground.
'The near-absense of rocks, hills, and holes means it'll be extremely safe for our instruments,' said InSight's Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
'This might seem like a pretty plain piece of ground if it weren't on Mars, but we're glad to see that.'
NASA has confirmed the landing sites for InSight, its parachute, and other components thanks to new images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
InSight previously sent back the first complete view of the 14-by-7-foot swath of land that will soon serve as its 'workspace,' indicated in the blue crescent. The team says it looks 'extremely safe'. Its parachute, back shell, and heat shield all landed about 1,000 feet away
Even Mars robots act like tourists every once in a while. NASA's new InSight lander has snapped its first selfie from the red planet, giving the mission team (and the rest of the world) a good look at its solar panels and deck now that it's settled in
Over the last week or so, InSight has sent back the first of its observations – including a clip of light passing over the surface, and recordings of Martian winds.
All of this comes as the lander and the team behind its operations prepare for it to begin work in the next few months.
For now, however, InSight is taking baby steps.
The lander flexed its 6-foot-long arm this week, snapping images of the terrain directly in front of it.
'By carefully swinging my arm out in front of me, I'm starting to get a better look at the ground in front of me where I'll be doing my work', the Nasa InSight account tweeted.
'Meanwhile, kind of hypnotized by the play of light and shadow on my arm'.
'By carefully swinging my arm out in front of me, I'm starting to get a better look at the ground in front of me where I'll be doing my work', the Nasa InSight account tweeted this week. 'Meanwhile, kind of hypnotized by the play of light and shadow on my arm'. This effect can be seen in the clip above
'No cause for alarm, Captain!': NASA confirms mysterious blue light spotted in InSight photos by actor William Shatner is just a lens flare, as the robotic lander plays cup-and-ball on Mars - PART II
'No cause for alarm, Captain!': NASA confirms mysterious blue light spotted in InSight photos by actor William Shatner is just a lens flare, as the robotic lander plays cup-and-ball on Mars - PART II
'By carefully swinging my arm out in front of me, I'm starting to get a better look at the ground in front of me where I'll be doing my work', the Nasa InSight account tweeted this week. 'Meanwhile, kind of hypnotized by the play of light and shadow on my arm'. This effect can be seen in the clip above
The data collected by InSight's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) in the months before it's moved onto the ground will eventually be used to cancel out background noises as it works to detect marsquakes
Just days prior, NASA revealed the InSight lander captured the sound of a Martian 'dust devil' during its first days on the red planet.
According to the space agency, this is the first time we've ever heard Martian winds.
The low rumble detected by InSight's sensors are estimated to be blowing between 10 to 15 mph (5 to 7 meters a second) from northwest to southeast – and, the recordings are within the range of human hearing.
NASA says the sounds recorded on December 1 line up with dust devil streaks observed in the landing area.
The vibrations were recorded at a very low pitch, though those with sharp ears will be able to hear it as is, using headphones or subwoofers.
To make it clearer, NASA boosted the pitch by two octaves, making it audible on laptops and mobile devices.
The space agency shared a series of high-resolution photos captured this week. InSight will soon begin snapping images of the terrain directly in front of it, so the team can select the best location to drill down. The solar panel that will help power the machine is pictured
While InSight didn't set out to record Martian winds, specifically, the team says this type of data collection comes with the territory.
The lander detected wind vibrations with two of its sensors: one designed to measure air pressure, and with a seismometer on the deck.
'Capturing this audio was an unplanned treat,' says Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.
'But one of the things our mission is dedicated to is measuring motion on Mars, and naturally that includes motion caused by sound waves.'
According to the InSight team, the two different instruments recorded the noise in different ways.
While the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem's air pressure sensor recorded the vibrations directly, the seismometer picked up vibrations caused by the wind passing over the lander's solar panels.
The data collected by InSight's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) in the months before it's moved onto the ground will eventually be used to cancel out background noises as it works to detect marsquakes.
Its short period (SP) silicon sensors can detect vibrations with frequencies of up to 50 hertz, which sits at the lower range of human hearing, NASA says.
'The InSight lander acts like a giant ear,' said Tom Pike, InSight science team member and sensor designed at Imperial College London.
