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 NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
One very strange phenomenon that has become more popular and pervasive in the world of the paranormal is what has come to be called the Mandela Effect. It deals with the preponderance of people who have very vivid memories of things being differently than they are, of recalling people, events, and places differently than the way they are represented in actual reality, a sort of a mass misremembering of the same facts or details by a large number of people. This can apply to popular culture such as movies, or extend to historical events and beyond, and it has even popped up in the form of people remembering the actual geography of the world differently than what it is.
The theory itself has its origins in 2010 with a paranormal researcher named Fiona Broome, when she found that a fact she clearly remembered seeing on the news, that Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s, was actually wrong and that he in fact was still alive at the time, indeed living until 2013, when he died from a respiratory illness at his home. This perplexed her, as she so vividly and clearly remembered his death in the 80s, and when she voiced this puzzlement online there was a deluge of others who seemed to share this memory of the same thing, claiming that they clearly recalled seeing it on the news, could envision the reports, and even that they had been taught about it at school. The name eventually stuck as a new phenomenon that became a persistent feature of the lexicon of the paranormal, and the term “Mandela Effect” stuck, encompassing all manner of feature of our reality that for whatever reasons a massive number of people remember completely wrong, perhaps suggesting the possibility of alternate parallel dimensions beyond our comprehension.
A very common facet of the Mandela Effect with regards to geography is the surprisingly large number of people who distinctly and clearly remember whole countries being different shapes, sizes, or in different positions than they were before. The most dramatic of these are those places that seem to have completely changed location. A very famous example of this is the island nation of New Zealand. Without looking at a map, where do you picture it being? Does it lie to the northeast of Australia or the southeast? Is it to the east of the continent or the west?
The correct answer is that New Zealand is located to the far southeast of Australia, approximately 1,200 miles from the mainland, but for many this might be quite a jolt. It appears that there is a large and very vocal population of people, in rare cases even those who actually live in New Zealand, who insist that this is wrong according to their memory. Interestingly, there seem to be different camps of those who remember the location differently. For some it is supposed to be much farther south than it is, for others they learned it was to the northeast rather than the southeast, and usually remembered as much closer to the Australia mainland than actually is, and for others still it is supposed to lie completely on the other side of the Australian continent to the west rather than the east. One Reddit commenter says of this all:
I remember it west of Australia. Sixteen years ago I bought a globe. I was actually thinking about Australia and New Zealand and how I didn’t know much about either, so I thought I should really know where they are. So I looked at my globe and saw it as a big landmass west of Australia. I thought ‘this is a good way to remember it, it seems exotic to me because it is further away from the United States, further west.
This seems to be no minor quibble or random mistake for some of these people, as there are plenty of people who seem to be genuinely shocked and horrified to learn the real location. As another Reddit commenter says, it was practically life-changing for him to be confronted with this anomalous geographical discrepancy:
When this all came to my attention a couple days ago I go over to my sister’s room and look for this globe we’ve had for years. First place I look is for New Zealand northeast area of Australia… lo and behold, New Zealand is now southeast of Australia in the middle of nowhere. At that point it felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I won the geography award in grade school and have a plaque that my parents still have on display, and I’m willing to scan it to prove it. Geography is something I’ve always had a keen awareness of.
One commonly held memory of where people think New Zealand is
It is not only New Zealand either, and there are other island countries that people adamantly insist were once in different locations. A popular one is the country of Sri Lanka. Again, where do you remember it as being? If you said it is obviously directly to the south of India, then you are wrong. Sri Lanka actually lies to the southeast of India, a fact that seems to really bother a lot of people who insist that it should be directly to the south of the tip of mainland India. One commenter on the site TheMandela Effect has said of this:
I have interviewed 5 persons regarding the location of Sri Lanka(ceylon)and asked them to draw a map, all of them drew it as they remembered and it was far far downwards, further I asked them to draw a horizontal line touching the tip of India’s extremity, the line went over the sea, all clear… and all were cynics.
Almost everybody remembers the country located further south beyond the tip of India. Being Indian I have the advantage of getting genuine feed back, and the peculiarity of Sri Lanka is that India is the only neighbor and people in India are aware of this sensivity and are keen enough to notice the location.
Other island nations are also constantly remembered as being in the wrong place as well. Cuba is often remembered as having been closer to Florida than Mexico, but it is actually closer to the latter. It is 214 km from Mexico and 228 km from Florida. Japan is also hotly debated, with a great many people convinced that it used to be farther south, nearer to China, when it actually sits much farther north than is recalled, next to Russia. Greenland is also remembered as in the wrong place, and many are quite shocked to learn that it not only is only 14 miles from Canada, but that it is actually much larger than recalled, a full 836,000 Sq. miles in area, about 21 times the size of Iceland. Speaking of different sizes and shapes, a large number of people also remember Russia as looking much different than it does, claiming that it looks decidedly wrong when looking at it now, to the point that it is baffling for some.
To anyone who correctly remembers the location, shapes, and sizes of these places all of this talk of how they are remembered differently must seem absurd, but it’s interesting how persistent and uniform many of these false memories are, how badly they jar and unsettle those faced with cold, hard reality, and they are enough that there are whole forums devoted to heatedly discussing these issues. Just about as bizarre as remembering countries in different places are those locations that seem to have appeared from nowhere or to have conversely disappeared off the face of the Earth.
By far the weirdest and most intensely discussed of these among Mandela Effect theorists nowadays is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean called Svalbard, which is an Unincorporated area of Norway. It is a large land, 23,561 sq. miles in dimension, with a rich history spanning back to the 12th century and its own culture, traditions, and people. The problem is that for a lot of people it should not be there, and looks decidedly out of place on maps, just sitting out there where nothing existed before. How could so many people misremember this place as not existing? It might seem rather ridiculous if you remember correctly, but there is a very vocal contingent of people who are certain that Svalbard never existed until very recently for them.
Svalbard
Another place that quite a few people don’t remember existing before is the Canadian territory of Nunavut, which is the largest territory of Canada and is larger than Texas, California and France combined. Some people find this baffling, as they have never heard of it, and although it is a relatively new territory, being split from the Northwest Territories in 1999, it still is rather jarring for a surprising number of people. Perhaps even stranger is a country that was in existence from the Middle Ages all the way up until the 1800s, called Great Tartary. It was considered a major power at the time, and was vast in area, being even larger than Russia, positioned in the northern part of Asia and bounded by Siberia on the north and west. Although it is no longer a country, for such a large country with such an illustrious history it seems odd that so few people have ever heard of it, with many insisting that it never existed before.