'The solar panels on the lander's sides respond to pressure fluctuations of the wind.
'It's like InSight is cupping its ears and hearing the Mars wind beating on it. When we looked at the direction of the lander vibrations coming from the solar panels, it matches the expected wind direction at our landing site.'
InSight touched down in a region known as Elysium Planitia. Its location can be seen in the map above, not far from the landing site of the 2012 Curiosity mission, the last NASA probe to land on Mars
NASA's InSight lander has finally removed the lens cover from its cameras, allowing the robotic explorer to take its clearest pictures yet of its new home
The team has released both a raw, unaltered audio sample of the seismometer recording and a second version that's been raised two octaves to make it easier to hear.
For the latter, the APSS sample was sped up by a factor of 100.
According to the experts, the source of the sound is pretty straightforward; vibrations detected by the instruments are much like the air pressure changes you hear when a flag whips around in the wind.
'That's literally what sound is — changes in air pressure,' said Don Banfield InSight's science lead for APSS from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
'You hear that whenever you speak to someone across the room.'
Illustration of InSight probe with its two main instruments deployed, a heat probe (left) and seismometer (bell-shaped, right).
Credit: NASA.
NASA’s InSight lander arrived on Marsin late 2018 tasked with the mission of studying the planet’s geology. Its main instrument is a seismometer which the probe will soon use to listen to marsquakes. However, the probe is also equipped with sophisticated meteorology gear like a highly sensitive air pressure sensor that is already revealing some unexpected surprises.
The Martian surface is very thin — less than one percent of Earth’s surface pressure — but it’s enough to accommodate weather and significant air pressure differences that cause the soil to slightly tilt and rumble. Therefore, InSight’s air pressure sensor data is essential to the probe’s missions since it calibrates the seismometer.
InSight’s mission is unlike that of any spacecraft we’ve ever sent to Mars. All of our past probes have studied the planet’s environment above ground, but InSight is focused on what happens beneath the surface by listening to ‘marsquakes’. By studying these slight seismic waves, scientists want to determine what makes up the planet’s mantle and core. Basically, InSight will study seismic waves as they pass through the Red Planet, using that information as a sort of ultrasound to find out what is lurking underneath the crust.
While the seismometer isn’t operational yet, NASA scientists have been busy studying data from other sensors, including those on temperature and air pressure. Some interesting discoveries include the presence of gravity waves, the displacement of a fluid from its position of equilibrium. These are not to be confused with gravitational waves, which are disturbances in the curvature (fabric) of spacetime, and most commonly during the evenings. And in the last 72 hours, researchers measured infrasound waves with a period of only one-hundredth of a hertz over a period of 100 seconds — that’s several octaves well below the range of human hearing. According to a Forbes report, the infrasounds may be caused by a meteor crashing into the red planet’s atmosphere, a landslide, or airflow over an underlying stable local atmosphere.
The most surprising finding is a strange pattern in the air pressure data, which shows surface pressure dipping slightly twice a day, at around 7 AM and 7 PM local time. Ars Technica reports that NASA has ruled out causes linked to the sensor or heating source.
Three-day weather data for Mars at the site of InSight probe. Notice dips at 7 AM and 7 PM in air pressure section.
Credit: NASA,
Scientists think that this feature may be due to some atmospheric wave generated by the sunrise and sunset on Mars. Alternatively, downslope air flow passing by irregular topography might lead to brief atmospheric changes.
Perhaps this anomaly may be important in answering some questions regarding the formation of dust devils on Mars. These low-pressure whirlwinds can spin at up to nearly 60 miles an hours and reach colossal heights of 10 kilometers.
A dust storm ultimately sealed the fate of the iconic Opportunity rover, which was officially declared defunct last week. Most importantly, these atmospheric disturbances could threaten human lives when astronauts finally arrive on Mars. Before any boots touch Martian soil, NASA wants to understand what are the minimum winds required to lift dust off the surface in order to forecast dust storms and dust devils.
On a different note, NASA now also has an updated page where you can monitor the weather around InSight’s landing site at Elysium Planitia. This week temperatures varied between -17°C and -10°C (3°F and 15°F) during the day and hovered around -94°C (-140°F) during the night.
“What is clear is that it is a cylindrical object of two meters in length. No doubt it is not part of a terrestrial technology so it could be a sort of robotic probe programmed to monitor what happens on our planet.”
We’ll let you draw your own conclusions after watching videos that surfaced on YouTube recently – the first showing a high-speed cylindrical UFO and the second showing night-vision images of what appear to be orbs exiting from a hole or cave in the ground near where the first was taken in La Rioja in northern Spain. The source claims there are more. Let’s see if the next one is worth waiting for.
The videos come from YouTube channel Verdad Oculta (Hidden Truth) and the first was published on January 25, 2019. Taken by drone, it shows something flying by the camera at a high speed that most people would initially consider to be an insect. However, Verdad Oculta’s analysis puts it as being too big and too fast to be a bug and speculates that it could be “a new type of UFO that takes off from an extraterrestrial base hidden somewhere in Spain.” That’s an awfully big stretch from this one video that again, most would say is a bug or possibly CGI. Some comments refer to a “Utah drone video” which appears to be this one (see it here) posted on January 12 showing a similar UFO that similarly could be a bug or CGI.
Inspired by the excitement said to have been generated by the video (over 1 million views – not too shabby), Inexplicada reports this week that another crew of investigators led by Nacho Rojo met with the authors of the original video and visited the UFO site. There they found “La Grieta” (the Crack), a “vast” cavern “20 meters in length,” which mean either a diameter (big) or a circumference (not so big) of 65 feet which the authors were now saying was the origin point of the UFO. Not seeing anything during the day (but picking up some nice drone shots), this team set up infrared night vision cameras and … well, here’s what they said:
“(We captured) something no one was prepared to see. We couldn’t believe it. Not just one UFO, but two, and they crossed each other’s path in the sky. These are anomalies that shine like stars in a linear travel path, but they are not airplanes,” concludes the researchers, adding that “this is the first video-program of all the material we have, and believe me, the best is still to come.””
While not jumping to any conclusions, Nacho Rojo says “many have questioned the veracity of the recordings and many believe there is no extraterrestrial base. Our research points out the truly extraordinary nature of that place.”
Could these be something other than alien UFOs? The websiteplanetanovosti.com says this:
“According to experts, it could be orbs – energy entities from another dimension. The human eye can not notice these objects, while the equipment is under force. Orbs most often appear around similar dips. For example, they “chose” the Cave of the Swallows in Mexico. People who jump into such holes and shoot it on video, often notice mysterious lights on the recordings.”
As of this writing, there don’t seem to have been any more videos released and no reports of Spanish UFO investigators climbing into (or disappearing in) “La Grieta.” That’s usually not a good sign. Let’s hope the investigations continue (we’ll try and keep an eye out for them) and someone gets better evidence one way or the other. The orbs angle may bear more fruit than the alien base.
Aliens? Orbs? CGI? Something else? Are these alleged sightings being blown way out of proportion?
Now that the CIA has placed a trove of its dirty laundry online for all to see, all sorts of strange chapters of the intelligence agency’s past are beginning to be revealed. Since 2017, journalists and amateurs alike have been poring over the CIA’s CREST database in search of the truth about the many dark, twisted research projects and activities the Central Intelligence Agency has gotten into over the years.
Already, some interesting and somewhat unexplained things have been found. Earlier this month, files were discovered showing the CIA hunted the elusive Yeti and a mysterious “metallic disc” in the Nepalese Himalayas, while another set of files appeared to depict unexplained shadow people with curious numbers stamped on them. Who knows what else may be waiting to be discovered in the CREST databases?
This week, American government watchdog site Muckrock found an interesting set of documents outlining the CIA’s interest in and fears of psychic abilities. Many of the files describe experiments into telekinetic abilities conducted throughout the U.S., Europe, and the USSR, including experiments involving famous psychic Uri Geller. In many of these experiments, the files note, individuals were able to “evidence a new form of energy that moves and perhaps alters matter.” The documents claim that British scientists witnessed objects appearing or disappearing during some of these tests, leading to CIA fears that enemy psychics might create “poltergeist phenomena” in order to terrify and confuse their adversaries’ leadership with psychic attacks.