Adding to all of the anomalies we have looked at so far are persistent and pervasive miscellaneous geographical conundrums that a lot of people remember wrong in the same way. A common one is that there is the vast number of people who swear that they distinctly learned that the United States has 51 states, or even 52, rather than the correct 50, and insist that in their remembered history Puerto Rico is a state. This might seem ludicrous to some, but they are adamant that their memory on this is very clear. Another is the location of Fort Knox, the military base famous for its gold reserves, which is located in the state of Kentucky, but which many very clearly remember as being in Tennessee. There are even those who claim to have been stationed there or know people who were, who insist that they were in Tennessee, not Kentucky. Weird.
Fort Knox
Again, for those who remember this all correctly, this must all seem pretty wild. It must seem to obviously be just the result of ignorance or stupidity mixed with the fact that most people don’t look at maps on a regular basis and their mind just sort of fills in the blanks of what they don’t know. Yet, a lot of the people who claim these discrepancies between what they remember and reality are well-educated, normal people, and these mistakes are so clearly remembered wrongly in a similar way across the board that it is at the very least an interesting psychological phenomenon, and perhaps something far stranger. People are so convinced that the world once looked differently that there are even whole maps available online of how the world should look to them versus how it actually appears. Why do these people remember these geographical details so wrongly and to such a degree that it is very often mentally troubling for them when confronted with the truth? It largely depends on who you ask.
For proponents of the Mandela Effect, this is all indicative of some sort of mysterious mass shift between two different realities. This relies on a concept known as the “multiverse,” which proposes that there are infinite parallel and offshoot universes coexisting with ours, with infinite permutations and infinite versions of you inhabiting many of them. In some of these alternate dimensions the difference could be very slight, such as you wearing a red t-shirt today instead of a blue one. In another, things could be more dramatic, such as having a different president, another one in which history is different, or even one in which the dinosaurs never went extinct.
In relation to the Mandela Effect, the idea is at some point a number of people has transferred over to a different timeline in a parallel dimension, while retaining the memories of how things were in their own reality. These two realities might be nearly identical, with the only differences being subtle yet jarring, such as in this case the location or size of a country or place. Making it even more bizarre is that this may have involved a straight swap with the you from this new reality and the other one, meaning that while one version of you wonders where, say, Svalbard came from, the other you from this reality is in the one you came from, wondering where in the world Svalbard went. For proponents of this cause of the Mandela Effect, it is all caused by the fact that the details and timelines of the two parallel universe don’t line up exactly, which can drive these people nuts and lodge into their psyche like splinters in the mind. How this shift happened or how many people were involved is anyone’s guess, and the ones who remember correctly are the ones who never left, and are safely in their home reality.
It’s all a very interesting, sci-fi sounding concept that is great as a thought experiment, but unfortunately there is ultimately no evidence at all that this has actually happened to any degree other than the insistence of those who are absolutely sure that reality does not match what they so clearly and potently remember. This forces us to look at more mundane possible explanations, and this mainly comes down to pointing out just how unreliable and malleable memories can be. Indeed, it has been show that memories can be influenced or even created with enough suggestion and belief, and false memories are surprisingly common. Although we still don’t fully understand how memories work or how our brain processes them, it has been found that memories can be subject to changes and evolve or be warped over time, and this can be influenced by how confident you are in that memory, even if it’s wrong, and what those around you think. As the site Stuff.com New Zealandsays:
It seems that the act of remembering something over and over again builds your confidence in that memory – even if you are more and more wrong every time. Which, really, explains the Mandela Effect well. You may stumble upon the community with a few things misremembered, a few details out of place, then by virtue of reading about hundreds of others who agree with you, set that wrong memory in stone. Suddenly you aren’t thinking “oh I thought that was there,” you’re thinking “I definitely know that it was in a different place”. Your ideology is rewarded and reinforced, as it is in any community.
Is that what is going on here? Are so many people just conjuring up these memories in their heads? Is this the result of some sort of mental short circuit or psychological trick, or is there something else at work to it all? Has the world changed from one universe and timeline to another for some people? There are numerous other examples of the Mandela Effect and geography, and I have only presented some of the odder and more widely discussed, but they all seem perplexing and widespread enough to give food for thought, regardless of whether one remembers it the “right way” or not. Considering there is not much we are able to do to prove the existence of other realities, or that people have traveled unwittingly between them, it is likely that the debate will continue, with those who think it is all an illusion on one side and those individuals for whom the world looks different than their memory on the other.
NASA is not content with merely looking for aliens visiting Earth or sending us messages from their home planets … now it’s creating alien DNA on its own. What could possibly go wrong … and how can you get in on this ground floor opportunity and make alien DNA at home for fun and profit?
“For a long time we’ve had hints that life evolved from G, A, T, C, not because they were exactly the right raw materials but because they were simply available. Steve’s four letters [S, P, Z, B] are, at least in terms of stability, in every way equivalent to nature’s four letters.”
No, that’s not a strategy for winning the National Spelling Bee but a simple description of how Steven A. Benner, a synthetic biologist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida, doubled the number of chemical building blocks (adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T)) or nucleotides that make up all DNA by adding the synthetic chemical pairs purine (P, B) and pyrimidine (Z, S) to make an 8-letter synthetic DNA Benner’s team named “hachimoji DNA” from the Japanese words for eight (hachi) and letter (moji). The research was published recently in the journal Science and funded by NASA, whose press release touts this as a really big deal.
“Life detection is an increasingly important goal of NASA’s planetary science missions, and this new work will help us to develop effective instruments and experiments that will expand the scope of what we look for.”
Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, explains that this essentially proves that there can be other forms of DNA on other planets or moons in our solar system and beyond. And yes, Benner’s team created real 8-letter DNA which can line up with RNA and transfer its genetic information into proteins essential for life. And that brings us back to the question: “What could possibly go wrong?”
“We’re starting to think of it as ‘cryptogenetics’. An expanded alphabet gives you the opportunity to make bigger, better, stronger, faster things in general.”
Things like what? University of Texas biochemist Andrew Ellington, a co-author of the study, reveals in Nature that he evolved the enzymes to turn hachimoji DNA into RNA in his lab and made a strand of synthetic RNA that resembles a sequence found in spinach. The synthetic spinach that got loose in the environment, destroyed the world’s crops and drove humanity to extinction? Not yet, but Benner has more noble causes – he’s made hachimoji RNA that can find and bind to liver tumors and breast cancer cells in a petri dish and foresees a day when it could help detect viruses or environmental toxins.
Is this really alien DNA? If your definition of ‘alien’ is ‘not found in nature on Earth’, then the answer is yes. And it’s just the beginning. Floyd Romesberg, a chemical biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, was not part of the study but told Nature that this opens the possibility to create DNA with ten or 12 letters, requiring the need to learn more Japanese numbers. But eight is already a really big deal.
“It’s already doubling what nature has.”
Something nature doesn’t have, while funded by NASA, is in the hands of corporate entities who could easily keep it to themselves. If it’s happening here, it’s happening elsewhere too.