This aspect of the CIA’s research into possible uses of psychic phenomena is well-documented by our own Nick Redfern and others, but these documents show that the CIA’s fears went even deeper, involving worries that its greatest adversary at the time was developing psychic abilities that could be used as weapons which could cause “a massive change which will alter the direction, time, space and energy-matter relationship of our world.” Yikes.
According to these files, the CIA began tracking Soviet research into parapsychology in the 1970s. While some CIA analysts believe the KGB’s research may have been a counterintelligence ruse designed to confuse American spies, many elements of America’s intelligence agencies took the threat of Soviet psychic weapons seriously. Some analysts even feared that if enough Soviet psychics were combine their powers, they could potentially cause mass destruction with their minds:
With the above scientific speculation and laboratory experiments in mind, a weapon or weapons could be theorized. […] If we see awareness in a psychic framework and you concentrate ten individuals in one area – all of whom are evidencing disruptive telekinetic phenomena – do you cause a chain reaction, causing much matter to reverse direction and sink back into a sea of energy or be displaced in time and space? Could such a ‘critical mass’ affect a whole city?
Could such a psychic weapon exist? Have any actually been deployed? Would we know it if they were? Perhaps the “disruptive telekinetic phenomena” and mind manipulation mentioned in these files could explain our recent shift into a bizarre dystopian timeline.
While these files are a tantalizing glimpse behind the veil of government secrecy, I firmly believe that the really secret, spooky stuff will never see the light of day or was never documented on paper at all. Still, these CREST files are beginning to show that the many conspiracy theories and allegations made about the CIA’s paranormal research over the years are perhaps more true than we realize.
Yep, that probably is the strangest title I have ever applied to one of my articles. Back in 2005, I did some filming for a TV show on the world’s most famous UFO event. Yeah, you know the one: the desert, little bodies, 1947. That one. Roswell, New Mexico. Anyway, for some odd reason that I don’t think was ever really explained to me, the company chose to do the filming high in the mountains of Mexico. I actually wondered afterwards if they had mistaken Mexico for New Mexico. But regardless of the reasons behind the shoot-location, Mexico it was. And, for effect no doubt, the filming was done outside a small astronomical observatory that sat high in the mountains.
As the crew set up their equipment, I wandered around, looking for exotic lizards and a bar and something cold and potent to drink. Well, not long before we started filming, an American man – in his 50s or early 60s – strolled past, saw the cameras being set up, and engaged us in conversation. When he heard we there to film a show for a new mystery-based series, he asked – in totally casual terms – something like: “Oh, is it about the pterodactyl?” The what???!!! Yep, a pterodactyl. That got me much more interested than bloody Roswell ever could. It may surprise many to know that for absolutely years numerous reports of creatures sounding suspiciously like pterosaurs have surfaced from various parts of the worlds. Controversial? Of course!
Pteranodon
Consider the following: From 1982 to 1983, a wave of sightings of such a creature – presumed extinct for million of years – occurred in an area called the Pennines, also known as the “backbone of England.” It’s a story that, in much lengthier fashion, can collectively be found in Jenny Randles’ excellent 2002 book, Supernatural Pennines and in issue 9 of UFO Brigantia, a much-missed magazine of the 1980s and 1990s and which was edited and published by Andy Roberts.
There are also longstanding reports of sightings of such creatures in Papua New Guinea. Locally, the beasts are known as Ropen. Unlike the huge pterodactyls of yesteryear, today’s Ropen appears to be a scaled-down equivalent of its ancient ancestor. Its wingspan is often described as being in the region of four to six feet, which is not large for a pterosaur, since some of them were immense creatures. That does not stop today’s alleged equivalents from being formidable predators, however. By all accounts the Ropen has a mouth filled with vicious-looking fangs, a tail that is reptilian in appearance, and is a beast that can fly at fantastic speeds.