For years, scientists have recognized the limitations of radio astronomy in the search for extraterrestrial life. Utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum to search for alien signals is problematic partly because it relies on searching for quiet areas in an otherwise noisy medium, as viewed from Earth. To be able to search for possible signals from far off places, astronomers have had to rely on finding regions where natural noise is minimized; and although such a “quiet” region exists between 1.42 and 1.67 gigahertz, affectionately known as the “Cosmic Water Hole,” one might compare this to trying to examine an entire ocean while peering through a straw.
Because of these obvious limitations, astronomers have been looking at new ways to engage the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and this includes forms of optical SETI that search for the presence of laser pulses that might originate from other places in our universe.
The prospects for such technologies have been exciting, but perhaps nowhere more than with the discovery of KIC 8462852 or “Tabby’s Star, an unusual star whose odd behavior has raised questions about everything from cosmic particulate that may encircle it, to the unlikely (but not impossible) supposition that it may represent an alien “megastructure.”
One group that has been exploring such possibilities is the SETI team at UC Berkeley, which garnered attention last year for one of its project leaders: David Lipman, who is now a student attending Princeton, had still been in high school at the time he began working with the project. In their most recent published study, the team has been sourcing data from the Breakthrough Listen Project “in an effort to detect potential laser signals from extraterrestrial civilizations.”
Lipman and his team decided to observe Tabby’s Star for evidence of laser light sources greater than 24 megawatts, which marks the lower regions of light a telescope would be able to detect at the distance between Earth and KIC 8462852. The survey relied on source data mined from the Lick Observatory’s Automated Planet Finder telescope, part of the Breakthrough Listen Project and one of the many systems that scientific organizations–some of them on the civilian level–have been using to scour the cosmos for signs of life.
The team’s paper, submitted for peer review in December, relates that they analyzed 177 high-res spectra of KIC 8462852, of which they say the “top candidates from the analysis can all be explained as either cosmic ray hits, stellar emission lines or atmospheric air glow emission lines.” Although they did not find evidence of any anomalous light sources, a number of insights were made into how future studies may be conducted to search various promising regions of space.
As advanced as laser SETI and its potentials are, varieties that have been developed in recent years have their own limitations, which have led SETI researchers to consider ways that more complex arrays that incorporate larger data sets might be instituted.
According to astronomer Seth Shostak, the SETI Institute has its sights set on incorporating just such a system. In July, 2017 the astronomer wrote, “The SETI Institute has developed an instrument that, at relatively low cost, could continuously survey the entire night sky for brief laser pulses. This is completely unlike the optical SETI efforts that have been made in the past, and continue to be made today: experiments that use sensitive photomultiplier detectors, but are limited to one star system at a time. That’s akin to a radio SETI search able to only monitor a single frequency channel. Extremely limited.”
Whether or not Tabby’s Star and its unusual characteristics ever prove to be the “smoking gun” in the search for extraterrestrial life, new technologies that will continuously search for laser pulses emanating from distant planets, as Shostak describes, could eventually be a game-changer as far as finding evidence of life on other worlds. As such, the future for SETI research looks very promising, indeed.
Cracks growing across the Brunt Ice Shelf are poised to release an iceberg about twice the size of New York City. A scientific presence on the ice shelf since 1955 has an uncertain future.
Cracks in Brunt Ice Shelf, as of January 23, 2019. Note the research stations, part of the British Antarctic Survey, whose presence on the ice shelf began in 1955. Halley IV had to be closed in 1992, due to destabilized ice. In 2016-2017, the Halley VI station was relocated to a safer location (Halley VIa) upstream of the growing crack.
Cracks growing across Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelfreveal that the shelf is poised to release an iceberg with an area about twice the size of New York City. The crack along the top of the January 23, 2019, image above — the so-called Halloween crack — first appeared in late October 2016 and continues to grow eastward from an area known as theMcDonald Ice Rumples(see image below). The more immediate concern is the rift visible in the center of the image. Previously stable for about 35 years, this crack recently started accelerating northward as fast as 2.5 miles (4 km) per year.
NASA said:
It is not yet clear how the remaining ice shelf will respond following the break, posing an uncertain future for scientific infrastructure and a human presence on the shelf that was first established in 1955.
Location of the Brunt Ice Shelf.
Image via NASA Earth Observatory.
When the fast-growing crack cuts all the way across the ice shelf, the area of ice lost from the shelf will likely be at least 660 square miles (1,700 square km). Although that’s not an enormous iceberg by Antarctic standards, it might be the largest berg to break from the Brunt Ice Shelf since observations began in 1915.
Scientists are watching to see if the loss will trigger the shelf to further change and possibly become unstable or break up. What will happen? Joe MacGregor, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said:
The near-term future of Brunt Ice Shelf likely depends on where the existing rifts merge relative to the McDonald Ice Rumples. If they merge upstream (south) of the McDonald Ice Rumples, then it’s possible that the ice shelf will be destabilized.
McDonald Ice Rumples. The rumples happen when ice flows over an underwater formation, where the bedrock rises high enough to reach into the underside of the ice shelf. The rocky formation impedes the flow of ice and causes pressure waves, crevasses, and rifts to form at the surface.
The growing cracks have prompted safety concerns for people working on the shelf, particularly researchers at the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Station. This major base for Earth, atmospheric and space science research typically operates year-round, but has been closed down twice in recent years due to unpredictable changes in the ice. The station has also been rebuilt and relocated over the decades.
Calving – the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacier – is a normal part of the life cycle of ice shelves, but the recent changes are unfamiliar in this area. The edge of the Brunt Ice Shelf has evolved slowly since Ernest Shackleton surveyed the Antarctic coast in 1915, but it has been speeding up in the past several years.
These 2 satellites images – this one and the one below – of Brunt Ice Shelf show a big change in the size of the shelf over decades. This one was taken on January 30, 1986.
MICHIO KAKU: The US scientist believes aliens could have cybernetic features (Pic: GETTY)
ALIENS: Many people believe there is intelligent life beyond Earth (Pic: GETTY)
“I think one day when we actually meet aliens from outer space, they will not be totally biological, they may be part cyborg, part biological.
“We’re so brainwashed into thinking they must look like Captain Kirk, right, that we neglect the fact that if they are that advanced, then they realise there are limitations to a biological body.
“They may be part cybernetic and not totally biological so I think we are missing the boat there.”
AVI LOEB: The Harvard University scientist admitted he thinks there is alien life in space (Pic: GETTY)
Avi Loeb, 57, chair of the prestigious university’s astronomy department, told The New Yorker: “I do not view the possibility of a technological civilisation as speculative, for two reasons.
“The first is that we exist. And the second is that at least a quarter of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy have a planet like Earth, with surface conditions that are very similar to Earth, and the chemistry of life as we know it could develop.
“If you roll the dice so many times, and there are tens of billions of stars in the Milky Way, it is quite likely we are not alone.”