Back to the story…
So, I asked the man for more information. He explained he worked in the tourism industry and had heard – some two months earlier – a story of a visitor to the area who claimed to have seen a huge, leathery-looking flying monster only mere feet from where we were filming. I asked the man how he knew the exact location, and he replied along the lines of: “The guy said it was right above the observatory in the hills.” Which was exactly where we were filming. He proceeded to point to the direction of the mountains in which the monstrous creature disappeared. The man knew no more, went on his way, and I tried to think of something new and worthwhile to say for the cameras about Roswell. But to be filming a documentary on Roswell outside an astronomical observatory above which a pterodactyl was supposedly seen only mere months earlier was just plain surreal. I suppose I should not have been surprised though. I have come to learn over the years that there’s very little in this game that isn’t surreal!
Future moon settlers could produce all the water they need — by capturing solar winds.
Image via Pixabay.
Streams of charged particles propelled from the surface of the sun (known as ‘solar wind’) slam into the Moon’s surface every day. It’s not a gentle process — these particles reach speeds in excess of 450 kilometers per second (nearly 1 million miles per hour) — but it does enrich the lunar surface with the building blocks of water, a new study reports.
Water from a stone
“We think of water as this special, magical compound,” said William M. Farrell, a plasma physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, one of the study’s co-authors. “But here’s what’s amazing: every rock has the potential to make water, especially after being irradiated by the solar wind.”
The team ran a computer simulation to see what chemical changes take place in lunar rocks under the effect of solar winds.
Solar wind is basically a flow of protons. It continually blasts the Moon’s surface, breaking the bonds among molecules in regolith — lunar soil — pulling apart the atoms of silica (SiO2, basically sand) and iron oxides found within the majority of the Moon’s soil. Some of these protons also grab onto electrons in the lunar surface, producing hydrogen atoms. These atoms then work their way up through the regolith leeching the released oxygen. Together, hydrogen and oxygen make the molecule hydroxyl (OH), which is two-thirds of the water (H2O) molecule.
The findings should help further our goal of sending humans up to the Moon to establish a permanent presence there, says Orenthal James Tucker, a physicist at Goddard who led the research.
“We’re trying to learn about the dynamics of transport of valuable resources like hydrogen around the lunar surface and throughout its exosphere, or very thin atmosphere, so we can know where to go to harvest those resources,” he explains.
The research drew on infrared measurements performed on the lunar surface by several spacecraft — including NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, and India’s Chandrayaan-1. These readings offered us insight into the chemistry of the lunar surface, all of them finding evidence that water or its components — hydrogen and hydroxyl — were present in the regolith.
Exactly how such compounds wound up on the moon, however, was still a matter of debate. It was possible that they arrived on the back of meteorites impacting its surface, or that these impacts initiated the chemical reactions that created hydrogen, hydroxyl, and water. Tucker’s simulation, which traces the life cycle of hydrogen atoms on the Moon, supports the solar wind hypothesis.
“From previous research, we know how much hydrogen is coming in from the solar wind, we also know how much is in the Moon’s very thin atmosphere, and we have measurements of hydroxyl in the surface,” he says. “What we’ve done now is figure out how these three inventories of hydrogen are physically intertwined.”
The findings also helped us understand why spacecraft have found fluctuations in the amount of hydrogen in different regions of the Moon. All the hydrogen atoms created by solar wind bombardment eventually escape into space (since it’s much less dense than all other compounds). However, hydrogen tends to accumulate predominantly in the Moon’s colder areas since it gets energized by sunlight, making it escape much faster.
“The whole process is like a chemical factory,” Farrell said.
A key implication of the findings, Farrell said, is that every exposed body of silica in space — from the Moon down to a small dust grain — has the potential to create hydroxyl and thus become a chemical factory for water.
The paper ” Solar Wind Implantation Into the Lunar Regolith: Monte Carlo Simulations of H Retention in a Surface With Defects and the H 2 Exosphere” has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Pictured: one of Mary’s offspring in the aquarium at School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham.
Credit: Laura Dean.
Stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) make babies without having sex. Like most other fish, the female lays unfertilized eggs which the males later fertilize with sperm in the nest. But somehow, one such female got pregnant and produced offspring through an emergency C-section. The female, aptly named Mary, shows that evolution is fluid and that nature doesn’t always play by the rules.