NASA has turned its attention away from the planets in our solar system in the search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system and is focusing on the moons orbiting some of the larger planets. One such object of study is Saturn’s moon Enceladus, seen in the image below.
In this image, the rainbow-like spire jutting from the side of the moon is a false color image of icy particles and water that spew into space from an ocean deep under the icy surface of the moon. Scientists believe that life on Earth originally started deep in the ancient ocean, conditions that could exist in the oceans of Enceladus. A NASA experiment has recreated how scientists think that life on Earth could have started in the ancient ocean inside a lab.
NASA scientist Laurie Barge and her team were working on ways to find life on other planets by studying how life started on Earth. The research specifically focused on how the building blocks of life form in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. In the experiment, the team formed mini seafloors in beakers filled with a mixture that mimicked the primordial oceans of Earth.
The experiments showed that the beaker oceans acted as nurseries for amino acids, which are essential to life as we know it. Amino acids build on each other to create proteins, which make up all living things on the planet. The experiments looked at hydrothermal vents where natural chimneys form as heated fluid from deep inside the Earth flows out.
Where the heated fluids exit into the ocean creating an environment where life was able to grow and flourish and still does to this day despite the cold ocean depths, this same process could mean life exists on icy worlds like Enceladus. The experiment used water, minerals, and precursor molecules pyruvate and ammonia, all needed to make amino acids. The solution was heated to 158-degrees Fahrenheit, the same temperature found in thermal vents. Another mineral called iron hydroxide was used, which reacted with the little oxygen found in primordial oceans to produce alanine, an amino acid, and alpha hydroxyl acid lactate. Ultimately, the team found that the experiment led the building blocks for life to occur.
A Russian Soyuz rocket lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to deliver the Egyptian Earth-observation satellite EgyptSat-A into orbit on Feb. 21, 2019.
A Russian Soyuz rocket launched an Egyptian Earth-observation satellite into orbit on Thursday (Feb. 21) despite experiencing technical problems a few minutes after liftoff.
The three-stage Soyuz rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:47 a.m. EST (1647 GMT), topped with the satellite EgyptSat-A, which was attached to the rocket's Fregat upper stage. Although Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, and the satellite's manufacturer, RSC Energia, reported that the satellite had reach its intended orbit, multiple Russian news reports "suggested [that] the mission may have experienced a close call during the climb into orbit," Spaceflight Now reported.
According to Spaceflight Now, EgyptSat-A and the Fregat upper stage had entered a "lower-than-expected orbit" after separating from the Soyuz rocket 9 minutes after liftoff — likely due to a problem with the rocket's third-stage engine. However, the Fregat upper stage "appeared to have corrected the apparent performance shortfall," boosting the satellite to its intended polar orbit, at an altitude of about 400 miles (650 kilometers).
The $100 million EgyptSat-A will provide high-resolution images of Earth for Egypt's National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS). EgyptSat-A was built as a replacement for EgyptSat-2, which failed in April 2015, three years into its planned 11-year mission.
Thursday's anomaly led the European launch provider Arianespace to postpone lofting the first 10 OneWeb communications satellites by one day, to Tuesday (Feb. 26), because that mission will also use a Soyuz rocket. "That flight is slated to use a Soyuz ST-B rocket, a variant that uses the same third-stage design as the Soyuz-2.1b launcher that flew Thursday with EgyptSat-A," Spaceflight Now reported.
"At least one day slip for the launch. Ugh," Greg Wyler, founder and executive chairman, tweeted after EgyptSat-A's launch on Thursday. "Glad to see EgyptSat-A launch was successful but need to review more data on that launch before proceeding. Waiting patiently."
You can now ride along withVirgin Galacticat the edge of space. An incredible new video shows footage from the SpaceShipTwo-class suborbital rocket VSS Unity launching from its carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo.
With a mountain range below, Unity lights up its engines. A few frames later, the spacecraft soars into a black sky, the curve of the Earth underneath it. Unity clocked a peak altitude of 55.87 miles (89.9 kilometers), which is slightly above the U.S. Air Force's defined boundary of space — the second time a Virgin Galactic spacecraft has surpassed that boundary.
In the video Unity slowly rotates against the black backdrop of space, displaying black-outlined diagrams of several airplanes and space planes along its hull.
"Welcome to space," one of the two pilots says. In addition to pilots Dave Mackay and Michael "Sooch' Masucci, a third Virgin Galactic staff member, Beth Moses, was also on board. Moses is the company's chief astronaut instructor and served as the company's first test passenger.
"Welcome to the club, astronauts," says one of the ground controllers.
Part of the flight's purpose was to provide more data about how the human body adapts to space during SpaceShipTwo flights, and how passengers feel. Unity also carried four NASA payloads, with the aim of studying data such as dust particles, payload vibration and liquid/gas interactions.
Unity's Feb. 22 voyage brought it to a maximum altitude some 4.4 miles (7 km higher) than its historic flight of Dec. 13, which was the first time Virgin Galactic breached the Air Force's space boundary. However, both spaceflights' ascent was well short of the Kármán Line of 62 miles (100 km) that the International Astronautical Federation considers to be the beginning of space.
Hundreds of potential space tourists have already claimed a spot for suborbital flights aboard Virgin spacecraft, paying $250,000 apiece for the privilege. Entrepreneur Richard Branson, who founded the company, said he hopes to fly for the first time on July 16, 2019 — the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's launch of three humans to the moon.
The Great Barrier Reef Was Just Hit by a Flood of Polluted Water Visible From Space
CARLY CASSELLA
The Great Barrier Reef just can't catch a break. Year after year, this global treasure has been battered by cyclones and beaten by bleaching events. Now, with little time to recover, a part of the reef is being kicked while its down.
An exceptional year of rainfall in Queensland, Australia has caused a huge flood of polluted runoff to rush out to sea, straight towards the reef.
Satellite images show the muddy waters stretching from the swollen rivers of the Whitsundays to Cape Tribulation.
(NASA)
For the nearest reefs, some 60 kilometres away from shore, the floodwater has already arrived, possibly shielding the sun and smothering the life below.
The biggest fear, according to the ABC, is that the muddy waters contain common farming chemicals, like nitrogen or phosphorous, because these could kill off the nearby coral and seagrass.
The longer the murky cloud sits there, the more damage it could do, and without strong winds, the plume of polluted water may take a while to move on.
AFP news agency✔@AFP
Smothering life: Runoff from recent floods in Australia is flowing onto parts of the Great Barrier Reef starving coral of light http://u.afp.com/J3yV
Right now, it's not clear if or how the runoff has impacted the reef, but there's not a lot more we can afford to lose.
Back in 2016, 93 percent of the reef was reported to be bleached due to unseasonably warm weather, with 50 percent listed as dead or dying, and some think it can no longer be saved.
(NASA)
But there may be an upside to all of this. If the rivers transport cold water out to sea and if the clouds continue to block out the sun, this might be enough to cool down some underwater heatwaves headed for the region in the coming weeks.