“We were astounded at what we found when we examined Mary in our lab in the Outer Hebrides. She looked like an ordinary egg-bound fish so we couldn’t believe it when we found she had almost completely developed embryos inside her ovaries. This is pretty much unheard of in an egg laying species. The embryos were perfectly healthy, not deformed in any way, and most have gone on to live a normal adult lifespan,” Dr. Laura Dean, a researcher at the University of Nottingham and lead author of the new study, said.
This isn’t the first time that scientists have come across developing embryos inside unfertilized egg-laying fish. Previously, only two such cases were known to science and both also involved stickleback fish. This most recent case is even more striking because this time, the embryos survived and many of the pups grew into adults that are still alive today.
Researchers found Mary while surveying egg-bound sticklebacks in Scotland — and she wasn’t in great shape. She was swollen with her young and very close to dying. Researchers euthanized Mary with drugs and then opened her up to extract the eggs. A total of 56 eggs hatched and survived to adulthood inside a laboratory aquarium. Twenty of these individuals are still alive today, three years later, the authors wrote in the journal Scientific Reports.
VIDEO: Embryos moving showing beating hearts just before hatching.
Credit: University of Nottingham.
Stickleback males don’t just contribute sperm. They have an active parenting role, helping eggs develop by fanning them with their fins for two weeks until they hatch. But it seems like the environment inside Mary was good enough to ensure healthy embryo development.
“Although this almost accidental find revealed a vanishingly rare phenomenon, it might help us to understand a really important change that has happened throughout the tree of life,” Andrew MacColl, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nottingham in England, said in a statement. “Most animals lay eggs, but some (including almost all mammals, but few fish) retain their eggs inside and give birth to live young. Although this appears to be a difficult thing to achieve in evolution, this one little fish seems to have got there almost by itself.”
As to how Mary got pregnant in the first place, that’s a mystery that might never be solved. Researchers thought that perhaps Mary had cloned herself or that maybe she was a hermaphrodite with both male and female sex organs. However, the authors ruled these two possibilities out since genetic testing showed that the offspring had versions of genes that could only have come from a father.
What probably happened is that Mary strayed by a nest where a male had just recently ejected sperm to fertilize normal eggs. Some of that sperm must have traveled up Mary’s egg tube, fertilizing some of the un-laid eggs inside her.
Researchers are now planning to go the site where they found Mary, hoping the catch similar specimens. Some fish, such as guppies pupfish, are livebearers and this ability may have evolved independently. In this regard, Mary may offer researchers with a glimpse of how such an evolutionary leap might occur.
The Most impressive UFO sighting of the last decades over area 51
The Most impressive UFO sighting of the last decades over area 51
For decades, a US military installation located approximately 161 kilometers north of Las Vegas has been one of the greatest secrets on the planet. We are talking aboutArea 51, a strange place where supposedly prototype tests of military spy planes are carried out, although it also has a certain relationship with extraterrestrials.(UFO sighting Area 51)
But in August 2013, secret information about Area 51 was finally declassified. The documents made references to Area 51 and detailed how the mysterious installation served as evidence for the CIA, the US Air Force and the aerospace company Lockheed. Even these documents included a map confirming their exact location. However, he mentioned absolutely nothing about experiments or extraterrestrial technology. This “revelation”It caused an earthquake in the conspiracy community, which publicly denounced how the government of the United States had eliminated this information in the disqualified documents thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA for its acronym in English). But the reclassification did not prevent news and publications from continuing to spread, as in Area 51, tests were made with aircraft created with extraterrestrial technology.(UFO sighting Area 51)
As expected, the US government did not confirm any of that. Fortunately, and thanks to the Internet, we can already enjoy evidence that shows how Area 51 is much more than a simple military installation. As a recently published video, it clearly shows a UFO at an incredible speed near Area 51. And for many, it is the best sighting of the last decades.(UFO sighting Area 51)
The incredible UFO of Area 51
The drone pilots Sam Chortek and Jimmy Chappie were in the US city of Beaver, Utah, near Area 51, with the intention of filming an extensive video for a documentary. But when they reviewed the images, they discovered that they recorded something more than the simple landscape.(UFO sighting Area 51)
In the video you can clearly see a strange silver-colored object that suddenly appears from a mountain and passes in front of the drone. It moves at a speed so fast that the shape of the object seems to deform, which makes it difficult to identify it.