"If you want to have a flipside to the story that would be one, yes," marine scientists Frederieke Kroon told the ABC, "but it's still a huge disturbance to the reef [after] the bleaching and the cyclones that we've had over the last couple of years."
High Speed UFO makes 90 degrees turn without slowing down filmed over Doi Ang Khang, Thailand
High Speed UFO makes 90 degrees turn without slowing down filmed over Doi Ang Khang, Thailand
When selecting video material for their wedding video, the couple discovered a UFO in the video flying at an incredible speed over Doi Ang Khang, Thailand.
The most fascinating aspect of this UFO fastwalker is the fact that it abruptly makes a 90-degree turn without slowing down.
Again the question, what are these flying objects that manifest themselves in our atmosphere and in space?
Is it possible that these fastwalkers are advanced transport vehicles under intelligent control carrying highly confidence messages or codes from and to certain locations?
The video was made in 2013 but recently uploaded on February 17, 2019. You have to slow the speed of the video (video-settings-speed) to see the amazing movements of the UFO.
UFO Caught on TV Zooming Over Cleveland, and You Won't Believe NASA's Response
UFO Caught on TV Zooming Over Cleveland, and You Won't Believe NASA's Response
The unidentified streak of light was accidentally picked up by cameras belonging to a local television channel in the early morning hours of 21 February, with journalists failing to even notice the blip until it was uploaded to YouTube by UFO hunters.
The footage, published by UFOmania, has garnered close to 50,000 views, and sparked an online debate about whether it was an alien craft, a missile, a firework, swamp gas, a weather balloon, or something else.
Amid the hype, NBC affiliate WKYC, whose cameras picked up the footage, reexaminedthe video for themselves in HD, and contacted a NASA expert, who told them that the streak was just a bird.
Thomas Wertman, a local UFO watcher, similarly downplayed the clip's significance, saying that the 'unidentified flying object' was "most likely a gull," and not really anything out of this world.
"I can actually see the wings going up and down and this is not uncommon. I've had some other videos submitted over the past that have turned out to be insects, when you get a very high quality resolution, you can even see the wings going up and down as it goes across the screen," he said.
"So we can move this from the category of unidentified flying object to identified flying object," WKYC concluded.
But WKYC's viewers weren't so sure. On the channel's Facebook page, users insisted that the footage was real, or offered alternative explanations as to what caused the mysterious streak.
"I don't know what it is but the article says that 'experts' at NASA who examined the video said it was a bird. The experts at NASA who stated this must have a bird brain because of all things it could be it's certainly not a bird," a user named Jim angrily noted.
"Definitely a UFO," a user named Larry added, saying that at the time in question, he had just parked his car at work in the area "when a light shot across the sky behind the clouds…way too fast for a jet."
Others had alternative ideas, suggesting the blip was a "potato and cheese pierogi," a search light, lightning, a meteor, a blimp, Nancy Pelosi flying on a broomstick, or even God.
"Always someone recording it with a camera that looks like it was HD back in the 70s…can you donate some higher quality cameras to WKYC?" user Keith joked.
Here is his story, and those of two other people who believe they have seen something extraterrestrial.
"It was the 31st of March, 1999," said Colin.
"We had been out for a bar meal in Warwickshire to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday.
"At approximately 9.30pm, myself, my ex-wife, daughter and mother-in-law headed home.
"We turned onto the Fosse Way, near the village of Monks Kirby, and immediately noticed some bright lights ahead of us.
"The lights were half a mile away and just off the road to the left. The lights appeared deep red, with a bit of white mingled in.
"We drove down, parallel to the lights. We had slowed right down at this point.
"I stared at the four lights, which were in a row, but not level with the ground.
"It was at this moment that I noticed a fifth, smaller, spurious light off to the left hand side.
'It tilted slowly upwards like an airship'
"I stared into the end light, and could see a criss cross of lines, a bit like a traffic light lens. It seemed to pulse very rapidly.
"As I was looking at this light and the lights in general, a shape started to appear around them. The edges looked like the sky was rippling, but they, and the body, I believe, were transparent at that time.
"I could see the shape of a diamond around the lights.
"As soon as I had realised there was an object there, it tilted slowly upwards like an airship or a submarine. The object was now solid and fully materialised in a triangular shape.
"The tilt was not from the centre of the craft but from the rear. It was so low that if it had pivoted from the centre of the craft it would have struck the ground.
"I noticed the surface looked to be alive, it was like a lake of dark grey liquid similar to mercury. The liquid, although tilted quite steeply, looked as though it had waves running up and down the surface, like ripples on a lake in a breeze.
"On top of this 'lake' were silver lines running up and down the surface. They were like raised box sections, which interlocked like an old fashioned maze.
"I could see how the craft's top and bottom surfaces joined to a lighter central core, like a sandwich. No nuts and bolts, rivets or welding seams visible.
"It was immediately obvious to me that this was not an earthly object."
At this point, said Colin, who is a former aircraft designer, having been employed by Saab Aerospace in the military in Sweden, and Chevron Petroleum in New Zealand, the driver of the car pulled forward so she could reverse into a gateway off the main road.
As she pulled forward, a large hedge momentarily blocked the view of the craft. When they could once more see the spot where it the UFO had been, it had disappeared.
"We got out of the car and it was gone."
Of the object they had seen, Colin said: "We could see a large craft in the distance with strange red lights at the rear. It seemed enormous to me with a huge wingspan.
"At the end of each wing was a steady white light shining up along the top surface.
"It was very, very quiet as we stood there, no smells of any fuel having been burnt.
"During the incident we didn't hear a single noise from the craft, which was the size of a house, hovering by the car."
Since his experience, which Colin described "like meeting God" and "life changing", he has devoted much of his time researching what he saw.
Colin was 40 when it happened. He immediately went home and starting building a model of the craft he believes he saw, which he completed in 2000. He has also had a 3D printed model made of the craft, and commissioned computer-generated imagery to enable him to show at his presentations.
Colin, now aged 60, said: "The years since the encounter have been very interesting for me.
"I have given several presentations to different groups, as well as appearing on television a couple of times with my model.
"The result of this is that many people have come forward to tell me of their own experiences."
Although his story will sound hard to believe to many of us, Colin is not alone.
'I understand this sounds very weird'
In 2014, a man who lives in Earl Shilton had a similar experience in his back garden.
"I was out in the back garden having a cigarette - when I smoked - in the summer of 2014.
"It was late as it was dark. I don't remember exactly the time and date as I had put it to the back of my mind.
"I usually look up to the stars during clear nights as it's a very nice sight. When I did, I saw a 'fluid' looking triangular craft coming from the west over Earl Shilton.
"I understand this sounds very weird hence I've not talked about it before.