According to the OVNI File portal , this incident occurred in October 2016, and both Chortek and Chappie decided not to make it public. But they have changed their minds, since earlier this year they contacted Huffington Post journalist Brian Hanley , who normally covers content related to politics. After watching the video, he was so impressed with the UFO sighting that he shared it on his YouTube channel.
“Normally I cover politics, but when Sam Chortek and Jimmy Chappie came to see me with this exclusive material, I had to change the story,” explains Hanley. “This video has never been seen by anyone until now.”
And after its publication in social networks, many users said that it is one of the best videos of UFOs, not only of the last decades, but also of history . Some experts in the field have considered that it has a saucer shape, others consider that it seems to change shape, but it is clear that it takes a second to leave behind the mountain and then pass in front of the drone, so its speed oscillates between 750 and 800 kilometers per hour.(UFO sighting Area 51)
Although the skeptics have another opinion about the strange unidentified flying object. Because airspace near or over Area 51 is used for test flights and training missions, it could be an experimental aircraft. Sometimes the aircraft can be strange, maybe even not identifiable.
Skeptics point out that many UFO sightings near Area 51 are secret aircraft training exercises, both manned and unmanned. The other possibility offered by “non-believers” is that it is an image generated by a computer program or an insect. Although, as noted by the experts of the UFO File , it can be clearly seen that the mysterious object turns and performs impossible movements , ruling out that it is an insect.
It is a really impressive video, and certainly the strange object does not look like any known aircraft and no insect. And if we discard the possibility that it is a computer generated image, we are facing one of the best UFO videos in history. Now we only need to know your opinion.
Is it the best UFO video in history? Or do you have another explanation?
Voor de kust van Cape Brett, bij het Nieuw-Zeelandse Noordereiland, filmde duiker Ben Laurie (21) een enorm wezen van maar liefst tien meter lang. “Het leek op een soort condoom of buis die dreef in het getij”, vertelt Laurie. “Een deel van mij wilde dichterbij en het aanraken, maar ik was ongerust dat het mogelijk giftig was, dus ik hield afstand.”
Het bleek een pyrosome die opdoemde uit de diepte. Die bestaat uit honderden tot duizenden manteldieren die samengehouden worden in een gelatine-achtige cilindrische of conische structuur. De wezens zijn zelden te zien omdat ze doorgaans heel diep leven.
Honderden fotografen en natuurliefhebbers trekken dezer dagen naar Yosemite National Park in de Amerikaanse staat Californië, want daar is deze week de zogenaamde “firefall” te bewonderen. Tussen december en april ontstaat langs de berg El Capitan een tijdelijke waterval door smeltende sneeuw. Als die waterval in februari al stroomt, zorgt de ondergaande zon voor een lichtspektakel met een bijzonder effect.
Beste bezoeker, Heb je zelf al ooit een vreemde waarneming gedaan, laat dit dan even weten via email aan Frederick Delaere opwww.ufomeldpunt.be. Deze onderzoekers behandelen jouw melding in volledige anonimiteit en met alle respect voor jouw privacy. Ze zijn kritisch, objectief maar open minded aangelegd en zullen jou steeds een verklaring geven voor jouw waarneming! DUS AARZEL NIET, ALS JE EEN ANTWOORD OP JOUW VRAGEN WENST, CONTACTEER FREDERICK. BIJ VOORBAAT DANK...
Druk op onderstaande knop om je bestand , jouw artikel naar mij te verzenden. INDIEN HET DE MOEITE WAARD IS, PLAATS IK HET OP DE BLOG ONDER DIVERSEN MET JOUW NAAM...
Druk op onderstaande knop om een berichtje achter te laten in mijn gastenboek
Alvast bedankt voor al jouw bezoekjes en jouw reacties. Nog een prettige dag verder!!!
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.
Environmental 'time bomb': It will be another CENTURY before...
Energy generated by wind farms in the North Sea could be...
Summer heatwaves in the UK are up to THREE TIMES more...
'Digital Ritalin' could be used to improve concentration:...