"I don't think I would have noticed it if it had been at a different angle as it was 'cloaked'. I could see stars as if I was looking straight through it, but I could clearly see the triangular shape of the craft and I still remember thinking to myself that it wasn't a very good cloaking device.
"It was moving very slowly and very low with no sound and no lights whatsoever, but it was huge - the size of a football pitch.
"As it got closer visibility got worse - I'm guessing it's all about the angle of view - then I could no longer see it at all. I managed to see what I assume would be the front right side as it was approaching, then the underneath.
"It was all smooth or fluid with no sharp edges with no markings that I could see."
Another person, who did not want to be named, said: "I have also seen triangular objects moving silently across the sky very low.
"On February 3, 2016, at 17.37, I was travelling from Stoney Stanton towards Earl Shilton. The lights seemed to be heading from Desford way, and following the Earl Shilton bypass across to Barwell.
"I wound down my window as it crossed overhead.
"The lights were very bright. I quite often stargaze and these lights stood out immediately. There didn't appear to be any other lights on it, just the three white lights in a triangle shape.
"They did not flash. The lights were around the size of helicopter’s search lights.
"I would say the height of it when it passed overhead was around 300-400 metres high. I couldn't make out the size of the craft as the street lights made it difficult.
"However, with the distance between the two rear lights and the front light, I would say it was the size of an articulated lorry and more of an isosceles triangle rather than equilateral. There was no sound as it passed over at approx 30mph."
Have you seen anything unusual in the skies that couldn't be explained? Send your pictures and videos to newsdesk@leicestermercury.co.uk
Scott C Waring, a popular extraterrestrial researcher who posts UFO-related stories, recently uploaded pictures of an alleged unidentified flying object sighting apparently shot from the Alps mountain Lesyn in Switzerland.
In his post, Waring revealed that the pictures were actually taken on last year, but the alleged UFO came to notice only after closer analysis a few days back. Even though no video of the sighting is available as of now, the photos of the incident have already gone viral on online spaces.
UFO Sightings Daily
After closely studying the image, Waring argued that this UFO might be actually entering or exiting a hidden alien base in the Alps mountain. The alien researcher also added that the alleged extraterrestrial craft might be using artificial gravity technology which is helping the occupants to stay intact even when the flying object is tilting.
"The UFO is tilted, but for the aliens inside, there is no tilting. The craft would have artificial gravity that keeps the pilots and occupants totally comfortable. The UFO would only be tilted if it was entering or exiting a mountain alien base," wrote Scott C Waring on his website UFO Sightings Daily.
In the website post, Waring assured that extraterrestrial aliens are living in the Alps, and this photograph is an irrefutable piece of evidence that substantiates this fact.
"This is a very rare moment not often seen, let alone photographed. Amazing evidence that an alien base exists below the mountains of Lesyn," added Waring.
However, experts have already ruled out the alien possibility by stating that this anomaly in the photo could be the result of a technical glitch.
The report of this UFO sighting came just a few days after popular conspiracy theory channel 'UFOmania' released footage that shows another flying object spotted during the live feed of Channel 3 NBC. Scott C Waring also checked this clip, and he claimed that aliens are visiting the earth to monitor human activities. Several viewers who watched the eerie footage also argued that extraterrestrials from deep space are gearing up for an invasion.
HITTING THE GAS ‘Oumuamua had its foot on the accelerator as it left the solar system. Some astronomers think the object was spewing jets of gas, as shown in this artist’s illustration, although there’s no evidence of that. Others think it was pushed by radiation from the sun.
NASA, ESA, STSCI
The first known interstellar visitor to the solar system is keeping astronomers guessing.
Ever since it was spotted in October 2017, major mysteries havedogged the object, known as ‘Oumuamua (SN Online: 10/27/17). Astronomers don’t know where it came from in the galaxy. And they’ve disagreed over whether ‘Oumuamua is an asteroid, a comet or something else entirely.
One of the strangest mysteries is how ‘Oumuamua sped up after it slung around the sun and fled the solar system, a motion that can’t be explained by the gravitational forces of the sun or other celestial bodies alone. The most natural explanation is that ‘Oumuamua spouts gas like a comet, which would have given the object an extra push away from the sun — except astronomers saw no signs of such outgassing.
In November, Harvard University astronomers Shmuel Bialy and Avi Loeb sparked a firestorm of media coverage when they suggested that the acceleration could be explained if ‘Oumuamua is an alien spaceship, in a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. In particular, the duo suggested, the object could be a solar sail: a large flat sheet less than 1 millimeter thick that uses pushes from starlight to navigate the galaxy (SN: 9/10/11, p. 18). Loeb is part of an organization called the Breakthrough Initiative that has suggested sending solar sails to visit a nearby planet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri (SN Online: 8/25/16). Maybe some other spacefaring civilization sent a similar sail to visit us, Loeb argues.
Since then, astronomers have been kicking around other origin stories to explain ‘Oumuamua and its bizarre behavior. “Jumping to the conclusion that it has to be produced by extraterrestrial intelligence, I think we don’t have evidence for it yet,” says astronomer Amaya Moro-Martín of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “There are other natural explanations that can be explored.”
Here are three such possibilities.
1. Fluffy ice fractal
To get a push from starlight, an object needs to have a large surface area — to provide more surfaces for particles of light called photons to nudge — and a small mass, so that even tiny amounts of photon pressure can make a difference.
A flat sheet, such as a solar sail, isn’t the only way to harness this radiation pressure, Moro-Martín says. A fluffy, porous structure that resembles a fractal, a geometric pattern that repeats itself on smaller and larger scales, could also be propelled by light, she argues. “Physically it would be the same idea, just the geometry would be different.”
FEELING FLUFFY ‘Oumuamua could have the same porous structure as this interplanetary dust particle, but on a larger scale, researchers say.
H. VOLTEN ET AL/ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS 2007
Dust particles collected in Earth’s stratosphere can have this sort of fluffy fractal form, Moro-Martín says. She also sees similar structures in computer simulations of the way planets grow up in the dusty planet-forming disks astronomers see around other stars. As ice grains in the distant, frigid regions of those disks stick together, the particles develop into fractals.
“If ‘Oumuamua were to have such an origin, it will be very interesting because it will be the first time that we have evidence for what this intermediate stage is,” Moro-Martín says. “We don’t know how the planet formation process proceeds. All we can see are the smallest particles, the dust particles, or the very largest, planets.”
But could a fluffy fractal survive the journey from another star’s planet-forming disk, all the way into the solar system and out again?
To accelerate as much as ‘Oumuamua did, the object must have a density of just 0.00001 grams per cubic centimeter, Moro-Martín estimates. In comparison, graphene aerogel — the lowest-density artificially produced material — is at least 10 times as dense. “It tells you [the object] must be very fragile,” Moro-Martín says.
“The idea that ‘Oumuamua is a fluffy fractal of ice, pushed by radiation pressure from sunlight, is an interesting scenario,” Loeb says. “But there are major challenges that it faces,” including how such a fragile object would survive, he says.
2. Comet skeleton
Planetary scientist Zdenek Sekanina of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., agrees that a fluffy structure could account for ‘Oumuamua’s strange speedup. But he doesn’t think ‘Oumuamua was born with it. Instead, the object is a desiccated comet that lost most of its water and gases when it swooped close to the sun, he proposes in a paper posted January 30 at arXiv.org.
“It’s like a skeleton of the original body, with all the ice out,” Sekanina says.
SKY SKELETON Maybe ‘Oumuamua was a comet that was destroyed as it approached the sun, like this image of comet LINEAR shattering into mini-comets in 2000. If that’s the case, only the skeleton of the original comet was left by the time astronomers spotted ‘Oumuamua.
HAL WEAVER/JHU, NASA
Comets that fly close to the sun often do not survive. But some of these doomed objects have left observable fragments behind, like comet LINEAR. That comet came within 0.7 times the Earth’s distance to the sun in 2000 and left a cloud of mini comets behind, which were observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. ‘Oumuamua faced a harsher situation: It swooped closer to the sun, about 0.25 times Earth’s distance.
Like Loeb and Moro-Martín, Sekanina thinks solar radiation pressure is the best explanation for how ‘Oumuamua sped up. And a fluffy structure is the best way to accelerate with radiation pressure without invoking “little green men sending a sail,” he says. Although ‘Oumuamua is denser in Sekanina’s estimates than Moro-Martín’s, that’s still “just unbelievable,” he says. “It’s like a fairy castle type structure, or gossamer.”
If ‘Oumuamua were a fully solid, icy comet when it approached the solar system, and developed that gossamer structure only after flying close to the sun, that could explain how the object survived a trip through interstellar space.
3. Weird comet or ice shard?
When the Spitzer Space Telescope checked ‘Oumuamua for signs of a cometlike tail, the instrument saw none, meaning only minuscule amounts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide gas would have been expelled, if any. And if you assume ‘Oumuamua’s composition is similar to comets in the solar system, Spitzer’s data suggest that the object must not have been spewing out much water, either.
But if ‘Oumuamua is a strange sort of comet, it could spew water vapor or other noncarbonated gases that Spitzer didn’t detect, which could explain how the object sped up. “‘Oumuamua is made of still water, not Perrier,” quips astronomer Gregory Laughlin of Yale University.
Laughlin and colleagues are working on a study that suggests that ‘Oumuamua releases a nozzlelike jet of gas whose source migrates across the object’s surface, following the warmth of the sun. That migration would let ‘Oumuamua tumble through space without spinning so fast that it breaks apart. Other comets, including one visited by the Rosetta spacecraft (SN: 11/11/17, p. 32), exhibit this sort of sun-tracking jet.
“The weirdness is that [‘Oumuamua] would have to be made of pretty pure ice” to explain such outgassing, Laughlin says. It’s not clear if a comet, even a weird one, could be made of pure ice. So it’s possible that it ‘Oumuamua could be an ice shard of a larger body, such as if an icy planet came too close to a larger neighbor and was ripped apart, he says.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to check how ‘Oumuamua is structured now — it’s too far away to make any more observations. The ultimate test will come when — and astronomers think it’s a matter of when, not if — another interstellar visitor comes calling.
“If [‘Oumuamua] was representative of a population, there will be opportunities to get an up-close look at them,” Laughlin says.
Sometime in the last decade, something heavy slammed into the Martian atmosphere and shattered into a hard rain of superheated material. Those pieces fell to the Red Planet's surface, dotting the Martian dirt with a pattern of pockmarks.
The impact craters, astronomer Phil Plait wrote on his Bad Astronomy blog, suggest that the asteroid hit Mars while in an already weakened state. Most solid rock or metal asteroids are strong enough to survive the journey through the planet's atmosphere to the world's surface. But many asteroids, he explained, have already suffered collisions during eons spent tumbling through the solar system. Those collisions can leave the space rocks weakened and covered in fissures, which split open under the intense heat and pressure of atmospheric entry.
"It's essentially an explosion, the force of the sudden and furious release of energy when it splits," Plait wrote. [5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions]
You know this happened recently on Mars because images of the same region from 2009 don't show the craters, as explained in a statement from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
Here's the site in 2009:
Here it is in 2016:
The new features are exciting because Mars barely changes, or changes very slowly. University of Arizona researchers counted 21 separate craters in this image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with some of the features up to 23 feet (7 meters) across. They span an area just over 1,000 feet (305 m) across.
"This is a not-so-gentle reminder that although we may think of Mars as not being a terribly active world, especially when compared to Earth, there's still stuff going on there … even if it means importing the action from space," Plait wrote.
Planet Ninewill probably be detected within a decade or so, if the putative world does indeed exist, a new study suggests.
Three years ago, Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown estimated that the hypothesized Planet Nine — also known as Planet X, Giant Planet Five or Planet Next — is perhaps 10 times more massive than Earth and lopes around the sun at an average distance of 600 astronomical units (AU). (One AU is the Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
But in a detailed and lengthy new review paper, Batygin, Brown and two other researchers determined that the putative planet is likely smaller and less far-flung than that.
Observational evidence and computer-modeling work indicate that 10 Earth masses is an upper limit for Planet Nine, according to the new study. Indeed, 5 Earth masses, and an average orbital distance of 400 to 500 AU, are likely to be closer to the actual marks, the scientists found.
And that means Planet Nine is probably easier to spot than scientists had suspected.
"Perhaps counterintuitively, the increase in brightness due to a smaller heliocentric distance more than makes up for the decrease in brightness due to a slightly diminished physical radius, suggesting that Planet Nine is more readily discoverable by conventional optical surveys than previously thought," Batygin and his colleagues wrote in the paper. The study was published online this month in the journal Physics Reports. You can read it for free at the online pre-print site arXiv.org.
Indeed, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) project in Hawaii could conceivably spy Planet Nine any day now. And even if the hypothesized world is on the fainter and more distant side, it will probably still be detectable by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is scheduled to come online in Chile in the early 2020s, the researchers said.
"Therefore, Planet Nine — if it exists as described here — is likely to be discovered within a decade," they wrote in the study.
The newly published paper also sums up the case for Planet Nine's existence, organizing the available observations into four main lines of evidence. All four deal with peculiarities in the orbits of small objects way out in the frigid wastes beyond Neptune's orbit.
Such peculiarities are best explained by the existence of a big, distant "perturber," whose gravity has shepherded the objects onto their current paths, the researchers wrote. (The magnitude of this sculpting effect is determined by both the perturber's mass and distance from the sun. So, a smaller-than-thought Planet Nine would have to be closer to the sun to produce the observed results.)
"Although this analysis does not say anything directly about whether Planet Nine is there, it does indicate that the hypothesis rests upon a solid foundation," Brown said in a statement.
This foundation is, indeed, very solid, Batygin said. In a conversation with Space.com last fall, he pegged the probability of the world's existence at "over 90 percent." Another key player in the Planet Nine hunt, Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science, is similarly bullish, putting the odds in the 80 to 90 percent range.
It may seem strange that an object considerably bigger than Earth could stay hidden in our own solar system for so long. But Planet Nine's neighborhood is extremely distant; for perspective, Pluto orbits the sun at an average distance of just 39.5 AU. So, Planet Nine is likely to be quite faint, and its orbital path is huge, meaning that astronomers have a lot of celestial ground to search.
"We've covered very little of the sky to the depth that's needed to be covered to find something this faint," Sheppard told Space.com last fall. "You can hide a very big thing in the outer solar system very easily."
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated byKarl Tate), is out now.
Chinese satellite snaps rare photo of moon's far side with Earth in the background
Eye-popping image evokes other iconic space photos, including the famous "Earthrise" portrait taken during the Apollo 8 mission.
China's LongJiang-2 satellite captured this rare view of the moon's far side, with Earth appearing tiny in the background.CAMRAS/MingChuan Wei (HIT), CAMRAS, DK5LA
By Denise Chow
Ready to feel small? A striking new photograph taken by China’s Longjiang-2 satellite affords a rare view of the lunar far side — the side that’s impossible to see from the surface of our planet — with Earth visible in the background as a tiny blue marble.
"Few pictures have been taken that show the entire far side of the moon, so we're pretty proud to have helped take this picture," Cees Bassa, an astronomer at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, told NBC News MACH in an email. Bassa is a volunteer astronomer at the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands, where the photo was processed.
The eye-popping portrait was taken Feb. 3 and beamed back to Earth the next day. Because the satellite’s camera lacks an infrared filter, the colors were distorted in the original photo (below). But the astronomers who processed the image created the color-corrected version seen above.
“We edited it to balance the colors, and make the moon greyscale,” Tammo Jan Dijkema, a software engineer at ASTRON who also volunteers at the Dwingeloo Radio Observatory, wrote in a blog post.
Longjiang-2, which has been circling the moon since last June, is a key part of China’s Chang’e 4 mission, which successfully placed a lunar lander and rover on the moon’s far side for the first time ever Jan. 3. In concert with Queqiao, a radio-relaying probe in orbit around Earth, Longjiang-2 has been providing the radio link between the Chang’e 4 lander and mission controllers in Beijing.
The Chang’e 4 mission is studying a part of the moon that previously had been explored only from afar. It has taken a series of dramatic photos of the surface and successfully sprouted a series of seeds that became the first plants ever grown on the moon.
Longjiang-2, which measures 20 inches across, is expected to operate until August. Dijkema said he expects to have even more photos of the moon from the Chinese satellite in the coming months.
NASA, the United States space agency has been searching for alien life outside the earth for many years, but until now, no probes have successfully found traces of life in the space. However, Jim Bridenstine, the reigning NASA administrator believes that the milestone alien discovery will happen soon, and he recently revealed that the upcoming Mars missions will find an answer to the billion-dollar question regarding extraterrestrial life.
An artist's illustration of NASA's life-hunting Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet's surface.
As per a report published in The Independent, Jim Bridenstine is quite eager to equip upcoming NASA missions to search for alien life. Bridenstine revealed that future Mars missions by NASA will try to collect samples from the surface of the Red Planet, and will be later taken back to the earth for further research. The NASA administrator also added that studying these samples will help to identify biosignatures that aliens might have left behind.
“We’re going to be able to look at samples and determine if there’s a biosignature in there. The goal is to discover life on another world; that’s what we’re trying to achieve. And because of so many great people in this room, friends, we are well on our way to doing that,” said Bridenstine, Space.com reports.
Bridenstine also talked about the previous findings which indicate that Mars is one planet in the solar system where alien life can be found. Earlier, several reses arch reports have found that organic molecules are there in the Red Planet, and experts also believe that there might be water sources below the Martian surface.
A few days back, Scott C Waring, a popular conspiracy theorist had argued that Mars was once home to an advanced alien civilization. Waring made this conclusion after spotting various anomalies on Mars photos taken by NASA. In a recent post on his website UFO Sightings Daily, Waring also argued that the male-oriented society which once existed on Mars was the reason behind the extinction of life on the Red Planet.
As per Waring, in his research, he has spotted very less female face-like structures on the red planet, and most of the apparent face-like structures he found were males with beards and mustaches. Waring added that the intelligence of female Martian species was ignored by men, and thus the species increased the odds of destroying themselves.
An aeroplane pilot reported being hit by a 'laser' just moments before he encountered unidentified flying objects.
The flying instructor, from Wolverhampton airport, was travelling over Gloucestershire when his small aircraft was brightly illuminated.
Moments after the incident, the pilot and his student encountered UFOs, which reportedly consisted of unusual lights.
A spokesman for Air Midwest, which employs the pilot, said: "We are unsure if this event (the laser) is involved with the main event (UFO sighting).
"The pilot believes he may have been under a laser attack from the ground.
"A bright laser-like light illuminated the cockpit. Immediately after this the main lights (UFO) were observed."
Air Midwest, a flying school based at Wolverhampton airport in Bobbington, has been unable to identify the source of the light. Staff members are now wondering if this event was related to the UFO sightings. They are also unsure if the light source was actually a laser, or if it was caused by something else.
They were undertaking night navigation training over Gloucestershire when the sightings occurred, after taking off from Wolverhampton airport.
Both events - the UFOs and so-called laser-light - have left staff members at the flying school baffled.
In the 'laser incident', which took place before the UFO sightings, the affected pilot radioed air traffic control after his student raised concerns.
In the conversation to air traffic control, the pilot said: “Apparently there is someone shining lasers at the aircraft from the bottom of the base-downwind leg."
A while later into the flight, the two Air Midwest flying instructors, who were in separate aircraft, spoke about witnessing the UFOs.
One pilot said to the other: "Behind you at your six O'clock, there is something that looks stationery but has got some peculiar lights on it."
As part of Air Midwest's own investigations, staff members trawled logs from Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), which listed airborne events in the area.
Tim Brannon, director of the flying school, told the Express & Star: "There was no airborne activity that remotely the objects we saw.
The flight school published the pilot's report on its Facebook page. Note, the photograph is not what the pilots saw, but gives an illustration of their encounter
"This is a massive surprise to us as we expected to find an activity that explained the event.
"So as it stands my guys did see still unexplained objects that one would generally refer to as UFOs."
The incident has drawn interest from around the world and it remains a mystery.
The Air Midwest spokesman added: "We at Air Midwest are still expecting a normal explanation at some point but as yet after investigating, we still cannot find an explanation for what four of our pilots saw that evening."
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 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.